#ur gonna have people in your life who do not have access to living life the same way you do. that doesnt make them evil. grow up

[cielosuerte]

i take issue with a view of community when it seems you only consider it to include people you like who agree with your views 100% without deviation or nuance & when you seem to believe that the only reason someone would fall outside this line is because they're evil (& you're the good guys). i'm very sorry but that's not community to me. maybe "house party" would be a better term? instead of trying to buzz wordify everything that makes you feel big and special, try just being honest about how you actually interact with your real community, especially the folks you see as evil for not falling in perfect lockstep with your decided worldview

[evereverest2]

@ofthemorningstars commented on my q&a post and i wanted to make a general little post for ALL of you aspiring writers.

i’ve talked to people who wanted to start writing many times before, who have said to me “your writing is so good, and i wish i could do it like you”. i always say the same thing to them:

cut bc this is long lol

the number one first thing you need to know when you start writing is that it has to be yours. it is a world entirely your own, of your design, your unique and wonderful imagination, and it must make YOU happy. don’t compare urself to me, dont compare urself to tolstoy, don’t compare urself to shakespeare. the things you make can only be made by you, even if they’re inspired by something else, even if they’re fanfic. every story, movie, song, painting, etc. is derivative of something else, that’s just bc there’s so many talented humans. that doesn’t mean they aren’t unique creations on their own. that doesn’t mean you’re copying someone.

the biggest roadblock to writing—and any art really—is your own mind. you will kill urself with negativity, telling urself that it isn’t good enough, that it is awkward, that it is derivative, that it does not deserve to be read. i struggle with that all the time, but generally that’s to my own standards and not another authors. this is what i mean when u say u can’t compare urself—

YOU HAVE SO MUCH CREATIVITY TO OFFER THE WORLD.

YOU.

you are amazing. everything you create is special. i could never write what you write, and you could never write what i write. we are humans who grow up in vastly different lives, with experiences that shape the way we think and create and inspire. we have different opinions, relationships, and memories that will shine through in our individual works.

when we write, we leave the unique and beautiful pieces of ourselves in the text.

and you need to remember that.

the second thing i tell people to focus on is time.

i’m gonna expose myself on main here and show you a snippet of a fanfic i wrote when i was 13

yeah that’s fucking embarrassing. what an introduction bro. people totally get tattoos when they’re 15.

the point being that you don’t start writing like a wizard day one. this excerpt was about a year into my writing and i was a middle schooler. you look at that and you wouldn’t expect the author of little monster.

so if writing is something you want to do and you’re passionate for, even as a hobby, you need to sit down and do that often. VERY often. serious and even average authors write EVERY DAY. even if it’s just one sentence. writing is an easily accessible hobby that has a HIGH ceiling for “being good” at it and an even tougher path to the professional level. anyone can write, and everyone does. whether those are emails or smutty fanfics, it’s just a fact of life. if it’s something you want to improve at, take it seriously. so many people write a few stories and call it day, saying they suck and they’ll never improve. well, i’ll tell you now, you’ll never feel good about your writing until you take it seriously.

and if it’s casual for u, that’s totally fine! i won’t tell u that u HAVE to write everyday. not even i do that !! (though it is most days). but that doesn’t mean it’s something you don’t have to work on. imagine if you wanted to learn an instrument— if you only learned a few songs, if you only practice once in a blue moon, would you call urself a musician? even if u never wanted to join a band, would you call yourself a guitarist because you learned four chords?

you’ll never be happy with ur art unless u practice. and it will suck, i assure you. but you need to be patient. you have to be bad first to be good.

so, in summation of all these things i’ve learned both on my own and in studying creative writing, i’ll leave you with this (and i know this post is a fucking mess lmao)

you are the most special and unique person in the world, because only you can tell the stories in your head. just give yourself the time and patience to get there.

i believe in you.

[iatrophilosophos]

Socialized medicine in the US is a partial solution to the myriad of problems with western medicine at best.

Western medicine is theoretically speaking the application of the scientific method to the human body, right? So it seeks to isolate "variables" in the name of "objectivity". Another word for variables here is context. And you just can't in a real way separate context from an individual's state of health; something medical professionals are VERY MUCH AWARE OF (see: shit life syndrome for one example) that exists in tension with both the current regiment of distributing healthcare and with the foundational mythos of western medical knowledge formation.

Western medicine is also beholden to the rest of the world. In places in the US where medicaid is actually relatively accessible, for example, you still have shit like racism and sexism and transphobia and ableism impacting care people get. And I understand that like, when people talk about their ideal socialist utopia, there's mechanisms in place that deal with social oppression; but I want you to think about just how big a project uniform care actually existing would be.

So in our current world, another obstacle to Making Medicine That Works is legality, especially re: the drug war. Very useful, known, well-studied substances have documented properties making them extremely useful or potentially useful for a variety of medical treatments (examples: THC for everything from gut stuff to emotional support; LSD for crohns and potentially diabetes; good old opiates and opiate-related-chemicals for chronic pain, some cases of depression and a subset of the experiences often diagnosed as schizophrenia and/or ADHD): but prohibition prevents application or further study (even for chemicals like THC that are legal in some states, if any program that receives federal funding is involved, can't use it! Fun right?). But sure, we can waive that one aside to and say that universal healthcare will also mean a total end to prohibition. That'd be cool!

So now that we've magicked away these problems, we have uniformly available healthcare that's getting better every day because all the social, legal and financial limits on medical exploration have been taken away. What do we have?

Well aside from a system that's gonna die with the rest of industry any time from next year to a few decades from now, still heavily dependent on plastics and factories and worldwide shipping and coerced labor in other countries, we still have a hierarchical structure where prescriptive knowledge is generated by centralized institutions who's abilities and members are dictated by governmental legislation and that inherently cannot see or account for the context of various people's bodies and lives and thus still limits the ability of disabled and mad people to explore/access unapproved/not-yet-approved treatments. But no, we can magic this one away too, obviously in the ideal socialized healthcare, everyone's needs will be accounted for so we'll have decentralized community medical exploration! And we'll use existing holistic healthcare tools and make more to account for individual people's context! And nobody will be subjected to coerced labor or nonconsensual treatment! And we'll find ways of creating medicine that are locally feasible, don't require global industry, and are resilient against climate collapse!

...so we no longer have contemporary western medicine (or civ, for that matter). Cheers!

But wait! There's more! You can live in this brave new world RIGHT NOW! what do you do with ur time, huh? You play video games? I bet you've put a lot of time and effort and skill-building and resource accumulation into it! Maybe you're poor as shit like me and have figured out emulators and pirating or talk to other people who share your interests about how to access them or you're into indie games! That is cool and meaningful! Maybe you like music! Maybe you like fiction! I bet you know a lot of lore/specifics/techniques/etc related to SOMETHING! maybe it's birds! Idk you but I am absolutely positive that there is SOMETHING you know a lot about that you have figured out how to know in a way that's accessible to you and applicable to your life. Maybe it felt easy, maybe it was really hard, maybe you did it because you want to, maybe you did it because you had to, maybe it's a really big topic, maybe it's a small one, maybe you can think of it right this second and maybe you'd have to ask some friends to point it out to you. Whatever it is, whoever you are, YOU HAVE BUILT A KNOWLEDGE SET AND YOU CAN BUILD ANOTHER ONE! You can start learning about the medicine that is applicable to your life right now. Go read the Wikipedia page for some medications you have around! Or for some ingredient in a food nearby you don't know what is! Or one you do know what is! Figure out a question about it! Google that question! Keep googling! Read some studies that come up and then search all the words you don't know and keep looking until you understand them! Look at you you're doing it! Keep going! This is how it starts!

Medicine exists in the same world we do and we can take it for ourselves and make it better!

[qelflinq]

Every porn take I see blow up on here says the exact same thing and it’s wild to see 20,000 people play absolutely stupid every single time lol. “2 people should be allowed to record themselves having good angel consensual sex and that’s why porn is good actually so stop saying it’s bad😇” Ok how come that’s your position that’s not even a very divisive thing to say. Come on now defend the porn made in a studio with a pornstar man and a pornstar woman whose Instagram comments are full of old men describing how they’d like to violate her (best case scenario). Like WHO is taking up an issue with the ethical shit when they talk about porn. That’s literally 2% of porn you assholes KNOW the other 98% (the pornhub most searched , the shit most curious 11 year olds will see first) is simulated rape/incest/pedophilia (oftentimes all 3). I’m not saying the straight guy favourites are all like this, but even the majority of “normal” porn reestablishes really fucked up ways to view women (as do things like weightwatchers and razor ads but that’s probably pushing it a bit too much on here). I guess part of the problem is that hardly anybody on this website can think or see beyond themselves and their own porn habits. Like sure maybe (maybe) Rocko| 23| he/they only gets off to AO3 fanfiction but the kink freedom warriors don’t love mentioning the swaths of men that go abt their day fantasizing about controlling or hurting women. Do they just not exist when we consider the effects porn has on us? Or are they not supposed to be a problem, and I’m just another grouch yucking somebody’s yum? The men that are our classmates and coworkers and family members etc etc the men we have to interact with daily. Like I’m sorry but not everyone lives in Tumblr world 100% of the time lol it doesn’t make us anti sex crones to think it’s weird that porn is so accessible and commercialized and STILL so influenced by misogyny (again I’m talking THE MAJORITY of it not the ethical shit everyone uses as an example when defending porn). I’m starting to get ads from onlyfans telling me to sign up 👍 telling me hey girl this is such a fun opportunity to make money. Is that not like, evil?? Is that not scary to anyone? Like now it’s the company itself explaining how good and empowering it is to have your income dictated by how jackoffable you are deemed by strangers forming fantasies surrounding your body? Whether my body is a particular fetish? Nobody online rly wants to talk about the other side of sex work. Abt how it’s so closely linked to addiction and poverty in real life. It’s not just silly cute cosplay photoshoots that stay within the greater queer community. And even when it is, if you come across any trans OF creators twitter, a great chunk of their comments are (often conservative) men who want to hurt/degrade them. It’s not a new or made up phenomenon. You can very much witness it for yourself. Most people DO witness it, I guess it’s just not really a priority so it’s better ignored? It’s useless trying to have a normal conversation about these things cause everybody reblogs the same posts to show they share the same opinions. When the internet is this fast ur priorities shift, I get it. It’s easier to form opinions based on others safe agreeable pre-written ones. So often I see or hear someone regurgitating some shit I KNOW they read on a Tumblr post or heard in a YouTube essay cause bro I saw it too. Sometimes it’s straight up word for word. Like what ! Does nobody read books anymore. Or go to work. Or go outside and talk to people. I know it’s hard to find time to think about things much when there r so many tiktoks to watch, posts to read, pictures to chuckle and so little free-time in your day to do all that. It’s crazy to me that if you’re not a woman on here , you’re probably not gonna think about how women are treated at all.

[enhaheeseung]

So basically ppl were trying to sexualize riki, and someone found this message: https://www.tumblr.com/jwonsite/738013651737444352/for-the-riki-smut-writers

then if u look through the comments ppl were saying that it applies to all the members but idk much, just checking to see Ur opinion on it.

Hmm interesting I mean idk I guess to each his own I personally would never write anything for niki or even feel comfortable thinking of him like that but that’s just me plus I’m only attracted to heeseung so there’s that even the older members I’d never write smut for

As far as smut writing goes for the rest of the members I can say there is an extent that I’m willing to go and I know this is gonna sound hypercritical as a smut writer myself but I’ve seen things that just aren’t my cup of tea and I feel certain things could just be left unsaid especially assumptions about how the members are in real life it’s one thing to write fiction but to actually come up and state that (whatever’s being talked about at the time) is real that’s when I draw the line

Also this may sound dumb but I feel like most smut is just tasteless like there’s just no actual substance to what’s happening it’s just boom bang bam smut end and i feel those writers probably shouldn’t write it but this is all personal and I’m not claiming im a better writer in any way

Anyways to answer your question tho I’m 50/50 I do get why people don’t want the members being sexualized (even I feel that way sometimes when it’s just tacky) and I get that others just realize it’s fiction and entertainment that being said I do feel like there’s an over sexualization sometimes and that’s the 50 that I don’t like again I know that sounds hypocritical cause I write smut but there’s just a type of smut/hard thoughts that just disgust me at times (I hope someone else feels like this and I don’t just sound crazy lol)

So basically I like smut when it’s more vanilla and tame not just some wild fantasy that would 99% never happen (not kink shaming tho this is just my preference)

Oh one more thing it’s hard for me to talk about the whole niki situation cause even tho he’s young the people sexualizing him might also be young too it doesn’t make it any better but the fact is unfortunately this is an app that underage people can access as well as other apps with adult content it does suck cause these people are young and probably don’t really see the immediate problem with it but there is indeed things that need to be implemented to protect minors being exposed to this shit and that’s a whole other problem that doesn’t involve niki or kpop but fact is we live in a fucked up world with fucked up things going on and I guess what I’m trying to say is that atp there really shouldn’t be any surprise should we try to stop it? Yes will it happen? Probably not but unfortunately thats just the way it is same shit happened with other idols too I do appreciate the people who call out underage blogs tho it helps keep things a little safer for the younger folk here so yeah even I have thought about deactivating my blog cause I know I have an influence on my readers and minors might be accessing my blog so sometimes it just makes me wonder if it’d be better to stop writing cause if I could protect just one underage person from being exposed to content like this I’d delete this app in a heart beat it’s fun writing but it’s not fun exposing people to stuff they shouldn’t be seeing and I know the whole talk about it’s the parents responsibility to keep kids off sites like this and writers shouldn’t have to quit because parents aren’t doing their jobs and blah blah blah but if you have that understanding that these kids aren’t being taught properly now is where you step in and take that role to be better than the people who raise kids up like that

Honestly I could write a whole essay but I’m sure I have bored everyone else by now

Again I was asked my opinion and this is all just my opinion so do not @ me

[idontmindifuforgetme]

im very lucky to have a group of friends that i love sincerely they really do fulfill me, buttt over the past 2 years most of them have moved away and it truly hurts my would, i listened to a podcast that says u meet most of ur friends by age 25 and i just started panicking cuz i tuned 24 recently, i cant stop thinking about how I'm just gonna be left alone idk i feel like suddenly super insecure about my social life i mean I've met new people over the last couple of months but none have been sticking etc. Also actively looking for friends feels so pathetic i feel like the biggest loser in the world. How do u get over this?

oh wow, that’s a very bold statistic. can i ask what the podcast’s name is? & what their sources are, if they cited any? i don’t doubt a lot of people flatline by 25, but things have also changed a loooot since the advent of social media. befriending people all over the world is accessible now more than ever… it wouldn’t surprise me if it was a lil bit of an outdated fact.

but anyway, running w the assumption that this is accurate: it genuinely doesn’t mean anything. say you’ve seen a statistic that says 70% of all biology majors end up switching majors. the automatic assumption to this is that biology is a hard major. but that’s not necessarily the case. some students could have dropped out because they’re no longer interested in biology; others could have dropped out because financial issues got in the way; others still could have dropped out because they’re reconsidering their career of choice. point is, a statistic can encompass any number of reasons, but that’s hardly ever accessible information.

the fact that most people meet their friends by 25 doesn’t mean making friends is no longer inaccessible; it just means most 25 year olds don’t do it, based on this statistic. maybe a lot of 25 year olds settle down and get preoccupied w family instead; maybe they already have their established cliques and don’t seek people outside of it; maybe it’s just not a priority, period. it doesn’t mean you, yourself, w your own circumstances that can never be exactly replicated by others, can’t form new bonds. & what’s pathetic about seeking human connection? vulnerability is literally your strongest weapon. try not to get bogged down in today’s rhetoric that disinterest translates into independence. it just translates into being alone & suppressing your feelings. anyone who thinks you’re pathetic for seeking connection can walk themself out the door. that thought process itself would be pathetic, and you’re better off without that kind of negativity in your space.

you’re 24. your life just started. live it to the fullest bc it’s a blessing and none of us is guaranteed a rewind. meet new people & learn & laugh & cry along the way. what others think of you is none of your fucking business <3

[iatrophilosophos]

There r also options other than going to the dr FWIW. like do that if you can & wanna and it's almost definitely a good idea to get checked up if people will actually listen, but like, if you read this and think "well I can't do that so I'm just gonna be miserable forever", you still have options! The following is p US-based in the details, fwiw. (Also, depending on where you live, there may be a harm reduction or "womens" health clinic catering to low income people-- oftentimes at these places you can say you're homeless and don't have ID and get free care! Sometimes you don't even have to be sneaky about it)

NONE OF THIS IS MEDICAL ADVICE! I AM LISTING THINGS FOR YOU TO LOOK UP AND FORM YOUR OWN OPINION ON!

One rlly easy otc thing for PMDD symptoms is up to 20mg famotidine (OTC name Pepsid). Many people in online support spaces swear by it and a few of my doctor friends prescribe it. Look for yourself on reddit or Facebook groups and thoroughly evaluate information before deciding to use it every month: pepsid isn't great for your kidneys. Why this works is kinda weird and AFAIK not well understood; immune shit and hormone shit are very closely connected tho

DIY HRT can expand to birth control (as-menstrual-treatment in this instance): many birth control drugs are available through the same routes people buy hrt raws. Again, seek information you trust. Find online communities and discussion groups (though you may have to think slightly outside the box, since it isn't common, but there are people out there who have the info you want). Consider finding the name and publisher of a reputable prescribing guide and downloading a pdf off libgen or Anna's archive. Look up scientific articles for toxicity and warnings-- but, most of these medications are estrogens or progestins, which typically do not have an overdose threshhold but may increase clot risk if used incorrectly over a long period of time. It's possible if you do go to a doc and get a script, you can co-op buy with friends or save up and save a lot of $$ on script fees (most things will be <$5/gram, good fucking deal for shit dosed in milligrams!)

People have been using herbs for shitty menstrual symptoms for thousands of years. Some herbs that come up often are: motherwort, red clover, raspberry leaf, black cohosh. Check contraindications (reasons a medicine might be harmful) from a western medical source like drugs.com, but look up actual usage in a BOOK (i like Matthew wood's Earthwise Herbal set, body into balance by Maria Noel Groves also covers these things in a way that's a bit more accessible but I hate some of her takes. Both available on libgen/Anna's archive) or a VERY REPUTABLE online source (like rjwhelan.co.nz or Henriettes herbs) instead of like, healthline articles, because those suck.

Ultimately like. This is not my favorite post because while it has a grain of truth, sometimes even what a really good doc is gonna say is "this just sucks for you", which you don't neccesarily need a doctor to know how to handle, and good doctors tend to be really inaccessible. it IS TRUE that if your periods are super miserable you should probably do some investigating; and like i said, getting checked out however you can manage is a GOOD IDEA because sometimes stuff IS kinda bad. You're just also not totally fucked if you don't have a doctor; and if your experience is relatively stable (i.e. not rapidly getting worse especially if ur well post-puberty and don't have an extenuating life or medical condition, e.g. being ultrastressed and/or food insecure and/or having an ED will very predictably give you fewer, much worse periods) then even trying some DIY shit for a while and seeing if it helps might be helpful in deciding if it feels important to push harder on finding an OK doc.

Finally: some herbalists and some doulas are quite knowledgeable about these things and usually have super reasonable/sliding scale rates; and they SHOULD want a brief low-down on ur issues to see if they think it's in their scope before a paid consultation (if they don't they're probably shitty anyway); so that can be a good resource in decision making.

So many people who get periods are like “Ugh it sucks that having a menstrual cycle makes you almost die every month” like no that’s not normal you need to go to the doctor

[yakultii]

I ain't scared, I just thought I might get the most best answer this way..I'm wondering what poet or poem you read (or were read in your childhood) that had you looking for more and aspiring to write your own? If it was a traumatic event, I feel you there. .it can really help to read a complete stranger's words of pain, when they harmonize with our own. I admit, I have only read a couple of your poems but I love your voice, keep on keepin on ☮️ 🕉 💛

HAHA DW I LOVE ANONS <33333 I encourage it.

HONESTLY no poetry inspired me to write poetry (IRONIC) I thought I hated poetry!!!! I’ve written many things since I was a kid but always been more of an essay kinda dude..I attempted to read poetry a few times over my lifetime and mostly it made no sense to me..I thought it was just a bunch of pretentious ppl flexing their advanced vocab (which honestly I lack bc of a whole other story I won’t get into and maybe I was just jealous) - the only time I wrote a poem was back in final yr of highschool lit class when my brain was malnourished af and writing it made me want to kms plus I had major imposter syndrome (and then my lovely grandma went and sent it in to a poetry magazine without me knowing and it got published and still I didn’t think poetry was for me) only in more recent times I no longer have access to a psych who I can send weekly 3000 word emails to and I needed to do something so that I would stop driving myself completely insane bc I also live alone 4hrs from family and no friends so have noone to save me but myself so I started writing every day on wattpad like a digital diary entry(today was day 118 in a row) then I started to see others who had written poetry and combined w the fact that I’ve come very far over the yrs in terms with perfectionism (as in not needing to be) I found myself in a place realising that poetry didn’t have to be “good” and that I could just make it work for me. I could just write for myself. To get things out (even tho it’s only like 5% of my mind). It didn’t need to look impressive for others etc like what I used to think poetry did… so yeah basically poetry is just my budget therapy now and a tool to prevent me from ending things :))))) everything I write about (so far, at time of writing) is from real life experience and I love using it as an outlet to say the things that wouldn’t be taken so well if they were said out loud.. cause everyone has some sort of darker side whether they are exposed to it or not and whilst I do hold onto a lot of hope I love being able to have an outlet to get the rot out of me or at least create something with it so it’s not completely useless and all consuming. ALSO I think it’s cool that poetry allows you to turn your words into art. I’ve always loved art and ppl consider me arty or whatevs but I can’t draw or paint (well - not that it matters) so this is kinda something that comes more naturally to me! (I’ve only been writing poetry for 4 months now so hopefully I can only get better)… AND THANK THE LORD in the meantime as I have come to write my own poetry I am now able to appreciate other people’s poetry, I can understand it more, I can be inspired by it, I can admire it. I get it now. Or at least I think I’m starting to get it…. But to answer ur question l wouldn’t say it was a singular traumatic event which inspired it but rather a combined experience of like 20 genuinely traumatic events combined with being neurodiverse & a lifetime of various mental illnesses which I wouldn’t say are all treated etc. and quite honestly having read NOTHING in the past which resonated with the depth of my own experience so I thought you know what I know I can’t be the only one feeling this, I’m gonna try write my own! If I can’t read it I’ll write it and hope I can be that for someone else I guessss

SOZ FOR RANT IDK HOW TO STFU AND THANK YOU FOR READING A FEW OF MY POEMS AND THANK YOU FOR THIS QUESTION ILY HAVE A LOVELY DAY <33

[so-secret-it-was-daisy]

“Firstly, when you get this, you have to answer with 5 things you like about yourself, publicly. Then, send this ask to 10 of your favourite followers (non-negotiable, positivity is cool)” 💕

Ok 5 things I love about myself 🤔

As someone who has had depression and anxiety and overall hasn't felt good about themself in like what- let me see if I can find anything:::

1: Let me start with my hair because it's soft and I have always loved it's texture and how easy it's to comb it even though I haven't been doing it since I was a little girl thanks to my mother

2: I love my hands especially when I was a little girl who wasn't girly and playing for my school's girls football team (stereotypical yes but they're kinda masculine) hell yass I liked their roughness and the unnecessary need to punch them onto my school desk for being a strong silly goofball

3: AM A BELIEVER and A LONER::

My unwavering faith in everything that I believe and hold close to my heart.. I Rather die than living in misery. I Rather have you Kill me than having to hunt you down if you don't finish the Job (don't like doing things) just cause I have to so don't make me do the work. I Rather hurt you with the truth than making you happy lying to you about anything. Honesty is accessible and essential if someone is not making you a priority they simply don't want to. Standing my ground even when I'm intimidated so please don't u ever back down on ur values & morals to apologize if you believe in something with ur whole chest stand by it / fight for it so you integrity doesn't make you feel small.

4: I'm a girls girl which means I be ur ride or diehard and if you're my person you have my unconditional loyalty & my precious little heart. You don't come for my people just because you're nice to me doesn't mean you're incapable of hurting other people no matter how much I may seem to love you and wanting to protect you with my life. Please listen when someone is telling you about their experience. don't forget ur values & upbringing love/friendships/people they come and go but a word of mouth stays with you over a lifetime so keep working harder to maintain your reputation/ image u have built for yourself over time.. I really try so hard to preach what I practice whether I'm alone by myself or in public. Choosing my words carefully cause knowledge is powerful and educating myself is a choice but ignorance if anything ain't bliss 💯

5: my brain 🧠 I really do cause sometimes I'm just fascinated by how much my mind works. if I was born with riches and resources the way I know I would be out there right now making movies 🎬 larger than life even when I'm failing it's spectacular (if you don't sell yourself better no one is gonna do it for you)

Sorry for making this super long if you can't tell I'm super passionate so I wasn't gonna hush hush it

[eroticcannibal]

Listen. Not to be Alarmist but I have many thoughts and feelings and Fears about voice recognition technology and the effect it will have on identity.

Like, we are already living in a time where maintaining a Regional identity is becoming a fight, specifically with regard to language. Trying to preserve your identity and community and heritage through ur children with language is so. fucking. hard. When u have only RP being recognized as “correct” English, and media is dominated by American ways of speaking.

And now we are very much being left behind by technology, which honestly fucking sucks for many people, and is straight up harmful for many disabled people with regional ways of speaking!

Now I know someone is gonna be all “oh u gotta speak slowly and clearly” no. Shut up. *You* need to speak slowly and clearly. That don’t work with many regional ways of speaking. We’ve been trying to use speech-to-text for my ADHD kid who can’t write without struggling A LOT and IT DOESN’T WORK. We TRIED slow and clear, even then it does not work! In fact recognition of their accent is so poor we couldn’t even do the training to recognize their voice. And they do not have a particularly hard to understand accent. They ain’t geordie. They ain’t full yorkshire. They ain’t that rural. How the fuck is voice recognition not recognizing really standard midlands-ish speech?

This is a choice. Those people developing voice recognition have chosen to not spend as many resources on recognising reigonal speech than on RP. It has been around so fucking long at this point, how the fuck in 2021 are we at the point where my child cannot even dictate one single fucking sentence?

They should not be forced to strip their identity from their speech to be understood. They should not be forced to go through the, for them, grueling process of learning *how* to strip their identity from their voice just to use an accessibility tool they need NOW.

What kind of a message is this going to give them? I went my whole life hearing how talking like I did made me thick, uneducated, scum. Now they’re hearing they aren’t even worth a basic accessibility thing that other people can freely access. They aren’t worthy of being allowed to do something as simple as write, just because of how they talk, because of how their family and community talks. How is that fair?

And like, not to bring up subtitles again, but this same issue effectively limits certain disabled groups to content produced only by people of certain backgrounds on youtube and no doubt other platforms eventually (cus why pay a person if a computer can guess). Is that not fucked up? Is it not quite fucked up that deaf people just straight up can’t understand content made by certain people cus no fucker can be arsed to have their voice recognition actually recognise voices?

I’m just so fucking mad about this.

[elvencantation]

everything everywhere all at once liveblog

okay i know she’s supposed to be evil and shit but JOY IS SO DAMN COOL AND HOT AND WOW. GODAMN

i love that she’s just straight up discovering weird ass new universes. rly don’t like the hot dogs for fingers tho everything on a bagel?? are you kidding me?

evil joy is too hot and that’s really not fair

the bagel cgi is cool too

poor this universe joy. yeah she’s not gonna be able to stab her is she

OMG YES RAPID JUMPS

WAIT THE GRANDAD IS NOW SENDING PEOPLE AFTER HER

juju chewbacca 😂

glad she’s having this convo with joy but shit

OMG THE BLIND JUMP AND THE SINGER FOR LUNG CAPACITY YES

GOD I LOVE HOW SHES COMBINING THESE RANDOM ASS SKILLS

WHAT THE FUCK WHY IS THIS LADY USING HER DOG AS A FUCKING BOLA?? not the right term but i cant remember it rn

is joy the key to defeating alpha joy?

god that would be so lovely if healing her relationship with joy in this horrible universe helped solve the problem

i love that her world saving skill in this case is thinking of weird ass random shit. i could probably do that. wouldn’t look as cute tho 😂

i hate this butt joke like. cant you take it out pls? for me personally cause it’s apparently a squick? thank you

NO NOT LIKE THAT

wait so they can only access the skills as long as they’re connected to that universe? how’d she combine them all with the shield fight then? or was it cause she fractured

oh no oh no she’s gonna kill alpha waymond fuck fuck FUCK

what is HAPPENING

is she stuck in another evelyn?

oh no the secondhand embarrassment of her messing up other universes

wait did she go back??

BRING ME BACK TO WUXIA UNIVERSE I LIKE THE OUTFITS

omg the creativity of putting them in her drawing??? HER MIND

oh it’s the weird white universe again

“the bagel will show you the true nature of things” GOD HOW DID SHE SAY THAT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE. ACTING

it’s probably a testament to the writing and acting that i actually kinda feel bad for hot dog Deirdre

also i know it’s bad that she’s fucking everything up but it’s such a cool sequence and joy’s face is fascinating to watch

okay now i wanna slow down that clip and see all the other universes!!!

if i was a rock would you still love me?

hmmm i’m a bit sad i didn’t hear their voices but i get the point

this is making me feel shrimp feelings. also i think i’m getting a headache. that’s probably just cause of not really having dinner and being on a plane 😂

YES YES WAYMOND IS GONNA BRING HER BACK I KNEW IT

oh no i forgot she stabbed him in the og universe fuck im gonna cry. and he’s still defending her

FUCK ITS NOT YOUR FAULT. YOURE THE ONE WHOS GONNA FIX IT

THIS WAYMOND BETTER SURVIVE OR ILL FUCKING RIOT

oh no she’s gonna kill waymond isn’t she. please don’t

WAIT WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED

why is the bagel here? and where did it go?

YES HUG DEIRDRE. ALL THE HUGS
god every moment i’m afraid of totally devastating tragedy. see what cdramas done to me??

YES PUT UR HUSBANDS GOOGLY EYE ON UR FOREHEAD DO IT

yess be the chaotic good to her chaotic evil!!

THERE ARE NO RULES. IM GONNA GET YOU. OMG THATS SO CUTE HELP

“i’m learning to fight like you” god now i’m gonna cry again

this is all so ridiculous i can’t. i love it. she’s finding these things from their lives- the things that make them who they are. what is in common in most if not all of the universes. this is really similar to my own concept of self god i love it i cant

oh god she’s racacoonie

don’t let her go

oh god it’s all between the three of them isn’t it. fuck

god the music is all so good and so eerie

holy SHIT THE ‘I AM YOUR MOTHER’ TIMED WITH THE SWITCHES AND MUSIC

wait WHAT. PLEASE TELL ME THE BAGEL LIKE SECRETLY UNDOES THE JUMP STUFF

god joy don’t cry i’ll just be crying with you and that won’t help my headache

god becky is so sweet help i cant. her smile!!!! fuck

oh god for some reason then hugging as two planets collide absolutely fucking ended me

yes yes yes. the other side of nothing matter is why not do the things that make your life and others lives better? why not be the one thing that matters to that person?

BECKY. IS. SO. FUCKING. PRECIOUS. as is waymond obvi

wait the end confused me. but i do like that she didn’t just pretend that she heard. oh like it’s gonna still be there in her metaphorical peripheral vision?

okay so watching prince of egypt wasn’t the best idea if i wanted not to cry again. time for my all time favorite- jupiter ascending

[notquiteaghost]

there's so much to unpack in The Jason Problem that it is kinda unfair to expect every fanwork to bother but, yknow. is the unpacking not what's fun???

like ok. jason is murdered, he gets better, he wants the guy who murdered him dead. i honestly think that's reasonable. it being the joker makes it possibly the most cut-and-dry it could get, morally, cuz the joker's sole motivation is causing pain. there's the potential for a really good story abt privileged white men who are violent n dangerous very intentionally because they think they have the right who cry insanity after, in the joker. do not at all trust dc to tell it. anyway,

oh this got long. ok a lot more yelling that is actually abt jason under the cut

the joker should die, but bruce can't kill him, because unfortunately jason u are not the only horribly traumatised person here. it's conflicting access needs. they need to talk this out with an objective third party, they never will, having A Thing you should definitely talk out with bruce and will avoid talking out with bruce as long as you live is like a requirement for batfam membership, that isn't the problem

The Jason Problem is. murder IS wrong. people should not be killed. but, also, we do not live in a vacuum, and our society currently churns out a small but significant number of people who are actively dangerous and will only stop being actively dangerous when they are dead. that sucks! we shld do smth abt that! but nothing anyone can do now will fix everyone overnight. that's the core tension jason creates by existing in a story, because batman is not a long-term solution, batman is a stopgap. and jason is, by some metrics, a better stopgap

the problem with jason's methods isn't actually how moral they are, the problem is it's very difficult to kill someone without it affecting someone else you've never even heard of. any time jason kills someone without first researching them right down to how they organise their underwear, he cld be leaving dependents without a caregiver or households without a primary earner or anyone without medical insurance or etc etc. even people doing terrible things can be keeping other people alive. and of course if he's mostly killing goons well then he's mostly killing poor people who probably don't have many other options isn't he, and it is in fact a disservice to his character to have him not target rich people. as if a kid who grew up in poverty n then lived with the All Of Gotham's Problems Are My Problems To Fix Personally guy wouldn't have a very specific hit list. nvm organised crime jason shld kill republicans.

anyway (...two!), THEN there's the aspect ive yet to see addressed in a way that doesnt make me twitch: the lazarus pit. the ableism inherent in every canon interpretation. that to kill anyone you need to be insane, that Lazarus Pit Madness is somehow a separate unique phenomenon from the inherent trauma of dying and then being resurrected, that jason doesnt have ptsd even before he died. the perennial batman media problem of criminals not deserving adequate care. how jason went to arkham, how arkham still exists.

it is my instinct whenever media makes a character ~crazy as a lazy excuse for being a villain to say okay, yeah, they're mentally ill now, no takebacks. and like you cannot tell me jason doesnt have cptsd, but i think post-lazarus pit jason shld be on anti psychotics and mood stabilizers. i think if ur gonna tell me the pit madness '''got better''' then it is because jason is on psychiatric medication. it is very Yikes! to have the only or primary symptom of mental illness be murder, which is why the murder shld not be a thing he is doing because he's crazy. he has lost the things previously stopping him murdering (need for bruce's approval / being fifteen), and also he's horrendously traumatised.

i think red hood stuff is the one part of his life he's reliably capable of thinking rationally about, because compartmentalising your personal shit in order to work a case is absolutely in robin training 101. he'll make a ten-step plan that involves running surveillance, breaking n entering, multiple fake identities, and execute it all perfectly, then go home and have to remove all the mirrors from his apartment cuz [redacted for being potentially delusion-triggering].

by which i do not mean that mental illness is smth u can train urself out of, but that pushing yourself to an unreasonable degree is a cornerstone of being a bat. he absolutely makes his shit worse by trying to act like he can just turn it on n off. they all do this, what differs is simply the symptoms n problems.

and! speaking of bats! obviously bruce is going to continue to have a problem abt the murder literally forever, holding everyone else to the torturous standards he holds himself to is a fundamental fatal flaw of his. but that does not have to be true of anyone else, and i think it makes for much more of an interesting dynamic if everyone else is on a sliding scale of 'Murder Is Wrong but he is family' to 'moral objectivity is a scam' to 'if bruce won't let me kill anyone then someone shld get to'.

like, yes this is objectively very fucked up. batman media is objectively very fucked up things the whole way down, that's why im here, let's explore the implications of your dead brother coming back to life n becoming a serial killer. i guess u can just have him not kill people but is that not boring? why not have everyone else have to reckon with what unconditional love truly means

uhhhh i forgot if i actually had an overarching point. in summary let jason kill people in actual positions of power because hey you never know maybe if half the oil barons die that might motivate the rest!

[lesbiancolumbo]

can confirm, as someone recruited by ur blog into the burt lancaster tony curtis hivemind - seeing u talk abt those movies actually got me curious!! and it made older movies less intimidating? I guess? tweets like that abt films being "embarrassing" is not doing anything but making ppl even more defensive abt only watching marvel movies lmao

and now see, you've hit the heart of this whole thing, because i think people who fundamentally believe what the people in those tweets (and there are a very loud minority of them) say miss the real issue. like, this has always been an issue about access. it's not that mass audiences have bad, stupid, childish taste. like duh mass audiences are gonna watch mass marketed media properties. i don't have a marketing degree outside of watching mad men all the way through six times but even i know this. independent films don't come to smaller markets. the dipshits who live in brooklyn and los angeles (no offense if you live here) are going to see all these things because they can. i grew up in a small town in the midwest with a small as fuck theatre - we didn't get shit like drive my car or john's shitty ass movie. if i wanted to see that, i had to pirate it. i live in a pretty big indie film market now and i still don't get the ability to see everything.

like, maybe i'm an optimist, but i fundamentally believe audiences want the stories that independently made cinema has to offer, they just lack the access and the money. i took my mom to see a german rom com where dan stevens plays a robot. she would never have had the chance to see it at home, and there was some resistance initially, but i sold it to her and she LIKED IT. the other month i texted my dad and got him to watch a three hour anti-war film from 1930 that was entirely in black and white. my parents are the kind of people bozos tweet about. if you give them the access they will more often than not bite. they're just not being given the chance to and getting patronized at every step of the way. that's why john is a dipshit who made a shitty ass film and people need to stop getting on their high horse and posting about marvel. like i don't care that you don't like it, what are YOU personally doing to combat this? are you renting independent films on demand? are you taking advantage of virtual cinemas and film festivals? do you know what another screen is doing? are you utilizing your libraries? do you talk about films you love with your friends and family? are you helping introduce your circle to things you love? like i know the people on tumblr making thousand-note posts about how much disney suxxxxx aren’t actually doing shit like this. they just want to complain. 

and don't misconstrue this as me being all "let people enjoy things". i love being a hater but i'm really hating on this trend of patronizing people and acting like everyone is actually a baby with no agency or brainpower to know all about My Arthouse Cinema. also, movie selections on airlines almost always suck and i probably would have watched a movie like jungle cruise too bc i didn't have to pay for it.

this turned into such a large rant, anon, and i'm sorry, and i genuinely love that my internet presence has made older films more accessible. that is quite literally what i have tried to do in every part of my life and my work. thank you.

[marimo-o]

ok so im making a long ass post about Abzu (the game) within the context of mesopotamian mythology because I'm insane. It's gonna be a doozy and likely incomprehensible so <3 below the cut it goes! There's gonna be TONS of spoilers for the game, and, like, I guess for the mesopotamian creation epic, so. Play Abzu if you haven't and if you wanna read the Enuma Elish that's also cool. Good for u

(a note from afterwards: it's long. like, REALLY fucking long, holy shit. if you actually want to read the whole thing, be. prepared or something idk take breaks! the last two paragraphs (i know they're walls of text pls bear with me) contain most of the important information. like, the final hurrah of my brain after working on this for multiple hours! So if u wanna save time and avoid some of the redundancy, just skip to those last two <3)

So "Abzu" referred to two things; the fresh water people got from underground aquifers (also as the void-sea which was underneath the Sumerian underworld, Kur), and the deity; he only appeared in the creation story, Enuma Elish, because a big part of that whole thing was that oh no! He dies! And that's also a thing I'm gonna touch on (sorry about the lack of accent marks in advance, it's not available on my current keyboard^ ^;)

I'm gonna start off with a brief tale of what happened with Abzu the deity, and then move onto how both the deity and the concept relate to the game!

So like I mentioned, Abzu the deity only really appears in the creation myth. The story goes that the Primordial Soup divided into two beings, with Abzu representing the freshwater and Tiamat being the saltwater. They were married, and together birthed some of the first formative gods! Some of these gods, jealous of Abzu's power convinced Tiamat to kill him (or, I thought it was started by Tiamat growing resentful of the younger gods, one of those). Either way, Abzu was killed, and Tiamat ended up lashing out, creating the first "dragons", or perhaps becoming one herself; with "poison instead of blood". She is killed by Marduk, the god of storms and the child of Enki (one of the first gods created by Abzu and Tiamat), and from her body the heavens and the earth are formed. Imagine getting killed by ur grandson lol cringe /j

Now! The waters itself! This also brings Enki into the equation, who kinda took over as god of the waters in place of his dead father. He's also the god of creation, intelligence, crafts, mischief, and more! Very important guy.

Abzu refers to both the groundwater reservoirs that people depended on for both accessible clean water and for some agricultural work, and also to the void-sea beneath the underworld, where it is said that Enki rests. He had a temple at Eridu, a now-ruined city, and I remember hearing somewhere that he lived in a temple in an underground aquifer? But I can't find wherever I read that anymore so don't take my word for it. Anyway, the basics of Enki as a deity is: child of Tiamat and Abzu, widely worshipped in his time, god of the waters, generally a cool and important dude.

And now. Finally. We move onto the game. My head hurts.

So, for a quick (post-writing: lol it's not quick) overview of the game; you play as a funny little diver, who woke up in the middle of the ocean and, as the player, are given no clues as to who or what you are. You explore through the ocean levels peacefully at first, and with the guidance of a scarred shark (painted as a bit of an antagonist at first with the audio cues) you make your way to wells at the bottom-center of each level that revitalize the space around them; as they progress, many levels start out as barren, empty landscapes that give you a foreboding, nervous feeling going in, before using an energy from yourself to rekindle the life. Huge coral growths, seaweed, and a myriad of ocean animals spring to life. The player character can also ride on the sides of the bigger ones! The game also puts a big stress on unity between yourself and the environment; there's not a whole lot you can physically interact with, but you can play with the animals there and, like I said before, ride on some of the larger animals. There are also "meditation spots", statues where you can sit and explore the wildlife from more of their point of view, able to follow them seamlessly and see what the different kinds of fish and such are called. It's a calming experience, and really the most interaction you get with some of the more timid animals, letting you still see them up close even if you can't get there as the player character.

The story of the game is told via writings on the walls, which you can light up and access by solving small puzzles regarding connecting reservoirs of glowing waters, similar to that of the almost cosmic area you go to between levels; one thing I read described it as a kind of "rebirth area", which I can definitely see hehe!

At the end of the game, you've held the shark in its dying moments, you've discovered a strange factory that builds the weird triangular prisms that deliver anything that touches them a shock, the little flashlight dudes that you've found over the levels, and little divers that uncannily resemble yourself, and you've seen yourself disassembled to your funny little mechanical skeleton, weak and slow as you try to walk on land, before you are rebirthed from the void-cosmic-water area once again, fully yourself. There's a wonderful ending sequence where you swim through all these rivers, bringing life with you as you go, with the shark once again by your side. The whole game, you saw no land when you poked your head above water, just miles and miles of water, but you've travelled far enough to reach a reservoir. You cut the chains to a central triangular prism, and it grows over with moss. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it, really, it feels like such a... grand gesture as you play through it. It feels personal.

Okay. Theory time. Finally, we're getting into the meat of it. Fucking hell.

So, imagine that you are this being. You're wandering an oceanic wonderland, observing and caring for what you need to, doing as any good little diver should. After a bit of poking around, you discover the start of the engravings on the walls; they tell the story of the people that were here before you, who built these temples and halls and used, or at least stored, the strange blue glowing "water" that you connect and move. It's a water of life, of sorts, one that they truly valued. You come to an impasse between areas, and this massive, scarred-up shark cuts in front of you. You're gonna stay hidden, that thing is terrifying! You try not to move. It doesn't spot you, or at least doesn't move to attack you. However, once it's safely out of view, you do follow it, and it leads you to a dark, desolate, empty chamber. This is wrong, you think to yourself. This isn't how it should be. There's a well, towards the bottom, and you approach it, taking... a fragment of light, from your chest, and imbuing that spark of life into the well. And, lo and behold, that intuition proved helpful, because the world around you springs back to life. Congratulations! You did it! And you continue to, as you work past puzzles and challenges and the appearance of these strange triangular mechanisms, that shock you when you get too close. These people worshipped a shark, as well, likely the same as the one you saw; the guide, now old and scarred, that brings you to where that spark is needed. Even later in the game, you see depictions of the triangular mechanisms, at first heralded as a positive, before these things are found to be the reason for this society's collapse. As if that wasn't perplexing enough, you see a depiction of a being that appears suspiciously similar to yourself, once again treated with reverence from the past civilization. In their hand is a ball of light, similar to the one shown when you revitalize the oceanic chambers. Well, that's certainly odd, you think to yourself. Perhaps this was a being that postponed the death of the civilization, or first allowed for those small chambers of life to exist in captivity instead of the open, natural landscapes you explored at the start. Regardless, it's now a relic of something long gone; but it still gives you something to think about. Later on, that strange coincidence of your similarities to that person are explained; you find a manufacturing plant, full of the vicious triangular mechanisms in each tight hallway, and right at the center of it all... multiple iterations of yourself, running down an assembly line, a spark not unlike what you saw before imbued into each of them. My, look at that; you've been responsible for part of this destruction all along, haven't you? Borne from that same ill that has been forcibly removing that spark from each of the places you've gone to. A bit inconsiderate of you, no? And yet... look at all the good you've done. You've rebirthed, revitalized, purified these ocean fragments, is that not enough? You are the keeper of these waters, regardless of the evil you had come from, despite the terrifying empty things may have reverted to. You, who trusted and followed the shark that seemed so scary at first. You, who followed it as it tried to attack a source of the evil, of the thing that was draining the oceans of their life. You, who held and comforted that shark as it lay dying, despite any fear you may have had. You, who attempted to traverse a minefield of those triangular machines, shocked over and over again and at the final moment, unable to make it to the finish line. You, who was rebirthed in full regardless by the oceans you'd cared for, by the void-sea you always returned to, to rest. You, who traversed a now-ruined citadel, temple, all of which had been flooded and had been dedicated to you. You, who brought life with you.

I hope you see what I'm getting at here. You're serving as a figure not unlike Enki, god and guardian of the waters. In the wake of Abzu, the avatar of the fresh waters, now confined to irrigation canals so as not to kill the younger gods, Tiamat lashes out. Her husband is dead, as far as she is concerned, and she goes to those younger gods to seek her revenge. The dragon, that which sucked the life from the seas and poisoned the waters. That which Marduk killed, to carve new life from. I would say that the shark is Marduk, even; given how the shark is the only one who is openly on the offense to those mechanisms, and who comes in at the endgame to finish them off, bringing new life with it. Even in how it all shapes up with the civilization before, in connection to the constructs; Tiamat was the mother of all in existence at that time. She was surely loved; but she turned hostile and violent. She could no longer be safely loved. And Abzu, both the glowing water we use to open doors and the light that we hold and the deep void-sea we enter between levels and father to all in existence, he was confined to small canals and reservoirs and put in a deep sleep so that he would not kill his own children. And by you, no less. Enki put him there. That is why you can use that water from the start; you lived in the Abzu, you came from it, and each time, that is where you return. That temple, now submerged and decrepit, is Eridu; the place where Enki was most worshipped. The other diver clones are the other gods, or perhaps the "dragons", now, that Tiamat had mothered. The smaller prisms definitely count in that "dragon" category; purely harmful beings that seek to destroy life. And in the end, indeed, you restore life; you and your son, upon killing Tiamat, return life to the world from her body. Perhaps you could not save those who once worshipped you, perhaps those structures will forever be in ruin. But there is no more danger, now; there is space to build and replenish. There is space to grow.

Fuck ok that was long as hell. Hi if u made it this far i love u. god fucking damn im never writing anything again after this. it took about as long as a full playthrough of the game, coincidentally!!

[bamf-jaskier]

Here and Queer: The Witcher

Hi, I’m Aaliyah, and this is Here and Queer, Canon Queerness in The Witcher books. 

I already started this series by talking about Ciri here. Her relationship required a fair amount of analysis because it began nonconsensually but continued for months after the fact and spanned three books so there was quite a bit to cover. 

However, while she is the main character there are other characters who are also queer in the books including Triss Merigold, Philippa Eilhart and Geralt himself!

Let’s jump right in by talking about our first queer character: Triss. 

She is explicitly confirmed as Queer in Blood of Elves during this internal monologue: 

As far as her erotic life was concerned, Triss Merigold had the right to consider herself a typical enchantress. It had began with the sour taste of forbidden fruit, made all the more exciting by the strict rules of the academy and the prohibitions of the mistress under whom she practised. Then came her independence, freedom and a crazy promiscuity which ended, as it usually does, in bitterness, disillusionment and resignation. 

Then followed a long period of loneliness and the discovery that if she wanted to release her tension and stress then someone who wanted to consider himself her lord and master – as soon as he had turned on his back and wiped the sweat from his brow – was entirely superfluous. 

There were far less troublesome ways of calming her nerves – ones with the additional advantages of not staining her towels with blood, not passing wind under the quilt and not demanding breakfast. That was followed by a short-lived and entertaining fascination with the same sex, which ended in the conclusion that soiling towels, passing wind and greediness were by no means exclusively male attributes.

Finally, like all but a few magicians, Triss moved to affairs with other wizards, which proved sporadic and frustrating in their cold, technical and almost ritual course.

Sounds here like Triss enjoyed her relationships with women but the forced heteronormativity of society caught up with her. This actually hits quite a bit for me as Triss states that her relationships with men seemed lacking after she had relationships with women. 

Of course, there is also this scene in The Tower of Swallows: 

The brilliant beam of light, broken by the diamond, flashed on the surface of the mirror. Yennefer stretched out both hands and began chanting a spell. The blindingly bright light reflected and concentrated into a fog. Soon, a picture began to emerge. The image of a room whose walls were covered with colorful tapestries.

A movement at the window. And a troubled voice. “Who? Who's there?”

“I'm here, Triss.”

“Yennefer! That you? Gods! How did… Where are you?”

“It does not matter where I am. Do not block the image, because the picture varies. And take away that candle, it’s blinding.”

“Right. Of course.”

Although it was late at night, Triss Merigold was wearing neither lingerie nor her work clothes. She wore a dress for going out. As usual, high-collared and closed.

“Can we talk freely?”

“Of course.”

“You're alone?”

“Yes.”

“You're lying.”

“Yennefer…”

“You are deceiving me, brat. I know your face; I know you too well. It’s the same look you had when you started sleeping with Geralt behind my back. Back then, you put on the same sheepish, innocent mask that I see on your face now. And it means the same thing now that it meant back then!”

Triss was red. Philippa Eilhart appeared in the window next to her, dressed in a dark blue men’s jerkin. “Bravo,” she said. “As usual, quick. As usual, perceptive. As usual, hard to grasp and understand. I am glad to see you in health, Yennefer. I am happy that your crazy teleportation from Montecalvo did not end in tragedy.”

Gonna be very honest here, as someone who has had to hide their girlfriend when a friend or parents walks into your room, that is exactly how I read this scene. Yennefer saying Triss has the look on her face of someone who just got laid? Philippa coming out of hiding and calling Yennefer perceptive? The fact that when Yennefer first called Triss didn’t let her see what was going on and then appeared fully dressed after blocking the image? I don’t know about anyone else, but I read this as Yennefer catching Triss and Philippa together romantically. 

However, even if you don’t buy this scene as explicitly showing a relationship between the two of them, Triss is still queer as well as Philippa. 

From Time of Contempt:

“So it is!’ said Marti Södergren, leaning over and wrinkling her nose, after which she picked up a goblet and looked at the traces of crimson lipstick on it. ‘Ah, Philippa Eilhart. I should have known. Who else would have dared to do something so brazen? That revolting snake. Did you know she spies for Vizimir of Redania?’

‘And is a nymphomaniac?’ risked the Witcher. Marti and Keira snorted in unison.

‘Is that what you were counting on, fawning over her and flirting with her?’ asked the seductress. ‘If so, you ought to know someone’s played a mean trick on you. Philippa lost her taste for men some time ago.”

Another Philippa scene from The Tower of Swallows:

Philippa Eilhart was in a short nightgown with thin straps, and her face and neck had traces of lipstick. Assire, with a great effort of will, contained an expression of displeasure. Never, ever, will I understand this. And I do not want to understand.

“Can we speak freely?”

Philippa’s hand made a sweeping gesture. And she surrounded herself with a magic sphere of discretion.”

Answering a telecomm with lipstick all over ur neck is such a queer power move and honestly Philippa might be manipulative but damn the energy she exudes. 

As well as Philippa and Triss, there is the infamous bath scene with Geralt and Borch from Sword of Destiny: 

“Let’s make merry!’ Three Jackdaws leant across the table and slapped Téa on the backside. ‘Let’s make merry, Witcher. Hey, landlord! Over here!’

The innkeeper scuttled briskly over, wiping his hands on his apron.

‘Could you lay your hands on a tub? The kind you launder clothes in, sturdy and large?’

‘How large, sir?’

‘For four people.’

‘For… four…’ the innkeeper opened his mouth.

‘For four,’ Three Jackdaws confirmed, drawing a full purse from his pocket. ‘I could.’ The innkeeper licked his lips.

‘Splendid,’ Borch laughed. ‘Have it carried upstairs to my room and filled with hot water. With all speed, comrade. And have beer brought there too. Three pitchers.’

The Zerrikanians giggled and winked at the same time.

‘Which one do you prefer?’ Three Jackdaws asked. ‘Eh? Geralt?’

The Witcher scratched the back of his head.

‘I know it’s difficult to choose,’ said Three Jackdaws, understandingly. ‘I occasionally have difficulty myself. Never mind, we’ll give it some thought in the tub. Hey, girls. Help me up the stairs!”

Now, there’s a lot of people who read this scene and say: hey now, Geralt didn’t actually sleep with Borch. They just slept with two women. Together. In a bath. Now, I don’t know about any of you, but when four people are naked in a bath together all having sex it’s not a situation where you can say no-homo bro and call it a day. 

Also, you know, there is this line later on in Sword of Destiny: 

“Véa, already mounted beside Téa, waved.

‘Véa,’ the Witcher said, ‘you were right.’

‘Hm?’

‘He is the most beautiful.”

Of course, this is in reference to Borch’s dragon form but considering the last person to call Borch beautiful was Véa who slept with him...well. Geralt is at the very least open for a variety of sexual situations. 

Finally, there is Sorel Degerlund in Season of Storms who says this about Ortolan, the elderly mage of the town: 

“As you’ve doubtless observed,” continued Degerlund, “I have exceptional looks and women have been known to call me an ephebe. I’m fond of women, indeed, but in principle I didn’t and don’t have anything against homosexuality. Under one condition: if it is to be, it must help me to advance my career.

My physical intimacy with Ortolan didn’t demand excessive sacrifices. The old man had long passed both the age limit for capability and desire. But I did my best for people to think otherwise and believe he’d utterly fallen for me.

Believe there was nothing he would refuse his gorgeous lover. Believe that I knew his codes, that I had access to his secret books and notes. That he was giving me artefacts and talismans he hadn’t previously revealed to anyone. And that he was teaching me forbidden spells. 

Including goetia. And if previously the great men and women of Rissberg had disdained me, now they suddenly began to esteem me. I had grown in their eyes. They believed I was doing what they themselves dreamed of. And that I was achieving success.”

So this is a very minor character who only appears in one adventure but he is queer. Well, to clarify he is queer for...career advancement? Honestly I have no idea if asaps is trying to make a statement here or if he was writing this and thought to himself: what if the mage was queer but only in order to advance his career? Sounds fun, let’s do it. 

So overall, there are queer characters in The Witcher, from Ciri to Triss to Geralt to Philippa to guy who is gay to advance his career in Season of Storms. There are likely other minor characters I might have missed, so feel free to add them!

I hope to see these characters as queer in the show and it’s really nice to have this type of representation in fantasy, especially a series such as The Witcher. And yes, there are a number of problematic tropes and issues this writing can stumble into but it is still nice to see a variety of sexualities, especially in the main characters such as Ciri and Geralt.  

[detransexual]

Its always weird to me when someone talks about the effects of Testosterone on the female body and someone brings up clitoral growth as a horrible, irreversible deformity lol?? Big clits are superb yall are just cowards lmao. Like if you're gonna talk about detrimental effects at least focus on the risk of painful hypersensitivity rather the aesthetic part? Because there are people who get so sensitive that wearing underwear gets uncomfortable and/or painful. I also saw someone claim that theres a big risk T will make ur clit "dead to sensations!" with absolutely no fuckin source other than "uhhh i heard someone say it on reddit once!" which i highly doubt is a statistically relevant risk lmao.

Idk man i just think its a really shit argument if you're trying to discuss the risks of Testosterone when there's actual health complications that are not just aesthetic.

You know what else is shitty? Fear mongering rather than trying to inform people of the actual risks and the liklihood of complications, as well as the uncertainty when it comes to long term consequences.

It is REALLY disingenuous to claim shit like "you WILL get a heart attack and cancer and DIE! Its GONNA HAPPEN its just a matter of when!!" when there's no scientific basis for that claim. There is scientific evidence of an increased risk, and that risk might turn out to be higher than it currently seems to be, but there is NO fucking basis to run around telling people they're 100% going to die young from cancer or a heart attack.

There is a risk of nipple grafts failing after a masectomy, but that chance is around 2%, so claiming shit like "nipple grafts almost ALWAYS die and fall off and its disgusting and horrifying!" is just flat out lies, the same way that claiming "you'll live with horrible nerve damage and pain for the rest of your life and your scars are gonna look horrible and you'll live the rest of your life as a sad, deformed freak!!" is also so blatantly transparent. Shoutout to the very compassionate radfems who tried to convince me of that when i was a 19 year old in excruciating pain despite being high on opioids recovering from a massive surgery, definitely feminist praxis to try to scare a teenager who's already gone through the surgery ur fearmongering about.

I WANT there to be more information about the negative effects and risks of transition! But that needs to be based in reality and scientific studies rather than your own personal disgust, which is all it is when you're just desperately trying to fear monger people out of transitioning rather than actually striving for people to have the ability to make fully informed decisions, which is not possible right now due to a lack of long term studies, but it certainly isnt helped by your personal moral panic.

This is a big part of why i dont give a shit what most radfems think/say about transition. Unless you have been through a transition yourself or work with detransitioners or do research about it i simply do not trust you to actually have the best interests of transitioners OR detransitioners at heart.

Stop with the fucking "oh woe is her she poisoned her feminine body with the evil hormones that are gonna give her cancer and heart disease at 27 and her nipples are gonna fall off and she's oh so tragically broken and repulsive and she's gonna die alone and in pain, wont someone stop this corruption of those naive and pitiful girls! A woman with an elarged clitoris? Excessive body hair? A deep voice? No breasts?? How REPULSIVE!" narrative lmao, you do NOT fucking care about ftms OR detransitioners, because if you DID you would support studies on the actual risks of transition and make an effort to make the most accurate information possible accessible to those transitioning or considering transition, rather than spread baseless claims that are explicitly designed to scary people into doing what YOU want them to do.

Its not your life or your body, the best we can do is strive to make accurate information available and question the narrative that transition is the only option, because as long as it is presented as the only treatment it does not matter jack squat how much you lie and fearmonger about risks.

Dysphoric teens arent gonna choose not to transition just because you fearmonger about the risks, they're just gonna do it anyway and live with the added stress of being convinced they're gonna die an early and painful death, because they'll still think its their only chance at a happier life.

Obviously in an ideal world i dont think irreversible parts of medical transition should be done before someone's brain is fully formed, and ideally even then its going to be the LAST resort, but we're not gonna get there by lying and making baseless claims, it only makes us look disingenuous and easier to disregard.