la dernière rose d’été...

she/her | anime of various sorts | original music | transgender and proud of it

[bluegrasshole]

like i just can’t. 12 kids in a one-room cabin in tennessee, listened to her mom who sang folk songs while working, started singing in church at 6 years old, released her first single at 13, became so wildly loved and famous and rich and still at every turn found ways to give to the poor, the undereducated, gave away so much wealth she made tangible change in the economy. books, covid vaccines, theme park… sang about women’s rights (and wrongs), sang about worker’s rights, sang about poor people, sang about love. collabed with so many incredible artists. acted in movies, received death threats for being accepting of trans people. never fucking missed. all while being the sparkliest, pinkest, blondest, giggliest. unapologetically

[bluegrasshole]

with a killer rack

[steamandcream]

thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.

[steamandcream]

sorry to put your tags on blast on this insane breach containment post I have since muted, but you're right and you should say it.

It is defeatable. Go for the throat.

[becomedog]

“…in lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to be made to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library” [source: Us]

In a lifetime of amazing creations, this program has gifted over 330 million books to kids.

Contribute here in her honor: imaginationlibrary.com

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free books to children from birth until they begin school in partici

[cyggiestardust]

0/250

The other day I got mail from the disability office. Unfortunately, it was a denial, and I have to start the process over. More doctors, more diagnostic nonsense, more fighting.

Meanwhile I have to survive while I do it. I have a food stamp application in, and an attempt to contact LIHEAP was made regarding the electric bill--not only was there no answer to the call, not even an automated one, but the line didn't even ring before disconnecting entirely, leaving me to ponder this $90 bill. The Walmart+ is also up--it prevents grocery delivery from running me into the ground. That one's 49 and also emergent

I'm doing what I can in the meantime, but every little bit helps.

Links:

https://cash.app/$CyggieStardust1

https://www.paypal.me/CyggieStardust

I signed paperwork yesterday getting a new lawyer, fingers crossed.

[thewingedwolf]

couples tend to follow each other into the grave and you could always tell dolly parton loved the hell out of her husband carl so it’s not surprising that she’s passed considering he died last year but wow. what a titan. one of those people i thought would live forever. the things she did to help literacy in this country are literally measurable in the thousands and thousands she spent donating books to poor schools and encouraging literacy in rural areas but is also completely immeasurable. she truly was larger than life.

[tankie-transfeminist]

Suicide is not some natural or expected outcome of transfeminine existence. It is an engineered outcome caused by transmisogyny. Every time a transfem kills herself, her death is a murder and part of genocide and it should make you absolutely livid.

[pealeii]

❌ “friends don’t look at friends like that” devalues friendship/platonic forms of love, pushes amatonormativity

❌ “historians will call them friends” devalues historians and forces complex relationships into modern simplicities, also devalues friendship/platonic forms of love

✅ “do they know its legal now” suggests the characters are stupid, poorly suggests that this is the only barrier to their relationship—both of which are funny as hell

[no-longer-another-bondi-blonde]

In 1990, the high school dropout rate for Dolly Parton's hometown of Sevierville Tennessee was at 34% (Research shows that most kids make up their minds in fifth/sixth grade not to graduate). That year, all fifth and sixth graders from Sevierville were invited by Parton to attend an assembly at Dollywood. They were asked to pick a buddy, and if both students completed high school, Dolly Parton would personally hand them each a $500 check on their graduation day. As a result, the dropout rate for those classes fell to 6%, and has generally retained that average to this day.

Shortly after the success of The Buddy Program, Parton learned in dealing with teachers from the school district that problems in education often begin during first grade when kids are at different developmental levels. That year The Dollywood Foundation paid the salaries for additional teachers assistants in every first grade class for the next 2 years, under the agreement that if the program worked, the school system would effectively adopt and fund the program after the trial period.

During the same period, Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995: The idea being that children from her rural hometown and low-income families often start school at a disadvantage and as a result, will be unfairly compared to their peers for the rest of their lives, effectively encouraging them not to pursue higher education. The objective of the Imagination library was that every child in Sevier County would receive one book, every month, mailed and addressed to the child, from the day they were born until the day they started kindergarten, 100% free of charge. What began as a hometown initiative now serves children in all 50 states, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, mailing thousands of free books to children around the world monthly.

On March 1, 2018 Parton donated her 100 millionth book at the Library of Congress: a copy of "Coat of Many Colors" dedicated to her father, who never learned to read or write.

[transguyarchive]

Excerpt from Lou Sullivan's FTM newsletter, December 1990.

[owlsoap]

99 inch nails: I wanna fuck you like a luftballoon

[destinationtoast]

My grandmother just had incision-less brain surgery (using an MRI to guide ultrasound rays), and in 90 minutes they mostly cured the tremor that's been stopping her from writing, playing music, or doing any of her other hobbies for the past 20 years (and has often made eating and drinking a royal pain).

I know so much is hard and scary right now. But we also live in a time of some astonishing, miraculous things.

[teaboot]

Okay okay okay so while we're talking about censorship:

When you say something is too evil for words, what you're saying that if you HAVE words, then it isn't really evil.

When I was a kid, people didn't like talking about child abuse. Because child abuse is evil and fucked up and horrific, and extreme, and it destroys people, and ruins your life forever, and the people who abuse children are irredeemable monsters and it's always immediately obvious to see because there is all this visible evidence of it happening.

So when I got a slap, and I was told, "that was nothing. Look, there isn't a bruise, you're fine. This is normal." I believed it.

And when I went to school with greasy hair and clothes that didn't fit, that wasn't a symptom of anything. It wasn't like I had a black eye.

And when I was home alone with the children for hours and hours, that wasn't abuse. That wasn't a bloody nose.

Real abuse was worse. Real abuse was unspeakable. And my life wasn't unspeakable. My life was cooking spaghetti for six and washing the dishes for three hours before I was allowed to go to sleep and wake up and go to school and do it again tomorrow.

When we heighten taboo subjects to this elevated, special kind of evil, it's sort of like moving the goalposts for the people experiencing the harm as well.

I got smacked a bit, and pushed, and spanked, and my hair yanked around, but abuse leaves worse marks.

I was in charge of raising the kids, but parentification means paying the bills.

Neglect means having no food, and we just had small portions.

Absence means running off on a drunken bender, not just locking yourself in an office and leaving your daughter to take care of the baby.

Yall see what I'm getting at?

There's a lot of shitty things we can do to each other, but it's not special, or unspeakable.

Cause my parents weren't unspeakable. They were my parents. They loved me, and they were doing their best.

You feel me?

[roughkiss]

And IF something bad has happened to you as a kid and you know it is unspeakable, what does that mean about you? It makes you feel irreparably dirty is what. Like what is wrong with you is so bad nobody is allowed to talk about it, not even you.

[markovchaingang]

how it feels to start your email with "dear [name]":

how it feels to start your email with "hi [name]":

how it feels to start your email with "hello [name]":

[marlynnofmany]

How it feels to TRY to start your email with "hi," but typing "ho" instead:

[3k626ekful7ozxujar43keiw236in2h]

i was labelling stuff today and this lady scoffed at me and i was like hi and she was like writing with ur left hand is immoral. its 2014 and someone actually said that to my face

[sexyboitommo]

Writing with ur left hand is fine but having a URL like that is definitely not

[3k626ekful7ozxujar43keiw236in2h]

i can’t even argue w that tbh

[idontthinkineedaclevername]

@hellsite-hall-of-fame

[zweizilla98]

Yes, random Twitter doomer, you're so fucking right, bro. Democracy is dead dead, for realsies, cooked beyond repair, game over forever.

That's why the brave people of Minnesota stood by their family and neighbors against the ICE occupation, because they thought democracy was dead dead, right?

That's why Trump can't get his stupid fucking SAVE Act passed by his lackies, and every attempt to try and rig elections either by the regime or by MAGA state referendums trying to stack the deck in their favor are losing in court or are getting voted down by the actual public, because democracy is dead dead, right?

That's why Viktor Orban, the motherfucking blueprint for the authoritarianism MAGA aspires to emulate, lost in a landslide election after spending sixteen years carefully consolidating power around his regime, and now has to watch everything he built get torn down and dismantled, because democracy as a concept is dead dead, right?

Listen.

Listen to me.

You wanna get real? Here's the truth: the truth is for the over 250 years that this country has been in existence, only just about nearly 60 of it has been spent under what one could concieve as a moderately fair and open democracy, and EVEN NOW it's still not fucking really fair because of gerrymandering and outdated representation methods that leave millions of Americans without proper representation.

But you know what? Democracy is a constant fucking struggle. Fighting for a fair and just world is a constant, neverending struggle.

The Black Americans who fought and fucking died to free themselves from the chains of chattel slavery understood this. Their children and grandchildren who fought and fucking died to overthrow the oppressive veil of Jim Crow to fight for basic fucking decency understood this. The women who fought and fucking dies for THEIR right to vote and for basic fucking decency understood this.

They faced significantly harsher odds than you fucking did, Twitter doomer, and they didn't die so that your ass can just casually post about how we're all cooked on your favorite little Nazi website because it frees you of any consequence.

We're all in this together, bro. So log off, go find courage, and then take my hand so we can build a better world together. Asshole.

[yallstar]

SCREAMING my mom just called out of the blue to be like "hey have you ever read fahrenheit 451?? it's so good!!" and i was surprised she hadn't read it before but we chatted a little about the book and then at one point she goes "yeah i just never got around to it bc i didn't really like star trek" which of course had me going "huh?" followed quickly by "mom. mom do you think gene roddenberry wrote farenheit 451 or that ray bradbury created star trek." and after a veeeeery long silence she says, ".....this would explain some of the tonal differences"

[vantaviiolet]

2026 Major vs 1995 Major

[tamara-kama]

IDK.. I think the 1995 Major was a bit more queer than implied here.. she joined with another being that I inhabiting a female cyber body but had a male inner and outer voice and then they basically jettisoned the male bits and kept the female stuff and her personality as the dominant one afterwards.. or at least that's how I see it..

[vantaviiolet]

I personally see 95 Major as very trans coded. The ghost and shell stuff could be read as a trans person's desire to have a lesser disconnect between their physical body (in the gender dysphoria sense) and their inner self. I am glad someone else pointed out that 95 Major is still very much queer in the subtext.

[karinta-agogobell-unified]

(also people always forget about SAC, where she's kinda both)