Apprentice to Wonder

i keep seeing posts to the effect of "period blood isn't special or different than other blood" and in spirit that's true but i keep on having the autistic objection of "wait, I went through sex ed, it's not actually the same thing as blood, it's a mix of blood, enometrial tissue, and discharge/mucus"

periods happen because of the uterus developing and shedding endometrial lining on a roughly 28-day cycle. this is related to pregnancy but like everything about the reproductive system it is not solely related to pregnancy. the goal if you're avoiding menstruation is for it to fail gracefully - i.e. no endometrial tissue develops, no period happens. (this is actually perfectly achievable for people not on testosterone, most doctors are just weird about it and insist on birth control cycling because they have weird ideas about women.) the danger whenever it stops (which can be caused by dietary irregularity, hormonal changes, etc) is that it hasn't failed gracefully and endometrial tissue is still developing in the uterus, because if it gets stuck in there or escapes containment it can cause endometriosis, which is very dangerous. get that shit checked out if you're experiencing weird pain or irregular periods you can't explain some other way; endometriosis is detectable by a non-invasive ultrasound so looking for it isn't even all that shitty

above all i think mystifying the bodily functions of roughly a third of the entire human population is a serious mistake, and one that laypeople aren't alone in making (again, many doctors have extremely weird ideas about periods!). read up, stay on top of stuff, everyone's got a body and you gotta be good to yours. be ready to advocate for yourself in the face of being blown off by doctors too, they're routinely very ignorant and stubborn about taking uterine conditions seriously, especially if you're visibly queer/trans/nonbinary

to the terfs in the notes losing their shit bc OP said one-third not one-half: one of the problems with equating "capable of menstruation" and "female" is that means people who are pre-menarche, post-menopause, or post-evicting-cancerous-uterus cannot be female, even though most such people understand themselves to be female

Alright tell me in the tags, what’s Your Poem? That poem you heard once and it has dwelt within you ever since?

I think that if you had enough daughters AND played your cards right you could spring Mambo Number Five out at the EXACT right gathering and shatter your entire family's trust forever

The secret is to name them out of order with the lyrics so by the time anyone catches on it's too late

For me personally the ideal gathering would be my funeral

How quickly we forget the dangerous crow boy who’s job it is to destroy plastic

I want to see more polyamory pride this pride month i'm serious. Stop being weird about people with multiple partners polyamory is awesome and beautiful and queer

ok every time this post comes by i resist geeking out on it but NO LONGER so these women are probably the same woman and that woman is monet’s wife camille doncieux. he painted her a LOT. but fun fact: monet had this asshole friend named ernest hochede, and ernest racked up some debts, and like an asshole he basically just fled the country, leaving his wife alice and their six kiddos behind. monet immediately got alice and kids to move in with him, camille, and their two kids. at this point, monet, alice, and camille became my favorite probably historic poly threesome. they lived together, taking care of the kids. they were so poor that alice and camille took turns wearing the nice dress so they could go out with monet. when camille got uterine cancer and began dying, alice helped monet cope and took care of things while he painted camille over and over. when camille died, alice is the reason monet was able to survive. when ernest finally died, monet and alice married, and remained married until alice died. at that point, blanche, the oldest daughter, took care of monet until he died. anyway, the point is, the umbrella ladies are probably the same ladies, but as far as i’m concerned, there WAS a historically queer poly family in that household and they were wonderful.

this is a fucking joy

Putting the term "Catholic guilt" on a high shelf where fandom can't reach it until everyone learns how to identify characters who are very very clearly coded as Protestant.

Friendly reminder that the leather flag predates almost every other flag. We owe this community to leather daddies and kinksters

In the era of corporate sanitization never forget it was leather daddies and S&M folks who protected some of the earliest pride parades.

Three years after that last comment and the corporate backers are fleeing as the moment the political tide turned - the kinksters aren’t.

one more day til the stop sign

Everyone get up it’s stop sign day

Stop sign day

STOP SIGN DAY

Official stop sign day

Official stop sign day

Official stop sign day

Official stop sign day

in order to unlearn racism u have to be willing to accept that u are racist. it’s not a bad thing to want to change for the better. it’s not a bad thing to say hey, the way i’ve been acting is racist and i don’t want to be racist anymore. when people of color are telling u ways in which u have been racist, it’s actually not cool to brush it off and say, well i didn’t mean it that way.. u actually have to make an effort to stop doing those things if u want to be able to actually say ur anti-racist. u can’t just say ur not racist because u don’t wanna be seen as racist. that’s not how unlearning racism works.

“um i’m actually a good person so calling me racist couldn’t possibly be true. ur just attacking me!” see how the racism is literally right there? see how ur just seconds away from calling me an angry black girl?

I literally reblogged this a day ago and OP was still up. This shit is entirely unacceptable fucking hell.

There are a lot of people who start creative projects with no business or financial plan, because "who cares, it isn't important, we'll figure that out later". And you can't let yourself become that person. Not because I'm a sneering finance bro who thinks your woke animated youtube series wont make money, but because if you don't you'll wind up financially exploiting your friends for years

Look, it's none of my business if you wanna work yourself to the bone for no money so you can make your dream project a reality. I think you shouldn't, but also let's be real that's basically a rite of passage for young creatives. But as soon as you start involving other people? You need a plan. You need to be able to compensate them for their time, and you need to have it in writing

For freelancers: I recommend getting yourself a copy of the Graphic Artists' Guild Handbook: Pricing and Ethical Guidelines for reference-- the newest one dropped last year (I have the 16th edition). It helps you figure out your pricing, how to create a contract for various projects (and you can access free PDFs of templates you can use to modify for your own projects)! It's a good place to start and refer to-- even colleagues who are decades in the business (and former Guild Members too) still use it.

following weird horny furries who are into shit like pooltoys and transformation and stuff is enrichment. the vitamins and minerals of posting

once you get over your ass and realise you will never get some people and that’s ok you are basically immune to right wing fearmongering. otherkin? none of my fucking business

I must not fall victim to disgust. Disgust is the heart-killer. Disgust is the little-death that brings total apathy. I will face my disgust. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the disgust has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

My mom likes to tell me about how when I was a little kid riding public transport with her I'd always smile and giggle and chat with weird old ladies who smelled like cat pee and homeless folks and strangers dressed in bizarre outfits but any time a tidy and respectable businessman in a suit and tie waved at me I'd immediately clam up, and she takes a great deal of pride in my supposed inherentability to clock personalities but the truth is I do vaguely remember those bus rides, and it was never about the clothes or the hair or the smell, but more because everyone "strange" asked interesting questions and listened to what I had to say and seemed to think about what I said while the neat and tidy and rigid folks only ever acted like they were going through the motions, which was boring as hell and also pretty annoying