Just a blog with random interesting shit - features GoT, Teen Wolf, 90ies stuff aka my childhood, food, some serious rl stuff and long periods of silence followed by a shit-ton of posts in the same day
Trans men are asking to be included in discussions about abortion access, where they, transmascs, and enbies (particularly if they're racialised) are THE most vulnerable group.
Trans men from the global south are talking about their specific vulnerabilities and the horrific violence they face.
Trans men are asking the rest of the community to please care more about the fact that their hormones are a controlled drug and their identities are already on a controlled drug registry that can be very easily cross-referenced with agab to Pick Out The Trannies.
Trans men are talking about how TMOC have been targeted for sexual & physical harrassment because of their transmasculinitiy in detention centres.
Trans men are asking the queer community to stop claiming they have made 'no historical contributions' when 1) they have, and 2) they have been violently erased, institutionalised, and forced into marriage throughout history, and even those lucky few who went stealth were often discovered through forcible outing.
Trans men are begging the queer community to stop spreading transphobic lies that predatorjacket them as dangerous, violent rapists.
Trans men are mentioning that they are often ENTIRELY banned from playing on men's OR women's high-level sport teams, because those teams are allowed to 'make their own decisions' on whether to permit them while using a banned steroid, which usually, you guessed it, means they can't compete.
If you wanna call me a Trans Men's Rights Activist because I care about the rights of trans men, along with every other member of the trans community... go right ahead, I guess.
Following the post, I reposted on Transmasc people and trans men being erased inside our communities. A lot of people seem to not understand a lot of us still live with traumas from when we were still a woman. I may look like this now
But I still feel like the tiny 45kg woman I once was. I still have the fear of men when I walk even tho I myself am masc presenting. No amount of hormones can take away the trauma of being sexually assaulted at 8 years old. It can't undo the two decades worth of being raised as a girl, a woman just because when I started testosterone I changed so quickly.
This was me at 17 to 19
Some days, I'm back being this in my own head. I love who I once was, and I will never be ashamed of her. She is a part of me, who I was for 20 years. But my body was also actively failing me.
Transitioning not only helped me mentally but physically stopped my muscle decay and getting hospitalised it actually is my treatment for my graves disease outside of gender affirmating care. I went from 45Kg to nearly 90Kg in only a 3 months before finally evening out. But some days, I'm still that terrified girl.
I lived through girlhood and womanhood.
I lived through being sexually Abused as an 8 year old girl
I lived through horrifying painful periods from the age of 12
I graduated from school as a young woman.
I spent 2 years in limbo after my mother passed because I was taken off testosterone, and my body declined horrifically. The photos up top are only from December till now I have only been back on Testosterone since August.
Yes, I present as a man now, but I was still raised as a girl by an amazing woman who told me not to hide who I was. And I will never hide my photos because that girl and that young woman went through hell for me to be the man I am today.
And I refuse to be ashamed to talk about my past as a woman.
Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):
“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.
“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.
“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.
“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”
“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”
“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.
peak internet security performance is 99% of websites think im a bot and google recaptcha won't let me make purchases on most websites because im on a vpn with firefox cookie sandboxing + anti browser fingerprinting + randomised user agent strings. the internet is so hostile to you having any privacy.
Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.
There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.
Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.
I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.
—
I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
things that would exist if intellectual property wasn't a thing
so much cheap generic medication. reverse engineering compounds would be even more financially profitable.
fewer people dead of vaccine preventable illnesses in the global south bc the greatest barrier to distributing some vaccines like hpv is their ip
plant seeds and grafts that come from the plants instead of licensing them. don't invest so much in preventing cross contamination. more localised experimental breeding.
library of the world: every book and journal article in the world could be digitised and be searchable for every person in the world to read regardless of where they live. cheap reprint runs and local translations everywhere.
an online interface where every citation could actually lead to the text in question
freedom from the hell that is DRM software
everytime someone reverse engineered your shitty proprietary software we would all be freed from it instead of them getting DMCA'd
so much hardware would be opened up & therefore made so much cooler.
so many more songs that riff off and sample and interpolate shit from this decade instead of like 70 years ago and more analysis of music that didn't keep getting nuked off the internet
preserving movies and tv shows and games as long as someone, somewhere has the desire to host them
just go publish your fanfic/art/vid as is instead of all us pretending it isn't fanwork or begging the corporation for mercy / licensing
a world without ip lawyers. im getting chills just imagining it.
today i rang up a customer at work for $13.36 and i said with such genuine cheer "uh-oh! two years before the plague hit England, if anyone cares!" and i watched the customer's eyes as they were clearly taken aback and then tried to pretend to be interested at all. they made such a valiant effort. they were like I don't wanna damper this guy's plague enthusiasm. They said, very awkwardly, "haha, uh-oh!"
Forever jealous of the Merlin cast. Imagine being in your 20s in the 2000s and your life consists of getting paid to do medieval larping, while surrounded by only attractive people.
Average isn't useful here. however, after a little bit of research, apparently the median income in the US is $24,327, which means the reality is actually much worse than this meme makes it seem. yay!
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