@untowardness / untowardness.tumblr.com
[Image ID: Post from Robert R. Raymond (@/ robpertray.bsky.social) reading: I just found out that nestle spends millions of dollars annually to lobby congress against paid maternity leave. they do this because...they make baby formula
anyways kids, don't forget that it's immigrants, trans kids, and china who are your enemies /End ID]
Look we have records of Medieval Knights crying out in their sleep, having emotional outbursts or flinching at the sound of clashing metal. We have records of people all through history who were treated badly by people who should have loved them, and having problems knowing who to trust. We have years worth of artists putting their human pain at broken hearts and broken promises into music that makes us cry.
Yes people have been traumatized by awful things for all of history and just like them You didn’t deserve to be hurt either.
“suffering doesn’t make you better, it just makes you suffer” - maus
when i say i like hiking, i don’t mean “eight mile backpacking trip with special gear and an emergency beacon” sort of hiking, i mean a three mile loop to go look at pretty things and then a huge brunch after.
this is in no way a slam on hardcore hiking, it’s very fun, but i mostly just need to lower people’s expectations when i say hiking is a hobby of mine
I once hung out with a woman, telling her I wanted to hike. When we arrived, she chastised me for taking her up a path to some ruins. She was expecting ropes and crampons because that's what she considered a hike.
No, miss, let me be clear: I brought you here to hang out in the woods and be weirdos.
Erik Olson (Canadian, b. 1982, Calgary, Alberta, Canada) - Tigers in the Night, 2011, Paintings: Oil on Canvas
I very much enjoy how my mind scrambles to make sense of this.
“The tiger He destroyed his cage Yes YES The tiger is out”
That tiger destroyed a lot more than a cage. Unless the original poem was a metaphor after all. Which would just make it cooler, really.
Anyways this is a beautiful and terrifying multidimensional beastie, ready to eat the face of anyone who tries to usher it toward a cage again. Go, tiger, go.
It is not merely what a tiger is. This painting is what a tiger does.
tbh shoutout to the over 40s on tumblr, sorry the internet acts like yall belong in the retirement home when ur literally just regular adults with hobbies
I was going to leave comments in the tags, but I decided this was important enough to put on main.
In college, my friend group collectively got into the SCA - Society for Creative Anachronism. They're the people who get really into medieval reenactment, the fighting and crafts and cooking, they have kings and queens and knights and events and a good percentage of them (but not all!) work or have worked at Ren Faires.
I am forever grateful my friends dragged me into that, because it was my first introduction to fandom in older adults. Middle-aged dorks. Elderly nerds. Absolutely as intense and weird and hilarious and fun as any fan in their teens or 20s. I started getting into fandom already knowing there was a road ahead for me as I got older, full of handmade costumes and late night movies and shelves of pewter dragon goblets and mixed-aged road trips to meet ups and conventions.
And it kills me that so many people don't know that sort of community even exists. On both sides, even! I went to Philcon a few years ago, which tends towards older fans, and an older woman I was talking to sadly told me that she thought fandom was dying out, because she never saw younger fans any more.
Over the past decade, there's been a really toxic movement towards keeping different ages strictly separated, both in and outside of fandom. There's this strong implication that if an older person wants to interact with a younger person, there is something inherently predatory about that.
Yeah, that attitude sucks. That drive towards separation and puritanism sucks. Declaring that younger people should have nothing to look forward to and that older people should stay separated and lonely sucks. It sucks and we are all worse for it.
Don't fear age. Don't put an age limit on having fun. Give yourself a damn future.
Beverly passed away in 2019, but she was one of many of my favorite, elder cosplayers that frequent DragonCon and remind all of us to keep playing as long as we can.
As a 50+ I get asked when Im going to grow up. When am i going to focus on something real? Get a real hobby? Stop acting like a dumb teenager.
Excuse me? These teens are sharp. They are vocal. They see trauma and toxicity where I would gloss it over as a consumer of media conditioned by the 80s.
I have learned more about my sexuality, my disability, the passive racism that I absorbed growing up because nobody told me any better, my strengths and my self love by listening to "the kids" (anyone under 40, tbh, are "the kids.") I have grown so much by connecting to the younger generations and just listening.
Yes, there definitely are creepy older people gonna prey on the young fresh kids... But you'll see as many in church as at a con I guarantee. The most dangerous person who ever tried to cross a line with me did it in church between Sunday School and Church proper, with half the congregation in sight.
Anyhow... Never grow up, Never surrender.
So, why did I write a book about Gef the Talking Mongoose, and how is it Neil Gaiman's fault? Like all good things, this began in the bathroom while my friends were hanging out upstairs during our post-Thanksgiving party. Up popped a targeted ad about the forthcoming movie Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose. I felt a chill. No. Not allowed. Gef is mine. I have given dozens of talks about him at conventions and libraries. He is my favorite cryptid story -- how can one not love him? -- and my three-part article on Gef is one of the top hits on the internet when you search for him. If a movie came out -- and I didn't have a book on the shelves before it did -- how would people know that I had surreptitiously claimed the spooky mongoose as mine? Great cast in this movie. Simon Pegg, Christopher Lloyd, Minnie Driver, Neil Gaiman -- Wait? Who was Gaiman playing? GEF? GAIMAN IS GEF? GAIMAN, MY LITERARY IDOL, WAS PLAYING MY FAVORITE MONGOOSE? And I didn't know? No one pulled me aside, saying, "Listen. I thought someone should tell you before you burst a blood vessel. A movie about Gef is being made. Yeah, it's not going to be a no-budget indie. WAIT, don't get the Big Eyes of Looming Burden. I haven't told you about the mongoose yet..." You understand my dread, I'm sure. I spent a few weeks revising my article up a few thousand words and was satisfied. It would make an acceptable ebook.
For my birthday, my mother gave me a mongoose idol and the well-overdue reprint of The Haunting of Cashen's Gap (she gets me). I had read some of it but never in a physical form or with such delightfully slapdash mongooses on the inside cover.
The introduction by Christopher Josiffe (author of Gef!) made me realize I needed to tear my little book down to its elements and start fresh because I did not know half of what I thought (if you knew what I know, you'd know a hell of a lot). I spent January turning a 6000-word article into a 125-page book. All because Neil Gaiman would be playing Gef, and I couldn't allow that to happen without my Hot Takes about tulpas, hoaxes, poltergeists, family dynamics, and ventriloquism.
Me, two glasses of wine in: "yeah so here's an in depth conversation about my identity as a nonbinary person, and my struggles with transphobia in 2023"
Median Center-Right American Dude at the party, also two drinks in: "Damn that's crazy, I never thought of it like that. Man, I'm sorry you gotta deal with this shit."
Me: "Ahh it's alright. I deal."
Random Guy: "People should just chill tf out."
Me: "Damn right"
Random Guy: "So if you're non binary, and, sorry if this is offensive but I don't know the right words here. Like, is it cross dressing for you if you wear a skirt?"
Me: "Its- hm. Huh. I have no idea."
Guy: "It must have been nice to go to school with other trans people. Like, you must've felt safe."
Me: "No actually it was the opposite. It just made me even more upset and confused. I didn't know what being non-binary was. I saw people that transitioned from one gender to the other and knew I wasn't that. It took me a long time to figure this shit out."
Guy: "man that sounds rough. No wonder you guys are upset all this time this sounds painful."
Me: "Well, it sucks until it suddenly doesn't. It sucks and then it rules hard."
Guy: "so It's like working out."
Me: [both of us are now nodding wisely] "it's like working out."
reblog for a bigger sample size (<- poll posting incantation)
Okay, quick story: I had chicken pox, but no one explained what the symptoms of this might be. I was in second or third grade. Suddenly, there were these itchy bumps all over me, but I did not feel especially sick. I considered this carefully and decided, "Oh. I'm dying. I guess I'll just die. I don't want to worry anyone with this, my imminent and untreatable death." After days of this, possibly for unrelated reasons, I went to the nurse's office. I lifted my shirt, and she unfurled an actual profanity over how poxy I was. So, I didn't die, but I do have mental health problems. Seems like someone could have diagnosed that, too. (I also spent years of my youth thinking I had terminal breast cancer, but I was not willing to tell anyone. I had a bump in my chest which I, in a fit of genius, figured I could press in and make it stop being a tumor. Turns out it wasn't a tumor, just a bump. In my adulthood, I actually had a breast cancer scare and decided I might die, but at least I told people about it! I was fine that time, too. Turned out it was just a bump.)
“And I don’t think anybody should feel bad if they get diagnosed with a mental illness, ’cause it’s just information about you that helps you to know how to take better care of yourself.
“Being bipolar, there’s nothing wrong with it. Being bipolar is like not knowing how to swim. It might be embarrassing to tell people, and it might be hard to take you certain places. But they have arm floaties. And if you just take your arm floaties, you can go wherever the hell you want.
“And I know some of you are like, ‘But Taylor, what if people judge me for taking arm floaties?’ Well, those people don’t care if you live or die, so maybe who cares? Maybe fuck those people a little. I don’t know.”
Taylor Tomlinson, Look At You (2022)
Snowball in Hell, acrylics, 30cmx20cm
I used a random piece of wire to paint the smallest details..!
I am not responsible for who I become when hyperfixating
I'd like to see YOUR dignity hold up when flooded by 2000% of your typical dopamine levels
literally all jobs rn are just like: ohhh were URGENTLY hiring!!! we need employees soooo bad!!! NOT YOU . we need employees right now omgggg stopppp we need workersss…. not you tho i hope you die in a fire forever but omggg nobody wants to work anymore… we are urgently hiring where are all the workerssss…. UGH OMG STOP FUCKING ASKING FOR A JOB !!!! WE DONT WANT YOU !! DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE . anyway. we are URGENTLY hirin-
What do we pay? Well we thought you might pay us for the privilege of working here.
So, did I ever tell you about the time when I applied to a private school that informed me that they weren't actually looking for a teacher? However, they would accept me as their full-time trainee-janitor, and the kids would vote after six months if I could possibly be a teacher there -- even though they did not have any teaching positions open. This would not be a paid position. It was so much not a paid position, I would have to sign a contract and give them $1500. I declined.
