#it has to be discussed

[rivetgoth]

It's honestly crazy that discussion around testosterone HRT skews so much towards the beginning stages of it (to the point that you have dozens of guys thinking their transition is "failed" if they don't pass by like a year in lol) and what the initial changes of the first couple of months to years look like, like the classic laundry list of those early basic changes like bottom growth, voice drop, etc, when IMO literally none of that compares remotely to the depth and intensity of the long term total masculinization you start to experience like 3-5+ years in.

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

[descendant-of-truth]

Shipping is fun and all but I swear every single time someone makes a comment, whether as a joke or in a legitimate analysis, about there being "no other explanation" for a pair's interactions, I lose just a bit more of my sanity

Like, no, you guys don't get it. Romance is not about the Amount of devotion, it's about the COLOR. the FLAVOR of it all. a character can be just as devoted to their platonic friend as they are to their romantic partner, and they don't love either of them more, just differently.

But because the majority of people still have it stuck in their minds that romance exists on the highest tier of love, I'm stuck seeing endless takes that boil down to "these two care about each other too much for it to NOT be romantic" as if that's the core determining factor to how literally any of this works

In conclusion: stop telling me that I don't understand the story if I don't interpret the leads as romantic, I am TIRED

[theworldisaplace]

with apologies to lewis carroll

The Walrus and her Fairy friend Were strolling down the block; They paused and then debated on Which one of them should knock: ‘You know, this might be easier If we just pick the lock!'

‘If I’m the one to do it And they find me standing here, Do you suppose,' the Walrus asked, That they would shriek in fear?' The Fairy said ‘I bet they would,’ And shed a bitter tear.

The Walrus and the Fairy then Walked on a little more, And came upon the house That they’d identified before. They flipped a coin to see which one Would now approach the door.

‘O Tumblrina, let me in!' The Walrus did beseech. ‘A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, For I have much to teach.’ (The sounds of this discussion Were within the Fairy’s reach.)

The Tumblr user looked at him, But never a word they said: Too wowed by this new circumstance To even shake their head. ‘Would you prefer,’ the Walrus sighed, A Fairy’s knock instead?’

‘The time has come,' the Fairy said, Accepting his new role, ‘We must admit this visit Is in service of a goal.’ And then the two together cried, ‘We’re here to take a poll!’

[rose-colored-tarot]

Personally I've never been a fan of the "magic is a beast that needs to be tamed" metaphor. Magic is more like the ocean: powerful, terrifying, capable of unbridled force. But at the same time, it is gentle, warm, the lifeblood of millions of people. The folk who know the ocean know you cannot harness it's force, you must work within or around it, lest it destroy you. Similarly, magic is great and terrible and gentle and kind, all at once. And those who work with it need to work WITH it, not reign over it. Because the primordial forces have no rules about biting the hand that feeds you.

[uptownthots]

I think if you consider yourself someone who genuinely cares about dismantling bioessentalism and the speaking out about harm it does to society you HAVE to acknowledge that bioessentalism is one of the oldest tools in the patriarchy's toolbox and not something twentieth-century TERFs invented

[bixels]

Just gonna have to wait and see, right? Just wait and see! Just gotta wait and see! Who knows, we'll just have to wait and see! It's anybody's guess, we'll just have to wait and see! The future is exciting, we just gotta wait and see!

[royaltea000]

he could not control the class 😔

[glitchdollmemoria]

please can we stop describing bigots as delusional. please. im so fucking tired. someone being sucked into a hate group surrounded by others who believe minorities should be oppressed and encouraging them to believe in conspiracy theories that the rest of the group believes, is fundamentally different from someone having a mental illness that causes delusions.

delusions, by definition, cannot be explained by things like cultural background - such as having a belief constantly reinforced by intentional attempts to rationalize it for the sake of maintaining power over minorities. yes, someone can be both delusional and a bigot, and yes conspiracy theories can feed into delusions, but the two are not fucking synonymous.

i did not spend my teen years convinced that i was being stalked by demons just to hear so many of you people equate my disability with incel behavior and genocidal propaganda. stop reinforcing harmful connotations about mental health struggles.

[doberbutts]

I always think it's funny whenever I post about an issue that directly affects me and someone responds with "you're an idiot that doesn't know what you're talking about" and I have to be like. Hello. This is my demographic. Do you see this label here? Guess who falls under it OH RIGHT it's me. Maybe I like. Have some amount of idea of what I'm talking about considering this is sampled directly from my life experiences. Just a thought.

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[ilostyou]

[stevejobsbuysasamsung]

"captain, there is a definite pleasurable experience connected with the hearing of your voice!"

ARE WE NOT GONNA TALK ABOUT THATTTTTT,,,, MR NO EMOTIONS THATS ILLOGICAL SPOCK?????????

[redysetdare]

All this aroace character shipcourse has proven to me that a majority of people that interact in fandom cannot actually interact with characters and media outside of shipping and genuinely I believe you need to learn how to interact with media outside of shipping.

[peachesofteal]

Simon Riley who’s not well adjusted and sticks his thick fingers in your mouth whenever he wants.

He pinches your cheeks together too. Holds the fat tight enough it stings. Enjoys the way your eyes dart around the pub, watching everyone watch you, their concern and curiosity shrinking away when he glares at them.

Ignores Johnny when he hisses to let ‘er go, murmuring that he’s making a scene, and “ye’re gonna get us kicked out again LT.” He holds your pretty face in his fist and smiles as you start to squirm.

Though pinching your cheeks is nothing like sticking his fingers in your mouth.

He’ll grip your chin on the train and press his thumb to the tip of your tongue, forcing it against porcelain teeth. Tips as sharp as razor clams, he scrapes the gnarled edge of his fingernail across their jagged tops, before returning to depress the flat of your tongue until your eyes go wide. Can’t swallow? Can’t breathe. Problem, pet?

He likes the way your teeth shine. Oyster shells iridescent in the sparkling sun of a beach, shucked and shattered, punished by the force of the surf, or the prying strike of a predator. No one shell is alike, millions of spirals and patterns, scotch bonnets and scallops, cockles and cowries, all lining the shore, but you’re the one he sifted through sand to find. His nautilus shell. A perfect spiral, a Fibonacci sequence, the sum of his life and his choices, all here in his hand. One day, he’ll pluck a pearl from behind your teeth, one harvested for him, built from the swirl of brackish water, salt soaked crystals rolled across a seabed until they took shape, a thing, a beautiful thing, made of you, made of him.

He’s fed them to you before. Oysters. Cracked their hinges with his own fists and slipped them down your throat, sea salt and sweet, he couldn’t help but lick inside your mouth after each one, shoving into cracks and crannies, zest of a lemon still tart on your tongue.

You bit him once. The ocean is a tempest, a reflection of yourself, violence humming in a swell only Poseidon could soothe. He gentled your wild tides after that, taught you the stark difference between good behavior and bad, smart choices and reckless ones.

You’re a good girl. You learned.

His fingers find the velvet catch of your cheek too often, and though his cock prefers the back of your throat, the thrashing, vibrating squeeze of your swallows, he likes to tuck into the silk beside your molars. Pretty pockets of a conch shell, protecting a panacea, one made only for him, for his scars.

He drifts there, carried on ocean currents too strong to be stopped when he splits you open on his cock, when he sits you on his lap, when he sates your hunger by his own hand. He insists, even in the pubs, on feeding you bite after bite, thumb and forefinger grazing the roof of your mouth, spongy flesh begging him to press so hard his thumbprint sears to your skin.

At night, he finds your mouth on instinct. Slips right between your teeth and floats away on a twilight tide, like the sea singing a baby to sleep.

[danielnelsen]

while i get where this comes from and it’s true to an extent, i reeeaaaally don’t like how people try to explain “trans men don’t [necessarily] have male privilege” with things like “some trans men don’t pass”.

like sure that’s the most obvious example (someone who is seen as a woman won’t have the privilege that comes with being seen a man) but you’re still acting like being a passing trans man is just a free opt-in to male privilege which is………kinda the issue.