Not gonna lie this makes me a bit irritated. Here's the real version of this photo:
Instead of a cutesie reference to film censorship it was an explicit statement of defiance of Maryland's criminalization gay sex, which was not repealed until 2002. This wasn't a guy saying "Oh they can't put what I do in the movies according to a completely voluntary industry code" he was saying "The State of Maryland wants to put me in jail for being gay and having gay sex."
It wasn't a guy being cheeky about sex in an ambiguous, cute way. It was a man stating, in no uncertain terms, that a whole state of the United States considered him a criminal for being homosexual.
Btw people elsewhere reverse searched the image and confirmed it’s a stock image of a trans woman. This was a conscious decision to degender her and give her a masculine name
everyone saying "what if Toby is just nonbinary" needs to think very deeply about this. Toby isn't real. its a stock image of a transgender woman, given a masculine name and referred to as "they/them". think long and hard about why the person who created this training program would do that.
this is why your lit teachers made you write about the books you read. you're supposed to think about the author's intentions.
When you’re an urban explorer making videos of abandoned buildings that you expect no one will watch— but then it turns out one of the buildings is inhabited by the Creature and that building has actually been his desperate lifetime hyperfixation & acted as his stand-in for the Entire World. Also: the weird dynamic you have with the freak who liked your 3am flop post.
I started writing this comic before episode 9, with the premise that Pomni might start reaching out to Caine for similar reasons she’d post videos she believes nobody will watch: not because you think anyone will listen, but because someone might. [and then revised it all after episode 9 came out and delved more into these ideas than I was expecting!]
love seeing revisionism in the wild “free the nipple never meant you can walk around topless every where that’s still sexual harassment it just meant for like breastfeeding and stuff”no it literally means you should be able to walk around topless anywhere because get this. breasts aren’t fucking sexual organs.
I remember when I was about 12, I watched a show on TLC that followed people as they got somewhat uncommon medical procedures.
There was one episode with a trans woman getting different gender-affirming operations, including breast implants. It showed the procedure, and (what I found so fascinating that it's stuck with me for decades), as soon as the doctor put the implant in, a censor blur popped up on the nipple.
And you just know there was a meeting between the TLC lawyers and the editors and producers of the show to discuss what the difference was between a "man nipple" (can be shown) and a "woman nipple" (no no must obscure, 'tis naughty). And they decided that as soon as the implant goes in and the nipple has more mass behind it, that's the moment when it becomes a woman's nipple and must be hidden to comply with TV rules.
But it's the same nipple. On the same person. I know what it looks like; I just saw it. But TV and obscenity rules are rules, and the rules say woman nipple = sexual and therefore explicit, but man nipple = neutral, just fine.
"Free the Nipple" was calling out arbitrary bullshit like that, because someone just existing with their body parts should not be considered obscene, and the double standard that men can be topless but women can't is so blatantly ridiculous. All nipples are just nipples. If you get turned on or bothered by them, that's on you.
I love when someone is explaining instructions to a group I’m in and they look at me and it reminds them to say something about using preferred names/pronouns or that there’s vegan food options available. I go by my given name/pronouns and I’m not vegan but I’m proud that I can provide this service
Of course! Let’s dive in—the seven different provinces of the United States of America are: The Beast Coast, Luigiana, Better Wisconsin, Minigan, Long California, Texas, and Canada+!
ill be so real the most personally insulting element of "content creator boundaries" as the mcyt sphere conceives of them is the idea that if i watch a fictional series published on youtube dot com and really enjoy it and feel inspired to make fanworks of it, before i am "allowed" to do so i am expected to go to Some Guy's Twitter where they have posted the rules for how to do that.
like. brother. i dont know that guy. they dont know me. i am not interested in knowing them. i am interested in the videos they posted on, again, a different website. to a public audience. this aint about them. so why is the expectation that i go to their fucking. social media account on a site i dont use and look up personal information about them. it's parasocial as hell. not to mention completely unintuitive if you havent been frog boiled by mcyt fan culture long enough to view it as a matter of course.
I genuinely don’t understand the cishet obsession with justifying not wanting to fuck people. I have plenty of friends who have hit on me and I turned them down because I found them unattractive. I didn’t however explain why I turned them down I just said no and everyone was fine with it because saying no is a completely reasonable response to someone trying to initiate a sexual or romantic relationship. Why do cis people have to go “well I don’t fuck trannies” every time they have to turn down a transfem.
Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.
There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.
Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.
I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.
—
I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
kinda tired of non binary being tied to skinny androgyny that's mostly white. I say that's as a non binary transmasc/boy thing who's fat and black.
being non binary can look like anything and anyone but especially individuals who have different body types outside of thin. they can have body/facial hair too. show up for all enbies.
