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Krimskrams

@shevni / shevni.tumblr.com

I love this, though, because my favorite thing about Superman is he isn’t Batman. I love Batman too, but Superman isn’t a dude who decided to live his life in pursuit of a vendetta against society when he was eight and then just did nothing for the next two decades but get super jacked, become the world’s greatest detective, and memorize every strategy used by every winner in every field of competition in history. Superman is a very good-hearted person who knows how to bale hay, use AP Stylebook, and break meteors into manageable bite-sized pieces by hitting them real hard. And I’m not saying Superman isn’t smart. He’s a bright guy, he’s just not like, one of the celebrated geniuses of the DC Universe. The best thing about Superman is he is basically a normal dude who happens to be orders of magnitude stronger than anyone else. Normal dudes have brain farts. Normal dudes are presented with a life-or-death situation they have less than four seconds to resolve and make a decision that is not optimal. Normal dudes aren’t typically asked to rescue a child from a 10,000 ton machine bearing down on him at 85mph, but if they were, they would probably sometimes panic a little and do dumb shit like ruin a train when they could have just whisked the child to safety.

I think sometimes Superman makes the wrong decision, not necessarily to the result of extreme catastrophe, but something like this, where everyone is standing around clapping and cheering and the kid’s parents are weeping in gratitude and they want to pose for a picture for the 6 o’ clock news with Superman and the conductor, and in the crowd someone is like “Why didn’t he fly the kid out of the way?” and rather than rolling with the fact that the emperor is naked his friend just says “Shut up, Drew, it’s Superman.”

And then, because I also love Batman for very different reasons, I imagine that later on the same day Bruce Wayne gets a phone call and Clark Kent is like “Hey, Wayne, I uh, need a favor.”

“Do you now.”

“Yeah, I, uh, kind of owe the Union Pacific Railroad $60,000.”

“Oh, and why’s that?”

“Come on, don’t do this to me. It was all over the news.”

“I’m prepared to write you a no-strings-attached check for the full amount on the condition that you explain your entire thought process from beginning to end.”

Anyway, that’s why I like Superman.

I think this is very accurate. One time a tree fell on me in the forest and while it would have made more sense to simply jump to the side and avoid it my idiot brain went through the fight-or-flight options and apparently chose fight, so I reached out my hand and caught the tree, then dropped it on the ground beside me. Ended up fracturing my wrist and wondering why the fuck my brain thought that was the best option for survival. I don’t think people are good at really weighing the optimal choices in moments of crisis. 

Bruce: “New Justice League policy. I am willing to pay for whatever damages you guys do in the name of justice and saving lives, but you have to write up a report detailing how the damage occured, including your thought process. Every once in a while, I will complie them into a presentation that we will go through as a whole to determine how you could have mitigated the collateral damage.”

Clark: “This is going to be a ‘name and shame’ type of thing, isn’t it?”

Bruce, lying through his teeth: “Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. This is to improve ourselves.”

The ones who admit “I don’t know what happened here” get a pass on shaming but they still get the alternative suggestions list

And on nights when he really needs a break, Bruce pulls those presentations out, watches the video, and laughs his tits off.

Forget the edgy “batman contingency: here’s how I’d kill all my friends” that’s all over YouTube Shorts, THIS is the series I want to see!

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the lazy river at water parks was made to appeal to relaxing adults and possibly accidentally those who like to pretend to be otters, sharks and various water type pokemon

As climate change increases the temperature and makes larger portions of spring and summer days unbearable we can, must, and should bring back and universalize the siesta. I want to clock out after lunch and go tf to bed. Humanity already solved the "it's too damn hot out to work" problem in tropical and subtropical societies the world over and more than ever we need to unionize for naptime.

this is absolutely fucking pathetic now every single fucking streaming service is gonna start doing this shit. all y'all had to do was not watch Netflix and let it flop for a few months and they would have given up

i think one of the most important things you learn about making connections with others is that a significant portion of the time people just do not know theyre doing what theyre doing

sometimes someone is acting selfish because they just didnt think you had any interest in what theyre hogging. sometimes you dont get invited to the movies because your friend could have sworn that you said no. sometimes you think someone is mad at you because theyre bad at hiding how little sleep they got. we are all like little worlds that briefly crash into one another from time to time and we just arent physically capable of seeing the whole picture at once in those moments. and learning that really changed everything!

One of the most life-changing things I ever learned came from Mythbusters, where they tested and proved (with cognitive testing puzzles and reaction time tests) that lying down and resting with the intention to sleep STILL provided significant mental benefits over just staying awake, even if a person couldn’t fall asleep in the amount of time they had. 

It helps me to actually sleep to know that just lying down with my eyes closed is still doing me some good, and helps me to not freak out/beat myself up when I stay up later than intended. Any amount of rest is better than no rest!

So if you didn’t know that…now you do

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do you know that i think of this post every time i can’t sleep op. what mythbusters did for you, you have done for a great many others. 

the point of my masculinity and male positivity posts are to underline that masculinity and manhood are seen as a threat or in direct opposition to queerness, and that often times in order to be seen as queer you have to be partially or wholly feminine or gender neutral, or express your manhood in a feminine or gender neutral way in order to no longer be threatening, invasive, or a problem.

it is very difficult to exist in queer spaces as a hyper masculine person & a man. you're made to feel like you need to walk a tight rope feeling like you're inherently out of place, as if you existing and being masculine or a man in queer spaces makes others uncomfortable inherently.. just know that when i make positivity posts it is to remind us all that masculinity/manhood and queerness are not opposites and that you do not have to be a feminine man or masc person to be viewed/seen/heard as queer.

chasing men, masculine people, and masculinity out of queer spaces isn't helping anyone currently and won't help anyone down the line. please accept masc enbies, butches, bears, and masculine trans men with the same kindness, love, and passion that you do neutral and feminine people. that's the point when i make these kinds of posts. thank u

This is 100% thanks to the “No kink at Pride” people. Because?

They didn’t want these men at Pride. This is a leather daddy. (A rather covered-up leather daddy, because this addition doesn’t do anyone any good if it’s flagged into invisibility, but best believe that dude has hella abs under there, and a 50/50 chance of heavy tattooing.)

Here’s another. Again on the modest side for the sake of not triggering the automod thing, but you can see the interplay of queerness and masculinity—particularly a kind of forward, unashamed sexual explicitness, if you take a look at their crotches. That’s a kind of…for lack of a better term, mating display. “I have this and want to use it, or at least know there are men here fantasizing about me using it.” It’s akin to a woman wearing a plunge neck. You’re supposed to look, and if you’re a dude, he’d like you to like it.

These dudes (well, most of these dudes)? They’re bears. (I said “most” because the guy in the sunhat is technically a cub. He’s too young to be a bear.) The furriness and the beards and the age and the bellies ARE THE POINT. The name “bear” is an affectionate one. Literally “I’m big and hairy!” In the 00s there was a stereotype(?) that bears were also super-cuddly. I don’t know how true it is, but I can confirm every bear I’ve ever met gives amazing hugs. They will readjust your spine, your touch starvation, and your entire outlook on life.

None of this touches on the rather large queer kink communities around “men in uniform.” Military, police, construction, I can’t tell you how many strip nights I’ve been to at a local gay bar with a guy dressed as a sexy firefighter getting absolutely swamped with dollar bills and lap dance requests.

You aren’t seeing these men because they’ve been forced out of spaces THEY CREATED. One of the best things you can do is to help bring them back.

They’re not threatening, they’re not disgusting, they’re not somehow dangerous just by virtue of being open about their sexuality and sexual desire. They’re just human beings who human slightly differently than you.

But more importantly?

They’re family. And don’t you forget it.

Leather daddies, imho, are fucking around with hypergender performance as much as drag queens. It's two sides of the same coin. Leather daddies literally have beauty pageants.

Also, there's a solid 50% chance that when you talk to those masc-looking leather daddies and bears are just much femme sissies as more femme presenting gay men.

Sincerely, a genderqueer amab bear who dresses like a dad half the time

Your local leather historian here to add a little bit of context to the "this is the fault of the no kink at pride" thing.

The leather community has existed formally (in the United States) since the mid 50s. The Satyr Motorcycle Club was founded in San Francisco in 1954, it is still around today making it the oldest continously run gay organization in the country. This is 15 years before Stonewall. The first gay leather bar, the gold coast, opened in 1958 in Chicago. 11 years before Stonewall. Informally the leather community has existed since the end of wwii when men who had spent years wearing leather, riding motorcycles, and having gay sex came back home and kept doing those things.

Gay men have been arguing about whether or not the leather community belongs at pride since 1970. Since the inception of pride, or more accurately, "Gay Freedom Day." Because the leather community has heavt ties to the SM community. (Whether or not the Leather community is a sub community in the larger SM community, or there's just a lot of overlap is a conversation leathermen have always been having) but there has always been push back because of the tie to radical sex and because of accusations that leathermen are trying to "act straight"

In an essay in Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice Leatherman Michale Bronski recalls hearing a lesbian tell a gay man "“Give me a break. You think that someone wearing chaps, a black leather jacket, a motorcycle cap, handcuffs on his belt, two different color hankies, and 36 inch high black boots looks Straight!”*

Which brings us to their presentation of masculinity. If you'll excuse me for becoming An Academic(tm) for a moment, if you look at these communities, Leathermen and Bears, what you find is that popular theories of masculinitu don't work when describing these men, at least not when they're in the spaces that the audence that their gender performance is for also exist. Queer masculinity is a performance for queer people, framing it in the lense of heterosexuality does not do anyone any good and erases the nuances of what is happening.

The leather communities are some of the oldest queer communities in America. To push them out of the queer community or suggest that they're toxic, or somehow harming the community as a whole is to ignore history completely, and engage with an argument that's half a century old.

In 1982 leathermen founded AIDS Emergency Fund in San Francisco. Consistently through the first decade of the AIDS Crisis leathermen (and other radical sex communities) were promoting safer sex, and hosting all kinds of fundraisers to raise money for PWAs and reseach (a lot of leather beauty pagents popped up just for the purpose of rasing money.) All this while they were being told BY OTHER GAY MEN they were the ones killing everyone, they and their weird gross sex were the problem (never mind that a lot of what the leathermen were doing was already safer than monogamous anal sex)

Leathermen are your family, we're part of your community and have every right to be here, even if you don't understand our masculinity.

❤️🖤💙🤍💙🖤

*none of this even begins touching the surface of the discourse leather lesbians and feminists have been having since the 70s. It's tied to TERF rhetoric and the anti-porn movement.

Historic note on bears: the origin of the community is shouded in myth, but certainly by the late 70s the beginnings of the community were there. The AIDS Crisis shot the community to popularity. Because AIDS will cause incredible weight loss, the eorticization of fat bodies was the eroticiaztion of safe bodies. If you read porn written by bears in the 80s and early 90s you'll notice the use of condoms where in other erotica that is lacking.

Wish y'all wouldn't only talk about fem bi men in jokes about getting pegged :/

If your first reaction to seeing a gnc man partnered with an equally gnc woman is to go "I just know the sexual roles are reversed 😏" I just think that's a weird jump to make and I don't know if regressive is the word but it's definitely uncreative.

I keep thinking about how I know a lot of masc bi guys. And I've known "bicurious" femme gay men who literally couldn't unpack their gendered attraction to women because they were so ingrained that being fem was uniquely gay trait. So then, yes, I do think it's weird to then see videos of fem bi men existing with their girlfriends and either hearing "is he hiding something 🤔" or "She MUST top" It's very very weird that that's the only interaction y'all have.

I talk about lgbt men every chance that I get to because you have got to understand the ways in which male identity is erased. If patriarchy can convince you all that being fem equals bottoming, being submissive and otherwise womanly, and/or that being butch means being dominant, topping, and otherwise taking on a defined patriarchal role, none of you are doing work in your downtime to unlearn gender roles and how femme and butch are terms that subvert them, not reinforce. 🤦🏾‍♀️

I'm embarrassed sometimes honestly.

Reblog this version!

The union busting firms are scared

As a fine dining cook, I found work in a union workplace around a year ago. My 40 hours a week are guaranteed except for Jan/feb/mar when there’s not enough customers, I get paid almost twice what I did at any other restaurant, if I work overtime, (more than 8 hours in one day, or more than 40 in a week), I actually get overtime pay, (and it’s 1.5x my normal rate!). I get holiday pay, and in addition I get to either bank or pay out my holidays if I work those days, (either a paid day off when I want it, in addition to the holiday pay, or I get paid an add’l 8 hours at 1.5x that week). I also get two floating holidays, 4 paid random sick days, 2 paid family sick days, and 4 paid “doctor’s note” sick days, (paid out by our health insurance), as well as general allowance to take as many unpaid sick days as I want without worrying for my job security. (I’ve been told that taking multiple months off is where we start to be concerned about abuse, so if I want to do that, I can go through our leave of absence procedures instead, where I’m allowed three 2-week periods a year generally for whatever reason I want, (If my manager wants to disagree, he has to get the union president’s approval), and after that it’s up to my manager to decide if he’ll accept them). I get two weeks of paid vacation time a year, and an add’l week per year for every 5 years I work there. We get our legally mandated breaks, which, I know that sounds like a low bar, but taking anything other than a smoke break in a kitchen?!?! Unheard of! I get two 15′s and a lunch every shift! I get to sitdown and rest my legs and not get flak for it! I get a bonus at the end of the year, there’s official procedures for if my manager isn’t happy with me or wants to get rid of me, (three meetings, during which my union representative has to be present), (and getting rid of my classification doesn’t work, there’s rules for how someone ‘bumps’ other people if classifications are gotten rid of), and severance pay for when full-time employees that are downsized out of the company, there’s a pension plan, like . . . Guys, I have a 40-page handbook which details all of the rights my union has won me, and believe me, I’ve never had any of these at any prior workplace. And you know what my union dues are? $4 a paycheck. Of course I’m going to pay my union dues for all of those benefits.

Reblogging for this incredibly thorough explanation of what it's like to actually have a contract in place at a union workplace. I reblog a fair number of posts about how people should organize, but if you're like me, you might not know exactly what that can get you until you've actually gone through the process. Every contract is different because you bargain for what makes sense for your particular workplace, and every few years you re-negotiate with the employer to improve things in the next contract, but some things (like the right to have union representation when you talk to your boss about leave or discipline) are universal.

It's worth every penny of your dues, I promise.

whenever i see another tiktok girlie talking about how she wishes to have been a fangirl in 2010s i feel like a seasoned veteran overhearing a foolish youngin boasting about wanting to go to war for glory and adventure. you naive little idiot. you know nothing. you understand nothing. you weren't there in the trenches. i have seen things, terrible things. i cannot plug in my phone charger at night without being plagued by the visions of Him