#as if it's a radical space when no not really lol

[protaetia]

🐞

[lettucedloophole]

it's... interesting how perhaps a vast majority of tirfs use the term "trans-inclusive radical feminism" as a way to signal "i don't hate trans women! (at least not as much as terfs do)" rather than radical feminism which incorporates transmisogyny & transfeminist perspective into its theory & practice.

[vampiremiffy]

hi, this feels like a rlly dumb question so i hope it doesnt come across as insincere- as a radfem, i truly dont understand why trans exclusion is needed for the liberation of women as a social class and the female sexual spectrum as a biological form. its something i’ve never been able to really get answers on from other radfems directly. i understand the concept of “womens spaces” and the preservation of women’s social identity (and thus social class) as an extension of female biological liberation, but practically i really dont see how transexuality (both contemporary “radical identity” in the form of nonbinary gender and sexual presentation and traditional hyper-binary transexuality) doesnt serve to undermine the power dynamic of male/female social control. idk its always been a sticking point for me lol, i would love for some insight on it bc i suspect maybe its a difference in approach (i.e seeking to eliminate gendered power structures by grinding away the meaning of genders and biological categories vs seeking to maintain womanhood as a social role that is liberated)

hi! sorry for not answering, i wasnt on tumblr these days the main focus is that radfeminism puts the source of women's oppresion at the basis of sex, it isnt really a trans exclusivity since female trans people (using TIF from now on since that includes both binary and nonbinary trans females, same w TIM) are still included in it all examples of female oppression comes from our sex, not our gender.

girls and women cant identify as men/non binary genders to escape female genital mutilation, feminicide, or simply misogyny microaggressions. we arent oppressed simply by being women, that's the excuse it has been formed by the creation of genders, we are oppressed as female. and even though, TIM may suffer discrimination when cispassing, its still proof of sex based oppresion (the perpetuator assuming theyre female) and we cant talk about all of this without the recognition of a female class, the same way people of color recognize that their oppresion is based on their ethnicity or homo/bisexual people recognize their oppresion comes from same sex attraction at the same time is weird to say "i see no race" when talking about racism, it is when trying to "erase" the existence of sex

also, and no less important, just like non human animals, female and male humans have different physical characteristics (+the female and male socialization), we need female spaces (and male) only, even after an idea of gender abolition like in medical aspects

hope this helps?? i answered at to how i understanded your question lol

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Am I the asshole for telling my mum she's being ignorant?

cw// racism .

I (18MtF) have a really, really good mum all things considered. She's been amazing about my transition, has gone to marches, spoke on radio, written articles and gotten into public spats on twitter (she's a semi-public figure) defending me. We live in the UK, so this is really a big thing on terf island lol. She's pretty good about mental health, and advocated in my youth aswell when I got diagnosed autistic.

Here is where it gets messy. My mum works in education for context, so is very clued in to the news and things. She's a hard-core feminist (I would probably call her a radical feminist to be honest). All of her friends are older women in education and journalism professions, and she speaks to them about feminist topics regularly. The thing is that ALL of them are white. Most of them are upper class (my parents both grew up dirt poor and had to work hard for everything they had). I have a number of bipoc friends, and there has been some weird instances of my mum accidentally breaking out the microaggressions that made me uncomfy, never anything massive, but enough to make me feel just a bit weird.

Tonight we watched the new Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon. Often on the way home from seeing films like this, my mum and I will discuss politics and society, but I usually steer the conversation away from race because it isn't something I want to bring up with her, especially in a space where i cant exactly roll my eyes and go quiet without annoying her. However, race is a key topic in this film. Discussions were going fine, and then my mum did this weird thing I've noticed her do before. I had been explaining that indigenous women go missing and are often barely looked for because of factors of racism and misogyny, she immediately chimed in talking about a very different situation, about the cervical cancer scare in Ireland where tests for cervical cancer weren't carried out properly, but all the women were told they were clear anyway, resulting in many women suffering from a disease that could've been caught much earlier.

Normally I would just move on and engage with this, but it enraged me this time, mostly because it was an evocative film that left me with a lot of emotions and also because earlier that day she'd said something microaggressive about my girlfriend, who is black. I told her that it was obviously awful and I get she was just trying to empathise, but that it was a completely different situation because it didn't have that intersection of race and misogyny. She made some point about how she was "Sure there were people of color affected by the scandal" but I told her that that wasn't the point and that she was being ignorant. She got passive aggressive and didn't talk to me for the rest of the night.

I seriously don't know if it would've just been better to engage with her on that and then steer our conversation back to something more focused on race or to just abandon it altogether or whatever. I guess im also sick of not being able to talk about race at all with her, and feeling embarrassed bringing my friends over because I feel like she's gonna say something. I just don't really know how to bring it up because the only thing she can ever compare it to is misogyny, when obviously these are very different things, but I don't feel like this was the best way I'd gone about it.

Was I the asshole ?

What are these acronyms?

[poetry-protest-pornography]

Max is the most effective Gay Yoda in history.

One conversation with Kawi, and he fixes his whole attitude towards Pisaeng.

One conversation with Pisaeng, and he finds the courage to be honest with himself.

Max is the best boy, and I love him. His no-nonsense-ness and radical acceptance of other people is a kind of magic, and I hope he knows how wonderful he is.

Just look at this:

His little "I guess we're doing this now" face. The smirk that says he saw this coming.

And then right into gently calling Kawi out for his double standard.

That last part... You can see it land. You can see Kawi realizing that he's been especially unfair to Pisaeng, treating him poorly for what a future version of himself did.

"He hasn't even done you any harm yet" is true in that this Pisaeng has been nothing but kind, and hasn't pushed Kawi about his feelings, which is what Max is saying, but it's also literally true. This Pisaeng hasn't shown up drunk at Kawi's apartment, kissed him, and then gotten angry and in his face when he didn't respond. And Kawi processes that and immediately starts to recontextualize his relationship with Pisaeng.

Which brings us here:

A genuine, thoughtful apology and recognition of his own failings.

And then we see that Pisaeng has also been thinking since his own talk with Max (sorry for the face that this screenshot captured, Gawin you're so pretty and I love that your face can still look this goofy, lol).

But Pisaeng has made peace with his attraction to men--to Kawi-- and accepted that he's queer, and found the bravery he needed to tell Kawi how he feels; to be honest about his feelings like Kawi told him he needed to be.

And when he struggles to get the last part out, to actually say "I like you", Kawi sees it, and he pulls out more of that newly realized emotional maturity, and gives Pisaeng reassurance and support (channeling Max perfectly):

And again, reassures Pisaeng that he knows that he's messed up before, but he is trying to be better now. And that gives him the confidence he needs to confess.

This whole episode just illustrates how vital it is to be seen. To be acknowledged and recognized and accepted. Even if it's just one person at first; one person who looks at you, and really sees who you are, and can tell you out loud that you're okay, that who you are is okay.

And Max does that so effortlessly (eyeroll notwithstanding) every time he counsels Kawi and doesn't let him get away with being whiney and self deprecating and distant, but does it with kindness and understanding.

He does it with Pisaeng when he approaches him at the gay bar, and then again when he tells him that he's not so important that he's worth gossip (that his sexuality isn't the end of the world, that being queer isn't on the scale of war and bigotry and natural disaster), and then he apologizes for being harsh, recognizing that Pisaeng is struggling, and scared, and tells him that he can talk to him, that he'll listen, that he sees him. Tells him that the answers about his feelings that he needs are in him, not in any place he needs to go to-- gives him an out to pushing himself into queer spaces if he's not ready, and encourages him to find himself and get comfortable with who he is within himself.

Max's superpower is that he sees people, and that he's willing to meet them where they are while they grow. And it's super effective.

I hope everyone who needs one finds their Max, and that we all take the opportunity to be a Max whenever possible.

[bleachbleachbleach]

[Bleach 080]

Things I Love Thinking in Circles About

How big, area-wise, the Seireitei is

What regular Gotei work looks like when we're not looking

What did the early bird VCs do the entire time they were sitting around in Conference Room 2 waiting for people to show up?

--

1. How big, area-wise, the Seireitei is

According to Yoruichi, walking from one gate to the next would take 10 days, which initially makes the Seireitei seem really damn big. The city of Ann Arbor, Michigan has a population of 120,000 people. If we're meant to believe that there are 6000 shinigami (citation: Ooetsu?), I find it difficult to believe that the Seireitei's population would be much larger than 120k, if that. (Personally, I proceed as though it's a lot less than that.) Like the Seireitei, Ann Arbor is also circular, ringed not by a Seireimon but a necklace of Interstates, but it's only like 10 miles across. It really wouldn't take that long to walk 1/4 of the way around its rim.

You'd have to walk around a quarter of the entire country of Spain for it to take 10 days:

Obviously Google is not taking into account tired feet or needing to like, sleep, with this estimate, but STILL. The Seireitei is not the size of SPAIN.

A) Let's say it would really take 10 days. This gate-to-gate trek might need to take terrain into account (which Google sometimes does and often doesn't lol). The area Ichigo et al ended up in seemed pretty civ where the gate matches up with Junrinan, but maybe a shade north and the terrain is much more difficult!

B) Let's say it really would not take 10 days. Yoruichi might have been exaggerating, because she doesn't want to walk to another damn gate and also it's not as though there aren't also shinigami waiting at...the other gates... So she nips that in the bud and directs her party's attentions elsewhere.

Or maybe she knows that even this close to the Seireitei, in Rukongai time gonna wime, and space-time are not going to exist in a constant relationship with each other.

C) Let's say Matsumoto's "half-day" comment probably isn't about geography, either. Half a day would make the Seireitei approximately the size of like, Indianapolis? (population 882k, area 368 sq. miles/950 sq. km) if we were basing it purely on area. But also, shunpou?? So I really feel like the "length of time it would take people to arrive"half day" comment is less a function of physical distance and more about the fact that they're all busy and have tasks they'd need to extricate themselves from before they started walking/running/sauntering/gamboling over.

Which leads me to--

2. What regular Gotei work looks like when we're not looking

I think we've seen enough evidence that the way the Gotei has built itself does not lend itself well to rapid response. Their response to the ryoka invasion was not particularly rapid, nor organized. Their response to AIZEN'S MURDER was nearly non-existent. Winter War prep was also kind of rough, and I guess TYBW 1 was kind of a surprise attack, but I think my point still stands that it's just not their forte. I think part of this is because the Gotei is legitimately just kind of bad at being functional; we all know this. They all know this. I think the other part is that rapid response is very, very hard.

Given that they are heavenly court guards, you'd think rapid response to potential threats would be more of a priority, but you could say that about a lot of real-life things that, in reality, do not work that way (and perhaps cannot, in the absence of radical reinvention). To use a near universal example, see Exhibit C: COVID responses lol. Even outside of that very particular example, I'm part of a direct action organization and even though it's relatively small and its politics are activist-minded, rapid response is still very, very hard.

I just love thinking about, okay, where are the Gotei bottlenecks, what's the red tape, where's the sludge in the workings, where to the capacities fall through, what jobs haven't been invented that they really need, what jobs exist that really shouldn't, how much is logistical, how much is political, how much is cultural, how much is personal? *this is my bulletproof kiiiiiiink*

If it's going to take 4-12 hours to get all the officers in one place, it makes me think that yes, the alarms are going off, but it's a rapid response priority only for those who were assigned to quadrant 6 or whatever. Yes, this meeting call went out, but the threat is not yet at a level where you need to drop everything and haul ass. It's serious, but not more serious than the rippling consequences of ignoring the essential tasks you were already engaged in that are really going to fuck things up in domino-like ways if you don't do them right now.

For Ichigo et al, rescuing Rukia is Priority #1. For the Gotei, the ryoka invasion is this major world event that slammed on top of their already-full calendars of other shit they're supposed to do today. Big meeting? That's great, but it's going to have to wait or else a whole deployment's going to ship out late, the payroll office is going to close before those forms get signed, and Z isn't going to have the Y report that's required in order to start the X project.

3. What did the early bird VCs do the entire time they were sitting around in Conference Room 2 waiting for people to show up?

The meeting was called to address Ichimaru's behavior in dealing (or not dealing) with the ryoka, so we can assume it was called relatively quickly after Yamamoto got wind of that. Renji just took Rukia to Fancy Prison, but it doesn't seem like there's yet been dissemination of an official report, because he doesn't actually know if Ichigo got killed by Ichimaru or not. But the meeting is still going on when the ryoka invade successfully via The Sky.

In the interim, Ichigo et al hung out with the denizens of Junrinan, met Ganju, walked out to bumfuck to find Kuukaku's house, got introduced to the cannon and the cannonballs, practiced with the cannonballs, ate dinner, gained proficiency with the cannonballs, and blasted themselves through the sky.

Which makes it seem like the VCs who got there early literally did have to wait around for half a day before everyone showed up. Keep in mind THEIR MEETING DID NOT EVEN HAVE AN AGENDA. They were just supposed to stage in Conference Room 2!

So what did they do? Did they bring any work with them? Did they shoot the shit for six hours? Play games? Nap?

...Orgy?

(Orgy.)

[redheadbigshoes]

the term "bi lesbian" made it 10x harder for me to process and accept that i'm a lesbian. like, i started questioning my orientation fully around the time when bi lesbians began to be discussed and i was active in xenogender focused spaces (i have nothing against xenogenders btw, the communities surrounding them just tends to have a massive "radical inclusion" problem) and... yeah. i got convinced that i was every bi lesbian term under the sun because of how much my muturals would talk about it, and also my own internalized guilt over being attracted exclusively to women.

i was basically convinced that i was a bi lesbian because i "could still feel attraction to men someday", and that really fucked me up in the long run. fuck that shite

“Bi lesbians” are always either lesbians in denial or bisexuals in denial lol. Idk why people act like it’s so hard to call yourself just bi or lesbian.

I never trust radical inclusionists.

[limeade-l3sbian]

This might come across as an unserious question, but I’m asking genuinely as a new radfem; is it still okay that i’m a radfem even if I enjoy manga? I’m not into stuff that degrades/objectifies women or is creepy loli shit, which unfortunately both are ultra present in the medium, but i’ve been a huge shounen fan since I was a kid so to part with my favourite mangas and animes for radical feminism would be a bit of a heartbreak. I don’t wanna seem halfassed in my beliefs though.

Radical feminism is not a label, it's a movement. So there's no need for you to "refine" your 'allegiance' lol. There will be parts of it that you disagree with and parts that resonate deeply with you. But ultimately, to call yourself a practitioner of radical feminism just means to believe in its core tenets and to practice methods of rebellion in the safest and most realistic way you can.

I'll compare your question to this: is it okay if I'm a radfem even if I enjoy rap music? The answer is yes. I listen to rap all the time, but have cut down on the most offensive parts of it and acknowledge that some of the songs I listen to still have misogynistic bars. But with those songs, I temper this concession by listening to those in a way where the artist doesn't benefit.

Not even just to be a "good radfem" but because once you start reading more and really having more conversations in the space, you'll find that your aversion to these things will come naturally. It won't be that you'll feel like you can't watch/listen to flagrantly misogynistic media. You won't even want to. You won't have the patience or stomach for it anymore.

Plus, misogyny is baked so deeply into every culture in the world. So to think you can evade it entirely is a waste of time. Just be conscious of when you are not acting in the interest of radical feminism and don't try to insinuate that somehow what you're watching/listening to is actually good for feminism lol.

BUT, you say you don't even bother with the gross parts of manga, so I'd say you're already making a good effort. Ultimately, no movement can tell you what to watch or do. I like that your question appears to come from a place of solidarity. Reminds me of when bisexual/lesbian women ask, "How do I make sure I'm not objectifying women like men?" And they don't realize by even being concerned about that is already a sign that they likely aren't since a great deal of men don't even think about that.

I don't think you have to give up manga. But as you read more into radical feminism (outside of radblr!) Just be prepared to start seeing things differently.

[nothorses]

hi! this is a question about pansexuality that i fear asking. tbh i don't really care what anyone identifies as. everyone's part of my community to me. i am trying to wrap my head around bi v pan stuff as someone who is neither. i know bisexuals who are critical of the pan label because to them it distinguishes bisexuality as starkly Not being pansexuality. when definitions of bisexuality have included "attraction regardless of gender, or to all genders (and including trans and nb people)" for many bisexuals since like the 70s which is how i see pansexuality defined a lot of the time

i know that bi and pan have always been concurrent labels and they have a lot of overlap and that some ppl use them interchangeably. and i truly don't care that ppl id as pan. but i do feel weird seeing it juxtaposed to definitions of bisexuality that aren't inclusive of all bisexuals? (ie that bisexuals aren't attracted to ALL genders, just two or more.. when many bisexuals Are attracted to all genders! part of bisexual history is that people have been fighting to let others know Bisexuality is more inclusive than the literal like latin meaning of bi = two). i don't know where to stand on this divide. i love pansexuals and the pan label and the right to self determination in identity but i do understand the argument that it feels hurtful in a biphobic way to say it is inherently a distinct sexuality from being bisexual when it's. like. many bi and pan ppl would define their sexuality in the exact same way other than a difference in specific label. i feel like people hate this opinion lmao!!! please help! even if you hate my opinion too i literally feel like i need guidance KDBDBS

Tbh I think there's a lot of historical context to this whole convo, and I don't think you're alone in being confused. And honestly given the amount of info you have, I think you're in a pretty respectable spot about it. (And I say "historical" here in the sense that I am. 25. and I'm mostly talking about the things I have either seen firsthand, or read about/heard about from others.)

So like- when I was a Young Queer, it was very common for people to define "bi" as meaning "men and women" (or even "cis men and cis women"), and thus "pan" rose to popularity as an alternative to essentially mean "everyone, including trans and nonbinary people".

This was like, early 2010's? And I'm talking about other Young Queer spaces and interactions. And you kind of have to remember that in that time, it was kind of radical to tell people not to call things "gay" if they didn't like them. Joking that people were trans (usually in terms like "lol Justin Beiber is a lesbian") was common even in progressive spaces. I was stunned when a friend of mine asserted that they were just gonna stop using the r-slur, like, at all.

So I can kind of understand why "pan" might have felt like a needed thing at the time. I think it felt like a kind of shorthand for "I'm cool with trans people", and at least from my perspective, that was something you very much needed to state back then.

I think there are a lot of people my age who, if they don't still understand "bi" and "pan" that way, at least kind of "get" where that definition is coming from. And yeah, it's ahistorical as hell! "Bi" has always been inclusive of trans people. Not to mention people have been defining it all sorts of ways for a long time now; there are a ton of definitions out there, and how the word is defined often depends on who you ask.

But then you ask: if we know "bi" is and has always been trans-inclusive, why does anyone still need the word "pan"? And I think the answer is... complicated. And extremely personal, tbh.

This happens with queer language all the time; as terms are cycled out in favor of new ones, people who've been using them hang on regardless. Sometimes they don't know the language has been updated, but usually it's more than that. Usually they have more of a personal relationship with the word, and the community, that they can't just give up in favor of a new word.

Maybe some people who do understand that "bi" is not actually a transphobic term also still view "pan" as shorthand for "I'm cool with trans people", and that's important to them. Maybe they grew up with that word, formed relationships under it, and came out with it. Maybe the pan community impacted them in some profound way, and rejecting it over shifting definitions just doesn't feel right. There could be any number of reasons.

The other part of this is that much as people have come to understand the original definition of "bi" more widely now, the definition of "pan" and "bi" both have taken on multiple definitions as well. I've seen a lot of definitions that seem to exist just to differentiate the two. For example:

Bi: attracted to multiple (but not necessarily all) genders Pan: attracted to all genders

Bi: attracted to all genders, but in different ways, or with preferences Pan: attracted to all genders essentially the same

Bi: attracted to multiple (or all) genders Pan: attraction regardless of gender

I've also seen people use "bi" as the umbrella term, and "pan" as a more specific label beneath it (often with one of those pairs of definitions).

And you mention that "bi" has a lot of different definitions and understandings- so does pan! How a person understands those words, particularly when they identify with them, is going to be deeply personal and very likely very different from the next person. I think a good rule of thumb is to assume that whoever you're talking to may just have a different definition and understanding of the word they're using than you do, and try to ask them about it if it concerns you.

[vacantgodling]

16, 18, 19 for the pride asks!

thank you <3<3

16. Did you ever change an oc's identity when they were already established? Why?

oh hundreds of times. many of my ocs stemmed from ocs and ideas i had as a kid (8+ years old) and because i was young, and bc i didn't know shit, many of my ocs were very cookie cutter. 100% not my fault cuz i was a kid, but now that i'm older i have been updating, editing, and changing my ocs to fit my worldview, to be more intruging, and to not be basic white fantasy character 2.0.

18. Do you prefer to give your ocs specific labels, or keep it unspecified? Why? If applicable, do you change their labels depending on circumstance?

because i (personally) have been getting more and more annoyed with the limited range of labels, and how i consistently have to have caveats for my own labels (which i'm thinking of dropping altogether lowkey, like at this point if anyone really needs to know they're getting queer or they're getting the dissertation i'm tired of trying to be in a box fr) i have been leaning more into keeping my ocs labels unspecified.

there are definitely many characters i have (especially ones in modern wips) that have more concrete labels (ie: darren or toph being bisexual, jenna being a aroace bi lesbian, etc). but when i start getting into the weeds of many of my pure fantasy wips like paramour or tcol, it becomes annoying to try and hold onto our world's notions of gender and sexuality bc simply put their worlds don't operate like that. like sure, amon is gay or masc attracted, but like, troibemme is a fully recognized third gender category, so like. it makes explaining things like that weird. in my mind amon is simply masc attracted, that's the best way to describe it. but like, that's not really a label, ya feel?

i don't really change their labels depending on circumstance, i just kind of know what they like and their general sex/intimacy preferences cuz that's more useful than having a label that means nothing.

19. Do you have preferences about depicting homo/transphobia in your stories? What, and why? Does it vary by story

i depict it if it makes sense for the plot. tcol has a homophobia storyline (around clear) because of how he was raised he faced it, and i have an in world explanation as to why. other characters like di (lukewarm rejection) or jake (purple haze) have it in their storylines because they're ways for me to explore my own struggles with things, but also because i made there a reason in their stories. even paramour has some because there's a small radical group of traditionalists who are specifically made so i can dunk on conservatives.

i have no issue depicting it but i don't put it in every story for the sake of having it though. and whenever i do depict it, i depict people triumphing over it because that's what's good for my brain space lol

[rewritingcanon]

Sorry, this might be a long rant but those anons and replies you were getting got me going. TERFs always say how trans women are “cosplaying” or “performing” what they think a woman is. But, and I say this as a cis woman, don’t cis women do that too? I’d argue that it’s not even performing womanhood, it’s performing femininity, and isn’t femininity a performance at the end of the day? Cis women wear makeup, jewelry, dresses, etc. usually to express their femininity, but it’s not inherent to being a woman. Being born a woman doesn’t automatically come with a gene that makes you interested in traditionally feminine things or ways of expression, it’s all socialization. People associate gender affirmation only with trans people, but cis men and woman do it too? Men will go to the gym to build muscle or get hair transplants to feel more masculine, and women will do things that make them feel more feminine. It’s all a performance that we put on for society. Cis women get cosmetic surgery to adhere to female beauty standards all the time (even JKR, allegedly) but suddenly it’s a problem when trans women do it?

It sucks because I do consider myself a radical feminist but TERFs make it hard to exist in that space. I think TERFs and I would agree that women getting plastic surgery is actually not an empowering or feminist choice and only further feeds an industry that profits off of making women (especially women of color) feel insecure. However, I don’t blame women for getting work done, because they’re essentially the victim in the scenario. Why would I blame someone who is groomed by a society that tells them certain parts of them are bad and need to be changed? It’s pointless and self righteous, and it only further puts the burden of being the “perfect victim” on women. I feel the same for trans women (and men). I don’t like that we live in a society that pressures people into undergoing sometimes very serious procedures to be more palatable. But that’s hardly their fault, is it? Can I really blame anyone for being worn down and making a decision to try and make their life in a toxic world easier? Specifically for trans women, it also involves their safety because they (specifically trans women of color) are the most at risk members of society, especially when it comes to violence. The more they ‘pass’, they are keeping themselves safe.

It’s just so crazy to me how TERFs can acknowledge that the patriarchy is toxic to women in ways that affect their daily lives and how they present themselves, but can’t seem to understand that it also affects other groups of people in those ways as well. Trans women aren’t our enemy, they’re just trying to survive, just like we are. How can I fault anyone for that?

Again, so sorry for the long rant but I got heated lmao

no dont apologise babe i completely agree LOL. its so sad because when i first came across radical feminism it was about their takes on sex work and the porn industry in general and i really agreed with a lot they had to say so i kept deep diving and THEN i came across the terfism. and to this day idk whether that is intrinsic to radfem ideology or if terfs are just saying it is. either way, its sad because i feel like radfems are sort of overshadowed by terfs in their spaces and get a bad rep to their name because of how many bigots use that space to promote their hateful rhetoric instead of promoting their good takes on patriarchy.

that original post about jkr got a lot of terfs/self proclaimed radfems in the shits too and i would scroll through their profiles and read what they had to say about the oppression of ciswomen and actually agree with them. and then they would turn around and argue the exact opposite about trans women which was absolutely mind-boggling to me. you tell me these people can discuss so many nuances about cis-womanhood but refuse to acknowledge similar nuances in transpeople? crazy. and very disappointing.

your point on plastic surgery and gender affirming surgery is interesting. ive never thought about it that way before or thought to compare the two. i agree with what you say about cis women getting plastic surgery btw, i also dont think it’s empowering women at all but i wont blame them. i think the difference between that and gender affirming surgery is that there are more grey areas like gender dysmorphia (although not everyone who gets this surgery has to have dysmorphia) and also what you said about safety in passing! im cis too so i dont pretend to know how gender dysmorphia feels like (i know dysmorphia is also not a trans-only thing either though). maybe the experience of that is because of socialisation and the knowledge that one’s physicality is preventing them from being socialised ‘correctly,’ and maybe that would disappear if strict ideas of gender (and what ‘man/woman’ “look” like) disappeared as well, but i don’t pretend to know lol. i dont want to make it out to be some big illusion of patriarchy or anything.

either way, you’re right. we are oppressed by patriarchy in similar ways, ways that are exacerbated for trans women (and more so for non-white trans women). even trans men are oppressed too, but im not so sure how they fit into terf rhetoric. i think they may just groups trans men in with cis women? although ive never seen a terf come on here and speak up for the oppression of trans men either so. lol.

sorry for taking so long to answer this i was pondering it for a long time 😭👍

[nekropsii]

What are your thoughts on dead vriska, I've always really liked her development and her confrontation with the retcon vriska was pretty sad, she's one of my favorite characters

(Vriska) actually was a major catalyst to my opinion on Vriska completely flipping on its head. I used to really not like her, she was one of my least favorites! She's kinda hard to like when you're a heavily bullied middle schooler, lol.

(Vriska)'s entire deal, especially when confronted by Retcon!Vriska, was just so incredibly sad and telling of who Vriska is as a person on both sides that it kind of broke me into liking her. It's almost impossible to come out of reading that exchange without realizing just how deeply broken of a person Vriska is, if you hadn't come to that conclusion already. It was obvious throughout the story, but seeing Vriska react to who she could be if she had been given the time and space to heal and not be on the offensive 24/7 is just brutal to watch. It's incredibly, incredibly difficult to not feel so deeply sad for her after watching that unfold.

[S] Terezi: Remem8er destroyed my entire life, though. I cry every time still. That's when I truly went from "Vriska is an incredibly complicated, tragic person" to "Holy shit, Vriska is the best character ever, actually." Terezi, too. Terezi's so deeply underappreciated. Her arc is fucking lethal. Top 10 Homestuck flashes that fucking radicalize you.

[deepseametro]

not trying to be hostile here just dont really want to put my name on this.

the thing that concerns me(transfem) when i encounter women-only spaces irl, even that are friendly to trans women, is that it just sort of puts us in a weird position with respect to passing and identity. i saw someone post a while ago something similar about queer student groups, they said like "the included group is based around good faith self-identification, but what if my self-identification isn't accurate or 'sincere' enough?" not to mention the issue of passing. plus in practice you also usually have no idea if a women-only space is actually safe for trans women until you get there...

im not even opposed to the concept, and really i think they are a good thing. but i still end up feeling weird about it. especially in my current non-passing form I just see something like that it's hard to expect that i would be welcome in a women-only space

I actually started to write up a post kind of about this earlier but got lazy and didn't finish lol. But I mean yeah. The fact is even the most inclusive of spaces tends to have these kinds of problems.

Ultimately this is one of the big problems with framing the answer to (this part of) radical feminism as just doing away with the spaces, instead of investigating the spaces that exist and looking who's running them and who's being allowed and in them and who's even comfortable in them.

Like, the solution to transmisogyny isn't removing woman-led or woman-centric spaces! TME women need to be making an active effort to be inclusive of transfems, and especially nonpassing/pretransition/butch/gnc/nonbinary/etc transfems! Not even just inclusive but welcoming. Going out of their way to bring these women into their spaces, you know?

At least that's the best solution I can think of on a most basic level. Even if all the women in a space genuinely and earnestly don't hold transmisogynistic beliefs and are comfortable and even happy to have trans women among them, I think half the issue is making it clear to transfems that's the case. And that requires a really active effort IMO.

It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth when people sort of act like the way to make spaces trans inclusive is to make them open to literally everybody, you know? Like obviously that works sometimes! Bathrooms don't need to be gender segregated.

But if you have this space that's meant to center or support predominantly women, and you notice that there's a problem with exclusion of trans women, and your answer is to let everybody into that space.. I think that just says a lot about how you think of trans women, you know?

[joompheart]

This one is Andrew. I'm really glad to finally have a kinda definitive picture that I can point to and go "that's what she looks like," and I'm looking forward to doing the same for the rest of my OC's. Long, detailed description below the cut.

-Age range: 16-21

-Physical attributes: Disgustingly lean. Almost nothing but muscle, skin, and bone. Think “teenage Olympian.” Strong for her size but not big enough to be “actually actually” strong. Shortest of my OC's, maybe 5'7” to 5'9”? I have a tendency to kinda homogenize heights with my characters but I still don't think of her as diminutive. Dark hair, approx shoulder length. Can be a couple inches longer or shorter though. [Maybe she looks a little sickly in this picture, that's just because I'm bad with color. Any human skin tone would be fine, I think the colors of her armor go well with every one I can conceive of].

-Magic specialty: Andrew is the most severely minmaxxed out of all of my characters, focusing on physical enhancement and melee combat. She's optimized for movement speed, strength, agility, grace/ coordination, and reaction speed. She also has some talent for enhancing objects, but only her own possessions. In a fair fight Andrew wins against every other character except Theodore, you just can't touch her. [Andrew I mean].

-Armor: Basically like at the end of Halo 4 where they take off Master Chief's Mark VI MOD MJOLNIR armor, it's a (supposed to be black or dark grey but the red looked better for this) skintight bodysuit with armor plates sealed on. The armor plates are small and rounded to reduce any drag or chances to snag on the environment when moving at speed, and to keep a lower profile (or at least as low as you can go when you're bright yellow-gold). Andrew was a zealot/ corpo assassin so this armor was made to be worn under more conventional clothes and could be at least partially hidden with magic. The armor plates are not exceptionally strong, but very light. They're mostly to facilitate wearing her thrusters.

-[An armor plate of note would be her cup, which is worn as a thong. Think something right out of a Radical Dream/ Rindou demon exorcist hentai, except the protection is actually real and not just ostensible lol. I point this out because you can't really see from this angle, but it feels important to the whole outfit and character for me. It's not like Andrew is supposed to be really sexy, she's got the most uncomfortable body of all of my characters. But leaving no armor there would feel sparse, and using a more conservative plate would feel lame. Idk. Idk it feels important.]

-Thrusters: Andrew can move stupid fast and could probably jump out of atmosphere if she had to, but she can't fly. This means that when she's really moving she would actually be at her slowest in free fall, or even worse at the apex of a jump. To counteract this she has sort of “reverse jetpack” thrusters on her armor angled up to push her back down to the ground, where she can get back to peak performance. Thrusters are concentrated on her upper back, but there are also some on the back of her shoulders, some right on top of her (damn near nonexistent) boobs, one above her cock, and on the back of her calves. Think kinda like Iron Man repulsors, though that makes me feel a little lame to say lol.

-Sword: The inception of this character was really enjoying the Odachi animations in the game Nioh, so that's what her sword is like. Try to imagine her padding along, holding it down in front of her, blade forward, hands crossed so her dominant right palm is down and her supporting left palm is up, tip of the blade just barely gliding above the ground. The sword is just metal with no inherent special qualities, albeit a space alloy that's more durable than anything we've got on earth and holds and edge really well. However, due to her strong bond with it, Andrew can magically enhance the durability and cutting ability of the blade even further, as to slice through rock and even metal with little resistance. Additionally, the length of the blade is magically variable. The sheath for the blade is only about a foot long, and the length of the blade for a given use is determined by how “long” the blade is unsheathed. The sheath is tied with cord so Andrew can stow her sword and attach it to/ hang it on her armor when not in use. The cord's length is also magically variable, so she can kinda “yo-yo” when her blade is too long to comfortably reach manually. In that way she can quickly change the length of the blade mid-fight, throwing the sheath to the tip of the sword to pull back to the hilt and then yanking it back off revealing that the blade is now several feet shorter (or vice versa).

-Partial Biography: Daughter of the governor of one of 2 colony mining cities, one of many children. Neither the eldest or the youngest. When Penelope (doesn't technically but effectively) kills the governor and the city is overrun with Penelope's cult [he doesn't lead it, hes just a prominent member. But that's off topic.], Andrew and her family flee to the other city on the other side of the planet. Andrew's aptitude for magic, both inherited from her father and developed on her own, leads her to be enlisted as a sort of political assassin for the governors of that city. Over time her convictions are loosened by the nature of her work and she's assigned a final suicide mission to kill Penelope and as much of his cult as she can, basically being told she's fired and that's the last listing they're leaving her with.

-Personality: Frustrated and vengeful, feels strongly about the concept of “justice.” Andrew is reckoning with having lost so much faith in the system that she and her father believed in, how she can possibly make “the world” “better” when her primary skill set is extreme overkill murder, and if her hate for Penelope and his cult even matters. Used to a high standard of living, if a little spartan. Very very very capable in action, moving efficiently and with little pretense. Very driven, expects to always know what her next goal is.

-Associated NiN songs: “The Wretched”

[eddie-redmayne-italian-blog]

Sorry for the fake nerd post lol Quick trip to Cabaret with Eddie Redmayne, who started performing on NY Broadway in April ✨️ Eddie Redmayne is the MC of Cabaret!? And this performance made the blood of a former nerd viewer. Cabaret itself is a performance that depicts the relationships and love patterns of those living in boring Berlin under Nazi Germany to be radical and black, so it can be a little difficult to deal with, but still I love the catchy songs of Cabaret.. (Please see posts with music 🎶)!

Eddie Redmayne's role as the MC in Cabaret is a strange, comedic, strangely difficult role as a philanthropist. I was amazed by the breadth of his acting skills in the movie "All About Lily", so I couldn't help but wait to see how he would play the MC! And of course, not to disappoint, his MC performance was fantastic. Bend your knees and your fingertips, are you really that kind Eddie Redmayne? Strangeness that makes you think. But with a slightly husky voice, Eddie Redmayne! It will happen! Lol and he was quite fit (when he appeared in one of the heart-shaped pants, he didn't think he was a friend: "Eh!! It's heavy!" With the "pussy" 🤣)

The stage show was absolutely brilliant! First swipe the ticket at the entrance leads to the neon-lit red and black corridor. From now on, there will be a ban on filming, stickers on the back of the camera...... Shots of 🥃 are given everywhere we go, and in a mysterious space where the dancers let loose. The Kit Kat Club on stage from the moment you entered the theater. Don't forget if you can go because the show starts at 8pm but these entertainments start at 7pm. I've already had a lot of fun!!

And finally the unforgettable memories...... While waiting for the show, Eddie Redmayne came to say hello✨️ Of course, he took my iPhone to autograph with me😭 A British gentleman who is as smooth as you can imagine♡ He is only in NY can you meet such fantastic stars!! After that, I chilled with my friends in the comfort of my daydreams lol. I'm still a little crazy lol. I want to see his works from now on.

Thanks to my dear friend for coming! Thanks also to all the adoptive dads! Lol this was an unforgettable memory of New York ✨️

sorry I used google trans for English.

thanks to https://www.instagram.com/p/C5kSKxDOvKE/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

[fox-flux]

the item-to-UI spiral

i just recently touched up this animation (sorry for the dropped frames):

[EDIT OH MY GOD LOL NO ONE TOLD ME IT WASN'T ANIMATING, IT'S THE WHOLE POINT!! OF THE POST!!]

and i wrote about how it works on cohost so i'm crossposting here and hoping tumblr doesn't chew my markdown up too badly!

now, i admit upfront: i did zero research on this. maybe there is a cool clever way to do a parametric spiral that isn't this. my suspicion is that any "simpler" alternative would be a trip through the polar plane and involve a bunch of trig, and we're game developers here, so we do everything with vectors god dammit

the problem

here is what i decided i want from the beginning:

when you pick up the key (or a handful of other items, but mainly the key), it animates moving smoothly into the UI.

the motion should not be a straight line, because that's boring.

the ideal seems to be a sort of spiral around and outwards from the player, which ⓐ feels like a congratulatory motion of "sparkly thing swirling around you" and ⓑ would still roughly end in a straight shot towards the final position in the UI, which is good as a dramatic finish to a motion.

(i'm pretty sure i did not know that i wanted a spiral from the beginning; it sort of emerged as an obvious thing to try. i first added this ages ago though so i'm not completely sure)

so how do we do a spiral if we don't want to use trig? my answer was to make this bad boy parametric. you know, that thing where you have x(t) and y(t) separately, and t is a hidden time variable. but i don't want to control x and y here; that would make everything radically different depending on where the key starts. so i went for a different coordinate system:

the original position of the key is the origin, and the final resting place in the UI is the point (0, 1). (note that as part of the UI, the animation happens in screen space, not world space; i immediately subtract the key's position from the camera offset and only work in screen coordinates from then on.)

to avoid confusion with screen or world coordinates, let's call these new axes u and v, where u is the perpendicular axis and v is the orthogonal axis (the one pointing towards the destination). though it doesn't really matter which is which since i'm about to treat them separately.

converting from uv back to screen coordinates is easy; one unit of v is the original delta vector, dest - source. one unit of u is a vector perpendicular to that, which is trivial to compute (swap the coordinates and negate one of them). so screen coordinates are

u * delta:perpendicular() + v * delta

[seriously? there's no, just, regular monospace text styling? —ed]

which is like no effort at all. so now i can think in terms of u and v and not even worry about the screen, or the distance, or anything except the shape of the animation! that's great. and now i'm in a good place to split this messy 2D problem into two 1D problems.

the orthogonal axis

first i want to think about the key's movement directly towards the UI. as an Artist™, i have a tenuous grasp of a few wisps of animation basics, so my instinct is to make this feel real good by adding a little anticipation. that means a "wind-up", where the key actually starts out moving away from the UI. i think this adds emphasis because ⓐ "backwards to forwards" is a more dramatic change than "still to forwards" and ⓑ backing up first means the important part of the motion now covers a greater distance. (the forwards motion also now has to be faster to cover the distance in the same amount of time, which feels more dramatic.)

so how do i do that? i am but a simple fox, and this is a platformer, so there can only be one answer for me: a parabola. essentially it's like the key is doing a jump off of a cliff and landing on the ground below. except, you know, upwards.

i don't need to model this like physics, though; i already know a lot about the parabola i want, so i can jump directly to expressing it as a function, v(t) = at² + bt + c.

i know that at time t = 0, the key is at its starting position, i.e., 0. so v(0) = 0, which swiftly implies that c = 0.

i don't know how long the animation should be yet, but i might want to change that later anyway. so i'll just say the key reaches its endpoint at t = 1 and scale it later if i want to. that means v(1) = 1 (remember, the destination is 1 unit away, because i decided it is), so a + b = 1. i don't want to plug that in quite yet because it makes the function slightly messier, but i'll keep it in mind; as soon as i know what either a or b actually is, i can find the other very easily.

that's already taken care of two of my coefficients. what about the third? i don't have a third constraint, so it can be whatever i want. but a and b don't directly correspond to any obvious property of the behavior here. i'd like something intuitive that i can adjust.

i think a natural question is to ask how far back the key winds up. i'll call that h, since it's the maximum height of the arc. or, uh, maximum... un... height. remember, it should be a negative fraction of the total distance, since it's a movement away from the target, 1.

how does h actually fit into my parabola, though? well, it's the v-value of the parabola's local minimum. there's an expression for that, but i always forget what it is. i do know (and can readily derive) that the t-value of that point is −b/2a, so i can just plug that in:

v(t) = at² + bt v(−b/2a) = a(−b/2a)² + b(−b/2a) = a(b²/4a²) − b²/2a = b²/4a − b²/2a = −b²/4a

ah, so h = −b²/4a. but i know h, and i want to find a and b. luckily i know how to express a in terms of b, which turns this into a quadratic:

h = −b²/4a h = −b²/4(1 - b) 4h − 4hb = −b² b² − 4hb + 4h = 0 b = (4h ± √(16h² − 16h)) / 2 b = (4h ± 4√(h² − h)) / 2 b = 2 · (h ± √(h² − h))

hmm. do i want the + or − there? if you graph an example, you'll find that the difference is that one solution has the peak happen before t = 0, which is... not helpful here.

i can distinguish them by noticing that i want the slope to be negative at t = 0, since the key should start out moving backwards. that's given by v'(t) = 2at + b, which at t = 0 is just b. how convenient! so b should be negative, which forces using the − solution. note that this is guaranteed to be negative as long as h is; h² is less than h² − h for negative h, so h will be less than √(h² − h).

now i have b, and that gives me a. and i have a parabola, as well as an extra parameter h that i can play with, even dynamically if i want.

the perpendicular axis

this has some nice oomph to it, but it's still fairly obvious that this is movement along a straight line. so now i can think about how to move perpendicularly, at the same time. it's nice to have this separate, because no matter what i do here, it will not affect the impact of the original parabola.

spirals are appealing, and this animation just feels like it wants a spiral. i'll give it a try, why not.

i don't care about any formal definition of what a spiral is. i just want to go roughly around the player. i'm already doing that in one dimension: the key moves to one side of the player, then the other. to get something spiral-like, i just have to do that a second time.

already i have several constraints falling into place:

u(0) = 0, because the key starts out with no perpendicular displacement

u(1) = 0, because the key also ends with no perpendicular displacement

between 0 and 1, u(t) takes on positive values for a while, and also negative values for a while

...which implies that there is a third zero somewhere in there

now, this sort of sounds like a wave, right? it goes up, then down. (or maybe down, then up; it doesn't seem to matter.) and originally, i used a sine wave here. but that always looked a bit wonky to me, and one of the big things i changed in this recent touch-up was to not do that. here's why.

a very good question to ask is, when should u be zero? that is, when should it cross back through the path of the player? and i think for maximum impact and maximum spirality, there is only one possible answer: at the peak of the wind-up. otherwise the animation has different kinds of extremes happening at different times for the same movement, and that's probably why the sine approach looked wonky.

when is the peak of the wind-up, though? i already know that — it's −b/2a. i don't know what that is, exactly, since those coefficients are based on some other thing... but i can figure it out, which is good enough, so i don't actually care about its value. just call the whole thing s, where s is mathematics shorthand for "it's a number but i don't have a good name for it and t is already something else".

and this is what prompted me to realize that a sine wave is not such a great idea. sine waves like to repeat, which means each wave is the same length. but i have two waves here: one from 0 to s, and one from s to 1. it seems unlikely that they are exactly the same size. i could fuss with the sine wave to make it work, but surely there's a simpler approach here.

and there is! remember, i don't care whether the function repeats. i only care what it does between 0 and 1. outside of that range, it can do whatever the hell it wants. so what do i need sine for? after coming up with that quadratic function, i can immediately think of one type of curve that has both a peak and a valley: a cubic.

which, at last, brings me back to my original question [upthread on cohost]: just how do i find a cubic that's zero at three specific points? i can plug them in but then i have three equations and four variables, which sounds annoying—

and then i remembered how algebra works, so

u(t) = t · (t - s) · (t - 1)

and that's it.

well, almost. there is also one free parameter here, because i can multiply the whole thing by a constant without changing the zeroes.

u(t) = ct · (t - s) · (t - 1)

the question is, what should that constant be? it controls how high the peaks are, i.e. the "width" of the spiral. but i can't get a good sense of it without figuring out what the heights of the peaks are.

unfortunately it turns out the heights of those peaks are fucking nightmarish hellscapes of square roots. so at this point i finally take off my mathematician hat and put my game developer hat back on.

i don't actually care about the heights of the peaks. i just want the animation to look good.

the maximum heights seem to happen when s = ½. i don't have a mathematical basis for this (though there are interesting properties of cubics that could probably help); i just tried it on wolfram alpha and noticed that the peaks are both shallower than this maximum value if s is anything else.

that maximum height is 4/27 (thank u again wolfram alpha), which is roughly 0.15. of course as already mentioned, s is very unlikely to be ½ (in fact it's impossible, which you can convince yourself of if you think about v in terms of projectile motion), so the height in practice will be even smaller than this.

a good spiral is kinda circle-y, so the range should probably be closer to, like, 1

i guess i'll multiply it by 6 or something. hmm, maybe 8. yeah 8 looks better. 12 is too much

and that gets me my spiral. the only other detail i skipped is that i reverse the direction of the spiral (just by negating the perpendicular part) depending on which side of the screen the key starts on.

the final result

trimmed down to minimize the syntax cruft and leave just the math part:

h = -1 b = 2 * (h - sqrt(h*h - h)) a = 1 - b s = -1/2 * b / a t = time / ttl ortho = t * (a * t + b) perp = 8 * t * (t - 1) * (t - s) delta = dest - source sprite:draw_at(source + delta * ortho + perp_sign * perp * delta:perpendicular())

also sorry

this is the kind of post that is just begging for some graphs and diagrams and stuff, but i am tired and there is just slightly too much friction on putting images inline on cohost [for now... —ed]