#its unisex

[makesims]

Vintage Pride Shirts - Pride 2023

This year for pride I’m taking inspiration from the pride protests and figures of history. This set includes 18 unisex t-shirts all made from real designs from the 70s-90s. 

Download and more info under the cut.

Download (no ads, no paywalls): SFS | Patreon

CREDIT: These shirts were made using meshes from @its-adrienpastel, who graciously allows meshes to be included in recolors. The fem mesh uses their Talia T-Shirt, and the masc mesh uses their Repeat T-Shirt. You do not need to download these for my recolors to work, but you should definitely still check out their CC if you haven’t. 

Note: To honor the real history here, I am choosing not to translate any of the text into Simlish. This is rare for me, and I know a lot of people hate English text in the game, so just know that I almost never do anything in exclusively English like this.

Feeling generous? Here are some good charities - Gendered Intelligence (UK), Act Up NY (USA), The Trevor Project (USA), and Mermaids (UK). I’d also recommend looking into any local charities in your area that could use volunteers if you have the time to spare! <3

And if anyone is interested in the background for some of these images, you can find that here. :)

[bananamilk2004]

yeah ok we've heard of butch fem ghost which is awesome showstopping amazing but if i may add onto that: the entire tf141 being butches. soap with the same mohawk stunting around in military surplus activewear to attract femmes (or other butches. she's not picky). gaz who– unlike her friends– presents herself as more of a bifauxnen with clean pressed shirts and a nice smile. price who's the hardest butch out of all of them; never shaving, foregoing bras, referring to herself with brazen terms popular in the older queer scene (all the while having the voice of a chainsmoker, so deep it can initially be mistaken for a man's tone) (maybe she even packs?)

just. ugh. butches…

and imagine if you were passed between all of them? spitroasted by their straps? omg

[rxttenfish]

Pardon the question, but how do the reimagined merfolk reproduce? In MP I recall them saying that merfolk reproduce in a similar way to seahorses (may be a throwaway joke, but in any case) but the reimagined merfolk are obviously different from how they are in MP in many ways.

ah yes, one of those things that i've had worked out fully for forever but never made a dedicated post on it over here... at least partially because im suspicious of tumblr and its ability to nuke anything even frankly talking about sexual selection and reproductive methods of various animals, oops.

which is why this is going under a cut, oops. like i said, lots of frank discussion of sexual selection and the processes of it. im a nerd when it comes to this.

-

the first thing most humans would notice when looking upon a group of merfolk (of the same species), is a notable lack of dimorphism. there's no dramatic color shifts, no difference in size beyond usual distribution among a population, no odd behaviors, nothing to really sort them out from each other. this is a consistent theme among merfolk in general — while they continually get larger as they age (at a much slower rate than they did growing up, certainly, and not as dramatic as pop media might suggest this to be), it's still fairly close along the existing curve of height distribution, and usually the only real "tells" for an adult merfolk's age is that they get pitted and worn, a little like a statue slowly wearing down, or similar to the age of crocodilians.

which might be a little odd for these hypothetical humans looking onwards, even if they were already familiar enough to be able to tell merfolk facial features apart. even moreso because as frank as merfolk cultures usually are about sex and nudity taboos seem rare, all of their applicable anatomy is internal, so even seeing one entirely in the nude isn't enough to sex them.

the truth has to do with merfolk as a secondarily aquatic tetrapod. i've mentioned before that the early ancestors of merfolk were temnospondyls that responded to environmental stressors in their freshwater environments by being able to take advantage of a wide variety of environments. they have lungs and gills, meaning they can breathe on land very well if they need to move between pools and ponds, and they have gills to optimize their time spent underwater and not have to surface if the going is good underwater. even more than that, they developed both external gills and internal gills, meaning they could reap the benefits of both fast-moving and slow-moving water.

all of this is relevant, because to be exposed to all of these different environments and to be able to move between them when the going gets tough in one, means they had to make longer and longer treks over land. some were dependent on specific vernal pools that they would travel to to raise their young, but this also limited the areas in which they could live, and if those vernal pools dried up then they could not reproduce.

so these early-line temnospondyls made the same switch that other tetrapods have made, and switched to internal fertilization. this meant that, if they were to find another one of their species during their land-travels, they could mate and continue onwards, even being ready to lay eggs right at the moment they found the vernal pool, limiting the amount of time the offspring needed in the water.

however, they did still need vernal pools and water, and were very vulnerable in these stages. and with the existing push towards shorter and shorter time spent in the vernal pools, well, what if they just didn't bother with them at all? it'd put more stress on the parents, but they were already primed to be able to survive through these periods of stress, so it wouldn't be such a huge jump.

so the line that would eventually lead to merfolk and the leviathans both made the switch to live birth fairly early on in their history.

the rest that happens from there varies. this was a more diverse group, back in the day! there were many different species with many different methods for that live birth. some would continue just carrying the fertilized eggs to be dropped off in the next suitable pool they found, some developed them into tadpoles, some went through metamorphosis in the womb and popped out into the world as mini adults, some left spermatophores for others of their species to pick up, some developed evertable genitalia and went at it that way.

but another shift also happened early on in their evolutionary history. them being able to spread out so far and wide meant that there was a very low density of them in any given area, and these low numbers made them vulnerable. if there was high disparity in the proportion of sexes in any given area, they'd feel the effects of that quicker, and when they were already in competition over the same niches as other temnospondyls, crocodylomorphs, marine reptiles, and later early cetaceans, etc who dominated these niches, they were often kept at these lower population numbers.

which was about when these early-line temnospondyls also made the switch to a trioecious mating system.

this happened because sex determination in amphibians is already weird, so it wasn't too far of a leap for a mutation to arise which created fertile dual-sexed individuals. and these dual-sexed individuals had a lot of success under the niche they had already carved out! now, whenever they did find another member of their same species, it was guaranteed that they could mate with them, which meant that their populations were self-sustaining and stable on much lower numbers. due to how their dispersal already worked, inbreeding wasn't as much of a negative factor, and they were even more capable of making it through the disasters and ecological strain that had the other non-lissamphibia temnospondyls going extinct. they could eke out a living wherever they found it, make long traversals over land if they needed to seek out greener pastures, and they were able to sustain themselves in the background without needing as high of a density of themselves in any given spot.

like i said too - this was a diverse clade back in the day! and you ended up getting different variations on this. some species didn't have any dual-sexed individuals. some species had only dual-sexed individuals. some had only males and dual-sexed individuals, and some only females and the dual-sexed individuals, and all in various different proportions and numbers.

what matters here is that merfolk were a part of the line who had evertable internal genitalia, and who ended up entirely composed of these dual-sexed members, making them an entirely unisex species in the modern day.

(this is also where i butt in, to explain from an authorial perspective, this is me kinda... being sneaky with canon and how it tends to phrase things. yes, technically it is the male who gets pregnant with merfolk! but, also, so would females. because they don't have "male" or "female" in these strict terms, and any given individual to them has the potential to do both. this is something that i do a lot with the usual facts given to me by canon, where it's technically true, just because i like to be contrary about it and not take things in the most literal way. it's just what i find fun, i know some other people do it differently, and that's fine with me!)

what this means is that merfolk don't have a conception of "gender". it checks out with their social structure too, because if a merfolk's miivt'ia have a child, then it doesn't matter who actually physically created that child, said merfolk would still consider themselves their parent all the same. the reproductive unit is larger than a singular merfolk or even two merfolk, and at that point, even if they were bisex, then each grouping still has the same reproductive potential as any other.

what this means is that, when miranda describes herself as a princess or a girl or that the king is her dad or she has sisters — these are best seen as translation errors. to a merfolk, the concepts at play aren't gendered. they would not immediately identify themselves as male, they would not immediately identify themselves as female, they'd be very confused and would only get more confused as you tried to explain it to them. miranda describes herself as a princess and uses she/her because she was told that, for landfolk, everyone had to pick one of two and she had to just choose one. she picked "princess" and "girl" because one of the first things given to her as a way to learn english were fairytales, and she really ended up latching onto the princess characters in them.

in fact, this is why merfolk seem to be a little... reductive? when it comes to gender? as in, if you do take the time to explain it to them, you will have to explain it all. which means starting with gender relating to the different genitalia, and you have just told this hypothetical merfolk that it is important to landfolk, who will now operate under that assumption. they will not innately understand why landfolk care about this or all the distinctions thereof and certainly not the nuance of it, so they end up just going "okay, when this landfolk tells me this person is a girl, that must mean she is like this", and potentially getting frustrated when you tell them that that's wrong.

it can't even really work for royals, who do simplify parentage down to two people, and care a whole lot about who is related to whom. for royals in the current merkingdom, its primarily about attempting to preserve a specific lineage. because merfolk lineage is its own can of worms, they simplify - they take the current heir (one who has been groomed and taught how to behave as though emblematic of that lineage and has been guaranteed to have the strongest claim to it), and will find a suitable non-heir of another royal house, for whom they will forbid either of them to make kids with any other merfolk. this agreement is less like a marriage in the traditional sense, and more like the heir's house is briefly sponsoring the non-heir's house, sending extended political and economic benefits to the latter through this connection, in exchange for reinforcing the lineage of the heir and making it more potent, reinforcing their political ties.

this is to ensure that absolutely no other genetics can be involved and to contain the process. because this occurs by who-was-born-where, it also means that only the heir really matters in this ordeal. if the heir dies while the non-heir of the couple lives, and they already have had children, then the non-heir is "locked in" and cannot remarry, obliged to stay within the heir's house in their current position to ensure the current holders of the lineage are brought up and cared for properly. if the heir dies while the non-heir lives, and they have no children, then the non-heir is sent back to their prior family with no benefits, and the next heir is named as though the marriage never happened. if the non-heir dies while the heir lives, then they can remarry as they please, existing children or not. this is not especially popular, as the non-heir's family can accuse the heir's family of being unfair or snubbing them, but it is still perfectly legal and accepted.

for instance: the king, miranda's father, had to marry into the royal family. it was the queen, miranda's mother, who was the crown princess before miranda, and who is seen as passing her inheritance down onto miranda and the other three sisters. when the queen died, the king could not remarry. he was secure in his position as king, but any other marriages would not carry the lineage of the royal family, and at best he would be seen as trying to "dilute" that lineage.

in this setup, it's not all that important who is the donor party and who is the carrying party. either the inheritor or their partner can be the one carrying, so long as it's certain and guaranteed who the baby comes from and that this can be assured with certainty. usually it's agreed between the two of them for whatever reason, though the carrying partner does have a benefit in being a surefire way to prove that they are one of the parents, with zero doubt. inheritors will do this mostly to make their kids look the most "100% royal line, no doubts", but this can also go the opposite way, to cement it down to it being a specific line who carried them and to reinforce the political benefits their prior family enjoys from this arrangement.

which brings me back to merfolk genetics, and why this is so important for the royals to ensure they know exactly who made what!

which is to say, merfolk never opted for traditional sexual competition, and instead erred towards sperm competition.

early on in their lineage, they didn't have a lot of sexual dimorphism to begin with. they were already fairly widespread, and while gatherings around early vernal pools were a pressure towards sexual competition, after they stopped relying on vernal pools, the differences between the sexes became more of a hinderance than a benefit. why would they bother with any colorful spots or being extra big and bulky when you're not even around enough of your species for choice to be an issue? if you can find another one to begin with, then that's really all either of you need, and challenging each other just puts another bind on that low-population issue. they were all function, minimal fuss, beyond some general traits that were seen as markers of health.

even when the ancestors of merfolk first started forming their colonies along the coasts, they didn't change this. there wasn't an initial hierarchy laid out, they were just a large group of the same species arranged in the same area for the same purpose, and also maybe some protection by numbers. they did start to form the early groups that would later lead to the modern miivt'ia, and they started to primarily associate with those groups and socialize with them, which meant that when they wanted to find someone to mate with, that hunting group was always the first and the easiest to access.

why fight over mates in that situation? why compete? the health of the group starts to become directly correlated to the health of the individual, and you've already determined they all have good genes, or else they wouldn't be this beneficial to helping you hunt and survive and evade predation.

but this isn't to say competition isn't happening. there is still the slight edge that natural selection adds in, and with multiple matings between different individuals, the thing that gets selected upon is the sperm itself. faster sperm, ways to kill competetor's sperm, ways to suppress the immune system of the mating partner to ensure that sperm will take, more output, ways to remove competetor's sperm to begin with, etc etc etc. their internal genitals start to get bizarre, both for the sake of excluding saltwater intrusion as they get more and more aquatic, but also for the sake of this sperm competition. this system also means, not only do more matings occur right after each other, but more partners involved. the "default" evolutionary position for merfolk starts to look more and more like a clump of noodles, writhing around and over each other. sexual contact becomes a way to bond and to connect with someone primarily, and a means to reproduce secondarily. it's an easy way to solve problems and to get merfolk to make up, by them simply fucking it out and everyone feeling better for it.

which is where i can get into the actual mechanics of it all!

unfortunately this is also where i run out of steam (also am sick. that will do it too), so i'll absolutely have to make a part 2 to this... and also i'll make another post sharing a few old writings of mine on this topic.

someday i'll make like. a masterpost on merfolk reproduction and what's going on there, but like i said. sexual selection is one of those things my brain goes ham for and i looooove talking about all these additional little facts. like how merfolk pregnancies last 2 years (to match with other large marine predators), and that they're based off of both tiger sharks and the alpine salamander, the latter of which has the record for the longest pregnancy on the planet at up to five years :3

also read Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke if this sounds interesting to you! and maybe listen to the episodes the Common Descent Podcast did on Live Birth and Milk!!!

[seiwas]

does shouto smell like baby powder or clean water

[jjaydazo]

not me, thinking i could've fooled you all thinkng that I am a guy cause of my user name.

[estel-of-the-eyrie]

When I went to watch LOTR in the cinemas for the first time last week, my brain kept catching new details I'd never noticed before. One of those in TTT was the broken statue at Helm's Deep by the stairs. Which then spawned this little fanfic moment I wrote in the car home at midnight for Myths of Its Own:

Tagging @tathrin @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras @scyllas-revenge (purely as I think you might like a read? )

Groups of refugees from across the nearby hamlets and towns were still coming through the front gates of Helm's Deep on a regular schedule, though their numbers were gradually dwindling as time between safe travel and a siege in progress narrowed. Wren had helped where she could with Edoras' displaced civilians before seeking a quiet corner for her to sit and wait for news.

Her leg swung back and forth, back and forth, back and forth counting the seconds when there was no news from any quarter. She hoped that the small warning would have been enough to prevent anything else changing; the life of one man was enough - if it ended up being an exchange of one life for another...

No, she shook her head. Now is not the time to spiral.

So Wren let her eyes wander. Over the crowds of people were the walls of stone that had remained standing for so long, and three tall stone statues. Each had their backs to the main keep, looking outwards, ready for an attack.

From her seat Wren could make out most of the closest pair - though the one closest to her was damaged and broken, only surviving up to the waist. The blade of a sword was still distinguishable up to the hilt, well designed and very Rohirric though less grand and not identical to its sibling statue on the other side of the walkway.

Wren idly wondered who they were. Many of the statues mentioned in Tolkien's work were grandiose and their histories long and storied, but these were small, quiet, everyday reminders passed by on daily watches or sheltered beneath in the afternoon sun.

"My lady-" a voice from somewhere to her left startles Wren out of the trail of thoughts; pushing away from the wall, she turns to see one of the riders. He was perhaps not much older than herself, somewhere in the late years of his second decade or the early ones of his third, and looking at her beneath his helmet with some consternation. "Are you well?"

"Oh um ... yes, thank you." She's taken aback, trying to stand gracefully despite almost certainly standing on her cloak several times and nearly toppling over the small outcrop on the third instance. "I was just wondering about the statues."

The unknown rider frowns, his head tilting to the side a little. The spray of white hair from the top curls around his shoulder.

He gestures to the one standing taller towards the front. "Of Helm Hammerhand." A gesture to the pair flanking the stairs. "And his daughter and son."

"But I thought ... that Helm only had sons?"

His laugh is light, and for a moment Wren panics thinking she has caused offence (or just generally made herself seem a fool) but the responding smile is understanding.

"So say the bards -" the rider stands a little and turns to muse over the broken statue for a moment. "-but the tales miss out most of the truth I find. Haleth, she was styled. The name afore has not been remembered but that is well. For the one that is," the rider pauses and smiles down at Wren, half a foot shorter. "Is far more suitable for a Shieldmaiden of the Mark."

"Shieldmaiden," Wren turns the word over in her mind. Coupled with the look that this rider was giving her, it seemed that he was making many connections between her, himself, and the broken statue of the woman.

"Names are a grander weight here, my lady, than it seems you are aware of. But one thing is certain that all agree upon. That, were it possible, she would have been a Queen that the entire realm would have loved."

She knew what he was trying to say, in a different language with different words, but she had read historical texts to have caught onto the implications - the tales hidden in plain sight. The hidden rainbow flags waving in the breeze.

It just led to more questions about the broken statue that she was afraid to know the answer to; Rohan and its people had been nothing but genial since the Five Hunters had arrived. It would not do to shatter the illusion now, so close to the siege.

[cadavercrafts]

Yugo Limbo stop making characters who’s hair is super hard to sculpt challenge 2023 aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[definitelynotshouting]

I have a thought! Watchers, being agametic reproducers, would not have any sexual dimorphism at all - Watcher gender is probably very different from our society's gender, and also very different from Player gender that would itself be different from our gender, since there's no way either group could've gotten a sex-equals-gender immutable-binary cultural idea. One group doesnt have sexes the other group has morphological freedom + is in a world where nearly every critter is unisex

YEAAAAH EXACTLY!!! This was kinda my vision for this universe, tbh-- i didnt really want there to be an idea of a gender binary in Player society, and a Watcher's sense of gender is definitely going to be on a completely different spectrum than that of a Player's. I honestly find it a fun and fascinating thing to explore with worldbuilding-- like what does this thing, when mostly divorced from irl societal expectations, look like from within that world??? Its fun to rotate in the brain :]

[an-assortment-of-forks]

guysssss i need an irl name but what is my vibe. im dying i just want Vesper to be my online name (perhaps a middle name if it works out) but what are good masc/masc leaning names? ive been on baby name websites too much and its melting my brain

[noworldasgoodasmine]

Honestly while I’ve been called Nina by multiple people in the past & was comfortable with it I’ve never added it officially as a name cause I just question it in regards to culture despite it being one in multiple cultures

[jesuscrab]

funny thing about selaco is that every bathroom in the game is unisex and i know 100% its becuse the devs dont have to stick two bathrooms in a level for worldbuilding

[femmesandhoney]

why do i forget to double check if something from the mens section will work w my hips before buying

[vsagis]

a hc i just realized i never shared: izuku's perfume smells like jasmine breeze and seaweed and salty-sweet caramel. the first note is sea salt, slowly morphing to include caramel notes, until it comes together in an unlikely but interesting mix of sweetness and freshness.

[sinners-go-to-drink-the-wine]

making myself absolutely feral imagining jake in my latest fragrance

[dullahandyke]

Get a child a gendered birthday card, they will remember it for a day.

Get a child a birthday card gendered opposite their AGAB, they will remember it for the rest of their little transgender life.

[scarecrowgolem]

Haven't seen the new batman caped crusader series yet but I'm obsessed with Oswalda. I hope she likes dykes.