#pressure to conform

[blatantescapism]

(you can also, if you so choose, be a sweaty horny pastel princess)

(or an asexual dyke)

The point here is that people have picked up some very weird and harmful ideas about sexual attraction and gender presentation,

because our oppressors have learned that they can wield control by using powerful labels like “toxic” and “predatory”.

Assholes have been trying to paint minorities as “predatory” since day fucking 1. This is Not New, but some of y’all younger generations don’t know your history and are repeating patterns we have seen before.

There is nothing inherently predatory or creepy or unnatural about experiencing sexual attraction. What matters is that you treat other people with basic dignity, and that you respect consent.

Thoughts in your head don’t hurt anyone. Feelings in your pants don’t hurt anyone. It’s your actions that matter.

It’s not inherently predatory or creepy or unnatural to express sexual attraction! This is an extremely common part of the human experience! Anything from flirting to fucking can be a safe and positive experience. You just have to gauge how appropriate and welcome your behavior will be beforehand. Make sure everyone is an adult who freely consents. When in doubt, you explicitly ask. If someone indicates that you should stop, you stop. Clear and honest communication is a key part of consent. This also holds true in nonsexual situations!

You with me so far? Okay.

It’s not inherently predatory or creepy or unnatural to express your gender. Everyone has a body, your body is your vehicle on this earth, you deserve to be as comfortable in your body as possible so that you can pilot it to Do Things. If a particular way of decorating your body makes you happy, or makes it easier for you to live your life, or just feels right, then it is good and healthy to do it.

Don’t decorate your body with hate speech, that’s an important rule. Hate speech causes actual harm. If your safety or the safety of others genuinely requires covering certain parts of your body, or wearing certain kinds of specialized gear, you should do so. If your safety or the safety of others genuinely requires temporarily removing or altering something that you normally wear, you should do so. A rule designed to address a genuine safety concern should have obvious practical reasoning behind it.

You have the right to make temporary or permanent changes to your body. If it’s a permanent change, it is good to make sure you are well-informed about options and outcomes, but others should trust that you know what is best for you and your body. After all, you’re the one who has to live in it. From hip replacement to tattoos to gender surgery to getting wisdom teeth out, it is normal and good if a person decides to improve their own quality of life by permanently altering their own body.

Are you still with me?

Within these guidelines, there are SO MANY ways you can express yourself! People can have all kinds of different clothing or body mods or makeup or assistive devices, and that’s really cool! It’s cool when different cultures develop different styles, it’s cool when individuals do completely independent self-expression, it’s cool when people just go for the minimal or practical and it’s cool when people get elaborate with it

but ultimately, the way a person chooses to decorate or alter their own body is their own personal business. And if they’re following reasonable guidelines for practical safety, it does not and cannot cause harm to anyone. It’s just their appearance. The body is the vehicle by which a person interacts with the world. It is a person’s *actions* and *choices* that matter.

YOU CANNOT JUDGE SOMEONE ELSE’S MORAL CHARACTER BASED ON THEIR APPEARANCE.

Our oppressors really, really want to pretend that you can. They invent elaborate justifications for how it totally counts this time, we swear, you can tell that *this* person is a Bad Person just by looking at them! It’s totally okay to label an entire group of people as Gross or Inferior or Predatory, just based on what they look like! Don’t judge people by their actions, judge them by the color of their skin, or how their nose is shaped, or if they choose to wear something that covers their hair!!

Don’t listen to what people tell you about their own genders, their own bodies, their own lived experiences… judge them by how much body hair they have, how thin they are, whether they “look” disabled. Tell them they don’t “count” if they don’t fit a certain narrow range of Acceptable Physical Appearances.

This is how our oppressors control us, by controlling what is Acceptable, by moving the goalposts whenever they like, by spinning a narrative about Us versus Them.

And there is an old, old tactic of saying that only certain forms of sexuality are Acceptable. Everything else is Predatory. You don’t have to ask the people involved if they’re all happy consenting participants… you can tell just by looking at them!!

If you treat other people with basic dignity, and respect consent, and check in with yourself and others to make sure you avoid causing harm, and try to learn and grow from accidents of miscommunication,

If your sexual expression falls within these guidelines, if your relationships fall within these guidelines,

you are NOT a predator.

Some of y’all are so afraid of predators, or of being labeled predatory, that you have been bamboozled into being afraid of even the *appearance* of possibly being *associated* with being predatory.

That’s how the oppressors get you, babes. You get caught in keeping up appearances, and they’re the ones telling you which appearances are Acceptable and which are Signs of the Predator.

If you genuinely want to be a sexless pastel princess holding hands in a field, if you’ve thought about it for yourself and you wholeheartedly choose that for yourself, good! Asexuality is a totally valid and healthy way to be. Pastel colors are pretty, and many people find joy in girly-girl flavors of gender expression.

But if you feel like you *have* to be a perfect pastel field princess because that’s the *only* option that isn’t tainted by evil scary associations, if you think that *looking* virginal and innocent will magically protect you from false accusations or oppression, if you are obsessed with indicating moral purity through appearance,

1.) you’re probably stifling yourself terribly

2.) you are just a step away from being manipulated into believing extremely harmful and incorrect things.

People who “look” innocent can do terrible things. (That’s actually a common tactic of a genuine predator.) People who “look” scary can do good deeds… or bad ones, or neutral ones, the point is that you cannot base your judgement on appearances!

THE ONLY ACCURATE WAY TO JUDGE SOMEONE’S MORAL CHARACTER IS TO EXAMINE THEIR ACTIONS AND CHOICES. And actually talk to them yourself, don’t just swallow what other people tell you!

Y’all we have to stop making eachother feel bad for having sexual attraction. Lesbians are allowed to be horny we don’t have to be sexless pastel princesses holding hands in a field or smth. Be horny, it’s frankly revolutionary to be a sweaty horny dyke.

[marisatomay]

I don’t believe that “iPhone face” is real per se but the sameification of faces across Hollywood in a way that wasn’t medically possible even just 25 years ago very much is

[athetos]

Imagine being severed and thinking you’re cishet then finding out your innie is a transgender and bisexual. This hasn’t happened to anyone on the show but think how beautiful it would be if it did.

[blatantescapism]

Reblogging with @chaoticbooklesbian ‘s tags, image transcription below the readmore:

[Image transcription: “#fat folks have to do gender above and beyond in order to be ‘correct’ #if i want to be feminine i must be hyperfeminine #or femininity is denied to me #if i want to be masculine i must be hypermasculine #or masculinity is denied to me #and i cannot falter in either ever #or it will be revoked #and revoking/denying either does not then grant me androgyny #it just means i am incorrectly feminine or masculine” End ID. /]

interesting how transmascs & transfems alike think losing weight is the answer to pass as our chosen gender.... almost as if fat people are never Truly afforded a passing gender regardless of trans status. as fat people we are never Truly seen as Men or Women. anyway fuck that notion & if u think u need to lose weight to pass that's the devil talking

[granulesofsand]

It’s getting obvious that some folks are only tolerating their own weirdness because they got locked outside the normalcy gate. We’re not reaching acceptance by trying to climb the fence back in.

[transmascutena]

we need to kill the idea that adolescence of utena is "more queer" than the show. i really like the movie, but it engages with the themes of queerness in a much more surface level and shallow way than the show does in my opinion. just because utena and anthy don't literally kiss on screen 5 times doesn't make their relationship or their story any less important or impactful. there is more to queerness than explicit romance, you just think all that matters is whether or not something has "representation" whatever that means. okay good bye.

[abirddogmoment]

Thinking about birds

[etruski]

That transformation video Imane posted made me feel so sad :(

I hope it’s just a temporary thing and she doesn’t actually feel pressured to present more feminine after all this relentless hate.

There’s also something to be said about how it looks slightly ai generated or there’s some weird filter on. People have also been spreading ai pictures of her looking more feminine to prove that she is actually “beautiful” after all and thus, now deserves basic human respect (according to them).

And before anyone says anything, you can see on her social media that she doesn’t present that way in a casual setting, I feel wary of calling it a “masculine” style but it definitely doesn’t involve dresses, long hair and makeup

[rebel-hunk-enjoyer]

🔥 Requesting an unpopular opinion about... Writing, please :D

Ahahahaha thank you!!!

I just actually wrote out a whole rb comment on a writeblr advice post and thought better of it, like I cannot tempt the fates after my Old Fan posting earlier by riffing on a post like this...

SO NOW I JUST GET TO SAY IT!

The advice was something about making characters sound realistic because no one just voices their trauma "like a robot" by stating it like fact and my reaction was, well, of course people voice their trauma by making statements of facts! ......in certain situations. In sarcastic ways they think will blanket the truth enough for them to be able to finally put it to words instead of holding inside. In mean ways they think defends their position and only reveals what they feel are Positive Traits and Not Trauma. In lots of different interesting ways that will still, ultimately, "read unrealistically" if you don't cushion it with the narrative -- or, perhaps, if it is being read in bad faith? :\

So, idk, I think my unpopular writing opinion is that advice is great but it isn't everything for all writers or characters or narratives or the stories we're looking to tell and I sometimes worry that advice given with a certain kind of authority or wording will nudge budding writers away from exploring interesting characters in interesting ways? That maybe the "Here's How To Write A Villain!" advice and the "What Character Flaws Actually Mean" advice are great and helpful, but how many of the writers tucked into those 30-50k rbs are taking this to heart in ways that distill creativity down to just playing within this set of rules?

And when that advice is shared on algorithmically categorized sites, how much are we allowing the consumerist nature inherent in certain online spaces to dictate which advice is being pushed to the top? Certain advice from popular sources will supersede other advice from less popular sources until all that's being seen and taken in and utilized is a particular brand of advice that won't serve everyone's story but absolutely could help mold stories into being the same shape and size and color as other popular ones.

To point a finer point on it, rather than spinning out on my anxieties about writing communities and the looming presence of capitalism in our lives, I think writing is a lot like cooking! You can follow a recipe and get a perfect dish. You can follow a recipe and get a fine dish that is not what you thought it would be. You can follow a recipe and come out with absolute slop because the recipe didn't account for your elevation, the tilt in your stove, the type of water you have access to.

I think it's possible to take the fundamentals you learn from following recipes, from them turning out anywhere from perfect to disastrous results, and cook. What you cook might not be quantifiable, you might not be able to translate it into a recipe for someone else to follow, and it may be an absolute mess every step of the way especially when compared to perfect step by step processes elsewhere ... but when the end result is exactly what you want? That's your meal. And I really, really hope everyone is eating well.

[in-tenebris-et-in-solitudine]

[shehatescoffee]

my emotional state has improved immensely since embracing my inner desire to be a cringe fangirl

[specific-dreamer]

i finished reading that was then this is now like four hours ago. all i have to say is representation and reading as a whole is so important. i use to wanna take acid because the trips sounded cool; wdym the street lights were melting ?? that’s meant to deter me? that sounds sick as fuck. but then M&M… man you guys i started crying long story short i don’t wanna try acid anymore and am actually scared out of my right mind

[chaoticreivingu]

So is nobody going to talk about how lesbian coded Rukia is?

Everytime she interacts with Kaien's wife during the flashback she's always either nervously stuttering(which is pretty uncommon for Rukia) or swooning over her, almost like Miyako was an awakening for her.

The way she looks at Miyako is also pretty different from the way she looked at other people, even during the flashback before the tragedy occured.

Then there's this monologue where she lovingly talks about how Miyako's her idol and how beautiful she is, only being able to gaze in the distance knowing that she's married.

Look how worried and forlorn she is when Miyako gets sent on the Hollow mission, maybe knowing this is the last time she'll ever see her alive.

The way Rukia looks at her in the episode is also the same way she looks at Orihime.

There are a lot of Very Gay™ moments between her and Orihime but it's especially apparent in the novels. The only reason she ever gave Ichigo his powers back is because seeing him depressed made Orihime sad and cry and even at her own wedding preparations she thinks more about Orihime than she does her future beard husband.

Despite proposing to him, she doesn't show much attraction to Renji in the novel or men at all in the anime/manga(she also acts in a more confrontational or dismissive way towards men than she does with women which is a queer coding trope) and even names her own child after Orihime herself.

[banyanas]

Okay there is no Way this is gonna fit in the fic wordcount limit (and a lot of it is background understanding to all my other fics too lmao) so who wants to talk about fiddly somewhat mundane toad-centric worldbuilding in regards to Imperial Amphibia -> Caste System Implementation time period??? And even if you don't want to I'm showing it to you anyway.

The 4 tower lords (Cardinal Lords used as an older title when I write) as participants and vassals to the Newtopian military is... pretty new. Especially because toad clans didn't really have a formal military in the first place (and still don't- toad army we see is an arm/branch of the overall Newtopian/specifically Leviathan-ruled Amphibian military). Previously, of course everyone paid fealty (and taxes but we will get to those) to the crown, expected to follow the laws of the united empire under the Leviathan dynasty, but toad clanheads and lords acting in a formal military position in direct vassalage to another army is... definitely new. As far as 'new' goes for a place with an implied-lengthy history as Amphibia does.

Nowadays becoming a Cardinal Lord means becoming an officer- if said lord wasn't already one in the first place. It's a more concrete requirement in the modern era, but before that, hey, remember what I said about taxes? It's relevant just stick with me a bit pls.

So, with the Me-Brand toadbuilding, toads were traditionally nomadic, and likely a more pastoralist society (tarantula cheese...). This did include very few permanent communities toad caravans cycled through, usually as a place of trade/commerce and cultural significance (specifically cairns and mass gravesites) for individual and allied clans. And from there, the majority of toads split into a bunch of much smaller semi-mobile camps that joined and split, in accordance to whatever understanding or trade agreement or alliance or rivalry their clan might have with other clans. These towns are still around despite how vastly different they are, and three of them are in the territory of a Tower- South Tower is the exception to this, since the southern toad population used to be so heavily intermixed with frogs they lived pretty equally spread inside the same township. Which oof, way to show how things change for the worst in a thousand years.

Pre-Andrias, taxes could be paid in both currency and bulk goods or productions- and they could make that work, because of the seemingly-infinite power source music box battery maintaining all their tech and infrastructure. Frequently, this was how toads paid their taxes- a bit harder to do pure currency payments, as well as y'know not rlly paying property taxes due to not privately owning much land.

(It was also, I want to note, supplemented by raiding rival or enemy clans, because they’re still a martial society- they aren’t peaceful nomads before Andrias fucked up everything, they’re violent and there’s inherent problems with gatekeeping someone from community aspects on the basis of whether or not they've killed something/own a weapon. Which we will get to the owning a weapon thing Also in a bit).

Buttttt after the box was stolen, there were a few policy changes. Taxes were required as coppers- ostensibly to bolster restructuring efforts and stabilize the economy now that the Calamity tech that was the fulcrum for their ENTIRE INFRASTRUCTURE was burglarized. Coppers which they don’t have much use for and thus don't have much circulating… yeah. But hey, specifically military service can be offered instead of coppers for taxes, at least for toads and some newts. Doesn't hurt that offering an out from taxes via military enlistment keeps toads and some newts from kicking up a very bloody, very messy fuss while the whole 'I invented speciesism and an oppressive caste system because I'm mad at my girlfriend and boyfriend' thing was being pushed through to law. Between breaking the law with all the severe risk of a nasty punishment/heavy fine that entails, or military service with some Perks of Power for an already highly combative culture? Yeah, no-brainer for why we barely see any non-military toads on screen. (This entire thing is a pretty damn slick move when it comes to enforcing ranks and systems. And admittedly less hamfisted than what we see in modern canon because frankly I think Andrias stopped caring about being careful with his enforcement of it once it became more self-sustaining)

The very messy, very bloody messes did happen, btw. After the last rebellion early into Andrias's reign (mostly made up of toads and frogs working together. Man this just makes it even more depressing to see the state of things in modern eras), only toads that were either in training, currently enlisted, or veterans were allowed to own and carry weapons. Which, beyond the practical problems of 'Amphibia is a dangerous place with lots of things that want to kill, eat, and/or poison you', when toad rites of passage and traditions, up to and including standards for being considered and allowed to act as a legal adult, rely on the use, ownership, or exchange of weaponry and blades... hm. Oh dear.

It's even worse for the frogs btw. Unless a frog somehow ended up actively serving a military term (which they are discouraged to), frogs were disallowed weapons at all. Because de-fanging and controlling who is allowed to be armed is kinda one of the first steps to suppressing and controlling groups of people, with one of the OTHER steps being financially suppressing and controlling (see the taxes thing, upward movement being nearly impossible for frogs and toads). Also contributes to casualties for frogs being way higher than they used to, since if they're a law-abiding citizen and get caught by a hungry predator, or bandits on the road, or any number of things they cant just drive off with pitchforks and slingshots, they're kinda screwed! It's messed up! And it's usually disregarded by newts and toads, because frogs are light on their feet, quite springy, they can just run, yeah?

Fun fact tho, this makes the Plantar basement stash SUPER illegal for some spicy revolutionary reasons. Hell yes good for them.

[batteriesandflashlights]

Thinking about Clerks 2 prison scene. Inconsolable.

"It's weird, man. I thought you were the only guy in the world who got me and had my back. The only person who'd take a bullet for me 'cause I assumed you felt about me the same way I feel about you. And all of the sudden, one day, you're like 'I'm moving, bye!' ... do you know what that's been like for me? I'm looking at a future that just sucks because you're not gonna be in it anymore. And you're not even throwing me over for a life that means something to you, it's just a stupid hollow existence you think you should embrace because you're getting old or something, because it's the kind of life everyone else goes after. You're a fucking drone, dude." GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!!

[blluespirit]

the level of BRAINROT that shipping has caused in fandom circles is unfathomable to me btw. like two characters will like Be Nice to each and maybe even.... become friends... and next thing I know there's 50+ dissertation length posts discussing how these two characters are made for each other and if the writers do anything but make them canon then they shall be hunted for sport. anyone in fandom that disagrees will be hung drawn and quartered.