Untitled

“My nephew had the best interruption while trying to do his homework“

tumblr: oh! so he’s gay!

writer: uh…no, he’s attracted to women.

tumblr: ….so he’s bi!

writer: uhh…no…….he loves his guy friends but he’s not romantically/sexually attracted to them.

tumblr: ….so you’re homophobic.

writer:

for not reblogging it sooner.

“but sex is what makes us human!”

  in 1916 a French officer in his twenties writes his

doctoral dissertation under

heavy mortar fire.

he sends it by mail, a page

at a time, to his wife.

a week before he’s to step up to the podium and

defend his work rather than his country

he is killed in action.

even as the bullets rip

through him he still wishes he could have become a professor

in French literature and

the university awards him a posthumous Ph.D.

sex is

  a woman breaks down in tears on the phone because

a week is not enough time to

get over a breakup.

her sister drives an hour across town,

comes up the front steps with

a gallon of ice cream and some beer

and together they eat moose tracks and marathon

every

single

Godzilla movie

ever made.

  sex is

she’s late for work but her car isn’t

starting and even through her coat and hat she’s cold.

she knows she can’t be late again because she’s missed

one time too many already because her

father’s nurse was sick with the flu and someone

needed to help him bathe.

the clock ticks past fifteen after and she hits

the wheel like it’s a heavy bag as though that will help

steps on the gas like the car will go

and wonders how she will pay rent

and how she will feed her father.

sex is

  it takes three people to hold the predator down because

even with the cover over his head

a bleeding eye and shattered wing

he is trying to hurt them.

none of them have seen this bird before in their lives but

they bandage his wing and head and give him a painkiller and

put him in a warm place to sleep and heal because

it is right.

at first he is paralyzed and cannot

fly but soon he is taking steps

and then fluttering, and then soaring, and

six months later he is whole and healed and hunting.

once he is gone they never see him again

which means they’ve done their jobs right.

sex is

  in 1969 a girl watches grey-and-white footage on her parents’ tiny television and

can’t quite believe that what she is seeing is not a movie set but

another planet.

the men on the screen look a little like

aliens with bulbous heads and no faces and fat

marshmallow arms

but they are still men.

her mother puffs on a cigarette behind her and declares that

this is progress

even if it was just a small step.

the girl grows up to be not an astronaut but a secretary

and her boss calls her ‘sweetheart’.

but sex is

  a boy is taught that real men don’t cry so

he doesn’t.

when his best friend dies from a self-inflicted

gunshot wound, he locks himself

in the shower every day and sobs under scalding

water until it runs cold

so nobody will see him grieving

so nobody will see that tears are just love that

has no place left to go.

he learns to dull love rather than suppress its expression and

soon the owner of the liquor store knows him by name.

three DUIs, two evictions, and twelve steps later,

he is feeding people at a homeless shelter,

and telling them it’s all right to cry.

Sex is

  the broken man tells the comedian

that he didn’t mean to step in front of the car but the rain

made it hard to see.

he seems okay but his leg

does not.

the comedian clutches a grubby receipt with the driver’s

plate number scrawled on the back

in pink pen, stands out in the rain so the broken man

can have his umbrella,

and gives him the comedy routine that ruined his career

so the man doesn’t think about the pain in his leg.

once he’s out of the hospital, the fixed man sends him a thank-you card

with kittens on it.

what makes us human

  yawning is contagious,

and there is a species of bird whose young we call “pufflings”.

melodic collections of sound, spaced by silence,

can move us to tears.

the tallest building in the world is

two-thousand seven-hundred and seventeen feet tall.

in less than eighty years we went from our first powered flight

to touching the moon,

and in one-hundred from the first phone call

to instantaneous connection between thinking machines of our own creation.

we make pies out of tree organs

and let cow’s milk ferment until it hardens and then

we put them together, because apple pie with cheddar cheese isdelicious.

what makes us human is

the earliestfossils of anatomically modern humans are

two-hundred thousand years old .

we have had pet dogs

for sixteen-thousand of those years, longer

than corn

or the wheel.

the steps we take are part of

one of the most energy-efficient gaits the

animal kingdom has ever seen.

we invented the concepts of love

and hate

and justice, and mercy

and we invented the language to convey them.

we sharpened rocks, then metal, to convince other people

who don’t hold the same idea of those things as we do

because we think

it’s right.

we are two hundred millennia of love and disappointment and

sorrow and innovation and

mercy and kindness and dreams

and failure

and recovery.

I call myself queer because before we knew who we were or how we loved or what was beautiful about us we knew that we were weird. We hid. The art teacher unlocked her room for us to eat lunch in, where no one would hurt us Twenty years later, we’ve learned our particular strengths Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, oh god, who knows, I just love who I love I just wear what I want. We’re not children anymore. We’ve had space to run. We stayed alive by knowing we were weird By knowing the bleachers weren’t a safe place to eat By seeking collective shelter.

I call myself queer because by now there are enough of us you could fill my middle school gymnasium over, and over– when we riot, we have to delegate crowd control. My girlfriend carries a first-aid kit. I carry water. We send messages forward, move the wounded back.

I am queer because there are enough of us that I can stop running, because I have an army at my back. I can turn around and face them. I’m louder than the man on the bus now. Take those kids off those bleachers and they aren’t so tall.

I ask, I’m queer. So what? They look over my shoulder. My girlfriend, she’s a pacifist. When her friends punch a Nazi, she’ll glue up his lip. It’s not the same thing as standing between him and them,  just a particular approach to this problem. It’s just saying: When they’re through with you I have bandages. They look at my army. I ask, You got a problem with that, punk?

While you want to bang your head on the table and go “OKAY LOOK I THOUGHT I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE ONE WHO HAS TROUBLE WITH EMPATHY.”

“wake up,” she urged the dummy, pressing her hands to the pulse points on its wrists. “come on. what the fuck.”

“yeah, i don’t think that asking nicely is going to do the trick,” hank said, his eyebrows raised. his helmet, the special one they’d decorated for him with craft supplies from michael’s when he’d gotten promoted to firestation chief, sat askew on his head. “i can see now why they didn’t pass you.”

annabelle rolled her eyes. “it’s a psychological thing,” she said. “it’s like, you give the brain an instruction and it follows naturally. and the pulse-point thing always works. i don’t know why it’s not, like, in any of the books, but i swear to god it’s worked for me every time.”

it was true that annabelle had the best record on low body counts, which was good because she was the smallest person on the team not counting Georgie, who was a corgi. jake and lillian were always making fun of her for having been the shortest of their whole rookie class. but it hadn’t ever been a problem before; annabelle rarely had to carry anybody out, because she was good enough at getting them on their feet.

but none of that would matter if she couldn’t pass her stupid recertification exam, because they’d take her badge and she’d have to go be, like, a doctor or something.

hank blew out a long breath and sunk down to where she was kneeling on the station floor in full fire gear, giving CPR to the practice dummy, whom they called dierdre. there was a little light that went on when you’d saved its life. it had been a dull gray for an hour now.

“look, AB. i know you’re a good firefighter, and i know you know how to deliver CPR. just do it like you do it during an emergency. you’re overthinking it.”

“but this is what i do during an emergency!” annabelle cried, throwing her hands up. “i put my hands on their pulse points and i use psychological mumbo-jumbo and they just get up and walk!” 

hank blinked. “…really,” he said, voice flat. “people who’ve been inhaling smoke for half an hour just … get up and walk.”

“the brain is an incredibly powerful organ,” said annabelle, shrugging. “look man, i don’t know, okay? but it works. i haven’t had to actually do CPR in like a year and a half.”

he gave her a long, quiet look and said, “well….huh,” before pushing himself back up onto his feet and frowning off into the distance. “keep practicing,” he said after a minute, and left her there.

-

hank switched her team.

“what the fuck, man,” she said, sliding into the truck next to him as the sirens went on. “i can’t get CPR on one fucking dummy and suddenly you don’t trust me to do my job without supervision?”

carl and bethany very carefully did not meet her eyes in the rearview from the backseat. bethany pulled a magazine from beneath the seat and said loudly, “look, carl, jennifer aniston and brad pitt are getting back together.”

“thank christ,” said carl. “i’ve been really worried about jen.”

hank gave annabelle the flat look that had gotten him promoted to firestation chief in the first place, the one that said i’m your dad and you don’t want to disappoint me. as always, annabelle wilted underneath it, sliding down in her seat and crossing her arms over her chest. it was a difficult feat in full gear but she wanted him to know she was feeling sullen.

“i trust you completely,” hank told her, his voice a light scold. “i want to see you in action so i can help you figure out what’s going wrong with the dummies. sometimes it’s hard for the brain to accurately remember everything that happens during a crisis.”

annabelle rolled her eyes. “i told you,” she said. “it’s just – it’s the same thing every time, I’m not like, blacking out.”

“great, then i’m about to learn a cool new trick,” hank said serenely, and pulled the truck out of the lot. annabelle kept her gaze focused out of the window, watching the city pass as carl and bethany talked loudly about which celebrities were dating which other celebrities and who wore what better. she tried to swallow down the nerves that tightened her throat. maybe the dummy was right. maybe she was doing something else and didn’t remember it. maybe the last two years had been a fluke and she had no business being a firefighter. maybe she was about to get fired.

there wasn’t a fire, though the alarm was going off. instead they found a bag of smoking popcorn and the collapsed heap of a forty-five year old bachelor type, down to just his boxers and a pair of slippers with llamas on them. he had no pulse. 

hank held carl and bethany back, directing them to deal with the smoke from the popcorn; annabelle he pointed toward the resident with a jerk of his chin. 

she sighed, kneeling by his side. she pressed her hands flat to his heart and then dragged them across his chest and down each arm, to his wrists. with her thumbs on his pulse point, she hissed, “let’s go, man. up and at ’em. you’re not meant to die in your underwear while cooking popcorn, come on.”

she held her breath for a few moments, conscious of hank’s eyes on her, and let out a long sigh of relief when she felt his pulse jump beneath her, watched his eyes flicker. “what the fuck?” he asked, voice a croak. “what happened?”

“you gotta eat more vegetables, bud,” annabelle told him, and looped his arm over her shoulders to help him get to his feet. she was so relieved she could have wept, but instead met hank’s eyes with a challenging glare. see? she thought. i told you. “let’s get you to the ambulance.”

-

“the bad news is that you have a lot of practicing to do if you want to pass your recert,” hank said without preamble, showing up at her apartment. she didn’t think she’d ever seen him in jeans before. it was weird. “the good news is i understand your problem now.”

annabelle stepped aside, beckoning him in. “what problem?” she demanded. “it worked! you saw it work. that’s the opposite of a problem.”

hank shrugged. he handed her a trifold that he’d clearly printed off at home. it said so you think you’re a necromancer. annabelle blinked down at it, and then up at hank, and then down at the trifold again. “i … don’t understand what’s happening here,” she told him honestly. 

“i’m not in the community and they’re kind of cagey, so i can’t really tell you a lot,” hank told her, stilted and visibly uncomfortable. “but i have a cousin who is, and um, i just want you to know that this doesn’t change anything. you’re still who you’ve always been and you have my complete support. we’ll figure out how to get around the recert. maybe i’ll – i can put you on admin duty to give you time to study. we’ll say it’s because of an injury.”

“hank,” annabelle said, with some urgency. “hank, this flier says the word necromancer.”

“yes,” agreed hank, looking relieved. “oh, good, you’ve heard of it already. i thought i was going to have to have the whole your body is changing talk.”

annabelle shook her head. “no, i – hank. you know that … um, you know that necromancy isn’t real, right? people can’t bring other people back from the dead. that’s crazy.”

“annabelle, not four hours ago you instructed a dead man to stand up and he did.”

“okay, he wasn’t dead, obviously. he was almost dead, at best.”

“no. he was dead.”

“i felt his pulse! it was very faint!”

“you called his pulse. no one else would have felt it, because it wasn’t there except in response to you.”

“hank, what the fuck.”

he shrugged. “read the flier,” he instructed. “and bring dierdre home with you. you’re going to have to practice a lot if you want to get recertified, considering you haven’t one time had to use any of the skills you learned the first go around.”

he bussed her temple as he went by, letting himself out of her apartment with a friendly wave. annabelle looked down at the flier in her hand with a frown. when she unfolded it, the first page said, everyone’s necromancy journey is different, but most people discover their gift by accident. have you ever brought a pet back to life? touched an elderly relatives hand and seen some of the color flood back into their face? or perhaps, more subtly, been able to keep cut flowers alive long past their purchase date?

annabelle looked at her kitchen table. she’d had the same vase of tulips on it since she moved in, three years ago. it was true they periodically started to wilt, but she usually just changed their water and they were fine, popping back up one after the other as she slid them into the fresh vase. 

A cute Blowfish-inspired mermaid, who’s actually slim but will get all chubby and spiky when angry or scared! x’D I think she’s ADORABLE, and you? ♥

tatterdemalionamberite:

We need a word for the thing where one person is genuinely, earnestly convinced of a thing, but expresses it in a way which runs roughshod over another person’s lived experience and damages their sense of reality, WITHOUT malicious intent. Essentially: person A is not gaslighting, but person B feels gaslighted.

I suggest “marshlighting”.

(Look up “ignis fatuus” or marsh lights: unlike gaslights, they occur naturally and are no one’s fault, but the person who sees them can still be bewildered, misled, confused and disturbed by the experience.)

Marshlighting can be the result of neurotype clashes or people being triggered enough to lose sight of reality while attempting to communicate. Sometimes it is mutual. It is, by its nature, an accidental injury; but the injured party or parties can have genuine trauma from it.

Yes, but also a lot of the time when people engage in gaslighting and other psychologically abusive behaviors, their intent is not consciously malicious. They’re not thinking, “I’m going to make you feel crazy.” It’s a defense mechanism to avoid feelings of guilt or vulnerability. The intent is not to cause harm, but to maintain control. Which is not to say that there’s never conscious malicious intent, because that definitely happens, but not always.

No. If they aren’t doing it on purpose, it cannot be gaslighting, because the entire fucking point of that term is to refer to intentional deception intended to undermine someone’s sense of reality.

If you believe what you’re saying, you cannot be gaslighting someone, period.

Tumblr does this weird thing where they want to make things that can be explained as a result of mental illness as only something that should be forgiven and worked around, and not harmful. But that just isn’t the case. Most abusers also suffer from some form of mental illness; many of them are abuse survivors themselves. Abusers will often leverage their mental illness or troubled past to garner pity from their victim. One almost universal tactic of abusers as romantic partners is to make their victim feel as if they are the only ones who can understand and love the abuser, with the victim explaining away the abusive behavior with the abuser’s mental illness/troubled past.

So, yes, sometimes a person can experience gaslighting when it’s not actually happening, but just because someone doesn’t have the conscious intention to gaslight someone doesn’t mean that’s not what they’re doing.

But feminine afab nonbinaries? Masculine amab nonbinaries? Ha! Good fucking luck to us. And it really does not matter if we’re talking cis people or binary trans people.

Story time: I had dinner last night with some cis friends I’ve known for almost three years, great people. They’ve always known me as nonbinary, as using they/them pronouns, etc. they’re great with my pronouns…or so I thought. Come to find out they almost exclusively use she/her pronouns for me behind my back (even in spaces where others know I’m nonbinary) because they have a hard time viewing me as nonbinary. Because I’m feminine.

Another story: my androgynous nonbinary friend once disparaging told me and my wife (both nonbinary) that we’re lucky we’re “cis passing”, as if constantly fighting to be recognized as yourself is somehow fun.

Yet another story: my trans woman roommate once told me and my wife “the further along I get into my transition the harder it is to see you two as anything other than women”.

ANOTHER fun story: having a cis person refuse to cast you in a role meant for nonbinary people because “you don’t really look nonbinary enough”

And I don’t doubt for a second that nonbinary amab people who express themselves in a more masculine fashion have to deal with the same. shit. I really, REALLY need people to stop acting like all afab nonbinaries are always accepted, because we’re fucking not! If we don’t look like the stereotypical nonbinary people it’s a constant struggle, it’s being erased, it’s being overlooked, it’s feeling betrayed by the people who you thought you could count on, it’s feeling like you don’t belong in your own fucking community.

Hi! Sorry for the late response; I KO’d shortly after all those banana questions and work’s been crazy busy. (It’s planting season!)

Never mind that other one

Who are these people?

Bottom row, second from the right released a pigeon in the room and is waiting for someone to find it.

Bottom row, far right doesn’t know why he’s in this picture but he’s happy to be included.

Top row, far right sees the pigeon but hasn’t realized what it is yet.

Top row, second from the right sees the pigeon and recognizes a good prank when she sees it.

Top row, second from left has also released a pigeon and is realizing that someone else did the same thing.