she is a princess and you are a dragon. she will be married tonight. do not keep standing outside of her room like that, go inside. go get her. that is what proper dragons do.
not that you have ever been a good or proper dragon. when you hatched out of your egg, your eggtooth was too smooth. the other dragons were rough with you, put little holes in your wings.
you were not bold. you were odd. you liked rippling water and the shine of chitin when bugs scuttle and of course the movement of the stars. those were all acceptable interests albeit maybe not traditional. perhaps you had inherited these through some great-great-uncle or something. certainly a dragon may be wise, or clever, if they are not bold.
yes, you have been a great deal of a puzzle to the other dragons. your body is smaller and rather more soft than it ought to be. so speed should have been yours, perhaps - your mother said it would be like fighting a shadow. if a dragon is not aggressive, it may instead be cruel, sly; a backstab. but alas your scales - so iridescent that they almost shine like the moon at night, a glow from within - you are not a shadow, you are a beacon like the flash of a knight's blade. your father has said at least you would make a fine egglayer, a nice mate to a good male. a dragon like you may still be a good mother perhaps; and that is a fine thing to be; although of course it would have been better if you'd been a trove-hoarder instead.
what a dragon must not be is kind.
you have watched her now for six moons. what a good and proper dragon would do is to go inside and to snatch her. a very proper dragon would have kidnapped her many times over, but you will be the delight of your brood to princess-snatch even at all. when you catch her in your jaws and bring her home, they will love you, then. they don't think you're capable of it, but you are, because you're a proper dragon. you can show them that. if you go in, now, right now.
you are rather too glossy to hide in the shadows, so instead you have learned how to appear flat and round, a puddle of light. (how your siblings would mock you! a dragon should be matte, to blend with the night). you dapple your flank with mud. you perch in odd angles atop of trees, scuttle like the bugs you love - hither, tither, frantic.
what you must not do is fly with your wings full-out. alight, you will be limned by the moon's corona. you will be a beacon. you must remember this when (not if) you snatch her.
____
you found her because of the lake. this lake in particular was your favorite - nestled deep in the woods, between two mountains. it is very quiet; there is nothing to horde there so no other dragon bothers you. a gentle waterfall spills over into a deep cove, and there are many mossy caves you've spent your afternoons napping in. while it is not proper for a dragon to prefer such things, you like to lay in rolling tenure just under the water. you have become excellent at holding your breath, can do it for hours. it is the easiest way to appear as a patch of sunlight.
she was not sunlight. she was the night's joy. the dark press of water. her face at first concealed by many diaphanous layers. her breathing quick and quiet.
she had pulled them back to drink from her water flask. and there she had been: a princess. your first very-real princess. right there, only the reach of a single talon from you. if you had simply lunged then, you would have been able to take her easily, in one single movement.
but you did not take her.
she had startled you a bit; you'd been daydreaming about music, which you'd just discovered, and rather liked. you'd heard it from a little house while you snuck in and stole their sheep.
but you knew the sound of fear, of being followed. you'd been chased too many times, you knew what it looked like. the rapid jolt of fear.
you smelled her then; cinnamon and onyx, and perhaps that was what had blinded you. perhaps your mouth was just watering. whatever the case, you waited until she had fled back into the forest; and then you waited a bit longer. in her wake, a garrison of men, their hands rough.
oh. so they were not knights. they were just men chasing a young woman through the woods. perhaps they did not even know a real princess had been running from them. well, that was a relief. you are not good at fighting with knights, who have swords instead of cudgels. these were just men, so you rose from the water in the quiet way you'd learned from the fish. they did not hear you coming.
and besides. proper dragons do violence so well.
___
once you had smelled her you could find her, although such things have always been easier for you than for the others. you spend a great deal of time studying things - it allows you to analyze them. you have tried to explain to the other dragons that sometimes it is best to slow down, but of course no dragon should be slow.
at first you did not understand the confusion of the people's umwelt. they relied so much on their communication (only words and actions!) and what they could see with their eyes. you and the other dragons did not use these as much; but you liked prying out the little sonic differences between hello that means "i like you" and hello that means "i don't like you."
so it took you a while to learn that you were responsible for what had happened to her. men had gone missing, and even bad men going missing makes a big fuss. (you know that if it had been girls missing, it would be okay. many proper dragons steal girls because it will not bring a knight to their door). for a while she had been trapped on the palace grounds. it was determined that it was no longer safe for her to be just a princess, she must undergo some human transformation and become a wife.
even so. you had gone looking for her (only to study, of course, so you may know how to snatch her best). but that night you saw her descending from the window of a castle, quick and agile, moving like a whisper, clad almost entirely in black. you could see her quite well of course, although you were not seeing her; but instead her heat and her smell and her sound and all the other sensory noise all humans give off.
you followed her, keeping yourself in a cloud so you appeared as if mist. she stole off into the woods. you were interested in that, and watched her scuttle - although of course you could have taken her then, you wanted to study your prey as best as you could. she did not seem to do much in the woods, only run around cry into her little hands.
she appeared to be looking for something. she did not get far that first night; scurried back to her bed. over and over this happened - she would run as far as she could, only to go back again. it seemed rather boring to you, but of course you had been free your whole life.
and then one night - finally, she arrived at the lake. she sank to her knees then, her hands pressing into the water. her head tilted to the sky. her dark hair spilling in a caught breath behind her.
this is how you heard her voice for the first time. when she came again the next night, she did so more quickly, more assured. straight to the lake, as if it had called her.
she had skipped a pebble over the surface of the water. this action was dangerous, because it almost hit the sail of your wing. you had structured yourself very finely to look like a rockslide.
"three months." her voice was like her: it was deep and smooth and dark, a low violin string. "they want me to marry that bastard in three months."
and then she cried into her hands again, and the sound of it almost broke you.
you followed her maybe more than a proper dragon should, after this. more than just back to the castle and her bed. you hid along her daily walks and watched her in the throne room and saw her out riding horses. she was good with dogs and nice to her people and very much a proper princess, although you had heard it said a proper princess ought not to slip out at night and run around barefoot through the woods.
you discovered she is terrible with directions. you have often had to make a path more clear so she could get home again. she cannot hunt better than an egg; you have had to kill fish and push them subtly up to the shore.
but she appears to love the lake as much as you do. you have seen her read by candlelight (how foolish. the entire woods saw her each time). you have seen her build little paper boats to float along the surface. you have seen her strip her many layers and dive in, have seen her lay with her belly to the sky, floating like she is suspended by the hands of darkness itself.
oh. so she loves the stars, as well, then.
__
you must go in. she will be married tonight. that is a human thing, but you have since learned what it has meant. she will go to somewhere else, and you will not see her again, maybe ever. and then how will you be a proper dragon? go!
you have made yourself in the form of a gargoyle, hiding in the white stone. you can see into her room; and the tapestries that seem unlike her. everything in her room is very bright, which is bad for a proper dragon. there are many knights in the hallways and in their rooms, and their smell is itchy and repugnant to you.
her dress is white, which does not seem like her. you have only seen her wear black. she is sitting at some kind of desk, and she is crying again. she smells of cinnamon still, but moreso of grief. you can feel the heartbreak in her as if it was inside of you.
you cannot watch her cry anymore. you have watched too often without moving. that is shameful.
you nose the door open. you can move quiet, because you are not very big. she is within a cave of you, then a wingtip, and then she is standing up, looking into your eyes.
"it's you." her hand on your jaw is warm. "i thought i was imagining you, you know. i turned around that day. i saw what you did to those men. i have been looking for you since. i told everyone that i had an angel to protect me. they locked me in here anyway."
you are not an angel, you are a dragon. you have to keep your wings locked tight or you would explode the walls of this place. it makes you feel big, suddenly. you are not used to that sensation. you do not like to be locked in a tower. you believe maybe the princess does not like to be locked in a tower either.
you take her in your jaws. she is very small, and does not resist you. although you are not a strong flyer, you must take off in a single push. any other movement would be too slow. you must also hold your breath so you do not smell her, the clove and cinnamon and little bird of hope. your mouth would water and you would drop her.
against the full moon, you do the thing that is impossible. you stretch yourself out all the way, a bold and beaming arrow, and you fly. you can hear them cry about you now, loudly. a banner that would strike pride even into your father: dragon. dragon. dragon.
on the eve of her wedding, you snatch the princess from her tower.
an arrow whisks for you, and then dozens, and then hundreds. you are not afraid of pain. you have learned long ago how to fly with holes in your wings. you hold her very gently still, and you push past the smell of your blood.
in the night you are a star. someone somewhere could look up and see you and make a wish.
there will be another lake, you decide. you can find another lake. somewhere very, very far from here. however long you must fly, however long you must hold your breath: you will take her home, because you are a proper dragon.
___
sometimes they come for her, your treasure. you have built her a little castle here, deep in the forests off the map. and of course for you: a silver round lake like the shift of her iris. you bring her books and she brings you bugs to study. you let her saddle you, and together you ride through the clouds and fog banks. she is a shadow on your back; a warm and velvet thing. she makes you music and lives the way she should; free in the night like a promise.
but they do come. you have stolen a real princess, and they do not want her to be a princess. they want to make her into a brood mother, or into bait, or into prey. they always look into the caves first; into the places proper dragons stay. they are real knights, not just men with sticks. they are loud and their smell still makes you itch.
but she has made you brave now, and cunning. if a dragon is not big, it should be cunning. and since you are a proper dragon, and since your treasure is your most precious thing, you lay in wait.
let them come. you will let the light drip off of you, and then you will pour through them.
afterwards, your princess will tell you a story around the fire. she will patch your wounds as she did that first time. she will sing to you.
and in that moment, neither of you will be a title nor a story. she will just be herself, and you will just be you.
the two kinds of tgirl are “infinite anger that destroys everything around her” and “infinite patience that lets the world turn her into a doormat”. and they both love giving the other unhelpful advice about how to manage their emotions
me, stunted 12 year-old whose only representation of trans women had been ace ventura and jokes about shemale prostitutes, "well, i guess when i'm like, 40, and everyone i have any obligation to is dead, i can get a bunch of sex change surgeries and fuck gross men for money. but at least i'll kinda look like a girl."
real transfem representation really could've saved me a solid 15-20 years.
this feels particularly relevant with the global push to chase minors off social media. none of it is about protecting kids, it's about control. it's about cutting off vulnerable, marginalized, young people whose only opportunity to learn more about their own gender and sexuality--and find other people who are like them--is through social media platforms.
queer, particularly trans representation hasn't come all that far in 20 years. maybe there's less blatant transphobia, but there sure as hell isn't any widespread positive representation. we have multiple generations of trans women and men who were only able to explore their identities during adolescence in online spaces. and kids today are being stripped of that.
be wary of any legislation or changes in corporate policy that cites "protecting kids". it's never about protecting anyone, it's about control. there are a lot of parents that'd prefer to keep their kid in the closet 'til it kills them than watch them actually explore their identity.
wowwwwwwww this male character I'm a fan of is so weak and incompetent, he's a woman to me. not actually a woman though. that’s icky. let men be feminine. I'm just saying he's like one because he's weak and incompetent and and submissive incredibly pathetic compared to everyone around him. like women are.
no they’re still being misogynistic against women (that’s what misogyny is) they just hate women so much that the only characters they think to use as excuses to be misogynistic are men.
like. when someone says something misogynistic about a character the character isn’t actually the one suffering from misogyny. it’s the people they interact with when they’re being misogynistic about the character who have to deal with that.
How many times have you actually seen someone say this. How many times has someone been conscious enough of trans women to decide to interpret a character as transfem while also being misogynistic enough that they equate femininity with weakness and incompetence.
How many times is it misogyny vs a transfem relating with their own experiences of vulnerability. Fucks sake did anyone read this post and actually think about what they said before replying to it
still wild to me that the first response I got to this post, within a day of making it, was blaming transgender women for this. i tried wording the original post in a way it would be clear this was about people who would talk about male characters as feminine men without ever accepting transfemininity, but people are soooo eager to throw transfems under the bus.
Transandrophobia theorists keep reinventing the terf concept of sex based oppression from first principles!
First, you’re aware that trans women also frequently have vaginas right? Second, you do realize that trans women are raped and abused at higher rates even not talking to account what genitals they have.
Finally, you do realize that the reason why “people with vaginas” are oppressed is because most of them are cis women. Woman is the axis of oppression.
can we please acknowledge that tma/tme is a meaningful distinction? a justice of the US supreme court is openly saying that it's legal to discriminate against trans women because the same laws do not target trans men. the transmisogyny is what makes it permissible. your transphobia is fine as long as it has carveouts for men.
Fascinating parallel here. This incapacity of the legal framework to protect groups who are at the intersection of two protected groups (trans women in this case, black women in the original) even while protecting both groups individually is Crenshaw's original reason for coining the word "intersectionality", which has since gone through the wringer.
"Nooooo, bro! You cant take away my emotional support misgendering of trans women! 'Dude' is totally gender neutral, dude! I promise, my guy! C'mon, man, just lemme call every single trans woman 'dude!' I promise it's gender neutral and not a very obvious way for me to misgender them with thinly veiled plausible deniability, brother!"
As a chronic gender neutral dude user, if a trans woman says it makes her uncomfortable dudette exists! Stop misgendering people cause you’re too lazy to
You shouldn't be waiting till a woman has to tell you "please don't call me that." Don't put her in the position of having to choose to either take that risk or keep silent and endure being misgendered to avoid being attacked. Just stop defaulting to calling everyone "dude." It costs you nothing. And you need to rewire your brain to stop regarding men/masculine as the default human being anyway.
"drug seeking" as a patient one of the most dogshit stupid concepts of all time. fuuuck everybody look out this guy came in here expecting medical treatment. better watch out in case he goes to a restaurant and starts food seeking
no, this is absolutely something that happens with stimulants and i've seen it firsthand, and it makes it harder for people with actual adhd to get the treatment that works best for us. we're not actually helping either patients or ppl with substance abuse problems by downplaying that this happens with controlled substances. same applies to benzos and opioids. this isn't even speculation it's well documented.
i also have "actual ADHD," your difficulty in accessing the meds you need is entirely caused by medical gatekeeping and by manufacturing limits that stem from the "war on drugs" and hostility towards the very addicts you disdain. you are not better than others
I think the most charitable interpretation of this is that people connect to characters that are like them, and that the experiences of Blackness is so alien to them that the White characters are the only ones that White people connect with. Combine that with the fact that Tumblr is so White as a platform, and you get this issue.
It’s still bad and racist, but it is understandable. People should still do better though. (I’m not trying to justify, I’m trying to come up with an explanation)
regarding my last post: i get people wanting to support black art and artists but at the same time idk how comfortable I feel marketing and selling art of a black character calling himself a nigga hung up in the homes of white people regardless if they're performative or not about my struggles. I could easily sell prints of that drawing because it's my most popular work but at the same time I am disturbed and bothered over like, the idea of art celebrating my blackness and triumph over ongoing white supremacy to be seen in consumerist eyes by non black people.
sorry if I come across as gatekeepy I'm just thinking really hard Abt this.
i decided that I will not sell prints of that specific drawing, but I can sell prints of this one if anyone is interested? I could price it around an affordable price (probably 10$-15$)
here
i would buy
i would pass the word to someone else who's interested
It's wierd how there's always "accountability" for trans women but never for transmisogynists.
Did we see any of these people argue for a process of holding britt-galaxys-brain for her whole "using kiwifarms" deal? or has it only be the people she targets? Really wierd huh. I wonder why
feminist retelling shoulsnt be the woman does some girlboss shit femist retelling is she does the same stuff except u actually give a shit abt her perspective and thoughts and feelings as a human being this time
"problematic queer representation" the phrase you're looking for is "transmisogynistic caricature" but you won't admit that because you'd have to admit trannies exist and that Arthur Gynephile from your favourite movie is someone's idea of people like me and not just "problematic queer representation"
I can't believe this is how I'm finding out that I got a scam forklift cert.
I took the cargo ops class at school but my teacher explained that it doesn't give a certification and I'd only be okay for ship's crane and the school forklifts. she said I could take an online exam and get my cert. I paid 60 bucks.
I'm googling and I'm seeing a lot of resources saying that the online programs cover the classroom part of the exam but not the in person practical aspect.
the back of the card even had fancy numbers on it. I couldn't have known that this isn't the one. this website sounded more official than certifyme.net, and there wasn't one with a .gov address.
so, I emailed OSHA, and they said that so long as I live and work in California, there's no such thing as forklift certification. I have to be told how to do it every time I get the job.
Update: I took a certification class in shipboard Material Handling Equipment at my federal job. *now* I'm forklift certified, but only on ships and piers and only for this company, but also rated to forklift explosives and hazardous materials. Also I'm a woman now.
