#I don't mind if anyone uses these

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[sketchy-tour]

I can't see you. Do you see me? 👁️👁️

[cozybells]

staying small for convenience (<- he wants to be held)

[atissi]

okay very preliminary thoughts on mitski's new album BUT i think there's something with how "laurel hell" felt like a goodbye to the music industry (can't find the source but i remember reading that it was intended to be her last album under her contract) like i'm sorry anthony fantano but if you interpret the back half of "laurel hell" as being generic breakup songs you're missing like 80% of the context. to me TO ME it feels so clearly about her negotiating her relationship with fame, how she can't love her fans the way they love her, and how she feels like she sold her soul to her job, so the only thing to do is step away. but THEN "the land is inhospitable and so are we" was created after mitski decided to renegotiate her contract, specifically because she loved making music enough to deal with the negative aspects of the work. and then all the songs are about the ghost of love she can leave behind, despite the present pain or emptiness, and like. do you see it. do you see it.

[dirtytransmasc]

the Sully kids' reaction to Jake saying Spider "knew everything" breaks my heart.

they knew him better than anyone else, better than their parents. they knew his love for Eywa, for Pandora, for The People, for the clan, for their family. they knew he would never tell the RDA anything... not willingly at least.

they knew they were leaving because Spider would be tortured for information, he'd be forced to reveal their home, their plans, their numbers, their weaknesses. their brother would be tortured and they were being forced to leave him behind.

they knew they were being forced to find a new home, without their brother, because their dad knew he would be tortured.

[egophiliac]

so have you heard about the ride kamens app game? seems like it's gonna be a twisted wonderland like game with all the riders being hot anime guys now, and it's also gonna be written by yuya takahashi and produced by naomi takebe (apparently it was in development before geats), with designs by the person who did sk8 the infinity, so take that for what you will

have you ever gotten the feeling that a piece of media came into existence just to appeal to you specifically, or

(brb preregistering immediately)

(as far as I can tell you play as an agent who maintains a secret superhero base for riders in the basement of the rider-themed cafe that you run with your butler, and there's some other plot stuff going on but honestly I'm way past sold at this point, this sounds amazing)

[hideawayfairy]

Sad thought but do you think Mammon ever used Fizz's relationship with Ozzie as a way to control him?

If there was ever a moment Fizz was being resistant or even a hint that Fizz could potentially leave Mammon's business, I can imagine Mammon just playing up how unfortunate it would be if word got out that Fizz was dating a Deadly Sin.

"Fizzie, my boy, if ya leave, don't ya think everyone will realize that you're cozying up to Ozzie? I've read the papers and it don't look good for ya. Oh, you know I don't have a problem with it. But the rest of Hell isn't as understanding as I am. And poor Ozzie, he'll be scorned and be made a mockery. And there'd be nothing I could do to stop it. So....you'll be here 8 o'clock sharp tomorrow, yeah? And keep up that smile, Fizzie. Everyone loves a smile!"

[khaotunq]

[bonefall]

i'm ngl depicting thunder's prosthetic as a burden is pretty uncomfortable even if it is something some amputees experience because like. there's a huge stigma around prosthetics already you know? it's like having a parent forcibly strap a child into a wheelchair when they don't need it and having a horrible experience with it and that being your only character in a wheelchair. some full-time wheelchair users do resent their wheelchairs but when that's the only time you're bringing it up at all it feels like you're playing into our society's perception of wheelchairs and mobility aids in general as useless and best and divine punishment at worst. idk do let me know if i'm wording this wrong because i really do love better bones! it's just that this detail is... strange.

I mean, I'm open to feedback if that's not something I should do-- but I do actually have other characters in prosthetics and mobility aids! A lot of them! Thunderstar's actually the only one who ends up rejecting his own, because I also wanted to depict that it's bad to force a device onto someone who does not want one.

Especially in circumstances like Thunder Storm's, where that sort of device would be actively unhelpful for his lifestyle. It might help in open field environments like moorland, but then I got more feedback and realized that it would just make a lot of unwanted noise in a forest (since cats have carpal whiskers to help them figure out where to place their paws). Then I figured it was a good way to show how BB!Clear Sky doesn't actually listen to his son's needs and acts differently when he's not "grateful" enough for his gift.

But he's far and away from the only one with a mobility aid or prosthetic!

I haven't figured out Frog entirely yet, but he's going to be the first cat with a "wheelchair" type device, to set up a long line of cats through the generations improving on it (Probably not much more than a reinforced canvas or durable leather, as this was the age of very early flax processing)

Wildfur's the next in the big advancements, even making the Great Journey in his own and getting a side story based around Littlecloud and Cinderpelt collaborating over this

The device is then improved upon by Jessy for Briarlight, giving her a level of independence and confidence that she needs to finally cut her mom out until she learns how to behave

Deadfoot has a brace for his front paw because the joint is loose (it was based on a friend's carpel tunnel bracelet) which is affectionately referred to as The Bonker; his name is also now an Honor Title (Old name: Hoprunner) for inventing a battle move by distracting with his good paw, and then SLAMMING his other limb down hard on his opponent. It's called "deadfooting."

I think mobility devices are super important, usually massively improve quality of life, and I just enjoy designing them, so the choice to portray Thunder Storm's as negative was a very deliberate one that I did in response to what I thought was a desire in representation. Even the fact it's a hind-leg prosthetic was thought out, since those have a much higher satisfaction rate in humans than hand prosthetics, but in a cat would probably be the opposite.

Still, I'm not missing a limb, so now with all of that context presented, do you still think the same thing? Should I just add even more limb prosthetics to make the ratio of satisfied prosthetic users vs Thunder Storm even steeper?

Sunlit Frost is actually going to have a bite on his good paw go septic (the other side has permanent damage from the fire). I could have that paw get amputated and have Thunderstar "return the favor" for how Sunlit Frost created the prosthetic he rejected by helping him build his own. A pawsthetic, if you will

OR would it be better to just remove the subplot of Thunder Storm grappling with/rejecting a prosthetic that is unfitting for him entirely, and have all prosthetics be 100% treated as positive in the narrative?

[neverswungonswingingstars]

I'm not proud of how happy I'd be to be murdered by him ok??

Lestat in The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child's Demanding

[hollowwish]

I don't really like. Politics post much but I wanna say something. Because the 2020 election was bad. This year is already worse and it's only March

As a queer trans american (who lives in the south, no less, and has to hear the dumbest anti biden propaganda you've ever heard) a republican getting in office is actually doomsday for me. I'm literally horrified of it. It gives me horrible anxiety for days on end and makes me feel physically sick. And if it happens I will not be able to leave immediately like I would want to.

The republicans want to kill me and i have known this since I was thirteen years old and i have just had to live with it. I have to just live with the thought as long as I'm in america. They want to kill me and all my queer friends and every other minority group they hate, they already took away abortion they have already started. And they are going to if we put them in office. Please please god do not let them put Trump in office again. I do not care who is in there, anyone but a republican. I will take almost anyone else but them.

Its to the point where I don't really care that a bunch of swfities are apparently voting democrat because Taylor said so. Yeah that's fucking insane but also it keeps literally the most evil man in this country out of office. Beggars can't be choosers I suppose.

Everyone around me is so sure of a Trump victory. They want him to fix the gas prices and things like that. People I thought were my friends really truly do not care what anti lgbt laws or whatever other horrible law they would make, as long as their personal problems get fixed. And I'm really really hoping that's not the case and that his victory is not already assured because I do not know what would happen and I am scared.

Please don't put him back in office. Just. Please. It's all I ask.

[the-good-ol-art-corner]

Ok, I'mma admit, as someone who was really disappointed with SB and didn't have any big expectations for Ruin.. It was weirdly good???? It's got clunky bits yeah, but it was good?? Great even??????

We even got to see Glamrock Bonnie's official design! This isn't it!! I drew Bonnie's canon design under the 'Read More' but I thought I'd tweak mine after,, what, a year n' a half? Two years? Since I really liked the design I did and I dunno when I'll get to draw it again. That and I never colored the og doodle I did-

Again, canon Bonnie (which means Spoilers!!) under the 'Read More' plus my thoughts on that design

Reblogs > Likes, thank you!

I've seen some mixed reception on Bonnie's design, but personally? I love him sm, he's so cute <3 The workout aesthetic was not something I expected, but I find it endearing ^^ He's not as flashy as I thought he'd be, I thought he'd have a stronger rockstar vibe, and admittedly while I like the color-scheme, I wish certain colors were. better dispersed? The purple on his jumpsuit is only used on the jumpsuit and I wish it was somewhere else on him.

Still, he's very cute and spunky looking. Cool that I got the star on the chest right in my own design, and he's got a matching earring with Freddy!! All and all, a very solid guy :)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DNI if you support Sc*tt C*wth*n/are a Sc*tt C*wth*n apologist. Do not tag with "Thank you Sc*tt" or anything similar.

[lunarharp]

"Found out" set in kind of a made-up chapter where the girls are in trouble, or something.

[gelatinous-globster]

did this doodle page to play around with Globby's shapeshifting abilities! if he can be a dinosaur I bet he'd LOVE to be a dragon

[keelanrosa]

started reading the cass review because i'm apparently just Like That and i want everybody crowing about how this proves sooooo much about how terfs are right and trans people are wrong to like. take a scientific literacy class or something. or even just read the occasional study besides the one you're currently trying to prove a point with. not even necessarily pro-trans studies just learn how to know what studies actually found as opposed to what people trying to spoonfeed you an agenda claim they found.

to use just one infuriating example:

Several studies from that period (Green et al., 1987; Zucker, 1985) suggested that in a minority (approximately 15%) of pre-pubertal children presenting with gender incongruence, this persisted into adulthood. The majority of these children became same-sex attracted, cisgender adults. These early studies were criticised on the basis that not all the children had a formal diagnosis of gender incongruence or gender dysphoria, but a review of the literature (Ristori & Steensma, 2016) noted that later studies (Drummond et al., 2008; Steensma & Cohen-Kettenis, 2015; Wallien et al., 2008) also found persistence rates of 10-33% in cohorts who had met formal diagnostic criteria at initial assessment, and had longer follow-up periods.

if you recognize the names Zucker and Steensma you are probably already going feral but tldr:

There are… many problems with Zucker's studies, "not all children had a formal diagnosis" is so far down the list this is literally the first i've heard of it. The closest i usually hear is the old DSM criteria for gender identity disorder was totally different from the current DSM criteria for gender dysphoria and/or how most people currently define "transgender"; notably it did not require the patient to identify as a different gender and overall better fits what we currently call "gender-non-comforming". Whether the kids had a formal diagnosis of "maybe trans, maybe just has different hobbies than expected, but either way their parents want them back in their neat little societal boxes" is absolutely not the main issue. This would be a problem even if Zucker was pro-trans (spoiler: He Is Not, and people who are immediately suspicious of pro-trans studies because "they're probably funded by big pharma or someone else who profits from transitioning" should apply at least a little of that suspicion to the guy who made a living running a conversion clinic); sometimes "formal" criteria change as we learn more about what's common, what's uncommon, what's uncommon but irrelevant, etc, and when the criteria changes drastically enough it doesn't make sense to pretend the old studies perfectly apply to the new criteria. If you found a study defining "sex" specifically and exclusively as penetration with a dick which says gay men have as much sex as straight men but lesbians don't, it's not necessarily wrong as far as it goes but if THAT'S your prime citation for "gay men have more sex than lesbians", especially if you keep trying to apply it in contexts which obviously use a broader definition, there are gonna be a lot of people disagreeing with you and it won't be because they're stubbornly unscientific.

Also Zucker is pro conversion therapy. Yes, pro converting trans people to cis people, but also pro converting gay people to straight people. That doesn't necessarily affect his results, i just find it funny how many people enthusiastically support his findings as evidence transitioning is… basically anti-gay conversion therapy? (even though plenty of trans people transition to gay? including T4T people so even the "that's actually just how straight people try to get with gay people" rationale for gay trans people is incredibly weak? and also HRT has a relatively low but non-zero chance of changing sexual orientation so it wouldn't even be reliable as a means of "becoming straight"? but a guy who couldn't reliably tell the difference between a tomboy and a trans boy figured out the former is more common than the latter + in one whole country where being trans is legal but being gay is not, sometimes cis gay people transition, so OBVIOUSLY that means sexism and homophobia are the driving factors even in countries with significant transphobia. or something.) anyway i hope zucker knows and hates how many gay people and allies are using his own study to trash-talk any attempts to be Less Gay. ideally nobody would take his nonsense seriously at all but it doesn't seem we'll be spared from that any time soon so i will take my schadenfreude where i can.

Steensma's studies have the exact same problem re: irrelevant criteria so "well someone ELSE had the same results!" is not exactly convincing. This is not "oh trans people are refusing to pay attention to these studies because they disagree with them regardless of scientific rigor", it's "one biased guy using outdated criteria found exactly the numbers everyone would expect based on that criteria, i can't imagine why trans people are treating those numbers as relevant to the past criteria but not present definitions, let's find a SECOND guy using outdated criteria. Why do people keep saying the outdated criteria is not relevant to the current state of trans healthcare. Don't we all know it's quantity over quality with scientific studies. (Please don't ask what the quantity of studies disagreeing with me is.)"

Steensma also counted patients as 'not persisting as transgender' if they ghosted him on follow-up which counted for a third of his study's "detransitioners" and a fifth of the total subjects and. look. i'm not saying none of them detransitioned, or assuming they all didn't would be notably more accurate, but i think we can safely treat twenty percent of subjects as a bit high for making a default assumption, especially when some of them might have simply not been interested in a study on whether or not they still know who they are. Fuck knows i've seen pro-trans studies which didn't make assumptions about the people who didn't respond still get prodded by anti-trans people insisting "the number of people claiming they don't regret transitioning can't possibly be so high, some of the people who responded must have been lying. (Scientific rigor means thinking studies which disagree with me are wrong even if the only explanation is the subjects lying and studies which agree with me are right even if we need to make assumptions about a lot of subjects to get there.)"

and this is not new information. not the issues with zucker, not the issues with steensma, not any of the issues because this is not a new study, it's a review of older studies, which in itself doesn't mean "bad" or "useless" -- sometimes that allows connecting some previously-unconnected dots -- but the idea this is going to absolutely blow apart the Woke Media, vindicate Rowling and Lineham, and "save" ""gay"" children from """being forcibly transed""" is bullshit. At most it'll get dragged around and eagerly cited by all the people looking for anything vaguely scientific-sounding to justify their beliefs, and maybe even people who only read headlines and sound bites will buy it, but the people who really believe it will be people who already agreed with all its "findings" and have already been dragging around the existing studies and are just excited to have a shiny new citation for it.

the response from people who've been really reading research on transgender people all along is going to be more along the lines of "……yeah. yeah, i already knew about that. do you need a three-page essay on why i don't think it means what you think it means? because i don't have time for that homework right now but maybe i can pencil it in for next semester if you haven't learned how to check your own sources by then."

[idrawgaystffs]

@ceo-caroline Hi yeah I saw your tags and oughh yeah,,

[Image Description/

1st image: A mostly black and white fan-made drawing of Chell from the Portal games. She is lying down on her right-side in a long hallway made up of nonportal-able panels. In two spots there are openings for square-shaped light sources. From one of the openings spews a yellow light (the only source of color in the art). Chell is reaching her left arm into the light source and her hand casts a black shadow behind it.

2nd image: A cropped version of the previous image closer to Chell's body to capture more detail. Only black and white, the color edit is absent in this version.

/End ID]

[Screenshot of the inspiration post Below]

[Image Description/

A screenshot from Portal 1 of the lit holes in the nonportal-able walls, emitting a yellow-y light.

Above is the text:

"this is what life is about baby"

Below is the following in tags:

"#whenever im playing & see these i feel so sad :( #i always imagine chell putting her hand through one ... stretching as far as she can in case it's really sunlight"

posted originally by @citranium and tags by @ceo-caroline

/End ID]