hi as pride month draws near for june reminder that cishet aces/aros are not LGBT and don’t belong in our spaces

And like, just a reminder that people like op are the people I don’t want to share my spaces with.

Every time I see an exclusionist on here and I click their profile they’re like 17 or 19 or maybe 21 at best. 

And that’s fair- it’s not like people that age can’t have opinions or be right, they’re people.

But when I think about how long it took me to work out my own damn sexuality, gender, and all that crap, and how gently I stepped once I realised I was queer, and how much listening to people I did to see who the hell was out there…how much I am STILL learning about people who have different experiences…

…it feels really odd to see people this young being so secure in their belief of who should be excluded from the community. 

Not how to support and include, to help and support, but how to exclude.

Like…being confident in your own sexuality at 19? Fuck yeah, good for you, I’m happy you had a better chance and an earlier start than I did.

But… telling other people they’re not queer enough to be in ‘your’ space?

Your space? Not mine anymore? Huh.

I’m over here at 35 still listening and learning and trying to understand everyone’s perspectives, discovering that sexuality is even more complex and nuanced than I know…and all these people barely out of their teens are talking like they know everything there is to know about being LGBT, ever. Like it’s all been written down, stamped, sealed, confirmed by some Authority.

Mmmm. No. Just… have an ounce of humility. Try gaining some perspective, please.

You haven’t lived long enough to even really listen to real life aces, to really think about what LGBT means. I don’t mean this as an ageist insult, I just really think that this kind of shit deserves TIME- hell I know it deserves time and thought because I am STILL unlearning bad assumptions and behaviours, and STILL meeting people who define themselves outside of the frame that I was once taught meant ‘LGBT’. And you, a teen raised in a world that’s still pretty fucking homophobic and doesn’t recognise half of what the LGBT community itself has taken years to acknowledge, you think you know it all?

Because you’re online? While you’re here, read some posts where ace people talk about how they’re treated. Forget semantics for a while: read the experiences. I’m online too, I have been for some time. Doesn’t make me right, but experience is of some value. Experience in listening to queer people who aren’t quite like me, that is, in trying to understand how I am similar, instead of trying to figure out how they do not belong. In how people rework things, figure out how they can be less harmful, more inclusive, more representative of all those who are marginalised. See, Q is queer but also often Questioning. It’s still important to let people be Questioning, there is an astounding amount of queerphobia in the world and we are NOT done working out the labels. We may never be. Not so long ago, the T in lgbt was under question. Bisexuals are still being excluded.  So I’m being told I don’t matter by people who weren’t even born yet when I realised I wasn’t straight. They’re skipping right over all the reflection and going straight to self-affirmation by exclusion. 

Which, again- if you are born into a world where you never have to question your identity, oh good grief I hope that’s real for everyone some day. But we’re not there yet, yanno? And I resent being told that after all these years of soul-searching and careful, very careful questioning of whether I belong and how I can be a good member of the community, people arrive so 100% certain of their claim to being LGBT that the first thing they do is try to kick others out.

tl;dr I was here first and I’m not amused.

My general feeling when These Kids start yelling about who does or doesn’t Belong in the collection of the broken, hurt and strange that is the queer community:

Pride month is an especially shitty time to tell queer people that they’re not queer enough and that they’re not welcome.

I’d like to take this opportunity to invite any exclusionists following me to kindly eff off (and also unfollow me while you’re at it :) Happy Pride!  

tumblr:

me:

I sat here… like an absolute dumbass…

sometimes it’s like. I have been so brave for so long. I deserve the universe not being terrifying for 5 minutes

This is getting a lot of notes all of a sudden, y’all ok

Are you?

*starts crying*

That point in a piece of fanfiction where you can tell something embarrassing is about to happen so you start fucking around on tumblr because you’re a huge baby with a crippling overabudance of empathy.

I do this with every media I consume. I pause movies and have to walk around and prepare myself for second-hand embarrassment sometimes.

This is mE

Secondhand embarrassment. I’ve got it. 

I sometimes mute movies or tv shows to avoid it. Especially if I know it’s coming. 

I TOTALLY DO THIS.

Hilarious Animal Snapchats That Are Impossible Not To Laugh At

Source

back the fuck up

There’s another story that I like about a Chinese general who had to defend a city with only a handful of soldiers from a huge enemy horde that was in all likelihood going to steamroll the place flat within hours of showing up.

So when said horde did arrive, they saw the general sitting outside the city’s open gates, drinking tea. The horde sent a couple of emissaries over to see what was what, and the general greeted them cheerfully and invited them all to come and take tea with him.

The horde decided that this was a scenario that had “MASSIVE FUCKING TRAP” written all over it in beautiful calligraphy and promptly fucked off.

Whoever that general was, he was clearly the Ancient Chinese equivalent of Sam Vimes.

did he just invite us over for tea nah man i’m out

This just keeps getting better

I fucking love history.

ok but tbh that story misses a lot of the subtlety of the situation like ok

so this story is the Romance of Three Kingdoms, and essentially takes place between Zhuge Liang, resident tactician extraordinaire, and Sima Yi… OTHER resident tactician extraordinaire.

The two were both regarded as tactical geniuses and recognized the other as their rival. Zhuge Liang had a reputation for ambushing the SHIT out of his opponents and using the environment to his advantage, thus destroying large armies with a small number of men. Sima Yi (who kind of entered the picture later) was a cautious person whose speciality was unravelling his opponent’s plans before they began. So it was natural that the two would butt heads; however, since Sima Yi tended to have more men and resources, he started winning battles against the former. Which, y’know, kinda sucked.

On to the actual story: Zhuge Liang is all like “shit i gotta defend this city with like 10 men.” Literally if he fights ANY kind of battle here, he WILL lose; his only option for survival is not to fight. And that’s looking more and more impossible until he hears that his rival is leading the opposing army. And then he gets this brilliant idea. He basically opens all the gates, sends his men out in civilian clothes to sweep the streets, and sits on top of the gate drinking tea and chilling out and basically makes the whole thing out to be a trap

When Sima Yi comes he’s all like “yo come on in bro”

and Sima Yi is like “yeah he’s never been that obvious about his traps before. this is definitely a bluff” and he’s about to head in when he realizes

wait. he knows that i think he’s bluffing.

and so he gets it in his head that maybe, just MAYBE, Zhuge Liang has this cunning plan that will wipe out his army - recall that he has a pretty good handle on what his rival is capable of. And after a long period of deliberation (which is just like “he know that I know that he knows that etc.”), being the cautious man he is, SIma Yi eventually decides to turn his entire army around and leave.

Zhuge Liang later points out that the plan was based specifically on the fact that he was facing his rival; if it had been anyone else, there’s no way it would have worked. A dumber or less cautious person would have simply charged in and won without breaking a sweat. 

and that’s the real genius here: it was a plan formed entirely just to deceive one man, and it worked.

Zhuge Liang is the most brilliant, sneaky-ass bastard in history. One time his side’s army was out of arrows, which pretty much meant they were screwed. So Zhuge Liang goes and does the logical thing, which is build a fuck ton of scarecrows and put them all on boats. Then he makes the men hide in the boats and sail them out on the river.

Well, that day was super foggy (which Zhuge Liang had predicted. Did I mention he was also a freakishly accurate meteorologist?). So the enemy across the river sees a fleet of boats armed to the teeth with what appears to be half an army of men. They panic! and start firing arrows like crazy. 

Zhuge Liang lets this play out for a while, then he’s like, ”Ok guys that’s enough.” They calmly turn the boats around and go back to base, where they dismantle the scarecrows and pull out all the enemy’s arrows.

Zhuge Liang is legend.

I love this post. It just keeps getting better. Like seriously, I would have adored learning about this in World History.

If you want to see this in cinematic glory, watch Red Cliff.

Especially since it makes Zhuge Liang look like this:

Red Cliff is 50% bloody battles and 50% eye candy and about half of that eye-candy is due to Zhuge Liang

I fully support watching Red Cliff; it’s gloriously silly entertainment during the battle scenes.

Guess what just got moved to the top of my watch list?? :D

@blackkatmagic

どいてくれないネコ https://twitter.com/kyuryuZ/status/1273812918467887104

@blackkatmagic

I’m very excited for my latest craft experiment, where I rhythmically slap sale rank oil paint onto a canvas and I see how long it takes to dry so that I can finally touch the paint textures I stare at so longingly in museums. 12 hours in, still wet. I am beginning to think this might take longer than I thought which you can imagine is quite a burden, as I am absolutely horned up to rub this paint.

You guys sound like you know what you’re talking about but I’m gonna touch it every twenty minutes just to be sure

I’ve put this canvas to age in the basement like a fine wine, along another recent masterpiece of mine “I put the paint on me hand and I slap the canvas like a bongo”

Paint slapped on 6/9, as of 6/22 (I mean actually it was a couple days ago but I didn’t fully check the dryness then so I can’t be sure):

It is rubbery feeling and the peaks of paint move when you flick them. The texture is not at ALL what I expected tbh and it makes me excited to try a different experiment, thick brush strokes, you know, those mad thicc ones that swirl real good

Here’s an additional shot with my coffee cup for a further sense of scale so people will understand that these canvases are small and therefore stop sending me asks about my supposedly gorilla sized hands, you bastards, you rotten bastards scared of the hands your minds gave me

I don’t know shit about art but isn’t this like a great example of art that pushes the boundaries of what art is? Like you’ve got your canvas with paint on it, but your reason for putting the paint there is totally different than why most people put paint on stuff. It’s like a study on texture or something.

Agreed, this is really cool and also I love the fact that you really wanted to touch some paint, so you just went out and bought a bunch of paint and made your own painting for touching purposes. That’s striking me as really really cool right now for reasons I can’t entirely articulate. 

For reference: Really thick paint on a piece of art is called impasto. Another really fun way to do it is with a painting knife: you can make each stroke SUPER SMOOTH like cake icing, but with visible, touchable texture between the strokes.

More impasto:

art by Jan Ironside, who does THICK IMPASTO FLOWERS THAT I SO WANT TO TOUCH

You LITERALLY sat down to watch paint dry…

Museums should have stuff like this on display JUST so you can touch it. With a sign like, “Feel me up! I won’t alarm!”

make good art

Only thing about thick impasto is that the paint can get a bit sharp sometimes. Like, I’ve cut my hand on dried impasto paint because the paint stroke was that pointed. -.-;

Every reply on this post is delightful

“I put the paint on me hand and I slap the canvas like a bongo”

“it makes me excited to try a different experiment, thick brush strokes, you know, those mad thicc ones that swirl real good“

I love your experimental approach to this, it’s very direct. like…”I have questions about the texture of this medium. I guess I could ask youtube…or I could put my hands right in it.”

A very rare Andean cat stretching out in front of wildlife cam 

(via)

Extremely Rare Forbidden Tum-Tum

I can’t decide if

a) This dude has run into Obi-Wan before and is just like this asshole lives to ruin my commute or

b) He sees a guy hanging from a droid in traffic and is immediately like “must be a Jedi. Our fucking tax dollars at work”.

Couldn’t you just pause it

oh my sweet summer child

Couldn’t you just pause it???😭😭😭🤣🤣🤣

COULDN’T YOU JUST PAU-AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Pause?!?!

PAUSE!?!?!?!?!?!?

Pause???? 😂😂😂😂 Oh man, how old is this poor kid?

PAUSE?????

Pause?!?!??!!?

guys… I don’t know if you know this but… if you wake up early… there’s so many more hours in the day

But at what cost

when you ship a rarepair but youre real passionate about it

@blackkatmagic shooting all these wonderful fics and rare pairs into our hearts with NO MERCY WHATSOEVER. ❤️

Cyril Rolando  -  http://cyrilrolando.tumblr.com  -  https://www.facebook.com/Aquasixio  -  https://twitter.com/RolandoCyril  -  http://sixinside.com  -  https://www.youtube.com/user/Colinlyrador?feature=guide  -  https://vimeo.com/aquasixio  -  https://es.pinterest.com/aquasixio

I fully agree with the intentions no longer matter part here, especially in the higher meaning. I really don’t think doing evil for a good greater plan, “using the dark side with good intentions” works with the force. But I think intentions in the way that they are directly connected to our emotions matter a lot.

I’m kinda semantically split on whether or not there exists dark side powers, because in most ways I don’t think there are specific “light side” and “dark side” powers and as you say, a force choke is a force push/grab around the throat. But I also think that there are certain things that one can only do when in contact with certain emotions (and by extent certain intentions). 

To me it seems that force lightning (because it’s the power people most often discuss), is taking your anger and hatred and throwing it at a person/thing. You cannot use force lightning without those feelings. You must want to hurt another person, to cause them pain. That intention has to be there. This is something darksiders repeat a lot, “use your anger, your hatred”. That the greater, original, intention was protecting someone else no longer matters at this point. Like with Rey and the transport. She was furious at Kylo, using the force to drag the transport to her but eventually the expression this force use took changed. 

So it’s all about the mindset and how emotions in the moment can’t be separated from intentions either. One cannot use Force-lightning without being in contact with the dark side. And as always with the dark side, doing this once or twice might be fine, but when you are regularly doing this, embracing this… You cannot regularly use your feelings to hurt another person, literally throw your anger and hate at them through a psychic network, and decieve yourself into thinking that you’re not affected in turn. 

I think there’s a really good point about how intentions matter when it comes to how you approach the Force, as in anger and hate and fear are intentions.  Using the Force through those feelings will drive you to the dark side (not all at once, but the more you embrace it into your heart, the further down that road you’ll be), because it’s very much a psychic emotions-based energy field in how mortal beings use it. But @jedi-order-apologist is also right that intentions don’t matter if you’re saying, “I’m going to go dark side for the greater good!”  Maybe that’s a choice you’ll make, to sacrifice yourself for something you see as being more important, that the good you’ll do is worth more than the dirt on your hands.  But it won’t matter to your psychic connection to the Force, because the dark side is still the dark side and it will echo all those negative feelings right back into your head, until that’s all you can hear and see anymore.  You can do the most good thing ever with your hate and anger and fear and it’s still a path to the dark side, you just have to decide if that’s worth it or not, I guess. I can see a case being made for something like–let’s say Anakin had killed Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith out of anger, that he fell to the dark side for it and lost a piece of himself, but he took out a tyrant who was going to get millions of people killed and even more oppressed and enslaved.  If a Jedi is willing to give up their life to stop someone like that, would it be morally wrong to give up their connection to the light to stop someone like that, so long as they didn’t hurt anyone else along the way?  Whether they died in shadow or had to deal with it for the rest of their lives or overcame it, was that personal moral sacrifice worth it to save the lives of billions of people? I think that’s where I think the semantics are the most interesting–you can make a case for a dark sider doing something good, but that can’t negate that there are still consequences to using the dark side and that the dark side is not good.  That anger and hate and fear is still a part of the person, no matter what their bigger intentions were when they used the Force, they still have to go through the process of facing it and letting it go, they don’t get a pass just because they killed Space Satan. And it’s really, really easy for the dark side to twist everything, it’s not rational or objective, it lies.  If you don’t let it go, it will consume you and you will act out to hurt others. Though, I guess this is one of those things where defining the “dark side” is difficult, especially because there is an important point of how one act of anger is not the same as seizing on that mindset as a way of life. I think Obi-Wan acted out of anger and hate when he cut Maul in half in TMP.  Ezra acted out of anger and fear when he caused the fyrnocks to attack.  Rey used Force Lightning because she was so angry and possessive of Chewie.  And all of them seemed to have faced that part of themselves and worked through it and let it go. That’s significantly different that, say, Maul who wants to kill Sidious and you can argue that that’s a good thing, but he’s doing it because he hates Sidious and wants revenge, not because it’s a good thing. I suppose what we’re also talking about is temporary vs permanent–if you have a moment of acting out of anger, that’s not a permanent thing, it’s something that has consequence, but it’s not the same as seizing on that anger and letting it into your very veins.  But if you think that acting out of that place was justified and totally fine, that you can keep doing it again and again without consequence, then there’s no path that won’t lead to being consumed by the dark side and eventually you will start hurting people and all your moral boundaries will be eroded, the longer you’re on that path.

he deserves it, probably for that Eri comment