#trait identification

[cosmics-beings]

when nonblack artists (especially white) draw nonhuman characters black or racebend characters black they really need to ask themselves why they subscribe certain traits (like aggression, stupidity, arrogance, largeness, etc.) to black versions of those characters and why they view kinder, wise and morally ambiguous characters as white or lighter skinned.

(kinda unrelated but it also slips into shipping (esp in mlm stances). like why are you making the larger/dominant one black and the smaller/submissive one white or lighter. )

this isn't a jab at anyone , but i just implore some artists to asks themselves why they see a character being aggressive and dangerous and automatically assume that character is black.

at the end of the day you don't even have to listen to me - draw what you want. i am just a faceless icon on tumblr dot com.

#fandom racism #i guess? #idk i was looking at some human formers art and some nonblack people's handling of megatron #esp prime vs bay megatron - like you have bay megatron the more aggressive one as black #but the more level headed and wiser versions of him are white #personally EYE see all cybertronians as black and just as a black person i've always felt that when i was little #but that's just me #im always sorta iffy on this topic #i love seeing black art of characters i identify with esp someone like mega - and by identfiying with him i mean like before he became a #maniac like he wanted equality at first and that is where my identification stops #BUUUT #blackness shouldn't be equated to certain traits #especially aggression etc. #and it's like even in my personal view of him i'd draw him black (a light complexion) because again i see all of them as black #becuase i've seen them as black since i was a kid #but i am always looking at how people who are not black typically see a character being aggressive and decide they should be drawn as black #in their human form #and the other characters aren't drawn as black

[ratmonsterz]

Love my mind. Was washing dishes in between doing a horse commission and was suddenly griped with the need to write an essay on removing gender from society again

#[scrubs plate] i need to read my anthropology book so I can make a timeline from genesis to modern day versions of gender identity #[rinses] we need to move from societal distinctions towards individual identification and that means #the vandalization and implemented obsolescence of gender #putting gender into a place akin to hair color in distinction of the human individual #and grouping it as a individual-unique trait and non-definitive part of their being rather than a societally important category of existenc #i will rest well when peoples name and pronouns dictate nothing other than what they are called #not how much they are paid #or where they buy their clothes #or what job they will pursue #or what they look like #i got a little more worked up writing these tags lmao #ratspeak.zip #terfs dni

[drdemonprince]

By now, a majority of Autism researchers and clinicians are aware that the existing assessments for Autism are profoundly flawed. 

They know the standard evaluation of Autism is sexist, with assessors excluding women for reasons like wearing makeup, having a boyfriend, being superficially polite, or not being fixated on suitably ‘masculine’ topics like ancient Roman history or barometric pressure. 

They know Autism evaluations are racist, deeming Black Autistics “oppositionally defiant” or even “borderline” rather than acknowledging any social alienation or sensory pain they’re experiencing, and believing they must be overstating the difficulty they face in moving through the world.

And they certainly know that conventional Autism measures weren’t designed with adult Autistics in mind. Many of us are still asked to make up stories based on paintings of frogs in a toddler’s picture book, when we sit down for assessments at age 20, or 30, or 45 — because all the evaluation methods were written for young kids. 

The data has already proven the far-reaching consequences of using such shoddy measures of Autism. People of color, gender minorities, older adults, and women are diagnosed at later ages, and also go undiagnosed at massive rates. 

A growing population of scientists are admittedly interested in fostering a new literature of what they call “patient-driven” Autism research, but they never stop thinking of us as mere patients, the passive receivers of care rather than the leaders of communities and political movements who are the ought to be the primary authors of the studies about us, and the sole determinants of what our desired outcomes should be. Even when they observe that their work could benefit from a greater Autistic perspective, researchers do so from closed rooms, filled with other professionals who are largely not Autistic, wondering amongst themselves what it is that we want instead of learning to quiet their voices and follow our lead. 

Though many basically well-intentioned Autism researchers believe that Autism assessments need reform, what neurodiversity really needs is to abandon the diagnostic process altogether. If Autism is a benign, neutral, naturally occurring form of human difference that requires acceptance rather than a cure, then there’s no need to diagnose it as if it were a sickness. And if hundreds of thousands of Autistic women, people of color, queer people, and older people have been able to give a voice to ourselves and find one another without having ever been given a label by a professional, then improved professional labeling is not what we need. 

Autistic self-realization is the future of Autism assessment. We hold the collective wisdom, organizing ability, insight, and political power to define who we are. No authority figure should have to sign off on our identities. 

Because psychiatrists fail to diagnose such a large percentage of the Autistic population, many Autism researchers now accept self-identified Autistic adults within their subject pool. Within the peer-reviewed journal Autism in Adulthood, self-realized Autistics often make up the bulk of the participant sample, and they have repeatedly been found to be indistinguishable from their formally diagnosed peers. 

A growing body of research now also considers the presence of Autism-spectrum traits as qualifying for inclusion in many Autism studies. The data makes it quite obvious that Autistic people exist within all human groups, spread all throughout the world, and that a great many people have experiences in common with us who have not been formally diagnosed. This itself reveals that a formal diagnosis is hardly necessary, and that a psychiatric paradigm of accepting self-identification is inevitable. The researchers are increasingly already doing it.

You can read the full essay for free (or have it narrated to you!) at this link.

[atzfilm]

winter blossom (m)

pairing/wc: k.yeosang x reader (10.1k)

genre: alien au, secret relationship

warnings: smut, mentions of murder/injuries, petnames

summary: earth abandoned centuries ago, you travel the cosmos alone. you land on a smaller planet, meeting an exiled dweller that calls himself yeosang.

— part of the ...and it's snowing collab!

Space has always been noisy. Ships riding past you in the low lights, stars sparkling in far away galaxies, the rumbling of your own engines enough to fill what small amount of peace you have alone.

You sit in front of the navigation screen, eyes flicking over the map. You have little fuel left and perhaps you overestimated how much you'll be needing before the next port. It's several hundreds of thousands kilometers away and you barely have enough to make it halfway there. Sure, there's planets in between that you can land at but it's a risk. Most hate humans, hate their existence entirely. Once they see you, you may be taken – either killed or used for parts. You rub your face, looking over your options. You won't make it to the next large port, that's for sure. Waiting out in open space is unreliable – pirates can get to you quicker than a space marshal would.

You groan, a planet close enough for you to land on. One you haven't heard of before.

Elysium.

You glance to the side, typing up the name into your database.

Elysium. Planet primarily consists of thickened forestry and large oceans, similar climate to the planet Earth. Population of three million, ruling under a monarchy. Temperament toward humans is neutral. Climate: Snow.

It ticks off enough boxes for you to decide to land, setting the destination point for Elysium as well as instructions and identification to the port for approval. You grab your telecommunicator and walk off away from the screen, readying yourself to land in the next few days.

“Hey pretty girl,” you walk past the framed photo of your passed cat, pressing your lips on the glass before moving on. Everything is tied down, thankfully, nothing out of place. You jog down the corridor, glancing in each room. All of it is secure since no one has lived in for ages, commotion from prior years of having a crew absolute. It wasn't anything bad for why they left – you all had different ideas on how to make money. Yours was simple, collecting mostly artifacts and lost space junk, getting a heap of coins every now and then. It's a simple life. Alone, yes, but it's fine. Nothing you've haven't grown used to.

After checking all of the rooms you move back into the navigation room, throwing yourself on

the fold up bed you've stored there. You can't remember the last time you slept in your own bed – it's probably been months. Being alone has made you more wary of leaving the room without an attendant. Anything could happen between the distance of your room and here. You'd rather deal with it straight on than wasting precious seconds running toward it. You tuck yourself beneath the sheets, eyes glued to the wide windows showcasing space.

The port is quiet as you land. Ships stationed in several spots, but you only see a few patrollers out and about. You grab your mask and place it over your face, suit already on as you exit the craft. An Elysium, taller than you by almost a foot, comes toward you. You read in the brief biography that they're quite tall in comparison to the average human. That you can clearly see as he stands in front of you. Most of the other traits are the same except for pointer ears, irises a lighter blue. Skin pale and almost translucent, lips a light pink. As if they haven't seen the light of day for ages. His head tilts as he looks down at you, surprised.

“A human on Elysium? I never thought I'd see the day,”

You bow slightly at the guard, holding out your identification and paperwork. “Yes sir. I have all the proper paperwork. I'm here to fuel up before the next stop.”

“Ah, quite far from Candor,” he glances over the paperwork. “It looks in order. Unfortunately for you, we no longer have enough fuel for an aircraft the size of yours.”

“Are you sure? I checked the database to confirm you had the capabilities for fuel and –”

“Oh we do have the capabilities, human,” he nods. “But we've slowed down on our supply since not many land on our port. We can give you fuel, yes, but it will take a few weeks in human time to fuel up that tank enough to get you to the next destination.”

There's nothing else you can do. You take your identification back from him, knowing what you have to ask next.

“Where can I stay while I wait?”

—

You hold the glass in your hand, staring at the seeds swirling in the water. The bartender insisted that it was made for a human's palate, but you almost gagged at the taste. Water this acidic couldn't possibly be water at all. Your helmet and suit rests on the seat next to you. After a quick chat with the guard stationed at the port, and a small device placed beneath your skin, your body is accustomed to the climate of Elysium. You’re all but ungrateful, the heavy material of the suit would only make your stay feel so much longer. Your eyes move to the table, wanted photos seemingly solidified in the glass. Your gaze strays to one in particular.

His presence stood out amongst the fugitives. Hair darker than what you've seen around, eyes staring into yours. His beauty is beyond any of what you've seen so far around here – and that's saying something. Skin covered in … glitter? A birthmark on the left side of his face. Some would say it would lessen his beauty, but it only exemplifies it for you. Your finger traces the outline of his figure, reading the description. It's conveniently in a language you can understand.

Kang Yeosang, Prince of Elysium. Wanted for the murder of the King of Elysium. Bounty set at 4,979,990 Elp.

He is a prince? It makes sense, you can see his commanding aura through the thin paper. But why would he kill the king? You presume it's his relative, father or uncle maybe. You can only snort to yourself, shaking your head. He should have had a maid or butler perform the task if he wanted the throne so desperately. The bounty is high, though. Higher than you've ever seen it. Enough to set you for life and then some.

“He has been forgotten for over a century, human,” A voice pulls you away from the table. You look up, meeting the eyes of another Elysium. His hair is a deep blue, skin covered in bandages. He sits at your table without even a hint of an invitation from yourself, humming. “Neither Elysium high guard or the most elite bounty hunters have been able to find where he resides. This planet has been torn apart for decades. Most have accepted that he is no longer alive. I doubt a human like yourself would be able to find him.”

“Well stranger,” you take another slow sip of your drink, wincing at the taste. “I never said I would be hunting for the forgotten prince and neither do I want to, seeming as he hasn't been found in so long. Trying to read the emotions of a person you don't know doesn't seem to be your strong suit.” You roll your eyes, looking away from him. All you're trying to do is stay under the radar, keep to yourself. Weeks of avoiding unneeded conversation is going to be rough, but you'd rather not start messing up your plan right now with an Elysium that's trying to read your mind.

“You were thinking it, I could tell.” He shrugs.

You narrow your eyes now. Taking the bait surely, you continue, “And how can you read my mind? Is that an ability many of you have? Because it doesn't seem to be working all too well.”

“Ignoring that snide remark of yours, it’s because of your ship,” he glances out the door for a moment. “Before it was just you, there was a whole crew. You were bounty hunters back then, finding lost men and growing. You were quite notorious too, until that crew of yours broke apart. Quite unfortunate now, you could have found the biggest bounty yet if you came here back then.”

“I only deal in antiques now,” you retort. The past is the past. And notorious? You doubt the crew was that popular. Maybe relatively known, but not famous. Just reliable. “And I don't remember seeing you around the port when I was parking.” You would have remembered a face like his. His lips curve at your words, shrugging.

“I'm forgettable. My name is San, by the way,” he holds out his gloved hand. You take it, shaking it. “I'm the owner of this bar, and the man who will be showing you to your room next door.”

“You own both?” Your brow raises.

He nods. “Family business. Whenever you're ready just find me. I’ll be out and about.”

-

You stare at the lack of clothing in your carry-on bag, knowing you’ll have to go back to your ship soon to grab some more supplies. You rub your face, sinking into the bed. This is exactly what you didn’t want. Familiarity, staying longer than necessary. If the government let you rest on your ship you would have. But instead, you’re stuck in a hotel, waiting impatiently for your fuel. You glance at the door. Secured with makeshift objects you kept on your person, a bell twisted around the doorknob. San insisted that this place is safe, but you’d rather not take the chance. Especially as one of the only humans on this entire planet.

“Hell,” you murmur, looking out the window. The planet is known to be dark at night, which only adds more sense to why their skin glows. You look at the streets, shimmering Elysium walking every which way, bright against the streets. It is beautiful, enough for your eyes to continue to wander, lids growing heavy enough to fall unconscious.

The rattling is what woke you up. You leaned forward almost immediately, fingers reaching for the knife beneath your pillow you took off your plate at dinner. Coming up empty handed, you slide off the bed, hands up slightly. Your eyes barely get a chance to adjust to your dark room, but you see them. Their skin brightens up the room, glowing against the walls. They hold up the knife, crushing it between their fingers. You swallow, shooting a fleeting glance at the door. They stand in between you and your escape. You could jump from the window, but it’s several stories above the ground. You doubt you’d survive the landing. They take a step toward you and your body stiffens.

“What do you want? Elp? Artifacts? I have none, they’re all on my ship.”

They hesitate for a brief moment at your words. “Your ship?” Their voice echoes around the room, smooth and deep. Pretty, despite the circumstances. “You have a ship?”

You curse yourself, nodding slowly. “I do. It has no fuel, so you won’t be able to get anywhere with it.”

“But you have a ship,” they confirm. “You can leave this planet.”

“Is that what you want? What are you, a fugitive?” Their skin's luminescence softens at your words. It's almost enough for you to make out their features. In that brief hesitance, they look eerily familiar. You don't get the chance to look any closer though, skin back to where it was. “I can help you.”

“I need to leave. When will you be free to go?”

Good question. “Maybe a few weeks? They said it'll take a while.” Why the hell are you negotiating with a bright spot? Just as you open your mouth again, they interrupt.

“I will be back.”

They dissipate in front of you in a blink, gone from your sight. You drop your arms, chest throbbing, breaths quick. You stand still for a few more minutes. After realizing that they're truly gone, you drop your hands. The smart thing to do is tell San what happened. But your gut is telling you otherwise. It was strange to say the least. But you can't think of leaving to complain to San about someone who might just be a figment of your imagination in your tired state. You convince yourself as such, moving closer to the door. The bell and other contraptions are still in the same place you left them. You walk back to your bed, a cold metal touching your foot. Glancing down, you see the pile of dust.

The knife they crushed.

—

You soon convinced yourself it was a dream despite the circumstances. The knife could have been fragile. You could have somehow imagined the pile of dust. All of these explanations ignore the feeling in your gut. It dwells. No one has bothered you much for the past few days. A little talk here and there, but most left you alone. San, you've grown to notice, speaks to everyone and anyone around his tavern and hotel. And it seems that everyone knows him well, his loud laugh echoing around every room he's in. It brings you comfort. Enough to hide that sinking feeling.

You sit outside, staring out into the thickened leaves and trees. They're nothing like what you've seen, vines tight, barely any signs of movement. As if it knows you're watching. So still that your gaze moves to the rustling of leaves. You tense, glancing around. No one is out and about. Only you in this area. Just as you begin to stand, you see him.

His hair is long, pulled back from his face with braided strings. His eyes are iridescent, still on yours as he makes his way to you. His movements are elegant, hands tucked into his jacket, hidden from view. There's only one person he could be – the Elysium from your bedroom. As he moves closer, you see it. The birthmark near his eye, extending to his temple. Pretty, but deadly, in these circumstances. He pauses in his movement, noticing your shift of focus.

“You know me,” his voice is softer, hesitance wrapped around each word. “You told me you were a human.”

You can't begin to speak, slowly standing up from your spot. Having the exiled crown prince standing in front of you, especially after all San said about his disappearance. What kind of luck do you have?

“I am.”

His eyes narrow, “Then how do you know me?”

“You are the forgotten one. How could anyone not know you? I –” You glance back. “I don't want to be involved in whatever you're planning.”

“I want to leave the planet.”

“Leave? You've been gone for a century, you could have left anytime you wanted. They forgot about you. Why are you trying to hitch a ride with me? What's your plan?”

He stares at you, silent. Your irritation makes your fear lessen, waiting for his response. He merely sighs, staring at the grass beneath his feet. “Humans have rarely landed on our planet. Each time, they refused to help me. Which is why I am asking you.”

“And why would I help you? If someone caught me, I could be killed. You murdered the king. That's not a petty crime.”

His jaw tightens at the mention of the past. Knowing you very much made a mistake, you backtrack. “I don't know you well enough to listen to what you have to say.”

“So why do you listen to what the others say? Do you know Elysium well at all? Why listen to the words of beings you have never come across? Why not listen to my words?”

You pause, unsure of how to answer. Sure, you can listen to the masses, take their word for it and report that you certainly have seen the lost prince. Or you can keep this quiet, decide on whether you want to save him. The longer he stares and waits for a response, the more you're sure of your decision.

“Did you kill him?” You ask.

“Yes.”

“Did you do it on purpose?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have no other choice?”

“...Yes,” he takes a breath. “If I didn't, more Elysium would have been killed. I had no other choice.”

There is no wavering in his tone. He says it strongly, a furrow of his brow. Lost, maybe hurt. But he is sure.

“Okay,” you glance around. “I will get you out of here. But once we land at the next port, you're gone. And we will pretend none of this happened.”

“I'll follow your words, human.”

“y/n,” you correct. “My name is y/n.”

—

“You’ve been out and about a lot these past few days.”

San glances up from cleaning the glass, leg resting on the edge of the chair. You have avoided him since your encounter with the lost prince. You doubt he can read your mind, mostly, but being around Elysium when you’re hiding the most sought out of them all is not exactly something you’d like to do. Especially since you’re growing a soft spot for San. Another thing you didn’t want to do. Unfortunately for you - he’s too kind not to.

“Am I not allowed to explore the planet I'm inhabiting temporarily?”

He purses his lips, leaning against the arm of the broom between his clothed fingers. “You are, of course. Just strange, the way you’ve been acting. Anytime someone asks where you’ve been, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost. Just what are you hiding, y/n?” His brown lifts, glancing between your eyes. “Or is it best that I not know about it?”

Do you trust him enough to spill what you’ve been hiding? Yeosang has warned you, especially tonight, not to say a word. Out of fear or otherwise. So though San is trustworthy enough, you can’t quite tell him. Not yet, or ever, really. You merely shake your head, and he nods in understanding.

“Fair enough. I hope you keep your radio line open, y/n. I’d hate to lose contact with you.”

You leave the hotel tonight after weeks of staying, petrol finally filled to the brim in your ship. You’ve spent all day filling up your storage with preservatives enough for your long journey and then some. The guard was curious that you had so much, enough for several people. He even inquired as to if you’ve found a life partner on Elysium. You denied it and he only waved you off.

San passes you a small bag of snacks you ordered earlier and you thank him, your hands brushing against each other. The leather encompassing his holds yours for a moment, a small smile on his lips. “There’s a small map in there to an entrance to the docks that no one takes anymore, out of commission. It so happens to be behind your ship, exactly where you parked it. No one would see it since it’s out of view from prying eyes. Someone would advise someone else to take it, using that little pill in that bag. It’ll show whoever it is as someone else temporarily. Not long enough to hang around for hours, but enough. In case, of course.”

He lets go of your hand, smile wavering. “Be safe, y/n. I trust you, even though I haven’t earned your trust yet.”

“San–”

He holds up his hand, shaking his head. “Don’t want to know my friend. Safe travels, keep that radio on. Don’t forget me and call if your journey is too boring, or if you’re tired of him.”

He doesn’t say anything more, grabbing his towel and broom, disappearing into the back of the bar. You grip the bag tightly, grateful that you’ve met him.

–

“It is safe?” Yeosang holds the pill in his hand. You’ve thrown a large coat around his body, the scraps of clothing that he has now not merely enough to make him look like a normal Elysium. The snow does not seem to bother him the way it bothers you, he himself ignoring how the flakes stick to his cheeks. “You’re sure of this?”

“I am,” There’s no need to expand on how or who gave you those pills, exactly. But you think you can trust him. You hope you can. Since he knows what you’re doing, he could have spilled it long ago. But he didn’t, and that’s enough for you.

His soft eyes watch yours. There’s fear of the unknown hidden between the irises, the slow blinks. He has trusted you up to this point. You’re not sure why he decided to grab a random human to help him, but he did, and it’s you. You’ve gotten this far, you wouldn’t betray him. Giving up your life for him is definitely a stretch, but you’d help him in any way you can. And those worried eyes do nothing but make your chest swell. You will help the forgotten prince off this cursed planet. Taking your silence as an answer, he swallows the pill, grabbing the bottle from your hand and drinks the water. You watch him as he stands very still. As if he’s waiting for his death to come. Instead what you see – you can only describe it as magical.

The dark, black hair of his disappears into a lighter blond, softer features hardening, delicate nose changing. Kang Yeosang is nothing like himself. He seems to have shortened in height as well, leveled with you. His eyes stay on yours though, now brown eyes hesitate. Without thinking, you reach out, brushing his wavy hair away from his face. It is not Yeosang in appearance, no, but you can still see him through the disguise. You reach into your pocket, pulling out your small pocket knife, showing him his expression through the reflective metal.

He laughs, shaking his head, “How horrid,” his voice is obscenely deep. Almost obnoxiously so. “What a relief you didn’t want to kill me.”

“I wouldn’t have, you know that,” you roll your eyes.

“I do,” he agrees simply. “Let us go?”

You nod, slipping your fingers into his. He stills for a moment, letting you pull him out from the forest. There’s plenty of people around but none pay attention to either of you. Yeosang’s grip tightens in yours, stiffer as he stands close to you. He hasn’t been around his people in so long, it must be jarring to see them not give him a second glance. Not shame him for what he’s done. You’d like to pick his brain on what he’s feeling right now but you have a task to complete.

You look around, entering the port through the back. It is as San said, no one around, no one to bother the two of you. You quickly open the back door of your ship, ushering him inside. He is a bit hesitant as he stands there, almost forcing you to push him into the ship. He turns to you, eyes widening. “You are not entering?”

“Not back here, I have to go around the front and grab my papers before leaving. I’ll be back.”

You take a step back and he moves a bit forward again, as if to follow you. “Hey, stay in there–”

“You wouldn’t leave me, right?” His words are soft now, the tone of Yeosang’s voice you’ve grown accustomed to. “You would come back?”

You look around, before stepping forward. You hold his face between your hands, “I will not leave you, alright? I am coming back, just give me a few minutes. I’m not lying to you. I promise you this.”

The tension in his shoulders dropped slightly, “Okay. I will hold you to that.” His lips press against the inside of your wrist, stepping back. You quickly move down the ramp, shutting the doors. Ignoring the beating of your heart in your ears, the warming of your face. There’s no time to worry about that now. You have more important things to do, like lie to the guard and smuggle off a fugitive worth more money than you can comprehend.

-

It’s been a few hours since you’ve left Elysium. You know Yeosang is still on, from the rummaging in the room you told him to stay in. You haven’t entered only to give him privacy. In fact, you haven’t seen him since you closed that ramp. The magic has definitely worn off by now. You did want to check but decided against it. Whatever he’s going through right now you’re letting him process it slowly. Hopefully carefully, knowing you have valuables in the room he’s staying in.

You sit at the control table, slowly eating a snack San handed to you. You radioed him just after you left to let him know that you were safe and everything was handled, and he sighed very loudly in relief, explaining that he definitely was not sitting around waiting for your call (he was) or that he thought you might have been taken (he definitely did think so). You reassured him with simple words, not enough to say what you mean, but enough for him to understand. The call was quick, ending with a simple goodbye. You will miss him endlessly, but landing on that planet again wouldn’t be in your favor. That’s your first and last time ever in that sector. Or near it at all. The next port is a couple weeks away, but you have enough fuel to go much farther. You want to discuss with Yeosang and see what he thinks, but he still hasn’t left his room.

Very smart of you to take a banished prince into your ship without knowing anything but what he’s told you.

The hum of the spaceship's engines echoed through the metal walls as you stared at the cameras. You glance at the closed door of the guest quarters, mind swirling with apprehension. The decision to let a stranger on board has always come with its own set of risks, and you just cannot shake the memories of a past experience that had gone terribly wrong.

A few solar cycles ago, you did something similar, made the mistake of extending hospitality to a different traveler stranded on a desolate moon. The person seemed fairly harmless at first, grateful for shelter and food. As the days passed, you noticed a few things off - stolen data from your harddrive corrupt, and before you could even confront them they took the rescue sub and left, leaving you to deal with the aftermath of compromised security, and lack of an escape. It took you months to get something to replace it. The weight of that previous betrayal still hangs heavy on your shoulders; sleepless nights spent trying to repair the damage, the sense of disgust that lingered long after the unwelcome guest had departed, regret that you even trusted a person enough to leave them alone around your things.

Your fingers trace the edge of the data pad, a holographic display of Yeosang’s past. The background check had little, just a brief history of what happened. Nothing to tell you about him, really, just what his people now think of him. Still, you cannot shake the feeling that history might be repeating itself.

"Am I being too paranoid?" you murmur yourself, glancing at the viewscreen that displays the vastness of space outside. "Hell."

Perhaps establishing additional security measures?

You hesitate for a moment. You think you trust him, you do. You trust him enough to leave him around your valuables without thinking twice. So you drop your hand from the screen, shaking your head. If everything messes up, it’ll only be your fault, no one else’s. You move from your spot, approaching the small bed in the corner. Deep sleep will evade you since you’re on board with a fugitive, but your lids are too heavy to ignore. You tuck yourself beneath the blanket, blinking slowly as you stare out the windows. You made a choice. A big choice.

You just hope it’s the right one.

-

“You’re quiet.”

You look up from your food, Yeosang slowly approaching you. He wears the clothing you’ve left in that room for him. Though a bit tight, and silly looking, it’ll fit for now. Nothing like what royalty would wear. You reach back, passing him a bowl that you’ve already made for him. In case he decided to appear in front of you.

He widens his eyes as you sit it across from you, gesturing for him to dig in. You take another bite as he slowly sits down. “You made this for me?”

“You haven’t eaten in days. I know Elysium aren’t the same as me, but you have to eat, Yeosang. You can’t survive on just water.”

“I can for a few months,” he says. Just as you’re about to apologize for your assumption, you see the slight smile on his lips. You roll your eyes, continuing to eat. “I’m grateful for your presence, and your thoughtfulness, y/n. I wouldn’t have been able to choose anyone better to help me leave.”

You shake your head, “It’s nothing-”

“It is something,” he interrupts, “I essentially forced you to take me off that planet. And you obliged without much hesitation. You risked yourself for me. There’s no way I can repay what you have done for me, nothing. I can only remain forever in your debt.”

You think for a moment before speaking. “I trust you Yeosang, I hope you know that. I wouldn't have let you on this ship with me if I didn't. I know that you’ve done it for a reason, and if you’re not able to tell me now, it’s okay. And it’s okay if you cannot say it ever. And do not place yourself into debt with me. Call us even.”

“You place far too much trust in me,” he whispers, looking away from you. “A stranger you barely know.” He takes a deep breath, eyes glued to his bowl. You can see the weight of his unspoken pain. “I wish to tell you what happened.” His eyes flick up to yours, holding your gaze with a mixture of gratitude and. He speaks of his father, the king, who had become corrupted by power and had posed a threat to the people of Elysium. And how, in an act of pure desperation to protect his people, he had taken the life of his own father.

"The council, the people—they didn't understand," Yeosang confesses, words laced with pain. "They saw me as a traitor, an assassin. I was banished, branded a murderer when all I wanted was to save them. I didn’t know how to deal with that, when I tried to save them all."

You can feel the depth of Yeosang's isolation and loneliness, the weight of the truth hanging heavy in the air. There is no doubt from you. You believe him.

"I was almost killed in the process," Yeosang continues, his eyes reflecting the memory. " And I almost let them do it, thinking that my sacrifice would be enough to prove my innocence, but then I pulled myself out of that. They would just let the royal line die, they wouldn’t dig into the past and see. I am the sole heir to the throne, it died with my banishment. If I died then, no one would care to see why. They would just celebrate my end."

Your expression softens, nodding slowly, "You've been through so much, Yeosang. I can't imagine how difficult it must have been."

"I miss being able to protect my people," Yeosang says, a hint of sorrow in his voice. "But now, all I can do is hope that they'll forgive me someday, that they'll learn the truth about the danger my father posed and the sacrifices I made to try and save them."

"You’ll find a way to clear your name, to unveil the truth. It might take time, but…” This is much to say, much too soon. “If you need me, we can face it together. I can help you in any way you need me to."

Yeosang meets your gaze, a mixture of gratitude and vulnerability in his alien eyes. "I've learned to trust only myself, to keep my guard up against those who might see me as a threat. But being around you... it's different. Easier. You've shown me kindness, understanding. And for the first time, I feel like I can breathe."

Pushing the dwelling feelings inside your own chest, you nudge him slightly. "You’re not alone anymore. I'm here for you, and we'll navigate these fucked up stars together."

“Until the next port?”

You pause. “Right. Until the next port.”

His head tilts. “I just would like to know why you’ve let yourself become entangled with me. Why you have yet to throw me off this ship.”

There’s no explanation you can give that would satisfy his curiosity. In all honesty, you haven’t the slightest clue. If it were pure idiocy that you let him on your ship, let his words convince you. There’s just something that you trust in him. Something that makes you believe everything and anything that he says.

Oh, you are just an idiot.

-

The first thing you hear is yelling.

It's low because of the incessant engine humming in the background. Cutting through the sound, echoing around the hull of your ship. Your eyes flick open immediately, feet slipping into your boots without much thought. Just as you stand, the cold metal of a knife presses against your throat. You still, thoughts flashing back to your past.

“A woman alone on a ship this large? Have you no concern for your safety?”

Alone? They haven't found Yeosang?

You keep your gaze to the floor, trying to think of a way out of this. You haven't the slightest inkling on how many there are, but there's bound to be more than three. You're severely outnumbered, and you doubt the prince has ever fought anyone like you have. Isolation for over a hundred years – the two of you will either be forced into slavery or killed within the hour. Well, at least you would be. Once they see the bounty on Yeosang's head, they'll take him back. And all of this would have been for nothing.

“Do you speak, woman?”

“My crew left,” you say. “We went our separate ways. They left me the ship as a gift.”

“And what a pretty one it is,” he sneers, forcing you to stand as he digs the knife into your neck. You follow his movements slowly, heart racing as the cold steel of the pirate's knife pressed against her skin. Your mind races, trying to come up with a fast solution to free yourself. Your security system is too far for you to run to, and he would very likely stab your neck before you can yell a command.

“The others are searching this ship,” he begins to explain, forcing you into a seat. Panic fills your body. His knife lifts from your chin, steel digging into your wrists as he ties you into the seat. The knife drags along your arm as you cry out. All of your plans of overpowering him dissipate into nothing. You're only a human, after all. There isn't enough strength in your body to rip apart metal confinement.

The door to the room swings open, and before you could turn to see, an ax hits the middle of the pirate's face, blood splattering against your cheek. You scream, leaning away from the bloodshed. Hands wrap around your constraints and pull harshly, dropping them to the floor. You have no chance to look back before arms surround your body, pulling you close against him. His sweet, calming smell is familiar enough to calm your heart.

“You're safe,” he whispers softly, lips pressed against your hair. “You're safe.” Taking in his own words, his arms drop from your body. You look at him, shocked at what you see. His lips are bloodied, body covered in cuts and slowly forming bruises. Shirt shredded, barely hanging on his firm build. He blinks slowly, eyes steady on yours.

He could have died. He could have died so horribly, and you were stuck in a room with one man. Your trembling arms wrap around Yeosang, holding him as if you could shield him from the wounds that adorn his skin. The smell of blood lingers in the air. Tears welled in your eyes, blurring the sight of the injuries that coat his body. He could have died. And you're not sure how you could have lived with that.

Sobs escape your lips as you press your face into the crook of Yeosang's neck, "I'm so glad you're alive," you whispered, carefully choosing your words.

Yeosang winces at your hold. You almost pull away, until his grip tightens, wrapping your arms around him again. His concern is etched in the lines of his furrowed brow, betraying his actions. "y/n, you're hurt. Your body," he rasps, fingers delicately resting against your arm. "I should have protected you better."

Your grip tightened, as if by sheer force of will, somehow you could mend both the wounds. “Protect me? You're the banished prince, idiot. I'm the one who should be protecting you,” you reprimand ever so gently. "You're the one who faced the brunt of it. I'm just glad you're alive. I only have small cuts here and there compared to you."

Yeosang's eyes, a mix of gratitude and worry, meet yours. "But you've risked everything for me already. I cannot bear to see you hurt."

A soft smile plays on your lips, "Yeosang, I know the risks as much as you do. I can protect myself."

You can see that he wants to argue more, but his expression relaxes, a silent acknowledgment of your words. You let your fingers trace the outskirt of his wounds. He watches you for a brief moment, before speaking. "I'm sorry for worrying you," he murmurs, voice wary.

You shake your head. "Worry about yourself for once.”

Your tears mingle with the stains of blood on Yeosang's torn attire, clinging to him fiercely.

-

The vibration of the spaceship's engines reverberated through the metal hull, creating a steady rhythm that accompanied your growing sense of unease. Something you’re not able to grasp fully. As a banished prince, Yeosang exchanged his endless roaming in Elysium’s forest for you. And as each day passes, you find yourself stuck, grappling with a strange and undeniable attachment to him. It’s not like you wanted this to happen. In fact, you actively avoided him every chance you got after what happened on the ship. But the silent nights sitting next to one another in the navigation room, the soft smiles shown between the both of you, somewhere in between, things just changed. It was subtle. Soon small smiles were nervous ones on your end.

You cannot avoid the inevitable, that you know.

In the vastness of space, surrounded by the glow of distant stars and the gentle hum of technology, you find yourself sitting in the main room, eyes glued to the television screen. It’s a bit older than newer ships, you never bothered to change it since you rarely watched it. The artificial gravity comfortably keeps you glued to the couch, legs tucked into your chest, blanket over your resting body. Yeosang sits on the opposite end of the couch, not daring to touch you. That’s another story in itself.

Yeosang never really touched you since the brief hijack, nor comfortably since that first time, his lips on your wrist. He actually avoided touching you, slowly taking things from your hand, shrinking himself against a hallway wall. You know it’s for your comfort, but it only makes you yearn for him even more. You never considered yourself a touchy person, not really. Not until now. You wouldn’t be able to tell how many nights you’ve stayed up, thinking about his eyes on yours as his lips covered the skin above your quickened pulse. How he stayed there, longer than needed, before disappearing in the ship. How you wish you can tell him to do it again.

How infuriating.

So as you stare at the screen, you cannot shake the unsettling realization that you are becoming tethered to the person that you sternly told needs to leave when you arrive at the next port. Vulnerability, unfamiliar and raw, creeps over your body, your stomach twisting. How silly that the unknown, uncertainty of the space outside these walls seems vastly incomparable to the fear of losing him.

“You haven’t said a word about the main character.”

You glance at him from your spot, confusion crossing your features. “Hm?”

“Whenever we watch this show, you comment on how annoying the leading man is. How he doesn’t deserve the leading woman. Then, you grumble and groan everytime he says another cheesy line, and sigh when she falls for it. But you haven’t done that at all this whole time. Are you alright?” His pretty eyes rest on yours, brows furrowing.

No, you aren’t okay. You aren’t sure if you’ll ever be okay.

“I’m alright, Yeosang. Thanks for asking.”

“You’ve become easily readable, y/n. I can tell when you’re lying to me. You can say it, you know. Who am I to judge?”

“Just… old times. Things. Stuff, you know.”

He frowns, “That is bigger than the last lie you’ve told me.”

“Yeosang, it’s fine.”

He sighs simply, head turned back to the screen. “Fine, I am not one to push. I just, I don’t know, perhaps I believed that we’ve moved past this hidden information phase. That you somehow trusted me enough to let me know when you’re upset.”

He’s picking at you, it’s clear. You know if you told him straight that you didn’t want to speak of it he’d drop the topic immediately, but you haven’t. It’s very clear to both of you that you want to tell him. But on your side, you’re just afraid to. Yeosang, though not looking at you, waits patiently for your response, unaware of the angst within your heart.

Your fingers nervously play with loose strings of the blanket across your body, trying to find the right words, fear pressing down on your shoulders. He will reject you. Yeosang, despite his status now, is still royalty. He may very much only see you as nothing more than a commoner. Though deep down you know for it to be a lie, your mind wants to convince you that it is true. That he will never stoop down to someone your level.

“I’m fucking terrifed, Yeosang,” you whisper softly.

His mild irritation disappears at your words, body turning fully to look at you. You avoid his gaze as best as you can.

"You’ve… you’ve lived so much of your life as royalty. And here I am, a reject from my former crew, confined in a ship with a prince," your voice is softer now, hesitant. “I’m scared of my feelings for you. And I’m scared that you’ll find me disgusting, gross, and try to leave as quickly as you can."

Yeosang's eyes soften, “y/n–”

“Wait, let me just… let me say this, please.”

He closes his lips, a silent invitation for her to continue.

"And I wondered, what if this feeling is just because you’re nice to me, you know? What if I’m so deprived of kindness that the slightest glimpse of someone remotely caring makes me want you? I never wanted you to pity me, and I don’t want you to say yes when it’s not true for you as it is for me. I like you, I like you so much that I can’t even look at you without feeling it. It aches me,” your eyes burn, tears threatening to fall. “But if you find me as insignificant as I think, please just let me know. Let me know so I can move on.”

Yeosang's expression is unreadable. It scares you even more. He uncrosses his arms, hand resting on the edge of your blanket. "You are not insignificant to me, y/n. You never will be," he smiles. "I just hate that you’ve said all of this before I could confess my feelings myself."

That stuns you for a moment. The way he looks at you is enough to make you look away. He has never made you this nervous before.

“Look at me, please.”

You turn to him.

"y/n," Yeosang begins, his gaze unwavering. "When I first saw you in that hotel, there was something different about you. I couldn't put it into words, but I felt a connection, a sense of trust that I hadn't felt with anyone in a long time."

Your eyes met his in a mixture of surprise and curiosity. You allow him to speak as he allows you.

"Back then, despite it being only weeks ago, I didn't know how to express my gratitude," Yeosang confesses, his fingers absently tracing patterns on the old couch. "You saved me, helped me escape. And in these past few weeks, spending time with you, I've come to see humans for who they truly are. Not just as a means of survival, but as individuals capable of kindness, understanding, and compassion."

A faint smile plays on your lips as you take in his words.

"I didn't realize it at first," Yeosang continues, "These feelings I've been grappling with—whether they were genuine or just a manifestation of attachment because you saved me. But right now, as you sit in front of me, gripping your blanket with such an enormous amount of strength, I just knew."

"Knew what?"

"That this would be it for me," Yeosang admits, "That I'm completely and utterly terrified of saying my next words, but I care for you deeply, and I want you to be mine. I have no reason to worry since you think the same, but I don't want you to have regrets. I don't care if you're not royalty as I was before. I cannot quite understand why you would think I ever cared about such a thing. I never even mention my former status to you unless you bring it up.”

He is right, of course.

“So what do we do now?” You ask after a moment of silence.

He shrugs, leaning further into the couch. “The same as we’ve done before, except now we know we both like each other,” his head tilts, eyes glued back to the television. “Ah, you’re right. He is quite a nuisance.”

-

And that is how it was.

Days melted into nights aboard the spaceship, neither of you mentioning what happened. The air shifted, no longer burdened by the weight of unspoken words. But still, there is a bit of awkwardness between you. Yeosang, no longer avoiding you or pressing himself against walls to avoid you, entered rooms you occupied and initiated conversations, his presence comforting enough. But other than that, he still avoided your skin. There was only one time he didn’t notice you around, your arm brushing against his to grab something from a cabinet. His skin flushed, body rigged as you lightly nudged him out of the way. After that, he rarely gives you his back, always sending you a smile, or keeping himself aware of where you are in the room.

The physical distance persisted, enough so that you could no longer handle being around him without bringing it up.

One night, as you tend to the plants in your nursery you finally sigh, looking back at him. He wears an old crewmate’s attire, tight against his fit limbs, leaving nothing to the imagination. It’s almost enough for you to forget what you were going to say, until his brow lifts, waiting for you to speak.

"Yeosang," you say, voice breaking the silence. "Is everything okay?"

“Hm?” he tilts his head endearingly, only making this much harder to bring up. You push past the unsettling feelings within you, glancing away from him.

“Do you not like touch?”

“What?” his voice is dripping with shock, almost appallingly so, brows furrowed so harshly they may as well rip his skin. “What makes you think that?”

“It’s hard not to when you avoid touching me every chance you get, Yeosang. I mean, I barely brush your arm and it’s like I’m some sort of disease? I don’t understand.”

“No, y/n, that’s not at all what I am thinking. I…” He rubs his face, moving off the wall, “I am filled with a never ending desire to touch you. It’s my fault that you don’t think so. I presumed that you knew of the mating practices of Elysium without even asking,” he rubs his arms, gaze sliding to the floor. “I don’t know if you noticed while on your brief time there, but on Elysium, all of us wear gloves to avoid touching each other. We only have skin to skin contact with prospective mates.”

You remember how his lips brushes against your wrist, his hand clearly wrapped around yours. How you pushed his hair away from his face, how you held it between yours. You’ve rarely touched him, but you’ve still done it, not knowing what it meant. No wonder he looks perturbed each time you’ve done so.

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” you whisper.

“And I should have presumed that you did not,” he murmurs. “Each time, every time you touch me, it’s an indescribable feeling. No one has touched my skin since my mother when she held me as an infant, y/n. You are the first since then,” his eyes land on your hands. “When I kissed your wrist, it was an act of confession. So when you told me a few days ago that you were scared I did not feel the same, I didn’t quite understand since I’ve already touched you. Again, another assumption that I didn’t explain,” he shakes his head. “Apologizes.”

“All we’ve done is assume,” you agree. “You don’t need to apologize.”

“I do, and I’m sorry again. I ... I didn't want to make you uncomfortable since touch as an adult Elysium with another is so much more than innocent. After what I said, though, if you’re uncomfortable, I can give you space."

“No.” You say quickly, an amused smile cast on his lips. “I mean, I don’t mind you touching me, Yeosang. You don’t have to ask. I’m comfortable with you.”

Relief washing over Yeosang's features, "Okay. You can touch me too, y/n.”

You snort, turning back to your plants, “Never thought I’d have a conversation like this.”

“Neither did I.”

The conversation fades into silence, your back to him as you dig out the leaves. You’re focused enough that you don’t hear Yeosang inching closer and closer to you, until a slow hand wraps around your waist. He pulls you into him with ease, breathing in heavily. You can hear your own heart beating against your eardrums, hands gripping the tools tightly. Sure, you expected him to touch you sooner or later.

But you just didn’t expect it to be this soon.

Yeosang’s lips brush against your neck, leaving a trail of goosebumps in his wake. “Can I touch you now?"

You lean into his body, humming, “Are you not already touching me?”

His free hand slips down, resting on the curve of your thigh. “Not in the way you want me to. Not in the way I desire, So,” his hand stills, “May I touch you?”

“Yes…”

His hand slowly drags against your pants. You watch as he does so, lips brushing against your neck. His lips caress your skin, breathing steadily. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says after a moment, causing a laugh to escape your lips. Though he does not move away from your body, you can feel his protruding lips pouting against your neck. You try turning around to look at him but he tightens his hold. “You’re not leaving, are you?” he whispers. “I can learn how to pleasure you.”

“Yeosang,” you try turning again, feeling how he reluctantly lets you go. You lean slightly against the framing of the nursery, stretching out your legs and wrapping them behind him. It pushes his body closer to yours, he himself grabbing the planters on either side of you, steadying his body against the framing. Entrapping you in his embrace. His eyes look nervous as they stare into yours. Without missing a beat, you reach up, cupping his cheek. His lids flutter, eyelashes brushing against his cheek.

“Why would I leave you alone?”

He swallows, gaze heavy as it rests on yours. “It is not an unfamiliar feeling.”

You lean forward, pressing a light kiss against the corner of his lips. He trembles. “I am not leaving you, Yeosang. I won’t leave you. As long as you want me around, I’ll be here. I won’t abandon you.”

His tongue drags against his lips, “You are sure of that? As long as you can be? I… You won’t leave me?”

“No,” your voice is firm. “I’m not leaving you. And I’ll teach you how to please me, pretty boy–”

An echo of metal cracking behind you stops you from continuing. You glance to the side, seeing his fingers digging deeply into the planters. Eyes widened, you turn back to him. His eyes are glazed over, glued on your every movement. Flicking down to your lips, he leans forward. You meet him halfway, hand resting on the back of his neck. Your tongue drags across his plush bottom lips, pulling him closer. A light gasp escapes his lips, and you take that chance to enter his mouth. He tastes sweet, as sweet as that smile of his. It’s something you very much can get used to.

You hear the planters crack again, his hands resting on either side of your hips, desperately clawing at the fabric. How delicate he holds you compared to the damage behind. He learns without you telling him how to kiss, clumsy a bit at first before calming himself down. Your hand slips down, following the curve of his broad shoulders, hesitating slightly as you touch the solid muscle of his arms. If there were any way you could be more enthralled with his very being you would have surpassed it long ago. You pull away to catch a breath, his head leaning against your shoulder, chest rising and falling quickly.

“Fuck me,” he murmurs, a strange set of words to come out of his usually proper speech. “We have done not a thing, but I am already too excited,” he lifts his head, thumb rubbing circles into your side. “How do humans fornicate? Is it like us?”

“Depends, what do you do?” Though he asked first, you cannot help but wonder about his answer. He pauses for a moment.

“From what I’ve learned, it is usually snowing outside. That is our peak fertility time. We strip bare, and fuck in the snow.”

“Yeosang!” You gasp, unable to hold in your laughter at his confused gaze. “You’re a riot.”

He continues on, as if you didn’t say a word, “We enter the mating partner through their anus and ejaculate after so much time. Depending on the Elysium, of course.”

“We are not having anal sex. Not now at least,” you say simply. “Humans, well, it depends on the genitalia of their partner. I’m assuming you have a dick?”

He tilts his head, thinking. “Yes.”

“Well, then…” After a brief history on what actually happens (brief as in, a forty minute lecture), Yeosang’s fingers are inside of you, moving quickly curving slightly. You moan against his ministrations, gripping the sheets beneath you, eyes flicking down to how easily he learned. His gaze never leaves yours, lips slightly parted as he watches you come undone.

“You’re so pretty, my pretty queen,” he whispers, a small smile gracing his lips as he feels you clench around his fingers. “So so pretty for me, my queen.”

“Yeosang, wait–” you grip his wrists, and he increases his pace. You’ve set boundaries earlier, your safe word being snow. “I’m going to cum if you continue.”

“Then cum for me, pretty. I want to feel you tight around my fingers,” he curls them slightly again, thumb rubbing against your clit. With warning, you moan, falling over the edge. He continues to move inside you, though much slower than before. Once you’re down from your high, he pulls out.

His free hand grips his pants, ripping them with eagerness. His hand wraps around himself, stroking his –

Two cocks rest between his soiled hands, his strokes slow and calculated. Your brain tries to wrap around where exactly in the conversation you had prior, when he told you exactly how many he has. He looks at your shocked expression, worry decorating his. “Darling?”

“You have two, Yeosang. I asked you if you had a dick and you said yes!”

“I do have one, y/n,” his expression still puzzled. “Humans do not also have two?” He swallows slowly, strokes slowing down. “Is this too much for you?”

“Ah, no,” you disagree immediately. “Just surprising.”

“I can only enter you with one, as to not hurt you,” he says quickly. “It’s what you prefer, of course. We can stop now.”

You think it through. Having one inside you is a job in itself, but two? They’re both pretty average and similar to a human’s, though a bit more prominent – skin softer-looking, and covered with shimmer, just as his skin is. You don’t want to end this, and clearly, neither does he. So with confidence, your eyes meet his nervous ones.

“We can try it.”

“…Both?” There’s a bit of hope in his voice.

Who are you to crush it?

“Both.”

-

note: no part two ;-;

#fic: winter blossom #yeosang x reader #kang yeosang x reader #ateez fics #ateez fanfiction #ateez smut #ateez fluff #ateez angst #and its snowing collab

[saylessastrology]

Astrology Notes!💫💅🏾

💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕

NATAL OBSERVATIONS

💫These Observations are from MY OPINION & Knowledge💫 Follow my Patreon for more💜💅🏾

Jupiter in 2nd,4th,10th - these people usually end up successful through finacial/career endevours as well as homes and physical property. usually comes into effect after your saturn returm

Aries Mars/Mars in 1st house - people with these placements express thier anger openly and loudly. Both my parents had Mars in Aries and it was a war zone when they were arguing.

Cancer Moons- This placement can create a very moody individual. While they are SUPER sweet and caring, they also have quick tempers when triggered

Aquarius Personal Planet Placements - I know aqua's get dragged for being emotionless BUT that is only on the outside! Internally, Aqua's feel EVERYTHING. They just have a very detached way of expressing thier emotions.

Grand Trines - Most people don't activily use thier GT to their benefit. Having 1 or more GT's can make the areas of your life that are connected in the GT TOO EASY. Almsot so easy that we forget to put in the extra work to get the best out of the aspect!

Chart Rulers - The rular of your chart can show how you are naturally suppose to navigate through life.

Ex: Ruler -Sun

You are meant to use your creative and expressive personality to navigate through life. When you do, you will stand out tramendously in the world and forward moving energy will be consistant.

South Node House Placement - The traits associated with the house your sn is in can show your secret traits from your past life that your can use sparingly in your current journey tword your North Node

EX: south node in 10th house/NN in 4th

You are blessed with so many benefical go getter career traits! You were the big boss in your past and shoud Incorporate these traits with your north node in the 4th house placement.

Feel like you don't have what it takes to run your own household?

Use your Multitasking, Athoritative and Business skills to care for your househouse

SYNASTRY OBSERVATIONS

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1. Sun-Sun Conjunction: Shared Identity

Observation: When one person's Sun is conjunct (in the same place as) the other person's Sun, they often share similar core identities and life goals.

Explanation: This aspect can create a strong sense of understanding and identification with each other. It’s like looking into a mirror; these individuals often feel a deep connection and mutual respect.

2. Moon-Moon Harmony: Emotional Understanding

Observation: Harmonious aspects (like trines or sextiles) between two people's Moons suggest a deep emotional understanding and comfort.

Explanation: Their emotional rhythms and needs align well, making it easier for them to empathize with and nurture each other. It's akin to speaking the same emotional language.

3. Venus-Mars Aspect: Attraction Dynamics

Observation: When someone’s Venus (planet of love) forms an aspect with another person's Mars (planet of desire), it indicates a strong physical and romantic attraction.

Explanation: This aspect can spark instant chemistry, creating a dynamic and exciting interaction. The Venus person is drawn to the Mars person’s assertiveness, while the Mars person appreciates the Venus person’s aesthetic and charm.

4. Mercury Conjunct Mercury: Intellectual Bond

Observation: A conjunction between two people's Mercuries suggests a meeting of the minds.

Explanation: This aspect fosters open communication, mutual understanding, and shared interests. It’s like being on the same wavelength intellectually, making conversations flow easily and enjoyably.

5. Moon Opposite Saturn: Emotional Responsibility

Observation: When one person's Moon opposes another's Saturn, it can indicate a relationship where emotional support meets responsibility and structure.

Explanation: The Moon person provides warmth and emotional understanding, while the Saturn person offers stability and teaches valuable life lessons. However, if not balanced, it could lead to feelings of coldness or emotional distance.

6. Sun Square Pluto: Transformative Challenges

Observation: A square between one person's Sun and another's Pluto often brings intense, transformative challenges to the relationship.

Explanation: This aspect can create power struggles or deep psychological confrontations. However, if navigated wisely, it can lead to profound personal growth and transformation for both individuals.

7. Jupiter Trine Venus: Shared Joy and Growth

Observation: A trine between one person’s Jupiter and another’s Venus indicates a joyful, growth-oriented relationship.

Explanation: There's an abundance of warmth, generosity, and shared values. This aspect enhances mutual appreciation and can bring luck and prosperity to the relationship.

8. Saturn Sextile Pluto: Building Together

Observation: When one person's Saturn forms a sextile with another's Pluto, it suggests the ability to build something enduring together.

Explanation: This aspect offers a blend of discipline (Saturn) and transformation (Pluto), enabling the couple to work through obstacles and effect substantial changes together. It’s about resilience and mutual empowerment.

9. Uranus Opposite Venus: Unpredictable Attractions

Observation: An opposition between one person's Uranus and another's Venus can create an unpredictable, electric attraction.

Explanation: This aspect can bring excitement and spontaneity but also instability to the relationship. The Uranus person shakes up the Venus person’s concept of love and beauty, while the Venus person may seek more stability and commitment.

10. Neptune Trine Mars: Inspired Actions

Observation: A trine between one person’s Neptune and another’s Mars indicates a relationship where dreams inspire action.

Explanation: The Mars person’s drive and ambition are creatively inspired by the Neptune person's ideals and imagination. Together, they can turn visions into reality, combining passion with compassion.

#i #astro observations #astrology observations #astrology community #astro chart #synastry chart #natal chart #fire signs #water signs #earth signs #air signs #zodic signs #zodiac #horoscope #astro content #astrology signs #astrology compatibility #astroblr #astro community #astro tumblr #astrology tumblr #astrology houses #north node #south node #mars in aries #moon in cancer #cancer #saylessastrology #astro notes #astrology notes

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I have THE biggest, BEST news EVER--

I GOT A BOOK CONTRACT!!!!!!!!

I am exceptionally pleased to announce that I have just signed a contract with Ten Speed Press (a division of Penguin Random House) to publish...

The Everyday Naturalist: How to Identify Animals, Plants, and Fungi Wherever You Go!

It is slated for publication in early Summer 2025, and will be written for anyone who wants to be able to identify the living beings around them regardless of educational level or experience. A HUGE thank you to my literary agent Jane Dystel of Dystel, Goderich & Bourret LLC, and my editor at Ten Speed Press, Julie Bennett!

This isn't just another field guide--it's a how-to book on nature identification that helps you go from "I have no idea what this animal/plant/fungus is and I don't know where to start" to "Aha! I know how to figure out what species I'm looking at/hearing!" Those familiar with my nature ID classes know that I emphasize skills and tools accessible to everyday people. Whether you're birdwatching, foraging, or just enjoying the nature around you, my goal is to help you be more confident in figuring out what living beings you encounter wherever you go--and not just in the Pacific Northwest. 

The Everyday Naturalist will not only explain what traits you need to pay attention to like color, size, shape, location, etc. and how to use them to differentiate among similar species, but will also detail how and when to use tools like apps, field guides, and more. (And given the current kerfuffle about A I generated foraging books, I will of course include information on how to determine the veracity of a given book or other resource.) And my editor and I have already been discussing some great additions to the book that will make it even more user-friendly!

Are you excited about this? I certainly am! I wanted to wait until the pixels were dry on the contract before going public with this (though my newsletter subscribers got to hear about it last month, lucky them!) It still doesn't feel real, but I'm already working on the manuscript so it'll sink in soon enough.

I will, of course, keep you all apprised of my progress because this project is going to be a big part of my life over the next several months as I write and edit and write and edit and wash, rinse, repeat. So keep your eyes on this space for updates (and feel free to add yourself to my monthly email newsletter here, too!)

#nature #nature identification #animals #plants #fungi #field guide #mushrooms #foraging #birding #birdwatching #scicomm #science communication #books #nonfiction books #publishing #wildlife #science #biology #botany #mycology

[jezzzebel]

DEITY IDENTIFICATION SPREAD by Jagoda

Card 1: a card that represents the deity.

Card 2: a positive trait of that deity

Card 3: a negative trait of that deity (darker, bad, ""evil"" , or just a trait that is seemingly negative by humans)

Card 4: domain, what the deity rules over

Card 5: minor domain, what a deity rules over but isn't talked a lot about

Card 6: that deity's mythology

Card 7: what a deity is associated with

Card 8: what the deity wants to work on with you

#witchcraft #pagan #paganism #deity work #mythology #spirituality #witch #witches of tumblr #witchblr #demonolatry #hellenic polytheism #hellenic pagan #roman polytheism #deity worship #deity identification #tarot #divination #tarot spread #tarot reading

[northwindow]

reading on reading

a literary syllabus [x]

how to read now by elaine castillo

a collection of essays by novelist and essayist elaine castillo about the politics and ethics of reading. castillo exposes the inherently colonial premises behind not only the works of many individual writers; but the way reading cultures analyze and canonize works, the tokenizing nature of the publishing industry that fails writers and readers of color, and the unfulfilled promises by bibliophiles and literary institutions to "build empathy" through reading diverse books.

"time in the codex" and "lastingness" by lisa robertson

two essays by poet lisa robertson from her prose collection nilling, both meditations on reading. “time in the codex” is an ode to the sensory and cognitive processes that reading evokes. “lastingness” explores the relationship between passivity and will when it comes to receiving the stories and ideas we read, using the work of hannah arendt to analyze texts by lucretius and pauline réage. 

a history of reading by alberto manguel

alberto manguel (former director of argentina's national library) compiles a history of reading that encompasses the prehistory of books in ancient mesopotamia, the story of the library of alexandria and its influence in libraries that followed, literary societies such as the heian court, book thieves throughout time, book banning in multiple cultures, and the progression of text formats around the world from clay tablets to modern bookbinding.

selections from not to read by alejandro zambra (trans. megan mcdowell)

essays taken from the collection not to read by chilean writer alejandro zambra about the practice of reading, his own evolving reading life, and writing books; mixed with a variety of literary criticism. selections include "in praise of the photocopy," "against poets," "obligatory readings," "traveling with books," and "novels-- forget it."

"how do we read?", "the reading ape", and "inventing reading" by stanislas dahaene

three chapters from cognitive neuroscientist stainslas dahaene's book reading in the brain. "how do we read?" functionally breaks down how our brain understands written words. "the reading ape" imagines how our ability to read evolved by recycling preexisting neural circuits. "inventing reading" explores how languages themselves have formed over time to serve the way we think.

"when robots read books" by inderjeet mani

essay by computational linguist inderjeet mani on ways that artificial intelligence could enhance literary criticism by analyzing classic texts, particularly cumulative corpuses of works. examples of literary AI usage include finding similar character traits, archetypes, and tropes between different books and authors; quantitatively tracking literary trends; and generating timelines and maps of information pulled from narratives. 

"uncritical reading" by michael warner

essay by english professor michael warner which attempts to define what "critical reading" actually is, the beginnings of a history of that practice, its alignment with agency and morality in academic culture, and what the qualities of "uncritical reading" (such as “identification, self-forgetfulness, reverie, sentimentality, enthusiasm, literalism, aversion, distraction") might offer us.

"someone reading a book is a sign of order in the world" by mary ruefle

essay adapted from a lecture in poet mary ruefle’s madness, rack, and honey that traces a reader's development through personal experiences in her own reading life. topics include rereading, what it means to read “the right book at the right time”, and the pleasure of finding imaginative connections between books. 

#cover image is by willy belinfante #syllabi

[abtrusion]

Theories of the holy shit what did I just see back there on the street?

Because transmisogyny makes them so impossible to ignore, for at least the last 70 years transfeminized people have served as key material of Anglo-American gender/queer/trans theories, as laundered through anthropology, sexology, and uncited personal witnessing. The anaemic denial of this fact through snappy and surface-level distinctions between ‘queer’ and ‘trans’ and between different transfeminized groups has made it functionally impossible for these theories to seriously account for transf* life, and this failure is highly productive, because it allows for the continued use of both ‘premodern’ ‘third gender’ and ‘postmodern’ transgenderism as lobotomized material for the theories of other people. The last century of gender theoretic development has revolved around slowly refining methods of extracting transfeminized peoples’ insight, forgetting and re-introducing them to their field over and over again to frame them as perpetual novelties, leading to a pernicious form of feminist amnesia that repeats over and over again.

1 . MARGARET MEAD (1949)

The work begins with Margaret Mead, the ‘most famous anthropologist of our century’ (Behar and Gordon 1996), who made her career studying indigenous groups in Samoa and New Guinea, then joined the larger anthropological effort to inform the US Government’s genocidal re-education campaigns against Indigenous American tribes. She later enjoyed a prodigious career as a public intellectual and shifted to more explicitly feminist writing which extensively influenced the movements of the 60s and 70s. Mead argued that essentially all sex-gender roles were culturally determined, and used the specter of the transfeminized homosexual-transvestite both to make that argument and to advocate for gender abolition.

This can be seen most clearly in Mead’s 1949 book Male and Female: a Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. Mead chronologically traces individual gender development through an ethnographic-sexological narrative, beginning with ‘first learnings’ that a child receives primarily through observation. Then the family comes in, and the transvestite comes with it, existing as the primary motive (alongside Freudian sexual attachment) which motivates gendered socialization:

Too great softness, too great passivity, in the male and he will not become a man. The American Plains Indians, valuing courage in battle above all other qualities, watched their little boys with desperate intensity, and drove a fair number of them to give up the struggle and assume women’s dress. (Mead 1949)

Mead argues that “fear that boys will be feminine in behavior may drive many boys into taking refuge in explicit femininity,” but makes a distinction between this identification and what she calls ‘full transvestitism,’ the culturally-specific recognition of that status. This differential leads her to conclude that the physical traits seen as markers of ‘gender inversion’ are culturally specific, and that what is understood as physical sex (then existing on a ‘spectrum’ model) is therefore partially socially determined.

For Mead, gender must be abolished precisely because of the fact that she could even make this argument. As she says,

Only a denial of life itself makes it possible to deny the interdependence of the sexes. Once that interdependence is recognized and traced in minute detail to the infant’s first experience of the contrast between the extra roughness of a shaven cheek and a deeper voice and his mother’s softer skin and higher voice, any programme which claims that the wholeness of one sex can be advanced without considering the other is automatically disallowed.

The desperate need to reproduce these distinctions, to make sex clear and visible and obvious, leads Mead to ultimately argue for a gender abolition that rests on complementary sex-roles. The main benefit of this approach for Mead is the complete eradication of sex-gender ‘confusion’ and its incarnation in transfeminized people, so associated precisely because of their intense usefulness as a tool for undermining sex-gender distinctions. So Mead sees the construction of physical and social gender by using transfeminized people as a lens, but because of her own disgust she can only fix gender by unseeing it again, by displacing gender to ‘real’ physical sex and protecting herself by breaking the tool. This, unsurprisingly, leaves her exactly where she started.

2. BETTY FRIEDAN (1963)

The feminist theorists that came after Mead directly confronted this reversion to ‘complementary sex’ logics, most notably in Betty Friedan’s foundational work The Feminine Mystique. Friedan discusses the ‘paradox’ of Mead’s influence, the strange combination of her exposure of ‘the infinite variety of sexual patterns and the enormous plasticity of human nature’ and her ‘glorification of women in the female role – as defined by their sexual biological function.’ In the middle, Friedan cites a page-long quote describing a point of ambivalent warning in Mead’s writing:

The difference between the two sexes is one of the important conditions upon which we have built the many varieties of human culture that give human beings dignity and stature… Sometimes one quality has been assigned to one sex, sometimes to the other. Now it is boys who are thought of as infinitely vulnerable and in need of special cherishing care, now it is girls… Some people think of women as too weak to work out of doors, others regard women as the appropriate bearers of heavy burdens “because their heads are stronger than men’s” … Some religions, including our European traditional religions, have assigned women an inferior role in the religious hierarchy, others have built their whole symbolic relationship with the supernatural world upon male imitations of the biological functions of women. (emph added by me)

...Are we dealing with a must that we dare not flout because it is rooted so deep in our biological mammalian nature that to flout it means individual and social disease? Or with a must that, although not so deeply rooted, still is so very socially convenient and so well tried that it would be uneconomical to flout it…

...We must also ask: What are the potentialities of sex differences? … If little boys have to meet and assimilate the early shock of knowing that they can never create a baby with the sureness and incontrovertibility that is a woman’s birthright, how does this make them more creatively ambitious, as well as more dependent upon achievement?

Friedan attributes this ultimate focus on sexual difference to Mead’s Freudianism: she argues that Mead’s need to approach culture and personality through sexual difference, combined with her anthropological understanding that ‘there are no true-for-every-culture sexual differences except those involved in the act of procreation’ (Friedan and Quindlen 1963), combines to cause her to inflate the cultural importance of the reproductive role of women. Friedan intensely rebukes this reification of reproduction as another component of the ‘feminine mystique’ (very close to the modern ‘divine feminine’), advocating for programs which enable women to reject the mystique and housewife status and to seek education and employment, to combat the problem ‘which had no name’ but takes shape through spikes in female ‘sex-hunger’ and ‘overt manifestations’ of passive male homosexuality, both understood as ‘children acting out the sexual phantasies of their housewife-mothers.’ In a paradoxical return to Freudianism, Friedan characterizes husbands unwilling to let their wives work as being seduced ‘by the infantile phantasy of having an ever-present mother’ (the Freudian homosexuality-signifier), associating antifeminism with passive homosexuality with femininity which the aspiring feminist has escaped, learning to compete “not as a woman, but as a human being.”

3. THE MULTIPLICATION OF TRANSFEMINIZED SUBJECTS

As we can see, transfeminized subjects are frequently used as signs of system collapse, hypervisible enough to be easy examples and potent enough to rhetorically corrode existing sex-gender systems in preparation for the author’s own vision. Once a piece is published, these examples are usually then forgotten, assumed as scaffolding for the real theory; but the rhetorical strawmen of these transfeminized subjects still remain, trapped implicitly in the text, and they bleed into one another with every new addition to the corpus, every call to action invoking a new transfeminized archetype.

So far we have seen Mead’s anthropological-orientalist framing of ‘transvestitism’ among the anthropological Other and Friedan’s psychological framing of ‘passive homosexuality’ in the United States. The increasing visibility of adult ‘transsexuality,’ somewhat disjoint from the developmental sexology Gill-Peterson (2017) discusses because of its visibility in high-profile cases like Christine Jorgensen, was likewise framed for theory. Harold Garfinkel’s (1967) book Studies in Ethnomethodology, which described methods for observing ‘the objective reality of social facts as an ongoing accomplishment,’ used an intersex woman named Agnes as an avenue to expose how everyday social facts are constructed. Agnes was an ideal exemplar because her insistence on getting HRT and being seen as a woman was considered psychologically normal: “Such insistence was not accompanied by clinically interesting ego defects. These persons contrast in many interesting ways with transvestites, trans-sexualists, and homosexuals.” Of course, Garfinkel was later notified that Agnes did not have an intersex condition, and he then noted that ‘this news turned the article into a feature of the same circumstances it reported, i.e. into a situated report.’

Anyways, now it’s time for yet another transfeminized subject: the ‘transsexually constructed lesbian feminist.’

4. JANICE RAYMOND (1979)

As with her predecessors, Raymond sees analytical power in her particular transfeminized group, arguing that “transsexualism goes to the question of what gender is, how to challenge it, and what reinforces gender stereotypes in a role-defined society.” But she also has some concerns for ‘transsexual women,’ initially assumed heterosexual, none of which are particularly novel or interesting. Now that she’s writing in an environment dominated by Friedan’s mandate towards shedding femininity, feminist amnesia makes it novel to regurgitate Margaret Mead’s responses: that “male transsexualism may well be a graphic expression of the destruction that sex-role molding has wrought on men,” and that “men recognize the power that women have by virtue of female biology and the fact that this power, symbolized in giving birth, is not only procreative but multidimensionally creative” (Raymond 1979).

Her analysis of (new archetype) ‘transsexually-constructed lesbian feminism’ is much more interesting. While Raymond can understand heterosexual transsexual women as ‘reinforcing gender stereotyping’ by pulling primarily from medical archives already hegemonized by gatekeeping and passing requirements, the transsexual women in the lesbian-feminist movement achieved a certain degree of personal contact and visibility that undermined ‘hegemonizing’ logics. So Raymond uses three main arguments: an essentialist appeal to fundamental ‘maleness,’ a red-scare-esque appeal to transsexual lesbian feminists as ‘court eunuchs’ bent on monitoring and controlling feminist spaces, and finally, an argument that transsexual lesbian feminists are fundamentally epistemically corrosive to lesbian feminist spaces:

Whereas the lesbian-feminist crosses the boundary of her patriarchally imposed sex role, the transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist is a boundary violator. This violation is also profoundly mythic, for as Norman O. Brown writes of Dionysus, he as the ‘‘mad god who breaks down boundaries.’’

Contrary to contemporary transmisogynistic discourse which frames trans lesbians as personal threats to women in lesbian-feminist spaces, this violation takes its form not in any particular act but in the act of passing, the deconstructive question this existence seemingly automatically places on lesbian-feminist spaces:

One of the most constraining questions that transsexuals, and, in particular, transsexually constructed lesbian-feminists, pose is the question of self-definition—who is a woman, who is a lesbian-feminist? But, of course, they pose the question on their terms, and we are faced with answering it.

Raymond notes with some frustration that this transsexual question has been discussed ‘out of proportion to their actual numbers,’ using up valuable feminist energy, and frames this as a symptom and crime of transsexual lesbianism itself. The trans question is transsexual women; like the theorists before her, she sees transfeminized people as a gaping hole in the gendered world, but now they’re inside her house, feeding “off woman’s true energy source, i.e., her woman-identified self,” and inherently stand to break “the boundaries of what constitutes femaleness,” to dissolve lesbian-feminism itself.

I want to stress two main points in all of this. First, Raymond understands studying transsexualism as a crucial tool for answering ‘the question of what gender is’ and ‘how to challenge it.’ Second, Raymond’s anxiety about transsexual lesbian-feminists moves away from specific actions and towards the ‘penetration’ inherent in their existence in these spaces at all, the understanding that transsexual women are inherently corrosive to lesbian-feminist movements. These two points are clearly linked. Raymond understands transsexuality as a form of epistemic gender acid, something that can be useful at arm’s length but is deadly up close. Of course, the transfeminized people she discusses were not necessarily invested in asking the Trans Question themselves; trans women attended lesbian-feminist events like Michfest before and after their trans exclusion policies, and regardless of ‘passing’ many people enjoyed a form of don’t ask don’t tell (Tagonist 1997). But within these spaces, the Trans* Question long predated the actual existence of transfeminized people – so once they arrived, the Question and person were fundamentally linked. Trans theorists have negotiated this association extensively, but that’s not the topic of this essay, so I’ll leave you with some sources (Stryker 1994; Stone 1992) and move to Butler.

5. JUDITH BUTLER (1990)

This work has been done already by Vivian Namaste (2020), who argues that “contemporary discussions of Anglo-American feminist theory, exemplified in Butler’s work, begin with the Transgender Question as a way to narrow our focus to the constitution, reproduction, and resignification of gender.” This singular focus on the ‘Transgender Question’ has made it functionally impossible for Anglo-American feminist theory to consider the outsized role of work, particularly sex work, in motivating the discrimination and violence against transfeminized people of color: “framing violence against transsexual prostitutes as ‘gender violence’ is a radical recuperation of these events and their causal nature-a violence at the level of epistemology itself.”

Namaste attributes this focus on featureless ‘gender violence’ to a crippling lack of empiricism, a lack of researcher-subject equity, and an exclusion of subject knowledges. She provides an effective power-based solution to this epistemic violence – that feminist theorists should talk with the subjects of their theory and give them some measure of power in the transaction – a sort of endpoint analysis which means she doesn’t need to consider too much of the internals of the system she’s challenging. That’s a good idea for her work, but with the benefit of history we can move differently. The next section synthesizes Butler, Friedan, Mead, and Raymond together to provide a functionalist analysis of the feminist theoretic use of transfeminized people. What are the benefits of using transfeminized people as an epistemic tool in feminist theory? What are the dangers of using this epistemic tool, and how does feminist theory manage those dangers?

6. PATTERNS OF EXTRACTION AND DEFENSE

Looking past Butler and further into the past reveals that transfeminized people have been crucial not just to the feminist theory of the past 20 years, but have served as exemplars as far back as the 1940s. The ‘Trans* Question,’ which frames transfeminized people as the most visible signifier and most horrifying symptom of social gender, has been cyclically used in a form of feminist cultural amnesia:

A transfeminized group serves as a hypervisible example to 'deconstruct' social gender

Transfeminized deconstruction bloats beyond itself, undermining 'sex traits' or 'femaleness' or some other foundational category of feminist analysis.

Reconstruction of gender as 'biological sex,' alliance between feminist theorists and men of all stripes by arguing that post-gender eradication of transfeminized people will (a) allow men to be feminine without becoming women or (b) destroy femininity entirely.

New-generation feminist theorists realize their predecessors have reinvented social gender. Return to (1).

As Margaret Mead’s work shows, the use of transfeminized groups to deconstruct both physical and social gender has been observed regardless of transmedicalization. This helical pattern has a few general properties:

Each cycle introduces a distinct transfeminized group, positioning it against prior groups as uniquely suitable for analysis, but simultaneously blurs the new group into the existing melange.

This "Trans* Queston" is almost entirely devoid of group-specific context and rooted in transmisogyny, which positions them as horrifying and visible symptoms of social gender.

Each "Trans* Question" initially exposes social gender, but constantly threatens to dissolve other categories or even the theorist's own writing as socially constructed, against the theorist's will.

Each new cycle demonstrates near-complete historical amnesia as to the relevance of transfeminized people in the prior theoretical move.

So the “Trans* Question” allows for the basic feminist move, asserting that gender is socially constructed, but if improperly controlled it stands to dissolve virtually any definition feminist theorists try to build. To be clear, I do not believe in the total deconstruction of categories – you need definitions, even ones you acknowledge as imprecise, to say anything at all. But transfeminized people probably have pretty solid ideas about gender, having to, you know, live with it. The alienated ‘Trans Question*’ has none of this insight, appearing instead as a gaping epistemic hole in the world, and so feminist theorists are forced to come up with complicated quarantining measures to keep the Question from spilling over.

What jeopardizes feminist theory’s use of the Question? One answer (among many) comes by looking at Mead, who concluded that physical characteristics seen as ‘sex traits’ were socially constructed by looking at the culture-specific construction of what she called ‘full transvestitism.’ In this case, the Question undermined sex when the social position of transfeminized subjects were seen as simultaneously normative and anti-normative, existing in some normative ‘social’ role while being understood as distinct from non-transfeminized subjects via another ‘natural’ axis. The fact that these splits were made differently across different transfeminized groups undermined the distinction between social and ‘natural/biological’ aspects of gender, and because the alienated Question provides no means of making anything solid out of any of this, Mead retreated to the womb.

So understanding that the Question allows for the deconstruction of gender, and that it overgrows when multiple (studied as) semi-normative transfeminized groups are cross-compared with one another, we can consider aspects of contemporary feministqueertrans theory that enforce the epistemic isolation and normativization/antinormativization of transfeminized groups. The knots this ties in feminist theories seem relevant both to the ‘why does trans theory exist’ question posed by Chu & Drager (2019) and to the challenges and limitations of applying queer/trans theory to groups outside the anglosphere (Chiang 2021, Savci 2021). I’ll discuss that more in another essay.

SOURCES

Behar, Ruth, and Deborah A. Gordon. 1996. Women Writing Culture. First Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Chiang, Howard. 2021. Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific. Columbia University Press.

Chu, Andrea Long, and Emmett Harsin Drager. 2019. “After Trans Studies.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 6 (1): 103–16. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-7253524.

Friedan, Betty, and Anna Quindlen. 1963. The Feminine Mystique. Reprint edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. 1st edition. Cambridge Oxford Malden,MA: Polity.

Gill-Peterson, Jules. 2017. “Implanting Plasticity into Sex and Trans/Gender.” Angelaki 22 (2): 47–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2017.1322818.

Mead, Margaret. 1949. Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. First Edition. William Morrow.

Namaste, Viviane. 2020. “Undoing Theory: The ‘Transgender Question’ and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory.” In Feminist Theory Reader, edited by Carole McCann, Seung-kyung Kim, and Emek Ergun, 5th edition. New York, NY London: Routledge.

Raymond, Janice G. 1979. The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. New York: Teachers College Press.

Savci, Evren. 2021. Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics Under Neoliberal Islam. Durham (N.C.): Duke University Press Books.

Stone, Sandy. 1992. “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 10 (2 (29)): 150–76. https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-10-2_29-150.

Stryker, Susan. 1994. “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1 (3): 237–54. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-1-3-237.

Tagonist, Anne. 1997. “Sister Subverter Diary August ’97.” Unapologetic: The Journal of Irresponsible Gender.

#transmisogyny #trans #transgender #my writing

[andr0nap]

cowboy au worldbuilding with the thoma

as you can see im taking some creative liberties with the giant emu by making them more diverse bc canon isnt enough for me and i have the brainworms

extra notes below the cut

standard thoma:

the original thoma and most common type available

perfect for travel, can pull wagons or carry light cargo

fast with good stamina, fastest over short distances

friendly, intelligent, energetic and quick to learn

the most diverse in terms of colors, patterns and extra traits

well rounded in all departments (theyre like the AQ horses of trigun)

draft thoma:

uncommon outside of major cities (kept by specialized breeders)

used for construction work and long haul heavy cargo transport

gentle, patient and eager to work

not built for speed but can walk for days at a steady pace without rest

dense feather coat protects them from the heat and sand

expensive to maintain and keep due to their size

theyre a relatively new type that came from selective breeding

"wild" thoma:

actually feral (aka. previously domesticated), not wild

originating from lost/runaways that have not been in contact with humans for generations

rare and elusive with a small population, sometimes spotted living near shipwrecks

people will pay top $$ for their capture

begin to exhibit adaptive mutations that help them survive the wastelands

smaller and less fluffy than their standard counterparts

dont come in many colors, mostly bays, chestnuts and blacks

hardy with incredible endurance

very stubborn, temperamental and intelligent, cant be forced to do something they dont want (like donkeys)

rarely ridden, mostly kept for crossbreeding

cattle-type thoma:

related to the standard thoma but NOT the same species

common pack animal in caravans, sometimes ridden as a cheaper alternative to the standard thoma

mainly bred for meat, hide and eggs

kept in huge open range herds that travel along worm swarms for feeding

sometimes kept as a form for anti-worm pest control

keratin crests are lightweight and used for protection and display

ranchers will paint patterns on their crests as a form of identification

not the sharpest tools in the shed, tend to bite and trample people

#trigun #trigun stampede #cowboy au #worldbuilding #andr0art #i like speculative biology idk what to tell you #its the brainworms #sorry for the horrible handwriting btw #also ik that significant adaptive mutations take longer to appear than a 100 years #but lets say they adapt fast due to genetic modification #the implications of what seeds did after the fall to adapt to the wastelands fascinates me #since thoma arent native to no mans land iirc #did they just have them on board? #what ab other animals? #what kind of non-native wildlife is there #i know there are birds and like... a cat #<- still hasnt read trimax #everything i know has been obtained via tristamp and osmosis #also yes im bringing in the og thoma #diversity win! #i needed a substitute for cows so vash and wolfwood have something to herd for cash #living the cowboy dream baby!

[changeling-ash]

Okay so the new footprints.

I see tracks, the career wildlife biologist in me goes feral and I went on an Identification Spree with my animal tracking guides. So.

First off, it would fit that these are the hind paw prints of a bear. The back paws of a bear are elongated compared to the front, looking slightly more humanoid. That fits with what we believe about Cucurucho being a bear.

(Images: two figures of bear tracks, both showing a short, round front paw and a long, boxy back paw. They have indents where the claws imprint. The first also contrasts the differences between black and grizzly bear tracks.)

However, we can ID further than just bear. What kind of bear is Cucurucho? As you can see above, grizzly bears have a flat top edge, and they have very long claws that jut out very far from the toepad, making very disconnected indents in tracks. They also have wide, bulky feet compared to our other bear species. Black bears, however, have a more rounded top edge, and their claws are much shorter and make indentations close to the toepads. Sometimes tracks will have the claws connected to the toe pad. Which means black bears fit much, much better with the tracks seen in the image.

The prints are a little more slender than the above bear tracks, though that may be because they're on a furry instead of an actual bear lol. More humanoid bear tracks.

Now I can hear you saying: But Cucurucho is white! Shouldn't he be a polar bear? But no. Polar bears often don't leave tracks with claw marks, since the claws are very short and don't brush the ground. Also, polar bear tracks often have fringed edges with brush marks, as they have paws completely covered with fur. None of that there.

However. There is very much a way that Black Bear Cucurucho makes sense. There are white American black bears, and they are not albino, but a mutated recessive trait. A Canadian subspecies, Ursus americanus kermodei. Kermode bears, otherwise known as "spirit bears."

Behold. Cucurucho.

#By extension we could also say maybe all the other workers are Kermode bears #Or maybe these are not Cucurucho's prints and they're another worker #qsmp #qsmp theory #qsmp cucurucho #qsmp global #qsmp federation #qsmp day 3 #qsmp day three #changeling posts

[nikoisme]

Personally I imagine that Telemachus has his mom's hair color and eyes,, but he still creepily looks like Odysseus. So, naturally, I have to ask:

Do you think that Penelope sometimes flinced when she saw her son? Because he looks so much like her husband?? Like, he would pass down the hallway and greet his mother, and she would think it's Odysseus - a flicker of hope on her face, only to realize it's her son. And after a while Telemachus doesn't know if that brief drop of her face is disappointment because it's him or because it's not Odysseus.

Do you think Eurycleia sometimes openly cried when she looked at Telemachus?? Because he has the same slightly impish grin just like his father?? Just like the boy she raised so many years ago?? Do you think she unconciously scrubbed more thoroughly around his thigh? Telemachus would wince at the sudden roughness and Eurycleia would realize that he doesn't have that scar that needed more cleaning to make sure debris didn't get stuck in it??

Do you think that Eumaeus would rush out of his hut when he heard Telemachus laugh? Because, as he got older, even his voice started sounding a bit like his father's?? Only to abruptly stop when he realized that it's not his master??

Do you think that even Telemachus would stare at a bronze mirror or at his reflection in a puddle and try to see his father - the one he barely remembers - in his own reflection?? He would imagine himself broader, stronger, with a beard?? His mother told him that he got his hair and eyes from her. So he tries to imagine something else in their place. He doesn't know what he's even looking for or thinking about. Just something, anything to get a bare idea of a man that is his father.

And do you think that as years went on, others started seeing more and more Odysseus in him and less and less Telemachus in him? Even if it wasn't intentional? They treated him like his father. They would offer him the fruit his father loved. They would sometimes expect him to wield the weapons his father could. They would tell him how much he looks like his father. And Telemachus would simply smile in response. But over time it was a slightly pained smile. At first he prided himself for all of that, he wanted to know everything about his father. He wanted to know how much of his son he is. But he finds the fruit sour. His arms slightly tremble when he tries to string a bow (not necessarily The bow™).

Do you think that over time, even he started feeling less and less like himself? Do you think that subconciously he tried acting like his father (based on the stories he's heard)? For the kingdom's sake, for his mother's sake, for his own sake? After all, "son of Odysseus" was his main trait. He was haunted by the ghost of the man he doesn't even know. But he does know him, doesn't he? Everyone tells him just how much he is like his father. But what part of him is like his father?? What part of him is like his father? Everything he does, everything he is, is apparently an echo of his father. But what part is Telemachus? What part of Telemachus is like his father? Is he like his father or is he slowly becoming his father? His voice isn't his own. His skin isn't his own. Hell, the blood in his veins isn't his own. It's the blood of Odysseus. Is that who he is?? A replacement for the king?? A mere stand-in until he comes back?? If he comes back?? Will he always have to act, to be a copy of his father?? Will he ever be himself? But who is he even? Who is Telemachus? Yes, he is the son of Odysseus (as a way of identification). But who is simply Telemachus?

DO YOU THINK?

#the odyssey #telemachus #tagamemnon #greek mythology #quietly opens google docs #leave it to me to give any characters fucked up problems and crisises #what is wrong with me lmaoo i can't come up with fluff #once again me and my obsession with identity and self #and then losing your sense of self #“who am I? a direct descendant of odysseus? i never asked for that!” is the only thing i could think of while writing this hehe #i'll write this down COPIUM #currently taking a small break from drawing because of back pain #and i am suffering #this is what happens when i don't draw

[liongoatsnake]

It has come up as of late, yet again, regarding the use of the term phantom limbs while referring to the experiences some alterhumans have where they feel traits on their bodies that are not physically there.  

While I could go into the long, long history of the term being used in the alterhuman communities going back into the 1990s, as this debate’s key sticking point is in regard to phantom limb being a medical term specific to the experiences of amputees or instead a general term that can be used for non-amputees as well, I’m going to strictly be pulling from academic sources below.   

To put it succinctly, the use of the term phantom limbs for alterhuman experiences has been recognized by multiple researchers and in other academic settings over the years. Ergo, no it isn’t a term specific to amputees that doesn't apply to alterhuman experiences. - Academic references below cut-

Examples:

The research done by a multidisciplinary team of researchers focusing on the study of the furry fandom called the International Anthropomorphic Research Project, uses the term phantom limb while referring the experiences of therians and otherkin. In their book, FurScience! A Summary of Five Years of Research from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project, which is a summary of five years of continuous research into the furry fandom, a section simply named “Phantom Limb,” touches on the topic of phantom limbs among furries, therians, and otherkin. [1] They go into the presence of “phantom limbs” among furries, therians, and otherkin again in their piece “Furries, Therians, and Otherkin, Oh My! What Do All Those Words Mean, Anyway?” which was part of the book, Furries Among Us 2: More Essays on Furries by Furries. Further, in 2019, the team published an academic article which shared their results where they used the previously mentioned Rubber Hand Illusion experiment on furries and therians. Once again, when bringing up the existence of experiences among therians and otherkin, the researchers use the term “phantom limbs.” [2] 

Devin Proctor’s 2019 dissertation, On Being Non-Human: Otherkin Identification and Virtual Space includes, along with dozens of mentions of the term throughout the work, a section on Phantom Shifting and in which he uses the term “phantom limbs.” [3]

For yet another example, the article, “An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Identity in the Therian Community” also goes into quite some detail regarding the experience of “phantom limbs” among therians. [4]

A final example includes Nat Bricker’s 2016 thesis, Life Stories of Therianthropes: An Analysis of Nonhuman Identity in a Narrative Identity Model. [5]

…

This is NOT an exhaustive list in the slightest, but I think I’ve made my point clear enough (and I have other things I need to do today other than keep searching through my archive...).

TL;DR - Researchers who have studied therians and otherkin ALSO use the term phantom limbs to describe our experiences. This isn’t appropriation or otherwise misuse of medical terminology. This is using a word for what it means.   Citations:

[1] Plante, Courtney N., Stephen Reysen, Sharon E. Roberts, & Kathleen C. Gerbasi. FurScience! A Summary of Five Years of Research from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project. Waterloo, Ontario: FurScience, 2016. https://furscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/FurScience-Final-pdf-for-Website_2017_10_18.pdf, page 116.

[2] Kranjec, Alexander, Louis Lamanna, Erick Guzman, Courtney N. Plante, Stephen Reysen, Kathy Gerbasi, Sharon Roberts and Elizabeth Fein. “Illusory Body Perception and Experience in Furries.” CogSci (July 2019): Page 596-602.

[3] Proctor, Devin. On Being Non-Human: Otherkin Identification and Virtual Space. The George Washington University. May 2019. pages 172, 203-209, & 255.

[4] Grivell, Timothy, Helen Clegg & Elizabeth C. Roxburgh. “An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Identity in the Therian Community.” Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research. Volume 14, Number 2 (May 2014): pages 119-120, 124, 128-129.

[5] Bricker, Nat. Life Stories of Therianthropes: An Analysis of Nonhuman Identity in a Narrative Identity Model, Lake Forest College, April 2016, pages. 10, 14-15, 39-41, 60.

#alterhuman terms #phantom limbs #supernumerary phantom limbs #phantom shifting #research into alterhumans #I don't mean to come across as harsh or snippy #it's nearing the end of finals week and I am in need of a break

[anomalymon]

[Essay] MissingNo Therian: An Exploration in Identity, Labels, and the Fictotherian Experience

We've seen a few posts of people wanting more personal essays in the community, so I thought I would write this and crosspost it to Tumblr. -Rex

I am a MissingNo. My exact form is one that's been fluid throughout my life, with Kabutops and Aerodactyl fossil forms having preference, but occasionally switching to the Lavender Town Ghost. I identify as a Pokemon therian or Poketherian for my species - or fictotherian for a broad term. This identification is one which can confuse people - after all, therianthropy is more traditionally associated with animals, and I identify as Pokemon that isn't real. My species only exists in four games that are well over two decades old and is a failsafe the game spits out. Why should I identify as a therian? Despite how strange it can seem, I still prefer therian over other labels such as otherkin and fictionkin. My therian identity is deeply intertwined with my hyperempathy, created by a bias of my animality, comes from viewing a MissingNo as a type of animal, and from experiencing common therian traits.

Therian over otherkin, fictionkin, or fictive

Some may be saying "why don't you call yourself fictionkin?" or even "Isn't otherkin for mythical species, while therian is for earthen species?" To address the later point, there have been better written essays dispelling this. I would highly recommend Therian: Dispelling the Earthen Animal Myth by The River System for a well written and researched essay.

To address the former point, it is personal preference. I did use "otherkin" for years and still do identify as both otherkin and fictionkin, but the term "therian" is more in alignment to how I experience identity. I am an animal, I experience shifts, and I experience instincts.

I don't perceive MissingNo as sapient on the level of elves or some dragons. For me, being a MissingNo is also a "real" thing, as tangible as a dog, bird, or dragon. I don't consider myself glitchkin despite being a glitch, nor conceptkin. I am like the theriomythics who label themselves for being an animalstic gryphon or phoenix.

When it comes Fictionkin and fictive, to me they can be too focused on identifying yourself in the framework of being a character, which I'm not. I'm not a creepypasta character anymore than one of the Hypno species would be. I still do identify as fictional - I can comfortably identify as "fictherian" or my preference "fictotherian" (Which comes from "fictotype". I believe I started this term usage - since when I started using it, I could find no results to it, but I did use it in forum posts, Discord servers, and other methods).

Fictive falls under a similar problem - but with slightly more alienation. While the term is open to me, my identity history makes me feel out of place in a community of walk-ins and introjects when it was one that developed later in life.

How I became a MissingNo and the grip of hyperempathy

My identity as a MissingNo came later in life. I began existing in my system as a canine pup - which I know from behaviors and mannerisms that I later connected to me in the present, and genuinely expressing feeling like a dog as a child. Years later, I identified this species as a manned wolf.

Then at around the age of ten, my identity shifted to a glitch Pokemon. What at least contributed to it was developing a special interest in Glitch Pokemon around this time. This combined with our natural hyper-empathy and perhaps being conceptum to subconsciously alter my identity over time.

These interpretations can cause me to be out of place. While I still love glitch Pokemon and I am fascinated by them, I rarely find anyone who also has an intense interest and fascination while having this level of hyperempathy - even if I encounter others who have some alterhuman or even gender or sexuality connection to glitch Pokemon. Almost uncontrollably do I see glitch Pokemon as genuine Pokemon. I might grow attached to certain Pokemon in the way I would a pet.

The overall psychological influence means that this identity comes down to personal interpretations and personification. I'm not a natural animal and you cannot read about me in a textbook or find any bits of lore within the games, but rather, I am an animal that came from the mind of a mentally ill person.

MissingNo the animal

What defines "animal" varies. Humans are biologically animals and primates, but not all humans identify with those terms, with some taking offense to it. To someone with hyperempathy, a stuffed animal may be as much of an animal as a living one, or even a car might be a type of animal to certain minds. This connection is what makes me feel a MissingNo can be a type of animal.

Additionally, Pokemon are their world's equivalent of animals, and this is how most of my system views Pokemon due to one of our deepest parallel life connections being a humanlike Mewtwo. This sentiment is also one I've seen many Poketherians have. In the world of our origin, we are animals. For another essay on a similar experience, I'd highly recommend "The Fire Burns Bright" by Jasper, an Alolan Marrowak therian.

Within the contexts of the games and many interpretations - including my own - MissingNo is also a bird. It is one of few Pokemon which use this glitch beta typing. Being a bird can be equally as much a part of it and I'd consider birds as a paralleltype and one where I may confidently call myself a bird. Albeit a very odd bird.

The wolf and animal bias in my core

In addition to the bird of the MissingNo, the manned wolf at my heart is still important to my identity. It's in between otherhearted and therian on a sliding scale, and I identify it more as manned wolf-hearted for convenience, but it's closer to "kinth". I don't know why I am or was a manned wolf, but it doesn't quite matter to me either way. What matters is that there is the manned wolf.

To me it feels as if despite my core being or "soul", my mind became a MissingNo while the core remained the same. To my soul, a MissingNo is a type of dog. Then, to my mind, a manned wolf is a type of Pokemon. Both of these identities came about and exist in harmony rather than opposition.

Another comparison that the heart and soul makes is being "feral". Glitch entities in video games to me are almost like an animal which can't be domesticated. They may act fine, but every so often you'll encounter something that reminds you that at their core, they're wild. MissingNo still scrambles sprites and Hall of Fame data - and you can't have a "normal" experience with it. MissingNo is to Pokemon as a wolf is to a dog.

The instincts that made me tear apart playsets when playing house pretending to be a dog are still present in the instincts that make me want to tear apart meat when I eat it.

The Experience of a MissingNo Animal

I fit into many traditional therianthropy experiences and unto a hybrid canine/avian experience - just perhaps with more twists towards the bizarre.

I am a contherian when it comes to mental shifting and almost always feeling like an animal. However, I do experience phantom shifts. I get the sensations of skeletal fangs, claws, and a body that's far heavier and taller than my tiny, human form. Though the bizarre comes when during these shifts, I don't feel like I have skin and much of my body feels transparent, I feel like I should be able to stick my hand through my lower jaw.

I feel the sense of freedom and flight when I ride a bike downhill. For a few minutes when I bike, I can imagine myself flying. I sit in rivers and ponds among the wading birds feeling like I belong. I treat the chicks and chickens we raise like a part of my flock.

I still want to hunt. Sometimes I need to fight my instincts to recognize chicks as flockmates and not food. I like to eat wildly and I like to taste blood and fat in my food. When I eat, I feel like like the blood should dribble through my skinless jaw bone. Skeletal claws should be typing this essay instead of fleshy human fingers.

Conclusion

I am an animal, and despite doubts, I am a therian.

This label fits my experiences better than the alternatives. I don't feel as much alienation or out of place compared to other communities even though my species isn't an "animal" in the traditional sense. Hyperempathy has created this experience for me in that I feel more comfortable saying I am an animal than I am from fiction.

My center being is animal and always has been, it's just how its presented through my life has shifted. The animal instincts have only developed as my species has.

It is my hope that more unusual therians might come forth and be encouraged to examine their experiences - and for both earthen therians and potential theriomythics or fictotherians to explore what exactly "animal" means to them. I want others to also examine where their mind's biases may lead them, how that can impact their identity, and use it to feel more at peace in what the heart wants.

#I was reluctant to post this because it will still show up in search results for MissingNo but oh well #alterhuman #therian #fictotherian #fictherian #fictionkin #alterhuman essay #therian essay

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Okay, y'all, it's rant time again. Buckle up.

A new report just came out from Public Citizen highlighting the dangers of using apps and AI foraging guides for identifying mushrooms, particularly when mushroom foraging. It's the latest in a string of warnings that are fighting against a tide of purported convenience ("just take a picture and get your answer instantly!")

I've ranted about this since last August, and I also wrote up a detailed post on how to identify an AI-generated foraging guide. I'm also including info on the limitations of apps and AI in The Everyday Naturalist: How to Identify Animals, Plants, and Fungi Wherever You Go. I'm not just saying this to toot my own horn--it's because nature identification, and teaching it to others, is literally what I do for a living. So this is a topic near and dear to my heart.

I teach a very, very specific sort of identification class; whether we're focusing on animals, plants, fungi, or all of the above, I walk people through a detailed process of how to observe a given organism, make note of its various physical traits and habitat, and use that information to try to determine what it is. I emphasize the need to use as many sources as possible--field guides, websites, online and in-person groups, journal articles, etc.--to make absolutely sure that your identification is solid.

And every year, I get people (thankfully, a very small minority of my students) who complain because my two-hour basic mushroom hunting class wasn't just five minutes of introduction and one hundred and fifteen minutes of me showing slide after slide of edible mushrooms. There are so many people out there who just want a quick, easy answer so they can frolic in the woods and blithely pick mushrooms like some idealized image of a cottagecore herbalist with a cabin full of dried plants and smiling frogs or something.

While I do incorporate a bit of information on getting started with the app iNaturalist in my classes, it is as only ONE of MANY tools I encourage people to use. Sure, it's more solid than most apps because, in addition to the algorithmic I.D. suggestions it initially gives you, other iNaturalist users can go onto your observations later and either agree with your I.D.s or suggest something different and even explain why.

And yet--even as great as iNat is, it and its users can still be wrong. So can every other I.D. app out there. And I think that is one thing that the hyper-romanticized approaches to foraging--and nature identification in general--miss. In order to be a good forager, you HAVE to also be good at nature identification.

And nature identification is an entire process that requires you to have solid observational and critical thinking skills, to be able to independently research using many different types of tools, and be willing to invest the time, patience, and focus to properly arrive at a solid identification--if not to species level, then as far down the taxonomic ladder as you can realistically manage. (There's a reason even the experts complain about Little Brown Mushrooms and Damned Yellow Composites!)

People mistake one single tool--apps--for the entire toolkit. They assume any book they find on Amazon is going to be as good as any other, and don't take the time to look up the author to determine any credentials or experience, or even whether they actually exist or not. It doesn't help that the creators of these products often advertise them as "the only [book/app/etc.] you need to easily identify [organism of choice]!"

I mean, sure, the world isn't going to end if you never question the birdsong results on the Merlin app, or if you go through life thinking a deer fern is just a baby western sword fern. But when we get into people actually eating things they find in the wild, there's often no room for error. There are plants and mushrooms that can kill you even if you only eat a tiny amount. And even if they don't kill you, they may make you wish you were dead for a few days while you suffer through a whole host of gastrointestinal nastiness and other symptoms.

There aren't any shortcuts if you want to be safe in your foraging. You HAVE to be willing to do the work. And any teacher, author, or product that says otherwise isn't being ethical. I'm glad to see more people speaking out against the "fast foodization" of foraging in regards to overreliance on apps and the existence of AI foraging books; I just hope it's enough to prevent more people from getting sick or dying.

#long post #foraging #mushroom foraging #mushroom hunting #A.I. #apps #nature #ecology #environment #conservation #cottagecore #herbalism #nature identification #critical thinking skills #critical thinking #media literacy #mushrooms #fungi #fungus #shrooms

[pink-onyx-au]

[Transmission Downloaded]

Translation applied to image from "Gem Glyph" to "Common Earth Dialect # 4"

Transcription:

Onyx Identification Guide - Written by Peridot Facet 3K9W - Cut 8RH

Gem Example Defined: Onyx (white)

Criteria points:

- Gem must have at least two (2) rings present.

- Vision Spheres must have a ring, black or white, included in their coloration.

- Iron deposits must be sufficient enough to cause curly hair. Ringlets are also permitted.

- Stripes must be parallel to other markings. Various colors are permitted.

- Body type must be within incubation standards.

- Permitted colors are white, yellow, and blue. Red-hued agates that fit this criteria do not qualify. See "Sardonyx" identification guide if this applies.

- Gravity connectors must be stunted at the base. Appropriate enhancers will be issued.

If an agate emerges with the above traits, notify a Diamond immediately so that they may be reviewed. Only Diamond-approved Agates may be issued the title of "Onyx." Immediate service is required by all Onyx. A rejuvenator shall be issued.

[End Transmission]

#pink onyx au #homeworld onyx #white onyx #intercepted transmission #steven universe au #steven universe #steven universe future #c423art #ceephorart