I know this makes the anti-voting fandom big mad but this is only happening because Murphy was re-elected by a thin margin in November 2021, bucking a 40 year trend of Democratic governors losing re-election in NJ, because enough people voted for him
okay so spock (the alien in blue) essentially goes into heat. like literal heat like an animal. Anyway, spock’s in bloodlust in this episode and must go back to vulcan to have sex with his finace (or someone. but its supposed to be his fiance) or he’ll literally die. this is called pon farr and some backstory spock is half human and thought he wouldnt go through pon farr so he abandoned his HOT fiance to fuck around in space except oops pon farr happens so. he and kirk (in yellow getting his tits cut open, he’s also spocks captain and best friend) and their other friend mccoy go to vulcan so he can have sex with his fiance or get married or whatever so he doesn’t die. but then spock’s fiance (t’pring) is like no i dont want to marry spock i want to have him fight someone to death (which she can do) and spock at this point is fully in the ‘blood lust’ and is basically not in his right mind and doesnt get what’s happening. and t’pring picks kirk to be her ‘champion’ in the fight (her logic is that if spock dies in the fight she doesnt have to marry him and if kirk dies, spock will be so upset with her he won’t marry her anymore anyway). anyway kirk doesnt know that its a fight to the death and so he’s like of course i’ll do this fight if it’ll help spock and then he gets told it’s a fight to the death and he goes WHAT and right afterwards spock slices his titties open like in the gif. also eventually spock and kirk roll around in the sand and kirk fakes his death and THIS somehow knocks spock out of his blood lust and he goes back to the ship super sad bc he’s killed his ‘best friend’ only to discover kirk’s alive and we see one of his biggest smiles of the series (a big deal bc spock is vulcan and they dont show emotion). anyway this aired as the season opener in 1967. know your history and all that happy pride
The thing about “the LGBTQ community” is that it has always been an explicitly political coalition. We didn’t all just come together and hug one day.
As a cis bi man, I have nothing individually at stake in political attacks on lesbians and trans people (sometimes I don’t even have anything at stake with certain attacks on gay men!) But I treat an attack on any of those groups as an attack on myself, because basically anyone who wants to target those groups also wants to target my group. This has always been the case: there is no inherent reason why gay men would form a community with lesbians, or lesbians with bisexuals, or bisexuals with straight trans people. But historically we know that an attack on one of us inevitably precedes an attack on more of us, so there was a choice made to unify under a shared umbrella.
The right knows this, and in recent decades has been investing in highlighting wedge issues to divide the coalition and weaken its collective power even as it grows larger. Attacks on trans people from cis LGBQs need to be understood as a form of support for these efforts at disempowering all LGBTQ communities (ex. those TERF orgs that signed on to a legal briefing opposing a comprehensive anti-LGBTQ discrimination law because it included trans people)
my dad–also a writer–came to visit, and i mentioned that the best thing to come out of the layoff is that i’m writing again. he asked what i was writing about, and i said what i always do: “oh, just fanfic,” which is code for “let’s not look at this too deeply because i’m basically just making action figures kiss in text form” and “this awkward follow-up question is exactly why i don’t call myself a writer in public.”
he said, “you have to stop doing that.”
“i know, i know,” because it’s even more embarrassing to be embarrassed about writing fanfic, considering how many posts i’ve reblogged in its defense.
but i misunderstood his original question: “fanfic is just the genre. i asked what you’re writing about.”
i did the conversational equivalent of a spinning wheel cursor for at least a minute. i started peeling back the setting and the characters, the fic challenge and the specific episode the story jumps off from, and it was one of those slow-dawning light bulb moments. “i’m writing about loneliness, and who we are in the absence of purpose.”
as, i imagine, are a lot of people right now, who probably also don’t realize they’re writing an existential diary in the guise of getting television characters to fuck.
“that’s what you’re writing. the rest is just how you get there, and how you get it out into the world. was richard iii really about richard the third? would shakespeare have gotten as many people to see it if it wasn’t a story they knew?”
I can no longer silently watch the Kremlin bots spread disinformation about Ukraine and Donbas region in particular. It pisses me off.
As many of my long-time followers know, I am not only Ukrainian, but also originally from Donbas. I lived in Donetsk under the occupation of Russian proxies for 8 years and moved to free Ukraine only a few months ago, before Russia attacked us.
Russian bots are trying to sow doubt in the minds of people from all over the world. They are saying that Ukraine subjected to genocide the people of Donbas. This is the official Kremlin's agenda and a pretext for invading Ukraine, DON'T BELIEVE THIS LIE.
The only person who carried out the genocide of Ukrainians (including Donbas people) is Putin. Kremlin bots are saying that this issue is "very complex" and intricate. I'll try to prove to you that this is not true, describing the events from 2014 to 2022 step by step. This is for people who really want to understand what's going on in Ukraine.
This is a VERY LONG post.
In 2014 the Revolution of Dignity took place in Ukraine. People protested against the former president of Ukraine Yanukovych who was the agent of Kremlin, basically Putin's henchman. He bloked the Eurointegration of Ukraine, people were pissed off, because they wanted to move away from the imperialist Russia and get closer to Europe. Yanukovych tried to disperse peaceful at first protest by force, but met a strong resistance. Then Maidan massacre happened, over a hundred of protesters were shot.
Ukrainians rebelled against the crimes of Yanukovych and he had to flee the country. Of course, it was Russia he fled to.
Putin couldn't afford to lose the influence over Ukraine, so he created his sock puppet "republics" (DPR and LPR) on the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. Basically, he invaded parts of Ukraine, starting the hybrid war. He also annexed Crimea and turned it into his military base.
Ukrainian army at that time was pretty much non-existing, extremely vulnerable. Because Yanukovych, being Putin's agent, did all in his power to destroy our military potential. Thus making it really easy for Russia to occupate our land. But still, Putin failed to fully execute his plans. He planned to turn the entire south-east of Ukraine into puppet republics, he got only some parts of the east instead. In the south, the people fought back and were able to defend their land from the separatists sponsored by Russia.
This was the beginning of a long war in eastern Ukraine. Russian propaganda presented the creation of the separatist "DPR and LPR" as the result of the persecution of the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine. In the east and south of Ukraine, the majority of the population indeed speaks Russian as their first language, 'tho everyone in Ukraine can speak and fully understand Ukrainian. But Kremlin's claims of discrimination and persecution of the Russian speakers in Ukraine are all completely false and fabricated. How's that, you ask?
The entire argument about aforementioned "persecution" is built on the basis of the "Language law" that establishes Ukrainian as the state language. Literally, that's it. Ukrainian is the official language in Ukraine, what a shocker, huh? There is absolutely no language regulation of any kind in everyday life. Ukrainians can speak to each other both in Russian and Ukrainian and don't even notice who speaks which language. Actually, many Ukrainians speak in "surzhyk" - mix of Russian and Ukrainian. Russia's accusations are simply ridiculous.
Eventually Russia moves even further from these ridiculous accusations and declares that Ukrainians are fascists because of the completely fake "discrimination" against Russian-speaking and ethnic Russians.
- You know, your regular fascists who VOTED for a JEWISH person, president Zelenskyy (he won with 73%). BTW, Zelenskyy speaks Russian in everyday life, so does half of our parliament.
- The only right-wing party in Ukraine doesn't even come close to 5% of votes, even pro-Russian parties get much more support, even though Ukraine has been at war with Russia for 8 years.
Now let's talk about those separatist "republics". This is how they function:
- Putin's terrorists who occupied my homeland Donbas place their military bases exclusively in residential areas, right among the houses. Terrorists fire from residential streets, so that if Ukrainian side would fire back, these shells will hit residential or public buildings and kill civilians.
- If there are not enough victims for Kremlin's propaganda, terrorists themselves fire on civilians or just stage it, then Russian media such as RT films it and presents as war crimes commited by Ukrainians.
I personally miraculously avoided death at least twice because of Putin's terrorists.
- In 2015 I used to live in the district of Donetsk called Bosse (Боссе). One morning I was woken up by the sound of artilery. I clearly heard the launch and then the landing of the projectile, which meant that the shot was fired from somewhere very close.
On a busy morning, mortar projectiles landed on a bus stop, killing 8 civilians and injuring 13. You can find wiki page by googling "Обстріл зупинки «Донгірмаш» у Донецьку"
I could've been on that bus stop or in the grocery store in front of it. I was lucky.
Occupants at first claimed that it was Ukrainians responsible for the shelling, but quickly figured that positions of Ukrainian army was too far away to reach that place with mortars. They destroyed evidences (filled the funnels so it's impossible for the OSCE to investigate) and fabricated this insanely hilarious version: Ukrainian diversionists on a garbage truck (!) with a mortar inside of it were driving around the city and shooting.
Everyone knows what really happened.
- The Volnovakha bus attack. Terrorists from "DPR" fired at a civilian bus heading to Volnovakha. 12 people dead, 18 injured. I was ON THE SAME DAMN YELLOW BUS to Volnovakha only earlier that morning. And I saw with my own eyes what was left of it few days after the event, I will never forget what I saw.
I can't even count how many times terrorists fired heavy artillery right across the street from my house.
And now, Putin says he wants to "free" Russian-speaking people of Ukraine. He wants to bring the same pain and suffering to the whole Ukraine as he already did with my once beatiful Donetsk.
He denies the very existence of the Ukrainian nation, the Ukrainian language, our history. He wants to wipe out all Ukrainians. Putin is the true fascist here.
It's Putin himself who reduces the number of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. I used to speak Russian for my whole life and switched to Ukrainian 5 months ago, because I can no longer speak the language of this fascist. And I am not the only one who made such choice.
Don't believe in Putin's lies and propaganda. Double-check everything you hear and read. Don't spread disinformation.
There is no complexity and grey area in this war. Russia attacked us first in 2014 and now for the second time, in 2022. Simply because we, Ukrainians, dare to exist.
college is catered towards the able bodied and able minded. school applauds people who can stay up all night, skip meals, and work endlessly. that kind of extreme contribution is expected. why are disabled people being squeezed out of academic institutions? why should I feel inferior because of some arbitrary and ridiculous standard?
Read the book Academic Ableism on this subject. It’s an excellent read and I genuinely think about it all the time still even though I read it a couple years ago.