Elven Intersex

Anyways! HERE'S YOUR HANDY GUIDE TO WHAT CAN COUNT AS EYESTRAIN! I'm pulling this straight from the Artfight rules page about what needs to be labeled and filtered as eyestrain because it's VERY helpful and VERY accurate! I also know not everybody has an AF account and might not always have access to this handy guide, and this is an important resource; That's why I'm sharing it here! (under the cut)

PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!!! THIS IS ABOUT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF OTHERS!!!

and I'm like....... okay that is a perfectly normal way to describe energy and reads totally clear to me, but I KNOW you don't mean hit points/health points which is the first place my brain goes, so what are YOU using hp to mean

and it's not explained in-text, which means it was common enough to not warrant explanation to the 1908 audience, so gotta look elsewhere

horsepower. turns out it's horsepower.

and I'm absolutely FASCINATED that a commonly used initialism from 1908 now stands for something different AND YET the contextual meaning is still the same to a 21st-century reader

I could hand this guy my nintendo switch and he'd be like, ah yes I understand, this ''''pokemon'''' loses horsepower throughout the fight

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

So first of all this one girl told us about a newer metaphor in Russian, "I have paws", which is something you say when you don't really want to do something, so you say you're incapable of doing it since you have paws instead of hands. Like, "hey, finish that report" "aw but I have paws :(" and I think that's adorable. It has "I'm just a girl" energy without the misogyny.

We also had the task to invent a novel metaphor and have the others guess what it means, and the teacher really liked my "she's such a capybara" = "everyone loves her". Capybara energy is like golden retriever energy except you're chill about it. You're just vibing and everyone digs that.

Anyway, reading this book now for the first time from a consciously trans perspective, I found this passage from The Ainulindalë really fascinating:

But when they desire to clothe themselves the Valar take upon them forms some as of male and some as of female; for that difference of temper they had even from their beginning, and it is but bodied forth in the choice of each, not made by the choice, even as with us male and female may be shown by the raiment but is not made thereby.

I’m sure this can be interpreted in more than one way, but the text absolutely leaves room for a gender-nonessentialist and perhaps even trans reading. This passage seems to be saying at least two things:

Gender is something that the gods can both choose their expression of (“bodied forth in the choice of each”) and have as an identity separate from and pre-existing their physical forms (“that difference of temper they had even from their beginning”); and,

The physical forms they take do not actually define or determine their gender (“male and female may be shown by the raiment [i.e., the outward, bodily manifestation] but is not made thereby”).

(It’s true that we never actually see any trans Valar or Maiar; since they have the ability to choose their outward forms, it seems unlikely they would ever choose ones that didn’t match their gender. But if the basic nature of gender we see here (having an identity and yet having a nondefining or nondeterministic relationship between their outer form and this identity) is true of them, it stands to reason it would be true of the Children of Ilúvatar—elves and humans—as well, whom the gods were explicitly imitating in taking their physical forms.)

canon is what happens in the text. e.g. merlin tries to poison morgana

a headcanon is a fact that you have personally made up as an elaboration of canon. it is your invention. e.g. i think morgana and gwen had a teenage lesbian situationship before the events of canon. or, i think modern morgana would love evanesence.

an interpretation is how one reads the existing text. it is not an invented fact nor is it a headcanon, it is a reading. e.g. i think merlin tries to poison morgana out of misplaced self-hatred. or, i think that one line was delivered with suppressed malice and shows a nuanced relationship.

fanon is the general fandom’s accepted headcanons and interpretations that elaborate or recontextualize canon. e.g. merlin is a badass waif and morgana is a bitch.