#in so many different and varied ways

[jessieren]

Uuggghhh this man (and his tache) 💀

[u3pxx]

👁️👁️

here's the aa cast w/o glasses and just a lil idea of harry's pupil changing colors based on which build the player chooses for him pftt

[wren-of-the-woods]

I've been seeing a lot of posts lately talking about how no one comments/reblogs/replies/etc anymore, and, as someone who comments regularly on a lot of fanworks, it sometimes makes me wonder if my efforts are worth anything. Then I remember how much happiness I get from comments on my own work/posts and how much the community of fandom can matter, and I remember the power that can be found in spreading joy instead of disappointment.

So -- to everyone who comments on fanfiction: thank you. You make the writing process worthwhile and so very rewarding. You make people happy every day.

To all the people who reblog art and gifsets and meta and anything else with enthusiastic tags: thank you. You make people smile and promote interesting conversations and make being on Tumblr so much more fun.

To anyone who sends people asks about their works, whether it's unprompted or part of an ask game: thank you. You give people reasons to talk about things they love and feel like a part of a community.

To the people who makes reclists: thank you. You give us more to read while showing the author how much their work is loved and appreciated, benefitting so many people.

To everyone who organizes events and groups and blogs and dedicated to fandom: thank you. You build community and love and excitement so effectively and it's wonderful.

To all the authors and artists who respond to comments and build community: thank you. You make people smile with your work and then again with your response.

To everyone who contributes to fandom and community in all the other beautiful, varied ways that I can't even begin to list: thank you. You are why we're here.

And, finally, to every writer, visual artist, gifmaker, cosplayer, maker of edits, writer of meta, or creator of art in any other form: thank you. Your work is wonderful and you make fandom what it is, regardless of who sees your art or how much response you recieve.

Keep going, everyone. You are a part of something beautiful.

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance - Symphony of Sorcery

[doostyaudi]

I like making self inserts/sonas i guess

[mapsareforbraindeads]

“hyunsoo is crazy!!! he’s possessed!!! don’t trust him!”

hyunsoo:

[mayomkun]

Insane how many social cues humans have and you're supposed to know them all without being told

[statisticalcats2]

I'm becoming more and more skeptical of the concept of bad acting.

"People don't act/talk like that."

Maybe you just haven't met enough people.

[slyandthefamilybook]

I think we need to have a serious re-evaluation of what "leftist" means bc there ain't no fuckin way authcoms are on the same left as me lmao

[despair-tea]

one thing I dislike is the sophomoric idea that society should, naturally, move towards a completely genderless model. I get where it's coming from, but it assumes an impossible level of homogeneity rather than accepting that - in the infinity of genders that DO and WILL exist - there are some which will take familiar forms and patterns and names.

Like, look, I don't live in the androgynous future ze're imaging. But if I did I would still feel alienated and out-of-place in a slightly different way from the way I felt growing up under gendered capitalism. Because I'm not genderless, and I know damn well that I'd still feel some calling to change... something about myself. Even without words like "woman" or "witch."

It's a nice dream. it might be comforting to some. But it seems like an airy fantasy to me, and not one I can see myself living in.

Obviously I agree that the barriers between genders need to be broken down. Obviously I don't think the traditional gender roles as our society sells them to us are working. But the future I see has more kinds of people and not less.

[lordofthemushrooms]

I think it is funny when Dragon Age fans get up in arms about the way they think the player characters should be played. My guy we are all telling unique narratives to ourselves and some of us post about our weird little guys narrative. If you do not like it simply?? Don’t play like that??

[screambirdscreaming]

I used to like saying "gender is a social construct," but I stopped saying that because people didn't tend to react well - they thought that I was saying gender wasn't real, or didn't matter, or could be safely ignored without consequences. Which has always baffled me a bit as an interpretation, honestly, because many things are social constructs - like money, school, and the police - and they certainly have profound effects on your life whether or not you believe in them. And they sure don't go away if you ignore them.

Anyway. What I've taken to saying instead is, "gender is a cultural practice." This gives more of a sense of respect for the significance gender holds to many people. And it also opens the door to another couple layers of analysis.

Gender is cultural. It is not globally or historically homogeneous. It shifts over time, develops differently in different communities, and can be influenced by cross-cultural contact. Like many, many aspects of culture, the current status of gender is dramatically influenced by colonialism. Colonial gender norms are shaped by the hierarchical structure of imperialist society, and enforced onto colonized cultures as part of the project of imperial cultural hedgemony.

Gender is practiced. What constitutes a gender includes affects and behaviors, jobs or areas of work, skillsets, clothing, collective and individual practices of gender affiliation and affirmation. Any or all of these things, in any combination, depending on the gender, the culture, and the practitioner.

Gender encompasses shared cultural archetypes. These can include specific figures - gods and goddesses, mythic or fictional characters, etc - or they can be more abstract or general. The Wise Woman, Robin Hood, the Dyke, the Working Man, the Plucky Heroine, the Effete Gay Man, etc etc. The range of archetypes does not circumscribe a given gender, that is, they're not all there is to gender. But they provide frameworks and reference points by which people relate to gender. They may be guides for ways to inhabit or practice a gender. They may be stereotypes through which the gendered behavior of others is viewed.

Gender as a framework can be changed. Because it is created collectively, by shared acknowledgement and enforcement by members of society. Various movements have made significant shifts in how gender is structured at various times and places. The impact of these shifts has been widely variable - for example, depending on what city I'm in, even within my (fairly culturally homogeneous) home country, the way I am gendered and reacted to changes dramatically. Looping back to point one, we often speak of gender in very broad terms that obscure significant variability which exists on many scales.

Gender is structured recursively. This can be seen in the archetypes mentioned above, which range from extremely general (say, the Mother) to highly specific (the PTA Soccer Mom). Even people who claim to acknowledge only two genders will have many concepts of gendered-ways-of-being within each of them, which they may view and react to VERY differently.

Gender is experienced as an external cultural force. It cannot be opted out of, any more than living in a society can be opted out of. Regardless of the internal experience of gender, the external experience is also present. Operating within the shared cultural understanding of gender, one can aim to express a certain practice of gender - to make legible to other people how it is you interface with gender. This is always somewhat of a two-way process of communication. Other people may or may not perceive what you're going for - and they may or may not respect it. They may try to bring your expressed gender into alignment with a gender they know, or they might parcel you off into your own little box.

Gender is normative. Within the structure of the "cultural mainstream," there are allowable ways to practice gender. Any gendered behavior is considered relative to these standards. What behavior is allowed, rewarded, punished, or shunned is determined relative to what is gender normative for your perceived gender. Failure to have a clearly perceivable gender is also, generally, punished. So is having a perceivable gender which is in itself not normative.

Gender is taught by a combination of narratives, punishments, and encouragements. This teaching process is directed most strongly towards children but continues throughout adulthood. Practice of normatively-gendered behaviors and alignment with 'appropriate' archetypes is affirmed, encouraged, and rewarded. Likewise 'other'- gendered behavior and affinity to archetypes is scolded, punished, or shunned. This teaching process is inherently coercive, as social acceptance/rejection is a powerful force. However it can't be likened to programming, everyone experiences and reacts to it differently. Also, this process teaches the cultural roles and practices of both (normative) genders, even as it attempts to force conformity to only one.

Gender regulates access to certain levers of social power. This one is complicated by the fact that access to levers of social power is also affected by *many* other things, most notably race, class, and citizenship. I am not going to attempt to describe this in any general terms, I'm not equipped for that. I'll give a few examples to explain what I'm talking about though. (1) In a social situation, a man is able to imply authority, which is implicitly backed by his ability to intimidate by yelling, looming, or threatening physical violence. How much authority he is perceived to have in response to this display is a function of his race and class. It is also modified by how strongly he appears to conform to a masculine ideal. Whether or not he will receive social backlash for this behavior (as a separate consideration to how effective it will be) is again a function of race/class/other forms of social standing. (2) In a social situation, a woman is able to invoke moral judgment, and attempt to modify the behavior of others by shame. The strength of her perceived moral authority depends not just on her conformity to ideal womanhood, but especially on if she can invoke certain archetypes - such as an Innocent, a Mother, or better yet a Grandmother. Whether her moral authority is considered a relevant consideration to influence the behavior of others (vs whether she will be belittled or ignored) strongly depends on her relative social standing to those she is addressing, on basis of gender/race/class/other.

[Again, these examples are *not* meant to be exhaustive, nor to pass judgment on employing any social power in any situation. Only to illustrate what "gendered access to social power" might mean. And to illustrate that types of power are not uniform and may play out according to complex factors.]

Gender is not based in physical traits, but physical traits are ascribed gendered value. Earlier, I described gender as practiced, citing almost entirely things a person can do or change. And I firmly believe this is the core of gender as it exists culturally - and not just aspirationally. After the moment when a gender is "assigned" based on infant physical characteristics, they are raised into that gender regardless of the physical traits they go on to develop (in most circumstances, and unless/until they denounce that gender.) The range of physical traits like height, facial shape, body hair, ability to put on muscle mass - is distributed so that there is complete overlap between the range of possible traits for people assigned male and people assigned female. Much is made of slight trends in things that are "more common" for one binary sex or the other, but it's statistically quite minor once you get over selection bias. However, these traits are ascribed gendered connotations, often extremely strongly so. As such, the experience of presented and perceived gender is strongly effected by physical traits. The practice of gender therefore naturally expands to include modification of physical traits. Meanwhile, the social movements to change how gender is constructed can include pushing to decrease or change the gendered association of physical traits - although this does not seem to consistently be a priority.

Gender roles are related to the hypothetical ability to bear children, but more obliquely than is often claimed. It is popular to say that the types of work considered feminine derive from things it is possible to do while pregnant or tending small children. However, research on the broader span of human history does not hold this up. It may be true of the cultures that gave immediate rise to the colonial gender roles we are familiar with - secondary to the fact that childcare was designated as women's work. (Which it does not have to be, even a nursing infant doesn't need to be with the person who feeds it 24 hours a day.) More directly, gender roles have been influenced by structures of social control aiming for reproductive control. In the direct precursors of colonial society, attempts to track paternal lineage led to extreme degrees of social control over women, which we still see reflected in normative gender today. Many struggles for women's liberation have attempted to push back these forms of social control. It is my firm opinion that any attempt to re-emphasize childbearing as a touchstone of womanhood is frankly sick. We are at a time where solidarity in struggle for gender liberation, and for reproductive rights, is crucial. We need to cast off shackles of control in both fights. Trying to tie childbearing back to womanhood hobbles both fights and demeans us all.

Gender is baked deeply enough into our culture that it is unlikely to ever go away. Many people feel strongly about the practice of gender, in one way or another, and would not want it to. However we have the power to change how gender is structured and enforced. We can push open the doors of what is allowable, and reduce the pain of social punishment and isolation. We can dismantle another of the tools of colonial hedgemony and social control. We can change the culture!

[darkwood-sleddog]

Can the balanced dog trainers please stop fucking talking about positive reinforcement as if those dogs are not “obedience trained”? A majority of competition obedience dogs I know were trained with R+. Letting your dog wander on the end of a line because you want to do so does not = untrained. It is simply…a choice.

[thevegetablewhichnoonedaresname]

I'm starting Mission to Zyxx Season 5 now, and I have feelings about that.

First, it generally scares me when people hype anything up at all because there is no guarantee that anyone values the exact same thing I do to the same degree. Even if I trust the creators of a thing to value something and try to do right by it, that doesn't always necessarily mean it will be successful, especially if that involves doing something wildly different than what made it good in the first place (I have been burned this way before). I guess I'm just hoping they continue the format of goofy improv shenanigans for the majority of it with something more planned and emotional in the finale if they want, like they've been doing all along. I'd think they would, and I've heard nothing bad about the ending, but I guess it still makes me nervous because I'm so close to the end and I want it so badly to stick the landing. I'm setting my expectations on the floor so I can be surprised instead of disappointed, but honestly, I don't need it to be better, I just need it to be on par with the rest.

Second, and more briefly, I'm happy it's (hopefully) ending before it has a chance to decline. I am so on board with that philosophy. But on the other hand, finishing a thing that I really, really like and knowing there's not another one out there gives me a special kind of heartache. Like, I know there will be other good media, and stuff that's good and unique in other ways, but I know for a fact that there are no other podcasts out there that have the same mix of a balance of off-the-wall improv and structured narrative, quality comedy, fantastical sci-fi setting and loveable characters, and high quality production. There are other things out there with many of those qualities, but nothing that checks every one of those boxes. It's a lightning-in-a-bottle thing that very much feels like the right people had to be in the right place at the right time to do it. Attempts to do it again would feel hollow because it had to be born out of necessity and passion and the talents of the people involved, so if you switch out the people it loses the reasons it's great, and if the same people tried to do it again it'd feel tired. That makes me so, so grateful it exists, but also so, so sad that it doesn't, and I'm 80% of the way done. When it's over, it's over.

Anyway. Now that that's all out there, I'm just gonna finish listening and have fun. Wish me luck.

[sexygaywizard]

So uh... Those "describe your gender" posts from a little while back started to make me think and I realized I'm not actually as Cis as I thought I was... In fact I'm Genderfluid and I'm going to be getting a binder. Thanks for starting me on that path <3

Yessssss I love hearing this!!!! This is the trans agenda. We are out here transing genders. So happy for you king!!!

[rxttenfish]

Is there even any infrastructure for humans visiting merfolk underwater settlements? Or are they too deep for humans to comfortably dive/swim in? Or maybe the merfolk just say, "of course we don't have any support for you under several hundred feet of water. literally why would you even try?"

there's not any infrastructure for human (or any other sophont besides gorgons that already live there, anyhow) visitation! mostly that's because this is a bit of a first contact situation, albeit one that was born more out of political isolationism and not necessarily caring about the land-based sophonts...

basically, the current political entity overseeing all existing or known merfolk settlement is a fairly old one, that slowly grew from a smaller polity into a more all-encompassing unit by swallowing up its neighbors. it's more of a complicated shell game than this necessarily makes it seem - like i said, a lot of time has passed, and significant cultural shifts have happened within that time, as well as shifts and establishment on how its government and policies would function, so it's a little bit more of a larger conglomerate containing within it many smaller governments, who are allowed independent control of the populations within their allotted territories, just so long as they take up the job of translating the broader governmental laws and taxes down onto that population. the details are rather vague, and so long as the results are what the larger governmental body asked, the intermediary areas are allowed a lot of different ways to interpret what that means.

however, one of the things that got lost in that shuffle of politic and history was the presence of merfolk inland. historically, merfolk have actually periodically spent time inland! usually it was still very tied to the water, being more like seasonal beachcombing using temporary shelters and housing, but they utilized the land a lot more for potential resources and ways to live. the nomadic families especially used to take advantage of these opportunities, and there was much more interaction with landfolk in these contexts.

the exact way it was lost varies, in that not everyone agrees what came first or what was the reason or who did what, but most of this was probably limited and then lost due to the larger governmental body, in the process of colonization, banning merfolk from going up onto the land in order to prevent political enemies and refugees from fleeing up and onto the land, using it as a base of operations, or otherwise using it as a means to escape to other bodies of saltwater. like i said, these periods inland were mostly seasonal, and merfolk did still majorly depend on the water, so what merfolk did make settlements inland mostly ended up vanishing over time anyways - either through simply vanishing into landfolk populations, or through dying out, it wasn't particularly sustainable.

but, time still went on, and this ban remained, and somehow it slowly disseminated into popular thought that the land was just not really very interesting in the first place. sure, merfolk knew there was stuff up there, and other animals and even fairly smart animals, but that doesn't necessarily make it worth investigating. travel over land is hard for them, and it's hard for them to live on land for long periods of time, and everything that they need and depend on is in the ocean anyways. there's a lot less space to the land, there's nothing that would interest merfolk, it would be uncomfortable and painful for them to visit (a lot of myths and legends about the land and what lived there got started in this time, with a lot of focus on undead monsters that had dried out and were lit from within by the hateful light of the sun, and a lot of merfolk made a habit of coming up with scary stories about the weird things that must've lived in such an extreme environment), and there was a lot more political movements and such focused on other merfolk to begin with.

even moreso because merfolk still, technically, did go out onto land? it just wasn't very large portions of land, that is. mostly they would set up on much smaller islands and atolls, which would mostly be used for manufacturing or more technical jobs that required being done in the air. they really just needed the space, not anything specific already on the land itself, and the space was all functional, very little exploration or relaxation areas. sometimes these were used specifically to produce novelty items or experiences, but usually this didn't go much further than exploring the uniqueness of being in open air for the first time, and wasn't really pursued as much more than that.

so merfolk still knew the land was important and needed for ecological functioning - something they had learned the hard way, after an earlier period in their history pre-unifying government became known for a particular and acute ecological disaster, felt even harder by all merfolk on account of the properties of water and everyone living in the ocean. they view the land as functional in its own right - a needed recycling facility that operates itself and helps keep them alive, and one in a place that they had no interest in and could set aside for such tasks.

they also knew there was life up there, even intelligent life, but considering the period in time when merfolk ceased interacting with land-based societies, and the predominant view that what makes something sapient for them being a multiplicity and plural nature to it, on top of the complex interweave of language and meaning, they basically just viewed it as "smart animals". i've compared it before to like if we actually discovered warrior cats was real and there was a population of feral cats in a national park that had their own tiny society. it's interesting, for sure, but it wouldn't be the kind of thing that they might feel too passionately about, and can easily pass it off as a curiosity and a thought experiment all of its own.

the fact that this has changed at all, and especially in such a small time frame and with such major turnaround and abrupt interest in the outer governing body is actually really odd, and a major question and mystery in what i'm writing! the starting interest happened only just in the previous generation, and now they're making major steps towards introducing themselves to land-based civilizations in just miranda's generation, even to the point of sending her inland as an ambassador and an active participant in this shift.

most people on the land already knew that someone was in the ocean and actively preventing anyone else from crossing it or even getting particularly close, but they had no context for this any more than anyone else, and thus they might not raise as many questions about why this is happening than they should, especially since they don't know merfolk history. even most merfolk don't necessarily have all of the details of this shift, but they do know more than nothing, and certainly can note how odd it is and how weird such a change is.

likewise, neither civilization has very much to accommodate for the other, given as they barely even knew of each other by the time they were already designing how it was laid out, so the issues humans have accessing merfolk spaces is at least mutual, if nothing else. it's also something very likely to change over time, depending on how said first contact goes.