Xyr blog

they/xe, SASS witch, exvangelical, human magpie. Tocilizumab is my favorite spell.

[last-iso-quorra]

[freak-motion]

really liked this conversation from exit strategy so i drew it...yay

[illustration-ivy]

Monsters

[jester-nonconforming]

People still tend to lump JK Rowling in with the category of ~problematic artists~ and I need everyone to understand that is not the problem with her. She is not comparable to anyone who wrote a piece of fiction you hate, or someone who made rude comments in 2015 and has since learned better.

She is far more like Elon Musk. She is a radicalized person with an extreme amount of social and financial power, and for YEARS she has been using that power to try to influence her government into hurting vulnerable people, on purpose. And she has succeeded. THAT is the problem with her, and THAT is why spending money on her books is so dangerous, not because her books aged badly.

Critiquing her work is fine, of course (I personally was never a fan so I really don’t care) but you NEED to understand that fiction is not the main issue here. And I truly think acting like she’s the same as the rest of any giant list of ~problematic creators of the week~ waters down how dangerous she is.

[otherworldscience]

[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.

[the-messy-artist]

Has this been done yet

[msilverstar]

[ID: Pippin : "What about pride month?"

Aragorn, next to a Pride flag, "You've already had Pride month"

Pippin: next to a Disabled Pride flag, "We've had one, yes, but what about second Pride month?" /ID]

[be-in-a-qpr-with]

be in a qpr with someone who pets you like a cat

[olderthannetfic]

*cackling*

If OTW weren’t around, this wouldn’t be “scaremongering”: It would be the inescapable status quo.

[lanninglurksnomore]

The people who believe this crap are the anti-vaxxers of fandom.

[olderthannetfic]

Oh god. They kind of are, aren’t they?

[athingofvikings]

I’d go bigger and just say that they’re the conservatives/reactionaries of fandom–or, to frame it differently, this is how conservative and authoritarian ideologies express themselves in the context of Fandom.

[kimberlyeab]

my opinion on AO3 is that it’s an important asset but i still find it scummy that they’ll ask for money but when their users try to ask for money they slam them with their non-monetization rules. Like Anne Rice is dead and this isn’t the 90s anymore, people are making money from fandom please catch up with the times.

[olderthannetfic]

I think you’ve misunderstood:

AO3 was built by a bunch of us with our free donated labor for the purpose of being a space free from commercial spam.

It’s not a public service. It was built by us to house the type of fandom culture we liked.

People who want to do fandom differently, including making money, are welcome to go build their own site with their own money or their own donated labor.

[elfwreck]

AO3 does not forbid commercial links because they think fans making money from fanworks is immoral but them making money (to run the damn site) is fine.

AO3 forbids commercial links because they are making a very specific claim about the legality of fanworks, and that claim is about noncommercial fanworks.

They’re not saying that commercialized fanworks are against the law. They’re just not prepared to host them–nor defend them in court.

In case people missed it: The OTW will not honor DMCA takedown orders that are basically, “I own X work and that’s a fanfic of it, and that’s copyright infringement so make it go away.”

The OTW says, lolnope, we don’t think that’s copyright infringement. If you disagree, sue us.

The OTW says: Disney - we will not remove explicit Mandalorian fanfic. Rowling, Warner Bros - we will not remove trans Harry Potter fanfic. Gabaldon - we are not removing Outlander fanfic no matter how much you think it’s illegal or a personal violation. Yarbro, if someone puts “The Adventure of the Gentleman in Black” on AO3, you will need to actually take it to trial to (try to) get it removed; none of this C&D order followed by fans caving because they can’t afford a lawyer.

…So far, nobody has sued them. (This is, in my mind, the strongest proof we have that fanfic is not copyright infringement. In 13 years, not a single person or company has scrounged up a lawyer and filed a lawsuit against AO3/the OTW for hosting fanworks.)

But they’re not willing to put themselves on the line for commercial works. Those get considered differently in copyright law. They’re not always infringing - there’s a whole history of parody books & songs to prove that - but the OTW is not dealing with them.

The OTW does not care if fans are making money. The OTW cares if fans making money interfere with its legal defense of its archive.

If you are not a copyright lawyer, your opinion about the situation is not going to be considered.

[thebibliosphere]

Also, it wasn’t just Anne Rice coming after fandom in the 90s as though this is some relic holdover terror from ancient history.

Events like Strikethrough and Boldthrough happened in the early to mid-2000s. It felt like you’d wake up every day in 2007 and find another fandom group on LJ gone. (And not just fandom groups either, important community groups for education and trauma survival were also wiped out in those purges as well.)

And while not exactly the same, Yahoo Groups–and yes Yahoo Groups was a major online fandom hub at one point–were deleted as late as 2019 with very little warning, leaving a lot of older fandom groups scrambling to back up decades worth of content.

I might be projecting, but Fanfic.net seems to be wobbling too. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out they go under in the next few years despite performing similar purges of adult content in 2012 and allowing for obnoxious ads, which made the site unusable on mobile unless you wanted to see an ad what felt like every couple of paragraphs. (It might be better now, I haven’t checked in a while.)

It has only been in very recent memory that fandom has gained any sort of foothold that isn’t poised directly over a precarious faultline that could at any moment open up and swallow entire communities whole, and a huge part of that is the volunteers at Ao3 who decided to play chicken with the likes of Anne Rice and won.

Ao3 at its core was and is built by fandom. Some people don’t like it and that’s fine, but to even suggest that the volunteers are lounging around eating peeled grapes and lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills making bank through fraud while fanfic authors are left out in the cold is beyond the scope of laughable.

[scififantasystuff]

They ask for all of that money for two reasons, one being larger than the other.

1. Employee expenses. Someone has to renew the page license, update firewalls, improve the webpage, and add beneficial features that the users are explicitly asking for. They also keep good copyright lawyers on retainer, who stay up-to-date on potential law suits and draw up legal responses to those Cease and Desist letter. That is not a nothing-expense. People deserve to be properly compensated for their labor.

2. This is the big one: Servers. I don’t know if y’all know this, but internet web pages do not have endless and infinite storage capacity. Since AO3 is ad free, it needs to come up with the money to buy and maintain servers from elsewhere, aka DONATIONS, which are willingly given.

It’s not a subscription service. Authors don’t have to pay to submit stories. There’s nothing predatory about it. If you don’t want to give, don’t give. But also don’t try and smear their name when you don’t understand a single thing about what they do for fandom and fanworks.

[olderthannetfic]

People do deserve to be properly compensated, but that’s not how AO3 runs. Almost all of the labor is donated, including those expensive tech skills and legal skills.

My biggest beef with the “I deserve a $5 coffee for my fic” thing is that the vital work of making the site exist at all is largely uncompensated. A given fic writer wouldn’t just be monetizing their own labor but that of a lot of other people who did not consent.

[cesperanza]

Yeah, I don’t think people realize–or can comprehend (!!)–that nobody gets paid–it’s all volunteer from the board on down, and even the lawyers work pro-bono. Server costs, machines, hosting for webpages for related activities, communications software, those things cost money, but the OTW is an all-volunteer nonprofit corporation. We did (I believe) once or twice hired limited-term contractors to help wit specific technical debt stuff (things about gems and stuff underlying the software, updating Rails), but the thing is mostly a giant labor of love. Because it turns out that not everyone creates awesome things  for money. As you might think an entire archive of awesome, custom-written fanfiction might prove. :D  Or to put it another way–the whole of OTW and AO3 is A FANWORK, YOU GUYS. 

[infinity-squared-comics]

Happy Transgender day of visibility! To celebrate, here are some Trans media recommendations (some of which are available on this very website)

The Deep & Dark Blue

The Deep & Dark Blue is a graphic novel that has achieved some notoriety for being banned in certain countries for the simple act of Transness. It stories the tale of a pair of twins, Hawke and (Grayce), heirs to a noble house who were forced by an inheritance scheme to hide in an all female order of weavers, who, with their blue thread, weave the very future itself. Because of this, they must act as girls. Except, Grayce is a girl. Transness. Also there’s a gender-affirming magical tapestry. I read this while egg, and related to it on a level I couldn’t quite describe yet. It’s really good.

Sleepless Domain

More gender affirming magic! In the world of this webcomic, girls and only girls are gifted mystical powers to fight monsters. So it was pretty neat for Zoe Blecher to gain these gender-affirming superpowers. I’d probably call Zoe a deuteragonist. She’s not one of the main characters, but she is a fairly major one. The story does not make much of a big deal of Zoe’s Transness, and we only really find out when one of her cousins over shared and explains Transness in general in that cute simplified way that children understand things.

https://www.sleeplessdomain.com/comic/chapter-19-page-29

Sleepless Domain is a comic about an isolated city in the middle of a dangerous world filled with monsters. During the day, the city is perf

Transcendent

More trans, more magic, although none of it has anything to do with gender. Despite being a magic user, the main character Olive still needs HRT. From aliens. Yeah there are aliens, but I only remember them coming up once. Nbd. It has a great balance of wonderful stories about gender stuff and wonderful stories having nothing to do with gender. Every single one of the stories is wonderful. It’s one of my favorite comics, and can be found right here on tumblr

https://allthingstranscendent.tumblr.com/post/617598276930289664/introductions

All Things Transcendent

Introductions

El Goonish Shive

This webcomic is not technically on tumblr but it can be viewed through tumblr. It does… not to great with gender stuff at first, but as the author improves so does the representation, in terms of both gender and orientation. It currently has the second most Gender cast of any media I consume (for the life of me I can’t figure out the first)

https://egscomics.tumblr.com/post/680206699132534784/sandwich

El Goonish Shive

Sandwich 

The Owl House

Great show, has an older Enby character, screwed over by Disney (also please more spoilers I’m not caught up with season 2B)

She-Ra and the princesses of power

Available on Netflix, this wondrous show has one (1) cool non-binary shapeshifter person, and one (1) major Trans female character who was confirmed outside of the show itself (for safety purposes)

Steven Universe Future

Shep. There probably would’ve been more explicit Trans rep if the higher-ups had allowed, but oh well, still an amazing franchise (this installment in particular handles trauma really well)

Magnus Chase and The Gods of Asgard

Alex Fierro is a genderfluid icon. So is xer mom Loki, but he’s especially evil in this so… also great pan realization from Magnus himself later in the books.

Shameful self promotion

I feel kinda bad about this, but this is supposed to be a full list of trans media, and I happen to specialize in trans media. I’ve got Infinity Squared, a pixel art comedy comic made up of 1. Wordplay 2. Geek culture references 3. Queer jokes and most often 4. Two or more of the above. I’ve also got spectrum force, a pretty cool hand-drawn comic in which a bunch of color-coded trans youths battle physical manifestations of the fear that comes from hope, and then shoot them with arrows. It’s fun, we have fun.

So… yeah.

[infinity-squared-comics]

More trans media for this year! We’ve got cosmic wonders by @itsapmseymour, elves and cosmic spirits of a variety of genders hanging about in a cafe, being wholesome. The cosmic positivity posts are also especially nice.

Over on WEBTOON we’ve got the prettiest platypus, a great ongoing story about a young trans girl, beginning with her egg cracking moment and continuing from there with lots of wholesome queer stuff (but also some darker/heavier themes, bad parenting and at one point a random physical assault that the mc still hasn’t really recovered from).

Another of my favorite WEBTOONs is Mira, a nice story about a sapphic polycule-in-the-making with some non-binary main characters (plus the transphobic mom decides to stop being just like, the worst parent possible, so that’s some nice wish fulfillment for some people out there)

Still on WEBTOON, Lovebot is a sci-fi comic with a trans man main protagonist that gets into AI rights, which I always like, but be warned, there is blood and murder and abusive relationships.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m reading this chunk of the list straight off of my webtoons list. Next up is Gacha girl. I’m just now realizing it hasn’t updated I’m a while, but it’s got a casually trans girl protagonist, and the most recent arc features the egg cracking of one of the main supporting characters.

This post has been mainly webtoon, the less corporate controlled set up of their “canvas” stories is a great place for trans stories to be when most mainstream media companies do not want us.

Anyways, happy transgender day of visibility.

[paranatellonta]

The Symbol

The plans for the rebellion were made. The right not to remain Same was worth protecting; who cared if someone temporarily wanted to turn themself into a goose or a flamingo? Sure, it could facilitate espionage, but it could also serve the very important use of sparking joy.

However, as meticulously as the alchemists had scheduled every last detail, and as dangerous as it had been to pass the schedule on to everyone involved, something had been missing. Something extremely valuable, and yet it had taken a long time to figure out what it was.

Now, on the very last evening, the alchemists had gathered in a circle, each in front of a tea candle and with their own marshmallow on a stick, intent on transmuting the white void to gold and willing to avoid tar. Once the golden glow had sparked all around the circle, the connection with the spirits was open.

“Please,” the alchemists muttered in perfect unison, “please send us a symbol of Endless Possibilities, of Hope for the Future, to emblazon on our shields and cloaks.”

For a long moment, nothing happened, but then there was a dull thud. When they went to look near the front door, a pair of cute, red children’s shoes stood waiting for them.

—

[Image description: A pair of red shoes for a small child, with red laces, is standing on a brown doormat with a pattern of red-and-black flowers. In the background is a white wall and a black plinth.]

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

The funniest part of the "your teacher dies in every possible ending" copypasta btw is that it doesn't really sell how generic the fucking Wizard game is plot wise on that front.

Like, we have two major spoilers, Rockwood curses Anne and blamed the Goblins for it, and Professor Fig dies regardless of ending. You'd expect therefore two very simple things from this reveals:

1) That this would lead to the classic mid story twist that the "oppressed minority doing terrorism was actually being manipulated the whole time and you the white saviour help them after realising they aren't so bad."

And 2) That the game has multiple endings that are shaped by your actions in the story, despite how in all of them your mentor dies (probably for different reasons each time).

This is however not fucking the case lol.

Because guess what.

Hogwarts Legacy has only two endings.

There is the "Good" ending, where you decide to keep the status quo as is and prevent systematic change, and a "Bad" ending where you "free the ancient magic" and change the status quo, but then promise to work to set ip up back as it was before.

NOTHING you do in the game changes this. Every decision, spell choice, side quest, NOTHING influences these endings. There is no Karma Meter, or checklist of decisions to have to pick the best possible ending ala Witcher, nothing, you are given ONE decision right at the end of the game, between breaking the status quo (bad) or keeping it as is (good) and that's the extent of player choice on what ending you get.

TWO ENDINGS.

ALL BASED ON YOUR FINAL CHOICE.

MASS EFFECT 3, INFAMOUS FOR DOING THIS VERY SAME SHIT, HAD THREE.

And after you have this choice, your mentor dies, and you fight the evil goblin leader who is evil because he was once the victim of a violent hate crime so now he sides with Wizard N*zis and wants to genocide all wizards, and who is, yes, the main villain of the game, not the guy who cursed the girl, nope, we're still murdering an evil minority rebellion leader with a large hooked nose as he's being powered by the status quo breaking "Ancient Magic" the hero is treated like a villain for if he decides to "share with the world."

And then there's a generic eulogy for mentor followed by the house cup being won by your fucking house as a "true" ending, which happens regardless of what choice you pick, and that is a "post credit scene" ending after finishing all collectibles and side quests, just to give the illusion of having 3 endings.

This game is shallow and mediocre beyond belief yet we have people fucking frothing at the mouth for being told they shouldn't fucking play the mid wizard game. You have streamers crying at the gentlest fucking pushback, people going "I can excuse transphobia and anti semitism but I draw the line at spoilers," for one of the most soulless, generic pieces of videogame media of this year.

"Boycotts don't work if the product is good just look at chick fill a" the product isn't fucking good the product is mid the product has an extremely shit plot baked in anti semitism and with boring "twists" and even if it was the fucking masterpiece some of those people claim it is have a minimum of moral fucking backbone and if you can't help yourself PLAY OR EAT SOMETHING ELSE.

IT'S NOT THAT FUCKING HARD.

[rabbitgoblin]

fucked up how cooking and baking from scratch is viewed as a luxury…..like baking a loaf of bread or whatever is seen as something that only people with money/time can do. I’m not sure why capitalism decided to sell us the idea that we can’t make our own damn food bc it’s a special expensive thing that’s exclusive to wealthy retirees but it’s stupid as hell and it makes me angry

[rabbitgoblin]

bread takes like max 4 ingredients counting water and sure it takes a couple hours but 80% of that is just waiting around while it does the thing and you can do other things while it’s rising/baking plus im not gonna say baking cured my depression bc it didn’t but man is it hard to feel down when you’re eating slices of fresh bread you just made yourself. feels like everything’s gonna be a little more ok than you thought. it’s good.

[pluckedanarchist]

bread is amazing and it’s also been sold to us as something really hard to make? Every time I tell someone I made a loaf of bread I get reactions like “you made it yourself???” and “do you have a bread machine then?” I haven’t touched a bread machine in probably 10 years. You CAN make your own bread, folks, and it’s actually pretty cheap to do so. I believe the most expensive thing I needed for it was the jar of yeast. It was about $6 at the grocery store and lasted me MONTHS (just keep it in the fridge.) The packets are even cheaper. destroy capitalism. bake your own bread.

[boonbucks-city-beach]

You can also make your own yeast by making a sourdough starter, so that cuts cost even more.

But you have to feed the starter daily/weekly and that means it grows quickly, but there are tons of recipes online for what to do with your excess starter. Cookies, pretzels, crackers, pancakes, waffles, you name it!!

[unbossed-deactivated20251218]

Here’s a link to The Home Baking Association’s site. It has recipes and tips.

[petermorwood]

Make it even easier - “No-Knead Bread”. All YOU do is mix the ingredients together and wait until it’s time to heat the oven. The yeast does all the rest.

Here’s @dduane​’s first take on it and the finished product. We’ve made even more photogenic batches since.

Kneading is easy as well; either let your machine do it, or if you don’t want to or don’t have one, get hands-on. It’s like mixing two colours of Plasticine to make a third. Flatten, stretch, fold, half-turn, repeat - it takes about 10 minutes - until the gloopy conglomeration of flour, yeast, salt and water that clings to your hands at the beginning, becomes a compact ball that doesn’t stick to things and feels silky-smooth.

Here’s what before and after look like.

My Mum used to say that if you were feeling out of sorts with someone, it was good to make bread because you could transfer your annoyance into kneading the dough REALLY WELL, and both you and the bread would be better for it.

Then you put it into a bowl, cover it with cling-film and let it rise until it doubles in size, turn it out and “knock it back” (more kneading, until it’s getting back to the size it started, this means there won’t be huge “is something living in here?” holes in the bread), put it into your loaf-tin or whatever - we’ve used a regular oblong tin, a rectangular Pullman tin with a lid, a small glass casserole, an earthenware chicken roaster…

You can even use a clean terracotta flowerpot.

Let the dough rise again until it’s high enough to look like an unbaked but otherwise real loaf, then pop it in the preheated oven. On average we give ours 180°C / 355°F for 45-50 minutes. YM (and oven) MV.

Here’s some of our bread…

Here’s our default bread recipe - it takes about 3-4 hours from flour jar to cutting board depending on climate (warmer is faster) most of which is rise time and baking; hands-on mixing, kneading and knocking-back is about 20 minutes, tops, and less if using a mixer.

Here ( or indeed any of the other pics) is the finished product. This one was given an egg-wash to make it look glossy and keep the poppy-seeds in place; mostly we don’t bother with that or the slash down the middle, but all the extras were intentional as a “ready for my close-up” glamour shot.

I think any shop would be happy to have something this good-looking on their shelf. We’re happy to have it on our table.

Even if your first attempts don’t work out quite as well as you hope, you can always make something like this…

[rae-napier-deactivated20180822]

can we have more posts like this in future please? this is really useful and could help those who are struggling

[satyinepu]

…it’s not hard?………shit….I always thought it was

[high-quality-tiktoks]

I still can’t believe he kept doing this for her over and over😭

[zoestorm]

The worst thing you can do, as someone who has recently realised they are transfem, is to let terves and transphobes convince you cis women will never accept you.

I was told that when I came out everyone would reject me. That I would find myself isolated from the world, and from other women especially, who would react to me with horror and revulsion.

In reality, within the first months of coming out, in no particular order:

My sister's reaction on my coming out was, "Right, so I have a sister instead of a brother. Cool. I'm taking you clothes shopping tomorrow."

A friend, when she learned I am a woman, immediately invited me to her women-only, girls-night-out birthday party the following week.

Another friend, when a friend of hers expressed doubts about my gender, immediately shut them down and reaffirmed I am a woman.

I went camping with a group of friends, and we had two tents, one for the boys and one for the girls; I was unsure as to which I should enter, to which a girl friend responded by grabbing me and physically dragging me inside the women's tent.

In the women's bathroom at a movie theatre a random woman, whom I'd never seen before and haven't seen since, stopped me as I was going into a stall, to warn me there was no toilet paper in there, because she'd just used the last of it.

All of these, and more, some from friends, some from complete strangers. All within a few months, as a trans woman who hadn't started medical transition yet, and was very visible as being a trans woman.

I've had some people reject me, true, but the vast majority, including almost all cis women, accepted me as a sister with open arms.

Cis women are cool. It's terves who are bigots.

[evil-wild-lesbian-wizard]

I needed to see this today

[carys-the-ninth]

Normal phone backgrounds.

[asynca]

it’s so intense reading all these rules people have for giving kudos like, “I never leave kudos on the first chapter”/”the story really has to stand out for me to give kudos”/”I only give kudos to stories that are incredible”

meanwhile I’m over here like “yeah, this is kind of a neat idea” KUDOS “I really liked that one joke in the middle” KUDOS “idk it was pretty good I guess” KUDOS like

[lylilorden]

My standard rule is: did you read enough to see the kudos button on the bottom of the page? Hit it.

Hit. The damn. Button. If it was good enough for you to get that far, it is more than good enough for you to press a button and validate the author and their efforts. Kudos aren’t the Oscars, you’re not giving them an Emmy, okay, whatever you’re reading doesn’t have to be good enough to be critically acclaimed. It’s just to say, “hey, I read this and I liked it enough to get to the bottom of the page, and now you know that someone’s still reading your stuff even if I’m too shy to comment.” That’s it.

Kudos cost zero dollars, and they make an authors day.