Choose Kindness

Finally finished painting this fantasy character!

Most Black folks in the US have a deeply painful racial story having to do with interactions with white "friends," including me.

I had a unique experience of going to very diverse schools my entire life, but my family moved out to a mostly white suburb when I was around 11 or 12 years old. So I had friends of all kinds of different backgrounds at school, but my neighborhood friends were almost entirely white. Which was mostly fine as a kid. I even had two of these friends as groomsmen in my wedding.

Things changed shortly after the murder of Trayvon Martin. This is when I started getting more vocal online about racism, anti-Blackness, and the injustices I was observing and grieving throughout the country. It didn't take long at all for the friends from this group to go from uncomfortable, to combative, and then to all blocking me on social media. Once I started talking about race too much, they abandoned me by walking out of my life, which was incredibly painful. These were all very nice, generous, and kind people in every other context of their lives. But something about their racial identity development caused them to turn on me immediately once my voice around race became uncomfortable for them.

Those experiences, along with countless others I've had in my life from white peers, white educators, white store employees, and more, have taught me to be very careful about trusting white folks. Because I have been burned in so many ways in my life.

⟢ The youngest member of the group gets sick and tries to hide it because they’re scared of being left behind, so everyone quietly adjusts the travel plan and pretends it was already decided.

⟢ The leader always eats last, and one day the newest member notices and puts food directly into their hands before anyone can argue.

⟢ The quiet one remembers everyone’s tiny preferences: who hates bitter tea, who needs silence after a fight, who sleeps badly near windows, who says they’re fine when they absolutely are not.

⟢ Someone gets injured and expects to be yelled at for slowing the group down, but instead the others start arguing over who gets to carry their bag. T

⟢ he group finds a safe place for one night, and nobody knows how to act because surviving together is easier than resting together.

⟢ The most reckless one gets grounded by the entire group like a misbehaving child, even though they are technically a full adult with weapons.

⟢ Someone accidentally calls the group “home” and immediately tries to correct themselves, but everyone heard it and nobody lets them forget.

Happy birthday Mrs. Ice! This year I decided to blast some more Studio Ghibli characters with the melanin beam- Ashitaka and San from Princess Mononoke. They were a lot of fun to do, and I've already got more SG characters on the roster (I was going to do a whole bunch more for the Melanin Beam Challenge but time makes fools of us all). Anyway, I hope you have a lovely birthday, and thanks for all you do here!

Second picture for the @creatingblackcharacters Melanin Beam Challenge! I was mentally searching through different cartoons I enjoyed, trying to land on one that would both be nice to see featuring Black characters, but also would have an enhanced message... when I came to My Life as a Teenage Robot, I thought about how Jenny is very much accepted as a trans icon (rightly so); she was expected to have a specific role, but she wants to assert her own identity. She's a robot, who is figuring out how to be a teenager, and be seen as a girl. As a Black teenage robot girl, she navigates finding her own identity, there is the pressure to fit in with other people and sometimes try to "hide" the fact that she is a robot, but she is also expected to always be exceptional and save the day. She can't just NOT be any of these things, because it is all part of herself, and ultimately she finds friends who accept her, and gains a good relationship with her mom, so she has the space to grow and be comfortable with herself~

⟡ What happens when the supernatural becomes mundane?

⟡ Do people with magic get taxed differently on their abilities?

⟡ Is there magic rehab for people who become addicted to using their power?

⟡ What happens when two people with the same rare power meet?? do they bond or compete?

⟡ Who regulates the use of healing magic? can anyone just set up a clinic?

⟡ Can you insure property against magical damage and who pays out?

⟡ Is learning to control your magic mandatory, like vaccinations?

⟡ What happens when a child's magic surpasses their parents'?

⟡ Are there magic-nullifying prisons or do powerful criminals just escape?

⟡ Does untrained magic during puberty cause accidents and how does society handle this?

⟡ Can someone weaponize a 'harmless' magic like plant growth?

⟡ Are there magic patents?? can you own a spell?

⟡ What do people with deeply embarrassing powers do for work?

⟡ Is using magic to win sports cheating, or is it just a different category?

⟡ Do people with illusion magic have to register so courts know their testimony could be fake?

⟡ What happens when a healer refuses to heal someone on moral grounds?

⟡ Can magic-users be forced to use their powers by the state in an emergency?

⟡ Is there black market magic? selling spells or abilities illegally?

⟡ What does magic fatigue feel like and do employers have to give magical sick days?

⟡ Are there magic-assisted suicide debates in this world?

⟡ How does memory magic interact with criminal law?? can altered memories be used as evidence?

⟡ Are there support groups for people whose powers emerged late in life?

⟡ If magic is genetic, do people selectively breed for it?

⟡ What's the etiquette around using magic in someone else's home without asking?

⟡ Do blind mages or deaf mages face different challenges?? does disability interact with magic?

⟡ Can you lose your magic permanently and what does grief over that look like?

⟡ Are there cultures where not having magic is actually seen as pure or blessed?

⟡ What happens to magic when a person is unconscious or in a coma?

⟡ Are animals affected by ambient magic?? do pets in magical households behave differently?

it's not just "worrying a lot" or one dramatic flashback scene. anxiety can be constant background noise, or it can hit in sudden physical waves, racing heart, nausea, feeling weirdly detached from your own body. PTSD is the nervous system staying on high alert long after the actual danger's gone. ask what the specific triggers and symptoms are before you write it, bc generalized anxiety and trauma-based PTSD work in genuinely different ways.

⤷ panic attacks are physical, not just emotional. chest tightness, dizziness, tingling hands, a feeling like you're dying or completely detached from reality. a character having one for the first few times might genuinely think something is medically wrong with them, not just "oh no i'm scared." it's not just breathing fast and looking spooked, it's the body convinced it's under attack.

⤷ triggers are rarely obvious or dramatic. a specific smell, a certain tone of voice, a particular time of day, fluorescent lighting. trauma responses often get triggered by mundane sensory details that seem to have nothing to do with the original event on the surface, and the character themselves might not even understand why they just shut down. don't limit your triggers to "seeing something that looks exactly like what happened," the brain makes connections that don't have to make sense to anyone watching from outside.

⤷ hypervigilance is exhausting and constant, not a dramatic beat. a character with PTSD might automatically scan every room for exits the second they walk in, sit facing the door out of habit, flinch at sudden movement or noise. this isn't them having A Moment, it's background behavior they've stopped even noticing themselves, bc it's just how their body operates now.

⤷ avoidance isn't cowardice, it's self-protection. a character refusing to talk about something, changing the subject, leaving the room, that's not necessarily weak-willed. avoidance is often the nervous system's own attempt to prevent a flashback or a panic response before it starts. writing forced confrontation as the only real path to healing is a common trope, but it's not actually how most healing works.

⤷ recovery isn't linear and doesn't end with one cathartic scene. a character can do real, genuine trauma work and still have a bad week months or even years later. writing healing as a single breakthrough moment after which the anxiety or PTSD is just "resolved" undersells how long and nonlinear this process actually is for most people, and honestly can make readers who are living through it feel like something's wrong with them for not being "fixed" already.

do the research, and if you can, read firsthand accounts from people who've actually lived through this rather than just other fiction that's already gotten it wrong.

Types of Magical barriers & wards!! (For your magic system)

⤷ boundary ward 𓆈 marks the actual edge of a protected space and alerts or repels anyone trying to cross it. this is your basic property line spell, and it's great for establishing scale early on, the reader instantly understands how big the protected territory actually is the moment someone triggers it.

⤷ silence ward 𓆈 blocks sound from crossing in or out entirely. genuinely great for secret meetings, interrogation scenes, or hiding a fight happening right next door to someone who has no idea. also creates fantastic dramatic irony, the reader knows something's happening, a character standing three feet away doesn't.

⤷ concealment ward 𓆈 hides a place or object from sight or detection completely, not just from casual glancing but from anyone actively looking. this is your classic "the door was never there" trope, and it's great for reveals, bc you can plant a location early and have a character walk right past it for chapters before it's ever found.

⤷ blood ward 𓆈 keyed specifically to bloodlines, only allowing or blocking certain people based on ancestry. this is a genuinely great plot device for legitimacy questions, a character who can walk through a blood ward without trouble has just proven something about their heritage without a single line of exposition needed.

⤷ barrier seal 𓆈 a physical-magical hybrid, usually placed directly on doors or thresholds. it's the combination that makes it interesting, bc breaking it might require both magical skill and literal lockpicking, so a character weak in one but strong in the other has to improvise or bring someone else in.

⤷ anti-scry ward 𓆈 blocks divination or far-sight attempts from locating the space at all. this one's great for raising tension from a distance, a character trying to check on someone through magical means and hitting total static is genuinely unsettling, and it tells the reader something is being deliberately hidden without confirming what.

⤷ containment ward 𓆈 the inverse of a boundary ward, it keeps something in rather than keeping something out. this is your prison cell, your sealed monster, your quarantine zone. great source of tension the moment it starts weakening, bc now the threat isn't "can someone get in," it's "how long until something gets out."