just a reminder that this blog supports trans women, trans men, and nonbinary people!
your pronouns and presentation are not up to anyone else, and all that matters is whether or not they make you happier than the alternative. no matter how you present yourself, I'm here to tell you that I'm proud of you, and you belong here.
whether your labels are general umbrella labels or hyperspecific labels or a large mix of labels, I support you, and I'm proud of you.
here's to all of my siblings, mentors, and elders in the community! thank you for being here, and thank you for being you. 🎉
If the trash pickup people stop doing their job for two weeks you'd be throwing a fucking tantrum. Same for the janitors who keep your office spaces and bathrooms clean. (And that's before the various illnesses start to spread all over your city from the build up of pathogens.)
The people responsible keeping our spaces clean (and thus, mostly disease-free) should both be paid more AND thanked more.
As funny as it is that rocky sees grace and complains about grace and humans in general as a terribly inefficient blob of water and fluids and teases constantly...
I REALLY think this should be a relatively rocky-exclusive perspective. He's watched this incredibly stressed human drip all kinds of tears and goos while they were floating around in space, and grace let down basically all of his guard around rocky personally, have discussed and understood eachother over life threatening missions. To Rocky, grace is Grace!
But grace does have some naturally combative push to him (see, the commentary that got him stonewalled in the scientific community in the first place, and being able to keep up with and handle Eva stratt) and further more, when an eridian is Not Rocky, i.e. not incredibly socially withdrawn and traumatized and maybe on their own spectrum of divergence before his ill fated mission and was very susceptible to latching onto a strange and unusual creature in just as much crisis as him...
That is to say. The eridians are going to meet grace with wildly different priorities and expectations. And what they're going to get is a human dangerously close to deaths door, and cornered and dying humans aren't always the most friendly or cooperative and friendly, even the Nicest Humans You Can Get.
So they get a dying human. And as tumblr loves to say, humans are terrifying to aliens, and fuck do they persist. Rocky's so-described "pathetic space blob" grace is terrifying to most eridians, especially the scientists studying him.
He drinks solvent and breaths combustion. Instead of simply dying when his body runs out of nutrients and calorie stores, it has begun to Digest Itself. His body is pumping chemicals they do not understand and every chemistry panel they run shows new levels of new chemicals and hormones. The human body replaces most of its cells constantly because even breathing, especially at a higher atmospheric pressure, is destroying their own lungs.
This thing "hears" things they cannot comprehend and he is unable to describe beyond "color" and "brightness" which are things you can not contextualize, and calls the strangest things beautiful. It has no entirely discernable traits you can understand ecologically as a predator- no armor, no weapons- and yet it eats meat and that is one of the many nutrients it needs to survive. You as a resident of erid do not have many creatures with "eyes" and so have no idea that the strongest mark of a predator is neither claw nor fang, but forward facing eyes, all the better to catch your prey, to meet a foe head on and fearless. You just know it "sees" and that it eats meat, and many other complicated things.
And in place of not receiving all those nutrients, it's body will litterally digest itself and keep going without them. Oh, this new chemical in it's latest blood panel allows it to ignore it's own pain to the point it won't realize it's injured. It can wake up from a dead sleep if you are too loud or too "brightness" around it. It speaks in an archaic graveling noise and is capable of imitating the strangest things, including a haunting near-vocalization of the eridani language of its own, which it calls "singing" and it does this at the strangest of times, when happy and when nervous. It is neither fast nor slow, but over time and observation, you realize this strange towering bipedal creature expends an entirely minimal amount of energy to walk, a process of controlled falling turned mobilization. You hypothesize that for lack of predatory weaponry like claws or sharp teeth, this thing simply evolved to follow you. To "see" you with it's forward facing eyes even in total stillness, total silence, and follow for as long as it takes: it won't spend much energy, and it won't starve waiting for you to exhaust. It'll start digesting *itself* while waiting for it's prey to lay down and have to sleep. It will "watch" you sleep with "eyes." You cannot wake up the way it can, and it will eventually catch up to you.
Also sometimes it cries excess amounts of saline rich solvent when you compliment it's latest research paper. Rocky calls him an idiot and the overseeing eridian scientists watch on with a sense of morbid eldrich horror. Right, right, just a "leaky space blob", sure.
They're kind of terrified of the future delegations with this planet. They litterally get to space by explosion. Not only are they scary- they're INSANE. And they're told the one they have is "a push over".
Listening to a person is more than responding to words. Its about hearing the things they don’t say, hearing the little voices that echo between their heart and their heads.
i hate the meme that nook is evil and greedy sm. he canonically donates 90% of the proceeds from his businese to an orphanage.
I…didn’t know that. I was more than willing to defend Tom Nook for his “loan” with 0 interest, no deadline and no pressure or need to pay, but I’m impressed he still makes cash somehow and just donates it, while maintaining his “slimy businessman” reputation like some sort of furry The Boss…
“Maybe I like looking trans "oh your voice is too deep" Maybe I like having a deep voice. Maybe I'm not your femme fantasy. Maybe I'm my own fantasy. I love looking trans. I fucking hope that when I walk down the street, they say, "look at that transsexual!" And just maybe someone will see me and think, "hey, I can live that way, too."”
point of reference from an able-bodied person: standing in one place for an hour kinda makes my feet/legs hurt. longer than that is when it really hits but it takes an hour to get there.
if you are in pain within minutes or seconds, that is not normal. that is a Symptom. poke your doctor into finding out what it is or connect with disabled and chronic pain groups.
if you are in extreme pain, not just "ugh my feet ache" pain but "i am going to pass out" pain, that is not normal. that is a Symptom. poke your doctor into finding out what it is or connect with disabled and chronic pain groups.
I know some people try to rationalize as "well it's not excruciating compared to my baseline" and I am gently reminding you that the baseline is zero. zero is normal. this ^ is not. be kind to yourself.
I love how everyone is still asking hey so my symptoms are actually symptoms? Even if I feel only x amount of pain after x amount of time? BUDDY THE NORM IS FEELING MILD DISCOMFORT AT MOST AFTER STANDING FOR AN HOUR AND THEY RECOVER WITHIN A FEW HOURS TO A DAY
Meanwhile document the actual effect the pain/etc has on your life. Document how it impacts your ability to cook; your ability to clean; your ability to clean yourself; your ability to sleep; your ability to work; document all attempts to be more active and how the pain interferes with them. If you have to do something other than just go stand in the kitchen for ~1hr to cook a meal, that's something to write down; if you have to choose not to have a shower because it'll hurt, write that down. If the pain prevents you from going for a walk, write that down.
Every single time you make a decision about what you're doing based on the pain, you document that; every time you have to endure the pain for a necessary activity which then impacts what ELSE you can do, write that down too, with a direct connection.
(Warning: this will probably be depressing as all fuck and you will probably hate it. You are almost certainly ignoring the impact of pain on you way more than you think you are, and having to face it will feel bad in the short run. Very bad.)
And then you bring it either to your new doctor or if you MUST, to your current doctor, and you say: this is how the pain currently affects my quality of life. This is what I would be doing if I weren't prevented from doing it because of the pain.
Say that you would like to find the reason for this pain and you would like them to order relevant diagnostic tests. If they refuse, or hem and haw, ask them to document clearly in your records that you requested this and both that they refuse and their reasons for refusing.
If you must deal with the same doctor, document the concerns you have with the weight-loss drugs, and ask your doctor to be explicit about why she thinks that these risks are worth something that does not directly address your actual concerns. Ask why this is their first line treatment for the rest of what you've described, and why they are more concerned with pushing an overprescribed treatment than actually investigating the cause of your pain and addressing it appropriately based on an evidence-based diagnosis.
This isn't a guarantee, but it's part of the process.
…. Also yes, I AM serious that you should be able to be in the kitchen for about an hour, on your feet and doing Cooking Things, without pain and without needing Recovery Time, in order to make yourself dinner and if you CAN’T - if that long results in Pain or Dramatic Fatigue or extended recovery - that is a Symptom. A big symptom.
A while ago, I started keeping a pain journal to log my chronic pain and other things, so that I could take it to my doctor’s appointments. I go into detail about it in this post if anyone is interested. My doctor is fantastic and actually listened to me and bothered to investigate my pain, but the pain journal was still a huge help in communicating my health issues clearly. I highly recommend logging your pain (and anything else you feel might be relevant).
Side note: I found the pain journal experience to be really enjoyable because I got to pull out my colorful pens and my cute stationery supplies and make something pretty every day. I decorated my notebook with stickers. I did have to face the way my pain was impacting me, but I got to do it in a fun and colorful way. It helped a lot.
HOLY SHIT GUYS, I WAS INSPIRED BY THIS POST TO TRY MAKE THE SONG AND YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE THE SCREAM I SCRUMPT WHEN I DRAGGED THE TRAINING AUDIO OVER THE BACKING TRACK AND IT LINED UP PERFECTLY
That last post I reblogged got me thinking again about how people can’t separate their idea of manhood from violence.
It’s like some people are capable of imagining womanhood without submission but can’t imagine manhood without dominance. Like for some reason in their minds women can escape their gender norms and make a new definition of what gender is for themselves but men can’t.
My cishet dad has often told me that he found feminist theory to be very freeing. It told him that yes men can be gentle and caring. Yes men can be sensitive. Being a man means what you want it to mean.
I’ve met other cishet men that feel the same way. I really do like talking with cis men about gender sometimes. You really see them become a lot happier when they fully internalize the idea that being a man means whatever they want it to mean.
You get told a lot as a man “real men do or don’t do xyz”. I’ve even experienced this as a trans man.
but the “real man” is an impossible standard to achieve. He doesn’t exist. He’s a mythical being to strive towards. You will never be him and trying to be him will trap you in a cage.
If you think that masculinity is a prison, what you need to realize is that the bars are unlocked and there are no guards. You’ve been talked into your cage like an elephant on a string and you can open the door at any time.
And if you’re into women and worried about what women will think if you’re not “manly enough”, my question to you is, why would you settle for someone who wants to talk you back into your cage?
The editing of this video is hysterical and genius- they switch between so many editing styles to reflect exactly what kind of thing they're going for in each segment its GREAT.
A HANDY CHART FOR THOSE OF YOU WONDERING WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THESE. NOTE THAT THESE ARE ALL THE INFORMAL AND YOU IS THE FORMAL SO LIKE YOU WOULD ALWAYS ADDRESS YOUR SUPERIOR/ OLDER PERSON/ SOCIAL BETTER WITH YOU BUT WITH YOUR BUDS YOU CAN USE THESE.
I’m a big fan of reenactment archaeology. I think there’s a lot to be said for recreating a scenario to better understand decisions made in generations past. Usually there’s an inherent logic to them.
Which is to say, that now that I have a baby of my own, I understand so much better the common cultural practice in which unmarried women wear their hair loose and uncovered, while married women have their hair covered and/or bound back.
I doubt it was just for modesty, oh no. No, my friends, I see now that the reason for this common practice of mothers binding back their hair is because there is nothing, I mean nothing, a baby love more than YANKING EVERY STRAND OF HAIR THAT COMES WITHIN GRABBING DISTANCE OF THEIR STICKY, SWEATY, AND IMPOSSIBLY STRONG LITTLE HANDS.
