ArdentPansy

prev Tha-Mi-Bèo random and fandom (aftg, trc, rwrb, phm, hazbin) late-20s, they/them

[hemipenal-system]

also yknow i do think that people would probably have more success dealing with transphobes if they just got obliquely blunt and unwoke about it

“look at her thats obviously a woman are you fucking stupid” works way better on the average transphobe and bystanders than “well shes transitioning so you should try not to be transphobic to her”

[hemipenal-system]

the average transphobe has kind of psyched themself into a paranoid reality that is mostly incomprehensible to the average person, and because of this the easiest way to socially defuse them is to make them look completely batshit insane. if you're surrounded by normal people, a well-placed "what the FUCK are you talking about?" mid-rant about chromosomes and hormones can shut them down infinitely better than trying to out-gender science them

[lttrsfrmlnrrgby]

"My Grandma taught me it was bad manners to talk about other people like that, and that it was good to mind my own business. Sorry to hear you weren't raised right," usually works for me.

[sobcat]

[etirabys]

oh my goodness, one of dian fossey’s first close up observations with gorillas happened when she was trying to climb a tree to see them better, but so badly that by the time she’d gotten up the entire group had come out of hiding to look at her: “Nearly all members of the group had totally exposed themselves, forgetting about hiding coyly behind foliage screens because it was obvious to them that the observer had been distracted by tree-climbing problems, an activity they could understand.”

[argumate]

hello, fellow apes

[spitoutthedaisyhoratio]

The lead up to that sentence is gold:

[consistantly-changing]

[Image transcript: porch. The group had been day-nesting and sunbathing when I contacted them, but upon my approach they nervously retreated to obscure themselves behind thick foliage. Frustrated but determined to see them better, I decided to climb a tree, not one of my better talents. The tree was particularly slithery and, try as I might, no amount of puffing, pulling, gripping, or clawing succeeded in getting me more than a few feet aboveground. Disgustedly, I was about to give up when Sanwekwe came to my aid by giving one mighty boost to my protruding rump; tears were running from his eyes as he was convulsed in silent laughter. I felt as inept as a baby taking its first step. Finally able to grab on to a conveniently placed branch, I hauled myself up into a respectful semislouch position in the tree about twenty feet from the ground. By this time I naturally assumed that the combined noises of panting, cursing, and branch-breaking made during the initial climbing attempts must have frightened the group on to the next mountain. I was amazed to look around and find that the entire group had returned and were sitting like front row spectators at a sideshow. All that was needed to make the image complete were a few gorilla-sized bags of popcorn and some cotton candy! This was the first live audience I had ever had in my life and certainly the least expected.]

[roach-works]

imagine some freakish not-a-human alien THING has shown up out of nowhere and is trying to get into your office building to study you. but it has no idea how to get past a revolving door. it tries for three hours. by the time it finally understands the concept of a revolving door and squeeze into the building everyone in the office is crowded into the lobby to watch and call helpful suggestions. it’s conclusively determined that the alien is definitely not a threat, except maybe to itself.

[obeliskthetormentorsfeetpics]

Addition approved

[what-even-is-thiss]

Ah, getting childhood trauma even when you have decent parents. Weird ass experience.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Many folks seem to assume by default that parents are bad.

They aren’t, but unfortunately despite their best efforts decent parents can’t always save you and the randomness of the universe might mess with your body and/or mind anyways.

Ah, isn’t life terrifying? Anyways I had a really good coffee today.

[schrodingerkilledmycat]

People will hear that you have childhood trauma and immediately say "I'm going to kill your parents for you" like. what a weird thing to say???

[what-even-is-thiss]

A parent being dead is part of the problem actually in my case lol

[ardentpansy]

[epicsause-official]

i recently found out what the * * * that sometimes separates parts of a text is called and youre never gonna fucking believe it

[homunculus-argument]

There's a fascinating phenomenon that isn't unique to tumblr, but which I have certainly seen here a lot, which I'm going to call the Default Assumption of Incompetence. It's when somebody has the baffling habit of always starting from the assumption that other people do not know anything about anything, or at least that having more knowledge than the assumer is extremely rare and statistically unlikely. To do this, they will frequently go out of their way to ignore context clues that indicate otherwise, or in some cases the assumer simply doesn't know enough about the subject at hand to be able to estimate whether or not this person knows what they are doing.

The assumer will see a social media post about someone's mushroom harvest, which clearly only contains exactly two distinct kinds of mushrooms, which the poster has identified and correctly named in the post itself, and the assumer will feel compelled to warn the forager to be careful out there! Some mushrooms are poisonous and they should be very careful to only pick ones they can identify! The assumer, who has ignored the fact that the poster did identify both of the mushroom species they had picked, and can most likely be trusted to do so in the future as well, has naturally assumed that the person showing off the results of their latest mushroom haul must have been obliviously picking them at random like an unsupervised toddler who is lucky to be alive.

If someone makes a post talking about how they just got a new job as a bus driver, the assumer might swoop in to warn them that driving a bus is extremely dangerous! It's so dangerous that it's literally illegal to do that unless you have a specific special training for doing that! Even a normal driver's license isn't good enough, you need a special license for it! And when the person who just got hired as a bus driver verifies that yes, they know that, they do have the license to drive a bus, and that they wouldn't have even hired someone who doesn't. The first question of the job interview was about making sure that they have a valid license for driving this type of vehicle.

"Well how was I supposed to know that?" is the assumer's standard answer to being corrected. Not embarrassed or apologetic, only defensive and insulted, as if the other person here is the one being unreasonably rude for implying that it was stupid of the assumer to assume that someone who just got a job driving a bus might not know how to drive a bus.

[mrwolfe1920]

This kind of thing isn't necessarily about being arrogant and assuming that everyone else is stupid. It's about not assuming that everyone is smart and knowledgeable.

You see this a lot in tech support. Everybody hates those basic questions like "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" It feels ridiculous and condescending both to the person being asked and the person asking, and you honestly just want to skip it because surely nobody would bother calling tech support waiting without checking something so basic?

...and then you get that call. The one where you spend twenty minutes troubleshooting only to figure out that not only haven't they tried turning it on and off again, the device isn't even plugged in. After that, you always ask.

Somebody posts about picking mushrooms. Did they correctly identify the species? Or did they just get very, very lucky? Emergency rooms (and funeral homes) have seen a lot of people come through who were very confident in their mushroom identification skills.

I'm sure your bus driver example was intended to be an exaggerated strawman, because obviously nobody would hire someone to drive a bus without making sure they're qualified, right? You can totally just assume that from context clues.

Encounter this kind of thing enough times, and you stop assuming that people know what they're doing. Instead of getting offended that some stranger didn't automatically know how skilled you are, maybe take a moment to appreciate that they were looking out for you -- even if it wasn't necessary.

[homunculus-argument]

That's a valid point, but even coming from that perspective, I think it's still not a reasonable response. Someone stupid enough to go randomly picking mushrooms they don't know, has no idea that driving a bus requires a special training you can't just intuitively guess, or thinks they can just DIY electric installment stuff without at least checking beforehand whether they can do that, should simply die as the consequence of their actions.

[hroethvitnir]

So, tech support is very explicitly different in a very key way: they have asked for help.

The fact that someone, somewhere, has found a way to do things that make literally no sense, is not an argument for treating everybody like they're about to make the stupidest possible decision at all times.

The examples given were also very specifically about the explainers very clearly knowing less than the person they're talking to/at.

Not being able to discuss literally anything without being talked down to, leading to feeling the need to include giant paragraphs of asides that will get get ignored and/or picked apart, is *not fun*.

Sharing an experience in a social space is not a request for basic guidance on a topic you have in no way demonstrated any need for.

I think most people understand that if they responded that way irl chatting with someone they are vaguely friendly with, it would not go down well.

Context matters online as well.

[elodieunderglass]

I feel like this post, in which I made a joke that demonstrated an extraordinarily high level of knowledge of a hobby and received people “correcting” me, is a great demonstrator of the low-stakes version of this behaviour.

If you’re excited to share knowledge, then you can politely reach out your hand to share, rather than instantly assuming the other person is in need of correction or lecturing.

This will also spare you from the tremendous embarrassment of correcting your superior.

[doradotcom]

walks around the dashboard with my hands behind my back like someone's grandpa

[1five1two]

[nothingtofalar]

Love isn't just for lovers. It's in friends, fleeting moments, family, the breeze, your favorite meal. Loving life in all its forms makes the heart lighter.

[pawberri]

If youre a closeted person somewhere out there thinking "I want to transition but it would be less progressive/unique/countercultural for me to be that gender instead of this one" please know that you are a real person not a character in a narrative and cant live your life based on what is good media representation. You are real you can only be yourself and theres no moral weight to any identity over another

[pawberri]

Liberal transphobes enjoy positioning trans identities as regressive compared to cis queerness or like non-transitioning transness or anything else they can leverage to make transphobia look progressive and I think its easy to absorb that message subconciously. But in real life we just are what we are and no ranking of validity can change the fact that you have an identity that is NOT chosen and is just your unchangeable truth. Not only should you not have to live a life dictated by what is most countercultural to identify as or whatever but also: being trans is extremely countercultural and feminist and leftist to begin with and theyre only trying to convince you otherwise bc theyre bigots

[pawberri]

"Why cant you be a feminine man society hates feminine men 🥺" and "all the butch lesbians are becoming men we need u 🥺" = stay in the closet for the noble purpose of being an abstract representation point in my new york times opinion column. You wont actually be a gnc cis person youll be a closeted trans person who uses the wrong words but I need you to do that because i hate you

[pris-cas]

Lesson #20 how far can humans see? pt. 2

*2.5 MILLION!!!!! light years away I forgot a lot of zeros sorry people

First lesson Previous lesson Next lessons

Thank you to my awsome beta readers!

@xushibeetle

@the-asexual-winter

@stelosia

[pris-cas]

Lesson #19 Throw pt.2

Cause pt. 1 was kinda eh here is another

Credit to whomever came out with shaded stick figure Rocky I couldn’t find the og creator

First lesson Previous lesson Next lesson

Thank you to my awsome beta readers!

@xushibeetle

@the-asexual-winter

@stelosia

[pris-cas]

Lesson #18 Adrenaline

That came to me after watching a TikTok of some guy just jumping down a slope and being like “yeah checks out” after seeing it was sponsored by red bull.

First lesson Previous lesson Next lesson

Thank you to my super beta readers!

@xushibeetle

@the-asexual-winter

@stelosia

[pris-cas]

Lesson #10 dreams

By popular demand here is one about dreams!! I’ll definitely do more about specific aspects of sleep since it’s such a huge biological difference!!

Thank you everybody for the countless ideas in the inbox!!

Lesson #1 previous lesson next lesson

[pris-cas]

Lesson #4 buoyancy

For those interested specifically it is:

• Freshwater: ~ 1.00 g/cm3

• Seawater (Saltwater): ~ 1.025 g/cm3

• Average Human Body: ~ 0.985 g/cm3

Lesson #1 Previous Lesson Next lesson

Again huge thanks for the support and Ideas people are giving me!! I’m glad glad glad people enjoy this series!! Also I’m so sorry for the lack of interaction on my part I’m kinda new to tumblr!!

[pris-cas]

“Lesson #2 endurance: persistent Hunting”

I headcanon that Eridians, tho fast sprinters, haven’t evolved to be long distance runners because of their cardiovascular system. So seeing a human run easily for more than a couple of minutes freaks them out.

Also Huge Thanks for all the love on my last post!! I’ll definitely be making this into a series!!

Lesson #1 Next Lesson

[pris-cas]

“Lesson #1 how far can humans see”

@deltatxt made this into a fanfic!! It’s awsome!! Go check it out!! Blinking in the starlight

Lesson #2