-“I’m not French!”
-“…yet”
-“I’m not going to be trans-French! FRENCH IS NOT A GENDER”
Tags:
#I am reminded of that post a while back #depicting a race/class selection screen with really weird options #and one of the races was ”demi-canadian” #and I was like ”yep‚ that’s me alright” #our home and cherished land #the humour of my people #our roads may be golden or broken or lost
People complain a lot about the “hot political takes interspersed with anime girls” Tumblrs, but I find them less jarring than the “hot political takes interspersed with GIFs of ejaculating penises” Tumblrs.
I am once again reminded that other peoples’ experiences of the internet can be very different from mine.
Now I’m wondering how many people reading this fall into the “this is a reminder of how different other people’s experiences can be” camp and how many into the “god, do I know that feel” camp.
(Personally, I’m in know-that-feel.)
Tags:
#there is a time and a place for reading hot political takes and it is *not* while looking for porn #look I get that you want to demonstrate your SJ-ness in order to reassure people that #just because you write *fiction* about women getting brainwashed doesn’t mean you support The Patriarchy in actuality #but you could just *link* to your politics blog from your porn blog #reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw text? #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #our roads may be golden or broken or lost
replied to your post
By the way: my main social media presence these…”
I think dragon.style has a 5000-character limit
*looks at dragon.style*
7777-character limit, which seems pretty workable even though I don’t really understand why there’s a character limit at all (though I notice a lot of the articles about Mastodon were written by people accustomed to Twitter who think 500 characters is a lot). Downsides: not currently accepting new accounts, some of the admin’s attempts to signal safety are of a kind that–from past experience–I actually parse as hostile instead (in a “will probably turn you in to the Thought Police” kind of way).
Still, proof of concept, and it’s possible Anthracite isn’t actually as scary as the people whose signals she’s using. (She does at least appear to have zero obscenity laws as long as you use content warnings and cuts, which is very important to me in a venue because…well, here is a quote from a PM I sent a while back regarding why I wasn’t going to move to Imzy:
“IME, obscenity laws are enforced more strictly the less sexually mainstream you are, and as someone who is about as non-mainstream as it gets, the strictures on me get very tight very fast once they start existing at all. (Good thing I’m not into bondage, or it’d probably cause a paradox. :P) It tends to work out that if straight people can’t have sex, then gay people can’t kiss and fetishists can’t talk, and dammit I *like* talking.
Basically, I don’t trust any site with any obscenity rules at all to let me post the thing I just posted {{note: the thing in question was this}}. (And woe unto anyone who tries to distribute [things that are in a grey area between porn and sex toys] like half the people in my kinky Tumblr‑sphere do.)”)
Tags:
#3dspacejesus #replies #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #sexuality and lack thereof #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #Fediverse
Sort-of-tagged by @justice-turtle. Name ten songs you’re obsessed with:
(I’m going to mutate the “obsessed with” in a different direction than JT did, and do songs that have been important or special to me.)
(In rough chronological order of when they became important/special.)
(Disclaimer: I have not listened to the Youtube links to make sure they work properly.)
1. “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”, Eiffel 65. For something like seven years, I would occasionally get stuck in my head a snatch of tune I called the Ghost. I didn’t know if it was a song I’d heard once as a small child, or something my brain had come up with on its own. I had no idea where to even begin trying to look it up: the memory(?) did not come with any lyrics.
Then, at a bowling alley when I was fifteen, I heard it. At first, I feared it might slip away from me again, as there was too much background noise to make out the words. Fortunately, Mom recognised it, and gave me the name and artist. I was so happy to have finally identified it, I didn’t even care that I came in last in the game.
2. [redacted]. Since I heard this song, my life has never known peace. (Well, okay, it’s known a hell of a lot *less* peace than it would have otherwise.) I probably never would have handled this song very well, but it definitely made things worse that I first heard it while especially vulnerable. To this day, after all this time, it still triggers the fuck out of me. I heard *two seconds* of it in December (before noping the hell out of the store), and it took days for the pain to fade, for it to stop intruding into my thoughts.
I still get twitchy around radios sometimes, if I’m already in a bad way or if it’s a station that’s been known to play it. I still occasionally have nightmares about being forced to hear it. Sometimes even stations that exclusively play new songs worry me a little: having witnessed the depths of how awful a song can be, a proof of concept, there’s a little part of me that wonders how long until someone makes another just as bad.
(I take comfort in the possibility that this song was grandfathered in from a more psychologically fragile version of me, and that–knock on wood–it might not *be* possible to make another just as bad.)
((You know how radio stations these days have websites that tell you what their playlists for the past week have been? I want them to have pages where they tell you what they’re *going* to play. People who like being surprised can avoid looking at those pages, and people with song-related triggers can know when not to go grocery shopping (and can shop with confidence when they *do* go).))
3. “Follow You, Follow Me”, Genesis. There’d been previous Phil Collins songs I’d heard and liked, but this was the song that sparked my special interest in Phil Collins’ music. I heard it on the radio on my way to a Girl Scout event in the autumn of 2006; my Google-fu was terrible when I was 12/13, so it took me three months of wondering about it and over an hour of active searching for me to figure out which song it was.
Have you ever listened to a song you have a special interest in? It’s indescribable. It’s *such* a high.
I rationed it out carefully, knowing my general tendency to have weaker feelings about a song the more times I’ve heard it. (I didn’t account for the fact that my special interests generally only last a year or two, though, so I may have been a bit *too* careful.)
I don’t listen to this song much anymore, because it’s unnerving to hear how far it’s fallen now that the special interest has faded. Like, it’s *nice*, but it’s not *ecstatic* the way it was when I was 13.
4. “Come With Me”, Phil Collins. The only explicit lullaby* I’ve ever actually liked. I think because there was so little pressure in the circumstances around me listening to it: nobody ever forced me to listen to it, nobody hyped it up.
*personally I think “Hold on My Heart” is more soothing, but it’s not really *aiming* for that the way “Come With Me” is
5. “Rolling in the Deep”, Adele. I like 10’s pop a lot better than 00’s pop (I think because when I was a child, kids I disliked tended to be into 00’s pop, and even when I wasn’t in contact with them I viewed 00’s pop through a negative lens because of that), and to me this was the point of changeover between the two. It was refreshing to have a current Top 40 song that I actively *liked*.
6. “Never Let Me Go”, Florence and the Machine. While it’s never been ecstatic the way “Follow You, Follow Me” was, it’s been nice to finally have a favourite song again. And it was my introduction to Florence and the Machine, a very good band in general (though I have *still* not gotten around to finishing my first listen-through of their 2015 album and deciding which of the songs I like; I have not been good at adding new songs to my collection lately). Thank you, random viral Tumblr user who recced it.
7. “Bombay Sapphires”, Stevie Nicks/“Think About It”, Stevie Nicks/“Docklands”, Stevie Nicks. That might qualify as cheating, but all of these fall into the same category: songs whose lyrics didn’t used to make sense until suddenly clicking one day in my late teens/early twenties. You can pretty much trace my developing ability to parse poetic language by how many Stevie Nicks songs I understand. (Some of them I can still see how I would have gotten confused, but last week I was listening to “Bombay Sapphires” and wondering how I ever managed to not understand this song. (although on further reflection, I think the first-person/third-person switches might have been a big part of it))
8. “Sorry”, Assemblage 23. This song probably isn’t ~supposed~ to be about social justice, but it’s definitely about social justice.
Hearing this song for the first time was the tipping point that led to me cutting a lot of contact with old friends and old reading-material-sources. It dawned on me, listening to it, that it’s a *really* bad sign when you start identifying with songs about unhealthy relationships.
(Sample of the lyrics:
“I’m sorry I can’t always drown
In rivers of despair
A man forever broken by
A need for your repair
I’m sorry if the things I said
Were somehow misconstrued
I’m sorry, yes I’m sorry
So sorry
But not as sorry as you”)
9. “Sad Angel”, Fleetwood Mac. It was nice to turn the tables and have *me* introduce *Mom* to Fleetwood Mac. Giving a loved one [music from their favourite band] that they had no idea existed is priceless.
10. “Almost Home”, Sultan and Shepard. The newest addition to my music collection. Under normal circumstances it would have just been okay (maybe still good enough to keep around), but I first heard it all the way through during the first time I was in a different country from my parents*, so I was particularly prone to Feelings about reuniting loved ones. I remember listening to it on the radio at work the day they were due to come back, singing along and trying not to cry.
*Or rather, they were in a different country from me. I stayed put, they went away. (not by choice: there were family matters in America that needed taking care of in person)
Tags:
#oh look an original post #music #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #my childhood #long post #meme
*
Quite apart from whether their arguments are correct, the main problem I have with kink-critical and porn-critical feminism is that their definitions of “kink” and “porn” feel *really* weird to me.
I would say that I’m kinky and that I consume porn. And I think it’s reasonable of me to define these terms in ways that cover me (what terms should I use, if not these?). But I’m not into pain and I’m not into power exchange (let alone non-con) and I’m not into video, so I end up in this unnerving grey area where people *appear* to oppose me, but none of the reasons they give for *why* they oppose me actually *apply* to me, so do they oppose me or not?
Like, am I vanilla-by-default in their worldview, not being into the things they define as “kink”? In what universe do *I*, of all people, qualify as vanilla?
(…maybe the universe I encountered in this post?)
Tags:
#not really ”vagueblogging” so much as inspired by the general discourse going on around me lately #sexuality and lack thereof #discourse cw #oh look an original post #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #(sort of) #nsfw text
ok so i’m pretty sure i know at least one or possibly two people in toronto
so one of the players from my d&d group has a question for y’all
she says “me and my gaggle of rich white friends are planning a road trip to canada, toronto is only like 8 hours from chi town so like not terrible, i was wondering what’s like fun stuff to do besides niagara falls and excessive drinking”
so uh, yeah. any suggestions? :-)
The CN Tower is neat if you’re okay with heights. (The elevator hurts your ears a bit, though. Try to swallow a lot or otherwise relieve the pressure.) There’s a transparent panel in one part of the floor. I’m not sure if my Girl Guide leader ever gave me the picture she took of me lying on that panel, with the ground far below as the backdrop, but that exists somewhere and you might like to do the same.
Casa Loma could be good, but I’m not sure what it’s like when they’re not hosting a big Girl Guide event.
There’s a biggish† amusement park in Vaughan (just outside Toronto) called Canada’s Wonderland. I’ve been there, like, once, over a decade ago, but I think it was decent?
—
I’m guessing from the Niagara Falls mention that it’s more of a “general Southwestern Ontario” thing than a “just Toronto” thing, so further out stuff:
Hmm. I mean, I went on a lot of field trips in my teens, but I feel like a lot of them are…like, they’re nice, but not in a *distinctive* way. (Also, some of them were *only* for school and school-like groups: the Woodlawn Memorial Park cemetery in Guelph would be pretty dull without their (great) school tour.) There are plenty of other museums in other places that are just as nice. Still, a general “always check out the local museums when touristing” policy will serve you pretty well here as it will elsewhere.
Some exceptions and possible exceptions to the general “check out museums”:
Last I heard the Ontario Science Centre (in Toronto) was kind of overpriced if you don’t already have a reciprocal membership with another museum††, but I think they’ve added more stuff since then and might be worthwhile now? And you might be rich enough not to care in any case.
The Canadian Medical Hall of Fame (in London) is basically just their website given physical form (a bunch of plaques and some screens with videos). If you’re interested in their stuff, just read the website (…if your computer can handle it): don’t bother showing up in person.
You note that most-to-all of the people in your group are white, so probably don’t go to any archaeology museums (the one I’m thinking of is the Museum of Ontario Archaeology in London) unless you’re the right kind of woke masochists (or are on the opposite end of the caring spectrum and aren’t bothered by Let’s Talk About These People Your People Oppressed at all; you do you, none of my business how many fucks you actually give about people as long you treat them okay). It’s too awkward otherwise to qualify as “fun stuff”.
(I kind of want to check out an archaeology museum in Europe someday. I bet they’re less awkward.)
—
I can’t give a whole lot in the way of restaurant recommendations, because my ability to take pleasure from food is somewhat limited. (Like, I *can* enjoy food, but I don’t really enjoy fancy food much *more* than plain food, and it never gets to the waxing-rhapsodic kinds of levels I’ve seen other people reach.)
—
The fact that you phrase it as “a road trip to Canada” implies you aren’t already in Canada, so maybe some more national-level stuff would be useful.
If you haven’t had Tim Tams before and are curious about them, they sell those at Zehrs (a grocery store chain of moderate fanciness/pricey-ness). Imported from Australia and everything.
If you haven’t had Mars bars before and are curious about them, they sell those pretty much anywhere with an impulse-buy rack. I don’t think they’re imported from Britain, but it probably doesn’t matter. They’re basically the same as Milky Ways in America, though. (to be confusing, Milky Way in Britain refers to what both America and Canada call “3 Musketeers”)
The best flavours of Tim Hortons bagel are Tomato Asiago (not as pizza-like as you would expect, but a different kind of good) and Garlic Parmesan, with Chive getting an honourable mention. Get them toasted and buttered for best results. They’re not available all the time in all branches, though, and tbh I don’t actually know if they carry them at all anymore; it’s been a while since I ate there. The fruit slushies are good too, and the muffins are decent. I don’t tend to buy anything else there (I don’t drink coffee).
(In general–and this might seem obvious to you already, I don’t know, but just in case–keep an eye out for interesting-looking food you wouldn’t be able to get in your normal location. I’ve lived here long enough that it’s kind of hard to dig through my memory for which things struck me as strange at first, though I could probably go “oh yeah, that was one of them” if somebody presented me with one.)
—
(JT, let me know how this goes if you can; I’m curious.)
—
†I went googling to confirm the name and Wikipedia calls it “the country’s largest”, so maybe I’m just spoiled by having seen Disney World.
††If you travel a lot and like museums at all (and haven’t already done this), maybe look into whether any of your local museums are part of a reciprocal-membership agreement and get a membership there. Back when I was an upper-middle-class South Jerseyan, my family had a membership at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, and it served us well throughout the East Coast. (Would probably have served us well out West, too, if we’d ever gone there.)
Tags:
#reply via reblog #our home and cherished land #the more you know #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #long post #food
I’ve been doing archiving again today, downloading local copies of things that previously existed (in versions accessible to me) only on the Internet.
The thing about archiving is that it *hurts*. Not having done it–the moment when you want to remind yourself how something went and find it isn’t there to tell you, will never be there again–hurts a lot more, so I keep doing this. My past is valuable to me and I want to keep hold of it, have it available, and yet it always hurts to immerse myself in it.
(Today I’m saving works of fiction, works I think I would miss if their links rotted. (Some of them have already rotted. Most were salvageable through the Internet Archive. But only most.) I didn’t think that would hurt, but it turns out that it does, that they evoke the time periods I read them in.)
I know a lot of people hate their past selves, for their ignorance and foolishness. I think this is another version of that impulse, but I don’t hate past-me.
I don’t hate *her*. I hate the people who did this to her.
I think that’s a lot of the problem. I think maybe a lot of the pain of archiving isn’t inherent to the task in general, but because most of the stuff I’m archiving–this project and previous projects–is from around my late teens, give or take, and I was in a lot of pain then. A lot of it I hardly acknowledged at the time, or if I acknowledged it I shrugged and figured that was just how things were.
Maybe it’s good for me to immerse myself in the past, sometimes, if only to show myself how far I’ve come.
Tags:
#our roads may be golden or broken or lost #oh look an original post #amnesia cw #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #((and can’t be added at the end because there are more than 20 tags so category tags won’t register there)) #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #I’m not even sure how long it’s been since the last time I cried #months and months I think #I’m not crying now I’m just saying I cry a *lot* less than I did then #(crying frequency is often a helpful guide to my current sanity levels if I find I’m having trouble telling from the inside) #((bear in mind I don’t experience estrogen’s effects on crying)) #((it’s not cathartic it’s not helpful and if things are going at all well it’s *not* frequent)) #I should probably stop for the day #I hate to leave tasks like these half-completed #but I’ve been neglecting my other daily tasks today and they need tending to as well #(I wonder whether I still have further to go) #(if late-twenties!me will look back at some background pain I’m so accustomed to as to hardly notice) #(and flinch) #(and pity me) #(and be grateful not to suffer like that anymore) #((my bet is on something finance-related)) #((I am aware of certain echoes between this post and two posts ago)) #((I maintain that accepting my lot is better than impotent anger at it)) #((but I acknowledge that having a lot that does not tempt anyone towards impotent anger at it would be better still)) #(((though I would like to point out that a lot of past-me’s pain was caused by feeling obligated to cultivate anger)))
True rebellion is accepting my lot.
Tags:
#sounds like a shitpost but isn’t #competing access needs #don’t you tell me that I deserve better #I take great comfort in not deserving better #it sure as hell beats cultivating misery #oh look an original post #somewhat related to #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #but currently mostly inspired by #in which Brin has a job #(okay fine before anyone is all ”oh no what happened”) #(both my job and my menial Internet labour cut my hours) #(and my job stopped providing one free meal a week) #(now can everyone please stop trying to ~commiserate~ and ~fuck those bastards~ or whatever and just let me get on with things) #fuck anyone who insists that I need to be angry about this state of affairs #the only thing we have to get angry about is anger itself #tag rambles
*
I have been seeing a disturbing amount of Maccabee glorification lately in the name of anti-anti-Semitism, so:
This Hanukkah, I would like to reiterate that I do not condone killing people for attempting to convert away from Judaism. Including and *especially* when the reason they are attempting to convert is because they think being non-Jewish will be safer for them.
This is not what supporting me looks like.
Tags:
#of *course* I would rather be an alive Hellenist than a dead Jew #and what the hell kind of right do you have to stop me? #why the hell would you even *want* to if your goal is to help me? #if you really think I’m going to be up against a hard place the *last* thing you should be is a rock #no I don’t think it’s *entirely* that people didn’t think through the Maccabee stuff #because I see it in other non-Maccabee forms too #everyone–enemies and ””allies”” alike–wants to keep me trapped in Judaism #at least enemies don’t have the gall to claim they’re doing it for my own good #oh look an original post #Judaism #rants #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #Hanukkah #anti-semitism cw #murder cw
[no content in this post so that reblogs of this will be second-level reblogs]
I don’t remember it being used in my school.
It’s been long enough that I don’t remember the circumstances, but it was definitely not at school because I didn’t go to school. (I don’t *think* it was a schoolbook.)
It might have been from my parents: my dad’s left-handed, so *some* lesson on handedness would be bound to come up at some point†. Or media. Or maybe Girl Scouts (which is also kind of parents, since my mom led my troop). Or a combination of the above.
(When I dig through my brain, I get strongest associations with Girl Scouts, but that might just be from me *thinking* about previous right-handed-privilege stuff *during* Girl Scouts because of crafts using right-handed scissors.)
—
†And I suppose might not come up much in an all-right-handed family, so that alone would go a fair way towards making it not a Relatable Childhood Experience.
My mental model of a central SJ-enthusiast would not find the idea of handedness as a legitimate axis of privilege obvious, and would react to the idea with at best curiosity and at worst hostility. My mental model of a central generic liberal would also not find the idea obvious. I’m also very probably biased to underestimate the importance of “left hand = devil hand” type attitudes because I live in a liberal area where it doesn’t seem to be a thing. This is the context that informed the wording of my post.
It’s very possible my mental models of a central SJ-enthusiast and a central generic liberal are in error.
Tagging @ranma-official and @moral-autism because they also responded to my post.
I think the idea was, *because* handedness (in this part of space-time) is not a huge Thing to anywhere near the extent of gender or race or such, it’s a good way to ease people into the ideas without [putting them immediately on the defensive]/[making them focus on the trauma of their oppression] (depending on status).
So, I don’t think they’d go so far as to call it *legitimate* per se, but thinking it’s ridiculous to the point that “X implies that handedness is an axis of privilege” constitutes a significant mark against X also rings false to me.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #my childhood #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #mind you my dad also told me the ”I can’t operate on him! That’s my son!” riddle when I was a kid #and I felt *so* embarrassed and like *such* a failure not to have figured out the doctor was his mother #that I still remember it after all this time #(I don’t know what reaction Dad was aiming for or what reaction he thought I was having) #(but subjectively I felt like a disgrace to the name of feminism) #((I don’t recall the wording of my thoughts but that was pretty much the gist of it)) #(I doubt the *acute* pain lasted very long but the experience stuck with me) #tag rambles
Brinens and Things - Tumblr Mirror 