#and the rest of the group are all so cool like they're all either queer or neurodivergent or both

[hella1975]

Oh Hella your DM sounds like a good one! Hope you have fun and that coin is amazing should we add practice the coin trick to your schedule? /gen

ACTUALLY YEAH PLEASE

[mynameisnotsoda]

A Brief History of Studentbur (according to me)

After recent events I'm renaming studentbur to Adam Will Bishop, it's not a big change but i don't wanna use Wilbur as a name for the bursonas anymore. I'll probably give the rest their own names as well at some point.

Adam's parents are heavily Christian, growing up they never let him express himself as he wanted to. He used to ask for dolls, girls clothes, etc. generally more "girly" things cause pink was his favorite color as a kid. Eventually he learned to stop asking, and to shut up and be grateful for what he was given whether he liked it or not.

Adam isn't allowed to do ANYTHING with his hair, he prefers to keep it short (which his parents want anyway) but he wishes they would let him cut it differently or dye it.

One time when he was younger (maybe 4/5) he got nipped with scissors while getting a haircut and he cried so hard he threw up. He was so scared of getting cut again that he refused to go for months, which only made his dad pissed, so he started cutting Wilbur's hair himself.

As the only child Adam receives ALL his parents attention, good and bad, he feels suffocated by them. His mom is overbearing with severely untreated anxiety and his dad is a very.. traditional man. He's the cause for most of Adam's distress with being himself.

He's gotten REALLY good at bottling up his emotions until he explodes. Usually his pent up emotions just lead to him sobbing uncontrollably for hours, while hiding away in his room after everyone's already gone to bed, just so he doesn't get punished for having feelings.

Adam went to this k-12 Christian school up until sophomore year. He was really isolated since EVERYONE knew each other they basically grew up together. So he didn't have a chance at making more friends after a while.

For the longest time he had trouble making and keeping friends, he was the obnoxious weird kid and eventually his parents and his peers broke him down. He's horrified of social interaction and the genetically inherited anxiety disorder doesn't help either.

Once he switched to public school he was noticeably less stressed. Even his parents noticed the improvement so they didn't bother pestering him about going to a different Christian school instead. If it weren't for his mom he probably would've been sent off somewhere he didn't choose, she's not a great parent but definitely the lesser of two evils.

Adam tried to befriend Tommy at first but once he saw how loud and annoying he was he kinda backed off and tried ignoring him (except Tommy wouldn't allow that because he needs to know EVERYONE)

He didn't befriend Charlie until after he started going by "Chad Bussy" and became one of the cool kids. (Ps. Charlie's the foreign exchange student and Ran moved there when they were younger) Charlie immediately liked Adam and basically claimed him as his best friend the moment Adam started trying to get to know him. He loves yapping and Adam loves listening, although a lot of the time he'll trick Adam into talking about himself and his interests.

Adam and Charlie have been best friends for two years, that's when he finally confesses after having feelings for Charlie for maybe a few months

This is so messy but yeah !!!! Here's some other miscellaneous stuff about the au that doesn't completely revolve around Adam

Adam's parents hate Tommy, he's too loud, too vulgar and is very disrespectful (in their eyes). They like Charlie but he despises them. They hate Ran just cause they're queer. They are kinda indifferent to Bill but he doesn't like them so he avoids going to Wilbur's place when he can.

Tommy has a few friend groups he's apart of but really likes sticking with Adam, he loves annoying the shit out of him. (And his brother, Techno, is 12 years older than him. So. He likes having a brother that's closer to his age)

Dr. Hilton and Mr. Marriot are two separate people who look oddly similar. Dr. Hilton was Adam's abuser at his old school but hasn't seen him since.

Mr. Marriot is just the goofy English teacher who desperately wants to be seen as the "cool teacher" by his students. He's painfully aware of Adam's discomfort towards him and has no idea why (because he never wants to talk about it)

Adam's the only person who's allowed to call Charlie, Charlie. Everyone else has to say Chad Bussy or Charles (Charles being mainly just for the teachers)

Adam, Charlie, Tommy, Bill and Ran end up being close friends!! (They end up staying friends after highschool too :3)

Once the squad (courtesy of Charlie and nobody else having a better group name) graduates they basically follow Charlie back to America. Charlie's parents are actually pretty wealthy so they stay with him for college !

This has been in my drafts for weeks 😭😭

[meraxes-of-new-albion]

What's it like being a zookeeper? What's your day like, and how'd you get into that?

Hi!

It's both really cool and really frustrating lol.

For context this is US, AZA based zoos; if you're elsewhere I have no idea whether the path that works here works elsewhere.

This got long so readmore.

I don't want to paint this career with rose tinted glasses. It's a passion career, and like all passion careers, you will be overworked, underpaid, and probably surrounded by reasonably privileged white people who can afford the overworked + underpaid. (I am absolutely no exception to this rule, btw.)

That said, a couple weeks ago I got to pet a Canada lynx. I've fed peanut butter to wolves, watched a secretary bird hunt, bonded with a Harris hawk, and made best friends with a plush-crested jay. You get the *coolest* stories, and it helps make the crappy parts of the job feel worthwhile; it's hard to resent your life when you're feeding bananas to a moose.

As far as career path goes, I'm still early in mine, but generally from talking to people, this is how it goes for most people: they go to a 4 year college/university for a degree in biology or something related -> they do at least one (unpaid :/) internship during college to get experience -> they work seasonally/part time at a zoo (generally several zoos, generally moving across the country multiple times)(this is where I'm at in my career) -> they get a full time, benefitted gig somewhere, and either work until a spot at a zoo they'd rather be at opens up, or they live the rest of their career there.

I'd like to stress this isn't the *only* career path - a lot of my coworkers here were dog trainers or what have you beforehand, a different coworker at a different zoo moved from guest services into a seasonal role and got hired on full time from there - but it is by far the most common one. This is also the reason we're pretty much all privileged white people - if you don't have family/friends who can subsidize three months worth of work that you don't get paid for, often you're a bit SOL. This is, very slowly, changing, apparently the MIlkwaukee zoo pays their interns for example, but it's still few and far between, and a very competitive field.

As far as my day to day goes, that changes a lot from zoo to zoo and even job to job - I'm a relief keeper here, so my day changes drastically based on which route I'm covering. At my previous zoo, I worked in their bird department, so my days were a bit more predictable; that was also a much bigger zoo so things like diet prep were handled by a completely different department rather than every route doing their own diets, or one person doing all of them every day. it's definitely worth investigating which kinds of animals you'd like to work with, and asking people who work with those specifically, if you can. For example, occasionally I serve as our second person to work the big cats - we have a two lock system so you can't accidentally let the lions out if you're cleaning in their yard, kind of thing. And I love our lions, and our snow leopards, but also... they're enormous, and terrifying, and sometimes uncooperative as anything. They're cool! But not an animal I'd want to work with every day.

General pros and cons:

Cons:

Pay :/ the mcdonalds I drive past every day would pay me a solid $3 more an hour. And probably give me paid time off.

You will work weekends and holidays. I've worked every holiday for the last two years.

Culture - so here's the thing. Zookeepers, as a group, are people who went individually in their lives "Hey i really suck at people skills. I know! I'll work with animals instead!" and then you put all of them together in the same room with animals they're emotionally invested in. Petty office drama, toxic management, and other such problems are common. We skew leftist and queer but that doesn't mean we have conflict resolution skills.

You are very, very, very likely to end up moving states at least once in your career.

pros:

No two days are ever the same. there's always something new to learn, some new problem to solve, something you all have to pull together and help with. Whether that be relocating an alligator, unloading a frozen meat delivery, a news crew hanging around, or something else, there's always something to change up the day.

The work you're doing never feels like a perpetual motion machine - it always has meaning to it. Everything you do benefits an animal you probably know personally, by name. You get to share those stories, those individuals, with the visitors who stop and ask; if you're lucky, they might go home and learn more about those animals. We all thrive by the concept of "You protect what you care about; you care about what you know; you know about what you are taught". Did I know kori bustards existed before I worked with them? no. Do I care now, and I'm glad to know they're no longer poached for fly fishing bait thanks to (i think) CITES in the 80s and 90s? You bet I do they're wonderful animals.

Your life, the everyday mundanity of it, becomes something that other people will always consider you the most interesting person in the room for. I don't get to work with said lynx very often anymore, due to staffing changes and whatnot, but every morning like clockwork Carson would meet you at the fence and follow you right along it to the den, because he knew you had his breakfast. It felt mundane, after a while, but it's always worth the moment of acknowledging "wow I actually get to hang out with some lynx today. That's pretty cool."

Hopefully this actually answers your question lol. It's not something I'd trade for anything, but I don't want to paint it as a world full of snuggling wolf puppies and rainbows and sunshine, because it's not that, either. It's sometimes grueling, frustrating, bitter work, full of frustrations about budgets and supplies and not having enough hours in the day. But then you go and you hang out with the giraffes for a couple minutes, and that in itself is wonderfully grounding.

so yeah. Hope this helps!

[rabbitindisguise]

Pansexuals are cool. I keep seeing people misinterpreting the history of it, assuming it's cis people being faux progressive and fixing a word problem that isn't actually even there, rather than of trans people being rejected by bisexuals because of transphobia and choosing to take up the word pansexual instead (especially to find people who categorically could not exclude trans people from the dating pool on the basis of their orientation)

I don't believe all bisexuals or bisexuality itself is transphobic, but at the same time "we're not inherently transphobic" feels a sloppy apology for decades of cis people going ew yuck a trans person bi people don't date transsexuals- and while that's not the main reason I'm not bi it's certainly not encouraging when bi cis people still ignore that history to claim to be Super Allies like transphobia being said by cis bi people never was a problem

And like I'm polysexual so the only horse I have is how much it sucks when people get pissy about newer identity terms. But nonetheless it's really annoying as an observer when people are using queer history for some kind of exclusionary agenda to justify saying pan people are transphobic somehow (???). Pansexuals are fundamentally a group just trying to either be kind to their trans partners and trans people, or trying to find potential people who will date them as a trans person without outing themselves first. That's an important safer space like T4T is an important safer space, it just includes trans people not willing to swear off dating cis people entirely.

And for bi and trans people who aren't afraid of some random bi person getting transphobic with them, I have infinite respect for that specifically. I wish more bi cis people understood that the rest of us aren't interested in playing transphobia chicken though. It's not personal. I don't think bi people are transphobic because I'm mspec but not bi. I think pansexuals want to advertise that they're willing to put in the work to date a trans person even if they're cis, and trans pansexuals want to be flagging that they're T4T, and non-binary pansexuals want an option that doesn't even suggest binary language applying to something so personal about themselves. I think as a polysexual I'm not interested in seeing if I'm attracted to men and women, or even if I'm attracted to men or women. To call myself bisexual and potentially just not be interested in binary women or binary men would be super confusing.

We all have good reasons that not be bi, and even if they were bad reasons we'd still not be bi because it's about what we pick to call ourselves. I'm not pansexual and no one has had a problem accepting that so far, so it's disappointing to keep getting heckled by cis people that I'm not bi. It's especially frustrating because basically all bi people I know in real life and even online are totally accepting of all my weird complex labels and totally lovely, so this is an obscure phenomenon like radical feminism is in the grand scheme of feminism as a whole. It's also disrespectful to bi trans people to reduce systematic oppression to pansexuals existing and I hate that they're using tackling biphobia as the mouthpiece of exclusionary rhetoric.

(Of course there's also people who are like "lav this is a lot of thoughts on a topic I wasn't even aware existed before reading this post" and thank goodness for that)

[terresdebrume]

Concept: an everyone lives, Steve-Centric AU in which after everything is done, he follows Robin to New York as she starts college.

To survive, Steve finds a job as a bartender in one of many queer bars in the village, where he's actually feeling pretty good! The coworkers are no Robin, of course, but they're cool enough, and the clients generally behave. Sure, you get the not so occasional group of assholes looking to beat someone up, but compared to dealing with the Upside Down it honestly doesn't feel that impressive, especially now Steve found his way into actual boxing lessons.

So for a few months, things are good. Steve phones the brats more than his parents phone him (no surprise there), stays in touch with Nancy and Jonathan (bit more of a surprise) and even with Eddie (what the fuck, but in a god way). He's content to feel at home amidst a sea of queer men and women even though he's definitely not queer himself--it's not like it's hurting anybody.

Then one day, his usual shift partner is sick so the owner calls someone else in who turns out to be none other than Billy Hargrove. For a moment, it feels like they're either going to throw hands or pretend the other doesn't exist, but then Billy looks almost bashful as he greets Steve so you know what? Steve makes an effort too.

At this point, the early stage parallel plots kick in:

One, Steve and Billy fall into an unexpected but actually pretty strong friendship once they lay the past to rest. They lead, support and follow each other into exploring their queerness (both bi, but not necessarily with the same tastes/desires, with an added dash of gender fuckery in Billy's case). They become roommate eventually, since Robin has to live on campus anyway. Overall I'm envisioning a strictly platonic but unmistakably queer relationship building up until Robin and the boys turn into a queerplatonic throuple.

Two: when he left, Steve gave everyone his new address, ostensibly in case of new Upside Down fuckery but really because he couldn't make himself let go of a group of people who gave more of a shit about him than his parents ever did. He didn't expect Eddie to actually use it though, and frankly when the first postcard comes in Steve even spends a good three days wondering if he should just toss it in the trash because he and Eddie really didn't seem to have anything in common aside from the traumatically obvious. He does answer though, and very quickly learns that Eddie writes a bit like Robin talks: a lot.

Which, hey, it's not a bad thing: he learns stuff about DND and Metal music and it's not really his thing but it's still something to learn about. And you know, after the third letter where Eddie tells him he has to (underlined three times) listen to AC/DC at the very least, Steve figures he can pop some of his (much better than in Hawkins) income into a vinyl.

Cue, Billy coming in and being surprised to hear Steve listen to metal. From this point on, it becomes very clear that the parallel plots were really just a trick because the real plot if the growth and evolution of Steve (accepting his queerness, finding new things to like, building a found family on purpose rather than by Vecna-induced accident this time) fueled in great parts by his relationships with Billy, Robin and Eddie and how these relationships influence and encourage each others.

Like, if I ever had the energy to write this fic (I probably never will) I really would want to place all three relationships on equal footing and really highlight how everything Steve learns in one branch has an impact on the others.

The endgame of the fic would be Eddie finally graduating after getting the party to help him figure out studying techniques that work for him (following Steve's advice who, after becoming friends with Billy, encouraged Eddie to ask for help even if it didn't feel like he'd get it because you never know) and moving to New York to join Billy and Steve's housemates situation with Robin prepping to join them the following year and the four of them ready to tackle the world together

[anthonycrowleymoved]

Oh shove off with your "Good Omens isn't real rep because they don't say I LOVE YOU every 3 seconds" nonsense. We're sick and tired of this immature discourse popping up every 2 months like clockwork. They're a queer romance, the end. And by claiming they're not, you're invalidating aromantic people. You're invalidating asexual people. You're invalidating QPRs. You're invalidating agender people. Grow up. Do better.

god i’m so glad i bookmarked this video for moments like this. it brings a nice lightheartedness to the rest of the post i think. anyway

1. if you don’t want to see my “nonsense” “every two months like clockwork” (lmao it’s literally always prompted sorry people care about my opinion) unfollow me. block me. don’t engage with my content. good bye!

2. it’s very cool of you to send me a message at four am my time on anonymous when i’m very publicly on the east coast so you probably knew i wouldn’t answer for hours. especially when there was no conversation about this for a while yesterday. very brave.

3. look, i’m not “invalidating” people because i think neil’s excuse is bullshit. i’m not going to speak for the groups you mentioned, because i am not part of those groups, but if you look at the comments on the essay you clearly didn’t read people who are actually part of those groups and actually, you know, have say, are basically saying they’re not happy with the in-text representation either. and it’s not that they didn’t say ‘i love you’ every three seconds, it’s that they didn’t hint towards any type of relationship they may have had at all in the actual show. that’s not representation, that’s neil telling you he wrote something he didn’t.

4. i love how it’s become this weird fight between like, the ace community who want to lick neil’s boots and the rest of the lgbt community. we don’t want a goddamned sex scene, we don’t even need to see them dirty gay kissing, we just want some confirmation of SOME SORT OF LOVE STORY. i’m not even picky as to what kind. i’d be fine if there was a throwaway scene that actually hinted at ace or qpr. it’s just like, neil’s taking credit for a love story of some sort, so i want to actually see one. and i don’t.

5. PLEASE think about your parasocial relationships and why you feel the need to anonymously defend a 60 year old white man who doesn’t know you exist

[xanderwithanx]

Chloe does night-time diary posts on HER tumblr, so I'm going to start doing them here, sometimes. It would be nice if you read it, but, please, don't feel obligated! This is more for me to write.

(I got tired of my normal journal, I guess. It's full of bad poetry anyway. Besides, where's the thrill of losing anonymity in a physical notebook?)

I've basically been asleep and depressed for several days, because I had withdrawal after not being able to get my adhd meds. But, I got it today, and DID THINGS. (This is SO much better than before!)

Today, I went to a small café or restaurant (focused on tea) called Alice's Teacup that was Alice in Wonderland themed! My long-standing obsession with Alice in Wonderland knows no bounds. It was a really cute place. I got pumpkin pancakes, and some really good iced tea. Like... REALLY good iced tea.

Still, it seemed like the entire place was geared towards having a pot of tea and snacks with your friends, which left me a bit lonely. The person I asked couldn't come, and by the time I heard back, I was more than halfway there. Still, I read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and watched Monty Python on my phone, so I still had a good time!

I dressed pretty eccentricly and effeminately all day, but, with my facial hair, I was ALWAYS coded as a man, even by people on the street! Pastels, a stupid hat, a crop top, and facial hair was a winning combination.

On my way, I was stopped by some guys soliciting for charity. I don't make a habit of stopping for strangers on the streets of Manhattan. What if it's a scam? What if I'm being pressured to buy something? What if it's a strange political rant? But, I had already taken my earbuds off, I wasn't in a hurry, and I'm terminally polite. The first guy said he liked my energy, which seemed to come from a genuine place, because I liked his too!

They were asking for donations for a breast cancer charity, the United Breast Cancer Foundation. After a discussion, it seems like the charity helps pay medical debt, medical bills, and other practical needs, which is much better than *some* others I could name. I regretted not being able to give their minimum there, as it was pretty high, but told them I'd give what I could when I got on the website.

I... did not. Money is tight, because I'm bad and irresponsible with money, even though this is more than a worthy cause. I didn't NEED to go to that tea place, and I don't NEED to spend so much money on food. Sure, I can justify it: I wanted to go to that place for so long, and it was near the college anyway! But, if I was responsible with money, you KNOW my friends direct fundraising drives would go first, worthy charities second. Still, I feel bad about it.

Then, I went to the college library, to get books to start my thesis research. I have literally been unable to go to the college itself, aside from getting my ID, so this was great! There just wasn't a reason. It was... very empty. I went to the library stacks, which was deathly quiet and deeply haunted by the old books. I half expected something to pop out at me, as I turned the stacks, but I wasn't even paranoid or anxious. It was like I was in something else's house. I was welcome, but on thin ice.

I picked up an irrelevant psychology book on the "schizophrenia problem" from the 1930s, out of morbid fascination, and quickly put it down when it threatened to shatter in my hands.

Some students walked past (which was a suprise in those monastic basement library stacks), and I added something to their conversation, in a totally natural and casual way. But, omg the poor girls, I made them jump! Luckily, I'm the least threatening person on earth, and we laughed it off.

After a lot of hunting, I got 5 out of my 10 books (for the most part)! (The rest are, sadly, online. I like to read physical copies.) Strangely, I only came in with a list to get 3 books out of 6.

Most of the books I got are about art in the AIDS crisis, which is the core of my thesis, I think, all with different value. One about exhibitions, one about the larger narrative of those gay artists, and another contradicting the larger narrative.

I also got a book about "Art and Homosexuality". Just, the parallel construction of both "art" and "homosexuality" across cultures and times, from earliest history to the modern age. It wasn't on my initial list, but I'm really excited to read it.

Finally, I got a book called "The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel", about the pain and spectacle of punishment in Medieval and Renaissance European art. I'm mainly interested in Italian Renaissance art of the crucifixion--and its masochism--for the second quarter of my thesis.

The rest are online, and Should mostly focus on Bacchus in the Italian Renaissance (especially through art) and what I call the art of "gay liberation", concurrent with the AIDS crisis (i.e. The Cockettes). These two topics make up the last half of my thesis.

I'm SO excited to get started!!

I even got to cross the college's sky-bridges! (The college is a few skyscrapers.) Still, the loneliness and novelty were kind of the same thought. Imagine if I had been here before COVID, or, if COVID hadn't happened. Who would I have been able to meet? What would the college buildings mean to me? Because, for now, they're just buildings. But, I got to see the street from above, and that was amazing!

Just walking through New York--the Upper East Side--on a cool, sunny day was beautiful. It takes 20-30 minutes to get from my place to the college (and the tea place), but it was great being able to listen to my music (a lot of They Might Be Giants on the playlist today) and see the city. You know, people, super cool old architecture being pushed out by terrible new architecture, and pigeons.

Oh my god, the pigeons. I took pictures, but none of them are good. I kept thinking about how pigeons and doves are functionally the same. We domesticated pigeons, which is why they're here, and no one is stopping to notice them? Even the ones that were splotched with pure white, like doves? There's only so many pigeons you can take until they're just white noise and a nuisance, I know, so don't think I'm blaming anyone! But it's so hard to look away from these quirky little birds.

Also, at one point my walk, I was vaping very strategicly. The mental task of searching through library stacks will do that to you, when you already have an addiction to nicotine. I made sure no one was around, and no one would be affected. I stopped on a corner next to an old, ornate Catholic church while the traffic light changed, and I almost juuled right next to a priest! I'm glad I stopped. I don't believe in Hell, but, I would have walked down there myself had I vaped at a priest. Still, the church advertised itself as LGBT+ friendly, so maybe they aren't so trigger happy on the damnation. Either way, I DIDN'T vape at a priest today, which is good.

Once I got back, I spent a few hours watching things with my amazing girlfriend Chloe, who you may know here as @cisphobiccommunistopinions. She is so beautiful, and I love her more every day, every time I see her. God, it's almost been 5 years!

I just wish I could spend more time with her. She's in Virginia, and I'm in New York. Like she said to me earlier, I'm flighty at the best of times, and, with my lack of object permanence for the digital world, I find myself not giving her the attention I deserve, or, the full connection I long to have with her. We used to live together. Luckily, someday we will live together again! All these problems won't be forever, and we can live together again.

We watched a lot of things, but we're pretty deep into Serial Experiments Lain right now. It's a postmodern anime from the 90s, and, wow, do I have no idea what's going on in it. It's about the internet, and potentially schizophrenia as well. However, I'm obsessed! One day I'll be able to crack this artistic code, and it's unreality, thematic knots, and double-meanings. I will probably understand it better on the second watch. I don't see myself in Lain, but I see my 14 year old self in her, when I had just developed schizophrenia. Her cyberpunk fate seems like it's railroaded towards tragedy, but I want to save her, even if it's silly and irrational.

I told Chloe that I was scared about spilling apple cider on my library books, and she referred to it as "The Great Apple Juice Disaster of September 11, 2021." To which I said that it was the second worst thing to happen in New York on that date. It was funnier if you were there, and also were in my brain at the time.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm meeting some online acquaintances from the college's "Queer Srudent Union" at a Japanese Culture Fair in a park. (I do not know which park.) It emphasizes "fun"! I don't know them very well, but they're friends with the one person I know irl, so it should be good.

Tomorrow night, I should Probably head downtown to check out a gallery show by MFA (masters of fine arts) students at Hunter! After all, I was in a group project with one of them, and they're absolutely brilliant. I missed the Thursday gallery opening by a landslide, because of the aforementioned lack of adhd meds and Being Asleep, which I infinitely regret. I could have listened to all the artists and curators talk about their art and exhibition! Maybe I could have even talked with the artists and curators. But, it's best for me to go sooner, rather than later, so I don't forget. And, I REALLY want to go.

It's "This dialogue which happened to be present in all other dialogues" at the Alyssa Davis Gallery. From the email I got, "Each of these works observes a threshold of transition. [...] [These] intimations [are] of a frame of mind shared by the artists. These works perform, record, access, engage, document, and entrap, embalming the viewer within the gallery space."

sgp is a really good artist, by the way. Their work is just next-level. Be sure to check out their art, if you have a chance. Let me link their portfolio: https://saragracepowell.com/

(I highly suspect spg and the other member of my group project ghosted me afterwards, but I understand. I was really in over my head. Still, they're both really sweet and kind people, don't get it twisted!)

I ALSO really want to see The Cake Boys. They're performing at the 3 Dollar Bill in Brooklyn on September 26th. (It's only $15!) They're the only all drag king collective in NYC! (Are... there any Other all drag king collectives out there?) Other than the fact that a lot of them are trans or nonbinary, which I love, this show is a totally non-judgmental competition for over 40 drag kings! I've heard their shows are hilarious and unique.

I just have to wait until I have $15 to spare. I... didn't eat dinner tonight, because I'm irresponsible with my money and don't want to ask my parents for money... again. Don't worry, it's literally fine, and I don't make a habit of doing this!

Which reminds me! For my birthday, my parents gave me a gift card to Lush! I'm definitely going to Lush tomorrow, which will be great. I would describe my personality as "Lush store employee acosting you about a bath bomb demonstration", so I'll fit right in.

I also made a transition timeline, to show how much I've changed on testosterone. For the better, I hope! I really believe I'm becoming, if not Have Become, the man I was always meant to be. It's so strange to look back at who I was not too long ago, and to know the absolute pain I was in. It's also strange, in a good way, to see the man looking back at me in the selfies. I'm so much happier now! Much more candid in my pictures, at least. But, I know that I'm so much more comfortable as myself than I was even 6 months ago. It's strange. Sometimes I think to myself, "I don't pass yet; I'm not who I Need To Be yet." Then, I look at my selfie from today, and... I'm THERE. My mind just hasn't caught up with my amazing, natural, normal reality.

The end. I have to get ready for bed, (even though I could be partying on a Saturday night in the city. I'm lame.) If you actually read this, I am kissing you on the mouth right now. I hope it made you calm down tonight, like a terrible bedtime story. If you didn't read it and just skipped to the end, don't worry: you did the rational thing.

[sunlit-skycat]

As a nonwhite American, I would like to challenge the idea that white American culture does not exist. Just about any immigrant who has found that they're doing things differently than their neighbors can tell you that yes, white American culture does exist and has noticeable characteristics.

Here are some examples of white American culture, both big and small. Not every white American does this, not everyone doing this is a white American, but it is significantly more common among that group to the point it is noticeable as a culture.

Wearing shoes inside the house

Eating turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce in a big family gathering for Thanksgiving

Putting up lights around the house and a conifer tree with hanging decorations for Christmas

Family gatherings with food to watch the Superbowl

Burgers, french fries, onion rings, sandwiches, pizza

Squaredancing

Celebrating the start of the new year on January 1st in a party, and considering that a time to set new goals for the rest of the year, which may or may not actually be fulfilled

Linedancing

Celebrating birthdays by giving gifts to the person turning older, and expecting that this is a special day for them where other people should put in extra effort to follow the birthday person's wishes and preferences

Cheerfulness at work, whether real or feigned

Valorizing the rugged underdog who overcomes difficult situations with grit and hard work

To some people, that list is so mundane, so common that it barely parses as noteworthy. However, it is not universal, among either Americans or white people around the world.

As a nonwhite American, I take off my shoes the moment I enter my house. I don't celebrate many of the things on that list nearly to the level white Americans do. At most, Thanksgiving gets a halfhearted turkey soup from my family on the years when we remember to buy it, and we certainly don't visit family for it. Cajun fries are an exotic delicacy that I have to go to the right restaurants to make sure I get the authentic, good stuff for.

There's three things on that list that I majorly participate in, and those are:

Squaredancing at IAGSCD clubs with queer elders who love to bring free food

Workplace cheerfulness, for employment

Reading and writing stories about hardworking underdogs who use gratuitous violence to get the job done

To say that white Americans have no culture to themselves because everybody does things this way is akin to a fish saying that water must not exist because it has never swum in anything else. I assure you, other people are very aware that there is a white American culture, especially in comparison to what they are expected to do. It's not all bad, either -- again, see the squaredancing thing. I like using an American folk dance as a way to socialize with community members and score free food off of them.

I'm sorry that you feel alienated from your community, anon. There's a bunch of cool things happening in the world, that you don't need blood ties to do. I second St Just's suggestions to find a hobby to get really into. Alternatively, volunteer. Contributing free labor to help other people, especially over long periods of time, is a great way to feel connected to your fellow volunteers and the groups you help.

/gen so what do you do when you're a white American? when you have no culture and nowhere to go back to. people hate white American culture because it genuinely sucks balls. there's nothing good about this country and I don't know where I belong

I mean you do have a culture! Like basically whether you like it or not if you interact with people regularly having a culture does come free with your humanity. It being a shitty culture is a different thing entirely, of course, but like I do have bad news about any authentic culture that might have been practiced by your ancestors too.

Anyway, have you considered getting really, really into some aesthetic/hobby/genre of music? Like unironically if you feel a real lack of community in your life finding a club of people to bond over some shared intense interest is as good a strategy as anything, and those goths seem to have more fun with fashion and style than anyone else I see.

But also I'm someone who finds holidays exhausting dislikes most of my family and most of the time dresses to fade into the background and has no real problem with any of this. So like, possibly not the best person to ask for advice here.