Why am I awake again?

I'm Asher, twenty-eight year old transgender gay witch. I answer to he/his pronouns. Feel free to message me about anything and everything, if you need anything tagged please let me know and I'll do my best to. I'm...

[antlering]

Something that baffles me is when people compare Aphrodite to “bloody” goddesses (Anat, Inanna, Sekhmet, etc.) as a way to say Aphrodite is just a demure love goddess teehee, look how badass my warrior goddess is instead.

Aphrodite Ourania rose out of blood and the ocean and walked to land fully-formed. This Aphrodite is a Titaness, older even than the generation of Zeus. She has no mother. She is never an infant. She is the ultimate generative power, the fish, born from a male (upending societal norms) and wielding the power of creation and invention.

Aphrodite Areia is a war goddess - this is the title made famous by Athena and Ares, but Aphrodite does not get this title from her lover. She is a goddess of soldiers and fights on the battlefield of Troy. She is also Aphrodite Hoplismena, the armed, depicted in full armor with a shield and sword. This is the Aphrodite of Sparta.

Aphrodite Nikephoros is not only Aphrodite armored and armed, but Aphrodite commanding the power of Nike - Nike, the goddess usually found at Zeus’s side, ensuring victory. This Aphrodite is not one to be crossed on the battlefield, because you will not win.

Or maybe we just aren’t on the same page as the ancients when it comes to a “love goddess.” Aphrodite Pandemos is a goddess of frenzy, a goddess who incites war and madness, a goddess to whom it was said even the Fates would bend their will. To some Hellenes, Aphrodite was the goddess of creation because she is the spark of all love and desire - and to others, she was the creator of all.

There’s nothing wrong in calling Aphrodite a goddess of love - she is, truly. But this doesn’t make her timid. She is not clawless. She is a complex goddess, inextricably linked to the awesome war goddesses of the Ancient Near East. Do not dilute her just because you’re not familiar with her or with the domain of love goddesses. I know this may seem trivial to some people, but don’t reduce one goddess to make another look more powerful - they don’t need it.

[bellybuttonblue-deactivated2021]

[sentientcitizen]

Here’s the opposite story, though. With apologies because I don’t have the book in front of me, so I may get some details wrong, but I read this “Irena’s Children“ by Tilar J. Mazzeo.

Irena lived in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, and dedicated her life to rescuing Jewish children from the Ghetto, and her story is complicated in a lot of ways but - well, this story isn’t actually about Irena, per se.

It’s about a bus driver.

It’s about a day when she’s traveling across town by bus with a very young Jewish child, and partway to their destination the child looks up and asks a question - in Yiddish. and the whole bus goes quiet, because everyone knows what that means. And Irena thinks, okay, we’re going to die here today.

And she’s running through her options - all of them bad - and suddenly the bus stops, and the bus driver announces that there’s been a mechanical failure and the bus needs to return to the depot immediately. Everyone off, please.

And she stands and goes to get off the bus and the driver says - not you two. Sit down. So she sits down as everyone else leaves, because, well, what else is she going to do? the options are all still bad, at this point.

and when the bus is empty the bus driver says,

“Where do you need to go?”

And then he drives them as close to their destination as he can, and lets them off, and drives away. And Irena lives, and the kid lives, and they never cross paths again.

So a janitor got three people killed, and a bus driver saved two lives - not to mention all the other lives indirectly saved because Irena was able to continue her work.

I think about that almost every day now, to be honest.

We can’t all be Irena. I couldn’t be Irena. She was in a unique place with very specific skills and connections that let her do what she did. I am just one mentally ill librarian. I can’t be her. But - I can be the bus driver. Or I could be the janitor. Because it doesn’t matter what your job is. It doesn’t matter who you are. In a world like this, every single one of us has the opportunity to do massive harm or massive good. We can save lives or end them.

And that’s scary. but it’s also very comforting? at least for me. Because at the end of the day it means this: no matter of how small and helpless and unimportant you feel, you’re never powerless in the face of great evil.

You can choose to be the bus driver.

[rose-in-a-fisted-glove]

That bus driver publically risked not only his own life, but the lives of any family he had, to help a pair of strangers. If you can’t be the bus driver, that’s okay.

You can still be one of the passengers or passersby who helped the bus driver live through saving strangers’ lives.

You can be the passengers that didn’t tell on the bus driver when he called “mechanical issues” when the bus had been working fine and made everyone but the Jews get off the bus without making sure another bus was coming.

You can be the pedestrians on the street who noticed a suspiciously empty bus, with only a woman and child on it, not following the correct route- and did not call it in.

There’s a lot of necessary quiet inaction that happens behind actions.

[sheddingplates-deactivated20160]

[sheddingplates-deactivated20160]

“Kissing Doesn’t Kill“ (Black and white postcard) from 1980’s ACT UP campaign for HIV/AIDS awareness.

[robotsharks-deactivated20260326]

This is the banner that was put up on buses to create awareness! a lot of companies cropped out the bottom so I thought it would be cool to share the full version

[feminist-space]

The above is a video shared by smrchildsadness on Twitter, showing a person participating in a pride parade exchanging a pride flag with a person standing on his (am using his pronoun based on the TikToks/Tweets of what happened) doorway who had a Portuguese flag. There are sounds of cheers and crying and the two people hug each other as they exchange the flags. The man at the doorway then waved kisses to the crowd within the pride parade.

The Tweet says: "NO YOU DONT UNDERSTAND HE WAS WAVING THE PORTUGUESE FLAG BECAUSE HE DIDN'T HAVE A PRIDE FLAG AND THEY TRADED FLAGS AND HE'S SO EMOTIONAL TO GET HIS OWN PRIDE FLAG I'M EMOTIONALLY RUINED"

For context, apparently they were worried that maybe he's a nationalist because he was waving the Portuguese flag and some nationalists opposing the pride march were waving that flag. But upon interacting with him, it turns out he didn't have have a pride flag and he wanted to wave *a* flag in support of the pride march. So they had an exchange and now he has his own pride flag 😭🥹.

The image above is a Tweet by kunwara_ladkaa that says "I'm crying so much right now (Image taken by Manuel Fernando Araújo/Lusa)". The image shows the same man from the pride parade crying as he hugs his new pride flag.

The above image is a Tweet by dudz_zZzz that says "ainda não parei de pensar nele," which according to Google translate from Portuguese to English is "I still haven't stopped thinking about him." The image is a drawing of the person from the pride parade, crying as he hugs his new pride flag.

Posts were made on July 1, 2024.

[nevereverbird]

His name is António Fernandes, and you can find the original article where he spoke about this event here

This elderly gentleman lives alone in Porto, when he saw the march coming up his street all he knew was he wanted to participate, so he ran home to get the only flag he had to wave as they passed by, when they did he was overcome with emotion and called over one of the activists, they hugged and exchanged flags, he felt so overwhelmed that he could only hold it and cry.

This isn't a story about a closeted elderly man, António lives and has been living alone for many years now and that little moment made him feel included in something for the first time in many years.

Says the article:

"The act was "of support”, guarantees the man, especially because “each one is as they are and we are all the same”. “The joy I felt at this moment. I cried,” he recalled, still emotional when looking at the photograph offered to him during this report.

However, even though it reached thousands of people, the moment screams a feeling of belonging, of joy and also a portrait of loneliness as a consequence of aging.

Behind that door, whose image spread across the country, António is the portrait of a condition that affects many others like him.  He lives alone, but the walls of his home are full of memories of a life shared and full of love. “Memories I preserve,” he stresses.

He's not gay, nor does he need to be to support and respect the cause.

“We all have the same color blood. We are all the same.”

Still with an emotional look glued to the photograph that immortalized his gesture at the march, António remembers: “I felt embraced by all of them”. After a sigh, he says: “See this photo? I want to take it to my coffin.”

[jewishsora]

for those of you who haven't been keeping up with Riku's VA streaming Kingdom Hearts:

he is using a rare mage build

he calls trinity marks "banksies"

he is obsessed with sending the postcards

every time Kairi appears or is mentioned he gets audibly miffed because she jokingly suggested taking the raft without Riku and now he's mad at her

he similarly hates Donald for putting the kibosh on Riku coming with them in the Gummi Ship. he calls him "the duck" and kicks him out of his party whenever possible.

he is the type of gamer who meticulously combs the map thinking up abstract solutions to simple puzzles

he ships Merlin and the Fairy Godmother

he says Riku fills his pants with water and keeps fish in there

[ozempicofficial]

[time-is-a-lake]

[goddamnshinyrock]

my parents visited today and their latest item of ‘what people you knew in school are up to lately’ gossip was about the absolutely BONKERS thing they’re trying to talk their friend out of doing to her daughter. I’m still in shock tbh

[goddamnshinyrock]

Their friend is helping her daughter’s boyfriend’s mom to throw a 200-guest surprise engagement party for her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend. The daughter and the bf are not engaged. Neither of them have even discussed planning to get engaged with their respective mothers. The moms are going to surprise the bf with his late grandmother’s ring at the party and tell him it’s time to propose to his gf. In front of 200 friends and family members. Just an absolute nightmare scenario.

[goddamnshinyrock]

Oh the kicker is that the pretense they’re inviting people under is that it’s a surprise “congrats on passing the bar” party for the bf. A thing he is currently stressing about having to take for the second time and may not pass. So it may turn into a 200-person surprise “sorry you failed to pass the bar for the second time, here’s your grandma’s ring, go propose anyway” party, which is a near-incomprehensible level of public humiliation.

[goddamnshinyrock]

Bf’s mom, whose brainchild this whole thing was, has already rented out an entire waterfront restaurant for the party. In Newport. This is what “more money than sense” looks like in practice.

[goddamnshinyrock]

Since this blew up overnight and people are asking, I managed to track the daughter down on linkedin today (the only social media I could find that we both have, lol) and message her. So she has been warned, and hopefully doesn't take the message poorly.

[roachpatrol]

things you will see on a road trip across america

-so much desert that you will get scared 

-seriously from california to new mexico is terrifying like it’s eight straight hours of pale red desert and the sky is so large that everything, even your car, even your hands, looks like a tenuously small and fragile diorama placed on an endless pale red table and left there to dissolve. 

-a gas station that for some reason has large dinosaurs made out of scrap metal. they are 1000% awesome. sometimes they move. take a million pictures.

-a fruit stand that sells the best fruit you have ever eaten. later you won’t quite remember which fruit. strawberries, maybe? peaches?

-small black birds, subtly different in every state. some have gold eyes and some are a little iridescent and some are black from beak to toes. the sparrows they compete with for crumbs look exactly the same wherever you go. 

-a completely empty rest stop. no one eats at the concrete tables. no one plays in the tiny strip of grass or gravel. you will find a small and beautiful stone. 

-a hawaii license plate, somewhere around ohio. i still don’t know how they get the cars across the ocean. i don’t know why anyone would leave hawaii for ohio. i don’t know why anyone lives in ohio. 

-an incredibly weird duck. you had no idea ducks could look so incredibly weird, and you wish you were still ignorant of how incredibly weird ducks can, apparently, look. 

-a small folksy roadside waystation that sells fudge and incredibly tacky statues of eagles and wolves and cowboys. if you like fudge, eat the fudge from here. 

-a lizard doing pushups. if you are particularly fortunate: many lizards doing pushups.

-approximately one gajillion starbucks shops. don’t bother counting them. it will make you angry. 

-a storm somewhere around oklahoma, if you’re lucky. the clouds tower up in fantastic fluffy castles miles and miles into the air and are painted pink and gold and purple and the sky turns a dozen impossible shades of blue and when the rain comes down over your car it sounds like the world is ending. 

-weird burrs will stick to your legs. you’ll flick them out of the car eighty or eight hundred miles from where their parent plant was grown, and not be sure whether you should wish the little hitchikers well or not. 

-a dog wearing sunglasses with his head hanging out of a car window. this will be the high point of the trip. 

-the world’s most depressing restaurant. you will know it when you wind up there and have to eat the terrible food, and listen to the terrible music, and look at all the listless waiters and want to tell them get in my car, for god’s sake get in, i’ll take you out of whatever crapsack little town this is that you can’t get out of on your own. but you won’t say that because it’s rude. maybe they have family here. maybe they even like it here.

-a painting of a sailboat in a motel located at least a hundred miles from any significant body of water. 

-several genuinely hilarious postcards. buy them.

-a cat that will not let you pet it. this will be the low point of the trip. 

-corn. so much corn you will get scared. who the fuck is going to eat all this corn? 

-a small stream in some small woods and the light will come down perfectly and the water will be beautiful and the grass will be beautiful and there will be flowers maybe or the leaves of the trees are starting to turn gold and there are birds chirping and it will be so perfect you will want to stand there and stay forever and live in this little magical painting off the side of the highway and be some kind of highway druid. but instead, you’ll get bored after a while, and get back in the car. 

[jumpingjacktrash]

if anyone ever wonders why i love america so much despite its many political and cultural flaws, this is why. this post explains it perfectly.

[bead-bead-deactivated20190901]

OOoh, tell me more road trip stories. 

[thepioden]

Based on recent experience from Nebraska to Colorado: if you are from the plains, you didn’t know or had forgotten what driving in mountains was like. Jesus Christ, they take semis through here? The avalanche warning signs make you nervous. It’s May, why is is snowing. What the hell is happening to your engine rpm. RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA, NEXT EXIT.

If you are from the mountains, you didn’t know or had forgotten what driving on the plains was like. Jesus Christ, do people live amongst these soybeans? The road construction goes from ‘tolerable’ to ‘inducing blind fury’ about 75 miles into I-80. It’s May, why is it 98 degrees. What the hell is happening to your engine rpm. GOD IS REAL, NEXT EXIT.

[girlmostlikely]

[ebrithilbowser]

Don't forget the followup

[homunculus-argument]

Today in Probably Inadvisable Homonculus Crafts: can I fix my own shoes?

[homunculus-argument]

Replacing a boot zipper felt like such a simple task to do that I was aware when I started that there will probably be unforeseen problems that I hadn't planned for.

Seeing how many other parts of the shoe were worn through to shit and realising that I might have to take the whole damn shoe apart and reconstruct it ship of theseus style was definitely an unforeseen one.

[homunculus-argument]

I have moved on from the denial to bargaining stage. It'll be fine if I just take out and replace the one torn soft leather strip at the brim, and the most inner fabric of the heel. It will then be perfectly fine.

[homunculus-argument]

One month later: I have successfully taken out the thoroughly fucked lining, made new ones from scratch and boyfriend's old pyjama pants, successfully sewed and glued them in, and I have now successfully completed one shoe, and I am almost done sewing the other. May get the second one done today, depending on how I get my actual work done.

[saulutekaipbabasake]

It isn't called hubris if you can actually pull through the "I can definetly do this, how hard can it be?" craft

[homunculus-argument]

It's only hubris if the gods and consequences catch you. Whether or not that's about to happen is still in the air.

[choiceparalysis]

@theshitpostcalligrapher "it's only hubris if the gods and consequences catch you."

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

me every day actually

[apollos-olives]

TOBY FOX FOLLOWS YOU??

who

[apollos-olives]

WHAT

[apollos-olives]

guys what's undertale

[apollos-olives]

[sealsdaily]

Today's Seal Is: Hmph!

[beardedmrbean]

Can confirm, it did be like this.

[beardedmrbean]

really painting the picture that was in my head right here

[txttletale]

generally speaking a lot of people wrongly take TERFs and other transphobes at face value when assembling their awesome rhetorical gotchas in a way that makes them seem like gullible suckers

[txttletale]

"do these TERFs realise that they're never going to get bathroom genital inspections implemented" yes they do they're not trying to get them implemented they're trying to intimidate trans women out of existing in public so they'll detransition or die

"umm im a trans man with a beard and if i used the bathroom these stupid TERFs want me to they'd hate that lol" right that's because they don't want you to use any bathroom they want you to detransition or die

"lol social contagion theory is stupid do these parents really think isolating their kids will magically turn them cis" well you see they actually think itll make them detransition or die

[masterhallmark]

Rant incoming

I feel like the problem with a lot of Disney's live action remakes (and arguably Wish) is they're trying to appeal to a crowd that no longer exists, namely the people who used to claim that the Disney Princesses were sexist.

All the interviews tend to include, "Well she's not chasing a MAN anymore" which...almost no one sees the princesses like that, anymore. Virtually NO ONE still believes the princesses are man-chasing sexist caricatures of women.

Cinderella is now hailed as an abuse victim who stayed strong long enough to get help to get out of her situation. Anyone who says she should have saved herself is basically regarded as a victim blamer. And it's very clear in the film she wasn't looking to marry the prince, she just wanted a night off. She was the only one who wasn't in line to meet him. She didn't find out she met the prince until he went looking for her!

Snow White is now hailed for her negotiation skills, ability to calm down after extreme stress (she had a moment of panic and had to cry for a bit, but who wouldn't after finding out The Queen hired someone to kill you?), and ability to take charge of a house of adult men. And again, she was an abuse victim, this time trying to escape ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS. While she dreamed of her prince, it was secondary to her main goal of SURVIVAL. There are also entire video essays about how Snow White gave hope to people during The Great Depression.

Everyone acknowledges that Ariel wanted to be human BEFORE meeting Eric. We all know she was a nerd hyperfixating on humans, and also standing up to her prejudiced father.

We understand Sleeping Beauty wasn't the main character, the Three Good Fairies were, AND PHILLIP WOULD NEVER HAVE BEATEN MALEFICENT WITHOUT THEM! He literally depended on them! WOMEN SAVED THE DAY! But even then, is it really such a sin for a girl to fantasize about romance and fall for someone with corny pickup lines?

We all understand Jasmine just wanted someone to treat her LIKE A PERSON. She rejected every Prince before Aladdin because they treated her like a prize. So why did they need her to want to be Sultan? How did that make her more feminist when she already wanted to be treated like an equal and have a say in her future? Is it only empowering if you want a career in politics?

We admire that Belle, despite living in a judgemental village, was kind to everyone (even though she found the village life dull), and her story teaches girls that the guy everyone else loves isn't always a good guy. What's sexist about teaching girls about red flags? And she didn't start being nice to The Beast until he started treating her with respect and kindness.

Do I really NEED to defend Mulan or Tiana? I think they speak for themselves.

Rapunzel was yet another abuse victim who just needed a little help to get out of her bad situation. In this case, she also needed to learn that she was an abuse victim, and that what Mother Gothel did WASN'T normal, much like many victims of gaslighting.

And don't get me started on the non-princess animals.

Perdita had a healthy relationship with Pongo to the point she was open to express her pregnancy fears to him, and was ready to TEAR APART Cruella's goons for daring to touch her puppies as well as adopting the other puppies. Like, she was so ferocious the goons mistook her for a hyena! She's basically that "I AM THAT GIRL'S MOTHER!" scene from SpyXFamily if Yor were a dog. She and her husband were a TEAM.....but they made a Cruella live action to turn her into a girlboss?! The literal animal abuser!? THAT'S the woman you wanted to put on a pedestal when Perdita was RIGHT THERE!?

Duchess kept her kittens calm after they had been catnapped and was classy as heck. Nice to everyone regardless of social class during a time period where that was uncommon.

Lady stood up to Tramp when she believed he had abandoned her and didn't really care about her. She found out he was a heartbreaker and was like, "Nuh uh. No. You are not doing that to me! You put me through enough."

Miss Bianca from The Rescuers was IN CHARGE the whole movie, and was willing to risk life and limb to save an innocent child. THAT TINY MOUSE TOOK ON ALLIGATORS! And she picked Bernard to accompany her because he was the only one who wasn't ogling her. And then in the sequel SHE DID IT ALL AGAIN! I wish I were as brave as her.

Like, the public haven't accused these ladies of being sexist caricatures since 2014 (Actresses and actors don't count, they're out of touch like the rest of Hollywood) yet Disney is operating under the assumption that the public still thinks that way, hence all the "sHe'S nOt AfTeR a MaN iN ThIs VeRsIOn" talk.

The live action remakes are trying to attract an audience that doesn't really exist much, anymore, and back when it did exist, was comprised mainly of people who didn't actually watch the films. The Disney princesses are no longer seen as sexist, and feminine qualities are no longer seen as weak or undesirable.

[ethernalium]

final fantasy characters when they defeat god:

[whichcouldmeanothing]

these guys haven't seen goncharov