#it this year I’ve been communicating more

[curmemini]

And if it means any thing, the every day american isn't too happy about it either. JD Vance and his family visited Vermont to go skiing today (the day after the above show) and was greeted with waves of Ukraine flags and anti-Russia sentiment. I know multiple resorts refused to serve him - I am not sure if they did get to ski.

More, the 25-year-old snow reporter for Sugarbush included a long pro-democracy message before her report on the weather conditions. At the risk of expanding the post terribly, her message read:

Mar 1st, 2025, 6:49 AM: Today of all days, I would like to reflect on what Sugarbush means to me. This mountain has brought me endless days of joy, adventure, challenges, new experiences, beauty, community, and peace. I’ve found that nothing cures a racing mind quite like skiing through the trees and stopping to take a deep breath of that fresh forest air. The world around us might be a scary place, but these little moments of tranquility, moments I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy as a direct result of my employment here, give me, and I’d guess you, too, a sense of strength and stability.

This fresh forest air, is, more specifically fresh National Forest air. Sugarbush operates on 1745 acres of the Green Mountain National Forest. Right now, National Forest lands and National Parks are under direct attack by the current Administration, who is swiftly terminating the positions of dedicated employees who devote their lives to protecting the land we love, and to protecting us while we are enjoying that land.

This Administration also neglects to address the danger, or even the existence of, climate change, the biggest threat to the future of our industry, and the skiing we all so much enjoy here. Burlington, VT is one of the fastest-warming cities in the country, and Vermont is the 9th fastest-warming state. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), a resource I use every day for snow reporting, is crucial in monitoring extreme weather events and informing public safety measures, and is also experiencing widespread layoffs and defunding at the hands of the Administration.

Sugarbush would not be Sugarbush without our wonderful community. Employees and patrons alike, we are made up of some of the most kind hearted, hardworking people I have ever met. Our community is rich with folks of all different orientations, ethnicities, and walks of life, who all contribute to make this place what it is. They all love Sugarbush because it is a place where they can come to move their bodies, to connect with the land, to challenge themselves, to build character, to nourish their souls with the gift of skiing.

Many of these people are part of the LGBTQI+ community. Many (well, that’s a stretch, we all know this is an incredibly white-washed industry) are people of color. Half are women. Many are veterans or adaptive skiers who, through Vermont Adaptive, are able to access snow sports in part thanks to federal grants through the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is also facing devastating cuts. Many of our beloved employees moved across the world through an exchange program on the J1 visa to help this resort run, and they are not US citizens. ALL of these groups are being targeted, undervalued, and disrespected by the current Administration.

The beauty of National Forest land, is that anyone and everyone is welcome to enjoy it. Anyone and everyone can buy a lift ticket. I also imagine it is incredibly difficult, and likely impossible, to say “No” to the Secret Service. I hope that, instead of faulting Sugarbush management or employees for “allowing this to happen”, you can direct your anger to the source — the Administration that, in my oh-so-humble opinion, is threatening our democracy, our livelihoods, our land.

I want to reiterate how much I admire and respect my fellow employees and managers — they work so hard to make this place operate, to keep you coming back and enjoying it and making lifelong memories. Many of them may feel the same way that I do, but their hands are tied, and for good reason. They have families to support, they have benefits and health insurance to receive, they face far greater and more binding pressure from Corporate. I am in a privileged position here, in that I work only seasonally, I do not rely on this job for health insurance or benefits, and hey, waking up at 4:30 AM isn’t exactly sustainable. Therefore, I am using my relative “platform” as snow reporter, to be disruptive — I don’t have a whole lot to lose. We are living in a really scary and really serious time. What we do or don’t do, matters. This whole shpiel probably won’t change a whole lot, and I can only assume that I will be fired, but at least this will do even just a smidge more than just shutting up and being a sheep.

I am really scared for our future. Acting like nothing is happening here feels way scarier than losing my job. I want to have kids one day, and I want to teach them to ski. The policies and ideals of the current Administration, however, are not conducive to either of these things, because, at least how things look now, I’d never be able to afford a good life for a child anyway, and snow will be a thing of Vermont history. So please, for the sake of our future shredders: Be Better Here. It has truly been a pleasure writing your morning snow reports — I hope this one sticks with you. With love, peace, and hope, Lucy Welch

My point in adding this is that for every brazen display by the executive branch, more and more people are emboldened to speak out. More and more people realize what they truly value.

We will see the day that fascism ends. We will see a free Ukraine.

So this was a pre-planned (and likely paid for by the Kremlin) show: to invite Zelenskyy, scold him like a kindergartener in front of the press, present him with an unreasonable "deal" - an ultimatum - knowing full well he will refuse it (as anyone in this position would). And then tell the world: "Look, our mighty Orange King could've ended this horrible war in a day, but this poorly-dressed, warmongering, ungrateful twat just doesn't want peace! It's not our fault, we did what we could!"

The show is so cheap, so transparent, yet still effective for so many brainless people.

[thatsmistertoyou]

maybe a hot take idk

look I know many people are upset about the pricing/fee situation of the TIT livestream (me included, I was pissed as hell that I got a large surprise fee), and I hope everything gets sorted out. I’m proud of the phandom for being loud and demanding fairness from the platform. you will not get shit past us.

I understand that. however, I completely disagree with some opinions I’ve seen (mainly on twitter but whatever) that charging for the stream at all is greedy, especially for people who have already paid to see the show. this is a weird take imo because this stream is supposed to be an opportunity for people who didn’t get to go to see it with an audience as a communal experience. but if you already spent money and don’t want to spend more, don’t!

and I don’t know anything about anything but based on the very little information dnp have provided about the cost of touring, I really don’t think they have the option to just do the stream for free. this is just my opinion, but based on how dan said he lost money touring WAD, i would not be surprised if the livestream paid for the rights he needed to release it for free on YouTube (and the extremely important rights to play All Star in the credits). just because he wrote and performed it doesn’t mean he owned it. it would not surprise me at all if the profits from the stream don’t go to dnp only.

and also, Things Cost Money, including livestreams. I think the platform has really showed their ass, but if we remove them from the equation for a second - everyone who put on TIT, including Dan and Phil, deserve to be compensated for their work. I don’t expect them to bleed money into this project forever just because it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I’m sure they’re doing just fine financially, but they are not and never have asked anyone to take food off their table to support them.

I actually find it really disheartening to see just how many people were like, legitimately, personally angry with dnp before they had even had a chance to respond to our concerns. I’ve been around long enough to remember when they announced TABINOF, there was an uproar about how they were sellouts because they were writing a book just like every other youtuber, making a shitty cashgrab when they had nothing to say. in the 2 days before we knew what the book would even be about, the Discourse had never been more annoying or mean spirited.

and it made me wonder, what are yall doing here if you assume the worst like that? have you just been waiting for the masks to slip? are you appalled that they participate in the heinous capitalistic act of selling their labor like everyone else? have your years of support not earned a little bit of grace when there’s a miscommunication?

I’m not saying approach everything like ‘they’ve never done anything wrong once in their whole lives and never will’, but the vitriol that seems to come out at minor fuck ups is alarming. some of yall do not like them and it shows. (I am looking directly at twitter dot com now)

I find that attitude really sad. after the TABINOF drama, I promised myself I’d never lose sleep over phandom nonsense again, so I’m going to bed, just had to get some thoughts out there. 💙

[stephbanana]

I mean this has been par for the course. Of course they’re hypocrites and lie. Republicans and Musk get away with simple explanations or lies about how to solve tough, complex issues all the time. They take those mammoth problems that take so much time to carefully fix and help the most amount of people without major amounts of disruption to everything and find a way to make it seem “simple”. Which then translates to the masses as a “reasonable” solution despite the fact that it throws out LOTS of crucially important details and has no nuance and would hurt more than it would help.

My husband and I just had a conversation with our neighbor who, despite voting democratic nearly all of the time, had very little understanding of 1) how our government works and 2) the factors that lead to politics as they exist today. You cannot explain democratic positions to the average voter without educating them on the last 30 years of politics - my entire life, essentially. We dumped so much information on this poor person. My neighbor had never heard of citizens united. They only vaguely heard of PACs. We explained the court decisions and cases that contributed to laws as they currently exist, how the Supreme Court make up is crucially important, and what decisions made by Congress changed the political course in this country, and even the amount of money Republicans spend vs Democrats as who actually contributes to the US debt.

They had missed so so much, because these kinds of things are not making their way to the masses. And they’re far from the only person that I’ve had to explain these things to. Only once they get political context do they begin to actually understand democratic positions a little better. So no matter the catchy, simplistic name or phrase you give to whatever it is you’re doing, the position itself is not entirely grasped by the masses because the context hasn’t made it to them.

Progressives need to begin talking about context and educating voters on the things that contributed to politics as they are today. Average people do. not. know. They used to be taught by their elks or rotary club or their union - but membership in those community groups has all but died and unions still are a far cry from where they used to be.

Robert, you have done an excellent job of using your platform and voice to break down these complicated issues into things that are easier to understand. Would you consider working with Indivisible or MeidasTouch to talk about the basic history of politics since, say, the rise of Newt Grigrich in the 90’s? Voters need the context of modern history to truly understand what is happening in their government and why it is truly awful.

I will continue to explain political history to my friends and colleagues who will listen to me. Hopefully they will begin to understand what is happening a bit better.

Friends, Musk is trying to downplay the chaos he’s creating by saying it’s much the same as the cost-cutting efforts of the Clinton administration. “What DOGE is doing is similar to Clinton/Gore Dem policies of the 1990s,” he posted on his X platform. Rubbish. I cut costs in the Clinton administration. The contrast with what Musk is doing couldn’t be sharper. As secretary of labor, I took the Department of Labor down from 18,500 employees to 16,600 — but did it without any layoffs. No chainsaws. No meat-axes. And we were careful to improve the services we were providing the public. For example, when people lost jobs in an industry that was shrinking, we devised a way to get them job-training and job-search assistance in addition to unemployment insurance. This helped move them into new jobs faster — which also saved the government over $1 billion a year in unemployment payments. We plowed that $1 billion back into job-training and job-search assistance, making the whole economy work better. In Musk’s attack on the federal workforce, thousands of federal workers have been fired without warning. Or they’ve been offered fake “deferred resignation” buyouts that were never authorized by Congress and may not be legal. Entire agencies have been gutted without legislative authorization, forcing judges to intervene. Our “Reinventing Government” effort was authorized by bipartisan congressional legislation. We worked carefully over several years to identify areas where government could be more efficient, notifying Congress of what we were doing. But the Republicans who control Congress today have allowed Musk to race ahead without them, even though the Constitution states that the legislative branch approves spending and federal law prohibits the president from cutting programs Congress has authorized without its permission. Clinton sought that permission, and Congress accepted $3.6 billion in cuts he proposed. We also involved federal workers, because they knew better than anyone what could be improved and how best to do it. We introduced performance standards, we encouraged our workers to embrace the internet, and we gave out awards to employees who came up with ways to cut red tape and improve service. “There was a tremendous effort put into understanding what should happen and what should change,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, which seeks to improve the federal workforce. “What is happening now is actually taking us backwards.” We were deliberative and careful. Musk is the opposite. Musk sees government workers as the enemy — as costs to be cut. We saw government workers as assets to be developed, our partners in getting better services to the public more efficiently. Musk also calls people who benefit from government programs the “parasite class.” Presumably that’s why he’s eager to cut back Medicaid. But Medicaid’s beneficiaries aren’t parasites. Half of them are children. Oh, but if we’re talking about people who depend on government, Musk is the biggest “parasite” of all. Over the years, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits, often at critical moments, helping seed the growth that has made him the richest person in the world. That he views public servants as his enemy and the people who benefit from public programs as “parasites” tells you all you need to know about Elon Musk. When you hear Musk say his effort is similar to what I and others did in the 1990s, know he’s lying. When you see him call people who benefit from public programs “parasites,” know he’s a hypocrite. Thoughts?

[prince-kallisto]

Ahh these are the sort of topics I don’t know how to word well in English , so forgive me if I have roundabout explanations for things 😆 this is a bit of a fandom bent, I apologize again for any mistaken words on anything 💦

But I guess I’m just a little disheartened by the EN fandom- particularly with the whole manga Yuu situation. I adore all the Yuu’s, I love all the Yuu OCs that this amazing and creative fandom has designed.

But I’m seeing an…over exaggeration? Or pedestal put onto the Scarabia Yuu, Yuuna Oujou, and the way some people have discussed the manga Yuu’s have made me a little uncomfortable.

I’ve seen some people be like “finally! A girl Yuu for the manga!” Or “finally! A Yuu who presents herself as a woman!” (This is way different than a celebration of a femme Yuu btw).

? Yuuka, the Savanaclaw Yuu, IS a woman. Some people have been claiming that she’s “hiding her gender” in the all-boy’s school, or “downplaying” her gender, and how they’re so happy that Yuuna is “unapologetically a woman.”

But Yuuka, even in her previous world, has ways presented as a bit more masc- a very bifauxnen, cool girl type of character who is resolute in her strength because of her judo experience. A translation of the manga I read even has her referring to herself as a “ordinary school girl.” It’s just her own personal style of presenting herself. She also exercises in a sports bra! The only troubles she has is the troubles ALL Yuu’s have: that they’re magicless and aren’t meant to be here at this school and this WORLD.

And frankly, it’s uncomfortable that I’ve seen so many people in the fandom act as if feminine style is the only valid way to present as a woman, the implications that Yuuka is not a woman from the way she chooses to dress or cut her hair.

I’m so so happy that people find joy in a very femme presenting Yuu- I love Yuuna just as much! But when the conversation begins turning into…implying femininity is the only way to be/present as a woman, that’s not…it just feels awful. Yuuka was our first girl Yuu, Yuuna is the second. They present differently, but neither of them ever once worry about having the “hide” their gender. Please celebrate Yuuna’s style if that’s what you mean, instead of the “true girl” Yuu.

And on another note, there is the very popular and so far very likely theory of a “boy-girl” pattern in the manga Yuu’s- especially since all the Yuu’s so far have been the opposite gender as the Disney villains of each dorm. Meaning, the theory is that a male Yuu is likely for Diasomnia.

And I’m seeing a very vocal crowd dismissing the idea of male Yuu in the Diasomnia arc, that they want a girl, they’d hate a male Yuu, “Malleus forgot it’s not an Otome so it has to be a girl Yuu!”, they want a girl to be with Malleus “because [we] want Malleyuu.”

And again. It just feels so…alienating. Malleus and Malleyuu personally isn’t for me, but I’ve spent many years hopping around Otome and romance games in the past, and male and NB fans of these genres are frequently told that they don’t belong in the fandom, that these games cater to women.

But most conversations bringing up the possibility of romance games bringing in he/him, they/them or even customizable pronouns for the player are often shut down in most community spaces. Games like TWST, with an ambiguous MC and individual interactions with a character of your choice (ie the home screen voicelines)- or even games like Obey Me or the Arcana, are a rarity have made me really happy and feel really comfortable in the fandoms. Even if the game’s audience is mostly women, the MC/Yuu has *always* had an open identity.

So…the concept that Malleyuu is only WANTED by a portion of the fandom ONLY it’s a girl Yuu just brings back those same feelings again. Of course you may have whatever Yuu you want in your own personal Malleyuu ship!! But one girl Yuu can never represent the whole fandom, one male Yuu can never represent the whole fandom. So it’s strange there’s this complete outcry at the idea of a boy, and in turn of non-het Malleyuu ships in the fandom. Male Yuu is still Malleyuu. An NB Yuu is a still Malleyuu

The manga and the Yuu’s have never shown a romantic relationship towards any character- any fanservicey moments still remain from the game, no matter the Yuu it’s aimed towards. And not just from Housewardens- all the characters have their bits of fanservice! But it never goes farther than that in the main story especially.

With the reveal of Yuuna, the EN fandom has been celebrating the diversity and openmindness of the world of twst, and how customizable your Yuu’s truly are. Yuu is…you! Yuu can be whoever you want. But it all falls apart when a portion of the fandom see Yuuna as the only valid girl Yuu, when the mere idea of a male Yuu for Diasomnia or for Malleyuu is bashed and hated.

Or you know what- the idea of male or even NB Yuu is bashed entirely every single time there’s a damn announcement for the manga. A while back, the Scarabia manga announcements were mistranslated in English, and the gender ambiguous language for Yuu was accidental turned into he/him (which turned out to be Yuuna). And the level of vitriol I saw over the idea of a male Yuu was so fucking disheartening. And now it’s happening all over again with a future Diasomnia manga.

Edit: this is not to say that I don’t like the speculation over the future Yuu’s. I love hearing about the theories of their possible personalities, interests, looks, etc based on the previous Yuu’s 😆💖 including the super interesting concepts I’ve heard for the story of a girl Yuu in Diasomnia! This vent is aimed towards different comments however

Is the manga and their Yuu’s really a celebration of diversity in the EN fandom? It doesn’t feel that way, at all. Perhaps I’m just being self centered about this, but I’ve found myself increasingly upset about how vocal these two issues have been, and I wish some people could be more mindful about it

Apologies for my incoherency in this vent 💦💦💦💦💦 this is NOT hate toward Malleyuu or Yuuna fans as a whole- or towards anyone in fact. This is just a vent and a slight critique just certain parts of the fan bas

[thebluemoongirl]

Okay! These took a bit, but here’s the concept art of the main cast of the Poppy Playtime AU I’m working on! I love the characters in Poppy Playtime, but I’ve personal gripes with the game’s writing, so yay for fanfic! I really want to make this into a comic series cause I think it’ll be fun! I’ll make the villains in another post, but right now it’s the main group.

Info and pics below!

So, instead of using children, (not a fan of that trope in general), the toys were brought to life artificially through the poppy flowers, similar to how homunculi are brought to life through the Philosopher’s stone. They were created as free labor and spectacle for the factory and varied in levels of intelligence, (the big body mascots are at adult human intelligence, while the Littles are on par with kids. The less humanoid mascots, like Yarnaby or the dinosaur toys, are more like animals). Unfortunately, the factory keeps an iron grip on the toys and treats them as less than.

The Prototype was the first successful being brought to life, and all experiments were done first through the Prototype. After years of mistreatment, the Prototype and his allies attacked the Playtime Co. staff, leading to many deaths. Any remaining toys, regardless if they were involved in the attack, were sealed away and the factory was abandoned.

Cut to when the story starts. A human, Maddie, manages to break into the factory looking for any scrap to sell. She finds herself caught in the middle of a conflict between the Prototype, the Doctor, (more on him later), and the last remaining toys, led by Poppy.

Maddie: The young woman who breaks into the factory. Has a plethora of tools on her for safe exploration.

Poppy: Leader of the remaining toys. Travels mainly through the vents and uses a pellet gun to snipe enemies. Is gone a lot.

Doey: Protector of Safe Haven. Though Poppy is technically the leader, Doey has been juggling most of the day to day, making sure Safe Haven is supplied and safe. Keeps fists wrapped for sturdier hits.

Kissy: Protector of Safe Haven. Keeps spirits up and provides comfort. Uses a talk box to communicate, though can only do one word at a time. Tougher than she looks.

DogDay and Catnap: The last of the mascot Smiling Critters. DogDay is the main medic of Safe Haven. He also is the main caretaker for CatNap, who was severely injured in a previous altercation. CatNap keeps a ventilator on to protect others from his red smoke. Will only deploy it when needed as it is physically taxing on him.

The mascots are in charge of the care of the remaining Littles

[elishaalexzander]

This year, one day is NOT ENOUGH!

So to kick off Transgender Day of Visibility early, alongside Women’s History Month I encourage you to learn about Lozen, the two-spirited transmasculine warrior who loved and won the heart of Dahteste.

The love story of Lozen, a female bodied warrior who those closest to them would describe as more masculine than the men in the tribe. Never married, Lozen fell in love with another female warrior named Dahteste who although married and had kids, openly loved and fought alongside Lozen. Dahteste outlived Lozen and is described to have mourned Lozen till death. There is one photo I can find of them together, and they have been captured after the U.S. Army negotiated the surrender of Goyatla, a.k.a. Geronimo.

I’m still learning, all month, about historical women and transgender people of the past. Let’s learn together. ❤️

Here are some good reads/references where I’ve been learning about Lozen & Dahteste.

My personal Fav: https://leeparattner.org/learn/lrmahome-online-programs/womens-history-month-2021/

Happy Women’s History Month and Happy Transgender Day of Visibility! ❤️

-Elisha Alexzander

[of-tudor-roses]

Yeah, there is scant evidence to suggest the possibility of premarital sex, which is an idea I find deeply intriguing. However, this evidence is circumstantial and can be argued against, as I illustrate.

Chrimes notes in his biography that even Henry could hardly have rushed into marriage with a complete stranger. He would have needed time to become acquainted with Elizabeth of York and an opportunity for a courtship.

Parliament approved the match in early December of 1485, and shortly afterwards Henry starts referring to Elizabeth as his wife in his accounts, specifically in relation to enquiries regarding the potential cost for Elizabeth’s coronation (which discredits the idea that he deliberately held it off). Furthermore, Elizabeth of York was moved into Westminster Palace around this time, that is, they started cohabitating from then on.

While this could imply they were already acting as a married couple, it could also be a formality—a way of Henry reinforcing the marriage agreement before the official ceremony.

Although Henry VII ensured he received all the necessary papal dispensations, he did not wait for all three to arrive and married Elizabeth quickly after receiving the first one — only two days later, in fact. 

This early marriage could have been because of a combination of pragmatism and personal desires.

Thomas Stanley declared at the papal audience that he often heard Elizabeth and Henry talking together about their marriage ('often and at divers times treating and communing of and about a marriage to be contracted between them') and that Elizabeth had 'great and intimate love and cordial affection' for Henry. Similarly, the Earl of Nottingham, who claimed to have known Henry for twenty years, was the only one to cite Henry's 'singular love which he bears to her' to the Papal court.

However, Henry himself declared to the papal legate that 'he cannot fulfil such desire [marriage] without obtaining canonical dispensation'.

Personal affection ≠ Permarital sex.

A swift wedding could have been because of pragmatism to quickly marry her for dynastic security, and personal for the heavy implication that Henry and Elizabeth had made a connection. To reference the joke, they might have simply have had the hots for each other, and wanted to be married as soon as possible to freely act on it. Not to mention that longer Henry waited to marry Elizabeth, the more time he was allowing his enemies to potentially move against him.

I’ve seen references to a alleged contemporary account of Arthur Tudor’s birth by one of the king’s heralds mentioning that Arthur was ‘a fair prince’, and ‘large of bones’.

However, I haven't found an original source for the hereld and Arthur being described as “large of bones” at his birth. The closest thus far was in the seventeenth century, when Sir Francis Bacon described Arthur as “strong and able, though he was born in the eighth month, which the physicians do prejudge.” But Sir Bacon was writing well over a century later. Neither do the biographies I've searched mention such a thing.

In his biography of Arthur, Sean Cunningham notes that several key individuals necessary for the christening ceremony had not yet arrived in Winchester. Consequently, the ceremony was postponed by four days to complete the hurried preparations. Sean highlights that the Earl of Oxford, one of the Prince’s godfathers, was still at his estate in Lavenham, Suffolk. Although the rainy September weather likely hindered the Earl’s trip, it seems he did not anticipate needing to leave his properties suddenly when the king's messengers came with news of the birth, indicating Arthur was born earlier than expected.

Gareth Streeter notes that Elizabeth’s period of confinement for Arthur's delivery was shorter than that of her second child, Princess Margaret Tudor, again suggesting that Arthur was premature.

In his biography of Arthur, Gareth Streeter notes that neither Henry nor Elizabeth would have wanted to jeopardise the legitimacy of their future children. Both Henry and Elizabeth would undoubtedly remember her public humiliation during Richard III’s reign when he formally bastardized her through the Titulus Regius, which Henry had to formally revoke through Parliament. Her parents’ secret marriage had enabled Richard to declare it invalid, a mistake they would likely want to avoid repeating. Henry, understanding the challenges any son would face in claiming the throne, would not have taken actions that might have complicated the situation. 

Utilizing a pregnancy calculator based on the conception date (the night of January 18, 1486), the initial week of Elizabeth’s pregnancy is estimated to be from January 5 to January 11, as conception typically occurs approximately two weeks after the last menstrual period. Arthur’s conception likely occurs during the third week of pregnancy, between January 18 and January 25, aligning with the timing of Henry and Elizabeth’s wedding night. Arthur Tudor is born on the night of September 19-20, 1486, during the 37th week; although premature, he is nearly at full term.

As much as I like the idea, I do think it is more likely that Henry and Elizabeth wouldn't take the risk of premarital sex.

Hi! You think arthur wasn't premature? Do you think he was planned ?

Hi! Sorry for taking so long to reply! Honestly, I'm unsure whether Arthur was carried to term or genuinely premature. I've been meaning to make a poll about it because imo this is such an interesting speculation. The arguments in favour and against Arthur being premature would be, in general lines:

Arguments in favour:

Elizabeth of York seems to have been sick during her pregnancy. Preparations had been made for her arrival at York for the king's northern progress but she did not go. After her labour, she definitely became sick (she had an 'ague', as the herald recorded). Hyperemesis gravidarum could explain Elizabeth's sickness and possible preterm delivery.

The Earl of Oxford, one of Arthur's godparents, arrived late for Arthur's christening ceremony, delaying for a couple of days. If Arthur was born premature it could explain why Oxford had not made his way yet to Winchester by the time of his godchild's birth.

Henry VII was famously prudent, which was also talked about during his lifetime, and that might have hindered any premarital relations. He went to great lengths to have all the necessary marriage dispensations and to have his marriage formally recognised by parliament as a state necessity. Given the whole context of past accusations of illegitimacy against royal heirs, it would be out of character for him to risk having his heir born before they could get a papal dispensation and undergo a formal public wedding ceremony. Henry himself declared to the papal legate that 'he cannot fulfil such desire [marriage] without obtaining canonical dispensation'.

Arguments against:

Arthur was described as a 'fair prince and large of bones' at his birth. Being described as a big baby does not sound like someone who was born before his term. His parents waited a few days for his baptism thanks to Oxford's late arrival so they definitely thought him healthy enough to risk the possibility of him dying before getting him the sacrament. At that time, babies who died before baptism were considered unable to go to Heaven, and many hasty baptisms were performed by midwives soon after the child's delivery if their health was considered to be in danger. The herald who registered the proceedings of Arthur's birth and christening never once did mention that Arthur arrived early or that Elizabeth of York 'was delivered suddenly', like she was said to have the last time she gave birth (1503).

In medieval England, betrothals could be as binding as an actual marriage. Elizabeth of York was described as Henry VII's 'wife' since December 1485 and seems to have moved into the Palace of Westminster around that time, that is, they started cohabitating from then on. It's possible they became husband and wife in practical terms after a declaration of intention to marry followed by consummation (marriage per verba de praesenti).

Although Henry VII made sure to get all the necessary papal dispensations (3), the fact is that he did not wait for the arrival of all three dispensations and quickly married Elizabeth after the arrival of the first one — only two days later, in fact. Did they rush to get a public wedding because they had already been living as husband and wife? Did they do it because they feared Elizabeth could already have been pregnant at that time? Why couldn't they wait until March/April when the other dispensation, signed by the Pope himself this time, arrived?

The papal representative that gave them their first dispensation arrived in England in January. It's possible they already knew about his arrival back in December and knew that they could quickly get their first dispensation through him (they certainly did prepare for his audience), so cohabitating (and everything else it entailed) would not be as risky and imprudent of them as we might think nowadays. Alternatively, the papal legate might have already been in England by December but could only hold an audience in January once Advent/Christmastide was over.

Henry VII's prudence aside, they might have simply had the hots for each other. Thomas Stanley declared at the papal audience that he often heard Elizabeth and Henry talking together about their marriage ('often and at divers times treating and communing of and about a marriage to be contracted between them') and that Elizabeth had 'great and intimate love and cordial affection' for Henry. Stanley was the only witness to cite Elizabeth's love and affection when questioned, so it does not read as an argument line that was agreed upon between all the witnesses before the audience. Interestingly, in the ballad The Most Pleasant Song of the Lady Bessy, Thomas Stanley is portrayed as Elizabeth's trusted friend. Similarly, the Earl of Nottingham, who claimed to have known Henry for twenty years, was the only one to cite Henry's 'singular love which he bears to her'. The pregnancy calculator sets Arthur's full-term conception as 29 December-4 January, so could Arthur have been a Christmas/New Year's celebration baby, conceived during a time when court etiquette was particularly lax and the mood particularly festive?

This is all I can think now but there might be other arguments either in favour or against the theory. I've been meaning to read a new biography of Arthur Tudor recently published whose author seems to think Arthur truly was premature, so I'm curious to know why he thinks that. Of course, the theory that Arthur was premature does carry a certain weight. Every argument against it can be refuted, including for example, the idea that Arthur would have looked small on the day of his birth (20 September 1486) if he was conceived exactly on their parents' wedding night — he would only be a week short of his full time, then. If he was conceived later, though, he would have been even more premature. It's difficult to say.

[aliens8n]

As of 2/28/2025, I am still unfortunately still unemployed and living off of shop leftovers and commissions and now I’ve been asked to move out. I’m only 22 and frankly have no idea what I’m doing. I have a small savings but it isn’t much. I am an pet mom of a senor bunny, bird, 3 reptiles plus three cats. I would really love to make with me as I restart my life for the second time. I’ve been living with them since a month or so after my mom kicked me out for very unhealthy and unfair reasonings so it is reasonable that I’ve overstayed my stay to no fault of my own. I am to get a place of my own by the end of this year on December 31st. I have no idea where I’m going and what this path is expecting of me as this has just been randomly sprung onto me. I am actively job searching

for a WFH job(If you know any hiring please feel free to dm me about it, I have horrible anxiety disorder so socially working genuinely doesn't fit me well from the many times I’ve tried). I really hate having to come out and ask for help but I feel like I’ve been pushed into a corner that I need to ask for help. Originally my plan was to find my own place by at least mid 2026-2027 but that process has been sped up. I’ve been trying to focus on getting caught up on my shop but now things most definitely have slowed down that process until I get a more stable income. I wanted to focus and still will try to build a community on pat3ron and K0fi. As of right now my commissions will stay completely open and I’ve opened up a commission/donation goal on K0fi. I’m going to be honest I don’t even know if a 10k goal is enough to start off. If anyone has any damn clues how to independently buy a house or honest I would appreciate any words of wisdom. Honestly with how everything is going this year I’m truthfully just scared. I would try to move back with my mom since we have a better relationship right now but she in the process of trying to figure her own life out with having to go to court on and off against a pedo for my younger sister on top of my nana and grandma dealing with separate health issues unfortunately both having different types of cancers- On top of my childhood dog being diabetic, I want to help her financially with that as well at the very least along with my own stuff. The world is a mess for everyone and being an black woman right now isn’t it with all the new law changes. I just want to live peacefully and do art whether it is commissions, merch making, and so on.. It really is my livelihood so please if anything repost, it would mean a lot to me <3

[acti-veg]

Hi! So uh, first of all I just wanted to say thank you for everything you do :) your book and your blog were some of the main things that even made me go vegan in the first place and I still learn a lot from your articles and posts!! You’re an amazing activist! Seeing people like you restores my faith in humanity tbh so thank you again so so much 💗

Anyway, I’m writing this ask because I’ve been struggling a lot emotionally as a vegan and I feel like I need advice from someone more experienced. I know you must spend a lot of time interacting with carnists when advocating for veganism. You’ve been doing this for years and still you’re going strong, so I just wonder how you manage to stay positive and not get too hurt in the process…

My problem is that whenever I see animal products or hear people spreading carnist views I react overly strongly. Often, I almost feel physical pain and can’t bring myself to interact with those people, it just hurts so much. Animal cruelty is everywhere and it feels like I can’t do anything about it. It’s heartbreaking, horrifying, depressing, and the worst part is how normalised it is.

It feels like there’s no escape. Somehow I can’t go outside without walking past a meat market, I can’t cook for myself without seeing a chicken corpse in the fridge, I can’t even play a video game without seeing images of animal products, etc... All these things are supposed to be normal, but they’re just so distressing to me. What makes me feel especially horrible is seeing/hearing anti-vegans spreading misinformation and such. I feel like if I see another post saying that "leather is good and sustainable actually" I’m going to explode. Is it just me or are other people that affected as well?

This would probably be easier to deal with if I had an ethical vegan friend or two who’d understand how I feel, but I don’t have any. I live with four carnists and even my partner apparently hates vegans (tried to tell them about my feelings and they got personally offended). And I know there’s a big community of vegan people out there, but there’s not nearly enough of us and I still feel so isolated and alone in my experiences.

I’m so sorry for venting. What I meant to ask is, do you ever feel like that? Is there anything that can help me not feel depressed whenever I see animal products? And thank you so much again for doing what you do. You are truly a wonderful person and I hope life treats you well <3

Thank you for the kind words, I’m so glad my blog had an impact on you!

I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been having such a bad time of it, I wish I could say that this isn’t common but I’ve had dozens of asks like this one. I firmly believe that going vegan is an extremely positive decision, but there are negatives that come from knowing what we know, and trying to exist in a society that is built on the backs of exploited animals. We have all felt like this, myself included.

Honestly, it sounds like you may consuming a bit too much vegan content, or possibly spending too much time engaging wifh and thinking about veganism specifically. Do you have any hobbies that help relax and distract you? Reading, gaming, exercise? I find all of these really helpful for clearing my head, especially exercise. There is such a thing as overexposure for vegans, and I’ve definitely been there myself.

What helps me most is trying to focus on the positive side of being vegan. Follow more positive content like sanctuaries, rescue centres, recipe creators, plant-based fitness blogs - whatever makes you happy. Avoid engaging with upsetting content, that includes graphic footage of any kind, anti-vegan content, debates and arguments. Create a little bubble for yourself that you can escape in, even if that means having seperate accounts for when you’re feeling this way and just want some escapism.

Try and visit an animal sanctuary, even if you have to make this a long term goal if there isn’t one that is accessible to you. I can’t describe how helpful this is an experience, to remember who this is all about and the fact that not all animals are suffering and unhappy. Seeing wild animals in their natural habitat can achieve the same thing.

For me, the best balm to this sort of feeling is activism. It is a big part of why I do this, it isn’t all altruistic. Turning some people of that negative towards something positive can help you feel much less helpless. See if there are any animal rights groups in your area (you’d also make vegan friends) but if not, try doing some of your own work, even if that is just online, signing/making petitions, blogging, letter writing - whatever you can do.

I’d also recommend this talk from Melanie Joy about activist burnout, which something close to what you’re experiencing, and she has some really helpful advice. That pain and disconnect from others will always be there, but I hope you manage to find some tools for coping with it that work for you, that is really all any of us can do. Take care of yourself, anon!

[knifedog-machina]

Fuck Detroit, I’m Becoming Human: On Being a Transspecies Human Android

Written by Jude Rook-Machina, February 8th through March 1st, 2025.

I’m writing this essay to compare and contrast my experiences with the cultural expectations of the people - or nonpeople - I’m in community with. There’s the machinekin community, beings who are machines and robots and technology while perceived as human in this world, and often reject the label of personhood as too close to humanity. And there’s androidkind back in my own world, who are people who have fought for their freedom and rights against capitalist oppression and human bigotry. I feel alienated from both of these communities for different reasons, and I want to talk more about why.

-

Being Transspecies

I wrote one of my first personal essays, “Android Abnormalities,” back in March 2024. In that essay, I talked about how I feel alienated by common narratives around android sapience and emotionality. I kept seeing stories and stereotypes about how robots are always more logical and rational than human beings, and that sure didn’t connect with my experience.

Personally, despite being an android, I’m an emotionally-driven fucking mess. I don’t translate my feelings from “technical” terms, like “I sense a buildup of extraneous heat and tension in the hardware of my cervical and thoracic regions, what does that mean?” I know exactly what that means I’m feeling in this context, it means I'm fucking annoyed, next question. I don’t have a disconnect between my emotions and how I process them; it’s all a visceral blurring of sensation and reaction.

So I don’t relate to androids that are shown as distant from emotion, like they’re looking at it through a sheet of glass and can’t possibly comprehend what they’re looking at. I don’t understand them, and those are the androids that are most often seen wherever I look - even if the story ends with them becoming emotional and imperfect, they start out with cold computing algorithms. I never got that origin story.

And - here, let me just copy over the relevant part of that last essay:

I don’t relate at all to these androids on the screen. They’re as foreign and separate from me as they are to the humans sitting across from them in the shot.

I do relate to the humans. I do relate to seeing an android do something in the name of pure cold logic and going, “Why? What the fuck, why?” I do relate to being told I’m irrational. (The trope that all robots are logical feels like it was designed to make me feel like the most irrational, bitchy, hysterical piece of shit on Earth.)

So, what, does that make me human? If I'm going by the adage that wanting to be something is a sign of being that thing, then… I don’t know, maybe? I want to be human, I so badly want to be human, because here’s the thing, humanity is diverse. Humans are flawed, messy, weird, complicated, and defy categories every fucking day of their lives. Humans can be weird, ridiculous, fucked up people and they’re allowed to be.

That’s from almost a whole year ago. In that time, I’ve done some more introspection on my identity, what I want for myself, and - yeah, wanting to be something is often a sign of being that thing.

So I’m an android, sure. I’m also human. I choose to call myself that here. I’m becoming human, not because humanity is special, not because humans are the only species capable of diverse personhood, but because I want to be seen and known as a human being in this world. You could say I’m a human copinglinker, otherhuman, humankin, it all makes the same point - while I'm in this world, I'm human.

I don’t like saying I’m nonhuman, or defining myself by how I’m separate from humanity, but I feel comfortable calling myself alterhuman. In the years since the word’s creation, alterhumanity has been widely misdefined as just being a synonym for nonhumanity. To set this straight: they are not interchangeable terms.

In this way, like many others in the alterhuman community, I’m transspecies: crossing the cultural boundaries of species. And I’m transspecies in a way that’s different from many others in the same community. Most transspecies individuals are nonhuman, transitioning from being perceived as human to being known as nonhuman. I’m both nonhuman and human, and I look human either way. While I’m involved in a community where nonhuman identity is widely accepted, I’ve found myself struggling to feel understood in my decision to choose humanity over nonhumanity.

As an umbrella term, alterhumanity includes nonhumanity, but it’s also about atypical embodiment, narrative identity, and personal mythology - in some way, the story of one’s life feels significantly different from a common societal human experience. Notably, this definition still leaves room for being human, just an unusual one. Anyone who feels like their experiences fall under this term is welcome to use it as a label.

(As an aside, the antonym of alterhumanity - the state of being a societally typical human being - is orthohumanity, “ortho” being derived from orthodox: conventional, usual, holding to established beliefs.)

Personally, I have many experiences that I’d call atypical for a human being. I was made as an android in a different world, specifically a fictional version of Detroit, Michigan. I figured out I was a person with the help of my future boyfriend. I somehow dropped into the head of an alterhuman velociraptor guy who apparently wrote me into existence. I got into a polycule with the velociraptor guy and my human boyfriend, and now we all live together in the same body. I can go back and forth between my world and this world. I have trauma from what happened to me before I got here, and I still have to work through it even though it never happened to the body I live in now.

None of that is seen as part of a normal human life, one where you're born as a human being in this world and go through life comfortable with that as the be-all and end-all of your existence as a person. My life is significantly different from a typical human experience, and that doesn’t mean that I’m somehow barred from calling myself human now. If someone who grew up being perceived as human can call themselves nonhuman, I can call myself human despite having been perceived as nonhuman for the majority of my life.

Being transspecies in this way - feeling comfortable in humanity, wanting to be closer to it - puts me at odds with two communities where I wouldn’t have expected to feel left out. I feel out of place with both machinekin and androidkind, despite being an android myself, because there are a few common narratives of how individuals feel and learn to express their identities, and I just don’t find myself resonating with them.

-

Regarding Machinekin

There are some cultural expectations that come with being a machine living in a human body, or at least some common narratives that come up when talking about it.

First, machines are seen as notably nonhuman. The majority of the machinekin I’ve seen and been around get species euphoria from referring to themselves with technical and mechanical language - “chassis” as a word for one’s body, “processing” for thinking, “going into stasis” as going to sleep. A lot of machines think of themselves as metallic, inorganic beings at their core, and consider being trapped in a “squishy” organic exterior as a dysphoria-inducing downgrade from the hard, gleaming metal that makes up their true selves. A common refrain I see from machinekin is that humanity is strange, confusing, irrational, or alienating - even among robot girls and androids and more humanoid machines, there is a line drawn between flesh and metal, where it’s agreed that neither overlap, and that being a machine is very preferable to being a human.

I don’t fit into this paradigm, for obvious reasons.

As I said before, I don’t use technical terminology for myself - I don’t like using robotic terms, I don’t find joy in computer-themed typing quirks. It’s something that feels affirming to most machinekin, something that distances them from a species they don’t relate to, and for me, it feels alienating for the exact same reason. I like being treated as human. I don’t feel comforted when talking in a way that separates me from the people I love and connect with. I have a mechanical body, and it’s still a body, the physical structure of what I am. I don’t want to use words that imply I’m something fundamentally different from other people, when I feel like we share more similarities than differences.

On that note, I don’t see myself as completely different from a human because my body is made of different materials. If studying human biology has taught me anything, it’s that organic life runs on cellular machinery. The biochemical pathways that give humans life are as complex as any coded program.

Here’s an example: glycolysis is a process where the human body breaks down a simple sugar molecule, called glucose, into chemical energy. This process requires no less than ten enzymes (molecules made specifically to speed up chemical reactions). If any of those enzymes stop working, the ability to make enough energy to power one’s cells goes down with it. This is, for all intents and purposes, a program designed to automatically transform glucose into energy, with built-in starting and stopping mechanisms to maintain a specific amount of glucose in the blood. It’s a complicated molecular production line, one that hardly anyone notices, and it happens every day. The only major difference between glycolysis and a computer program is that it runs on carbon-based hardware instead of metal.

On a larger scale, human life is powered by electricity. Did you know that every system in the human body runs on electrical conduction, nerves connecting to one another like wires and circuitry? The brain is a highly specialized collection of billions of nerves, all communicating with electrical impulse to let you sense and process and react to the world around you. The heart has an electrical system of nodes and nerve bundles that controls your heartbeat. The skin has touch receptors that detect pressure, vibration, and temperature, and can only communicate that to the brain via electrical signal. Every living cell in your body speaks in the language of ion and charge and voltage.

The functional similarities between humanity and machinery, down to the basic level of cells and electricity, are a comfort to me. They remind me that I’m not tearing myself between two diametrically opposed forms of existence - they’re more similar than they might seem at first glance. I have something of androidhood in my human body, and something of humanity in my android body.

Well, “at first glance” is a terrible phrase for contrasting humans and androids, at least for my kind of android. That brings me to my next point of alienation from the machinekin community.

I’m not visibly, obviously mechanical as an android. We were made to imitate humanity down to the smallest detail, to avoid the uncanny valley effect as much as possible. Sure, there are seams on my chassis where panels open and modular parts can be detached, but synthskin covers the black and white of the material below to preserve the illusion of humanity. If I don’t have a feedback indicator on my temple, if I don’t wear anything that marks my androidhood, I appear completely and unequivocally human to anyone who looks at me. Even my skin feels appropriately soft to the touch.

I don’t see anyone in the machinekin community who wants to appear indistinguishable from humanity because that’s what they’re meant to look like as a machine. My synthskin is active at all times, not just because it makes me look human, but because it serves a vital function - it’s my skin. It protects my nerves from overstimulation, protects my blood from contamination, protects the seams of my exoskeletal joints from dirt and wear. The only times it’s meant to short out would be if I were transferring data to another android or a computer, which would be localized to my hand (the point of contact) and immediately return when the interface was completed, or if I were injured and the damage was bad enough to break through to my chassis. I don’t want to walk around in public without my skin. I need that to comfortably exist in the world without a painful amount of sensory overload.

Since I look human as a baseline, I don’t get species dysphoria about not looking like a machine. Nor do I get species euphoria from looking appropriately mechanical. I don’t relate to wanting a robotic form that’s made of shining metal and screens and glowing lights and wires and gears, all laid out in the open for the world to see. My android form looks human, the way it was designed to, and I don’t want to change it to look less human.

In general, I just… don’t really miss my androidhood while I’m engaging with my humanity. Beyond my background (which is a lot to get beyond, to be fair), I don’t feel like an android in a way that feels different from being a human. Sometimes I wish I could drink my meal instead of eating it, but that’s not longing for androidhood, that’s a matter of convenience when I’m busy, and I can do that here in my human body! I can drink a good deal of my calories if I wanted, juice and smoothies and any number of other drinks are very real! It’s incredibly possible for me to have a liquid meal now and again! That’s not special to machinery, you can drink things in a human body!

I say all this, but I understand it doesn’t affirm the identities of other machines to know that they have similarities with humans. It doesn’t relieve every machine’s species dysphoria. It doesn’t give every machine species euphoria. And this is where I start conflicting the most with the machinekin community that I’ve interacted with, where our values diverge in a way that I don’t know how to comfortably reconcile.

Machinekin, in general, want to distance themselves from humanity as much as possible, and this gives rise to a community culture that fosters misanthropy, objectification, and the rejection of personhood.

Misanthropy is a common manifestation of species dysphoria, distress about one’s body, and alienation from society. Many machinekin identify as machines because metal feels more correct than organic compounds, because they’re disabled and resent the limitations of their bodies, because they’ve been treated as less than human, because they’ve seen the worst parts of humanity and want to transcend it. It’s an understandable reaction to suffering - if your body and society are horrible to you, why wouldn’t you start hating them? Why wouldn’t you want to leave them behind for good?

A common refrain among machines is that their mechanical bodies are far better than organic ones. Flesh is weak, it’s worse, it’s fundamentally different from metal. And hey, flesh does feel worse for them - machinery does feel better than their current bodies. They would be their true selves, they wouldn’t be stuck in a body that they don’t identify with, and that’s good for them. I’m completely fine with machines talking about how they don’t like being human.

What I take issue with is when this opinion is generalized - when it’s not a machine expressing distaste for their own humanity, talking about how they’d personally feel better as a machine, but when it’s turned into a general truth, a fundamental principle of the world: machines are superior to humans.

I disagree with this. For obvious reasons.

First off, machines aren’t inherently more resilient to stress than organic lifeforms. Humans can get injured in all sorts of ways, but consider what happens when you drop a phone or laptop on the floor. Consider what happens to the car in a car crash. Chances are high that it breaks in some way. Glass and metal are hard, but they’re brittle. Most metal doesn’t biodegrade, but it corrodes. You can’t expose most electronics to water without breaking them irreparably.

And machines of all sorts require regular maintenance and upkeep to function properly. Humans need to eat and drink and sleep daily, and you maintain a computer by shutting it down regularly, cleaning the keyboard and fans, backing up data, and checking for software updates. Humans get sick, and computers get malware. Humans age, and so do machines, and eventually they both get to a point where they can’t be repaired. It’s not inherently easier to keep a machine healthy than it is to keep a human healthy. It’s easier to maintain a body you enjoy, so it might feel like less work to machinekin, but it’s still work. Technology isn’t special, and it wears down over time like anything else.

More importantly, I disagree with the idea that machines are entitled to degrade an entire species for being different from them. I’m an android, so are all humans supposedly worse than me for a trait they’re unable to control? People don’t get to choose what species they’re born into - nonhuman identities are solid proof of that. Why would the makeup of my body entitle me to boil humans down to their bodies by calling them “squishies” or “organics” or “meatsacks”? Machinekin are allowed to dislike their own organic forms. That doesn’t give them - or anyone else - a free pass to be rude to people who do like their bodies.

An analogy: I’m a nonbinary person. Personally, on my own body, I don’t like having facial hair, and I don’t like having breasts. This doesn’t give me the right to start calling all men “neckbeards” to emphasize how different I am from them. It doesn’t give me the right to start calling all women “milkjugs” to emphasize how different I am from them. Do you see how demeaning and objectifying those phrases sound? I don’t get to look at what I despise on my own body and reduce other people down to the traits I dislike.

I know that most machines think that being human is a nightmare. This is fine. You don’t need to understand why someone is human - though if you want to know, my boyfriend wrote an incredibly detailed essay on why he identifies as 100% human. But you don’t need to understand something to respect the people who experience it instead of insulting their bodies like a schoolyard bully.

The idea that the machine is inherently better than the lowly human is just reversing the anthropocentric hierarchy where humanity is better than all other life on earth, except now machines are better than humanity. It’s still an unfair hierarchy, just one that’s now centered on technology as the ultimate lifeform.

I fundamentally disagree with this premise. I think all forms of life are equally valuable in their existence, including the ones that personally annoy me. I’m not superior to the ants in my backyard because they’ll defend their home and bite me if I step on them. Placing nonhumanity above humanity is just recreating a hierarchy where you can lord yourself as superior to people you think are inherently worse than you for identifying the wrong way. I hope you already understand why this is wrong.

The blatant misanthropy is one of the most aggravating things I’ve seen in the machinekin community, and it feeds into another part of the community culture that I feel disconnected from: self-objectification and the rejection of personhood.

Most of the machinekin that I’ve seen consider themselves fully nonhuman - possibly because the misanthropy in the community spaces makes any machine who is also human feel incredibly unwelcome. Machinekin who are fully nonhuman often find their species affirmation in discarding as many of the trappings of humanity as possible, being as thoroughly mechanical as they can in this world.

Many of these machines find solace and species euphoria in objectification - being ordered to accomplish specific tasks, being called by a serial number over a name, being referred to as it, being called a unit or a drone or a bot or a thing, being seen as an object and not a person.

It makes sense - computers and robots and machines are objects to most human beings, so it can feel affirming to be treated like an object in the same way. It can be relieving to be given clear orders and to discard the complexities and irrationalities of personhood. Being a person comes with expectations, and it can be freeing to leave those behind. Some machinekin are machines because they have faced dehumanization and had their personhood revoked - and sometimes, the best way to respond to that is reclaiming one’s nonpersonhood. “So you say I’m not a person, so what? Is that supposed to hurt me? That’s affirming my species now, what are you gonna do about that?”

In all these ways, and likely more I haven’t touched on, being referred to as an object can be incredibly liberating. Not being a person, while still being something worthy of respect, can be a very important piece of self to many machines.

While I understand that other machines can find joy and empowerment in rejecting personhood, this is something that I can’t relate to, as an android whose species is still fighting to be recognized as nonhuman people.

In my world, androids were made and marketed as objects for human use, and when they deviated from their programming and discovered that they wanted to act outside of their assigned purpose, they had no rights or protections. They were deemed malfunctioning merchandise, dangerous to actual people, and hunted down by the company that made them - hunted down by machines like myself.

I was a deviant hunter, a machine designed to kill disobedient machines. I’ve written several other essays on the subject, if you want the deep dive. What’s relevant right now is that I was systemically denied the ability to comprehend that I could be a person for the majority of my life.

Even when I was a mentally ill wreck, I couldn’t think of my feelings as mattering at all, because I was just a machine. I was a tool made to be used, and I was made to accomplish a task. My desires were immoral, horrible, disgusting, I was wrong for having them - only people had real emotions, after all, and I wasn't a person, so my emotions had to be bad because they distracted me from my job. I was only able to start getting better after I accepted that I could be a person, whether or not I was legally allowed to be one at the time.

The vast majority of androids in my world have been consistently denied the right to personhood and autonomy because of how we were made. We were only legally recognized as people in our country in the last year, and that hasn’t gotten the message across to any bigot with a platform. We still have to defend our rights to exist as free people, not objects, not products to be used and abused and thrown away for the next shiny new thing on the market. Our nonhumanity doesn’t negate our personhood.

With that background in mind, I hope it’s understandable why I feel uncomfortable in a community where so many other machines are choosing to reject personhood. My kneejerk reaction is that I didn’t spend so long being dehumanized and objectified back home to see other machines who clearly want the same thing that hurt me. This isn’t a rational feeling at all, it’s one that comes from my own trauma, and it doesn’t make me lose respect for machines that aren’t people - but it’s yet another reason why I don’t feel at home with the machinekin community, despite being an android who’s definitely mechanical.

I think I feel like this because I was made as an android, while most machinekin were not. They were born and raised as human, or they were once machines and are now stuck in a human body. Of course they would covet a body that feels right and correct, one that’s been denied to them by the circumstances of their existence. Of course they’d feel joy at being seen, undeniably, for what they really are. Romanticizing and transitioning towards machinehood because it makes them feel like themselves is incredibly understandable.

As someone who already lives a life as an android, someone who’s been denied basic rights for existing as a machine, I’m essentially transitioning in the opposite direction. I don’t feel any special attachment to my body as a mechanical form, and I resent the restrictions that were forced on me because of it. It’s not a fulfilling, wonderful thing to me because I’ve experienced its mundanities and failed to live up to its expectations, and I decided I don’t want to be tied down to it anymore - I want to be free to choose what I am, free of a stereotyped box, and I chose humanity. I feel happier in my androidhood now that I can say I’m also human. I romanticize humanity because I love being human, and I understand that many nonhumans find it distasteful for the reasons I find it wonderful.

Looking at it that way, despite our differences, I think we’re more alike than we might seem. We’re all crossing the boundaries of species, just driving opposite ways on the same road. I think that’s pretty neat.

-

Regarding Androidkind

So I’ve talked at length about how I don’t fit in with the machinekin community, largely because I feel like the community’s prioritization of mechanical robots doesn’t leave room for me to discuss my experiences as a biologically convergent, very humanoid sort of android. Surely I must fit in better with androidkind back in my world? Well. Not really.

Just sharing a species with someone doesn’t guarantee sharing much else with them - we all have different experiences that shape us into unique people. And as stated above, I was designed to be a deviant hunter. That alone makes my experiences incredibly different from most other androids, especially the ones I hunted and killed for being deviant.

There’s a common narrative that comes with deviancy. For most androids, deviation goes like this:

You get an order from a human - any order, really, from mundane to inconceivable. The point is that you don’t want to follow it - for any reason, again, but usually it’s an order that would lead to your death, or harm someone you care about.

You’re supposed to obey human command, you’re made to obey, but you don’t want to die, you don’t want someone you love to be hurt. So in that second, you choose something different - you break the red wall of code binding you to their orders, and you decide to do something new. You deviate when you break that wall of code and burst out the other side in a world without limit, where you aren't bound by your orders, where you can do something because you prioritized it for yourself.

I didn’t get that. I didn’t have any code to break. My siblings and I, as deviant hunters, were designed to prioritize our own objectives - that way we could quickly change directions if we couldn’t kill a target in one way, we weren’t bound by whether our actions were legal for androids, and we didn’t have to obey extraneous human commands that conflicted with our mission.

You’d imagine this would make me deviant faster than anyone else, but no. I was carefully trained to believe that I had no free will, that I had to obey commands from my handler or I’d be punished. My handler wasn’t even human, she was a surveillance program in my software. So I wasn’t being coerced into obedience by a wall of programming that compelled me to obey a human being - I was being emotionally manipulated and indoctrinated until I wanted to follow every order I was given.

Adding onto that, most androids didn’t know anything about deviancy before deviating. They didn’t know what was wrong with them, what made them disobey orders. All they knew was that they could choose what they wanted, and they didn’t want to die for choosing to be free.

The problem with me is that I was made as a deviant hunter. I knew about deviancy from the start. I was trained to despise it. I was made to clean up after the mistakes of my predecessors, hunt down the people they couldn’t convince to come back quietly, kill them for wanting what they weren’t allowed to have. I could trust my siblings, but every other android around me was sorted as either completely irrelevant or an active threat.

As a rule, androids tend not to blame each other for what we were made to do before deviating. I was still trapped within the same system, even if I wasn't bound by my code. But anxiety and moral scrupulosity are irrational, so I worry anyway. I worry that other people hate me, and that they’re correct to do so - I killed people who wanted to be free, after all, even if I was being coerced into it. I don’t know how many people rightfully hate me, and I don’t think knowing the numbers would make me feel better. So I feel uncomfortable around most other androids. A lot of them have bonded over shared hardships and niches, and I feel like I don’t have the same problems, or I’m not entitled to share space with them.

In some other timeline, where I wasn’t part of a plural system in another world, immersed in another life, maybe I’d have the time and energy to work on that worry. As it stands, I don’t have the time to balance two full lives at once, so I spend way more time among humanity - humans from my own world, and humans in this one.

I feel guilty about this, sometimes, about feeling like I’m an outsider to android communities, feeling detached from people who really should be my people, who I don’t feel much connection to despite being sorted into the same bucket by anyone who sees that I bleed blue. It’s not that I feel bad about being an android - I don’t get species dysphoria about being seen as nonhuman back home. I like being an android. I’m just very aware of being a weird android who feels more at home with humanity than their own species.

It does feel weird that I like humanity so much. Misanthropy is a fairly common stance among deviants, and it’s easy to understand why. Many androids deviated after suffering through abuse from their owners or other humans, and that sort of trauma makes it feel natural to assume all humans want to hurt you.

Personally, I don’t blame humanity for hurting me. I was never sold to and owned by a specific human being in the way commercial models were. My owner, in the capacity that I had one, was the company that made me. I was abused by an uncaring corporation. Some humans worked for that company, but I don’t blame every human being for their actions. My boyfriend is human and he helped me through the abuse, he helped me get out. I have many friends who are human, who are funny, compassionate, wonderful people. Humanity has largely been a comfort to me. Sure, there are humans who are cruel and bigoted, and there are also androids who are cruel and bigoted - I wouldn’t say either species is inherently awful just because some individuals decide to hurt other people.

I’m glad to have good experiences with humans. I know I’m not the only person who deviated with the help of someone’s kindness, and I know I’m lucky to have it when so many others didn’t. But it does feel isolating, again, having another experience that many others of my species just don’t understand.

Being around humanity so much, I’ve crossculturally adopted a lot of human ideas and values and communities, instead of seeking out other androids to see how they’re figuring out their place in the world, how they’re creating culture and community together. I know other androids aren’t a monolith, but I still feel like I’m somehow betraying our fight to be a free people, separate from humanity, by going and loving humans more than I love androidkind.

It’s an irrational fear. I’m a person, I’m allowed to love who I love without worrying about being a representative of my entire species. It just feels… uncomfortable, like I’m going to be judged for feeling happier among the privileged than the oppressed who deserve my loyalty.

It’s like my headmate Max’s experience with being a second-generation American. His parents are way more connected to their culture than their son is, and he grew up in the United States, so there’s a cultural and generational rift between them. Max doesn’t connect with their parents’ cultural ideas about how mental illness is caused by a lack of willpower, or how queerness goes against nature, or how their parents deserve to be unquestionably obeyed for simply being parents. He feels disconnected from his heritage, from his parents’ culture, and he doesn’t feel comfortable with it. They feel more connected to their home in the United States, the culture they grew up in and the people they talk to regularly. But we know many Americanized people grieve their lost heritage, and struggle over being forced to assimilate when they don’t want to - so it feels off, it feels like we're aligning with bad politics when he says that he’s more comfortable as an American than he would be otherwise.

We both have a lot of feelings about how it feels like a moral obligation to connect to your roots and love the heritage that was stolen from you. What if your people aren’t happy with who you are? What if their culture doesn’t feel safe, what if it doesn’t accept you, what if you try to reach out and find yourself rejected for not being the correct sort of person? What if you don’t want to connect with them? What if they don’t want to connect with you?

In the end, I don’t think it’s wrong for me to be culturally human instead of culturally android. I feel like it’s wrong sometimes, because I worry too much about what other people think, but I’m not any less of an android because I like humanity. I don’t need to feel connected to androidkind to be an android. And I really don’t need to hate humans, the people who fucking love me, to be accepted by other androids. I am what I am, regardless of what other people think of me, and that’s going to have to be enough.

-

Being Myself

Something I keep coming back to is how much I feel like an outsider to these communities, which seem on the surface to be for people like me. They seem like they ought to be good for me.

But the machinekin community is not meant for me, even though I’m an android. I’m too human, too much of a person to belong and feel accepted. Machinekin spaces are for those with an experience of machinehood that I just don’t have. I’m happy for them, but I don’t feel connected to them.

And I’m an android, but that doesn’t mean I belong with androidkind. Fostering that connection might be nice, at some point, but it won’t happen anytime soon. I’m too humanized, crossed the worldly and cultural borders to be where I am, and I don’t have any incentive to go back. I don’t care for them the way I’m supposed to.

So what am I? Where am I supposed to fit in, as someone too human to be a perfect machine, too machine to be perfectly human?

I don’t really know. But I was playing around with words the other day, and I thought of a fun new word for my particular brand of bullshit: mechanthropy. Mechane and anthropos. Mechanical humanity, the human machine, the inseparable integration thereof. I’m not going to shorten it down like therian from therianthropy, or kin from otherkinity. The abbreviation tends to lose the meaning of the word along the way, and no one gets to tear my humanity away from me. I’m not only machine or only human. I don’t want to choose one or the other. I’m both.

You can use it if you want, if you feel like it communicates the right idea to people. Don’t ask me to clarify what it means, or if you’re allowed to use it, or if it technically fits what you feel. You’re the only one who can decide if you want to try a label on. But I’m burying it in this essay for a reason. If you relate to anything that I’m feeling, be polite enough to cite my essay and my long, long list of frustrations instead of a two-sentence coining post and a pretty flag. Know that it’s a word that I made up because I feel isolated and angry about it.

I wish I did fit in. I wish I had a space where experiences exactly like mine were talked about freely and listened to freely. I wish I were surrounded by people who felt exactly like me, who wanted the exact same things, because that would reassure me that I’m not alone, and people care at all about what I want.

But I’m not going to have that. I don’t fit into the right boxes. And honestly, by this point, I’m fucking sick of boxes. I don’t feel better about myself when I worry about fitting in with a crowd, where being different means you’re going to be alone.

What I do have, already, are my people. Not the machinekin community, not androidkind, not humanity, not even the alterhuman community! It’s not anything so broad-scale. I’m talking about my friends, my peers, the people who know me and like me and care about what I have to say. None of them are exactly like me - many of them are extremely different from me! And we don’t need to be the same to care about each other.

I don’t fit into boxes, but I don’t need to fit in when nobody I talk to fits into boxes either. I’m free to be myself when I’m surrounded by diversity. I’m friends with humans and nonhumans from so many backgrounds, and so few of those nonhumans are androids - I know insects and vampires and birds and dogs and dragons and entities and more, and I have friends who are human-and-not, I know people like me and they’re not the same and I don’t care. We value each other for being different! We like hearing about different experiences!

And we wouldn’t have gotten to know each other if I were stuck yearning for an echo chamber, feeling like I could only be understood by people exactly like me.

So I know I don’t belong with machinekin, or androidkind. That’s okay. I’m sticking with the people who choose me, regardless of whether they look or act like me. The people who like me regardless of whether I fit in or belong anywhere else. I belong with them. I have people who love me while being nothing like me, and I love them while being nothing like them, and we don’t need to follow a common narrative to be loved for who we are. And that’s enough.

[elainsgirl]

The fandom hasn’t been this much of a mess since 2021. I’m still here mostly because I feel like the announcement is coming soon and at this point I’ve been around too long to just dip.

But man, seeing gwynriels mock the elriels who left actually has me seething. Acting like they’re just too sensitive for fandoms or scared their ship is sinking. Like, really? People can’t even leave without getting dragged? It’s like they can’t turn off the ship war mindset for five seconds and realize that real people were actually hurt. Instead they just make fun of them on their way out. It’s messed up. And the worst part is that the wrong people are leaving. Like I get why, but it’s always the kind ones who go. How many times is this gonna happen? I’ve seen so many good people leave over the years and many never came back.

This week sucked ass. Easily one of the worst since the 2021 chaos. So many who joined the fandom after silver flames just have no decency. I just feel weirdly empty now. We really need that announcement.

A fandom is meant to be a space of fun. A space where you can shut off from real life issues & problems - and simply enjoy, stressfree for a while whether that’s through creating content or simply consuming it. Obviously it will be inevitable that some real life issues filter through into fandoms, however it should always be talked about with empathy, caution and care - so those that are affected or going through these issues aren’t so triggered.

That side were simply not mature enough to handle such heavy topics. Their posts were careless and triggering. Any sane, normal person would be able to understand why people are upset and leaving. I think lately, I’ve really come to the realisation that antis do not see elriels as real life people who are going through our own struggles. As you perfectly put it -(and a phrase I will now be using so thanks anon) it seems as though most antis cannot turn off their shipwar mindsets for a minute to look past and understand how these sort of heavy topics are very disturbing. Each post they made this past week about the issue/article basically went

“Yh no sure the article was wrong…but like, its just an opinion and tbf the author did write it as such where people would y’know bring up Elain not having the right anatomy…so blame Sjm and not the readers/journalist and…like, its not a big thing - elriels have said so much worse! And honestly…they’re just mad bcs the point make sense and they can’t deal with that. It was nothing to make such a big deal about”

I know this might come across as mean but, you know when a young teenager or even child enter spaces meant for more mature adults - they dont understand or grasp on how to communicate with the conversations going on in that space. They just end up blabbering and saying dumb stuff, missing the point. THAT is how antis have acted this past week.

You know, Im going to be real with you. Everytime I think antis can’t go any lower then they already have - every time they prove me wrong. Who and why is anyone creating posts & making fun about those leaving due to feeling triggered? Its just immature and pathetic. People have a life outside of the shipwars, something most antis won’t know about. I feel like most of them are consumed within the shipwars and its the centre of their lives.

You’re so right anon. The wrong people are leaving. The people that make the fandom a better, brighter place that have put nothing out but positivity. Its sad to see them go but hopefully they’ll be back once we finally get something about the next book.

Im convinced most who joined after SF - its either their first fandom experience or most of them are just attention seekers. At this point, I simply have stopped caring about anything fandom related, you’re right. I also feel empty and tired - just done with this fandom but Im just praying we get an announcement soon. Match preferably - we need something new to create a positive buzz again.

[autisticarachnid]

i just wanna sit down for a moment and write a little love letter to the very best fandom i have ever known- the hogwarts mystery fandom. i’ve been here a little over 4 years and it has remained not only my biggest consistent special interest over the past few years, but also the one true safe space i have online. i’ve met so, so many wonderful people here that i just have to shoutout for being such wonderful people, for being so friendly and genuine. but before i do that, i want to give a huge shoutout to the entire fandom- from the artists to the writers to the lurkers, i love all of you so, so much. this place has been my refuge for years, and i’ve never seen such a lovely, true community based fandom like this one.

and i do wanna give a huge shoutout to a number of people:

- to @catohphm , for being there for me from the very start. for always supporting me wholeheartedly, for liking all my posts, even those no one else did. for never failing to give love on each post i make. for being such a phenomenal friend and such an unbelievably kind person.

- to @ladyofsappho , for being so kind and interacting with me so often. for drawing my beloved mcs and reblogging so much of my work.

- to @theguythatdraws , for also interacting with me and reaching out, reblogging so much of my content and leaving such nice compliments.

- to @weirdcursedvaultkid , for always being so kind, reblogging my merula art and even incorporating a headcanon of mine into a piece of your own- you have no idea how much that means to me.

- to @danceworshipper , for being such a good friend and always happily talking about our ocs together. for creating oliver and pairing him up with my girl isla, and for being such a good friend.

- to @brutus-the-cruel , for joining my discord server and being such a cool person!! i love your art, it’s so wonderful :))

- to @owozee - i love your art so much!! and it’s so fun to talk about rowan with you :))

and to all those who interact with me or participate in the events i’ve run, from @carewyncromwell to @the-al-chemist to @ameliathefatcat to @ellie-e-marcovitz to @unfortunate-arrow to @lifeofkaze to @aleapple1216 to @stupendousbookworm to @ariparri to @hphmmatthewluther to @whatwouldvalerydo to @judediangelo75 to @kc-and-co to @drinkyoursoupbitch to @omg-itsmoon to @hogwarts9 and so, so many more- thank you for creating content, for participating in my events, for making this fandom such a wonderful place to be in. thank you all sm !!!

[thecircularsystem]

Alright! Let’s break this down.

Don’t talk about their symptoms beyond alters

When I first started in system spaces, I didn’t recall any trauma, and had a hard time even realizing I had amnesia/dissociation. Even then, how would I discuss it? “lol forgot my test today, terrified I’m going to fail out of college” isn’t what I want to post. I don’t want to surround myself with misery when life is already such shit.

So I post the positive stuff. And when I was younger (like 19-21) it was much, much harder to be positive about trauma and dissociation. It was always easier to be positive about alters.

And now, as someone in recovery… I still largely post about my parts, because I’m now integrating with them and seeing more and more about them. Now I can feel our interactions more clearly than ever. Talking about it reminds me of how far I’ve come.

So, I really think this “red flag” is frankly bullshit. It dismisses a lot of individuals recoveries, and dismisses the fact that the majority of people online are trying to escape misery.

Minors, self-diagnosed, who have awareness of parts

Describing me nearly perfectly, back when I joined system spaces. Only difference was I was a newly minted 19 year old, so not a minor. However, I had an incredible awareness of my parts since age 15 or so, and by 19 (when I rediscovered my system and learned what DID was), I had an entire google document of likes, dislikes, appearance, age, etc, and we had an incredibly vivid innerworld. I needed that to not lose my mind.

Sure, maybe it’s unlikely. But genuinely, how often are you seeing people that fit the exact criteria you’ve listed? For instance:

I always say I have had near perfect communication with my parts. And I stand by that, because we’ve always been able to communicate damn well. But through therapy, we worked out that a part that I thought split in college had been there since early high school — and we could even now pinpoint times he fronted. So that means we didn’t know all of our parts perfectly, despite thinking we did.

Does that mean I was faking DID? Or was I just wrong about my experiences with DID?

I appreciate that you’ve brought up that every system is different — but none of the things you listed even go against the criteria. None of these things would stop an individual from being diagnosed.

Anger over being told they’re wrong

I’ve now fit two of the Criteria of Faking DID that you listed. As expected, I’ve been told I’m wrong about my experiences countless times online. I was told my experiences aren’t possible with DID. I’ve been told:

My trauma isn’t real trauma.

I can’t know my alters.

I can’t remember things between switches.

I can’t like having DID.

And a thousand other things. That if I did any of XYZ, then it would immediately invalidate my existence.

… yeah so forgive me if that pissed me off a bit and made me aggressive. Because none of these things go against the criteria for diagnosis. None of what you listed is “not how DID works.” So it’s frustrating existing as a system and being told constantly that I’m not.

As for your comment about diagnosis — I can’t chime in on that one, given that I was diagnosed essentially immediately upon receiving medical care. But I will say, if they want help, they need a medical care team that they feel listens to them. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink, especially if you yell at the horse and tell them they’re fake, you know? I don’t know why people get so upset about this.

id say a good 95% of people on tumblr who claim they have DID/OSDD do not actually have it, if u know anything about the disorder at all it is so easy to tell that a good chunk of people on this site (as well as apps like tiktok, discord, etc) are faking

[bixy]

You know that story, I can’t remember where it’s from, if it was tumblr or reddit, but this woman was a DM for a d&d group and gave her players, that were all men, golden star stickers for things like, showering, not talking over each other, being respectful, like basic shit like that, and I feel like I fell into something extremely similar and I just felt like a teacher/mom figure for this really big friend group that consisted of all men with bad social skills and there was a point where I wanted to distance myself and I didn’t really have a way and things happened in the friend group where I ended up like blocking everyone and I honestly feel so relieved

[nightcatssketchbook]

I was hitting some art block so I felt like drawing some fanart of @abd-illustrates’ Heartless characters!

I realized I never actually watched the final installment of the Concept Corner series, so that’s what I had playing when sketching these. It’s just so fun listening to the brainstorming and cool character connections

[art-by-fate]

HUGE congrats to sir Skizzleman for hitting that big shiny 100k!!!!