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it's kinda comforting to me when my friends are a little annoying or longwinded or abrasive or tired and inarticulate, or they don't do the exact politest thing in every interaction, and stuff, because I know I'm sometimes annoying, or take up a more than my share of conversational space, or forget to ask them questions, etc etc, and... like, I'm always working to be nice to my friends and to get better and better at friend-ing, but it just makes me feel more human about it :}

anyway I love you friends plz know I'm not counting, in fact I feel great affection toward you even (especially) when conversations go less than Perfectly Ideal

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Spurred by a recent disagreement between my ex and I, I want ask;

If "other" explain in the tags, or clarify if something seemingly higher on the list is acceptable but something lower isn't.

I'm actually really curious about this because I'm wondering if my view on this is skewed for various reasons.

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Shelter on Amazon prime has well written characters and an interesting story. There's a black latino guy that is THE main character, a black girl as a protagonist, a lesbian girl as a protagonist, a lovely dorky but genius guy that you are going to love a lot... there are lots of wlws involved, there is a non binary black character that's important to the plot, A LOT of plot twists, it deals with really heavy topics like abuse on children but it's also funny at times so it's not all heavy and the kids are written like actual real people and not just gen Z caricatures... beautiful relationships between the characters, beautiful scenes of platonic friendship and mutual support, lots of action and drama but in a good way, there are queer relationships actually happening on screen that are the main focus!! It has literally everything you could ever want and it's actually pretty damn good!!! GO WATCH IT NOW PLEASE 🥺

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On anon but. I'm someone who has detransitioned. I just want to say that, I was on HRT for about a year. It changed my body in ways that I absolutely love. I have a deep voice, and sharper features, and I have new perspective on my identity and how it interacts with the world. Being trans is a journey. From when I was five up to when I was 17, I fullheartedly believed I was a boy. I was, in that moment. But now, I'm a girl, too. I feel better as a girl - prettier, comfortable. But when I was a boy, I felt good too - in that moment, I was handsome, and I felt so so strong. It's not as scary as it seems. People ebb and flow and change. You can be what you want to be, and if ultimately you want to go back? You can. Just don't discount your experience as a mistake. In the moment it felt right. In the present is what matters.. You'll reflect on it, and maybe you won't ever change. Maybe it'll be what sticks. And that's a lovely thing in and of itself. You will find the you that fits. You will become someone you love by letting yourself express. I promise. Holding back will just mute everything that makes you, you - don't feel like you need to medically transition, either. It was right for me, but research is key, in all things. You'll be beautiful no matter what. Your experiences will shape you - as long as you allow yourself the freedom of expression. I promise.

this is so beautiful. the word detransition does seem to have a negative connotation in certain spaces and im really happy to hear u sharing your positive experience.

its so important to stress that you can simply try it. and if it isnt for you, you can stop.

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"The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I'm not a trannie or a fag so I don't care, just give 'em the medicine they need."

"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."

One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.

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I have been noodling over posting this for several days but I think it's important for some people to hear.

At a March on Saturday, at a pro Palestine march, my group and I were targeted by by nazis. Not targeted for violence, but targeted for recruitment. They weren't wearing swastikas, they weren't spewing blatant antisemitic hate speech. They seemed like two normal dudes. They marched with us, talked about how awful everything in Palestine was, how we wished world leaders would grow a pair and hold Israel responsible for fucking war crimes, how existing in the world right now was hard. They were empathetic, they were kind, they seemed like genuine good dudes.

Until we passed a synagogue where people were handing our water to marchers. They had signs defending Palestine on their table. But the tone of the conversation changed. These two seemingly normal dudes started talking about how "performative" the gesture felt, that Jewish people should be doing more. That they needed to PROVE it. They started talking about "Zionist" propaganda in the US, about how it was deeply entrenched in capitalism. Things that, on the surface, seemed reasonable but it set off alarm bells in my head.

When I was a kid, I remember getting the speech of "don't repeat anything your uncle or cousin so and so says and don't argue with them. Try to avoid them but if you can't be polite." Because those uncles and cousins said a lot of hateful things about anyone who wasn't like them, but their favorite targets were black people and Jewish people. I would find out as an adult it was because many of those uncles and cousins were in the Klan. When I studied hate symbols for a class in college, I found my self looking at images I'd seen on arms and necks and hands my whole life, because I live in an area of the US where the KKK is still around. And standing in that crowd, listening to these guys talk, i had the most horrible realization I've had in a long time.

We were being fished by Nazis. We were a group of able body, white American leftists. At a march in support of stopping the murder and genocide of Palestinians, these motherfuckers were out here, trying to find people they could get to hate Jewish folks. I wasn't the only one in my group who clocked it, and when we called them on it, the masks came off. They called us a bunch of "Jew loving bitches" before they moved on.

But we're marched with these guys for a couple hours, talked with them, laughed with them, brought them into our circle. For a moment we forgot we also weren't immune to propaganda, we weren't immune to people who make hate sound reasonable and that people like that never start out saying the quiet part out loud, they lean on your anger and your sense of helplessness to move you where they want you. If the last eight years has taught us anything, it's that fascists know how to adjust to the times, to work with what they got, to recruit. They know how to radicalize people, how to weaponize anger and helplessness. And I'm sitting here, every day, seeing posts that sound exactly like these guys did and it worries me.

I know I'm talking to the No Reading Comprehension Website, but I'm begging you guys to develop some now.

You are not immune to propaganda. We are all angry, as we fucking should be. We are watching an entire culture, thousands of lives, whole bloodlines, being wiped out in real time, and for many of us our nations are at best, wringing their hands, and at worst, shipping them weapons, all to protect capitalist greed. It's monstrous, it's disgusting. But look, REALLY LOOK, at the things you are tweeting, sharing, look at the language and how it's used. Take the time to educate yourself about how hate groups use social justice causes and civil unrest to recruit, research the posts your spreading, check your sources. If you are out protesting, be situationally aware, and do not be afraid to clock and call out Nazis. Listen to Jewish people, listen to their concerns, educate yourself on what Zionism and antisemitism actually are and how they can be weaponized. It doesn't feel as good as rage, it doesn't feel as good as having a group you can functionally rail against in a way we can't against a nation a world away, but it's a skill that's going to help you and a lot of other people in the long run.

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My DIY ripstop worked!

Inspired by ripstop fabric, and by the idea of reinforcing stuff before it breaks, I machine-sewed a little grid along the inside part of the jeans where they always wear out first.

Tonight I was venting about an awful group project to a friend and I draped myself dramatically over the couch and felt something rip a little.

Look! The rips stayed inside their little squares. Look how small it is! Look how easy it'll be to mend!

Ok actually since the fabric's been fading and the thread now looks really dark, I'll probably unpick the grid and sew it again. I'll do thread a shade lighter than the fabric currently is so it'll still match as fading continues.

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May I present: Leda and the Swan Princess! It's based on this post about a swan princess who refuses to go quietly in obscurity when cursed. (If you liked this one you will probably also like my other comics which you can find on my pinned post).

If you enjoyed and want to support a queer art student, you can tip me over on my Ko-fi! Tips help me out dramatically while I'm still in school!

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How do you make yourself tell someone how much you appreciate them, or how big an effect they have on your life? Idk why, but with some people I really can't do that.

I was thinking about ways to circumvent that problem and I remembered that a friend I had once did, like, bulk appreciation. Like, they'd post on social media saying "I just looked through my friends list and I can say this with 100% certainty: if you're reading this I love and appreciate you". And I absolutely hated that, and I still have no idea why.

Rationally I knew that it was not cringe, nor an attack on me of some kind. I knew this was very sweet of them actually, and that it should be making me feel better that they say that.

Yet I still cringed and wanted to tell them to fuck off and leave me alone. I didn't want to be appreciated. I didn't want to be remembered. Fuck you. Fuck off. Leave me to my miserable little lonely life I hate you so much-- (This is a good place to mention that we were both struggling with depression at the time.)

I never told them that, obviously. Their heart was in the right place, it was my head that wasn't, and I didn't want to make their depression worse. And also this was not only directed at me, and other people probably felt normal about it, and the normal way to feel about it is like loved and thankful and shit. (Although I actually hated when they told me personally things like that, too. Again, fuck you, fuck off, leave me alone. Never told them that either.)

It was so bad that even now when I remember they used to do that I want to tell them to fuck off, and they've been dead for three years. Died to their own hands, too. I know, rationally, that these were probably their attempts to hold onto life, to make themselves and others believe there was something good to be experienced and that they were worthy of it; I did that myself over these years. And I'm so so sorry they didn't make it through but I still want to tell them to stop including me in that shit, even though they haven't been doing it for years... Brains are weird.

I'd do bulk appreciation myself, maybe, but I can't bring myself to do it, even though that problem I had was probably extremely specific and not common enough to be a reason not to post stuff like that. I feel like I'd hurt someone the way these words hurt me back then, for reasons that I still do not know.

God I hate it here.

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Y’all… what do you guys do for a living… but describe it in the worst way possible.

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Okay so. Since this blog doesn't show up in anyone's notes, I'll admit here: I am the, uh, woman (actually nb) from terf propaganda. I've got trauma from a man's actions, and I associate it with men in general so hard that I still, after four and a half years in therapy, see many men (or people I perceive as men) as threats, fundamentally, because they're men.

I've been working on it for years. Right now, amab nb people don't just fall into "man=danger" category by default, and I'm able to trust cis men that I know well enough -- both of these things were difficult to achieve.

Three years ago, while I was self-aware enough to know that this is just my subconscious regurgitating my trauma into a bias, I couldn't really do anything about that bias. That terror of being alone in a room with a man. It was there, and I couldn't ignore it.

Back then, if I had a need to go to queer spaces, I would have found one where amab nb people wouldn't have been allowed. Because my trauma and my fear were real, and why should I go to a queer space to feel unsafe there? I was deeply depressed at the time, and leaving home was already a problem, so I didn't go to any queer spaces (I still don't, for other reasons). And maybe it's my depression that saved me from falling into a gender-essentialist trap and being recruited by terfs (although I like to think I was too self-aware to actually believe someone telling me it's something intrinsic about men and not just my brain being broken).

I guess what I'm saying is... some people's brain really is hard-wired into "men=danger" to the extent that terf propaganda says it is, and it takes time to unlearn. And I would really like if, during that unlearning time, these people could go to places other than their home and feel safe there. But, since the feeling of danger is based on who the traumatized brain perceives as men, there's really no way to do that, and any approximation like "no men or amab nb people" is just inviting gender-essentialists and their propaganda into your space. And that's just kinda... sad, you know? It's sad that these people can't feel safe outside of their home and places where terfs are actively trying to recruit them. It's sad that there's nothing to be done about it.

REBLOG THIS POST IF YOU FEEL SAFER WHEN QUEER SPACES ARE OPENLY ACCEPTING OF AMAB NONBINARY PEOPLE

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wait actually im really curious now

also if you know how to use them please share where you learned it from! (family, friends, internet, takeout chopsticks wrapper etc)

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A Small Suggestion

Hey guys, an AO3 tag wrangler here with a small suggestion for making the lives of wranglers and the Abuse volunteers and all your fellow users a little easier. You know that impulse to post a “PROMPT ME, I WILL TAKE ANY OF THESE 50 SHIPS IN 30 FANDOMS” work?

Please don’t. These make everyone cry.

Look at all those fandoms and ship tags… that this work doesn’t apply to! Look at the fact that this isn’t even a work yet! Look at all those tags you’re asking wranglers to wrangle, usually not the existing canonicals, that appear in the bins of 30 different wrangling teams, flooding the smaller teams and annoying the big ones! Look at the Abuse volunteers getting 3 reports for your work in the first day and having to talk to you and reply to each of those people!

I have a better suggestion: personal prompt meme.

Aw yeah, AO3 has prompt memes and allows personal collections! Imagine your personal prompt collection:

Control when it’s open and closed!

Post a link in the notes of all your works!

Post a link on your blog and your AO3 profile!

Post the things you’ll accept in the Rules/FAQ section of the collection!

Use claims or gifts to notify the prompter when you’ve posted a work for their prompt!

Easily delete prompts that don’t follow your rules!

Post each work separately and gift each one to the prompter to build relationships and encourage interest from new fans who just noticed your work!

So much control, so much useful organization, so many fewer frustrated users finding a work with two chapters, neither of which applies to most of the relationships or fandoms tags. Why burn your bridges with some users when you’re trying for positive attention for your works?

Just imagine it: “[YourName]′s Personal Prompt Meme*”. Your name on a collection on AO3. All for you.

Let’s make this a thing, yeah?

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everyday i wake up and i go “god i’m so tired. i can’t do this anymore.” and then i get up and i continue to do it

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Because i've been thinking about this for a while now: