there’s this moment of awareness for a girl when she realizes her legs (and/or arms, armpits, upper lip…) are unacceptable.

she’s just minding her own business, bopping along, when maybe a classmate starts mocking her for having visible body hair. or she goes to a sleepover and someone points out that her legs look different from all the other girls’. or she walks in on her mom shaving and asks why, and the answer is “because a woman’s body looks nicer this way.” or maybe her mother or sister actually approaches her and says, “looks like it’s time you learned to shave that jungle.”

the point is, the day before that realization, however it happened, the girl didn’t give a shit about her hair. she put on shorts and tank tops without a second thought. she didn’t feel unclean. she didn’t feel like a monster when she looked in the mirror (at least not because of body hair). her hair didn’t stop her from riding a bike or climbing a tree.

only after someone draws her attention to it does she start feeling self-conscious and wanting to remove it. removal, in this culture, is never a choice made free of coercion. it’s never born of a girl’s own naturally occurring desires. the seed of shame was planted in her by someone else (family, friends, bullies, magazines, razor commercials) and chances are that seed will stay with her forever- a sinking realization that her body can be wrong, that she can look ugly or dirty even when clean, that a thing she never even noticed about herself before should be a source of retroactive humiliation.

that feeling is like a scar. every time we look at it, the humiliation and judgment we experienced as kids comes rushing back and the little nasty patriarchal voice in our heads (the same one that says shit like “jesus you’re getting fat,” “ugh why did you think you could pull off this outfit,” “god who would ever want to touch THOSE boobs,” etc) says “ugh, looks like it’s time I shaved that jungle.” and it’s just parroting back what we’ve already been told.

Japanese legend: you have the face of who you loved most in a past life

THE NEXT AVATAR ABOUT TO LOOK FINE AFFFFFF

Oh, so YOU guys can just see a face and be like “I like that face, I’m gonna make it my face” and everyone’s just COOL with that. But when I, Koh the Face Stealer,

please take a moment to really appreciate the argument of why "most cops don't live in the cities they oversee" needs to be addressed

full video here

[transcript:

Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: what percent of the police live in the city?

mayor: about 5% or so

Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: 5%, so 95% don’t live in the city.

mayor: yes.

Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: so when you say that the vast majority of the percentage goes towards salaries, et cetera, fringe benefits, that means that they take their money on 81, go to outside the city, pay taxes in those communities that have some of the best schools while we have an underfunded school district--

someone else: $60 million up.

Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: so i just want to put into context what we’re talking about, because it’s really easy to say, mayor-- and with all due respect, i like you. but that was a very politician answer.

mayor: sorry, what specifically?

Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: the, “we will consider, and we will look.” what we’re saying is we’re not interested in considering and looking. what we’re saying is, actually, there’s $50 million. commit to $20 million cut, because we’re sending money-- as the mayor of Syracuse, when you don’t have a tax base, you’re sending money out of Syracuse. and not just for 30 years-- for the rest of their life because their pensions, their health insurance, their families. so we are funding for other people’s communities to have the promise of the American dream while we are denying it in our community. that’s the context that you, as the mayor, have to look at this under.

so when we talk about renegotiating union contract, what we’re saying is you can’t play around with, “maybe, um, we will--” no. y’all got to go, because you don’t provide a service that is beneficial to the community, that is meaningful to the community. the services that you provide criminalize our community, impoverish our community, reallocate resources to suburbs. we are actually funding the suburbs, both in our police departments and in our schools.

and to be clear, just to be clear, it’s not just the fact of, like, the percentage of people. we’re also funding what race of people are on the police force, the percentage of race of teachers, as well, superintendent, board president. so we want to put in context, because it’s not just a class issue. it’s a race issue. we’re telling black and brown people and poor people, you don’t matter. the devil’s in the data and in the details, mayor. respectfully, it is not acceptable for us to be here considering.]

I keep thinking how much more powerful the Spiderman origin story would be if Peter Parker was an African American kid, whose Uncle Ben was shot by police while being arrested for a minor parking infraction. There is no formal investigation, and Peter decides to put himself on the line to prevent it happening again. He tackles the white crimes that go unpunished, punishes POC criminals fairly. He is the leveler, always fighting to be without bias, to be just. To protect people like his uncle. 

This not only mirrors so much of what’s happening in America, but feeds right into the complex relationship between Spiderman, the authorities and the media. 

Peter Parker is a brilliant student, awkward, a nerd, but is branded a thug, a gang member, a criminal, because of his appearance. The media latch on to that and misrepresent him totally.

The police, humilitated by the fact that he refuses to work with them and often punishes cops themselves for brutalizing innocent people, or guilty people who still deserve better treatment than they get, attempt to hunt him down.

I had to.

oh man. This is the shit.

The “with great power comes great responsibility” line gets such a deeper meaning within this context.

Not to mention a white nerdy boy with glasses is not the look of a social outcast or person of ridicule anymore.

I want this made right now

Do you ever lie awake wondering how the heck Gimli knows what a nervous system is

Clearly dwarves have medical knowledge far more advanced than that of the other races.

His Majesty Dr. Gimli, son of Gloin, Neurosurgeon, M.D.

gimli trying to explain his studies to legolas, a flat-earther

#*scroll down* #*remember that middle earth is canonically flat for elves and round for everyone else* #*scroll back up & smash that reblog button"

tired: legolas took gimli to valinor with him because they were bffs/in love/etc. 

wired: legolas took gimli to valinor to prove the world was flat after arguing with him about it for decades

Sorry it’s what to elves

So, in Tolkein lore, the world was originally flat, with most of the land in the middle (hence Middle Earth).  But the Numenorians (men who were rewarded with their own Atlantis-equivalent island for service in the first big war against Melkor, but eventually Power Corrupts etc) tried to invade the uttermost west which was basically Elf Heaven.  To put an end to that sort of thing, the creator of the world Bent The World and made it a sphere…but left elves able to treat it like a flat disk.  So elves can sail west and reach Elf Heaven, but a man or dwarf or hobbit who sails west will eventually wrap around to the east coast of Middle Earth.

This is why Legolas can see for such great, almost impossible distances. The Earth does not curve for him.

Legolas said fuck the horizon

I’m having a crisis around this LotR knowledge I didn’t have until now, in the year of chaos, 2020

…dafuq

alright, ill bite. whats cum

A Latin word that generally translates as “with”, such as the phrase summa cum laude, meaning “With highest praise.”

haha i cum real laude all the time

Sorry, I could never be a capitalist, I suffer from “wanting humans to have their basic needs met” disorder, where I care about people who aren’t me.

Someone once asked me if, assuming we got universal healthcare, I would be okay with the rise in “healthcare tourism” where people who are sick come to our country to get their medical bills taken care of and life-saving medical treatment cheaper than in their home countries. I was just like, yeah thats fine, I’d actually prefer it if 0 people died from preventable causes kept behind a paywall for no reason.

at least tumblr hot takes are written by an overwhelming majority of just weird nerds and teens who don’t hang out with other gays... on twitter you can stumble upon any unbelievably bad opinion and discover it was written by an nbc showrunner who married the ceo of a startup that converts rental properties into oil wells. like at least nobody here has money or influence

How to Feed Baby Manatees 

(via)

some fools be like “i play games to escape my responsibilities” then pick tank or healer

in my greatest fantasies i am able to help people

Like I get that Chengqing in the show exists mostly as a foil for Wangxian since they’re both torn apart by stubbornness and circumstance and an inability to trust each other and it’s very sexy that Wangxian is the one that flips death & bury your gays the middle finger and gets a happy ending

But

That said where is Wen Qing’s confusing and morally dubious transmigrator rebirth over a decade after her death that sends her love interest and relatives into error 404 mode and leaves the cultivation world simultaneously reeling and quaking in their boots

Wei Wuxian: lmao welcome to the “brought back from the dead against my will and living in someone else’s body” club, we have jackets

Wen Qing: what the

is going on

Some idiot rogue cultivator tries to heal the girl with half a soul after the hunt on Dafan Mountain by modifying a demonic array he bought in an estate sale last week in Mo Village. It fails miserably and Wen Qing’s outraged yelling draws all the cultivators remaining in town to watch this guy’s public humiliation. Including Jiang Cheng! Who, since I’m going with show canon & that poofs the body back to how you looked the last time around, is face to face with his crush who got murdered by his in-laws over a decade ago.

Okay reblogging this again for a proper response. Y’all. I have got EMOTIONS.

ChengQing is an Untamed thing, but even in the book, it’s like. I feel like Jiang Wanyin and Wen Qing are both About duty and family in the same way that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are both About righteousness rooted in their own judgment. The ships work so well as foils of each other because the characters involved are also foils to each other - jwy to wq and lwj to wwx - in similar ways.

Likewise, and here we lean more on the Untamed, Wen Qing’s fate is informed by the above virtuous values as thwarted by her fatal flaws, un-aided by Jiang Wanyin because the same values, with his different circumstances, put their priorities at cross-purposes– and because both parties refuse to cross a distance created in part by miscommunication. This is not unreasonable or childish of them, necessarily - the emotional and physical stakes are both high - and I should go into more detail about what I think those virtues and flaws and priorities are, but I don’t want to derail this into a character analysis essay. Some other time. I just wanted to lay this out, because: It’s another mirror to wangxian, with Wei Wuxian’s death likewise coming from, like, see above.

Anyway, this is all to say – 

How freaking cool would it be to have a whole B-side to the part two murder mystery? Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian just miss meeting each other. Sure, jwy deeply suspects Mo Xuanyu’s real identity, but like. He’s not gonna talk about it. IMAGINE… they pass within yards of each other in Qinghe… maybe jwy and wq talked to Nie Huaisang a day prior to wwx and lwj? 

Jin Guangyao is Messy, I bet there’s a good sidequest mystery that ties back to him in travelling distance for ChengQing to handle while WangXian are busy in Yi City. Maybe some good dirt on Jin Zixun and Jin Guangshan, while we’re at it… And maybe it’s ChengQing who extract and interact with Sisi and Madam Qin’s maid Bicao! I dunno!

Also, in a mirror to how wwx collects junior disciple ducklings, it takes less than a week for YunmengJiang’s senior disciples to start deferring to Wen Qing as if she’s already Lady Jiang…

Lyra is throwing down EXCELLENT POINTS over here and I just wanna emphasize the character foils (and relationship foils!) points with this screenshot I took while watching the Untamed bc it gave me IMMEDIATE “oh I see what u did thar” feelings:

Also……. can you picture Jin Ling’s emotional journey from “evil??? stranger???” to “is this woman going to be my step-mom aunt” paralleling Sizhui’s from “dad it’s very nice of you to take in Senior Mo but exactly WHY are you ending your 13 year long mourning period for this guy we found in a shed” to “WAIT THIS IS MY ORIGINAL GAY DAD???”

JIN LING… comparing Wen Qing to Jiang Cheng’s dumbass matchmaker list like “no… no, he’s definitely not interested in this lady, right??” JOKE’S ON YOU KID,,, 

“She’s not even nice to me!”– he protests to his uncle. 

Jiang Cheng, confused and irritated, replies “She’s nicer than you deserve, after your shenanigans??”

ALSO, they should find Wen survivors. Like, no way would they still have the name, but still. There should be. Maybe mixed up in that Yi City mirror-sidequest. At the first Qiongqi Path incident, the guards said there were other camps. Movement of people between camps. Also if I understood correctly, there was a period of time where they were in some kind of refugee settlement before they were taken to the camps, after the war. So, some survivors. With kids. Also these ones get an invitation to Yunmeng. It’s symbolic of like, repudiating the mistake of not standing with Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing’s Wen remnants last time.

YES…………… Jiang Cheng getting a chance to step up and prove his inaction wasn’t because he wants her family to suffer…… paired with Wen Qing getting a chance to be honest about her role in the golden core transplant? (MAKE PEOPLE BE HONEST WITH JC 2020)

god can u fucking imagine Sizhui & Jin Ling commiserating over their future step-mom woes but ending up in an argument anyway because their reactions are polar opposites jfjajdhjs love these idiot cousins

YES TO ALL OF THIS. I don’t have any coherent things to add, I just want this fic dammit

queer liberation not gay assimilation

Gay Assimilation is “no fats no femmes no asians” in a grindr profile. It’s cops marching in uniform at Pride. It’s a gay man like Milo being a leading figure of the fascist resurgence in the US. It’s banks using us as props for feel good ads while denying loans to trans women. It’s “equal opportunity employers” hiring lgbt+ people to make the drones used to kill queer Arabs. It’s a Starbucks with a rainbow police shield “safe space” sticker on the door while a cop down the street assaults a black trans woman. It’s cramming gay people into the predefined boxes of a cisnormative hetnormative white supremacist capitalist society. It’s abandoning the fringes to the cold so that those of us closest to the mainstream can get a pass as long as we don’t act “too gay” in public. Gay Assimilation is maintaining all the same broken power structures that enabled our oppression to begin with.

Queer Liberation is dismantling oppressive structures. It’s abolishing prisons, opposing war, subverting capitalism, disarming/dismantling the police. It’s building new models of community and resistance, it’s refusing to abandon our siblings on the edges because they are no less deserving than those of us who can “fit in”. It’s refusing to cut out bits of ourselves to accommodate the comfort of straight people. Queer Liberation is striving to create a radically different society where systems of oppression and biases have been challenged and uprooted.

it’s also Queer Liberation that gets shit done

Ugh that post has gotten me thinking about fat acceptance in a way I haven’t in years. I’ve read more studies about weight and health than probably any other topic I’ve ever researched. And every time I see someone wail about health I am just like

Did you know that in post-mortem examinations there is zero correlation between weight and levels of arteriosclerosis and related diseases found?

Did you know that people with an overweight BMI have the longest life expectancy, that those with an “ideal” and an “obese” have about the same life expectancy, and that being “underweight” raises mortality rates more than being “morbidly obese”?

Did you know that losing weight and then gaining it back is worse for your heart than remaining at the weight you started consistently?

Did you know that 95% of people who lose weight do gain it back, and there has never been a single documented weight loss program that has been demonstrated to keep the weight off for five years or more in the majority or even a significant minority of people? Like, telling people to lose weight isn’t much use if we don’t know HOW to make that happen.

Like I have read The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos and Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata and Big Fat Lies by Glenn A Gaesser (Ph.D!) And Fat!So? and several other books that I don’t own and so don’t remember all of their names I spent like four years reading every single study coming out and looking at the methodology and noting which ones had huge holes or terrible methods and which didn’t (the holes were almost always in the pro-weight-loss studies) and like

Big Fat Lies has 27 pages of bibliography. 27 pages worth of scientific citation. The book content itself is only 197 pages. That’s a page of references for every 7 pages of book. Reading the book is just reference after reference and study after study. Most of these doctors (like Linda Bacon, author of Health at Every Size) started out the same way. They wanted to use the scientific method to find a real weight loss program or health solution that worked and could be proven to work, and so studied everything they could about weight and fitness only to find out that we didn’t need weight loss in the first place. That all the studies calling for it were lacking or nonexistent. That weight and underlying metabolic health have very little relation. That the history of our relationship with health and obesity has little basis in fact and a LOT of basis in capitalism, politics, and fashion. No, really, the association between weight and health was first proposed by insurance companies looking for ways to charge people more by claiming risk. They also charged tall and short people more. And people with different skin colors. When they got in trouble for charging people for things they had no control over and had no bearing on their health, they set out to prove that weight was controllable and that fat was unhealthy to make money. 

These are also a lot of the same people who went on to invent the President’s fitness program, so if you went to public school you probably already hate them. 

Anyway, if you want a place to start reading about the issue, this article is a pretty good launching pad. 

This casual rant is like a primer on weight science. Amazing. I second their book recommendations, and would add to the list Body Respect by Drs Bacon & Aphramor, Body of Truth by journalist Harriet Brown, and What’s Wrong with Fat? by UCLA professor of sociology Abigail Saguy.

man I remember that time I reblogged an anti-fatphobia post and lost a follower and  reader who took the time to come into my DMs and rant about how betrayed he felt that I, who he had trusted and respected, would dare to signal boost content that made people feel like it was okay to be fat. how dare I

anyway the weightloss industry is a scam

Having ADHD is that your brain either feels like

Or

And it can switch in a matter of seconds.