So my time is running down to bitch about this writing class (I CAN SEE THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL, THE END OF THE YEAR IS SO CLOSE, GOD, I CAN PRACTICALLY TASTE FREEDOM) and I need to get some stuff off my chest here. An open letter to my class under the cut for ranting and cursing and general miscellaneous bullshit.
Instead of using that creepy ass quote Professor Sneep says about his obsession with his dead ex-friend as The Harry Potter Quote why don’t we use the one James Potter says to his son, whom he gave his life for, to comfort him as he walks to his death
“‘You’ll stay with me?’
‘Until the very end,’ said James.”
The other night, I told this story to my sister, who had somehow never heard it before. She demanded that I write it down. (I sincerely hope she’s not planning to use this as some kind of college life advice for my nephew.)
There are three things you need to know to understand this story, provided you are not my sister:
I started college at 15.
I almost immediately got mono and didn’t realize it, assuming that I was sleeping 16 hours a day because sleep was the best thing in the world and I’d suddenly gotten really good at it.
I made most of my bad decisions – like, most of the bad decisions I would ever make, and almost all the ones I could think of – before starting college.
These were not things I had in common with my freshman cohort. Any of them, as far as I could tell. They were all older than I was, they seemed to have all the energy in the world, and they had come to college to make those bad decisions they’d been dreaming of all these years but apparently couldn’t quite commit to until they were away from parental backup and support.
“If someone comes to you and asks your help, you shall not turn him off with pious words, saying, “Have faith and take your troubles to God!” You shall act as if there were no God, as if there were only one person in all the world who could help this man–only yourself.”—
You don’t expect to hear a rabbi say “act as if there were no God” and mean not “do whatever you feel like doing” but “recognize that the ultimate responsibility for doing good in the world lies with you.” I kind of love this.
#religion #… I mean if anyone were going to say ‘act as if there were no god’ to mean ‘it’s all on you mate’ #it would be a rabbi (via thetrollingchaos)
i dont get offended at white people jokes even though im white because:
i can recognize white people as a whole have systemically oppressed POC in america, which is where i live
most people when they make white people jokes only mean the shitty white people and i am not a shitty white person
im not a pissbaby
my white friends that have reblogged this give me life
4. Sometimes I am a shitty white person and the jokes remind me to FUCKIN STOP
If ur white and like this post I fux with u
^absolutely
5. It’s hard to be offended when white people jokes involve bland food/tourist dads in socks and sandals/white girls in yoga pants obsessed with pumpkin spice/suburban PTA moms and other harmless and mostly true stereotypes while jokes about POC involve them being called thugs/criminals/slurs/uneducated/illegal immigrants.
i fucks with u heavy if ur white and you reblog this
Knowing that trans women of color started the movement in the united states and were literally immediately erased and excluded from what they started is the most deeply jading knowledge.
It is the original sin of the so-called queer community and it damns it from the cradle.
The TSA gambled on millions of wealthy Americans opting out of its pornoscanner-and-shoe-removal process and signing up for its Precheck policy, which allows travellers to pay for the “privilege” of walking through a metal-detector with their shoes on, while their laptops stay in their bags.
It was a gamble that they lost. Americans have stayed away from the process in droves, but the TSA had already committed to cutting staff in anticipation of much lighter queues at their checkpoints. Instead of lightening, the queues have got longer, as the US economy has recovered and low fuel prices have kept the price of plane tickets down.
The TSA is now warning travelers to expect very long security lines this summer (Denver Airport warns that its TSA queues can take three hours to clear), as it scrambles to train more staff. In the meantime, whole airports’ worth of people are missing their flights, sending the airport managers and airlines into rare public displays of temper against the agency, calling the lines “unacceptable” (American Airlines), a “fiasco” (Brent D. Cagle, interim director of aviation for Charlotte Douglas International Airport) and accusing the agency of lying when it cites crowds as the reason for lines (Denver Airport).
The agency still hopes that more people will sign up for Precheck, which turns travel into a profit center for the agency, rather than a cost center. A cynic might say that this summer’s “fiascos” are an attempt to squeeze user fees out of American travellers, but whether or not the lines are a deliberate strategy is largely irrelevant, as it will certainly have the effect of pushing more fliers into the Precheck program.
However, even Precheck fliers aren’t immune: as the TSA diverts its staff to handle the three-hour-long queues, the Precheck lines have slowed down. The Precheck lines in Newark can take more than an hour to clear.
David Graeber remarked on the bizarre phenomenon of lengthening official lines in his brilliant essay The Utopia of Rules: for decades during the Cold War, long official lines were the symbol of the Soviet Union’s oppressive, incompetent bureaucracy. With the fall of the USSR, the lines have moved west, getting longer and longer, being joined by official forms and systems that disproportionately target the poor and vulnerable, while elites are exempt or exempt themselves by paying professionals.
In United States, Capitalist Pig sells you faster line! What a country!
and how many credible threats have we stopped with this security theater?
Wonderful :(
Also, I will say that I qualify for TSA Precheck because I paid for Global Entry which allows me to skip to the front of the customs lines when returning from international travel.
The last 3 times I’ve traveled, the Pre-check lanes at the airports I’ve been traveling through have been closed (San Diego, DFW, and KCI). So, there are people that have paid for a service that isn’t even being reliably and consistently offered.
Why is it that evil villains always find poison to inject into their victims like just literally fill the syringe with air and just stick the needle between their toes or something. It’ll mimic a heart attack and the victim will die pretty quick and NO ONE WILL ASK MANY QUESTIONS BECAUSE IT’LL LOOK LIKE A HEART ATTACK
first of all how do you know this information i feel like the government doesnt want you to know that
sure, peaceontheplanet. i mean i can’t promise it’s gonna be as funny as the internet apparently found the porn thing but like, HERE’S A STORY ABOUT THE TIME I GOT MUGGED AT KNIFEPOINT (BUT BY A GENTLEMAN).
so when i was studying in argentina, it was like a thursday, and they were having what’s called a “feria” which is kind a holiday?? in argentina sometimes they decide to CANCEL EVERYTHING, ostensibly to celebrate things like books and students but i suspect really so that nobody has to go to work.
argentina gets me.
ANYWAY, i decided that day to go the gym! this was new and different for me, a person who considers “intense chewing” to be exercise.
BIKINI BOD: ON TRACK.
so i went to the gym. it went the way that trips to the gym usually do for 5'8" girls with severe pigeon toes and a total lack of all motivation.
badly.
as i’m walking home, past the college of dentistry, i was fussing with a lighter that i had in my pocket because i was also, at that time, dealing with my fear of intimacy by smoking. so this guy comes up to me and is like, “hey, can i borrow a light?”
here’s a list of things i should have said:
“sorry, no.”
“ahhhhhh you know what, i would, but i’m super busy right now??? i actually have a dentist’s appointment, as evidenced by this College of Dentistry that i’m standing outside??”
“NO HABLO ESPAÑOL.”
“don’t you know that smoking gives you cancer? let’s commit to quitting, right now, to each other. bring it in. go team. together we can.”
here’s what i did say:
“claro que sí, amigo.”
he’s trying to light his cigarette, and his hands are shaking a little? so he can’t. and i’m like, dude, calm down, it’s okay. what is this, your first cigarette or something? lol.
after a few seconds, he kind of goes, “fuck it,” and drops the lighter into his pocket. and i’m like, “excuse me??? that’s my lighter?? also you didn’t even manage to light your cigarette???” but before i can vocalize these protests, he gets rEALLY close to me and pulls out a knife. then he goes, “you have three seconds.”
what i should have said:
“okay. you can have whatever you want.”
“here’s my wallet.”
“wow, what a very sharp-looking knife, in what way can i avoid being stabbed with it today??”
what i actually said:
“haha, uhhhhh, until what?”
UNTIL WHAT. “UNTIL WHAT, MR. SIR WITH THE KNIFE? LIKE, WHAT’S ON THE MENU HERE????”
BUT HE DIDN’T SAY DEATH!!! it turns out that the gentleman attempting to rob me was like, maybe a rookie? it’s possible that he had never robbed anybody at knife-point, before. this as an experience that we were going through together for the first time.
because what he said was: “….i have a knife.”
i said, “yes. i can see that. it’s very nice.”
IN MY DEFENSE: IF YOU ARE GOING TO ROB SOMEONE, THE ONUS IS ON YOU TO GIVE CLEAR DIRECTIONS.
“i have a knife”??? come on, buddy. be better prepared. come with a to-do list. practice in a mirror.
“then i’m going to pull out the knife and say: give me _____.”
clear, concise, quick. that should be your motto, buddy. it is not MY JOB, as the ROBBEE, to read your goddamn mind. I AM NOT DRIVING THIS SHIP. IF YOU ALSO AREN’T DRIVING IT, WE ARE IN TITANIC-LEVEL TROUBLE.
at this point, clearly realizing that he had gotten in tOO DEEP with this dumbass tourist who didn’t even know how to get robbed properly, he blurted out, “uhhhhh, do you have a phone?”
i did have a phone! i had a broken claro go-phone that i had purchased upon entering the country which had 2 argentine pesos worth of text messages left in it and a inbox message from a boy name juan that said, “you like me a LOT.”
i had responded, “actually, i just like you the normal amount.”
i felt bad about that when i realized that he was trying to say, “i like YOU a lot,” but feelings verbs in spanish are mostly reflexive.
SORRY JUAN.
i handed the man with the knife my phone. he looked at it. looked back up at me. “r u srs?” his face seemed to say. “this is what you’re giving me right now? a janky ass claro go-phone that is CLEARLY MISSING THE NUMBER 7 KEY????”
look, the shoddy workmanship is a source of frustration to you and me BOTH, okay. we’re BOTH victims here.
but the beautiful thing about this story is that HE TOOK IT! he looked at me, looked down at his knife, sighed, and put the phone in his pocket. THEN HE REACHED BACK INTO HIS POCKET AND RETURNED MY LIGHTER TO ME.
we looked at each other.
here’s the thing that no one tells you about daylight robbery: there’s like. an afterbeat.
there is a moment in between “robbery-in-progress” and “going home to your homestay and explaining that you can’t answer phone calls anymore” where you and your robber have to look at one another and figure out HOW TO WALK AWAY.
listen, friends: in robberies, as everywhere, goodbyes are never easy.
“thank you,” he said.
“you’re welcome,” i answered.
he hesitated. “have a good day,” he said.
“………….okay,” i answered. “you too. enjoy the phone.”
ENJOY THE PHONE?????
IT WAS BROKEN. IT WAS CLEARLY BROKEN. WE BOTH KNEW THAT NOTHING BUT HEARTACHE WAS GOING TO COME FROM THAT PHONE.
i think about this a lot, and i wonder if he ever thinks about me. i wonder if he ever thinks, “that goddamn asshole knew i was going to have to press the 7 key four hundred times before it registered anything.“
i’m sorry, man with the knife. i panicked. in the heat of the moment, we all say things we don’t mean.
oh my god i was going through my facebook last night and LOOK WHAT I FOUND
i literally fucking hate broadway’s policy of not filming until the show is over, if at all. im going to compare it to sports games
seeing a football or basketball game live is amazing for sports fans, right? like most players would probably recommend seeing it live, you get to go with your friends and buy food and the players are really there and the games are usually sold out. but because seeing it live is a more favorable way to experience the game, that doesn’t mean they don’t let anyone watch it on TV and demand anyone who wants to see it has to go to the game. what about people who don’t live in the area or don’t have money to go? they still get to see the game with everyone else, and the fact that they put the game on television doesn’t drive down ticket sales. people still love seeing football or basketball or whatever in person
broadway is the same way. it’s so fucking inaccessible if you live anywhere other than new york, and even then it’s so expensive and hard to get tickets. why wouldn’t you also film it? there’s no reason not to, if your show is sold out for a full year, you’re not going to lose ticket sales because you’re also letting people watch it on TV. you will not be losing some random girl from Tennessee’s ticket sales if it would be impossible for her to go in the first place, in fact you’d make money by spreading it to a wider audience.
i love legally blonde, ive seen it upwards of 10 times because theres a professional recording on youtube for an MTV special. this doesnt mean if i had the opportunity to go see it i’d be like nah, id rather watch it alone on youtube. i’d JUMP at the opportunity to go see it live.
tldr: people arent going to stop seeing stuff live just because you also monetize on a recording of the show to be released to a wider audience, you dumb fucking shits
(I’m making this post for a friend, but I figured some other people might get some use out of it as well.)
I know it can be super difficult to find the time and the energy to cook things sometimes. Even just looking up recipes can be super stressful when you’re low on spoons, because everything seems to take so much effort. But please, friends! You should still eat something! D:
This is a list of sites and blogs that house good, simple, cheap recipes which hopefully will help. Everything is easier if you have a crock pot/slow cooker!
http://no-more-ramen.tumblr.com - this site has a “no chopping” tag and a “crockpot” tag for if you really just can’t today, and also makes sure to note gluten/nut/egg/dairy and vegetarian/diabetic-friendly recipes! Super awesome!
http://lowspoonsgourmet.tumblr.com - they organize things by spoon number in the tags, from 1 spoon to 7 spoons! Unfortunately their mods aren’t 100% consistent on tags BUT it looks like you can find good recipes under either the “recipe” tag or the “mod fae” tag.
http://www.budgetbytes.com - This site has a ton of crockpot recipes. Just throw the ingredients in the cooker and walk away, come back whenever!! These recipes have a lot more ingredients than some other ones but you can always ignore half of the list if you don’t have them, or substitute.
http://ridiculouslyeasyfood.tumblr.com - not a lot here, but what they do have is really good and easy to make, especially on a budget! Plus, good directions!
The tag “low spoons food” on tumblr itself also has a good number of recipes and advice, from what I can see.
That’s it for now! If you know of any other good resources or have any feedback, please let me know. Hopefully this helps someone!
watchers’ council: our slayers keep dying
watchers’ council: let’s take our slayer that has successfully not died the longest and make her powerless and battle a vampire
watchers’ council: 👍👍👍
Alright, but that’s… Exactly the point? The moment a Slayer turns 18, there’s a bigger chance she would go against the Council in some way - Buffy cuts ties with it, Nikki gets pregnant and raises a child, Faith kills people. For the Council, a Slayer can’t have that kind of independence, the Cruciamentum was created exactly to kill Slayers when they get too old.
It’s not a test they’re supposed to pass, because it’s easier to train a new weapon than to have a wild weapon you can’t control.
well that’s even more fucked up than I originally thought
Seriously though. With only Donald Trump on the Republican side of the presidential election, it’s really childish to say you won’t vote if Hillary gets the nomination. This is about all of us, and while she isn’t Bernie, she certainly isn’t Donald Trump.
I want to write a fic where Lilo goes to college and her roommate is Boo from Monsters Inc. Boo is the first person to think Stitch is adorable and cuddly, and Lilo is the first person not to act like “Mike Wazowski” was a weird name for a goldfish. They get on like a house on fire which is kind of bad for Nani’s blood pressure.
But then one night they wake up in the middle of the night because something is in their closet. And the door starts to creak open so Stitch tackles whoever (whatever) is in there. They fall back into the closet, the door slams shut… and when Lilo runs over and opens it there’s nothing but an empty closet.
Then Boo tells Lilo all about this weird thing that happened to her when she was a kid, and how no one ever believed her but she knows it was real.
And cue Lilo and Boo busting into the Monster world to rescue Stitch and wreaking mad havoc in the process.
SEE THIS IS A WORTHY SEQUEL
This needs to happen
Petition for the movie to be hand-drawn in Lilo and Stitch’s style when they’re in the human world, and computer animated once they go through the door into the monster world.
Okay but it ends with Lilo and Boo saving the day and having a celebratory ‘we lived’ kiss and being girlfriends, right? Because it should end with them being girlfriends.
narcissa malfoy was probably the most powerful occlumens in hogwarts history and nobody knew
she literally stood up to lord voldemort and lied that harry potter was dead and i don’t know about you but if i were an evil ruler i would probably want to triple-check that my nemesis was, you know, actually deceased
voldemort had actual doubts about snape
narcissa swans on by without a whisper, without a second glance
narcissa malfoy understood from a young age that she was meant to do only a few things: look pretty, say nothing, and marry well.
narcissa malfoy understood those rules, and she layered her mind with them.
look pretty. wear the most expensive robes. grandmother’s pearls. curl your hair every night. think only of clothes and dimples and the way your hair falls when you flutters you eyelashes at a boy.
say nothing. don’t speak when mother and father are screaming at each other. demurely look down as another boy asks you to dance. retreat into the reading room when your family friends, known death eaters and criminals, pay your parents a visit and speak in hushed voices over tea. think of pretty things.
marry well. marry into a family of your parents’ friends. bear children. wear pearls and look demure and think of nothing but pretty, pretty things, like the way your husband’s hair gleams in candlelight.
masters must learn the rules before they can break them. narcissa learned the rules so well that they wrapped around her; sank into her skin and her mind. they protect her from enemies. they conceal the quick, strategic plots ticking her brain into gear every moment of every day. they hide the calculation of each smile, each movement.
narcissa is so good, so perfect, that no one will ever know.
But what if the princess was in the tower because she was the dragon?
Like the queen gives birth and oops it’s this adorable little scaley lizard with tiny wings that she can never quite seem to fold right
None of the King’s advisors or doctors can explain it, no one can remember anyone who might have cursed the royal family, plus sire she’s clearly yours still I mean look at those eyes
They just kind of accept it and keep her in a tower so no one tries to slay her
The queen or castle servants reading bedtime stories to the toddler princess, who’s made a nest of her favorite toys and some jewelery she stole off her mother, and when she laughs little puffs of smoke come out of her mouth
The king being so proud when she flies across the room for the first time
And once the princess comes of age, confused knights breaking into the tower to find a twenty foot long dragon sitting at the vanity getting her horns polished by her handmaidens
and the “kidnapped” princess is her girlfriend?
this feels like a minotaur myth gone amazingly right.
Okay, who brought this back? Because I haven’t seen notes on this thing in literally months.
She goes flying around the surrounding kingdoms, just watching and listening.
And pretty soon she has a dozen girls sharing the tower with her.
Some were being pushed to marry, or promised in marriage to someone they hated. Some were already married.
Some were poor, or hunted, or enslaved.
Some were thrown out, abandoned, banished.
There’s a princess there, yes, one who would rather sit in the solar and read books than marry a boorish prince and interact with her subjects all day.
There’s a wizard-student who fled her university after one of the professors tried to curse her for disagreeing with him.
There’s a girl who ran away to be a knight, and a girl who was thrown out for being pregnant, and a wife who ran out the door with her toddler carried in her broken arms, her belly swollen and unwieldy, and stories circulate from the bar the next day about how the dragon swooped down and stole away a man’s wife.
Probably ate her, he says. Good riddance.
There’s a formerly-wealthy merchant wife, cast out by her husband in middle age so he can wed someone young and pretty.
There’s an elderly grandmother who’s outlived her family and her usefulness.
A street child, rag-clad and starving. A baby, left abandoned on a hillside.
It begins to filter through the land, spoken from fathers to daughter, husbands to wives, employers to servants: if you are bad, the dragon will take you. if you are stubborn, or willful, or refuse to marry, the dragon will find you. if you are useless, or slovenly, or disobedient, you will be thrown out and the dragon will pluck you up in its claws and take you back to its lair filled with bones.
They do not understand that this is not a threat but a promise.
They do not know that the version their servants tell each other, their wives tell their daughters, their mothers tell circles of friends, is “if you are desperate, the dragon will find you. if you want out, the dragon will rescue you. if you pause outside, and tell your fears to the soft beating of wings somewhere in the sky, you will fly, and the dragon will carry you home.”
There are bones, but they are surrounded by living flesh.
The tower, the Princess’s Tower in the central kingdom, is hidden by the finest spells and left alone by longstanding tradition. The nature of the Princess’s curse is a matter of speculation, but most likely, people say, she is under some fairy’s enchantment, and she will sleep for a hundred years until the right prince finds the way in.
The wizard-student was fairly advanced in her studies, and is quite good at teaching the runaway scullery-maid and the young unmarried mother turned out when her belly showed. The gates to the far reaches of the tower grounds open to a hillside two kingdoms away, and to an alleyway in a major city, and to a deep tideswept cave near a fishing village and a harbor, and to a storage room in the oldest wing of the Princess’s home palace.
The rich former merchant’s wife sorts through the dragon’s hoard of gold and gems, and delivers instructions to the runaway postulant and the worn old farm wife; dressed as a young clerk and a common tradesman, they go to call on this merchant who sets the best prices, and that factor who has misplaced goods available for a low price, and this manufacturer of looms and that seller of books.
The farm wife knows the best sheep to buy at market, the ewes who will bear twins and the lambs which will have the finest wool. Another country over, this time in the company of “his” elderly “father,” she buys cows that will give good milk, and chickens that will lay good eggs.
An elderly wizard visits a university, and inquires after their library; she is let in, and watched as she pages through books filled with arcane topics in languages she can’t understand; back at the tower, the wizard girl and her students capture the pages in a scrying crystal.
A pretty young fishwife smiles at the vegetable-seller as her daughter clings to her skirts, and soon the girls and women of the tower have seeds to plant. Looms hum, and dyestuffs are boiled, and even the poorest in their former lives wear bright dresses, or breeches and tunics if they prefer.
The dragon brings back a pirate woman from the harbor, stolen from the hangman’s noose while the crowd cheers; she knows where there is treasure stored, and soon the young girls have gems to play with, and the girl who ran away to be a knight has someone to learn proper swordwork from.
The little girl whose first flight was in her mother’s broken arms wants to be a blacksmith; when a swordblade breaks, the dragon breathes on it, as long as needed, while the child determinedly hammers it back together.
The dragon princess surveys her kingdom with approval. It is small, and tonight she will fly over a small town, where she heard breaking crockery and yelling last night, to see if someone steps out into the darkness and wishes for a better life, and tomorrow there may be one more.
I hate these educational Cat in the Hat things where the Cat in the Hat teaches you shit about, like, healthy food or whatever. The Cat in the Hat is a chaotic neutral home invader whose information is highly questionable at best.
Everybody that reblogs this by May 10th will get a traditionally drawn character based on what I think you look like after scrolling through your blog
I think he will have stopped because of how many fucking people xD
nope, im doing everybody that reblogs this! the only thing its doing is making it take a bit longer. i could easily put out 20 or 30 of them in a day, maybe even more if im feeling productive (i draw a lot in my spare time), so really, its just giving me more practice, which is good. im not stopping because of the numbers!
“If minorities are box office risks, what accounts for the success of the “Fast and Furious” franchise, which presented a broadly diverse team, behind and in front of the camera? Over seven movies it has grossed nearly $4 billion worldwide. In fact, a recent study by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that films with diverse leads not only resulted in higher box office numbers but also higher returns of investment for studios and producers.”
“
“If minorities are box office risks…”
IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE THE “BOX OFFICE RISK” HERE IS MINORITIES, FAM. LOOKS LIKE IT ACTUALLY MIGHT BE WHITE WASHED FILMS, MY GUY.
word
FUCKING THIS. YAS. GLORY TO GOD. AMEN. SAY IT AGAIN. ONE MORE TIME FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK.
someone hiring me for work I willingly choose to do is not the same as someone violating me
even if they were violating me (which can only happen if my consent is not respected!) they would NOT “own” me after the violation.
I am still my own, and not anyone’s property, if people have sexual pictures or videos of me.
I am still my own, and not anyone’s property, if people have sex with me.
I am still my own, and not anyone’s property, if people give me money for choosing to provide them with sexual images, phone sex, or actual sex.
I am still my own if the money I choose to accept for sexual acts is pivotal to my survival.
If you refer to sex work as “buying women”, if you say that by doing sex work I “become a product”, you are dehumanizing me. My job - and the fruits of my job, like porn clips - do not dehumanize me. Being sexual for a price does not dehumanize me; I am still a person, choosing to be sexual for a reason that you don’t choose to be sexual for. People like you contribute to a culture that encourages people to see people in my line of work as less than human.
Scapegoating frequently-objectified women for the objectification all women experience at the hands of men is patriarchial respectability politics. It is victim-blaming. And does not teach anyone to treat sex workers or anyone else with real respect.
I’m offended both as a sex worker and as a rape survivor at the idea
that choosing a job that departs from your misogynist ideas of sexual purity is somehow morally equivalent to being abused against my will.
I’m appalled as a rape survivor and as a sex worker that you consistently imply that I no longer belong to myself after having sex for pay or selling cam sessions, and list your inaccurate rape equivalence as the reason. Do you not see how disgusting that is, to say that rape means you now somehow belong to the rapist? Your ideas are rotten all through.
tl;dr: I do not become a product when I do this work, I am a person providing a service. Encouraging others to think of me as a product instead of a service provider contributes to my dehumanization and the dehumanization of all women who dare to be sexual in ways that threaten the heteropatriarchy.
Hi, I'm 25 and debating starting male-to-female HRT. However, I'm scared that HRT won't help me at all. It seems like HRT does so little after puberty, especially by the time one gets in their 20s. I'm really scared that I'll just end up being someone in a male body, but with breasts. Is there anything you can say to someone having this fear? Thank you, and sorry, I suspect this is a silly question.
Actually, the claim that HRT doesn’t do much after puberty is a myth. I started when I was 31 years old and now I’m 35. =)
i was emotionally abused in school as a small child, but strongly supported and validated at home; as a result, instead of coming to believe i deserved to be dehumanized and scapegoated, i developed a reactive stubbornnes where everyone who hasn’t earned my trust over a course of years is on probation and everything they say has to pass a gamut of skeptical analysis.
now, don’t get me wrong, this has caused a lot of problems for me in my life. my intimacy issues are breathtakingly bad. BUT it does have the followiing benefit: abusers testing for victim potential push me once, then run like hell.
what occurs to me after reading about the way abusers systematically erode your boundaries and use the frog-boiling method to make abuse seem normal, is that the general public could perhaps benefit from my experience, and learn that there is a simple first line of defense against abusers:
politely refuse the first request a new friend or date makes of you.
that’s it. that’ll weed out a whole lot of the assholes without you ever having to lift a finger to eject them. decent people will accept your refusal – they might be a little confused or hurt, but they won’t PUSH – and abusers will either show their true colors, or run like the cowards they are.
now, it might take a bit of cleverness to refuse the literally first request if it’s something like ‘please pass the salt’ that no sensible person would ever refuse, but if your hands are conveniently buttery you can do it. otherwise, wait for the first actual favor that requires effort, or just bluff it out – give them a cheerful nope and watch how they react.
because, in case you didn’t know this, a real friend will NOT throw a shitfit if you tell them you can’t drive them to work tomorrow, or you don’t want to lend them your jacket, or you’d rather they don’t take the last soda from your fridge. they really won’t. they’ll still be your friend. they won’t make a big deal out of it. i promise, abusive behavior is NOT normal, no matter what someone in your life may have told you.
don’t tell me you can’t use physics in your daily life, once I realized that the marshmallows in Lucky Charms are less dense than the cardboard cereal they reside in, I figured out that stimulating motion (shaking the box) would cause marshmallows to rise to the top of the cereal before I poured it into my bowl = more marshmallows for me and a pissed off brother who can never figure out why all the marshmallows are gone when he goes to eat his cereal
It’s not that I can’t figure it out, it’s just that it’s annOYING AS FRIK AND YOU NEED TO STOP
that awkward moment when you forget your brother follows you on tumblr
(Because oh my god, it’s so hard, and everyone’s all like stop feeling so bad about yourself and it’s like how???)
Be naked. A lot. Sleep naked. Have sex naked. Eat cereal naked. (Or naked and wrapped in a sheet. Favorite thing.)
Follow beautiful, confident, (un-photoshopped) body-positive babes on the Internet. Unfollow anything that makes you feel insecure. Exposure is key. You’re not going to get it if you don’t seek it out, because the media sucks and wants us to feel like shit about ourselves so they can take our money. (Some hashtags to follow: #effyourbeautystandards #bootyrevolution #blackisbeautiful #transisbeautiful #wheelchairlife #fatkini #fatshion)
Lingerie. Next best thing to being naked.
Self care, babe. Different for everyone. (Me? Showers, books, shaving my legs, nature walks, dark lipstick, good playlists, clean rooms, candles, sexy time.)
Get ready in your underwear. Boobs = happiness.
Self portraits. Be pro-selfie. Take a million selfies. Take sexy selfies. Take no makeup selfies. Take bad angle silly selfies. Take artsy tripod selfies. Take everything-is-on-point selfies. You’re gorgeous; document your gorgeousness. You don’t even need to post them.
Stop with the self deprecationnnnn. Pleeeeaseeee. It’s hard to control your thoughts love, I know, but you can control what you say. NEVER insult yourself out loud. Dare I say compliment yourself out loud? (And if you can, do your best to try to body-positive-ify your thoughts too.)
Sex (including solo sexy time), wine, and chocolate. In that order.
Share the body love. Compliment your girlfriends. Cultivate a nonjudgemental, supportive, lift-each-other-up “we’re so cute” friend group. Everyone’s insecure. Compliment your besties. And strangers, too. Be that person that makes everyone feel good about themselves when they’re around.
Good luck gorgeous. It’s a battle. We gotta unlearn all this societal bullshit.
okay, most of what i do re: harry potter is criticism, and hp is flawed in such a number of ways, but sometimes i just sit here and
i mean, you all have a comprehension of just how drastically harry potter changed literature, yeah? like. it revitalized it. it blew the literary scene apart. the new york times had to create a separate bestseller’s list for children’s lit just because harry potter existed. harry potter changed reading.
so many people on tumblr were born in the ‘90s. when the first book came out, most of us couldn’t read. but we grew up in a world where everyone, everyone, everyone was reading harry potter, no matter how old they were; we grew up in a world where the most popular story in the entire world was a fantasy children’s book.
it’s sort of difficult to grasp, sometimes, the extent to which harry potter is not just a book. the extent to which what is basically a series of fun, interesting, and fairly good novels is such an enormous, enormous part of our lives, a cultural touchstone, a truly universal reference point, something so many people have shaped their lives around, a foundation for all of the stories we would read and watch for the rest of our lives– for so many of us, the first books we ever loved
the extent to which so many of us can’t call ourselves “fans” of harry potter, because it would like being a “fan” of, like, having lungs.
it’s not even about liking it or disliking it. it’s just a part of us.
This is actually exactly what I tell adults who ask why I still like “a kids’ series” so much. First of all, I still read fucking Animorphs and watch Disney movies, if I want to be a fan of a kids’ series I’m damn well gonna be (and like HP doesn’t really strike me as kids’ books, but whatever). But more to the point, it’s not really…a question. I like having an appendix, or a spleen, or arteries, too.
At first, Finn doesn’t understand what the problem is.
The base on D’Qar moves to a different heartbeat than
Starkiller: more chaotic than ordered, with an inconsistent stream of missions
and refugees and impromptu meetings in the war room early enough for his eyes
to still be tacky and blurred. He tries his best to slide into the place left
behind by the countless bodies left in the wake of the Hosnian system, even
though he swears the General will glance in his direction and just stare
straight through him, as though witnessing a phantom.
Finn isn’t sure he wants to know what she’s actually seeing.
So he works, and he gives quiet advice, trying to keep his
head down, cause yeah, he’d excelled at being a Stormtrooper, at tactics and
standard recon and procedure, even though by the end of it Phasma’s vaguely
proud turn had turned sour when he had refused to leave anyone behind. On some
fundamental level, Finn knew the Resistance didn’t operate that way; General
Organa’s quiet joy when her pilots returned as a whole, with no men lost. When
they find a complete family adrift in the wreckage of the New Republic. When
another soldier stumbles from the medbay with his head still attached to his
body.
Finn likes to think that he’s helping. Poe says it often
enough, but Poe also enjoys protein bars and standard maintenance, so Finn is
starting to think that his advice is a little dubious.
It seems like the first rule of magic, or at least the first limitation mentioned, is usually ‘you can’t bring back the dead.’
And I know it makes sense from a writing standpoint, but I also wonder if it comes from somewhere else. If that’s just the first, most common human response to hearing that magic is possible.
Maybe the first question was, ‘Are the dead still going to stay dead?’ for so long that people stopped needing to say it, that it just got answered right away. Yes, the world will still hurt. Chin up, you can make fire from your fingertips. Maybe you can hurt it back.
