Hi everyone! My name's Laura, or just Lau. This blog has no theme except for stuff I like. Expect WLWs, social justice and random rants when I Must Express My Feelings ;) 30s | ace lesbian | white | cis
TRANS PEOPLE CONSIDERING SURGERY- READ THIS PLEASE GENUINELY I AM BEGGING YOU IT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE
If you are getting gender affirming surgery, especially if itâs your first major surgery, PLEASE be aware that you can become SEVERELY depressed afterwards ESPECIALLY if you have a history of depression or suicidal ideation.
Post op depression is a natural reaction to the crazy mix of hormones your body goes through after major surgery as well as the stress and anxiety of recovery. Think of it like an adrenaline crash, but dragged out longer.
For me it kicked in about 6 weeks after top surgery and the worst of it lasted until about 10 weeks post op. EVERYTHING felt IMPOSSIBLE. None of the skills Iâd been practicing worked. I thought everything was going to be bad forever. I didnât attempt, but I was in the hospital. If it wasnât for my support system I probably would have attempted.
This is not regret, but it can feel like it. I remain happy about my results to this day (going on six years later).
This is not you failing to maintain your mental health, but it can make you feel like a failure.
Things are not hopeless, but through the haze of this depression they can feel hopeless.
It can be terrifyingly sudden or it can sneak up on you. I didnât even realize what was going on until after the depression finally passed and my mental health went back to normal.
I am writing this post because nobody told me about this before my top surgery. I was caught completely off guard. For my subsequent surgeries being aware has made all the difference. Being able to treat those symptoms as an expected and normal part of the healing journey has made them far easier to deal with. Because even when my emotions go to dark places I *know* they will pass. I have been able to tell the bad thoughts to take a bad seat and focus on healing.
PLEASE have a plan in place for if this happens. I know that this topic is taboo because of how often our mental health is weaponized against us, but I desperately want every single person getting gender affirming surgery to be aware of, and have a plan for post operative depression.
Beyond his art, Neal Adams is rightfully remembered as an eternal champion of creatorsâ rights and for the part he & his work played in the Comics Code revision of â71 but his contribution to John Stewartâs creation is â I think â a rather underrated aspect of his career, especially as itâs such a great reminder of the kind of person he was. Taken from an interview conducted and transcribed by Allen W. Wright over at the Green Arrow: Bold Archer fansite, hereâs Neal discussing Johnâs beginnings (x).
i'm never leaving this fucking site i stg i love you all.
OK
final one
for all the marbles,
this one doesn't have an illustration bc i think it was just a kids novel but i haven't been able to find ANYTHING about it on my occasional internet queries:
kids is staying with his (grandmother?) in the woods and she warns him not to look a fox in the eyes bc they're tricksy and will swap places with you. obviously that's the first thing the little boy does and gets body snatched by a fox who uhhhh proceeds to pig out with his new little boy human hands and the boy has to trick the fox into looking him in the eyes again to switch back...
thats all i got, it's an older book i wanna say from the 60's?? 70's?? kinda the same jist of "Little Rascal"
Have you experienced the Tetris Effect in any way?
Have you experienced the Tetris Effect in any way?
Yes
No
Voting ended onJul 26
The Tetris effect occurs when someone dedicates substantial time, effort, and concentration to an activity and thereby alters their thoughts, dreams, and other experiences not directly linked to said activity.
People who have played Tetris for a prolonged amount of time can find themselves thinking about ways different shapes in the real world can fit together, such as the boxes on a supermarket shelf or the buildings on a street. They may see colored images of pieces falling into place on an invisible layout at the edges of their visual fields or when they close their eyes. They may see such colored, moving images while falling asleep, a form of hypnagogic imagery. For some, this creative urge to visually fit shapes together by organising and building shapes can be extremely addictive.
Those experiencing the effect may feel they cannot prevent the thoughts, images, or dreams from happening.
A more comprehensive understanding of the lingering effects of playing video games has been investigated empirically as game transfer phenomena (GTP).
Yes!! When I was at university I played so much Guitar Hero that I would see everything shifting vertically in the way that the notes come at you on the track.
Yes I know you mistrust the banks, milord, and I don't blame you, but their Vault Wizards are specially trained to prevent dragons from detecting large amounts of gold. I cannot emphasize enough that it's a full-time job employing multiple specialists, I'm not trying to be humble here but it's not something that just the court magician and I can set up a couple wards for on the weekends and call it good.
It's, it's just that dragons are the primordial embodiment of avarice wrought into fire and flesh. They are truly, supernaturally good at finding large amounts of valuables, that's why the big mines hire those Dragon Scouts to go sniff out their lairs and mark them on the maps as potential mining ventures. You know, in case someone slays the relevant dragon. Which doesn't happen often because, milord, they are simply not that easily slain.
No I know you've hired many knights, blooded warriors and true. Yes, I was there when you gave the ten most impressive ones their special sashes. Very grand, very high honors, of course. Ehm. It's just, none of them have ever actually faced a dragon. Yes no I know Sir Edbert says he did but Sir Edbert is rather notoriously prone to exaggerated and tragically unverifiable tales---
Well no milord of course I would not doubt the word of a sworn knight. Perhaps his sobriety, but not his word, as such.
The point is that the grand treasury, while surely grand and a very special notion, is just... it is mayhaps not the ideal way of handling the realm's finances? Perhaps a series of smaller vaults, capped well below the dangerous wealth threshold at which gold is known to whet the appetite of colossal winged harbingers of death, in different corners of the realms or...?
No, I, yes well I do realize that will impede anyone's interests in coming into the vault to hurl around the gold coins and go "whee, I'm so rich!" I am aware of its deficiencies as a plan in that regard. No, I see I've misjudged a few things.
Actually, thinking on it, milord, I truly believe what you need is a fresh set of skilled wizards on this job. The court magician and I, we cannot keep up with your visionary thinking. We're too old-fashioned. But the wizards revolutionizing the eldritch academies seem to be more on this sort of level. I hear they've made some truly remarkable choices in terms of outsourcing all of their spellwork to the Ever-Whispering Void, such that it takes mere minutes for them to set up an entire defensive array. That's just the sort of innovative thinking you require.
Though it will grieve the court magician and I to leave your service, perhaps this is a sign that retirement is overdue. So I'll just... be moving further away from the big pile of gold... in the opulent, dome-shaped building with the crystal skylight... best wishes.
Broke: what is worldbuilding? Made in a lab to be as blandly inoffensive as possible. Time to randomly namedrope terms like 'nonbinary' and 'ace' while doing zero work actually incorporating them into the world or characters and have someone give a speech about how valid they are. Lines like 'I'm too ace for this' while never exploring the concept of asexuality or aromanticism and still having very central romance plotlines is common. I hate it here learn how to write realistic dialogue and fully realized characters I'm begging.
Woke: more ore less typical sci-fi and fantasy but Itâs Queer Now. Might include in-universe queerphobia to be struggled against or may have queer identities be fully normalized. Can be done bad or well depending on the skill of the writer. A good way to explore our contemporary ideas of gender and sexuality or to have a bit of a power fantasy with lesbian princesses and trans knights. There will probably be a bisexual love triangle.
Bespoke: what is a gender. What is monogamy. What is polyamory. What is romance. What is platonic. Time to show you the most fucked up uncategorizable relationship youâve ever seen. There may be weird ass metaphorical sex
AKA books that tackle gender, sexuality and relationships in ways that come off as deeply alien and non normative to our present day culture, frequently featuring actual aliens.
For details on the books, check under the readmore! My personal favorites are marked with an *
A note: as I'm generally more into sci-fi than fantasy, this list skews heavily toward the former. Feel free to make your own recommendations in the notes if you know of more titles!
If you want more book recs, check out my masterpost of rec lists!
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie*
Once, Breq was Justice of Toren, a starship whose artificial intelligence linked through the minds of a multitude of human ancillary bodies. Now, there is only Breq, a lone soldier seeking vengeance after a horrific act of betrayal cost her everything. As Breq gets closer to her goal, the conquering empire she once served begins to destabilize from the inside, and Breq herself has to question her priorities as new loyalties arise. Features female-as-neutral worldbuilding, as well as singular characters existing throughout many bodies.
Note: my favorite from this series is Translation State, which gets really weird about gender and sexuality and stands fairly well on its own, go read it!
The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang
Novella series. In a world where children choose their gender when they're ready, twins Mokoya and Akeha once swore never to pick. But as they grow older, the two find themselves drawn in different directions, both in terms of gender and in what they want from their lives. Rebellion is brewing, and the twins' mother is looking to use them to her whims to retain power. Akeha, unwilling to be her pawn, resorts to leaving home and falling in with the rebels.
The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum*
On a distant planet in a distant future, everyone has multiple bodies that can be customized however they want, cybernetics have abolished nearly all privacy, and the gender binary is no longer about man or woman. Instead, there's vail and staid, for which biological sex is irrelevant. Fift should be focusing on the obligations of a staid, but is distracted by budding feelings for Shria, forbidden due to Shria being a vail. When their complicated relationship unexpectedly becomes the center of a growing revolution, they will both have to decide where their priorities lie.
Dawn by Octavia E. Butler*
After a devastating war leaves humanity on the brink of extinction, survivor Lilith finds herself waking up naked and alone in a strange room. Sheâs been rescued by the Oankali, who have arrived just in time to save the human race. But thereâs a price to survival, and it might be humanity itself. Absolutely fucked up I love it I once had to drop the book mid read to stare at the ceiling and exclaim in horror at what was going on. Includes darker examinations of agency and consent, so enter with caution.
The Javelin Program by Derin Edala
Dr Aspen Greaves expected to be woken from decades of cryo sleep on humanityâs first deep space colony, but instead finds themself alone on a spaceship still years away from its goal. Surrounded by mysteries on a barely functioning ship, Aspen must make sure the still sleeping crew reach their new home, while also dealing with the many secrets hidden behind the Javelin Program. Nonbinary and aromantic lead, based on a society and norms very far removed from ours.
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir*
Gideon, raised as a swordswoman by unfriendly nuns, would rather run away and make her own life, but her services are needed. The Reverend Daughter, Gideonâs childhood nemesis, has been invited to a trial to win a place as an immortal by the Emperorâs side, and sheâs in need of a bodyguard. Listen, if youâre on tumblr I probably donât need to explain this book to you. Trust me when I say itâs exactly as good as people claim. Humorous and spooky but also absolutely gut wrenching and clever with a lot of political commentary. There are also, indeed, lesbian necromancers in space.
Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
Centuries in the future, humanity has deliberately engineered society to be as utopian as possible, politically, socially, sexually, religiously. But things begin to crumble as the shadow of impending war looms. Written in an enlightenment style and featuring questions of human nature and whether itâs possible to change it, and what price weâre prepared to pay for peace, this book is simultaneously very heavy and very funny, and written in a very unique style. While still human, the society presented often feels starkly alien.
Walking Practice by Dolki Min
Having crashed their space ship, a shapeshifting alien finds themself trapped on Earth. Suffering from isolation and loneliness, they have settled into a routine to survive. Using online dating services, they take on the shape of human men and women to hunt humans for food. Strange, gross, and gender weird, Walking Practice is a unique take on gender from a wholly alien perspective.
The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley
Zan wakes without memory, a passenger aboard one of the living world-ships of Legion, a fleet of decaying generations ships. Told sheâs the salvation meant to free them from the fleet, Zan is flung head first into a brutal and bloody conflict. This book fucked me up when I read it. Itâs weird, itâs gross, thereâs So Much Viscera, there are literally no men, it has living spaceships and biotech but in the most horrific way imaginable, where humans are nothing but part of an ecosystem that cares little for their well-being. Itâs an experience but not necessarily a pleasant one.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells*
After having hacked its own governor module, SecUnit uses its small amount of new freedom to secretly download and watch as much media it can between doing its job guarding humans. But when the scientists itâs been charged with keeping safe come under attack, it must make a choice about whether to continue keeping its freedom secret or risk it all to save them. The series features both novellas and full length novels, and balances humor with scathing social critique. There's also an excellent tv adaptation!
Drinking Sapphire Wine by Tanith Lee
Four-BEE is a utopian city, in which humans have no responsibilities, are cared for by machines, and few acts cause true consequences as even death has been conquered. Able to change bodies and gender nearly at will, living lives of luxury and hedonism, everything should be perfect; yet the narrator finds him/herself dissatisfied with his/her life. After an impulsive decision leads him/her to break one of the only remaining taboos, he/she is exiled from Four-BEE into the wholly uninhabited desert wilderness outside.
The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells
Moon doesn't know what he is. Having lost his family young he lives on the move, shifting shape to hide his true form. The only ones similar to him he's ever encountered are the vicious, bloodthirsty Fell, but he knows he cannot be one of them. When chance leads to a meeting with someone like him, he hopes his days of loneliness are over. But his new people stand against a dangerous enemy, and not all of them welcome Moon's help. Featuring a world with not a single human in sight, The Cloud Roads makes for a unique perspective.
When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb*
The angel Uriel and the demon Little Ash have been friends for centuries, living and studying together in a small Jewish community in Europe. But times are changing, and many of the community have left for a new life across the sea. When one of these emigrants go missing, Uriel and Little Ash decide to leave their peaceful life to go find and, if needed, save her. While set in our own past rather than a fictional world/time like other titles on this list, the relationships and identities of the two main characters often break our ideas of gender as well as platonic/romantic.
The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson*
Young adult. Young artist June Costa lives in Palmares Tres, a beautiful, matriarchal city relying heavily on tradition, one of which is the Summer King. The most recent Summer King is Enki, a bold boy and fellow artist. With him at her side, June seeks to finally find fame and recognition through her art, breaking through the generational divide of her home. But growing close to Enki is dangerous, because he, like all Summer Kings, is destined to die. Set in a world in which bisexuality and polyamory are largely the norm.
Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre*
In a future ravaged by disaster, Snake is a traveling healer who uses the venom of her snakes to concoct medicines for all imaginable ills. The most valuable of them all is her dreamsnake, an alien creature whose bite can grant a painless death. When circumstances cause her to lose her dreamsnake, she must embark on a dangerous journey to obtain a new one so she can continue her work. Set in a world where polyamory and bisexuality are largely the norm.
Shadow Man by Melissa Scott
As an effect of an FTL drug, intersex births increased, resulting in five separate genders among humans: men, women, mems, fems, and herms. But on the planet Hara, people cling to the old two gender system, forcing intersex individuals to pick one of the two and generally refusing to recognize their existence and needs. As conflict on the planet broils, Warreven, a Haran advocate and herm, and Tatian, an off-worlder, find themselves dragged into a struggle for equality.
Leech by Hiron Ennes*
Unbeknownst to humanity, a sentient hive mind has taken over the entire medical profession to ensure the health of their host species. One of their doctors is sent to an isolated location where theyâre cut off from the rest of the hive mind, only to realize theyâre faced with a rivaling parasitic entity. Leech hands you only just enough information to get by, and whether its historical fantasy, an alternate timeline, or futuristic post apocalypse is hard to determine. Itâs spooky and weird and wildly creative, and does some neat things with gender, because what does gender even mean when you're a hive mind bacteria inhabiting countless bodies?
Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis
Itâs 2007, and a leak has just confirmed that the US has reached alien contact. Cora wants nothing to do with it, but as her absent father is the whistleblower who dropped the news the media wonât leave her alone. Even worse, she soon finds herself meeting and being stalked by the alien presence itself as it tries to remain in hiding - and discovering that there is a much larger threat on the horizon. Features aliens with very different ideas of gender and relationships than humans, and a central focus is how a relationship between one of them and a human would look like.
Ammonite by Nicola Griffith
Centuries ago, the first settlement on the planet Jeep was hit by tragedy: a virus killed off all men, leaving behind a society of only women. Now, the planet has been rediscovered, its inhabitants having long forgotten about the rest of humanity. Anthropologist Marghe Taishan is sent to test out a potential vaccine. If the vaccine succeeds, Jeep and its people would no longer be in forced quarantine, but it would also open them up to exploitation.
Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold
For Dr. Ethan Urquhart living on Athos, delivering babies looks a little different: they are "born" from uterine replicators, as Athos is a planet populated entirely by men. But now they're running out of the ovarian cultures that allow them to reproduce. To replace them, Ethan is one of the first of his people to be sent off planet into the wider universe - where there are women, rumored to be an evil and corruptive force.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Genly Ai is an emissary sent to the planet of Winter, meant to help facilitate Winterâs inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But heâs unprepared for Winterâs citizens, who spend much of their time genderless or switching between genders, making for a culture wildly different from what Genly is used to.
Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey*
Thora and Santi are strangers, brought together by a coincidence and torn apart just as abruptly when tragedy strikes. But this is neither the first nor the last time they meet - again and again they encounter each other, as friends, lovers, enemies, family, every time recognizing in each other a familiarity no one else carries. But with every new life, a mysterious danger grows ever closer, forcing them to find out the truth of their connection. This is a puzzle-box of a story that goes some entirely unexpected places in a very wild ride, featuring a bisexual co-lead and a very hard to define main relationship.
A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
On the moon Shora live the Sharers, a nation of women who reproduce via parthenogenesis and have developed highly advanced biological sciences. Leading wholly pacifist lives, the Sharers are threatened when humans from another planet come across their world and decide to develop it, no matter what the Sharers themselves think. The Sharer society is openly sapphic, though the main romance is m/f.
Dust by Elizabeth Bear
In a dying spaceship, orbiting an equally dying sun, noblewoman Perceval awaits her own gruesome death. Having been captured by an opposing house, her wings severed and life forfeit, Percevalâs execution is imminent - until a young servant charged with her care proves to be Percevalâs long lost sister. To stop a war between houses likely to doom them all, the two flee together across a crumbling, dangerous spaceship. At its core waits Jacob Dust, god and angel, all that remains of what the ship once was. And he wants Perceval. Sapphic and asexual characters, however be prepared for kinda fucked up relationships.
Halfway Human by Carolyn Ives Gilman*
When Val, expert in alien cultures, gets called in to help handle the young Tedla after a suicide attempt, she is let in on a secret decades in the making. Tedla is neither male nor female, an asexual person from an isolated planet where a genderless class of 'blands' are exploited as a work force. As knowledge of Tedla's presence begins to spread, so does the attention of various parties wanting to use it for their own ends, including its old masters. As Val works to unravel the history of how Tedla came to leave its world, the pressure builds - what is to become of Tedla? Content warning for themes such as suicidal ideation, slavery, and child sexual abuse.
Moonstar Odyssey by David Gerrold
On the planet of Satlik, humanity have been changed: children are born genderless, and have the ability to choose between male and female during puberty. As a child coming of age, young Jobe finds herself having a hard time choosing what she wants to be, a decision coming into shadow as global disaster looms near. Novella length, focused as much on building up the history and lore of Satlik as it is on the coming of age story. Also an early example of female pronouns being used as default and neutral!
Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon*
Charlie Johns is just your average guy, so when he suddenly finds himself pulled into the strange, utopian future of Ledom, he's shocked. In Ledom, gender is a thing of the past, as is hunger and war. Confused and wanting to return home, Charlie Johns is promised that he will be returned, but first the people of Ledom want him to tour their society. Charlie Johns agrees, but the more he learns and the better things seem, the more suspicion grows: why is he really here? Published in 1960, Venus Plus X is frankly astoundingly progressive about the topic of gender.
Trouble on Triton by Samuel R. Delany
On the moon Triton hundreds of years in the future, life looks a little different from our world. The only place yet to be drawn into a war spanning the entire rest of the solar system, society on Titan is in many ways a utopia, where everyone can live however they want, no matter how strange their ideals. Yet despite this, martian immigrant Bron Helstron isn't happy. Unable to build meaningful relationships or figure out what he actually wants out of life, Bron is prepared to all but turn himself inside out to figure things out. Strange, surreal, and a bit out there, I'd recommend this if you want a story with a fairly loose plot and prose that will scramble your brain. Not a personal favorite, but an impressive work.
Every Day by David Levithan
Young adult. A is neither boy nor girl - in fact, A doesn't have a body of their own. Every day they wake up inhabiting a stranger's body, and spend a single day living their life before waking up as someone else the next day. They try to be respectful of their hosts' lives, not making decisions they wouldn't themselves make, but after meeting and falling for Rhiannon, the girlfriend of one of their hosts, things begin to change as A begins pursuing their own wants.
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
After being forcefully committed to an asylum, Connie Ramos' life is looking bleak. She's being coerced into experimental treatments meant to "cure" her, and no matter what she does no one will believe she's fit to be released. Her only escape are the mysterious visits by a time traveling envoy, who introduces her to a utopian future of sexual and racial equality. But this isn't the only possible future, and Connie herself may be a driving force in what shape the future will take. A very interesting work featuring a mostly gender neutral future, though it does at times feel more like a thought experiment than a narrative.
[images: photo collages of the covers of all the named books, first all of the books in one image and then in groups of three before the descriptions.]
So every year, my aquarium does a captive lobster hatchery project (hence all the loblings). The reason weâre doing it is because in the wild, loblings only have a 1 in 25,000 chance of surviving their larval phase. Theyâre plankton as babies and everything eats them. Additionally, as the Gulf of Maine warms, they are having even lower survival rates because the blooms of copepods they feed on as babies are happening earlier in the year, and theyâre missing it.
Obviously, the goal of this experiment is to grow the lobsters until theyâre big enough to settle to the seabed and then release them, because they have a much higher likelihood of surviving to adulthood when theyâre able to hide. Ideally, captive lobster hatcheries can boost the wild population and keep things stable, so we donât have a major crash in a decade or two.
The first year we tried this was pretty bad. We had a lot of eggs, but very few babies. It turned out that the CO2 levels in the building spiked as more guests visited throughout the summer, and that settled into the water and threw off the pH and caused a chemical reaction that prevented a lot of the eggs from hatching. I think we ended up releasing three baby lobsters (which is still better than their wild survival rate but not great).
The second year was a little better. We added a de-gasser to the aquarium and got a ton of larval lobsters, but right as they were settling to the bottom we had a disease outbreak that killed most of them. We ended up releasing four babies at the end of the season.
But this year? Oh boy. We have so many lobsters that we had to release the first round early (usually we wait till September or October so guests can see them). We just released a total of FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE baby lobsters, and we still have over a hundred who havenât settled to the bottom yet. I genuinely donât even have words to explain how cool this is. OVER FIVE HUNDRED. We just added hundreds of lobsters to the wild population that wouldnât have been there otherwise.
I know people like to clown on aspects of classic Disney films that don't feel grounded in reality. But I've worked both front and back of house in restaurants of varying quality. And if I found out our line cook or something served a full plate of spaghetti to two dogs in an alley, I would consider that like. Like not good. But possible.
Always roll my eyes a bit when fantasy does the thing where a race of magical beings doesn't use names to refer to each other.
Like. I understand the metaphor, I get why personal names have all this symbolism tangled up in them, why having a race use no names sets them as Other and interesting, but.
Come the fuck on. Let's be BASICALLY PRACTICAL about this. How the FUCK do you build a society where you have no way of specifying who you are talking about at any given chance? Where you can't even call out a person so they'll turn and know they're being spoken to? Forget all the Misty Symbolism, let's really engage with how atrociously unpractical it would be to not have personal names, can't we?
[The United States was] hard hit by Hadenâs first wave but we and most other western and industrialized countries immediately coordinated our responses and locked down further immediate spread of the disease.
izzy806
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
yousharknotpass
gracieabrams
turnnoffyourmind
ellievsbear
origamiaround
