#you see people who do change

[cherryysocks]

living in the midwest kinda sucks ngl 

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Hey now, Let her cook!

[mamawasatesttube]

BTW... PSA.... even if we arent mutuals if youre in my notes regularly theres a Very high chance i am still fond of you. yes im vaguing someones tags on the compliment the person u rbed this from post. but like. positive vaguing? THE POINT IS im weird abt following ppl but IM STILL SENDING U FOND VIBES...

[egophiliac]

(looks at upcoming card releases)

I'm in danger :)

[secretsimpleness]

Sometimes I want to bring Morrigan but then I remember I play as a face-tanking rogue and I bring Wynne. Warden Cousland, Morrigan, Wynne / Dragon Age Origins (c) Bioware

[trans-axolotl]

my gendered experience growing up as an intersex person was overwhelmingly defined by my responses and resistance to everything that got me labeled as a failure: failure to quickly get a gender assigned at birth, failure to go through a normal puberty and grow up into a woman, failure at meeting the standards for "complete womanhood" because of my intersex sex traits, and yet simultaneously failing to ever be acknowledged as a "real man" and being treated as a threat when I expressed I wanted to transition.

before i realized i was a man and came out as trans, the ways that girlhood was denied to me was very often humiliating and painful. locker rooms filled with other girls were a frequent source of shame. there were many big and small ways that i was told that my intersex body made me insufficient, incomplete, broken. i was forced onto estrogen, forced into shaving my body hair, and was constantly being told to change myself to better fit this mystical idea of a "normal woman." and even though I ultimately ended up becoming a man, the denial of girlhood was painful.

but i think that these things would have been even more difficult to navigate as an intersex girl if on top of everything I already said, i was having to cope with the denial of my girlhood while i was forced into boys locker rooms. if my doctors were forcing me onto testosterone hrt and refusing to even discuss estrogen, if all my legal paperwork had "M" on it and was a logistical nightmare to change, if every support group for my intersex variation labeled it as a "men's support group," if the LGBTQ community spaces i tried to join were misogynistic towards me often to the point of exile, if my self determination as an intersex girl was denied in most spaces of my life, and on and on and on. while listing all these things out i also don't want to make it seem like it's all about suffering and pain--so much of transition for me has been about joy in my self determination and how much it feels like a reclamation of autonomy to decide what I want my body and self to be like--i know this is an experience i share with so many of my trans intersex friends.

as an person who was AFAB, although there were many ways that trying to grow up as an intersex girl were a painful, logistical nightmare, many times and places that i was excluded from woman's spaces, etc. however, there was a simultaneous affirmation that i was right to strive for that in the first place. which is logic rooted in some fucked up compulsory dyadism, but also which would have made some things slightly easier or even possible at all if i had wanted to embrace being an intersex girl within this fucked up system.

pretty much every time i've seen people on tumblr talking about "afab transfems" in an intersex context, people seem happy to collapse these experiences and act like there's no meaningful distinction or point in distinguishing between different types of intersex embodiment. it seems incredibly extractive, to be perfectly honest with you--taking terms already used by a community to make meaning of their experiences and to expand and dilute that term enough that it means something pretty different than the original.

it's making me think about the concept of epistemic injustice, which is a term coined by Miranda Fricker to describe oppression related to knowledge, communication, and making meaning of the world. There's two subtypes of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice refers to the dynamic where marginalized people are labeled as not credible, excluded from conversations, and their testimony and knowledge is labeled as unreliable, even when they're the ones who are experts and have first hand experience of what people are talking about. (this is why i probably won't make this post rebloggable--i've noticed this pattern on tumblr many times where trans men speaking about transmisogyny get lots of notes and are given a lot of grace, where trans women are silenced, attacked for not having perfect wording, and otherwise delegitimized.)

the second type is called hermeneutical injustice. it describes how marginalized people are denied the right to make sense of the experiences in their own lives. this can look like preventing people from building community, terminology, a political understanding of themselves, and the interpretive resources needed to process how you live in the world.

this is a form of injustice that I think almost all intersex people are very familiar with--we are denied community and interpretive resources to the point that we're told we don't even exist, that intersex isn't a real word, and so many more examples that leave us isolated and with very few options for understanding what we're collectively experiencing. as an intersex person i really intimately understand how frustrating, confusing, and painful it is to not have words for your experiences, your identity, your life.

so it makes me really sad and pissed off when it seems like intersex people seem to be replicating this exact same type of epistemic injustice towards transfems and specifically towards intersex transfems. pretty much every time recently i see people talking about "afab transfems" they're doing so in a way that seems to deny that trans women even have the right to make sense of their own experiences in the world. there seems to be this mindset that these political frameworks, these interpretive resources that transfems have built up are just up for grabs for anyone. and then on top of that has come with it a lot of cruel, hateful language and direct attacks towards many intersex transfems who are facing so much harassment right now.

an important value to me is this idea of reciprocity as a foundation for solidarity. to me reciprocity means that we're prioritizing the ways we care for each other, we're thinking about how we can uplift each other, and we're watching out for extractive or exploitative patterns where one group is constantly expected to be in "solidarity" with another group without getting the same respect and care back toward them. i think that there could be so many ways that intersex people of all genders could share our overlapping experiences and actually be in true, meaningful solidarity with each other, but i barely ever actually see that happen on tumblr. and that pisses me off, because i do think that there's so much we have in common that we could celebrate and support each other with. i feel so much kinship with so, so many of my trans intersex friends, and ways where i see our lives converge. but i don't think that can happen in an environment where there's no acknowledgment of the ways that our experiences will sometimes (often) differ from each other, and the ways that we have unique needs.

another frustration i've had based on this most recent couple months of transmisogynistic intersex posting on tumblr is how intersex people have been mostly ignoring intersex community resources and devaluing the existing intersex terminology that people created to try to meet our needs. so much of what i've seen people describing on tumblr seems to really line up with the term ipsogender. Ipsogender is a term coined by an intersex sociologist Cary Gabriel Costello, and is used to describe intersex people whose gender matches the gender they were medically assigned at birth, but who might not feel like cis or trans fits them, might experience dysphoria, and who might feel like they've ended up transitioning medically or socially in some ways. this is a word that exists that an intersex person put time into coining because they wanted other intersex people to feel seen, embraced, and have ways of understanding themselves and communicating to others, and that's something that's super meaningful to me! and yet, i've rarely seen anyone reference it, and also seen multiple people making fun of it in other spaces online.

there's also intergender, which is another intersex specific gender term used to describe when your gender is inseparable from your intersex traits, and that your intersex identity is intertwined with your gender identity in some way. some people just identify as intergender, others use it as an adjective and exist as an intergender man or woman. intersex terminology like this is really important to me, especially because we're so often denied the right to make sense of our own experiences.

i think ultimately what i wanted to say with this post is just that when i think about intersex community, some of the most important values of intersex community for me are solidarity, care for each other, and affirming our right to define our own existence. and i don't think that can happen in a community where people are acting in extractive ways, harassing and attacking their fellow community members, and being dismissive of the realities of other intersex people's lives.

[daily-beau]

Day 16: My saviour

[tempo-takoyaki]

Transmigrator!Hua Cheng AU (aka SVSSS x TGCF AU) | I mean technically it's an AU but I wrote it in a way that would make it fit as HC's POV throughout TGCF, so AU or theory? Take that as you will | Warning: Canon Compliant Violence, Suicide ideation, Implied non-con (not between Hualian and never actually happens here)

"A Tale of Three Princes" was Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky’s latest novel. Unlike his previous success, Proud Immortal Demon's Way, ATTP (as it was called by the fans) was a renowned  masterpiece. Far from the stallion novels Airplane readers had been used to, ATTP was more akin to one of those classics that would be taught over and over again throughout  the centuries. What made it so peculiar though was the narrative device used to tell its story.

ATTP was not in fact a single story, but three, set in the same universe, centuries apart. The three stories were updated one after another daily, by chapters of ten thousand words (as Airplane readers were used to). Which meant that the readers had no idea how each story ended before being swept up into the next...

Which also explained why Zhu Qiang did not know any of the three endings when he got reincarnated into ATTP.

It had been just another terrible day for Zhu Qiang when he died. He had found a quiet spot in his school's stairwell to unwind and read the latest update of ATTP when his bullies had found their way back to him. He had put up a good fight, maybe too much, as he could still remember losing his footing and falling head first onto the stairs. When he had opened his eyes, it was not to the stairwell's ceiling, or even a hospital, but a busy street where people in ancient clothing looked at him strangely.

After a few minutes, he had put two and two together relatively quickly. He  had transmigrated in none other than the second story of ATTP, also called the Xianle Arc. As for which character he was supposed to be... He had no idea. When he had asked the system about it, it only flashed him a [System has encountered an error. System update…] which was not helpful in the least. Despite his more introverted personality, he had no other choice but to ask around… And the answers came relatively quickly: “It’s the monster child!” “Get away you fiend!” “Disappear!” With a sigh, he came to the realization that unlike many of those popular transmigration novels, this life wouldn’t be too much different from his previous one.

He hadn’t been the best looking guy back in his hometown, at least from what he knew, and people had always bullied him for it. This time around, he had no mirrors or phones to confirm what others said, but he supposed he wasn’t much different. (Though to be fair, even back in his previous life he had always carefully avoided mirrors and photos, he couldn’t even recall what his own face actually looked like). Once the system had finished its update, it tried to give him some helpful directions to survive, like where he could find food or shelter, but any questions about what character he was supposed to be were left unanswered. (All that he knew was that he was about ten years old). However, he finally got access to his stats (after days left to his own devices) and he almost choked on the spot.

“MINUS THIRTY-SIX ON LUCK?! WTF?!”

The reason for  these god-awful bad stats? A passive skill called Eye of Misfortune which reduced his own luck by a hundred points, and the one of surrounding people by fifteen percent. Completely unfair… But it explained people’s glares and insults. Again, with no mirror to look for, Zhu Qiang had no idea of what that Eye of Misfortune actually looked like. But at this point, he had understood that the best way to stay on the down low was to hide it. Usually, those types of novels would then introduce a special ability only the protagonist could have to solve his main issue and become a total badass… But asking the system about it, for the very first time, it seemed to express an actual tangible emotion.

[System apologizes. There has been an error. UV003 has no special ability attached to this vessel besides Eye of Misfortune and Demonic Heritage.]

Ah, yes Demonic Heritage. Another passive skill that actually was useful, unlike the other, as it made him less receptive to pain by fifty percent. He supposed it was linked to Eye of Misfortune in some way… But again how could he know when he’d apparently spawned out of nowhere with a backstory he wasn’t aware of? As time passed, the hope of bettering his life slimmed down until it seemed barely believable. 

He had no parents to take care of him. No home to find shelter in. No prospect of finding a job with his “deformity” as people called it… Only two months went by before he called it quits.

If he hadn’t died in that stairwell, he probably would have jumped from the rooftop of his school. He wasn’t afraid of death, he had hoped for that prospect for many years prior to reincarnating. But reincarnation hadn’t been kinder to him. It hadn’t offered him a life he could change, one he could better to prove he was worthy of something, anything. The system flashed him warning signs, but fuck it, he was tired. So tired of playing into God’s hand. 

[Major Event Activated: The Last Parade of Xianle.]

At the top of the castle’s wall, he could remember the first chapter of the second story of ATTP. “His beauty was beyond compare, his stance the one of a mighty warrior, and his gaze behind the mask: determined, fierce, and maybe even sly in his own childish way.” (Chapter 2 of A Tale Of Three Princes) He was too tired to go on, but if he had to go one last time, he wanted to see the prince, his favorite character, before doing so.

Once he saw him in his golden clothes, Zhu Qiang took a step beyond the edge and…

…

[Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! Great things must be said three times! You have successfully changed the plot "The Star of Bad Omen" into "A Fateful meeting"! Character role changed from "Canon Fodder" to "Side Character". +100 B-points!]

… Uh?

He was cradled into a pair of strong arms, holding him tight against embroidered robes despite his dirty appearance. He heard the sound of a wooden object hitting the floor, and he looked up. There, with the most gentle eyes he had ever seen…

[New Character Unlocked: Xie Lian, Prince of Xianle. Second protagonist of A Tale of Three Princes.]

Zhu Qiang wanted to strangle the system with all his might. Finally, finally he knew which character he had been transmigrated into: THAT ONE STUPID KID WHO KILLED HIMSELF DURING THE PARADE OF XIANLE, CURSING THE ENTIRE COUNTRY IN THE PROCESS. WOW. That one child who had no name but haunted the entire second plotline of ATTP. Never named but always present, the curse of the city, the failure of its inhabitants, a character full of symbolism but no actual practical utility to speak of… No wonder his luck stat was so low and the system did nothing to make up for it!! He was born to die!!! 

That alone, pissed him off enough to reschedule his suicide at a later date. If he had to die he wanted it to be by his own hands and his own choice. If the system wanted him dead, then it was no better than his bullies back in his previous life! Besides, he was already laughing in its face, because he had been held by the Crown Prince of Xianle, a beauty amongst beauties, the most perfect and fascinating character ever written (in Zhu Qiang’s own biased opinion as a 16 year old).

What happened afterwards though was embarrassing to say the least. First he had been found out by Qi Rong (that bastard traitor, he had always hated him even when he was only a reader) who had beaten him to a pulp (he was so thankful for Demonic Heritage at that moment), then Xie Lian had saved him (yay!) and he had taken care of him (double yay!) and then he and his subordinates had asked him questions (fuck).

“What’s your name?” He doesn’t know. “What does your mother call you?” Uuuuh people said his cursed eye was red so maybe… “Hong…Hong-er?” “How cute!” Nailed it. “Where are your parents?” Damn, he wishes he knew! “I… ran away from home.” “Poor boy…” He would have felt awful if it weren’t for Xie Lian’s gentle hands and his soft smile. Any lie in the world was worth it if it allowed him to see him. He was however, feeling very uneasy in the presence of Feng Xin and Mu Qing, Xie Lian’s two closest servants and friends who were eyeing him as if he had a bomb hidden under his clothes. Especially Mu Qing, the last chapter of ATTP about Xianle he read implied that Mu Qing was about to betray the prince, and so Zhu Qiang (now renamed Hong-er) didn’t trust him one bit.

But even so… After that awful cultivator told him he didn’t deserve to live (and god did he already know that)... Xie Lian took him in his arms and said he wasn’t a monster. No matter how ugly his sobbing was, no matter the reason for his misfortune, Xie Lian, unafraid of him, held him and told him he was not a monster… that was more than anyone had ever done for him in two lifetimes. And for the first time in a long time, Zhu Qiang cried.

He already knew he was a curse on legs, and so no matter how thankful he was, he couldn’t extend his stay. He knew what sort of character he was, if he did, things would only get worse for Xie Lian from then on. And he didn’t want that for him… And then Xie Lian ascended.

It was a miracle that he stayed alive for so long. His saving grace? Not Xie Lian’s temple he had built himself and took care of. No. It was beating the other street kids like they had beaten him up before. Hey, no judgement, those weren’t modern times, the worst that would happen is some other kids coming back to get revenge and then he could whoop their ass over again. Uh? He was an adult beefing with kids? That’s a detail, system, buddy! Let him enjoy this miserable life of his that had not improved one bit in three years besides that!

[+32 exp point. User has obtained a new success: Child Beater. Congratulations… (-_-)]

Now it’s just making stuff up. Anyway, life was going, that was it. Every day was the same: go in the fields to get a flower for the crown prince’s statue (not only did it make him happy, it also raised his Faith stat!), pray, take care of the temple if need be, take leftovers from one of the big houses in the neighbourhood, beat other kids up when they came to provoke him (or steal his food), go back to the temple to pray (again), clean it up (again), steal food (again), beat kids (again) and sleep where no one will see him (...again). It was fine the first year. The second, it had become redundant, the third, he was wondering what the heck he was doing. Beating kids raised his stats slowly but surely, but becoming stronger wasn’t his goal. What he wanted… And that was it, he didn’t know what he wanted. And after three years, doubt made its way in the cracks of his broken heart: he lived so he could spite the system for attempting to kill him… But was it worth it? 

Xie Lian was a god now, and with his shitty luck, was he going to live long enough to even see him for the upcoming civil war? What was the point of it all in the end? He wasn’t supposed to live. He had never been meant to live at all… So why…?

“If you don’t know what to live for, then live for me.”

[Class upgrade: Beggar -> Soldier. Skill update: STR +15. DEF +13. CHAR +5...etc]

[New passive skills acquired: Blade of Xianle, doubles the amount of exp gained from killing humans. Demonic Heritage II, the might of your ancestors give you +20 to your Strength and Speed.]

[Major event coming soon: Land of Tender, Land of Loser.]

Reading about the Land of Tender had been excruciating. One of the main criticisms towards ATTP was how downright cruel some chapters were towards the main three princes. Each had one specific traumatic event that would shape them up for the rest of the story, their own fall from grace. In the case of Xie Lian… It had been the Land of Tender.

Unlike his previous novel Airplane hadn’t romanticized what happened at all. It was so raw and so awful many readers had considered dropping the story right here and there, Zhu Qiang had been one of them. It was the start of the fall of Xianle, marked by this cruel beyond humanly possible event.

Now, standing straight with his sword in hand, Hong-er faced the flowers. He couldn’t let them close, he knew what would happen if he did. It’s the exact reason for why he had followed Xie Lian in the forest to save Qi Rong even if he hated him. If he gave up, if he wavered for just one moment… Never could he forgive himself.

And then the flowers changed appearances, and laughing, they took the face of the Crown Prince.

Back when Xie Lian only used to be a character in Zhu Qiang eyes, he admitted he looked at some fanarts or some skimpy fics about him, sometimes even watched videos imagining it was him. Face with the real deal, he had vowed himself to never see him again as some sort of forbidden pleasure. And yet those flowers had seen right through him… Maybe they had all been right, his bullies, his parents, his teachers, the villagers, everyone… Maybe he was a monster.

“You’re not a monster,” he had clinged onto those words for years. But his palm against the white skin of his prince, he felt his devotion waver. He thought it was faith, he thought it was fate, now… he wondered, hadn’t it all been in the name of lust and obsession? When Xie Lian left, and he asked for him, he reminded himself of why he shouldn’t have gotten closer in the first place: he was a jinx.

Mu Qing kicked him out of the army after this event. There was no point in arguing with him. No matter how Hong-er told him he was the one at fault for abandoning the prince, the only acknowledgement he got from him was a slap to his face and his insignia snatched out of his hands. And back to the street he was. He wasn’t beating kids anymore, no point to that, he would destroy them at the first occasion. His stats were high thanks to how much he had killed (Paper men, he reminded himself after washing the blood off his hand, paper men). There was the epidemic too. Since he was immune, he got recruited to take care of the transport of the ill. The grotesque faces made him want to puke, but it hadn’t been the worst he’d seen at that point.

He saw Xie Lian one last time. And then another time, his eyes closed, holding the pagoda… And then Xianle fell. And he was back to beating kids up to protect the temples he rebuilt.

“I’ll never forget you!!” His one reason to hold on in two lifetimes.

He died in Xie Lian’s temple, stabbed by Qi Rong, not without smashing his head in retaliation. Heavens, he hated that guy. He laughed low and quiet, the system flashing his health bar lowering and lowering. And then… As he had expected it, everything faded to black.

[GAME OVER. 2/3 life left, start again?]

Wait… HE HAD SPARE LIVES???!!

[Class update: Soldier -> Malice. Base stats changed from Human to Ghost. Passive skills still active: Eye of Misfortune, Demonic Heritage I, Demonic Heritage II, Blade of Xianle...]

[To continue…?]

(I don't know if I'll do it in multiple parts or not, if you like it I'll continue. Other than that, here's the tweets that started it all:)

(I added one of the replies mentioning that it could explain why his writing is so bad because I hadn't thought about it when I made my first tweets, but looking at his writing in adaptations and comparing it to how modern chinese students write... You can see similarities.)

If you enjoy the concept you can add onto it in the replies, the reblogs or send me asks!

[shorthaltsjester]

the mighty nein - critical role

this is a place where i don't feel alone. this is a place where i feel at home.

[artharakka]

Beautiful, But Broken

[deimosatellite]

like idk it just seems actually nefarious to take one of the very few widely known instances of queerness in older history being a symbol to show queer people that we've always existed and aren't alone for CENTURIES and taking away the queerness from it. like. i know some people say that ''the queerness isnt important in the book" which i mean in my opinion i could go off for 10k words in an essay as to how basil's love for dorian is integral to the story BUT EVEN APART from that its really just. having a real explicitly queer character in such an old and widely regarded classic novel is HUGE for queer history and this is just. literally like. its 2024. why are you doing queer erasure to DORIAN GRAY

[torchstelechos]

I love that In Stars and Time gives the nonconsensual kiss a proper horrified reaction, by the way. Most media where a character can kiss someone out of no where either make it a funny thing or the "romantic" thing, but here Siffrin kisses without permission out of no where and Isabeau reacts correctly! He pushed them away! Because thats surprising, and fucked up to do to someone with no lead up and no permission! Isabeau had no context, and at the time when the kiss happened, was under the impression that Siffrin didn't like touch which can have a variety of horrible reasons for it. Not only that but... We don't know what face Siffrin was pulling and I don't think it was a nice one. Which, again, means that we don't have all the context either! This is a horrible event that has horrible consequences and I love that it does. Because it's something that is horrible and objectively one of the worst things Siffrin did to one of the others in the loops, so I'm just!!! So excited it had bad consequences!!!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Good morning, Sleepyhead.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[m-a-d-e-l-e-i-n-e]

I hope leftists who think they’re above voting for president or are voting for Jill Stein or whoever because it’s their stupid way of protesting the system feel good about themselves, especially if Trump wins partly because of your negligence 😍 I know you’re not doing shit to plan the proletarian revolution, especially before January, so you guys better not complain about something harming you that you didn’t even bother to try and change

(edit: changed the last part bc I wrote “…if life gets a lot worse for you” cause that does nottt sound right at all and I apologize for writing that)

[nicollekidman]

realizing that people who equate cynicism with intellectual rigor are often just being lazy and pathetic has been so helpful tbh