[loz-furbies]

Linktober 2023 #16: Dragons

[morrithal]

meeting on the turret stairs tuesday

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[naniyou]

[yardsards]

the Trans Experience in our society is being treated like schrodinger's gender. you're a woman when they wanna deny you agency and a man when they wanna deny you support. this is an experience that unites nearly all of us, whether transmasc, transfem, or something else.

[yardsards]

and it drives me bonkers how many of you dipshits act like the solution is "okay, then let's just deny trans women agency and deny trans men support :) to treat them like the correct gender :) i am so progressive :)" when it's like. can you not imagine a world where we don't deny ANYONE agency ir support?

[bridgeleaves]

*cucco noises*

[depsidase]

[hickeywiththegoodhair]

[woolandflax]

[hazelsmazecave]

[cocoon2010]

We all got that one vassal who's read a few too many warrior tales... Trying to get a little freaky with it on the down low... Won't shut up about his loyalty unto death... Saying shit like "my liege, I am your blade...." Bitch I sent you to guard my isolated holdings in the eastern provinces for a reason!!!!!!! #REBLOG!!!!!

[sailorcuba]

the purest form of serotonin is when a cat looks at u and u go like “what?” and it meows at u

[arborealgargoyle]

like, that is a very unspecific response I still have no idea what you want but I applaud how adorably you meowed all the same, well done

[arborealgargoyle]

This post led me to reminisce on the nature of cat’s meowing, and I have a funny story

I befriended a feral cat once who had spent her life in the forest without human interaction. I was worried about her because she had a paw damaged from an old injury and was emaciated but obviously nursing kittens that were hidden away somewhere. It took me weeks of putting out food and sitting across the yard every evening for her to trust me even a little and when she decided we were friends and she expected dinner every night she started coming to my door and trying to call for me in the evening, but she didn’t meow. Why would she? Cats only meow naturally as kittens when their vocal chords/ears aren’t fully developed, adult cats communicate with vocalizations that aren’t audible to humans. She probably tried making noises I couldn’t hear to call me but ended up sticking to the one I always responded to- a horrible yowling growl that she had made at me when we first encountered each other in the forest. Except once we were friends she would make this noise while purring and rubbing affectionately against a nearby tree or the porch railing (because she didn’t want to touch me yet). This understandably freaked my family members out but I was touched that she had taken the time to find a way to basically yell FUCK OFF in an affectionate way.

Fast forward to when she finally trusts me enough to bring her hidden kittens out of the forest to me, long story short I gained their trust and put them in this big pen, that I had previously used to keep chickens in, so they’d be safe and to keep her from having another litter. Except she was already secretly pregnant again! (Fix your pets, guys, they make SO many babies) and ended up having her new babies in this pen. I kept my distance, sitting on the outside once they were born until she seemed comfortable enough to let me come inside. The kittens were a bit wild, hissing viscously at me as soon as they opened their eyes, but they warmed up to me. There were four of them and soon they all wanted to be the center of attention during the twice daily play sessions. I’d be playing with one and another would meow insistently behind me and I’d immediately answer them and give them love, teaching them that humans could be friends that answer their needs- making them adoptable once they were weaned. Mama cat (Artie) would just watch me play with them, and I guess she was doing some thinking because one day when they were about a month old I was playing with them and one meowed behind me. I was confused because I hadn’t realized there was a kitten behind me and when I turned, there wasn’t. The only cat there was Artie looking at me really intensely. I turned back around to the kittens and I heard the meow again, I turned back to Artie and responded in the way I always did with the kittens “yes baby?” And she meowed again in an exact imitation of her kittens! After that she would.not.shut.up. It was like she had cracked some kind of code, meowing for attention and snacks and just to say hi. Her two older kittens, the ones she’d had in the forest, had never meowed at me either but started to once they saw how I responded to their mom. and I find it endlessly fascinating because before that it had never occurred to me that cats only meow at humans because they were taught by other cats to keep meowing past kittenhood because that’s the best way to get a human’s attention.

Imagine befriending some weird giant with the wrong number of legs that you met in the forest who seems nice enough but doesn’t seem to be able to hear you, until your friend explains that all they can understand is fuck off! And I’m a baby give me love!

[adampvrrish]

no matter how terrible my day is. i can always end my day in bed imagining fictional characters making out sloppy style and fucking raw. and that's beautiful. there's some good in this world mister frodo and it's worth fighting for

[herigo]

[angelgigisworld]

[3liza]

hello I am speaking to you from the future: this guy is awful at sex and will put you in the hospital. he owes you $500. you will have one orgasm the entire time you are with him and it will be followed by him scolding you to move your hand away from your clit because "it's distracting" and he can't cum unless he mimics the exact same level of numb pressure and total dissociation he has conditioned himself to masturbating with five times a day. every girl he has ever dated has tried to commit suicide. after you get away from him you will realize he looks exactly like Carl from Aqua Teen. instead of dating him you should turn your 100k word Sabrina fanfic into a breakout YA novel using find-and-replace and buy a decent vacuum cleaner

[nudityandnerdery]

Carl didn't deserve that, but otherwise fair.

[nudityandnerdery]

"The Democratic Party: Hey, We're Not As Shitty As The GOP!"

It really shouldn't be a campaign policy. How do we vote for that Target guy instead?

[nudityandnerdery]

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a "Fuck the Democrats, we're not voting" post. This is a "Jesus CHRIST at least give us some fucking HOPE here, Dems!" post. They are the lesser of two evils, but they shouldn't campaign on that, they need to be more active, tell us "This is what we can do right now, BUT VOTE FOR US IN CONGRESS, TOO, AND WE CAN DO MORE. WE CAN DO BETTER. WE WANT TO DO BETTER." That's what I want from them.

[creekfiend]

I came up with this character last night. her name is Isabel Badkitten and she is a little girl who is a cat that is bad.

[anexperimentallife]

[sailor-artemis]

[warriormale]

Support Ukraine Freedom!

WarriorMale

[starlightomatic]

hey. why do we blame people for having low self-esteem. why do we assume people just woke up one day and decided to hate themselves and not that they were taught to hate themselves by peers, parents, teachers, bosses, and other authority figures

[starlightomatic]

maybe "uwu i love myself" will not be enough in a world that still teaches people to hate themselves. maybe we start there?

[starlightomatic]

if i'm told that i'm lazy, ugly, unattractive, slovenly, and wasteful because i'm fat. if i'm told that i'm lazy, inconsiderate, rude, slovenly, and gross because i have adhd. if i'm told that i'm rude, cold, and immature because i'm autistic.

then i might start to believe i'm lazy, ugly, unattractive, slovenly, wasteful, inconsiderate, rude, gross, cold and immature!!!!

giving myself affirmations in the mirror won't be effective and won't be enough. why should i believe myself over the world? it's not convincing. and even if i do succeed in convincing myself, i'll be subjected to the barrage again as soon as i step out the door.

we need to stop situating the issue in whether i'm giving myself affirmations in the mirror, and situate it in the ableism, fatphobia, etc that i and so many others are subjected to.

[starlightomatic]

and "go to therapy" is also not sufficient because it still does not remove that messaging, and also, it often perpetuates it!! come late or miss sessions because of adhd and depression? you're slapped with lazy, inconsiderate, and rude all over again. not even a net positive for self-esteem!

[starlightomatic]

and like yes, putting effort into rejecting these narratives is good and worthwhile. but humans are social creatures and are wired to care about what others think of them, and that's not a personal failing.

[futurefishy]

Omg thank you for articulating this! another reason why "go to therapy" doesn't help in my experience is that (at least in the UK) "go to therapy" gets you CBT. a therapy entirely focused on the idea that your thoughts are irrational/unhelpful and that challenging and changing them will fix the problem.

But my thoughts about myself did not appear out of fucking nowhere! a lot of the thought challenging in CBT is based on looking for evidence for the thought, with the presumption that negative thoughts are irrational, so you won't find any. BUT I HAVE A SHIT TONNE OF EVIDENCE! THATS WHY I HAVE SELF ESTEEM ISSUES! I have a lifetime of evidence of my peers calling me ugly and unlovable for being fat. I have a lifetime of evidence of peers thinking i'm weird and off-putting and unlovable for being autistic. Being persistently bullied in every education environment i've ever been in, and at my first job, and in every club I've ever been part of is a lot of fucking evidence. And no amount of "I love myself uwu" will counteract that I am constantly told by the world that I shouldn't.

I have a psychology degree, and in the course of that, we addressed the influence of systemic oppression on therapy all of once. It was an off-hand "well if someone is in financial trouble, stress management exercises probably won't fix it" like yeah, no shit.

It's not irrational for me to take what I've been constantly told about myself to heart. It's fucked up that people think that way, but at a certain point it's hard to convince myself that everyone else is wrong and I'm right. CBT makes me feel like I'm being fucking gaslit.

Fun fact I learnt the other day: experiencing peer rejection (like bullying) makes your brain respond more negatively to rejection in the future. It literally, physiologically starts to hurt more. The paper I was reading didn't make this connection, but that implies to me that RSD/rejection sensitivity is not just an inherent part of ADHD and autism, its a result of persistent social and societal rejection. Something something we don't know what autism/ADHD looks like without trauma.

[starlightomatic]

yes, thank you for this. i can't meet the expectations of functionality other people have of me, so trying to convince myself that i can won't work because it's clear i can't. instead i need to frame it as "my worth is not defined by my functionality." but this would be a lot easier if the people around me didn't get nasty to me when i can't meet their expectations. also if i was allowed to use autism and adhd as reasons instead of just thinking "i didn't get this done because i suck."

[starlightomatic]

[bacanex]

Michael Murfin