dreamwalker

Someone recently posted about how Tumblr clout doesn't actually translate into anything in real life, it just means X amount of people read your post, so what's the point?

I mean besides the fact that some people actually use their posts for good, like activism and combating misinformation, there's just posting for the sake of posting which is its own reward.

But also, sometimes you'll make an impression with your fucked up posting that someone decides to send you a DM to talk to you about elves or a podcast or a podcast about elves or something and now you've made a new best friend :)

Also sometimes you get to teach people about sauna gnomes and that's rewarding in and of itself

PLEASE tell me what a sauna gnome is

Okay, so: it's "saunatonttu" in Finnish. The word "tonttu" gets translated as "elf" sometimes but like as a Finn I emphatically disagree with that shit, these ain't no elves. "Gnome" has its own issues but I think it's funny.

They're basically a type of tutelary spirit of the sauna. Whenever you build a sauna a sauna gnome will eventually move in. I mean you can always expedite the process by going to someone else's sauna and telling everyone there that you've just built a sauna and it's such a shame that you don't have a sauna gnome yet, so the local sauna gnome will put the word on the grapevine that any sauna gnomes in need of a sauna know that there's a new sauna in town.

And they basically take care of the sauna for you, making sure it doesn't burn down and that it works properly. But they're also capricious and vindictive: to stay on their good side you gotta make sure to behave properly in the sauna (the sauna is no place for drunkenness or obscenity, in fact going to the sauna should be treated almost as a somber religious ritual), you gotta greet them when coming and going, and it's customary to leave them a vihta/vasta (a bundle of birch branches with the leaves on, used for cleaning up in the sauna) and to leave them one last löyly (a very specific term for the steam that rises from the sauna's stove, called "kiuas") before you leave so the sauna gnome can enjoy the saunaing.

If you're in breach of sauna gnome etiquette they may turn against you and skin you alive or burn down your sauna.

Passing this along in case any of my mutuals were thinking of building a sauna.

Look i tried to laugh it off, but I haven’t stopped thinking about this message because… my cat literally isn’t green

like where is the green

Oh Christ

This is the color your cat is

colors i eyedropped directly from op's cat

I drew a tree using only colours eyedropped from OP's cat.

every time i see this post all i see is some green alien kitty with antennae so i had to draw it

I originally thought those were supposed to be mushrooms, implying that this cat is moldy

Moldy forest cat

world heritage post

A lot of parents want to be forgiven when they're overwhelmed and accidentally snap at their children.

Sure. You can be forgiven for that. As long as you show the same forgiveness to them when they do it.

If your child gets an ass whooping whenever they snap at you, then no, you don't deserve to be forgiven when you snap at them.

love the word “rapscallion”. like not only are you a rascal but you’re also kind of spring onion about it too

I saw this question posed on tiktok, but I think Tumblr would really enjoy it too.

If a fae creature offered to give one million dollars for a bone chosen at random, how many bones would you allow them to take?

Light clarifications; The fae is not the one choosing the bones. The bone is taken at random. Each bone, no matter the size or importance, is worth a full million dollars. You must also declare the exact number first, you can't go bone-by-bone. You either say 2 or you say 10, you can't work your way up to a higher number. The bones are removed instantaneously, and the money is given immediately as well. You will not get in government trouble for acquiring the money.

Tell me in the tags/replies how many bones you'd let the fae take. And as always, reblog for bigger sample size.

if you want to test your luck, this site lets you choose a random human bone :) https://randomlistgenerator.com/human-bones

"take them all and let my child finally have money to survive this cruel world" would be such an origin story for a rich asshole who grew up without a loving childhood thanks to losing his last parent to the fae. he is cruel and miserly and perpetuates a system in which desperate people feel their one option is to sell their bones. only now there is so much desperation, the bones are only worth $1000 each, and people do it anyways.

You guys really liked my last poll so

im really pissed that palindrome isnt palindrome backwards

Ah, yes but emordnilap is a word!

An emornilap is any word that, when spelled backwards, produces another word. Examples of emordnilap pairs include:

And therefore “emordnilap palindrome” is an emordnilap palindrome.

Which I, for one, think is really frickin’ cool.

dude

You know that bothered someone else in history so much they had to make the word emordnilap something so that palindrome could be used in a palindrome.

The plural of emordnilap is semordnilap and that’s just the best part of all this

making art is so fucking hard. wheres that defunctland quote

Okay, so y'all know the phenomenon where American media companies say they can't produce queer stories because they'll just get censored in foreign markets? It's transparent as hell, because the dominant culture of the United States is still violently queerphobic, and in many cases, state queerphobia in other countries is the direct result of Christian imperialism. The US is not the enlightened gay haven in a world of evil homophobic foreigners, and trying to pretend that American media can't be too gay because it'll be censored overseas is asinine. We all know that, right?

Anyway, today I learned that there is an episode of the Australian cartoon Bluey that has been censored in the United States because it shows the dad character pretending to be pregnant and have a baby as part of a game of pretend. Disney refuses to air it on the Disney Channel or on Disney+. It has been made available on YouTube by the Australian rights holders.

So let's quit fucking pretending that Disney is actually scared of foreign censors, hm? The queerphobic censorship is coming from inside the House of Mouse, and it always has been.

I will continue shouting about this on every post I see about Bluey getting censored in the states, because it's like, m u l t i p l e episodes for all sorts of stupid shit.

All of the Bluey episodes are available for free from the network that created it right there on their website, here's the link:

Jenny Holzer “BY YOUR RESPONSE TO DANGER” Red paint on white enamel

I wish age gap discourse hadn't spiraled the way it has because I want there to be a safe space to say "Men in their 40s who date 25 year olds aren't predators, they're just fucking losers"

... honey you just described a predator LOL

No, I said what I said. But thank you for providing an example of how this topic has become insufferable on the internet.

i am honestly burningly curious about how a 40 year old man who fucks around with college grads is not a predator

"College grad" is not a developmental stage, nor is it what I would describe a 25 year old as. I was 4 years out of college at 25. My mother had two children at 25. You can be a fucking congressman at 25.

There's a difference between a man who is immature and buys into misogynistic views of beauty and aging and one who is a predator. Also, many actual predators? Not losers and able to move through society pretty freely being seen as cool and the ideal, so conflating the two isn't helpful.

This is going to be my final response to any attempt at discourse. You're welcome to continue amongst yourselves.

also sometimes a 40 year old and a 25 year old just weirdly find each and it's a perfectly normal relationship - like all human relationships are complex and situational, it's so rarely an either/or thing let alone just one thing only

if a 40 year old dude only dates 25 year olds, DiCaprio style or something adjacent to it, then yeah he's a loser

if a 40 year old dude meets a 25 year old through social event or friends or whatever and they happen to hit it off and make a go of it, and this isn't some sort of reoccurring pattern for the guy, that's just a relationship with an age difference

being predatory means something specific, and man I agree w/ OP and really wish people just stopped ascribing it to any and all relationship dynamics they personally might not like

predator and groomer - two words that need to go up on the "can't use till you learn their meaning" shelf

Something I find really stressful is this seemingly endless creep of infantilisation and removal of autonomy from young people. Like, not to be all “in my dayyyy” about it, but… at 16, my friends and I were expected to be broadly responsible for our presence in the world. Most of us had jobs, we navigated public transport, looked after younger siblings. We were expected to make informed decisions about our future careers and our sexual partners. We were allowed to leave education and work full time (this was not necessarily good thing - I think increasing the school leaving age to 18 was broadly for the best). Most of us were smoking, or drinking, or both - again, not good things, but just facts - and many of us were sexually active. Many of the AFAB people I knew were on the pill. Legally, we could live independently, or get married with adult consent.

Legally (I live in the UK) we were not minors, although we inhabited an odd legal limbo until we turned 18, and we were certainly not “children”. Intellectually, socially, though, we were considered (young) adults, or at the most “older teenagers.” We were expected to read mostly adult books (rather than middle grade or YA), watch the news/read papers, watch mostly adult television.

And I do think we a bit under-protected, under-supported, and in some cases - neglected and financially exploited - and I’m not necessarily advocating that. But it did make us feel, I think, in charge of our own lives, capable and competent to make decisions.

At 16-17 my parents knew they could leave me alone overnight/for a couple of nights, and I wouldn’t starve or burn the house down. I felt comfortable getting cross country trains on my own, or booking and staying at a hotel (yes, with my boyfriend.)

Then there was this… creeping of sentiments that we were all Too Young to trouble our heads about certain things. A lot of it was good - more stringent licensing laws, raising the school leaving age, raising the minimum smoking age(!) - but some of the broader cultural stuff was… a bit patronising? Eg, the introduction of “New Adult” as a category of books aimed at 18-25 year olds, the way cartoons and books written for the 9-12 age group were being marketed as for the 12-15 age group, referring to late teens as “children,” etc etc.

Then, in 2008, there was the big financial crash and suddenly my generation were (broadly) robbed of all the usual markers of adulthood and success, meaning that we got ‘stuck’ in the lifestyles and modes our late teens/early 20s. And suddenly, all the emphasis shifted from social and legal protections for late teens/ younger adults, to legal restrictions on their freedoms/rights, and strange philosophical protections on the emotional states.

So, OF COURSE a 23 year old can’t buy a beer without carrying an ID card, and a 17 year old can’t have a crush on a 16 year old, but also, because you’re *children* you don’t need to live like adults. So the UK government got to save money by saying “18 isn’t a proper adult,” then “20 isn’t a proper adult,” and “25 isn’t a proper adult” because it meant they could refuse to give single occupancy housing benefit rates to people of those ages (I think they’ve raised it over 30 now.) Or by refusing to clamp down on exploitative temporary/zero hours contracts - because they’re just “temp jobs for young people!”, or by raising the retirement age because “60 is far too young to retire. You’re not a real adult until 35.”

And it means the discursive environment is such that you can claim that a 21 year old trans person is too young to make their own medical decisions, or a 15 year old is too young to consent to the contraceptive pill.

Meanwhile, they are not offering additional *protections* to these newly infantilised adults. 18 year olds are still encouraged to saddle themselves with enormous educational debt, or allowed to have credit cards, or expected to pay rent, or no longer receive child benefits. You still have to *work*. In fact, in the States, they’re looking to removed child employment restrictions - but that’s fine, because 20 year olds are being protected from making their own medical decisions, and adults get to say which books their teen kids are reading in school, and kids aren’t allowed to change their name or what they wear without parental consent.

We can see what these people are doing to the rights of children - so why are we being so complacent in expanding the definition of ‘child’?

Regardless - 25 is VERY CLEARLY an adult. At 25 I was married, had two kids, an overdraft, rent to pay, and experience of living in the world for 6 years. I had more in common with someone of 40 than I did with someone of 15. Hell, at*20* I had more in common with someone of 40 than someone of 15. Any sexual or relationship decisions you make at 25 are your own to make.

Of course there are likely to be power imbalances in a 15 year age gap - which is why most 25 year olds don’t date 40somethings - but not actually necessarily. And yeah, a 40 year old who only dates 20somethings is a skeeze - just like a 30 year old who routinely ingratiates themselves with rich 80 year olds is a skeeze.

But if any young people are reading this (doubt it)… your rights are much, much more important than your protections.

Yes, young people should be protected, but if someone claims they’re protecting you while denying you access to personal autonomy, financial stability, intellectual curiosity, or sexual self-determination because you’re “too young” to need, or understand those things… be very suspicious of their motives.

And if you’re legally an adult, ask yourself why you don’t feel comfortable defining yourself in those terms.

This thread is from 2023, and now with the Cass report we have seen the real, tangible danger that comes from infantilizing adults in their 20s.

"men don't need to be afraid walking around at night"

Unless they're black

"men make more than women in jobs"

Black men make less than white women on average

"men don't get followed around by people who mean them harm"

Black men are heavily policed and regularly jumped and killed for just walking down the street

"no one tells a man what he can and cannot do with his own body"

Black men are repeatedly assaulted and have their hair forcibly shaved or cut for wearing their hair natural and in culturally important styles. Black men who choose body modifications like tattoos or piercings are branded as thugs. Black men who have children and black men who don't have children are both regarded as players, hounddogs, absent fathers, and baby daddies, as if the logical answer is that no one's first choice of partner and father of their children would ever be a black man.

"no one judges a man's worth based on his clothes"/"a man isn't ever in danger no matter what he wears"

Black men are required to look presentable and professional according to eurocentric standards, push themselves into clothes not made for their bodies, and be highly uncomfortable in their daily lives or else risk 'fitting the profile' or 'matching the description' and getting detained by police AT BEST for the crime of existing in public. Black men wearing comfortable clothes are seen as sloppy, thugs, gangsters, street rats, hood and ghetto.

"no man fears rape"

The rape and sexual assault of black men ties directly to black buck stereotypes and black fetishization to the point where liking a black person or having your dating pool be open to black people is treated like a sexuality much like being gay. People are both threatened by and aroused by our bodies and that leads them to perform extreme acts of violence on us, including rape, SA, coercion, trafficking, and more. Much like how "tranny" and "lesbian" is a porn category, so is Big Black Cock. Sometimes with us featured as the rapist. Sometimes with us featured as the victim. Almost never with us featured as intimate, passionate, loving, tender. Black men are either to be feared and reviled, or to be broken and forced to submit. Direct ties to slavery with white people still getting off to our suffering.

Just say you don't care as much about black people's suffering and go, jesus.

I have privilege because I sometimes pass as a man? Try walking in my shoes for a while. Turns out being a black man vs being a black woman isn't always so different.

I do think it's really interesting that I have a lot of black butches and trans mascs on this post verifying in their tags that yes they've lived both as 'black woman' and as 'black man' and 'black man' is really not the improvement it's advertised to be and in the mean time I have also a bunch of nonblack people and especially white europeans saying this post is stupid and no one who agrees knows anything about what it's like to be a black woman and I'm just wondering out of the two options who do you think is more knowledgeable about what black people go through? 🤔

My nephew was 6 years old when his mother sat him down and explained to him very plainly what happens to black boys and black men who are out at night.

Both of my parents worked in education. My white (passing) mother was a special ed teacher in a middle school. My father was her district's administrator. She was paid more than him. Significantly. They both have Master's Degrees.

My nephew was 13 when Trayvon Martin was killed. His mother asked him to please make sure he came home before the streetlights came on, and if he couldn't make it to not wear a hoodie and certainly don't wear it up. No matter how cold.

My nephew and my father were both pinned down and had their afros shaved/ruined by teachers, people they should have been able to trust. My nephew, my cousins, and more than one of my uncles have had the same happen to their locs. When my mother became pregnant very early in my parents' marriage, no one believed that she actually *wanted* to marry my dad but that she'd accidentally become pregnant and married him to not be ashamed. When my parents adopted my sister who is much darker skinned than my other sister or myself, the assumption was that she was a child from one of dad's previous marriages (he's only ever been married to one woman: my mom) and that my sister was only there because of a custody battle. The first time my dad came to pick me up from school, the office refused to let him in the building and called the police on him for trying to abduct me, because everyone knew my mom was white and the logical conclusion of a black man picking up his black/mixed kid from school was that he was a kidnapper and not that he was my fucking father.

My father arrived home late one night after flying in from Japan and was understandably in comfortable clothes after being exclusively in suits in Japan in the middle of summer for 6 months. Our neighbor saw him pull into the driveway, let himself in the back door... and called the police saying a black man in a hoodie was breaking into our house. We'd lived there at that point for more than a decade. My nephew and I have been followed around in stores for wearing beaters and basketball shorts in the middle of summer. My cousin was harassed by cops while sitting at the bus stop because he had his hood up and was listening to music on his ipod. My uncle was cornered by airport security and ended up missing his flight because someone gave a 'tip' that he 'looked suspicious' in his jeans and a t-shirt.

Every single one of my older black relatives, male and female, have been raped. Every single one. Some of the younger ones too.

This is not a 'what if' post. This is not a 'higher discussion of systemic violence' post. This is a 'stop erasing the experiences of black men because you think there is no way on earth a black man can suffer outside of [just racism]' post.

two years ago I posted this and two years later this still rings true, but I want to draw attention to something:

This is the post that netted me my "reputation" for saying that black women have it better than black men or that black women caused these problems.

This post was made in specifically because of radfem talking points, in direct response to a radfem post I saw and was mad about. Two years later I am seeing white radfems say the same about F1nn5ter. My response is still the same. A: trans women aren't men, B: that's not even true of cis men because marginalized cis men experience all of these things on a regular basis.

No where in this post does this blame black women for anything or say that black women don't experience this- in fact I specifically mention black butches in multiple reblogs and in other posts discussing this exact topic. Black women are frequently forcibly degendered and masculinized, and God forbid a black woman actually be GNC and masculine or transgender because then her risk of violence to be enacted upon her is at an absurd height.

This is a critique of white, radical feminism and how it actively perpetuates racism. Don't get it twisted.

marie howe, in an interview with krista tippett of on being

from marie howe’s 2017 collection of poetry, magdalene

(x)

I love how the tornado doesn't look malicious. She's just dancing along, doing her thing, and it's a pity you're so very ant-sized below.

after finding out a lot of friends haven't seen movies I consider formative to childhood (I grew up in South America, so they definitely had international reach!) I'm curious to know just how many haven't seen some of these... uh, let's call them children's classics.

Due to the list of potentials being massive, I'll restrict this to the 1980s, and not include Disney animated movies i can't promise there won't be further polls

(feel free to sound off in tags the ones you haven't seen, if it's more than one!)

No Ghostbusters, no NIMH.