luckystarchild

[luckystarchild]

Uk media reporting on the OSA:

Reality:

[luckystarchild]

Just a quick life update.

End-of-May through end-of-August has become the worst time of the year for me in terms of work/life balance. The month of June alone used to "the hard one," but things have changed in my industry, and it's turned what used to be "a tough month or two" into an entire impossible season.

Recap: I work in the anime industry. A big part of my role is being a customer-facing "face of the brand." I go to conventions, appear on social media, host panels, etc. These in-person events are a huge and crucial part of my role, and each convention takes months of prep-time and stress.

Used to be, there was one convention early in the year (March), one in July, and another in October. There was a consistent eb and flow, up and down, of the rhythm of preparation for each convention, with space in between for recovery and rest. Lovely.

.... well too bad. NOT ANYMORE!

The March convention moved to May, and the October convention moved to August. So now all of the prep happens at the same time and I am burnt out beyond belief from April to the beginning of September.

Just giving some context for why I've been gone. I'm deep in survival mode just trying to make it through the crunch period. Thanks for your patience as I deal with all of this. Fall will be better, and I'll see you soon!

[luckystarchild]

[luckystarchild]

i mean this in the nicest way possible but some of you need to learn how to be annoyed

[luckystarchild]

This is the end result of anti-trans propaganda: more harassment of girls and women, more policing of gender roles, more gender McCarthyism.

[luckystarchild]

green's my colour.

[luckystarchild]

Getting inspired to write is actually really easy! All you need to do is be the busiest you've ever been in your entire life and as far away from a computer as humanly possible. Hope this helps 🥰

[luckystarchild]

Welp...

[luckystarchild]

As a person who literally attended that very camp for 10 years, I'm co-signing everything you just said.

These were kids. I was one of them once upon a time. Today I'm a queer atheist fighting against the current conservative regime. Some of those missing kids will grow up to be more like me than the people who cancelled the weather service funding.

Fuck anyone making a joke out of this. Those kids didn't deserve it.

I think the most ghoulish thing I’ve seen with the flooding going on in Texas right now is the people who think it’s “funny” or “ironic” that a Christian summer camp was swept away in a flood. Or saying they deserved it for voting wrong.

Children are fucking dead. I don’t give a shit what anybody thinks about religion or whether victims “deserve” compassion. People caught in natural disasters deserve aid and not to be fucking mocked for their theoretical bad opinions. I don’t care if the dead 8 year old’s parents voted for Trump.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t ridicule Abbott for declaring a day of prayer; that’s stupid and useless.

This disaster was likely caused by multiple factors; topography, climate change, insufficient preparation, systemic negligence, federal budget cuts. These things do need to be investigated and addressed to prevent further tragedies, but mocking the dying children for their religion just makes them shitty people.

[luckystarchild]

[luckystarchild]

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

— Maya Angelou

[luckystarchild]

It is deeply, deeply beneficial to TERFs if the only characteristic of TERF ideology you will recognize as wrong, harmful, or problematic is "they hate trans women".

TERF ideology is an expansive network of extremely toxic ideas, and the more of them we accept and normalize, the easier it becomes for them to fly under the radar and recruit new TERFs. The closer they get to turning the tide against all trans people, trans women included.

Case in point: In 2014-2015, I fell headlong into radical feminism. I did not know it was called radical feminism at the time, but I also didn't know what was wrong with radical feminism in the first place. I didn't see a problem with it.

I was a year deep into this shit when people I had been following, listening to, and looking up to finally said they didn't think trans women were women. It was only then that I unfollowed those people, specifically; but I continued to follow other TERFs-who-didn't-say-they-were-TERFs. I continued ingesting and spreading their ideas- for years after.

If TERFs "only target trans women" and "only want trans women gone", if that's the one and only problem with their ideology and if that's the only way we'll define them, we will inevitably miss a vast majority of the quiet beliefs that support their much louder hatred of trans women.

As another example: the trans community stood relatively united when TERFs and conservatives targeted our right to use the correct restroom, citing the "dangers" of trans women sharing space with cis women. But when they began targeting Lost Little Girls and Confused Lesbians and trotting detransitioners out to raise a panic about trans men, virtually the only people speaking up about it were other transmascs. Now we see a rash of anti-trans healthcare bills being passed in the US, and they're hurting every single one of us.

When you refuse to call a TERF a TERF just because they didn't specifically say they hate trans women, when you refuse to think critically about a TERF belief just because it's not directly related to trans women, you are actively helping TERFs spread their influence and build credibility.

[luckystarchild]

What if water didn't have surface tension and whenever you spilled some, the whole floor of your entire apartment was covered in a 2 micrometer deep puddle

[luckystarchild]

I can't believe this story is over, and I can't recommend it highly enough!

This fantastic YYH fic features a compelling mystery, pitch-perfect characterization, and deft handling of Yu Yu Hakusho canonical elements. The plot and premise feel very much like one of the mysteries Yusuke solved in the early chapters of the manga. (Those are lowkey my favorite chapters of the manga, so you know this story had me by the throat.) You'll also get to enjoy Tacky's wonderful sense of humor, and all the characters feel like real, breathing people.

I can't recommend this story highly enough. No pairings; just a captivating journey with our favorite cast over the course of a deftly plotted, perfectly paced mystery. The ending left me with the same sense of nostalgia that the final chapters of YYH always leave me with, and I truly can't offer higher praise than that. If you love YYH, you'll love this story!

10/10, will read another hundred times. Please check it out!

A Little Courtesy, chapter 11 - THE END!

It's here already! Thank you so much for your support while I wrote this. It ended up taking way longer than I expected, but I'm pretty happy with the result! I hope you like the ending!

A Little Courtesy, Chapter 11 - Life After Death

Somewhere in the mountains of Shimane, not too far from Izumo, there was a village by the name of Toguchi.

[luckystarchild]

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than forgive a friend.”

— William Blake

[luckystarchild]

I dealt with this for 25+years while I was still IDing as a cis woman and dressing in a feminine style. It was horrible. And it got infinitely worse once I came out as nonbinary and largely dropped feminine presentation as a whole. People would hear me request the short masculine name, see my short hair and men's suiting, and immediately ask with an air of pinched anxiety: "Your name is short for [deadname], right?"

If I said yes, they would immediately start using the longer feminine name without my consent, looking more relaxed once they were able to clock that I was likely AFAB with a name like that. It was like they were using my name to shove me back into the box they thought I belonged in. Their comfort mattered more to them than my own, even though in theory my preferred name shouldn't impact their comfort at all.

And it's the masculine (not gender neutral!!) variant of the name that's the problem. Because they assume you're a girl, and to them, a girl can't have a man's name. Not without proving she's worthy of it, first.

I'm going to use "Chris" (short for Christopher or Christina) as a placeholder when I tell this next anecdote. That's not my deadname, but it's a good approximation of it.

I was at a friend's law school graduation party some years ago, dressed in a three-piece suit with my mostly shaved head, when I was introduced to someone using the same short masculine (not gender neutral) name as me. He introduced himself as Chris, and I shook the man's hand and said with a smile, "Oh hey, I'm Chris, too!"

He didn't smile. He didn't laugh. And he didn't even ask if "Chris" was short for "Christina." He just gripped my hand tighter (that overly tight, aggressive, crushing grip of a man with something to prove), looked me dead in the eye, and said: "You are not Chris. you are Christina. I am Chris. It's nice to meet you, Christina." And then he dropped my hand like it had burned him, turned his back, and struck up conversation with someone else.

A variant of the above happened to me dozens of times before I finally dropped even the short version of my deadname and renamed myself entirely, to something that isn't short for anything and isn't related to my deadname at all.

I didn't hate my old name, truth be told. I actually liked it. But other people made it effectively unusable.

Today's minor gripe: Lists of unisex/gender neutral names

This is a gripe because inevitably I see my deadname on these lists. Its inclusion fucking kills me every time. Having lived with that name for 25+ years, I can tell you with my whole chest it ain't gender neutral at all.

If you're AFAB and you have that name, people will assume the name is short for a longer feminine name. Certain folks will refuse to call you anything but the longer feminine name. If you protest and demand to be called by the shorter 'gender neutral' variant, they'll look at you with pity and go, "But [deadname] is such a pretty name." And then they'll tell you how you should feel about your name, and how you'll want to use the longer feminine name when you're older. And they'll happily continue calling you the longer feminine variant if you don't fight them on it.

And you WILL have to fight them. Every time you meet someone new, you'll have to make a case to convince them you deserve to be called by the right name. It will draw attention you don't want, to the point you're tempted to just stop arguing and resign yourself to being called the long feminine name you hate.

And the short variant isn't gender neutral, either! It's masculine! But masculine is the default, so these lists include it as 'gender neutral' even though it most assuredly is not.

[luckystarchild]

Today's minor gripe: Lists of unisex/gender neutral names

This is a gripe because inevitably I see my deadname on these lists. Its inclusion fucking kills me every time. Having lived with that name for 25+ years, I can tell you with my whole chest it ain't gender neutral at all.

If you're AFAB and you have that name, people will assume the name is short for a longer feminine name. Certain folks will refuse to call you anything but the longer feminine name. If you protest and demand to be called by the shorter 'gender neutral' variant, they'll look at you with pity and go, "But [deadname] is such a pretty name." And then they'll tell you how you should feel about your name, and how you'll want to use the longer feminine name when you're older. And they'll happily continue calling you the longer feminine variant if you don't fight them on it.

And you WILL have to fight them. Every time you meet someone new, you'll have to make a case to convince them you deserve to be called by the right name. It will draw attention you don't want, to the point you're tempted to just stop arguing and resign yourself to being called the long feminine name you hate.

And the short variant isn't gender neutral, either! It's masculine! But masculine is the default, so these lists include it as 'gender neutral' even though it most assuredly is not.