#taking back our culture

[desimartinis]

[ccorinthian]

fuck you ageism fuck you life ending at 30 fuck you makeup industry forcing us to feel bad about a natural process fuck you hustle culture fuck you instagram fuck you youtube fuck you glorification and deification of youth fuck you who make people feel bad for not having "achieved anything" in their 20s fuck you people who peaked in high school and try to drag everybody down by insisting it's all downhill after 19

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

That's the face he makes when he's feeling silly.

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[philzokman]

natsume soseki did not say "don't say 'i love you', instead say 'the moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it'" FOR NONE OF YOUS TO WRITE IT INTO UR FICS!!!!!!!!

[autisticcassandracain]

I dunno man I feel like most statements along the lines of ‘Batman isn’t REALLY x, he’s y’ don’t hold much water because usually, there’s a pretty good chance a number of writers over the years have written him as x, you just didn’t like it or think it doesn’t count for some reason.

For example ‘Batman isn’t REALLY a good parent, he’s actually a bad parent’, when Batman has been written as a good parent by a number of writers, and has, in addition, been written as realizing that he’s screwed up with his children and resolved to fix it by even more. At the same time, stating ‘Batman isn’t REALLY a bad parent, he’s actually a good parent’ is also incorrect, because Batman has been written as a bad parent by a number of writers, either intentionally or not; in addition, the pattern presented by the tug-of-war between writers who believe he should be a good parent and writers who don’t has, over the years, created an unintentional pattern that strongly resembles that of an abusive relationship. So, stating he is a good parent is inaccurate and dismisses a bunch of his canon writing, but stating he is a bad parent also dismisses a bunch of his canon writing and the intentions of the authors that wrote him.

The secret here is realizing that Batman has had so many writers over the years that it’s practically impossible to find a universal truth about him beyond the basic premise and maybe very, very basic characterization keystones. Writers with different beliefs about both the character and the world at large have written him in accordance to their worldview, and sometimes that worldview will align with yours, and sometimes it won’t.

Like, at this point, Batman is more an idea than he is a character. He is the bare-knuckled fight against injustice, but what ‘injustice’ is depends heavily on your worldview, as does what ‘bare-knuckled’ and ‘fight’ mean. Batman has been interpreted in dozens of different ways over the years, and singling out a few of those as the True Batman is largely arbitrary and dependent on your personal taste and belief in what the character should be. The only ‘objective’ measurement you could apply here are the old Golden Age comics, and I think most fans can agree that measuring modern Batman comics by how faithful they are to the Golden Age comics is, more often than not, a little ridiculous.

For the record, I do think that arguing about what Batman should be matters; if right-wing assholes use the character as a mouthpiece for their worldview we can and should critique that, but not because it’s ‘OOC’, but because the worldview espoused by those right-wing assholes is harmful and shitty. Batman should be a good parent, not because it’s ‘OOC’ for him to be a bad parent, but because having your paragon of justice be a child abuser is pretty shitty. Etc.

I don’t really have anywhere specific to go with this, I just think it’s a little strange when people try to view Batman as a character with a clear-cut characterization, rather than a concept that many people have approached in different ways over the years. Can that concept be mishandled? Sure. But it’s usually mishandled for reasons a bit more substantial than ‘a previous writer wrote it differently’.

[not-poignant]

This is the anon the said 'safe'. Your tags hit me hard, since I'm actually starting a transition but am avoiding hrt. I've been getting pushback on it, and been told I'm not really trans without it. I know what I want to change to feel like myself. Also what I don't want to change. That's probably why 'safe' was my choice. It sucks when you think you should belong, but still feel like you aren't good enough. It helped to hear you have felt the same. I just want to give you a big virtual hug.

Ahhh I have a similar story, anon <333 I'm so sorry you went through it too.

Under a read more because it contains transphobia towards a nonbinary person from a binary trans person. My experiences are from a nonbinary lens, anon, so take the bits that are useful to you and ignore the rest, depending on where you sit on the trans spectrum <333

When I started realising I was transmasc (I'd known I was non-binary for a while) I remember that I talked to a trans man about it, he'd been going through the process for a couple of years at that point and we'd talked about that too at different points.

And I remember mentioning that I'd thought about hormones, but I was still on the fence because I'm nonbinary, not like 'binary trans' (i.e. I'm not going from point A to point B, where you move from AFAB to man or AMAB to woman), and I was talking about wanting they/them pronouns and maybe he/him pronouns at that point.

And he said: 'Oh cool, yeah, hopefully that helps until you decide for sure with testosterone and surgery.' I had this moment of like ??? and he was like 'when you realise and can be brave enough to commit to being a guy, I hope that goes really well for you.'

It was one of the most transphobic things I'd ever heard, not because it was said from a hateful place (it really wasn't, I'm still friends with this guy), but because it came from a friend, I was being very vulnerable during the conversation and it left me feeling like I didn't have a right to consider myself trans at all for about two years after that. It pushed me into this space where I'd been defined by a fellow trans person as a 'coward until I decided to be officially a man.' And then for two years I kept looking for that inside of myself, denying my non-binary-ness in favour of looking for a very clear and decisive 'I'm a man!' moment. It was a horrible period of time, gender-wise. Because being identified exclusively only as a man or a woman is dysphoric to me, so trying to do it to myself was like cutting at myself with an axe.

It's also very much like when gay and lesbian folk would say to me - back when I identified as bisexual - 'get back to me when you pick a side / become a real queer.' There's a real phobic bent among folks who are 'one or the other' (sighs) towards people who are in the liminal with this stuff and that's where they belong. And it hadn't occurred to me that I'd hear a version of that from a fellow trans person. You'd think I'd have learned, right?

He and I are still friends, but I stopped talking to him about all of my experiences as a trans and nonbinary person. It was clear to me, in that moment, he saw me as a much lesser version of an identity he'd embraced and was living. You know, how so many people think of nonbinary transmascs. (It's also frustrating, because trans men also don't need to have hormones or surgery to be trans men, and it makes me furious when people take this attitude with binary trans folk too, but I'm mostly focusing on my own experience here, of the myriad ways we encounter transphobia in the trans community).

I never heard anything quite like that again, but I've had one other trans guy be like 'when you're ready for testosterone, I'll support you' like he was waiting in the wings for me to 'fully make a decision to be 100% a man' which isn't a decision I can make, because I'm not 100% a man, lmao, I'm like 80% of one, and 20% something else, and 0% woman, lmao, which is why I call myself nonbinary transmasc.

I was lucky that through research and listening to voices in nonbinary transmasc spaces and more open-minded trans spaces that I realised that I'd encountered transphobia, and that this specific kind of transphobia is particularly common in the trans community, especially in cases where a trans man or woman has a period of being nonbinary as an experiment to see what transitioning feels like before they fully commit to the surgery and/or hormones and name etc. that they often wanted all along. So they often project this onto other people, because for them being nonbinary was a midway point, or the middle of an evolution. But being nonbinary isn't an experiment for most nonbinary people, it's literally our identity and it always will be. (And any binary trans person reading this, don't ever use this rhetoric with your nonbinary friends, or your fellow binary trans friends who have elected not to use hormones or surgery - it's transphobic.)

These days, I'm proudly trans and proudly part of the trans community, but I'm also aware that there are a lot of binary trans people who will treat me and other trans folk as 'other' because I haven't suffered through the same surgeries or adjustments that they have. That's...their transphobia, and it's not me expressing my identity wrongly, or being 'lesser', it's just straight up transphobia. It belongs to them, not to me. I don't believe we have a unique word for nonbinary transphobia, it all comes under the same umbrella, but that's definitely what it is.

When you start to feel like you don't belong, anon, remind yourself that this is internalised transphobia, not to punish yourself, but to remind yourself that it's not true. Those feelings belong to the people who gave them to you, but they're not innately or inherently true, they actually have nothing to do with how valid you are at every stage of your transition.

You're fully a trans man if you don't take hormones, and you're fully nonbinary if you do. Whatever you need (or don't need) to affirm or express your gender for you, is what you need, and that deserves to be respected and fully validated no matter what, at any time. Whether it's binding or not binding, hormones or not hormones, hormones and then 'not for the next few years' and then hormones again, surgery or not surgery, etc. Whether you're a trans man, woman, nonbinary, agender etc.

People have this idea of what it is to be a 'proper' trans, bi, gay, lesbian person (like the 'gold star lesbian' which is horrendously disgusting as a term and concept), but all you need - literally all you need - re: these things, is to just... know you're these things. That's it. That's how a gay person can know they're gay without having sex. That's how a bi person can know they're bi without sleeping with someone of the same sex. And it's how a trans person knows they're trans without looking perfectly androgynous or perfectly binary trans (depending on what they desire) on the outside. (Don't get me started on fatphobia in androgynous and nonbinary spaces, and the equation of true 'nonbinary androgyny' with thinness, because that's a whole other rant for another day, lol).

I'm sorry you've experienced that pressure to be 'more' of something from society / particular people. I can specifically relate on the hormones front because I actually went quite far into looking into taking T, to the point where my doctor was ready to sign off with an endocrinologist, before I realised that it wasn't the right decision for me. It might be one day, but right now I know I'm transmasc without it, and I'm concerned about some of the side effects with my neuroendocrine tumours. There are other ways I affirm my gender that work great for me. But I did have a moment of knowing that would impact how other people see me, and it's one thing when it comes from all the cis people, but it's another thing when it comes from the trans community as well. :( Thankfully most people are really validating now, use the right pronouns, and I just don't confide nonbinary vulnerabilities with folks who saw being nonbinary as a midpoint of their own evolution/journey, just to be safe, lmao.

Wishing you fortune and strength and much validation, anon <3 You are amazing as you are, whatever you decide to do or not do in the future. :) *hugs*

[brookheimer]

my boss: write an 800-1000 word piece on the truman show’s 25th anniversary

me: *currently 5000 words into dissecting the history of a subgenre i coined mid-article*

[fauvester]

omg iskra going back in time auau- but like- garak seeing two random cardassians on the station with no explanation why they r there, and they seem to know him like- what. Would they try to avoid him so he dont sus them out? what about names? They obviously cant say their surnames. And Ziyal 🥺 (sorry this is just such a edible idea anyway)

AWOOOOGH GARAK WOULD BE SO INTRIGUED! you KNOW he'd be hiding behind promenade pylons trying to get a drop on any information about the two cardassians that the captain has let stay on the station during the war against cardassia! You KNOWWW he'd be desperately trying to make eye contact with them at quark's! AND YOU KNOW ISKRA WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO RESIST THE TEMPTATION!

Unfortunately Idan is a first year starfleet student and like any student is deeply passionate about the letter and not the spirit of the law, and thinks that they should barricade themselves in their quarters so as to prevent temporal contradiction (as recommended in the textbook). Iskra, who graduated a cardassian jurisprudence apprenticeship and has a degree in comparative galactic law, recognizes that every set of regulations has loopholes just waiting to be tugged open and wiggled through. And that involves meeting all her aunts and uncles in their glory days, causing trouble, making cryptic remarks and flirting up a storm.

They probably do ask sisko to get bashir and garak off the station to minimize interference (Iskra also requests several other random crewmembers be kicked out. Just so that there's no implication about future events.) But not before she gets to meet her yadek! (and maybe get hit on by s3 era julian, eugh)

Iskra goes by her birth family name when she's not on Cardassia to minimize assassination attempts, so they're both Ghilanas (until SOMEONE hacks into the computer on their rented shuttle and finds their ID info...)

And also Ziyal... wary of two shiny young cardassians but still trying to put on a brave face...swept up by their openness and enthusiasm but deeply wary of the secret they seem to be hiding...

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

I don’t know why I’m shocked with the United States’ support for genocide given their track record with it. I don’t know, I just hoped that maybe for once they would actually make an effort to prevent one and speak out against it but it looks like we’re going down the same path we always do which is: make it worse, assist in the deaths of innocent civilians and then when the dust settles claim that another genocide can never happen again and next time we won’t be silent and we will do something about it.

[daydreams-n-daaru]

~udti patang se the woh, kahan gaye unhe dhoondho~

[desimartinis]

me at a random pool in the middle of nowhere

📍bali, indonesia

[dreadfutures]

I am really so grateful to have grown up where I grew up and gone to college where I went to college 🙏 getting to know people from all over the world and all walks of life and emphasizing our common humanity and the importance of solidarity against empire and the establishment

[leechandoki]

I feel constraints on what I can draw and what I cannot draw all because of purity culture. It really sucks that I preach about just going for it/draw what you want. And then become a coward in drawing it.

I only dipped my toes in a more suggestive drawing in the past but even that has some restraints in it. I want to draw more freely without the pressure of purity culture. So that is what I'll do in 2024. I want to explore more with my art and improve instead of being stuck.

Don't get me wrong, I love my art and I love where it is going but, I believe it can go further. I believe I can push myself to do better.

[bright-eyed]

The Road Not Taken 

BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

[4thbrighteststar]

</3

[parseisflat]

hmm i’m starting to regret my stick and poke? maybe?