aem9phase

Latest Posts by aem9phase

Woolly Mouse Oh my goodness 💕( ⁠´ ⁠ꈊ⁠ ｀⁠)

02/28/2025

I do want to note that the whole "women are allowed to dress masculine and wear trousers" thing needs to be viewed in its historical context:

People fought for generations to be allowed to dress that way. They fought hard to be allowed to wear pants. Blue jeans were a symbol of feminist revolution. Women were barred from workplaces and schools for wearing them.

This is not some a natural fact that women dressing masculine is less shocking and humiliating. That normalization was fought for and hard-won.

And yet so many people erase the struggles of those people who fought to make that happen and pretend that it's just normal and natural that people don't see women "dressed like men" as ridiculous.

The Marriage of Figaro has what's called a "breeches role" which is a woman wearing men's clothes playing am ale role. This was done partly due to the vocal range requirements, but in many cases it was done comedically. It was risque and sexualized or comic relief that a woman was dressed as a man.

Anti-suffragette posters mock women wearing pants - well they were bloomers and split skirts back then - and mocking more masculine cut styles of clothes. This was meant to portray this as ridiculous.

They mocked the "new woman" in Weimar Germany, lamenting that they were too masculine.

This is a political cartoon from the 1920s depicting a woman in masculine dress deciding which bathroom to use:

Sorry but you're erasing these struggles and flattening history when you say this shit.

Women were killed and institutionalized in the struggle to make this happen. It really fucking bothers me the way it's framed as "people just don't find it as weird when women dress masculine."

Yes they fucking did. Until women and transmasculine people fought for their right to wear what they want. It's normalized because people struggled to normalize it.

And it's not normal everywhere. There are many countries where it's still illegal for women to wear pants. Sudan, Saudi Arabia.

Even in the US, it's forbidden and considered ridiculous in groups like the FLDS, the Amish, and the Hutterites.

We are flattening and erasing the struggles of women when we say these things. I know we're trying to build theory here but you can't build solid theory on a foundation of lies.

On one hand, I am a firm believer in "just start writing a fictional story without hard research if that's what it takes to get the first draft down, mistakes can be fixed in future drafts". On the other hand, I am also a firm believer in cultivating the reflex of "hang on, I don't really know what that means, let me at least go skim the Wikipedia page right now to make sure I'm headed in the right direction here".

Sometimes, especially with original fiction that's presumably been professionally edited, obvious mistakes that are harmful can be infuriating, but I'm usually just amused whenever I encounter an author who clearly hasn't done research for the industry or skill that plays a central role in their story. If one of your main characters is an athlete, you should probably know the rules of that sport??? How its professional leagues work??? Maybe???

"Character A is a chef in a 5-star Michelin restaurant!" <- Michelin stars only go up to 3, bud. "Character B is a famous Michelin food critic!" <- Michelin reviewers are also famously anonymous, bud.

The easy fix for the above example is to just invent a fake food guide company for your story, with known reviewers and a system that goes up to 5 stars. Michelin Guides came out of a tire company and they're not infallible; they've received plenty of reasonable criticism over the years. If you know what Michelin stars actually are and where they came from, they can be modified and replaced in your fictional world's alternate universe to suit your purpose. Instead of you being very obviously misinformed about, uh, the basic facts of your setting in your own summary.

Does anyone have any memorable examples of "that's not how that works" experiences with fiction that have stuck with them?

So, I saw this image on Facebook, and it was supposedly showing what Queen Nefertiti would have looked like in real life:

Now, I thought this AI generated garbage was just truly terrible on a number of levels; first off, she looks wayyyyyy too modern - her makeup is very “Hollywood glamour”, she looks airbrushed and de-aged, and as far as I’m aware, Ancient Egyptians didn’t have mascara, glitter-based eyeshadows and lip gloss. Secondly, her features are exceptionally whitewashed in every sense - this is pretty standard for AI as racial bias is prevalent in feeding AI algorithms, but I genuinely thought a depiction of such a known individual would not exhibit such euro-centric features. Thirdly, the outfit was massively desaturated and didn’t take pigment loss into consideration, and while I *do* like the look of the neck attire, it's not at all accurate (plus, again, AI confusion on the detailing is evident).

So, this inspired me to alter the image on the left to be more accurate based off the sculpture’s features. I looked into Ancient Egyptian makeup and looked at references for kohl eyeliner and clay-based facial pigment (rouge was used on cheeks, charcoal-based powder/paste was used to darken and elongate eyebrows), and I looked at pre-existing images of Nefertiti, both her mummy and other reconstructions. While doing this, I found photos of a 3D scanned sculpture made by scientists at the University of Bristol and chose to collage the neck jewellery over the painting (and edited the lighting and shadows as best as I could).

Something I see a lot of in facial recreations of mummies is maintaining the elongated and skinny facial features as seen on preserved bodies - however, fat, muscle and cartilage shrink/disappear post mortem, regardless of preservation quality; Queen Nefertiti had art created of her in life, and these pieces are invaluable to developing an accurate portrayal of her, whether stylistic or realistic in nature.

And hey, while I don't think my adjustments are perfect (especially the neck area), I *do* believe it is a huge improvement to the original image I chose to work on top of.

I really liked working on this project for the last few days, and I think I may continue to work on it further to perfect it. But, until then, I hope you enjoy!

Remember, likes don't help artists but reblogs do!

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

cats...?

Hey kid, look at me.

I want you to T-pose. Turn your right thumb up and your left thumb doen and look at your right thumb. Move your arms up and down a bit until you feel a nerve running from your armpit to your palm. Now turn your right thumb down and your left thumb up, and look at your left thumb. Keep your chest facing forward and your shoulders back. Move your arms again until you feel that nerve again. Keep alternating between these two for a minute, or look at each thumb thirty times each.

Now sit down. Put your left hand firmly under your left buttock, palm down. Keep your shoulders back and put your right hand over the crown of your head, very gently pulling it to the right. Do this for thirty seconds, then do it again but with your right hand under your right buttock.

These are stretches for the nerves in your arms, and are very good for people who sit behind a computer a lot, or fibre artists, or you name it. Do them daily. They will hurt in the beginning, but keep doing them, even after the pain has gone, or it will return and you'll have to start all over.

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

this is so funny. in my evil wizard chamber learning fucked up evil math

‪The incorrect and negative beliefs we can get from years of negative feedback not knowing we have ADHD or how it affects our lives. While not everything is solely caused by ADHD, it can affect us and our comorbidities in many, many ways. Good news is, treating ADHD can do wonders for Anxiety and Depression!

Had an argument on the Hellsite about how Signalis isn't gay, actually, and by queer people 'making it about us' we're just 'being inssuferable'. Motherfucker it's a game about DOOMED YURI. It's a game about a queer couple conformed of a bullied repressed girl that only managed to express herself once she was out from the thumb of the authoritarian regime of her homeland and a suppossedly unfeeling automaton that has more heart and resolve than literally anyone made of flesh and blood in that world.

I'm rambling. I just hate seeing people take SIGNALIS and say 'no actually it's not a game about explicitly gay people and if Ariane was Adrian nothing would change'. Fuck you.

Screaming crying because I hate every piracy guide I come across on here.

love language

*Taps Mic*

Samus, short hair.

I KNOW HOW MY FILTHY MUTANT ABILITIES UPSET YOU, SCHMIDT. DON’T WORRY–

–YOU WILL DIE PURE. NO MAGNETISM 

JUST FISTS.

hi! i was just wondering if you’re getting a piece of this pie. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/voidrealmminis/rise-of-the-eldertubbies?ref=profile_saved_projects_live

Oh my goodness! Haha thanks for showing me! And no, of course, this guy is still selling my dream while claiming it’s totally nothing to do with me. I hadn’t heard about it so thank you.

For those just joining us, here is the saga of the elder teletubbies:

1. in 2017 I posted a dream I had on Tumblr. In the dream I discovered that the childish teletubbies shown on BBC’s Teletubbies are merely the children of a species that grows up to be forest cryptids as adults. The post contained a detailed character description explaining how the children’s simple antennae become more complex antlers; their coats become thicker hair; their eldritch screens are unknowable; here, look:

The adult Teletubbies have more branching, complex antlers and shaggy coats. They are less brightly coloured. They are terrifyingly large. Their strangely human faces, emerging from the thick fur, are unquestionably adult; remote, serene, reproachful. Their television screens are glitchy, esoteric and unknowable. They are cryptids whose public exploitation has undermined their rarity and their strange, alien dignity.

That’s a pretty clear description.

2. The post quickly gained attention and many people drew art, made sculptures, designed in-depth character concepts, and even made DnD character sheets and entries with detailed notes. It was 2017. The post got over 90k notes. It had an extremely clear description of the cryptid in it. This wasn’t at all obscure.

3. The post and four pieces of the concept art, including the first piece by were screencapped and posted on r/tumblr. The post included this art by the now-deactivated @finoliatav which is, I think, the first piece of art. Most screencaps don’t show that it’s animated! Once you see it you can no longer pretend that any more work needs to be done in designing these characters, really - they’re all variations on a very clear theme.

4. A guy called Jars started drawing the BBC Teletubbies as adult Teletubbies. He noted on Reddit that his inspiration for the first one was the r/tumblr post but after that, he considered it entirely his own creative work. He drew each of the 4 BBC Teletubbies as adults using my character description and wrote a little story about how his character had stumbled upon them in the woods. He’s a good artist and his work went viral on Reddit and instagram. Those places being separate from Tumblr by the walls of the enclosure, they quickly believed the Jars was being highly original and praised him for it.

5. jars got carried away by his fame and started merchandising for all he’s worth. He’s selling elder teletubbies placemats. He got a collaborator to help him make and sell plushies.

6. Plushies of my character design applied to BBC characters. Jars sells them. To people. Who buy them. He sells these.

7. I think this is like… his job.

8. It has been years of this. I don’t think he has actually come up with anything else to sell by himself. But given that he now has millions upon millions of views on platforms I don’t use, let alone dominate (Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok) he seems to have fully subscribed to the idea that this is his THING.

9. After a while I wrote him a friendly email expressing that since my original dream was very much about discomfort with how the teletubbies were being exploited, I didn’t mind him selling his own art but that I wasn’t happy with him selling plushes based on my writing.

10. He wrote back along the lines of it all being his original intellectual property and absolutely nothing to do with me, etc, so jog on and don’t interfere.

11. I’m not entirely sure where the original intellectual property is when taking BBC characters and drawing them according to someone else’s detailed description of how to “evolve” them (branching antlers, shaggy coats, eldritch screens, serene adult human faces) especially having drawn them after seeing four separate detailed reference photos to base your own drawings on; especially when they’re the existing BBC characters from the show and not even your own. Like, Jars, you were given an entire detailed brief, several sets of references, an entire concept and a television show: the only artistic choices made here were to pick up your own personal pen and do the drawing. You have never deviated from my description, which you did not come up with yourself in any way. But okay Jars. You did some real intellectual heavy lifting here, this is Intellectual Property suddenly, and I guess this is your day job!

12. I myself actually have a day job, am capable of generating lots of other original material just for funsies, have never asked you guys for money, and I’m not generally huge jerk I don’t think. Also, I’m uncomfortable but have never been clear on how to stop him - I don’t think I can. So I don’t do much about this, apart from occasionally scream with hilarity with you guys about it.

13. Like this is the opposite of Goncharov. This is a guy making his wage on a 2017 tumblr collaborative shitpost insisting that this is the beautiful fruit of his only brain. And millions of people believe him.

14. There are now YouTube documentaries with millions of views and TikTok lore about Jars, and his lore, the Elder Teletubbies, which apparently he invented. People are making their wage talking about the history of Jars and his teletubbies lore. These documentaries are, if you can’t tell, not especially well-researched, as it is not difficult to find the original elder teletubbies art on the internet, which is all timestamped. Occasionally hilarious people from Tumblr point this out in the comments (thank you, you guys are hilarious) but the juggernaut is unstoppable!

15. Jars is now, apparently, doing a kickstarter to raise money for some kind of DnD sheets using the grown up BBC teletubbies.

16. I will point out that tumblr made and played with DnD teletubbies in 2017 for free and nobody had to pay $3000, but again. The juggernaut is unstoppable.

I have never, ever known what to do about this guy.

I have always been open to advice but genuinely never been able to articulate how it “damages” me, apart from ethical discomfort about how much I hate my writing being monetised by other people, especially when it was about my discomfort with exploitation. The juggernaut is unstoppable though. He fully intends to get thousands of dollars from this. He almost certainly will!

TIL that the reason lead levels in children’s blood have dropped 85% in the past thirty years is because of an unknown scientist who fought car companies to end leaded gasoline. He also removed it from paint, suggested its removal from pipes, and campaigned for the removal of lead solder from cans.

via ift.tt

You Can Now Play the First LGBTQ Computer Game, For the First Time

‘Caper in the Castro’ was thought to be long lost.

Caper in the Castro is a legendary video game, not because legions of die-hard fans continue to play it, but because it was thought to be lost forever. Now, what is largely considered to be the first LGBTQ-focused video game (it was released in 1989) is on the Internet Archive for anybody to play.

The game is a noir point-and-click that puts the player in the (gum)shoes of a private detective named Tracker McDyke who is, in case you couldn’t guess by the name, a lesbian. McDyke must unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of Tessy LaFemme, a transgender woman, in San Francisco’s Castro district, an historically gay neighbourhood.

OOOOOHhh!

The game was released as charityware – freely, with a strong request to give a donation an AIDS Charity of their choice. I’d like to push towards still following that and donating, if you’re able.

(And you might also want to donate to the Internet Archive, who is hosting it now, while you’re at it – they’re in the middle of a donation drive, and could use your support.)

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

500 Words Magazine

How to Help the People of Sudan?

Sudan is currently undergoing a brutal war that has left more than 12,000 people dead, more than 5.8 million internally displaced and m

Barana Hanabneiho Organisation (BHO)

Darfur Women Action Group (DWAG)

Hadhreen (7adhreen)

Nas Al Sudan

Sadagaat Charity Organisation

Sudanese American Medical Association (SAMA)

Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA)

Sudanese Diaspora Network (SDN)

Sudan Tarada Initiative and Save Al Geneina Initiative by Sadiea

Sudanese Red Crescent Society (SRCS)

Sudan Solidarity Collective (SSC)

Takaful Organisation

Likes to charge reblogs to FUCKING cast

forgotten confession..

Dude has a death wish

when I drew this comic 3 years ago I had NO idea how far it would reach. I'm happy to finally share a corrected version with proper abbreviations, and even MORE state names of indigenous origin ♥️

however, the goal of this comic was to inspire people to do your OWN research on indigenous history. To question everything we have been taught, and everything that has been pointedly left out. This erasure, this “forgetting”, of history is not just of the past… it is happening now. - Across so-called Canada, the US, and US-occupied islands, native women are victims of murder at 10-12x the rate of non-native people, and are the most likely to go missing without being searched for by the law. - Native reservations have the highest rates of poverty in the US, with over HALF of tribal homes with no access to clean water (with more joining this list by the year) - Native people are 6-10x more likely to be unhoused than the rest of the population, and native teens suffer suicide rates higher than any other demographic. This list of modern day genocide goes on (thank you for compiling @theindigenousanarchist <3) and yet take a look at those environmental stats!

Native people manage to do SO much for the planet as a whole - thanklessly - and with all this stacked against them. Don't even get me started on kin fighting in south america. Could you imagine if there was help? #landback is resistance to genocide, and it is the key to saving our warming earth.

So look into it and the other hashtags, cuz a cartoon goose ain't a substitute for a proper education. Love to my grandparents who always kept a map of tribal territories of turtle island on their wall, to speaking on our Tsalagi & Saponi heritage. Love & solidarity forever, happy research, and happy #indigenouspeoplesday

LANDBACK.ORG

(Also, if you care to support the artist, I'm publishing a book ! and writing another - a fantastical afroindigenous graphic novel - that I post exclusively about with tons of other art on my patreon.)

OK SO I WAS WALKING DOWN THE STREET IN THE RAIN AT 2AM AND I SAW AN ANIMAL RUNNING DOWN THE ROAD AND SO I GRABBED IT AND

IT WAS THIS

How to Argue Like an Asshole

Good evening, friends, let me tell you some Secrets on how to argue like (and with) assholes. I’m writing this because I keep running into a particular asshole, and I need to stop engaging with them, and so this is an instruction sheet for myself as well as you guys. 

First, try to avoid assholes; they don’t deserve your time and energy. But, if an Argument is unavoidable, here are a few tips on how to emerge unscathed. 

Let go of the idea that you’re going to win. 

You’re not gonna win. Nobody wins in an argument with an asshole. But, on the other hand, you can make them lose. You can deprive them of their entertainment and their triumph. 

How??? 

Do not present your side of this debate. 

This is so counter-intuitive for most of us who believe in things like, oh, science, or real facts, or the idea that real facts can be determined by science. Here’s a cool terrible thing about humans: certainty has nothing to do with facts. And when people are certain, that is when they become assholes. 

When someone’s only goal is to win an argument, any real evidence or facts you give them is just ammunition for them to turn against you. 

You will not convince them. So what should you be doing? 

Destroy their arguments.

This is a thing of joy, because it’s what assholes are used to doing. They are, at heart, morons who don’t know how to construct, only how to destroy. 

I used to be super emotional about arguments like this. I couldn’t think of anything to say while the other person ranted on about their horrifying bigotry. Now I’m a lawyer, and I’ve learned to weaponize my essentially nitpicky nature. For money. 

So here are some easy tactics you can remember and deploy: 

- Make them define the words they use. Nitpick the definitions. 

- Turn questions back on them. If they ask you “why do you believe x”, ask them why they believe y. If they pull some “I asked first” shit, ask them why they’re afraid to defend their beliefs. 

- Call them emotional.  If possible, pick out specific emotions. This is especially devastating when you’re debating a man, as he will get more emotional as a result. 

- “Why is that funny? I don’t get it.” Making people explain mean jokes can be a delight; they just wilt the more you question them about the underlying assumptions. 

- Laugh at any especially dumb shit. Like they use some slogan or catchphrase that’s obviously untrue, due to science, or essentially ridiculous, like “we’ve made America great again,” and you just blurt out laughing. If they get mad, tell them – oh, so sorry, I’ll shut up, I’m giving you the floor to talk about your beliefs. I’m respecting you. This is a goddamn power move. It gives you the high ground, and also the implied control over the situation. The floor belongs to you, but you are yielding it to someone because you can. 

- If they make an awkward exit, let them. Especially if they call the discussion “political.” It means they’re feeling attacked. Graciously allow them to retreat with their tail between their legs. If they storm off, allow them to do that too. Congratulations; you’ve ended the argument and you don’t have to deal with it anymore. 

Basically: hand the asshole a shovel, and let ‘em dig. Relieve yourself of the burden to convince them they are wrong, and just sour their fun instead. 

–

Additionally, these are the tactics that assholes use, consciously or subconsciously, all the time. Recognize them. Once you know what they are, you can become immune to the intimidation and belittling tactics. 

Good luck. 

even as a smugbug appreciator, wolfspider has it's appeal for sure

prob the last piece with the magazine thing, but I'm really enjoying this style.