Think of the total number of humans you've interacted with.
Think of the total number of humans you've interacted with in such a way that either their genitals or yours were involved in those interactions.
No matter how much sex you have had, the second number will still be much smaller than the first one.
It is absolutely buckwild to me that people feel entitled to this information about total strangers.
Why do they care?
When I was growing up it was completely normalised that everyone knew whether you were a boy/man or girl/woman, but that's because I'm older than most people here and grew up at a time when inflexible gender based hierarchies were only rarely questioned.
Unless you are:
seriously contemplating an interaction with someone that you hope would involve genital contact
directly and immediately involved in planning someone's medical treatment for a condition in which this might be important
this information is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.
Outside of these situations, anyone who is determined to know more than your pronouns and other preferred forms of address and doesn't care whether the question makes you uncomfortable is a person who thinks this affects how well, and in what way, they should treat you.
That's a May Day in Moscow red flag warning.
If you find that not knowing someone's assigned sex at birth or genital configuration makes you uncomfortable even if you have never met them in person and/or rarely spend time in each other's company, that's a you problem and you need to figure it out.
It's fine by me if you don't want to fuck someone who does (or doesn't) have a penis, but if you can't stand being in the same room with someone without knowing whether they have a penis or not, you might benefit from some help thinking that through.
There are people who are paid to do this. Don't make your trans friends do it.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
At the time of Creation, Gabriel was as enthusiastic about the new project as any other angel. By the time of Armageddon, he'd changed. It took a memory wipe to remind him of what he'd lost and all that had happened in between.
AKA the "Gabriel wasn't always a dick" fic.
The Night That Changed an Angel (or, why does Aziraphale still wear that shabby vest?)
Mini-Meta Musing (#4)
I've been brooding for a long time about, of all things, Aziraphale's worn velvet vest and the long cream jacket he's kept in "tip top condition for over 180 years now." I love the sweet familiarity, but this is the same angel who popped across the Channel and almost lost his fluffy-topped head in 1793 for dressing like an aristocrat.
"I have standards!"
He's the height of elegance, extravagance even. A dandy. We've seen the same at the Globe Theater 1601, Edinburgh 1827, and even as a Knight of the Round Table in 527 Essex, where he's wearing a glorious pelt across his shoulders! However, sometime after Edinburgh 1827, Aziraphale's stylish extravagance ends. He adopts the dress of distinguished but modest gentility. No seamstresses strain their eyes for days hand stitching ruffles and trims for him any longer. When we next see him in 1862, his clothing is refined, simple, and serviceable. It becomes his uniform, with only minor replacements. Why? What happened to change him?
Edinburgh 1827 happened. And his encounter with tragedy ran over his sensibilities like a locomotive.
Aziraphale had, we were told, saved his earnings over time and had bought land, invested wisely, and became quite well off. He used real money, not miracles, to build the bookshop, paying the builders well and taking care of bills honestly. He built himself up to a more than comfortable lifestyle, from nearly nothing. And his clothes are real, not miracled from nothingness like Crowley's. (source: original showrunner)
Aziraphale's wealth allows him to afford luxurious tailoring and fancy shoes and ruffles and trims. He'll certainly pay the cobblers and tailors and seamstresses well for their labors. It will be a substantial expense for the era. (The linked post gives a wonderful perspective on 1793 lifestyles and costs.)
The angel's Edinburgh multilayered and trimmed top coat, soft leather gloves, matching scarf, jacquard vest, silk cravat, etc., look entirely out of place in the back alleys where the poor huddle. Walking the clean, gas-lit avenues with Crowley and Elspeth, Aziraphale is oblivious to the privilege he has in this world.
As he strolls along in philosophical banter with Crowley about the "blessing" of poverty, the angel spouts trite pontifications created by the rich to justify poverty. He genuinely believes Elspeth has more opportunities for goodness. After all, look at Wee Morag. He respects her goodness tremendously. It proves to him his ârightness.â And so he sabotages Elspethâs attempt to sell the body she dug up in her attempt to support Wee Morag. Dalrymple gets no body, Elspeth gets no money, and Aziraphale believes heâs saving her soul.
Itâs a poignant moment, though, when Aziraphale cradles the jar containing a tumor from a seven year old child who died because there wasnât enough medical knowledge to save him. Turning point number one. It becomes Real, not a philosophical debate. Selling stolen bodies puts good in the world. Heâs all for it now, and goes back to encourage Elspeth. Good heavens, heâs even willing to help this time!
But, as we know, it all goes wrong. Wee Morag is shot by a grave gun, and dies of her injuries. Elspeth steals laudanum, and plans suicide. Crowley drinks the laudanum, saves her in a compassionate Scottish frenzy, and is stolen away by hell because of his kindness.  And it is All. Aziriphaleâs. Fault.
Turning point number two. Another watershed moment where Aziraphaleâs world changes again.
One of Crowleyâs last earthly acts, before getting plunged into hell, is to have Aziraphale give Elspeth all of his pocket money. What is pocket money to the angel is a fortune to her, one that can set her up for a better life. I have no doubt that in the aftermath of the traumas of that night, missing and worrying about Crowley, Aziraphale thinks about all of this. He considers all of the money he casually spends on fine clothing and expensive tailoring. He wonders how many lives could change if that money was better spent on helping to relieve the poverty that surrounds him. He wants to help, and to try to make amends for the harm he caused. What would Crowley do, if he were free to be kind? And so Aziraphale changes.
Iâd love to know the story of how it all played out. Did he sell his fine clothing and donate the proceeds? Did he become involved in charitable foundations? Did he buy the clothing of a simple gentleman and decide to preserve it, however worn it became, as a reminder to himself of his past blindness and vanity? We see in Season 1 how important it is to him to preserve that coat. (Sure, it's also a fantastic opportunity to flirt and flutter those angelic eyelashes... But, nonetheless!)
By Season 2, the angel who took too long justifying a life-saving miracle for Wee Morag, and who hesitated to give Elspeth his 90 Guineas, willingly and freely gave Maggie forgiveness for thousands of pounds of debt. I'd love to know what else he's done over the last 180+ years!
Whatever happened, it began that night in a graveyard.
Iâm deciding it now. All shows, conventions and fairs should have a second smaller version of themselves within them. Yes academic conferences, yes comic conventions, yes state fairs, yes horse shows, yes whatever old guys are doing with old cars.
They all have to have a second smaller version of themselves like a model village
So one day a dwarf is talking to a human and finally realizes that when humans say woman, they generally mean âperson who is theoretically capable of childbirthâ because for whatever reason, humans assign social expectations based genital differences. (What a fucked up culture, the dwarf thinks.) But hey, better communication! So the next time the dwarf introduces theirself, they say, oh, by the way, I am what you call a âwoman.â
And the trade negotiations just stop. They just stop cold. The tall people insist on speaking to the man, they insist on talking to the lady dwarf about all sorts of irrelevant bullshit, like recipes and childrearing and perfume
so the dwarf goes back home, enraged
and is like âBTW guess what happened, weâre all just going to be men forever now as far as the tall ones are concernedâ
and everyone is justly horrified at this barbarism but they all agree to do whatever it takes to squeeze those tall bastards for all the resources they are worth
and the dwarves get surlier, and the trade agreements less generous
and the tall people are all âwhat a miserable and greedy raceâ
but really theyâre just still nursing a grudge about how goddamn backwards and sexist the tall people are
because their best negotiator, one of their sacred cave people, got snubbed the instant she said she was capable of childbirth - and a mortal insult like that can never be forgiven
#yes good #personal headcanon: dwarves have fundamentally misunderstood human pronoun usage #and gender roles #they are very perplexed by it #eventually they went âfuck it apparently âheâ is the correct wordâ #âitâs their language and they keep using it for usâ #so then you have this situation where dwarves are cognizant of the words âmotherâ and âwifeâ #but not the usual use of âsheâ secondary headcanon specific to Tolkien dwarves #dwarves that choose to bear children are held in high regard #because they are making new dwarves it is the ultimate craft #thatâs what mahal did you made a new person #it is very impressive #everyone is impressed
Just as an additional thought, we hear that women dwarves generally stay within the mountain and are a protected, guarded subset of the dwarves. Thereâs not many of them, so thereâs an implication that women dwarves are too precious to be allowed out.
But what if this too is a mistranslation? What if the dwarves were talking to the Men and when asked âwhere are all your women?â they hit a wall. They whisper amongst themselves, and eventually come back with a question, âWhatâs a woman?â The Men are incredulous.
âWhy, the members of your race that bear children, of course!âÂ
More dwarven whispering.
They reach the conclusion that Men mean dwarves who are currently pregnant. Well! Of course those dwarves are currently safe within the mountain, well cared for and generally loathe to travel until the child is born. The Men take this to mean that all dwarven women are discouraged from traveling, and that their primary purpose is childbearing. Dwarves find this a satisfactory outcome, especially with the way Men treat their women, and so even when the misunderstanding becomes clear to them they never correct it.
This kinda implies that making a child and raising a child are considered two different crafts if heâs going back to adventuring after just one year. Same as how some might specialize in refining raw material, while others make things out of the stuff that has already been refined to some extent.
Iâm picturing a Childcrafterâs Guild whose craft consists of raising children to such an age that they might start an apprenticeship, and finding suitable mentors to introduce the children to. They also advise and assist any of their people who are attempting such a project on their own and provide classes as needed. Nothing good comes of anyone attempting a complex craft without proper instruction after all.
Since children are seen as something of a communal project the concept of âparentsâ is another one that doesnât have a clear translation into dwarven culture. Eventually they figure out that while the literal translation is âthe one who brought you into the worldâ, functionally itâs used to refer to a relationship similar to that of Master and Apprentice, except for some strange reason that relationship is assigned at birth with no attempt made at checking for compatibility.
Janet Kagan's Mirable: a colony world so short-handed, they developed a a concept very like that to give kids the best upbringing and so that specialists in other fields could keep working in them.
died & came back & it's creeping people out how well-adjusted I am now? everyone's on eggshells waiting for something terrible to happen. honestly i feel terrific
@cleverthylacine Also the idea that Kirk chased everything in a skirt, when he mainly did that when he was a prisoner or otherwise needed to manipulate the enemy.
It is really important to me that all of you learn about Al Bean, astronaut on Apollo 12 and the fourth man to walk on the moon, who after 20 years in the US Navy and 18 years with NASA during which he spent 69 days in space and more than 10 hours doing EVAs on the moon , retired to become a painter.
He is my favorite astronaut for any number of reasons, but heâs also one of my favorite visual artists.
Like, look at this stuff????
Itâs all so expressive and textured and colorful! He literally painted his own experience on the moon! And that's just really fucking cool to me!
Just look at this! This is one of my absolute favorite emotions of all time. Is Anyone Out There? is like the ultimate reaction image. Any time I have an existential crisis, this is how I picture myself.
And then there's this one:
The Fantasy
For all of the six Apollo missions to land on the moon, there was no spare time. Every second of their time on the surface was budgeted to perfection: sleeping, eating, putting on the suits, entering and exiting the LEM, rock collection, setting up longterm experiments to transmit data back to Earth, everything. These timetables usually got screwed over by something, but for the most part the astronauts stuck to them.
The crew of Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Al Bean, and Dick Gordon) had other plans. Conrad and Bean had snuck a small camera with a timer into the LEM to take a couple pictures together on the moon throughout the mission. They had hidden the key for the timer in one of the rock collection bags, with the idea being to grab the key soon after landing, take some fun photos here and there, and then sneak the camera back to Earth to develop them. They had practiced where they would hide the key and how to get it out from under the collected rocks back on Earth dozens of times.
But when they got to the moon, the key was nowhere to be found. Al Bean spent precious time digging through the collection bags before he called it off. The camera had been pushing their luck anyways, he couldn't afford to spend anymore time not on the mission objectives. Conrad and Bean continued the mission as per the NASA plan while Dick Gordon orbited overhead.
Fast forward to the very end of the mission. Bean and Conrad are doing last checks of the LEM before they enter for the last time and depart from the moon. As Bean is stowing one of the collection bags, the camera key falls out. The unofficially planned photo time has come and gone, and he tosses the key over his shoulder to rest forever on the surface of the moon.
This painting, The Fantasy, is that moment. There have never been three people on the moon at the same time, there was never an unofficial photo shoot on the moon, this picture could never have happened.
"The most experienced astronaut was designated commander, in charge of all aspects of the mission, including flying the lunar module. Prudent thinking suggested that the next-most-experienced crew member be assigned to take care of the command module, since it was our only way back home. Pete had flown two Gemini flights, the second with Dick as his crewmate. This left the least experienced - me - to accompany the commander on the lunar surface.
"I was the rookie. I had not flown at all; yet I got the prize assignment. But not once during the three years of training which preceded our mission did Dick say that it wasn't fair and that he wished he could walk on the moon, too. I do not have his unwavering discipline or strength of character.
"We often fantasized about Dick's joining us on the moon but we never found a way. In my paintings, though, I can have it my way. Now, at last, our best friend has come the last sixty miles." - Al Bean, about The Fantasy.
This is a common misconception because theyâre such similar environments, but you should be aware that dads are native to Home Depot, while lesbians are actually native to Loweâs. At this point, however, both dads and lesbians have made themselves at home in both Home Depot and Loweâs to the point that trying to separate them back into their original ranges would probably do more harm than good to the delicate ecosystem of large chain hardware stores.
A properly raised and socialized Dad will be perfectly comfortable cohabiting with Lesbians. Its not really âencroaching on anotherâs territoryâ. You wouldnât say that about foxes in a forest that also homes bobcats, would you? No. Itâs just two different species that have both evolved to live in similar/the same environment. As long as they recognize each other as equals, Dads and Lesbians are more than capable of cohabitation.
Now, if you were to release a pack of Lumberjacks into a Lowes or Home Depot, thatâs where chaos will reign. Being adapted to a far harsher and more demanding environment, the Lumberjacks would simply push Dads and Lesbians both out and also consume far more than a sustainable amount of resources. It would be like releasing bears at a country club.
As a former timber-harvester⊠I feel this is potentially accurate in theory. But highly improbable in actuality.
Lumberjacks, like most megafauna species generally require more space than the average hardware store, even a big box store could provide. The misconception is that Lumberjacks are a social species because of how they often work and live together.
This is a matter of necessity, not preference, and a survival technique for thriving under the LogBoss.
A âpackâ of Lumberjacks, if not under the environmental pressure of a LogBoss will naturally disperse until they each have a wide territory.
Lumberjacks rarely fight for territory.
One on one, a Lumberjack could drive out a Dad or Lesbian, however the latter tend to travel in social packs.
Lumberjacks will passively retreat on the presence of large numbers of people. Kind of like Sasquatch.
Getting a âpackâ of Lumberjacks assembled would be hard enough unless they were forced into a Hardware Store by a LogBoss. In that case, they would already be in a heightened and potentially agitated state far above their natural behavior. This artificial scenario can be likened to a circus animal running amok. If it had been in the wild, the incident would not have occurred.
Free-roaming Lumberjacks are the cryptids of the Hardware ecosystem. They are surprisingly quiet and unobtrusive.
Please stop labeling Lumberjacks as dangerous roving social predators. They are intermediate level omnivores and remarkably peaceful unless threatened.
question where does the âart studentâ or âDIYerâ âcrafterâ or âsoap makerâ or âminiaturistâ etc. who has ventured into the store for supplies fall into the ecosystem/what is their impact of said ecosystem?
Most of the above are native to craft and hobby stores (art students, historically, are native to museums, but having been introduced to hobby stores, have found a niche for themselves and thrived), but all can be seen in hardware stores on occasion due to territorial overlap. They are generally low-impact, as they tend to stick to specific small areas and primarily utilize different resources. While a large group of any of them can be disruptive (art students, in particular, are known to travel in packs), in general, they are more likely to have territorial disputes with one another than with the local fauna.Â
A point of clarity -âcrafterâ is a bit misleading; while it conjures a specific image, much like âfishâ or âreptileâ it actually covers a broad array of wildly disparate species, and in general, more descriptive nomenclature is preferred. Fiber artists in particular are a genus to watch out for, particularly in groups. Beware a roving pack of domesticated quilters. They fear nothing, will go anywhere, and due to their social nature, will often seek interaction from other species that thrive best in solitude. They are quite friendly, and will happily adopt members of other species; the concern is that their adoptees do not always wish to be adopted.Â
I can say as a former craft store worker that if you wish to see true fear, look into the eyes of a Dad who must venture into a craft store. Despite the overlap of familiar beings known to him from his native hardware store habitat, Dads are instinctively aware that craft stores are not for them; they contain unfamiliar perils and even the seemingly familiar may have strange variances and unnerving secrets. (âWhy is this airbrush so small? What do you mean nails, why would you⊠WUT!!â)
Only experienced silverbacks or the boldest young Dads dare venture into a craft store for long without his mate or offspring to keep roving Craft Ladies at bay and guide him in this strange ecosystem. If a Dad enters with his mate and is separated from her, he will often scuttle for the seeming familiarity of Woodcrafts, Models, or Paints (the latter not to be confused with Fine Arts, unquestioned territory of art students), but he eyes Scrapbooking and Jewelry with trepidation and will usually venture into those exotic areas only in the company of females of his pack.
Lumberjacks are rarely spotted entering craft stores of their own volition, for while they do not fear it as Dads do, they know it is an environment unsuited for megafauna such as themselves.
Hardware store Lesbians generally adapt more easily to craft stores, although they may enlist another Lesbian of a subspecies more adapted to that environment to guide them until they find their niche. Lesbians have even been known to seek the aid of a Craft Lady, a native fauna that share similarities with Lesbians but are usually smaller and nimbler to suit their chosen habitat. Dads who witness this are often awed by the Lesbiansâ temerity, for although larger, Dads are generally wary of the cunning and dexterous Craft Ladies and may mistake their enthusiastic pack greetings as predatory swarming.
Craft Ladies, secure in their ecological niche, have no fear of interlopers and take the presence of non-native beings in stride, although they may become territorial about scarcer resources.
The only truly invasive species that threaten craft stores are Brides-to-Be, who are mere annoyances individually, but like locusts may descend in hordes and lay waste, leaving swathes of destruction in their wake. Fortunately for the Craft Ladies, Brides-to-Be are seasonal and usually only a threat in the spring and early summer.
Is anybody going to address the newly invasive species of BuJo enthusiasts into the craft store/art supply store environment? Why arenât we talking about the dangerous proliferation of Leuchtturm 1917s and the growing threat of Dotted Moleskins? I had to liberate a Dad from a tangle of washi tape in the art supply store the other day and it wasnât pretty.
The natural habitat of journalers was stationary stores, which have been replaced by office supplies stores, not the same. Journalers invade the craft stores and art supplies stores to get the markers and washi tape and Sakura pens they require for survival.
Another thing to note is all of those habitats must adapt to the seasonal migration of goths. As soon as the faintest hint of spooky can be detected at those stores, goths will arrive in packs. A small pack of goths determined to forage can strip the shelves of a seasonal section bare in 30 minutes.
Asexuals rove Ace Hardware (obviously) and keep fair distance from Home Depot and Lowes. While the presence of Dads is alluring, the threat of both Lumberjacks and Lesbians will keep Asexuals away. Asexuals may be able to coexist with one or the other but rarely both at the same time. Grandpas also rove Ace Hardware and will occasionally adopt an Asexual in an attempt to find mates for their own descendants but since this is a rare occurrence, the Asexuals are never completely driven away by this small population of Grandpas. Most of the Grandpas are simply knowledge sharers and Asexuals in particular are easily drawn towards sources of great knowledge. When the Grandpas convene to share knowledge with each other, Asexuals can be found close by, siphoning off as much knowledge as possible before being discovered by the Grandpas. If discovered by a group of Grandpas, the Asexual risks being adopted.
And then there are the Grandmas - they hang out in indie yarn shops, especially the ones that are the yarn equivalent of cryptid Soho bookshops: primarily a place to store the collection, not sell it. You are assumed to have your own stash at home.
They also get hilariously more into the process when you're doing it as an adult-- I had my moment of "I'm a grown up now which means I CAN go to Build-A-Bear if I want to" and they got very into the whole "put a heart into it" bit with me.
"i had straight As in high school i don't understand why college is so hard" get tested for adhd. if you were tested as a kid and they didn't diagnose you it was cause your grades were good then but you've since lost the routine and structure in hs that kept you on top of everything so go get retested. go get tested for adhd. go
coworker was telling me he did great in high school until his covid/senior year and it went to shit and now it's been several years and he wants to apply for college but he's on his own and frozen up with all the paperwork and doesn't wanna keep working retail but it's so easy (routine. structure) and i said. you need to try speed. and then you need to go get retested
"all my brothers were diagnosed with adhd but i wasn't" because they struggled with classwork and you didn't and that's all that child psychologists give a shit about because they don't understand that children can have good grades and still have adhd. k-12 and college are different worlds go get tested
i also don't really believe that tidiness = no adhd especially if you follow up "i'm really neat" with "i'll start fuckin tweaking if i think there's any dirt anywhere in my room" now. brother i'm not going to try to unpack that on you today but i think you should tell a psychologist that in those exact words
Relevant to that last one, "My options are either rigid tidiness and obsessive organization or devolving into complete chaos" is a sign.
Additionally if you were not getting grades in high school that "lived up to your potential" but thrived in college, consider that in college you get to choose almost everything you study which...makes it a lot easier to focus on classes. And also living away from family can allow you to build your own structures if you happened to be raised by people who were not great at providing you structure (or really great at disrupting any attempts at it) previously. Get tested!
I did my HS calculus homework during roll call. Study? Whatâs that? Did not do well in college - due to an administrative screwup, I didnât get any classes in my major (software engineering) my first semester. Did very well in Silicon Valley, which runs on ADHD hyperfocus. (Also, female)
The sound of ineffability @jamoche - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
