I'm aiming for eroticism but I'll settle for chaos

Tragedy! You set out to read a negative review of a piece of media you dislike, only to find that the critic is being completely unfair to it and making a bunch of bad, unsupportable arguments.

#yeah. this is actually the worst#because if someone likes something for the wrong reasons and you like it too you can just sort of shrug off their opinion#but if they dislike it in a way that's unfair it's actually infuriating because now you've been put in the position#of defending this absolute dogshit piece of media - even if only in your own head - against their unreasonable complaints#it's the exact opposite of catharsis

Me: “Disney live action remakes are soulless cash grabs that deny the original writers and artists the credit they deserve” Some fucking chud: “Exactly! They never should have started wokeifying all their movies” Me:

for the past few years i’ve had a personal rule that i do not sign anything i haven’t read - mostly because i genuinely think it’s a good idea, but also as a kind of social experiment - and i wanna share some observations

the moral of the story is… like… we treat a signature like it’s the absolute most surefire way of saying “yes i understand this and agree to it,” but in practice there’s not even a pretense that a signature means you’ve READ whatever you’re signing. in fact, handing someone a piece of paper and saying “sign here” is one of the LEAST effective ways to make sure they understand and agree to something, and PEOPLE KNOW THIS, and we do it ANYWAY because what else are we gonna do? notarize it??

i don’t have a solution but like. that’s kinda fucked up, you know?

i need to practice saying “most people are fundamentally honest, but by handing me a contract/waiver to sign you’ve already chosen not to take me at my word. it’s only fair that i should do the same by reading it first”

Honestly I do this without the asshole exception. Narrowly avoided a zero-hours but also you can’t work for anyone else job by reading the contract even though the guy “explained it all to me”. He was a fucking liar

“I don’t sign what I haven’t read.” Full stop. Asshole Mode on standby. Sit my ass down to read it even if there’s no chair and I’m parking my butt on the floor.

The fact that it discombobulates a lot of people is icing on the cake.

My favorite quote from any movie critic ever is from Roger Ebert, who once said “The Borg Queen looks like no notion of sexy I have ever heard of, but inspires me to keep an open mind”

i thought this was a joke, but. uh. nope.

A painting process.

This is by the same guy who draws horses in his funky style (videos here and here)

[eng by me]

The vibe

extremely fucking weird to have to convince leftists that fighting for a better public education system & better wages for teachers is not, like, the Lame Establishment Dem take or whatever.

It is not Cool and Radical to advocate for the dissolution of the entire public education system in favor of Everyone Doing Their Own Thing. what you're describing is libertarianism, and a system that directly and dramatically benefits fascist right-wingers and child abusers.

the community-centered child rearing yall love to talk about exists. it desperately needs to be improved, but the bones are here, and they're already doing a lot of legwork in the fight against aggressive nuclear family isolation.

it's called public school, you fucking dweeb.

Public education is a thing we did right.

We just really, really need to update it.

@wickedcr0w bought a LONG cacnea, and also its evo. I had to take it down a desert ent route.

Its flowers open when rains on the way, and its cloak shields it from sandstorms, making it very adapted. It stands at like 8ft tall and is known as the ranchers ally, overseeing herds and farms if befriended. They scare most foe off with their unnerving glare, but arent all that menacing once you get to know them.

hey for pride month lets talk about slavic queer cultures and latine/latino queer cultures and african queer cultures and asian queer cultures. something that’s not western centric.

anyway reblog with your country’s culture!

In Hindu culture there's a prince who walks into a goddess's garden, the garden is cursed so that any male who enters turns into a girl. The goddess knows he didn't enter on purpose and blesses him with the ability to turn into a girl and a boy at the prince's will.

The prince chooses to be a girl for awhile and falls in love with a male God and has kids with him. The prince then turns into a guy to become king, marries a woman and has kids with her.

The prince's two lineages that are caused by this have huge importance in hindu mythology since the God Vishnu takes human forms and is born in both lineages different time in different time periods.

NOTE: I am not LGBT myself, I just saw "non-Western queer culture" and I fucking love decolonizing and spreading the word about Filipino/Tagalog mythology. PLEASE GO WILD AND ADD MORE FILIPINO STUFF, LGBT KAIBIGAN!

--

A lot of Filipino shamans/spirit-workers were women, or men who were socially treated as women. They are almost definitely what we’d describe as modern LGBT, but we don’t really know if they were “gay men” or “transgender women.” They are usually considered a third gender. Modern Filipino folks usually call these men bakla.

The Spanish hated them and constantly called them “cross-dressers” or “effeminate men.”

There is at least one propaganda story where the Bible “cured an effeminate man” after he read it, by inspiring him to cut his hair and stop wearing women’s clothes, but I’m not sure where exactly that story was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipino_shamans

--

As for Filipino deities, I'll be focusing on Tagalog deities since that's my family's ethnicity.

We have at least one intersex deity called Lakapati, who is a fertility deity that usually presided over agriculture and fishing. He is said to be "a man and woman's figures combined into one person."

Bathala Maykapal the creator-god has some heavy homosexual undertones. When the world was new and barren, he just wandered around bored and lonely. Then a sky-serpent/dragon called Ulilang Kaluluwa rolled up, challenged him for rulership (rulership of WHAT, THOUGH???) and fought him, and Bathala quickly regretted it when he killed him, because that was the first living thing he’d seen in ages and now he’d have NO MORE COMPANIONS.

A while later, he met a winged spirit called Galang Kaluluwa and Bathala actually talked things out this time. When he found out Ulilang Kaluluwa and Galang Kaluluwa were both part of the sky-tribe and therefore figurative kinsmen, Bathala admitted that he'd killed Ulilang Kaluluwa by mistake and he didn't want to do that again.

So they lived together for years, and when Galang Kaluluwa took ill, he asked Bathala to bury him (or just his head) with the remains of his Ulilang Kaluluwa.

Bathala wept deeply when he died, but he did as Galang Kaluluwa requested. From the joint grave grew a palm tree with a trunk like Ulilang Kaluluwa’s body, and coconuts that looked like Galang Kaluluwa’s head.

This inspired him to plant more trees/plants and create people.

I cannot remember where I read it, and this is also heavily subject to "the Spanish just didn't bother understanding native culture that squicked them out," but I heard somewhere that Bathala may not HAVE a specific gender--because he is a creator-god, and to be locked down as male OR female would mean he's incomplete and missing half of the creator-magic. (Hence, why Lakapati's intersex body is a physical representation of agriculture.) And I've seen modern Tagalog folks musing that Bathala seems to be gay/bisexual since he also has a LOT of children with women/female-spirits, but his most famous companion is Galang Kaluluwa.

According to the "Bathala has no gender like AT ALL" reasoning, Bathala Maykapal is constantly SAID to be "Just like the Catholic God" because the Spanish went scorched-earth and started REALLY going heavy on "BATHALA IS A MAN, AND HE'S JUST LIKE OUR GOD, AND HE WAS REALLY GOOD FRIENDS WITH GALANG KALULUWA!!!"

TO MY KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING: Guabancex, the Mother of Storms, would spin her arms and create juracan (hurricane). The eventual cemi/zemi of Juracan was considered either of both sexes or outside of sex and gender entirely, depending on which peoples on which part of which island or landmass you spoke to.

So, I dont know about any Pre-Islamic Malay cultural heritage that speaks of Queer People so I cant say anything about the myths and legends. And I cant really speak on Malay Queer Lingo, cause thats A LOT, and I am not up to date with the recent ones.

However I will tell you this, the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion, Avalokitesvara, (who has many forms) manifests a Male Form in Tibet, as Chenrezig, and manifests a Female Form in China and SEA, as Guanyin.

This is a Skillful Means that is shared by all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas if I am not wrong, to manifest and appear as what is most necessary to a sentient being.

Four Armed Chenrezig

Thousand Armed Thousand Eyed Avalokitesvara

Guanyin Pusa

also I just really wanna mention the Medicine Buddha, Bhaiṣajya-guru-vaiḍūrya-prabhā-rāja, who said in one of his 12 Vows:

The Medicine Buddha said Trans Rights

i just made this for myself, but multiple people have told me they find it really useful so i thought id share it!

some people asked for an image description, and i wasnt initially sure how to convert a flow chart like this into something understandable with purely text, but i think i managed! the description is under the read more.

whoever said diamonds are a girl's best friend clearly has never met ibuprofen

Actually literally accurate. The song originates in the 1949 musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, while ibuprofen was invented in 1961.

Y’ALL. We have one of those cling film covers in our bathroom window for privacy and in the afternoon when the sun hits it just right, it makes rainbows, right? And today my wife sends me the best pic she’s ever taken:

and what about it.

When you could be watching She-Ra or something actively and openly LGBTQ+ friendly.

oh shut the fuck up

#can’t believe people in 1956 were watching johnny guitar instead of she-ra#🙄🙄smh

im fucking dying what the hell kind of noxious fart gas do u have to have instead of brains to fucking comment something like that 😂

im just i dont even know where to begin, between the foolishness of forgetting that queer people predate the she-ra reboot and the blatant disinterest in hearing the experiences of queer people in different contexts and the fact that maybe just maybe we dont exclusively want to watch Certified Gay media and that queer reading is a way of actively engaging in the art u consume and validating urself and etc etc… im dying, what a mook 😂

It must be so strange for kids now to wrap their head around how little representation there was back in the day. And what we did get was generally bad - if you were any kind of queer character, you were either murdered or a murderer who deserved to die. No in between. It really did a number on generations of queer people, seeing ourselves presented that way.

If you want to talk animated queer characters, up into the Disney Renaissance and beyond, the only queer-coded characters you ever saw were the villains.  Hell, in the Beauty and the Beast reboot, they gave us “a confirmed gay character” who was apparently LeFou, Gaston’s side-kick. I say apparently, because have you watched the film?

I can only think of one mainstream film I saw from the 80s that had any positive queer representation while studying film at uni and it was tangled up in a savage critique of racism, culturalism and Thatcher’s Britain.

Things are better now, yes, but let’s not forget where they started. Let’s not forget how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go.

ellen is garbage, but when she came out on her TV show (april 30th, 1997. i was fifteen.) it was national news. for months.

a year and a half later, matthew shepard was beaten, tortured and left to die, because he was gay. his death was also national news - but more importantly, his murder is what led to gay bashing being legally declared a hate crime. i was sixteen years old and had been with my then-girlfriend for almost a year. assaulting, raping, and killing us for being queer wouldn’t have been prosecuted as a hate crime.

i could go on for so, so long but this is already pushing me close to tears.

“you could be watching she-ra” my god. you know, i did watch she-ra when i was a kid.

i didn’t see myself in any of them.

I am 43 years old. The first time I remember seeing a lesbian couple kiss on television that wasn’t porn or immediately leading into deaths meant to demonstrate that lesbianism would immediately destroy your lives (within the next 90 minutes!) was The Body, a Buffy episode which aired on February 27, 2001.

I was 24. My daughter was an infant. I’d never seen anything like it before. Here I was! There! On screen. I identified with dorky, awkward, very gay Tara so much.

And then you know what happened just over a year after we finally saw Willow and Tara kiss, having been denied for seasons because the network wouldn’t let them?

Whedon fucking killed Tara off in the most ridiculous, pointless way possible, right after Tara and Willow, who had broken up, got back together.

My “good, meaningful, actually changed my fucking life” representation still followed the horrible tropes. That’s how hungry we were. That’s how desperate we were. We still pointed back to Willow & Tara as ‘this is the best we’ve gotten,’ even though she literally got shot through the heart, somehow, randomly, with a stray bullet the morning after she and her girlfriend have make-up sex and get back together.

Fuck.

There’s actually a few,solid essays on why such coding is so important and how hard things were,and still are to this day for queer people desiring any,any level of representation in media

Heres one on Queer coding and why it’s important

Here’s one on Disney’s ‘cold war’ on queer artists working for them,along with queer subtext

and here’s two on queer film theory and how it relates to horror movies,from how they use depictions of queer people to signify evil, and also touches on why a lot of queer people’s favorite genre is horror

Fun fact: there's two Austin Powers games for the Gameboy Color, and both have a third gender option, but they gave different third genders:

Sara Jacobsen, 19, grew up eating family dinners beneath a stunning Native American robe.            

Not that she gave it much thought. Until, that is, her senior year of high school, when she saw a picture of a strikingly similar robe in an art history class.

The teacher told the class about how the robe was used in spiritual ceremonies, Sara Jacobsen said. “I started to wonder why we have it in our house when we’re not Native American.”

She said she asked her dad a few questions about this robe. Her dad, Bruce Jacobsen, called that an understatement.

“I felt like I was on the wrong side of a protest rally, with terms like ‘cultural appropriation’ and ‘sacred ceremonial robes’ and ‘completely inappropriate,’ and terms like that,” he said.

“I got defensive at first, of course,” he said. “I was like, ‘C’mon, Sara! This is more of the political stuff you all say these days.’”

But Sara didn’t back down. “I feel like in our country there are so many things that white people have taken that are not theirs, and I didn’t want to continue that pattern in our family,” she said.

The robe had been a centerpiece in the Jacobsen home. Bruce Jacobsen bought it from a gallery in Pioneer Square in 1986, when he first moved to Seattle. He had wanted to find a piece of Native art to express his appreciation of the region.

       The Chilkat robe that hung over the Jacobsen dining room table for years.   Credit Courtesy of the Jacobsens      

“I just thought it was so beautiful, and it was like nothing I had seen before,” Jacobsen said.

The robe was a Chilkat robe, or blanket, as it’s also known. They are woven by the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples of Alaska and British Columbia and are traditionally made from mountain goat wool. The tribal or clan origin of this particular 6-foot-long piece was unclear, but it dated back to around 1900 and was beautifully preserved down to its long fringe.

“It’s a completely symmetric pattern of geometric shapes, and also shapes that come from the culture,” like birds, Jacobsen said. “And then it’s just perfectly made — you can see no seams in it at all.”

Jacobsen hung the robe on his dining room wall.

After more needling from Sara, Jacobsen decided to investigate her claims. He emailed experts at the Burke Museum, which has a huge collection of Native American art and artifacts.

“I got this eloquent email back that said, ‘We’re not gonna tell you what to go do,’ but then they confirmed what Sara said: It was an important ceremonial piece, that it was usually owned by an entire clan, that it would be passed down generation to generation, and that it had a ton of cultural significance to them.“  

Jacobsen says he was a bit disappointed to learn that his daughter was right about his beloved Chilkat robe. But he and his wife Gretchen now no longer thought of the robe as theirs. Bruce Jacobsen asked the curators at the Burke Museum for suggestions of institutions that would do the Chilkat robe justice. They told him about the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau.

When Jacobsen emailed, SHI Executive Director Rosita Worl couldn’t believe the offer. “I was stunned. I was shocked. I was in awe. And I was so grateful to the Jacobsen family.”

Worl said the robe has a huge monetary value. But that’s not why it’s precious to local tribes.

“It’s what we call ‘atoow’: a sacred clan object,” she said. “Our beliefs are that it is imbued with the spirit of not only the craft itself, but also of our ancestors. We use [Chilkat robes] in our ceremonies when we are paying respect to our elders. And also it unites us as a people.”

Since the Jacobsens returned the robe to the institute, Worl said, master weavers have been examining it and marveling at the handiwork. Chilkat robes can take a year to make – and hardly anyone still weaves them.

“Our master artist, Delores Churchill, said it was absolutely a spectacular robe. The circles were absolutely perfect. So it does have that importance to us that it could also be used by our younger weavers to study the art form itself.”

Worl said private collectors hardly ever return anything to her organization. The federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires museums and other institutions that receive federal funding to repatriate significant cultural relics to Native tribes. But no such law exists for private collectors.

       Bruce and Gretchen Jacobsen hold the Chilkat robe they donated to the Sealaska Heritage Institute as Joe Zuboff, Deisheetaan, sings and drums and Brian Katzeek (behind robe) dances during the robe’s homecoming ceremony Saturday, August 26, 2017.   Credit NOBU KOCH / SEALASKA HERITAGE INSTITUTE      

Worl says the institute is lobbying Congress to improve the chances of getting more artifacts repatriated. “We are working on a better tax credit system that would benefit collectors so that they could be compensated,” she said.

Worl hopes stories like this will encourage people to look differently at the Native art and artifacts they possess.

The Sealaska Heritage Institute welcomed home the Chilkat robe in a two-hour ceremony over the weekend. Bruce and Gretchen Jacobsen traveled to Juneau to celebrate the robe’s homecoming.

Really glad that this is treated as hard hitting news, no really, I am

This is why spaces like Tumblr are so vital in changing the narrative. We cannot back down from the truth.

I love that this happened and want it to happen more. This right here is how to be a good ally and advocate for others.

There is no shame in loving without abandon. ✌️❤️

And the real trick to it is falling madly in love with literally everything. Gomez Addams isn’t just madly in love with Morticia, he’s madly in love with his house, with his train set, with his kids, with his brother, with his weird normie neighbors, with literally everything. Different kinds of love for each, but love all the same. For having such morbid tastes, Gomez is madly in love with life. THAT’S how you land a Morticia, by being unapologetically and madly in love with everything around you.

Bitches love me for my passionate swag and my unrelenting appreciate for the zest of life

I often see people ask how to get started with doing this, because it seems like a daunting task to be in love with everything, when you are starting off in love with nothing, or very few things perhaps. But the answer isn’t grand or elaborate or secret. The answer is to pick something, and choose love.

And then do it again, and again, and again.

The act of being in love is just choosing love over and over.

The act of being

in love is just choosing love

over and over.

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

Mr. Smitten's Sammich

take me to the moooon 🐄👽🛸

Pride month vest project, a patch a day #14: All Pride is Kink to Bigots

I think kafka’s diaries are the strongest evidence that journaling is not necessarily good for your mental health

it's because he didn't use washi tape

If a flaming old queen in a cape wants to kill off racists in power I say have at it

That wasn’t even his plan!! His plan was to make the senator a mutant, so he’d have to advocate for mutants or be destroyed by his own policy, and tbh. It’s the best villain plan I’ve ever seen. The goo was the plan unexpectedly failing. 9/10 only bc he was going to kill Rogue. Next time use someone willing to sacrifice herself for the cause, pls. No further notes