Aem9phase - AEM

so many of the transfems i know spent their time pre-transition performing a kind of lifelong exercise in self-deprivation, the goal of which was to find out exactly how little a person needed to live. they starved themselves, dressed carelessly, shunned friends, and hollowed themselves out so as not to be burdens on anyone but themselves.

i see it now, too, in the girls around me. i'll ask if they want care – a home-cooked meal, relaxed company, sex without the expectation of reciprocation – and they say no, no, thank you, i don't need it; what would you like, what do you want, because in their head they're still doing that awful calculus, still training themselves to disappear in the eyes of the people around them.

i don't think i'd have died without transition – not in the conventional sense, at least – but to take that leap, i had to stop thinking of myself as a human experiment in fuel-efficient living and start nurturing the anemic, atrophied flame of desire in my heart. i had to learn to eat well, to exercise, to style myself beautiful, but harder than that, i had to learn to ask the people around me to work on my behalf in order to enrich my life and give me the things i wanted.

and i did it; i learned. and it was agony, but courage is a muscle you can train, and every day i get better at accepting gifts with the hungry gratitude i never learned in my years and years as a sad, scared, lonely boy.

so be patient with the trans girls in your life. better than that: be proactive, attentive, generous; be forceful, if you have to, and learn to distinguish real discomfort from the terrified reflex of self-denial that so many of us once learned to rely on.

and if you are so lucky as to love a trans girl, you must insist upon her. you must insist upon her happiness, her comfort, her pleasure, and her rest, because she may still not yet know how to make those demands for herself. if you can devote any amount of energy to becoming an engine that nurtures the flame of even a single tgirl then there is a place for you in trans heaven, which as far as i'm concerned is the only one worth going to

I made an art/anatomy tutorial about birds! I hope people will find it helpful!

i dont consider myself a 'fashion guru' by any means but one thing i will say is guys you dont need to know the specific brand an item you like is - you need to know what the item is called. very rarely does a brand matter, but knowing that pair of pants is called 'cargo' vs 'boot cut' or the names of dress styles is going to help you find clothes you like WAAAYYYY faster than brand shopping

Community for Otherverse fanfic

Have you ever written fanfiction for Pact or Pale by Wildbow and wanted more eyes on it? Do you want a place to talk about Otherverse fanfiction?

For fic and meta of canon characters

For OCs in the Otherverse

Plus a Discord server to talk about Otherverse fanfic with other people! https://discord.gg/RB5zJkZ4HD

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

btw I’ve found these stretches from the WAK blog very helpful when knitting a lot:

Plus make sure to take breaks regularly - and stop if anything starts to hurt!

especially with gift knitting I know it can be tempting to push through it for a deadline, but it’s really not worth causing long term injury. (And anyone knit-worthy should be understanding of that, imho.) Stay well :)

A very important reminder that the Buffalo Genocide was a very real thing that happened and not just a shock factor thing. Bison fur was sought after and their tongues were considered a delicacy by the colonizers.

But they also knew they were a main source of food for plains indigenous people. Plains Indigenous tribes would follow the herds over the year to be able to hunt when needed. Bison were quickly hunted to near extinction so that natives would be forced to depend on the colonizers for food and aid.

After the children were taken and forced into residential schools that were intended to "Kill the indian save the man." They cut our hair, made it illegal to speak out languages, made us catholic and kept the children at these "schools". Any surviving adults were sold into slavery and put into Ghettos. Many of which we still live on. Babies were sold as property. For a long while killing and keeping native scalps, yes their scalps, was done for sport some generals buying them for money.

This was one of many reasons on top of disease that nearly wiped us all out. The last residential school closed in 1997 the year I was born. My parents and grandparents all attended them. Bodies of children that were killed in the schools are still being found and we'll never really know how many there were.

I say all of this because the amount of people that aren't taught this is horrifying. Natives are treated like mystical story pieces or like we simply don't exist anymore. It couldn't be further from the truth.

If you take anything from this film please start by being educated since most of the land you stand on was taken. Your home, school, job. Everything around you exists because of this.

Only just now in 2022 are indigenous actors and media finally starting to get taken seriously. Our stories are finally mattering and not just dismissed. We're finally allowed to create our own worlds and stories that people actually like. It's so important that if you like these stories you get educated. You listen and donate. Share. Educate. Speak up for us when other white people try to silence us. Give reparations and actively try to unlearn your stigmas.

I'm so happy this film exists because I finally feel pride in a native role and like people are finally maybe going to listen.

This is definitely not a google drive full of the sleep stuff from the Headspace app, including sleepcasts, music, and wind down meditation, that normally costs 17.99 a month, no siree and you definitely shouldnt share this with people

cats...?