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Airlock 3

@sparklespirit

I am just vibing broe...

“Everything’s in the cloud now,” I shout at the hot air balloonist over the sound of the burners. Sun glints off my snub-nose .38. “I was never smart enough to be a hacker before.”

Phineas Fogg looks behind him. "Uh-uh," I gently scold, and shake the gun for emphasis. "That went overboard a long time ago." He looks glumly over the edge of the basket, hoping to see his Passenger Removal Blackjack. It's a a desperate hope, one that it was simply misplaced by me, rather than yote parabolically into a nearby state fair from 8,000 feet. "Now drive."

"Fucking Missouri," he spits, and he's right. In any other state, this would be a felony. Balloonists are like gods there, unimpeachable even by law enforcement. Here, the gods meet mortals, and they don't like it.

We float higher and higher as he works what I have determined to be a crude throttle. The fire is beautiful, but I know that I cannot allow myself to be distracted by the purging of hydrocarbons. These balloony-types are crafty, having fought their way out of the vicious canvas wars of their disgusting home country. I know that if I take my eyes off the prize for one second, he'll try something.

Indeed he does. We pass briefly over an attractive red-and-white circus tent, itself an overinflated artifact of a bygone age of freaks. My unwilling travelling companion takes the opportunity to leap out of the basket, falling hundreds of feet. He bursts through the roof of the tent, landing squarely in a conveniently-placed bale of hay. Figures, I grunt to myself, but then I notice that he's not moving. No doubt the Barnum Bros have gotten themselves a cost-cutting MBA, who has decided that rocks painted like hay is sufficient enough to convince the rubes that the elephants are eating well and treated well, in equal measure.

I have caught myself in quite the pickle, I realize, as I look at the crude array of burners, levers, strings, springs, and apertures that lay before me. Saturday morning cartoons have taught me that this contraption operates the balloon's height, but its exact nature is unclear to me. Safe for the moment, I decide to take advantage of the surprising-but-welcome solitude and meditate on the issue, sitting cross-legged in the bottom of the basket and pivoting my thoughts towards the eternal expanse of human ingenuity. Carburetors of my youth come unbidden to my mind's eye on this vision quest, and soon I have discovered the common ancestor of this gas-burping nightmare and my precious Plymouth Volare's single-barrel, ethanol-rotted Ball & Ball.

Opening my eyes, it is very clear to me now what I must do. I floor the fucker. An enormous wall of flame bursts from the burners, singing my eyebrows. I laugh, and rise into the sky. Up there, in the clouds, the banks dwell. I am coming for them.

just saw a post where someone put “detrans dni” and like… hey we should be supporting detransitioned people bc if we don’t terfs will

sometimes you’re wrong about your identity and that’s ok like i used to think i was bi but it turns out i was wrong and i know ppl who thought they were trans but it turns out they were wrong and it should be ok and accepted that sometimes people don’t get it right on the first try

@shadowknight1224 this is an excellent way of putting it thank you

This touches on something I have felt for a long time, which is that one of the reasons rigid queer labels and gatekeeping is so dangerous is because if you want to encourage people to explore their gender/sexuality, there has to be a safe "Actually I was wrong" option.

I went through so very much anxiety coming out, and when I really think about it it was squarely from the fear of being wrong about it all. That I was, at heart, a cishet woman, and therefore I was appropriating a label that didn't 'belong' to me, and I would (somehow) be harming other people by doing so. There's so much more unnecessary pressure if the sword hanging over your head is "But you do have to be right about this, you can't back out once you've even asked the question."

I think that is Bad. I think it makes fewer people ask the question. I think that includes those who need to ask, and would be much happier for it.

to summarize: one of the things the Q stands for is QUESTIONING

and that is as it should be

I’d like to also submit the possibility that some people may be more prone to shifts in their gender identity than others, and that it’s not necessarily even a case of being “wrong,” so much as it’s a case of just changing over time. I know the predominant narrative we see in discourse is that a person who transitions was never their agab—and I’m sure that’s true for a lot of people! But… it’s not true everyone? I remember reading an interview with Danny Lavery after he came out, and he said something along the lines of “One day, I went to bed a woman and woke up not a woman anymore.” So if a person can change once, who’s to say that can’t change again? For example, I know Eddie Izzard (whose labels have shifted a lot over the decades, as terminology and options for gender identities identity have changed many times over since the 1980s) has said she goes through long block periods of being a particular gender, so right now she’s “based in girl mode,” (her words) but she’s previously had blocks of time being based in “boy mode,” too. So like, whose to say other people don’t have block periods like that? Maybe somebody really was non-binary for ten years and now they’re not anymore, y’know? Not feeling something about yourself forever doesn’t have to mean you were wrong the whole time. Of course, being wrong is okay too! But I’d make room for both.

i LOVE this addition, especially because it helps us move away from the "ive always known" narrative that dominates so much trans space. sometimes your gender literally changes, and it's not helpful or healthy of us to act like that means everything that came before was false or mistaken.

Gender Fluid Vibes… Nice!

Oh look, it’s me! Like, my gender has definitely changed over time and while it seems to have settled as queer/indefinable for a decade now, it might change again one day and I could end up identifying with a binary gender again. 

And can I get a shout out for the people who transition more than once and still identify as trans even though the pronouns/gender they ended up in might be somewhat similar to the one that were assigned at birth? Y’all are beautiful. Keep on being great.

Thinking today about how as someone with major texture issues around most fruits and vegetables, it would have helped so much if someone had come to me years ago and said

Hey:

  1. Make it tiny
  2. Mix it with something Good Texture that you like

"Eat healthy!" they say, and then they show you pictures of a smiling woman digging a fork into half a butternut squash or eyeing a bowl of whole blueberries like a ravening wolf and your spine wants to crawl out through your skull at the thought of that Texture in your mouth.

But you know what I can do? Cut zucchini into paper-thin slices and cook it with noodles and marinara. Chop that spinach fine and scramble it with eggs and cheese. If I'm having a day where the thought of a grape popping in my mouth makes me nauseous, I can cut it in half. My chinese takeout gets diced into tiny pieces and mixed into the rice. It doesn't work with everything - seeds are still a Major Problem - but the number of fruits and veg and even world cuisines that I can eat has expanded SO MUCH since I discovered this. YMMV, but it's such a stupidly simple thing to do, and nobody ever told me.

i went to a tiny counterserve diner once and accidentally poured sugar instead of salt all over my hashbrowns and was eating them sadly anyways. the waitress took them away and started making me another one and I tried to protest, but she just snorted and said "we're not catholic here". now every time i'm doing something painful out of obligation i think about how that is not repenting, this body is not a catholic establishment, there is no nobility in suffering.

Compilation of people in YouTube comments trying to describe how music makes them feel

Continuation

More for the collection. It's been a while since i've thought to add more things.

A lot of people have asked to hear the songs these people are talking about, and I've been trying to compile a playlist, but I have no idea how to track them down, and have had little success.

I think the songs aren't the important part. These comments aren't found only on songs with particular merits or special qualities. (Which is why it's so hard to find the sources again...) They're just people experiencing art.

To me, this epitomizes "accidental poetry," or poetry as a human instinct. When people consciously try to write poetry, often the result is flat and uninspiring, but when people are simply grasping for words to describe a beautiful experience that is hard to articulate, sometimes you get something that is the essence of what poetry can be.

"It's amazing how pain unites us all here. The same song, pains differently. Hope everyone finds peace."

I'm so fucking sad that most of these comments were purged by YouTube

Is it normal for neurodivergent burnout to rev up directly after the stressor goes away? I just finished the last of the work I had to do for the semester and I expected to feel relieved, which I do to some degree, but I also feel restless, bored, tired, irritable, anxious, and sort of helpless? It's not that severe, just kind of surface-level. I am hoping it's just like, a delayed reaction to the stress of the semester and won't last too long. I have things I want to do with my summer but I feel paralyzed right now.

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A group of sailors surround the ship’s cat "Convoy" as he sleeps inside a miniature hammock aboard the HMS Hermione, 1941.

sometimes being visibly queer is terrifying but sometimes it is the best and most wonderful thing in the world

when the person helping you at the store is also visibly queer, and they're holding it in but you can tell they're just so happy to see you. to say hello. or when you meet an older queer person and they are So kind to you, like they're determined to be a good thing that happens to you today. or when someone on the sidewalk picks you out of everyone to ask for directions because they know you're safe. when you walk past someone and clock each other and make the smallest eye contact, just to say i see you. thank you. we're in this together

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It's good to be with family

sometimes being visibly queer is terrifying but sometimes it is the best and most wonderful thing in the world

when the person helping you at the store is also visibly queer, and they're holding it in but you can tell they're just so happy to see you. to say hello. or when you meet an older queer person and they are So kind to you, like they're determined to be a good thing that happens to you today. or when someone on the sidewalk picks you out of everyone to ask for directions because they know you're safe. when you walk past someone and clock each other and make the smallest eye contact, just to say i see you. thank you. we're in this together

Avatar

It's good to be with family