#BUT I LIKED THIS REACTION A LOT

[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[bytebun]

eat or be eaten 😳🍴

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I know those eyes.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[bunnieswithknives]

You made a little mess there bud

[canisalbus]

✦ Hound mode ✦

[milk-lover]

Sobbing uncontrollably reading through a dissertation about the college experience of students with ADHD. It is like reading a report about my life that just says over and over "My experiences are real. My hardships are real. I am not lazy, I am not dumb. My struggles were not my fault, and they were not a moral failing. The failure was with the system, not with me."

Here's a line that got me in particular:

"Hotez et al.(2022) compared the health, academic, and non-academic capacities of a nationally representative sample of U.S. first-year college students with ADHD and without ADHD. Students with ADHD self-reported lower academic aspirations and more feelings of depression and overwhelm, ranking themselves lower in their general emotional health. The fact that students with ADHD scored in the highest 10th percentile for many non-academic traits, such as artistic ability, computer skills, creativity, public speaking, social confidence, self-understanding and understanding of others, compassion, and risk-tasking, suggests that this population has strengths that are frequently underappreciated in academia."

(the paper is a thesis called "Understanding the Collegiate Experience for Students With ADHD" by Gia Long, 2022)

[vaguely-concerned]

that part in sea of blood where the game is soft tutorializing you on the sunder mechanic as the elite rogue venatori enemy shows up for the first time and lucanis' reaction is sooooo..... 'mierda. these guys'. see this is why he's the funniest and also most endearing character ever made. he really does sound softly, tiredly mildly exasperated in a way so wildly out of proportion with the situation at hand. a knife dude from the secret society slash cult that's been horrifically torturing him for a year just popped out of the woodwork, and the tone of lucanis' voice in response is reminiscent of nothing so much as a man who's just realized the office printer is out of ink again and whose resigned little sigh in response conveys with perfect good-natured clarity to everyone else working late alongside him that he is a bit annoyed but like not at any of them. 'we're in this together' his tone seems to say. fuckass printer and all. I'll go fetch some new cartridges. I'm getting coffee along the way does anyone else want anything while I'm there. he has the most companionable effortlessly comforting and innately hilarious presence of anyone who's ever lived even running through the failing forcefield personal trauma horror prison of all time at the bottom of the ocean. his day job is murder. he met rook and co literally half an hour ago and already these are the vibes, starting as they mean to go on.

the je ne sais quoi factor of this man. unparalleled

[zu-is-here]

During the post dark cream arc where Cross was pregnant with Aim, is it possible for Aim to mive and kick while in the soul…? And if so is it painful for Cross+

continuing @clownyclowns' comic's topic <3

[mythology-void]

love watching odysseus fluctuate violently between suicidal depression and all-consuming homicidal fury like look at him go

[satsuha]

Apollo! It truly is you! Nahyuta...?

been thinking about the possibility of nahyuta meeting apollo a few years before spirit of justice..

more thoughts below:

i'd imagine this is around 5 years ago, when nahyuta first became a prosecutor? dhurke says that when he first became a prosecutor he was still determined to bring down ga'ran, which i assume means it was before he knew the truth about rayfa and before he was blackmailed to do ga'ran's bidding... i don't know if he had always been an "international" prosecutor but i think he would have been a lot happier to see apollo again compared to his actual reaction in 6-2

at the same time though apollo would probably react more or less the same way, since it's still been a long time since he started trying to forget about his past. i guess he'd at least be more receptive if nahyuta greeted him warmly since i think he has more complicated feelings about dhurke since nahyuta had no part in the decision to send him away...

now onto designs! i based nahyuta off one of his concept designs (specifically the one below) but with a closer colour scheme to what he has in his final design. his hairstyle's more of a middle ground between his adult and child hairstyles, and i also gave him gloves since it doesn't make sense for him to flaunt his rebel tattoo as a prosecutor but also wouldn't have the glove with ga'ran's symbol yet.

i think apollo is fairly obvious but i just gave him his suit jacket from the WAA background, since he both mentions that he likes it and that he doesn't wear it anymore because of trucy's comment about it making him look like a stand-up comedian. i feel like it'd make sense for him to want to look more professional with a full suit before settling for his current look after becoming more comfortable in his shoes

[xxplastic-cubexx]

oh noooo or whatever

bonus aka The Real Motive Behind This:

SURPRISE double bonus. textless ver of the first pic under the cut

[rjshope]

SYS Final Kim Taehyung

for @kimtaegis ✨

[jingerpi]

[do not use this as justification for sexist bigotry, this is a personal thought relating to the investigation of ideas and not a statement meant to be derisive towards feminist theories.]

disclaimer out of the way, I've been thinking about transmisogyny a lot lately and it's really interesting to consider the nuances of. I think a lot of the objections to transfeminist theory simply come from sexism, but there is one point of potential critique that I think warrants further inquiry. to get at this we have to first clarify something else though.

the distinction of tme/tma might sound like an issue to a lot of transmisogynists, but most of their objections die away as soon as you clarify it's not "never ever experiences transmisogyny" and is perhaps more accurately "trans misogyny exemptable" as this gets at the reality of trans women facing transmisogyny regardless of what we do, there is no way out, we are the intended targets. other people face transmisogyny as a sort of warning, a clarifying statement that "if you are transfeminine we will Other you" and they're able to exempt themselves from this in most situations by clarifying "I am not a trans woman" regardless of the particular form that takes.

not everyone is able to exempt themselves from all gender related bigotry though. you cannot, for example, make this distinction (of not being transfem) to escape intersexism, which is why many intersex repeatedly experience gender based oppression and cannot opt out of it. this is oppression is fundamentally not an result of transmisogyny, it is a result of intersexism.

with that clarification out of the way, I think there is an understandable critique regards the simplification that

"men have power over women" <- correct, easily verifiable, almost everybody agrees. "Black men have power of Black women" <- still correct and non controversial (at least in feminist spaces). then you go to "trans men have power over trans women" and everybody freaks out, yeah? like people start to object to this understanding suddenly, even though we've only changed 1 thing, which we've changed before and nobody found issue with it in those other areas. many of these objections come transmisogyny, but I don't think it actually tells the whole story to write all of this off as transmisogyny.

I think why we run into an issue with this understanding (again, critique, not refutation) is that trans people's gender is often, perhaps even usually in flux. the statement "men have power over women" is trivially true, and is a statement on gender and misogyny. this comparison can be brought to trans men and trans women, but it's not without nuance, as the most basic information we can get from this is applied to gender, something which is often actively shifting for trans people.

the reason is don't see this as some kind of disproof of transmisogyny or something should be clear though, for two reasons (aside from the obvious statement towards trends rather than specific instances)

1. transmisogyny is fundamentally not the same thing as misogyny at large, and

2. though trans-gender is often shifting, we can use the prior distinction of exemptable and intended targets to largely do away with this problem.

despite the framework of misogyny not applying 1-1 onto trans people (many who identify as trans men have 'correctly' experienced misogyny), we can still see how it is useful to look at the intersection of misogyny and transphobia. While yes, trans men often experience both of these things, it is often not simultaneously like it is for trans women. As trans women transition our closeness to womanhood tends to increase so as our experiences of transphobia increase, so too do our experiences of misogyny- where as the opposite goes for trans men. it's not that one can't be sexist and transphobic to a trans man, they're not transmisogyny exempt in some metaphysical sense, but rather that for trans women our transness and our womanhood have a positive correlation, our transness and our womanhood are inseparable, we cannot denounce one by leaning on the other.

on the contrary, while trans men will still face transphobia and sexism which denies the validity of their transness and treats them with misogyny, as they transition their relationship begins to more closely match that of men, because of course they are men, this leads to them being able to escape transmisogyny not by being part of some magically 100% transmisogyny excluded class, but because they have the ability to meaningfully denounce trans feminity, to put down womanhood and to become "one of the guys", it's conditional, yes, but often the conditions are not to "pass" in the traditional sense but rather to express views aligning with the patriarchy and derision of feminity, i.e, misogyny.

I think we can see this in the popular responses to tme/tma discourse within the trans community: many trans men correctly recognize what is happening and stand in solidarity, transmisogyny is a genuine problem and it makes sense to talk about the intersection between misogyny and transphobia, trans men even experience both at times, so it is a good idea to stand against. Then, some men begin to talk about their experiences with denial of who they are and the misogyny that can come with that. This too is rather sensible, though it doesn't somehow counteract or disprove transmisogyny generally, it can be studied and acknowledge much in the same way we understand cis men are tested with transmisogyny to enforce what others call "toxic masculinity", despite them not being transfeminine. Then we have a third and wildly popular group, who appropriate the struggles of the second group, where co-option occurs by men who buy into or express sexist ideas for the sake of more fully exempting themselves from transmisogyny. Along with this, instead of recognizing the basis for transmisogyny as intersecting gender based oppression, because doing so would show their fleeting relationship to it, they redefine it as being intersection of two metaphysical identities generally, and thus "transandrophobia" is born, posed as being on an equal to transmisogyny, after all, they're both born from intersecting identities are they not?

of course, we know Androphobia is not something which actually exists, nor is Misandry - these arent axis' of oppression, and they largely know this too, but their goal is to obfuscate the ways in which marginalized men still benefit from their manhood. it takes what I think can be a rather genuine expression that trans men experience both transphobia and misogyny, and instead of grappling with the ways they can societally put down others to gain exemption from transmisogyny, the way their relationship to it is transient, they instead cling to it and invent new terms or fall on old bigoted talking points to justify doing so. "transandrophobia" yes, but also "sex based oppression" and "male/female socialization" these terms and rhetoric are regularly used against transfeminists by these trans men who have exempted themselves from transmisogyny, who have sided with patriarchy over their trans sisters, instead allying with the general terf movement at large and often implicitly misgendering themselves in the process.

and just to be clear, not exempting yourself doesn't mean you will experience the brunt of transmisogyny or to the same degree trans women do - you may be called slurs by bigots, may be harassed in given instances, or sometimes worse, but the systemic forces of transmisogyny go far deeper than negative interactions with individuals, and these transmisogynistic forces are again, aimed specifically at trans women. While I want to recognize the ways in which transmisogyny permeates all of society, do not see this and mistake it for support for the idea that everyone experiences it equally and their relationship is only changed by putting down transfemininity, it is and always has been about targeting transfemininity, the reason I clarify exemptable is due to society's constant enforcing of transmisogynistic ideas on everyone, even if the worst persecution is specifically and intentionally reserved for trans women

Lastly I want to say that these ideas are still developing and my understanding of them will likely change with time and discussion. I dont think these ideas are particularly new, they seem to underpin a lot of discussion on these topics, but this is my attempt to bring them from an implicit unspoken agreement into a more firmly expressed position. Doing so is necessarily going to expose flaws and I see that as a good thing, as doing so is required to elevate understanding of these theories to a higher level. Some of these flaws will be with my expression and understanding, and I will work to correct those, but some will likely be with the ideass themselves and it will take time for them to develop. Please read in good faith, thank you.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

In the world of heavy metals, love is denser than hate!

[quasi-normalcy]

I've decided I'm not going to complain about generally positive representations of transness in media. Like, yeah, okay, I do find characters like Adira and Gray Tal from Discovery and Dreamer from Supergirl and even Rose Noble from Doctor Who to be unrelatably wholesome little lollipops; but it doesn't matter anymore. Fascists are in power and I've decided that forcing The Trans Agenda down people's throats like a kettle of boiling water is Good, Actually.

[recent-rose]

hey i dont go here but jayce's speech about viktor in s2e9 isn't him saying 'u should never have tried to heal yourself, you were perfect the way u were x3' it was him saying that viktor's physical health never made him any less beautiful, never made him any less important, never made him any LESS, period. he wasn't saying viktor didn't need to pursue a cure for his ills like come on his motivation to invent hextech was to help people. to cure disease. viktor's first and foremost among them.

he said what he said because it was the thing viktor craved to hear most in his life, and that is why those were the words that punched through his defences even as the machine herald: jayce loved him wholly and unconditionally, healthy or ill, good or bad, human or inhuman. he would always be loved just the same.