l3v3r3t

no longer 42 ~ no answers only questions ~ he/they/it ~ parental unit ~ poly/queer/kinky ~ into music, things, & stuff

[heartnosekid]

day 14 of @deadboystims’ 300 follower event: a stimboard of my favorite fashion style, which would be victorian goth!!

💀-🕯️-💀 / 🕯️-💀-🕯️ / 💀-🕯️-💀

[elodieunderglass]

it's a well-known fact in the textile crafting community that "making objects from textiles" is an entirely separate hobby from "having a collection of materials to make things with."

crafters often refer to this collection as a "stash" or a "hoard."

it's normal to have, but sometimes comes with a certain awkwardness.

the problem is that it takes a very long time to make things from textiles - and it is extremely quick, fun and easy to get more materials.

Presents, impulse purchases, leftovers from other projects, things you bought FULLY intending to make something that you changed your mind about...

Another problem is that you genuinely DO have a plan for the materials! your intentions and desires are THERE!

and admitting that it isn't going to happen - or that your mind has changed, or you're no longer able to do them - can be really painful!

it's incredibly hard to say: "we are not the people who can do these things. we are not the people who WILL do these things."

but sometimes you need to.

it's a natural part of life. it might feel painful to let go of things that you really want to use, but won't. But clearing them out - and the attached guilt and shame - will make room for a lot more things in your life. Room for things you'll use. Room for the projects you'll do.

Room and space - not for hanging on to the shades of the ambitions and intentions and people you aren't - not being held for lives you don't have - but room and space for who you are today, and who you'll be tomorrow, and for the things you'll do.

Room and space to grow.

[afieldinengland]

just overheard a mum in the museum ask her seven-year-old child ‘shall we say bye-bye to the skull?’

[bovid-beauty]

Trans youth denied hormones twice as likely to attempt suicide, survey finds

A Trevor Project survey found trans young people who were unable to access hormones were nearly twice as likely to report a suicide attempt

A major new survey from The Trevor Project released on Wednesday (6 May) has found that transgender and nonbinary young people who wanted hormone therapy but were unable to access it were nearly twice as likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year compared to those currently receiving hormones.

According to the report – which included over 10,000 responses from trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer people – 15% of trans youth denied access to hormones reported a suicide attempt, compared to 8% of those able to receive care.

When you advocate for taking medical transition away from minors, you advocate for their death.

[shinvermouthea]

A lot of these people prefer a dead boy to a living girl

[maidslime]

Hrt saves lives.

[chortlebot]

before someone screenshots this and posts it elsewhere this is me

[clawcakes]

PREV TRUTH NUKE

[huffy-the-bicycle-slayer]

If you mess up a social interaction you can say "Failed Experiment" and move on

[huffy-the-bicycle-slayer]

Cannot stress enough that you say this in your head

[theminotaursmanual]

by Laerte Coutinho

[las-lus]

btw this is laerte. She is 73 now! Making art and being happy! It's never too late to transition

[hometoursandotherstuff]

https://a-z-animals.com/articles/the-purple-toad-that-doesnt-even-look-real/

[what-even-is-thiss]

My computer just randomly stopped running Bluetooth and even digging into the internal files and forcing it to run the software isn’t working for some reason.

[amorphousmassofflesh]

My child just randomly stopped eating, and even hitting them and yelling at them to eat isn't working for some reason.

[what-even-is-thiss]

You know I’ve cycled through like ten different snarky comments I could make in reply to this but frankly this comment (even if it’s some kind of joke) is so out of the ballpark from what I’m talking about that I fear your fundamental understanding of what im referring to isn’t even in the same zip code as the reality of the actual situation and I don’t know how to properly be funny in response to this because I’m so genuinely baffled.

[kde-plasma-official]

have u tried killing and birthing your kid again?

[depsidase]

[maskdoll]

fuck i’m trying to catch all these flies but they think my vinegar is stupid. i have honey also but that’s for me i can’t give them any of that

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

management trying to hire and retain employees

[loyalsquire]

I'm learning so much about princesses on tumblr dot com

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[porterdavis]

[rylandsgrace]

WWDITS (2019 -2024) I 4.05

[biglawbear]

I finished reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in my life. With all of *vague gesture at everything* this going on.

I Am Not Okay

[biglawbear]

You have to understand. I watched the movies maybe once as a kid when they came out twenty years ago. I've somehow avoided learning like anything about these books my entire life. Literally everything about these books was a complete unknown and surprise to me. Totally blank slate going on. I barely even knew how it ended.

Holy shit.

[biglawbear]

Frodo didn't complete his task. Sam literally carried him up Mount Doom. And when he got to the end, he couldn't throw the Ring away.

But for Gollum biting it off with his finger, it wouldn't have been destroyed.

So Frodo's journey saved the world nonetheless.

And it broke him.

It was too much for him to bear. He could no longer live in the Shire or live in Middle-Earth. He wasn't of the world anymore. He had to go to the Undying Lands.

He took on the task that no one else would. He saved the world. Everyone got a happy ending. Aragorn became King, Sam rebuilt the Shire, Merry and Pippin became heroes. They all lived in renown.

But Frodo had the hardest task of all. No one else would do it. A simple hobbit who came by the Ring by chance. Not a King, not an immortal. Not a wizard. No power save his will and his friends. And he did it and saved everyone.

And he never got to rest. He never got to remain in peace. The task destroyed him. It was too much.

But there was no other way. Nobody but a simple hobbit could bear the ring all the way to Mount Doom and resist its power so long. Not a man, not an elf, not a wizard; they would have succumbed. Gandalf knew this, which was why he chose the hobbits in all his designs.

It's amazing that one of the precedent setting works in the fantasy genre holds up so well because it subverts what ultimately became the genre's core tropes. The hero was not the King, or a chosen one. In fact, the hero not being the King was a key point that allowed Aragorn to distract Sauron and allow the task in the first place. The hero was someone unassuming but courageous, who did the thing because no one else would, even though it was just by chance he came upon it.

But Frodo couldn't resist the Ring completely. He wasn't superior to anyone else in that way. And in the end it left him broken. The burden crushed him. No one else could do it, and in the end, he couldn't either. He wasn't so special that he was invulnerable.

I'm not okay. Holy fuck you guys.

[biglawbear]

It's been a week and I'm still not over this, I'll never get over this.

Something that I've been thinking about, as I struggle with depression and anxiety and *another vague gesture at everything* is that LOTR does not criticize Frodo for being broken. It does not shame him or deny him what he needs.

The task was too much and it broke him and that's okay. His friends nonetheless take care of him and let him go with understanding. The book doesn't treat it as a bad thing.

This seems to be a theme throughout the books. The characters rest and heal. They spend time recovering in Rivendell, Fangorn, Lorien, Ithilien. It's treated as good and necessary. They don't heroically endure endless torment from the second they set out until they're done.

And in Gondor's march from Minas Tirith to Mordor, Aragorn recognizes that some of the very few men he's taking with him don't have the heart to go to battle against the Enemy. And he says that's okay. He gives them other tasks the they can do. They hold other strategic points. They aren't shamed for not going all the way, or kicked out, or told that they aren't manly or whatever. Their limitations are recognized and respected. The task was too big and it was okay that they couldn't do it.

I don't know man. I've held on through some absolutely crazy shit. White knuckled through mental health crises when my doctors were begging me to take a break, to go to the hospital before I hurt myself. My therapist has tried to slow me down and tell me that I've been going through it and it's understandable that I am feeling some kind of way. Even one of my colleagues remarked that I've had an absolutely fucking wild career and that I've seen more as a lawyer of seven years than she has as a lawyer of forty. But I've gotten it into my head that I have to be strong, I have to be independent.

Fuck me, man, I'm currently white knuckling through life and hanging on by a fucking thread. A few weeks ago I was about an hour away from checking myself in to a mental health facility until my best friends swooped in to help me. And then I went right back to work.

And then I read this book. This fucking brilliant and beautiful book written by a man who had seen the horrors of war and spilled it all over the page. And I read it for the first time as an adult with full understanding and experience of what it all means. And it hits me like a fucking truck.

And it says that you can't endure everything. That at some point you need to rest and heal. That if you take on too much you will break. And that all of that is okay.

How am I supposed to move on with my life after reading this?

[three--rings]

Certainly there are many messages within Lord of the Rings, but you have to think that Tolkien would have been happy that this message in particular was still being conveyed all these years later.

[dobbymakesthings]

I've been knitting a thing! I've immediately gone off in to the deep end and decided to do an irregular double knit scarf, which has been a lot of fun to work on.

It's a self-drafted pattern for the 9 skulls of the houses from the Locked Tomb book series. With four panels completed so far, I'm happy to say that this project has been accepted in to the Desert Bus 2026 Craft-a-long, and will be available as a price of some sort during this years run.