I recently learned that my way of thinking counts as "proship" so now I know half of the people on tumblr hate me      ~ I won't interact with people who don't use respectful language ~
Hello and welcome to my corner of the trashfire: read this first
Like any responsible person, I WILL NOT under any circumstances engage with your discourse if you cannot be polite and respectful.
Many of us have strong feelings about the things that are being discussed here. Thatâs okay, understandable, and valid. However, any dehumanizing language is an immediate nope from me. I can and will ban people who canât be respectful.
This is just basic elementary-school level stuff, guys: if youâre calling people âfreaksâ or âmonstersâ or anything like that, YOU are the asshole, and I wonât talk with you until you calm down. Treat other humans with respect. Always.
'we need to fight for intersex rights because a lot of them are lgbt/lots of intersex people are trans' stfu right now. we need to fight for intersex rights not because it benefits us but because theyre constantly under attack, god.
please stop rebloging this with queer tags! i swear to god! the point is that not all intersex people are queer, not all intersex people consider themselves queer or trans, and you should care anyway.Â
so i explained this poorly and i feel obligated to elaborate-
due to their own experiances with their body and gender, a lot of intersex people find comunity in queer spaces and identify as queer and a lot of them are queer aside from being intersex. some are also compleatly cishet and dont want to be called lgbt. and both are compleatly ok ways to feel.
HOWEVER a lot of allies to intersex people because they prove gender and sex arent binary, or because they're lgbt, or because a lot of them share experiances with trans people or are trans. a lot of people only care when intersex people prove a point.
you need to fight for intersex peoples rights not because it affects you or because you think they help boost your own minority rights, but because what people do to intersex youth, especaily babies, is disgusting. you need to care not because it affects you but because they are under attack constantly.
a lot of lgbt or queer people only care about intersex people for selfish reasons and it needs to be talked about.
i mean he had been out here since 1988 dropping such bombs:
"'fandom' is a vehicle of marginalized subcultural groups (women, the young, gays, etc.) to pry open space for their cultural concerns within dominant representations; it is a way of appropriating media texts and rereading them in a way that serves different interests, a way of transforming mass culture into a popular culture"
Jenkins, Henry. âStar Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.â Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5, no. 2 (1988): 85â107. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295038809366691. Â
there are even some earlier works in fan studies but thatâs what i have ready to hand.Â
The day before yesterday I got to try a ripe pawpaw for the first time.
Someone else was supposed to come in at the center, but I was in the mood to be alone, so I fucked off into the woods at the earliest available opportunity, looking to collect more hickory nuts.
I hiked about two miles down the trail, seeking to find a little-used path as far from the center as I could reasonably make it. I was five or ten minutes down a fork in the path heading down a valley when I unexpectedly smelled something familiar: the scent of ripe pawpaws. I only knew that scent from having come upon a rotten one several days back on the trail.
I had seen pawpaw trees on the way up, but I looked around and saw nothing. I indulged a beast-like impulse: I sniffed. I turned until I was facing the direction of the scent and moved towards it. And I saw, about 50 feet away down the hillside below...a pawpaw grove
Some interesting facts about pawpaws:
The pawpaw is the largest fruit native to North America, known for its "tropical" flavor. Despite being reputed to be delicious, it is not found in grocery stores due to the fruits being far too delicate to ship without spoiling. A few people farm them, but otherwise the only way to get one is to come upon one growing wild, which is rare, because the opossums love them.
Pawpaw trees are hard to grow and take 10-15 years to produce fruit, but you can see wild ones in mature and well managed woods of Kentucky. They are small, barely trees, only about 15-20 feet tall, with trunks only a bit bigger around than a circle you can make with your index finger and thumb. They almost always grow in clonal colonies, groups of many trees that are all clones of each other due to being propagated from the roots of existing trees. They are also strictly understory trees, growing in the shade of much larger trees.
Now, an interesting fact about Eastern Kentucky: At the fringe of Appalachia, and even into parts of the Outer Bluegrass, the terrain frequently turns into very steep rolling hills.
It's hard to notice if you are in more cultivated areas that have been leveled out more, but in wilder parts you can seldom just casually walk in a straight line through the woods. Unless you are following the contour of the hills, you are either sliding and gripping saplings to slow your descent or you are climbing on all fours.
Such was the hill below me, descending at roughly a fifty-degree angle into the pawpaw grove.
I was going to get me some fucking pawpaws.
I climb down the hill by a combination of scooting, sliding, and scrabbling. After a few minutes of struggle I am standing in the pawpaw grove, alone, scanning the branches with my eyes.
The ground is littered everywhere with pawpaws, some very rotten. I see only two or three fruits remaining in the trees, and I walk around giving each tree a good shake, thinking to myself about how this is certainly an experience shared by millions of years' worth of primate ancestors before me.
After nearly ten minutes of (literally) fruitless tree-shaking, I start to eye the fallen pawpaws on the ground around me.
Some of them are perfectly fine-looking. The skin hasn't even been broken into. I pick one up.
It is very soft, but not squishy like something rotten. It is about as long as my index finger (my hands are small) and oblong. Its smooth skin is pale green and spotted with brown like a very ripe banana. I tear the skin back and give the creamy orange insides a test lick.
Friends.
It was transcendent.
Imagine the most perfect ripe mango, but with a flavor that is more banana-like, mellow and creamy and mild instead of tangy. The texture is perfectly smooth and soft unlike any other fruit. You can lick it and it will just melt in your mouth.
I am autistic and a very picky eater due to the difficult textures of many foods, and this fruit has the perfect texture. Mangos are already one of my favorite foods and this is somehow even better. I remember, deliriously, that farmers are seeking to improve pawpaws for possible commercial production, and it seems like the height of foolishness there in the pawpaw grove. There is no possible way wild pawpaws could be improved. All of creation is tainted by the Fall of Man, except for fucking pawpaws, because they are beyond the earthly tier of fruits.
I lick it like a dog going crazy on a Kong full of peanut butter until it falls apart in my hands and start scanning the ground for another.
They are all perfectly ripe and mostly untouched by bugs or creatures. I start just squishing them in my hands and licking the creamy insides. I am just planting my face in these fruits like some kind of animal. My face and hands are covered in pawpaw squish.
I go through like ten of them before returning to my senses. I've been thoughtlessly wiping my hands on my pants, and they are now more soiled than the clothes of the messiest toddler. I feel primal and connected to my ancestors. I have truly earned my Primate Card.
My mom said in the car that I smelled very strongly of something (pawpaws) so it's safe to say that literally every person I passed on the way back down the trail got a good whiff too, and likely connected it to the Pawpaw Squish that was basically all over me.
Diverse species of flowering plants evolved to swaddle their seeds in sweet fruit delicious to the palates of animals, who unlike plants can move and roam, carrying seeds to a place little seedlings can germinate and grow. The lineage of primates evolved to feast on fruit, using the sugars to help fuel their energy-demanding mammalian bodies and complex brains.
I am nothing like you; you are nothing like me. But we are bound together, belonging to the same ecosystem. We are made caretakers of one another, in accordance with a law far more ancient than the laws of Money or Profit or Power.
You gave me a wonderful gift, in a lonely, sunlit forest where nothing is earned or deserved. It was so incredibly lucky, to happen upon the sweet golden wealth of perfectly ripe pawpaws by chance, that it seemed like some kind of miracle. And like a miracle, it seemed to gently turn my head to look upon something of sacred importance.
Do you still remember? How I made you? How you made me? How we cared for one another, even before I was Asimina triloba, even before you were Homo sapiens? Can you still feel what moves in the mycelium beneath your feet, the pulse in the sprawling vessels sketched by the paths of migrating hummingbirds and foraging bees?
It just makes me emotional to participate in an ancient mutualistic relationship with a plant.
How the tree gave me the best damn fruit experience my frail human senses have ever processed, and how I have fussed and worried over this little seedling, fueled by the sense that I have a parental obligation to the seeds by virtue of having enjoyed the fruit they came in.
I'm glad at least one sprout is thriving so far, because the tree TRUSTED me with that fruit
okay I've had this confusion pop up several times. apparently pawpaw is a term that can refer to papaya, despite also referring to a completely different fruit (Asimina triloba, the North American pawpaw)
Pawpaw fruit:
Papaya fruit:
This is also the cause of a lot of bafflement when I say that pawpaws can't be bought in stores. Papayas are widely available in stores, but Asimina triloba has thus far proven near impossible to grow commercially due to how quickly the fruit spoils after ripening and how soft and easily damaged it is.
Pawpaws are in the Magnolia order and the Custard-apple family, so probably the closest most people can get to the soft sweet flavor are soursop and cherimoya
Tumblr recently made it a requirement for you to be logged in to send asks anonymously. If you receive a hateful ask, donât publish it - report it to Tumblr. It can be traced back to the user that sent it and with enough reports that personâs account will be suspended.
Share to raise awareness but also to make the clowns who think this behaviour is acceptable think twice before acting brave behind the guise of invisibility.
I will mash that Reblog button every single time this shows up on my dash. I spent a lot of years martyring myself for âthe needs of the business.â Young people? Donât fucking do it. They donât care about you, you are a âresource,â not a human being. I canât say this strongly enough: see to your self-care!
We talk a lot about how to tell if you have a bad boss... Here is how you know you have a good boss:
My boss would verbally kick my ass if I logged in or communicated voluntarily about work while on vacation. And if I had to log in, absolutely no one else could do my thing and it couldn't wait? He would refund my time off and make me take it the following week.
Time off is Time Off. Take it. Unashamedly. Unabashedly.
We need to clear something up: nonbinary or agender aliens and robots arenât problematic. Neither are ace or aro ones. These are normal traits that youâd expect of robots and would not be surprising in aliens.
Iâm bringing this up because Iâve seen some really weird criticisms lately that take the stance that if you make a robot that has no gender or sexuality, thatâs somehow⌠bad? That a single sex alien race, or a trisexed alien race, or a hermaphroditic alien race, is somehow inherently insulting to trans people? And this take is fucking baffling to me! These are exactly the traits you would expect in robots and aliens! (This applies to robots that seem to act autistic, too; many common autism traits also happen to be traits that you might expect in artificial intelligences.)
I can see the logic. At some point, we noticed all the stories with human cis men and human cis women who were almost entirely heterosexual, and some robot who doesnât have a gender and explains this to someone at some point, and some people went âwoo, agender representation!â and then everyone had to be like âthatâs not agender representation, itâs a robot.â Which is correct; the robot happens to be agender, but if none of the humans are then having all the robots be agender isnât agender representation. So some people started thinking that the robot was the problem. The robot isnât the problem. The robot is fine. The problem is the humans. The robotâs existence isnât some insult to the agender community, or the nonbinary community, or the ace or aro or autistic communities, depending on what traits it was given. Itâs not representation, but itâs not an insult.
âOh, but making all the robots asexual is saying that being asexual makes someone a robot!â No. It doesnât. Making none of the humans asexual and making them all confused by it and having them treat it like some big division is what says that. âMaking aliens that donât have genders gives the impression that genderless people â â NO. IT DOESNâT. Making all the humans cis people who treat the absence of gender as a weird alien thing is what does that.
The aliens and the robots are fine. Theyâre not the problem. The lack of diversity among human characters is the problem.
What would be equivalent would be creating thousands of robot and alien characters but never depicting any members of the robot or alien race, ever, going âhuh, genders? I think maybe I have one, or would like toâ or âsex? Huh, well now that you mention it, actually that looks like fun!â
Representation isnât about whether some characters with a certain trait are unusual. Itâs about showing that harmlessly unusual is okay, and that not everyone is, should, or has to be a member of the majority, whatever it is.
Thereâs a point in the spectrum of general acceptance in which having a nonhuman or otherwise heavily distanced character be insert-identity-here is functional representation of that identity, and that is when that identity is so heavily othered that it functions as a low-stakes introduction to the concept, when having an actual human be that identity would cause moral alarm in mainstream society, or when the identity is too heavily othered or maligned to get the story accepted by its audience.
Generally, entities like aliens, robots, elves, dwarves, et cetera (as well as very out-there human cultures and mirror universe humans) serve a function of providing distance which has the option of being bridged. They enable an idea, or an identity, to be presented without outright saying âitâs okay for humans to be like thisâ or âitâs okay for you to be like this,â and make an unpalatable or threatening idea unscary enough to be looked at. Itâs the equivalent of looking at pictures of a thing you have a phobia of, or switching cats into each otherâs space to get used to their smell: a low-stakes, heavily distanced preliminary introduction.
This serves an important purpose in the early stages of a journey to winning acceptance for something. Itâs presenting a small, easy-to-swallow premise: âmaybe this thing can exist, and maybe it is okay?â without asking the viewer to commit to full acceptance at first blush. Itâs a type of Representation-Liteâ˘, and by design it isnât the whole picture; somethingâs missing, deliberately, in order to provide that super-easy palatability.
Often that thing thatâs missing is humanity. A genderless robot, a bisexual alien. Other times itâs normalcy: a mirror-universe lesbian, a behavior-altering-phenomenon-induced interracial kiss. Still other times itâs the authenticity of the identityâa soldier just acting queer in pursuit of a military discharge for insanity.
The result is the same: a concept gets presented to, and largely accepted by, the audience. And then the next few pieces of media can build on that, and go further.
The problem comes when the representation stops here, when even in light of greater acceptance years or decades into the future, stories donât have the courage to put those identities into the close seats, or when authors donât have the care to use those identities as anything more than sideshow filler.
Not every story needs to, or even can have, every type of representation. But if over a multitude of stories none of the aro/ace/agender characters are human, or only the villains are gay, or none of the main characters are dark-skinned, then thatâs the sort of hole in the story ecosystem that leaves a mark.
And, yes. The robots arenât the problem, just a very common half-assed nonsolution that used to be more valuable than it currently is.
officially decided that anyone who tries to divide the lgbt community is a fed. i dont care if you're not actually a fed, if you're causing infighting in a minority community then you're a fed who just isnt getting paid to be one. either apply for a job at the CIA or shut the fuck up
do you have any pictures or facts to share about sea slugs/nudibranchs?
Imagine the sweet smell of watermelon candy⌠underwater???
đ¤đđ
Meet the lionâs mane nudibranch, a.k.a. melibe, a stegosaurus-shaped sea slug with a surprisingly sugary scent! While the fruity fragrance of this marvelous mollusk may be alluring to humans, itâs quite off-putting to potential predators, like sea stars and fish.
We donât recommend trying to sniff while underwater, but you can find a bouquet of melibesâyes, thatâs the collective noun, very spring-vibesâin the Aquariumâs Enchanted Kelp Forest, beneath the Kelp Canopy exhibit. They can also be spotted in kelp forests and eelgrass beds all the way from Alaska to Baja!
Weâre shore that a nudibranch by any other name would smell as sweet! đ
it's always so fucking funny to me when terfs are like "how can you say trans women and women are the same thing! being born as a man makes you different!" because like. yes. trans women and cis women are different. so are black women and white women. and straight women and queer woman. and women from different countries and different socioeconomic statuses. there's diversity in the experience of womanhood? what a wild concept
incidentally, this why terfs tend to be white women. from the combahee river collective statement, 1977:
...we reject the stance of Lesbian separatism because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us. It leaves out far too much and far too many people, particularly Black men, women, and children. We have a great deal of criticism and loathing for what men have been socialized to be in this society: what they support, how they act, and how they oppress. But we do not have the misguided notion that it is their maleness, per seâi.e., their biological malenessâthat makes them what they are. As BIack women we find any type of biological determinism a particularly dangerous and reactionary basis upon which to build a politic.Â
"To argue that transsexual women should not enter [women-exclusive spaces] because their experiences are different would have to assume that all other women's experiences are the same, and this is a racist assumption. The argument that transsexual women have experienced some degree of male privilege should not bar them from our communities once we realize that not all women are equally privileged or oppressed."
(from "Whose feminism is it, anyway?" by Emi Koyama)
This. This is the core of it. This is why trans-exclusionary radical feminism is rooted in racism, colonialism, and imperialism. It excludes the idea that there can be any other type of âwomanâ except one very (white, colonialist, imperialist) definition.
What is with people who think you can always control your likes at will??? Does everyone else refuse to like things if they don't meet some arbitrary moral standard???
I hate saying this as often as I do, BUT I CANNOT CONTROL WHAT I HAVE POSITIVE FEELINGS ABOUT!!! I CANNOT HATE THINGS SIMPLY THROUGH SHEER FORCE OF WILL!!!
I used to wish I hated chocolate so I could lose weight! (the science behind this is shit, but that's not the point) My brother says sugar always makes him feel sick, so he's a lot thinner than me. Could I force myself to hate chocolate so I could lose weight like him? YOU FUCKING TELL ME!!!
If the thing itself has qualities that appeal to me, then outside context isn't going to just make those qualities vanish into thin fucking air!!! Am I going crazy??? Can everyone else control what they like perfectly through sheer force of will and I'm the only person on earth who can't??? I SERIOUSLY FUCKING DOUBT IT!!!
What matters is how I treat real people, and how I respond to real instances of bigotry, and I think I'm doing well there! I try, anyway! I can't control my thoughts, but I can control my actions!
Internet """discourse""" has actually gone so far that people are asking you to not only perform actions for them that are actually harmful, they're demanding you perform your thoughts as well. You can't be a flawed human person, you have to be a perfect little god-fearing angel that answers to some unseen outside force that dictates your every whim so you can't even have any private thoughts to yourself. Every thought is watched and judged, even if only by yourself. If you have intrusive thoughts? You're a bad person. If you like some instance of "bad" queer rep, you're a bad person. If you even slightly deviate from the cookie-cutter "good person" mold the group has specifically set up for you to fill, then you've failed, and you deserve nothing but empty criticism and harassment.
We need to continue to expose the anti-fiction fancop movement for what it is; A purity cult. Nothing more, and nothing less.
As soon as tyrants have control over your very thoughts, you are no longer a free-thinking person; You are a mindless servant, constantly performing emotions for authority. There is an entire subsection of the social justice sphere that operates EXACTLY like a cult, and not enough people are taking it seriously. If we let them get away with it, then evangelical fundamentalism will have seeped into even the youngest most progressive people, and literally every part of American culture will be compromised.
Fiction itself doesnât affect people or give them Bad Ideas.
No amount of dark fiction would make someone with a solid moral core harm another person.
The guys who stormed Capitol Hill were dressed as Captain America.
Children & Fiction
We as a society already had this discussion with the violent video games nonsense.
 âWell if you donât support it irl then why would you like it in fiction?!â
Why should the writers be held responsible for the bad choices of anyone who picks up their book and ignores whatâs actually in it in favor of the version of the book they made up in their head?
People just blame mental illness or past abuse or their victims if fiction isnât an option.
Fanfic writers are the product of the world theyâre in, far more than they are the cause of whatâs wrong with it.
Donât fucking trivialise Nazis and their crimes against humanity by equating them to the fucking âdewitâ wrinkle man or the guy who tried to eat a unicorn.
âFiction affects reality!â It does⌠but also it doesnât, and certainly not on a one-to-one level.
Magic Bullet Theory
Fiction affecting oneâs perception does not equal the hypodermic-syringe model:
Jaws
It is not necessary for fiction to be good for peopleâs mental health.
â Romanticization â
Definition of Romantic
What âromanticâ, in a literary sense, actually means.
Romanticism is the opposite of realism.
A PSA reminder:Â Fiction is entertainment, not nonfiction!
Hey fandom, fiction doesnât have to be realistic!
Romanticizing an aspect of fiction isnât that much of an issue, actually.
For godâs sake, the reason we tell stories is so we can engage the imagination.
Most fiction âromanticizesâ human experiences and behaviors.Â
Hey, did you know that rape fantasies are really common, especially in women?
Women are infantilized so much.
And ultimately, we should not take away womenâs abilities to explore their fantasies through fandom.
A fandom fictional ship should not be an example or a role model of a healthy relationship.
Seriously if you need fanfiction to teach you what healthy and normal relationships are like, you donât need fanfiction you need resources geared towards teaching you what healthy and non-abusive relationships are like.
â Normalization â
Your words arenât magical and donât brainwash people into doing what you imagine
People do not copy fiction as a rule.Â
Fiction isnât going to normalize problematic concepts to anyone to a significant degree, unless the problematic concept is already normalized, and then itâs a societal problem rather than one of expression.
This
How ânormalizationâ works:
What antis donât understand is that exposure =/= normalisation, exposure = recognition, which is not the same.
Normalization and Desensitization regarding Fiction
To antis, this lack of disgust is the normalization they are fighting against
Abusers choose to hurt you. They know that their actions will hurt you, and they choose to do it anyways. Everything after that is an excuse.
Blame the abuser, they did the abusing.
â Villains â
Reasons I have liked villains/antagonists before without agreeing with their actions.
What I mean when I say I like villains:
âThe good guys are boringâ
The Villain Police
No, the characters one fans over do not âdefineâ who they are as a person, nor âconfirmâ their political beliefs.Â
The "women who like villains and ship them with heroines are messed in the head and will end up in toxic relationships" argument is nothing but misogynistic hot garbage.
Excuse me, are you asking if I know that murder is bad?Â
PSA to the Minorsâ˘ď¸ and fake activists:
â Redemption â
Nobody "Deserves" Redemption
Exactly! Redemption is for VILLAINS.
Anyone who says certain characters do or do not "deserve" redemption arcs: shut the fuck up like PLEASE.
The only thing that makes a villain irredeemable is if they choose to be⌠and redemption is a series of choices, not just a singular moment.
They think that âredemptionâ is not âbecoming a better person and fixing your mistakesâ, but âbeing accepted by the good guysâ.
I think itâs really important to talk about how different people have different power fantasies.
No one deserves a redemption arc!
Forgiving is not synonymous with redeeming.
Anyone else think people tend to get the wrong idea about hero/villain relationships where the heroine âââfixesâââ a male villain?
Itâs pretty disturbing tbh, to treat basic things that every human needs (like being loved) as a ârewardâ that you get for good behavior.
â Shipping â
I ship people because I think their story is interesting, not to get relationship advice.
Reasons Why People Ship or Enjoy Problematic/Toxic/Abusive Relationships
Unhealthy relationship means just that, a relationship that is unhealthy.
Love Redeems isnât âLazyâ storytelling.
Antis are worried that we "normalize" and "romanticize" abuse for harmless FICTIONAL ships.
Shipping doesnât mean condoning.
Enemies to Lovers =/= Belligerent Sexual Tension
Enemies to Lovers is about:
Women and their tastes in fiction arenât responsible for abusive men.
Hereâs a take you all need to hear: People do not deserve to be mistreated over a fictional character, even if theyâŚ
PSA: Shipping is not activism.
Why Shipping is Not Activism
â Fanpol â
Trying to dictate other peopleâs expression based on your preferences and opinions makes you an anti.
âCensorship is like telling a man he canât have steak because a baby canât chew it.âÂ
Fandom is not activism.
90% of the problem with Twitter is treating fictional people like they're real and real people like they're fictional.
Iâve noticed that the younger crowd requires villains to adhere to a strict moral code. lol
And the girl moved on with her life.
Antis are the one hurting people.
Self-Projection
Hey guys, guess what? According to Twitter, you're "promoting" a villain's actions if you're their fan!
Fandom Frollos
The Moral Crusaders of the 1950s
You are taking responsibility away from the person who has made the decision to abuse and instead placing the blame upon the tools they used. Â
