#why does the trans community eat their own

[chrissy-kaos]

Passing privilege much

Tell me how you really feel 😬🙄

[ravenquingvax]

Thinking about Vox Machina going to their first ever Pride event together... For some of them, it's also their first ever Pride event in general.

---

Scanlan has been too so many by now you'd think he would be bored of them... But he isn't!

He gets to be annoyingly pansexual in public without being deemed a nuisance!? Sign him the fuck up!!

He's flirting with everyone, he's wearing glittery face paint, he's running around with only a pansexual flag and tight glittery booty shorts on!!

He also makes sure that all of the rest of Vox Machina are safe and having a good time! Are they drinking? Well, Scan is watching over their drinks!

Are they mingling? Well, Scan is keeping a close eye on them to make sure they're not being harassed or anything!!

This isn't his first rodeo, and it sure as hell isn't going to be his last one either!! He identifies as a little nightmare to society and he will be getting his gay on!!

---

Pike has been to a few Pride events as a bisexual woman, and she's been to many as a voluntary healer and helper.

She likes the community and the silliness of these events, but her cleric training has her reluctant to join in with full reckless abandon...

That being said, she has the bi flag painted on her cheeks while she's hugging anyone who needs comforted!!

She's handing out snacks and water, she's healing injuries and listening to people's stories.

Pike is a Pride Mamma and she is fucking proud of it.

---

Taryon has never even dared to dream of attending a Pride event before - his dad wouldn't approve of it, after all.

So he's nervous and shy when Vox Machina take him to his very first event in Whitestone.

But he quickly warms up to it! There's so much colour and glitter and ribbons!!!

People are dancing and singing! Some are kissing!

It's absolutely wonderful.

Next time, He even wears the MLM gay pride flag around his shoulders as he and his new husband join the festivities.

---

Grog doesn't understand it.

But he likes parties and these events seem like parties to him.

Also, it makes his friends happy to come to these big events.

Someone asks him what he identifies as and he tells them he's not an object to identify.

He's flirted with by all types of people and tells them he's not really here for that either.

Grog is just Grog, and he is very happy to make his friends happy by watching after them as they let loose for once!

Also, the alcohol is amazing.

At some point he ends up with an agender pride flag and he doesn't know why, but Pike says that it suits him and Vax tells him to wear it as a cape because it'd look cool.

So he does. And he looks very, very fucking cool with it on.

---

Vex'ahlia has been struggling a lot to come to terms with her sexuality since she was a teen.

Growing up with her rather queerphobic father in Syngorn has left her scared to explore her bisexuality, but seeing her brother and friends open up and explore their own genders and sexualities has helped her.

Vex is quiet about it, but she wears her bisexual flag as a cape with pride and she wears her "i love my trans twin" shirt with even more pride.

She may even kiss a few folk!!

---

Vax'ildan is trans masc, enby, polyamorous and bisexual.

He has beads in the colours of the bisexual flag braided through his hair, he's wearing the nonbinary flag as a cape, his nails are painted with tiny trans flags on them...

And he can't stop smiling.

He's kissing so many people! He's dancing! He's singing! He's accidentally leading a whole ass macarena line through the streets! He's drinking fruity cocktails! He's eating cookies and cupcakes with the most ridiculously dirty decorations you could possibly imagine!

He's thriving and nobody can rain on his parade!!

(Though when he gets home, he will be plagued with the fear of his father seeing him like this and of the man's reaction.)

---

Keyleth is young and not very experienced in anything.

She is aware of the many different possible genders and sexualities out there, but she hasn't quite figured out what she is just yet - but that's fine!

Her friends tell her that they love her for her, that whatever she identifies as will be just as amazing as she is herself!

So she goes to her first Pride event nervous but curious, asking other people about how it was they figured out their genders and sexualities.

And maybe she even walks away with her own collection of new pride flags... She always did love green and purple, so the Asexual, Demiromantic and Agender pride flags are even cooler to the questioning druid.

---

The youngest of the group, Percy has no idea what he is.

Well, he knows he's a man, but he doesn't know why.

Nor does he know what his sexuality is quite yet, either.

He finds certain men hot, but he also finds Vex'ahlia hot.

And, well, some other women too - but mostly just Vex.

Vax'ildan and Vex'ahlia are both very hot, actually. It's been a bit of a problem for poor Percy.

Someone tells him he could be bisexual, or even demisexual.

But neither feels exactly right.

Maybe... Maybe both?

Yes. Both is good.

Also, the bisexual flag is pretty and both twins wear it well.

(This doesn't help Percy at all.)

[max--phillips]

Hey, @staff @support @wip @engineering @changes @humans it’s me again. Do you have a second? I would like to draw your attention to something.

So, you know how when you start typing in a tag, it’ll list tags to choose from based on what you’re typing in? Y’know, you start typing “star” and the list will populate “Star Wars” and “Lego Star Wars” among a few other tags you can tap on to auto-complete what you’re typing if you want? Yeah, it’s about that function.

I assumed that these tags populated based on popularity or number of uses. But when I saw some weird shit populate that read more like a clickbait article headline than a tag an actual human being had used at some point, I did some experimenting.

To preface, the tags that I'm about to list here have never once been used on my blog, and are not suggestions from my history. They are purely on tumblr's side.

Did you know that if you type in simply “I need,” the following tags auto-populate?

“I need to lose so much weight,” “I need to lose this weight,” and “I need to ⭐️ve.” Yikes. Knowing this, out of curiosity, I typed in "I want" next. Guess what I found?

"I want to ⭐️ve," "i want to cvt," and "i want to be skinnier." Again, yikes.

But perhaps this is a bit too leading. What if I just type in "I w" instead?

It auto-populates with some repeats, PLUS some more concerning shit. we got "i want to ⭐️ve," "i wanna lose weight," "i will reach my ugw," "i wanna be skinnier," "i wanna be tiny," "i want to cvt," "i want to be skinnier," "i wanna be perfect," "i will lose weight," and "i wish i was weightless."

Let's try just "i n" too, for fun.

We get "i need to lose so much weight," "i need to lose this weight," "i need to ⭐️ve," and "i need to be weightless."

With this in mind, I typed in "ana" because I recognize all of this as stuff people struggling with anorexia have historically said on this platform. Once again, we have some concerning things auto-populate:

"ana meal," "ana bllog," "ana tricks," "tw ana diary," "ana trigger," and "ana rant."

Here's my question: how and why are these auto-populating? This kind of thing literally goes against your own community guidelines. Here's a screenshot from those community guidelines:

I highlighted the text that reads "Don't post content that actively promotes or glorifies self-harm. This includes content that urges or encourages others to: cut or injure themselves; embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders;"

I realize that monitoring tags like this isn't going to be perfect, some things inevitably slip through the cracks. But this many tags? Someone somewhere is dropping the ball.

That also leads me to another point.

I, as with many other people on this website, the self-proclaimed "queerest place on the internet," occasionally tag posts with something to the tune of "terfs do not interact" because... well, being a terf is to be inherently transphobic and anti-queer. I noticed something peculiar recently while tagging a post as such.

I'm willing to bet real actual money that the tag "terfs dni" gets used significantly more than the tag "terfsafe," so... why does the auto-populated tag list look like this when you type in "terf?"

We get the auto-populated tags "terfblr," "terfsafe," and "terfism." But not a sign of "terfs dni" or "terfs don't touch." Why is that?

So, again out of pure curiosity, I typed in "rad."

"radblr," "radical feminists do interact," "radical feminist safe," "radqueer" (which isn't radfem related but also shouldn't be on that list), "radical feminism," and "radical feminist community" auto-populate. Considering radical feminism and being a terf are literally the same thing, this is further concerning.

For shits and giggles, I typed in "lgb" to see what I'd get.

Why on EARTH is "lgb drop the t" the second auto-populated tag?

Let's try just the word "gender."

"gender critical" is the second auto-populated tag. Another transphobic term.

I'm sure this has nothing to do with the fact trans women can't post entirely safe for work selfies on this website anymore without their post getting flagged as mature content, or the swath of trans women who have had their blogs entirely terminated for no reason recently.

Also, interestingly enough, in your community guidelines, under the hate speech guideline, you have written "Don't encourage violence or hatred. Don't post content for the purpose of promoting or inciting the hatred of, or dehumanizing, individuals or groups based on race, ethnic or national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, age, veteran status, sexual orientation, disability or disease." You may be interested to know that terfs and other transphobes do, in fact, encourage, promote, and incite hatred of, and dehumanize, individuals or groups based on gender and gender identity.

Perhaps what you have auto-populate for tags should reflect things that are popular and inclusive on this website, not... whatever this is. If this is truly the queerest place on the internet, and you want to continue to cultivate it as such, you should probably at least act like it.

Anyway, it'd be cool of you to address these things. Toodles.

[nerdygaymormon]

Happy Pride

I want to wish a happy Pride to:

Ice Coffee

On the surface, it’s so commonplace, it’s just coffee, how can it be gay? Well, a lot of ordinary things have been coded queer over the years: thumb rings, which ear you have pierced, handkerchiefs, and carabiners. Signaling to other queers that you are also queer, while once essential, has now become a fun part of cultural communication.

Will and Grace was one of the first times popular media recognized iced coffee is associated with the gays when in a 2001 episode, Jack signals himself as gay to his barista by repeatedly ordering frappuccinos. Why frappuccinos? "Fancy" coffee was seen as feminine, so men ordering these drinks is a form of gender subversion, a way to signal to other gay men that you are gay.

Bert & Ernie

Sesame Street debuted 1969 and from the beginning Bert and Ernie behaved in the same loving & discreet way that millions of queer people had to do at that time. For anyone with eyes to see, Bert and Ernie’s subtextual queerness has been there for everyone to see. They share a bedroom. Bert watches Ernie take baths. They’re together on the cover of a Sesame Street album titled "Love." They cook and eat together. They vacation together.

Mark Saltzman, one of the script and song writers on Sesame Street, stated in an interview with Queerty that he wrote Bert and Ernie as reflections of himself and his longtime partner, Arnold Glassman. However, Sesame Street won't acknowledge that Bert and Ernie are a gay couple because, even to this day, many people view heterosexuality as neutral and queerness of any kind as obscene and inappropriate for children.

In 2013, the US Supreme Court ordered the US government to recognize same-sex marriages performed by states, and in response to that sweeping victory, The New Yorker magazine ran this cover:

Biangles and Double Crescent Moon

The biangles are the first symbol for bisexual visibility and were designed by Liz Nania in 1987. The design of the biangles began with the pink triangle, a Nazi concentration camp badge that later became a symbol of gay liberation representing homosexuality. The addition of a blue triangle contrasts the pink and represents heterosexuality. The two triangles overlap and form lavender, which represents the "queerness of bisexuality", referencing the Lavender Menace and 1980s and 1990s associations of lavender with queerness. The colors of the biangles were later used to create the Bi Pride flag.

Because the biangles incorporate the Nazi pink triangle symbol which was used to identify gay & bi men and trans women in concentration camps, some bisexual individuals objected to the biangles. In response to this, in 1998 Vivian Wagner created the bisexual double moon as an alternative. This double moon symbol is most popular with the bisexual community in Germany and surrounding countries, though bi people throughout the world use it as well.

U-Hauls

Question: What does a lesbian bring on a second date? Answer: A U-Haul.

This joke plays on the perception that lesbians quickly form intense emotional connections and move in together, referred to in gay slang as an "urge to merge".

Especially before the internet when it was much harder to find other queer people unless you lived in a big city with gay bars, there was no guarantee that you would find another person you could be compatible with, so everyone snatched everyone else up and just made it work, and thus the stereotype that lesbians quickly move in together.

Nail Polish Emoji 💅

Since wearing nail polish has been for females, gay men (or queer people in general) wear it to express some sort of femininity or just to feel free to do things that are outside the norms. The nail polish emoji is a vibe for when you feel powerful/femme/boldly gay, and has become the emoji version of the limp wrist, in other words, shorthand for gay.

Piercings

A lot of LGBTQ+ oppression involves people telling us what we can and can't do with our own body. You can't hold hands or kiss the cheek of a same sex partner without risking others expressing their disapproval and disgust. You can’t get hormone therapy or gender affirmation surgery as a grown adult without having to go through years of psychological evaluations.

Getting piercings is a signal of rebellion against expected social and cultural norms. The queer association with piercings became widely known when a 1991 article from the New York Times claimed that gay men could be identified by their earrings, stating that they “often [wore] a single piece of jewelry in the right ear to indicate sexual preference.” The phenomenon isn't limited to gay men, many queer people get multiple piercings in their ears, nose, and other places, as a way to express freedom to be who they are and not fit the gender expectations of what is feminine or masculine.

Labrys

The labrys is a double headed axe featured in Greek & Roman mythology, frequently seen in depictions of women warriors, like Amazons. The labrys was adopted by the lesbian community in the 1970s to represents the strength and feminism of homosexual women. 

An early flag representing lesbians was violet in color with a black triangle containing a labrys. The color violet comes from the poet Sappho who associated the violet flowers with her female lovers. The upside down black triangle was used in concentration camps to identify women who did not conform to Nazi ideals (this included lesbians). The flag may not be popular anymore, but the labrys continues as a lesbian symbol.

GSA

The first gay–straight alliance (GSA) was formed in November 1988 in Massachusetts, after a teacher came out as gay and a straight student approached him because she was upset by the treatment of gay students and others. The second GSA was established in 1989 and the concept spread. GSAs made headlines in 1999 when Salt Lake City School District banned a GSA from being started at East High School, but a court case determined this was a violation of the students' rights. Eventually the acronym GSA changed to mean Genders & Sexualities Alliance to be inclusive of gender minorities. GSAs are associated with positive social, academic, and health outcomes for LGBTQ students and improves school climates for all students, not just those who are LGBTQ.

Doc Martens

Doc Martens gained popularity in the 70s as the ultimate protest footwear among activists. A significant number of protests were LGBTQ and so before long the shoes turned into an image of LGBTQ pride as they stomped all over the status quo. Also, butch women who were more likely to work nontraditional jobs in male-dominated fields wore Doc Martens with a flannel shirt and jeans as everyday workwear.

In the 1980's, lesbians carried on the shoes' reputation for rebellion by wearing them to gay marches and to hospitals where gay men lay in beds suffering from AIDS. Doc Martens grew in popularity throughout the 1990s when they became associated with the grunge movement, but as grunge faded, so did the popularity of these shoes among the general populace. In the 2020's they are still widely worn by butch lesbians and baby dykes. Docs were likewise well known among cross-dressers, who valued the boots' capacity to make their legs look longer and thinner.

Eurovision Song Contest

Like so many other things that acquire “gay icon” status, the Eurovision Song Contest unintentionally became a queer favorite because of the glamour, kitsch and flamboyance of the performances, and songs with themes of overcoming struggle and standing stoically through the turmoils of life. Also helping were performers who are examples of trans excellence, drag queens, and who made pleas for marriage equality.

Some notable queer performances from over the years:

Paul Oscar became the contest's first openly gay artist when he represented Iceland at the 1997 contest.

The following year, Israel's Dana International became the contest's first trans performer and won the 1998 contest and is considered the symbolic coming out of Eurovision.

In 2007, Ukraine drag queen Verka Serduchka finished in 2nd place with the song "Dancing Lasha Tumbai", and has been brought back several times over the years for guest appearances.

Drag persona Conchita Wurst won the 2014 contest for Austria

Openly bisexual performer Duncan Laurence was the winner of the 2019 contest for the Netherlands.

Victoria De Angelis, a member of the 2021 Italian winning band Måneskin, is openly bisexual.

Loreen, won the 2012 contest for Sweden, came out as bisexual in 2017, then won the contest again in 2023.

2024 had 9 queer artists in the competition, with the winner being Nemo who identifies as nonbinary and pansexual.

[lukabitch]

Sorry if the requests are closed I couldn't find a post detailing it

Anyway can I request trans masc reader who's too nice for they're own good and tries to talk sense into the killers

Preferably Wraith, Hillbilly and Bubba but I'm fine with Ghostface or anyone besides frank and freddy

Request are almost always open. The reader sounds like the most innocent thing in the realm. Thank you so much for the request! :)

Killers: Wraith, Hillbilly, and Bubba the baby boy.

Tw: typical dbd violence, mentions of cannibalism, parental abuse mentioned(Hillbilly and Bubba), transphobia.

Wraith:

Oh okay.

He’s a bit confused but it doesn’t bother him as much.

He’ll just continue with the trial as usual but would give you the hatch.

Finds it cute when you try to talk him out of it every trial.

Usually ends up saying your too pure of heart.

Has told you on multiple occasions that he would stop if he could. It’s just a ghost haunting him.

Every damn time you would pull him into a hug telling him it doesn’t have to be like that.

He almost cries when you do this. Your just too sweet.

He would become more defiant to the Entity.

Practically protects you with his life. He won’t let anything happen to his sweet boy.

If someone was being transphobic towards you they will be missing a spine.

He has and will always be there for you. You mean too much to him to let you be upset.

He loves you with all his heart. You showed a side to him he thought was lost long ago.

Hillbilly:

Someone actually showing genuine concern for him? He’s never had that happen before.

Seriously he literally melts from just you showing concern and trying to get him to change.

He’ll just let you ramble to him about how he could be a good person.

He always pats you on the head and walks off.

Even if he wanted to turn a new leaf he couldn’t exactly communicate that to you. He doesn’t know exactly how to speak because of the neglect and abuse of his parents.

He can only really make noises that sound like words. Lucky for him you were quick to notice what he was trying to say.

With how nice and innocent you are it repulses him to have to hurt you. He honestly doesn’t want to so he saves you for last to make it less painful.

He lets you go when he can.

Every time he does let you he sees you smile and lets you ramble about how you could let all of them go next time.

He never does let all of you go. He can’t take the beating the entity would give him.

If someone is being transphobic they will be horrifically dismembered.

One time you were trying to talk sense into him and a survivor yelled slurs at you from afar.

Yeah they didn’t last long he will protect with all his heart. It’s his only way to show that he cares without being sucked into the void.

Bubba:

He’s incredibly confused.

Remember he was raised into believing that it was normal to eat people.

After awhile of you trying to talk him out of it he gets a bit weary. He truly takes your words to heart.

Remember how he treats Stretch in tcm2? He treats you very similar.

He’s kind to you and tries to keep you being alive low key. It doesn’t work at all but come on he’s trying! :(

He gives you a hug every time you try to talk him out of it.

He can’t communicate properly at all. He can only make a mess of noises and squeals.

He considers the two of you close and bring you gifts! Isn’t that lovely?

The gift was makeup, it makes him happy why wouldn’t you make happy?

You tried to explain to him. He does kind of understand what your saying just very loosely.

He just saw you become really uncomfortable when someone was calling you a girl.

It’s chainsaw time baby! He swung it like his life depends on it.

At the end of the day he wants to change for you because he cares about you. He just can’t change due to circumstances.

[anarchotahdigism]

"It’s interesting how often people cite “CDC guidance” as their reason for unmasking. Although the CDC has absolutely participated in and cosigned the mainstream minimizing of the illness, even the CDC still acknowledges that vulnerable people are at risk from COVID infection. They simply encourage the public to let those people die.

During an interview with the BBC in the fall, Dr. Fauci famously said aloud “You’ll find the vulnerable will fall by the wayside. They’ll get infected, they’ll get hospitalized, and some will die.” Should he have characterized any other vulnerable group this way (“You’ll find Native people will fall by the wayside,” “You’ll find trans people will fall by the wayside,” “You’ll find Black people will fall by the wayside,” “You’ll find women will fall by the wayside”) there would surely have been an almighty backlash. But to say medically vulnerable people must die so the rest of us may have brunch indoors does not beget such a reaction- never mind that all the above-named groups- Native people, trans people, Black people and women- are at a higher risk for Long COVID, and other poor outcomes from COVID." ... "The move to frame the requirement of a public safety measure- no different from requiring seatbelts, helmets, pants and shoes in public- as a violation of bodily autonomy came directly from groups like the Atlas Network, which, as you might gather from its Ayn-Rand-worshipping name, opposes all public regulation. Meanwhile, we continue to violate the bodily autonomy of disabled people by making participation in public life contingent on accepting forcible, continual reinfections. Since Biden’s COVID normalization campaign, MAGA-style rhetoric about how disabled people should “stay home forever” and how they are “useless” and “weak” has absolutely infiltrated left spaces. Many disabled people, in fact, are effectively “staying home forever.” They are shielding themselves from a disease that may kill them, and certainly would likely lower their baseline health, and have been for years. Meanwhile, the pleas of these incredibly isolated people for the bare minimum of solidarity- please at least mask up indoors when not eating or drinking- are ignored because that is apparently too difficult for the mental health of abled people." ... "A last point I will address, I did see questions about how we are supposed to “force” people to mask. Disabled people, vulnerable people, and left groups generally do not have the power of the state. We are not going to be engaging in “policing,” because nobody is going to end up in jail, physically hurt, on probation, or with limited job prospects because of our community care. Simply write “masks required” on your event invites, distribute masks wherever possible (contact your local Mask Bloc!), and do your best to spread information while modeling good praxis by masking yourself. For the most part, people are following the crowd. They will do what the majority is doing, and many will be happy to mask if it is normalized instead of stigmatized.

A left that purges its spaces of everyone who values community care, everyone who is willing to experience a minor inconvenience for the well-being of another, everyone who thinks it’s all of us or none of us, is a drastically weakened left. A left that does not incorporate disability praxis is drastically limiting its own scope and ability to be effectual. A left that mocks vulnerable groups and seeks to justify harm to them is not grounded in real justice and has only a superficial understanding of its own aims. Join us in masking, keep your comrades safe, and relish the beauty of avoiding illness while knowing you did your part to protect others. It’s a good feeling at the end of the day, I promise you that."

[spacemancharisma]

vent under cut

so the background is that I work for a family-owned business in an extremely politically red area. I knew the owners were republicans, but didn’t realize until recently that they’re like,, hardcore about it. the wife wears trump merch 24/7 and they both toss the t-slur around in a work environment like it’s nothing. they have two kids though, around my age, and the son is gay, which I learned a month or two into working here. since then, i’ve come out to him & we’ve been friends, we’ve had solidarity, i’ve seen him make at least token attempts to chill his parents out. I’ve never made my personal political leanings obvious at work bc I know better, but it’s fairly obvious from everything about me that I lean pretty hard to the left.

all this to say- the other day as I was leaving work, I walked into the office where the parents & kids were all talking, and arrived while the son, my friend, was in the middle of a story that went “- and he asked me why he should vote for trump, so I was explaining like, ‘do you know what a 30% corporate tax would even do?’-” and I know it’s naïve of me to have expected anything but it still hit me in the fucking chest

and since then i’ve had this feeling of like,, rage and pain the way a little kid feels, all that righteousness and confusion because how can you not care about other people???? I’m just sitting at work feeling like I’m going to start screaming or crying because PEOPLE DIED FOR YOU. YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS DIED IN THE FUCKING STREETS FOR YOU TO HAVE THE RIGHT TO RENT A LITTLE HOUSE WITH YOUR BOOTBOY BOYFRIEND AND MAKE OUT WHILE YOU VOTE FOR TRANS PEOPLE TO BE FUCKING EXTERMINATED. but what does it matter to fucking you, I guess, since you’re white and cis and male and masc and able-bodied. who gives a fuck about everyone you’re stomping on. who gives a fuck about the queers and the faggots and the trannys getting wished out of existence if it means that you, a Good Respectable Homosexual, don’t have to pay some goddamn taxes. I want to fucking throw up. this is a vent post bc I can’t be articulate about it. it just hurts. it fucking hurts that I am haunted every day by the spectre of an entire generation that republicans murdered in cold blood, and people like him haven’t ever even considered the what it would’ve been like if he’d been born a decade or two earlier. we have not recovered from the aids crisis. we will never recover from the aids crisis. the community we once had was fucking demolished, deliberately, and if you can go about your life & never think about how many people we lost & what we lost with them, you have fucking lost the plot.

how is it possible to so genuinely only think about capital, about fucking money. how is it fucking possible to care so little about other people????? people you claim to have community with???? yourself even?????? we live in fucking georgia dude, we don’t have room to backslide. panthers eating faces or whatever. maybe they’ll come for me first but I promise they are coming for you next.

they don’t fucking respect you. you’re not “one of the good ones”. they’ll never forgive you. they’ll never love you. and when they start eating faces, you’re not as far down that list as you want to be. I just don’t understand how disconnected you have to be to not see that, to not care, to think you’re above it. you are as filthy as any of us to them, and when you need someone to stand with you, it’s not going to be them. it’s going to be us, standing with you even if you never stood with us.

anyway.

[crippleprophet]

i want to thank you for your post from a few months ago about abandoning the idea that health is good. it's helped me process and unpack just how much the health framework has damaged me (and everyone; you could get multiple phds exploring how the concept of health categorizes and controls bodies!). and those ideas have extended beyond my personal life to my academic and professional writing and my interactions with loved ones - they've reached and impacted a lot of people.

i was a disabled child in a family of career athletes; the health paradigm was deeply engrained at an early age. now that i'm finally shaking those teachings, i've gotten a lot out of reanalyzing ideas i've always framed through a health lens. if it doesn't matter if i "eat healthily," since that's a meaningless concept, then how and why do i choose what i eat? why do i want to stretch regularly, if not because it's healthy and my doctors said it will improve my disability? how does my relationship with substance use change when health is taken out of the equation?

in these questions, i often find there's deeper and more satisfying reasons for my feelings and actions. this process reminds me of my experience with transness, in a way. reconsidering the concepts and assumptions underpinning a framework, deciding the whole framework is useless to you, and exploring what lies beyond it. thank you for opening such a freeing and fascinating door :-)

oh, woah, this absolutely made me cry, i truly can’t express how meaningful this is for me. (as you might know from following my blog lol) i’m homebound & only see two people in person unless i’m at the doctor, so this feeling of connection to other folks in my community is so deeply valuable, i really can’t thank you enough 💓💓

i definitely relate to the sense of rejecting health leading to a changed perspective on, like, everything in my life + prompting more intentional ways of engaging with my choices, routines, etc. following that theme of community, lineage, & ideas that ripple out, i’d love to take the time to mention just a few of the scholars, ancestors, comrades, & friends who have been life-changing for me in this area!

while there is a lot of transformative & vital work within disability studies, there’s still a lot of structural barriers against sick people’s contributions to formal theory + a lot of direct & indirect reinforcement of health as a good thing in the field. so i’ve found in many cases more resonant work in trans studies, mad studies, & postcolonial studies, by people affirming the pathology of their own identities & positions. just a few favorites of mine from within, across, & outside of these fields, in no particular order:

Sandoval-Sánchez, A. 2005. Politicizing abjection: in the manner of a prologue for the articulation of AIDS Latino queer identities. American Literary History. 17(3), pp.542-549.

Fritsch, K. 2013. On the negative possibility of suffering: Adorno, feminist philosophy, and the transfigured crip to come. Disability Studies Quarterly. 33(4).

Barounis, C. 2013. “Why so serious?” Cripping camp performance in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. 7(3), pp.305-320.

Abrams, T. and Adkins, B. 2020. Tragic affirmation: disability beyond optimism and pessimism. Journal of Medical Humanities.

Stryker, S. 1994. My words to Victor Frankenstein above the village of Chamounix: performing transgender rage. GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies. 1(3), pp.237-254.

Sexton, J. 2011. The social life of social death: on Afro-pessimism and black optimism. InTensions Journal. (5).

these were all immensely profound to me, but this last work, following Fanon, was such a complete & total frame shift for me that i feel the need to include some of it here (emphasis added):

This is precisely what Gordon argues is the value and insight of Fanon: he fully accepts the definition of himself as pathological as it is imposed by a world that knows itself through that imposition, rather than remaining in a reactive stance that insists on the (temporal, moral, etc.) heterogeneity between a self and an imago originating in culture. Though it may appear counterintuitive, or rather because it is counterintuitive, this acceptance or affirmation is active; it is a willing or willingness, in other words, to pay whatever social costs accrue to being black, to inhabiting blackness, to living a black social life under the shadow of social death.

This is not an accommodation to the dictates of the antiblack world. The affirmation of blackness, which is to say an affirmation of pathological being, is a refusal to distance oneself from blackness in a valorization of minor differences that bring one closer to health, to life, or to sociality.

[…] In a world structured by the twin axioms of white superiority and black inferiority, of white existence and black nonexistence, a world structured by a negative categorical imperative— “above all, don’t be black” (Gordon 1997: 63)—in this world, the zero degree of transformation is the turn toward blackness, a turn toward the shame, as it were, that “resides in the idea that ‘I am thought of as less than human’” (Nyong’o 2002: 389). In this we might create a transvaluation of pathology itself, something like an embrace of pathology without pathos.

To speak of black social life and black social death, black social life against black social death, black social life as black social death, black social life in black social death—all of this is to find oneself in the midst of an argument that is also a profound agreement, an agreement that takes shape in (between) meconnaissance and (dis)belief. Black optimism is not the negation of the negation that is afro-pessimism, just as black social life does not negate black social death by inhabiting it and vitalizing it. A living death is as much a death as it is a living.

if you want a pdf of any of these & are unable to find one feel free to hmu (although they will likely come with my annotations lol). this was a major topic of my master’s thesis for my disability studies degree (which was actually about disabled trans people, so i love that you connected this process of rejecting normality to transness in your own experience – i relate to that a lot) & i’m also happy to share that research with anyone who’s interested :)

i also have relevant thoughts & reblogs in my “stay sick” tag here (which i’ll add to this post) & my “embracing abjection” tag here + more broadly on my main.

& just a few of the many folks whose work + lives have shaped mine: @kelpforestdwellers @heavyweightheart @librarycards @crutchbutch @gatheringbones

i would also (always) absolutely love to hear more about your thoughts + writing if you would like to share! thank you again for taking the time to share this with me, i appreciate it more than i can say 💓💓

[safety-pin-punk]

Hey Key,

It feels appropriate to ask you whether I can vent this but I figure tumblr anon communication is a bit slow.

So I was on my way back to my college town on Easter Monday

An acquaintance (not friend) of mine visited family in the same city so we decided to take a train together

Frame of reference: I’m 25NB, she’s 20FTM (she prefers her feminine given name and she/her since she isn’t actively transitioning yet)

We are both physically disabled and mentally ill

Being the queer neurodivergent I am, I went !!! at her and immediately started talking because hey, commonalities!

Half an hour in we moved on from physical disability to talking about the mental stuff and I mention I’m self-do autistic. And she goes “Nah. You can’t be.” And I go “Huh?” “You’re too talkative! You’re ADHD, yes, but you are too social and talkative to be autistic.”

Like… gee, man, maybe because we have met a few times and immediately clocked you as queer and neurodivergent? You think that might be why I’m comfortable talking rapid-fire?

“Nah, we don’t know each other that well, so that can’t be it.”

Right… and then she told me she doesn’t “want to endorse self-dx” because she thinks she might be hypochondriac and therefor any and all self-dx or preemptive diagnose “might make things worse because I think it’s worse than it is”

Like, yes, I understand and she explained she does experience psychosomatic symptoms in response to being stressed/ burnt out. I don’t deny psychosomatic responses. I believe that.

But also she straight-up refuses to look up anything that might help her?? When we were talking about physical disability (we both have chronic pain) I immediately pulled out my phone to send some coping ressources and self-help stuff

And she went “no, I never look at [coping] things, I worry if I read that, I will just convince myself that I’m worse than I actually am.”

Which, okay, reasonable boundary…

I told her about how I started using a walking cane, on my own, decided for myself that it helps. And also how most of my splints/ bandages are self-bought and self-administered because no doctor acknowledged my chronic pain so far.

And she goes “I sometimes have days where I have to drag my leg. I’m like-paraplegic when my psychosomatic symptoms get to their worst. But I would never use a cane! I don’t want to stand out, you know? I don’t want to catch attention.”

And I’m sitting there screaming internally like “You are entitled to be seen! You deserve accommodations! You just said some days you could use a wheelchair!! What the FUCK?!”

Yeah… and the longer our talk goes on, the more I read between the lines that she believes “if I do everything right, it will mostly go away”

Like, she forced herself to stick to “fibro-diet” to combat her rheuma and fibro, which is great on the surface. And then she tells me she forces herself out of bed and forces herself to cook, even if she doesn’t feel like eating, but she just pushes through because “the anti/inflammation diet can help with rheumatism”

And just– …my internal screaming continued.

I don’t want to dislike her! I recognise she’s young(er) and she’s naive and blue-eyed. While I’m just a cynic who’s been depressed for the majority of my life and I stopped giving a fuck about “not standing out” because my neurodivergent ass is too autistic and too ADHD to interact with people without standing out

Like, I’m ““high-functioning”” but at the same time I’m the kind of autistic who never had the chance to fit in. I have always been and will always be “the standoffish weird kid”.

But I just feel bad for her and at the same time I know I don’t want to become friends with someone who’s this blue-eyed “it will all be good if I just do the right thing”

I’m frustrated with her as an acquaintance and I just know if she tries to become my friend I have to give her sooooo many lectures

Among all these other things about how she is allowed to be non-binary and how she doesn’t need HRT to be trans and how she doesn’t have to cower in fear of changes HRT would do to her body because even if she’s binary FTM nobody’s forcing her to go on testo.

Just… so much frustration after this one 3h train ride :/

Fully agree, tumblr anon communication is very slow. Especially on my blog. I go through moods where I answer a bunch of things at once and then dont for a while. (sorry) Long post under cut

First of all, I am so sorry about your friend invalidating your self-dx autism. Personally I'm all for self-dx, anyone whose dealt with doctors long enough knows how hard, how many hoops you have to jump through, and the amount of time and money required to get diagnosed with ANYTHING. I've definitely dealt with my fair share of non-medical professionals telling me both "You dont have this thing I have" but also "You definitely have this thing I dont have".

I see why you are frustrated by someone seemingly not wanting to help themselves. But it seems like she is trying, she just has never been exposed to the right resources to help her. Its kinda like. I went to a SUPER christian university, and there was this gay guy, wonderful dude. His view of his own queerness though? I had only read about people like him online until I met him. He was a pastors son, his whole life he grew up knowing that being gay was wrong and bad. He never had access to the resources he needed to learn how to love that part of himself. Not his own fault at all, but by the time he got to college, there was no changing his views. He now goes around preaching to other kids about his experiences being gay and how he represses it because God. He absolutely broke my heart.

My point it, your friend is young and naieve. She probably has never had access to the resources and information you have. Her experiences have probably been *wildly* different from yours. You can't force a 'fuck it' attitude onto someone like that. You just kinda have to wait and hope they grow into it on their own. Theres nothing wrong with not wanting to be friends with someone like that though. You are responsible for currating your own social experiences. I completely understand your frustration with the whole situation though.

[ink-stained-clouds]

hi!! what are some of your favorite readings, books, essays, articles, etc on sociology? i’d love to maybe see what class readings you’re doing

Hi anon!

I have a whole bunch of recommendations, no books, unfortunately. Actually, scratch that, I have one but it's actually a history book! I found it to be sociologically fascinating, though. It's The Origins of the Modern World by Robert B. Marks. It's a really interesting take on decolonizing the study of history and our understanding of how the west became the global superpower

To be honest, I don't know what book chapters I was reading for my theory class, our professor only sent us pdf scans. If you're interested in the philosophic origins of sociology, I am happy to try to hunt down the reference for you. Personally, I'm not a big philosophy fan so I can't speak to how good it was lol

Scholarly articles

Clover, Carol J. 1987. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” Representations, 20: 187-228. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2928507.

Sowles, Shaina J., Monique McLeary, Allison Optican, Elizabeth Cahn, Melissa J. Krauss, Ellen E. Fitzsimmons-Craft, Denise E. Wilfley, and Patricia A. Cavazos-Rehg. 2018. “A content analysis of an online pro-eating disorder community on Reddit.” Body Image, 24: 137-144. doi: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2018.01.001.

Berbrier, Mitch. 1999. “Impression Management for the Thinking Racist: A Case Study of Intellectualization as Stigma Transformation in Contemporary White Supremacist Discourse.” The Sociological Quarterly, 40(3): 411-433.

Kwate, Naa Oyo A. 2008. “Fried chicken and fresh apples: Racial segregation as a fundamental cause of fast food density in black neighborhoods.” Health & Place, 14(1): 32-44. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2007.04.001. (I read this one in a class years ago and it's always stuck with me, highly recommend)

Snow, David A. and Leon Anderson. 1987. “Identity Work Among the Homeless: The Verbal Construction and Avowal of Personal Identities.” American Journal of Sociology, 92(6): 1336-1371. Doi: 10.1086/228668. (a really interesting application of identity work, which is one of my favorite sociological frameworks)

West, Candace and Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. “Doing Gender.” Gender and Society, 1(2): 125-151. doi: https://www.jstor.org/stable/189945. (a classic! essential sociological reading, you may have come across it already)

Non-scholarly articles and essays (that are all very sociological in my opinion)

Being an Honorary White Person Doesn't Make Us More Powerful

How the '5-Minute-Face' Became the $5,000 Face

Why We Should Talk About What Kyrsten Sinema Is Wearing (Tressie McMillan Cottom is a phenomenal sociologist! I recommend all her writing)

Selfies, Surgeries, And Self-Loathing: Inside the Facetune Epidemic

“ain’t i a woman?” on the irony of trans-exclusion by black and african feminists (one of my personal favorites)

Poor People Deserve To Taste Something Other Than Shame (I return to this one often)

Violent Delights (a really interesting commentary on the cultural fascination with true crime)

Podcasts

Sage Sociology

Give Theory a Chance

Maintenance Phase (not technically sociology but very sociological in my opinion)

Unfortunately, I don't really have any books to recommend but if anyone else does I'd love to get some recs too!

I also try to post a round-up of all my reads under my monthly reads tag if you're looking for more suggestions, though it seems I haven't been particularly consistent ope

Thank you for the ask, anon. It was fun going through my notes and finding all these!! Please feel free to reach out with any recommendations of your own :)

[lexcat-11]

it’s a late night rambling about life stuff night. tumblrs basically an echo chamber for me so I don’t mind lol.

content warning for discussion of fatphobia & what could be considered disordered eating. stay safe if this does reach anyone at all <3

it’s crazy to me how I, fortunately, was able to grow up with very little internalized homophobia and to have had such positive representation and acceptance primarily on the internet but also irl. I consider myself a very rebellious person who won’t let anyone invalidate me when it comes to stuff like that. I love being a lesbian, I’m not ashamed to be asexual. That’s me and I know I’m valid. I love who I am in that regard.

But god damn on the opposite side of things internalized fatphobia has not nearly been as easy for me. I guess I gained exposure to it so young and so directly it makes sense but it’s everywhereee. Weight loss ads on the tv, not finding clothing sizes in stores or their patterns being carelessly made so they don’t fit, seats in theaters not fitting my legs, the lack of representation, the hatred and immediate association with “ugliness” or “failure” from so many close minded and unkind people, direct bullying even like a month ago.

like when I was in *preschool* I remember daydreaming about the stuff a stereotypical little girl does— princesses, magic, all that, and at five years old, in my own imagination, I’d stop and tell myself “I don’t look like me. I look like another girl who’s prettier because she’s not fat.” FIVE YEARS OLD

I just have so much grief for that little girl and just everyone who might have ever had to go through it. Bodies are treated like trends and so oversexualized and some people would rather wish for someone to harm themself than be unable to sexualize a thin body. And at five years old I didn’t believe I could be pretty unless I lost weight.

Caring so much about it is against my values. I don’t care what society says about my sexuality or interests! But I do care about this. And it sucksssss because why should it matter? What if my healthiest self is the heaviest? What if I don’t work out anymore because it became a form of self-punishment? Why should anyone get to comment on my health??? Why is my body any of your business??? It’s so disgusting not to even mention all of the overlaps with ableism, the impacts it has on the trans community, and fatphobia’s roots stemming from racism. Why is it regarded as so normal? Why are we making five year olds in preschool sitting in a circle on the mat on the floor daydream about being thinner so they could be pretty enough to be part of a story? I’m an adult and I still envy thin people so much. I want to have this confidence boost and wear things they are but I’ve been taught that my body looks wrong in them.

I’m genuinely trying to unlearn all of this. Again idk if anyone’s gonna read this but I feel like being open because I know it would help me to know I’m not alone. There are plus sized and fat-bodied individuals who look like me and I think they are so so beautiful and I don’t ever criticize them the way I do myself and I don’t understand why I’m so unkind to myself.

I’m gonna try to stop having such a negative relationship with food and scrutinizing myself. I’m not going to focus on exercising and burning calories but instead moving my body so that I feel good. I share the image of sculptures of Greek goddesses and the fact I am nourished and have energy is something to celebrate. I have a body that naturally gains and retains weight. I don’t want to spend my life fighting it and hating myself trying to chase love that I deserve to be shown without conditions. I am a human being. I am alive and my body is the least interesting thing about me.

[permanently-sprained-ankle]

Explaining my banner

[Image ID: White text in a Galaxy background reads If you: Derail my posts; are an “aspie”; run a sh/ed blog; are under 16; are a TERF; think cripplepunk is for mental disabilities; think that autism isn’t a disability; are pro-transabled, trace, transage, etc; are pro-map or pro-zoo; are a transmed; want to completely demedicalize autism, I will probably block or mock you. End ID]

General

This isn’t a DNI. I don’t think that DNIs actually work, and I don’t really care about DNIs if the other person is directly spouting bigoted crap (otherwise I’ll respect them).

On that note, anyone can interact with my stuff. This is just a warning about what will happen if you do.

I reserve the right to be a dick, asshole, and/or rude to anybody who falls under those categories (except for under 16). If you’re a bigot I’m gonna treat you like one.

Specific meanings

If you don’t know what I mean by one of the items on this list, look here. They will be listed in order.

Derail my posts: basically, if you try to make my post into something that it’s not, I will not be polite about it. Example here.

Are an “aspie”: this refers to people who reference themselves as being an “aspie” or as having Aspergers syndrome. Learn why this is bad here. As a moderate-high support needs autist descended from Holocaust and Inquisition survivors, this is triggering and I will probably block you for my mental peace.

Run an sh/ed blog: (tw) this refers to blogs that are about self harm and/or eating disorders. These are incredibly harmful to everyone involved. I will block you.

Are under 16: I am 20 years old. I do not feel comfortable interacting with young teens, especially since I post a lot of sexual references, and cursing. I will not mock anyone for their age; this falls under the “block” category.

Are a TERF: this stands for Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist. Basically, this is about anybody who is transphobic in the name of protecting women’s rights. Honestly this applies to any transphobe. I WILL mock you into oblivion.

Think cripple punk is for mental disabilities: cripplepunk (aka cpunk) is a movement specifically for physically disabled people. It is not about people who are mentally disabled only, without physical disabilities. Cripples deserve our own communities. Read more here.

Think that autism isn’t a disability: autism is inherently disabling, going by the criteria of autism and the definition disability. To say otherwise is both misinformation and a denial of the lives experiences of higher support needs autistic people. Read more here.

Are pro-transabled, trace, transage, etc: these people appropriate the perfectly valid idea of being transgender, thinking that you can identify with a different race or ethnicity than you are (aka trace or transrace) a different age than you are (transage) a disability that you don’t have (transabled), or others. I will mock you relentlessly.

Are pro-map or pro-zoo: MAP stands for minor-attracted person, aka a pedophile. Zoo is short for zoophile, which is a person attracted to animals. These people are their supporter are absolutely disgusting.

Are a transmed: a transmed, or transmedicalist, believe at the very least that you need gender dysphoria to be transgender. Some are more extreme, believing that you need to meet the clinical criteria for gender dysphoria or that you need to medically transition in order to be trans. This does not refer to trans people who simply want to medically transition.

Want to completely demedicalize autism: this is a bit complicated and I may make a post about this later. Generally though, it refers to people who view autism as not a disorder but as a purely innocuous, net neutral or positive, “just another neurotype”. They want to remove autism from the psychiatric or medical fields entirely as they believe it is not about deficits in cognitive function. This is entirely false.

Ok that’s it. If you want to learn more about the specifics you can click on the links provided or Google them.

[cordycepsfem]

Pageboy Readthrough, Part Five

Previously:

more Canadian history

EP's step-family is an absolute bucket of shit-heads

EP doesn't know the difference between a dab and a dollop, but I forgive her given the "step-family of shit-heads" thing

the subconscious message EP takes in from her family is Why aren't you like them? meaning Why aren't you normal? and your reviewer got maudlin and sad again

Now:

Chapter Six

we start off the chapter with EP and a friend at dinner

EP is living with this friend at the time

earlier in the day that we start into, EP had to call the police about a stalker

the stalker started off as a pen pal when EP was first on TV at the age of 11

EP diverges into telling us what she likes about acting, and surprise surprise, it's "being anyone but who I am"

EP has a music teacher who told her to "stop roughing up the boys at recess" which, you know, same

EP realizes that acting means she will have to wear "girl" costumes, which, you know, duh

EP there is a 900% chance that you did not know they were "cis" boys nor did you refer to them as "cis" boys because no one talked about people as "cis" when you were 11.

Also, "how is that not you"? They're wearing costumes! You are also wearing a costume for what sounds like some sort of historical drama? No one is wearing "suspenders, knickers" in modern-day Canada except in their Mennonite or Hutterite communities.

EP makes a website with basic HTML for school

a man contacts her through it

she likes it because she likes feeling "seen" - the man said he could understand her feelings

he probably could because he was like twenty-eight

we once again digress into the Canadian Part of the story, where I learn that the drive between Toronto (close to where I used to live) and Halifax (where I went on vacation once) is two days

EP and her mom would eat ketchup chips on vacation because, of course, Canadian

back to the pen pal

he is a Creepy Fuck who makes collages of her with angel wings

EP jumps headfirst into an eating disorder which starts by hearing a voice in her head

during what is going to be a very serious moment about a stalker, we take a header into Canadian Stuff because OF COURSE we do

Did you know Toronto is the Raccoon Capital of the World? OF THE WORLD? Jesus, I'm glad I moved... they could have definitely overrun my small town

apparently 100,000 raccoons live in Toronto

2.93 million people live in Toronto, just for a further demographic

anyway, back to the part that matters:

the Creepy Fuck emails all of EP's friends trying to find out where she is

he finds out

EP and her friend call the police

the police are worried and she gets a restraining order against him

we once again play All These People Are Shitheads

the Creepy Fuck FINDS HER, because of course he does

he tries to get her to take a walk with him

she runs

he gets arrested

he has schizophrenia

she does not press charges

things go from Bad to Worse because we are well and truly out of control at this point

EP decides that she will stop eating

she tells us that trans and gender-non-conforming youth are more likely to struggle with eating disorders

I did some research even though I feel like shit trying to correct her in her own sad book, but I am a very specific type of asshole

we know that female individuals are most likely to have eating disorders; I'm sure that now a lot of those female people are trans men and enbys

I had no idea that gay and bisexual men and boys made up almost half of male sufferers of eating disorders

anyway, EP starts doubling down on an eating disorder

I need a moment of levity so I will say that I would eat the fuck out of a Fear Sandwich if it was served at a cool restaurant or a nifty food truck

anyway, back into Hell

We've come to the end of the chapter which is good because I am so incredibly upset about all of this. I thought I was going to be able to do two chapters today since I didn't do much else, but Jesus fuck this book is so incredibly sad.

EP, you can have my dad. We can share dads. He is a very good dad. He would not come to Toronto to kick your ass... he would have come to Toronto to be comforting and to be very involved with everything. He was so concerned for my safety online that he told me that I had to give a fake name to the Christian women in my "Touched by an Angel" fanfic mail chain when I was fourteen, even though all we really did was tell each other we were praying for whatever causes they brought up and sending around new chapters of fic. I think I told them my name was Rachel.

My dad is funny but not at the expense of his children. He's been married to my mom for almost forty years and they love all three of us, let us be our own people throughout our childhoods. He is so incredibly proud of us, for wherever we are in our lives. He would have been proud of you and he would have fought for you the same way he fought for me when I got sick, the same way he fights for my disabled sister's care, the same way he stood up for my baby sister when she punched a kid in junior high because said kid was teasing her and the school wanted to suspend her.

(And this might just be me being selfish, but you are a few months older than I am and I would have loved an older sister. Again, we could have been weird together.)

My point is, you deserved better people around you. You still do. No matter what, you did not deserve this - from your father or from your stalker. You deserved to be a kid, and to be happy, and to eat.

And now I need to go eat, because reading this reminded me I haven't done that yet. Maybe I'll make a Fear Sandwich.

[eclipsecrowned]

discord conversations took a turn this morning based on a post that's been going around about nitty gritty details of villains. i thus bring you 'my dee see baddies + politics.'

warning: am*rican politics, obviously. amusingly, only one muse listed here can even vote/have traditional impact on the voting process.

oswald: should be r*publican, but the entire r*publican party of gotham either bullied him or his father before him, so he's backing the d*mocrats despite it going against his own best interests and beliefs, the weird doublethink of 'queer disabled man' and 'unscrupulous nepo baby millionaire.'

jon: a d*mocrat, but neither nice nor progressive. he's a trans gay man from the am*rican south and he knows who's actually backing his interests. like oswald, has a chip on his shoulder about the opposition. still has problematic beliefs like the poor just need to work harder instead of getting 'handouts.'

mina: dyed in the wool pr*gressive l*beral d*mocrat. was raised in the dregs of gotham and grew up and said 'never again.' never wants to be rich and does her best to prevent it by giving back to the community and infrastructure. runs a 0 charge clinic. walks the walk, talks the talk, shame about the serial murders.

bane: you are all like little babies. watch this. dismantles capitalism in his south american homeland and defies the west to stop him coming to collect s*nta pr*sca's expat war criminals other countries welcomed as asylum seekers. burn it all. he is the one man revolution once he's out of his rogue years.

weasel: why does ross, the largest friend, not simply eat the other five?

[katyspersonal]

It is still hard to believe.. yet at the same time, everything makes too much sense.

Ever since I saw how much he seemed to hate me and wish ill on me and be in genuine agreement that I was a danger for society for ableist reasons, I've been doubtful. Maybe I was in the wrong, after all? Maybe I did cause harm with my words, after all? Why else would someone act this way? Because being scared and perceiving me as someone harmful from how I sounded at my worst is still harm. Negative emotions sap the HP, I am aware of that. Not to mention that apparently turned out he mentioned being afraid to interact with people that interacted with ME.

But when I got crashed with the reveal that, in fact, he never saw me as a human being to BEGIN with, but only as a name in "heretics" list, everything fell back into place. I've never been happier to get back to square fucking uno. Mic was right about that type of people being just NPCs all along. He saw something many years before I did, and I was right to chase that white rabbit.

All that vitriol, all that ill will, ditching people that as much as were kind to me felt so personal. I was convinced, CONVINCED that I HAD to have done something bad to him, even if collateraly, to evoke this. And yet, apparently, it is okay in the eyes of those sorry Choirlings to treat people this way mindlessly and spread hateful fear-mongerish propaganda under guise of "awareness" without bothering to learn whether it is justified . People just... can do this shit carelessly and tell you that they do not want to know you as a person, which by effect means they don't want to know whether they were fair to you or not. Internet does something with people. At the very least, I was genuinely concerned that I might have hurt him, and it was a reasonable conclusion from how he reacted. But, no. People just throw words, actions and posts carelessly. They don't care how it effects the person or whether it would change a darn thing about the world to the better or whether the claims are ever true. Of course it "was not personal", because they don't see me as a person. Or even themselves.

"This is what queer people do" no, this is what cultists that are hostile to the "outsiders" do. And the fact that he told these words to another queer person should be even more telling. I can feel Mic laughing in my head, even if we parted the ways for months now on very negative terms. His mistake was simply in deciding to respond to those people in kind. But learning that I was correct in looking at him and thinking "this is what happens with people that "communities" grind and toss away like trash". He was a trans man and yet his own "community" denied him his own identity for failing to follow the rules and imposed ways to look at things or even at his own body and mind. This is why I do not turn to "communities": people within them are so paranoid that they start eating their own. When there is a suspicion that one of them is a bad apple, the bastards start interrogating and honestly dip into extremely private matters without any decency. And not even baring one's entire life and soul guarantees being saved. I was not guilty for understanding such a simple thing, it were my enemies who lacked common sense. And I should have never doubted my perception only because I got concerned about a single Choir boy. But no one can understand how liberating it feels for me, a person with lifelong story of being gaslighted, abused, brainwashed and manipulated to finally be confident about my perception. I am still yet to deal with anger, I have been extremely irritable and disturbed ever since that exchange. I even got into a fight at workplace. I know WHY I am so angry.... I am not mad at anyone, but hyperactive because my mental hardware is being rewritten. Erased, destroyed, and created again, but finally with a crucial change. But it should be the first step to my healing. To my independence. I don't need Mic to see things. I don't need "community" to see things. I don't need Kris, I don't need my abusive stepdad. This is what finally seeing things without anyone's help feels like, and I want to nurture and improve this ability. I've realized, at last, that I am not as stupid and confused about world and people as I always thought. The confidence in my ability to make choices. The knowledge that I have nothing to apologize for (except for being rude and hostile, and it is not damning, everyone reacts differently when scared).

But also this is why I don't want to end up hating the whole world. As long as THIS is the state of identity-based communities, there will be people that get thrown out of them for being "misfits". Identically homeless people keep increasing in numbers, and they should stay this way. Because if we were to make our own community, we'd just start yet another vicious cycle. Because humans are evil, and this evil comes through social organizing. We must walk our own ways and maybe communicate and make small friends groups at best- just like individual Hunters scattered across the game, or covenants too small to be communities. To Hell with the Choir boys, they don't deserve me shedding a single tear over them if they don't even bother to acknowledge me as an individual. DEFINITELY to Hell with Alfred and Logarius (you know who they are if you followed since summer). And also to Hell with that lunatic, even if meeting him was so, so rewarding in the end. No one deserves me humbling up and doubting myself and crying for them. No one, no one, no one....

[augment-techs]

28, 32, 39 for the Ship Ask Game for BillySkull

Who’s the better chef? Do they cook for the other? With all things being equal, Billy grew up in a house with loving parents who provided for him and tried to teach him the basics of life so he could get along, but most of the time he was always in his head with calculations and theoretical problems and just ate whatever was in front of him without taking in how it got there. Therefore, when he was finally on his own, only then did he realize...recipe instructions are liars or idealists. He can cook for himself, but would never want to subject anyone to anything else he might make other than that floral tea he got very specific instructions on from Trini.

Skull on the other hand learned as much as he could so he didn't accidentally poison himself with the food he scraped together for most of his childhood; and only got better as he got older. He can make choco-strawberry cinnamon shortcake waffles, traditional Ukrainian Paska bread, lime jello fudge that Bulk claims causes Summer Camp flashbacks, Nutella stuffed donuts, Pupusa cheesy and thick, and a special kind of steak soaked in red wine so rich and easy to cut that it melts in the mouth. Really, if Billy hadn't already been into him, he would have dropped his pants five seconds after eating any one of those dishes and jumped Skull's bones for the rest of eternity. Do either of them drink? If so, who’s the lightweight, and how does their partner care for them? Being that he has a rough time being a Ranger and has earned personal time, Billy does imbibe in champagne during celebrations or wine during a rich dinner, but is very much a light weight, so he paces himself and never goes above three flutes or glasses. The one time he went too far, Skull took him home, made him drink an entire 8oz. glass of water, and made sure there was a bin next to the bed for when he puked his guts out. Followed up by making him light toast and chewy bacon that Billy actually managed to keep down...even while wrapping himself around Skull like a sloth. Skull has lived his entire life with a family that imbibe in horrible garbage and do terrible things because of it. The most he'll take on is a bottle of the shittiest beer, and maybe a Bloody Mary if it slides his way. (Except in the Coinless Universe; there Skull has trained himself to drink an entire bottle of pure vodka or good tequila and not die... but nobody takes care of him the next day, except usually one of his fellow sentries standing outside of the communal bathrooms wincing while he pukes, looking to give him an egg and some coffee.) When and how did they admit that they loved each other? If they haven’t yet, why? When they were tiny little kids, Skull told him Billy he loved him in little ways right up until the blond broke his heart and they separated into different venues of life for almost two decades. Helping him tie his shoes, carrying him around on his shoulders during parades, giving him the last cupcake in a box, finding him four leafed clovers to tuck in his hair, bandaging Billy's scraped knees and then kissing them better. When they were in their thirties and got back in touch after a decade of absolutely nothing (which Skull didn't have a choice in and Billy felt like shit about); it took a long time of getting to know each other again before they could even come close. Billy had an inter-galactic relationship that didn't work out even after he realized he was gay and his partner was a trans man, spent all his time teaching or supplying material for Ranger teams on Earth without stepping foot there until his mom took ill, and spent the rest of his time trying to bring Zordon back. Skull had a child that he kept safe and happy, even while having absolutely no help--Bulk on Mirinoi, his mother hating him, his brother with his own husband going through health issues--and having to spend his first few years as a parent being a street worker. He got lucky selling a couple jingles, which lead him to getting signed up as a singer for a theme song for a hit Japanese anime, which lead him to become popular as a singular artist. Fortunately, Skull doesn't have his head stuck up his ass and noticed how well Billy got along with his son. A year later and Billy finally says the words, which Skull simply replied with, "About time, dummy."