I Don't Even Know

My now-husband and I had been dating for nearly a year, we had talked about marriage, what sort of wedding we’d like, children vs no children, etc.  We went to a shopping center/mall during the holidays when massive sales are going on, and he had me look at the jewelry to see what sort of thing I like.  I asked to have my finger sized for a ring…just in case.  A few months later he proposed, and had the ring I showed most interest in.  I was sick as fuck, had been on bed-rest for two weeks due to how sick I was, and he had spent those two weeks helping me get to and from the bathroom.  I hadn’t showered for nearly four days when the fever finally broke and I was strong enough to get out of bed.  Managed to get up on my own and was on my way to the bathroom when he got down on one knee and proposed to me in the hallway. 

The WAY he proposed surprised me, not the proposal itself.

You should know a proposal is coming, be expecting it.  Oh, hell, talk about what sort of proposal you would loathe.  Now-husband and I had watched a guy propose to his girlfriend in the middle of a mall and the girl smacked her boyfriend.  He used a MICROPHONE so everyone could hear him.  She took the microphone, smacked him, and stated very clearly “this is the most humiliating thing you could have done to me” and walked away. 

It’s not that one can’t make it as extravagant as they want, but it should only come after both parties have already went through the details of what a married life entails and how compatible they’d be and that it’s something they both want.

“Teenagers shouldn’t be involved in politics!” …and religion shouldn’t be involved in the government and men shouldn’t be involved in women’s healthcare, but here we are.”

science: actually there are xy women who only appear female because they never developed receptors for testosterone. in fact they’ll look even more feminine than xx women because of their insensitivity to testosterone. there are also xxx women, xxy men, xyy men, xxyy men, xxxx women, and a whole bunch of other combinations

also gender is a social construct and sex and gender are not interchangeable.

So let me explain it a simple as I can to you… females are sexualised PLENTY in video games. Most characters are made to look aesthetically pleasing to the audience. This goes for both females and males..

But of the dumbest things I’ve heard is that “males are just as sexualised as females” so lets get that out of the way shall we? 

The definition of “sexualise” is, and I quote, “make sexual; attribute sex or a sex role to“ examples of this: Breasts and booty shots (consistently and clearly for the pleasure of the audience/player) , made to look so aesthetically appealing that the creator refuses to really change characters features or facial expression during or after an occurrence (because they don’ t want to risk even one single frame of the character being “ugly” for the sake of making them only purely enjoyable to look at most), not giving the character realistic clothing (mostly for booty and breast shots), not giving the character any real personality or lore, but rather focusing only on their looks and poses, making certain characters less important due to their looks or how sexual they are ,and lastly TONS of fan service. There are probably a bunch of other examples, but these are the main ones.

So now that you have these in mind think for a moment : “Do these apply more to female characters than male characters?” If your answer is no, then think again. Yes men are made to come out aesthetically appealing in most video games, and yes that’s a problem that should be taken care of, but are men sexualised? If your answer is yes, then I guess you’d be right, because I mean there was that one time that a guy in a game was wearing a once piece bottom, and those times a guy was topless in a video game (*gasp* how sexualised!). But, being realistic here, women in video games tend to be WAY MORE sexualised than men. In a game with one scene of a topless guy walking around there will always almost be 5 or 6 more shots of a women’s ass and or breasts. You don’t see a game focusing so much on a man’s ass as much as it does a women’s and you don’t see a game focusing on a mans chest area as much as it does a women .

Still don’t see where I’m coming from? Let me ask you this…

If games were constantly showing close ups of men’s genital area and or their asses or chests, and are only really there to look good, would you get annoyed or uncomfortable or just tired of it?

With women, many of us are. We’re tired of seeing female characters being there only for breast shots and ass shots and maybe a little bit of the story. And it might not be your problem, but it is ours, and if you’re too inconsiderate to think about the possibility of this, than I know I, and other women will lose respect for you. Because you obviously have no respect for us.

So to answer your question. No, males are not just as sexualised as women. Yes they are made to look just as aesthetically appealing as women, but no, not as sexualised.

and it brings up a lot of questions about what kind of information can even be stored in genes, like… does genetic memory really exist? what does this mean for humankind? could a race of people develop an instinctual memory of the land like this? are there people whose bones tell the stories of ancient mountains? what about my people? is the diaspora something that can be felt among every one of us? are we all the living cumulation of hundreds of thousands of ghosts?

One thing I never really understood was Sleipnir (meaning “slippery one” fyi) in depictions of Norse mythology. Sleipnir is an eight-legged horse, the steed of Odin and the son of Loki, and he is commonly depicted like this:

(image not mine)

But why would you depict an eight-legged horse like this? Horses gallop the same way most other mammals run, with all feet leaving the ground at one point, so having extra feet here doesn’t seem like it could make the horse any faster. I’m also not sure it would give it any more stable footing, since it doesn’t have a wider base.

If you want a stable eight-legged form that can reach great speeds for its size, wouldn’t you want to start with what nature has already provided? Wouldn’t you want something more like… this?

(my drawing)

“But wait!” you might say, “Sleipnir was conceived when Loki, in horse-form, seduced another horse! That’s why it looks all horsey, just with extra bits!”

Well, that’s a good point, but consider that Loki as a deity was originally based off the spider, and his name even derives from the old Swedish word for spider (source). Therefore, it’s not too hard to believe Sleipnir inherited his horse half from his mother and the more spidery half from his father. In conclusion:

As far as Sleipnir having eight legs, it’s probably a reference to Icelandic horses. Icelandic horses are one of the few horse breeds with five gaits. They can do a walk, trot and canter/gallop, like most horses. But they have also evolved to have a tolt,

[ gif of a man riding a brown Icelandic horse doing a tolt. The back legs of the horse move rather stiffly back and forth, while the front legs are lifted up almost to the horse’s chest. While the horse bounces slightly, the man riding the horse could probably hold a glass of water without spilling. ] 

which is fast, smooth and noted for its explosive speed and ability to cover long distances.

The second unique gait is called flugskeið, or flying pace.

[ a light brown Icelandic horse demonstrating the flugskeið. With the exception of the wind in the horses’ mane, the upper part of the horse and the rider seem to almost be still, with the background simply zipping by them. The horse’s legs, however, move fast enough to blur. Unlike with a full gallop, the horse does not fully extend its legs away from its body. This is particularly obvious in the front legs of the horse, which lift up to the chest of the horse and land under its chin the same way as in the tolt]

It is both smooth and fast, some horses being able to reach speeds of 30 mph. Not all Icelandic horses can do a flugskeið, but you’ll notice that when done properly the legs move in unison and so fast they can blur, giving the illusion of the horse having eight legs.

Anyways, here is a video to further emphasize how cool the flugskeið is;

The thing is, until the late 1800s we didn’t know how horses moved. 

In old paintings you typically see horses with their legs stretched wide as they thought that gave the appearance of great speed. 

But it really just looks like Timmy’s big brother was being an evil bastard and bent the legs of his tin horses out . 

It’s completely unnatural looking, but horses moved too fast for us to be able to see how they moved, until Edward MAuybridge captured their motion in a series of consecutive photographs in 1878.

And for the first time we could see that all four legs did leave the ground. (and are never stretched uncomfortably wide!). 

He also created the first motion picture as the individual photographs could be put together as a series of film frames (below).