#anyways it was really groundbreaking for me

[deanofsam]

it just occurred to me that some of you might have missed seeing american football player joe burrow’s suit this past june during paris fashion week, and it is my personal opinion that everyone see these images at least once in their lifetime, especially those of us with a shared interest in slutty clothes on men (fictional or otherwise). so here they are.

[aroaceleovaldez]

apparently pjotv twt was being weird about book!Percy's eyes being green because they don't think the ocean can be green (???) so consider this a sequel to my Grace siblings eye colors post and here is some visual references of green water for all your Percy inspo needs:

And for reference, the water around New York-ish where Percy is usually is somewhere around this color:

or some alternatives:

or here is a nice hazel green if you want his eyes more on the brown side, which is very common in freshwater ponds and streams:

or if you want him to have totally brown eyes - water rich in tannins will appear brown, greenish-brown, or very dark brown - this is sometimes called "blackwater" due to often appearing very dark or having low visibility:

[markantonys]

GEWOON VRIENDEN | JUST FRIENDS (2018)

[beesinspades]

i know astarion's attitude towards sex is all due to his trauma but. listen. there are some aspects of his romance and experiences that can be so relatable as a sex-neutral or sex-averse ace person. in fact him being ace or acespec on top of the trauma makes him even more compelling and tragic to me. it would've been amazing and interesting if he'd been canonically ace and these aspects plus how his asexuality affected his traumatic sexual experiences had been explored as well

[centaur-dreaming]

This just in: Woman is woken from peaceful sleep by realisation that Stede Bonnet aka Rhys Darby is the voice of Coran from VLD and has only just put two and two together upon hearing his voice in a fucking tv commercial

[eye-of-yelough]

i love ‘spirit/demon/parasite possessive over its host’ as much as the next pervert but i’d love to see ‘host possessive over its reluctant/unwilling possessor’ some time. like maybe they made a deal under extenuating circumstances which have ceased to be, and our hosts tag-along Wants Out. but the host is like No ☺️ You Need Me. (i need you. you make me better/more powerful/feel safe. and i have no intention of letting that go.)

[moonsidesong]

i still enjoy the bfb finale on the whole i think but. like. i really do have to admit the final confrontation with four on the sun is pretty stupid HAHFHAHA

[dolokhoded]

mel c magdalene made me realize what was missing from my magdalene design and it's that she's not fucking jacked. it's crucial to her character

[generationa1trauma]

currently struggling w the concept that the community i so desperately want to be a part of relies heavily on talent and always involves some level of rejection through auditions

[aeide-thea]

have been reading fic & thinking abt my relationship to fic, which is of course also among other things a mirror of my relationship to my own psyche, and like—i think all the discourse abt its being ~internalized misogyny~ to mostly/entirely read m/m is not ultimately, whatever the truth of it, all that helpful, either to readers or to Women! but of course that doesn't stop me from feeling weird guilt abt the fact that i don't read more f/f than i do, because if there's anything i love to do, it's feel unhelpfully bad abt myself on the slimmest of pretexts…

however! i did end up reading some f/f earlier, specifically transfem f/f, and it got me thinking—basically what i'm usually mostly reading fic for is the romance/sex, right? like, don't get me wrong, i love when a fic gives me a gorgeous double helix of, like, casefic and romance twisted together, that's ideal, but fundamentally most of the time the feeling up is what i sat down at the table to eat. so in a complex aegosexual way it's a fantasy i'm—not projecting onto, exactly, i don't want to be one of the people in it; but, like, lurking in the wings of with eyes big love-crumbs, to steal a phrase from a relevantly-named poet. :) and so it's no wonder that mostly i don't want to read cisfemme4cisfemme stuff, because that's not a dynamic that feels like it has any room for me, or even like i'm particularly welcome in the room. but like. if it's trans women? i'm there, i love that for them and for me. if there's a butch? i might get tripped up by our differing lenses on gender feelings and stub my toe a little but even so i'm probably here for it. (thinking here abt that one butch/femme geraskier ~cisswap which is, like, a gorgeous bruise i keep periodically pressing. <3)

so really it's just like. shocker: i'm not personally moved by fantasies abt romance which feature conventionally feminine cis women whom i don't personally find relatable or sexually desirable! and when i put it like that, it really instantly dissolves the weird useless discourse-induced guiltgunk. like. give me a woman who's, idk, tall and charismatic and strong and clever and talented at something (though honestly it's like that siken revised tweet, a lot of those characteristics are ultimately negotiable!), like women i've historically crushed on irl, and then give me a pairing for her that's like. another woman who's also enough of those things, or a man who's—honestly the kind of m/f i'm open to would be its own whole post bc holy shit am i fussy, it very much does exist but for now let's just stick a pin in that one—or somebody nonbinary, which… idk that i've ever actually seen nb/f in fic? i'm sure it exists! but i'm not sure it exists in any fandoms i've been into. pondering the question did get me really thirsty for a good 'farmgirl (of the luke skywalker variety) is absolutely stunned-and-ringing-like-a-struck-bell captivated by confident flamboyantly genderqueer love interest (example wanted)' dynamic, though…

[sad--tree]

kinda assumed ppl were overstating the drums or w/e being Like That on st anger but. oh my god no they. they really are very very much Like That

[lilidawnonthemoon]

[beesinspades]

It's Vashwood Big Bang preview week on twitter so I thought I'd share here as well!

‘with you, the sun rises slowly’ is a modern au about letting into your life someone in need (the neighbor you've been pathetically crushing on since you moved in, to be exact), sharing a bed, dealing with trauma, and asexuality 💜

excerpt under the cut for easier reading:

His cigarette done and his nerves relaxed, Wolfwood shooes Kuroneko back inside—which gets him a reproachful meow—and follows after her.

Livio and Vash are watching a cooking show for amateurs, commenting on the dishes and desserts presented. Wolfwood watches from the corner of the room for a minute, thinking that’s not how you’re supposed to make grilled cheese—who the hell puts butter on both sides of the bread?—before taking that as a sign he should get cooking himself.

Wolfwood steps over Livio’s legs just to be annoying, but it comes back to bite him in the ass when Livio exclaims, “Oi, where do ya think you’re going!” while Vash is already reaching out to him with a shit-eating grin.

Vash and Livio each grab him by the wrists and pull him down. Wolfwood crashes backwards on the couch with a grunt, and before he knows it Livio has extended his arm over his shoulders and reached out to Vash, squishing Wolfwood between them.

“Hey! I need to—” Wolfwood begins to protest, only to make an indignant noise when they both shush him, nodding at the television.

[tenrose]

I'm gonna read a tumblr beloved book: The Secret History.

This better be good.

[szkicel]

Ok i’m scheduling some art I’ve done in the past while I work on new things and I remembered that Queen Bee (from h/lluva b/ss) redesign I did a year ago when a lot of ppl were doing it and it’s probably time to post it before it gets too old…

man, I am NOT excited for all the harassment I’m gonna endure from the unhinged HB fans, but hopefully I’m too small of an artist to get noticed so maybe i’ll be fine

[catboybiologist]

“As a biologist, the terms biological woman and man don’t make any sense to me” okay then you’re an idiot and a terrible biologist. I swear to god, morons like you only become biologists just so you can hold it over others, when in reality, if biology deniers like you can become biologists, then being one really doesn’t mean much anyway. But this probably just gave an autogynophile like you a boner to read, anyway.

Oh fun! Haven't gotten one of these in a while. Disregarding the fact that you somehow think the qualification for being a biologist entirely hinges on defining womanhood, I do need to ask some clarification. I know I'm feeding the trolls here, but here we go: does your definition of "biological woman" mean:

Sociological woman? Eh, context dependent, I'm not fully out of the closet, but oftentimes, I am and present femme. So let's call that one 50/50.

Psychological woman? Because I am one.

Neurological woman? Because I am one [1].

Physical woman? My soft tissue redistribution is handling that well.

Hormonal woman? My blood tests are within cis female ranges.

Transcriptional woman? As a signalling molecule, the downstream effects of estrogen have broad transcriptional effects, completely changing the profile of gene expression and functional genomics of my cells. [2]

Genetic woman? I mean, see my above point- as far as my genes that are actually active, I have all of the same transcripts being produced, controlling which genes are expressed.

Karyotypic woman? I actually have a few signs pre-HRT that might point to a non-XY chromosome pair, but I haven't had a karyotype. We'll put that down as unknown. And hell, even if its XY, there's plenty of cis women who are karyotypically XY, with suppressed sry or complete androgen insensitivity. Interestingly enough, a completely androgen insesitive woman can go her whole life without knowing- and functionally, is very similar to a trans woman, actually. Fancy that. [3]

Reproductive woman? I can't produce an egg cell, but neither can significant fractions of cis women. Also, this is all gonna change soon, which is fun. [4]

There's also a lot of understudied aspects to the biology of HRT and even pre-HRT that are emerging, largely demonstrating widespread cellular and genetic remodeling of trans individuals undergoing hormone therapy. The field is a bit behind due to constant political pressure to revoke funding, but a lot of the results are extremely exciting in both testosterone and estrogen hormone therapies. I'm sure that, as a self professed biology As someone who presumably has a lot of expertise in biology, I'm assuming that you're aware of all of this cutting edge research, and are keeping up with modern papers, including but not limited to these cool findings:

Trans men on HRT exhibit significant genetic and transcriptional changes that make them biochemically male. [5][6]. It's a good hypothesis that the same happens with estrogen treatment, but those studies don't exist yet- I'm sure you're reserving judgment until more publications exist, of course.

Trans men on HRT develop male cell types and tissues. [7]

Trans women experience muscular and blood cell changes that align with cis women moreso than cis men [8]

And many, many more! This is an exciting, underserved, and groundbreaking field of research, and I'm sure you're keeping up with the latest in scientific journals about it.

I'm sure, of course, that you understand that it becomes impossible to draw a distinct line anywhere in here, and that words like "woman" are shorthand for the myriad of traits that invisibly synthesize in our mind and in society to represent a concept? I'm sure you understand that science is fundamentally descriptive, not prescriptive? I'm sure that you understand that these findings, while really cool and interesting, actually don't mean jack shit about what the word "woman" means or not?

As someone who is the ultimate decider in what a biologist is, I'm sure you know that bioessentiallism is a childish mindset that completely ignores and disregards the constantly changing, dynamic nature of biological systems, something that extends well beyond biological sex and its relation to gender.

I'm sure that also, that you understand that beyond just this, that the role of science in society is to advise how to achieve our moral principles, not create moral principles in themselves. And I'm sure that understanding means you know that trans affirming healthcare and supportive societal treatment leads to reduced mortality and increased happiness for everyone, right?

So great to talk to someone who is surely a scientist on this. You are a biologist, if you're talking like this, I assume? I assume you're not going to spit complete misreadings of scientific language from the background sections of these papers that only reveal you've never read a scientific paper in your life if you're thinking this way? I assume you have experience interpreting data like this?

Also, imagining my genitalia while writing this? Ew. Please stop projecting your fetishes into my inbox.

Works cited:

Kurth F, Gaser C, Sánchez FJ, Luders E. Brain Sex in Transgender Women Is Shifted towards Gender Identity. J Clin Med. 2022 Mar 13;11(6):1582. doi: 10.3390/jcm11061582. PMID: 35329908; PMCID: PMC8955456.

Fuentes N, Silveyra P. Estrogen receptor signaling mechanisms. Adv Protein Chem Struct Biol. 2019;116:135-170. doi: 10.1016/bs.apcsb.2019.01.001. Epub 2019 Feb 4. PMID: 31036290; PMCID: PMC6533072.

Gottlieb B, Trifiro MA. Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. 1999 Mar 24 [Updated 2017 May 11]. In: Adam MP, Feldman J, Mirzaa GM, et al., editors. GeneReviews® [Internet]. Seattle (WA): University of Washington, Seattle; 1993-2024. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK1429/

Murakami, K., Hamazaki, N., Hamada, N. et al. Generation of functional oocytes from male mice in vitro. Nature 615, 900–906 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05834-x

Pallotti F, Senofonte G, Konstantinidou F, Di Chiano S, Faja F, Rizzo F, Cargnelutti F, Krausz C, Paoli D, Lenzi A, Stuppia L, Gatta V, Lombardo F. Epigenetic Effects of Gender-Affirming Hormone Treatment: A Pilot Study of the ESR2 Promoter's Methylation in AFAB People. Biomedicines. 2022 Feb 16;10(2):459. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines10020459. PMID: 35203670; PMCID: PMC8962414.

Florian Raths, Mehran Karimzadeh, Nathan Ing, Andrew Martinez, Yoona Yang, Ying Qu, Tian-Yu Lee, Brianna Mulligan, Suzanne Devkota, Wayne T. Tilley, Theresa E. Hickey, Bo Wang, Armando E. Giuliano, Shikha Bose, Hani Goodarzi, Edward C. Ray, Xiaojiang Cui, Simon R.V. Knott, The molecular consequences of androgen activity in the human breast, Cell Genomics, Volume 3, Issue 3, 2023, 100272, ISSN 2666-979X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100272. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666979X23000320)

Xu R, Diamond DA, Borer JG, Estrada C, Yu R, Anderson WJ, Vargas SO. Prostatic metaplasia of the vagina in transmasculine individuals. World J Urol. 2022 Mar;40(3):849-855. doi: 10.1007/s00345-021-03907-y. Epub 2022 Jan 16. PMID: 35034167.

Harper J, O'Donnell E, Sorouri Khorashad B, McDermott H, Witcomb GL. How does hormone transition in transgender women change body composition, muscle strength and haemoglobin? Systematic review with a focus on the implications for sport participation. Br J Sports Med. 2021 Aug;55(15):865-872. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2020-103106. Epub 2021 Mar 1. PMID: 33648944; PMCID: PMC8311086.