Musings of a Faerie Doll

& also these tags by @milfygerard: #its bc shes a black woman and specifically a rapper so everyones always looking for reasons to treat her like dirt its crazy#also even apart from just liking girls she IS also influenced by queer culture esp ballroom and drag#shes not even woman who happens to be bi like shes clearly inn the community which ppl love to ignore bc they think her dating men gives-#them an excuse to ignore it like fuck you lol <- genuinely unfathomable how people can listen to a song like Body or Her and not realize she's queer.

but who can put it better than the woman herself

My sycamore tree began life in the gravel at the edge of a parking lot. If trees can feel pain, that is a painful, unlucky death. I carefully dug it up and put it in a pot I made out of a disposable cup.

Hello small one. This world may be cruel, but I will not be.

I decided to take care of it, not expecting it to survive, and when my sycamore tree unfurled one tiny leaf and then another, it chiseled a tiny foothold in my terrified brain, the kind of brain that doesn't remember a world before the atomic bomb and before 9/11.

I googled the lifespans of trees. My neurons had to stretch and expand to accommodate what I learned: My sycamore tree may live five hundred years. It's hard to think something so big. In twenty years, my baby sycamore tree will be three stories tall, and the home of many creatures. In five years, my sycamore tree will be taller than I am. In one year, it will be summer.

There's this concept called sense of foreshortened future where people who have lived through trauma can't conceptualize a future for themselves because deep down they don't expect to survive, When I look forward, all I see is fire and death, melting ice and burning sky. We were raised Evangelical. All we see is Judgment Day, except there is no heaven.

But now there is a tiny gap in the wall, a crack in the door of my cell

and on the other side, I see a tree

There is, in the future, a great old sycamore tree, full of clean winds and the stir of a thousand wings. A hundred years from now. Fifty years from now. There will be forests in that world. There will be a world.

It takes courage, but we have to imagine it.

Most tree species can live in excess of three or four hundred years. I think I'm learning something. I think there are ancient voices saying hello small one, touch the dirt and the leaves, for now you are part of something that cannot die

in 2030 I will be thirty years old and the world will not have ended and there will still be hummingbirds, and we will have photos of the stars more beautiful than we can now imagine.

I planted an Eastern Redcedar; they may live nine hundred years. There will be nine hundred years. The people in that time will remember us. Maybe we will meet the aliens (hi aliens!).

I will blow out the candles on many birthday cakes in a world where there are wolves in dark forests far from home. I am learning to imagine the future. I learned recently that elk were reintroduced to the Appalachian Mountains after over a hundred years of extirpation, and that they are expanding their range.

That tiny crack I can see through now opens a tiny bit more:

Maybe elk will pass through my hometown, maybe there will be a forest where the pasture is on the high hill that I can see from my home

say it, say it, say it: ten years, thirty years, a hundred years from now

Wow! Here’s something incredibly personal.

This is Good Bi Gender. A comic I made to express some feelings I have about my gender. I don’t really have that much else to say about it. Here it is.

[Image Description: A digital comic made with sharp, angular abstract lines and only the colors white, blue, pink, and black. The featured character is all white, except for facial features and hair colors, which changes from panel to panel. The comic reads: Cover Panel: The text “Good Bi Gender”, the words colored with the trans flag. It shows a glitchy person’s face, half pink and half blue. Panel 1: White text reads: “Hello. My name is apparently irrelevant. And my pronouns are he/him and she/her. But you can’t call me she/her. And here’s why.” Someone with a half-pink and half-blue shirt looks to the side. One eye is covered with hair, and the other eye is pink while the iris is blue.

Panel 2: The character sits happily, imagining facial hair and a masculine voice. “I don’t want top surgery. I love my chest. And I dream about being on testosterone someday soon.” The character looks at a phone, frowning. The phone shows the male symbol with an “X” through it. Text next to it reads: “People don’t seem to think that the features I dream of are very pretty though… Or they think even worse of them than that…”

Panel 3: The character’s features are all pink, and sits in a blank frame. The character reaches over to a blue frame, frowning. “I don’t like the animosity. I really despise it.” A photo of the character shows an all-blue frame and blue hair, with pink outlines and facial features. “To be a boy… I aspire to be one. I aspire to be masculine in all its handsomeness. All its prettiness.” Panel 4: The character sits in an all blue panel, but reaches back out to the pink panel. “And I’m still a girl too. I was so excited to have both. To love both. To have handsome femininity. Beautiful masculinity.” The frames break and connect, and pink and blue swirl together. The character smiles in between the frames, with one pink eye and one blue eye. “So excited. And yet I get asked…”

Panel 5: Two hands hold out two different pills to the character, one blue and one pink. They ask “Male? or Female?” using the male and female symbols.The character, facial features an array of pink and blue, looks between the two hands, distressed. “It’s both! I’m both! They’re not opposites. Not narrow boxes. I say I’m both despite the insistence that I can’t be. And I know what I look like. I know I look like a girl to most. I know that if I say people can call me she, that’s all I will get from most. Because it’s “easier”. It “makes more sense”. To have my masculinity, I am often forced to be unflinching in it and it alone. To never use she. Because if I don’t, I will never get to have he.” [The words “she” and “he” are italicized.] Panel 6: Text reads: “I’m still very happy to be so comfortable in my identity. To know, despite all that, that I am indeed a boy and a girl and both. But you know. Telling people to only use he/him for me. Guarding my masculinity all just to have it. All at the expense of the part of me who is happily and unashamedly a girl.” The character cries from one pink eye, the other hidden. The character holds a pink girl in a sea of blue, the girl crying out. In the midst of the blue, text reads: “Well, it fucking breaks her heart.” End ID]

You know, the one who brought home an inordinate number of animals over the course of my mom's childhood.

Longtime followers might have noticed it's been quiet here lately and that's because I've added several dozen animals to my household. Our beloved Ginger cat Mochi passed away in March from a kidney infection and it was. Emotionally devastating. Since there was a cat-shaped hole in my home, I talked with with several rescue agencies, and drove to Texas on Easter Weekend to collect my beautiful daughter Selene:

Selene is three apples tall, weighs less than a gallon of milk, and sits comfortably at the top of the animal dominance hierarchy. Selene's hobbies are Rodent Destruction Simulator (toys), Reptile Pursuit Simulator (String on a flypole), and wedging herself into crevices. The dogs instinctively fear her, but lately Herschel the Corgi has started to be brave about playing string with her, and she makes a point of greeting Charlie the Yes when he comes in from the yard.

Since Selene is a very energetic baby with a healthy appetite for recreational violence, we did have a bit of a problem with her deciding that the humans were he favorite toys and playing with us a little too hard. On the recommendation of our vet, we got her a Playmate:

Helios (actually answers to Sunny) is approximately 5years old, and has the Size, Sweetness and Intellectual Fortitude of a Honeybaked Ham. He has the proportions of Johnny Bravo and none of his executives are functioning. Sunny's Hobbies are watching TV (His favorite movie is Fantasia 1940, specifically the Toccata and Fugue In D Minor), getting in the way of D&D, and demanding we all go to bed at 9PM.

He's about 5, but had a rough start- his former owners surrendered him when they moved, didn't do a good job box-training him, and declawed his front paws. He is extremely spoiled now, but does have to live with an inexplicably heavily armed teenager who wants to play Violence with him.

Neither of these cats Meows. Selene beeps and trills like some sort of adorable futuristic robot and Sunny very quietly honks and quacks like a very polite goose. I also decided to manifest a dream I've had since I was about 7:

If you've never kept fish before some notes:

Fishkeeping is a TERRIBLE introduction to pet ownership, but a GREAT introduction if you want to learn Ecology, Chemistry, Zoology, Structural Engineering, Botany, Interior Design and Economics all at once

Which perhaps sounds daunting but if you also need something that is intellectually engaging, forces you to learn time management and budgeting skills, and will alleviate your depression by giving you a project that rewards you with actual, literal growth, I cannot recommend a better hobby against The Current Miasma

I am not kidding about the Interior Design and Structural Engineering. 1 gallon of water weighs about 10lbs so the smallest acceptable tanks weigh at least 50lbs when full, usually more, and more than say, an Ikea Bookshelf can reliably bear. The GOOD tanks start at 200lbs and need to be placed where they can be filled and drained for water changes, near an outlet for lights/filtering/heat/air pump, and on a floor that can handle the weight of both the tank and the stand

Prices and product quality control being what they are, you might need to build your own stand so add Carpentry to that list too

Fishkeeping can be ...expensive

It can be a lot less expensive if you casually mention you're interested in the hobby, because half a dozen fishkeepers will pop out of the woodwork and start offering you their old tanks and equipment as well as excess plants and livestock, but this will also make you Beholden To Your Local Fishkeeping Community

which is not necessarily Bad

...but it may mean needing to rapidly set up an emergency tank for a Surprise Betta your friend who does hazardous building cleanup found in the back of an abandoned trap house, for instance

If you do not already have one, you will develop a deep and profound hatred for the pet industry and how they will outright lie to people about fish, especially bettas.

You will also become very emotionally attached to Shrimp

Come join me it's fun I promise :)

Ok this post is already a mile long so read the Alt text for descriptions of my Tank Denizens:

Relatedly, the best place to put a fish tank is the bathroom because the sink is RIGHT THERE for water changes, it's got the water-resistant flooring and outlets, and you're garunteed to be in there a few times a day so you will be checking on the tank.

Also, Premium Ringside Seating! I'm a goddamn Genius.

Hey everyone,

It's Your Local Bardic entity, Gallus Rostromengalus of Bread Jesus and other Weird Tumblr Story Fame.

Despite my best efforts to mitigate mt Terrible English Dental DNA, today two of my teeth broke.

I don't even have a fun story about this, it's literally terrible genetics and stress-grinding my teeth in my sleep.

I just got back from emergency surgery to get the pieces pulled and the hole in my jaw closed so I don't get an infection, but a second reconstruction surgery to give me a bone graft and dental implants will be needed so I can actually chew and use my mouth for it's intended purposes.

I do not currently have dental insurance. I haven't talked about it here much, but my husband was unemployed after getting laid off for almost all of last year. He has a job again, but it pays like 2/3rds of his previous one and the benefits are crap. Like no dental insurance until he's worked there at least a year.

So I'm on the hook for the full cost of Today's emergency surgery, Medication, and the necessary follow-up reconstruction, which my dentist estimates will cost between $5000-$7000. Our dentist has given us every discount she can and we have a payment plan, but losing half our household income has left us with no savings and credit cards at their limits. Even though I only need to come up with $500 this month to go ahead with the reconstructive surgery, I do not have any money to spare. It will also be VASTLY cheaper overall to pay for everything up front rather than pay interest over the months with the payment plan, but literally anything will help me right now.

Link To My GoFundMe

Link To My Ko-Fi

Thank you all so much, Gallus

Deep voice, big muscles, Tall

Because:

A) I see it around the Internet where the proportions are off, and I think people are copy/pasting from different thumbnail images that come up in search results, and not clicking through to get the original. It's not a big deal, but it causes a hiccup in my brain whenever I see it.

and

B) There's been some discussion in the Disability Community here on Tumblr on what the precise symbolism should be, and it's changed a bit and gotten complicated. So I want to simplify and broaden it, so it can be explained to curious Normate folk -- without going into a 15 minute explanation of social constructs.

So I'm making a fresh post right now to put all that stuff together.

I'm gonna leave the detailed description of the flag design's proportions just in the alt text (so that people with screen readers know what they are, without having to listen to it twice)

The width of each colored stripe is proportional to the overall width of the flag, but I decided to leave the general proportions of the flag flexible (so it's easier for people to make one based on what materials they can find -- just in case there's a need for a protest sign for a pop-up rally).

The Meaning (Short Version -- what to tell someone who asks while you're waiting for the elevator)

6 colors represent how the Disability Community is Global

The 5 colors in the middle represent how diverse that community is

The black is inspired by pirate flags: rage at injustice, fighting back

The stripes are diagonal to represent cutting through barriers.

The in-depth reasons behind the meaning (Long Version -- If you actually want a 15+ minute discussion of social constructs and history)

(Please subtract one vote from the third option -- that's just me, the poll-maker, wanting to track the votes as time goes on)

[Dreamwidth lets poll-makers see results automatically, BTW]

#I am of the opinion that *all* disabilities don't get enough recognition as-is [...] #I say this as a person who can be fully able-passing (for short amounts of time)

@strangestructures made similar points in (excellent) replies to this post, especially how any disability can be made "invisible" depending on what resources a person has access to, or the context of what they're doing and when.

Back when I was still in the first stages of designing a disability pride flag (when I was still focused on the cursed zigzag design), and I was still thinking of representation in terms of different medical conditions, I only had four stripes, and someone asked me to add a fifth, for invisible disabilities.

I'm glad Ryan was Ken because now we can have a screen accurate Ryland Grace face sculpt

I put the shirt fabric straight through the printer and for the jumpsuit patches i used transfer paper

Putting rocky outside to dry i was afraid someone would steal it so i took some pictures there, my hand for scale

sneakily putting them on the wife's desk while she naps

her finding it

for context: I started playing violin when I was five years old. Am I great? Nah. Am I able to tell when an actor is phoning it in on violin playing? Absolutely.