skullamity

[skullamity]

Hey if you like ice cream and easy to follow recipes and comics, I would love to draw your attention to this lovely, easy to follow illustrated step by step on how to make and customize your own no churn ice cream by Sarah Becan!

@femonologue and I did a cinnamon and crushed pecans test run while our kiddo was away. We added white sugar because I looked at other recipes for cinnamon ice cream ingredients ratios and that was a bit of a misstep because I haven't worked with sweetened condensed milk in forever and forgot just HOW sweet it is. Even with it being more sweet than I'd like, it was still good! Kiddo came home for the cottage and devoured it!

This afternoon, kiddo and I hunkered down and made both dark chocolate espresso and graham cracker lime variants, and they should be frozen just in time for kiddo's 13th birthday tomorrow!

I have loved Sarah's food journal comics for well over a decade, and they came into my life while I was experiencing several food allergy/gallbladder related issues that narrowed down what foods I could eat safely without feeling like I was having a heart attack. I was in a state where I felt like very large sections of one of the most important aspects of human existence were suddenly closed off to me, and Sarah's comics booted me out of my wallowing and helped me feel more adventurous around foods that I'd avoided before my medical issues popped up--either because I'd never tried them, or tried them once and decided I hated them rather than looking into other ways they could be flavoured or prepared that were more to my taste (or weren't actively butting up against texture hangups).

Somewhere, over the years, when I stepped back from social media, I lost track of Sarah's work. I was SO excited when this specific comic/recipe showed up on my bluesky dash, and this was just such a nice way for her comics to come back into my life. If you like comics about food, which are sometimes recipes (but sometimes not, still good though!), you should definitely subscribe to her newsletter!

Aaaanyhow, if you make this ice cream, would love to know how ytou flavoured it! The flavours we did were:

Lime Graham Cracker:

The vanilla and salt from the base recipe, zest and juice from two normal, average sized limes (ended up generating 1/3 cup of juice, depending on how that ends up tasting we will either add more or less next time), about a cup of smashed up graham crackers. We kept the smaller crumbs and bits of cracker that my kiddo smashed to use as toppings tomorrow. We wanted invoke 'key lime pie' but we didn't use key limes because they are tiny and annoying to work with.

Chocolate Espresso: The vanilla and salt from the base recipe, 2tbs of cocoa powder and 2tbs of Nescafe original espresso powder (I believe they make vanilla instant espresso powder and possibly hazelnut instant espresso powder, and they would probably both also be very good! But original is what I had on hand, so original is what I used). Cinnamon Pecan: We were having a craving for Ben and Jerry's Churro icecream, and decided that the cinnamon was the best part of that. We used the vanilla and salt from the base recipe. If you google cinnamon ice cream recipes, a lot of them call for adding granulated sugar and/or simmering them and/or adding eggs? Please don't do any of those things for this specific recipe, it will be waaaay to sweet. Just add 2 to 3 tsps (depending on how much you like cinnamon) of cinnamon and like a cup of crushed walnuts or pecans and the sweetness of the condensed milk will do the rest of the work. The nuts ARE heavy and WILL sink to the bottom, so don't forget they're there when you're scooping! Anyhow, if the lime needs any adjustments, I'll come back and add them! I'll also add pictures once we get to actually eat these two tubs. If you like this recipe or even if you just like comics about food, definitely subscribe to Sarah's work!

[skullamity]

Yeaaah, seconding prev.

All serious discussion I have seen re: the 'male loneliness epidemic' has, 100% been about men leaving highschool and realizing that they have no genuine bonds or connections with anyone because of the constant pressure to be stoic and unmoved by gross girly emotions, lest he be punished. See also: women openly admitting online about a miriad of scenarios where their boyfriend/husband/partner did something like cry (at the birth of their child/after experiencing a death/after losing a job/etc.), and their image of him was forever changed by the "ick" watching him experience that emotion generated for them.

The only instances in where I have seen anyone saying this is about guys not getting laid? Has been people who aren't actually participating in these discussions because they either assume that this is what they are about OR they acknowledge the actual content of those discussions and think the solution is for dudes to toughen up, keep their feelings to themselves and stop trying to emotionally connect with anyone.

It isn't manosphere dudes saying this shit, it's people who don't want these conversations to happen, and the easiest way to do that is to insist that they are about something they are not, like OP is doing.

To the legions of people in the rbs and tags who are saying shit along the lines of "I legitimately thought it was about that first thing, I was today years old and reading this post when I learned that it was actually about men thinking they don't get laid enough! Wow!"--please put on your critical thinking hat and remember that if you're learning something that contradicts information you thought you knew about for a long period of time before this hot new factoid just dropped in a Tumblr text post with zero links, screencaps, documentation or evidence? You didn't learn shit! You don't just take that at face value, you either look into it yourself to confirm that you are not being tricked OR, if it doesn't matter to your own personal situation enough for you to look into it, you shrug and say "cool story, this changes nothing about what I know about this unless OP wants to follow up with literally anything to back this up."

when i first heard about the male loneliness epidemic i was like oh yeah close camaraderie and bonding between men is often discouraged in favor of competition or, if not discouraged, at least filtered through a lens of individualism that precludes deep connections. and then i learned what people meant by it (men arent getting laid) to which i say skill issue

[skullamity]

prev tags were:

and Iike...I'm not American, but in a way, same. In the very peripheral sense that I think about Benjamin Franklin Pierce, the character from M*A*S*H who is canonically named after the guy in your tags.

[skullamity]

Context: my icon is a self portrait. This is what I look like! And I have looked like this for about seven years (took a few years on T before I could grow decent facial hair and then my hair started falling out haha)

With that in mind, one of the most frustrating things about having been out and transitioned for so long is the blatant discomfort that other people have at being reminded that I was presumed to be a woman until I came out at publicly at 30, specifically discomfort that I, personally, am able to fondly talk about my life before transitioning.

Because here's the thing...I never got the hang of being a woman, but I didn't realize that I had any other options until I was 28ish. But goddamn did I ever TRY to get the hang of it. Every little and big thing that both women in my life and years and years of media exposure told me would eventually make things click for me? I tried! So, a lot of little superficial things like bonding with other women, makeup, buying spicy lingerie, going on dates that other women would have been thrilled about, learning how to dress myself cutely, accentuating my 'womanly' shape.

But also a lot of big things. Got married, and a big part of what Big Wedding pushes on women is finding The Dress, the idea that you will put it on and just Know and you'll fall in love with it, be able to see yourself walking down the aisle. You'll cry when you put it on because it will be The Dress. You'll never feel more beautiful. I must have tried on like 30 dresses and I ended up going with the first one. It was a cool dress! But the more I tried on, the less I felt about any of them. I didn't feel connected to any of them, and the whole experience wasn't traumatic? But it wasn't anything else, either.

Wanted to start a family! Had a couple of early miscarriages, which was sad. But then got pregnant and it took! Had a baby! Motherhood is supposed to be magical! And I love my kid, but I had a really difficult time really connecting with the idea of being someone's Mom, specifically. Tried so, so hard to breastfeed because of the connection with your baby it was supposed to help forge, but the hormones literally made me feel like I was becoming untethered from reality. Figured out I was trans when kiddo was a toddler, and realized that if we wanted to have a second kid I was going to have to push back any transition plans I had if I wanted to make that happen.

It was stressful, dysphoric and way more body-horror than my first go at it because, unlike my first pregnancy, I wasn't massively sick 24/7, so I didn't have the constant quest to keep food down to distract me. Pregnancy ended pretty far in, and because of a shitty doctor who was not willing to listen to me and send me for a D&C, had to use topical medication to evacuate my uterus at home! Incredibly dysphoria inducing, stressful, and my body did not want to give up on producing pregnancy hormones so I had to have weekly blood tests where I was routinely misgendered by people who were trying to reassure me that I'd get to be a mom to a second kid, eventually. Weekly blood tests for SIX excruciating, dysphoric months.

I have had more than one person ask me directly why I would ever admit to any of that, or reference it in relevant conversations--doesn't acknowledging any of tha make me uncomfortable? Don't I want to distance myself from that?

Why would I want to? These were hard, hard years. But I wouldn't be who I am right now if I had not experienced them. I wouldn't have my wonderful kid who is nearly a teenager, and when my wife (before she came out and also started to transition) and I were perceived as a gay couple at various points in the past decade, we would sometimes get asked shit like which one of us was the "bio dad" or generally just what the process was for managing to acquire a human child when both of us were generally assumed to not have the ability or parts to give birth to one. Could we have lied? Made something up? Sure, but then we'd have to remember who we told what and why. We'd have to keep up one or more narratives indefinitely, and no matter what story we picked, we'd always know that whoever we told that was a single conversation with someone who knew me pre-transition away from having someone mad that we'd kept up an elaborate lie to them for years.

It also felt like a disservice to one of us no matter what story we cooked up, and truthfully? I'm appalled that apparently people who were chill with me before I came out, as well as chill with me coming out and transitioning, are instantly no longer chill if they are reminded that my life once looked very different, and expect me to distance myself from things that I experienced and accomplished, for their comfort, not mine.

I think, when it comes down to it, I still feel connected to my own experiences and how things used to be because those experiences were hard! And I fucking lived! Why shouldn't I own those experiences? Why shouldn't I be proud of them? Why shouldn't I talk about experiencing them freely?

The trappings of femininity only felt like a cage to me at the time BECAUSE they were happening to ME. And now that I have transitioned and I look like my icon? Nobody is trying to push me into femininity anymore, it is no longer being traumaticly foisted onto me. Before I transitioned I was really fucking uncomfortable with a lot of stereotypically feminine things, because admitting that I was into them, even if they were something as banal as liking the colour pink, felt like a concession that people in my life could point to to "prove" that I was a woman. But now that I am comfortable in my own body, I no longer feel that way about engaging with stereotypically feminine things. I am actually super comfortable with shit like wearing pink or wearing makeup sometimes or painting my nails, now, because I am engaging with it willingly and on my own terms rather than feeling like I don't have a choice because it is expected of me as a woman.

And even if it was somehow traumatic to me personally, it is extremely easy for me to separate my personal and deeply shitty experience with femininity from the experiences of people who embrace femininity. The femininity wasn't traumatic because it was femininity, it was traumatic because it was being forced on me whether I wanted it or not. Femininity is mostly not for me, but experiencing it makes my wife feel great! I can't consider something like that to be horrible, when that same thing makes my wife so happy!

As it stands, it is more important to me and for me to be able to candidly talk about my life and my experiences without having to self edit to make cis people comfortable, even if it's something that was traumatic while it was happening to me. Why would I try to hide the fact that I had a baby? That was hard, miserable work! I grew a whole ass human being who is now old enough to have inside jokes with me and play couch co-op on the Xbox with me! You best believe I'm going to own that experience, especially since it resulted in the existence of one of my two favourite people on Earth. You bet I feel connected to that process, even if I never ever ever ever want to go through that again.

I know there's this idea that it seems like there are less trans men out there because so many of us choose to go stealth for safety reasons, but...that was never on the table for me. It was never an option that I entertained for even a second, and if you told me I'd be able to go perfectly stealth tomorrow if I wanted to, that'd be a hard pass for me. I am not eager to distance myself from events that made me who I am, because I did some incredible stuff and had some incredible experiences before I transitioned, and I think those experiences and connections are worth more to acknowledge than what life might hypothetically be like if I could pack up and move to somewhere where nobody knows I'm not cis. I am those experiences! Those experiences are me! Still feeling ownership over them and connection to them doesn't make me feel bad! Neither do pre-transition photos of myself! That used to be what I looked like and what kind of life I was living, but it isn't anymore! And that's extremely cool actually!

Question for the trans guys who still feel a connection to womanhood and femineity:

Why? Personally I've found masculinity very traumatizing, and I can't possibly see why you'd ever feel still connected to an upbringing that was likely also traumatic for you. So why do you still feel a connection to womanhood?

[skullamity]

An important aspect of this that OP hinted at but didn't expand upon, so I will:

Humans brains are pattern seeking, and this applies to both visual and narrative forms of art. It's the reason why, when you watch a show or a movie and you get so excited about what you think is going to happen that you might feel compelled to pause and turn to the person you're watching with and say "oh shiit, I am connecting the dots, and I think that (twist!) is going to happen!" and when that twist does happen? You feel great! And you feel great because you've basically solved a puzzle. Solving puzzles feels good, and this is actually one of my favourite things about watching tv and movies! I love to keep score!

When you are reading a webcomic or subscribed to a multi chapter original story online, and you email the author to tell them what YOU think should happen next, because it would feel narratively satisfying, you are putting the author in a very awkward position.

An author lays down breadcrumbs for their audience because they WANT you to guess, they want you to be trying to solve the puzzle, and they want you to feel rewarded because you figured it out! You're not telling them anything new by contacting them, you're just letting them know that you followed the trail they were leading you down! But the catch is, if you email me and tell me "hey so this should happen, it would make so much sense if this happened, please consider making it go here" and it was already going there, that was already the plan, and I have been carefully planting clues and setting up this payoff, I am now in a bit of a predicament.

Because if I write the story as intended, the way I was setting it up? That was all me. I planned this. But now I have you back in my emails saying "I'm SO happy that you took my advice! The payoff was so good! But I was a little disappointed to see that you didn't leave a note for your readers about where that idea came from. I'm not asking for money, just credit, you know?" and if I don't respond to that, or I respond and say "look, this twist was in my plans a year before you emailed me and your email had zero influence on my decision to take it in this direction" you are now emailing me, pissed off, and either subtly or outright suggesting that maybe you actually DO deserve some compensation, because I am making money off of "your" idea.

Or maybe you're not emailing me again, maybe you're shit talking me on social media and encouraging people who have expressed interest in my work to skip it, because the story might be good but I'm a bad person who takes advantage of my readers.

It isn't wrong to love something so much that you become invested in it, and it isn't wrong to be so invested in something that you have opinions about where it's going and what should happen. But that doesn't mean that you should ever contact the author directly and tell them what to do! Any time I have ever had someone email me about where they thought my comic should go narratively, it has never been a peer, it has never been solicited, and it has NEVER been appreciated.

If I want advice? I will ask people who have the skill sets and experience to pull off what I'm trying to do, and they will, most importantly, be people that I already know, talk to and trust! A reader is welcome to their opinions on where they think I should be focusing and what I need to work on, but that's none of my business and they should never contact me to tell me about it. I am not obligated to take any of it into consideration, even if they are being super nice about it!

And I get that this makes me sound ungrateful, which is frustrating because I actually really love it when I can look at comments left on comic pages and see what people are predicting and watch them celebrating if they were right! It's so good! I am not ungrateful! But if you email me like this, you are putting me in a position where I will have to play that part to make it clear to you that we do not know each other and you have no say or influence, past present or future, in where this story goes. I don't want to be mean to my audience! But I also need to draw clear boundaries between them and myself for a miriad of reasons, you know?

a very gentle PSA that a writer is not a short-order cook, please do not try to order off the menu

[skullamity]

As an artist, especially if you're focusing on sequential arts where a single page is generally comprised of multiple illustrations inside their own panels, one of the most important skills you need to master is the ability to look at whatever you are working on and say "this is good enough for right now."

When I was much younger, I had a lot of quiet envy for people who, rather than making comics, make single illustrations that they could spend weeks or months on to get as close as possible to creating exactly what they pictured in their imagination on their canvas of choice. It felt weirdly unfair that their beautiful finished pieces were miles ahead of my work quality-wise, but what I didn't quite grasp was that if I spent the same amount of time on a single panel as they spent on a single illustration, I might be able to match them in quality, but the trade-off would be that any comic page I could make would require that kind of time-cost for every single individual panel, and nobody is willing to wait for 12 weeks to up to a full year for a single six panel comic page.

I have been doing comics as my primary job for about 17-ish years now, and I have seen extremely talented friends from other industries like animation or illustration briefly dabble in comics, only to quit because the level of quality they wanted to have coupled with trying to have a turnover rate for pages that keeps people interested in reading your work is just not sustainable. If you are making comic and want to be able to update frequently and consistently, you need to be able to simplify, you need to actively choose character designs, layout choices, colouring techniques, etc., that will shave as much time off of your process as possible, even if it means that the quality of each page is no longer what you personally would consider "illustration quality" and you need to learn to be confident in those decisions.

It might feel like a step backwards, but the fastest way to train your sense of anatomy, shapes, colour, aesthetic, comic language via panelling and gesture, etc., is by making a lot of comics. And you are going to make more comics if you purposely set hard limits for how long you are allowed to spend on a single comic page than you are if you aim for a perfect representation of what you see in your mind rendered into reality by as many hours as it takes.

In the same time friends dipping their toes into comics would manage to do a single page, I was doing a batch of 3 to 7 pages. And if they managed to do five pages before deciding that comics required too much time? In the time they did those five I would have done 15 to 35 pages. You learn so much more doing 15 to 35 pages than you can in five!

And sometimes this means looking at your sketch phase for a page and going...this is not even close to what I pictured, I am NOT satisfied with it, but it is the best I can do for now. Maybe I'll go back and redo it if I want to print it or do an ebook, but for now, it's good enough.

Art is a sport

One common thing I see among artists who are just starting out is that they are very precious about their work -- ironically, way moreso than experienced artists. They need to get every line JUST right, because in their mind, getting that line just right is what stands between the piece being bad and it being good. I was like that too, for so long that I'm still struggling to catch up because of how it hampered my progress.

Being precious about every line is kind of like a track sprinter starting a run, but then restarting every time their foot lands in any slightly suboptimal way. This is comes off as silly, because we know that the "unit" of what they are doing is a sprint, and that they would make their greatest progress by finishing the full sprints, because that's how they train.

Well, similarly, the "unit" of art is a finished piece. What stands between the sprinter and the time they want isn't 1 individual step, but 1000 sprints. What stands between the beginner artist and making art they like the look of isn't that 1 line, but, i'm sorry to say, 1000 pieces.

Taking note of any mistakes you made afterwards is something done by both the experienced artist and experienced sprinter -- this is healthy and helps you improve. But you can do that later, after you're done.

That line is good enough.

[skullamity]

Individual websites listed by series at the anime web turnpike, which was a directory you could submit your fan websites to manually. Most (English) websites were geocities, and they divided things up by media category (fanart, fanfic, galleries or official art, videos clips). The fanfic sections used the lemon/lime/citrus rating system!

I legit have not thought about that website in 30-ish years! I'm honeslty surprised that I was able to remember what it was called a) at all and b) so quickly, this almost never happens for my recall!

Please participate in my research (also, if you say other, please put it in the tags/comments !)

[skullamity]

Nice!

[skullamity]

YEP! Every spring, a piliated woodpecker (quite possibly the same one every year!) rings in spring by banging on the tin roof tiles above my bedroom window starting at 5am. It usually lasts a week or two, and by the end of the first week I am like...ladies, please notice this man so he can STOP and I can SLEEP. This year he presumably got someone's attention after only four days, and we are all very proud of him and also relieved that he's shut up for the season.

[skullamity]

Heyyy, so, M*A*S*H is a show that i have seen front to back probably around 13 times (and counting) over the years. It's been a few years since I did a rewatch, but generally:

1) this character is not portrayed as trans or gay or any flavour of queer that would have been intentionally recognizable as such for both the time that it was filmed AND the time that the story takes place. The series itself does touch on queer topics from time to time, which is frankly kind of impressive when I think about shows from the same era and how it compares. So this isn't a situation where they were trying to sneak in queer stuff secretly, because they did, in fact, just overtly include queer stuff.

2) for those who have not seen this show, the context is that the character Klinger thinks he's going to get killed over in Korea and very badly wants to be discharged in a way that doesn't involve military prison--he thinks that the fastest way to get stateside is to demonstrate that he's crazy and therefore unfit for duty/service, so if someone will sign off on a Section 8, he'll be on the next plane home to talk to some American doctors before miraculously coming to his senses and living as a normal dude back in Toledo, Ohio. Now, because this is a comedy, the catch is that both of his COs over the course of the show see right through him and are so unbothered by his bullshit that they consistently tell him "lol nice try, I'm not sending you home, you can dress however you like because I KNOW you're just doing this so you can go home, and if I don't get to go home, then we can suffer together."

I would argue that the show very much goes out of its way to portray him as a character who is aggressively straight and cis. He's in multiple relationships, including a marriage to a cis woman, and while the details are fuzzy because it's like 11 full seasons long, I vaguely remember a character or two over the course of the show either hitting on him or being hostile to him because they assume he is gay, and in response he is very clear that he is not.

3) Finally, he is also very clear that he is not trans! I mentioned above that both of his commanding officers were 100% aware that what he was doing was a desparate attempt to go home, but at one point in the show, a character named Dr. Sidney Friedman, a psychologist, who COULD sign off on a section 8 for Klinger, calls his bluff. He tells Klinger that he'll sign off on it if Klinger agrees to getting GRS (cw: he does refer to it as a sex change), and Klinger basically has to be like...never mind, I actually do not want to do that, ya got me. I just want to go home.

M*A*S*H touched on a lot of things that were very ahead of its time, and once it found its tone and voice a couple of seasons in, it mostly touched on those topics with dignity, compassion and care at the forefront. It was a show that wasn't afraid to make its protagonists come off as jackasses if it meant that they would learn and grow from their mistakes. If there was an opportunity to make a character with less "desirable" traits sympathetic, it took that opportunity every single time. Today, so much of it still holds up and feels relevant, which is not something I ever predicted for a show that I thought of as a "boring old army drama" before I ever sat down and watched any of it as an insomniac teen.

Can you enjoy M*A*S*H? Yeah, absolutely you can. If you're bothered or uncomfortable by some aspects of it, not only is that fine, it was often INTENTIONAL. This show wants you to be uncomfortable with things like racism, bigotry, fascism, addiction, domestic violence, adultery, death, WAR. It's a black comedy, and you are supposed to get the sense that the characters are actively making a joke of everything because the alternative is so, so bleak.

You might not love every part (the first couple seasons are rough at times), but there *is* a lot to love.

Anyhow, I initially wasn't going to respond to this because you asked for specifically transfem opinions and I am a trans man, but then I noticed a lot of tags in the reblogs that boiled down to "I have never seen any of this show please tell me what to think" and I felt like, as someone who knows perhaps TOO much about this show, that I should weigh in. If it helps, while I was typing this I was having a discussion about the original post/what I was typing with my wife, @femonologue, a trans woman who has put up with me rewatching all 11 seasons of M*A*S*H every couple of years for 20 years exactly, and has watched it through once or twice in that time with me, and she cosigned pretty much everything I just typed. If she would like to weigh in on this or disagree with anything I've typed, she is welcome to! I've tagged her above (she fell asleep while I was typing so, tomorrow).

what's the general transfeminist opinion on the crossdressing on M*A*S*H? making a joke of Men In Dresses, or a reasonable use of gender nonconformism in the discussion of war, or somewhere in between?

***note, im mostly looking for transfem opinions on this. i am NOT looking for the opinions of ppl who think rocky horror was a victory for trans women lmao

[skullamity]

oof, wish this wasn't relatable. Made the mistake like 6 months ago of advocating for myself in a post where a trans radfem was actively calling me a transmisogynist for *checks notes* saying that I had, as a trans man, also shared experiences that she insisted were exclusive to trans women. I also made the mistake of mentioning that my wife, who I have been married to for many, many years, is a trans woman, in a misguided attempt to counter the assertion that I had clearly never spoken to a trans woman irl in my life. The conversation went nowhere, which I should have expected.

I don't have my asks or messages open on my main blog and haven't for probably ten years. Apparently the idea that I am maliciously inflicting myself on my wife by continuing to be married to her was so offensive to either that specific trans woman or someone who read my interaction with her that whoever it was decided that they had to do something about it (the it being my marriage).

Presumably they combed through my archive and managed to locate my old transition timeline blog, which I never set strict ask/messaging permissions for because I had like 10 people following it, and then proceeded to send me like 20 asks over the course of a few hours that were variations on "your wife should divorce you" "you should kill yourself so your wife can be free" "you're abusing your wife" "you're using being married to your wife as a free pass to be transmisogynist, which is extremely 'i have a black friend' behaviour" "can't wait until your wife sees what a transmisogynist you are and divorces you so she can be with another transfem like nature intended" aaand so on, like my wife can't read the things that I post and doesn't also have a Tumblr account that is arguably way more popular than mine because I rarely post anymore.

I straight up just deleted my old transition timeline blog wholesale because I wasn't doing great mental health-wise for unrelated reasons at the time, and I really regret doing that in retrospect because I was so upset that anyone would think those kinds of things about me that I didn't bother going through my old posts and saving pictures that I'm not sure exist anywhere else anymore.

I don't understand how total strangers can feel so comfortable asserting that my existence is a blight on my wife's life despite knowing nothing about either of us. Feels bad, which I guess was the intent. Before either of us transitioned, no one ever sent either of us anything similar but with the roles reversed, and while I did occasionally have an irl relative or acquaintance try to make an "lol men suck" joke at my wife's expense, I never let it happen a second time from the same person, because I love my wife, and if you love your wife (even if she thinks that you're the wife and you think she's your husband at the time), you shut that shit down. I had not experienced this from the other end until those asks were sent to me, and it sucked.

I hate that I know exactly what this post is talking about, and I hate that there are apparently people out there who are so comfortable with their toxic opinions about ALL men that they didn't think twice about sending me multiple asks letting me know that they think I should kill myself so my family can be happy. And I hate that this experience is something I have in common with so many other trans men on this shitty ass website! Kind of a rancid shared experience, tbh!

the way western society normalizes hostility toward romantic partnerships, especially ones that involve a masc partner, is genuinely toxic and deeply dehumanizing. there is this baked-in cultural script where masc people are positioned as burdens, villains, punchlines, or ticking time bombs in relationships. and once you notice it, it’s everywhere.

when i talk about my wife, the reaction is so often warmth. admiration. people say she sounds wonderful (she is), they say our relationship seems like a dream (it is, actually, thank you!), they call us relationship #goals. i light up when i talk about her. i love her. she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and being able to talk about that openly is such a joy. i once got crazy drunk at a party (this was when I was still in my early 20s, a different era of my life for sure lmao), stood on a chair, and gave a speech about how much i loved her and wished she was at that party.

but when she talks about me? it’s so often met with weirdness. suspicion. cruelty. even from people who haven’t met me. people joke, they jab, they offer unsolicited concern or imply dysfunction before she’s even said anything that might warrant it.

she says she’s tired, or anxious, or she had a rough day, and they immediately assume it’s a relationship problem. and not just that, they assume i’m the problem. without context. without hesitation. having never met me. it’s like they come in ready to believe i’m the root of her distress. like it’s a default setting, preloaded with assumptions about masc partners. it’s exhausting, and it’s cruel.

and then there’s the really insidious stuff, like when she casually mentioned to a brand new coworker that i’m allergic to blueberries, and their first response was: “well at least you know how to poison him if you need to!”

think about that for a moment.

just… sit with it.

someone she barely knew, upon hearing the most benign fact about me, didn’t say “oh no, food allergies are tough!” or “gotta be careful with that!” they went straight to murder joke. this person hadn’t even met me. and the first thing they felt comfortable joking about with my wife was the idea of killing me.

and people act like that’s funny. like that’s normal. like it’s expected.

but it’s not funny. it’s not normal. it is an extension of a deeply rooted cultural narrative that devalues love, resents intimacy, and paints masc people as disposable, antagonistic, or inherently abusive. it creates an environment where tenderness is suspect, where joy is questioned, and where people, especially femme or femme adjacent people, are quietly encouraged to view their partners not as allies, but as eventual enemies! that's so sad!

it is heinous. and it chips away at us. at trust. at safety. at being allowed to just love each other in peace.

my wife and i love each other. we support each other. we adore each other. we are tender, and playful, and honest, and openly affectionate. and still, people feel comfortable responding to that love by implying violence. by assuming conflict. by projecting dysfunction.

i want better for her. i want better for us. i want better for everyone trying to build something loving in a culture that acts like love is a trap.

you don’t have to think we’re perfect. but you do have to treat our love with respect. and if you can’t do that, you’re not someone we want near it.

and while we’re on the subject: do you know how maddening it is to watch people go out of their way to privately message my wife! my wife! to shittalk me? to try and stir something up, to start some weird little whisper campaign because they didn’t like a take i had, or didn’t like the way i worded something? they sneak into her dms like it’s their sacred duty to “warn” her, or play devil’s advocate, or lowkey vent about me to her, as if she’s just this passive, neutral vessel who might be won over to their side. as if she has not been married to me, on purpose, for years.

and like. the entitlement of that alone is jusr? staggering. she’s not your fucking inside woman. she’s not your spy. and she is not your tool to try and triangulate some imaginary interpersonal drama.

not only does she share most of my so-called “big opinions” (why do you think we’re married), but even if she didn’t! even if she didn’t agree with me on every single thing! it is so profoundly inappropriate to try to sow discord between us. especially when it’s just because someone didn’t like a post or opinion I have. you are not doing anything brave or righteous when you do that. you are trying to isolate a marginalized couple from their mutual support system. and you need to ask yourself why that is something you feel compelled to do.

and it doesn’t stop there. here on tumblr, people will befriend her, knowing she is married to a multigender transmasc person! and then go on to reblog and boost the most vile, hurtful shit about masc people/trans men/etc. just hateful garbage dressed up as discourse or “critical thought” or whatever flavor of thinly veiled bigotry is trending that week.

do you have any idea what it feels like to witness that? do you have any idea how heartbreaking it is? this is someone trying to make friends, trying to connect, trying to exist with softness and warmth in a world that already makes that hard and people keep showing her that their care and respect stops where mine begins.

and it’s not just about me. it’s about how deeply embedded this disgust and resentment is, socially, toward anyone who’s masc, toward anyone who steps outside the boundaries of what a “safe” queer person is supposed to look like. people feel entitled to show us disdain, and then act shocked when we don’t want to stick around for it.

and you know what it actually does? it isolates people. it drives wedges where there should be community. it makes people who want to be open and kind feel like they have to choose between friendship and integrity. it steals the joy of shared space. it poisons the well.

this is what happens when hatred gets repackaged as progress. this is what happens when people mistake cruelty for critique. and it fucking sucks.

be better.

or leave us alone.

[skullamity]

Good morning eel fans.

We are only 50 DOLLARS AWAY from our 25% Milestone!!

As a reminder, when we hit 25%, I will do a dramatic reading of a pretentious eel poem. I promise to wear a hat.

In other news, on Thursday May 8 At 2:00 EST, we'll be playing the Silt Verses TTRPG over on our twitch https://www.twitch.tv/stardustshines

In keeping with the theme of letting you hassle us for money, there will be the option to provide donations in exchange for making the characters lives worse. (Or better, but we all know why you're here.)

All of your support makes this show possible. Thank you.

[skullamity]

I love how you made an extremely cool looking khajiit and I spent more than an hour making a brachy cat. It really does look SO much better, even if you're trying to make something gremliny. I don't think it's actually possible to make them look as bad as how they looked in OG oblivion by default.

last Oblivion post I’ll put on main but this is nuts

[skullamity]

@shadsasaur new training regimen for u

[skullamity]

I showed this to my wife and, without skipping a beat, she deadpaned "bonzi buddy wielding two dodgeballs" and I fucking lost it

[skullamity]

I'm going to abuse this blog a bit this once, but it is related. They're getting rid of the Duolingo forum tomorrow, which is fairly shocking because there are too many good resources posted on there!

I'm trying to copy over some of them for reference, because there are things that maybe I'm not advanced enough to use right now, but I would like to be able to use once I'm a little more skilled at Welsh.

Copied below are all the resources, verbatim. (Some resources may be repeated because I'm just copying)

The two best, best resources for self-learning, apart from Duolingo itself, for visual learners, are the series of videos on pronunciation on youtube:- https://www.youtube.com/user/welshplus

and the Big Welsh Challenge course :- http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/learnwelsh/bigwelshchallenge/ (click on 'enter course', then 'skip introduction'), the section 'practice with tutor' is particularly useful, especially the male South Wales presenter, who is a well know, very funny Welsh actor. (Ignore the 'archive notice' and click on 'enter course', it works fine.)

The book that we have linked to in the Welsh course on Duolingo is here https://cls.byu.edu/welsh/BYU_Cwrs_Mynediad.html

Hard copies are available through all the usual book sellers.

For auditory learners 'Say something in Welsh' is very good and has a wide network of supporters in particular its popular Facebook group. https://www.saysomethingin.com/welsh/course1

Finally don't forget to join our Facebook group where further discussion takes place and the writers respond to queries. https://www.facebook.com/groups/welshduolingo/

Also here is a link to an fairly good article about mutations:- https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Welsh/Mutations#Soft_mutation

Here is a website which gives a daily crossword and also a range of 'her geirfa' vocabulary challenges:- http://www.happyhere.co.uk/

In addition for people not anywhere near a Welsh class, there are a number of people and places that offer online Skype lessons. Here is the link to the Skype courses of one of the Welsh centres in Wales:-http://www.coleggwent.ac.uk/welshcentre#.V1Zh_5PR-V5.

Below is the list of apps grouped into themes and in alphabetic order. Enjoy!

Complete courses:

Learn Cymraeg Mynediad Android, and iOS

Lovely free course for beginners, offers a variety of activities and contains plenty authentic audio recordings. A more advanced course from the same developer is available for purchase.

SSiWelsh Android and iOS

Say something in Welsh, a great Welsh course available from the website and via app. Users can choose between North/South Welsh pronunciation. The Challenges and Course 1 are for free and there’s more paid content. I highly recommend this app.

Grammar-specific:

Ap Treiglo Android and iOS

Another amazing app that teaches you how to use mutations properly. There is a list of words causing mutation, you can also look up grammar rules regarding prepositions, numbers, etc. Good to have it in your toolkit.

Welsh Number Whizz Android only

Welsh Number Whizz is an app designed to help you learn the traditional vigesimal number system. Could be useful especially for us Duolingers, as the Welsh course focuses on the decimal system.

Welsh Verb Blitz Android only

A fantastic tool to learn verbs and their conjugations. The app offers several mini-games to practice Welsh conjugation.

Vocabulary-specific

Anki Android and iOS, the iOS version is paid

I put Anki here as one of the two tools I know and use for flashcards. Anki is available both in a desktop and app version. There are a few big decks with Welsh flashcards, you can find them here: Dal Ati Android and iOS

For all those who have access to S4C this is a very useful app to learn vocabulary that is used in S4C programmes.

Dreigiau Dinas Emrys Android and iOS

I fell in love with this cute game from the first tap. Such a great idea to explain the legend of two dragons in Dinas Emrys and turn it into a Welsh learning app. Great music and sounds, try it out!

Gofalu Trwy’r Gymraeg Android and iOS

If you want to learn some medical Cymraeg, check out this one: nicely arranged topics with authentic recordings and English translations. Simple and intuitive, well worth taking a look.

Memrise Android and iOS

Many of you probably know Memrise, a popular website and app for learning languages and other subjects using flashcards. But do you know that there are many great decks (or courses, as they are called on Memrise) with Welsh vocabulary? Take a look here to see a list of Welsh flashcard courses on Memrise:

Vocab Game Welsh Cymraeg Geirfa Android only

Interesting vocabulary app for learning Welsh. 8,160 words structured in about 200 levels arranged by number of letters and alphabetic order. Each level contains about 20-25 words. The app is nicely designed and fun to play. Perhaps one downside is that many of these words are old or very specialised and I often have to look up the English translations to find out what something is. Nevertheless, you will surely get to know lots of vocab after completing all the levels, so give it a try.

Dictionaries

Ap Geiriaduron Android and iOS

A very nice Welsh-English and English-Welsh dictionary. Recognizes mutations, contains common phrases. And it works offline as well. A must-have.

GPC Geiriadur Prifysgol Android and iOSA monolingual dictionary of Welsh, less useful for beginners, but definitely something to have on your be-able-to-use wishlist. Great features: you can download the whole database to your memory card and there are language games.

Other:

Ap Beibl Android and iOS

This one is perhaps not for beginners, but it’s good to know about it for the future. Contains a number of different translations of the Bible into Welsh from different periods of history.

Ap Golwg Android and iOS

This app allows you to buy a digital edition of Lingo Newydd, a bi-monthly magazine for Welsh learners. Articles are colour-coded to mark difficulty and there are audio recordings of articles (which you wouldn’t get in the paper edition). You can either but a single issue for £1.49 or a subscription plan (Lingo Newydd costs £9.99 year). Ap Golwg also gives access to the Golwg360 website. It’s totally free and has a useful VOCAB button at the top that shows definitions of words in articles. You don’t need the app to access the website, but it’s nice to have a shortcut to news in Welsh on your mobile device.

Legends of the West Android only

Fabulous app about the history of Ceredigion and Wales. Contains text and recordings in Welsh and English.

There is a lot on the BBC Learn Welsh site, too - http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/learning/learnwelsh/ Much of the site is archived now but much of it still works. There is a downloadable grammar guide here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/learnwelsh/grammar/index.shtml - which you might find in book form, too, if it is still in print.

Dal Ati ('Stick At It') is a television programme on S4C for learners of Welsh. There is a Youtube channel for the programme here - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSnqXodFrOCxTH2VRAeXIVQ

The recently revised DysguCymraeg/LearnWelsh course books are available for free download in pdf form on their website. This Duolingo course covers approximately the same ground as the Mynediad and Sylfaen books, and a little of Canolradd.The course books are available here - https://learnwelsh.cymru/learning/curriculum-and-course-books/ or try https://parallel.cymru/amdani/ or https://learnwelsh.cymru/

If you hunt around http://www.ybont.org there are a lot of supporting materials for learners of all levels.

For an online dictionary, https://www.gweiadur.com is very good (free registration to use its full range of information).

For a smartphone app, the free Ap Geiriaduron is good.An authoritative English to Welsh dictionary is https://geiriaduracademi.org, although many of its examples of usage use more formal Welsh than is taught on introductory courses such as this Duolingo one.

The National Centre for Learning Welsh has a web site including many materials for learners. Look around https://learnwelsh.cymru for materials supporting the national Mynediad and Sylfaen courses for adults.

A few more apps which I have found good are: Tywydd which gives you the weather forecast in Welsh and teaches you weather related vocabulary.

Gwlad Gwlad which teaches you to sing and pronounce the National Anthem of Wales.

The Magi Ann children's books apps which allow you to tap to hear the words spoken in Welsh or tap to see the English translation.

S4C programmes available to view outside the UK: http://www.s4c.cymru/clic/Categories/99

Stories: For entry (mynediad) and foundation (sylfaen) level stories, go to the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Amdani: Learn Welsh Festival of Reading (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNbPx7YxCU13oE6qCWs9hjP57ypKscCgR). The short stories are written for learners, and read by the authors, from the books 'Agor y Drws' (entry) and 'Ffenest' (Foundation). I was able to buy both books online from my local, Welsh bookshop in Llanrwst (https://www.bysabawd.cymru/en/products/books/welsh-books?search=cyfres%20amdani) and find it is really helpful to hear the author read the story out loud while reading the book myself.

The Dysgu Cymraeg course: https://dysgucymraeg.cymru/dysgu/cwricwlwm-a-chwrslyfrau/ Textbooks and mp3s. Is really good.

[skullamity]

Aching, cold and lumbering...I thought OP said my body would take on a new form? But this is literally just my original form. 🫠

Congratulations, youre body has taken on a new form! Spin this wheel three times. These words describe your new body