#this is not even to mention the

[shinigami-social]

Since some new athletes subject to gender (sex) testing are getting a lot of spotlight shined on the transphobic elements of this practice, please can people keep in mind the intersexist nature of sex testing. While many concerns raised about athletes’ gender/sex are related to transphobia, the material reality is that these people aren’t trans, they are intersex. These tests reveal that these women have hyperandrogenistic conditions that make them intersex. They are experiencing oppression based on having an intersex condition. This isn’t “oops we oppressed a cisgender person who might have been trans,” it is the intentional oppression of people who are intersex.

[starbuck]

i say i like tragedies and everyone’s all like ‘why do you like sad stories? are you depressed?’ and never ‘how was the catharsis? was the catharsis fun?’

[luckyladylily]

So a few months ago there was the discourse about would you rather meet a man or a bear in the woods. I didn't want to touch it while the discourse was hot and everyone dug in hard because those are not good conditions for nuance, but I waited until today, June 1st, for a specific reason.

I'm not going to take a position in the bear vs man debate because I don't think it matters. What is really being asked here is how afraid are you of men? Specifically, unexpected men who are, perhaps, strange.

People have a lot of very real fear of men that comes from a lot of very real places. Back when I was first transitioning in 2015 and 2016, I decided to start presenting as a woman in public even though I did not pass in the slightest.

I live in a red state. I knew other trans women who had been attacked by men, raped by men. I knew I was taking a risk by putting myself out there. I was the only visibly trans person in the area of campus I frequented, and people made sure I never forgot that. Most were harmless enough and the worst I got from them was curious stares. Others were more aggressive, even the occasional threat. I had to avoid public bathrooms, of course, and always be aware of my surroundings.

I know how frightening it is to be alone at night while a pair of men are following behind you and not knowing if they are just going in the same direction or if they want to start something - made all the worse for the constant low level threat I had been living under for over a year by just being visibly trans in a place where many are openly hostile to queer people. You have to remember, this was at the height of the first wave of bathroom law discussions, a lot of people were very angry about trans women in particular. My daily life was terrifying at times. I was never the subject of direct violence, but I knew trans women who had been.

I want you to keep all that in mind.

So man or bear is really the question "how afraid of men are you?", and the question that logically follows is "What if there was a strange man at night in a deserted parking lot?" or "What if you were alone in an elevator with a man?" or "What if you met a strange man in the woman's bathroom?"

My state recently passed an anti trans bathroom bill. The rhetoric they used was about protecting women and children from "strange men", aka trans women.

Conservatives hijack fear for their bigoted agenda.

When I first started presenting as a woman the campus apartment complex was designed for young families. The buildings were in a large square with playgrounds in the center, and there were often children playing. I quickly noticed that when I took my daughter out to play, often several children would immediately stop what they were doing and run back inside. It didn't take me long to confirm that the parents were so afraid of "the strange man who wears skirts" that their children were under strict instructions to literally run away as soon as they saw me.

"How afraid are you of a strange man being near your children?"

I mentioned above that I had to avoid public bathrooms. This was not because of men. It was because of women who were so afraid of random men that they might get violent or call someone like the police to be violent for them if I ever accidentally presented myself in a way that could be interpreted as threatening, when my mere presence could be seen as a threat. If I was in the library studying and I realized that it was just me and one other woman I would get up and leave because she might decide that stranger danger was happening.

Your fear is real. Your fear might even come from lived experiences. None of that prevents the fact that your fear can be violent. Women's fear of men is one of the driving forces of transmisogyny because it is so easy to hijack. And it isn't just trans women. Other trans people experience this, and other queer people too. Racial minorities, homeless people, neurodivergent people, disabled people.

When you uncritically engage with questions like man or bear, when you uncritically validate a culture of reactive fear, you are paving the way for conservatives and bigots to push their agenda. And that is why I waited until pride month. You cannot engage and contribute to the culture of reactive fear without contributing to queerphobia of all varieties. The sensationalist culture of reactive fear is a serious queer issue, and everyone just forgot that for a week as they argued over man or bear. I'm not saying that "man" is the right answer. I am saying that uncritically engaging with such obvious click bait trading on reactive fear is a problem. Everyone fucked up.

It is not a moral failing to experience fear, but it is a moral responsibility to keep a handle on that fear and know how it might harm others.

[chloesimaginationthings]

RIP Michael Afton.. you would of loved FLAF

[kedreeva]

There's some dude (derogatory) on FB who is PISSED people are pricing their farm fresh eggs at $2 and $3 a dozen instead of $4+, saying it's "disrespectful" and "undignified" and "I'm trying to feed my kids" like Sir, you are on a Facebook group page bitching about your neighbors egg prices because your pet chickens aren't earning you a living wage and you think it's your neighbors' fault, you do not have a leg to stand on here wrt dignity.

Also half the answers are like "I give them to friends and family free" or "I donate them to food banks" or "I'm making them affordable to folks who might not otherwise be able to get them now that they're so expensive in the store" and "if you think you're going to turn a profit keeping backyard chickens you have been wildly misled" and so on, and so forth, and I'm so living for it.

and I can tell you right now, he did NOT like my answer of "if you're trying to feed your kids, I hear eggs are edible."

[prokopetz]

Tumblr: Isn't it funny how Japanese light novels have such improbably long titles? Isn't it weird?

English literature for most of the 17th–19th Centuries:

[Image description – A photograph of a book published in 1810, whose title reads, in full: "A Reviving Cordial for a Sin-Sick Despairing Soul, in the Time of Temptation, Being an Account of the Miraculous Preservation of the Author’s Bodily Life From Many Imminent Dangers; and of the Way in Which the Spirit of God Effected the Deliverance Of His Soul From the State of Nature to the State of Grace. To Which Is Subjoined, the Only Refuge of a Troubled Soul, in the Time of Tribulation and Affliction; or, The Mystery of the Apple-Tree, Explained and Laid Open, in Two Discourses From Cant. ii. 3", by the Rev. James Barry, Minister of the Gospel.]

[starii-void]

going to chb must be crazy like imagine sharing a camp with

-one of the strongest demigods ever who's saved the world like at least 3 times, fought multiple gods & titans and WON (and is a tartarus survivor)

-the literal main architect of OLYMPUS who's also saved the world multiple times (also tartarus survivor)

-THE lord of the wild who's also close friends with the first two (and has helped save the world multiple times)

-an emo kid from the 1930s who again helped save the world and is also a tartarus survivor (TWICE)

-a son of apollo who survived tartarus with nothing but cargo shorts and sheer will (pun intended)

-the main designer and builder for the argo II, also the first hephaestus kid to have fire powers since hundreds of years ago (did i mention killed gaea? no? yeah he did that too)

-a girl who somehow charmspeak-ed gaea into falling back asleep (also side note daughter of super famous actor because why not)

-pretty much everybody is a two-time war veteran

-THE GOD APOLLO who just sometimes comes down to visit in the form of a teenage boy

-did i mention dionysus, god of wine madness and theatre

-also chiron, trainer of pretty much every greek hero ever

[shadowtraveled]

"mithrun is the only real monsterfucker in dungeon meshi" is objectively the funniest bit you can get out of his everything, but in all seriousness i think his attraction to his love interest is deliberately overstated—and that makes sense, because romantic jealousy is a classic and digestible motive, which is explicitly what kabru was aiming for in condensing mithrun's backstory, and also because until chapter 94, mithrun wasn't willing to admit to the true nature of his desires.

but because romantic envy is both classic and digestible, it probably isn’t a unique enough or complicated enough desire to tempt a demon’s appetite. mithrun’s wish, as far as we can figure from kabru’s reduced retelling, was to have a life in which he had never become one of the canaries, and that carries like 3857 implications and desires within it. that’s delicious. his love interest acts as sort of a red herring to his motivation for making it, though. (side note: i'm saying "love interest" here because, keeping in mind that i barely speak japanese on a good day anymore, "想い人" is something i'd usually take as just kind of an old-fashioned and romantic way to refer to a lover, but in context i wonder if both the connotation of yearning and the vagueness are intentional, and i think this phrasing gets those aspects of it more effectively. anyway.)

mithrun considered his love interest to be untrustworthy. there was a minute where i thought that comment might be about a similar-looking elf (yugin, one of his squad members), but comparing the two…

the "sketchy" arrow is definitely referring to the elf we know as his love interest—the bangs go toward her right, she only has the one forehead ornament, and, most notably, her ears aren't notched.

every time she’s given a full-body depiction in his dungeon, she’s drawn as a chimera, with the body of a snake from the waist down. (side note: the “what if a dungeon has chimeras before reaching level 4?”/“then the dungeon lord is unstable” exchange just being mithrun grilling his past self alive is so funny. he’s so. but anyway) there are a couple things about this.

first, the snake part of the chimera appears to be modeled after some species of coral snake mimic

which, in the biology-for-fun manga, i… doubt is a coincidence, especially with the added context of the “untrustworthy” comment. the dungeon’s conjured illusion of mithrun’s love interest was a harmless copycat of a venomous original. for whatever reason, he felt this person was a threat and made up a "safe" version of her to be in a relationship with, and while it’s definitely possible to be attracted to or even love someone you find to be toxic and/or intimidating, when you take that into consideration alongside the configuration of her body, you get some interesting implications.

which brings us to our second point: if we assume that mithrun was not in fact fucking a snake, then sexual attraction, at least, was so far removed from his idea of a relationship with this person that he did not even bother to keep her dungeon copy human enough to maintain the illusion of the option of a sexual relationship. this is somewhat echoed in the depictions of their interactions, which also imply a frankly unexpected romantic distance. she kisses his cheek and he doesn't seem to react; she's at the edge of a narrow bed with only one set of pillows, on top of his blankets while he's underneath them.

the kiss is particularly interesting because it seems to contrast the text. kabru's narration tells us this was everything mithrun could have asked for, but mithrun is there looking unreadable to pensive, likely because this is right before the panel that makes it clear things in the dungeon are beginning to go wrong.

walking through this backwards for a minute, we have the physical barrier of his bedding and the spatial separation inherent in a bed made for one person, the emotional barrier of his mounting anxiety getting in the way of his ability to enjoy the affection he sought, and... the snake, which historically carries the connotation of temptation, yes, but also mistrust, barring physical intimacy. okay. ok. if a dungeon reflects the mentality of its lord, all of this might suggest that mithrun was not able to have any real desire for a relationship with this person. his unwillingness to be vulnerable or let another person in was insurmountable. but in that case, why was she such a focal point that she remained to the end, after his dungeon had stopped creating iterations of his friends to come and visit him? why would he get so upset over her meeting with his brother that he became lord of a dungeon about it?

well. mithrun's brother was also interested in her, probably genuinely. and mithrun had to win.

you have an older brother who your parents completely ignore, probably in part because he is chronically ill/disabled and almost definitely in part because he received a ton of recessive traits that resulted in rumors that he was an illegitimate child. you are aware, most likely because those same parents fucking told you, that you actually are an illegitimate child. but they keep you around because you had the good fortune of looking just like your mother. what can that possibly teach you but that you, like your brother, are disposable?

it's utterly unsurprising that mithrun, under these circumstances, developed a pathological need to be better than everyone around him. people don't keep you otherwise. i'd argue this is also why he says he looked down on everyone he knew while milsiril claims his dungeon reeked of feelings of inferiority—he sought out people's worst traits and prioritized them in his mind to protect his already extremely fragile sense of self-worth, and all the while he tried to be as likable and high-performing as he possibly could be. his parents disposed of him anyway, but even then he tried to keep up the performance. he was kind to everyone. he never once lost to a dungeon.

when he saw his "love interest" meeting up with his brother, what he saw was himself being replaced by a person his parents had always treated as worthless, and if that was what they thought of the child they'd kept, what value could anyone possibly see in the bastard they'd given away to die? mithrun and kabru tell the story like he wanted to win this unnamed elf's heart, but it was never about being with her. it was about cementing his worth, proving that he didn't deserve to be thrown away.

and so it's particularly cruel that his demon discarded him, too. but maybe it's also particularly gentle that, in the end, there was someone who refused to even consider giving up on him.

kui laid it out in three panels better than i could hope to.

yeah. it's love. you wanted to be loved, even when the only way you were able to understand it was through the desire to be wanted, and you wanted that so badly that the idea of being consumed felt like the promise of finally mattering to someone.

[wulfhalls]

UNCLEFATHER CONFIRMED

[bixels]

“America has no culture” is an inherently racist statement. Especially when talking about California, which has enormous populations (yes, plural) of Hispanic and Asian immigrants.

It’s such a self report that you see the American hegemony, the American monolith, as a singularly white entity that’s worthy of scorn. I want that person to look at the Black American NYC Miku design and tell me with their full chest that that isn’t culture. Especially when modern pop culture owes so much to Black American culture — hip hop, language, streetwear and fashion, pop music, jazz — as is actively erasing their roots, saying all of America has no culture is a dumbass statement.

Also, “all the US Mikus are dressed in generic casual street style for coolish weather.” The original Brazilian Miku is wearing sunglasses, a crop top, short shorts, a bikini, and flip flops you absolute dunce. If you’re gonna be rude at least be consistent.

[inkskinned]

you're in the habit of denying yourself things.

if someone asked you directly, you would say that you love a little treat. you like iced coffee and getting the cookie. you drink juice out of a fancy cup sometimes, and often do use your candles until they gutter out helplessly.

but you hesitate about buying the 20 dollar hand mixer because, like. you could just use your arms. you weren't raised rich. you don't get to just spend the 20 dollars (remember when that could cover lunch?), at least - you don't spend that without agonizing over it first, trying to figure out the cost-benefits like you are defending yourself in front of a jury. yes, this rice cooker could seriously help you. but you do know how to make stovetop rice and it really isn't that hard. how many pies or brownies would you actually make, in order to make that hand mixer worthwhile?

what's wild is that if the money was for a friend, it would already be spent. you'd fork over 40 without blinking an eye, just to make them happy. the difference is that it's for you, so you need to justify it.

and it sneaks in. you ration yourself without meaning to - you don't finish the pint of ice cream, even though you want to. the next time you go to the store, you say ah, i really shouldn't, and then you walk away. you save little bits of your precious things - just in case. sometimes you even go so far as putting that one thing in your shopping cart. and then just leaving it there, because maybe-one-day, but not right now, there's other stuff going on.

you do self-care, of course. but you don't do it more than like, 3 days in a row. after that it just feels a little bit over-the-edge. like. you can't live in decadence, the economy is so bad right now, kid.

so you don't buy the rice cooker. you can-and-will spend the time over the stove. you can withstand the little sorrows. denial and discipline are practically synonyms. and you're not spoiled.

it's just - it's not always a rice cooker. sometimes it is a person or a job or a hug. sometimes it is asking for help. sometimes it is the summer and your college degree. sometimes it is looking down at scabbed knees and feeling a strange kind of falling, like you can't even recognize the girl you used to be. sometimes it is your handprint looking unsteady.

sometimes it is tuesday, and you didn't get fired, and you want to celebrate. but what is it you like, even? you search around your little heart and come up empty. you're so used to denying that all your desires draw a blank.

oh fuck. see, this is the perfect opportunity. if you had a mixer, you'd make a cake.

[chloesimaginationthings]

Vanessa TOTALLY got those Tapes for the FNAF lore..

[teaboot]

When I was a kid, I regularly lost reading privileges for "having an attitude" and "acting out".

It wasn't as simple as being told not to read during other activities- one of the first times it happened, I remember being six years old, watching my stepfather pull fistfuls of books off my bookshelf and throw them to the floor in a heaping mess while I cried and asked him to stop.

It was weird. Every other adult I knew described me as exceptionally well-behaved, but at home, it was the opposite, and it was blamed on "learning bad habits from that shit you're reading".

Because I couldn't read at home, I spent all my free time at school in the library, reading with my friends.

When I grew up and moved away, I realized that my family life was toxic and abusive, and the "attitudes" I was being punished for were standing up for myself, standing up for my younger siblings, and resisting actual, real-life psychological abuse. Because I'd learned from what I'd read that my family wasn't normal, not like my parents said it was, and in my stories, the heroes were the people who spoke out when it was hard to.

It is insane to me that there are students right now who can't access books. It is insane that books are being outlawed. It is perverse that we are stealing away an entire generation's ability to contextualize their lives, to learn about the world around them, to develop critical thinking skills and express themselves and feel connected to the world or escape from it, whatever and whenever and however they need.

That is not how you raise a compassionate, thoughtful, powerful society.

That's how you process cattle.

It's fucking disgusting.

[rystiel]

i keep seeing people say the doctor shouldn’t have feelings for rogue because he’s married to river…? river song… who has also married multiple people… one of the most polyamorous characters in the show…?

[catmask]

sometimes while i think about that while a lot of adults did not treat me very well as a kid i also get a lot of 'in hindsight this person was so good to me and i didnt even realize it until now' as an adult. today i was thinking about how the first anime convention i ever went to was when i was 10 and i asked the man working the manga cafe what manga was/what a good place to start was (because the con was very overstimulating for me and i had gotten lost) and he asked how old i was before recommending yotsuba and asking if i wanted any water or something to eat. its really simple but theres a lot of bad things that couldve happened or he could've been careless in his recommendation, but instead yotsuba has remained one of my favorite manga for years, and probably a large portion of why i continue to read manga as an adult... i think adults who try to involve kids in the world safely/kindly even in little ways make so much more of a difference than they ever really know.

[asthedeathoflight]

I think an underrated angle on 2x05 is something that either Jacob or Assad said in some interview somewhere, which is that in that episode Louis is addicted to heroin. Thats why he has that whole stash of drugs that he gives to Daniel, that's why he gives Daniel the drugs even though he's already got him alone. He didn't just use those 128 boys for sex he was using them to get high. Bring them home, get them to shoot up, and then drain them to get that secondhand high.

It clarifies something that's always confused me about that scene, which is why Armand saves Daniel the first time. He wouldn't save Daniel as a person, he clearly knows Daniel needs to die, but he's not seeing Daniel as a person there. Daniel is just a substance. He rips him away from Louis to stop him from using.

And i think that adds a whole other layer to the fight he and Armand have to think that this is Louis on a bender, with Armand cleaning up after him because he's not stable enough to. Louis in the bed for a week isn't just healing from the burns, he's going through withdrawal. Him at the table with Daniel giving him the "bright young reporter" speech is probably the first time he's been sober in months.

It adds another layer to Armand's desperation, that Louis has been running from both Armand and himself in this way, and of course Armand wants to erase that memory. Of course he wants to pretend that that fight never happened. Not just to protect himself but in a way to protect Louis from having said those things. When he describes the fight to Louis afterwards, he says "you said the worst things you've ever said to me." And he doesn't really know how to forgive Louis for that so he just wants to bury this rock-bottom moment and move on like it never happened. After all, Louis was high, he didn't really mean it, but if he remembers then maybe he might think that he had a point. Better to wipe the whole experience away.