Coming out of my cage (the tomb)

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stop telling your teenage daughters who say they don't want kids that they'll change their mind

reblog the shit outta this

I haven't been a teenager in over a decade. Mind has yet to change on the subject.

So please, please stop telling girls (or really kids at all, but especially girls) that they will change their minds. Please don't tell them that meeting 'the right guy' will make them suddenly feel broody, that their potential future husband's desire to have children will make her reconsider and see things his way. For one, a couple should have had that conversation and decided if it was a deal breaker, LONG before they got hitched. For another, it's her body that gets to grow and birth another human being- her husband's desire to be a father doesn't supercede her autonomy.

Please, let girls make their own choices? Girls are forced to mature too fast as it is and are bombarded from all sides with SHOULD (you SHOULD be a size 2, you SHOULD wear this dress, you SHOULD have a boyfriend to be a normal teen, you SHOULD always smile), they don't need another judgement from someone who hasn't walked a mile in their particular shoes. Respect teenage girls and their ability to look at the world, themselves, their situation, and their future, and make an important choice.

*gets off soap box, slides it back under the sofa, lets out a sigh*

Thanks for attending my TED talk. G'night.

Also, normalize your children saying they want kids and then changing their mind about it.

I was raised Mormon, so I was told that I wanted kids. Not I said I wanted them, I was told from the time I was eight that I wanted them. For a long time, I believed that I did want them.

Then my sister started having kids.

That was when I realized that, no, actually, I did not want them. I had been told for over twenty years of my life that I wanted kids. I saw my sister go through pregnancy and birth and realized that nope, I loved my niblings, but being a mom wasn't for me.

And that is totally valid!

One of the things I was always told (if my desire for no kids was taken seriously) was "But what if your husband wants children?"

At first I said 'If he wants kids that badly he sure as hell wouldn't be marrying ME' but one day I blurted out 'then he can carry them himself' and my dad choked on his beer.

There is never a good reason to tell a young person (or anyone) "You'll change your mind."

Either they will or they won't. Your saying it won't make it so.

There are cases where someone says "I don't want to have kids" and then, at some later point in their life, decides, "Actually, you know what? Changed my mind. Having a kid around would be nice."

There are cases where someone says "I don't want to have kids" and they go to their grave never wavering in that decision.

There are cases where someone says "I do want to have kids," and then later decides "Actually? No thanks."

And what all these cases have in common is that they're that person's decision, not yours, and your input is not needed.

I've known I didn't want kids since I was six. Several decades later, I haven't changed my mind. At this point, I kiiiiiinda doubt I ever will.

I understand skepticism when somebody says at the age of 6 that they don't want kids. I even understand a certain amount of skepticism when teenagers say it, or people in the early twenties.

What I don't understand is letting that skepticism make you into an asshole. Be silently skeptical all you want, maybe you'll wind up being proven right, but don't fucking make that the other person's problem. Leave it alone.

No person who says that they don't want kids has ever had their mind changed by another person self-righteously proclaiming that they're just being silly and don't actually know how they feel, or by constant needling, or by histrionics over not being "given" grandbabies.

Also, we shouldn't be fucking trying to change people's minds in the first place! Leave people alone!

A meeting of dragons.

i'm begging tumblr users who couldn't name an evil woman to read the locked tomb because in just a short list of the insane amount of characters in these books there is (out of context spoilers ahead)

You show up for your first day at Copyright-Free Magic School. As you're going through orientation, you're informed that all new students get a school-assigned familiar that they are responsible for housing and maintaining. The staff member assures you that your assigned familiar is appropriately chosen and reflects you in some way.

Spin this to find out yours. (Remember, you are responsible for maintaining this familiar in your dorm room.)

da2 isn't the best dragon age game *because* it's openly a tragedy, but being a tragedy forces a level of narrative coherence that the other games in the series don't have, and *that's* what makes it a better game.

okay, so. dragon age 2 runs on nested foreshadowing and a limited set of themes that almost every character and plot beat fall into: love is not enough, wealth is not enough, power is not enough, good intent is not enough. the problems you run into are structural, rather than individual, and your ability to resolve them as one person is strictly limited. the arishok is a central figure for this, because he prefigures every other tragedy and makes the game's thesis statement as clear as possible. he doesn't want to be in kirkwall, but he is compelled to remain until he gets back what was stolen. he doesn't want to lead a coup attempt, but he is compelled by qunari codes of justice to act. he does not want to die and fail his duty, but but he is compelled to by the other two impossible demands. every tragedy in kirkwall is the result of too many people with wildly different definitions of justice crammed into one place specifically designed to maximize human misery and suffering, and so you get a wonderfully nested narrative onion where each quest reinforces that idea, where there are no good options, just positions you can take — even the affinity system plays into that, where constantly gassing up your friends or constantly pushing them to change are equally correct ways to go, but ones that won't ultimately make a huge difference in their lives or characters, because no matter how much they like you, they're not under your control.

this coherence is even justified by the framing device. of *course* the moral of the game is "insisting on a dogmatic, narrow idea of justice destroys individuals and societies," it's a yarn being spun by varric the con artist to a chantry cop!

neither origins or inquisition play with that sort of narrative complexity. origins is a jaundiced hero's quest, certainly, but it's still basically a hero's quest; inquisition has a number of characters who question what you're doing and why, but the multitude of voices pulls the game in too many potential directions. DA2 was so constrained in its production that it pulled on decidedly ancient theatrical traditions, and it worked so, so well

if you spend your life bitching and complaining about the fact people are 'expected' to engage in the dreaded pointless banal '''small talk''' instead of learning to trade pleasantries with the people around you, you will never know the true and heady joy of doing a dumb bit with a complete stranger and as a result your soul will remain small

#my favorite bit is when i wear my wrist braces in public and someone asks if I got hurt#and I tell them something patently insane #'I got into a Kung Fu Battle with the local canada geese' insane #and realizing that We Are Playing A Game #they will Yes And me #'Oh yeah they've been taking lessons from the squirrels' they nod #and within two minutes the lady cutting my fabric at the quilt store and I have a whole bit about the urban animals all being in rival dojo #The grandma behind me chimes in that the fat raccoons under her porch must be doing Sumo

going insane thinking about the harrow and palamedes friendship. harrow, who has never met another necromancer her age forming a bizarro 3D chess rivalry while pal worries about her safety at every possible turn. harrow, who is up to her eyebrows in paranoia and secrecy, trusting the sixth house with gideon unconscious and hurt, letting them into the ninth house quarters unsupervised. if “i cannot conceive of a universe without you in it” is goth for i love you, “death first to vultures and scavengers” has got to be goth for i love you (platonic). pal’s first reaction when harrow comes into his bubble in the river is to scoop her up in a hug, and at this point she doesn’t remember anything about him because cutting out all her memories of gideon is impossible without cutting out memories of the sixth, but she still makes him a skelehand to inhabit anyway. when harrow’s memories are finally whole, she tells dulcinea she couldn’t face pal knowing that his pen pal girlfriend died on her account, but the next time she “faces” him, palamades’s soul is in someone else’s body and harrow’s body is full of nona’s soul. he spends six months protecting and caring for harrow’s body (and nona obv), believing in the possibility of bringing her back to it the same way cam believed in him. “god, do you know i miss harrow terribly.” and by the time harrow comes back to her body at the very end of ntn, pal is gone forever, fully pauled. the last time harrow and palamades see each other as their complete selves is in canaan house, alive and unlyctored. two of the smartest and loneliest people in the solar system meet each other in the worst of circumstances and spend the rest of the story dancing around each other as fragments of themselves, trying to care about each other in the interim but never fully meeting like they did the first time. a friendship made almost entirely of missing the other person. “do you know i miss harrow terribly.” god. i need to lie down

If your democrat friends start muttering about stolen election conspiracy theories, the time to have a sit down with them and express your concerns is NOW, while you still have a chance to reach them, not 6 months from now when they're fully conspiracy-pilled.

Here's some of the talking points and why they're bullshit:

But just as importantly as the facts: sit down with your friend and talk about the anxiety that's behind their conspiracy leanings. Acknowledge their pain and fear. Help them find ways to feel less powerless and regain their sense of agency. Take them to a mutual aid event, involve them in a fundraising event for a marginalized group, invite them to a local community effort. If they spend more time feeling connection and empowerment and less time doom scrolling online, they're far more likely to stay in reality.

Ten-in-bed

A bucket of snoots

a group of larval Gentle Aliens experience the joy and happiness of The Pile

a goblet of horses

rio being amused by agatha's shenannigans.

#i think it's important to note that Rio doesn't just love Agatha#she /likes/ her#she finds her funny#like sure she likes to watch Agatha kill witches#but she genuinely has a fondness for her stupid antics#her fuck-you attitude#her sense of drama#and Rio is being entirely genuine about this#there's no one to lie to#there's real affection here and it's incredibly heartbreaking

thanks for the perfect tags @ennn

“Oh, it all makes sense now brother. Is there anything so undoing as a daughter?”

SOMEONE FINALLY PUT IT INTO WORDS!!!

guYS THE FUCKING SIGNS

posts about the alt-right pipeline being compassionate towards young men while radical leftists shun and shame them are not fucking saying "the men are becoming violent because feminists are too mean!" and if that is your takeaway you need to get off tumblr until you've better honed your critical thinking skills.

those posts are talking about how effective the language and approach you take in your activism can be. this is literally cult deprogramming 101. if someone is being taken in by a violent or dangerous group, that violent or dangerous group is usually offering them compassion and solace while working hard to convince them everyone else in the world is their enemy. you are under no obligation to coddle or act compassionate toward these men and their violent ideologies, but if you have the means to try, it is something that you can do to make a tangible difference.

radicalized people are often only one loving friend or family member or external voice away from being de-radicalized. of course that is not always the case, but it very often is. a lot of y'all rightfully understand that you do not carry the burden of being that voice, but a lot of y'all also have a lot of internalized ideas about morals and punitive justice and have simply written off these people as deserving of only the worst and not worth saving.

ten years ago, my grandmother was a fox news watching republican who voted red in every election and very well could have fallen down the qanon rabbit hole if not for me and her daughter challenging her compassionately, walking her through hypotheticals that validated her feelings & proving why they were false, & being patient with her despite our extreme division in political ideology. it was frustrating fucking work! but i decided i wanted to do it, because i could see the horizon and i could see me making a difference!

"misogynists have been saying feminists are too mean for years, get new material" that is not the fucking POINT. the point is that you, feminist, can be the compassionate voice that guides your brother, your father, your cousin, your grandfather away from fucking becoming or staying a nazi. you can show them compassion and companionship. you can be the woman they think of when their alt-right bros try to convince them that women are the enemy. and you can choose to crystallize that image of yourself so wholly in their mind's eye as worth protecting that they may very well choose to reject those harmful ideas.

it's not saying you HAVE to do it! it's saying you CAN do it! don't you 'firebomb a walmart' people all love taking change into your own hands? where the fuck is that energy right now, huh?

i saw this right after and OP turned off reblogs but LITERALLY!!! LITERALLY.

i know the punitive justice obsessed "kill all abusers" ass catholics on this fucking website don't want to hear shit like this but love is literally the answer. fix your heart or die

How are disabled and interracial illegal???

Interracial marriage was outlawed for the longest time, and disabled people lose government benefits when they get married so they cannot have reassurance that they will continue to LIVE if they get married.

Story time: my mom is white, dad is black. They’ve been together twenty four years, married for twenty three. When my parents were dating they did it on the low TO KEEP MY DAD SAFE.

My mom’s parents said “We don’t care who you love.” At that point she’d only ever brought home white guys. She brought my dad home-her mother called her a nigger lover and damned the relationship as much as possible. Her father grew around his prejudices after I was born but never apologized, just wasn’t a blatant fuck.

The day she introduced my father to her family was the last time she spoke to her mother for over twenty years. When I was getting sick and she called and asked her mother and grandmother if anyone in the family had anything strange happen similar what I was going through they told her “it’s because you married a black man. You made your bed, you lie in it.”

Cops pulled them over all the time and asked my mom IF SHE WAS OKAY AND IF SHE NEEDED HELP BECAUSE MY FATHER-A BLACK MAN-WAS DRIVING A 100 POUND WHITE WOMAN AROUND. HE WAS HARRASSED AND THREATED WITH ARREST.

My father ended up getting into a fight in self defence because some entitled hick decided he didn’t like seeing a black man and white woman in the bar together. Thankfully other patrons helped my father but he still couldn’t go to the er for his injuries. My mom patched him up and they were terrified the cops would take him away.

THEIR BEST FRIEND GOT LICENSED TO MARRY THEM SO THEY COULD ACTUALLY TIE THE KNOT BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE WOULD AND CITED JIM CROW ERA LAW AS TO WHY.

When shopping with just me my father wouldn’t hold my hand if there was a group around. Why? I’m far lighter than him and people had stopped and asked him “whose child is that?” Or “little girl where’s your parents?” and were stunned when I grinned and pointed at my dad and proudly proclaimed “my daddy’s right here.” You know where else mixed kids couldn’t hold their parents hands? Apartheid South Africa. We live in fucking FLORIDA.

So yeah. Some history for you.

This post was made in October 2018. The above poster’s parents met in 1994. We were a generation removed from the Civil Rights movement and this was happening.

"We don't do/say that here" has been powerful for me.

It’s wild to me to see transvestigator conspiracy theories online that could be so easily explained by natural human variation. That woman has a deep voice? Yeah, sometimes they do. A woman has broad shoulders?? Maybe she plays rugby or hits the gym a fuckton. There’s a “bulge” in her tight pants?? Maybe her vulva is just fat. All the “markers” of trans woman that transvestigators use to harass any woman aren’t even things unique to trans women.

Transphobes talk about women like they’re Barbies. Have you forgotten the existence of cameltoe? Tiny boobs? Narrow hips? Broad shoulders? Why do you think choirs have altos and not just sopranos? What do you think female athletes look like? Do you think a woman that lifts weights and plays contact sports will look like a 90s supermodel? At what point in history did we collectively forget that human bodies have natural variability???