#I'm relevant now

[ashorterurl]

It’s been 4 years are you still an antisemite jerkoff or did you develop the rest of that malnourished brain

this is the first time I've been called that, FINALLY I get anon hate

[trans-axolotl]

my gendered experience growing up as an intersex person was overwhelmingly defined by my responses and resistance to everything that got me labeled as a failure: failure to quickly get a gender assigned at birth, failure to go through a normal puberty and grow up into a woman, failure at meeting the standards for "complete womanhood" because of my intersex sex traits, and yet simultaneously failing to ever be acknowledged as a "real man" and being treated as a threat when I expressed I wanted to transition.

before i realized i was a man and came out as trans, the ways that girlhood was denied to me was very often humiliating and painful. locker rooms filled with other girls were a frequent source of shame. there were many big and small ways that i was told that my intersex body made me insufficient, incomplete, broken. i was forced onto estrogen, forced into shaving my body hair, and was constantly being told to change myself to better fit this mystical idea of a "normal woman." and even though I ultimately ended up becoming a man, the denial of girlhood was painful.

but i think that these things would have been even more difficult to navigate as an intersex girl if on top of everything I already said, i was having to cope with the denial of my girlhood while i was forced into boys locker rooms. if my doctors were forcing me onto testosterone hrt and refusing to even discuss estrogen, if all my legal paperwork had "M" on it and was a logistical nightmare to change, if every support group for my intersex variation labeled it as a "men's support group," if the LGBTQ community spaces i tried to join were misogynistic towards me often to the point of exile, if my self determination as an intersex girl was denied in most spaces of my life, and on and on and on. while listing all these things out i also don't want to make it seem like it's all about suffering and pain--so much of transition for me has been about joy in my self determination and how much it feels like a reclamation of autonomy to decide what I want my body and self to be like--i know this is an experience i share with so many of my trans intersex friends.

as an person who was AFAB, although there were many ways that trying to grow up as an intersex girl were a painful, logistical nightmare, many times and places that i was excluded from woman's spaces, etc. however, there was a simultaneous affirmation that i was right to strive for that in the first place. which is logic rooted in some fucked up compulsory dyadism, but also which would have made some things slightly easier or even possible at all if i had wanted to embrace being an intersex girl within this fucked up system.

pretty much every time i've seen people on tumblr talking about "afab transfems" in an intersex context, people seem happy to collapse these experiences and act like there's no meaningful distinction or point in distinguishing between different types of intersex embodiment. it seems incredibly extractive, to be perfectly honest with you--taking terms already used by a community to make meaning of their experiences and to expand and dilute that term enough that it means something pretty different than the original.

it's making me think about the concept of epistemic injustice, which is a term coined by Miranda Fricker to describe oppression related to knowledge, communication, and making meaning of the world. There's two subtypes of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice refers to the dynamic where marginalized people are labeled as not credible, excluded from conversations, and their testimony and knowledge is labeled as unreliable, even when they're the ones who are experts and have first hand experience of what people are talking about. (this is why i probably won't make this post rebloggable--i've noticed this pattern on tumblr many times where trans men speaking about transmisogyny get lots of notes and are given a lot of grace, where trans women are silenced, attacked for not having perfect wording, and otherwise delegitimized.)

the second type is called hermeneutical injustice. it describes how marginalized people are denied the right to make sense of the experiences in their own lives. this can look like preventing people from building community, terminology, a political understanding of themselves, and the interpretive resources needed to process how you live in the world.

this is a form of injustice that I think almost all intersex people are very familiar with--we are denied community and interpretive resources to the point that we're told we don't even exist, that intersex isn't a real word, and so many more examples that leave us isolated and with very few options for understanding what we're collectively experiencing. as an intersex person i really intimately understand how frustrating, confusing, and painful it is to not have words for your experiences, your identity, your life.

so it makes me really sad and pissed off when it seems like intersex people seem to be replicating this exact same type of epistemic injustice towards transfems and specifically towards intersex transfems. pretty much every time recently i see people talking about "afab transfems" they're doing so in a way that seems to deny that trans women even have the right to make sense of their own experiences in the world. there seems to be this mindset that these political frameworks, these interpretive resources that transfems have built up are just up for grabs for anyone. and then on top of that has come with it a lot of cruel, hateful language and direct attacks towards many intersex transfems who are facing so much harassment right now.

an important value to me is this idea of reciprocity as a foundation for solidarity. to me reciprocity means that we're prioritizing the ways we care for each other, we're thinking about how we can uplift each other, and we're watching out for extractive or exploitative patterns where one group is constantly expected to be in "solidarity" with another group without getting the same respect and care back toward them. i think that there could be so many ways that intersex people of all genders could share our overlapping experiences and actually be in true, meaningful solidarity with each other, but i barely ever actually see that happen on tumblr. and that pisses me off, because i do think that there's so much we have in common that we could celebrate and support each other with. i feel so much kinship with so, so many of my trans intersex friends, and ways where i see our lives converge. but i don't think that can happen in an environment where there's no acknowledgment of the ways that our experiences will sometimes (often) differ from each other, and the ways that we have unique needs.

another frustration i've had based on this most recent couple months of transmisogynistic intersex posting on tumblr is how intersex people have been mostly ignoring intersex community resources and devaluing the existing intersex terminology that people created to try to meet our needs. so much of what i've seen people describing on tumblr seems to really line up with the term ipsogender. Ipsogender is a term coined by an intersex sociologist Cary Gabriel Costello, and is used to describe intersex people whose gender matches the gender they were medically assigned at birth, but who might not feel like cis or trans fits them, might experience dysphoria, and who might feel like they've ended up transitioning medically or socially in some ways. this is a word that exists that an intersex person put time into coining because they wanted other intersex people to feel seen, embraced, and have ways of understanding themselves and communicating to others, and that's something that's super meaningful to me! and yet, i've rarely seen anyone reference it, and also seen multiple people making fun of it in other spaces online.

there's also intergender, which is another intersex specific gender term used to describe when your gender is inseparable from your intersex traits, and that your intersex identity is intertwined with your gender identity in some way. some people just identify as intergender, others use it as an adjective and exist as an intergender man or woman. intersex terminology like this is really important to me, especially because we're so often denied the right to make sense of our own experiences.

i think ultimately what i wanted to say with this post is just that when i think about intersex community, some of the most important values of intersex community for me are solidarity, care for each other, and affirming our right to define our own existence. and i don't think that can happen in a community where people are acting in extractive ways, harassing and attacking their fellow community members, and being dismissive of the realities of other intersex people's lives.

[teaboot]

I have decided that from now on when people jokingly speculate about highly personal experiences I'm just gonna answer honestly until it stops

Like yeah Shannon my parents did hit me growing up, would you like to sit down and talk about how that was a formative experience or did you want to tell me something with your big girl words

[thegeminisage]

SPOCKANALIA VOLUME 1 IS NOW ON AO3!

do you like vintage fanzines, but hate reading tiny font? do you love spock, but hate the headache you get from squinting at textured paper and imperfect scans? are you someone who wants to read SPOCKANALIA but has trouble getting your screenreader to cooperate with 60-year-old PDFS? have we ever got news for you. @maulthots and i have been very, very, VERY hard at work digitizing SPOCKANALIA, a SFW star trek fanzine about spock first published in 1967, and now you, YES YOU, can read it on AO3!

updated features of SPOCKANALIA on AO3 include:

text has been meticulously retyped and can now be read at whatever size you have your browser settings on, which means the line width also changes based on the width of your browser window or device screen

images are dynamic to fit on your screen whether you are on a pc or a mobile device so you don't have to scroll until your hand breaks and still only see mr. spock's eyelashes (you have to turn work skins on for this feature)

backgrounds/paper texture/echoes of ghost text removed (by hand!) from images for easier viewing, and in some cases the images have been rotated to correct tilted/sideways scanning

images come with ALT TEXT for those using screen readers!

here are a few before/after shots for your perusal:

so what are you waiting for?! get your inner 60s fangirl (gender neutral) on and read SPOCKANALIA today!!

and if you think this is COOL AS SHIT (i do), please consider giving this post a reblog or leaving us some love on AO3! we have only your good vibes to fuel us as we contemplate volume 2 💪

[aethersea]

I've always wanted to learn bookbinding, ever since I was a wee little nerd, but there are a lot of things I've always wanted to learn, and this one has both a daunting upfront materials cost and a daunting upfront research cost. however, my sister is a jewel among siblings and gave me for christmas last year a handy dandy bookbinding manual, a block of good paper, and a little bag of tools.

but I still didn't have a suitable workspace, nor any of the many important tools and materials that she didn't include in her gift. so I just read the manual and pined. until maybe a month ago I got fed up with pining, flattened a cardboard box for a cutting mat, and went to town.

and I'm real proud of myself, so here's me rambling, plus photos!

I went to the thrift store and got glue + some fabric to bind the cover, went to Michaels for a paintbrush (and later went back for a metal ruler lmao it's amazing how useful it is to have a straightedge for cutting the paper), and...could not find material for the cover boards. so I went home and pined some more. but the urges were too strong, so after a couple hours of moping I got a stack of printer paper at the grocery store (I could not bring myself to use the good paper for my first, inevitably weak attempts, I just couldn't do it) and started making a little booklet. which was a great idea, it turned out, since it makes for good practice with cutting the paper, measuring things, punching holes in the signatures, etc.

I have a big box of greeting cards from Michaels, which I used for the covers. it didn't feel like I was making a Real Book, so I got some colored paper from the stationery store and used that for end papers.

so fancy~

galvanized by this success, I ordered a stack of chipboard online to use for cover boards; and once I was confident that I could cut paper without making it look too stupid (getting that straightedge ruler sure helped lol), I made signatures out of the good paper, left them under some heavy books overnight since I don't have a book press, and then punched holes in them! (huzzah for this nice video on getting the holes right)

my sister's gift included good linen thread. it's unwaxed, but after some poking around on r/bookbinding it looks like that just means I'll have to be more careful to avoid tangles and keep good tension. I am fine with this. I can be extra attentive. (I considered just running it over a beeswax candle, but one commenter said if your wax has paraffin in it, it could melt in a hot car, ruining the spine. I can't guarantee my candle is 100% beeswax, I didn't make it, so maybe we just move on.)

I don't have good linen fabric to use for the tapes, but the important part there is that the fabric be thin, sturdy, and not stretchy. the probably-cotton I got from the thrift store fits the bill, so it'll do!

this is a french link stitch, which I got from this exceedingly good tutorial. apparently it's strong enough on its own that for a book of this size, I don't actually need tapes, but I'd already cut the things so eh here we are. and tapes plus french link will make it a stronger binding still (according to a friendly redditor on r/bookbinding), so we carry on.

specifically we carry on to the gluing step. now as I mentioned, I do not have a book press, and you....kinda need one for this step. you need to hold the book block in place with the signatures facing upwards, pressed together hard enough that the glue won't run down between them and stick the pages together (though you do want the glue to get between them just a little, just for like a 16th of an inch). you at least need some clamps and a couple boards to sandwich the book block with.

but you know what? I'm not a professional, this is my first ever book, if it's a little bit off it'll be fine. so we grab all the heaviest books off the bookshelf and improvise.

it's fine! I'm sure it's fine! and just in case it's not, I've tucked a bit of cardboard underneath to catch any glue that drips down so it won't land on the floor. see? I'm prepared! I'm acing this.

and actually, it really was fine. I used clear elmer's glue, applied with a flat paintbrush from the art supplies aisle at Michael's, and frankly I liked the way the flat paintbrush let me slip glue in between the signatures. I did poke around on a couple bookbinding sites to see what kind of glue I should use, and the gist is that although there are better options than this, elmer's glue is perfectly serviceable, and the main downside is it's not archival grade. but I don't need my first bookbinding attempts to last 200 years, that's fine.

the next step is to add the mull. mull is a specific type of fabric – extremely loose-weave linen – and the idea is to paste it down over the spine to essentially hold the tapes and signatures all in place in relation to each other.

but I don't have mull! so I'm using more of the thrift store probably-cotton, because it's thin enough and not really stretchy at all. I'm sure this will be fine too. I painted a layer of glue onto the spine, then left it to dry a bit while I measured and cut the fabric, then painted a generous stripe of glue down the center, where it'll affix onto the spine. then I added a bit more glue to the spine, just to be sure, and pressed the mull into place, rubbing it thoroughly to make sure it's firmly affixed to every signature, with no creases in the fabric or air bubbles beneath it.

honestly I might have overdone it on the glue. I've never done this before, I don't know! I think it's okay, though – I tried not to ever let it become a thick layer, just a slight coating, since the danger of too much glue is that it might crack once dry and weaken the spine.

and now we leave it in the press overnight to dry, and pick up the next step in the morning!

[mozart-the-meerkitten]

*rolls up 15 years late with Avatar the Last Airbender thoughts*

So I've been rewatching clips from the show lately to refresh my memory while I'm writing my Zuko Alone fanfic. And last night I rewatched the clip where Iroh teaches Zuko how to redirect lightning and I have had thoughts about this scene for years so I might as well finally throw them into the void of tumblr.

So, this scene is insane to me, because at the end of learning how he could-hypothetically- redirect lightning, Zuko looks at Iroh and, completely seriously says "okay I'm ready to try it with the real thing now". Like, Zuko, the boy with a massive scar on his face from where his father burned him just looks at his uncle and says, "shoot me with lightning".

And yes, he's 16 and not thinking but that's part of the point because the amount of blind, complete trust Zuko has in Iroh to look at him and say "shoot lightning at me" after the insane trauma he had at the hands of his own father- that is WILD to me. Zuko literally trusts Iroh so much that he just assumes, without even having to think about it, that no matter how volatile and unpredictable the lightning is, Iroh won't hurt him because Zuko cannot fathom his uncle hurting him.

And of course, Iroh's appalled because Zuko's standing there with a massive scar on his face from when his father misused firebending against him and likewise, Iroh cannot fathom hurting Zuko. And since IROH knows how volatile and unpredictable lightning is and how it could literally kill his son nephew he is absolutely NOT going to use it just to let Zuko practice redirecting lightning, but he's so flabbergasted that Zuko would even ask him that that he just kind of splutters angrily that he will ABSOLUTELY NOT shoot lightning at Zuko. (it's also just another layer of how messed up Ozai is because he shot lightning at Zuko without a second thought later)

But I hope Iroh thought about it later and realized the amount of pure, unthinking trust Zuko has in him because ;-; the child didn't even THINK about it. "Okay uncle shoot lightning at me now. I know I'll be safe because it's you." I love them so much 😭😭

[bigfatbreak]

Hello I love your art!!! I was reading through your changeling au and Felix mentions that fae are creatures of mirth. They literally need attention to survive. But what kind of attention? I guess I'm wondering because Adrien has been in the public eye for a while now, but has been personally neglected for even longer. What does that mean for him? Is he starving? Is he in danger of dying? Does he even know it? (I assume not given he doesn't even know he's Fae).

If he is starving / in danger of starving who is the first to realize this?

it depends on the mirth, on the attention, on what it is they seek. Without making things too complicated - I don't like to define everything into neat little boxes after all, there's fun in nuance - Felix is just explaining from his experience, the Fae he was with tended to be "entertained" by certain aspects of their playing, which was the mirth that kept them relevant. Relevancy more than anything is really what keeps their wheels greased.

In Adrien's case though, the reason he's cloying for so many names and to have so many thralls and attendants is because he SHOULD be a more social creature and has been kept woefully alone. He is kinda starving in the way a fae starves - he's relevant, but only in an image his father constructs OF him, which means it isn't REALLY him - and he has no one to play with. No friends, no lovers, and no rivals, makes a very sad fae

[spark-circuit]

Here, everyone! Help yourself to a free Coffee yourselves while we wait for the update!

[birdsat4am]

a poorly made meme to explain my greatest desire

[amber-tortoiseshell]

I love when big cats sit in a tree, it looks so comfortable somehow.

Cats love to do this because it combines the power of 'being high up above everyone else' and the power of 'napping is my greatest talent ever'

Bonus:

[xulips]

🌻🥀 first meeting

[helimir]

Some top tier Caduceus quotes I've been thinking about in these Downfall times. Something about how so much of Ludinus' position seems to rest on revenge. Showing Bells Hells the squabbling of the gods as they debate what to do about Aeor, and asking 'You can just watch bad people get away with it?'

It doesn't matter if the gods were wrong for their choices. Killing them won't bring back Aeor and it won't stop the violence that Ludinus and the Ruby Vanguard have visited on the world. I just don't see what it's for.

[crystallizsch]

eepy eepy

[flownwrong]

Star Trek: Discovery / Mirrors (5x05)

[felassan]

r/dragonage (Reddit) post titled "Jeff Grubb: Dragon Age: Dreadwolf scheduled to release in late 2024." Post text: "Dreadwolf to be shown this summer and planned release later this year, Bioware is internally confident on the release date. Anything could change of course." Source: [link] Clip: [link] "Credit to: u/IcePopsicleDragon for posting this in r/GamingLeaksAndRumours."

[source]

In episode 339 of Game Mess Decides, Jeff Grubb had the following to say on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf's possible/rumored release window [transcript]:

Question from chat: “Hi Jeff and Mike, when will Dragon Age 4 be shown and released?” Jeff: “Yeah, I mean, I expect it will probably pop up this summer. I don’t know when it’ll be shown is the real answer, that’s the, let’s get that out, I don’t know when it will be shown. I assume it will be shown sometime this summer. Could happen at any time though. It will be released this year [2024], last I heard. That is, and they’re pretty confident about that, doesn’t mean it’s a guarantee, could slip, but right now, internally, they expect to release it later this year, which is why I took it in Fantasy Critic”.

[source (timestamp 35 mins 20 secs), clipped version]

(there were no more mentions of Dragon Age or BioWare during the episode)

[ask-whitepearl-and-steven]

hopefully this isn't a spoiler-

are we going to see more of Steven's bite, like that burn to Jasper?

oh yeah.