#mentions of...

[optiwashere]

I think B-2 would be strangely fitting for lea'zel and shadow

You're right, this is a pretty fitting prompt! Also, since I don't write this ship, I'm doing this as a platonic pair. Thanks for requesting this one 💜

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B2. Scars

There lay in Lae'zel's expression a ghost, a familiar cast that Shadowheart recognized.

While the others trawled the streets of Baldur's Gate for equipment, a few of them had stayed behind to watch for any signs of Gortash's prediction about a spy in camp.

Shadowheart knew what it was like to be forced to shed everything she knew as truth. Everything she lived for had been a lie, a fabrication. Shadowheart saw that same loss in Lae'zel that day. It was the reason she bothered to sit at her tent and consider everything about Lae'zel that she had previously ignored.

"Why do you stare?" asked Lae'zel abruptly from her own tent, her eyes slitting.

"I never noticed the scar on your face," Shadowheart explained.

"Because you are unobservant."

Shadowheart shrugged. She was growing tired of this, but she remembered the first night she spent with Asheera after the Gauntlet. How she wished to fight every word, every gesture of affection her lover had offered.

"So you agree that you are unobservant? What is this meant to signify?" Lae'zel mimicked Shadowheart's shrug.

Ignoring the question, Shadowheart said, "I've scars all over. Fumbling with the interrogator's scalpels, getting into knife fights. All sorts of things that I can't quite recall."

Lae'zel stared at her, obviously confused.

"I presume most of yours are from your service to Vlaakith?"

Lae'zel spat on the ground in response. "I wear those shackles no longer. I do not wish to speak of this."

"Most of these scars I gained — earned — in Shar's service. Now they are a part of me, and I wouldn't wish to be rid of them even if they remind me of my parents, of everything I'd lost."

It was true. Shadowheart saw the old scar on her lip, the myriad pocks and old scrapes on her arms and legs, and she thought of them. Thought that perhaps one of those clusters of scars was made by her mother's fingernails or her father's grip. The thought sickened her, but losing the marks to cosmetic healing magic would be the same as pretending the past had never happened. To forget, to lie to herself, was now anathema.

So she turned it to Lae'zel with her open hands, hoping that Lae'zel could see the friendship she was offering. The understanding.

Lae'zel looked at her at first with disgust, annoyance, or something else that Shadowheart couldn't decode. Then her expression softened, and she returned to a meditative pose.

She said nothing, but Shadowheart saw the furrow of her thin brows. Lae'zel was no fool.

Even if she would never say it, Lae'zel would be made to understand friendship.

[menlove]

interesting how transmascs & transfems alike think losing weight is the answer to pass as our chosen gender.... almost as if fat people are never Truly afforded a passing gender regardless of trans status. as fat people we are never Truly seen as Men or Women. anyway fuck that notion & if u think u need to lose weight to pass that's the devil talking

[whaledocboi]

ai generated images make me increasingly sad and tired the more i see them in more and more casual contexts. i dont know how to explain, but it just fills the world with a bunch of nothing. no matter how visually stunning the pictures might be, there's nothing behind it for me. no dedication, no emotions, no feelings, no hard work or creativity, nothing i can truly think about, admire or enjoy. i dont think thats how art is supposed to be

[lastoneout]

Ya know when people told me "when you're finally safe enough that you can leave survival mode and start to let go of and process your c-ptsd/trauma things are probably going to get really, really bad before they slowly start to get better" I thought that was reasonable. I did not understand that by "things are going to get bad" they meant "you're going to find yourself in the worst mental state of your entire life, but dw, that means it's working" and tbh I simply wish someone had been more clear.

Edit: If everyone could please take a minute and think about what it must feel like to be struggling and then have multiple strangers say to your face that they find the prospect of going through what you're going through so horrifying that they'd rather kill themselves and then stop leaving comments like that I would greatly appreciate it.

[dendrochronologies]

maya angelou saying the funniest thing anyone has ever said about editing, which i can never let myself forget EVER AGAIN [x]

[starbuck]

i say i like tragedies and everyone’s all like ‘why do you like sad stories? are you depressed?’ and never ‘how was the catharsis? was the catharsis fun?’

[buttercuparry]

Reblog the fundraisers you mfs!!!!! I don't know why you all skip those to reblog some pic of a banner saying "FREE PALESTINE" or of news from Columbia University! Literally these people from Gaza have made an account on Tumblr and is writing in english to communicate what they need and you all are coming onto my blog or on the tag and not reblogging their posts. We have people both Palestinian and non Palestinian vetting the fundraisers! I mean more the reblogs, more the chance of the fundraisers gaining momemtum, the more there would be a chance of a donation. Please donate if you can and reblog!!! and follow them if it is possible.

@/mohammedayesh has posted about getting leaflets, telling them to evacuate Rafah. They are very low on funds. Go follow them and reblog their posts and donate if possible.

We have @/haneenatya too whose mother is suffering from eye stroke and need to evacuate. Please I have been following them for some days and it doesn't seem their own posts are getting much attention.

Follow them! They are on tumblr. Reblog their posts and donate. The protests in universities are being done on account of them. They should be our focus.

(EDIT: on re-reading my post it seems as if I am dismissing all that the students of universities are doing. I am not. I just meant, since all of it is to help Palestinians, we must not ignore them when they ask for help).

[demonboyhalo]

"average person sees 3 spiders a year" factoid is a statistical error. Sephora Georg, who attracts 3 million horny spiders with the spider sex lotion, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

[ski-ip]

elf ears

[luckyladylily]

So a few months ago there was the discourse about would you rather meet a man or a bear in the woods. I didn't want to touch it while the discourse was hot and everyone dug in hard because those are not good conditions for nuance, but I waited until today, June 1st, for a specific reason.

I'm not going to take a position in the bear vs man debate because I don't think it matters. What is really being asked here is how afraid are you of men? Specifically, unexpected men who are, perhaps, strange.

People have a lot of very real fear of men that comes from a lot of very real places. Back when I was first transitioning in 2015 and 2016, I decided to start presenting as a woman in public even though I did not pass in the slightest.

I live in a red state. I knew other trans women who had been attacked by men, raped by men. I knew I was taking a risk by putting myself out there. I was the only visibly trans person in the area of campus I frequented, and people made sure I never forgot that. Most were harmless enough and the worst I got from them was curious stares. Others were more aggressive, even the occasional threat. I had to avoid public bathrooms, of course, and always be aware of my surroundings.

I know how frightening it is to be alone at night while a pair of men are following behind you and not knowing if they are just going in the same direction or if they want to start something - made all the worse for the constant low level threat I had been living under for over a year by just being visibly trans in a place where many are openly hostile to queer people. You have to remember, this was at the height of the first wave of bathroom law discussions, a lot of people were very angry about trans women in particular. My daily life was terrifying at times. I was never the subject of direct violence, but I knew trans women who had been.

I want you to keep all that in mind.

So man or bear is really the question "how afraid of men are you?", and the question that logically follows is "What if there was a strange man at night in a deserted parking lot?" or "What if you were alone in an elevator with a man?" or "What if you met a strange man in the woman's bathroom?"

My state recently passed an anti trans bathroom bill. The rhetoric they used was about protecting women and children from "strange men", aka trans women.

Conservatives hijack fear for their bigoted agenda.

When I first started presenting as a woman the campus apartment complex was designed for young families. The buildings were in a large square with playgrounds in the center, and there were often children playing. I quickly noticed that when I took my daughter out to play, often several children would immediately stop what they were doing and run back inside. It didn't take me long to confirm that the parents were so afraid of "the strange man who wears skirts" that their children were under strict instructions to literally run away as soon as they saw me.

"How afraid are you of a strange man being near your children?"

I mentioned above that I had to avoid public bathrooms. This was not because of men. It was because of women who were so afraid of random men that they might get violent or call someone like the police to be violent for them if I ever accidentally presented myself in a way that could be interpreted as threatening, when my mere presence could be seen as a threat. If I was in the library studying and I realized that it was just me and one other woman I would get up and leave because she might decide that stranger danger was happening.

Your fear is real. Your fear might even come from lived experiences. None of that prevents the fact that your fear can be violent. Women's fear of men is one of the driving forces of transmisogyny because it is so easy to hijack. And it isn't just trans women. Other trans people experience this, and other queer people too. Racial minorities, homeless people, neurodivergent people, disabled people.

When you uncritically engage with questions like man or bear, when you uncritically validate a culture of reactive fear, you are paving the way for conservatives and bigots to push their agenda. And that is why I waited until pride month. You cannot engage and contribute to the culture of reactive fear without contributing to queerphobia of all varieties. The sensationalist culture of reactive fear is a serious queer issue, and everyone just forgot that for a week as they argued over man or bear. I'm not saying that "man" is the right answer. I am saying that uncritically engaging with such obvious click bait trading on reactive fear is a problem. Everyone fucked up.

It is not a moral failing to experience fear, but it is a moral responsibility to keep a handle on that fear and know how it might harm others.

[myautisticpov]

"People shouldn't post about how the contraceptive pill can be prescribed for non-contraceptive reasons because it's sex negative" feels like a take that can only come from people who don't realise just how young some people end up being prescribed the pill

Like, fine, you, person in your twenties, might be comfortable being like "this is the pill I take to fuck without getting pregnant", but I don't think it's sex negative for a thirteen-year-old who has been prescribed it for debilitating period pain to not want to have to hide their medication from their classmates on an overnight school trip because their classmates think that the only reason anyone would take it is that they're sexually active

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

being a student during peak pandemic was so fucking surreal like. "it's not an excuse to fall behind" I cannot stress enough to you how much A Worldwide Plague Upending Life As We Know It is literally one of The Top Three Reasons to fall behind

[vinylattes]

What is the key to enjoying life? (x)

[creature-wizard]

Since the r-slur is making a comeback (you know, the word that starts with R, has six letters, and ends in D), I'm gonna make a little PSA:

Yes, it's an ableist slur.

Terms like "asshat," "head-up-ass," "up their own ass," and "high on their own farts" exist. There's also words like crap, dogshit, half-assed, assclown, and chucklefuck. And on the less vulgar side, there are terms like ridiculous, nonsense, train wreck, pointless, insipid, self-absorbed, pretentious, annoying, boring, contemptible, vile, and disgusting.

Substituting words like restarted, poptarted, brain damaged, smoothbrain, etc. is still ableist, because either 1. you obviously still mean the r-word, or 2. you're still using disability as an insult.