we will endure

Tagged by @brashtea!

Favourite Movie: Newsies feels like a boring answer at this point bc y’all know this by now, so a couple of my non-musical favorites are Booksmart and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I love a good silly coming-of-age film!

Favourite Book: Matilda by Roald Dahl or Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Favourite Painting: okay I can’t find the name of this painting in particular, but this is one in a series of paintings by Vanessa Stockard. The cat’s name is Kevin and there are several more where this comes from, but I quite like the size ratio between the chair and Kevin here, as well as the level of bewilderment on his face

Song that best describes you: there are probably other songs out there that better describe me as a person in general, but this one is very much how I feel at this point in my life

Favourite colour: pink!

Favourite gemstone: rose quartz

Favourite drink: Shirley Temple or, my classic Texas girlie answer, Dr. Pepper 🙂‍↕️

Favourite city that you've visited: Dublin!

Favourite month: December!

favourite book: maybe wuthering heights or the secret history

favourite painting: kinda basic but probably starry night

song that best describes you:

favourite colour: pink 💗

favourite gemstone: also rose quartz haha

favourite drink: cherry coke or the fruit flavoured fanta

favourite city that youve visited: probably Freiburg im Breisgau. I havent been to that many tho

favourite month: may!! my birthday month and also usually good weather and stuff going on

Favourite movie: right now probably The Sound Of Music, that's a timeless classic:)

Favourite book: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Since I read that no book compares!

Favourite painting: VERY hard to choose one😭 but I LOVE The Café Terrace at Night by Van Gogh

Song that best describes you:

Favourite colour: green🍀💚

Favourite gemstone: I've been very fascinated by amethysts since I was little haha

Favourite drink: this might sound basic but water

Favourite place that you've visited: either London or Nice in France☀️

Favourite month: may! The weather's nice, it's almost summer and it's so beautiful with all the blooming trees and flowers.

Tags:

Fav movie: I have so many but I'll say Coraline, i could watch that everyday and not get tired

Fav book: I would say Catching Fire but right now it would be Project Hail Mary ☆

Fav painting: THIS!! It's by my favorite artist ever Reynier Llanes, it's called Surfing for pollen (all their artworks are so beautiful and I have so many favorites, but this one is one is in my top5)

Song that best describes you: i have no idea but checking my playlist i think this one is very me

Fav color: pink, blue and green (but mostly green, like a pretty dark forest green)

Favorite gemstone: amber, it deserves more love. Like if sunshine was a gemstone it would be amber

Favorite drink: coffee

Favorite place that you've visited: quintana roo

Fav month: october or september 🌟 the vibessss also the weather and everything i just love those months sm

fav movie: all-time is howl’s moving castle. recently fav is sorry baby

fav book: let the english degree in me geek out Theophanies - Sarah Ghazal Ali (poetry); Babel - RF Kuang (fiction); One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This - Omar El Akkad (nonfiction)

fav painting: any claude monet lily pad painting. specially though 1899 “bridge over a pond of water lilies”

song that best describes you: landslide by fleetwood mac

fav color: sage green. but also recently chocolate brown

fav gemstone: when i was younger, emerald. now, probably onyx or opal

fav drink: lemonade. also coffee

fav place that you’ve visited: sienna, italy

fav month: april or june

(i spent WAY too long on this. help)

fav movie: all time favs are Causeway (2022) and Bones and All (2022) for sure. AND i just watched Spree (2020) for the first time this week and I'm already on my 6th watch, so...... yeah <3

fav book: for the last 5 months I've only been reading fanfic <3 BUT recent-ish favs that have been on my mind lately are "Paradise Logic" by Sophie Kemp and "Boy Parts" by Eliza Clark <3 for non fiction definitely "Waiting to Be Heard" by Amanda Knox (truly when am i not thinking about Amanda Knox...) and "Divided Minds" by Carolyn S. Spiro and Pamelo Spiro Wagner

fav painting: i looked through all my journals of the past 6 years to find it, because i knew that i had printed it out at some point or another lmao (I found it in the 2021 one)

by @/soaprunsfaster on twitter/instagram

song that best describes you: this one is So Difficult. i'm more listening to music based on the vibes instead of the lyrics + unless the lyrics are very literal, i will most likely be confused (and that's on the autism) <3 the last time that i Understood and related to a song, i was listenting to "Nothing is About to Happen to Me" by Mitski; lyrics from "Instead of Here" made it into my diary so i guess it qualifies </3

fav color: yellow !!!! (generally just warm earthy tones), but also a lilac/lavender kind of purple !! so many actually

fav gemstone: aventurine :)

fav drink: iced coffee & afri kola mix (≈ mezzo mix etc)

fav place that you’ve visited: honestly, maybe berlin? i always have a great time whenever i'm visiting friends and/or family there

fav month: april. ideally, it's not too hot/too cold + what a fun name for a month :)

i'm tagging: @jabberwockymoreau, @thisusernamewasntavailable, @a-graveman, @arcticsilence, @cuntyclowngirl, @gyozanyam, @bog-horse, @manicpixieautism, @kadebronson, @screamin-lord-dinosaur, @tobias-four-ever-divergent, @dysgraphicnerd, @hollowedcathedral, @fluffyfangirl, @l393ndjean, @zephyne, @sweetcreatureeternal, @puppydogmike, @willlain, @moonlight-x0, @eredmes

Alas, here we go.

Favourite Movie: Currently Project Hail Mary, definitely. Also a huge fan of Monty Python movies and Shock Treatment, but overall it frankly depends on the time of day and position of the stars what I'll tell you my favorite movie is. Hugely mood-related.

Favourite Book: Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett and the Night Watch books. I also absolutely adored This Is How You Lose the Time War and The Song of Achilles.

Favourite Painting: Oh god that one's rough. Gut instinct says go basic and say Ophelia by Sir John Everett Millais so that's what I'm sticking with

Song that best describes you: honestly also depends wildly on when you ask but. I feel like it's definitely a Choice to put a TMG song here but it's what I'm sticking with: Animal Mask from the album Beat the Champ by the Mountain Goats

Favourite colour: I used to struggle with this a lot but I've developed a Brand now. I basically love all shades of green, especially toxic waste neon green or a deep dark pine green

Favourite gemstone: for emotional reasons I would have to say citrine, but going purely by aesthetics, probably opal

Favourite drink: I wanna say Mate Iced Tea just to annoy my irls but the real answer is probably iced coffee with a concerning amount of whipped cream

Favourite place that you've visited: For legal reasons I think I have to say @livinginthewifi 's house and I won't doxx her here. But just going by aesthetics again, probably the Knossos palace on Crete, although that was hot as balls

Favourite month: May!! The weather is already nicer, but it's usually not overbearingly hot and it has a good solid amount of holidays to get time off work lol

Tagging @livinginthewifi @firedrakewicked @xnumb-little-bugx @wintersoulwitch @latenightbotanist @mazjin @vamillepudding @clam-kid @ironghostie @rose-pendragon and anyone I forgot who feels like it

favorite movie: there’s quite a few for me to choose from, but I’ll go with Arrival, the film that gives me an emotional and existential crisis every time I watch it

favorite book: Harrow the Ninth, an absolute fever dream of a book that gets better every time I read it because I still notice new things that I haven’t picked up on before. favorite painting: not an easy one but I’ll go with gather ye rosebuds while ye may by John William Waterhouse

song that best describes you: ohhh another difficult one to choose. First that comes to mind is Imposter Syndrome by Sidney Gish and tbh that’s probably the one that fits best, as well as Rat of the City. Followed close behind by Sweet Hibiscus Tea by Penelope Scott.

favorite color: ourple

favorite gemstone: rose quartz (sorry not sorry)

favorite drink: appy juice…….or….lavender iced coffee with sugar and whipped cream and maybe some sprinkles on top

favorite place that you’ve visited: tough one, and I know it’ll definitely be subject to change. Any place where I can be with my loved ones, honestly.

favorite month: October!!!!! (at least here where I live) I love the cold rainy weather, the leaves turning yellow and gold and brown, curling up with some nice warm tea or hot chocolate and a book…..

On Monday Nationals MP Alison Penfold introduce this private bill to federal parliament in an attempt to reshape the Sex Discrimination Act to target trans people while claiming not to target trans people

It is worth noting that this bill is being pushed by the National party, one of Australia's main right-wing parties. The party currently in power is the Labour party, our biggest left-wing/centrist party. The party pushing for this bill does not have the votes needed to pass it, and thus either needs to convince centrists to agree with them or are doing this to curry favour for the next election or some other goal.

When it comes to the bill itself, they are defining anything relating to one's sex in terms of the sex binary in a way which excludes intersex people in many ways. They also are changing the definition of sexual attraction, and the main change this makes is an exclusion of non-binary people in attraction. However, it is also worded so a trans woman lesbian is considered straight, and their definition also doesn't properly include asexual people. Those wording issues are already present in the original law, however.

or, a transfem guide to conversations for girls who struggle with taking agency

Alright, so there's a post going around about how lots of young transfems have poor conversational skills. It calls specific attention to the tendency to just make animal noises or mindlessly flirt, and how they're an insufficient substitute. This is true, but it's not helpful*, I'd like to try to be actually helpful.

I. Why does the problem exist?

On the one paw, basically all widely shared advice assumes a lot of things that simply are not true for us. "Ask them about their job, their future, their finances, their social lives." Well. Generally, many of us are chronically underemployed, vaguely suicidal, surviving off of scraps, and extremely isolated. These aren't first date questions. A lot of transfems try to bridge the gap by jumping to third date questions like "how's your sex life, what kinks are you into, can I touch your tits, do you want to touch my tits." This has other problems that I will not get into in this post.

On the other paw, a lot of good conversationalism involves taking agency and putting yourself out there. The thing about childhood trauma is you're usually repeatedly punished for taking agency until you stop trying. Plus, agency, if it is a thing you can do, isn't likely to be something you do with strangers. You've been taught that your purpose is to be a punching bag. It's comfortable for you, even, in a weird fucked up way. But, this pushes all the agency onto your partner, which kinda sucks for her. Especially if she has the same background as you.

[ *sidebar 1: "the problem with transfems" and other things not to say.

Unfortunately, we live in transmisogynistic hell world. Unfortunately, you are a part of transmisogynistic hell world. Unfortunately, anything talking about "the problem with transfems" will see increased legibility and get shared more because of transmisogynistic hell world. Unfortunately, this cannot be escaped. Broadly, I highly recommend keeping such discussions to transfem only spaces not visible to the public. Or at least don't write vent posts about transfems. Please. ]

II. Then, what can I do differently?

In this post, I'm going to talk about the strategy that carried me through the first two or three years of my transfem social life, until I had accrued enough experience and confidence to try other strategies.

And, I want to say explicitly: maybe you can't think about it now, but you will get there. It's like immersion, your brain is picking up details from around you and shaping them into your own behaviors. As long as you are around conversations and let yourself pay attention to them, you'll get better at all of this.

I just want to help provide a shortcut.

For me, this was a method to be around people and talk to them when I really needed it. When I wasn't yet a person and didn't know how to talk or make friends or have friends or hang out or any of the shit no one writes guides for because they figured it out in middle school when I was busy discovering suicidal ideation. And it worked for me, so I hope it'll work for you.

III. What is infodumping?

I think most of you are probably already familiar with infodumping. Broadly, I'd define infodumping as a communication pattern associated with autism characterized by one-sidedly sharing a large amount of information with the other party.

There's a lot of memes about it that go something like girl 1: [infodumping about bionicles], girl 2: [not paying any attention, in her head: I'm gonna rail her later]. I don't like these memes.

In an autismphobic society, infodumping is a genuine and vulnerable activity. It's relaxing and fulfilling and kinda embarrassing. It's putting yourself out there. It's taking control of the conversation and not letting go until you're satisfied. In that light, it's kinda like topping†.

But, perhaps in defiance of your expectations, I'm not going to tell you how to infodump. I'm going to tell you how to be infodumped to.

[ †sidebar 2: topping and bottoming.

It's pretty popular in transfem spaces to be critical of the phrase "top and bottom" and prefer "dom and sub", because "top and bottom are more heteronormative". If you think about this for any amount of time, you'll realize that this isn't really true (changing language alone does not feminism make).

While you'll commonly hear top and bottom described as 'the penetrative role and the penetrated role'. This isn't the commonly used definition in bdsm spaces, of which I am from. In those spaces, we use 'top' to mean 'one who does the thing' and 'bottom' to mean 'one who the thing is done to'. In this way, we can generalize dynamics between bondage, discipline, d/s, and s/m.

Of course, these definitions are kinda just a trick of the light, and can go in any which direction if you look at things differently. As long as you can agree that obviously the one giving head is the top. ]

IV. What does the infodumpee even do?

The reason I don't like those memes is pretty simple, they present the receptive role as a non-entity. It kinda sucks to infodump to a non-entity. You're putting yourself out there and being vulnerable and she's just thinking about sex of all things. Bionicles is objectively better than sex.

As I see it, infodumping is a lot like music. And if you're the infodumpee, you're playing a rhythm game.

Just like with normal bottoming, your goal is to take this deeply vulnerable activity and provide consistent support throughout. To be a good recipient and accept what is given to you with an open mind. To illustrate to your partner that you are engaged with the ideas being shared, that you are listening, that you are enjoying the process, and that you're present and there.

What this means in practice is a mix of two things: mhms and questions.

VI. What is 'backchanneling'?

There's actually a lot of skill to mhming. Of course I don't merely mean 'saying mhm'. Backchanneling is the linguistic term for this and it's an essential conversational skill.

This includes phrases such as 'yeah', 'uh huh', 'right', 'I see', and so on. The purpose is to let your partner know that you're listening. This is, most directly, the rhythm game element.

There will reach moments where your partner looks to you to see if you're listening. At this point, you need to indicate that you are listening by giving such a cue. Make the noise, nod your head, send a thumbs up emoji. Sometimes animal noises work here, but generally I think they fulfill a different purpose‡.

If you're too late, she'll feel she caught you looking away. She'll think you were distracted and not paying attention, and begin to be distracted from her thoughts by checking up on you more and more.

If you are listening very closely, you'll give the cue before your partner even consciously thinks to check. She'll never even realize she worried if you were paying attention in the first place, the flow will never be broken up.

But if you give it too early, she'll think you're just saying the words without paying attention. You'll disrupt her thoughts with it, and she'll become confused and thrown off.

With each partner, the correct timing is slightly different. Personally, I try to give my 'mhms' when my partner has completed a thought and is reaching for the next one, or when she's asked a rhetorical question or completed a point. But, it takes trial and error. The only way to improve is by practicing.

[ ‡sidebar 3: what is echolalia?

Echolalia is a certain behavior associated with autism generally described as repetitive words and noises. Generally, I tend to understand most "animal noises" as a kind of echolalia (though this isn't always accurate)

Echolalia was first explained to me as a kind of stimming. More formally called 'self stimulating behavior', stimming is another category of autistic behaviors generally understood to aid in sensory maintenance. Flap your hands, tap your feet, bounce in your seat and it'll give you something to focus on to weather the storm.

But, conversationally, echolalia can play other roles. You might use it to hold your place in a conversation. As opposed to where backchanneling says 'pass', echolalia says 'one sec, I'm thinking'.

Further, echolalia can also act as a way of asserting your presence. Meow as you enter a voice call to indicate that it's you and that you're here.

These are useful conversational tools to have. ]

V. How do you ask a good question?

You ask questions to continue the conversation. They indicate not just "I'm listening" but "I want to hear more". They encourage your partner to let loose and just keep talking to you. Turning what could be a simple exchange into a more in depth engagement.

So, ask questions that indicate this. Ask open ended questions that require her to reword things and look from weird angles. Ask analytical questions that reflect your own lack of understanding. Ask silly questions that let her continue her jokes. Ask surface level questions so she just knows you want to hear her speak. Cheat and use google to find more questions to ask but make sure to reword them so she can't tell.

If your partner says "I don't want to get into this, so I'll just say this abbreviated other thing" you better ask about that. But that's when it's really obvious, and only following obvious cues can make her feel like you're just humoring her.

Look at the holes, the thing your partner is skimming over 'to save time' and ask about them. Look at what she's excited about, ask questions about the details that don't add up or that feel weird. Look at what she's interested in, make connections between the different sections and how they relate.

Here, you don't want to just let her go with the same thing as usual. You want to explore new territory. Give her new ideas to interrogate. Plug her back into herself in new ways. Get excited and make her excited about your excitement.

VI. But how do you get someone to start talking to you?

So, we know what to do once we're there, but how do we even get there? This is both the most and the least ritualized element of this.

One way is to simply start asking questions. Most of us wear our interests on our sleeves. On tumblr‖ you'll see us talk about things we like, so you can figure out pretty quickly what to ask about. Generally, someone does not write long posts about things that she does not find interesting to talk about.

But, going in can be hard. If you just say "tell me about X", your partner might think you're only doing this because you want something from her. Or she might care so little about you that she sees no reason to talk to you about it. Being truly purely passive does not work. You need to give your partner something to work with.

One strategy I've seen is the kind of 'instantlossbait' type, where the bottom feigns cluelessness and attempts to trick the top into using them. Here you might ask believably naive questions, present yourself as the 'ideal infodump victim' in a tongue in cheek way.

But, personally, I tend to favor "let's continue this in private". For this strategy, you take a public discussion that someone initiated or led about a topic, you closely read it and synthesize a question about the content, then you ask that question in private or in near-private. Then, from there, you continue to ask more questions. Voila, conversation is happening.

[ ‖sidebar 4: finding a partner on tumblr

There's also a good bit here I could say about choosing your partner. Frankly, I think social media is a bad space for this. If you're going after someone you follow, you're likely going on with some "expectation to perform", and you can't get rid of that no matter how hard you try.

As a rule, if you are meeting someone in a space, you want to meet someone who has the same relationship to the space as you do. Or, at the very least that you both perceive as such.

If this post takes off, I might write one on "finding a discord community", "founding a discord community", or "tumblr dming etiquette", though I'm not really an expert on the last one. We'll see. ]

VII. And then what?

So, you're being talked to, you're talking to people, you're participating in a conversation, albeit a relatively one sided one.

From here, you have a few options.

For one, you could just genuinely enjoy it as it is. I did, for a couple years. I think that true excellency in conversational bottoming can only be achieved through practicing intrinsic enjoyment of it.

You could also try taking turns. Maybe you do in fact have your own needs, and you want to talk and share too. A well rounded partner will have some skill both bottoming and topping. Though, I think only performing one role because you expect an opportunity to perform the other is bad practice, as common as it is.

turns out the college I’m hoping to switch to

the only college I had the fucking emotional capacity to even consider because even just applying to this one a few months ago fucking ruined me

the only fucking plan I have to get the fuck out of my parents’ house

will not be giving me a single fucking cent of financial aid, and who the fuck knows if I’m going to find anywhere near enough money anywhere else

Might find a scholarship or something somewhere, or get something through appealing the financial aid thing, my kofi’s always open if anyone wants to add a drop of water to the bottom of a fucking swimming pool but

Yeah