panic and squee

So, if any trans men are being told about this, it’s not true!! Smoking will not change your voice, at least not until you’re about forty years down the line and you’ve already irreparably destroyed your lungs and throat and mouth and pretty much every other organ in your body. When you hear heavy smokers with deeper, scratchier voices it is literally because their vocal cords have been ruined. This is not a passive effect of smoking, it is a very very damaging one!

It’s simply not worth it! There will be no meaningful changes except terrible ones. Voice training will do a lot more for you than cigarettes will, I promise that the people urging you to start smoking as a voice training method do not have your best interests at heart!

(And you know what, this also goes for not eating due to the idea that starving yourself will decrease your chest size. Like with smoking, there will be no meaningful changes except terrible ones. Your body is worth so much more than that and there will always be healthier alternatives!)

(Btw, afaik smoking only has this effect on estrogen from HRT. Estrogen that AFAB bodies produce naturally is not affected, so smoking is still bad for trans men)

I think also in that conversation, I had a couple people tell me that the book The Easy Way to Quit Smoking is, despite the gimmicky title, genuinely helpful.

If quitting for yourself seems too abstract and it’s hard to care, think about everyone around you. Someone with asthma or migraines will breathe easier if they’re not risking an attack from standing near you.

Lastly, some queer history: a 90’s tobacco marketing campaign that targeted gay men was literally called Project SCUM. That’s what they think of us. Don’t give them your money.

Nina: "She's not embarrassing herself, she's- she's braver than anyone I know."

She stands up for her. She tries to protect her, refuses to let someone talk about Maggie like that. She doesn't just stand there and watch, she does whatever she can to defend her, even though she's a regular human being and these creatures threatening her, Maggie, and Mr. Fell are very clearly not.

And what does Crowley do when God starts dragging Aziraphale through the mud?

What. The. Hell. Is. That.

He just... shifts his gaze from God to Aziraphale with this cold... expectation and... indifference? This dark, detached look? Aziraphale is obviously hurt by what's being said, and Crowley just... stands there, leaning against that damned bookshop pillar, looking at him as if he deserves to hear it. Like, "Well? What do you have to say to that?"

It just gets under my skin. It's unbearable. It's revolting.

That is NOT Crowley.

Crowley would NOT stand by while someone said things like that about his angel right in front of him.

This is NOT the Crowley who, when he thought Aziraphale had died for good, lost every shred of hope and every desire to save the world, and instead went off to get drunk because, without Aziraphale, he saw no point in enjoying Earth or any of its little pleasures.

Aziraphale is the most important person in his life. The person closest to him. Crowley has risked his own life for him over and over again. He is his first, only, and best friend. His light, his hope, his love.

Just being around Aziraphale always lifts his spirits, even when he's irritated or upset.

Aziraphale means the world to him.

And when Crowley played Aziraphale at the end of Season 1, he portrayed him exactly the way he sees him: brave, courageous, smiling even in the face of danger and death, compassionate, forgiving, and full of faith.

Crowley sees the best parts of Aziraphale: his courage, his resilience, his unwavering commitment to his principles even when it threatens his own existence or well-being; his faith in something better; his ability to find light in the deepest darkness; his ability to smile at people who, for centuries, have treated him terribly.

And the fact that Crowley reacts to God's words about his angel with such coldness and indifference...

It destroys me.

I don't know who you are, or why the hell you look like our Crowley.

And let's not forget that throughout most of Season 2 he relentlessly bullied Gabriel and practically drove him toward a window just because Gabriel once told his only friend to shut up and die.

Aziraphale, Crowley, and rainbows… and learning how to like them. Happy Pride! (and Pride is all summer over here with parades way past June so yes it counts)

1. First flag was designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978 to serve as a symbol for LGBTQ+ Pride and was first flown in San Francisco. Originally with 8 colours, each with a different meaning from pink to purple: sex, life, healing, sunlight, nature, magic, serenity, spirit. Later Pink and Turquoise were removed for ease of production, as those dyes were harder to get and more expensive. 

2. Victory over AIDS flag, with the black stripe added to the bottom to represent those who died of the disease. It was suggested that once a cure was found the stripes should be removed again, and even ceremoniously burned. 

3. One of the more recent additions variations of the rainbow pride flag. The black and brown stripes, sometimes seen on flags at the top above the rainbow, represent racially marginalised members of the LGBTQ+ community who face a different kind of oppression, even within the community. The white, pink, blue are taken from the Trans Pride Flag, also to draw attention to transgender people within the community. Both additions represent those who face more than just homophobia. It is, personally, my favourite variation of the rainbow flag. 

More Queer History Omens Here

This homeless person is making me uncomfortable. Should I call [a man with a gun]?

My neighbor is having a loud party. Should I get [a man with a gun] involved?

There are some teenagers skateboarding. Do you think [a man with a gun] would get rid of them for me?

those are not the babies i loved

who are those two

fucking

skinwalkers

bodysnatchers

why are they invading the tag

Goblins need a balanced diet of 462 snacks per day. While your Goblin may also partake in "meals" it is essential that they have steady access to foods they can haphazardly shovel into their mouths.

Put a tiny, domesticated creature, like a cat or a snake, or a slightly larger creature like a dog or a horse, near your Goblin. They will be delighted. Expect shrill squealing.

Goblins need piles of Soft things to cocoon in periodically. To preserve their strength.

If your Goblin is hydrophobic, as many are, you will need to periodically prod them into the shower. Be Very Careful. There is a very high Bite Risk during shower prodding.

Friends, in case some of you, like me, are published authors or illustrators or creators of any kind, and you are still using any Google service (Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Classroom), please consider deleting all your material from Drive and moving it to external harddisks or something similar before it turns into a catastrophic problem like mangaka Masahiro Itosugi just experienced:

I really hope this comes as no surprise to all of you and you were already taking precautions about it, but I know for a fact that 100% of my colleagues in the academic field back their papers and their books up on Drive, and that most of our institutional email addresses and some essential tools (for example Gmeet, that we are required to use for remote teaching or to record conferences) are based on Google Workspace (including crucial stuff like uni department documents, scientific journal archives, publicly funded projects contracts and so on).

Now they could be flagged for copyright infringment and lose access to their entire accounts for uploading back up copies of THEIR OWN work on Drive, because AI systems are apparently unable to recognise the legitimate owner of copyrighted material (or they have been intentionally set up to not recognise it so that tech corps can steal people's work).

The complete automation of the scraping-scanning-banning process, that Google has now delegated entirely to unchecked AI, with no human review, is coming for us quicker than I thought, and while there may be some things that I fear we can't disentangle from this mess anymore (I'm thinking of Gmail specifically), we can still pull our work from Drive before it's too late.

I'm not sure how to properly tag this, but if you know people who may need this warning, please help them understand how serious things are becoming.

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. 

a romance between two men does not automatically make a story good representation. especially when those characters are reduced to a set of generic traits: they are kind, they love each other, and that is basically it. we have already seen countless stories like that, and this is not just about gay relationships. people loved aziraphale and crowley not because they were a couple. they loved them as individuals: complex, contradictory characters with their own dynamic, history, and personalities that developed over many years. that is why it feels so strange to watch them be replaced with a flatter version of the same idea

(this came out of a conversation in the comments on a previous post about an author threatening to stop updating a fic because of lack of engagement)

So there’s this idea that fic writers should write for themselves and not care too much about stats or engagement,

and i totally get the sentiment behind that. if writing becomes entirely about stats and external validation, something important does get lost - creative freedom and joy, conviction in your own writing

but i also think:

“i write for myself, but i post for others.”

because posting fic is not only self-expression. it’s social. ao3 is called an archive, but emotionally it often functions as a community space.

people post for connection, for participation, for others to bear witness to their pain and trauma and grief,

and i don’t think most people are asking to be admired so much as acknowledged. there’s something deeply human about wanting another person to encounter something that mattered to you and go:

“ok, yeah, I see what you were trying to say. I see you.”

especially because fanfic is often people processing very real feelings through fictional characters at a safe distance, one step removed,

and then uploading that deeply personal thing into a shared archive and hoping somebody else might connect with it.

And i think that’s why it hurts so much when you summon up the courage and post a fic into the void and you get nothing back,

and then it’s like,