#esrah talks

[resignedseraph]

"You should obey god because he's the one that saved you from hell" has really similar vibes as "you should obey your parents because they put a roof over your head"

[esrah-rah-rasputin]

[ID: a gaudy pink themed collage of a smiling Quark from DS9, with many sparkly gifs around him. These include a rotating gif of himself, a confused Odo, a color changing DS9, sale stickers, and gambling. Text in various stickers reads, "scum lord," "I support drunk driving" "sicko" "marked" "freak" "Be the reason why someone closes this app" "it's 5 o'clock somewhere" and "I love my 67 boxes of unsold self-sealing stem bolts." /End ID]

[esrah-rah-rasputin]

I have feelings about gracerocky as dynamic where the priorities are entirely unrelated to romance or sexuality, and/but the intensity is the same. I think dynamics where people bond over mutual thirst for knowledge and companionship and shared skills and interests are often underrated, so I just love thinking about that in the context of them

That feeling when you want to be in proximity of someone because they're just so fascinating and interesting and different from you, but so alike at the same time, and you work so, so well together you may as well be one being. Where remembering each other's habits and accounting for preferences to make things run as smoothly as possible is how you show you care, so you can work fluidly and learn and experiment with as little resistance as possible, and with the kind of company that makes even the boring things interesting. That kind of intimacy is so fucking good

[resignedseraph]

Types of sermons I’ve been done with for years:

God is calling you! God is calling you!! God is calling you don’t you hear him!!! (no, stop asking)

Did you know you suck? You do? You better

Here’s the same story you’ve heard literally dozens of times since you were a kid, now react to it like you’re hearing it for the first time, start tearing up in awe to show you care

Remember, if you think you’re suffering no you’re not, and if you are just trust god ok that’ll fix it

God hears you and will answer your prayers and provide for you! And if you think he’s not just slap “god” on something random and be grateful it isn’t worse

Like I’ve been sick and tired of these for half my life, I’d be happy to never hear any of these again, and if you relate, those feelings are valid and it’s okay to acknowledge them

[esrah-rah-rasputin]

Hi I'm going to talk about a weird xenoanthropology topic involving cannibalism and spiders now

I saw a pair of male and female wolf spiders in my bedroom today, within a few inches of each other. I took a picture, sent it to the group chat and made a joke about "aw they're on a date." I went back about fifteen minutes later, and noticed the only thing left was a leg (assumedly from the male being eaten post-copulation), and commented on this plus "I see the date went well"

Then I was like, huh. That is a very non-anthropocentric comment I just made (aside from the fact that I was labeling spiders mating as a date, which was pretty clearly anthropocentric). Seeing evidence of post-copulatory cannibalism and commenting on it as on par with human standards for mating rituals, and all that

Then I thought to myself, what would interacting with a sapient species that has similar practices work? Of course you have to do a certain amount of anthropomorphizing to play with this idea at all in a way understandable to a human, but I digress. Back to spider people

Like... how would that relate to social roles? Would it be acceptable to turn down post-copulatory cannibalism, or would it be seen as a cowardly or selfish thing? Would it be approached as an ancient practice from a time with fewer resources, which isn't participated in anymore as a sign that they have reliable resources?

Would there be cookbooks like 101 Best Ways To Cook Your Mate? What about some equivalent of last will and testimonies? How would a male think about the whole arrangement? What if a female didn't want to eat a male post-copulation? What if she only wanted to eat him a little bit? Would that be taboo, or considerate, or even kinky? How would legal things work? Would it be a private matter, or out in the open? Would it be seen as a romantic sacrifice, or a grief filled necessity?

Plenty of human societies have practiced cannibalism (almost always for ritual purposes associated with grieving or conflict) but what if there was a species comparable to humans that practiced it as part of a very vital piece of their life cycle? Upon the advent of producing sustenance outside of opportunistic hunting, how would a species adapt this part of their lives? You know??

[esrah-rah-rasputin]

Yet again one of the best things my parents taught me/my brother from an early age that influenced how we view things now, is that in context where people might be nude, bodies are just bodies

See a naked old lady in the swim locker? Yep, sometimes people do that. You don't have to do the same thing, and you don't have to look if you don't want to

See a guy wearing a speedo that looks very tight? He's still following the rules, he's not harassing anyone and just swimming. You can politely look away if you're bothered

See a person's nipples through their shirt? They have nipples, you're right, so do all of us. Some people like to cover them, and some don't really care to. This is okay

This helped a lot when it came to respecting my own discomfort but not making it other people's problem. It also helped me not fall for the lie that the body is inherently sexual and provocative, once one starts puberty. If someone thought my body was distracting, that was entirely a them problem! Even when I was in a wildly conservative environment at the time, I did not see the naked human body as a threat or danger, and it prevented me from developing a lot of reactions or feelings around nudity that would've fed into bioessentialism and both religious and secular purity culture

This was also especially helpful when I came out as trans and more recently when I started doing in-home caregiving, because sometimes nudity comes up and that's okay, and being adjusted to that avoids distress that might get in the way of important things

[esrah-rah-rasputin]

With turned-Eridian!Grace AUs I think something underrated is Grace using human body language and accidentally coming off uncannily (if that’s even an emotion Eridians developed). Like would that be worse in an Eridian body? If he turned into an Eridian would ppl be like “…actually we’d gotten used to your human body language so this feels weird all over again”? Alternatively I love the inevitability of Grace picking up Eridian body language because humans are so so social, not even to mention verbiage

[esrah-rah-rasputin]

tfw you wake up early and while sleeping your body’s been making Smells and so you wake up and smell the Sleeping Human Smell and it’s not great