Oh Hey Yahtzee!

Now see, the big brained strategy that I’ve employed to combat this is to transition to the point where I’m forced to come out as a formality.

And then to top it all off, Cam and Pal spend all three books unpacking and dissecting this binary until they ultimately reject it and LITERALLY become non-binary together!!! 🤯💀🔥🥹

I love how Tamsyn Muir was like, in this world everybody’s totally cool about gender and sexuality, but there’s a new invented binary that’s culturally and religiously defining and dictates who people are allowed to love and/or fuck and the roles they play in society.

They’ve written volumes and volumes of religious texts about how to conform to these sacred binary roles and filthy porn about people fulfilling or breaking the stereotypes of these roles. The role a person fulfills is determined before they’re born and dictates every aspect of their life. Once in a while someone who’s supposed to be on one side of the socioreligious binary is born more suited to the other side and has to hide it all their life (Coronabeth). Sometimes people fall in love in a way the socioreligious binary declares blasphemous and they decide to love each other openly anyway, and it shocks and scandalizes people no matter how wholesome and lovely and mundane their relationship is (Abigail and Magnus).

And these sacred binary roles are not equal, oh no, as much as the religious doctrine crows the importance of both roles, one is supposed to sacrifice endlessly and unquestioningly for the other, body, mind, and soul. And these binary roles have existed for ten thousand years and were created by God and underlie the whole structure of the universe! But here’s the secret: there was a time before this sacred binary existed, and God is just Some Guy who made this shit up.

This hits WAY too close to home for me.

Escapism

Writing this down for later…. 🦴

hi!! I love the Harrow rosary you made - I want to do something similar for a cosplay I'm planning and wondered if you could share some tips/more detailed info on how you did it and what you used? How thick was your embroidery thread?

hi!! so for the ones i used oven bake clay (i did off brand sculpy), and took chunks that looked like the right size that i wanted and then rolled them into balls. after going ball mode i squished into the sides of the ball with my fingers to make it kind of square? but i didn’t make it even all around i let it be more indented near the middle (exhibit a)

here’s a top view (exhibit b)

and then i poked through it with an embroidery needle and baked it for the recommend time. after baking i painted them with watered down black brown and yellow acrylic paints, and i kinda just dabbed it on with my fingers and rubbed it in for the lightly weathered look.

for the thread i used 2 strands of standard dmc embroidery thread and i didnt tie knots between each bead bc thats hard. i used the same needle that i poked the holes with the thread them bc i knew it would fit!

if you have any more questions lmk! i also did a bone corset i don’t remember if i ever posted it tho 🫶🫶🫶

And then each subsequent book continues to flip expectations of the genre like the cohort flips planets!

By the end of Gideon we’re already reeling, but then Harrow comes along and really shows off the brilliant inner workings of the setting and magic system all while gaslighting us on the very existence of the previous book. 😅💀

The thing that really gets me about the Locked Tomb series is that from a worldbuilding perspective it’s YA catnip. Like any other author would have started it out from someone low ranking in the cohort, maybe falling in love with a rebel or vice versa, introducing parts of the world slowly. There are even houses to sort yourselves into! It’s perfect! That would have been a good story in and of itself! However Tasmyn Muir started in the deepest depths of the equivalent of death cult Amish territory from the POV of someone trying to escape and join the terrible death army, and it works. It’s like if you started explaining the concept of Star Wars with a clone from one of the tanks in Palpatine’s lair. Obsessed with her as an author.

Glinda: I loathe your Docs!

I’ll say this, if anything, every single description of Elphaba’s shoes in the book makes it more than obvious she’s a lesb. there’s way more descriptions of shoes than you’d expect and they’re all gay boots.

For years, the TV in my parents’ house had a greyscale Fox News logo burned into the bottom-left corner of the screen due to how often that channel was on.

I used to think it was funny back before I started questioning myself. Now I’m just glad I don’t have to look at it anymore.

This isn’t really meant to be a comic trashing my dad.

I do truly appreciate his commitment to education.  I do truly have a soft spot for his style of humor, which certainly influenced the development of my own.  I appreciate how he had this VHS-C camera that he was always bringing out and would let me use, sparking my love for movies and starting me on a path that led to me going to film school.

All those good things about him were real.

But so was the colossal amount of damage he caused.

If you happen to be a parent and are reading this right now, I’m going to ask that you consider this suggestion from a childless thirty-six year old:

You need to consider how you communicate with your child, and how communication doesn’t just mean the words that you use.

You’re telling your kids something with the foods you eat, the activities you engage in, etc…

…you communicate to your children with the media you consume.

The rhetoric against the trans community wasn’t as much in the spotlight when I was growing up, but every time my dad turned on the radio, he’d have my sister and I listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, etc…  One of the topics that’d come up frequently was queer people. 

Issues about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, gay marriage, gay boy scouts…

The “gays” were an issue.  More than an issue really, they were a problem.  If someone was queer, these radio hosts were quick to villainize; “this teacher is going to turn their students gay,” “this troop leader is going to abuse his scouts,” you don’t want your kid to end up like that, do you?”

My dad would listen to these folks non-stop and nod along in agreement, all the while his extremely queer and aware of it child was sitting right behind him, listening to how she was some kind of monster.

So I hid. 

There could be no sharing about aspects of myself.  My parents would be listening to 770am or Fox News all the time.  If I share that I was queer, I’d be finished.  How couldn’t that be the case?  Every day they chose to listen to people that hate me, so they hate people like me. 

So I can’t let them know me.  I won’t let them know me.

Even though they never said that they hated queer people with their own words, they told me that they hated queer people every day with the media they chose, and in turn forced me to consume.

So again, if there are any parents reading this right now, consider my words.  Hate is a choice you make, and hate can be communicated with more than just words.

If for no other reason, you never know if that kid in the back seat is listening, listening to how you hate them.

This infuriates and disheartens me to no end quite frankly. When I want to browse art and thoughts closer to my end of the transition spectrum, every third post is from some farm account posting the most blatant (and likely stolen) chaser-bait I’ve ever seen.

genuinely do not know what to make of the fact that the transandrophobia tag is half trans men cogently discussing the oppression of trans men, and half people of all gender identities talking shit about other trans people for ??? reasons, while the transfeminism tag is half trans women cogently discussing the oppression of trans women, and half just straight up pornography

And then transmeds took it back and ran with it. 😔

But like, what did people we would define as trans do back before we had lab-grown HRT like we do today? Did we used to just, roll over and waste away? I don’t think so.

Modern HRT is a wonderful thing (I should know), but I personally see it as a societal bandaid solution and a “cure” for cis people’s perceptions of us. I LOVE what it is doing to my body, but if I lived in a world where transness and gender roles where fundamentally permeable, would I think the same way?

At that point it would just be another form of body modification I suppose 🤔

the “born in the wrong body” model has never been a correct and universal explanation for being trans, it was always just a simplification to get cis people to understand things better. but then cis people took it to mean “there is something fundamentally wrong with trans ppl that can only be fixed with hrt” and its making me lose my mind.

🫂

So much of my gender is wrapped up in what I can do for others. What I can be for others. My gender is anything before it is my own; the helpful young man holding doors open for strangers, the caring grandson visiting his grandmother in the hospital, the protective older brother, the son trying and trying and trying to be perfect for his mother.

I am the son trying to be perfect, and the best thing I can do for my mother is be a daughter. What else am I supposed to do, other than try my best to be a daughter? My gender is a man whose only purpose is what he can do for others, and that means I must be a woman.

I heard someone say, once, that men are taught that our value comes from providing for those around us. We're taught that being a man means taking care of a family, but we never learn that being a man means taking care of ourselves too.

Do I matter too? The best thing I can do for my mother is be her daughter, and the best thing I can do for me is be her son. What am I supposed to do? What's more important? My gender is about taking care of my family, providing for them, and my gender has never been about doing anything for myself.