Doink!

A place where a weird girl lives.

[nothorses]

we have really allowed cis women to get FAR too comfortable being transphobic toward trans men.

[penrose78]

[nothorses]

uh oh

I appreciate your tags but like, please don’t do this.

Cis women being transphobic to trans men isn’t Just Transphobia™. Cis women target trans men specifically, because they know they can get away with it in more spaces.

A cis woman being transphobic toward trans women, or trans people in general, is going to be seen as a transphobe. They’ll likely, and rightfully be criticized and/or ostracized from certain spaces because of it- especially in most feminist circles. If they want to be a part of mainstream, non-TERFy feminism, they’re gonna have to meet some bare minimum behavior expectations where that’s concerned.

But when cis women are transphobic to trans men, most people won’t even notice it’s transphobia at all. Plenty of people will even cheer them on:

Trans men get acne and oily skin on T? Men are so nasty! Trans men have bottom dysphoria? Lol, just like a man to be insecure about his penis! Transmascs face the highest rates of lifetime sexual assault out of every gender and we’d like that addressed? Men are so whiny and fragile! Fight the patriarchy!

They’re women! They’re feminists! when they say horrible, violent, stomach-churning, bigoted shit about trans men, they’re just railing against their own oppressors. It’s justice!

There are so many more insidious forms of this, too.

Cis women who fetishize us as small, soft, effeminite versions of “real men” are still seen as “trans allies”. It sounds so positive; who wouldn’t want to be seen as inherently sweet, safe, and pretty? Who wouldn’t want to be grossly othered and fetishized for qualities we are stereotyped to have? Surely not the men who already have to fight tooth and nail to define our own relationships with masculinity and manhood.

Cis women who infantilize us and try to revoke our autonomy are seen as “allies”, because they’re only trying to protect us!

Cis women who quietly refuse make reproductive healthcare more inclusive, who go on making that fight about Women’s Bodies, who continue to say things like “men can’t understand misogyny” and include trans men in their “kill all men” jokes… well, they’re just affirming our genders!

Why would trans men want equal access to healthcare? Why would trans men want our suffering acknowledged? Why would trans men, the group with about a 50% rate of attempted suicide, not want to be told that everyone else would prefer we were dead?

Feminism!

This isn’t even touching on the very intentional predation of trans men by cis women. Trans men and transmascs are targeted by cis lesbians in particular for corrective rape, and by abusive cis women as “easy targets” due to the lack of support networks, resources, and community for trans men and transmascs.

These things are said and done by cis women who tout themselves as “trans allies”. These are women who share those “share to make a TERF mad” posts and call themselves “TERF destroyers”. These are women who say “trans women are women”. These are women in your spaces, and in your community. They’re people you follow and admire. They’re even people I follow and admire; women I’ve followed for years have called me a misogynist for pointing out the problems in things like “men can’t know what it’s like to be expected to have children”.

It’s not just a transphobia problem. It’s not just a cis people problem. And it’s hilariously symbolic that you erased that meaning from my post, because the erasure of trans men and the silencing of our voices is exactly why this shit continues to happen.

[asfgjfkgjnfkjgnkfjg]

If Sisyphus was a girl, he would be able to push that boulder up

[asfgjfkgjnfkjgnkfjg]

Women can do anything.

[writing-prompt-s]

You find a girl crying next to a grave. “What’s wrong?” You ask. She cries harder. “Nobody came to my funeral.”

[dycefic]

Night watchman at a cemetary isn’t the kind of job most people want. I’ve always liked it, though. It’s pretty peaceful, most of the time, which is nice. Sometimes I get to chase off teenagers or would-be occultists or obnoxious drunks, which is fun. There’s a lot of entertainment in a good chase, at least for me, and scaring the crap out of them is fun too.

Sometimes it gets sad, though.

It was my first walkthrough of the night when I saw the girl weeping beside the grave. It happens sometimes, and I never chase them. The cemetary is for the dead and the grieving. They’re always welcome here.

I went over to her, careful to keep the grave between us so I wouldn’t scare her. “What’s the matter?” I asked gently. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

She shook her head, still weeping. “No-one came to my funeral,” she sobbed. “No-one at all.”

I checked the stone. She’d been about seventeen. An age of strong emotions and fierce resentments. “I’m sorry,” I told her, and meant it. “That’s… always hard.”

“If they cared about me, they would have come,” she wept. “This means nobody cared at all.”

“Not always,” I told her gently. “Sometimes it means that something else happened. If you like, I can try to find out.”

“Really?” She wiped her eyes. “I’d… I’d appreciate that. I’m Lucy.”

“Stanley.” She couldn’t shake hands, so I gave her a friendly nod. “Come with me, Lucy. I’ve got a laptop in the watchman’s hut.”

She followed me, drifting silently, back to the hut. I brought her in, and made two cups of tea, offering her one. “I’m not solid,” she said, her lip quivering. “I can’t -“

I showed her how to take it, the ghostly echo of the solid cup, and told her I’d learned it from the day attendant over at the columbarium. She’s Korean, and knows a lot about hungry ghosts. She sipped her tea while I opened the laptop and ran the usual searches.

I do this a lot.

Sure enough, there’d been three major car accidents between the area she’d lived in and the cemetary. There’s almost always at least one - there’s this one intersection that no exorcism, ritual purification or cleansing spell has ever worked on - and it usually helps. A lot of spirits want to know why someone they loved didn’t come.

Keep reading

[naberiie]

WHAT is that one poem (?), abt a modern worker contemplating the numerous forgotten who were actually responsible for all the ‘great’ deeds of history

[naberiie]

found it!!

A Worker Reads History Bertolt Brecht

Who built the seven gates of Thebes? The books are filled with names of kings. Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone? And Babylon, so many times destroyed. Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses, That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it? In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song. Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend The night the seas rushed in, The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves. Young Alexander conquered India. He alone? Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army? Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears? Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War. Who triumphed with him? Each page a victory At whose expense the victory ball? Every ten years a great man, Who paid the piper? So many particulars. So many questions.

[violsva]

So I just went through three notebooks to find this, because I knew it was there.

I was at the ROM, about six years ago, at a special exhibit on Babylon. And there was a brick, formerly part of a palace. And Nebuchadnezzar, the one who built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, had had his name in cuneiform stamped on every single brick, to emphasize that he had built it.

And on this one, a workman had carved his own name, Zabina’, into the block too, in Aramaic. Here’s the brick. It’s 2600 years old.

[llamagoddessofficial]

[This idea has been rattling in my brain and I had to share it.]

I know we all love the ‘humans are space orcs’ concept… but imagine, onboard the new ship they’ve been assigned to, the human meets an actual space orc. A massive monster… fangs and tusks and scars and a battle-hardened stare, looming over all the other life forms on the ship in its thick indestructible armour it refuses to remove. It barely drinks, it doesn’t need sleep, its massive shoulders are heavy with the terrible things it has experienced. Compared to the squishy & delicate human body, this thing is a walking tank.

… Except instead of hating/ignoring one another, the human and the monster start bonding over both coming from death planets. The human is excited to find a life form who doesn’t quiver with fear at the vague description of a jellyfish and the monster is ecstatic to meet someone who understands the feeling of being bitten by a qua’lem (cats are pretty close). They sit together and compare dangerous animals and locations as the other aliens look on in confusion and fear… oh, you also have dense jungles of deadly hidden predators, boiling acid lakes, tamed predatory killers, and areas with horrendously high and low temperatures? Sick!! 

It doesn’t take long before the two of them become totally inseparable. The human loves not feeling like some kind of crazy outsider and the monster is overjoyed they’ve finally found an equal in this unkillable marshmallow.

Monster: When I was a youngling, a grol-lik stung straight through my armour. The pain lasted for approximately 16 human hours. Human: Oh yeah man, I get that. As a kid I got a wasp stuck in my shirt. It stung me like four times, it was awful, and all my cousins just laughed at me… Monster: [using their arm screen to research human courting methods] I see.

[driiaz]

Not quite an ‘Orc’ per-se, but eh, close enough. See here giant spiky Deathworlder simping for tiny shouty Deathworlder.

[marlynnofmany]

This art is amazing and makes it so much better.

[valtsv]

[valtsv]

[beckettmariner-deactivated20200]

You ever invite your coworker to watch you give birth just to spite a racist

[linguisticparadox]

Okay howmst the fuck has a ship doctor in the far future never handled a birth without the father present? Are sperm donors and gay couples and trans women no longer a thing in the bajillionth century CE?? :/

[thatoldantique]

I while understand the frustration with erasure sometimes it helps to look at things through the cultural context of when something was made. Star Trek the Next Generation was made in 1987, this particular episode I believe aired in 1988 a time when a future where the husband was always present for the birth would have been amazing to many of the people watching the show as men had only been allowed to be present for the birth of their children for 10/15ish years at that point in the US.

Women (and many men) fought for decades with hospitals to even have men allowed in the delivery room during the early stages of labor, which can last for several hours, and hospitals only began to give in to their requests in the 1960s but even then they would be kicked out of the room by hospital staff before the actual birth took place. So many of the couples watching the show would have had to go through labor without having/being allowed to support their spouse regardless of their wishes. Having the child’s father present for the birth only began to happen in the 1970s and 1980s. Which means most people watching this show either went through birth without the support of their spouse, were not allowed to support their spouse during the birth of their child, or their own mother’s went through that during their birth.

A future where the husbands were always present for the birth was still a little crazy to consider in the late 1980s. A good kind of crazy for the people living in that time, it showed a future where the wishes of the couple were finally consistently listened to by medical professionals as a result of the actions of people during their or their parent’s lifetimes. And it does that by also subverting it in allowing Data to step into the role of the father when the father was unknown and/or unwilling/unable to fill that role (I’ll be honest my knowledge of Next Gen is a bit spotty and I have not seen this whole episode, just a piece of it at family Thanksgiving). The woman’s desires as to how she would give birth are listened to and respected, something that still doesn’t happen in many hospitals now and would have been seen as even more revolutionary then. So while it isn’t perfect I think this scene was actually fairly impressive for its time and cultural context and shows a future that many people of that time would have seen as ideal.

[cannon-fannon]

I think this kind of contextual understanding and analysis is really important because things that look antiquated now were revolutionary then. I remember reading that the mini skirts in Star Trek TOS were legot just in fashion (about 64’ ish), one of the actresses (the one that played Rand) requested they be in the show and both her and Nichelle Nichols said they didn’t see them as demeaning but liberating in that time and context. Where as NOW it looks like ‘sexy male gaze’ but then it wasn’t.

[elfwreck]

Miniskirts are comfortable and easy to move in - unlike longer bulkier skirts, which had previously been required for “modesty.” And unlike the approach of “we’ll just put them in pants,” miniskirts made a statement that women crew-members weren’t being treated like men. Miniskirts were a way to say “I can be an attractive woman, wear comfortable clothes, and still look professional and do a serious job.” 

The clothing for that message today would be different. 

[prismatic-bell]

This is also why the bridge crew of TOS may seem “tokenistic” today. When it came out, the Cold War was in full swing and “Soviets” were maligned and hated, Black people could not count on their right to vote being honored, and mixed-race people (like Spock) were called horrible things like “half-breed” and “zebra.” A white man was in charge of the ship, but Gene Roddenberry was fully aware that a chunk of the viewership read him as queer, and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DISCOURAGE THAT READING, at a time when “homosexual activity” was illegal in the United States!

By today’s standards, “one of everything? How tokenistic.” In 1966? “A Black woman, a Russian, a man from multiple cultures, and a man who loves differently, all top of their fields, all working together and finding common ground to learn, grow, and help where they can? What a wonderful future!”

[charismat1c-megafauna]

Also I’m sorry but like. A show also featuring a Japanese man who isn’t a stereotype but part of the crew, having a Scottish character be a part of the central cast (idk if I need to get into why this is important, but considering how England has continuously tried to erase Scottish culture and identity, and the stereotype of Scots as bumbling bumpkins, etc, its kind of nice to see a Scotsman who’s the best of the best at his job).

Moreover, a lot of kids watched this show. MLK himself contacted Nichelle Nichols and asked her to stay on the show when she was considering leaving, because “you don’t have a Black role, you have an equal role,” and there wasnt many Black role models on tv. I can only imagine how Black kids, Asian kids, and mixed race or mixed culture kids felt seeing people like them on tv. Hell, seeing Uhura on screen is what inspired Whoopi Goldberg as a little girl.

Also, yeah, its easy to look back and say ‘damn, fathers weren’t there in the delivery room? What assholes’ but no like they legitimately were not allowed in there.

[gayahithwen]

Tiny correction: while George Takei is Japanese, and while Sulu thus looks like what we in the 20th-21st century consider to be an ethnically Japanese man, Hikaru Sulu was Pan-Asian by design. His last name is not Japanese. And Roddenberry designed him like that intentionally, because while there was a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment in the US at the time (I mean, hell… George Takei himself spent years in Japanese internment camps during WW2), there was also a lot of other anti-Asian sentiments, and Roddenberry intentionally put ALL of it on the character of Sulu.

Like, all the years of anti-Chinese racism in the US? Sulu. Anti-Japanese sentiments left over after WW2? Sulu. Korean War in 1950-52? Sulu. The Vietnam War, with Johnson in 1965 (a year before TOS started airing) choosing to start sending American troops into the conflict? Sulu.

Sulu was Roddenberry’s desperate attempt to show all Asian people as inherently worthy, inherently human, and yeah, he probably put kind of too much on Sulu’s shoulders, but it was the 1960s and Roddenberry fucking cared about representation, so he did what he could.

Just, you know… a little bit more historical Star Trek context

[gholateg]

Also to hammer this home?

Scotty was third in line for the captain’s chair. The only non-Kirk who had the con more then him was Spock.

He was smart, he was a *ranked* crewmen, he was a gentleman, he wasn’t a skirt chaser, and he was capitol L loyal. The only time he got into a fight was when someone both went after his Captain, AND his Ship.

And he was Scottish. 

That’s so above and beyond the typical Scottish stereotype even TO THIS DAY.

[earhartsease]

Dr Polaski was coded as something of an arse just so they could make their valid points about equality and bigotry using her as a foil. Yes it was kind of clumsy from a modern perspective, but it was also kind of groundbreaking (not least because you didn’t usually get arses being played by women)

[aqueerkettleofish]

I am hard-coded to put this on any post that mentions MLK and Nichelle Nichols.

Also, it’s very worth noting that the “token minority character” label doesn’t apply in any way to these characters.

Tokens are there to present the appearance of diversity. Whereas Roddenberry created a diverse cast in an era where there wasn’t even a need for the appearance of diversity. Roddenberry didn’t put these characters in because he wanted to look diverse– he put them in to BE DIVERSE.

[why-i-love-comics]

Flash Comics #13 - “The Creeps” (1941)

written by John B. Wentworth art by Stan Aschmeier

[katedrawscomics]

i could live a hundred years and i’ll never write comic dialogue this good

[lovely-v]

I do genuinely believe that the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (and arguably the Zelda franchise as a whole, though i myself have played literally none of these games) is closer to fitting the description of ‘Tolkien-esque Fantasy’ than most other movies/shows/games/books etc that claim that label

Like, compare this post by tumblr user wufflesvetinari, which makes an important point about Tolkien’s worldbuilding, and also lives in my head rent free:

and then these quotes from Jacob Geller’s “Every Zelda is the Darkest Zelda”

and his conclusions about the messages in Zelda games are thematically very similar to the through-lines about friendship and love in LOTR, and what a lot of authors miss about what makes a fantasy story personal and memorable:

“A world without joy and humor isn’t a compelling world to fight for” is exactly why there are so many pieces of fantasy media out there that just feel like carbon copies of each other (i’ve seen many posts that explain this better than I can though I can’t find any specific ones at the moment, just know that I didn’t invent this thesis). You’ve got the cool swords, you’ve got the wizards and the spells and the battles, but first and foremost you need the LOVE.

[whitepeopletwitter]

[injuries-in-dust]

Fun Fact, thats, more or less, something that wealthy people in China and Japan did, they were called “musical floorboards.” Designed to squeak when stood upon. A person could make noise all the way down a corridor.

The residents and servants knew which floorboards made a sound and avoided them. But a burglar, or assassin didn’t. If you heard the creaking of floorboards, you knew danger was coming.

Even better, despite what movies may show, a lot of the old west was founded by Chinese immigrants, so there could have been carpenters around who knew how to make the musical floorboards!

[apocalypticvalraven]

They were also called Nightingale Floors, and looking up to make sure I had the right term, I found they were super clever! They were more than just ill-fit boards or whatever makes floors creak normally, they actually used little metal bars under the boards placed into small holes in the boards to cause the creak.

[swan2swan]

The best things on the internet are when someone makes a joke and then Miss Frizzle rolls up for an educational adventure.

[swagpaws]

when u exit hyperfocus mode and ur immediately hit with every status effect ever

[verthanthi]

Oh fuck I gotta pee. Wait wait, I can’t stand up I’m gonna fall over. Shit I haven’t eaten in like 23 hours. Damn I’m thirsty, maybe I should— fuck why am I nauseous? Oh, I didn’t eat, right. It’s WHAT time? 3AM? Do I even have time to eat? Shit, I forgot to take my meds earlier. Or did I? Damnit. Why is my head pounding, oh, right, haven’t eaten and I’m dehydrated… fuck I still gotta pee

[maestrosmassacre-deactivated202]

[a-real-human-person-not-fake]

*minimizes word document and stands up* My body:

[badjokesbyjeff]

Airplane crashed into a cemetery.

Rescuers have already pulled 10,000 dead bodies from the wreckage and are still pulling out more…

[thehobbitskunk]

I’m so confused. Where will they bury the survivors?

[badjokesbyjeff]

I heard Twitter HQ has quite a lot of space nowadays

[godisaboutasrealasthisdick]

okay jeff just hit us with a two hit k.o

[blaruu]

Ah, sorry. Excuse me. My cat needs to take a nap on your dash a moment. Just step over him.

[blaruu]

Oh. Damn it. Sorry- just step over her too.

[newgin-clever-title-goes-here-d]

I know there’s a lot of posts talking about how Charles Martinet Is a professional actor.

But no one seems to have pointed out his other big role. His range, he has range! His other big role?

He voices Paarthurnax from fucking Skyrim and it’s amazing.

They picked a guy who can only do one voice, over a professional who can sound like a funny Italian man, who can also voice an elderly, wise yet imposing dragon.

[boeing747]

i think grossness is a vital aspect of life btw and we all experience it and i think its important to represent in art and i think oversanitization of popular media is 100% our downfall. things are gross and disgusting and yucky and thats life we cannot deny ourselves this

[roach-works]

training yourself to be calm and curious in the face of disgusting things is one of the biggest favors you can do yourself

maggots in the trash can? calm down. clean it up. free bird food.

nasty porn? calm down. scroll past. shrug it off.

assholes leaning on dehumanizing rhetoric to get away with hateful behavior: calm down. think about why they want you so shook up.

when you’re disgusted, you’re reacting. you’re not thinking. you don’t wonder things, you don’t plan, you don’t learn anything. you just wince away, stomp the bug, ban the books, bully the freak.

decay is a form of life. rot is inherent in the act of creation. things are made into other things. corpses become flies become corpses. filth is its own intricate ecosystem. things that are gross have an inherent worth and dignity.

and sitting with your own revulsion, sticking your fingers in the dirt, listening quietly to the way the world digests itself: this is going to improve your experience of life so much. please try.

[homunculus-argument]

in Finland, it is illegal to kill a bear when it’s hibernating. If you ask a hunter why that is, a number of them will tell you it’s wrong simply because it is the law, and they don’t make a distinction between what is right, and what is legal. Most people like that are perfectly normal, decent and respectable people, just like the rest of us.

 But if you ask people who think about things, the answer is vague. Killing a hibernating bear would just feel… impolite? You can’t fucking shoot a man when he’s sleeping, that’s just fucking rude. It’s just not the right thing to do.

 Long before hunting laws were established in Finland, you couldn’t kill a sleeping bear, and what commands you is something older than law: tradition. Even at a time when hunting was a matter of life and death, and a bear fighting for its life is mainly a matter of death, you just didn’t kill a hibernating bear, you have to wake it up first. Hunters risked their lives, the lives of their brothers and everyone in the hunting party, who were friends, family and men that they loved, to give the bear a fighting chance.

 In the modern time, the hunting season of bears is in the summer, for the warmest summer months. There are many reasons for why they are allowed to tread safely in autumn and to sleep in peace through the cold months, almost all of which are rational and scientific, and do not touch the old traditions.

 Old faith says a living thing has many souls - henki, luonto, itse. Plants only have one - the one that wills them to grow. Animals have two, both the spark of life and nature that enables them to act. A human being also has the third, one that makes them a person, personality, itse, literally “self”. But the soul that travels in your dreams is not the soul that defines a human - animals have that one as well. When your dog runs in her sleep, her soul is elsewhere, where a dog is needed.

 One’s waking soul is elsewhere when they sleep and dream. A bear’s soul is somewhere else when they are hibernating - there are two words for “hibernation” in finnish, one of which is talviuni, “winter sleep”, and that is the one that bears have - and if you kill a sleeping bear, their soul is not in the body, it is still out there, and it can find you, and as a revenge for killing its body, Ghost Bear will kill your entire fucking family.