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I'm getting so pissed with people who are saying Gwen isnt trans. Like they're trying to explain why her dad has a trans patch on his jacket and why she has a trans flag in her room, by saying she supports trans people... wtf???? Literally what ally has a TRANS FLAG, IN THEIR ROOM, BECAUSE THEY SUPPORT TRANS PEOPLE??? That's some shit closeted me would tell my parents when they saw me drawing rainbows. People that are saying this shit are literally just transphobic and dont want her to be trans. Gwen is trans and fuck everyone that argues against that.

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As someone recently diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, one thing that’s been helping me grapple with the intense shame I have over all my “wasted potential” is accepting that potential doesn’t exist and never did.

This sounds so harsh, but please bare with me.

I procrastinated a lot growing up. I still procrastinate today, but less so. And yet, I got good grades. I could write an A+ paper that “knocked [my professor]’s socks off” in the hour before class and print it with sweat running down my face.

I was so used to hearing from teachers and family that if I just didn’t procrastinate and worked all the time, I could do anything! I had all this potential I wasn’t living up to!

And that’s true, as far as it goes, but that’s like saying if Usain Bolt just kept going he could be the fastest marathon runner in the world. Why does he stop at the end of the race??

If ANYONE could make their top speed/most productive setting the one they used all the time, anyone could do anything. But you can’t. Your top speed is not a speed you’re able to sustain.

Now, I’ve found that I do need to work on not procrastinating. Not because the product is better, even, but because it’s better for my mental health and physical health to not have a full, sweating, panicked breakdown over every task even if the task itself turns out excellently. It’s a shitty way to live! You feel bad ALL the time! And I don’t deserve to live like that anymore.

So all of this to say, I’m not wasting a ton of potential. I don’t have an ocean of productivity and accomplishments inside of me that I could easily, effortlessly access if I just sat down 8 hours a day and worked. There’s no fucking way. That’s not real. It’s an illusion. It’s fine not to live up to an illusion.

And if you have ADHD, I mean this from the bottom of my heart: you do not have limitless potential confounded by your laziness. You have the good potential of a good person, and you can access it with practice and work, but do not accept the story that you are choosing not to be all that you are or can be. You are just a human person.

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List of Palestinian Evacuation Fundraisers

Last Update: 05/06/2024

All fundraisers have been looked into by me or vetted by others. If anyone notices issues in validity with any of the fundraisers listed please let me know. Funding updates daily!

Fadi Al-Sharif and family ($10,439/$62,500 goal)

Hayam Taha and family (€8,718/€30,000 goal)

Deyaa and family (€7,764/€20,000 goal)

Fatima Alshanti (kr5,085 SEK/kr150,000 goal)

Shahed Ghazi and family ($6,776 CAD/$94,838 goal)

Little Yusuf and family (€5,960/€85,000 goal)

Sara & Huda Hajjaj and family ($240/$15,000 goal)

Mohammed JH Shamia's family (kr20,168 SEK/kr250,000 goal)

Maram Ahmed and family (€1,032/€30,000 goal)

Hamza Almofty and family ($3,772/$35,000 goal)

Mahmoud Jomaa (€400/€10,000 goal)

Dr. Mohammed Shara ($445/$20,000 goal)

Abdulrahman Alshanti and family (kr137,402 SEK/kr350,000 goal)

Besan Almabhouh's family (€5,767/€25,000 goal)

Said Tanani and brothers (€30,935/€50,000 goal)

Donia Tanani and family (€67,538/€100,000 goal)

Hussein Shamiya, his pregnant wife, and son ($8,042/$40,000 goal)

Mohammed Shamia and family ($15,020/$35,000 goal)

Amro Bakr & kids Bakir and Tala (€1,772/€15,000 goal)

Almadhoun family ($18,365/$80,000 goal)

Child Mohammed (€6,420/€10,000 goal)

Sana'a and family (£19,668/£50,000 goal)

Noha Ayyad and family ($23,050/$95,160 goal)

Nazmi Mwafi and family ($5,151/65,000 goal)

Ibrahim Almofty and family ($535/$40,000)

Hamdi Hejazi and family ($10,236/$25,000)

Mohammed and family ($7,620/$25,000)

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the butch/femme scene of 1990s san francisco by chloe sherman

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The thing neurotypicals tend not to understand about the ADHD brain is that it really only has two gears

I turn to the chalkboard and carefully write out

WORKIN' HARD

HARDLY WORKIN'

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did u ever write the post abt violence and hatred being the most viable forms of intimacy in tlt bc like Ur Absolutely Right but i would love to read a fleshed-out take on that

i did not!! but let me try and collect some of my thoughts on this for you now. and i'll also try to be relatively succinct (god help me.)

i think what is so effective and brilliant about tlt is that it's dramatizing relationships with empire and the corrosive force of imperialism, but it dramatizes this, first and foremost, through its characters interpersonal relationships rather than centring itself on, say, a big geopolitical map.

one of the key ways it does this is through cavalierhood, which is the foundational relationship of the empire. it's john's relationship with his very first resurrection, with his "Adam," Alecto. it's the structure he has all of his lyctors enter into. it's a basis of relationships in every last of the nine houses. and, per mercymorn, it's a method of relations that is inherently zero-sum. ("You let us think we’d cracked it … You let us think it had to be a one-way energy transfer.")

on a macro-level, the empire is a zero-sum game. it's john demanding, explicitly or implicitly, that everyone sacrifice everything they have to him: to his thousand-year war machine, to his godhood. but it's also a method of relationships that has poisoned everyone from G1deon to Gideon. because all of them are engaged in the structure of cavalierhood. (and/or the societies that are powered by cavalierhood, to fold the general population of the nine houses into things.)

this is where the Old Lyctors become so fascinating to me, because they (under john's direction and approval) created cavalierhood (as the empire receives it; they didn't know what Alecto really was!) and then live through the rest of the empire. they are both the inciting moment and sort of the long transformation of what john's empire does to a person.

and it's also so clear that the creation of (imperfect) cavalierhood is a point of no return for that generation. it is the thing that irrevocably changes the way they can relate to each other, themselves, the empire itself. what was sold to them as an ascension was, in fact, a sort of moral/emotional fall (ha ha ha). a survey of these immensely fucked up wizard-shits under the cut:

(this is a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but insert something here about how the lyctors are changed by being asked to literally commit murder. fancy, necromancy murder, but it's pretty functionally murder. something here about how that's a necessary step in being able to be the sort of agent of mass war and genocide that a lyctor is. or something about how this is a dramatization of how to be at the top of [or in any comfortable position in] any form of empire requires you to accept--or repress!-- that you are benefiting from/complicit with death/exploitation etc etc. all the basics.)

(cavalierhood is just tricking, in canaan house, a vulnerable half of your population to go along with it. and go along with it enthusiastically. alfred and cristabel throw themselves into cavalierhood with a passion; this doesn't make it any easier for augustine and mercymorn to live with.)

okay. Okay. but enough of this very 101 capitalism/imperialism. let's look at what some of those irrevocable changes are. let's look at how absolutely fucking terrible all the Old Lyctors are at relating to people after being imperial supersoldier wizards for millennia. (i'll also note that i have dmed @cristabel-oct extensively about this and may be filching some points from that esteemed brain.)

GIDEON (1) & PYRRHA

"I WILL REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU KISSED ME—YOU APOLOGISED—YOU SAID, I AM SORRY, DESTROY ME AS I AM, BUT I WANT TO KISS YOU BEFORE I AM KILLED, AND I SAID TO YOU WHY, AND YOU SAID, BECAUSE I HAVE ONLY ONCE MET SOMEONE SO UTTERLY WILLING TO BURN FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVED IN, AND I LOVED HIM ON SIGHT, AND THE FIRST TIME I DIED I ASKED OF HIM WHAT I NOW ASK OF YOU..."

per wake's letter, gideon and pyrrha, even as they embroil themselves in a explicitly traitorous love affair, are really enacting imperial logic. it governs their intimacy.

pyrrha is besotted by wake because she is "so utterly willing to burn for what they believed in," which i believe refers to gideon & the same logic that drew her into cavalierhood appears to be animating her affection towards wake

VERY intriguing to me that this letter suggests pyrrha & gideon kissed before her consumption & that the act itself was explicitly made into one sort of laced with passion/lust. cavalierhood is fetishized in every lyctor (and many present gen!) relationships, it's skewed into an act of love, whether it's cristabel and alfred's self-sacrificing martyrdom; or loveday and cytherea's (also martyrdom, but with a different flavour because that was more of a mutual agreement); to now pyrrha & gideon, who give it a different flavour.

which i bang on about bc it appears to be the only form of love they can go for, after that point. violence and intimacy are fused for them. love is enmeshed with the risk of death. pyrrha says "i want to kiss you before i am killed." & it's maybe the most telling that they can only find, or find their most perfect/appealing romantic other in their literal enemy.

CYTHEREA & GIDEON (2)

Cytherea's understanding of romance is also enmeshed with cavalierhood and Loveday's sacrifice.

@cristabel-oct has definitely written more eloquently about all of this, but Cytherea-as-Dulcinea's entire relationship with Gideon at Canaan house is laced with a predatory, fetishistic undertone. She admires Gideon for her butchness, for the ways she'll make a perfect cavalier (“I meant it,” she said earnestly. “You were wonderful. You would have made that little nun such a cavalier—I almost wish you’d been mine.”) by the way, it seems, that gideon resembles loveday, even if only loosely.

I think the most salient point here is that Cytherea, though she seeks to prevent further cavalierhood and take a stab at the empire itself, by the time she gets to Canaan house she's too irrevocably changed by imperial relations (which, notably, she was born into). especially on the level of the interpersonal. she discounts the humanity and ability of those who are infantile in years in comparison to her, but her love/lust is also fully warped by the loss of loveday, the memory of loveday, which over the years has eroded into an idealized and fetishized outline. she can reach for it, she can play pretend at it, but she can't enact it in a way that isn't laced with a predatory (and thus violent) impulse.

AUGUSTINE & MERCYMORN

aka my personal brainrot of choice.

why did i save my manifesto until the end? i have no idea. i think i'm a bit afraid i will just become an unhinged gargling sound, so read on at your own peril.

so augustine and mercymorn! augustine and mercymorn!

augustine and mercymorn who genuinely hate each other, but are also, i believe, genuinely attracted to each other. like: it didn't have to be a threesome. both times, it didn't have to be a threesome.

I mean, Augustine is the most repressed, I think, character in the Mithraeum. And he's up against Harrow, who has literally lobotomized parts of herself: "Augustine the First was the closest thing you had ever experienced to human plex. On the outside, he was perfectly painted... Yet there was nothing inside him but an equally easy contempt. It was as though ten thousand years had built up a shell and left a space at the centre. Nothing seemed to touch Augustine. He was effervescent and charming... But there was never any real emotion, or reaction, or opinion—his mouth said one thing, and his face could contort itself into any number of silly expressions, but those eyes were devoid of substance."

And yet the one point on which he's constantly animated? Mercymorn. The person who can still pull real emotion out of him? Mercymorn. The one relationship that gives him some life? Mercymorn.

Mercymorn is, I think, a touch more complex to wrangle. Augustine seems a touch more self-aware that he genuinely cares for Mercymorn than the other way around, but I think the connection undoubtedly one that moves in two directions.

Which is maybe kind of my whole point!! Cytherea is pantomiming a new cavalier relationship, but Augustine and Mercymorn (Pyrrha/Gideon/Wake) have found the space where something lateral and approaching mutuality can exist in this empire: in violence. That's the only place where one's intimacy, however nasty or cruel or downright bloody, is also able to be enacted with a form of equality.

I think so much of it is spelled out in "Oh, we’ll still hate each other, my dear, we have hated each other too long and too passionately to stop … but my bones will rest easy next to your bones."

The too passionately is as a key as my bones will rest easy next to your bones. It has been a passion. It's been a passion in the only way they know how to enact. It's been a passion because they've repressed so much of their ability to love (be it familial or romantic) when they repressed the entirety of Alfred and Cristabel, and so this is, really, the only register they have left.

But what kind of drives me to jump into a potential blackhole about Augustine and Mercymorn in particular is that this nasty, hateful relationship almost loops around again and becomes redemptive.

“The Nine Houses are gone,” echoed Mercy. “It is over … it is done. We always planned for a mass evacuation … but I had my moment … and I took it. I took it, Augustine. And now I will die, and face the River.” “No,” said Augustine. “Augustine, you promised me that after we did it we would go somewhere and drop into the nearest sun—”

(Augustine, you promised me does something feral to my brain but:)

A millennia of being imperial agents sours all of the remaining lyctors, and they all turn on John in their own ways. but Mercymorn is much closer to Cytherea, is perhaps a more well-planned out re-do of Cytherea's Canaan House schemes (my post on those here), in terms of her fantasies. She wants to kill John, kill the empire, avenge Cristabel, and then kill herself. She wants to, as Augustine will point out, replicate the suicide pact that cemented these relationships all the way back at the start of the empire.

What Augustine wants to hold her too, instead, is breaking that pattern. Is some sort of atonement.

“Bad luck,” said Augustine. “It’s done—as you chose to stain your hands so mine could be clean, you’re going to have to put up with the fact that you picked the wrong man to enter into a suicide pact with. I hate ’em. Cristabel might have undone all my good work with Alfred, but here comes the reckoning. We’re going to go round up the ships—everyone who’s left—sue for peace as best we can—get the Edenites on side. And then we’ll find a place to fulfil the old promise … Somewhere out there exists a home not paid for with blood; it won’t be for us, but it will be for those who have been spared. Babies always get born. Houses always get built. And flowers will die on necromancy’s grave.”

Augustine. Evil anti-imperial king. lmao. But he, you know, he gets it. Augustine is the only one with a sense of how to get out of this entire way of relations: and it's to destroy the empire, yes, but to do so in a manner that still allows those who are innocent-enough to rebuild. A home not paid for with blood! A place where they can have another go. Try and find a new, different way of relations. And he would hold Mercy to this. He insists on doing it with her. He insists on an action that might not wash them clean, but would be a valiant effort, would be, given their options, the right thing. He insists on making her better.

So you know!! There is a redemptive force in this intimacy too. Or a desire to harness it towards redemption, even if they don't believe they can be absolved. There is, perhaps, a way out of, or something more to, this strange blend of lust and anger and hatred they've been engaged in for a lifetime... alas!! They don't even get to make a go at it.

IN CONCLUSION

I hope this rambling tour through the old lyctors kind of illustrates what I'm getting at when I say violence is the only viable form of intimacy. I don't necessarily believe that, you know, good or moral or even healthy relationships need to be entirely mutual (esp not in fiction), but I think what the book is doing is showing... the rot of the empire and its structures through the way these interpersonal relationships and governed and corrupted, through the way that the only satisfying form of equality is... in violence, in constant and vicious struggle.

like, if you love in terms of the empire (cavalierhood) a la cytherea, you end up with something exploitative, demanding, and/or fetishistic. and if you try to seek something else without unpacking empire, while still very much being its agent (perhaps even it’s number 1 through 3 agents! ahem: gideon, pyrrha, augustine, mercymorn), your only space to set more equal terms is in a space of explicit violence. etc.

and this extends to the new generation of necromancers and cavaliers too! harrow and her contemporaries! they inherit a structure that is poisoned. i think there are endless good pieces on how perfect cavalierhood is not a happy ending for harrow and gideon, how even cam and palamedes (who have a very amicable relationship) are entrenched in a deep imbalance that has a very steep and unfair emotional price. (i think, too, about how jody is so stunned and dismissive by the lack of extreme and rigid hierarchy in as yet unsent.) that's cavalierhood and so that's empire. that's its logic, baby.

as of the end of htn, none of the characters have unpacked imperialism. (think about how at the end of gtn palamedes is baffled that a lyctor could 'hate' the emperor; harrow also loves john throughout htn.) and so what's so compelling abt tlt is that... the work of unpacking imperialism is rendered extremely juicy and compelling, is rendered one of the crucial conflicts that the main relationship must overcome to have a, I think, satisfying ending. i think there's a reason gideon/harrow are the most explicitly power imbalanced at the start of the series. it's a journey of how they get out of there; which, because of this very clever construction, requires them to reckon with imperialism itself.

so, in sum: in many ways, the imbalance and the violence is just cavalierhood. but since cavalierhood is the foundational sediment of this universe, it's empire. and like what a gift. not to get too idk into it, but i think [gestures hands nebulously] we talk a big game about art helping us understand complex methods of relationships and i really do think that muir has set up a world where thinking through these relationships and through cavalierhood is a really satisfying way to try and, in parallel, think through how imperialism works in our real world and a launching point for imagining alternatives (however otherworldly), if you like.

i am sure this was only mildly coherent, but!! those are some of my thoughts on violence and intimacy in tlt. i hope that somewhat satisfies and thank you so much for asking and prompting me to put some of this on the page!!

#the locked tomb

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I'd like to talk for a bit about the genre of post that's like "sure you're a boygirl fagdyke genderfreak but do you respect [trans identity]?" I think these sorts of posts do address a lot of important points, such as:

Even if you're genderqueer and going "gender isn't real! smash the binary!" there's a real possibility you haven't unlearned or might still be upholding some very transphobic sentiments, and you should do some introspection about that

Some people only want acceptance for their trans identity but don't want to do the work to deconstruct what gender looks like, stop holding other people to their own gendered expectations, and unlearn their internalized bigotry about different trans identities

Sometimes the [trans identity] is specifically relevant to the identities referenced, such as people who will do surface level acceptance of "boygirls" but then call multigender people problematic for using "contradictory" terms like male lesbian, or asking "are you normal about intersex people?" to point out the prevalent intersexism in the multigender community.

But if the [trans identity] or intersex identity being asked about isn't related to multigender community issues, it seems a little strange to consistently single out labels like boygirl and fagdyke that tend to be used by multigender people in these posts. All kinds of trans people can be transphobic about other trans identities. All kinds of trans people are capable of fighting for their own acceptance but not anyone else's. But these posts are pretty frequently just about boygirl fagdykes.

It reminds me of posts about a "theyfab named Sock being transmisogynistic." Are there transmisogynistic FTX nonbinary people? Yes, no one is immune from perpetuating transmisogyny. But these types of posts are still exorsexist.

Similarly, though I'm not saying the pattern of "sure you're a boygirl fagdyke genderfreak but do you respect [trans identity]" is necessarily exorsexist or transmultiphobic, since like I said they do address important points, some of which actually are multigender community issues. But people do use those types of posts to be really transmultiphobic and exorsexist, but in an "acceptable" way, because the boygirls are transphobic so it's okay to hate them.

Some examples in the notes of this sort of post asking 'are you normal about trans women?":

This assumes that multigender identities are only an online thing, only a young person thing, that all multigender people look cis in real life, that no multigender person has experienced real transphobia.

Again, this assumes that no multigender person "looks like a freak" for their gender, that they never struggle with transphobia offline. And straight up saying they have a "huge issue" with girlboy genders.

Multigender labels aren't "performative titles," they're our genders. This person is just straight up admitting they think our genders are fake, that they're only "titles" and not real fucking identities.

"I tend to Not like multigender people" okay so we're just saying the quiet part out loud now

By all means, keep talking about intracommunity transphobia. It's important. But don't throw multigender people under the bus to do so.

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chinese mantou (steamd bread) be like

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truly nothing about house md prepares you for wilson. he's fucking insane. he's been divorced three times. he's the only person who can scheme just as well as house. he gives a patient his own liver bc he felt bad for him - a patient who didn't even know wilson's name. btw. he noticed a patient had depression bc he never mentioned his grandkids. he starred in a porno. he dosed house with antidepressants for several weeks. he allowed his boybestie and his gf to share custody of him and didn't even try to stop it. house told him to buy a piece of furniture that represented who he was, and he bought a $4000+ organ for house. he was gonna torpedo his career to talk abt euthanasia bc one of his patients suffered longer than he had to. he let house move into his 1 bed apartment bc his therapist thought it'd be a good idea. this man would do anything for anybody if they let him. he'd fucking quit his job to save a snail off the sidewalk. bro is not normal in the slightest

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My take on Farcille <3

(experimenting with my style too)

#dungeon meshi

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Ok

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Fear is a prominent part of the horror genre. On that note, what scares you?

Cryogenic freezing of the body, especially the process and keeping thereof. Chambers where the body is buried. Mice. 

—Tamsyn Muir, from an interview before the publication of Gideon the Ninth.

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just when i thought my comics couldn't get dumber... i surprise myself 👭

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more fucking petitions because this clown car country cannot stop with the bigotry for 30 seconds

uk people it takes 5 seconds and you checking your email to verify

everyone else: rebloge please