#i'm just so tired y'all

[just-a-little-anxious]

the way i went through the five stages of grief with sanders sides is kind of insane. Like:

Denial: "I'm sure we'll get the episode soon!"

Anger: "WHY. SO. MANY. ADS."

Bargaining: "As a fandom, we have been pressuring Thomas a lot. He should take his time and it'll be alright. I can wait."

Depression: "We're never gonna get that finale, are we?"

Acceptance: "I'm gonna stop waiting and move to a different fandom."

[thatonebirdwrites]

I will be blunt and honest here. First I want to address how I Feel in general: I'm tired.

I am legit tired of everything in society being coded as male or female. I can't even find a bathroom that isn't binary coded, and so I'm left flipping a coin as to which one is safer to enter. If I enter the wrong one, I could have my life threatened or worse.

I'm legit tired of people misgendering me, of people erasing nonbinary genders, of people telling me I don't understand my own mind and need to "choose a gender already."

I'm legit exhausted by getting death threats if I dare to exist too long in binary-gender spaces or if I give a presentation on trans topics. (Time for an annual bonfire to burn the death threats I guess? How I'm still alive is a mystery for another day. I guess Death and I got a pact now.)

I'm tired of publishers sending back my story with notes that read: "I don't understand why your protagonist must be nonbinary. It's not essential to the plot. Please choose either male or female and resubmit." (Yes, this is legit feedback I've gotten before. Because apparently, people like me aren't allowed to exist in stories unless our gender is crucial to the plot. Which is transphobia and is emotional violence by the way.)

Secondly, I want to address how people, even those in the trans community, treat nonbinary people.

Many people don't believe me when I say nonbinary. Sure, they say they accept me. They say they will use my "preferred pronouns" most of the time. But the moment the think I'm out of earshot? When they don't think I can hear them? They default to whatever gender they assigned me -- either male or female. If they knew me before I came out nonbinary, this will always be female. If they new me after I started Testosterone, they will default to male.

How do I know it's not a mistake?

when they slip up in front of me, they turn it into a drama production. This is unnecessary. Just correct and move on please. I don't need a 62 apology pick-up please.

When they think I'm out of earshot, they, without fail, revert to the binary pronoun they have assigned to me. They won't use my correct pronouns once. Even if someone corrects them.

And that's how I know they don't believe I am nonbinary and don't actually care about me as a person.

It doesn't matter that I have not once in my life ever been male. It doesn't matter that I'm not female. Sure, I have had the doctor, when I was a baby, look at my genitalia and slap an F on my birth certificate.

When I write it like that, it sounds horrible, doesn't it? But that's the fucked up system we use to assign binary genders. It doesn't matter that doctors are not infallible and can be wrong, and hell, they will even force unnecessary surgeries on babies in order to force ambiguous genitalia to fit a binary gender (this horrendous practice is still allowed in some places on intersex people).

Society wraps everything we do, wear, say, and how we look into gender. I am still on that unlearning journey myself, and if we truly wish to be allies for each other, we need to unlearn that shit. So when I say I'm nonbinary? When I try to switch up how I present myself?

I get what feels like a pat on the head. Or some people whispering of how I'm still figuring things out.

No, I am, the fuck, not.

Nonbinary is not some transitional state between the binary genders, and yet I encounter people who think this -- even within the trans community! Please exorcise that from your thinking.

Nonbinary is a diverse galaxy of other genders that are not male or female.

In fact, gender itself is a galaxy of infinite potential. The gender binary doesn't exist.

It doesn't even exist within our biology. There are up to six possible chromosome combinations, and when you pair that with the primary and secondary sex characteristics, you can end up with more than fifty possible combinations. So our biology is highly diverse.

Yet our society tries to take these complex and diverse systems and shove it into a very narrow binary. This causes harm to all of us, and it's something we need to unlearn.

Unlearning will be messy. We will make mistakes, and that's okay. Give yourself some grace. Just correct yourself, listen to others, do your research, and most of all do better.

Be accepting of nonbinary people who may not present the way you were taught they "ought" to present.

"Androgyny" is often presented by our culture as skinny, someone with little to no body or facial hair, hair cut short, masculine dress, and pitch that's an low alto. Not all nonbinary people will present that way, nor should nonbinary people be forced to present that way.

There is no one way to present your nonbinary gender. Wear whatever the fuck you want. Wear makeup or not. Wear your hair long or not. Wear your hair in whatever style you want.

Nonbinary people can present in any way. Body hair, facial hair (or no), shape of face, pitch of voice, length of hair, shape of body, genitals, etc. -- none of these parts of our bodies are male or female.

Our culture tries to take body parts and shove it into these binary categories, then our culture socializes us to automatically gender people by looking for these body parts (an unconscious thing by the time we become adults).

So we must actively unlearn these problematic associations with body parts.

My body is nonbinary. Yet people will look at me, see specific body parts or hear my voice, and assign me a binary gender against my will. Then one of three things happen:

1. either they try to undo that mentally by verifying my gender and respecting it OR

2. pretend like they give a fuck by using correct pronouns to my face, only to stab me in the back when they think I'm out of earshot by misgendering me to others. OR

3. they refuse to acknowledge nonbinary genders are real and just use whatever binary pronouns they decided to assign to me thus misgendering me to my face.

I used to just joke about it, but the more I think about it?

The more I want to call out this form of emotional violence. I shouldn't have to put up with it all the time. I shouldn't have to joke to ease the pain of it.

Misgendering me and/or not accepting I'm nonbinary is like taking a piece of who I am and putting it through a shredder, then wondering why I'm hurting afterward.

I specifically say 'emotional violence' because negating who a person is? That's harmful. That cuts deep. And when it keeps happening over and over and over and over and over?

Now I'm riddled with a thousand cuts, all of them bleeding, and I can't bandage them fast enough. So I slowly start to bleed out over time. That emotional and psychological burden weighs heavy, and no amount of "positivity" is going to erase the trauma from the endless negation of who I am as a person.

Misgender is negating who a person is, and that is violence. Do not misgender anyone. Always do your best to verify pronouns and use those for that person.

So what if the person turns out to be evil? Do Not Misgender Them.

The Collateral violence of misgendering doesn't just affect the person you are misgendering -- it affects all trans people and people questioning their gender. Misgendering cuts them up inside too, and makes them less likely to trust you. It creates a less safe world, one predicated on continuing a cycle of violence.

So let's stop that cycle.

Firstly, don't misgender people. Not even as a joke against whoever you decided is evil.

Secondly, unlearn associating gender with every single attribute, okay? It will be better over all for all of us.

Not every body part needs to be associated with gender. Not every pitch of voice. Not every style of clothing. Not every like or dislike.

We must decouple gender from everything known to humanity. This isn't to say we need a genderless world. Instead, let's build a world where we allow gender to be a galaxy of diversity, where we no longer classify people based on strict, problematic binary tropes invented by our society.

Unlearn that cultural bias. Unlearn this need to automatically shove people into binary genders against their will.

I am going to yell this bit because even trans people don't seem to get this sometimes:

You Cannot Tell Someone's Gender By Looking At Them.

You simply can't. The moment you do? You are engaging in unconscious bias and could be misgendering them.

The only way to ever determine someone's gender is by asking them.

Then verify their pronouns and use the pronouns they give you.

And no, these are not "preferred" pronouns either. These are our pronouns period. They are not an opt-in pronouns for when you feel kind enough to throw us a bone. They are our pronouns, and not using them is misgendering us. And that is emotional violence.

I know folks don't like it when I am this blunt, but I'm fucking tired.

I'm tired of dealing with this for years on end, even from my own community.

How I present myself does not give anyone the right to shove me into a binary gender and misgender me.

I'm nonbinary.

I use they/them/their or vi/vem/vir pronouns.

These are not optional pronouns.

Please respect nonbinary people. Do your best to use our correct pronouns, and if you feel yourself slip up, correct yourself and move on.

We will make mistakes as we unlearn the shitty transphobia that society forced on us.

And it's okay to make mistakes!

Just don't dig in and refuse to do better.

Consider this your invitation to join me on this rocky path of unlearning genderification (what I call the societal process of putting everything that exists into gender binary boxes.)

Embrace instead the wonders of diversity. Where gender is a galaxy of wonder that is just one attribute of our diverse selves. Where we accept people's gender identities, and do our best to respect their name and pronouns. This builds up safety and trust.

But also, allow one another grace to mess up. To learn and do better. No is perfect. Do not expect perfection.

We are all messy, imperfect, and absolutely beautiful human beings. We are all worthy of love, respect, dignity, and acceptance. Don't settle for any less.

❗️❗️ This is asked entirely in good faith. This post is intended to open dialogue and help with solidarity and understanding. ❗️❗️

I would like to hear specifically from nonbinary people how the system of exorsexism/enbyphobia uniquely targets and affects you. Things that you feel other demographics do not experience. Reblogs and replies are very encouraged! If you would prefer, you could dm or send an ask to be added anonymously by me.

This is in the spirit of wanting to understand. I am listening. I encourage all binary trans people to not speak on this topic and let nonbinary people do the talking here. Reblog the post to spread it, but please say nothing.

Any and all people who identify as nonbinary are encouraged to participate. This is not agab-locked. If you are agender, trans neutral/neutrois, genderfluid, bigender, trigender, multigender, xenogender, genderqueer, third gender, two spirit, or any other gender not wholey contained within the strict binary of "man" or "woman", this post is for you. Even if you have already posted on the trans fem or trans masc versions, if you are nonbinary, you are welcome here.

This is not bait to start a fight. I will block without hesitation anyone who is actively being a shithead on this post. I want to hear and uplift your voices by getting it directly from you.

Click this to access the trans fem and trans women version of this post.

Click this to access the trans masc and trans men version of this post.

[irlbop]

"I want to stop thinking" not in the "I want to be fucked brainless, help me forget" kind of way, but in the "I am so used to my brain thinking of multiple things at once that it is causing actual physical fatigue and distress and I just need to stop thinking but I am genuinely unable to" kind of way

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[unforth]

Gentle reminder that very little fandom labor is automated, because I think people forget that a lot.

That blog with a tagging system you love? A person curates those tags by hand.

That rec blog with a great organization scheme and pretty graphics? Someone designed and implemented that organization scheme and made those graphics.

That network that posts a cool variety of stuff? People track down all that variety and queue it by hand, and other people made all the individual pieces.

That post with umpteen links to helpful resources, and information about them? Someone gathered those links, researched the sources, wrote up the information about them.

That graphic about fandom statistics? Someone compiled those statistics, analyzed them, organized them, figured out a useful way to convey the information to others, and made the post.

That event that you think looks neat? Someone wrote the rules, created the blogs and Discords, designed the graphics, did their best to promo the event so it'd succeed.

None of this was done automatically. None of it just appears whole out of the internet ether.

I think everyone realizes that fic writing and fanart creation are work, and at least some folks have got it through their heads that gif creation and graphics and moodboards take effort, and meta is usually respected for the effort that goes into it, at least as far as I've seen, but I feel like a lot of people don't really get how much labor goes into curation, too.

If people are creating resources, curating content, organizing the creations of others, gathering information, and doing other fandom activities that aren't necessarily the direct action of creation, they're doing a lot of fandom labor, and it's often largely unrecognized.

Celebrate fan work!

To folks doing this kind of labor: I see you, and I thank you. You are the backbones of our fandoms and I love you.

[rose-red-ink]

Children are drawn to the taboo and the dark. That is not their fault; it is a part of human nature. It's why channels like Jaystation got huge, they marketed to kid's desire to see that kind of forbidden and scary content.

HOWEVER, children do not have the ability to differentiate between fiction and reality like adults do. This does not make them stupid, it is a state of development.

I showed my 1st and 2nd grade students the crab rave video; most were unsure if it was real or fake because the CGI "looks real" to them.

Children are the perfect market for horror because they will not know if it is real or not.

These games are taking advantage of a vulnerable age group, and assuming (correctly!) that parents aren't properly monitoring their child's devices.

It's one of the most frustrating things for me to deal with as an educator, and I'm putting together an informational night for my student's parents because of it.

this is how we win guys

>fnaf movie comes out

>unknowing parents bring kids to the movie

>kids get scared

>dozens of complaints ab their kids getting scared shitless

>i ThOuGhT tHiS wAs A kIdS mOvIe

>theaters have to warn parents that fnaf isn’t a kids thing

>social media outrage

>horror games stop fucking advertising to children due to backlash

[the-acid-pear]

First mental breakdown i suffered in the streets after a while, gotta make sure to keep the habit! Gotta make sure to make everyone's day a little bit more interesting 😋

I have a terrible headache and I'm struggling to breath tho. And my knees are going weak, i basically had to drag myself home.

[forlornmelody]

Today's List of Nice Things:

Shazam: Fury of the Gods was really good

It was almost 70F today

I get to sleep in tomorrow?

[saragrosie]

I have been sketching. So much tma. Here's some expansions on my Jon and Martin designs I've been doing.

Another note I forgor to mention is I love how after hearing Simon go "it's enough to make your hair turn white" about Martin's office in s4 many of us collectively agreed his hair turned white because of his association with the Lonely. The shared consciousness is real and we use it to play hot potato with the communal brain cell dedicated to the sillies.

Closeup of apocalypse boyfriends (also to the person who said they love my s5 Jon's fancy white girl updo: I think about that every day)

[fairydrowning]

"People cry out of fatigue. But how horrible it is to hear someone say, ‘she’s just tired.’ Tired, yes, certainly, but just? There’s nothing just about it."

– Heather Christle, The Crying Book

[redysetdare]

A character looks straight into the camera and says "I'm not interested in romance" and people will still say "No, it's not confirmed they're aromantic!!!" "They could change their mind!!!" "it's a challenge for them to overcome!!!" "They'll have character development that makes them fall in love"

It's like they are given the most blatant answer to a character romantic orientation and they actively ignore it. all the while all it takes is subtext for people to speak as if it is fact for a character to be any other sexuality.

[theminecraftbee]

alright, so, one more thing i've been thinking about during all of this, and apologies, because i normally try to keep my blog fairly discourse-free in the grand scheme of things. but.

there are hermitcraft fans who act irritatingly morally superior about this fandom. i think it's out of some impulse to try to distance yourselves from any other mcyt fandom. it needs to stop.

the worst behavior during the polls was from the hermitcraft fans.

period.

there were so many instances of hermitcraft fans accusing the other side of cheating, of hermitcraft fans making attacks on the character of their guy's opponents, i have heard what i HOPE are isolated reports of racism in the grian/quackity fight (it was genuinely impossible to keep up with the blog's notes that round without both going into a death spiral thanks to the horrible behavior of scar fans during techno/scar and also without losing track instantly of where we were due to the frankly insurmountable volume of notes, so i did not see it, but unfortunately i fully believe it). i have seen people receiving awful asks - saw people being accused of 'betraying' the hermitcraft side due to voting for quackity or techno, for example.

and for a fandom that likes to act like it's better than the other guys, well. the dsmp fans were generally very well behaved in comparison. (shoutout, for example, to quackblr - i saw maybe one or two possible instances of bad behavior, but for as intense as you all were, you all were normally mostly just retaliatory towards whatever energy was thrown at you.) it wasn't supposed "outsiders coming in" that was doing this bad behavior, either.

folks, you can't blame the dsmp when the problem is inside the house. you can't blame twitter users when you're doing it here. you can't blame the reddit when you're the ones throwing the first death threats.

get off your high horses. we're all mcyt fans. we're all having the same fun. get off your high horses. you can hardly claim we're entirely all "unproblematic" when keralis accepted a sponsorship from the wizard game and xisuma periodically gets another round of getting shouted down over something he said on xisumasays. get off your high horses. you can't claim we're the accepting, good behavior fandom, unlike those other guys, when you're the ones causing the problems.

now, as always, i'm sure this is a law of large numbers thing to some extent. as technoblade, wise as he is, said: sometimes when you get a large enough group, you're going to have a few serial killers. but for the amount that hermitblr likes to act better than Those Other Minecraft Fandoms, and those Other Fandom Websites, it wasn't those guys that made me cry.

to be clear, the majority of you have been well-behaved. but there's a persistent tendency in this fandom to act strangely morally superior to other fandoms. and, y'all? you aren't.

you just aren't.

and the sooner you acknowledge that, the less likely this is to happen again, because once you admit that yeah, we can be toxic too? that's when you can start actually looking at yourself and trying not to be.

anyway, sorry again to make this post. i don't want to be a downer, hence why, outside of the official mod statements of "chill the fuck out", i didn't make this until now. (it also helps that i wanted to wait until i was no longer furious, upset, and death spiraling.) i have seen a lot of the best of this fandom over the past two weeks! i've just also, unfortunately, seen some of the worst, and feel the need to make this statement because it's just... been eating at me.

i don't want this to continue to be a trend. i think we can do better. do so.

[thenonbinarydetective]

Things batfam stans need to leave behind in 2023:

Jason's Lazarus pit rage

Thinking Tim's parents were horribly abusive and hated him

Only caring about Stephanie in terms of her relationship to another person (ex: Tim's bestie/ex/gf or Cass' gf/bestie)

Treating Jason or Stephanie like they're stupid

Feral Demon Child Damian

Permanent sunshine boy Dick Grayson

Any "[blank] was the real violent Robin" discourse

Really just any reducing or sectioning of certain traits to certain batfam members and not allowing other characters to exhibit those same traits (ex: see sunshine Dick Grayson)

But also stealing traits from other characters and projecting them onto someone else (ex: Jason getting Dick's personality in fics. He is not the same type of big brother Dick is canonically)

Purposefully mischaracterizing characters for angst (ex: Dick sent Tim to Arkham, my beloathed. also again see Tim's parents)

Trying really hard to nuclearize the family. They are an unconventional family for many reasons, and that's why they're interesting.

"Alfred solos the batfam"

Making Duke "the normal one" and completely forgetting to give him an actual personality.

Cass using sign language because she can read body language (note: does not apply to YJ Cass who has damaged vocal chords)

Cass being used as a prop for her brothers

Tim being weak, woobified baby

Feel free to add on ~~

Don't send hate over these things because idgaf, they are harmful mischaracterizations, and many are built on total ignorance and often racism, classism, ableism, and sexism.

[finemealprompt]

DP x DC Prompt #25

Hobson wasn’t the Fenton’s butler for long, but he was their butler long enough to become … concerned. Specifically, for a certain black-haired teenager.

However, he didn't know the best way to go about stepping in on this situation. So, instead he calls a friend. Surely Alfred will know what to do.

[noodlesarecheese]

Full disclosure I'm a couple episodes behind in WWW, so I'm not 100% on every thing that's being discoursed about, but I've seen enough that I just want to remind people/beg people to remember:

You are watching The Nuance Show, DMed by Mr. Philosophical Nuance and played by Notable Lovers of Nuance.

[khaire-traveler]

I reiterate that if you're going to ask people for donations, you will come across as extremely suspicious if you spam their inbox. People are likely to report and/or block you, thinking you're a bot. If you need donations, I do not recommend going about like this. I really, REALLY do not recommend it.