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Genre-savvy horror protagonist figures out they're in a slasher movie, simply turns around and leaves; realises too late that they're actually in an artsy character-driven psychological horror film about them slowly being driven mad by existential uncertainty over whether they've successfully escaped the narrative.

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The worst part of human adulthood is being your own zookeeper

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Hooray! Yay! Dykes!

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*flirting with an older man* when i was born you had already attempted suicide once

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I'm really enjoying weightlifting as a hobby, but for something I dedicate 2 hours to three times a week I'd like a way to make friends while doing it.

And the thing is, I'm getting to the point where I can deadlift twice my body weight, which means I could be entering competitions. Not because I want to win prizes; trying for that would suck the fun out of it, but because I want to spend my hobby time with other like-minded woman who would appreciate it the same way I do.

But I'm transgender. And it's becoming illegal for services to provide a single sex space that includes me.

I feel like the point of communal amateur sports is to help people connect with each other, so it feels gross I've been legally excluded from something that exists to promote inclusivity.

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as a cis guy, when presented with the "99% you get a ton of money, 1% you turn into a girl" it honestly would be dumb to not hit that button until it breaks. like ok now i have 100 bajillion dollars and gender dysphoria. big deal. i have all the money in the world to turn me back into a guy. like with that kind of money i could have obama do me a phalloplasty. he wouldnt be able to do it as he isnt a surgeon but the point still stands

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I never got the whole don’t threaten me with the Supreme Court thing in 2016. Hillary Clinton wasn’t threatening anything when she said if she lost democrats were going to lose the Supreme Court for a long time. She was telling you what the consequences of her losing would be and she was right. It’s not a threat to tell you the realistic outcome of an election.

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as a fat person who's always clamoring for more interesting fat characters in media, I honestly think one of my all-time favorite depictions of a fat character is Jumba from the original Lilo and Stitch - both visually and personality wise

from a design perspective, even though he's an alien, he has so many little anatomy quirks that make him a more believable fat character than many fat human designs in other media. I love the realistic sag and layering of the fat on his arms, the lack of neck definition, the rim of chub around his face and upper back, the way his back is rounded. his clothes pull taut and pinch in anatomically accurate places (e.g. shoulders are firmer = smoother outlines, the sides and back are squishier = bumpier outlines).

and he's stylized so well! all these great details boiled down to some simple shapes and pen strokes. IMO the Lilo and Stitch art style is extremely appealing - it's warm and clean and visually pleasing, but every character is super unique. Jumba isn't supposed to be pretty, but even though he's a very large, very fat, bald older guy who spends most of the movie in crop tops, the way he's stylized and staged makes it clear the audience is supposed to find him interesting to look at, and variably intimidating/cool/powerful/capable. he's often funny, but the physical aspect of his comedy is derived from being so hefty the other characters struggle to prevent him from barreling ahead and doing whatever he wants; being fat makes him come off more in control of the funny situations he gets into, not less. also, because the art style is what it is, a lot of his character acting also just makes him look kind of cute ... though that's universal across the cast

I also really like the fact that his size clearly gives him both realistic advantages and realistic disadvantages. along with having a stronger sense of agency in the comedic scenes, his size in combination with his impulsivity also makes him a more intimidating antagonist. you never know what he's going to do, and his size makes it difficult for other characters to stop him when he's made up his mind. at the same time, it seems to take him longer to catch his breath, he sometimes grunts when moving around a lot to imply it takes more effort, and he clearly struggled to find clothes that fit him when putting together his disguise. I think it's awesome that the character's size impacts how he interacts with the world so much, and again, in relatable ways

and personality wise, it is ALWAYS great to see fat characters portrayed as intelligent - not only is Jumba an accomplished scientist, he's also crafty and witty! a few quiet scenes imply a philosophical side, as he ponders on Stitch's existence and feelings as a living weapon. with Stitch explicitly being made in his own image to an extent, I'd argue there's even room to interpret some of the things he says about Stitch being hints to how he sees himself; we never learn much about Jumba's past, but it's clear he's a social misfit and strongly defiant. I don't think it's a stretch to assume some of what he said to Stitch about being a monster who can never belong anywhere was intended to read as projection (which makes it all the more heartwarming when both of them find a place to belong on Earth)

it's also a nice twist that toward the end, Jumba is the one who is unexpectedly compassionate toward Nani, while Pleakley tries to urge him to ignore her. again alluding to a level of emotional depth and intelligence that is often missing from even well-intentioned depictions of fat people. his character isn't even fully explored, and yet he's one of the most dynamic and interesting supporting characters in a movie full of fantastic characters. the audience is expected to find him fascinating and even sort of mysterious, and he is!

the sequels and spinoffs were more merchandise-driven franchise fluff for kids than the artsy direction of the original movie, but even so, I remember Jumba went on to become Lilo's lovable, amoral uncle figure, which I also thought was so fun as a kid. I love that they committed to the fact that he was more caring and compassionate than he seemed. not only was he a cool evil mad scientist character, but he was also eventually ... a friend ...

and he was even gay

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"wait, but what do I say to describe people who cannot get pregnant?" a guide.

Men cannot get pregnant: INCORRECT. Transgender men are men and many are capable of getting pregnant. Also, excludes the plenty of people who are not men who cannot get pregnant.

Cis men cannot get pregnant: INCORRECT. Intersex men who are technically cis, but have uteruses and ovaries, may be capable of pregnancy, even if it's unlikely. Also, excludes the plenty of people who are not men who cannot get pregnant.

Cis perisex men cannot get pregnant: Correct, but excludes the plenty of people who are not men who cannot get pregnant.

People without uteruses cannot get pregnant: Correct, but excludes infertile and menopausal people with uteruses who also cannot get pregnant.

People who cannot get pregnant: CORRECT. Excludes no one.

To use inclusionary language, you don't need to rip through the reeds in search of wider terminology when you could quite literally say things exactly as they are. Inclusive language isn't "overcomplicated" at all. It's straightforward.

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I've seen what happens when people Get Worse. I've orbited a lot of people who Got Worse (especially online). If you listen to people who Got Worse it's all the same: they don't have consistent, meaningful social support, they've been hurt too many times and they can't open up out of fear that the next betrayal is going to drive the knife right through the artery, they end up spending too much time alone and develop secret languages, meanings, thought cycles completely inscrutable to anyone who has never had to rely on such rituals to survive, they get caught in a cycle of reopening and licking their wounds because the progression of time is so unrewarding and stagnant that the past is basically always the present, and the present is already the future, they become mean, they become strange.

some people might offer to help them but it's rare they ever know where to start, let alone exhibit compassion without grimace. admittedly, even for genuinely compassionate people, it isn't the easiest thing. if the person is someone who is stuck in their ways or doesn't know you, they don't really have a reason to be receptive to your help. "why should I waste my time on someone who is just going to become another memory of heartache? someone who will carelessly hurt and abandon me?" and such. an earnest attempt to help can feel like an attempted assault to them. at the same time, the meaningful interpersonal relationships that these people need will not survive if built on pity or fleeting self-gratifying feelings of "building" someone into your idea of a desirable person.

I don't know where I was going with this, but I always found it hard not to see myself as only a few degrees removed from these people. one or two safety nets separated from being completely trapped. unable to feel safe in not just the world but also my own body. a cosmological dead end. I stay away from habitually engaging in the obvious things can that make trying to change when you're at this point difficult (alcohol, drugs, etc), but if temperance is how you maintain stability in the face of rock bottom, you're basically already there, right? you're there and your body just hasn't caught up. maybe I'm just being dramatic because it's late. hows everypony finding the new deltarune chapters.

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“Ariel sold her voice for legs just because of a guy“

Meanwhile Ariel with legs;

Ariel already loved the human world long before meeting Eric (you don’t get a collection like hers overnight) and when she finally got a chance to explore it, she took it.

Ursula made it more about Eric than Ariel ever did.

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Darth Vader, and infact before that, when he was Anakin too, has a distinct sense of humor. He is a master of the dry understatement. “Perhaps you feel you’re being treated unfairly?” “I find your lack of faith disturbing.” “Don’t choke on your aspirations.” “This is where the fun begins” “You will try.”

I wonder if this way of talking, of being formal and minimal in his language is how he was taught to talk as a slave. He was not expected to make big observations or give big opinions. He was expected to take his cruel childhood in his stride.

But then he moves to the temple and is in the company of children who are his age but were never slaves. During his introduction to the dorms the class is told that meals will be made available every eighth of a day and every fifth of a night. Anakin says outloud “How regular.” and all the other kids laugh. Anakin really was marveling at food being regular. All the other children seemed to think it was a joke.

Anakin understood very quickly that he was at risk of being “funny”. He said things the other kids wouldn’t say, and he’d say them in ways they wouldn’t either. He thought it better to be funny on purpose than to have funny assigned to him.

He wasn’t sure which of the things he was saying we’re jokes. He learnt to make a smirk, one his face wasn’t accustomed to; he wasn’t previously allowed to be perceived as arrogant. But the smirk made people think he was being comical. People seemed a lot less stiff around him when they were laughing.

He’s in the military now. His character is criticized as being unproffesional. He is called cocky. Some say he has a disturbed sense of humour. The clone troopers like him. They talk very much like he does. They understand how property is meant to talk.

The War is over. He no longer has a mouth to smirk with. Everyone is ridged. No one laughs. He talks to everyone the way he used to talk to Watto. They all look so small from this angle. They seem afraid that he’s mocking them. Threatening them? He doesn’t know how to make them think he’s joking. He doesn’t know if he’s joking.

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therapy language final boss: the person who is arguing with you that it's desirable to kill civilians and dislikes that you're pressing them to make actual arguments has to "step back from this conversation" for their "own mental health"

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I was more or less stunned by what had happened. I had been prepared for criticism and ridicule - I was accustomed to them. But it had never occurred to me that people might want to hound and persecute me for my change in role. I had lived as a woman because that was my social standing, and had been made fun of and called 'half-man', and now when I had faced the situation and righted the grotesquely false position in which I had lived so long, it seemed that the public would damn me because I had once, perforce [by force, by necessity], worn skirts. I tried to get other hospital work. I went to the men who had been my chiefs and told them the truth and asked their aid in securing another position; to a man they turned me down. I tried to get other sorts of work and failed tor the same reason as soon as I gave my name. Then my family employed counsel and instituted proceedings to have my name legally changed; and the medical school from which I had been graduated served notice on us that if we persisted they would rescind my diploma and have me disbarred from practice.

— excerpt from Letter from Alan Hart to Mary Roberts Rinehart, August 3, 1921, on the subject of his transition from female to male and the impact of being publicly outed by a woman who recognized him. Alan Hart was one of the first men to get a hysterectomy in the US, and pioneered the use of X-rays in the diagnosis of tuberculosis, which ended up being crucial to treatment as the disease was asymptomatic early on.

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Someone anonymously messaged me to tell me that writing about detrans folks makes me a traitor to trans people, because all detrans people want to push conversion therapy on us and forcibly detransition us.

That’s precisely the kind of narrative that ends up pushing detransitioners into the arms of TERFs and the religious far-right.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with detransitioning. Sometimes people realize that transitioning no longer suits them, or never really did. And that’s fine.

When we systematically push them away regardless of their politics, we make people feel like the only places they can get support are among transphobes. That’s not a good thing. Building de/trans solidarity is an critical tool for disarming anti-trans movements.

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Someone anonymously messaged me to tell me that writing about detrans folks makes me a traitor to trans people, because all detrans people want to push conversion therapy on us and forcibly detransition us.

That’s precisely the kind of narrative that ends up pushing detransitioners into the arms of TERFs and the religious far-right.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with detransitioning. Sometimes people realize that transitioning no longer suits them, or never really did. And that’s fine.

When we systematically push them away regardless of their politics, we make people feel like the only places they can get support are among transphobes. That’s not a good thing. Building de/trans solidarity is an critical tool for disarming anti-trans movements.