realllllllllllly hate the popular liberal thing of like. "how can anyone be transphobic when trans women are this GORGEOUS" like. idk i feel like i see this sentiment often in certain spaces and it gives me a bad vibe because it feels so focused on appearance and prettiness as The Reason Someone Deserves To Live. which is actually just straight up misogyny.

It's hard to say this without sounding like a right wing dickhead, but the thing about progressive spaces is that they may naturally attract people who are always on the lookout for excuses to start a fight. Like you can find yourself faced with someone whose political outrage is totally justified, and whose humanitarian ideals are right on the money, but simultaneously they are carrying a ton of psychological baggage about being wronged and getting revenge, and they will exploit literally any opportunity to live out this psychodrama with anyone in their line of vision. I have thought of several related anecdotes since I started typing this post, but I'll limit myself to the thing that inspired it, which is that I just visited this ultra-lefty cafe/bike shop/community gathering space where I've heard that the proprietor is constantly in a fight with everyone around her. When I paid for my stuff I noticed that there was no tip option, but I thought I had heard something about this, so I snuck away to look at the website and it made me really glad I didn't ask! I think there should have been a really enticing and exciting way for her to say "I've decided to be the change I want to see in the world, so I'm paying my baristas a full living wage, I'm making sure EVERYONE feels welcome and comfortable here, and I'm selling products I believe in!" -- but instead all the web copy sounded more like "You're either with me or against me, you're a fucking piece of shit asshole if you can't handle the inclusive atmosphere here, and by the way tipping is for fascist cavemen and if you ever try to tip someone you are refusing to relate to them authentically and you are enforcing a dangerous and evil power dynamic that should be purged from human society (so therefore I pay my staff well)." Like everything she stood for was totally agreeable, but why did she have to put it like it was directed at her worst enemy, rather than at the kinds of people she wants to attract? If the word on the street is to be believed, the reason for this posturing is that she spends quite a lot of energy making as many enemies as possible, and she probably likes it that way. I guess I'm just reminding myself, and perhaps others, that while one might think of "politics" as being broadly social and theoretical, no individual can fully separate the political from the intimately personal. Even somebody who seems to want to uplift and protect their fellow humans may be getting some perverse inner satisfaction out of that valiant crusade, and you may never realize it until you find yourself in a confusing fight with them.

my eternal personal bugbear about "authenticity" in specifically artwork is the central irony that a given piece will only be accepted and understood as suuuuper authentic and raw and real if it matches what the audience perceives as the artist's True Self. "authenticity" has a look, it has a style, it has a vocabulary, it has a hierarchy of materials and media, it should be folk craft or handmade over industrial or digital, it should be emotional and warm over detached and bitter, and obviously it should look pre-21st century because as we all know no one has ever existed honestly since the turn of the millennium and all Authentic Culture died to death badly in 1990. I've heard tons of artists in marginalized groups repeatedly get the feedback that they should make their art "more authentic" and more "reflective of their identities" by people who clearly just mean "make it look more like the stereotype I expect from you." it's a framework that relies on the idea that the only real representation of a culture or identity comes when you strip away all its interrelations with other groups, as though cross-cultural exchange and technological innovation aren't constants throughout human history.

Yeah, that doesn't prevent pregnancy.

Dfgajagakala it’s so you don’t get a UTI 😂

Lmao! That last line! 😂

Keep this in mind if you recently started having sex again after vaginoplasty. It's a super important habit to get into. Especially if you weren't super careful about it preop.

Everyone should piss. Now. No exceptions.

see I am extremely pro-sex-scenes in whatever, I think its good and fun and important because its literally just an aspect of life being portrayed, its fine. But my problem is that a lot of the time, characterizations change drastically within sex scenes and I find that jarring. This is especially true of eroge, VNs and such.

Like, I feel like there's a switch that gets flipped that once the sex happens its "porno mode" and the writing is meant to be more hot than work towards any other cause. Which is fine, but some people seem to take it to the point of just sucking the character out of them to make them porno stand-ins. Like, if theres a clumsy character, I want them being clumsy in the bedroom too. If there's a goofy character, I want them cracking dumb jokes while they fuck. If someone isn't particularly forward outside of sex, why would they be initiating within the sexual scenes? Things like that drive me bonkers!!! And I feel like it would probably be ten times as hot if you get to see an actual character who got built up like that in the bedroom, you know???

i do not “delete sentences” when they start “hindering the plot” i COPY PASTE THEM into a SEPARATE DOC made just for keeping all my USELESS LINES that i will also NEVER USE so therefore i should JUST DELETE THEM but i DONT because id FEEL BAD if i did

You don't actually have to kill your darlings. You can just put them in the oubliette #myoubliette

I do this too, I call it the compost pile. Occasionally I turn the pile over and see if any darlings have turned into useful worms or nutrients for the story as it has progressed.

Or sometimes they turn into whole new stories by themselves. Volunteer story in my compost heap.

kaladin and szeth do have a few things in common. for one thing they are both people who, when asked what their "body count" is, would start listing people they've killed

[image description: tags reading "#except kaladin would be like 'it's impossible to determine a number... battle is so chaotic... does any soldier know the true count of the #lives he has taken at war? how cheaply we hold men's lives that we can kill them and not even know the weight of what we've destroyed' #and szeth would be like 'i've killed 10535 people and each one is a nail i'm driving directly into my eye 👍' #then whoever asked the question is like 'i mean how many people have you slept with' and they're both like 'oh, zero' #stormlight archive #szeth son son vallano #kaladin stormblessed". End description]

@is-bi-engineer-guy-a-girl-yet

Why do I even bother

OH COME ON THATS NOT A GIRL THING EVERYONE WANTS YO BE FORCEFEMMED

Lmao

ok fine yeah it was

keep getting glimpses into an alternate timeline where plurality is more normalized and you can buy shitty tshirts and mugs about it

Love not having a ”””fandom””” specific blog. Something new will just consume my mind and everyone has to accept it. My house

Shout-out to characters who don't plan to survive their stories! Heroes who think they can only atone for their failures through sacrifice, villains who don't think they deserve to live in the world they're trying to create. Gimme that passive suicidality baby, mm-mm, delicious.

And let's not forget the ones who don't expect to die or anything, but are always half-thinking "well I'm the most expendable one in our team so if someone needs to sacrifice themselves obviously it should be me." Like, no bitch! You're also part of the team! You matter! Shut up and accept it already! (But also don't because the rock-bottom self-esteem makes you so compelling.)