Dialogue Thing #11

Hey so first off, absolutely love your blog. I have learned so much and I can hardly wait to implement it! My question is: I have a character with vitiligo (and’s Celiac’s and rheumatoid arthritis) in a comic book I’m working on, and I want to represent that, but the problem is the comic is abstractly colored to display the characters’ emotions rather than their actual physical appearances, and my art style is designed to be pretty minimalist so I don’t need huge amounts of time and energy to actually make the comic itself (I’ll attach a picture at the bottom for easier reference). My current plan is just make lighter patches of the abstract color in place of skin color, but while that works great in theory, in practice it doesn’t show up well in lighter colors, including his default color, and since absence of color indicates absence of emotion, I don’t want to just leave them blank for the lighter colors either. Do you guys have any suggestions for alterations so I can more clearly represent that?

Thank you so much in advance!!

This is the guy in his default color. This was also the drawing I first ran into the light color problem with

Hi!

So I don't really think there are other ways to draw it than “lighter skin” for vitiligo, as that's kinda what it is, visually speaking.

What I'd keep in mind is that vitiligo isn't always super visible.

[source for images: 1 2 3 4]

If the character's skin color changes, then the vitiligo patches will be less visible when it's lighter. That doesn't mean he suddenly doesn't have it, just like how people with pale skin still have their vitiligo, no matter how apparent it is at first glance.

Regardless of skin color, vitiligo patches will tend to be of a very similar color - it's not just lighter skin (an incredibly wide category), but loss of pigment.

However, if his skin isn't human-colored but instead gray or green (or anything else), the shade of the patches will slightly shift to be less saturated or have a different undertone. But if he goes between going dark blue and light blue, the vitiligo would still be the same shade of very light blue, rather than getting darker when the rest of skin is darker. I see this a lot with how people draw characters with vitiligo, and it just Doesn't Work Like That (top right on the image above, also featuring the trope of pale people never having vitiligo for some reason).

If his skin color constantly shifts, then his vitiligo will be more visible one time and less at other times - there's not much you can do about that, it's just how contrast works. That said, sharp-edged and larger patches will be more apparent to readers than smaller ones.

So basically his vitiligo patches should probably float at a similar amount of pigment regardless of how the rest of the skin looks like, with slightly different undertones depending on the skin color at the moment. Sometimes it will show up more, sometimes less, if you want to make it clear to the readers then you can first show him in a color that makes it more obvious.

Either way, he has vitiligo!

Hope this helps,

mod Sasza

YAY HE'S LIKE ME <3

Me when solar is bi

okay so yeah this short is very obviously poking fun at fans and fandom at large but also. aside from being a stereotypical fangirl. emberlynn is also very, very similar to early-episodes stolas.

i mean. the immediate sexualization of their first encounter (or at least, first encounter as adults)

the pose.

the nickname.

the obvious projection of submissive sexual fantasies.

the over-reliance on fiction to inform their sexual expectations.

and, yes, the harassment at work.

i feel like maybe this short was also speaking to some fans who don't quite get how blitzo didn't see stolas' feelings as genuine. this is how. embrlynn and stolas aren't exactly the same, but they have some (i believe, intentional) similarities, and i think this short makes it clear how fetishized their actions made blitzo feel.

don't get me wrong. there are differences. and it's clear by now that stolas and blitzo have genuine feelings for each other. but this is an aspect that i think a lot of fans missed and need to see more clearly.

Until you came along

Chapter 2/?

tagging list: @millie-the-goth

In Light Of Today's Events:

I seem to be perpetually crying inside.

We're all gonna miss you, Solar. 💔

So nice to see Solar has 100% embraced the role of being a single father

Dialogue Thing #4

"How...how could you?"

"I swear, it's not what it looks like!"

"Don't give me that!! I know what's going on here!"

"But... I-"

"You SAID we could watch the season finale of Yu-Gi-Oh 5ds together!!"

hey tsams fandom why dont we just all be friends and hold hands? we're all sharing the playground theres no reason to start wars, and DEFINITELY no reason to harass people and send gore and smut and death threats. lets just all be nice to each other okay? okay.

block whoever you want, dont engage with stuff you dislike.... just dont be a dick needlessly? you're just stirring up more negativity by retaliating than if you just left it alone.

"this person is wrong and blah blah blab" okay. block that person. dont send them gore and death threats. okay? okay.

lets just all be nice to each other okay?? okay!!

<3

I have a character with paranoid schizophrenia who starts the story not being medicated and doesn't really want to be so far.

She has frequent auditory hallucinations since childhood, but she likes them and has friendly bond with them.

I've done a lot of research on how different people lead with their auditory hallucinations, and chose to take this approach because they're usually always portrayed negatively in media when that is not the case for everyone who experiences psychosis.

What I'm wondering is if it would be alright for her to want to seek treatment later on. In the world she's currently in (fantasy setting), there's no way she can consult with a health care professional nor get actual medication, but she can seek healing magic which would have a similar effect to antipsychotics.

I wanted to know if it is alright for me, as someone who is not on the schizospectrum, to portray her symptoms getting worse and more overwhelming over time and have her make the decision to seek help.

Being neurodivergent, I know how wrong people can get the relationships we have with our conditions, and I also know not everyone would like to see certain struggles be shown in media. However, I would like to show both the good parts of her condition (how important the voices are to her) as well as the less good parts, always as carefully and respectfully as possible, of course.

Thank you already for your time and for this amazing blog! It has been very useful to me.

Hello there, friend!

There are obviously a lot of ways to experience relationships with auditory hallucinations or any symptom of psychosis and schizophrenia specifically. I have friends with psychosis and with schizophrenia or schizoaffective specifically who have decided against taking medication - there are also people with these disorders who have decided against medication but been given medication anyways.

It is also possible for someone to have symptoms for a while that get worse - for schizophrenia and schizoaffective specifically there is usually a period called prodrome or the prodromal phase where certain negative symptoms (symptoms that take away such as lack of affect or lack of energy, difficulty with hygeine, and so forth) become more pronounced and light psychotic symptoms develop until they become more severe in the "active" phase of the disorder.

as for having symptoms as a child that get severe in late teenage years or young adulthood...it is possible. There are multiple people I know, including myself, who had psychotic experiences as a younger child that later turned from magical thinking and odd experiences to active psychosis later. But I do want to stress that childhood schizophrenia is much more rare than it is often represented in media, and often more severe than how it shows up as an adult. Your character would likely have psychotic experiences but not full-blown active psychosis or schizophrenia until later. I also want to add that sometimes children have experiences that may seem odd and that is not always disordered, even in a character with a thought disorder!

However, with that in mind - having symptoms get from comforting to disturbing enough to seek help is absolutely a narrative that happens, and I think it's a great one to include in the character.

One last small thing - paranoid schizophrenia may or may not be used depending on where in the world the story takes place or when the story takes place. The DSM-5 no longer puts schizophrenia into subtypes but the ICD still does! Something to think about.

-Mod Bert

*Laughs Nervously* Oh, dear...

Sun...? Earth...? Lunar...? You should probably check on your brother.... He's...not okay...

(Seriously, though, someone needs to talk to him aside from Monty; I'm worried he'll do something he'll regret...)