[most fairy tail/anime stuff is slowly moving over to @fairydares 👆 I still try to make sure all the really good stuff makes it over here tho ;)]
On I/P.
Radfems seem to misinterpret my username & think I’m one of them. so to be clear: I do not align with TERF, swerf, radfem, or “gender-critical” views. The response to this ask sums up my feelings on this pretty well. If you message me I’ll block then never think of you again. “Febfems”, transmeds, anti-choicers, and ace/arophobes get going or get blocked, too.
***gender, according to science (also) (and)***
***trans+ resources :)***
***More links on this***
Etiquette (or what passes for it here)
I usually try to at least tag stuff I haven't fact-checked, but please take my reblogs and posts with a grain of salt; I am not an educator, and this blog is personal, not a resource. I reblog & post with more "private sphere" guidelines & for myself. That said, I appreciate when people point out if I got something wrong and will do my best to correct it.
***Tips to search for any post on tumblr***
***secret dashboard w/ only the people you have notifs turned on***
okay im not done. Like. Sure. I get the urge to confess stuff too in similar situations, I have OCD, I get it, but you gotta remember 1. this person did not ask for that information 2. you are only burdening them with the heavy implication they are there to absolve you which is not something they should ever have to do (why should they?) and 3. kinda making it about you, you know? that's not cool. And so you must harness the power of Shutting the Fuck Up.
Watched a documentary about abuse and advice one guy said to give children was, "Tell them that if someone is hurting them, to tell someone - and don't just tell one person. Tell as many people as possible, and keep telling as many people as possible until the abuse stops." and i really liked that
Bc so many ppl focus on the idea of telling A Trusted Adult, but even a well-meaning individual can fuck up and let abuse fall through the cracks or not know what to do
Whereas if a child tells LOADS of adults AND other kids, there's far less opportunity for an abuser to do damage control
Consistently telling their story and spreading it around disempowers the abuser to control and coerce the flow of information, or to utilise gaps and weaknesses in systems of reporting or welfare to isolate the child
Just really good advice. Not suprised I don't hear it more often.
This was filmed at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which rescues, rehabilitates, and releases orphaned elephants in Kenya (among other conservation efforts). Charity Navigator has given it a 4/4 star rating, and you can make donations here or “adopt” a baby elephant here.
there is no such thing as a 'pure' desire untouched by various societal pressures and bigotries and stressors and traumas. there's no way to know what sexuality would look like stripped bare of everything that influences it. and either we can embrace that complicated mess, or we can spend till the end of the world trying to figure out what Correct Sexual Desire looks like and in the process further traumatize and exclude anyone who doesn't fit that image. and frankly, that sounds extremely unsexy to me.
I think there’s a conversation to be had about how “animal rights activism” is generally considered the easiest form of activism because it allows one to disconnect themselves from overall societal issues, and it’s why many celebrities consider themselves to be animal rights activists, but due to a complete lack of research and complacency on what animal rights activism actually entails, most of these activists end up doing a lot more harm than good. They’re the people who will only focus on stray dogs and cats during natural disasters or genocides that kill thousands of human beings; or the people who boycott “kill shelters” and replace them with “no-kill shelters” despite the fact that this lack of understanding on how these shelters work directly leads to the deaths of more animals; or the people who replace animal products with “vegan alternatives” that have more impact on the environment than the original products; or the people who don’t understand why the natural next step in Greta Thunberg’s environmental activism was to advocate for Palestine.
Like, animal and environmental rights activism is so misunderstood by the people within the movement who are doing it for all the wrong reasons, and it’s mostly because they do not understand that animal rights and human rights are so intrinsically connected that you cannot seperate the two at all without watering down your activism into a complete nothingburger.
It’s also because they don’t do basic Google searches on how things work either, but that’s neither here nor there.
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.
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I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
Hi, alas you're the third person I contact tonight about this, the "Felix Marinez" cat jury duty is fake, it's AI posted by a content farmer on X. There are more detailed explanations in the notes.
INTERESTING
I read it out to my husband, and as I did it was actually tingling my Spidey senses. Nothing I could put my finger on, it just felt off, you know? Something about it.
Because something like that DID happen to an acquaintance of mine. Different country, no jury duty, but her cat WAS involved (she was charged an official fee that everyone has to pay) and she DID have to jump through hoops until the officials believed that, no, it’s not a person but a cat. (She did not have to go to the vet to get a document but it did take her a while until it was solved.)
So cats somehow ending up as being treated as a human by official administration does happen.
So, apparently the Felix story is not necessarily AI generated, just stolen - someone says in the notes they read it on Reddit like 6 years ago. And it seems that while Felix Marinez is fake, the story itself kinda did happen 16 years ago. The cat in question was called Sal Esposito and there was nothing about being registered as a voter, and the error was quickly corrected without the cat having to turn up: https://www.markpack.org.uk/17615/sal-esposito-the-mythical-story-of-the-cat-and-the-jury-summons/
Even if you followed the news only lightly in 2011, the chances are you can across the story of how a cat received a jury summons in the US.
