#where we find ourselves

[summerwages]

lazy daisy...

last one seems to have survived by laying low...

[unholy-fabray]

hey. if you are a queer/trans person who is feeling hopeless and overwhelmed by the election results, i just want to tell you this:

we have existed as long as humanity itself has existed. through every monarchy, every presidency, every dark age and revolution, queer people have existed. we have survived and lived and thrived and loved. in the face of an unwelcoming society, we have always carved out our own niches where we can find community, strength, and peace.

we survived 2004. we survived 2016 and 2020. we will survive this, too. i promise you.

please stay safe, take care of each other, and if you ever feel like it's over - i suggest reading about our queer elders and ancestors who lived through time periods that were even more dangerous and hostile. i always find strength and solidarity in their stories.

but most importantly: hold onto one another, build each other up, and love one another. we will get through this.

[dayurno]

this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it

and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?

anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode

[onse-chill]

Disclaimer: for those just joining us, this is the kinda content you can expect from me 🐈

[ihhfhonao3]

Shockingly, I do think there can be nuance in this issue. "Being proship is a discourse stance, you're going to find discourse and people arguing with the 'other side' in the tag that is intended for discourse, and part of our culture is built upon fighting back against the people that have hurt us and calling out their hypocrisy and cruelty" and "seeing all of this negativity and hatred from antis in a place that is supposed to be safe and welcoming is actively harming my health, because screenshotting someone saying 'you deserved to get raped' and having someone else repost it saying 'this is insane can you believe this!!!' doesn't make me feel very good about myself. and it makes it worse that this is put into every single tag we have, including tags that are more intended for positivity and spreading joy like the tag that is explicitly labeled 'proship positivity.' some of the other tags are also for things that might squick me out, like the comship and darkship tags. there is no place for me to go, I am surrounded by discomfort" are thoughts that can and should coexist I feel

[sharkneto]

Hey, sorry if this is a bit of a personal question - and feel free to ignore it if it is - but how did you know you wanted to start hrt? I am someone who IDs as transmasc and knows in an ideal world, I would've loved to have been born a guy. But the idea of going on hormones is terrifying because I can't figure out if I really want it... I worry about regretting it, or it making me 'unappealing' physically, or my friends judging me for it. Did you ever struggle with similar worries?

I think every person thinking about and starting HRT goes through this. A rite of passage, if you will, and also not a bad thing to do. HRT is a big step, some of the changes (especially on T) are irreversible. It's good to think through if it's a choice that's right for you or not.

That said, it's also Just A Thing You Can Do. I first started really questioning my gender at the end of 2020 (thank you, Elliot Page, for coming out and making me go "oh shit, you can do that?"). I got a therapist to talk about gender... Mid 2022? And started hormones spring 2023, top surgery a year later.

Before getting the therapist, I spent over a year Just Thinking About It. And a lot of the thoughts were around the changes on T and if I'd like them or not or if I'd regret them. If I'd be ugly, after being conventionally attractive as a woman.

It hits a point, though, where eventually you have to pull the plug one way or another. I spent a lot of time thinking about how my body would change on T. A Lot. With longing. I caught myself putting things off Until I Knew For Sure and because I didn't want to do it while being perceived as a woman. I was sitting, treading water for a hypothetical Later that I could start moving towards at any time. I was scared for the Teenage Round 2 phase, and didn't want to spend months being "ugly and awkward", but then the months passed anyway and I was still in the same spot.

HRT isn't an all-or-nothing thing, you can ease into it on a low dose. My doctor started me on a low dose and we ramped up over months. Some T changes can start pretty quickly (voice dropping, bottom growth - this isn't true for everyone, but was true for me). If these changes excite you, make you feel good - great! Keep going! If they scare you, feel wrong - stop. Assess. Figure out what about it isn't right (a gender therapist for all of this process is a Huge Help). In early days if you stop T, the changes can revert, for the most part. But you can always stop at any time.

The bigger thing I actively worked to wrap my head around before starting HRT is - Who Cares If You're Wrong? What's right for you now might not be right for you later. The idea of detransitioning was scary to me, society has such a weird spotlight on it, the Right uses people who have detransitioned as props against transition. But it shouldn't matter. At the end of the day, if I do change my mind, I'll know myself better, and I don't think it's wrong to chase and find comfort in your own body.

A year+ on T, I've mostly made it through the ugly duck phase, I think. I was lucky, I didn't get bad acne or get too oily or anything (after having horrible acne in my first puberty). Most of what I dealt with was the chronic baby face, where I was getting read as male but a teenager - I'm almost 30 and a woman wanted to card me over a free T-shirt at a baseball game because it had beer logos on it. After some middle months of changes and going "oh my god what am I doing" and not feeling confident in how this was all going to turn out, I think of myself as relatively attractive and I think I'm just going to get more vain as my beard comes in. Some of that is physical, sure, but I think a significant amount of that is me feeling more confident in myself and liking the body I'm in more. I was never a selfie or picture person, now I am. I joke I'm like a budgie, always looking at myself if there's a reflective surface nearby. I'm more excited to exercise, I'm interested in lifting weights for the first time, I'm curious what my body on T can do and become. Keep your eyes on the pieces that are going well, the changes exciting you, and let the rest catch up.

My social circle helped a lot. I'm very lucky and blessed to have great friends and family, all of whom are supportive. If you don't have friends who are supportive of you, that are judging you for exploring yourself rather than lifting you up for it, it's a sign to expand the social circle and find ones that are. Family is harder, but that's a thing you have to navigate for yourself and find your own boundaries for.

So, there's no ~one moment~ where you're 100% certain that medical transition is right for you. It's a huge unknown and you're changing the body you've had your entire life. At some point, though, you just have to jump and see how it lands. Part of being alive is making mistakes and doing things you might regret.

That said, the regret rate for trans people is something like 3%. The regret rate for knee surgery is something like 20%. Trust yourself.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

just finished el mundo gira and i thought it was like. comically bad. sorry to any el mundo gira stans, but tomorrow's writeup will have some hater energy.

[randik-86]

Where do we all go,

I often find myself wondering,

When our hearts get broken into a million pieces,

When we feel there is no hope,

Giving into the pain that we hold on to,

Dragging ourselves into an infinite hole,

Getting lost in the thoughts,

Lacking the consideration that we will ever be loved,

Nothing hinting at us that we stand a chance,

Even though we may not have lived enough,

Because there is still so much more,

Waiting to be discovered,

Our faith escaping our souls,

No one understands,

How much we have suffered,

How we have fought for so hard,

To find the path to happiness...

©️randik86

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

you absolutely already know this, but i adore your work. i think it's hard to avoid the pressure of being surrounded by people we might consider "true artists," but the fact is that, frankly, everyone who makes art is an artist.

before this year, i hadn't drawn a complete piece in nearly three years. the line work i did produce felt abysmal and i was tempted to give up. then, i saw your comic and i thought, "wow, that's really cute, and it looks like a fun style to emulate."

i drew you, pondering me, eating grass. and it WAS fun. i forgot how fun it could be. i can draw lesbian horses, or pony!WWX throwing a chicken, or me eating grass. i can even make shitty memes! and all of it, no matter how good or how bad, is fun again.

you bring a lot of fun to people here. that's something equally as important as people who cultivate fancy line work or expert level digital painting. i'm sure that's something you know, but i hope it never hurts to hear it.

happy first season, friend! i can't wait to see the rest.

As a chronic perfectionist, it's been a long journey for me to accept that 'done is better than nothing' and that the worst critical voice is my own. Sure there's people who've gone to professional art schools, and those with a more than a decade of experience on me, but honestly? Would I tell a child their sonic drawing isn't art? Just because they have no 'experience' or 'technique'? Absolutely not. So I'm no longer saying my efforts should not count as art.

At the end of the day, art is what we choose to make it. We have the power to create whatever we want. And we are going to use it to have fun! We never lost the love and fun for creation we all had as children, we just told ourselves it wasn't enough. But it really is B*)

[hella1975]

there's a very specific kind of vibe that comes with living with your friends in final year that it just does not have in first year or even second year. like as a fresher it's usually the first time any of you have lived away from home let alone with SO MANY people your age and it's terrifying and exciting and randomised to boot so it's generally carnage for a whole year in the best and worst ways, and then second year you pick who you're living with and it feels like for the first time you're doing this adult thing PROPERLY. you have a place of your own now. these are the people you've chosen to live with. studying gets serious etc. but it's still fresh. it's still new. you still don't know how to navigate it. but final year? final year is when you actually get it right. you know how to manage your time better. you know what works for you and what doesn't. studying is the main focus and you've been out in the world for three years now and it's not loud and boisterous like it was in first year and you're not exciteable and awkward like you were in second year. you're comfortable. every single one of my flatmates has their own friend group and we mainly keep to our own social circles, but we'll still meet each other back at the house after a night out and sit in the kitchen or my room to do the debrief. sometimes i'll go days not seeing either of them despite sharing a house but every now and then someone will softly call up the stairs that 'the heating's on!' or one of us will sneeze and the other two will yell 'bless you!' through the walls. the lack of interaction isn't interpreted as dislike in ways it would have been even last year, because we're all just old enough to be past that now and settled enough in our friendship not to worry about it. idk. uni is very loud and unsettling a lot of the time so it's been really sweet to see how almost boringly comfortable final year is.

[chikirya]

Ya think if P and Sophia used the giant Ergo thingy Simon had in the tower to wind back time BEFORE the Puppet Frenzy and the emergence of the Carcasses (mind you not the petrification disease) ....ya think they can make Geppetto less of a dick than he turned out to be?

Or will this fall under the "its an alternate reality when P was never created" or "maybe Carlo never dies" category?

Or idk what are your thoughts.

[andromeda-nova-writing]

I want to read more works from black writers. It's our month, so let's try and promote a work of ours or recommend other black writers that we know and enjoy. I hope this can be a resource for finding and supporting each others work. It doesn't matter for what Fandom. All I ask is all the works are by Black Writers.

So I guess to start this off, Hi. I usually go by Mimikyu. Currently, I'm writing for Genshin Impact. My most recent fic was Unpacking in the Infirmary.

I really hope to see more people add to this! 💜

[birdcatt]

doodles of these 2 lads

[transfemmes]

For the past like 7 years Ale has been going "Bill felt used" and "weh" in response to minor inconveniences and pauses in conversation and nobody but me and maybe 2 of his brothers knows he got it from a movie where a stick figure man suffers from generational trauma and mental illness

[chialattea]

thinking about how during da2 Isabela was terrified of emotional intimacy and connection out of fear of both hurting Hawke and/or losing her only to choose to come back to her everytime she left like a moth to a flame, deciding to stay and confront their shared feelings,,,, and thinking about how devastating it’d be for her when she hears Hawke has sacrificed herself in the Fade,, a woman who hates naive goody two shoes but decided to fall in love with a self sacrificing fool because living without her would be too agonizing, only to lose her due to the same qualities she loved so much,,, BioWare when I get you….. BioWare……

[techmomma]

There is a degree to which we are responsible for our emotions. And certainly, we are responsible for our reactions and behavior.

In situations that we have control, situations where a friend is hurting us, like yes, maybe they shouldn't be hurting you. But there are also actions you have to take on your part.

Think of it like an ocean wave. If you go to the beach and a wave surprises you and gets you wet, and you're upset by this, that is perfectly reasonable.

If you keep standing there, letting yourself get wet and get more upset, when you can move away, then that's on you. I mean, it's your choice to do so. If you don't like getting wet and you just stand there getting wet when you can take a few steps back, you can do so. But it's also unnecessary stress, and you give up your own agency. Saying "I can't control this" when there are very much parts you can control denies your own responsibility in this situation. You can't control the waves from crashing, but you can step away from them.

If you know that a friend is going to keep disappointing you, there are two different actions we can take here: a proactive, and a reactive action.

A reactive action looks like knowing they're going to disappoint you or upset you, they do so, and you react to this. Nothing changes, and it keeps happening, and you continue to be upset. Your anxieties remain unaddressed and continue to hurt you.

A proactive action looks like knowing they're going to disappoint you or upset you and taking the steps to mitigate stress in anticipation of this. And THAT can look like setting down a boundary, removing yourself from the situation (no longer participating in the thing that your friend disappoints you about or no longer asking them to do X when they won't), or accepting that they will disappoint you--meaning you are at peace with the idea of them disappointing you, not "I am going to continue letting them disappoint me but it's going to upset me every time."

It means addressing the source of your stress and what upsets you before it actually does. And like. That's hard! It fucking sucks!

Especially for those of us who've grown up in situations where we didn't have any choice but to be reactive, because oh I don't know, we were children and didn't have any other options. And now we've grown up into adults who feel like there's no other option but to sit there and take it. Like there's no other choice but to be stressed and upset.

Part of healing from this kind of abuse, managing our stress in proactive, responsible ways means we no longer settle anymore, for being hurt. "Just taking it" when people hurt us and won't change. And as adults, that is kind of our responsibility and no one else can really do that for you. That's kind of part of being emotionally mature, is understanding yourself, and being responsible with your own emotions.

We sometimes can't change what other people will do. But we can change what we do, in response. And we can take care of our stressors before they stress us out.