#old dog thoughts

[noblekenshi]

Not to invalidate the message or cast doubt upon the veracity of the statement against heteronormative programming and how it erases gender euphoria, the idea fills me with existential discomfort because it's not *just* that I want to feel that affirmation in my expression of masculinity but also I doubt how much of that desire is from my own consciousness and how much of it is that same programming telling me I want to comply.

I remember being mocked and ridiculed for wearing eyeliner when I was younger. I remember being called a transvestite for an entire school year because I wore makeup during a play production because I had read that was what serious actors did. I remember not being able to wear pink or purple or even *yellow* because they were "too girlie". I remember being called weird cause I painted my nails.

So how can I trust that a printed bowling shirt brings me "euphoria" and it's not just the sapped and strained remnants of that inner boy just being satisfied that no one is going to make fun of me for *this* outfit? And how many other people comply for the same reason?

this speaking as a cis person. Nothing brings me more joy seeing people find gender euphoria in becoming a mediocre representation of humanity. And I mean that so genuinely. Local boy finds joy and fulfillment wearing a cargo shorts and t-shirt combo. Local girl has transitioned to look like someone's disheveled aunt, has never been happier. Local person experiences gender euphoria rocking the world's worst bowl-cut. Without a scap of irony, this shit makes me see the wonder and whimsy in just, being a human. An average, person going through their day-to-day, is a wondrous thing? That's amazing. And heteronormativity has stripped these experiences of their joy. Like you're right, wearing a basic girlypop skirt should make my heart sing. Why not? Why are these expressions lesser because they're normal? All this to say. Shoutout to all the basic bitches out there. Yes that polo shirt does make you look like a divorced golfer dad. Yes, that too is kind of a slay, now that I think of it.

[ameba-from-space]

[asteroidtroglodyte]

5 years ago, I was in Rehab.

10 years ago, I was watching my Potential and Opportunities dissolve and evaporate in an ocean of cheap gin and expensive whiskey.

But 5 years ago, I was in Rehab.

One of the exercises they had us perform was to imagine ourselves happy, 5 years in the future.

Many of us in that room had forgotten how to imagine nice things happening to them. A few snorted (well, I snorted), finding the notion that we’d even still be around in 5 years grimly humorous.

For about half of us, it was the last stop on the way down.

But I indulged the therapist. I was there, after all, because I did not want to die. So, I imagined myself, 5 years hence.

Happy.

It came to me all at once; an artistic remix on Norman Rockwell’s Freedom From Want, reframed with myself placing food at the table.

Sunday Dinner At My Place, I answered, when it came my turn to share my fantasy. I was asked what food I imagined eating.

It’s not the meal itself, I said, it’s the implications framed around it. Sunday Dinner At My Place means that I have a Place. It means that I have Family that will actually speak to me and friends who actually want to see me. It means money enough not just to feed myself but others too. It means having the time to spare to take the time preparing the meal.

A lot of nodding heads all around me. A struck chord. Many people with no Place, in that place. Nowhere that would lament their leaving.

5 years hence, as I lay down to sleep in my Home, with my Wife and my Son, surrounded by my Art and my Flowers, I reflect.

It was a long road. It was hard. We lost people. So many people. There were long days and long nights and hospital stays. Angry arguments with ghosts. I changed, in ways I never hoped for, or expected. Good ways, finally, for once. Slowly, against the backdrop of a world in chaos, I found my mind.

Sometimes, My Wife wondered aloud, what she did to deserve me. After some stumbling with my feelings, I eventually settled on an answer.

I’m a Rescue.

She gave me a Home.

And, so, I gave her a Family.

It seemed fair

This Sunday, my folks, which whom I have not had a shouting match in years, will come over for dinner. We will cook and eat together. My Friend became My Wife, and she took a piece of me and with it she made Our Son. There will be many hugs, and no violence. Good Things Happened.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you don’t know what the future holds.

don’t give up yet, ok?

It could get good, even.

[te4k3ttle]

Is this loss

[noblekenshi]

Even outside the aspec space this is difficult. Like expressing love and devotion to someone platonically comes off as trying to coerce them into a romantic entanglement or "testing the waters" and leaving yourself an easy out. And the more "unhinged" the proclamation, the less believable the platonic element of the feelings seems to be.

"No, no, no, I meant I'm totally obsessed with everything that comes out of your head *as a friend*. Geeze. Relax."

But why should that platonic love be trivialized like that? Why *can't* we be so enamored and obsessed with our friends, joyously revelling in celebration of their very existence and how brightly it makes our world?

As a decidedly allosexual bi-cisguy, I feel like there's even *less* believability given to these proclamations because that kind of love-bombing gassing-up is used so frequently, especially by the worst actors in the gender, to attempt to coerce sexual relationships with people.

liking someone platonically is so embarrassing like. yeah i admire you. yeah i think about you all the time. yeah i look forward to every time i see you even if it's only for a minute. yeah it's all platonic and yeah i couldn't explain this because it'd sound romantic. fucking hell

[umulata]

Cheeky Daniel based on lovely @hummingbee-o0o 's Picking Lint off the Sofa, which I love dearly. But then again I love everything she writes so eh. Go read her fics if you feel like gifting yourself some unmatched witty writing and feels!!

Oh and a lil sketchy extra because I couldn't resist drawing Armand's outfit as well

[bungobble-my-balls]

OK correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the main 'yin/yang' parallel with Atsushi and Akutagawa is not something like 'this one is bad but secretly has a good side and this one is good but secretly has a bad side'.

I feel like it's more about 'who they are at their core vs who they choose to be'.

At his core Akutagawa is kind and at his core Atsushi is not. But despite this Atsushi tries every day to make the kinder choices and I love him so much for it. He has to work so hard to be good.

He wants to be a bitch SO bad I know he does but he tries his best to help people and be nice (sometimes he fails but that's OK <3)

Atsushi doesn't always WANT to help people, a lot of the time he's selfish and scared, but he does help people anyway. He keeps helping people over and over again. There's still some selfish motivation to it, and his initial motivation for helping people was because the headmaster told him that's all he was worth, but overall he does care about the people he helps and it weighs on him if he fails to save them. And of course, as the series goes on he starts helping people more because he can rather than because he feels like he needs to.

In Akutagawa's case, he's still capable of being kind but his environment led him into being someone who chooses to hurt people. But he's always been a protector at heart. In the start he was bad compared to Atsushi because he was choosing to hurt people and keep the cycle of abuse going. Just like how Atsushi developed in why he saved people, Akutagawa starts to get redeemed when he chooses to not just act on his rage. Not only does he start to spare people, but he speaks more kindly to them (apologising to Higuchi and telling Kyouka he's proud of her). It all culminates into the moment he chooses to help Atsushi and sacrifice himself for him, going back to his core value of being a protector. Even when he's finally revived, he keeps this role in his new position as Aya's Knight.

I kind of see the streaks of white in Akutagawa and the streaks of black in Atsushi not as their 'hidden sides' but as their fundamental selfs. That's who they are at their core, and their main colours (black for Akutagawa and white for Atsushi) are how they're presented to everyone else and how they try to have people see them as.

[originalartblog]

one dozen donutzai please

[noblekenshi]

I enjoy approaches to gender that are unique and personally flavored. Even among some "progressive" voices and dialog I've seen a very strict adherence to cishet-normative depictions and definitions of masculinity and femininity. An adherence not only to the gender-binary (even if they express it as a duality within their own identity) but to the archaic institutions that "masculinity is active/aggressive/action and femininity is passive/nurturing/subversion" and it's just... exhausting.

Expressing gender/sexuality as interpretations and poetic metaphors of abstracts seems far more accurate.

i love xenogenders because they reveal how arbitrary gender symbolism already is.

we can say ‘my gender is space, cool rocks, and curiosity.’ 👽

is that any more strange than saying, ‘femininity is empathy, flowers, and the color pink’? 🌸

gender is what we make of it, whether practical, picturesque, poetry or prose <3 💖

[vinyldiskk]

“Can you give me... A reason to live?”

“I can.”

screencap redraw

[yume-fanfare]

happy halloween! the cast from fist of idol: togenkyo have reunited again to bring us...... a horror movie?!

[noblekenshi]

As an old dog, it can be hard (note: that's not "too hard"). Change sometimes is. Dealing with new information, new cultures, new expressions that go against decades of programmed social learning can be difficult. Do it anyway. 1. If you refuse to acknowledge, challenge, and change the social programming that's been instilled in you since you were a child, you are signaling your complicity with *all* those problematic elements of society and culture that we point to. All the cis-hetero normalization. All the bi- pan- trans- ace- erasure. It's imprinted on you, like tattoos under your skin, and you're going to have to scrub to get them off. It's going to feel like it hurts, and maybe it might... it's hard to reconcile the people in your life that you love/loved are also complicit in this. It's hard to acknowledge and accept the stages in your life where *you* were complicit in this. Don't let those systems win. Don't look at our siblings and fellows and surrender them to hate. 2. Everyone deserves validation, acceptance, and love. As a standard. As a baseline. People who move away from your values, who move away from your visions, you can pull back the degree of that validation, acceptance, and love *you* tender to them... but everyone deserves to have their truth and their selfhood respected. Especially when it comes to the internal. No one knows someone like that person knows themselves. Listen to them. 3. Practice. Some of this is *not* going to come naturally. Our brains are networks of shortcuts and assumptions and logical jump-points designed to heighten our efficiency. The way our brains process information, especially language, is rife with these. If you don't work at rewriting those pathways, it's always going to feel like a struggle. You can say you "accept" someone, but if you don't go through the work to align yourself and challenge your previous misconceptions, what is your acceptance but "thoughts and prayers"?

4. Leave space for when you mess up. You will. You're going to hurt someone close to you. You're going to make a mistake and will do harm to someone you care about. Perhaps even someone you love. Leave space to be there for that harm. It's not easy, but admitting fault and failure never is.

it/its pronouns are not inherently dehumanizing, unless the user wants them to be. it/its pronouns aren't weird. it/its pronouns aren't too hard to use. people who only use it/its pronouns need to have this be respected no matter what your beliefs are. you don't get to single out people with "weird" pronouns and misgender us and use incorrect pronouns. accept someone who uses it/its as you support someone who uses they/them. there's nothing wrong with it/its pronouns. respect its users.

[theyamjam]

oobydoobydoober

[idyllcy]

"secret relationship ghost" "secret relationship price" SECRET RELATIONSHIP GAZ.

No one expects it from him. He's wonderful, yes, and lovely and sweet and the team is kind of surprised that he isn't dating someone or whatever, but Gaz just never talks about you because, well, no one really brings it up.

No one pays attention to his dog tags either. No one bothers. It's not like he has a whole-ass ring on it or anything. No way.

No one asks why he's always first to go when they're off from deployment or whatnot.

No one asks anything until Laswell is introducing a new one to the team to Price and they watch as Gaz pulls you to the side and scolds you up and down as you give him a look that has him shutting up.

"Friends?"

"Datin', maybe."

You make sure he falls out the helicopters so much less, and the two of you work really well, kicking at each other under the table in the mess hall and chatting during downtime, and Soap swears he sees you squeeze Gaz's arm at least once.

Fifty bucks you're friends (Soap) and another for dating (Ghost) and Price tosses in a five that the two of you are already married or whatnot since Gaz had "lost" his dog tags at one point. You youngsters are crazy. Maybe he just used 'em for something.

The answer doesn't come right away (no one thinks to ask Gaz or you) and eventually you just assume that people know you're married so you start visiting him at night (Ghost catches you once. You don't even blink at him) and then Price spots the two of you tucked together resting while camped out.

Ghost is the one to ask — the two of you camped out on a roof to snipe, a lower-stakes mission, and you think you hear him wrong when he does.

"So. You n Gaz?"

"What about us?"

"What are y'?"

You blink at Ghost like he's just asked you what color the sky is.

"Married, Ghost. Married." You spot the target below, bullet flying through their skull as you click to open comms.

"Yer WHAT?"

"Boys, hand over them fifties."

"Thought y'knew." Gaz raises a brow.

"So no one bothered reading my file?" You keep watching through the scope as Ghost pulls the trigger. "No questions on my last name, huh?"

"What is—"

"Garrick. Come on, boys. Get movin'"

"Yes, Captain."

You end up handing Kyle a ten because they didn't know.

[webdiggerxxx]

꧁★꧂

[dailysigma]

Today's Sigma: has a lightbulb moment 💡