#things that aren't a reblog

[albacore-fish-or-aesthetic]

[Image description: Six images of the text “Totally aced it!” in all capital letters; the word “aced” is written in a larger font size and has the colours of the asexual pride flag (black, grey, white and purple; one for each letter). End of image description]

[branwinged]

ned being held up as the metric for moral goodness in asoiaf is absurd like did you not read bran i, agot in which he beheads a man on the run from the others because he must fulfill his fedual oaths and he carries out the execution through his family's ancestral sword which was definitely forged for the exact opposite purpose, i.e. in defense of the north against the others. and then he uses ice again to behead the direwolf which was meant to protect his daughter. is it any wonder that he also meets his end the same way, through it, after spending the rest of the book in king's landing in service to a failed king, desperately trying to reassure himself that they are not repeating history. bran i is saying ice was already metaphorically broken long before tywin melted it down because the starks have forgotten their magical history yes, but also because ned represents an older, failed generation in service to hollow chivalric ideals. and it is now up to his children, the ones coming of age in a world destroyed by the previous generations—it is up to bran, sansa, arya, and jon to reforge their family legacy, away from contradictory oaths and in service to hollow paradigms. (and in a way ice is already currently being remade through brienne, who is not a knight of the songs but still the closest thing to the idea of a true knight)

[trans-axolotl]

my gendered experience growing up as an intersex person was overwhelmingly defined by my responses and resistance to everything that got me labeled as a failure: failure to quickly get a gender assigned at birth, failure to go through a normal puberty and grow up into a woman, failure at meeting the standards for "complete womanhood" because of my intersex sex traits, and yet simultaneously failing to ever be acknowledged as a "real man" and being treated as a threat when I expressed I wanted to transition.

before i realized i was a man and came out as trans, the ways that girlhood was denied to me was very often humiliating and painful. locker rooms filled with other girls were a frequent source of shame. there were many big and small ways that i was told that my intersex body made me insufficient, incomplete, broken. i was forced onto estrogen, forced into shaving my body hair, and was constantly being told to change myself to better fit this mystical idea of a "normal woman." and even though I ultimately ended up becoming a man, the denial of girlhood was painful.

but i think that these things would have been even more difficult to navigate as an intersex girl if on top of everything I already said, i was having to cope with the denial of my girlhood while i was forced into boys locker rooms. if my doctors were forcing me onto testosterone hrt and refusing to even discuss estrogen, if all my legal paperwork had "M" on it and was a logistical nightmare to change, if every support group for my intersex variation labeled it as a "men's support group," if the LGBTQ community spaces i tried to join were misogynistic towards me often to the point of exile, if my self determination as an intersex girl was denied in most spaces of my life, and on and on and on. while listing all these things out i also don't want to make it seem like it's all about suffering and pain--so much of transition for me has been about joy in my self determination and how much it feels like a reclamation of autonomy to decide what I want my body and self to be like--i know this is an experience i share with so many of my trans intersex friends.

as an person who was AFAB, although there were many ways that trying to grow up as an intersex girl were a painful, logistical nightmare, many times and places that i was excluded from woman's spaces, etc. however, there was a simultaneous affirmation that i was right to strive for that in the first place. which is logic rooted in some fucked up compulsory dyadism, but also which would have made some things slightly easier or even possible at all if i had wanted to embrace being an intersex girl within this fucked up system.

pretty much every time i've seen people on tumblr talking about "afab transfems" in an intersex context, people seem happy to collapse these experiences and act like there's no meaningful distinction or point in distinguishing between different types of intersex embodiment. it seems incredibly extractive, to be perfectly honest with you--taking terms already used by a community to make meaning of their experiences and to expand and dilute that term enough that it means something pretty different than the original.

it's making me think about the concept of epistemic injustice, which is a term coined by Miranda Fricker to describe oppression related to knowledge, communication, and making meaning of the world. There's two subtypes of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice refers to the dynamic where marginalized people are labeled as not credible, excluded from conversations, and their testimony and knowledge is labeled as unreliable, even when they're the ones who are experts and have first hand experience of what people are talking about. (this is why i probably won't make this post rebloggable--i've noticed this pattern on tumblr many times where trans men speaking about transmisogyny get lots of notes and are given a lot of grace, where trans women are silenced, attacked for not having perfect wording, and otherwise delegitimized.)

the second type is called hermeneutical injustice. it describes how marginalized people are denied the right to make sense of the experiences in their own lives. this can look like preventing people from building community, terminology, a political understanding of themselves, and the interpretive resources needed to process how you live in the world.

this is a form of injustice that I think almost all intersex people are very familiar with--we are denied community and interpretive resources to the point that we're told we don't even exist, that intersex isn't a real word, and so many more examples that leave us isolated and with very few options for understanding what we're collectively experiencing. as an intersex person i really intimately understand how frustrating, confusing, and painful it is to not have words for your experiences, your identity, your life.

so it makes me really sad and pissed off when it seems like intersex people seem to be replicating this exact same type of epistemic injustice towards transfems and specifically towards intersex transfems. pretty much every time recently i see people talking about "afab transfems" they're doing so in a way that seems to deny that trans women even have the right to make sense of their own experiences in the world. there seems to be this mindset that these political frameworks, these interpretive resources that transfems have built up are just up for grabs for anyone. and then on top of that has come with it a lot of cruel, hateful language and direct attacks towards many intersex transfems who are facing so much harassment right now.

an important value to me is this idea of reciprocity as a foundation for solidarity. to me reciprocity means that we're prioritizing the ways we care for each other, we're thinking about how we can uplift each other, and we're watching out for extractive or exploitative patterns where one group is constantly expected to be in "solidarity" with another group without getting the same respect and care back toward them. i think that there could be so many ways that intersex people of all genders could share our overlapping experiences and actually be in true, meaningful solidarity with each other, but i barely ever actually see that happen on tumblr. and that pisses me off, because i do think that there's so much we have in common that we could celebrate and support each other with. i feel so much kinship with so, so many of my trans intersex friends, and ways where i see our lives converge. but i don't think that can happen in an environment where there's no acknowledgment of the ways that our experiences will sometimes (often) differ from each other, and the ways that we have unique needs.

another frustration i've had based on this most recent couple months of transmisogynistic intersex posting on tumblr is how intersex people have been mostly ignoring intersex community resources and devaluing the existing intersex terminology that people created to try to meet our needs. so much of what i've seen people describing on tumblr seems to really line up with the term ipsogender. Ipsogender is a term coined by an intersex sociologist Cary Gabriel Costello, and is used to describe intersex people whose gender matches the gender they were medically assigned at birth, but who might not feel like cis or trans fits them, might experience dysphoria, and who might feel like they've ended up transitioning medically or socially in some ways. this is a word that exists that an intersex person put time into coining because they wanted other intersex people to feel seen, embraced, and have ways of understanding themselves and communicating to others, and that's something that's super meaningful to me! and yet, i've rarely seen anyone reference it, and also seen multiple people making fun of it in other spaces online.

there's also intergender, which is another intersex specific gender term used to describe when your gender is inseparable from your intersex traits, and that your intersex identity is intertwined with your gender identity in some way. some people just identify as intergender, others use it as an adjective and exist as an intergender man or woman. intersex terminology like this is really important to me, especially because we're so often denied the right to make sense of our own experiences.

i think ultimately what i wanted to say with this post is just that when i think about intersex community, some of the most important values of intersex community for me are solidarity, care for each other, and affirming our right to define our own existence. and i don't think that can happen in a community where people are acting in extractive ways, harassing and attacking their fellow community members, and being dismissive of the realities of other intersex people's lives.

[anyataylorjoys]

seeing so many fellow creators' gifsets getting under 180 notes with an average reblog to like ratio of 1:3 is so disheartening. less and less people are putting out content cause it seems that no one cares anymore.

If you truly care about supporting creators at all, I encourage everyone to have a tracked tag in this economy whether you make content or not, you probably have mutuals who would love to share things with you and can't.

[foolishlovers]

WIP Wednesday Good Omens Recs

let's spread some love and share some wips this wednesday. writing can be hard and lonely sometimes, so let's hit the kudos button and post a comment or two on some ongoing fics today!

[museaway]

"idk if I really count as a writ—"

You do. Even if you've only posted one fic, even if you haven't written in years, even if you only share snippets to tumblr, even if you're still working on your first story, even if you never show your writing to anyone. It all counts. You're a writer. Here you dropped this 🖊️

[legionofpotatoes]

I know the discourse well is poisoned and no one hates bioware games more than bioware fans, but I am just 🫠 having so much fun with veilguard it's unreal. It is selfishly the dragon age game I always wanted. with less emphasis on cRPG, a more focused story, curated mission based design that spotlights the high fantasy stuff, slowburn structure with companions, significantly less sidequest bloat, and a fully real-time action-oriented combat system that isn't riddled with the growing pains of previous titles. when I first played origins I imagined something almost exactly like this as my ideal version of a sequel; and it was one of those dirty, selfish thoughts that I knew was disrespectful to the then-established DNA of the thing, but I can't help but feel giddy about having it here and now. like down to the shift away from the childishly dark tone and to something more inherently flexible with a baseline aspirational quality. I hate aesthetically depressing games so much. am I not alive right here and right now already

When I say "aesthetically" there though I do mean it. I'm fully on the opposite side when it comes to tone and positions expressed in the story itself. I am just not including that in my analysis because I am not done yet - so please no spoilers! I think I am where most people consider to be the second act, and I definitely have my gripes with the narrative framework and some of the optics, but I won't put the cart before the horse and will see how it wraps things up first. Above that level, in terms of how it presents itself, of how it plays, of how it balances its core pillars - it is such a bioware-ass game and I could not be any cozier in it. So grateful it exists

[catgirl-catboy]

[yardsards]

people love an "i'll take care of you" "it's rotten work" "not to me, not if it's you" character dynamic until the character who needs to be taken care of is disabled. then it's supposedly fucked up and toxic for a person to have to take care of someone else.

[petricorah]

🚨🚨if you followed me in the last two days, please like this message. Last night, over two hundred bots followed me, and some even left really vague comments on my art, almost making it seem like a real person. i'm about to go and block people especially if you have the default icon.

i'm sorry. i know not everyone with a default icon is a bot, but there are viruses going around for if you check, and with 272 bots, I just don't have time to check. The are following me quicker than I can report and block, so I have to block default icons on sight.

please reply with something that sounds real to this post or like it or something if you followed recently.

edit: like twenty more followed me in the two minutes it took to post this. i can't block them fast enough. Not all of them have default icons, some are sneaky, but they're still bots.

edit edit: over 700 in the last 12 hours

[estrogenism]

i wanna scream at the perisex trans people on my post so badly. like yes you do make good points but you're coming onto my post that was first and foremost about intersexism in trans spaces and framing yourself as having a stronger vantage point to criticize the tme/tma dichotomy than intersex trans ppl.

like it's not that you're wrong, it's that i made that post specifically to vent my frustrations about how perisex trans people looove to ignore the concerns that intersex trans people have about the black and white language they use. and then you came onto my post and basically said 'well as a perisex person, i can confirm that your concerns are valid' as if intersex people need perisex validation in order to discuss or vent about intersexism

[albacore-fish-or-aesthetic]

I feel like in a lot of the walrus vs fairy stuff we forget that the original poll's question was "which one would surprise you more", and not "which is more unlikely/unrealistic/impossible"

[hephaestuscrew]

I do think there's something special about the way that audio drama creators seem to love including cameos of voice actors from other popular audio dramas. Obviously, part of the reason why actors from one show might pop up in another is because the audio drama creator community is relatively small and interconnected, and also because those actors are very talented.

But there's also often such a sense that creators are having fun with these cameos. Like Greater Boston casting audio drama heavyweights Briggon Snow, Zach Valenti, and Felix Trench as famous film actors Matt Daemon, Ben Affleck, and Mark Wahlberg respectively. Or Faux and Stallion having Tom Crowley (who plays a Victorian detective in Victoriocity) pop up as Dr Watson. Or Unseen casting Beth Eyre and Felix Trench as characters who are twins. Or Arden getting Emma Sherr-Ziarko to play an actor impersonating a character played by her former Wolf 359 costar Michelle Agresti (with Michaela Swee also appearing as an actor impersonating the other main Arden lead).

In these cases, it's not just that there's a cameo, but that the cameo is given particular (often comedic) significance to those who are aware of the featured actor's other work. The vast majority of people wouldn't recognise any of these voices. But by doing these very intentional cameos, these creators show confidence that a fair chunk of their audience will know these actors and enjoy the link. There's an awareness that listeners of one audio drama are fairly likely to listen to (or at least be aware of) other fiction podcasts, even when the shows in question aren't of particularly similar genres. Recognising these cameos feels like being in on a secret. It feels like these shows are giving a little nod to listeners to say that we're part of the same club.

[superkooku]

I see it as a personal theory but it saddens me that Maomao's parents didn't really love eachother but instead wanted something to gain from it, both resulting terribly for them.

In worse it had an impact on their own child, with her not really being showing emotions, especially viewing love in a negative light. Not to blame her growing up in a environment where women are mere objects for men to desire.

That's a sad but interesting take. And honestly, it's pretty realist too considering Maomao's life isn't a fairytale. Though I see it in a different way. A different taste of tragedy.

(rant incoming)

To me, Lakan and Fengxian made some form of bond, at least friends with benefits.

We see Lakan's POV. Him literally crying and going towards Fengxian even if she's sick proves that he loved her. She's the only one (with Maomao) whose face he can see, her playing partner in go and shogi (they share hobbies, which is a great way to create bonds imo).

We see him running in the rain, begging to see her, his desperation when he sees the letters and the fingers. It's pretty clear to me he loves her.

It's more ambiguous on Fengxian's side, as we don't get her inner monologue, but she seems to have missed him too. Though their reunion is shown through rose-tinted glasses, as she never recovered from syphilis in reality. Just Lakan's imagination.

So I'd have less trouble believing she didn't fully love him but I think he's pretty much smitten (I'll watch the series again soon, to refresh my memories).

They're also a parallel to the couple from episode 4, the concubine who faked her (mental) illness to go with the man she loved, trapped in a world where she'd only be a pretty object.

Though I agree with the fact that both had something to gain, especially in the beginning, and as the feelings changed, none of them were able to communicate correctly.

Fengxian was known to be a very proud woman after all. And Lakan likes strategy and twisted games. So they're both terrible at communication and then he's sent in foreign land and she's pregnant. It's too late.

I completely agree about what you said on Maomao, though. The environment she grew up in, especially before Luomen picked her up, was terrible for a child.

She ended up very reserved, taking any emotional display as putting too much attention on herself, something detrimental.

Because of her upbringing, she refuses to be sold by the madam because she knows what to expect. She still has nightmares of her mother cutting her fingers, puts fake freckles to seem uglier. She knows how dirty men can be, she saw lust, STDs, assassination attempts, poverty.

What an awful childhood.

And I COMPLETELY understand why someone like Jinshi makes her uncomfortable. She doesn't like the attention and just wants to live quietly with her passion as an apothecary. And he's clingy as hell, like in that honey scene.

I firmly believe that if he learns to leave her alone, she'll warm up to him faster, because she won't associate him with lecherous men anymore.

It's fortunate Maomao had Luomen as a positive father figure and Meimei/Pairin/Joka as "motherly sisters". She wasn't alone in this terrible world.

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence