Delphinium Grue

Times are dark. You are likely to be eaten by a snowflake.

[weaver-z]

Fondly remembering the time that a cat owner casually entered their calico Maine Coon in a cat fancier’s competition and the judges lost their minds because the cat was 1) male and 2) able to bear children

[weaver-z]

Anyway here’s Dawntreader Texas Calboy as a silly lil kitten

[weaver-z]

Here’s an excerpt from one of the articles about the drama his entry caused among the Cat Fanciers that I thought was very earnest and sweet <3

And also some of Calboy’s children!

[gasterofficial]

@pangur-and-grim

[elodieunderglass]

He is fearfully and wonderfully made!

[rainbow-lizzard]

ALT

I was about to say he would technically be an intersex king (not because I dislike the concept of trans cats, just bc intersex rep is sorely needed too) but I did some more reading on this icon and actually found the article OP referenced.

ALT

He’s not your usual male calico kitty as it turns out. That’s already cool and rare, but he’s even cooler and rarer than that!

ALT

ALT

Calboy is a chimera!! Which is really fucking cool of you ask me. The chances of having a male calico this way are slim to none, but the mad lad still exists! What an icon. I would die for Calboy.

[weaver-z]

Everyone in the tags of this post @ cat show judges

[sweetenby]

Originally I was looking for an adult picture of Calboy

(He’s so pretty 🥰)

But I also found a source for the article screenshotted above! And folks it’s WILD. It’s an incredibly interesting read if you happen to love hearing about niche hobby drama. It’s also just a fantastically written article!

The parts I find the most interesting are about how conservative the cat fanciers association is. This isn’t even all of the parts that talk about that.

People are so mad about this cat spefically because he has female colors. An animal who couldn’t choose how it was born. This is happening in Texas by the way. Hm. I wonder how they treat trans people over there?

[ilovedirt]

Reblogging again for this crucial addition

[ardienothesieno]

wait i’m sorry

people are being transphobic. towards a cat.

what the actual fuck.

[iconuk01]

Also, not to derail, but “You know, we don’t let three-legged cats in here either”

Well, to put it politely, “Screw you and every single one of you who make that sort of decision”

[istoleyoursk1n]

•❅───────────✧❅✦❅✧───────────❅•

Petition to make a metal band but Halsin is the main voc

Because man. Holyshit that scream was everything.

•❅───────────✧❅✦❅✧───────────❅•

[delphiniumgrue]

“Penguins and Sparrows” live author reading announced!

(https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2616847751974720&id=100009485635289)

[delphiniumgrue]

The last Presidential impeachment, the unofficial characterization of it was "oral sex on the floor of the Senate".

This time, we've got "ass-backwards" and the media's new darling, "pre-buttal".

This is the AssButt Impeachment.

[delphiniumgrue]

Stop punching!

Look, the tendency of US men to reach for physical violence as a first-pass solution when they’re feeling or thinking things they have trouble articulating or expressing in any other way is a systemic cultural chasm between everyone -- but particularly everyone else -- and equal share in the safety afforded by the rule of law. That is at the very core, the crux, the absolute certerpoint, of talking about domestic violence as it affects women in the US. The fact that at the very moment he was trying to articulate this, and having trouble doing so, Biden chose to make and raise a fist, make punching gestures, and say (in reference to a need to “change the culture”) “We need... to keep punching at it and punching at it” just underscores that he is still unconsciously acculturated to the very attitudes he’s saying we need to change. This is all aside from the point that he was asked about sexual violence and harassment against women, fumbled about with vague phrases for about a full minute, and then only managed to bring his thoughts together when he meandered over to domestic/physical violence with “No man has a right to raise a hand to a woman in anger,” which in response to questions about sexual violence is about as sophisticated as the suggestion, from the other side of the physical violence issue, that if women want equality that makes it okay for men to hit us. Shameful. Absolutely shameful. I’ve seen pundits tonight saying his biggest gaffe onstage was erasing Senator Kamala Harris from the US Senate, but this should -- in a world that managed to retain a rational perspective on questions of violence against the vulnerable -- have been his Clayton Williams moment. Men won’t stop punching at people until they stop thinking of punching as a way to solve (or a metaphor for solving) problems they find uncomfortable to think clearly about.

[delphiniumgrue]

Live and Let Die? You Suck.

Me: What you're asking disabled people to put up with could literally kill them.

Randos: Well they already know that, so they'll just have to take extra steps to prevent it by providing their own straws every day. They're already used to taking extra steps to not die anyway.

Me: Those biodegradable straws you're so excited about are made of plant starches. It says so on the wrapper: "Made from plants." Which plants? You don't know. Could be corn. Could be wheat. Could be soy. Got any plant allergies? Abled people with food allergies could die from using them unless they take extra steps to avoid them and provide their own straws instead.

Randos: What? No, that's unacceptable! We can't just ask everyone with food allergies to provide their own straws or risk dying! That's horrible!

GUESS WHAT, PEOPLE? YOUR INCREDIBLY UGLY AND HATEFUL OPINIONS ABOUT THE WORTH OF DISABLED LIVES IS ON FULL TECHNICOLOR DISPLAY RIGHT NOW, AND I WANT YOU TO TAKE A REALLY CLOSE LOOK AT THAT.

[delphiniumgrue]

“like an old-stone savage armed”

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: ‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.' Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: 'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down.' I could say ‘Elves’ to him, But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father’s saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'

("Mending Wall", Robert Frost)

[delphiniumgrue]

If the Parkland teens are being funneled so much money by $big_bad_liberal_whoevers to front an astroturf political movement for gun control, why is it exactly that they can’t even crowdfund one single survivor’s medical expenses in nearly a month?

[mysharona1987]

[allthingshyper]

Casual reminder that the NRA literally gives no shits about human life

[bemusedlybespectacled]

They’re talking about this like a hypothetical as opposed to something that actually fucking happened.

[delphiniumgrue]

repeatedly

[sarahconnorjr]

It's 2018

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) was just reformed so that disabled people can’t sue public businesses for discrimination because it would be discrimination against that business.

50% of all US murder victims by police officers are disabled

Bathrooms, entryways, seating, parking, and other public spaces are segregated for disabled people

Disabled children are required to go to segregated schools

Disabled people can't…

Get married without losing their health insurance which is a death sentence

Have savings accounts

Have more than $2000 at any given time

Own or inherent property

Own jewelry worth more than $100 or other items worth more than $500 without reporting them to the government

It is legal for a parent to murder a disabled child if they consider that child an undue burden

This is an extremely short list of things you are leaving out of your social justice

NTABs okay to reblog

[sarahconnorjr]

A lot of people reblog in the saying that many of these things aren’t true

ignorance is one hell of a drug

[darkp0ptoy]

I love how disabled people are like our lives suck please help! and ntabs are like LIES! my mom is legally disabled and gets next to no assistance because she had an inheritance from her parents dying…unfortunately that inheritance isn’t very much money and will run out before she dies and she won’t be able to support herself anymore (she barely can now and lives very poor) and will have to either move into a home or in with me or one of my sisters because she just won’t be able to afford to pay her bills anymore she has to pay for almost all her own healthcare because she doesn’t qualify for medicare or whatever it is because she “has too much money” and that too much money is next to nothing but it’s more than the $2,000 you’re allowed. She gets a very very very little amount of money each month that pays for next to nothing. This is all true. This isn’t a joke. Like think about that. My disabled mother. Who is disabled because she has sooo many health problems. And needs a lot of healthcare. Has to pay for basically everything out of pocket because she has more than $2000 in the bank. The person who needs healthcare the most and needs help paying for it the most gets no help. I’m sorry but our system is stupid and fucked. I used to think disabled people got you know essentially free healthcare by becoming legally disabled. And that’s really how it should work. But it doesn’t. That doesn’t happen and that’s not how it works at all. Also a friend growing up had a sister who was severely disabled and she told me her parents were asked if they wanted to either terminate her or give her up if it would be too much of a burden to care for her. The state they were living in had really good programs for that sort of thing but then they moved here and apparently the programs here were really shitty and she needs like 24/7 care and they were really struggling with going to work and caring for her and paying the bills and getting her decent one on one care and stuff and they got to a point where they had to seriously consider it. They didn’t do it but they were backed into a corner because of the lack of help that they had to seriously consider the option. Which is so fucked up!!! For her, for them, for everyone involved! Like!!! This is a serious problem!!! Look up the laws, none of this is untrue. Some of it varies a little state to state but overall these really are the laws here. I think, first of all, an actual disabled person who has to know and live by these laws would know??? But also all the other disabled people and friends and family of disabled peoples saying hey, yeah, this really is how it is!!!! smh I think what people are confused about is….as a disabled person you CAN do/have these things but then you won’t get any help. And then what’s the point of being legally disabled in the first place??? So people who really cannot work can’t have things like more than $2000 in the bank and property and be married etc etc or they’ll get their benefits taken away. So unless they have like rich family or a sugar daddy or whatever the fuck, which is highly unlikely, they can’t get the things they need like healthcare and food and a fucking roof over their heads let alone all the really fucking expensive shit that comes with being certain kinds of disabled like needing a wheelchair and shit. This is a real actual thing. Look it up!! My mom did find a program where she can get some stuff for free if they decide she needs it. It was some kind of charity thing and people came out and assessed how disabled she is and she has a deck with a few steps and they turned that into a ramp and they put like handlebars in her shower. She has a large property and her boyfriend takes care of a large garden where they grow a lot of their food and they have chickens and they heat their house with wood so they cut down trees in their yard for that and it’s a little hilly so she can only walk around the house she can’t help out in the garden or go anywhere on her property anymore so she found this one thing where you could get like a golf cart kind of thing and they came out and decided she didn’t meet the criteria to get it so that really sucks. So she can walk around the house and really that’s it. That’s all she can do. She gets next to no financial help or help with healthcare. And for those wondering like…she’s been to lawyers. She’s been evaluated over and over. She’s talked to tax people and money people and law people and medical people and so on and so forth and this was all explained to her. She’s also done a lot of research on her own but seriously when she applied for disability and had to meet with a lawyer and stuff they told her all this and she was like what the fuck?!?!! So I’m getting help but I’m not getting help??!?!!! She cried and cried like this is a real thing people are dealing with. Also it took like 2 or 3 years iirc for her disability to be approved!!! And that is normal!! And that is even kind of short in some cases!!! She was only able to survive because she had money because her parents died!!!! Imagine if you have very little to no money in the bank and you become disabled so you CAN’T work at all and then you have to wait 2-3+ years to get disability!!! How the fuck would you support yourself/pay your rent!! Or have money for food! Or medication! Or whatever you need!! Some people DIE before their disability is approved!!! Her disability lawyer told her! That is a common thing! That happens! What the FUCK! God damn it people get your heads out of your asses! I’m sorry I just got real heated writing this because it hits so close to home because the laws are so fucking stupid. Like I’m pretty sure they just want disabled people to go away and die. It’s so fucked. It’s so very very fucked.

[boarboy-old-blog]

Videogames: you can choose from twenty different eyelashes!!!! oh but you can’t be fat

[onsomekingggshit]

Yeah, whine about how you can’t have a fat character that can scale walls, or sprint. Please whine more.

[boarboy-old-blog]

you’re so right kiddo….. games are very realistic……. like the parts where you die and then come back again? classic realism. 

[prokopetz]

[warlock-enthusiast]

but we can’t have fat people in videogames because fat people are the real fantasy creatures and not like… the dragons. and of course, every thin person can scale a wall. sure sure.

[m0nsterbrains]

Y’know what, here’s something that’s been pissing me off for a while. 

Fat? Easy to gain. So so easy. Our bodies want to keep fat around, because we’re designed not to starve.

Dropping fat? NOT so easy. When people talk about “losing fat,” what they’re saying is “I need to override millions of years of genetics to convince my body I’m not dying and it doesn’t need this carefully-stored fuel.” Dieting? Your body thinks it’s starving. Work out like crazy? Your body thinks it’s in a situation where it needs to bring the hammer down on the regular, and that means you need more fuel – speaking just for myself, I want to eat the world after I lift. That shit doesn’t melt away, even if you’ve been training like a motherfucking monster for months and eating right, because the body wants to keep it.

So yeah, the “eat less move more” doctrine can fuck itself right in the face. 

There are very, very active fat people, fat people who are experts at every sport and physical activity you can imagine. But because fat rests on top of the muscle, you don’t know when we’re jacked. Oh, sure, sometimes you can get a idea, if a person is WILDLY active, like for a fucking living. Here’s Samoa Joe, the NXT pro wrestling champion who was literally dethroned last night: 

Yeah, you can see there’s a lot of power there. 

But a lot of times you can’t. Here’s Vince Wilfork, two-time Superbowl tackling champion:

And here’s Holley Mangold, 2012 superheavyweight division Olympian: 

These are people who fight (and flip, and do all kinds of crazy shit in Joe’s case), and run, and lift for a living. 

And they’re not unusual, as much as you’d like to think so. The world is full of fat powerhouses, of fat runners, of fat Crossfitters, and they’re just as good at doing the thing as their smaller counterparts. 

So realism? Fuck off. The only reason we don’t have fat game characters is because society is fatphobic as fuck. 

Also? Saints Row lets you be fat, *and hot,* so don’t even come at me with “nobody wants that.”

[thequantumqueer]

“fat people can’t climb though”

(Exhibit A: Fezzik carrying 3 people up a cliff)

“yeah but that’s fictional!”

and video games aren’t?

[kyraneko]

Apparently weight weighs differently if it’s fat instead of, like, eight different machine guns and a rocket launcher?

Video games let you carry all sorts of shit, they can let you carry your own body.

[fatphobiabusters]

(This got better) -V

[f1rstperson]

I love whenever people are like “ugh, fat people can’t climb a wall”. 

Cool story, quick question: can you? 

Because plenty of people aren’t into climbing. Being skinny isn’t what allows people to climb. Training is.

[jenroses]

Like I just tweaked my skyrim character so they can carry an actual ton of gear, because going home just to stash gear is annoying. And fat people can’t do shit? Because realism? HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A HORSE RUN UP A MOUNTAIN IN SKYRIM????? Don’t even get me started on Link. Fuck off with your “realism”, I don’t know who that’s for, but it’s not fantasy games.

FANTASY

[nudityandnerdery]

How To Feed Yourself When You're Depressed

An extremely cool feature of depression is an overwhelming indifference to the concept of staying alive. Eating is a prerequisite for life, so it makes perverse sense that, for many people, it’s among the first victims of a depressive episode.

[staxilicious]

Having looked through this article, it is also full of good advice for chronic pain sufferers or anyone else who regularly finds themselves unable to make/eat substantial meals. Yes, this also means it is good advice for people who struggle with eating disorders that fall into the “not eating” spectrum.

[gwydionmisha]

Dear Millenials and Gen Z,

Back when I was in College, I looked at the Demographic figures and realized that my Generation had next to no hope of accomplishing progressive goals in government alone against the combined weight of the Boomers, but I looked at that big beautiful Millennial swell on the Demographic chart and this gave me hope for the future, once enough Millenials passed voting age.

When I was teaching, adults at parties would ask my notoriously cranky ass questions about “kids today” that clearly expected me to agree with them about the overall crappiness of young people, but every damned time I’d tell them stories about my kids.  About boys standing up to homophobes, about girls protecting the kid being picked on for his disability, about how compassionate and kind they were, how brave in the face of bigotry and illogic.  I always ended by stating firmly that I had faith in my Millenial students and that I found that the idea that their votes would be protecting my basic rights as a human being incredibly comforting.

We have finally reached the tipping point where there are enough Millenial voters to win things, if you all come out and fight for it in elections and in protests, and when I look at all these amazing Gen Z kids organizing protests and fighting back with all their cleverness and the energy of young, I weep with joy and relief.  It feels like hope.  It feels like we still might have a future, even with all the deliberate damage and death Boomers and the wealthy have done to the rest of us and the planet.

I know I keep saying this, but I am terribly glad you are out there.  Please keep voting and protesting and calling the rich people in power out on their bullshit.  There are way more of you now, and if you get together, you really can change things.

Thank you,

Love,

Gen X

[chavisory]

And like, if you want to know one of the places where I’d start in making sure that there are disabled actors–and especially autistic ones–to fill disabled roles, and that they can get those roles?

It’s stop with the thing where non-disabled kids get acting and drama classes because acting is good and fun, and disabled kids get acting classes turned into therapy.

If a disabled kid is interested in acting, put them in acting classes.  For real.  With the accommodations and supports they need.  Not as stealth social skills therapy.

And if they’re not interested in acting, don’t.

Make sure they’re getting other non-therapy, real-world experiences, too.  In general, and not just in case they might want to be an actor, but all of that stuff is part of how actors build a broad knowledge base of experiences that they reference when developing characters.

Teach them that this is a thing they can do for real, and not just one more thing where everyone has the ulterior motive of convincing them to be more normal.

[delphiniumgrue]

“If a disabled kid is interested in acting, put them in acting classes.  For real.  With the accommodations and supports they need.  Not as stealth social skills therapy. “ Theater was my first major and very nearly my career. It’s also been the primary barrier to diagnosis. “You can’t be autistic. You have... like... facial expressions and stuff.” Well, yes. I need to use all the methods of communication at my disposal to clarify my meaning, or people don’t usually understand what I’m trying to say. And I happen to have fourteen years of training in having “facial expressions and stuff”. But let’s be clear: It’s a barrier to diagnosis because passing as completely neurotypical in presentation and mannerisms is so natural to me it’s easy to keep it up for several hours at a time. I could also pass as anything else I had sufficient examples to mimic; in the same 6-month period I passed as an elderly, arthritic Bostonian woman in frail health pretending to dementia as a cover for a clever plot and a plucky, irreverent 10-year-old street urchin from Victorian London. Those required actively seeking out examples to study in order to manage anything more than the shallowest mimicry, to flesh out and make breathing and believable. But it’s not like there’s a dearth of neurotypical people walking around to take notes on. I can (usually, but not always, literally) pass as neurotypical in my sleep. If you want your autistic kid to pass as neurotypical, don’t put them in abusive ABA “treatment” that uses aversives that can cause lifelong cPTSD and beliefs like “anything I love will just be taken away unless I am perfect”. Introduce them to the thrill of storytelling, take them to plays, let them watch interviews with the actors doing the voices of their favorite animated characters. Find out if it’s something they might like to try. Learning interactions through doing something I loved, as part of a team with other people, in a field where attention to detail is a mark of professionalism and a good job is rewarded before the masks even come off, gave me the ability to communicate what I want to communicate in a way that is easily understood, rather than just teaching me to algorithmically perform subroutines other people expect in hopes of avoiding punishment. It’s the difference between empowerment and brainwashing. Just get your (interested) kid (consensually) involved in school or community theater programs. 

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

Just queued a quote from Alisa Rowe about arguing, and it got me thinking about the line between intentionally abusive behavior, and behavior that was abusive because I am autistic.

Many of the verbal and physical fights with my abusers started because I asked a question. Maybe I needed to know if they were asking a question literally or figuratively. Maybe I needed to know specific details.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that this sort of literal thinking and need for explicit communication is a source of my mistrust of people in general.

Even knowing as much as I do now about how people and society works, even as much as I know about the differences between allistic and autistic communication styles and social reciprocity and all that, I still catch myself being uncertain when people are being literal or generalizing.

Home: “I need you to clean this,” while pointing at a pile of clothes might get me in trouble. Maybe for doing my laundry instead of cleaning my room. Or maybe for cleaning my room instead of doing the laundry. Maybe for cleaning up those clothes, but not doing the laundry. Or cleaning up the clothes but not the rest of the room.

Work: “I need you take care of this,” after a conversation about a errors in an excel report. Do you need me to fix the report? Do you need me to fix the worksheet? Do you need me to fix the entire workbook? Do you need me to find the person who fucked up and make them fix it? Do you need it now? Do you need it later?

And when I ask questions. “Just do it.” “I shouldn’t have to tell you how to do your job.” “You know what I am asking.” “Don’t be a smartass.” “Why do you always have to have everything explained to you?”

Because I’m not a mind reader, Karen.

But thank you for the cPTSD. You’re the reason I’m afraid to do everything wrong.

[broccoliveins]

Don’t leave out any hard of hearing children who come to your door this Halloween, take a minute out of your day to learn a few seasonal asl signs!  These are two different variations of “Happy Halloween” Click here for my source.

[scullysgirl-deactivated20260108]

halloween is for everyone!!!!!!

[cosmopollution]

this is honestly the cutest thing ever 10/10 will do this year💗💗

[adhighdefinition]

the three stages of adhd internet browsing:

that looks interesting but my focus is shit rn so i’m keeping this tab open for later

*tab sits there for 2 months, untouched*

riiiiight, i never got around to that hmmm well doesn’t really matter anymore *closes tab*