apocalypticautumn

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Happy pride month to my dad. When I came out as bi to him, this man googled what it ment, look at me and said "ohh. Yeah. You get that from me. You'd have far more siblings of I only shaged women." And went right back to his work emails.

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I've been doing a lot of thinking about my family and how I was treated as a child, and honestly, my father has never seemed more amazing in my eyes.

I used to love Luigi(Mario's brother) when I was little. Like, he was my favorite character ever, and I had multiple plushies of him. Didn't give a fuck about Mario, vaguely tolerated Peach, but I loved Luigi.

On my first day of kindergarten, my dad gave me the number for his work phone and said it was Luigi's phone number. "If anything happens at school, call Luigi."And not even twenty minutes into my first day, I was having a panic attack. So I went down to the principal's office and called "Luigi."

Now, at the time, my father was in a meeting with his manager and his supervisor, along with most of his coworkers. And when I called, he picked up before he even left the room.

And he put on a very awful Italian accent and said, "Itsa me, Luigi! Whatsa the matter?"In front of his boss and coworkers. Without telling them what was going on. So they were absolutely bewildered, and he carried on like they didn't even exist. He only explained what was happening after I had calmed down and hung up, to which most of them responded with "Aww, cute."

I continued to call him whenever I got upset at school, and eventually his coworkers got in on it. I distinctly remember one of them impersonating Toad. I don't know why I'm telling you this, I just thought it might make you smile :)

this is so delightful I love your Luigi dad

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Pen sketch vs digital coloring

I kinda got lazy about the doodles and didn't color them. :0 any way I drew best boy Duke thomas I love his character so much, and he's criminally underrated.

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"GIVE DUKE THOMAS A MOVIE OR SHOW!" We all cheer in unison

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I've mentioned before that antisemites, to varying degrees, imagine Jews as lacking interiority, and what I am using that word to mean is "an interior emotional and mental experience." This often comes in the form of antisemites imagining that Jews make decisions and choices in order to trick or deceive them (or God), rather than for our own reasons. They see all of our actions as performative -- not in the sense of empty or fake, but in the sense of existing for the sake of their perception.

This shows up in many different contexts. One, which I've spoken about before, is the way some people view Jewish legal "loopholes." Take for example Shabbos lamp, which is a lamp with a wooden or plastic cover that can be rotated such that the lamp can be left on for all of Shabbat but can be covered when the user wants darkness:

This is because many Jewish communities hold that it's forbidden to open and close electrical circuits on Shabbat, so this enables people in those communities to be able to choose to lighten or darken their room without breaking Jewish law.

However, a lot of people who are not part of these communities do not realize that the prohibition is on opening and closing circuits, and believe it's about "using" electricity more generally -- and thus see a Shabbos lamp as "cheating." Those with a penchant for antisemitism take it a step farther and see this as an attempt by Jews to "trick God" into believing that we are pious and following all of God's rules when in "reality" we are breaking them. Some also believe we are trying to trick them.

Rather, it is our attempt to put into practice that the commandments are to enrich our lives, not make us miserable; we find approved ways within the laws to meet our needs. The laws are not for asceticism or proving piety, they are a system of holiness, and so finding solutions that the law approves of is not cheating. And God cannot be tricked.

That is to say: we have reasons for doing things based on our own spiritual, religious, and practical needs, not based on how it looks to others. And we are not trying to trick anybody.

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for juneteenth the innocence project sent out a collection of reading material on their mailing list that i thought i should share with all of you-- a reminder of how the us prison system is a continuation of slavery, and how we all must keep fighting for justice and equality. they also are accepting donations if you have a few bucks to send their way: every dollar counts!

How the 13th Amendment Kept Slavery Alive: Perspectives From the Prison Where Slavery Never Ended

On Juneteenth, Here Are 5 Ways to Be a Better Ally

Race and Wrongful Conviction

How a Wrongly Incarcerated Person Became the ‘Most Brilliant Legal Mind’ in ‘America’s Bloodiest Prison’

A Mistaken Identification Sent Him to Prison for 38 Years, But He Never Gave Up Fighting for Freedom

‘The Dungeon Was the Last Place I Wanted to Go’: An Exoneree’s Story of Survival at Angola Prison

Book an Innocence Project Speaker This Month

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dc used to stand for disorders and cocaine comics. there was still really awful propaganda but you used to be able to see BATMAN have PSYCHOSEXUAL ISSUES and drive a shard of glass COMPLETELY through his hand about it. nowadays if batman had psychosexual issues tom king from the cia would write an issue where the batfam all took him to therapy about it while delivering witty quips. and barbara gordon would be wearing a shirt that says big [picture of dick grayson] energy and then those shirts would be sold in real life. because nobody is doing any more fucking cocaine and everybody with interesting disorders quit

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White trans men stop telling me how I'm opressed for being trans not a man. My black ass dont care what you think, your understanding of opression is shallow and white and i dont want to hear it anymore. I am not gonna seperate my identity into little parts and sort them into the "opressed" and "not opressed" boxes, bc that's straight up just not how it works.

If you're a white trans man maybe consider that your views on privilege may still be skewed twards whiteness and be a little more tactful when you decided tell all trans men who their opression works

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Because it is the anniversary of his death, I wanted to share a small story about my grandfather.

Before I knew that I was intersex, I identified as a trans man. And I went the way any trans man has to go if he wants to transition in my country. My parents thankfully were supportive but I was afraid to tell my grandparents. My grandparents were German and lived/were raised during the third reich. While both of them never said or acted in a way that suggested that they had fascist views (my grandfather was until he died part of a leftwing political party), but there still was this fear in me. "They are old, they grew up surrounded by abhorrent beliefs...". And then there was my aunt. Who would constantly claim that my grandfather was homophobic.

The problem was, back then, there were no openly out gay people in our area, so I never got the chance to see my grandfather interact with someone who was queer. So I just believed her. Because she was so insistent on it. And because it confirmed my fears and my brain loves to be constantly afraid.

But I knew I wanted to come out. I had to, eventually, because I had stopped my estrogen treatment (back then, I did not know that I got that because I was intersex) and went on testosterone instead and first physical changes began to show. We all lived in one big house, so my grandparents would eventually notice.

I was so afraid that my father at some point offered to talk to his parents. I waited outside in the hallway that led to their kitchen and listened.

My father explained, easy to understand, that I was going to transition from female to male because I felt terrible in my body. My grandfather asked, "Is that why the child* is so depressed all this time?" I had been in and out of multiple clinics for manic depression at that point. My father gave a yes. And my grandmother made the incredibly selfish comment, "Can't that wait until I am dead?"

Before I even got time to be upset, my grandfather slammed his fist down on the table. I had never seen or heard him do anything like that before. He was a very calm and collected man who preferred to leave the room before he got too angry. "No, it can't wait. The child gets to get well now. And if that is what is going to help, then it needs to be done."

From that day on, he never used my deadname again or used the wrong pronouns for me. Sometimes, he would stop in a sentence to think and remind himself, but he did always address me correctly.

He celebrated with me when my name was legally changed. He built the bed frame for me and my boyfriend's bed when we moved in together, just like he had built the first adult sized bedframe for me when I outgrew my small bed. He drove my boyfriend to his chemo sessions because my grandfather also had cancer and knew how terrifying it was to go alone.

Did he fully understand what it means to be intersex? To transition? No. But he understood that one of his loved ones was suffering and that he could help to alleviate that pain. And so he did.

He taught me calligraphy. He taught me how to sew. He taught me bookbinding. He gave me many gifts.

But the biggest gift he gave me was, that when someone hated me for what I am, I could stomach it. Because this man was willing to unlearn the bigotry he had been taught for decades so he could love me for who I am.

*in my grandpa's dialect it was normal to refer to children as just 'the child' (genderless)

EDIT

I was blown away by how many people have reblogged this post. I believe my grandfather would be very happy to see that he can give some hope and love to others even now.

I do not want him to stay faceless; so here is a piece of art I made for his obituary, with a slightly altered quote added now.

Dahlias were his favorite flowers. Orange ones especially. They reminded him of the home he had to flee from as a child.

EDIT 28/03/25

Happy birthday.

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Self-loathing hero who keeps trying to sacrifice themselves for the Greater Good in order to prove their worth, but always accidentally survives in a way that makes them look really badass, and now their friends are trying to hold an intervention about their alleged death wish, which is technically accurate, but they all have completely the wrong idea about the particular kind of death wish involved.

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Breaking News: the writing process for a fanfiction of a series set in the early 1980s has somehow devolved into the author researching an Austrian skier.

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why is it that when we talk about the history of antisemitism in america we say things like “we used to not be allowed into country clubs” and not “in 1958 the oldest synagogue in atlanta was bombed”

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i’m not against vaping, but man, vaping two inches from my face on the subway is a ridiculous asshole kind of move. this dude was billowing like he was auditioning for the role of haunted house fog machine. the humidity in the whole car changed, he was ruining haircuts. just jump starting the water cycle. condensation was dripping down my glasses. people were slipping off poles, it was chaos. it was like watching one man try to terraform the moon. a planet with one dense, root beer scented atmosphere blocking out the sun and choking all life. 

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so embarrassing to have a favorite character honestly. like yes that's my specialest guy 🙄 yes i have 200 photos of him saved 😑 if i don't look at him or hear him talk every 2 minutes i'll start killing the hostages 😕 i think about him every day. because he's my favorite. whatever