#transgender people are fucking epic

[dioptasesystem]

Luce Says: transgender people are fucking epic.

This is canon, I asked Francis myself.

[buddycore323]

Punch transphobes and terfs okay? Promise me? Pinky promise? Pretty please?

[rainbowgod666]

Isnt that a given...?

(WARNING: the tags contain a MASSIVE FUCKING RANT about the shit trans people go thru, because transphobia wasnt enough apparently WHO DO I HAVE TO KILL-)

[mueritos]

Hi matteo! I think you’ve talked about gay and lesbian books you like, but I was wondering if you have any that you think every trans person should read?

hai!! good question :) I have a couple I can think of but they're definitely not very different from the ones Ive already offered. I think trans and cis queers should be reading the same literature, but I do also understand the want to find trans specific literature.

Transgender History by Susan Stryker...a good start but definitely not the most expansive look into trans history

Trans Sex by Lucie Fielding...this is definitely a more clinical book for folks who work in therapeutic settings with trans people, but reading it before I even decided to go into clinical social work gave me a lot of tools, knowledge, and lived experience to draw upon

The Trouble with Normal by Michael Warner...posted about it before but I do think its a must read for any freak/pervert/degenerate out there looking to academically justify "freakdom"...aka lets stop normalizing ourselves into the us imperial regime!

Trans Studies: The Challenges to Hetero/Homo Normatives...havent finished reading this but ive picked at some of the essays...some don't land all too well if you're BIPOC, but nonetheless are informative

Sex Wars by Lisa Duggan and Nan D Hunter...not necessarily a trans history book but I think its a book essential to understanding how radical feminism historically veered into conservatism...not to mention all the foreshadowing of language/policy/scapegoating being used by TERFs today...lol

The Joy of a Castrated Boy by Joon Oluchi Lee...def need to reread this because it was like so fucking epic for my brain but...you'll get it when you read it (he's also a fellow virgo)

Ill leave it at that lest I just bombard you with more readings. I actually have a queer theory google drive here if you're interested in checking out some readings/lists I have on file. Haven't had time to read everything in there but golly! lots of great places to start :)

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

as someone who is both trans and disabled i think the fact that transphobia and ableism come from the exact same place isn’t talked about enough like. it’s the idea of someone being abnormal looking abnormal needing medication needing healthcare. it’s the idea of people changing their bodies to help themselves it’s the idea of bodily autonomy it’s the idea that the people you know will be abnormal in ways that cannot be hidden. being transgender is conflated with disability, both physical and mental, by transphobes, and cannot be talked about without talking about ableism.

you’ll see it in their talking points. doing shit like “would you let a MENTALLY ILL person around your DAUGHTER?” implying mental illness makes you a danger unfit to be around a child worthy of scorn and mockery, needing to be hidden away from the public instead of having their rights fought for. it’s in framing autistic trans people as unable to make decisions of their own, framing them as objects and pets and not people who should be pretty little dolls and when we're not we're clearly being manipulated into it. it’s in how they mock surgery and scars and treat the medical consequences of such as gross and immoral, framing surgery as something horrific to be avoided because of it being “abnormal”, talking about how no one should ever be on medication for life even though most people that are are disabled people who would be severely impacted and possibly die without it. it’s in the way they casually call trans people retarded and crippled. they’re the same thing.

and we see this! photomatt, the guy harassing a random trans woman for being mean to him on the internet and breaking the fucking law for epic owns, has told people with epilepsy who are in genuine danger from flashing lights in ads to buy ad free for basic accessibility and Not Dying. bigotry against trans people directly leads to bigotry against disabled people. bigotry against disabled people directly leads to bigotry against trans people. our struggles are linked so heavily.

[falselyprofound]

excuse me, how's creepy castle's lore so batshit, that it isn't well-documented in the wiki?.

(In regards to this post)

Creepy Castle's the sort of game that doesn't sound terribly batshit on paper (especially not compared to some of the other stuff I blog about, e.g. Sam & Max), but playing it blind socked me in the guts emotionally.

It's been a good five years since I played this game but let me see if I can sum up the weird yet effective genre drifting it does.

Creepy Castle is initially straightforward. Moth, a plucky young knight, hears that an evil king is planning to steal all the capacity for love from the world using a device called The Heartbreaker. Moth sets out to stop him.

Chapter 1 is your standard quirky indie RPG. Earthbound-inspired enemies, a lot of silly notes, medieval dungeon crawling… just generally silly nonsense.

While traversing the castle, Moth is repeatedly challenged by other weirdo adventurers who all believe only they have the ability to take down the king. One of them is an asexual aromantic archer, who - even though he has no interest in love himself - is repulsed that Darking would want to rob people's agency.

I bring this up for a couple of reasons, but in the short run I just need you to know his name is Arrow Ace.

Fucking lol. You have no idea how happy this made me.

The most relevant rival is Ant Queen, who - four hours into epic fantasy adventure - suddenly reveals she's an alien from another universe. That Heartbreaker Darking made to steal everyone's emotions? Yeah it's not magic, it's powered by a part of her spaceship that broke off when she crash landed in the castle. And she needs it back.

...Sure! Moving on.

Moth confronts Darking in the throne room and fights to save the world, until Darking starts having a wee bit of a breakdown. No, he doesn't want to destroy the concept of love. He wants to destroy emotion, period. Darking knows his people are suffering, and wants to guarantee that nobody will ever suffer heartbreak ever again.

And if the only way to do that is by stealing every emotion, good or bad? Well, so be it.

Moth is fairly young and naive, the sort of hero who was raised on a very black-and-white approach to morality. Having to beat up someone with good intent to save the world? Knowing that he can't stab societal problems?

...It gradually takes a toll.

Darking is eventually knocked out, and Ant Queen assures Moth he did the right thing.

But again, the world's not that simple.

Destroying the Heartbreaker has prevented people from being permanently locked into apathy, but has not fixed anything else. Darking is right - Dopterra's people are still suffering en masse, and by failing to eliminate negative emotions the gods themselves realise the planet is fated to collapse into despair and tear itself apart.

So, in response to Darking's defeat, the gods send down a demon known as the Possessor to save everyone some time and destroy it early. Minimise suffering, as it were, by going scorched earth.

The demon kills Darking and possesses his corpse, much to Moth's terror. Ant Queen is forced to step in, using the power of friendship and this gun she found.

Incidentally the gun doesn't shoot bullets, demons are immune to those. She shoots and kills the guy by opening a space/time rift right through his stomach.

Sorry you had to see that Moth but you gotta admit that's a sick way to go out.

Later, the same demon tries his shit again and gets beat up by a transgender butterfly. Long story. I'll put it in the footnotes.

Finally the Possessor goes fuck this shit, decides to stop possessing people, and possesses a meteor and hurls it at planet Dopterra.

Ant Queen takes over the role of protagonist, and sets off across the universe in her spaceship to stop Moth's planet from getting nuked to shit. Creepy Castle: where the castle is optional.

Ant Queen's got a three step plan:

Find out who the Possessor is, and that he was a weapon made by the gods. (See above.)

Figure out where the gods live while avoiding Pinky, Ant Queen's abusive mother figure. (Another long story, but Pinky is a mad scientist type who bioengineers sentient creatures with free will - specifically so she can have fun enslaving them. Ant Queen is one of her creations, but she got too strong and ran away.)

Show up at the gods' doorstep, call them a bitch, and make them call Possessor off.

Unfortunately the gods aren't home and their doorman is incapable of intervening. Ant Queen has the horrible realisation that this might all be futile.

With only a few hours left before the Possessor's meteor is set to destroy the planet, everyone starts getting desperate. I can't find footage of it but I could've sworn Ant Queen blackmails the leader of the space mafia into getting as many people off Dopterra as possible before the meteor hits.

There's another part where Ant Queen's crew discuss getting Pinky to help - even if it means all the people she'd "rescue" from the planet would be converted into slaves. I don't think they go through with it, but the fact it was on the table made for one of the most harrowing conversations I've seen in a family friendly video game.

Ant Queen rolls up her nonexistent sleeves and decides to go down to the meteor and beat the elder death deity up her own fucking self.

She succeeds, saving the planet from death by giant rock. But in the end, she doesn't fault the Possessor for what he was trying to do.

At the end of the day, he was screwed over by his parents even more than she was. At least she had free will, and a chance to make friends.

My memories get pretty hazy after that. I think it's implied the gods are dead, and the world trucks on towards its prophesied doom, and it's unknown if anything can be done about it. Particularly as the squad just killed the only tools the gods left behind. iirc it was a bit of a setup to a second "season", but five years down the track and nothing has materialised.

Regardless, there you have it. That's how a tiny little game about a Moth knight seeking out an evil king turns into elder gods, free will, nature vs. nurture, and a sprinkling of moth depression.

Speaking of that last one, I had to leave a lot of character arcs out of the above explanation for the sake of flow, but here's some stuff worth mentioning:

Moth is traumatised from his fight with Darking (not to mention causing his double-death AND being told by Possessor that he triggered a slow apocalypse in the process), and quits being a hero for a while. He disappears into the depths of the castle and I think gets possessed for a bit? Until the aformentioned transgender Butterfly shows up to rescue him and help him through it all. I don't remember this chapter terribly well because it was three in the morning when I played it. Somebody please clue me in, all I remember is the fleshy hell hallway.

There's an optional chapter where Butterfly's grandparent does an archeological expedition to discover lore about the Architects (gods). I never finished this one, but I did find the corpse of one Architect in a jail cell several miles below ground. I would love to know what the fuck that's about.

Darking's head knight is called Monsoon. He's initially portrayed as a standard loyal evil knight, but after Darking's defeat he's firmly on the side of the heroes. He's such a dorky old man and I love him. He cannot work skype to save his life

Northernlion is a playable character for some reason and will die in one hit

One of the first boss fights in Ant Queen's chapter is against a bat who attacks you... by turning the combat interface into choose your own adventure text prompts. If you get his questions wrong he writes fanfiction about how annoyed AQ is at the situation. It's great

[corpsentry]

there’s something so epic about hetero chinese period dramas and i think one part of it is that there is absolutely nowhere in the narrative i could exist.

lately i’ve been on a western media detox— i’ve cleaned english language music out of my playlists and have never been able to stomach western dramas anyway, so that part is easy— which might seem funny, because if i’m in singapore and i hate it and i won’t touch american music then what’s left? the answer is the false binarism of chinese period dramas, at least for me. the badly written ones are misogynistic and stupid and the better ones are less of those things, but regardless the world that emerges is clean-cut and easy to parse. there’s someone to root for and someone to hate. there’s a girl and a boy. there’s the comedy and the drama, the sheer thick drama, the music that signals to you precisely how to feel before the scene even starts going

try to jam a fifth culture transnational transgender they/them with 2 mental illness and 1 autoimmune disease into this world and it simply doesn’t work. and that’s kinda epic lolzers! it’s like watching high fantasy, or super hardcore sci-if. it both represents a simulacrum of the real world and is so far from the reality you know that you understand it as a hypothetical universe, one that disincludes you on principle. i exclude myself from the story and in doing so fangfei from moyuyunjian’s steely gaze becomes all the more important. i give so many shits and laugh and yell and spectate. but i am safe from the eyes of its inhabitants. if i entered the story it would break. so i sit outside of it, clapping by myself

in other news, we gave up on mysterious lotus casebook 16 episodes in. there are many character archetypes in these shows that i can no longer stand; the salacious sexy seductive supervillain lady is not necessarily one of them but the way they did miss ‘this man didn’t even Look at me when all men fall at my knees so i hated him’ ‘no one is allowed to steal buttchin from me’ jiao was way up there. surely a woman can have multiple personality traits and yet you would think from this drama that that is not at all true. and the strange harem that grew around li lianhua despite his absolute loser attitude— like i get it, he’s the gintoki of this show, that’s hot, but the way the women who were into him were written made me want to Eat Horse. it bothered me that di feisheng and lianhua’s homo as fuck dynamic was so intriguing and them + fang duobing was a winning trio but all the women in the show were written like complete fucking ass, and one of the big antagonists being a woman, the stakes throughout were not only lost to me but also Pissed Me Off. also, that case about the corpse flowers dragged on forever and all my pocky wilted

I Just Think, women deserve better in these damn stories. make them slutty as hell, sure, but make them other things too and i mean this in the most generous sense. slutty and proud. slutty and weird. slutty and oblivious. literally anything at all so they don’t come out cardboard flat from all angles. this is why i have a personal vendetta against the ditzy clueless female protagonist as well because if everything stems from the fact that she doesn’t know shit it’s like please someone Please tell her shit i’m on my hands and knees begging. give her more to chew on she’s dying of boredom over there

this is why i liked the so called antagonist of blossoms in adversity best (spoilers ahead). he was cruel as hell to huazhi and gu yanxi’s only parental figure. he was paranoid and selfish and lonely and craved a son’s love from the one person he couldn’t hold onto. in the end he is pushed further and further by huazhi, who won’t give in, to isolate yanxi from the people he loves and to lash out at those people as a way of punishing yanxi. and when he dies it’s because of his own distrust, his own negligent parenting, his absent cruelty from decades of insomnia and lack of faith in his people. but he cries for yanxi, and there’s something so human about that. to think of evil not as a first principle but rather an adjective for a verb that is set in motion by other events. to be honest, i haven’t seen such thoughtful writing in any chinese period drama before or after that and i strongly suspect i will never see such writing again in this genre but man, it was so fucking good (spoilers end).

in the meantime, i’ve dragged my mother to moyuyunjian/the double for the return casting of liu xiening and wang xingyue who are Eating so hard. they’ve got wang xingyue done up with the sluttiest makeup and liu xiening is breaking my heart with her pout and her Sassy Mean constitution and this is a revenge story, yes, but it’s a double revenge story. it’s a grief story. and fangfei is carrying more on her shoulders than lingbuyi imo, and doing so with much more grace too. her step mom’s a dick but she’s a smart, 5d chess playing dick who wears hot shades of green so i’m personally interested enough to keep watching (something lotus casebook DID NOT accomplish with their epic female antagonist…. mein gotte). and the princess too. unhinged as hell but god, so charismatic. and beautiful, with scary big eyes and the sweetest head tilt. fun fun fun! that’s fun character writing right there. the comedy might be too straightforward for my tastes but everything else is kind of hot and sexy And after the coming of age ceremony when jiangli appeared amidst the flowers i felt my throat close up even though we saw her for all of one (1) episode). i was like yes. they got me alright. i Care now

really that’s all that matters isn’t it. we want stories about people we care for. we want to give a shit. why else would we listen to the stories of other people. we are looking for us and the people we love in them

oh also moyuyunjian soundtrack goes hard as hell i love a little three step waltz. here’s a pic from the ‘gym’ for ur time. guten night

[eyelessfog]

Hi everyone, it's me, L's sibling! Guess what we made! Zombieland Saga x My Little Pony AU where the mane 6 and some others are shoved into the roles of FranChouChou and some other major characters! Also I know they would be human-like the way they are in Equestria Girls(but probably better designs) but I want to take a moment to think about ponies dancing onstage the way our beloved undead idols do.

First up!! Roles!! (and some funny thing to think about)

Twilight is Sakura I think this is pretty obvious. Main character, friendship, bla bla. Most importantly, Twilight motherfucking Sparkle getting hit by a truck IMMEDIATELY

Rainbow Dash is Saki Also very obvious, possibly more obvious than Twilight as Sakura. Race, biker, go fast, swears(because I believe with all my heart that if she could, Rainbow Dash would swear), went out in a blaze of glory(twice), multi-colored hair. Basically, the sporty, rude, loud one. Funny things to think about.... went out in a blaze of glory twice. Had an epic rap battle with "Twilight Princess" as L has called her.

Applejack is Ai Keeps to herself sort of, kind of done with the others, the one who actually thinks. Not in a nerd way but with a proper understanding of the real life situation they're in instead of book stuff or the ones who dont think at all. Knows how to work in a group. Smacked Kotaro in the face with a baguette and will fuck his ass up(this will be even more hilarious once you find out who Kotaro is)

Fluttershy is Junko. Shy as hell, gets called a loner, your average <:3 girlie, woman who ran away from getting her picture taken. She gets to obliterate a guitar that belongs to Kotaro(once again, this will become 100x funnier when you find out who Kotaro is)

Rarity is Yugiri This is actually the one that started this all off. L heard Rarity sing in A True, True Friend. Rarity my favorite girl that has now slept with many men and killed a guy once and died for it, but she'd do it again(and says so). Shes also from the Meiji era.

Pinkie Pie is Lily Forever positive and fun loving party girl! Made to be on a stage!! This does make Pinkie and 10 year old [it's L from now on hi guys] but i mean look at them. they make sense. pinkie is the only one who would ever be able to rewrite a song, remake her outfit and then also choreograph a dance that immediately became a tiktok sensation. pinkie transgender canon also

Nightmare Moon [luna] is Tae Girliepop who is herself but fucked up and strange and bites people. It's like. nightmare moon if nightmare moon was Not Luna in a different way from being possessed. just trust me on this its good okay. shes best friends with twilight and at one point grabs her face and goes rag rahahrah rah and twilight goes youre so right. that was so sweet. thank you i love you moon

Spike is Romero Doggy. bork bork bork

Celestia is Kotaro bossman, specifically focuses on twilight, looks like they should be cool but they're the cringiest people you've ever seen, also just all of this. yeah he sucks ass more than she does but she can suck like as a person. for fun. also now she does a talent show trying to do an impression of a mudkip and i can think of few ponies more likely to do that shit

Discord is Jofuku Old man with powers. thats it.

SciTwi is MeiMei one off character who accidentally tripped into the secret of the main guys and uhh she wears glasses and cant see and she gets to be part of the team Once. good for her i guess.

[rainbowgod666]

Eh

A reminder from an annoyed trans person:

JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO TRANS PEOPLE DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE NOT TRANSPHOBIC. IF YOU USE OUR IDENTITY AGAINST US AT ANY POINT, YOU ARE BEING TRANSPHOBIC.

DONT PRETEND YOU ARE A SAFE PERSON IF YOU WILL ONLY REFER TO US CORRECTLY US WHEN YOU ARENT UPSET WITH US.

[biracy]

This is vaguing multiple things and is also a general statement I've made before, so, once again: The way people on here talk So fucking detrimentally about "virgins" leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. This website is all "this is the neurodivergent autism website!" and "It's okay to experience typical 'teenage' things in your 20s and beyond if you're A Queer! Your life doesn't end at 25!" until someone hasn't had "regular sex", ESPECIALLY if they dare to post horny things and be conscious of their own sexuality without having had "regular sex". People on here love endorsing the social construct of "virginity" if it means they can Epically Own "fandom losers"/"terminally online losers"/even that fuckin article about how people only like Harry Styles bc they haven't had "real sex". It's just so deeply uncompassionate to "the queer transgender mentally ill neurodivergent autism website" and also just such a reductive way of looking at sexuality I'm sorry. "You can't know anything about your own sexuality or your sexual preferences until you've had REAL SEX to the standard I approve of" is going to be infinitely more "loserly" to me than idk. Someone daring to call themselves a top as "a virgin"

[mithos343]

future

I found a book of prophecies at the local business school. All of this will happen in 2026

Schools realizing giving small children Chromebooks is a bit much and start handing out garter snakes instead

Elon Musk tries to invent a version of Scientology based on "epic memes" that just ends up being a bunch of "founders" discussing how to blow up a nearby homeless shelter. Musk escapes all legal evasion because American institutions need to protect him in the name of Rich Man Good

A county school system in the Seattle metro area cut arts, drama, history, and literature and replaces it with the Amazon System For Learn2Code.Biz, featuring Mr. Beast speaking at the graduating ceremony

A reality show about how much landlords cry when they evict people is critically lauded

The bees come back out of nowhere. And nobody knows where they came from or where they were. Everyone decides this is fine, decides not to look a gift horse in the mouth

Jon Taffer, of Bar Rescue fame, runs for Senate and ends up winning by three votes

The American Medical Association says eugenics can be "done right, ethically, thanks to our partnership with OpenAI"

When the US isn't able to buy TikTok, it just floods it with influencers who talk about the "Saudi-Israeli prosperity plan." One of them ends up leading the Neom Secession Movement before being killed by Mr. Beast (not related to the Neom Secession Movement it's a hit and run while he films in Neom)

Former US president William Howard Taft is rumored to be spotted in Henderson, Nevada. This goes viral on Twitter and then it turns out to just be a guy

The Atlantic publishes an article by a war criminal about how philosophy departments need to admit morals are "fake and gay." It turns out the author was ghostwritten by his 14-year-old groyper janissary

An Ivy League law professor opens up a restaurant themed around "what if Olive Garden was authentic." It ends up revealing a massive tax evasion movement that ends up with three senators, seventeen Twitch streamers, and five major CEOs arrested

David Zaslav awarded a cultural medal by George W. Bush, who is somehow president again (to the joy of all Americans)

Mr. Beast supposedly finds the golden plates of Mormonism but buries them again

J. K. Rowling claims that sinking the migrant boat was necessary because they might have been exposed to "transgender ideology"

The Broadway musical of Rick and Morty, starring Jon Taffer as Rick and Mr. Beast as Morty, sweeps the Oscars despite not being a film, in no small part because Broadway partnered with OpenAI, who sponsored the Oscars. The host is made of entire pure ChatGPT and it's found out when someone tries to fuck him on stage.

The private equity epidemic is solved when the president of the United States, Jon Taffer, helps the restaurant and service industry find its niche with safe, corporate logos and mediocre brew. In addition to his presidential duties, Bar Rescue is on its 171th season, which also features Mr. Beast pretending to cure the bartenders' "genetic weaknesses" with his osteopathic touch

[aprofessionalwithoutstandards]

I am a raging transsexual and I love my cunt so much. I love experiencing being this strange expression of human biology. I love experiencing the transformation of my body into that strange expression of human biology.

I do want to get top surgery, but not bottom. Because I like my cunt. I want to ask for topical cream for it so that I can maximize bottom growth, because having a fat and juicy tdick is literally THE dream. Like, I think I like the idea a bit too much. Like, unhealthily so. But I Dont Care that's so gender euphoric and attractive and it feels so representative of my gender identity.

If I could have things my way, I'd genuinely have both a dick and a cunt (no balls bc where would they go) And no tits. That's the optimal body for me. I'd want to keep my clit, and have decent bottom growth too. I don't think that's possible though sadly, so getting a pussy pump and topical cream will have to do for bottom growth.

I know this is a really personal topic. Like, as personal as it fucking gets. But do you have a dream body? Like, ignoring what's possible using modern day Science and Medicine, ignoring current monetary balance and access to ressources, wbat would your hot transgender freak body be? If you wanna talk about genitals go ahead but this qustion isnt limited to genitals bc gender is vast and part odf every facet of our lives

Hey, that is possible! Vagina-preserving phalloplasty and penis-preserving vaginoplasty are relatively niche but certainly possible procedures, I've seen photos of it I know it can happen lol. And that's honestly also been something I've been wanting for a while! Attentive followers will know that I am, aheh, nonbinary, and while I do not consider having both a pussy and a dick to be representative of me being "both a girl AND a boy" or w/e, it is still a very gendereuphoric concept and something I really want. However I'm also still super pumped abt bottom growth and ALSO about being even more hairy as hell. Full disclosure since we're all being super TMI here, I'm already hairy as hell, I have hair in basically all the places those "things they don't tell you about going on T!" posts say T will give you hair in, I'm part Southern Italian and we're a very hairy people. However I DON'T have very much chest hair and I really want chest hair! And facial hair lol. Again since we're being TMI, I have like, "small on a woman but considered Massive Milkable Badonkahonkazonagas on a man by this website" tetas, which I think I would stop being dysphoric about if they were hairy as hell (and also it'd be hot cmon). I think if I'm reaaally spitballing here, I'd like to go on t but not really experience the fat redistrubition, if only bc I think being a very hairy goth boy with idk. Curvaceous Child-Bearing Hips or whatever is extremely funny and a good gender. I also want a bunch of stupid nerd shit like fangs and a puppy tail and dog ears and shit but this isn't a post abt that this is a post about my epic potential future dick. Thank u for letting me talk abt this lol I love thinking abt transgender joy and getting to hear abt what the boys and the dolls and those whomst lie betwixt are out there achieving, it makes me so happy knowing that people like me are existing and are happy and that I have a chance :)

[rainbowgod666]

Magnificent

TRANS STAR

TRAN S TAR

[cytocutie]

tag game sent over by @chiropteracupola :)

rules: list ten books that have stayed with you in some way, don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard - they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you.

haha oops it's long. i'll go ahead and put my chain letter bit up here if you folks would like to have a crack at it: @atomic-madness , @the-atrium-of-fools , @another-sad-lieutenant ?

I'm gonna take "books" loosely—some of the pieces of writing that have affected me most were short stories. In no particular order:

1. "There Will Come Soft Rains", Ray Bradbury

is the house, broken, obsolete, and alone, still a house? the gentle death is far more painful than the violent one. oh shit i just realized how much this story influenced my d&d character

2. "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea", Ursula K. Le Guin

i have so many second-/third-generation immigrant feelings about this story. even if you could do it all again, better this time, there would always be something too late to be changed, it was already part of you... when you make a decision there's always something you leave behind... and then there's the ansible and the desperate futility of communicating with a world "you" cannot return to...

3. "A New Refutation of Time", Jorge Luis Borges

this one's an essay! well kind of also a prose poem. one of those works that found me at exactly the right time in my life to punch me in the gut. "The world, unfortunately, is real. I, unfortunately, am Borges." sooo true girlie.

4. Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

i don't know what to say just please read this if you haven't. it changed the way i love

5. Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

i do enjoy a good intergenerational epic! despite spanning a century, each character was written with so much love and humanity. this book sat down in my stomach in 2018 and has not budged since.

6. The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer

7. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

speaking of epics with ensemble casts whose humanity breaks me. there's nothing i can say that hasn't already been said. i love People

everyone shut up about victor. the creature is so fucking transgender. i cannot emphasize enough how transgender the creature is. envisioned as Adam, cast as Satan, yet so often paralleling Eve. conceived as the perfect man, meticulously designed, and rejecting the design. bristling against his own body. the monster is Creation itself, creating itself. but i didn't give you that option! none of us are given that option. <-part of an unfinished diatribe ignited by my ap lit teacher

8. A Tale Dark and Grimm, Adam Gidwitz

10. The Unfolding of Language, Guy Deutscher

a silly trilogy and not one i particularly enjoy as an adult, but i found it very cathartic as an unwell nine-year-old with violent fantasies.

9. Superman from the 30's to the 70's

i inherited my affection for Superman from my dad, mostly through this anthology. at one point i had the first couple issues in it memorized. i got some very strange ideas about crime from this book before i learned enough about the modern world to realize that's not quite how things work

words (and art and ideas and loss and transformation) are so fucking cool you guys. this was my comfort book as a tween but i honestly hadn't thought of it in a while. i should go back and reread it

[chilidogloverr]

“I just came from r/196” ask game

Saw another post. I think I should invite y'all to one of our longstanding traditions. Answer the questions then tag 10 (or more) people. I'll go first.

Name? Jarrod

Pronouns and gender? they/he, guy???

Sexuality? Pansecual

Country? USA MERICA FUCK YEAH🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅

Top 5 fandoms? hazbin/helluva, fnaf, team four trees two, i forgor the rest

What is your Most forbidden snack? fabuloso also chapstick

Would you pet a bug? scared scared scared of bugs. dont like them. scary scary.

Share a weird fact/story about yourself with the class. i love fixing things, no matter what it is. my silly little brain just latches onto it like a puzzle, which it kinda is. i can already fix most electronic devices, or alteast know how to (FUCK apple and their stupid fucking anti repair policy. thats actual fucking bullshit. i dont want to have to pay for a 200 dollar course and license to fix your shitty god damn phones. mac books and ipads are aight. but FUCK apple as a company. all this does is protect their silly little fucking income from their stupid ass fucking phones breaking all the fucking time. all it does is make it so that people who do fix phones for a living fucking cant, and no devices to fix means no food on the fucking table for them or their families. they're toying with peoples livelihoods for a bit of fucking profit.) if i dont know how to fix it (cars, microwaves, tvs, literally anything that could break) i want to learn

What does the color blue taste like? mmm yumby

What is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen? the ocean. it goes on forever. it doesnt stop. i didnt realize that until i saw it in person. it stopped me dead in my tracks.

What is the stupidest thing you've ever done? ive got this protein bar. in 2020 (my second year of marching band, freshman year) i was eating a box of them on the way to marching band camp. i lost one. this was in july. i found it on the ground still sealed in january of the following year. i still have it. im going to eat it my senior year at the end of the year band dinner. i have not done it yet. im going into my senior year. im going to do it. it will kill me. i will not regret it.

Stupidest thing you've seen/heard someone else do/say? a pastor for a church i used to attend (unfortunately hes my uncle) blamed crime and evil on transgender people

Hyperfixation song? long list. Starman David Bowie, banana man tally hall, mr white keys cherry poppin daddies, play that funky music wild cherry, cant take my eyes off you frankie valli, sh-boom the ink spots, the devil went down to georgia the charlie daniels band

Is there any meaning behind your profile picture and/or username? I've been asked several times where "Chapstick Man!" comes from. It comes from TF2. I named a rocket launcher "chapstick gun" with the description "ngl chapstick taste kinda good" and then i thought the joke was funny and it stuck. my name is now Chapstick Man on like everything. i have not been sued yet. Im too cool to be sued.

Dream career as a child? also electronics repair technician (i am answering these out of order)

Dream career as an adult? still kinda a child ig. but i want to be an electronics repair technician, running my own little computer/electronics repair shop. i already know how to do it, i just need a building and to be 18 (i turn 18 in december) and people to come and give me their stuff to fix. i love fixing things.

Thoughts on cilantro? its aight ig

Have you ever been banned from a location and if so, why? I havent. but i plan to be. i am going to be silly and they cannot prevent it.

What is your cursed food combination? I did my burgers in ketchup if i want ketchup, i did my biscuits in gravy for biscuits and gravy

Trans rights? are epic!!!!!!

@everyone im lazy

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading update

what's up gamers, the odds are very slim that I'll be finishing another book before November is over, so let's do a roundup! I've you've been following me literally at all you probably saw me reblog my public shame TBR list at some point, and now we get the #reviews.

what have I been reading?

Histories of the Transgender Child (Jules Gill-Peterson, 2018) - this book is a really incredible piece of historical research, exploring the existence of transgender and gender non-conforming children in the first half of the 21st century. Gill-Peterson threads a great needle of both laying out ways in which trans identity and specifically trans youth were understood in the early decades of trans healthcare, establishing that young transgender people are in no way a modern phenomenon, while also making the strong case that trans youth have been able to exist without complication or medical intervention throughout American history. It's an engrossing medical history, and I would say intensely valuable to anyone who has a vested interest in protecting trans kids' right to autonomy and joy.

Batman: Bruce Wayne - Murderer? (Greg Rucka et al, 2002) - this, to me, is peak Batfamily content. everyone is miserable and nobody is communicating about it because they're all too depressed and bitchy. Bruce gets accused of murder and sent to prison and he decides the only reasonable thing to do is break out and never be Bruce Wayne again, with seemingly no concern about how horrific the consequences will be for his family as long as he gets to keep being Batman. the dysfunction is... fucking delicious. cannot WAIT to read Bruce Wayne: Fugitive, I must know how Brucie baby gets himself out of this one. also, hey, have I mentioned that I miss Babs as Oracle every single day? god, she's just... she's so much cooler as Oracle.

Alive at the End of the World (Saeed Jones, 2022) - Jones is so so so so so so SO good at writing layers of pain and hurt into his poetry. the imagery of apocalypse and protest is infinitely striking, and I was particularly shaken by the recurring series within the book that ended each segment, in which Jones finds himself in his apartment after a reading speaking with a doppelganger who turns out to be his own personified pain. chills!!!! CHILLS!!!!

Elatsoe (Darcie Little Badger, 2020) - I wanted to make a point of reading something a little lighter, because we've been a little #heavy lately, and Little Badger's debut YA novel was perfect for that. while Elatsoe isn't what I'd call flawless - in particular, I have to say that the main characters seem VERY young for 17 year olds, feeling more like middle readers protagonists in most ways - it's an extremely charming book with a lot of really cool ideas. the world is one very like ours but suffused with mythology; ghosts, vampires, and fairies are well-known facts of life integrated seamlessly into the story. it's very cool to see an urban fantasy where the protagonist's parents are totally in on the supernatural and fully supportive of the teen sleuthing without any sketchy ulterior motivations, and I think the tidbit that Lipan folks are able to banish vampires for coming into their home - the entirety of their ancestral lands - without an invitation is one of the coolest twists on vampire lore I've ever seen.

Nature Poem (Tommy Pico, 2017) - I LOVE Tommy Pico's epic poetry (that's a literary term, not an outdated compliment), and I read Nature Poem in what I believe is the way that was intended: all in one evening, still wearing a cute little bodycon dress, glitter, and fishnets after a Halloween party, a little tipsy. as always Pico's voice is impeccable, dry and witty and observant and so, so tired of so much bullshit. the preoccupation of this poem is the idea of nature, specifically writing a poem about it, and Pico's railing against the idea that white poets can write countless poems about nature and only be seen as writing a poem, while he, as a Kumeyaay man, can't write a poem about nature without it being seen as a woo woo magical Native American thing. but it's not just that; no Pico poem is every just one thing, but a smart and circling conversation to drive a point home. I still don't know if I'm liking poetry right but man I know I love Tommy Pico.

The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Michael Warner, 1999) - full disclosure: I ordered this book in a feverish haze after it was recommended at a conference by a speaker who was so stupid hot that I nearly had a panic attack about it. we don't have time to unpack all that, but I will say that this was as eye-opening a read as nearly all historical queer texts are. the two things that jumped out at me most were 1.) Warner's well-written argument against the concept of marriage as a whole, with the then-ongoing fight for gay marriage necessarily included, and 2.) the scathing critiques of gay individuals who throw ~weird sexual deviant~ gays under the bus to further their own social standing. INSANE that that's still topical in 2022; can't wait to be quoting a 20+ year old book at people when the kink @ pride discourse starts in 2023.

A Dowry of Blood (S.T. Gibson, 2021) - that's right, it's the TikTok book about Dracula's brides being in a polycule! I figured with a description like that this was either going to be pretty good or bad in fun and interesting ways, and I wasn't disappointed at all. Dowry was a fast, fun read, with a heavy gothy ambiance all the way through. it carries more weight than expected by depicting Dracula himself as a surprisingly realistic abusive partner, a boyfriend from hell who keeps his partners on short leashes with a thinly-veiled threat of death if they ever displease him. if you like your vampires depressed, horny, and wrapped up in deeply unhealthy psychosexual mindgames you will LOVE this.

Into the Riverlands (Nghi Vo, 2022) - this is the latest novella in Vo's Singing Hills Cycle, which I cannot recommend enough to anyone. I didn't initially adore this entry quite as much as When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain or Empress of Salt and Fortune, I think because it felt less immersive. the Singing Hills Cycle tells stories within stories, framed by a cleric named Chih travelling to gather stories across the fictional kingdom in which they live. the first two novellas were much more immersive in their storytelling, and I think I missed having that in Into the Riverlands, but there was a certain reveal near the end that cast the whole thing in a very different light and made me like the setup a lot more. it's also worth noting that given the way this novella deals with larger-than-life martial artists and the way their legends are distorted across time, it reminded me VERY much of The Girl Who Kept Winter - a spectacularly fun read, one that I can't recommend enough.

The World We Make (N.K. Jemisin, 2022) - god DAMN, N.K. Jemisin! I was a little unsure about The City We Became, willing to rank it as my least favorite of Jemisin's books, but the sequel really knocked by socks off. I could hardly put it down, and I'm sad to see the duology ended already - if I'm being totally honest I think this book could easily have been fleshed into two for a trilogy, given how much capital-p-Plot is introduced, but I also really respect how much story Jemisin was able to so slicky introduce and resolve in under 400 pages here. on the whole this is a thriving, fast, fist-pumping love letter to New York City and the power of community in the face of all kinds of evil, and one of the few sequels I feel completely confident calling better than the original.