...I really need to stop deleting all my social media accounts whenever I have a really bad fit of RSD and depression.
And while I keep telling myself that, it keeps happening.
Show & Tell
Xuebing Du
$LAYYYTER
Keni
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

ellievsbear
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
Cosmic Funnies
Jules of Nature
Cosimo Galluzzi

shark vs the universe

Love Begins
Monterey Bay Aquarium

tannertan36
RMH
Claire Keane
we're not kids anymore.
seen from Germany

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Türkiye
seen from Algeria

seen from Canada
seen from Russia
seen from Croatia

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Malaysia

seen from Malaysia

seen from T1

seen from India

seen from Japan

seen from Malaysia

seen from United States
seen from Türkiye

seen from United States

seen from United States
@systembomb
...I really need to stop deleting all my social media accounts whenever I have a really bad fit of RSD and depression.
And while I keep telling myself that, it keeps happening.

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Here's a key part of the transfemme experience that is very overlooked: when you don't pass, people don't actually see you as a man, or treat you like a man.
Men are generally treated with a level of respect and seriousness that transfemme people don't get. Even if they don't see you as a woman, they still know they can talk over you, they still know to view you as a sexual object.
I think this is also why discussions of "male socialisation" are often very unproductive. I sure as hell wasn't getting treated like the other boys, my abusers definitely understood that. There must be a better word to describe it, but I think there's a huge difference between growing up as a boy and growing up as a "faggot".
its a key part of the policing and reinforcement of masculinity that if you fail to meet the standard of masculinity you are A Faggot and the faggot is someone you can harass and assault. the fear of that disenfranchisement is what drives the performance of masculinity to such a ridiculous degree that people don't wash their assholes or whatever. the benefits of masculinity are not conferred by default they're the reward you receive for being strong and dominant and heterosexual. deviate and you are no longer a man, you are a weak degendered pansy. faggot is the third gender
going "huh okay im moving on" when you see kinks and fetishes you dont like or enjoy is a really good thing for not being someone who fascists can exploit with culture war rage bait, but its also a really good way to develop new kinks and fetishes
what im saying is that it's a win win
What was that quote about not giving in to sex- negative fascism?
Although TBH you can shorten it to say "...that some people might get off," and not be wrong for a frighteningly large number of people.
we gotta get back to torrent distribution, i just watched someone eat eight grand in bandwidth charges because they ran a direct-download piracy site with local file hosting through cloudflare. torrents were invented literally for this exact reason
torrents work like this
i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3
unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it
i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map
i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs
this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.
crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.
please learn to torrent
Here's a key part of the transfemme experience that is very overlooked: when you don't pass, people don't actually see you as a man, or treat you like a man.
Men are generally treated with a level of respect and seriousness that transfemme people don't get. Even if they don't see you as a woman, they still know they can talk over you, they still know to view you as a sexual object.
I think this is also why discussions of "male socialisation" are often very unproductive. I sure as hell wasn't getting treated like the other boys, my abusers definitely understood that. There must be a better word to describe it, but I think there's a huge difference between growing up as a boy and growing up as a "faggot".
its a key part of the policing and reinforcement of masculinity that if you fail to meet the standard of masculinity you are A Faggot and the faggot is someone you can harass and assault. the fear of that disenfranchisement is what drives the performance of masculinity to such a ridiculous degree that people don't wash their assholes or whatever. the benefits of masculinity are not conferred by default they're the reward you receive for being strong and dominant and heterosexual. deviate and you are no longer a man, you are a weak degendered pansy. faggot is the third gender

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
They go after the most vulnerable and marginalized. Trans people, kids on SNAP, single moms, old people. They’ll work their way to the rest of us bit by bit if we don’t stop them
The Spear in the Others heart is the Spear in your own, you are he. There is no other wisdom and no other hope but that we grow wise - Diane Duane
Also, do *not* expect people to know what they should about those book burnings. I remember watching the book burning scene in Last Crusade, and asked mom what the Nazis were burning.
Without skipping a beat, she replied "Bibles."
And I know there's no way in hell I'm the only person who got told something like that. We never talked about it in high school at all- history ended with the Spanish- American war. College, we only had to take US history and that was IIRC focused heavily on the Civil War and civil rights movements. So little important details like "hey, so the Nazis burned LGBT+ history" or the urban legends (of the era) that Germany lost WW1 because a bunch of gay men were giving the Kaiser bad advice get lost.
thinking again about TvTropes and how it’s genuinely such an amazing resource for learning the mechanics of storytelling, honestly more so than a lot of formally taught literature classes
reasons for this:
basically TvTropes breaks down stories mechanically, using a perspective that’s not…ABOUT mechanics. Another way I like to put it, is that it’s an inductive, instead of deductive, approach to analyzing storytelling.
like in a literature or writing class you’re learning the elements that are part of the basic functioning of a story, so, character, plot, setting, et cetera. You’re learning the things that make a story a story, and why. Like, you learn what setting is, what defines it, and work from there to what makes it effective, and the range of ways it can be effective.
here’s the thing, though: everyone has some intuitive understanding of how stories work. if we didn’t, we couldn’t…understand stories.
TvTropes’s approach is bottom-up instead of top-down: instead of trying to exhaustively explore the broad, general elements of story, it identifies very small, specific elements, and explores the absolute shit out of how they fit, what they do, where they go, how they work.
Every TvTropes article is basically, “Here is a piece of a story that is part of many different stories. You have probably seen it before, but if not, here is a list of stories that use it, where it is, and what it’s doing in those stories. Here are some things it does. Here is why it is functionally different than other, similar story pieces. Here is some background on its origins and how audiences respond to it.”
all of this is BRILLIANT for a lot of reasons. one of the major ones is that the site has long lists of media that utilizes any given trope, ranging from classic literature to cartoons to video games to advertisements. the Iliad and Adventure Time ARE different things, but they are MADE OF the same stuff. And being able to study dozens of examples of a trope in action teaches you to see the common thread in what the trope does and why its specific characteristics let it do that
I love TvTropes because a great, renowned work of literature and a shitty, derivative YA novel will appear on the same list, because they’re Made Of The Same Stuff. And breaking down that mental barrier between them is good on its own for developing a mechanical understanding of storytelling.
But also? I think one of the biggest blessings of TvTropes’s commitment to cataloguing examples of tropes regardless of their “merit” or literary value or whatever…is that we get to see the full range of effectiveness or ineffectiveness of storytelling tools. Like, this is how you see what makes one book good and another book crappy. Tropes are Tools, and when you observe how a master craftsman uses a tool vs. a novice, you can break down not only what the tool is most effective for but how it is best used.
In fact? There are trope pages devoted to what happens when storytelling tools just unilaterally fail. e.g. Narm is when creators intend something to be frightening, but audiences find it hilarious instead.
On that note, TvTropes is also great in that its analysis of stories is very grounded in authors, audiences, and culture; it’s not solely focused on in-story elements. A lot of the trope pages are categories for audience responses to tropes, or for real-world occurrences that affected the storytelling, or just the human failings that creep into storytelling and affect it, like Early Installment Weirdness. There are categories for censorship-driven storytelling decisions. There are “lineages” of tropes that show how storytelling has changed over time, and how audience responses change as culture changes. Tropes like Draco in Leather Pants or Narm are catalogued because the audience reaction to a story is as much a part of that story—the story of that story?—as the “canon.”
like, storytelling is inextricable from context. it’s inextricable from how big the writers’ budget was, and how accepting of homophobia the audience was, and what was acceptable to be shown on film at the time. Tropes beget other tropes, one trope is exchanged for another, they are all linked. A Dead Horse Trope becomes an Undead Horse Trope, and sometimes it was a Dead Unicorn Trope all along. What was this work responding to? And all works are responding to something, whether they know it or not
An incomplete list of really useful or interesting reads from TvTropes.
please note that yes many of these are concepts that exist elsewhere and a few are even taught in fiction writing classes but TvTropes just does an amazing job at displaying the range of things that can be done with them
legitimately so much of the terminology I use to talk about storytelling, and even think about it in my own head, i learned about from TvTropes
Willing Suspension of Disbelief
Watsonian vs. Doylist
Trope Tropes, for all the ways tropes are used, deconstructed, subverted, and played with.
The Oldest Ones in the Book, which is basically my favorite thing on the entire Internet
Punk Punk, for -punk subgenres
Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness, Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism
The Weird Al Effect is a fun one
Chekhov’s Gun, Chekhov’s Boomerang, Chekhov’s Skill, and further variations
Law of Conservation of Detail
Law of Conservation of Normality
Anthropic Principle
Word of God, Death of the Author
Sliding Scale of Fourth Wall Hardness
Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness
Genre Savvy
Flashbacks and Chronology breaks down all the ways you can handle chronology in storytelling
Show, Don’t Tell is a very good breakdown of what is showing, what is telling, and how both can be used effectively.
Lampshade Hanging
Noodle Incident is just fun imo
Genre Title Grab Bag
Fridge Horror
Rule of Cool, and also Cool of Rule
The Smurfette Principle
The Hays Code - not a trope but a very good breakdown of how the Hays Code affected storytelling in film
this is just a really short list of examples I encourage people who write or otherwise create stories to browse around on this site it’s so useful
Informed Attribute is one of the ones I reference most often as an editor.
Theory of Narrative Causality is one of my personal favorites, because it's kind of fun when a story acknowledges that things are happening in the story because that's what makes it a good story.
Also Applied Phlebotinum, because sometimes you don't need to know how something works, it just does, and that's all that matters for the purposes of the narrative.
Honestly, this got me wondering about some kind of Valjean/Javert bullshit where The Hero™ steals the Sacred Sword™ from the shrine, only to get arrested and sent to jail because he committed theft. And when he gets released years later he can't get a job because he's an ex- con, so he steals the sword *again* and tries the quest again, except now he's got this lunatic cop who's constantly on his tail and convinced the whole world that he's some kind of ontologically- morally- defective habitual criminal.
Bonus points if we can find a way to break the monomyth. It's a formula that draws attention to itself and therefore is inherently bad storytelling.
What is the most broken card you have ever proposed during design?
We tried a mechanic in early Tempest design where you could discard any number of cards to copy the effect that many times.
One of the cards was a “drain 2” effect. When my opponent discarded their hand to drain me for 14, I said, “This might be a problem”. : )
Wow. Stormbind on crack. That must've been a hell of a game.
Story time:
In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.
Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.
What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.
The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.
So whenever I see crap like Elizabeth Holmes’s blood test scam or pharmaceutical trials which are unable to be replicated or industry-funded research that reaches wildly unscientific conclusions, I just remember those fucking sweet potatoes. I remember that curiosity dies when people are just trying to give their superiors the “right” answers, so they can get the grade, get the job, get the paycheck. It’s not about truth when it’s about paying rent. There’s no scientific integrity if you can’t control for human desperation.

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god
okay so i just got my dream job??? a week after applying to it?? and now i’m thinking….maybe this is the good luck post
…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment
likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post
i need all the help i can get for finals
Hey so
the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like.
So you know.
This might be the real one, y’all.
Still hoping for an internship.
trans women who can not have bottom surgery due to complications are still women. trans women who can not afford or attain bottom surgery are still women. trans women who don’t want bottom surgery are still women.
reblog this to make a terf angry
More importantly: reblog it to make a trans woman feel better
not to sound preachy but i’ve never seen anybody rebut “make a terf angry” with “make a trans woman feel better” and… that’s kind of tumblr’s attitude towards trans women summed up as concise as possible. more people should strive to be the second thing because the first is performative and lazy… thank u discourser-of-kruphix…
reblog it to make a trans woman feel better
And also
Trans women who *do* pursue bottom surgery….
Are not mutilating themselves.
Do not have “fuckholes”.
Are not “an angel who lost her wings”.
Unable to accept their bodies.
Are not “butchered”.
Are not being “frivolous”.
Neovaginas are beautiful, real, oftentimes come with few or easily solvable complications, and for some women, are the ideal way to alleviate bottom dysphoria.
I’ve seen a LOT of bottom surgery negativity recently, and I’m trying to comfort myself through it- it takes years of work to get even in the best of circumstances, and every step of the way you have propaganda screaming at you and you want nothing more to hop off the train.
reblog this to tell a trans woman that you don’t care what her genital situation is and that she’s pretty regardless of what she does with her transition.
Had a weird dream where I got into a screaming match with Ken Paxton. Haven't been able to get back to sleep.
Would it be okay to make cards representing named characters that aren’t legendary?
Strongly yes
Less strongly yes
I’m neutral on the topic
Less strongly no
Strongly no
Well, MtG did that in The Dark with Niall Silvain and Tividar of Thorn (the latter being errata-ed to being a Legend sometime afterward). So there is precedent.
people on here are always saying “we NEED a story where the art of storytelling is abandoned” like ugh literary devices are soo annoying like that wouldn’t happen in real life that only happened to further the story (why is there story in my story) why would orpheus turn around when he was explicitly told not to why would icarus fly so close to the sun romeo&juliet catcher in the rye why are they so earnest why pour your heart and soul into anything why bother why cant all art be quippy logical monotony like my marvel movies there’s a void in my heart bc i refused to fill it and the curtains were blue
“i hate poetry its so pretentious” but then you reblog a quote or a throwaway line and say “why does this go so hard” you are desperate for poetry you are starved for it and u dont even realise you’re hungry
what if there was a story where nothing cool happened and it just kind of sucked
You just described litfic. The only time something cool happens is when it tries occupies another genre's territory.

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
people on here are always saying “we NEED a story where the art of storytelling is abandoned” like ugh literary devices are soo annoying like that wouldn’t happen in real life that only happened to further the story (why is there story in my story) why would orpheus turn around when he was explicitly told not to why would icarus fly so close to the sun romeo&juliet catcher in the rye why are they so earnest why pour your heart and soul into anything why bother why cant all art be quippy logical monotony like my marvel movies there’s a void in my heart bc i refused to fill it and the curtains were blue
“i hate poetry its so pretentious” but then you reblog a quote or a throwaway line and say “why does this go so hard” you are desperate for poetry you are starved for it and u dont even realise you’re hungry
The sentiment of “maybe the curtains are just blue” helped severely dampen people’s ability to read anything. Like yeah, maybe the writer is just engaging in dadaism, but the way I see it is they wouldn’t go out of their way to describe something unless there was a reason.
Now they’re mentally in the shallow end of the pool when reading.
The writer described the curtains because they've gotten criticized for dumping characters into "the grey zone" and now has to over- describe. Or it was a NaNoWriMo project and they needed to make word count.
Any number of possibilities.
Maybe they just wanted to write a fun story, and they're actively throwing red herrings to disservice the "reading must be literary or nothing worth" set?
Don't ever hesitate. Reblog this. TUMBLR RULE. When you see it, REBLOG IT.
Depression Hotline: 1-630-482-9696
Suicide Hotline: 1-800-784-8433
LifeLine: 1-800-273-8255
Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386
Sexuality Support: 1-800-246-7743
Eating Disorders Hotline: 1-847-831-3438
Rape and Sexual Assault: 1-800-656-4673
Grief Support: 1-650-321-5272
Runaway: 1-800-843-5200, 1-800-843-5678, 1-800-621-4000
Exhale: After Abortion Hotline/Pro-Voice: 1-866-4394253
If you ever want to talk, my ask box is always open