three kids in a disco jumpsuit

unauthorized fucking thing!!!!!!

(warning: loud chirping throughout)

I really just have to summarize Thomas's entire life:

He was in a committed relationship with a male swan named Henry for 18-24 years before a female swan named Henrietta showed up and mated with Henry.

Thomas was initially jealous of the pair and attacked them, breaking 2 of the 5 eggs Henrietta had laid. However, once the remaining eggs hatched, Thomas warmed up to them and helped raise them.

Henry couldn't fly because of an injured wing, so Thomas taught the cygnets how to fly.

When they needed to reduce the goose population in the pond where Thomas and the swans lived, they dyed Thomas's feathers red so he wouldn't be separated from Henry.

Henry, Henrietta, and Thomas remained in their happy throuple for years and raised 68 cygnets before Henry died in 2009. After Henry's death, Henrietta found another swan and flew away, leaving Thomas alone.

Thomas finally met and mated with a female goose in 2011 and had his own babies. However, another goose named George stole them and raised them himself.

As Thomas grew elderly and blind, he was relocated to a wildlife center where he raised orphaned cygnets.

His caretaker at the center described him as "pretty high maintenance."

Thomas died in 2018 at the age of around 40. He had a funeral that included a small coffin and a procession that was led by a bagpiper. He was buried under the stone where Henry was buried, the two finally reunited in death.

Yeah you're cute when you sleep but you didn't let me sleep either so I'm going to annoy you now because I'm bored. Hahah get poked, sleepy idiot.

How do you not comprehend this when I am literally staring at you. Like I understand that your brain can't understand things this nuanced but come on, how do you not get this.

I don't know if you know that what I am currently doing is an expression of affection, but that won't stop me. Knowing that I showed you that I love you is enough.

I heard a crinkly material and the sound of you chewing so I have to know what's in your mouth RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

I can't communicate with you and you can't communicate with me, so I'm just copying the tone of the sound you're making in hopes that you understand that I try.

You are doing activities beyond my comprehension, and I find this fascinating. I will never understand what the fuck you are trying to achieve here, but I am intrigued nonetheless.

they perform as well as expensive HEPA air cleaners, and are comparatively VERY inexpensive. all you need is a box fan, 4 air filters, a piece of cardboard, and some duct tape!!!!

Who’s this fucking skeleton trying to hoard all the cave treasure for himself

The signs and every far-off voice implore, The heart, the mind, the flattened lungs agree: There’s nothing in this cave worth dying for. 

Just airless dark. Just bones on the sea floor. The fruitless search. Your mother on TV. There’s nothing in this cave worth dying for. 

A picture that you saw some years before, A diver in a sea-beneath-the-sea… There’s nothing in this cave worth dying for. 

An underwater river in whose bore Were caught the branches of a sunken tree. There’s nothing in this cave worth dying for. 

Dear Representative [Name],

I am writing to express my strong opposition to H.R. 8250 (The "Parents Decide Act"). As your constituent and a concerned citizen, I believe this bill introduces unprecedented risks to digital privacy and security.

Specifically, I am alarmed by:

SEC. 2(a)(1)(B): Requiring age verification to even use an operating system creates a mandatory "hardware lockout" that ends anonymous computing and forces users to hand over sensitive identification data to major corporations just to power on their devices.

SEC. 2(a)(3): Mandating that OS providers create a system for all app developers to access verification data is a massive security vulnerability. This effectively creates a centralized API of user identities accessible to thousands of third-party developers, many of whom may lack adequate data protection.

This bill does not protect children; it creates a centralized surveillance infrastructure at the OS level. I urge you to protect the privacy of your constituents and vote NO on H.R. 8250.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

Given that, in the wake of this mandatory identification policy, my country seems to be moving to hand over its citizens biometric data, like fingerprints, Face ID files, and identification documents, over to the USA and to ICE to maintain the visa free travel (ESTA) we have, I strongly urge any US resident to send these emails, or make calls.

But if you can’t do that, the most powerful thing you can do is spread the word. Tell your friends, family, coworkers, anyone who can help.

My reach will likely be small, and so I don’t know if this will mean very much in the grand scheme of things, but I cannot stand to see this tracking happen to another population as it did to mine.

And if you think it won’t affect you, it will. All anonymity goes out the window when your accounts can be linked via your personal ID

extra funny in this case because i believe my AO3 username was listed in the bio at the back of Yield Under Great Persuasion lmaooooo

They also straight up have words and social roles for people we'd now probably classify under the transfeminine umbrella, the galli. These were AMAB people who voluntarily underwent castration, dressed in women's clothes/jewelry/makeup, and were priests and worshippers of a particular religious cult to the goddess Cybele/Magna Mater, and Attis, her consort. (There is a character in the book who is a gallus! She is the emperor's augur, meaning she makes divinations based on observing the flight of birds. Important person to bring along on a quest.) Here is a statue of a gallus looking extremely cool:

But all of that is sort of.... normal to us? Like we get it, we understand that, we go "Oh, yeah, it's like this other idea we already know about," it fits into our mental model, it does not challenge us to bend our brains in any weird yoga poses.

"Vir" is the thing that will do that. "Vir" is often translated as just "man" but this is bad and lacks the weight of certain encoded subtleties. It is one of two words that means man, the other being "homo" (as in homo sapiens), but the vibes of that one are more generally just "a person (nonspecific)". "Vir", however, has extremely specific vibes, because it is not just "a man" as we would think of the concept today. A vir MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST possess ALL of the following traits to qualify as a vir:

adult

freeborn

male-bodied

CITIZEN!!!!!!!

with intact genitals

(behaves correctly as a vir)

If he's a teenage freeborn AMAB citizen, he's not a vir (yet). If he's an adult freeborn transmasculine citizen, he's not a vir. If he's a slave or a freedman or an immigrant (aka Not A Citizen), he's not a vir. If he used to be a vir and then got castrated (either by misadventure or as punishment for a crime), then oops he's not a vir anymore, he's a semivir (half-man). If he is a vir but he doesn't act reputably and adhere to the Required Gender Norms, then he's on THIN FUCKING ICE and should stop immediately and get his act together before his paterfamilias disowns him for Betraying The Vir Code.

From the word "vir" we get words like "virtue" (aka the qualities a vir should have), and "virile" (a vir's ability to be Fucking). This is also where we get words like "triumvirate" (a governing body comprised of three viri) -- which, when you realize what "vir" implies, REALLY showcases how unequivocally other genders were excluded from being full participants in government. Couldn't be elected to public office unless you were a vir!

The thing that makes this incredibly *GENDER* is that there were mandatory anxious toxic masculinity expectations forced on the viri that other AMAB people did not have to comply with. The Romans were out here conceptualizing gender as being something that was as much informed by your SOCIAL CLASS as it was by physical sex. So a male slave, freedman, or foreigner could (for example) refrain from shaving his armpits, and it doesn't really matter. Meanwhile, if you are a vir, you DO have to shave at least your armpits to be behaving Properly. JUST ARMPITS. If you shave your legs or your chest or your pubes, then [middle school voice] EW that's Gay. (The Romans' concept of vir-masculinity was very much a VERY FRAUGHT AND TENUOUS AND ANXIOUS attempt to find a Goldilocks zone in the midst of constantly shifting goalposts. If you're not manly enough, obviously that's gay and bad, we still have this concept today. BUT IF YOU ARE TOO MANLY THAT IS ALSO GAY AND BAD. Gladiators??? A super shredded mega-hot gladiator who's drowning in pussy? The viri are like, "Gay. Gay of him. Unmanly. Effeminate. Ew yuckie no no no." We do not have an upper limit on "how much masculinity is good" in our culture, we sort of think "the more the better" and that's why everyone's horny for a lumberjack.)

A lot of the time people are like "The Romans didn't have homophobia! They only had bottomphobia :D" but actually they DO have homophobia once you account for the fact that "vir" is a separate gender from "servus" (male slave), "libertus" (male freedman), or "peregrinus" (male foreigner/immigrant/other non-citizen), etc. A vir can fuck any of those genders, AND any of the AFAB-aligned genders, AND the galli, AND intersex people and that is perfectly fine and normal and Roman Heterosexual of him. Why is it fine? Because the default cultural assumption is that the vir will be topping. A vir absolutely must top, viri who do not top get mocked and made laughingstocks in satirical plays. This is catastrophic to them. They would genuinely prefer to die in battle, even though it's kind of gay to get stabbed when you think about it because that's basically another man penetrating you????? Cringe. Cringe and effeminate to be stabbed.

Actual Roman homosexuality would be a vir fucking another vir--someone of his own gender. This absolutely cannot happen, because then [GASP] ONE OF THEM WOULD HAVE TO NOT TOP. Morality crisis. Philosophers throughout the empire are clutching their pearls and scribbling the ancient equivalent of Reddit posts about how one time they heard about a guy (vir) who fucked his friend (another vir) and it's Probably Because Of Moral Bankruptcy Such As This That Society Is Collapsing Before Our Eyes, We Live In The End Times If Viri Think It's Okay To Kiss Each Other With Tongue, The Only Thing Morally Worse Than This Is How All the Twinks Are Becoming Gold-diggers (we can't get into the twink golddiggers panic of the 2nd century right now. it's about the viri buying twink boytoy sex slaves and then leaving them their entire vast fortunes in their wills when they died. Seneca the Younger had a Reddit tantrum about it)

basically the Romans did not INVENT toxic masculinity but they did perfect it and raise it to an art form. absolute slapstick comedy clown shit. Don't kiss your wife in public, that's gay. Don't fuck too much. Don't fuck too little. Don't fuck other men's wives. Don't chase pussy. Don't be too fashionable, don't be too unfashionable, don't belt your toga too tightly, don't scratch your nose in public, DEFINITELY do not be an actor, do not play music or dance in public. You can be an orator but that's still a bit sus tbh, because it's LIKE performing in public like an actor, and that's BASICALLY the same as prostituting yourself. Don't comb your hair too much. don't comb your hair too little. Don't be unkempt. Don't be too well-groomed.

[holds up the viri proudly like a naughty cat, stinky bastard man] they are making themselves miserable every day of their lives and that's one of my favorite things to watch a man do <3333 read my book. look at it on kickstarter

this is sincerely only scraping the surface of Roman gender nonsense and how absolutely fucked up these guys were. And i CANNOT get into stuff like how manumission (an enslaved person being voluntarily given freedom) was treated with rituals and attitudes that kinda make it feel like a gender transition process (you get new social roles, you get new expectations, you are washed clean of any "necessary shame" you might have had to endure, a sharp line is drawn between your old life and your new life). I also can't get into the Twink Genders right now or this will be impossibly long (twink is a roman gender, and there are multiple sub-genders under the twink gender umbrella ("puer" "exoletus" "pathicus/cinaedus" etc))

and you thought having a lot of genders was a new modern thing. no no. lol. lmao even. go read Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity, it will give you SO many more cool facts about these fucked up lil guys if you don't want to wait for my book (though the author, a presumably cis man writing in i believe 1994 doesn't have the "ohhhh wait this is GENDER, this is ALL GENDER, this is just GENDERS ALL THE WAY DOWN" epiphany that i, a nonbinary person on tumblr in 2026, am predisposed to perceive)

Vir.

Is this.