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So I hate facetime but have two small nephews who live very far away and wanted them to know who I was. So when second nephew was born, I started sending first nephew (4 years old) a postcard every week.

The content wasn't anything special. I made cookies, I saw this flower, my cats did this. He likes trucks and machinery so I scoured redbubble for anything related to machinery and got a giant batch of machine postcards. Whenever I traveled, I'd hunt down a postcard for him.

My second nephew turned four this year, and I started sending him postcards as well. Both of them like Pokemon now, so mostly it's been double Pokemon postcards every week. I don't hear much from them, or my sister, so I just generally hope they're enjoyed and try to remember to mail them before Sunday.

However. This week my mom informed me second nephew likes the postcards SO MUCH he brings them into daycare to show around. And when I shared that with my sister, she told me not only does he bring them into daycare, he sleeps with them at naptime.

The only higher honor would be for her to tell me he's eating them.

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(as i scroll through tumblr looking at all the posts) hmm… beneath me, beneath me, juvenile… petty and childish… beneath me… this one is good. beneath me, juvenile, beneath me

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The amount of times I could have been that white girl in the horror movie could honestly be a movie in itself and it’s honestly a waste that my entire life isn’t constantly recorded on film because it would be HILARIOUS

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I mean, I don't want to sound stupid, but I always assumed that the Ancient Romans were mammals

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i love pitting classically trained magic users against self-taught magic users in sci-fi/fantasy but it shouldn’t be snobbish disdain for them it should be terror

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Silly Concept: an Egyptologist/archeologist specializes in Middle Kingdom Egypt or something, and whenever she's in the field, her work in her actual field of study goes more-or-less fine, but she keeps running into various supernatural curses and revanants from other periods of Egyptian history, manifesting as wildly distorted magical versions of prevailing ideas from those periods.

"These hieratic papyri could really give us new insights into the inventory management systems of the twelfth dynasty... wait, what's this inscription? Huh, this isn't my specialty, but I think it's Byzantine period, maybe 5th century? My Koine is a little rusty, but I think it says 'Here lies the accursed tomb of the Heresiarch Pelagius, who denied the sinfulness of humanity. Whoever disturbs his eternal imprisonment shall face the wrath of Jesus, son of the God YHWH.' Huh. Cursed Christian tomb. Is that a... thing?"

"With the artifacts on this site, I think the role of both free and forced labor in the textile industry of... watch where you're stepping! What's this? Ah, Ayyubid period Arabic, I think: 'Here lies Al-Adid, last Caliph of the Fatimids. Though the foul Sunni usurpers have destroyed my reign, I shall rise again in the final days, reunite with Ali and the Prophet Mohamed PBUH, and take vengeance upon the House of Saladin.' Uh oh."

"So it's a long shot whether the isotope analysis will really be able to reveal whether these spices and dyes were really traded over as long distances as ... haven't I told you about what happened to my last graduate student who didn't watch where he was walking? Stay focused and don't look at stuff outside of our designated site, ugh. Hmm.... modern Arabic printed brass plaque. Looks about forty years old. 'This was the amulet of President Anwar Sadat. Should any foolish Muslim Brotherhood Jihadist try to destroy or steal this amulet, even as they destroyed its master, the Spirit of Arab Socialism shall descend upon him and...' oh come the fuck on."

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One of the talents I've discovered in myself is the ability to plan a party. I don't do it very often! It's really only worth it for family, or occasionally for coworkers I like very much. But I'm sincerely good at it, and while I'm always pleased to be Good At Things, I also vaguely resent that it couldn't be something cooler. "She has a knack for throwing knives/taming rabid weasels/pole vaulting/etc." seems like something you could casually introduce into conversation to elicit the admiration and envy of your peers; "oh, that plump eldest daughter is good with food and bossing people around" is just expected.

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My apparently wild and radical take is that trans women can literally just dress like women without much "accomodation"

"but what about hiding your-" I guarantee you women's clothes already does that, and you need it less than you think

"but what about adding padding to-" there are women's clothes that do that, also you need it less than you think

"but I don't think women's clothes will accommodate my proportions" I'm guessing that they will, and if you've been in HRT for any noticeable amount of time, they will likely fit better than men's clothes

Like I had my whole "femboy guide" pre transition, but that was a different vibe entirely.

If you want my advice on how to dress now, it would literally just be:

Take what you currently wear

Look at the woman's cut version of it

Size it properly

Wear it the correct way (eg, use the waist that women's clothes are made for)

There's a lot of clothes that's made "specifically for" trans women. Aside from very specific things (like tucking) I think most of it is garbage. Not to mention the absolute horrible ways that they're often marketed, rolling in trans women's everyday clothes with crossdressers and fetish gear.

When a trans woman first transitions, I've found that they're immediately BOMBARDED with "fashion advice" that is A, extremely othering and sometimes dysphoria inducing, and B, oftentimes outright garbage and uses old school crossdressing/drag advice that often fails to account for the effects of HRT, or doesn't come off as a more casual look.

I do think there's value in guides that are more in the zone of "hey, you've only been taught about men's fashion and clothes your whole life, here's the basics of women's fashion to catch you up to speed" but I've yet to find one that doesn't devolve into a weird "hide everything about your body, tran" kind of tone.

Quick preemptive Q&A

Are you saying that trans women CAN'T wear men's clothes and/or be butch?

No, I'm saying that women's clothes DOES fit and accommodate trans women's proportions, but most people refuse to believe that.

So you're a gender conformist then? Just molded to the binary system of fashion?

The last thing society wants a trans woman to be, is a woman. The most radical thing you can be is yourself, and sometimes yourself is a woman.

But what if I don't want to dress in women's clothes?!?

Good for you, then don't

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Which 60s-80s band do we think inspired the most pre-internet teenagers to write "My Parents Sold Me To ________" short stories in their notebooks? Putting a polite moratorium on The Beatles because they're too obvious.

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my apologies to the lovely lady who had only just begun constructing her beautiful spiderweb in the immediate path of the side door this morning when i, in my self-centered desire to vacate my home of assorted household refuse, came oafishly barging through the sum of her efforts. i shall meditate upon my actions and how they harmed not just her, but all women of the world, and endeavour to do better

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Back during the time when it was popular to bash Twilight for both legitimate reasons (Edward being borderline abusive to Bella, the whole child grooming plot point in Breaking Dawn, etc.) and not (REAL VAMPIRES DON’T SPARKLE THATS GAY), I saw this meme on Facebook where it was Louis and Lestat from Interview With The Vampire commenting on Edward’s sparkling and making fun of him for being gay. Like… Buddy My Guy. My Fair Dude. My Dear Sweet Homophobic Idiot. Not only are the Vampires in IWTV super duper gay, you’re lying to yourself if you think Lestat wouldn’t slam dunk his entire body into a tub of glitter on any given occasion. You Fool. You Imbecile.

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There's a book that we had in our house growing up that I was obsessed with as a kid. It was just called "PAKISTAN: PAINTINGS BY LIN YONG AND SU HUA" and it was an art book of 100+ paintings/sketches by two Chinese artists who travelled thru Pakistan in 1978 and 1981, a sort of travelogue of their trip, and to little-kid me, it was some of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. I have no idea why we had that book, but I would stare at it for hours, and it made me wish I could draw/paint/do whatever it was that these artists had managed to do.

Anyway, we've moved house a bunch of times and I lost track of the book and haven't seen it for probably two decades now. But I think about it now and again, and had struggled to find it over the years, but I finally, finally got my hands on a copy of my own and i want to cry haha

I was afraid that maybe the art isn't as good as I remembered, being just a kid and all, but I cracked it open and nope, it hits me just the way it used to. Maybe even more now. It's so fucking pretty. Have some random pages:

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mmmm the color green

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How Anne Elliot Got Her Bloom Back

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Why can't that be enough for you?