This Is A Dragon Age Blog

Mostly here to find out what day it is. No gods no masters no sideblogs. I am very bad at tagging, sorry! good luck with my interests. Profile pic credit to my friend Chris who is now on tumblr.

[vanillish-deactivated20211102]

[riannafinch]

somebody put this in a time capsule because it is so important that future generations see this

[naga-noia]

as a person under the agender/nonbinary umbrella I actually think the recently increased focus on a nonbinary person’s agab is insanely fucking uncomfortable and blatantly exorsexist. Stop trying to sort NB people into boxes of amab vs afab, transfem vs transmasc, tma vs tme, etc etc. It is not praxis or activism to keep attempting to binarize people whose entire identities are built around the fact that they DO NOT ADHERE to a binary. You are just being a fucking tar pit #sorry

[supermariosunshine2002]

tma and tme are to describe one's relationship to transmisogyny. it's similar to describing a relationship to anti-blackness by "creating a binary" of black and non-black (which includes white people, latino people, asian people, etc). tme includes anyone who is not transfeminized (such as cis men, cis women, trans men, etc). just because there are two categories of something doesn't mean you're getting forced into a gender binary. ignoring your relationship to transmisogyny by refusing to understand what tme/tma means is exactly the same as ignoring your relationship to anti-blackness by saying "i dont see color", because sure, you can ignore that there's a structural & systemic issue regarding a specific demographic, but it doesn't mean its not there!

[naga-noia]

nigga did your white ass really just come onto a black person’s post to try and lecture them about not knowing their own relationship to antiblackness

number one check yourself. Number two comparing TMA/TME to anti-Blackness is a false dichotomy and I need white queer people to stop trying to compare themselves to Black people every single chance they get. oh my god

The two are NOT similar. If you really wanna play the game of equating race and gender, then the equivalent to “Black and nonblack” would be transfem/trans woman and non-transfem/trans woman, not TMA/TME. I can assure you that NO black person is going around saying “antiblack racism affected vs antiblack racism exempt.” Because That Is Stupid.

EVERYONE is affected by antiblackness, because of how deeply it’s ingrained into our entire societal structure. You cannot write off specific demographics as not being affected by certain forms of oppression or discrimination, because the nature of living in a white supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy is that ALL of these systems are INTRINSICALLY connected with each other, and affect EVERYONE to some degree. There are countless historical examples of antiblack legislation directly impacting poor communities of other racial groups- including white people. There are primary targets of discrimination, obviously, but nobody is truly “exempt” from any sort of oppressive system unless they are at the VERY top of the damn food chain.

In the same vein, the intersection of transphobia and misogyny is ALSO deeply ingrained into our society. And because of that, nobody is truly “transmisogyny-exempt.” Even people who aren’t the primary targets are still directly impacted and negatively affected by transmisogynistic systems. I find TMA/TME to be useless in terms of categorization because it directly posits that everyone who gets sorted into the latter group just doesn’t experience any oppression or discrimination derived from transmisogynistic bases at all, which is ridiculous, because that happens All the time.

A trans man or enby who’s mistaken for a trans woman and is assaulted for it, a cis man who’s belittled and attacked on the basis of being Too Feminine, a cis woman who’s publicly shamed, derided, and transvestigated for having testosterone levels that are “too high,” are all examples of non-transfem/trans woman groups being negatively affected on the basis of transmisogyny.

Poor white people being affected by legislation meant to target and attack Black populations and the massive trend of colorism throughout Asian communities are examples of nonblack groups being negatively affected on the basis of antiblackness.

You cannot sort people by what oppression they do and do not face, and attempts to do so are inherently exclusionary and are bound to lead back into denying people of their lived experiences, just because they don’t line up perfectly into these specific categories of “this genre of person goes through this” vs “this genre of person doesn’t go through that.”

I believe that TMA/TME was coined with the best intentions, but the problem is that it’s a clumsy dichotomy and the way a lot of people tend to use it ends up leading back into the same issues of being binary (“amab trans people experience this, afab trans people don’t experience that”) and then THAT leads back into a whole heaping mess in and of itself

Talking about the way transfeminized people are targeted by transmisogyny is not a bad thing in and of itself! But like, you can just say transfem/non-transfem- or even just “transfeminized” to describe the position oppressors will often place people into in order to enact transmisogynistic violence against them- instead of directly trying to state what different groups of people Do And Don’t Experience. you can say “primary targets of transmisogyny” without directly implying that certain groups are exempt from it all together.

THAT is my issue at hand when it comes to TMA/TME. It is an awkward framework to describe oppression, because oppression doesn’t work like that in reality

[redstonedust]

i am fascinated by people who say they shave their legs for sensory reasons because like. im not saying i don't believe you but god i cannot relate. shaving is sensory hell. 30 minutes of running a tiny irritating blade along your skin again and again twisting and turning trying to make sure you got every spot (and very easy to accidental cut yourself and cause irritation) and then after like 4 days of smoothness you enter the stubble torment dimension where you skin becomes a cactus trying to fight itself. brother count me out i'll keep my full leg forest.

[beardedmrbean]

Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.

Kids books is probably not the best way to word it, you can enjoy them at every age, including your childhood, as you get older you may find new truths in them, but they're still good for any age.

[cookingwithroxy]

I want you to understand this. I NEED you to understand this. My mother read me the hobbit as bedtime story, and I started pushing myself to read before pre-school so I could in fact read the hobbit for myself instead of having to wait for bedtime.

I didn't do so right away but jesus wept I PUSHED myself to learn to read SPECIFICALLY so I could read The Hobbit! It is, in fact, a children's story! And children only see page count as 'there is a lot of this fun story to read!'

[nitewrighter]

Ozempic scares the shit out of me. You're telling me there's a drug that takes away both the craving side of hunger and targets the brain's rewards center for eating. You're telling me it takes the joy out of eating and it turns you into a skeleton. Why did we turn The Curse of the Black Pearl into a drug. What the fuck.

[nitewrighter]

I actually want to thank the diabetics coming on this post like "actually it genuinely is a great treatment for diabetes and it hasn't affected my mood or my enjoyment of food. The real issue is it's getting abused as a weight loss drug which also makes it scarce and more expensive for those who can genuinely benefit from it." Kind of reminds me of the time my brother got permission from our family psychiatrist to try my ADHD medication and his reaction to it was "what the fuck are you on. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ON. WHY DO I FEEL LIKE CRYING. YOU'RE ON THIS EVERY DAY!?!"

Body chemistry! It makes a big difference in how your body processes a drug! What can be genuinely helpful for some folks is The Curse of the Black Pearl for others!

[purple--starrrs]

By the way it's like. Really fucked how society's thoughts on epilepsy is just "get over it." Seizures can cause permanent brain damage. Seizures can kill people. Seizures hurt like hell. Allow me to reiterate that seizures can kill people. And you're just gonna casually put flashing lights, a common trigger for seizures in your advertisement, in your animation meme, in your edit, on your billboards, without even thinking about putting a simple disclaimer? That's unbelievable. Your little anime edit could deadass cost a life and you're not gonna put a warning because it's "inconvenient" or "people like that shouldn't be on the internet" (ableist) (the problem exists outside the internet also). Or you'll give insufficient ones like putting it in the captions or only giving like one second before the flashing lights appear, meaning that the trigger's already in motion before anyone who needs the warning can read it and save themselves from literal physical danger.

We need to start commenting under other people's posts about how to properly warn for flashing lights and eyestrain. We need to be emailing and calling companies about their possibly triggering advertisements that could induce seizures. We need to stop tolerating ableism and start speaking up for the more vulnerable.

Also, stop putting epilepsy warnings. That's like saying "warning: schizophrenia" on a post including unreality or "warning: dyslexia" on a post with a typing quirk. First off, the disability mentioned isn't the only group of people that this could trigger. Second, it doesn't truly get the message across and instead makes it worse for those with the disability-- scrolling through the epilepsy tag on Tumblr should get you to view the content of other epileptic people, but no, you just get a bunch of flashing lights and eyestrain, even though you could instead tag for, oh I dunno, flashing lights and eyestrain.

Anyways this Disability Pride, and for every month that comes after, think about epileptic people and others who are triggered by flashing lights/eyestrain. Happy pride to those who experience seizures too frequently due to the unaccommodating and ableist societies we live in!

[anarchopuppy]

This is something we as radicals don’t talk about much but which has come up a lot in my experience:

You deserve mutual aid. You’re not too privileged for it, you’re not stealing it from people who need it more - you have a right to use community resources just as much as anyone else

I’ve seen food rot, clothes and books be forgotten in storage, because the people volunteering at or supporting these projects don’t think the resources are for them. Then those same volunteers will go out and put money they don’t have into the capitalist system to buy the resources they could’ve gotten for free

You’re thinking like a charity. You’re drawing a line between the people giving resources and the people taking them, which inevitably leads to a feeling of separation and eventually superiority, unconsciously seeing yourself as a savior coming in and helping the less fortunate. That alienates the people you’re helping from you, and results in neither side fully recognizing the other as human and the same as them

There’s a reason we say “solidarity not charity”. There’s a reason mutual aid is called mutual. Because by lifting each other up, we all become stronger. In solidarity and mutual aid, there is no separation between giver and receiver, because everyone involved is benefited by it

But that doesn’t happen if the resources aren’t used! Get out of the capitalist scarcity mindset - give freely and take freely, because by being lifted up you help us all

[eatingmuffinsinanagitatedmanner]

This is important! When I first started doing the food distributions, I’d feel really weird about taking a leftover box of produce or an extra meal home. Then my volunteers started feeling weird about taking theirs and very quickly we developed a culture of “who really deserves/needs this food”? I realized what was happening and started taking a little bit home myself, and then everyone got much more comfortable with me and people who were originally just standing in the line to get food began volunteering and doing other things to help out.

[afro-evolutionary-astrology]

This one thing that like clicked for me since doing mutual aid is that capitalism’s overproduction is so deep. The Food Bank in my city, in order to maintain its grants at certain financial volume, ends up giving families soo much food it’s like they handed out boxes that came direct from Costco.

10 cans of peaches, 2 5lb cans of crushed tomatoes, 6 loaves of bread, a whole box of tuna packets, 8 mangoes, 6 1lb bags of rice, 10lbs of frozen chicken tenders or fajita meat. And it’s like wtf? They gave this to a family of 4??? They can’t even fit some if that in their fridges/freezers half the time so it gets donated to us.

I had my neighbors stop me before last distro to hand me all those items, plus other things. This one of many small examples, that pounded in my skull, that if I want/need it, I’m taking it.

One of my partners hit me with some wisdom a few months back, “Are you trying to build a community that you dont get to be a part of?” And that shit just echoes in my brain these days.

[tgirl-tamag0tchi]

Was sent this post today… I needed that. I always love helping others… but I always feel bad accepting help myself…

But yeah… it’s okay to be a part of a community… to rely on others as I’d have them rely on me.

[frankiecorleone]

Does anyone else have an list of 10-15 untouchable thoughts that if you let yourself remeber or think about them for even a second it’s excruciating or is this a me thing

[scarlettaagni]

so i think the solution is to give dachshunds a third pair of legs right in the middle

[footlongdingledong]

idk man not to sound like a cartoon hippie but if your entirrrrre blog and dash is about how the world sucks and everyones bigoted i think you are going to give yorself brain worms

[footlongdingledong]

"ah but all of this is important and true and if i dont reblog all of this important stuff waga baga THE WORMS! THATS WORMS! THE BRAIN WORMS!

[footlongdingledong]

i do not think you are doing activism chief i think what you are doing is sitting in your room flagellating yourself expecting something to happen

[shadowed-yet-vibrant]

I love having friends who reject diet culture. I love going out when everyone buys food and drinks that they enjoy. I love people who will pipe up and suggest we stop for a snack or grab a meal. I love ordering what I want and no one making comments other than how good it looks (and maybe asking to steal a bite off my plate). I love revelling in how full we are after a good meal and taking a break to appreciate how fortunate we are. I love sharing snack from our bags with one another. I love enjoying the pleasure of food and drinks and good company.

[vulpinesaint]

saying "question mark?" and "however comma," out loud are game changers. punctuation on the go. and it's always the funniest thing that anyone around you has ever heard

[molabuddy]

recently when im tempted to say 'i'm gonna kill myself' i try to correct it into saying "im gonna walk into the river and become a trout" or some other form of that. this is my new thing

[molabuddy]

btw this has graduated into me just saying "the trout population will be affected" and then not elaborating

[other-orchid]

this post has genuinely helped me so i used it as inspiration for today’s hand lettering practice

[depthchargeforcutie]

cyberpunk 2077 is a very good game and yet this is the second time i have developed a weird aversion to finishing it for reasons i don't really understand

[crowboy-bebop]

unauthorized fucking thing!!!!!!

(warning: loud chirping throughout)

source: hellgate osprey cam

[curlicuecal]

[adz]

im in the pussy like turmeric in tupperware

[adz]

nods serenely

[creekfiend]

i have been feeling especially low blood volume lately so an infusion nurse came out to give me fluids + magnesium+ b vitamins today and it was our favorite nurse. the very buff firefighter nurse who is also a gamer with encyclopedic knowledge of every Geeky Thing. some days he does not speak to us at all. some days we have pretty equitable conversations. today it was His Turn On The Talking

we got an hour long infodunp about dungeon crawler carl, the author, the story, all of the adaptations and which are the best, the voice actor who reads the audiobooks, how much the kickstarters raised, I mean EVERYTHING

gentle attempts to widen the scope of the conversation into things like "the phenomenon of lit rpg in general" were very strongly resisted so after a while we just stopped trying and just nodded and Reacted to what he told/showed us. and then after he left we absolutely lost our shit about the Unskippable Dungeon Crawler Carl Nurse Cut Scene

i feel like when I talk about social skills I have learned I often focus on, like, things that are perceived as autistic deficits and how I compensate for them. that's true, I have worked a lot on those things. but also VERY IMPORTANTLY, along with the skill "remember to take turns in a conversation and ask the other person questions back," there is a parallel skill of "understand that incidents of failing to do this in a conversation are not malicious"

I try to think of being patient and friendly during an hour long infodump about something I'm not particularly interested in as a gift that I can give someone. it's annoying but it isn't hurting me. sometimes people have weird communication days just like they have weird hair days.

I understand that it is important to try to have reciprocal conversations where I show interest in other people and actively listen and ask questions about them. I also have a few friends who don't have that skill. they'll just talk about themselves. so a skill that *I* have learned is to pretend they have asked me about myself and respond as though they have. they'll say some things about them and their lives, and then I will take the initiative to share stuff about my life. this was difficult for me for a while because I felt like if I wasn't explicitly invited to say something or asked about myself that indicated a lack of interest. it usually doesn't. my friends who don't have that particular conversational skill respond to my spontaneously listing all the stuff that's going on in my life/stuff about my interests/etc very positively. they like that I do this so they don't have to feel self conscious about having trouble remembering to ask me about myself.

i think that understanding different communication methods that may not be the extremely basic rote "take turns in a conversation and invite people to talk about themselves!" type stuff is a VERY important social skill. and tbh? goes along with trying to give people grace and the benefit of the doubt/good faith/whatever.

i think that outlining what "usual" conversational expectations are is helpful bc people may not understand why they get the reactions that they often get from others during or after social interactions.

i also think it's not great to frame it like "if you don't do this you're Rude and Bad and it is correct that people do not like you"

something can be broadly understood and experienced as inconsiderate and ALSO be something someone can't help. we can learn to compensate for some things to the degree that we are able and I think it is important to try and learn as much as we can about social interactions and expectations. and also, like... sometimes that doesn't look like "I simply know now that interrupting people is rude and elect not to do it"

Interrupting people is the conversational issue I still struggle with the most. i know ! its bad! to interrupt! and also sometimes i just do. so part of "compensating" for me is knowing when I do it (something it sometimes takes effort to spot in the moment) and making dure to say "I'm so sorry, I interrupted you, what were you saying?" when I do

if "knowing most people find it more Socially Correct to ask questions -> get asked questions in return" is information that someone can possess about socialization, then "some people's brains don't really work in a way that makes doing that intuitive. they may not do this in conversations and it is not malicious" IS ALSO information you can know and SHOULD APPLY to your interactions

i have been seeing an increasing number of like "y'all don't know how to act/manners are important actually" posts and like... i agree... they are. and also it's important to not end up just sounding like we are ABA practitioners because I will be so real, some of these posts are pretty much an ABA hand out 😬

anyway.

[creekfiend]

I will say that we were both intermittently glancing at the IV bag throughout the infodump to see how much fluid was left. which is very funny and would make a good comic. i think that all slightly uncomfortable interactions should come with an built in hourglass this way.