Testing Out The Password System.

knock knock. what's the password?

if you've somehow gained access to this thing, then i'm assuming that means i did something right and didn't fuck it up. congrats! to you and to myself i mean for getting here. html is really hard. makes me wanna die. but we ball. anything hidden behind password protection is probably just system related stuff or 2purrsonal 4the n00bs. yeah. i'll have to discuss with the council whether or not making an entirely new tumblr blog for this kind of thing is worth it, or if we should just keep it passsword protected. me personally? i wanna make a new blog! but it doesn't really matter to me whatever happens.

HELL YES. I've figured it out.

I'm too fucking good. thank you ikari and teeg for giving me the code for the password container. love yall.

protected page

11/11/25, The Birthday Special.

Hello all, take a seat, puff out your petticoat; this princess party is back on once again.

So my birthday was about three or so days ago, that was fun wasn't it? I went out with my friend and my sibling and we had a blast just walking around downtown, buying shit, and having lots of fun! It was cool-ish. Before that though my family had planned a surprise birthday party for me, and it was certainly a birthday party. Which is to say i didn't like it very much if I'm being honest.

Perhaps I'm being picky and spoiled, maybe. But I don't really care.

The ideal birthday party involves me getting my sibling, mother, and father together, going out to eat, and then going our separate ways. I don't like surprise birthday parties and I don't like being around a lot of people for my birthday. I think i've talked about this before but I'm already feeling a level of exhaustion from being around my huge family admittedly, and I wanted that day to just be a day I could spend with those three people + my two friends I was supposed to go out with. But it didn't happen, and it kind of frustrated me I'll admit. The party itself was okay, family spoke and I spoke, and we talked about stuff. It was all really Okay. The hangout afterwards though made the evening, I must say. God I love my friends and I love my sibling. God bless.

Also my dad got me The Score and illmatic, i was so happy to see them. I haven't listened to my illmatic disc yet, but i'm planning on it soon.                      

Anywho. Since turning 17 life has been kind of mediocre. I go to school, i do what I need to do, it's all fine and dandy. Since then I've been working on my new project: befriending someone. His names jake. hes... very interesting. i mean this pawsitively of course! we're currently mutuals on twitter and admire each others work a bunch, hehe. (it still freaks me out that so many people like my art) but i've only spoken to him a little bit and he seems really nice! i worry about a lot of things, and i worried that perhaps I wasn't doing enough or doing too much when talking to him, but my problem was quickly fixed when i realized that hes just sort of A Dude. and by that i mean hes just like. really normal. i don't think he cares as much as i think he does about if i'm talking too much because it shows that i'm interested in having a conversation i think? i don't know, i'm bad at people. it's whatever though, i hope to speak with him more in the future...

That's about it, sorry for this one being so short. If i don't write something about my birthday i will forget, and that's the last thing i wanna do. 

this is spidey, signing out.

10/21/25, Try to Avoid the Description of a Fool.

So. It's been a minute.

What a massive fucking understatement. It's been about two months since I last updated and we got some stuff to cover okay? Sit back, relax, puff out your petticoat and take one sip from your cup. Or two. Or three. Or ten. Point is: this princess party's back on.

So, that last update right? "The absence of god doesn't always bring you comfort, baby." Couldn't be any truer, it really does not. But when things look down they can either do one of two things: get worse or get better. And it definitely got a lot worse before it got better. I mean technically my circumstances are still pretty iffy but my brain is so hope-pilled I can't see just how shit things are. These circumstances are pretty much my fault (Note: if you aren't stressed out about college, stress harder. Your future self will thank you!) and now I'm really paying for it. But somehow even when things were looking REALLY shitty (being unable to get a letter of recommendation from a teacher I needed one from), it just somehow??? Worked out??? That's the weird thing about me, I'll be completely butt fucked by life—like really getting my ass handed to me—and somehow it all just works out. I've dubbed it my Spidey Luck, but it's really just the principle of life that makes itself really apparent to me: When you think life's gonna work one way, it'll usually go another, and that's not necessarily as bad as it seems in the moment. That doesn't mean you shouldn't develop a plan and stick with it of course, but sometimes life has other paths for you and it's not bad to give those other paths some thought every once in a while.

At the moment though, college applications have been taking up about 80% of my brain space, like to the point where my dad says I should probably take a break. Which is insane to me by the way, because he's the type of guy who usually encourages me to be on top of my shit and working always. But I think it's because I've been letting school take a backseat to getting this college shit done, which is bad. Currently my grades are looking okay, I've got straight B's and one C I'm working to raise to a B before the end of the quarter. I've only got like four classes and only one of them is a really hard class (god I hate pre-calc so much) so I don't have any excuses to do bad this year. Accountability is important, and I am trying to hold myself as accountable as possible!

Don't know why I feel depressed when my life is not that hard the more I think about it. Really goes to show how much you do not choose your headspace, huh.

But anyway, guess what else I've been stressing over: MY BIRTHDAY. GASP. I'm gonna be turning seventeen soon and I have been putting making plans on the backburner in favor of getting my academic and college work together, turning seventeen is like the last thing that's on my mind. But the moment I choose to pull that string out of the depths of my brain I realize oh my god I have so much shit to do to plan.

I've been getting more into collecting CDs, this is a surprise to literally no-one. I'll blog more about this later, but it's been a hobby of mine that I really like, and I find CDs to be a more convenient way of listening to albums than I do Spotify tee bee aych. Or any digital streaming service for that matter, I can't stand any of them because of all of the damn ads and "smart" shuffle nonsense. It is really wonderful that instead of having to jump through hoops to find a song a million times and put it into a playlist to loop it, I can pop it into my player and put it on repeat until I get sick of it. Life is just so wonderful, honestly. But anyway, I've been enjoying buying CDs, and I want to ask for more for my birthday. Problem is that I heavily suspect that my parents kind of look down upon me for my little hobby. I mean my dad hasn't ever been shy about the fact that in the modern era of having everything on Youtube or Spotify he doesn't exactly *get* the point of CD collecting, the guy never allows me to buy CDs whenever we go thrifting which sucks because you can find them at the thrift for dirt cheap.

I found an old copy of Fiona Apple's "When The Pawn..." while I was out thrifting, like to the point where it still had the fiona apple website sticker on the front. I regret not buying that CD severely just because my dad wouldn't let me. I have such an appreciation for old CDs that mostly boils down to "Original = Older = Cooler." That's why I prefer buying my discs secondhand, usually from online thrift store vendors. It's supporting the community and it's getting older stuff. So Vintage, as the youth say.

But anyway, my dad doesn't get my hobby because of modern advancements which have made music more "accessible" (in theory), which I guess is fair. I don't think all of the explanations in the world could ever get him to get it, and I'm okay with that. It's not exactly like I'm pining for him or anyone to "get it" for that matter, I'm very content with just buying my discs even if people think it's a waste. My mom's opinion is another story, though. She hasn't made her thoughts on it very explicit but it's pretty obvious she think's it's a stupid hobby too. And I'd be okay with that if she didn't give me this look and scoff every time I talk about my CDs or if one comes in the mail. It was fine the first few times but after a while it becomes annoying. I was going to ask for CDs for my birthday, but I've been contemplating just not doing it outright because I really get the feeling she doesn't vibe with it. At the moment the CDs on my 'GOD I WANT THIS FOR MY BIRTHDAY' List are as follows:

- Arular by M.I.A. (purrsonal favorite album of mine.)

- The Score by The Fugees. (I've been meaning to give this album a proper listen.)

- Illmatic by Nas. (yet another favorite album of mine that I listened to when I was first getting more into hip-hop.)

- The Anthology by A Tribe Called Quest. (compilation album which has a lot of my favorite Tribe songs and Vivrant Thing. God I love that song. Q-Tip makes me feel Things.)

- Beats Rhymes and Life by A Tribe Called Quest. (considering removing this one to be honest, it's a good album but I'm not sure if I like it *that* much.)

- We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service by A Tribe Called Quest. (fuck I've grown to love this album so much more than I did when I first listened to it, it's so good.)

And that's about it! Only like five discs, very short list. I don't know, I'm not the type of person who enjoys asking for much. I might ask for a homestuck shirt or something, I've always wanted either a Jake or Roxy shirt to live out my Jake Kinnie Dreams, and a roxy shirt because she's awesome and I want to cosplay her in the future.

Also because of my secret third reason: wearing homestuck merch in public can either attract the people I want or give the former tumblr kids cosplaying as normal, everyday people flashbacks to a better (or worse) time. Both of these are ideal scenarios. I have no shame about being a homestuck, and outing myself as one in public is fine by me.

But yeah, birthday's on the mental bulletin board containing my "To-Worry-About" list.

Also, I ended up going out with my friend Jules (Viv's their name now, so I'll be calling them such from now on.) and I had so. much. fun. We mainly just walked around the mall and caught up on life, and our chronically online lives too. It's really nice knowing someone who's about as woke as me in opinion that I don't feel like I have to walk on eggshells around when discussing like. Anything. We bought some Popeyes, talked about the shitty job market, took a few photos, and then went our separate ways. It was a really nice hang-out, would love to do it again sometime! Well I guess it's gonna happen if my birthday planning turns out right, so I'm pumped for that! I also gotta invite my bestest friend ever Filbert. We haven't talked in a hot minute aside from last week when I volunteered to help out with decorating a hallway for our school's hallway decorating contest.

Each class has to decorate a hallway with a theme, and whoever does it the best wins! We had the theme of Broadway Musicals, and I was given the task of drawing a huge Elphaba cut-out for the Wicked section of our hallway. I didn't really like how she turned out honestly, so none of you are ever seeing it. In my defense, it's really hard to draw a body when you are hyperfocused on going at it section by section instead of sketching it out fully first and THEN doing line-art, colors, etc. I don't even know if the class of 2026 won or not, I'll have to ask Filbert about it. I really miss that guy.

Speaking of friends. Flattie Project is finally starting soon! I'm so excited, in case you're unaware it's this thing that was organized by John and his friend August where we make a flat stanley and mail it to each other to take pictures and shit. This was supposed to be starting like last year but 1. It took a WHILE for people to mail their flatties to August and 2. Trump got elected which makes international mail about ten times more difficult because everyone fucking hates America. Talk about the Century of American Embarrassment. But anyway all of the flatties should be with him, so we can send them to each other through the mail.

Though while this was all going on I kind of had the realization that if you have fags in your phone who you trust with your life, the US Postal system is your oyster. So one day I was like, "You know what, sure, I guess I'll start using this thing." and now me and Teeg have this mail project thing going on. She's probably already started collecting stuff to send me given she's an adult with a Job and I have been SO. BUSY. but I have ideas on what I'm gonna send, not saying them here though because she's probably gonna read this. Hi friend! Love you! But it's not like I haven't given the idea of mailing my online friends things some level of thought, it's just I've never actually done anything with it for some reason.

Like take the Losers/Sugoi Sauce Squad. I've always had this idea that at some point I'm gonna make a personalized playlist for each of them, burn it on a disc, and then send the CDs with decorated jewelcases and all. It's the ultimate gift; the gift of music. Problem is I don't really have the means of burning CDs, well that's a lie technically. My dad left over a bunch of blank CDs before he moved out, I just need to find the time to go to the library and figure out the art of CD burning or find a laptop that still has a functioning CD/DVD player in it. Sucks that they phased those out, they were my everything.

I'll get around to it, hopefully. I need to manage my time better so I have more space for not-essential-but-still-important tasks.

But yeah, that's it for now. Thank you for coming back! I appreciate it, really. Join us for another tea party whenever I choose to have one.

This is spidey, signing out.

8/22/25, the absence of god doesn't always bring you comfort, baby.

Hi all. Grab a chair and take a seat of the table, this princess' party is back on. It's been a hot minute since I've last updated this blog... I think a month or two to be exact! Wow, time sure does fly doesn't it? I've been meaning to, anyway. I got like two drafts locked up in the vault that I'll get out eventually, but for now we're here. Here we are in the future, kind of bright. 

At the moment life has been pretty shit. To be fair, it looks like it's been abysmal for almost everyone around me too which isn't very comforting but at least I know I'm not alone in all of this. Near the end of June, after life was looking pretty up for me, it felt like a giant tidal wave of sadness crashed over me for just about no reason and I've been having to tread water in it since then. It's been about 1,411 hours 20 minutes and 29 seconds since we've last known peace 'round these here parts, bucko. It's just been terrible, not much more I can say on the matter without getting 2 purrsonal 2 quick. 2purrsy2quicky. At first I really just relished in being alone aside for a few friends because my mind's decided that I hate everyone and everyone hates me, but Rose unfortunately dragged me out of my cave to get me to talk to people again so I guess I've been doin' that. It's... alright I guess. Not nearly as fun as February-Mid June of this year but it satisfies well enough.

If it helps, after a while of failed job searches I finally got an interview. Said interview went great, even though I was pretty nervous about it at first. Now we just wait for the results of it to come back and see whether or not Malik is gonna be working or not.

I really hope I will be. Sitting on my ass talking to my friends and watching movies is not the life for me it seems. Especially when everyone's going off to college.

Oh yeah, that's another thing that's happening. My best friends Ray and Angelo are going off to college soon. And Rose is too I guess. It makes me fear for the future. I can't imagine a world where my favorite chronically online friends have to lock in and go away because they're focusing on school. That scares me. It's scary, really scary. But in all seriousness it really just has me thinking about how weird it is that the guys I've been friends with for about 3 years or so are now off to the "real world" so to speak. In a way we all experienced high school together, or at least I kind of did with them. So it's a bit of a stretch to say that I like, grew up with them, but I certainly feel a little different than when we all first met. However I felt anyway. 

We all used to stay up on school nights and draw together, talk about our oc's and ship them together, draw them in various states of undress, all that good stuff. The sun would be coming up and then I'd realize that I gotta get off whiteboard so I can actually sleep. It was a complete detriment to my sleep schedule honestly, but do I regret any of it? Hell no. If you told me I could relive one of those nights again I'd do it in a heartbeat. But now that everyone's been caught up in school and like, actually having lives, it feels like things have changed. New friendships outside of the friend group emerged, new friendships within the friend group emerged, people getting jobs, it's so weird. Now like four out of the seven people in our friend group are off to college, and I'M NEXT. I'm about as excited for it as I am literally terrified.

Okay. Maybe terrified is a bit of a stretch. It's not like I'm shitting my pants scared over having to worry about going off to college, it's just a little daunting. I feel like instead of being depressed this summer I probably should've been more worried about deciding where I'm even supposed to be going. But I guess if I don't do it now I never will. To me, college feels like that period in your life where you haven't really gotten everything figured out, but you get the independence to figure that out and make a hell of a lot of mistakes in the process. The word I'm looking for is "young adulthood," but you get what I mean. Young adulthood feels daunting. Not as much as it used to be anyway, seeing that a lot of my friends are young adults. In a way, looking at their lives through the brief glimpses I get of it makes it feel less scary. I don't know why it feels so creepy to admit that, but it does make it seem less intimidating and more like. I don't know. Unserious. I like seeing my friends who are off at college like Mok, Jay, Teeg & Gordon. I don't think that saying they're inspiring is necessarily the right wording, (Mok's life is anything but inspiring, she's evil) but it does make things feel less scary and realize that it's just another part of life. I feel like such a baby saying that, oh well. I still got like a year until adulthood is something I really gotta worry about, I'm gonna try to make the most of whatever I get until that arrives. 

Now taking a bit of a pivot; college. Where am I gonna go? I don't really know that yet. Most of the choices I've had in mind were primarily in state just because tuition is less expensive, but my father told me to think outside of the restraints I've set for myself. (This guy really wants me out of here, huh) So I considered going to the school that Teeg is at, and I think I'm gonna apply. I've also considered South Dakota State, I might apply there too but I'm not too sure on it. I dunno. I was primarily looking into all of the in-state universities like I said before, it's comfortable, safe. There's a high chance I'll already know everybody at the in-state places, so why move away? 

Sure, it sounds like a good idea in theory but is that what I really want? I'm not really sure. 

As much as safe is nice it's not good enough in my mind. I know everyone, but I also like, know everyone if that makes sense. It's the same, nothing's really changed. It would be nice to have a change of scenery once in a while, it gets a little boring having to deal with the same few places all the time. And even then, a part of me feels like despite the fact that I've lived here [my state, area, whatever] all of my life I barely know anything about this place. I was actually working on another blog post about this very topic but in spite of being involved with my community's y'know, *community*, I feel like I have a lack of any real connection to the queer community around here. I guess I know and/or knew a few gay people, all of which either moved away for college or are still here, just not very close to them. I kind of want to change that, it's a little isolating to be honest. I wanna get to know more about my area instead of being a little isolated and sort of out of the loop. I wanna at least do this before I have to move away for college anyway. 

I ought to make a bucket list, that's what I oughta do. I really don't know why I didn't think about that sooner. 

There's still so much I wanna see, still so much I wanna do, yadda yadda. And it's up to me to achieve all of those things no matter what limitations or hurdles I have, that's how I've always thought about it anyway. Like take college for example, I want to go so bad but I had an abysmal junior year. Like, pretty bad. I've got to get my shit settled this year or have my luck come in clutch for me to achieve my dream of going to college and becoming a pharmacist. Oh yeah, that's my new dream career! I don't know if I've ever talked about my dream careers on here anyway, but since I was little I always had the dream of being a psychiatrist, but I had a change of heart last year. No matter what, I just want to work in the medical field. Helping people calls me, but especially helping people get the help that I wasn't able to access for a lot of my life due to Circumstances Out of My Control. If I could help someone get the proper medication they need, work in pharmaceutical research and aid in the creation of life-saving treatment, or just help people any way I can, no matter how small, I think I'd die a happy man. And all I want is to die a happy man.

I think that's a nice note to leave this blog on. I'll talk with Teeg and Rose about college when I get freed from my dad's place and can finally go back home. Which I hope comes sooner than later, a guy can only take hearing his name get yelled so many times before he starts to get a migraine.

This is Malik, signing out. 

6/12/25. What is Love? (Baby Don't Hurt Me.)

Hello friends, friendettes, & frixnds! So funny thing about this update in pawticular, i had it already finished and ready to be posted. But apparently something must've gone extremely wrong in the autosave purrocess, so all of that writing is just completely gone. Lovely. I'm a little pissed about it but not enough to just completely discard this post idea, nope. I'm willing to put my purride aside and just rewrite everything I had to say, even if that lost draft was really, really fucking good. 

Anyway, for the purrpose of this blog just assume that for the most pawrt every time I discuss 'love' I mean it in the romantic sense, although we will delve into platonic love later. 

Also for the sake of my sanity I'm dropping the cat pun quirk. It's purrfectly pawesome and all but the red squiggly lines are pissing me off.

Lately I've been listening to a lot of love songs and my old crushing playlists because love has been a topic that's been on my mind since about late May. Mainly just to recreate that feeling, since I kind of miss it. It's like the auditory equivalent of delivering 40 electric shocks to your head to get you to remember something. But it really got me thinking about what exactly love *is*, at least to me. It's a difficult question to answer honestly, and I don't really know if I can. But I can try, that much is sure.

Love is a lot of things for one. But for me, I think love is a feeling of intense devotion, care, and want. When you're in love with someone you want to spend all of your time with them, want to do everything with them, and a whole lot of other stuff like that. Kisses, make-outs, and other things that are exclusive to romance I guess. It's a fun feeling, it involves a lot of affection that can't be captured properly in just the label of a 'friend' but can be aptly described when you call someone your 'partner.'

But see, the difference between platonic and romantic love is just something that's hard to describe without saying "when you feel it you'll know the difference," because that's an impawssibly vague non answer. I mean, sure, I could sit here and say that when you're in love you want to spend your whole life with this individual, but I could also want to do that with a friend. "You'd want to raise kids together!" Helping my friends out with their kids is also something I'd be down for! I think the indicator that distinguishes romance from platonic feeling is the urges. I mean, just how comfortable are you with kissing your friends? Yeah, didn't think so. But that's what love is to me I guess.

But see, romance is something that I'm usually adverse to because I'm the kind of person who enjoys romance in theory more than in practice. I like the warm, fuzzy feelings I get when I listen to a playlist I made about being in love, but if someone confesses their feelings to me I think I would shrivel and die. Sometimes I yearn, but more for the idea of love I've made in my head than for a specific person. I like how being in love makes me feel like anything is possible, it makes me feel like I'm right where I'm supposed to be. But if I had to be in another romantic relationship I think I would just feel massively uncomfortable the whole time, I don't know why. I think that much romantic devotion to me and affection for me just generally makes me extremely uncomfortable, I don't really know why. Romance isn't something that I really need in my life so much as I like thinking about it sometimes, I could never see myself being the type of person who's like "oh my god I NEED a girlfriend!!!" Trust me, I already have enough of those in my life. I’m fine being “alone” in the field of romance. And besides, I used to be that kind of person anyway, so I think that’s why nowadays I tend to stray away from romance.

As a wee, young baby (8th grader) I dealt with a heartbreak so bad that I ended up becoming really desperate to recreate how badly I was crushing on my then ex that I ended up fucking up a few friendships along the way. Genuinely horrible time to be alive, I am so glad that’s not me anymore. But that experience led me to value my friendships a lot more than I did before, and they’re some of the most important and valuable relationships I have in my life. Without my friends I would be a very, very different person I feel. I love all of them very much, as much as I love to say it. I wouldn’t trade any of them for the world. I guess having a lot of friends I love is better than having a partner, and it’s not to say that any of the friendships I have replace the romantic need I have, god no. It’s just to say that I have so much platonic love in my heart that the “romantic need” is practically nonexistent.

I’ve pondered a lot on if this means I’m aromantic or something, but I don’t know and honestly I don’t really care. My sexual orientation isn’t something I think about all that much, and why would I? I choose to go wherever my heart or dick tells me to, and that’s that. Putting a label on who or what exactly I’m attracted down to the very microlabel to feels like it would be such a tedious process that I don’t even bother with it. So like, so what if I was aromantic? It wouldn’t really change a thing other than going like “oh, neat.” and then moving on with my life. I just don’t really think about it all that much. But contrary to me being “unlabeled,” I actually love labels. At least queer labels anyway. See the awesome thing about queer labels is not only are they descriptors but those descriptors come with history behind them. They’re words but also not *just* words, and that is just so awesome to me. Certain subcultures and labels in the queer community are so rich with history and pride (pun intended,) I love all of it so much. It’s so lovely. 

But I’m getting off topic. Love. Right. Loooove. Well recall earlier when I said "I prefer romance in theory and less in practice"? Yeah, I don't really like it in practice. One might even say hate it. Feeling like you're in love with someone is usually so awesome but the moment it's reciprocated, or someone who you're not interested in suddenly develops feelings for you, it's kind of like flat trumpets. I don't know, someone being that intensely interested in me romantically just makes me super uncomfortable for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. But there's levels to it, if someone's just casually interested in me then I'll be able to turn them down and move on but if it's, like, and intense crush then I feel even more uncomfortable. Apolocheese for making it homestuck, but I'm basically like Jake English in Act 6 trying to handle Jane & Dirk's romantic feelings at the same time. On one hand, he was definitely in the wrong for ghosting Dirk and pretending he didn't know how Jane felt about him, but on the other hand I can see why he did it and there's a part of me that probably would've done the same. I like my space! Jeez! I don't like the pressure that comes with having to reciprocate someone's feelings. And even if someone were to date me, I just don't think they're ready to handle everything that comes with being with me. See, there's a difference between how I am with different people, and god knows how I act around people I'm romantically interested in isn't godawful. But the amount of vulnerability that you have to give in that kind of relationship isn't something I'm very comfortable with. Like I said, I don't think anyone can or needs to handle allat. I'm content dealing with it on my own, or with a therapist.

But that's about it, I think that's all I had to say on the topic. OH YEAH, and today's Karkat's birthday. So happy birthday to him, I guess.

This is malik, signing out.

re: “SJW” & Ugly Art Styles. (We Will Never Be Free From Tumblr)

Okay. I'm not discussing any lgbt discourse in this blog update so don't get discouraged by the title and click off just yet. It’s gonna be really far from that. I was just thinking about talking about the whole SJW/Tumblr Art Style thing since that was a big discussion topic amongst artists and casuals alike since it was basically being reinvented on xitter and I was forced to look at and think about it again after having not heard those talking points since 2016.

The thing about Twitter as a site for discussion is that it fundamentally isn’t meant for it, or at least for any meaningful and nuanced conversation. But that won’t stop people (and sometimes me, I won’t lie) from trying anyway!

Anyway, about the topic in question. This all comes from the fact that someone had reposted artwork from someone who’d been outed for (allegedly)pretending to be black, being a transmisogynist, and making their Jewish of Israeli. Their artwork was, for lack of better wording, pretty ugly. And the question of why white people have such ugly art styles in an attempt to be unique was brought up. This question has been on my mind for a hot minute and I don’t really have a definitive answer, but I wanted to ramble about it.

For one: I think it’s interesting that people were saying that they pretended to like their art while they were active but had been so glad to not have to do that anymore when the person was outed as problematic. But I can’t lie, something about that leaves a really sour taste in my mouth. More so the latter statement than the former. This isn’t defending that person or their actions, I just think it’s weird to willingly pretend or force yourself to enjoy an art style that you find unappealing instead of just blocking, muting, or generally choosing not to engage with the person’s art. It’s okay to just dislike it, and move on with your life. If you find something ugly, you find it ugly! And that’s fine.

But it also got me thinking about people’s art being considered bad after they’re outed for being problematic in some way. While I think criticism is okay to be levied at artwork, in a constructive manner of course, I think a lot of people would be better off realizing they want an excuse to bully people. It makes me think of that artist who spawned the whole extremely unfunny “rendering process :]” meme on art tiktok a while back, to the point where people were making up shit about the artist to justify bullying them as hard as they did. You don’t need a moral reason to dislike anything, you can just dislike it. Bad people can make good art, and while I think they should be mocked for their actions and what they did wrong I just don’t see the usefulness in mocking someone’s art if it had nothing to do with what they did wrong? Maybe that’s just me, I don’t know. I can’t tell people how to and not to hate, but at least be honest about your intentions.

In this case, with the weird racist artist, I think it’s pretty apt. If you’re using your artwork to perpetuate transmisogynistic shit about trans women then you should be mocked for doing just that.

But circling back to that question which intrigued me so much, “why do people try so hard to make their styles unique, to the point where it ends up looking ugly?” I think it stems primarily from a lack of skill. I don’t mean that as an insult by the way, just objectively speaking. A quote that comes to mind in particular is “learn the rules before you break them,” and I feel like artists who do this break the rules before actually learning them properly. That’s not to say that I think every artist needs to study the fundamentals for thirty years before drawing or anything, but I think it helps to have some basic baby level understanding of anatomy before stylizing so hard you end up creating artistic monstrosities. Unless that’s what you’re going for. In which case, go right ahead!

Intention is also something to consider here. If your intent is for your artwork to be unappealing, go right ahead. Be my guest! But I think there’s a difference between intentionally ugly art on purpose and intentionally ugly art on accident, if that makes sense. Trying to make your art ugly while still having some understanding of what you’re doing in comparison to trying to make your art ugly while having no idea what you’re doing. And like I said, it comes down to a matter of skill level.

That does lead me to another question that was raised about this conversation though. Particularly this one. 

You see what I said earlier about a lot of this feeling like “SJW/Tumblr Art Style” rhetoric? People trying too hard to be inclusive in their art style and all that, what a way to phrase a question LOL. But the answer lies in the same answer that I gave for the previous one; lack of skill, or lack of care.

The fact of the matter is that if you’re going to attempt to draw black people in some kind of accurate way you do have to learn how to draw our features. It’s not all that scary, trust me, but if you don’t put the effort into that you end up with a whole lot of ashy people with heat damaged hair that people usually do when they clearly don’t know how to draw black people but try anyway. For beginner artists, it’s not as egregious as in comparison to if you’re a very clearly experienced and skilled artist, and it’s as simple as using references and studying how we actually look to get it right. (But this isn’t even limited to just black people, I feel like it can go for most people of colour.) 

See, I do have to admit I have a problem with this question. Because when people ask this it almost always ends up targeting people who draw fat people, people with body hair, darker skin, gnc people, or trans people who don’t pass. It almost never takes into account that people like that, y’know, actually exist.  

Another example I saw and that’s worth mentioning is how the artist —- formerly known as puppychan —- draws trans men. He tends to draw them fat, being pre-top surgery, and in revealing and feminine clothing. Lots of people seem to take issue with that when personally, it was pretty inoffensive to me? People love to shit on artists who make their trans men feminine, or make their trans women masculine (although they’re not exactly equal since some of people who make their trans women don’t do it with tact.) and it’s kind of funny since in the year of our lord 2025 you’d think that we would be past the need for people to conform to gender roles. Guess not. But trans people can dress and present however they want, and if artists are exploring these differences in presentation in a good faith, I really fail to see what the issue is.

The word “caricature” often gets thrown around in these kinds of conversations but it makes me question if the people who say it even know what the word means. Don’t get me wrong, it’s entirely possible for someone to make an oc which is an unintentional caricature, but how does drawing gnc people, people with body hair, disabled people, etc. just living fall into that? For it to be a caricature it’d have to be made with the intent of parody or mockery, if it’s not doing that I just don’t see what the problem is.

That’s about everything I wanted to discuss. It could entirely possible that I take things in far too much good faith and don’t see the negative, oh well. If you have thoughts leave them in the comments, I would like my think pieces to have some kind of discussion with them! That’s it though, this is malik signing out.

p.s - alt title was going to be ‘Every so Often People Reinvent Tumblr Discourse But On Twitter and We're All Forced To Deal With it.’ but that’s way too long, that’s also why the first paragraph is that.

4/24/25, Relax Yourself, Boy Please Settle Down.

Hey friends, friendettes, and frixnds. I've returned with another blog update.

So, little FYI. When you think it can't get worse, it probably can. Or purrhaps that's my weird brain talking since I have a tendency to think up nothing but the worst pawssible scenarios when I'm in a bit of a pickle. And at the moment, I am in one of those pickles. Stress has been killing me lately, and trying not to think too hard about the many things that stress me out isn't helping as well as it used to.

It's kind of funny, actually. I was really anticipating today since my mom is supposed to be coming home today and I missed her really badly. I wanna go home so bad. But oh well, I'll just wait for her to come home. I have to much I want to talk to her about that I hadn't gotten the chance to. Well. That's a lie, I just hadn't since I value talking to her in person over a video call. I love my mom, she's awesome.

Anywho, I don't really know what else to talk about. I'd just started writing since I was upset and now I'm stuck in this strange place where I feel like I forgot what I'm supposed to be upset about. Weird since it hadn't started that long ago. Oh well, whatever it was must've been crazy!

As of late, I've really wanted to switch up my hair though. I want to get some twists done, small to medium size. Maybe make them dark red or something, I've always loved some red in my hair, it's a good look! The only problem is that I'm both attached to and sort of sick of the hair I have now. The thing that's going for me is that I've had it in for so long, and I get lots of compliments on it when I go out. Like. A lot. Even one of my friends in class had told me that my hair is really iconic, whenever she sees it in the halls she already knows its me. That thought excites me as much as it terrifies me. Oh dear... people RECOGNIZE ME BY MY HAIR!!! So scary, so so scary. But on the other side, all of my family members tell me that my hair is hideous. I would just say the female ones but the male ones do too. As illogical as it sounds, I'm a lot more inclined to believe my family members telling me my hair sucks than the random strangers I see around who tell me my hair is gorgeous. Maybe they're all in on some kind of inside joke that I'm not aware of? No, that's stupid, it purrobably just looks good and I take my family member's comments too much to heart. 

Anyway, HAIR. I'm thinking about adding some charms in there as well to really dazzle up my twists. The only thing I fear is the fact that I won't have any bangs like I usually do for my hair. Major bummer. But. Dot dot dot. I think it's a great opportunity to try something new, and it's the beginning of a new era in my mind.

I'm pretty certain I've talked about this before, but the beginning of a new hairstyle is sort of like the beginning of a new era in my life, and I feel a new era of my life starting soon, for better or for worse. I wanna see where this one takes me, fuck around and find out. 

But that's about it, hope you enjoyed this short update. I'll see you when I see you, this is Momo, signing out.

p.s hope you like the new font, I think I sure do.