Doing The Best I Can

Shark. They/them. 27. Currently interested in: Horror, DnD, Dimension 20, Fall Out Boy, radical hope. And I do art, sometimes.

[nb-stingray]

re: the TADC finale (spoilers ahead)

Some of y’all have never been mentally ill in an ugly way and it shows.

“I can’t believe they tried to make me sympathize with Jax, an abuser”

Yep. He was abusive. He was mean. He was homophobic and transphobic while CANONICALLY being trans (and maybe a lesbian too, kind of got those vibes with Ribbit). He was also repressed, traumatized, and suicidal.

None of those things meant he deserved to die. Or be abstracted. None of those things mean everyone should have let him be to die much earlier. He was a really, really good representation of a person who struggled so long, lashing out because he was afraid of letting someone in.

I’m not saying everyone had to forgive him and have it be sunshine and rainbows. Gangle hated him— she struggled with being even feeling sad about his death! Zooble was pissed off, but still grieved someone who died! Ragatha and Pomni both genuinely connected with him and were pushed away, of course they’d still grieve him!

I think the show actually handled that part really well. Sometimes, you reach out. Sometimes, it’s not enough. Sometimes, you get hurt. That doesn’t mean you should stop reaching out, though. That doesn’t mean a person is evil.

Jax sucked. But Jax felt very real to me in a really sad way.

Last thing: despite what I felt like was genuine canon on Jax being transfemme, I still use he/him because you DON’T push someone that way. I lived in Texas for 20 years. I understand exactly why he reacted that way after being seen. I actually really appreciated Pomni not doing some posthumous outing when they all talked about him.

Edit: AND ANOTHER THING! Jax is Not bad rep! Not every rep needs to be a bastion of light! Jax was REALISTIC rep!!! Jax wasn’t any of the negative stereotypes for a trans character, the reasons he sucked had very little to do with being trans!

[natalieironside]

It's fascinating (and infuriating) to live in an age where almost everyone I know is languishing in Dickensian poverty but social media is slap full of professional-managerial computer-touchers who've never known hunger insisting that the economy is fine because their metrics say rich people are still rich.

[natalieironside]

A bad economist and a bad engineer are often bad in the same way; they're both people who, when reality doesn't conform to the model, decide to get mad at reality instead of adjusting the model

[teaboot]

And they kill people

[nb-stingray]

This move has been really, really rough. All the other stuff seems minor in the face of the fact that we were robbed this morning from our U-Haul box. They threw a bunch of clothes and books around on the ground, stole probably $2k worth of Legos and kitchen appliances, my spouse’s entire playing card collection, and a couple boxes with some of our sentimental items we couldn’t fit in our tiny car.

What’s devastating me more than anything is that they stole the box that had all of my mementos and memories from my grandparents (both deceased), and our wedding, as well as my stuffed animal I’ve had since I was a baby. Sure, the other stuff cost money and it sucks, but this box was not full of valuables. It was full of things important to JUST US. I now have nothing from my Grammy and Papa, and our scrapbooks with our first 5 years of being together are gone too. My childhood stuffed animal, gone. The framed photograph I was given for high school graduation two weeks after my Papa passed, gone. My spouse’s pet paw print for her childhood pet, gone. And for what???? You can’t sell this stuff. They probably tossed it in a dumpster somewhere and that’s what hurts most of all.

My mom said “at least you still have the memories” but it’s so hard to think that way. I wish there was something I could do.

[sanitymakesposts]

Mods? Take him to the stump of his favorite childhood tree.

[sanitymakesposts]

Mods, make him busy during a friends planned trip so he misses out on the new inside joke.

[sanitymakesposts]

Mods… change the smell of his parents house.

[evilscientist3]

look boss, our quarterly "subjection to the brutalities of the Absurd" budget is almost blown already. can we not just shoot this one twice in the back of the head and call it a day?

[capnsoapy]

always remember that chell is canonically* a transgender woman

[capnsoapy]

Transition timeline; 99999 days on Aperture Science homebrew œstradiol

[capnsoapy]

POV you used the phrase "transition timeline" on [tumblr] post about 20-year-old video game models

[dragon-in-a-fez]

wait, you mean that by spending decades joking about how schools are disease vectors because children are just naturally disgusting, adults were ignoring a structural problem they had created? how surprising and not at all precedented

[hare-brained-schemes]

me lowkey

[thewereturtle]

we eating good tonight!

[vesperosy]

this tweet has been fucking killing me

[petulantpony]

i’ve said it before but i wish vaginas didn’t cost money

[petulantpony]

you literally can not have a vagina without paying for it. vaginoplasty for some, period products for others, if you want to stop buying period products that’s gonna be expensive medicine or an expensive procedure, recovery from surgery requires time off work and vaginoplasty specifically requires money spent on dilators. our bodies shouldnt cost us this much on baseline. having a vagina shouldnt have such a hefty tax on it. it makes me feel like i’m in a fictional dystopia written for middle school classrooms when i think about it.

[ittybittymattycommittee]

#raise your shields #because you’re about to get wrecked

[jewishgarygreen]

#this is the star trek i wanna see#like when somebody asked gene roddenberry why piccard was bald#because wouldn’t they have found a cure for male pattern baldness by then?#and he was like ‘no by the 24th century no one will care’#i wanna see that attitude with disability and neurodiversity#it’s not that we’ll have a magic cure for everything#there’ll always be something new#but disabilities and neurodiversity will be celebrated and seen as part of the norm#it will be accomodated#so blind people can serve in star fleet#and so can people in wheelchairs and autistic people and people with prosthetics and people with chronic illnesses (via @hunterinabrowncoat)

[kiapet2]

This episode ends with Geordi saving the planet by using something derived from the technology found in his visor (an adaptive device that lets him sense things around him). So a disabled man literally saved the lives of an entire culture that wouldn’t have considered his life worth living, using technology they would have never deemed necessary without the presence of his unique needs.

[scholarlypidgeot]

I don’t watch Star Trek, but I can’t stress enough how important this message is

[fictionadventurer]

My favorite thing about this episode is that, while the rest of the characters are taking a more Star Trek philosophical approach to this situation, calmly debating the good and bad points of this colony built upon eugenics, Geordi is just seething. Troi is having a romance with their flippin’ president, but Geordi never hesitates on his morals. He’s always aware that this world’s supposed perfection is built upon the despicable philosophy of killing people like him. He barely even bothers to hide his anger as he has to work alongside their scientists. He’s snappish and short-tempered and bitter, clearly only working with these people because lives are at stake. When he discovers the solution is based on his VISOR, he is viciously triumphant, his joy at saving the people boosted by a bitter sense of righteousness that these people were only saved because someone like him was allowed to survive.

And even though this anger and bitterness are very un-Star-Trek-like approaches to diplomacy–it works. The scientist who works alongside him is the first person who decides to jump ship and leave the colony behind. She sees the stagnation of their bland “’‘‘‘‘utopia’‘‘‘‘‘ and realizes that diversity and adaptation create a much better society. And while the other Enterprise crew members have some wishy-washy lament over how this will destroy this planet’s ‘‘‘culture’‘‘, Geordi never waffles. He has far too personal a stake in this to lose sight of the fact that peoples’ lives are more important than any high-falutin’ philosophical justifications. The episode might waffle over the Prime Directive points of this society’s decline, but Geordi’s perspective is the one showing clearly why it needs to die.

[hotvampireadjacent]

Halal movie night follow up

[plumbewb]

hear me out…

[punkrock-bottom]

“Hear me out” and it’s the most conventionally attractive alien father figure you’ve ever seen

[lazydelusions]

[peachdoxie]

[kingscrown666]

I mean? Yeah? Gantu is obviously conventionally attractive

Deep voice, big muscles, Tall

Like. What am i missing here?

[get-thee-to-a-shrubbery]

honey he has a fish for a head

[kingscrown666]

So what, all of a sudden mermaids aren't hot?

[stealthetrees]

What if human astronauts visit Erid one day and are doing diplomatic things and whatnot and they learn Ryland Grace is sstill alive and is in a terrarium. One of the astronauts jokingly says “you’re not experimenting on him are you” and the Eridians freeze cause yeah, they totally are. They experiment on him all the time. They’re experimenting on him right now in fact. They read about deep sea diving and are now testing the effects of replacing certain gases in Graces atmosphere. Right now they’re testing helium.

They send someone to stop the experiment but Grace refuses cause they’re so far in already and well that would just ruin the data.

The new humans think this is hilarious and insist on joining the experiment as Grace excitedly yaps about all the cool stuff he’s learned about aliens but he’s still got that high pitched helium voice.

[avoid-avoidance]

(^ @caligeno tags)

Grace:

[npdclaraoswald]

A doll youtuber I watch has made a video about the history of Polly Pocket, and she's describing the plots of the dvd specials, one of which features an elderly woman named Ms. Throckmorton, and my reaction was

[doyoulovethewayzeylily]

you'll feel like a total dipshit train wreck and no matter what some girl is gonna see you and think "role model". you can't kill yourself you have to go be clocky in the gas station so a 14 year old can have the trajectory of her life altered forever

[duchessvongooseberg]

as annoying as it is to work fast food, at my previous job one time a kid recognized the theta delta pin on my hat and was so fucking excited because i was the first other therian they had ever encountered offline.

"hey....are you a therian?" "yeah!" "what kind of animal?" "eh, some kinda dog" "😲😀 im like a wolf coyote hybrid" "that's fuckin awesome"

to be weird is to cast lifelines all around you

[doyoulovethewayzeylily]

tags from @k1ntsug1-r0b0t-g1rl

what really drives me nuts is that like. this happens an average of x times per year as a visibly weird person, but we only get made aware of it a small fraction of the time. you can't kill yourself you have to be clocky in the gas station.

[analog-delight]

Being clocky when i was working as a barista was one of my big joys. Being clocky when i was teaching high schoolers how to play the marimba was my reason for being for half a decade. It sucks how scared I am to leave the house I live in now. But I still need to try and be clocky at the grocery store. I wish i had a job to be clocky at. Being visibly me is one of the most radical acts I'm capable of, and I hope that one day we live in a world where it isn't radical at all.

[fleshengine]

Something that really helped ground me in my transisition and helped me kill a lot of my dysphoria was getting on tumblr and being exposed to a bunch of girls who were clocky and happy and stuff. A lot of issues of my evaporated when my mental model for trans women went from "pretty women with millions of followers on tiktok and instagram" to "normal women living their lives."

[assiraphales]

rocky always yells “enrichment for grace! enrichment for grace!” when he has a new invention to make the humans time more interesting on erid. grace, while appreciative, replies ‘I know I’m in a zoo enclosure but could we maybe not call it that? I feel like a bear getting thrown a pumpkin covered in peanut butter.’ rocky simply gives him a thumb, not wanting to explain that a significant amount of the population sees grace as the celebrity savior scientist who rocky keeps as a controversially young trophy wife and publicly lavishes in gifts

[ace-disgrace-on-the-case]

There’s something so uniquely terrifying about memory issues. I feel like my self is slipping away from me.

[ace-disgrace-on-the-case]

Here’s the thing I feel like a lot of folks don’t get: I’m not trying to forget what you said. Honestly, I really tried not to. I can’t control what I do and don’t remember—forgetting things just happens. It’s annoying for you, I know, but for me it’s distressing as hell and when you make a big deal out of it rather than just reminding me you make me feel ashamed. I’ll remember that, at least.

It costs you nothing to be kind to people with memory problems. Please. It’s scary enough without people treating memory lapses as a personal failing.

[ace-disgrace-on-the-case]

Hey, reblog this version instead, please!