tea-drinking fashion gremlin

Mx. Elya is... - a fan of D, Dir en grey, Queensrÿche, Miyavi, X Japan, Malice Mizer, and many, many others. -a j-fashion enthusiast, most often wearing gothic or classic lolita with occasional forays into ouji, sweet, and visual kei. a student of the Klingon language mildly obsessed with plushies, particularly handmade or altered ones and/or ones of pretty and/or badass japanese rockstars hello nyasagi is...  a hand-altered kitty-chan plush inspired by NYASAGI, the feline alter-ego of Asagi, lead singer of D NOT "Emo Hello Kitty" //_-;;

[elyachan]

(from my twitter pinned thread)

I wear lolita fashion for myself; for fierce femininity on my own terms; for bringing strange and unexpected beauty into the ordinary world.

I wear lolita fashion as part of a community that celebrates all this and more; that delights in elegance and excess and experimentation.

A lolita coord is like a sonnet: it's all about what YOU make within the set form. The silhouette is the framework for your creativity.

I dress like this for my own self; my frills are my armor.

[smallgodseries]

The cat is in the way. 

This is a basic fact of the universe, simple and immutable.  The sun is shining, the wind is blowing, the cat is in the way.  The world is spinning, the atomic structure of the universe is decaying, the cat is the way.  The faithful pray, the apostate condemn, and the cat is in the way.

How is the cat always, inevitably, unavoidably, in the way?  When did we get a cat, anyway?  How did that cat get in here?  Hey, is anyone willing to take responsibility for this cat?  Can someone tell me whose cat this is?

No.

No, no one can tell you whose cat this is.  No, no one is going to take responsibility for that cat.  No, no one let the cat in, and the cat is in the way because it is the nature of cats to be in the way.  If the cat were not in the way, something much more terrible than the cat might rise in its absence.  The cat occupies space to ensure that the space is occupied, because the space will be occupied, whether it is by the cat or by something far more terrible.  The cat is doing you a favor.  Do not count the cat’s eyes.  The cat’s eyes are none of your concern.  The cat can see you.  Isn’t that enough?

Isn’t it enough that the cat is being generous enough to protect you from the terrible thing that would be looking at you with some uncounted number of eyes if the cat were not there?  Isn’t it enough that the cat is soft, and the cat is purring, and the cat is in the way?

Isn’t it enough?

Let it be enough.

The cat loves you.  The cat will love you even into the void.  The cat will forgive you for your frailties, and the cat is in the way.

The cat is always in the way.

[smallgodseries]

[image description: A tiny Oriole sits cheeping on a branch. But this wee bird has tied a big colorful toucan beak over his own, and added a bright red-orange comb. We see him against a bright green rainforest background. Text reads, “18, YUCAN TU, the small god of faking it until you make it”]

Sometimes education isn’t enough.  Sometimes you can study and study and try and try, and never quite cross the last bridge between where you are and your heart’s desire.

Sometimes you need to tell the perfect little lie to get there.

Once upon a time there was a small god of orioles named Yucan who wanted nothing more in the world than to be a god of toucans, to manifest himself as a big, beautiful, tropical bird that people would stop to ooo and ahh over when they saw it in the trees, something impressive.  It was a good thing to be a god of songbirds.  There weren’t as many of them as there had been before cats became quite so popular as house pets, and the ones remaining needed all the divine intervention they could get their wings on.  He appreciated their attention and their worship, but he wanted, so very badly, to be more than his nature was allowing him to be.

So he hatched, over the course of several slow decades, a plan, and one night, with no warning whatsoever, his faithful woke and found him gone.  He had abandoned his divine duties, flown the coop, left the nest, and no one could find a single feather left behind!  All the little birdies were distraught…but not for very long, as little birdies have short memories, and there were other gods of songbirds around to serve.  If it wasn’t quite the same, well, nothing ever is, not even following the same god from one day to another.  They adjusted.  They adapted.

And far away, a very small god with a very big dream put his plans into action. He donned a false face, he told everyone who met him that he was the god of endangered tropical birds, and if no one had ever seen him before, well, some of those birds were very endangered.  Deforestation and poaching, don’cha know?  So many dangers to evade.  So many fledglings to protect.  So he lied, and lied, and pretended, and did his best to live up to his own lies.  He protected those who came to him, he spread his wings over the nests of species unknown to science, and he tried, and he lied, and he tried.

Until one day, the mask would not come off when he went to go to nest.  One day, he noticed that his wingspan was greater, and he no longer heard the prayers of songbirds, but of the birds he had claimed…and of more than them. Of frightened high school drama students and would-be figure skaters, of novice computer programmers and new-made lawyers.

They had their own lies to tell.

And Yucan Tu would be with them every step along the way, singing goldfinch songs in their ears and spreading his wings to defend them from the risks of their own actions.

He is a god of falsehood, yes, but also of sincerity, and of effort.

___________________________________________________________

Artist Lee Moyer (Trident of Aurelia, 13th Age) and author Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children, October Daye & InCryptid series) sincerely thank to each and every one of you who share Small Gods!

Tumblr: https://smallgodseries.tumblr.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smallgodseries/

Homepage: http://www.smallgodseries.com/

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

[smallgodseries]

[image description: A tall thin (and sumptuously gorgeous) blonde doll, with a rakish eye patch and military uniform worn with no socks and low black heels carries a huge green duffel and a smaller bright red suitcase. Pink target sights appear all around her, and the ginchy floral pattern with swirls behind her has been repeatedly attacked, revealing the metal around the bullet holes. Text reads, “263 FREDERIQUE BARBAROSSA - SMALL GOD OF ACTION FIGURES.”]

•••••

“What’s that, kid?  You want to know the difference between a doll and an action figure?  Oh, you’ll get lots of stories from lots of sources on that one.  People who’ll say brushable hair or changeable clothing makes something a doll, and ignore all those full-size GI Joes with both.  People who’ll say possibility makes an action figure—and here comes Made to Move Barbie, and fuck, is Barbie an action figure now?  Lots of people telling you lots of things, and those things don’t match up, but it doesn’t matter, because they got to have an opinion, loudly, and where they come from, the louder an opinion is, the more true it is.  They call this ‘debate.’  I say they need to buy a dictionary.  But come closer, and I’ll tell you the difference.  You listening?

“Marketing.  It’s all marketing.  Because see, some clever Charlies so far removed from their own childhoods that they didn’t remember what it was like to look at a teddy bear and see it prowling through the primal forests, those assholes decided that boys wouldn’t play with dolls.  That dolls had been so conceptually tainted with the essence of girlhood that boys would sit idle and bored before they’d play with a doll.  Never mind that actual patterns of play didn’t support that—never mind that it was parents who refused to buy dolls for their precious little men, because their own ideas about gender were so rigidly-set that they couldn’t imagine anyone disagreeing with them.  The people in charge needed a way to sell toys to boys, and kids like to play with tiny people.  Gender’s got nothing to do with it.

“So the people who run the markets decided that some dolls were action figures now, and defined the category so loosely that almost no one could tell what they meant.  Now ‘doll’ and ‘action figure’ are more of a vibe than anything else, and you can learn a lot about a person by how they identify the things around them.  Is Barbie a doll?  Is He-Man an action figure?  In the end, when they’re both up to their chins in mud, saving the world from an evil mastermind from the planet of the Care Bears, is anybody going to say it really matters?

“Are you?”

[gothiccharmschool]

Today's advice from your Goth Auntie

Unclench your jaw, have a snack, take your meds.

No one is perfect at a thing they're learning. In fact, no one is perfect, stop being upset with yourself.

The Cursed Object is very tired, and is napping in the teapot. 

❤️Auntie Jilli

[transisstor]

Reblog if you think fanfiction is a legitimate form of creative writing.

[smallgodseries]

[image description: A faux woodcut of a medieval burgher with a twelve-sided die with strange symbols for a head. Text reads, “ #1D12, Sir Tunty of Chants, the small god of Custom Game Dice”]

Small gods are not like large gods in power or potency, but they are exactly like them in the same way they are exactly like poison ivy, or like mushrooms: there is no point at which they decide who they are going to be.  They find a source of nourishment and grow from there, feeding on fertile soil.  They can remain small for centuries, if not millennia, until their circumstances change.  Like all other things, they grow according to their environment and the resources it contains.

Sir Tunty came into being four thousand years before the beginning of the current calendar, his temples sculpted from bone and rock, his symbols etched by hand, and for a very long time, it seemed he was destined to be a very small god indeed.

And then in 1974, the Great Guy Gax appeared as some small gods do: all at once, already in the height of his power, calling forth his creations from the firmament.  He built of earth a dungeon, and filled it with such great beasts as he could summon out of his imagination, dragons and more.  And he invited all the people into his temple, and so many of them came that they overflowed the halls and spilled off to form temples of their own, temples of starships and vampires and beloved television properties and superheroes and cartoons.

And in all those temples, Sir Tunty was present, ready to roll, ready to give his gifts and his misfortunes to the faithful.

The Great Guy Gax waned, as those who make the biggest of entrances must often do, and in his place rose other gods, and when the vasty Bee Yawned appeared, Sir Tunty rose to his greatest prominence yet, crafted in thousands of homes, coveted and pursued, random and rolled as ever.  He is proud of what he has done, and will always remain so, but he takes nothing for granted.

After all, as his acolytes will gladly remind any who asks, anyone can roll a one.

[star-trek-dumb-comics]

スタートレック Star Trek アバター作成

Star trek OC/avatar maker. Include multiple alien species. Scroll for details ⬇ スタートレックのキャラクターとアバターメーカー。いくつかのエイリアンの種も含まれています。. Author: htt

Picrew v1.2 is out !

I added a Borg category and cardassian, human and bajoran civilian clothing ! (check colours for alternative versions)

Also reorganized the accessories categories + added headscarf and medical coat; and lowered the spoon on cardassian foreheads 'cause that was causing layering issues.

In the end I didn't have the time to add any hair stuff so that's gonna be for next time ! I'm gonna add as many hairstyles as i can + at least two new hair colours (I'm thinking purple, blue and maybe pink)

[animentality]

[guerrillatech]

[lurker-no-more]

All of this. #WGAStrong

[nkjemisin]

I’m not on Twitter anymore, but I see John Rogers is still there bringing the fire. As I think I mentioned here a while back, I’m not in the WGA yet -- applied, after writing the script for the Fifth Season film, but obviously everything’s on hold given this. (The script was being revised, but since the strike’s been called it’s “pencils down.”)

And the stakes are exactly as high as what John lays out here. I’ve already seen any number of absolute garbage takes on this -- dismissing screenwriters as rich hacks who just want to get richer, stupidly suggesting that only some workers should matter (as if that won’t get weaponized against all of us), and worse. But whether y’all want to believe it or not, creative workers are workers, and the WGA is fighting for all of us right now.

#WGAStrong

[artefaktual]

“I don’t bite. Well…actually, I do.”

[fictionalred-art]

Get some positive reminders :))

On my Redbubble

[elyachan]

yInlu'meH QaQ jajvam! 💜

[ceti-alpha-six]

Mark Brill.

[elyachan]

«mon'a' lISa?» [Does Lisa smile?]

I love that tlhIngan Hol has SO MANY puns baked into it. Thank you, Dr. Okrand. 💜

[idol--hands]

✴️Monster High Dolls transformed into Klingon Women✴️

source & more pics: https://mediachomp.com/custom-star-trek-klingon-monster-high-dolls/

[marinella-ela]

[cephalon-sancti]

Multispecies enrichment and learning!

[star-anise]

So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”

Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”

So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it. 

That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and  unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender. 

When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.

And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.

But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.

But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”

And that? That gives me hope for the future.

[star-anise]

Similarily: “Dyke/butch/femme are lesbian words, bisexual/pansexual women shouldn’t use them.”

When I speak to them, lesbians who say this seem to be under the impression that bisexuals must have our own history and culture and words that are all perfectly nice, so why can’t we just use those without poaching someone else’s?

And often, they’re really shocked when I tell them: We don’t. We can’t. I’d love to; it’s not possible.

“Lesbian” used to be a word that simply meant a woman who loved other women. And until feminism, very, very few women had the economic freedom to choose to live entirely away from men. Lesbian bars that began in the 1930s didn’t interrogate you about your history at the door; many of the women who went there seeking romantic or sexual relationships with other women were married to men at the time. When The Daughters of Bilitis formed in 1955 to work for the civil and political wellbeing of lesbians, the majority of its members were closeted, married women, and for those women, leaving their husbands and committing to lesbian partners was a risky and arduous process the organization helped them with. Women were admitted whether or not they’d at one point truly loved or desired their husbands or other men–the important thing was that they loved women and wanted to explore that desire.

Lesbian groups turned against bisexual and pansexual women as a class in the 1970s and 80s, when radical feminists began to teach that to escape the Patriarchy’s evil influence, women needed to cut themselves off from men entirely. Having relationships with men was “sleeping with the enemy” and colluding with oppression. Many lesbian radical feminists viewed, and still view, bisexuality as a fundamentally disordered condition that makes bisexuals unstable, abusive, anti-feminist, and untrustworthy.

(This despite the fact that radical feminists and political lesbians are actually a small fraction of lesbians and wlw, and lesbians do tend, overall, to have positive attitudes towards bisexuals.)

That process of expelling bi women from lesbian groups with immense prejudice continues to this day and leaves scars on a lot of bi/pan people. A lot of bisexuals, myself included, have an experience of “double discrimination”; we are made to feel unwelcome or invisible both in straight society, and in LGBT spaces. And part of this is because attempts to build a bisexual/pansexual community identity have met with strong resistance from gays and lesbians, so we have far fewer books, resources, histories, icons, organizations, events, and resources than gays and lesbians do, despite numerically outnumbering them..

So every time I hear that phrase, it’s another painful reminder for me of all the experiences I’ve had being rejected by the lesbian community. But bisexual experiences don’t get talked about or signalboosted much,so a lot of young/new lesbians literally haven’t learned this aspect of LGBT+ history.

And once I’ve explained it, I’ve had a heartening number of lesbians go, “That’s not what I wanted to happen, so I’m going to stop saying that.”

[simonalkenmayer]

This is good information for people who carry on with the “queer is a slur” rhetoric and don’t comprehend the push back.

[theroguefeminist]

ive been saying for years that around 10 years ago on tumblr, it was only radfems who were pushing the queer as slur rhetoric, and everyone who was trans or bi or allies to them would push back - radfems openly admitted that the reason they disliked the term “queer” was because it lumped them in with trans people and bi women. over the years, the queer is a slur rhetoric spread in large part due to that influence, but radfems were more covert about their reasons - and now it’s a much more prevalent belief on tumblr - more so than on any queer space i’ve been in online or offline - memory online is very short-term unfortunately bc now i see a lot of ppl, some of them bi or trans themselves, who make this argument and vehemently deny this history but…yep

[ryttu3k]

Or asexuality, which has been a concept in discussions on sexuality since 1869. Initially grouped slightly to the left, as in the categories were ‘heterosexual’, ‘homosexual’, and ‘monosexual’ (which is used differently now, but then described what we would call asexuality). Later was quite happily folded in as a category of queerness by Magnus Hirschfeld and Emma Trosse in the 1890s, as an orientation that was not heterosexuality and thus part of the community.

Another good source here, also talking about aromanticism as well. Aspec people have been included in queer studies as long as queer studies have existed.

Also, just in my own experiences, the backlash against ‘queer’ is still really recent. When I was first working out my orientation at thirteen in 2000, there was absolutely zero issue with the term. I hung out on queer sites, looked for queer media, and was intrigued by queer studies. There were literally sections of bookstores in Glebe and Newtown labelled ‘Queer’. It was just… there, and so were we!

So it blows my mind when there are these fifteen-year-olds earnestly telling me - someone who’s called themself queer longer than they’ve been alive - that “que*r is a slur.” Unfortunately, I have got reactive/defensive for the same reasons OP has mentioned. I will absolutely work on biting down my initial defensiveness and trying to explain - in good faith - the history of the word, and how it’s been misappropriated and tarnished by exclusionists.

[brightlotusmoon]

[prismatic-bell]

Worth noting here is a sneaky new front I’ve seen radfems start using:

Yeah, okay, maybe older LGBTs use queer and fag and dyke…but they’re cringey, and you don’t want to be cringe, do you?

I’m not even joking. They strip the loud-and-proud aspects of our history out of all context, remove every bit of blood, sweat, and tears the queer community poured into things like anti-discrimination laws and AIDS research funding, and use those screams of rebellion to say we’re weird, and you wouldn’t want to be WEIRD.

Stop and think about that for a minute.

Yeah. They are not the arbiters of our community and they never were, and it’s important to not give them the time of day.