#because people are weird to me about it

[the-casbah-way]

trans stuff below ignore this

i'm at such a weird and horrible part of transitioning that i've never seen anyone talk about before. i'm so far from what i used to be but i'm so far from what i want to be too. i passed for years and now i've deliberately chosen to stop passing and it feels really strange. my whole life is on hold until i am able to feel like myself. i don't do anything i don't go out i don't talk to anyone i exist completely on my own because i just cannot show up in the world the way i want to and there is nothing i can do about it. i literally can't speak because i can't stand the idea of someone hearing my voice as it is now. it makes me feel sick every time i talk because the person i am hearing does not sound like me even though it is me. that's not what i'm supposed to sound like. i get so tempted to go back to what i was before even though the thought is unbearable because at least then i wouldn't be this horrible weird in between thing that feels just as far away from me as the old me did. i miss the times where i would feel so good about my gender and my body and myself even though they're always so fleeting. i know one day i will have those moments again but for so long now i've just been drowning in dysphoria that i can't even describe and none of it is because i don't "look like a man" whatever that means. i did look like a man, and i didn't like it, so i chose to stop. and now i get misgendered all the time and people stare at me for ages trying to figure out what to call me and no one treats me normally and i feel sick every time i go outside. there is not a single thing about the way i look or feel in myself that is right or good and every time i try to fix it i just make it worse. it's like every single trans masc on earth looks good and cool and infinitely closer to what i want to be than i do and i would trade with literally any of them i don't care if they're medically transitioning or if other people think they pass i would rather look like literally anyone else than me because i don't have anything about me that i can work with in order to look and feel like myself. i'm thinking back to all the times i felt ok enough in myself to be able to express my sexuality or be myself and now i feel sick because i could never do that now. it would make me so angry and disgusted at myself and the idea of having sex makes me want to vomit up my insides and rip all my skin off because i can't believe i would ever let myself want that. and i can't believe i would ever let people see me in a sexual way. like even writing it makes me feel like i'm going to be sick i don't understand how i was capable of that even though the last time i felt it was just earlier this year. i don't know i just don't see the point in anything until i can get on t and the more i look into it the more it seems like it'll never happen and i don't know who to ask to help me because i can't talk to anyone. and even if i got on t who cares. i've been holding out for it for so so so long whilst watching everyone around me get on it even the people who came out long after me but who cares. it won't make me any less of a shitty person and it won't get rid of everything i hate about myself and it'll just make my life harder because of how cis people and my family are going to treat me and it just feels like it's an endless lifetime of horrible things that make me pray that i will one day be able to find it in myself to give up and leave

[gibbearish]

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[a-most-beloved-fool]

makes me a little sad when star trek ignores IDIC. like. vulcans are logical. that is true. But 'logical', for vulcans, does not amount to 'without compassion,' and it definitely doesn't amount to 'racial superiority.' Belief in 'infinite diversity in infinite combinations' should NOT result in the weird racist/speciest stuff we're getting in some of the newer treks. It does make sense that some vulcans are discriminatory. They're still flawed. But that should not be common or expected, like it seems to be in SNW. If it is, then it's a race of hypocrites, which. doesn't seem very true to Star Trek's message.

I think TOS Spock does a pretty good job of embodying this. Not always, it was the 60s, after all, but mostly. He was often trying to find non-violent routes, and get by without killing - even if they were in danger or had already been attacked. (See: the mugato, and the horta (until Kirk was the one in danger, lmao. t'hy'la > IDIC), the Gorn ship). Kirk, in his eulogy, calls him the most human soul he's ever known, and I've always read that as Kirk calling out Spock's overwhelming compassion.

It's just so much more interesting when Vulcans get to be radically compassionate. I want them to believe that everything and everyone has value. I want them to respect all ways of being. I want them to find ways for even very non-humanoid aliens to exist unfettered in society. I want them to see hybrids and think that it's amazing. Also, like, disability rep. I want Vulcans to have The Most Accessible Planet and available resources because they want everyone to feel accepted and valued. It makes for better characters and more interesting stories.

[beastlyidiocy]

my sweet old man who is genuinely too kind for the world he lives in :(

[crabsnpersimmons]

i'd love to celebrate my birthday with y'all! no pressure to say or do anything, just wanted to share and "invite" you all 🥰

[p0th]

[tofixtheshadows]

So I've been thinking lately about how Mithrun is Kabru's dark mirror (more on that another time- it needs its own post), and I thought it interesting that one of their parallels is that they were both cared for by Milsiril, but in opposite directions. She took Kabru in as her foster after he was orphaned and tried to convince him not to become an adventurer. On the flip side, she helped rehabilitate Mithrun specifically so that he could rejoin the Canaries.

And I kept wondering: why?

For Kabru, obviously she loves him a whole lot- despite any other shortcomings in their relationship, I do believe that.

So I get why she tries to convince him not to go dungeoning, and, failing that, at least prepares him as thoroughly as she can.

But why help Mithrun? She used to hate Mithrun, but after realizing what a secretly twisted person he was, she actually thought of him more positively (oh, Milsiril). So it wasn't as if she held the kind of grudge that might motivate her to make his already-depleted life even more miserable by sending him back to the dungeons. And it wasn't that she felt bad for him either, since she didn't visit Mithrun for the first ~20 years of his recovery.

The Adventurer's Bible says that Utaya was the impetus for Mithrun returning to the Canaries, but Milsiril is the one who made the trip to see him and tell him about it.

Why would Milsiril work so hard to get her old coworker back into fighting fit? Why encourage him to return to such a dangerous lifestyle, when she was the one who chose not to mercy-kill him?

That last panel is such a crazy thing to hint at and then never elaborate on. Without it we could have just thought that Milsiril wanted the Canaries' work to continue without her, even if it seemed out of character. I think some people even assume she's just a natural caretaker as a foster mom and handwave it to include nursing Mithrun too. What could Milsiril's suspicious motives be? What does she gain from Mithrun joining the Canaries that isn't an altruistic desire to see dungeons safely sealed? Feeling a sense of responsibility for the work she left behind isn't an ulterior motive.

My theory is: Milsiril, knowing that Mithrun was empty save for the burning desire to face the demon again, wound him up like a clockwork doll and pointed him back at the dungeons.

Hoping that he'd eliminate the biggest threat to Kabru's life, before it was too late for him.

Milsiril the puppetmaster.

[hussyknee]

I know some dickheads have now decided that Judaism is the "bad, violent, terrorist religion" and Islam is the "good, peaceful" one, which is only to be expected of white people, but how much of an issue is it currently? Like I've seen some USAmericans sharing how the Islamic faith shapes Gazans values and perseverance (good) except with that distinct white hippie "I'm about to imprint on this like the world's most racist duck" vibe (bad), but I didn't think they're already turning on Judaism in numbers.

Do they realize that Christianity is also the same kind of comfort to Christian minorities in Asia and Africa? That it was Buddhists that genocided the Rohingyas in Myanmar and Tamils in Sri Lanka? That Hindu fundamentalists are even now trying to ethnically cleanse Muslims in India? How Hindus and Christians are terrorized and persecuted in Pakistan? That Muslims have a history of persecuting and ethnically cleansing Jews too?

Really tired of asking y'all to be normal about people's religions man. There's no religion that's inherently violent or exceptionally peaceful. It's just like any other ideology that becomes a weapon in the hands of ethnic power. Interrogate power, not religion, and respect people's belief systems insofar as they aren't in your business.

Edit: I've amended the "long history" of Muslim persecution of Jews because it might be misleading in the current political climate. Zionism and antisemitic Arab nationalism are twin births resulting directly from Christian colonization, and Islamic empires tended to actually be more tolerant of other religions compared to Christianity, especially Judaism, which was considered a sibling religion. Antisemitism wasn't ideologically entrenched in Islamic tradition. It's simply that ethno-religious power will lead to ethno religious domination and intermittent cleansing of minorities, and Islam is no exception. Humans be humaning always.

[uncanny-tranny]

Not a day goes by where I do not think about the advent of medicine like PrEP and wonder just what the people - especially queer people - who passed from HIV/AIDs during the AIDs crisis would think

And then, I read this survivor's testimony and it just makes me emotional. I think this is the closest answer we have. HIV has changed, and we must always remember the people who didn't see that change before it happened.

[eggwishing]

[mylols16]

not people calling deadpool and wolverine queerbait im begging yall to learn what queerbaiting is. like why is it that straight characters can have romantic subtext and thats all well and good but the minute gay characters have romantic subtext everyone gets out their pitchforks and starts screaming about queerbait. queercoding and queerbaiting are not the same people! i feel the fact that a song about going down on someone plays while the two protagonists hold hands to save the world should be evidence enough that the gayness was at least a little bit intentional. if you want to be mad about the movie not being gay enough thats fine but i keep seeing people praise venom as gay rep when it also doesn't explicitly state the two characters gayness or romantic interest (i love venom btw don't come for me). just can we stop the arguing and enjoy a fun movie please

[bixels]

The Ryoko Kui interview's reception is such a disaster over a pretty normal (yet still flawed) interview between a non-Japanese fan and Japanese artistic. This is discourse for discourse's sake, and it's no surprise that almost every Twitter user I've looked at who's using this interview to parade Kui around as a goated mangaka standing strong against Western ideology is anti-trans.

Like, I do think the interview was kinda wonky with its focus on fandom culture, which Kui clearly didn't have much interest in. But sometimes that happens. Sometimes interactions between two people, especially a fan and a creator, two people who view and interact with a piece of media in completely opposite perspectives, don't click. Does this really need to get blown up into a "West vs. East culture war" issue.

Anyways, Kui saying "I don't consider my audience's interpretations when writing. I leave it to their imaginations, but I have my own read on things too" is the healthiest, most normal thing an artist/writer who wants a non-parasocial audience could say. Artists and writers use this line all the time. If Kui didn't enjoy autistic Laius or Farcille headcanons, she would have probably voiced/signalled her discomfort, like she did on the topic of Senshi fanservice. Overall, Kui handled the interview really well. Props to her to sticking to her guns and keeping a healthy disconnect from the fandom. While I think the interviewer could've/should've been more tactful and restrained, the flaws in their questions is not a symptom of the woke mind virus trying to wriggle its way into the pure Japanese psyche. It's the sign of an over-eager fan who sees a piece of fiction differently than its creator.

[sergle]

biting my fingernails down to the quick as I see the rare post being like "you bitches and your measly $20 donations think that absolves you of anything think again" gaining notes because you are all worrying me rn by discouraging smaller donations and implying that donating is supposed to be 1) some kind of moral absolution and 2) that it only works in large sums

[cali]

a lolcow is obviously a bad and harmful thing but studying weird people online is a wonderful and soul enriching experience. but if u treat the fun of it as a product and engage with them to get more of this product, if youre "milking" the "lolcow", youre fucked. youre going down the path of darkness. it needs to be aetherial and loose. the better alternative is looking at lolbirds instead which is quite beautiful cuz, like birdwatching, its a process where u do not enact power and force over ur subject to make it show u what u want, you just let them naturally come by and show off their plumage (10000 near identically composed deviantart illustrations of different kids show character crying while getting knead into dough and baked[this happened in a single episode of a show the artist saw when they were 4]) and then u maybe show some of ur favorite feathers of theirs to your close group of friends and then let them pass on with the wind and u keep them as a sweet memory ❤

[entamewitchlulu]

once i was in a creative writing class in college, and in a bit of humor i wrote the line:

"Um," I said, eloquently.

And my teacher was so adamant that I had to remove it because "um is not an eloquent word, so it makes no sense" and i was like my brother in christ it's called Irony