[songfawn]

Hm i wonder why i feel so disconnected? *watches from afar* *watches from afar* *watches from afar* *watches from afar* *watches from afa

[nondelphic]

writing isn’t hard it’s just emotionally devastating and time-consuming and requires full body possession by an idea

[aplpaca]

Pro tip! If u have OCD, that genre of advice stuff that's like "if youre questioning whether youre X, you probably are" is not for you and is in fact poison!!!

[aplpaca]

Someone tagged this as "unless its about transitioning" and no actually that is 100% not an exception. Gender and sexuality related obsessions are not uncommon, so if someone is spiraling from that kind of advice about transitioning, then its not for them and should be ignored.

[tuckedinbugw]

Nothing like holding my love

[vilea777]

sorry i cant hang out i forgot how to mimic human like behaviour

[helloitsbees]

check out the mourning doves’ new single “hooOOOO hoo hoo hoo” if you get the chance. sound of the summer.

[monstercangirlofficial]

Considering the recent targeted terminations against blogs run by transfems in the last couple of days (angel-athetos, fungalfaggot, coyote-roadkill, hound-mother, corpse-of-omelas-ageplayer and my previous blog, zebrabyopn3), some close friends and myself worked on a google form where users can make submissions for their terminated blogs. Too many of us have lost our blogs and everything in them, yet there's no existing record of blogs that have been terminated, so we want to change that. If you're not a transfem you can also answer, as we want data about all deleted blogs in general, like: the name of the banned blog, date of termination, and if there was a reason given or warning for the deletion (or not)

Tumblr Termination Submission

This is a submission form made for Tumblr users whose blogs have been terminated. This investigation will mostly focus on the unfair and tar

The form consists of 8 questions and takes around 3-5 minutes to answer. We'd appreciate sharing this with anyone that has been unfairly terminated, so we can create a record, so those blogs and their names can be remembered

[redpandarascal]

this is super important for whatever legal anti discrimination action might result! Document document DOCUMENT. please share this around.

[kinavu]

I feel like ive seen quite a few gfms getting passed around and ive observed that a lot of them have stories of such exceptional people who have achieved so much, or were going to before the genocide cut it off. And i really commend them for it, i really do.

But it breaks my heart that palestinians reaching out to us feel the need to have to prove that they are they are good people who are worth the support, like theyre only worth being supported if they had a good gpa or were exceptional in some way.

They shouldnt have to prove that theyre beneficial to the economy somehow to be worth the support. They shouldnt have to be exceptional to deserve help. Our governments are putting them through this, both in the west and around the world too. They shouldnt have to prove anything. We owe them this

Do not rb this without the second addition to this post

[fake-mermaid]

can i get a hell yea if you’re still gonna be wasting your time on this website in 2014

[lunaticcat28]

can i get a hell yea if you’re still gonna be wasting your time on this website in 2024

[intersexstars]

im making this its own post actually

found family is "i have endured the fucking horrors with these guys. i would both kill and die for them. i would rip my own bones out to make splints to heal theirs. there is no name for the bond we share"

found family is NOT "this guy is so dad-coded and these guys are so sibling-like and—"

[revui]

just saw this tag and i figure it's only right to give a genuine answer for all wondering, at least from my perspective as the person who didn't make the original post.

i think the main issue is that, when you make a found family using the second method, you're just reinventing the "nuclear family" in a framework that isn't made to support that. found family has nothing to do with who's in what role; it's not a game of house, it's a support system. rigidly defining who's who in the system is just putting shiny paint over outdated ideals of what a family is supposed to look and act like, and those ideals also tend to come pre-packaged with gender roles. you know that phenomenon of people taking the only major woman in a cast and dubbing her the "mom friend" or "responsible older sister"? that's the exact same problem as this.

by it's very name, a family of choice is one that is uninterested in or defiant of the traditional picture of a family, especially because (both in real life and in fiction) they're often comprised of people who were explicitly failed by that picture in some way. a found family can just as readily be made up of a dozen people in their fifties as it can be a couple ragtag teens and their disgruntled adult caretaker with optional animal sidekick, but the first one won't get recognized as often because it doesn't fulfill the roles people are looking for like the second one does.

i don't care if you think a character acts paternal or if you think a group of characters behave like siblings. i also don't care if unrelated characters refer to each other with familial terms. but there's a difference between performing the role and actually being supportive. too much emphasis on the former creates "found families" that are just regular families with a sparkly filter overlaid on them.

[cinaed]

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

— Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

[hnnhmre]

if someone would’ve told me that womanhood would still included me styling my hair and hysterically crying, I wouldn’t have believed you

[woundlingus]

Oh how Hozier has written an album about the absolute worst humanity has to offer, all our sins and crimes laid bare, and he says you are forgiven with so much tenderness. This is what makes you human. This is what makes you complex in the most beautiful ways. Look at the tragedy around you, and look at the survivors. Aren’t you all just so beautiful in your efforts to strive forward and begin again.

[theriverbeyond]

[emerging from the hozier song covered in blood] anyway,

[hnnhmre]

I never saw you as anything but my big brother until I was 6 and you were 8

Grandma had taken us from our mom, you were happy. I was being neglected and groomed by our grandfather.

The divide between us grew, you never noticed. You didn’t even remember how cruel she was to me, no one did. Everyone explained it away. I never forgave you for not protecting me

Until I was 16 and you were 18, a decade apart from the world we grew up in. I felt like I really knew who you were and felt a real bond with you. We used to walk for hours just talking.

I don’t think I could set foot in that town and not think about you. And now I’m 24 and you’re 27.

We haven’t spoken since your birthday, but really the last time we spoke was an hour long conversation with you ranting about how my kind of people were pedophiles on my birthday.

I will never forgive you. I forgive you.

[hnnhmre]

when I drink coffee past four pm and my brain is being unkind, the only thing that can make me sleepy is the same four comfort fics I’ve been reading for YEARS

[systlin]

🔥 on american culture

There isn’t any.

America stripped the cultures away from all who came here in order to hammer them into the good little uniform consumers that were wanted.

The culture of America is one of endless consumption and breathtaking arrogance.

[kyidyl]

That’s....not really true. Because it’s literally impossible to have a group of humans and not have a culture. But is hard to see your culture from the inside. And, yes, there are negative things about American culture. I mean obviously. But after spending >year outside the US, here are some things I noticed about our culture:

We are casually generous. “I’m going to the store, you need anything?” Does not carry a requirement of paying us back. The other Americans in my program thought nothing of buying one of our British friends a soda or something, whereas when our British friends got each other a drink or something they paid each other back. And if you’re in trouble, Americans will literally offer you the shirt off their back. Or - in the case of one Brit I had a conversation with - a job to a stranger who needed it.

America is brightly colored. I don’t know how else to phrase it. Europe isn’t drab but like the US like brightness, light, and color. It’s the first thing I noticed when I got home - everything was more saturated.

We are genuinely curious. We aren’t always as polite about it as we should be, but usually if we’re asking about your culture, it comes from a good place.

We genuinely love cars. I’m not saying this is a good or bad trait, just that it’s part of our culture. We like to drive a lot more than people in Europe.

We are diverse. I was walking home with one of the other Americans and we were chatting like idk...a couple weeks after we’d met and she was like “ok I don’t want to be weird or anything but like....is it just me or is it SO WHITE here??”. We agreed that, yeah, it was but that y’know...White people came from somewhere and the uk is one of those places. But when I was gone I really missed seeing faces that looked nothing like mine. There are, of course, other ethnicities in the UK but compared to the us where literally half the population isn’t white, it’s definitely a striking difference. And as a consequence of this, our food is way more diverse. We didn’t strip these things from their cultures. The vast majority of restaurants that have, say, Chinese, or Thai, or sushi, or Indian, are run by people who immigrated here, brought their culture here, and adapted to the goods available to them in their new country. That is a natural, normal process and a long-existing part of human migration. And because we have so many more cultures here, we are lucky to be able to take part in what they share with us. It isn’t always a benign process but it’s just wrong to say that it’s always about “us” stealing from “them”.

We talk about our problems. IE, we’re very self-critical. We aren’t always good but we spend a lot of time looking at our culture and our country, breaking it down into pieces, and examining those pieces. We argue about how to make them better. A lot of times we suck at it but at least we’re having the conversation and the argument.

We hate authority. It doesn’t matter what your politics are, chances are you dislike and distrust the govt. we’re rebellious and few things make us more pleased than giving the man the finger or seeing someone else do it. British people protest - I literally saw an anti-Brexit protest march by my window - but they plan a time, politely show up and politely voice their displeasure, and then go home after cleaning up behind themselves. Americans? We fucking RIOT. Part of the entire point of the mall in DC is to yell at the govt every time we don’t like what they’re doing. We hate that we need a permit to do it. We’re always looking for new and creative ways to question authority. I think this is why it bothers a lot of us when people from other countries are like “why don’t you do something about _______”. Like, we’re trying. Trust me, we’re trying.

Idk that’s just some random stuff I noticed after living somewhere else for awhile.

[physticuffs]

yes!!! other things: 

- Americans smile a lot. Europeans can tell the American in the room just because the American will auto-smile at random passerby. smiling is a greeting as much as “hello” is, and it’s a way of talking. when i talk to American friends, i’m nearly always smiling slightly and my tone rises and falls constantly. my European colleagues do not smile nearly as much, and have much flatter speaking tones. 

- Americans are ultra-casual. after you graduate from school, everyone is going to introduce themselves by their first names. actually, sometimes even in college, professors will do that. Euro and Asian colleagues tell me that in their home countries, professors act like gods and it’s very difficult to disagree with them. one side effect of the casualness also plays into friendliness; Americans are what Europeans consider friendly on a very frivolous surface level, and colleagues of mine have been confused by strangers who they thought spoke to them like friends, but it’s just the American attitude of being casual toward everyone. a German colleague told me that even the notoriously “rude” parts of this country, like the Northeast, are still “friendlier” toward strangers than most of Europe. 

- building on what @kyidil​ said about “Americans love cars”--ROAD TRIPS. road trips are such a staple of American culture. Americans are much chiller about driving long distances than typical for Europeans, and cross-country road trips are a staple of American media, often considered almost a rite of passage.

- and yes, Americans often have a much deeper-seated distrust of authority than Europeans. it often doesn’t look like it, especially due to the Trump phenomenon, but even that’s a type of backlash against authority. it also doesn’t express itself well; our government has eroded a lot of freedoms that Americans are relatively unaware of, but mostly in the realm of privacy. for both good and for bad, the particular form of the American obsession with freedom comes very much in a “don’t tell me how to live MY life” way--regardless of enforcement. ie, i have a strong sense from growing up in this country that if everyone knew they were spied on all the time, but the government actually did nothing with that information, that would be fine. on the flip side, if the government set “how to live your life” laws in place but didn’t check up on anyone or enforce it, Americans would be rioting in the streets. basically, it’s a libertarian streak that runs through the entire political spectrum.

ADDITIONALLY, it’s difficult to talk about a monolithic American culture because our entire nation is nearly as big as the entire continent of Europe, so it might be more fair to talk about regional cultures. (for example, the note about diversity being part of American culture strikes me as a very regional thing, and very urban.) but it’s ridiculous to say that America has no culture when each regional culture is, definitionally, an American culture. as the person above me said, it can be hard to notice your own culture until you move elsewhere, but then you notice it hard. i moved from the Northeastern megalopolis to Colorado--different areas, different cultures, but both are American cultures. i guarantee any American that if they left the country entirely and went to live in another country for a while, they would start to realize what pieces of culture they no longer encountered, both in quintessentially “American” things and in quintessentially “my region of America” things.

[whetstonefires]

Mostly via Hollywood, America has also followed Britain in the tradition of casually exporting its culture so extensively that pieces of it become...internationally cosmopolitan, as it were, which further complicates the process of identifying 'American culture' as such but still doesn't actually unmake it.

Oh also, complement to the casual generosity thing: while the details of this practice vary a lot regionally, a great way to communicate to an American that you don't like them and are refusing to be their friend/friendly is to politely decline whenever they offer to do you a small favor, like grabbing you a drink or giving you a ride on their way to somewhere.

It doesn't matter how nice you are about it or how cordially you act in general, if you say 'no' to all offers over time without at least coming up with an equally easily fulfilled counter-offer to one of them, you are cutting your American acquaintance dead. Depending on how sensitive they are and why they were trying to bond with you, a grudge may even result, and you may be labeled 'fake' or 'cold' or 'a snob' or some similar thing.

It's permissible and even welcome to later reciprocate such offers in kind, but settling them in money or even being too anxious to balance the scales exactly communicates the desire to keep things impersonal. Unpaid debts that are never called in is how you know your friends.

[fantastic-nonsense]

Also, in terms of more tangibly visible aspects of American culture that you don't normally think about but are definitely American:

Music: Jazz, Hip-Hop, Rap, Country, and Blues are all inherently American music styles that have spread worldwide

Religion: many of the various major Protestant Christian denominations that exist were founded in the United States. Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Quakers, the AME and other African American churches....you just do not get the same Vibe™ anywhere else. The history of Christian evangelism/evangelical churches is embedded in our culture. The American South is called "The Bible Belt" for a reason, and that reason is the existence of a particular unique culture that gets exported elsewhere.

Also...Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. Both are "fringe" but largely inescapable parts of American culture.

Architecture: Art Deco, skyscrapers, the concept of American suburbia

Technology: the pervasiveness of Apple/Apple products as a cultural signifier of wealth and status

Clothing: wearing a baseball cap abroad is literally the easiest way to get identified as an American. Also, our 'casual clothes' culture compared to most other countries

Holidays and Traditions: Thanksgiving and Memorial Day are the two most notable holidays with unique cultural characteristics and traditions

Sports: American football and baseball, but also "regional" sports like ice hockey, rodeos, and lacrosse....also, frankly, the way that sports and sports teams are integrated into the school system. That's largely unique to United States culture. The concept of Homecoming straight-up doesn't exist in most other countries. Related: the Kentucky Derby and horse racing as social events, golfing as a part of American business culture

Literature and Media: Disney, caped/masked superheroes, the Transcendentalist movement, Slavery narratives, the Beat Generation, late-night talk shows

Other general pieces of American culture: driving at 16, high school prom, car and driving culture, volunteerism, gun and hunting culture, and our weird cultural relationship with alcohol and drugs due to the history of the Prohibition movement and the War on Drugs

It's important to realize that it's often difficult to see a culture when you grow up in it and doubly difficult when your country is a culture exporter (sometimes in the name of cultural imperialism, sometimes in the name of making money, and sometimes by complete coincidence). But the United States definitely has a (or a series of) culture(s), and it is in many ways a sign of American exceptionalism to pretend we don't.