-. . -.--

AU where everyone’s favourite precious child has a transcendent spaghetti experience at Tonio’s and decides to become a chef while getting his life together.

Watch it, Rohan: you almost said something nice, there. 

Repeat offender contributor @exec-phantasmagoria inspired this tangent with an awesome suggestion: “Josuke didn’t fix up Rohan’s house because Rohan is 900% death before dishonour. I suggest something that shows the extreme lengths that Rohan went to make sure Josuke doesn’t fix his crib (things like sneaking into Okuyasu’s house to use HD to make Okuyasu take Josuke out of town. Forcing Tomoko to make Josuke visit Holly on the other side of the country) The finger Josuke fixed is Rohan’s eternal shame.” All of this is canon, and I want you to imagine that I drew everything in detail and not just the first encounter that started this chain of extreme lengths.

Ah, I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been unwell :( I was cripplingly depressive for most of high school and university, although it was specifically because of an emotionally abusive “’’friend”’’. This alleged friend liked to tell me, on a regular basis, that

- I didn’t love art enough to succeed in an industry or on my own (ha!)

- My art wasn’t interesting or worthwhile (this was based entirely on her own interests and not on any knowledge of the industries I was interested in– she preferred… photoreal Glee fan art…)

- I wasn’t allowed to draw anything in my spare time aside from our characters, and whatever else I was interested in was idiotic & a waste of time 

- I wasn’t allowed to have other friends, to the point where I’d have to lie about where I was going if I had to get off AIM in order to avoid a fight. She’d also belittle the friends I made at university and try to convince me that they didn’t really like or care about me

- That I was a malicious, self-absorbed bitch whenever I tried to tell her that I the way she treated me made me unhappy, and

- That I should never talk about my own happinesses & successes, because that made her upset :,^)

And so on and so forth (side note: if anyone treats you like this, burn that bridge to the ground ASAP). There was, of course, a lot more to it than that, and there’s a lot to unpack here, but my point is that I’ve also had to relearn a lot about making art and what I care about after I cut contact with this person, although because I was in school for animation I never stopped drawing entirely. I’ll try to share what I’ve learned!

1) Please try to forgive yourself for taking a break ;; it’s natural to worry about how much you could’ve improved or what you could’ve done if you were 100% fit and happy, but the truth is that you just weren’t in the right mindset to draw and that forcing yourself would have most likely been damaging. If you can see your rest period as something you absolutely had to do for your mental and/or physical health, it may become easier to let go of what could’ve been! 

2) Now that you’re feeling up to task, it’s time to get excited about improving! Being rusty or not as skilled as you’d like can be frustrating and disappointing, but it’s also an opportunity to grow in leaps and bounds! Let yourself make 1,000 bad drawings, quickly and carelessly– don’t think about the finished product, think about the process. Go wild, experiment, take risks– try things you might not have tried while feeling comfortable with your skill level. One of the major things I drew while getting my personality back was my first comic.

3) Don’t push yourself! Drawing is like running– if you try to go from a sedentary lifestyle to running a marathon, you’ll be hard up and miserable. Draw when you feel like it, and draw what you love. Don’t beat yourself up or tear yourself apart for skipping a day, or a week, or for being self-indulgent with your subject matter. The most important thing is to have fun. 

4) If you’re not having fun– if drawing really feels like pulling teeth and you’re upset because of it– it’s okay to stop, either temporarily or permanently. Don’t turn art into an obligation.

5) I really like this post by Chira about depression, and being an artist dealing with mental illness. I recommend giving it a read!

I’m by no means saying that discussion about whether to include people who are ace/aro alone in the LGBT+ community isn’t allowed, or that discussion about who gets to use the q slur isn’t allowed, because those are valid discussions that need to be had.

But the fact is, that “discussion” has reached absolutely vile and toxic extremes.

When people are

coming into the asexuality tags to say they “hate all ace people”

coming into the asexuality tags to tell someone to “get murdered”

coming into the asexuality tags to make blanket accusations

coming into the asexuality tags to post mocking “uwu :)))” single-sentence discourse messages

telling people who have been sexually harassed or raped that the cause of it was something else

forcing labels on people who are uncomfortable using them (particularly aroace people who don’t want to identify as straight because it’s a label that means to the world at large “heterosexual” and simply doesn’t apply)

using ableist slurs like “fucking useless” and “why are you all so fucking STUPID” and telling ace people to kill themselves

or going onto a person’s blog to do any of these things

then the discussion is no longer a discussion.

Need I remind all of you that there are children and minors in the asexuality tags looking for information and support and they don’t need to see messages from people telling others to “get murdered”…

(this being publicly posted to all ace tags and the person has told at least two other people to kill themselves)

and those minors don’t need to see people telling certain kinds of aces that they hate all of them outright either.

(again posted publicly in all asexuality tags).

When you’re using ableist slurs on people you disagree with, telling them you hate everyone for something they can’t change, and telling people to kill themselves or get murdered, that is toxic, vile behavior and that behavior has reached the eyes and ears and, unfortunately, mouths of children and it needs to stop, and that goes for everyone who is behaving like this.

If we want to have these discussions that need to be had, we need to drop the vitriolic and explosive “ace discourse” movement and move on towards patience and education, and being able to disagree with people without telling them to kill themselves or using ableist slurs.

The Queer Japan Project is live on Kickstarter!

However, they aren’t even half way funded and the Kickstarter only has 9 days left!!

(not) standing straight :: a bakufu hasegawa mix

So you’ve married into a wealthy family. Got a government job. Worked your way to the top. But is it even really you anymore?