Untitled

[jaubaius]

It’s still stupid but it worksheet

[ignescent]

This is so fun, because it’s a solidly learned superstition.

[redeless]

I want you to know from the bottom of my heart that you are the dumbest person on Tumblr for seriously, genuinely implying that women have it good on diet culture. Yeah man you're so right women have it soooo easy they should be grateful. Men: the true victims of diet culture!!!! Lmfao get bent. If you're suffering from 'male loneliness' it's because you're in insufferable misogynist and a twat. Delete your blog and talk to a woman irl

Damn, sorry you have no reading comprehension.

Several pissy asks I got about that post softened "eating disorder" and "starve yourself" to "diet culture," as if I think what I was talking about could possibly be benign, and ignored the word "disguise." The message to hate and punish your body is never good or gentle or wholesome, no matter what face it wears or who its directed to.

The woman version of the message did a huge amount of damage to my self image and my health, once upon a time. If anything, the man version is so OTT that it's easier to brush off - but that's for me, someone who survived round one of buying into The Shit, and then got to see the sudden contrast as I transitioned. I think for people who grew up treated as boys, the version targeted at them is probably just as insidious and dangerous as the other flavor was to me. When something is ubiquitous it's hard to see it for what it is.

[transfemme-shelterdog]

Trans activism isn't truly activism unless it is includes intersex voices

[only-knives]

shoutout to the mentally ill adults who survived childhood, started getting their shit together, only to become even more mentally ill because it turns out you're physically disabled too. i can't be the only one.

if you have a similar experience and feel alone, i'm in this with you friend. you're doing your best and i'm so glad we made it. let's keep going together, cause we never have to do anything alone ♡

[doubleca5t]

"male loneliness epidemic" is misleading because it implies that men are suffering because they can't get girls when I feel like the actual problem is that pretty much any online content that's aimed specifically at men conceptualizes the masculine ideal as what I call the Buff Scammer. there are only two things in this world that matter, says the Buff Scammer: being jacked and making money. how you get to either of those things doesn't matter, you just need to be as rich and as buff as possible or you have failed as a man. Get into drop shipping. Eat nothing but raw meat. Rugpull a memecoin. Remove seasonings from your diet. Sell an online course. Go to the gym daily. Starve yourself so your body will achieve ketosis and start burning fat. Attend a seminar on real estate investing. Work 80 hours a week. Take steroids but don't let anyone know about that part. Flip a YouTube channel after 10xing the subs. Sell AI art on Etsy and AI audiobooks on Amazon. What's that? You're trying to do this to get girls? Why would you care about women? Women are all stupid whores who don't help you get richer or buffer. The only people you should be paying attention to are other rich, buff men. If you do hang out with women you should be pimping them out on Chaturbate so you can at least get an ROI off your time spent not thinking about men. Male friends? You don't have time for friends. You should be hustling and grinding 24/7 365. And if you absolutely do need to spend time around other men you should only be spending time with other buff scammers so you can collaborate on entrepreneurial ventures. Like Jesus Christ even writing this is exhausting I feel like trying to be this dude would be fucking miserable like not only did you turn yourself into a friendless, materialist, misogynistic asshole who can only conceptualize the world in terms of value extracted but you're NOT EVEN HAVING FUN DOING IT!!!!!!

[redeless]

At some point in my transition, the "hate yourself, get an eating disorder, buy product" messaging I get switched from woman flavor to man flavor, and omfg. What the hell is this shit!

The "woman" version would often disguise itself as self care. There's this facade of softness and gentleness. ("indulge yourself: buy skincare! do what's right for YOU: starve yourself and smile emptily at zucchini noodles! this is empowering. your body is a temple, divine feminine chakra mother!!!") In the man version, no such thing. Self compassion is not allowed. You've got to brutally grind yourself into the shape of a Real Man or die trying, but you don't get to *enjoy* being the Real Man because comfort is for girrrrrrlllssss.

My dangerous trans gender ideology is that being a man should be enjoyable. If there's nothing fun about it, change your approach or stop being a man.

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

okay here's the video from the tiktok post from earlier!

Like I said I appreciate the clickthrough but this is being posted in straightup video format for all of yall who ain't going over there

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

#shits I scrolled all the way back to the original because the search said there were zero 'carl sagan' posts on your blog#please post stills of the final version!#I wanna stare at it and read it#I will click the link to the tiktok

wait i got you i had to send images to the commissioner in order to set up the final order

[ilovedthestars]

I wish it wasn’t a hot take that a story in which two characters of any gender prioritize their purely platonic relationship over any other romantic or sexual interests they might have is a textually queer story

[ilovedthestars]

A lot of people really don’t understand amatonormativity as another dimension of “there is a right way to love people” that we have to dismantle.

Amatonormativity 101: Amatonormativity, a term coined by Elizabeth Brake, is the very prevalent idea that there is one relationship type that is above all others. This relationship is an exclusive/monogamous, committed, romantic and sexual relationship.

According to amatonormativity, this specific kind of relationship:

Is something everyone wants (or should want)

Is the most fulfilling relationship it is possible to have

Takes precedence over all other relationships in your life

This goes hand in hand with heteronormativity, which says that this ideal relationship also has to be straight. But if you remove that part, all the normative forces of amatonormativity still exist. And they suck for just about everyone! Amatonormativity says aromantic and asexual people will never experience the “highest” form of love. It says single people are inherently less happy than people in a romantic relationship and should always be actively looking for one. It says sex without romance or romance without sex are both lacking a fundamental part of an ideal relationship. It says polyamorous people are failing to choose the one person they can be fully devoted to. It says that your monogamous, committed, romantic/sexual partner is the most important person in your life—more important than your family, your best friend you’ve known all your life, etc.

I hope we can all agree that is something queer people, and also people in general, would benefit from dismantling!

Now let me talk about an example of what I was referring to in the original post.

If you’re not familiar, Elementary is a TV series based on the Sherlock Holmes stories. It’s a modern day adaptation featuring Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective for the NYPD, and Joan (rather than John) Watson, his sober companion and eventually detective partner.

Sherlock has many casual sexual relationships with women throughout the series, while Joan has a string of romantic relationships with men. Neither of them is textually queer (although Sherlock feels very aromantic-coded, if unintentionally, and I personally think an aro reading of both characters has merit).

However, the two of them share a relationship that defies amatonormativity. Sherlock and Joan share almost every part of their lives together—first because Joan is monitoring Sherlock to help maintain his sobriety, but soon because they have actively chosen to remain in each other’s lives. They eventually become partners as detectives but are also functionally life partners, living together, sharing their resources, taking care of each other emotionally and physically. At multiple turning points in the story, they express their love for each other. Throughout this progression, their relationship never becomes romantic or sexual. While Sherlock continues to have casual sex and Joan continues to go on dates, it’s clear that Sherlock and Joan remain each other’s most important person.

This relationship defies amatonormativity, and in my opinion that makes it queer. Queer as in breaking boundaries, defying norms, challenging the idea that there is any right or wrong way to love someone.

Now it’s time for my real hot take. There is a reason I used Elementary as an example, instead of the many other pieces of fiction that have a very similar dynamic between two characters of the same gender.

Those stories—stories that center a platonic relationship between two characters of the same gender, a relationship that remains platonic but is deep, devoted, and prioritized over other relationships in the character’s lives—are textually queer. They are not textually gay (although yes, many of them are subtextually gay). But that does not stop them from being queer stories.

If you want to read into whatever subtext might be there and interpret that relationship as a gay romantic/sexual relationship, that's great. But I wish more people shared my opinion that this is not making a previously normative story into a queer one. Usually, it’s trading heteronormativity for amatonormativity, creating a relationship that defies different norms.

I’m not saying that one or the other interpretation is more valuable (in general—which one is most meaningful to you is a personal preference). I think they’re both queer interpretations of the story. However, given how often stories like the ones I’m describing get accused of “queerbaiting” or simply “not being canonically queer,” I’m pretty sure my opinion on this is not widely shared.

In conclusion: Queerness is a much broader set of concepts than just gay romance. We should consider amatonormativity another dimension of oppression that queerness is in opposition to. Ship or don’t ship whatever is more fun or meaningful to you but please don’t assign moral righteousness to one kind of queerness while erasing another. Also, please be nice to aro and ace people, we already have enough to deal with. I wish none of this was a hot take. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[ilovedthestars]

I've gotten multiple responses to this post that are basically along the lines of, "I mostly agree with this, but calling close platonic relationships 'queer' still feels weird to me. That's not what 'queer' usually means and I don't know if I'd use it to describe relationships like this."

And like. I appreciate that people are listening to my point and being receptive to it, even if it feels a little Out There to them! I genuinely appreciate the folks who aren't sure they get this but are hearing me out.

But I also keep wanting to be like. Yeah, that's my point!

We don't use 'queer' to describe platonic relationships but I think we should. (Or at least, should be able to, when it fits the circumstances!) I know, and I acknowledge directly in the post, that this is not a widely accepted usage of the term. I am arguing for an expansion of the term.

I can only make guesses as to what people with this kind of reluctance are feeling, but my best guess is that they're used to "queer" (or at least "queer relationship") being used mostly in reference to gay/lesbian/same-gender love and attraction. A lot of people mostly associate the word "queer" with gay romance. And while that's a big subset of queer experiences, honestly, I think it's a shame that it's often the only type of queer experience that gets talked about.

Queer is an umbrella term for a reason! Is there any reason "queer relationships" shouldn't include, say, friendships between queer/trans people? Or romantic/sexual relationships that could be considered straight, but include one or more trans people? Or, as I make the argument above, relationships that are breaking down the normative ideas of what kinds of relationships a person is "allowed" to have, regardless of whether the people involved are themselves queer?

Maybe that last one is a leap for some people, and you think that a relationship can't be queer if the people in it don't identify with any of the LGBTQ+ labels. I understand that reservation, but honestly, I think that there's so much social pressure against non-normative relationships that people who break them should get to be considered queer / in a queer relationship if they want, and that we should get to apply queer interpretations to characters in that kind of relationship as well.

(Also, like, a lot of people in non-normative relationships are in fact queer, especially aromantic and asexual. But if we aspecs can have fun with our queer friendships and queerplatonic relationships, I don't see why anyone else shouldn't be able to!)

Anyway, all that to say that if this is pushing your definition of queer a little bit, good! That's what I was trying to do! And I hope people come away from this a little more open to the idea.

If you still aren't really convinced, that's okay. If it doesn't change what you personally use the word "queer" for, I hope you still get something else out of this post—like learning about amatonormativity and starting to see it around you, or considering friendships in media through a queer / anti-amatonormative lens of analysis when it feels relevant. (Or just being more chill about aro and ace people in fandoms who don't ship your ships. Please. We would really appreciate it.)

And I just want to say, while I'm here: Thank you for the incredible response to this post. It's just over 10k notes as I'm posting this and I'm so happy that so many people are interested in this topic & my thoughts on it (and so grateful that the response has been 99.99% positive so far). To all the aspec folks who have told me I've put something into words that you never could—thank you, I'm truly honored and I love you all 💜💚. To all the people who have told me I've opened their eyes to something new—thank you for being curious and willing to learn! And to all the people who still don't get it but are here anyway—thank you for listening to what I had to say. I'm glad you're here.

[artpigeons]

"ohh 00s diet culture isn't back because of ozempic, you're overreacting"

idk i keep seeing previously size-inclusive brands remove plus-sized versions of their clothes from their catalogues entirely, even lines specifically aimed at bigger sizes are cutting their size range down and chopping the bigger ones. i keep seeing mean skinny tiktokers get famous because they said something rude about fat people. when i ask my doctor about weight loss (which my country's gender treatment clinic requires before i can access even preliminary talks about hrt), i'm immediately offered drugs about it - drugs which, according to the doctor, we don't know the long-term effects of. but surely! surely it can't be worse than being fat!

like why are people acting surprised? we've made being extremely wealthy the aspirational aesthetic to strive for, made 'being skinny and having a lot of time and money to stay beautiful' a not only viable but lucrative carreer for people, and then released a drug that is wildly expensive and will make people thin.

of course people are gonna make being thin the ultimate status symbol again - it more than ever before signals wealth and leisure-time.

like, do you think it's a coincidence that people are back to constantly spouting 'nothing tastes as good as skinny feels' again? and pretending being fat is a matter of lacking self-control around cake or whatever? as if people haven't spent decades trying to get these fucks to understand that actually healthy produce and the time to maintain your body are extreme luxuries in our society?

anyway my broke fat ass can't find pants i like and can afford because the size-inclusive lines i'd have shopped at previously have axed anything over a size xl

and like. i'm not even that fat. what the fuck do people bigger than me do. it's really heinous right now for fat peeps.

[artpigeons]

Some really good points from the tags:

skinny was never 'out'. absolutely correct. as long as we live in a society where being skinny can be used to signify status, it'll be extremely fashionable to be skinny. however, there have been fashion waves of being 'thicc', getting bbls, etc - manufactured 'perfect' hourglass type figures. i'm not saying those things have made the world any easier for fat people, but while skinny has never been out, it was briefly also in to have other bodytypes.

it seems to be more the big push of ultra conservative culture than ozempic. imo it's just both. like, notice how all this weird-ass body policing concerns women. demanding women look a certain way is the most conservative-ass shit in the world. i could write thousands of words about how conservative sensibilities have infiltrated mainstream culture through social media (esp tiktok) trends in recent years, but i'll save that for another time. my point is, i think conservative culture and the availability (and status by way of the price tag) of ozempic have cooperated to create an especially hellish time

isn't ozempic for diabetics? it sure is! it's diabetes medication! for people who need it to live! but you know. it makes you not feel hunger, so of course people were gonna use it to starve themselves to death get that sommer bod or whatever the fuck

[tweetthang96]

As a plus size diabetic person, on a med similar to Ozempic (I’m on Trulicity), this shit has gotten insane.

I need my meds to live a healthy life. It is a weekly injection. It keeps my body functioning the way it’s supposed to.

But I shit you not, the popularity of GLP-1s (Ozempic, Trulicity, Mounjaro) for weight-loss assistance has made getting the correct dose of my medication difficult. I had to step back down a level for close to a year because of shortages. Meanwhile, I was and continue to get, an average of one commercial for GLP-1s for weight-loss per commercial break when watching television, and an average of one ad per youtube video for them.

These aren’t ads for them as diabetes medication.

These are ads for them as weight loss drugs.

And if that doesn’t indicate that the huge push to be skinny is back, I dunno what does! These medications are being advertised for a side effect rather than their actual life saving purposes! To the detriment of people who need them for their originally intended purpose!

[nwmo]

NEW FISH JUST DROPPED

[cannibalcaprine-deactivated2024]

I KNOW that playing God is morally wrong, but holy HELL, it looks fun.

[ninjakittenarmy]

Why is it playing God? We aren’t violating any natural laws. God set the parameters of the universe to allow these things. There’s nothing wrong with it, there’s no hubris in learning more about how to manipulate the universe around us.

[cannibalcaprine-deactivated2024]

We made a whole-ass fish.

[ospreyonthemoon]

The reason this was accidental BTW is because they used paddlefish eggs as a negative control group for a breeding experiment on sturgeons because the scientists, quite naturally, assumed that they were SO unrelated it would be genetically impossible for them to mate. Like. I cannot stress enough to you how these creatures last related ancestors were

140 MILLION YEARS BACK.

If you don't know how far that is, that's basically the start of the cretaceous. Let me simplify that for you even further. Chimpanzees and humans seperated, what, 5 or 6 million years ago?

This is basically like if humans could hybridise with THESE THINGS.

This is the sort of thing that should be impossible. They used those eggs to be ABSOLUTELY 100% SURE NOTHING WOULD HAPPEN.

And then THEY GOT FISH OUT OF IT.

Like. You can quite clearly understand why they didn't think anything would happen. WE ARE MORE RELATED TO BLUE WHALES THAN THESE THINGS.

THE AMERICAN PADDLEFISH AND THE STURGEON ARE SO COMPLETELY UNRELATED THAT THIS IS NOT PLAYING GOD. IF ANYTHING THIS IS AN ACT OF GOD.

THE SCIENTISTS HAD NO BLAME IN THIS BECAUSE NOTHING LIKE THIS HAD EVER HAPPENED BEFORE

It sort of goes against the rules of genetics a bit.

[ospreyonthemoon]

Oh i forgot to add

THESE THINGS, FOR HYBRIDS, HAD A REALLY HIGH SURVIVAL RATING. LIKE 70% OF THEM SURVIVED.

To put that into perspective, getting a blue whale and a squirrel and trying to hybridise them is more sensible, and that wouldn't produce anything but getting you banned from science. Most animals that aren't plants can barely hybridise two degrees away from each other.

BUT THESE TWO ENTIRELY UNRELATED FISH create PERFECTLY HEALTHY HYBRIDS.

the scientists literally had to do the tests AGAIN just to be like "okay this is real right. This is actually like, not a fluke, this works right" and it worked again. They just Can!

[cipheramnesia]

It clearly wasn't a fluke. This is a fluke.

[trochaic-mutant-ninja-tetrameter]

🎶Accidental fish get! Sturgeon power!🎵

[dabwax-deactivated20250410]

I've been off of my low dose post menopausal testosterone for a month bc the only compounding pharmacy is too far away and I'm too busy and it's fascinating to watch all the health problems that went away on it creep back. It's such solid evidence that yeah, maybe more cis women need T and more cis men need E probably to actually live healthy functional lives but we're so binary and stupid about sex and gender that T is the Man Hormone and E is the Woman Hormone and there's a baseline for cis people??? Insanity. Insane. Absolutely insane.

Off of T, my joint pain is back, my blood pressure is up, I've gained weight, I'm volatile if I don't control myself, I'm constantly an emotional wreck, and I can barely get out of bed. It took me years to get them to let me try T, and they kept arguing that all of those things would get worse ON T. I fucking hate modern medical science modern sex and gender science too bc my queer clinic was shocked to hear all this. Genuinely. They don't get it despite being THE local hormone clinic for queer folks specifically. They don't understand intersex bodies or that maybe our baselines are bullshit on an individual basis. All of modern sex and gender science absolutely ignores the natural sex differences in most people.

How many people get put on the wrong hormone for their wellness? Cis or trans. Because we've assigned hormones to gender. How many cis women deal with worsening body pain and mental issues bc they were put on estrogen when they needed T? Why are we gendering fucking hormones

[dabwax-deactivated20250410]

I've had a billion doctors say the same shit to me. Last time I got my presh checked in-office on T, it was 110/70. Literally as perfect as it can get.

I was misdiagnosed with PCOS, but I have CAH. My blood pressure was critically high for most of my life and I was always told to lose weight. When I say critically, I mean 160/120 nearly every single fucking time. Dangerous. BP meds helped get it to a safer high, and testosterone got it to low-perfect.

I want to strangle every single doctor who nearly killed me by ignoring that critical BP and blaming ME for it. Don't ever let doctors convince you that there's nothing at all they can do on their end. Or that hormones are specifically bad for you in one direction or the other. Estrogen has nearly killed me and since I'm a cis woman, estrogen is supposed to "be the right hormone" to "fix" me. It never was.

[greynightshade]

On the other end: I'm trans and I'm on Testosterone to accomplish my gender goals like a year ago. I also was diagnosed with fibromyalgia about 2.5-3 years ago and it's widely believed there's no treatment options to manage fibromyalgia aside from exercise and muscle relaxers... which is only given in worst case scenarios.

Since starting testosterone? My symptoms have alieviated- not entirely vanished- but I have more energy and control over my life and my pain is far more manageable than when I was initially diagnosed. I relied on a cane around the time of my diagnosis. Now, most days I don't need it since my symptoms have improved and allowed me to improve my health.

I don't think T is the magic cure-all for my disability but holy shit my quality of life has drastically improved.

[dabwax-deactivated20250410]

As someone who had fibro suggested but then got diagnosed with EDS and also still have pain but it's like cut in half? Yeah. I legitimately thought I was on a downward decline to an early grave bc I was so dysfunctional from pain. Now it's manageable.

Also - is it fibro? Is it EDS? Will we ever know the truth? Probably not :)

[ducktoothcollection]

I really want everyone to know that modern medical science is AWARE that testosterone is an effective treatment for fibromyalgia and other chronic pain conditions, and estrogen is not. This doesn't work for everyone and exactly how it works isn't quite settled science, but it's been known for like a decade. A LOT of doctors don't know this, because they're not up to date on the research, or are resistant to the idea because of perisexism/cissexism/prejudice against people with mixed sex characteristics in general/a misconception that giving a patient mixed sex characteristics is inherently harmful. BUT. Science, as a whole, knows! and more people should know!

Here's a fibromyalgia-specific review article that I think is well-written and has a non-technical summary of the main points. It should be open-access but let me know if you can't get at the full text.

A novel use for testosterone to treat central sensitization of chronic pain in fibromyalgia patients

Fibromyalgia is a diffuse chronic pain condition that occurs predominantly in women and may be under-reported in men. Symptoms include a los

White HD, Robinson TD. A novel use for testosterone to treat central sensitization of chronic pain in fibromyalgia patients. Int Immunopharmacol. 2015 Aug;27(2):244-8. doi: 10.1016/j.intimp.2015.05.020. Epub 2015 May 21. PMID: 26004314.

[dabwax-deactivated20250410]

This article is TEN YEARS OLD. I'm printing this out and taking it to the gender clinic and stapling it to the nonbinary doctor's forehead that denied my intersex ass T gel because I identity as a woman and it would "make me gain weight and make my blood pressure go up." A nonbinary doctor told me this. A nonbinary doctor denied me fucking hormones that could have been helping me this whole time. A nonbinary doctor led the charge on forcing me to keep taking an antidepressant that was keeping me awake for days straight and making my kidneys hurt.

I'm so fucking mad. Not at the person providing this article - I'm pissed that I waited months on a waiting list to see this nonbinary doctor, hoping they'd be the change I needed, and in the end I had to hunt down a cis OBGYN with PCOS to medicate me properly. I'm sick of intersexism. I know three other local intersex people that this specific doctor has denied care to. Fuck.

Trans intersexism, y'all.

[humormehorny]

@doberbutts

[doberbutts]

Yeah as a trans man who discovered his intersex status as he transitioned medically- literally everything with my blood pressure and repeated health crashes and chronic illness was almost immediately solved by testosterone, after multiple doctors told me that estrogen was my only solution and my symptoms only getting worse. It's not particularly uncommon to hear stories like this.

When I first found this out I actually asked if trans fems get this in reverse- and a few did say that they did start experiencing health problems on estrogen most commonly labeled as "AFAB problems" like POTS and fibro- but they didn't regret it because it was the right thing to do for their own transition journey.

We need to have intersex and chronic illness considerations when discussing HRT or else we will continue having these cases.

[rickybabyboy]

Dont worry i bite and kicka you

IDs:

Image 1: Orange and white tabby laying down and winking at the camera

Image 2: Same cat motion blurred grabbing at the camerapersons hand

[nemfrog]

Microscopy. Column header.

Science Gossip. 1899.

Internet Archive

[orcbara]

too many stories about turning yourself into a monster as a metaphor for pretending to be something you aren't and losing yourself in the process. not enough stories about turning yourself into a monster as a metaphor for choosing to openly embrace yourself even if it's strange to other people

[closet-keys]

I really feel like there's a parallel between

people uncomfortable with fatness saying "overweight" as a euphemism, which avoids just saying "fat" by instead implying there is a "correct" weight which someone is deviating from, which is itself anti-fat

people uncomfortable with transness using [sexgender + body] phrasing as a euphemism (e.g. "male bodies" instead of "penis" or "female bodies" instead of "breasts" or whatever), which avoids just naming body parts by instead implying there is a "correct" assemblage of traits which someone is deviating from, which is itself anti-trans

the euphemism is for the benefit of the speaker, because they are uncomfortable with someone's body. they portray it as politeness, but it's extremely rude.

[safitheartist]

I disagree.

Objectively speaking a lot of people do still take offense with being called fat, because fat was used as an insult against them in the past therefore they have bad associations with that term.

Generally you should avoid commenting about a person's weight, but using overweight over fat is definitely being conscious of the fact that not every person is comfortable with being called fat.

It's generally a bad idea to assume that your own relationship with your body image and the language around it is universally shared.

Instead of shaming other people for trying to be considerate of other people's feelings I would suggest you just stick to letting people know your own comfort level instead of assuming everyone has the same as you.

[redeless]

I get not calling people fat when you don't know how they'd feel about it, but that's not a good reason to substitute "overweight" for fat. Overweight has a value judgment right there in the word. OVERweight. It's giving, "there is something wrong with your body. I have assessed what it is by sight, and deemed that it needs correcting."

When people say overweight, they have no idea what weight a person would actually be healthiest at. (As evidenced by all the people who congratulated me for losing weight and "getting healthy" while I was wasting away from chronic illness. Significant overlap between that group and the people who'd previously called me "overweight" in the context of suggesting I exercise more or starve myself, showing they really did mean the value judgment part of it. They also had no idea how much I exercised - Too Much - or ate.)

Aside from all that, whether another person is at their healthiest isn't anyone else's business, either. And re: fat in particular, concern about health is usually masking, "I don't think you look right and I'm making it your fault." There are only some bodily characteristics that elicit this pervasive concern about "health". Being intersex is another one; people will go to great lengths to avoid saying it, while suggesting you fix your health by fixing your appearance. Health and appearance aren't the same, and correlating them can ironically be incredibly damaging to people's actual health.

Re: OP, I'd never made this connection before but yeah, damn. The fear and discomfort and hatred of people having Wrong Bodies is all connected. Fatphobia is connected to Ableism is connected to Interphobia is connected to Transphobia. Eliding the terms for what you're really talking about can be part of the phobia in all cases.

...Anyway, in conclusion, Thank fuck T is finally making me fat again. Means my digestive system is working again. I haven't been in this little pain for a decade.

[kaijuno]

catmouflage

[aubreyappears]

the thing about stock fantasy monsters and people and things is that even the most stock ones have some WILD stuff happening before they were standardized.

a unicorns horn was said to be so strong unicorns escaped hunters by jumping off cliffs and landing on the horn, which absorbs the impact. drinking dragon blood lets you understand birds. and don’t even get me STARTED on trolls, fantasy genre did them a massive disservice by turning them into just “big ugly dumb guy”.

[aubreyappears]

haha it hasn’t even been an hour where did almost forty notes come fr-

oh well, yeah. that’ll do it.

[tyrantisterror]

[frustrationinexcelsis]

A few bits and bobs off the top of my head:

Unicorns were sometimes described as being mortal enemies with lions. Lions would hunt unicorns by standing in front of a tree, goading the 'corn into charging, dodging to the side and, when the unicorn was good and stuck, going in for the kill. I know that there is some kind of relationship to England using lion heraldry and Scotland using unicorn heraldry, but I don't remember the direction that the causality took here.

A common element in dragon stories in medieval Europe was that if a small, harmless creature like a common snake (or a lamprey, or a worm, or any other long and wiggly animal -- these things were often seen as fairly interchangeable) lived for long enough or grew big enough, it would become a dragon. See things like the Lambton Worm, for instance.

Griffins were sometimes described as compulsive hoarders of gold, even before this became common for dragons. Herodotus, for example, described them as endlessly feuding with a tribe of one-eyed barbarians because of how much both coveted the gold of the far north.

Manticores were sometimes stated to be able to mimic human speech, or to have voices like flutes and trumpets.

Almost every famous werewolf trope (associations with the moon, periodic or uncontrolled transformations, infectious bites, hybrid appearances, lack of control while transformed, etcetera) was developed by a handful of famous movies in the early-mid 20th century. Medieval werewolves were something more like a kind of witch, and were not thought to actually transform, as such. Instead, they typically either used magic to either disguise themselves at will, but without any effect on their mind, or sent their souls out into the world in the shape of wolves.

(Also, there were a few odd examples of heroic or benevolent werewolves, like the Friulian benandanti, who described themselves as using their powers (the soul travel version, in their case) to fight evil witches (malandanti) that threatened their communities.)

Vampires were sometimes described as having a sort of obsessive mentality around counting. One way of dealing with vampires was to find their graves and scatter a lot of small grains or seeds around, so it would be forced to spend all night counting them, or to bury a body with a small net or a length of tangled twine, so it would stay occupied by slowly unpicking the knots one at a time.

("One thousand, five hundred, and thirty-eight millet grains, ah, ah, ah! One thousand, five hundred, and thirty-nine millet grains, ah, ah, ah...")

Also, I fully agree with OP's comment in another reblog that ogres lost a lot by being lumped in with trolls and giants as a single category of big stupid brutes. A lot of folkloric ogres lived in castles, wore fine clothing, and used magic... and were also evil man-eating monsters on top of that, of course.

[ninjakittenarmy]

Trolls are funny because nobody seems to know what the fuck they are. You’ve got the big dumb beasts, you’ve got the small, tricky little gremlins, you’ve got greedy trolls, gluttonous trolls, benevolent trolls, trolls that talk in riddles, trolls that regenerate, trolls that run toll bridges. Why are all of these things called trolls? It’s like they used the term for any fey monster that didn’t fit the bill of “elf”, “goblin”, pixie, or “fairy”.

[thecottageinthedark]

'Elf', 'goblin' and 'fairy' are all catchall terms too-or were originally. (I'm not sure about 'pixie'.) They're all from different languages-and thus different regions. They also overlap a lot! The idea that these are all separate, easily definably different types of being is a pretty modern idea. For instance, Tolkien is pretty much solely responsible for the way we think of elves and dwarves. He invented 'elves are tall and skinny and beautiful and live in forests, dwarves are short and muscly and bearded and live in caves, and these are entirely different species'. Mythological sources often refer to dwarves as 'dark elves', or rather svartalfar.

Mind you I'm not saying that Tolkien made that up out of whole cloth-the ideas of willowy forest dwellers and of small cave/mine dwellers were definitely present in various mythologies. But the thing is, within Middle-Earth, elves and dwarves are provably real in the same way humans are provably real. They're flesh and blood beings and as such have defined natures. Within the real world, elves and dwarves are stories, or rather elements of stories. They're plot devices that have been altered to fit into a whole bunch of different narratives and belief systems, over thousands of years.

[kafk-a]

Ursula K. Le Guin, from The Left Hand of Darkness

[eileenlufkin]

[id I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth. The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor. end id]