reblog for a larger sample size pls etc etc i'll pass u a strawberry 🫶🏽

we did it! we formed a statistically significant sample size with a perfectly acceptable margin of error!

idk man i think that if you can read dozens and dozens of trans men talking about how their support systems abandoned them when they started getting too masculine on T or had top surgery or whatever, and queer spaces started treating them like threats or potential predators, and you find these stories going back to the 90s or even earlier, and you read all of that and come away thinking that there’s nothing wrong with how progressive communities treat men, you are just fundamentally beyond help dude. you don’t see us as people

a lot of people are somehow misinterpreting this post as saying that trans women Don't experience alienation or ostracization from queer, feminist, and/or progressive communities, to which i say: i am not responsible for your belief that trans men and trans women have to have entirely separate and opposite experiences. if you think that trans men experiencing something implies that trans women can't experience it, that's on you! you might want to sit and have a think about how you see the world and whether or not you're buying into the (deeply patriarchal!) idea that men and women are entirely separate from each other. you might learn something.

“I knew you were Autistic, but I still talked to you like a normal person!”

Listen I appreciate the sentiment there friend but I don’t think hearing you say it like that is the lofty honor you think it is

Like I’m not sure how to break this to you but I do see myself as a normal person, and hearing you imply that you’ve been Playing Along With My Delusion all this time kind of makes me feel like two poorly-disguised children in a trench coat trying to sneak into an R-rated movie called Dignity And Respect

Lol I keep seeing screenshots of my posts popping up on sites like Reddit with people going like “Yeah… That ~happened~” like bruh I don’t know how to tell you this but sometimes life is exciting

Like, you try new things and take risks and talk to people and you’re surprised at what you find? Yeah you’re gonna end up playing beer pong at a clown’s house, yeah you’re gonna witness a crime, that’s why we’re all here

i hate how you get desensitized to the cool stuff in your WIP if you've been writing it for a long time so when you read back over it you're like "this isn't as cool as i thought :(" but it still is! you just read it too many times

Gotta recirculate this post periodically just cuz

Just don't read the post too many times.

Oh god oh fuck

this post aged like a fine wine

edward elric is so edgy and so pained and so hostile all the time and everyone buys it because he lost his family and some of his limbs and meanwhile al is in the corner having lost his entire body giggling to himself because he fit 3 whole cats in his stomach and nobody caught him yet

Maine?? Hello?

Fucking DO IT, Maine.

AMERICANS USE PRIVATE ELECTRICITY???

they'd make us breathe private air if they could

Big fan of characters realizing they don't get to die. They have to live. And grow. And be a person. And deal with shit they thought they'd never have to. And be fucked up about it. I would like more of this. Enough dying for honor or as redemption. It ain't. You're just a corpse. There is no moral value in dirt time.

child handling for the childless nurse

My current job has me working with children, which is kind of a weird shock after years in environments where a “young” patient is 40 years old.  Here’s my impressions so far:

Birth - 1 year: Essentially a small cute animal.  Handle accordingly; gently and affectionately, but relying heavily on the caregivers and with no real expectation of cooperation.

Age 1 - 2: Hates you.  Hates you so much.  You can smile, you can coo, you can attempt to soothe; they hate you anyway, because you’re a stranger and you’re scary and you’re touching them.  There’s no winning this so just get it over with as quickly and non-traumatically as possible.

Age 3 - 5: Nervous around medical things, but possible to soothe.  Easily upset, but also easily distracted from the thing that upset them.  Smartphone cartoons and “who wants a sticker?!!?!?” are key management techniques.

Age 6 - 10: Really cool, actually.  I did not realize kids were this cool.  Around this age they tend to be fairly outgoing, and super curious and eager to learn.  Absolutely do not babytalk; instead, flatter them with how grown-up they are, teach them some Fun Gross Medical Facts, and introduce potentially frightening experiences with “hey, you want to see something really cool?”

Age 11 - 14: Extremely variable.  Can be very childish or very mature, or rapidly switch from one mode to the other.  At this point you can almost treat them as an adult, just… a really sensitive and unpredictable adult.  Do not, under any circumstances, offer stickers.  (But they might grab one out of the bin anyway.)

Age 15 - 18: Basically an adult with severely limited life experience.  Treat as an adult who needs a little extra education with their care.  Keep parents out of the room as much as possible, unless the kid wants them there.  At this point you can go ahead and offer stickers again, because they’ll probably think it’s funny.  And they’ll want one.  Deep down, everyone wants a sticker.

This is also a pretty excellent guide to writing  kids of various ages

Circle of protection against capitalism

10/10 addition

love writing. writing is awesome. it’s a shame that it involves writing though

Whoever needs to hear this. Please know.

"Closed at 6pm" does not mean "The entry door locks up at 6, but if you're already inside you can keep on shopping."

It means, "you should be finished and out of the store at 6pm."

This is not up for debate

This is just how things work

Anyway if you’re from the US and you ever wanted to know what tumblr feels like from a non-USAmerican perspective (please note that the rest of the world is not a monolith either and none of these apply without exception):

Fellow non-USAmericans, please add anything else you can think of.

You want to kick someone every time a man is called a brunette.

You know more about us politics then your own countries. People in your country laugh at a government official. You don’t know who that is, but you’re up to date on Florida’s legislation.

Someone online talks about the “liberals”. The post makes no sense until you realise they’re talking about the opposite side of the political spectrum than your country’s Liberal party.

Someone mentions ‘the President’, no clarification. They’re not from the USA. Neither are you. You know what he’s the President of without asking.

You click on a video. The person speaking in it has an accent similar to yours. This is novel and surprising. You won’t experience it again for months.

You are always surprised when somebody you interact with is also not an American (assumed American until proven otherwise).

You find a recipe with only three ingredients. Two and a half of them are impossible to get in your country.

Seriously, the pledge and shooter drills! Never getting over that.

The astonishing backlash when somebody mentions that racism works differently in their country (there is still very much racism, unfortunately).

This video is not available in your country.

Seriously, the

pledge and shooter drills! Never

getting over that.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Me: *scrolling twitter in bed*

My gf: "I like to think Mario and Luigi are both colour blind and think they have matching outfits"

Me: *fucking losing it*

oh so they’re just saying the quiet part out loud? Good to know they’re just out and open now

That’s not the quiet part.

There’s something else, something they might not even be fully aware of themselves. The real quiet part is that if it was *their* child or *their* ectopic pregnancy they’d pull out all the stops to save their life or get their grandchild aborted. Planned Parenthood sees reactionaries and regressives all the time, and they are every bit the nightmare patients you’d imagine them to be. But the one thing all those patients have in common is that *their* abortion is *justified*, and the next week they’ll be outside the clinic again, rejoining the protestors for “killing their baby”.

It’d be one thing to have ghoulish principles, but the far-right have none at all.

When I was younger and had more time to waste on the internet, and spent a lot of time in various online forums getting into arguments -- on purpose -- I made up a game I called Six Degrees of Slut.

The game (which is a variation on the well known Six Degrees of Bacon) was very simple. In any discussion of abortion, see whether you could get the other side to articulate, within six back-and-forth exchanges, some variation of The Filthy Sluts Must Be Punished. Regardless of where their argument started, the goal of the game was to get them to admit that.

I never once lost a game of Six Degrees of Slut. On a few occasions the match was inconclusive - the other person left off arguing before we reached round six - but I never lost; I never once reached six rounds of debate with a prolifer without them expressing some variation on this sentiment. But what was really remarkable to me was, a lot of times, that there was no effort involved at all -- they would blurt it out themselves, with effectively no provocation.

Scratch a prolifer, and you'll find right under the surface the conviction that The Filthy Sluts Must Be Punished. I have never once yet found an exception. Sometimes you don't even have to scratch.

So I got called into jury duty…

And I was put in the seat instantly, of course. I said, “your honor, I can’t be a juror on a two week trial, I have opera rehearsal.” And she said, “opera huh, well, sing something for us.”

And I did. In a federal court of law, in front of the judge, 75 jurors, the lawyers and the fucking DEFENDANT, I sang o mio babbino caro.

And the judge excused me.

@districtswiftie13

YO I DIDNT EMBARRASS MYSELF IN FEDERAL COURT SO YALL CAN DOUBT ME.

I know a lot of opera singers, and singing a full-on aria in a court room with only a hint of provocation is EXACTLY what they would do.

I know a lot of judges, and demanding an impromptu opera solo on a whim is also something they would do.

(And also one of the main reasons you can be excused from jury duty is economic hardship–basically, it would cause you unreasonable financial damage. If you’re a professional singer, a two week gap in your rehearsal schedule could do that for sure.)

As a muso, I absolutely believe this. I’ve got my accordion out of my carry-on and played a tune when airport security couldn’t recognise its weird mass of levers. Singers and musicians are just Like That.

Accurate.

My friend got stopped at the Canadian border coming back into the US. Border patrol took one look at his tattoed, ear-gagued, mutton chop wearing, hipster self, and said “I don’t believe you’re an opera singer. Sing something for me.” His wife immediately put down her knitting and plugged her ears, because Matt’s a contrabasso, and he does NOT sing quietly. Every other booth along the border stop had a head poking out of it within twenty seconds. And they let them pass without further contest.

The unwillingness of some people to believe that literally anything remotely interesting happens in other people’s lives is truly astounding.

Can we all please just take a moment to appreciate that OP’s url is literally @melodramaticsoprano and yet she still was doubted?