Maunderings

[bobbole]

Kibori Nicola, Big Plump Pigeon

[hailraykin-deactivated20230814]

Reblog to give mutuals a break from whatever they're been going through

[fairycosmos]

getting older is funny because characters you used to look up to and see as very established and grown up people are like 29

[northshorewave]

Handing the Google executive currently chained in my basement a piece of paper that reads "Shall I end your torture?" with one checkbox that reads "No" and another that reads "Maybe later."

[fishing-princess]

I Defeated the Demon Lord but it Turns Out the Demon Army was Largely Unaffected and I Fell Victim to a Flawed Belief in Great Man Theory

[teaboot]

Can I be honest with yall I don't want to hear SHIT against cishets at pride this year

[teaboot]

"But it's not FOR them!!!" The biggest military power in the world belongs to a christofascist nation overseen by a felon found guilty of 34 federal crimes and has greenlit a gestapo with more direct funding than the entire military of Canada for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. Let Hetero Jessica throw some biodegradable glitter at a municipal parade

[teaboot]

At this point if anyone is trying to exclude anyone benignly pro-queer from a pro-queer space I'm just going to assume you're a fed or something idk like something something destabilize the movement from within or whatever

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

no more historic events this decade that is ENOUGH, i’m putting my foot down

[alettertofutureme]

History is not done with us yet my friend

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

I have received all manner of threat, up to and beyond “I will play a flute carved from your femur,” and yet this is the first time I’ve felt truly threatened

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

i knew posting this in 2022 was risky but holy fucking shit

[prokopetz]

The whole "the Old Magic actually sucks because material conditions have advanced" thing, but applied to cinematic martial arts. No, yeah, the legends are true, that move used to explode a man's entire skeleton, but you need to understand that people had more fragile bones back then. Poor nutrition, you see.

[prokopetz]

This five-point meridian strike is meant to make your head burst like an overripe melon, but it turns out it only works on people who have peripheral nerve damage from chronic vitamin B12 deficiency, which everyone did at the time it was developed. If you take your multivitamins it just makes your ears ring.

[sarahseeandersen]

This brand new piece has been made available as a signed print! A portion of all proceeds go to Mind, the UK's leading mental health charity.

[romanceyourdemons]

first day as a second century warlord i have my men tie branches to their horses’ tails to stir up dust and make it look like there’s a lot of us but i forget it just rained so there isn’t any dust and the enemy can clearly see there’s like twenty of us all spread out in a line

[romanceyourdemons]

second day as a second century warlord i bribe a bunch of kids to start singing a nursery rhyme i carefully crafted to spread misinformation and further my strategic ends but they change the lyrics to be about poop and the enemy isn’t misdirected at all

[romanceyourdemons]

third day as a second century warlord i lure my enemy into a narrow valley and send a team of archers to shoot them from the high ground but there was a feral hog napping on the trail up to the overlook and they couldn’t decide whether to try and shoot it or just go around and by the time the hog woke up and left on its own the enemy had already passed safely below

[romanceyourdemons]

fourth day as a second century warlord we attempt to join a battle on the side of the guy we want to ally with but he and the guy he’s fighting have really similar names and it’s finally dusty and i misread the standards and attack the wrong guy. so now we’re stuck with this total loser of a liege lord, because how the fuck do you explain that after a battle?

[romanceyourdemons]

fifth day as a second century warlord and some sort of wizard wanders into camp, my loser liege lord wants to execute him for being a wizard but i convince him to let the wizard stay, because i want to do more weather-based strategies and i’m pretty sure having a camp wizard can help with that. after the welcome to the team banquet the wizard steals half the treasury and my liege lord’s wife and leaves

[romanceyourdemons]

sixth day as a second century warlord my loser liege lord sends me to reinforce a city he’s taken, but in the confusion of leaving i forgot to take the token that would have gotten us into the city, so my men have to wait outside the city walls for like eight hours while i ride back to get it

[romanceyourdemons]

seventh day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord finally joins me in the city, it turns out he’s actually a pretty cool guy, and he isn’t even that mad at me for letting the wizard steal his wife. i decide to shoot my shot but i’m really nervous and keep on stalling because what if i mess up our relationship and by extension jeopardize the security of my men, and eventually he just says goodnight and goes back to his room, where an assassin is in the process of setting up to kill him

[romanceyourdemons]

eighth day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord tells me to fake defect to his rival warlord, the one i originally wanted to ally with, to find out if he was the one who sent the assassin and why. but my whole way over to the rival warlord i’m worried that this has something to do with the wizard thing or how awkward i made it last night

[romanceyourdemons]

ninth day as a second century warlord i try to tactfully ask my fake liege lord if he sent the assassin to kill my loser liege lord and it turns out the idea of using assassins never occurred to him, but now that i’ve suggested it he’s really into it. in order to save my loser liege lord i volunteer to be the one to kill him

[romanceyourdemons]

tenth day as a second century warlord on my way back to my loser liege lord’s city i realize i won’t be able to collect my men from my fake liege lord until i bring back my loser liege lord’s head. this would have been a great thing to think of before i got myself in this situation. i go back to my loser liege lord and ask him to rescue my men, and he tells me that if he could sack my fake liege lord’s camp he already would have. that doesn’t change the fact that my men are still trapped. they’re prisoners, even. i go back to my room to sulk

[romanceyourdemons]

eleventh day as a second century warlord i find a little caged pigeon in the rafters of my loser liege lord’s room and deduce it belonged to the assassin. without asking permission or telling my loser liege lord goodbye i let the pigeon loose and follow it north. don’t ask what i was doing in my loser liege lord’s room. it’s not important

[romanceyourdemons]

twelfth day as a second century warlord i disguise myself as a wizard and enter the camp of the coalition leader the pigeon led me to. in the middle of my little sleight of hand performance i make eye contact with the coalition leader’s second-in-command. IT’S THE WIZARD THAT STOLE MY LOSER LIEGE LORD’S WIFE. after the banquet i corner the fake wizard and ask him what the fuck is going on and he just says “wouldn’t you like to know” and leaves. i don’t know what to say to that so i just let him go

[romanceyourdemons]

thirteenth day as a second century warlord i’m honestly so sick of not knowing what’s going on, so i adjust my wizard costume to passably disguise myself as a woman and break into the women’s area of the camp, where sure enough my loser liege lord’s wife is. i ask her what she’s doing here and she tells me the fake wizard overheard her singing a poem she overheard on the street, not knowing it contains the coalition leader’s formation’s weaknesses. the fake wizard kidnapped her and assigned an assassin to kill her husband before they figured out the poem’s significance. she shares the first couplet with me but i’m discovered and thrown out before she can share any more. she doesn’t need to. through a bizarre coincidence of homophones, it’s the poop version of my misinformation nursery rhyme

[romanceyourdemons]

fourteenth day as a second century warlord i go back to my loser liege lord and tell him everything, urging him to join with my fake liege lord to attack the coalition leader according to the weaknesses in the nursery rhyme. he tells me frankly that he doesn’t trust me anymore. i ask him to execute me if that’s really true, because i can’t bear to live if i can’t protect him and i can’t protect my men. he agrees to attack the coalition leader

[romanceyourdemons]

fifteenth day as a second century warlord. due to the information in the nursery rhyme, and thanks to my loser liege lord reminding me of the weather conditions multiple times while planning our battle strategy, our alliance carries the day. my loser liege lord gets his wife back. my men tell me that our fake liege lord actually treated them really well and they’d like to stay with him if i don’t mind. i do mind, now that neither the men i love nor the man i love have any use for me, but i don’t tell them that

[romanceyourdemons]

sixteenth day as a second century warlord i’m preparing to leave to i don’t know where, maybe to try to become a wizard for real, when my loser liege lord stops me and asks me where i’m going. he says he had hoped i would continue to work as his advisor. i was unaware i was his advisor in the first place. i agree, and he tells me he’s truly honored to have me in his service at last. he has known i am a rare and talented man with a strategic intelligence far above his ever since the day he witnessed me tying branches to my horses’ tails in six inches of mud, and could not for the life of him figure out why

[laurelnose]

did you know that the well-known factoid that male anglerfishes degenerate after attachment until they’re basically just a pair of testes is false? i knew of course that they don’t just become “growths” on the female because I’ve handled dozens of attached pairs and every male I’ve ever seen has been very much obviously a whole and complete second fish, but I sort of assumed there was internal degeneration, perhaps muscle atrophy, etc. i can’t believe no one ever corrected me on this but this just doesn’t happen. in obligatorily parasitic species, the male actually continues to grow and increases considerably in size after he attaches to the female, because the two of them can only reach sexual maturity together. me, an octavia butler fan: is this the height of romance??

what is true is that attached males do have hugely enlarged testes proportionate to the rest of their bodies & organs, and that they receive all nutrition from the female’s bloodstream so their stomachs are always empty, though their own gills seem to still be functional, as are their fins and muscles—you can even induce movement and swimming motions on recently dead attached males. I can only assume that at some point someone said that basically the only biological function a male anglerfish needs to perform is sperm production and this got taken out of context and luridly exaggerated over time. he’s not just a pair of testicles! he’s her forever partner! one flesh one end!

[laurelnose]

there’s a type of creature that lives six miles underwater in the sunless void and it’s hatched in two bodies and unless they find each other and fuse into a single chimaeric whole they can never grow up properly. hello? hello??

[savouryduck]

That's extremely cool! also, distracted and enraptured by the writing style at the second link.

[filthyprotozoan]

people are always like “i have face blindness but i’m good with names” or “im terrible with names but i never forget a face” well baby idk how to tell u this but i am . bad at both.

[filthyprotozoan]

yesterday i didn’t recognize my coworker bc he was wearing a purple shirt and im used to him wearing all black

[filthyprotozoan]

yeah and im stomping you to death with my hooves

[lychgate]

my husband put on a wig, in front of me, and i immediately got distressed and mad because it looked like a stranger was in our house and my ape brain wanted to attack

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I once accidentally filled in a form using my internet name, went "that's not right", realised I didn't remember my legal name, panicked, and started filling it in with the names of everyone in my lab in order until I stumbled on the name that I recognised as being used for me.

[april]

women are like diamonds: synthetically-produced women are not meaningfully different from naturally-formed women, and anyone trying to tell you otherwise is probably trying to justify keeping their women mines open

[gayluigi]

[anomalocaris-in-da-clurb]

Women are like diamonds since they are composed primarily of carbon.

[lgbt-tiktoks]

Description: [A video of a woman riding a galloping horse bareback while holding a large rainbow flag.]

[nattousan]

i felt like these tags really added to the experience, thanks @cynderxdustypaws for your knowledge

[naamahdarling]

This is one of the most powerful images I have ever seen, and I will reblog it every single time because every single time it brings tears to my eyes.

[shintayabe]

2025.11.22 TOKYO TRANS MARCH @ SHINJUKU

[audible-smiles]

My memory of The Birdcage (1996) is always that it's more dated and more difficult to watch than it actually is. You hear "drag-themed comedy from the 90s based on a musical from the 80s based on a play from the 70s" and you brace yourself just a little, right? But the film has a strong gay perspective, so the fruity fag jokes mostly come off as warmly affectionate. There is a surprising amount of poignancy in Robin Williams' portrayal of Armand, grudgingly agreeing to his beloved son's request that he go back into the closet for an evening ("do me a favor and don't talk to me for a while"). The drag club's staff attempting to redecorate the apartment with stuff straight people might like (a taxidermy moose head, an enormous crucifix, and Playboy magazine) is extremely funny. Albert's histrionics are a point of tension because he does often come off as a stereotypically pathetic/comic figure, but towards the end of the movie he makes it very clear that he's aware of how people see him, and asserts that trying to copy a stoic masculinity he doesn't possess for the sake of social approval would be more pathetic. In the 1983 musical adaptation, they give "Albert" (Albin) the only good song in the whole show, "I Am What I Am", which Gloria Gaynor covered to the delight of gays everywhere. Apparently Nathan Lane wasn't (publicly) out yet in 1996, which is amazing because it means that at one point in this movie you're watching a gay man playing a straight man playing a gay man playing a straight man, in a movie about how it's important to be yourself, an absurdity that does seem to encapsulate the state of gay America in the 90s.

[silverhand]

I'm seeing a couple of posts circulating about the gay 90s and this movie. The above is a very good summary, and I think it's worth adding a few other points.

This movie got made because Robin Williams said yes to it (and it's important that Gene Hackman did as well). Williams in the 90s was a mega-star of a type that's not present in the current media environment (maybe Tom Cruise, but I personally think that's echo from his salad days). Even his flops made money on the back end in the video rental market, which also doesn't exist anymore (streaming is different). Hackman was on the other side of his A-list career but still Hollywood nobility if not full royalty.

Playing gay was considered career suicide in the 90s. There had been a number of actors who put lie to that belief stretching back decades, but this was Williams and Hackman (yes, being on screen next to a gay character was enough to get you blacklisted) saying "screw that" and doing it anyway.

Being gay and out was career suicide in the 90s.

Nathan Lane had a really nice gig going for himself. The Lion King put him into the Disney rep company with people like Williams, Bette Midler, and Whoopie Goldberg (check their IMBD list from the 90s--they were making bank at Disney).

Lane didn't come out until several years later (nice summary: https://deadline.com/2024/06/nathan-lane-robin-williams-advice-coming-out-birdcage-1235975010/).

I don't want to imply that this was a Sorkinized moment where everything changed because of one thing, but this was a very important movie that caused real movement in the needle on queer acceptance.

It also proved that there was a market for films with gay characters, which had the knock-on effect of gay filmmakers being able to find distributors of their gay-themed films. Which meant that more people than ever (queer and non-queer) got to see representation on-screen.

[thetroublesofbeingtrans]

I recently came out to my mother's side of the family who are majority conservative christians and it went much better than I expected. Like, they were weirdly supportive. I only got one comment insinuating that I might possibly be going to hell but it came from my aunt and she's dying soon anyway so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Anyway, I'm telling them how shocked I am and that I honestly thought that they'd have more of a problem with it when my grandma is like "Well you know we've been through this before with your uncle Nicky" and I'm like "what" and so it turns out that my uncle Nick was born a Natalie, came out as a boy at 19, and my great grandma proceeded to pay for his top surgery and hormone therapy. In 1974. And I just had to process for a bit because my entire life no one has referred to him as anything other than he/him and his chosen name. I ask why no one ever thought to mention this and they're just like "tbh we forgot. It's been so long that he's been a man" This man is married. He has a wife and three kids. I ask my relatives how they went about having kids, whether through adoption or sperm donor or what and none of them know. Apparently he just told everyone that they were gonna be parents and then one day showed up at my grandma's house with a baby. No questions were asked. Just. He and his wife had a baby now and that was that. Three times. Weeks later when I finally talk to my aunt Sarah (Nick's wife) all she tells me is that neither of them have ever been pregnant and, I quote, "sometimes you just come into children". She phrased it like people use the phrase "come into money". Like children are something that just happens to you. I ask my relatives if any of them had a problem with Nick being trans at the time, saying I'd understand if they had negative feelings about it, as it was the 1970s after all. They were like "nope" and i was just like "you didn't think anything of it?" And my grandfather was like "these things happen" while the other adults nodded sagely. So I guess the moral here is that if my conservative christian relatives could accept my uncle as trans in the 1970s then there really isn't any excuse for anyone. And also my family needs to ask more questions because I'm fairly sure my aunt and uncle stole their kids.

I'm laughing my ass off at that last sentence- But I'm so glad your coming out went well! That's one heck of a way to find out you have LGBT relatives.