Possum Creates

“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”

I truly sacrificed to create this ridiculous mug. biting clay is a bad sensory experience 😔 who would have guessed

Transandrophobia exists but holy hell do y'all engage in so much exorsexism in the process of trying to prove it does.

Things can be more than one thing. The punishment for daring to reject womanhood is not something only binary aligned trans men and mascs face. Threats of forced pregnancy and detransition are not something only binary aligned trans men and mascs face. Fear mongering about T and the difficulties in accessing it are not things that only affect binary aligned trans men and mascs. The specter of the stolen girl is not just because she turned into a man but because they no longer have the girl they view as their property.

You can acknowledge all of these things while still advocating for the existence of transandrophobia. And it's imperative that you do. Because otherwise you're shoving everything into another fucking binary. And it's honestly the same logic being used to prop up tma/tme as a useful framework.

The efforts to class t and meta and phallo as fgm affects everyone trying to access these forms of gender affirming care and that gender is not always aligned with the binary.

The history of the transmeds denying that nonbinary people were really trans.

The idea that nonbinary people don't transition (because they're not dysphoric and also not really trans).

That nonbinary people are either really cis or really binary trans and this is a placeholder rather than a fully formed identity in its own right?

So obviously if someone is doing these things they must really be binary trans so misgendering them as men isn't a big deal. But how dare you call a binary trans man a transmasc.

That exorsexism is a thing that people denied existed? That people still do it because they don't think nonbinary identities are valid.

"No, I mean-"

Oh, maybe the woman who had to pee in a public park that only had pay toilets, so she tried to hide behind the bushes but got caught? Public urination is a sex crime.

"What? No, I mean-"

Oh, maybe you mean the homeless guy who had to strip down to get his clothes in the laundromat to clean them for the first time in weeks? He tried being subtle, but someone called the cops on him, and now he's on the sex offender registry for public nudity.

"Rapists and pedophiles! Kill rapists and pedophiles!"

Oh, like the trans woman who got called a pedophile groomer for helping a trans kid escape her abusive parents?

Or maybe the black man who got labeled a rapist because he came on to another man's wife, and he decided to get back at him by charging him with rape?

How about the 17 year olds who were fooling around, fully consensually, in one of their bedrooms? That's still technically underage sex and thus rape of a minor.

Oh, or maybe you're talking about the doctor who performed genital reconstructive surgery in a state that just voted to get that classified as rape?

People will do everything they can to get you convinced rape and pedophilia are the worst crimes possible, then accuse whoever they like the least of being either a rapist, a pedophile, or both, counting on you turning on them just for being accused of the crime.

"Oh, so you're saying you don't want to kill a serial rapist?"

That's exactly what I'm goddamn saying.

Once we decide a group is okay to kill, the government will do everything they can to convince you that their political enemies are either part of that group, or just as bad as that group, to get you to kill their enemies for them.

yeah!

you're allowed to FEEL like you want to kill rapists (esp your own if such a misfortune has befallen you). you're even allowed to WANT and WISH for their deaths. that's all normal natural and dare i say... healthy???

it's perfectly sensible to feel all that rage and bloodlust as we grieve the loss of our autonomy, even if it was brief, or if we grieve the fact that this happens to others, or the prevalence of this crime, etc. whatever the reason you want that person dead, you're certainly entitled to that mental state

all of those feelings are yours, and you are allowed to feel them as long as it takes you to feel them

My wife pointed out to me the other day that apparently most people were literally only taught how to say Sorry and not how to Apologize or even that they are different things so here.

An apology that is meant is not just spoken; it is shown in actions.

He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.

The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”

It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.

He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died.  He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.

Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough. 

You’re not Terry Pratchett. 

You are you.

“Yes,” I said.  “But I like seeing how authors grow.”

The jeans problem was the favorite lecture one of my philosophy professors in college gave about the history of jeans and how it ties into capitalism/mainstream culture absorbing and monetizing any counterculture it encounters. So prior to the 1950s jeans were mostly an item of work-wear that you wore on the job as a farmer or factory worker or miner because they were cheap, durable, and hard-wearing. If you were off the job you'd wear what we'd call now dress pants or slacks. This changes in the 1950s when youth culture start wearing jeans as regular clothing, again because they're cheap, durable, and hard-wearing. But then jeans get absorbed by the culture and we start getting designer jeans, acid-washed jeans, pre-ripped jeans, and now we got people shelling out hundreds of dollars for "povertycore" aesthetic. And now jeans aren't even cheap, durable, and hard-wearing.

My clasped weft cowl is finally off the loom! I can't believe i warped this up a whole month ago. I'm absolutely loving the technique and how it all came out. I just need to wash it, trim ends and block it!