#we also talked a lot about my transness and how it's connected to my art but also about my art on its own

[whileiamdying]

Arca and Marina Abramović on Divas, Death, and Body Drama

ARCA: Yes. I’m a little afraid of it. Have you ever felt that there’s so much synchronicity that it can feel like paranoia or delusion? Sometimes there is so much meaning and symbolism moving through me that I start to forget where I end and where the world begins. When I think about synchronicity, I worry that maybe one’s agency is not driving things. What do you think about free will? ABRAMOVIĆ: I’m not crazy about it. We’re connected with the trees and the birds and the rocks and the cosmos and the stars and the black holes and the universe and everything. We are little dots in this big puzzle. When I was a kid, I always imagined that humanity was in the heel of an old, fat lady and that she was just kicking us around. ARCA: The one place I would argue that free will might exist is with ego. There’s an idea from Jungian analysis where you imagine that ego is like a sphincter. Waste moves through it, but it’s able to produce a lot of pleasure, too. If you give the ego too much power, then you’re a prisoner of it, but if you give the ego too little space, you also become a prisoner of it. ABRAMOVIĆ: Our problem as human beings is that we don’t live in our bodies enough. We live in our intellect, and intellect has fucked us up in so many ways. The body has ancient wisdom. It knows everything. It’s the most extraordinary machine or computer that we have. Think about our cells and our atoms. It’s like a microcosmos. The body can heal himself. The body can do anything. But the mind overthinks, and it fucks up every time. ARCA: If the mind is responsible for something as amazing as having the idea to come up with a performance and then doing the performance, that’s cosmic, too. ABRAMOVIĆ: So, what do you think about sex? ARCA: When I think about sex, the first word I want to say is “libido,” because we tend to think of libido as erotic energy, but really, it’s a life force. Imagine how it moves our bodies to touch and collide with each other and mate and breed and love and fear. Art comes from it, too. Our sex drive and creativity are birthed from it. ABRAMOVIĆ: I agree. There’s only two times in life that the brain stops thinking: when we sneeze and when we orgasm. That’s it. Let’s talk about transitioning. ARCA: I was trying so hard not to do it, but the image that finally reached me was of the body that I want to leave behind when I die. I support body modification in all its forms, and I like to think of transness not as a pathology, or transitioning as a response to a symptom, but rather the manifestation of an expression. It’s not about trying to fix a glitch. It’s about an expression that comes from within that you can’t shake and you don’t know why and the curiosity doesn’t disappear and it makes you unhappy not to listen to that. ABRAMOVIĆ: This is listening to your body more than listening to your brain, because what the body needs is transformation. That’s what it’s telling you. ARCA: You know what I see it as? It’s a static that was inside me that others didn’t realize was there. And what I did was I moved it outside. So now it can cause friction between my environment and my identity, but it feels less noisy that way than to keep it in. ABRAMOVIĆ: What do you think about dying? ARCA: I believe in death positivity. The more we face our fear of death, the less of a grip it has over our actions. ABRAMOVIĆ: I think I should adopt you.

#interview magazine #marina abramović #arca

[yououghtaknow]

NEW CLIP: “Leave Yourself Behind”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32041894/chapters/79438735

#skam brighton #no thoughts head empty just vibes #also update on how my interview went yesterday!!!! #it went really well!!!! i had a lot of fun talking to everyone there and i am happy with how i did :) #i am very exhausted now however. so so tired. #i did so much social interaction. i did an interview for a documentary that was being filmed there #and talked about being trans and how much i love making trans art about trans joy <3 #also i accidentally infodumped about my romeo and juliet musical there #about generational trauma and growing up queer in a warzone where neither side wants you alive you know? #and about physical divides cause emotional divides and how i use punk and folk music to show the rage of the youth #i said all of this to a room of like 15 people. i am fucking crazy but at the end of the day i am free #also a professor at the best university in the country casually mentioned he read some of skambr and it blew my mind #he brought up the al and monica father to son scene!!!!! and he liked it!!!!! #like it's just. it's so weird. like i started writing this show when i was 14 and it was brought up BY SOMEONE ELSE #who i really admire at my first job/internship interview. #we also talked a lot about my transness and how it's connected to my art but also about my art on its own #which was really nice :) i love being recognised as a trans artist but also just an artist who is trans #because i get treated with the same respect as the cis artists there but i also get to talk about being myself without being treated badly #also i introduced myself with he/they pronouns and never got misgendered <3 it was so lovely #genuinely it was just such a fun experience. i love talking to people!!!! i love having fun!!!!! #anyways enjoy the clip besties and have a good day

[technooccult]

Womxn Mho Make Spiritual Machines--Jess Rowland

For my dissertation, I’m interviewing womxn in the performance art and music worlds who make spiritual machines, whatever that means to them.

1)Tell me how your performances tie into causes and ideas that are important to you personally? What are those ideas and causes?

I started out in a San Francisco scene that was anti-capitalist and anti-consumer. This experience deepened a line of thought I was already committed to - and I probably, on some subconscious level, was drawn to the community I found in the Bay Area. This was in the 90s, fyi, and since then a lot has changed. Some of the folks are still there, but most have moved on. A lot of my performance work is tied to an exploration of consumerism - I never really got into the more overtly political anti-capitalist thing. I grew up in a suburban world where consumerism was everything. It felt like to me a substitute for substance and a substitute for love. The idea that Ronald McDonald would stand in for your father, and that the bliss-point of snack food would make up for real meaning in one's life. I told people that corporations hated humanity. Most people disagree, but I still think it is largely true if you look at what consumerism has done to the planet. It's a lot of what Kurt Vonegut was talking about - How do you explain what people do to the planet and each other? The only answer he could make sense of was that people actually hated being alive and wanted it to stop. I saw my thinking as a continuation of that line of thinking. He was mostly talking about nuclear weapons, but I saw it more as the effect of consumerism and corporate American-style capitalism.

So, when I perform the eating of a bag of snack food, I'm acting out that process of how we take in consumerism as a substitute for nourishment and love, and that includes self-love. when I do the googlespreadsheet sonification, I'm talking about work, as in 9-to-5, and its emptiness. Sofy, you probably don't know this work, but I used to do a lot of video/music improv like "McDonaldland is Changing" and "John Ashcroft vs. the Space Librarians" and "The Barbie Explosion". This was my thinking mostly as I started out in performance, and I still explore that theme, though it has changed over time.

"McDonaldland is Changing" and "John Ashcroft vs. the Space Librarians" and

What has changed in the idea of the work is then - how does consumerism and work and consumer technology affect our body. Especially the body that wants to be expressed, for me that is Woman-ness and Woman power. When i think about how these forces of capital and consumption act on myself, I see the way the systems that are in place act against: transness, queerness, and the female body. Much of my adult life has been committed to expressing the feminine in myself. This is fundamentally a feminist, or trans-feminist perspective on consumerism. And, since consumerism acts - in our society - on the deepest levels of our being - how negative perceptions of the self work for capital and how love, if it is possible, can counter that. I hope when I perform ,there is a little bit of that love that can reach the audience, even in the darkest, most excorcism kinds of performance. Maybe there is a purging, the way to remove things from the deep insides.

These days, consumerism largely acts through technologies, cell phones, computers, etc. When I perform the laptop destruction or cellphone thing, it's an attempt at purging as a feminist action.

2)What are your thoughts on queer and feminist visibility? How do you express it in your work?

i think I might have just answered part of this question. Visibility = good! When i perform it is important that I am seen, that is part of the process of a ritual of purging. But more generally, I feel that trans visibility and trans-feminine energy needs to be out and about.

3)Can you describe your spirituality (or thoughts you have on spirituality) and how you express it/perform it in your work?

This is a big one Sofy! Growing up, i considered myself a Taoist, and largely I still do - at least as a spiritual practice. As a kid, i had an experience with music that was a sort of spiritual awakening, and when I started reading about Taoism, I realized it coincided with the kind of experience I had. I sometimes think of this as a sort of "musical taoism". The basic idea, if it is possible to express, is that the universe is energy which flows through everything and is, in fact, everything. Creativity allows us to tap into this energy, the way a radio can tune into a radio station. The truer you are to the moment you are in, the less the ego demands to assert itself, the less you fight against the natural power of that energy, the more that energy can work in a positive way in your life, but most import for us artists - the more you are in touch with the source of creation. and for me, this expresses itself mostly in music. This is where my commitment to improvised music started. In San Francisco, I had a band called Spork, which was committed to this idea. It was (at least at first) a 100% improvised ensemble. We never played the same music twice, because no two moments are the same. when we were in touch with the power of that energy, we felt it and it shows in the music. I'm still committed to improvisation, and it acts in my performance as a force which can counter consumerism, conformity, and surface-awareness. The energy of the universe I consider primarily a feminine force, and - as you know so well - we have our group dedicated to the Electromagnetic Goddess.

"The Barbie Explosion"https://www.discogs.com/Jess-Rowland-Scenes-From-The-Silent-Revolution/release/3879362

overall speaker stuffhttp://www.jessrowland.com/art/

music for earringshttp://www.jessrowland.com/music-for-earrings/ laptop destructohttps://vimeo.com/154124264

piano rollhttps://vimeo.com/249305849

Electromagnetism and the spirituality of electromagnetism is huge in my practice. In addition to the Bunker, my art practice focuses a lot on homemade paper speakers and other unexpected sound-making objects using embedded circuitry, all relying on electromagnetism. These are technological objects. But they stand against consumer technology. It is a feminist statement against the system of technology which corporations try to force us into. this work is also essential an expression of my particular journey as a trans person: it explores voice as hidden impulse, a speaker where no speaker is allowed, sound made manifest. Quite often my works require interactivity to activate sound, the active search for the truth of bodies that are otherwise hidden, bodies inhabited by sound. A good example of how this feminist critic of music technology plays out, is my audio jewelry and music for body space. a vast majority of music technology has a masculinist-aesthetic, a robocop or terminator kind of feel to it. With the audio jewelry I wanted to challenge that aesthetic explicitly. I created some music for the audio jewelry, a four channel spatialized piece (2 earrings, a necklace, and a bracelet). In making the music, I played off the idea of an "etheric body", the aura that supposedly surrounds the body. The music is meant to generate a sound-field to protect the feminine body, or as I sometimes call it "sound perfume".

My circuit prints are often stand-ins for the body, and the electromagnetism contained therein is a stand-in (or might literally be!) spirit. The foil surfaces are meant to act like the metallic gold leafs and precious stone inks of Illuminated Manuscripts, as a connection point to deeper truths.

I'm currently reading "The Mysticism of Sound and Music" by Hazrat Inayat Khan,a Sufi musician and mystic, which expresses these ideas - and more! - about sound as the source of all power and the center of the body in ways better than I could. It is interesting to see so many of the thoughts I've had about sound as a spiritual power from a taoist perspective, be matched from the perspective of Sufism, a different (though slightly connected) spiritual tradition than Taoism.

"The Mysticism of Sound and Music" by Hazrat Inayat Khan https://www.shambhala.com/the-mysticism-of-sound-and-music-1071.html

Snaxxx https://vimeo.com/319382872

4)Tell me about your electronic techniques, hardware or software configurations or objects you have made to create your unique sound. Basically I am curious about the tools of your trade as, on the technical side this is a very NIME-like round up of performers. You can speak about a particular piece or your practice at large.

These days, I use Max a lot. Though I use it in a specific way - as a controller of sound, but not as a content-creating device. Snaxxx, for example, uses Max as a signal threshold detector for a contact mic on the snack bag. The detector then triggers pre-recorded sounds to play. The sounds themselves were recorded from a performance of feedback elements. Outside of Max, almost all my tools are analog, the input sound is analog and the output is often played through analog materials. In this way, I think of my technology practice quite often as "postdigital". The paper speakers are probably the best representation of my kind of postdigital aesthetic. I use foils and magnets to create embedded circuitry, and some of these objects are intended for performance, at least of a sort. I have performed on the piano roll before, which uses circuit-completion with a foil backing on the piano roll, connected to a computer running Max. Again, using signal threshold, the circuit completion triggers pre-recorded sounds. I still rely on old-fashioned pedals, which often I find more effective and useful than staring at a Max patch for hours on end. Laptop Destruction uses contact mics hidden in the laptop to be sent through loop pedal, delay, reverb, and ring modulator. The cell phone piece uses induction - like our Bunker performance - and also contact mics on the cellphone. So: lots of contact mics, induction mics, analog signal generation and completion, often connected to Max.

5)Please provide me with a short bio

Jess Rowland is a sound artist, musician, and composer, and a 2018-20 Princeton Arts Fellow. Much of her work explores the relationship between technologies and popular culture, continually aiming to reconcile the world of art and the world of science. At UC Berkeley, she developed techniques for embedded sound and flexible speaker arrays. Her research includes music perception, auditory neurosciences, and music technologies. In addition to an active art practice, she has taught Sound Art at The School of Visual Arts in New York and continues to present her work internationally. Recent installations and performances include the New York Electronic Arts Festival, Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, Berkeley Art Museum, and Spectrum NYC.

#jess rowland #handmade musical instruments #art #interviews #sofy yuditskaya #technoshamanism #feminism #punk

[campgender]

hey, would you mind talking about your most recent poem? I really resonated with the vibes it was giving off, but I don’t really understand the specifics. obviously it’s okay if it’s personal and you don’t want to explain, but I thought i’d just ask.

oh my god i would Love To, i appreciate any reason to ramble about my writing lol. & thank you for asking so kindly! honestly i’m gonna use this opportunity for all it’s worth and take it line by line because i’m excited ☺️ the poem is here (link) for anyone who’s curious

“closer to 22 than anything else, i’m still thinking about that professor / who said she wished everyone could transition. ma’am, i don’t see you / picking up a needle. stop making my body nothing more than a metaphor.” so the whole piece is about HRT and cis people’s various expectations about and reactions to it, & the disconnect between the narratives they try to force on my transition and my own narrative/concept of it.

i took a women’s and gender studies class a little over two years ago, long before i started HRT, and there was a lot of transphobia in it, made even worse by how i wasn’t braced for it the way i am in engineering classes. my prof was kinda super dehumanizing in the way she talked about medical transition, but under a progressive veneer, like “oh i wish everyone could have that process of introspection and changing, and knowing what it’s like to live as both genders,” which, yikes. i’m like, that’s rich when you’re saying that but i’m the one actually doing it, paying & bleeding for it, yk?

and like, this is my body. it doesn’t exist to teach people some deep truth about themselves or be cis women’s savior in destroying the gender binary. i don’t exist to represent someone else’s experiences; i exist, full stop.

“a cis friend calls me after the diagnosis & i say i know it isn’t the same, / but he doesn’t let me put that kind of distance between our bodies.” a friend was recently diagnosed with testicular cancer and underwent procedures that mean he’ll be on testosterone injections for the rest of his life. because his circumstances aren’t very common, he asked if he could talk to me about my experience with hormones, & i was really surprised when he didn’t treat our experiences as totally disparate. like yeah, they’re definitely different, but it meant a lot that he wasn’t uncomfortable comparing himself to a trans person—he handled it really respectfully, treated HRT like it was normal, not some strange and otherworldly process the way my prof did.

“(neither would the boy, if he was here.)” i’ve gotta slip a little t4t content in lol so here’s a reference to the (trans) guy i like

“so here it goes: / yeah, i still hesitate, but i don’t flinch. print that out & tape it / to her office door. burn that goddamn book” the hesitate but don’t flinch part is directly about giving myself injections, but it’s also about my increased willingness to point out and dismantle transphobic rhetoric in the past couple years. doing painful things anyway even though they’re difficult, and being used to the pain of it, coping with it.

the book referenced is a memoir we read in that prof’s class which included a trans guy being misgendered, outed for shock value, and having his abusive behavior connected to his transness. his transition was a source of fetishizing curiosity and fascination for the author, and i’m still disgusted by it.

“& say into the phone / yes. just to be safe.” directly about when the cis guy friend asked if i aspirate when doing injections, but safety is something i’ve been thinking about a lot lately. it’s complicated; being visibly trans makes me less safe, but my mental health improved so much after starting HRT, which is its own safety. i want so badly just to be safe, but that often isn’t an option, or it’s not worth the consequences.

“i’ve touched more alcohol swabs in the past 11 months / than ever before—that’s the kind of thing i think about, not whatever kind of / evolution you’re expecting. you & i, with all undue respect, / are the same fucking species,” going back to the way a lot of cis people treat medical transition as something Serious and Deep and Heavy that you have to have equally serious, deep, heavy thoughts about or make serious, deep, heavy art about. & as i allude to earlier, there are certainly serious aspects, and every trans person feels differently about it, but overall for me it’s just a thing that’s happening to my body. it’s so normal.

& then i couldn’t resist a play on words with evolution to reiterate that medical transition doesn’t separate me from cis people in general & that professor in particular the way they act like it does. we’re more similar than they think, and that scares them.

“& when i say yes to my mentor’s for the rest of / your life? she winces, but i beam.” the third and final cis person who had a totally different attitude about HRT than i did: my mentor, who i love dearly & who was so happy for me when i told her i was starting testosterone, and who was (understandably, imo) upset that i’d have to inject myself once a week for the rest of my life. but as much as i get why she reacted that way, it’s not how i feel about it—the thought of injecting myself for the rest of my life is exciting, not dismaying, because it means i’ll be able to exist in & with my body the way i want to.

#thank you again so much for this ask! i’m really glad the poem resonated with you in whatever way it did 💓 #mac writes #asks #transition #needles tw #cancer tw #ask to tag

[demyrie]

Wow I totally forgot to cry here but I love love love how you portrayed trans Shinsou in BnB?? Like maybe it's cause it's from Aizawa's POV or Izuku's instead of Shinsou's but it's just. I love it. It's not the only thing in his arc, it's not his only (very valid) concern. It's not over-mentioned and there's a good balance of acceptance and surprise from those who know like- God idk I just love that there's unrelenting support for him that isn't in his face or in the readers', it's so genuine

Oh god thank you so much. Really. It means the goddamn world to me, OH GODDDDD, because the instant that I realized it was perfect, that it was true for my Shinsou and how, I shied away from it for weeks because I was afraid i would mess it up. I didn’t even tell Rae that he was trans???? Like not until right before that chapter dropped??

So .. just … thank you. Everyone around him just loves him very much and will do their utmost to understand and support him. There will be misunderstandings and weirdness, but everyone is FOR him and whatever he decides, and not ABOUT him, and that makes all the difference in the world, and I really hope I communicated it in a way that wasn’t a Very Special Episode but also wove it into his identity and struggle in a real way that makes sense narratively.

Reflection on Trans/queer fics and headcanons and storytelling under the cut!

So here’s the thing that’s cool about being in fandom for many years and being able to see how queer and revolutionary existence grows and finds free expression within these communities and how it’s often our first time to see or just IMAGINE someone who looks like us and is like us in our popular media. It’s so encouraging and transformative to see trans characters and trans headcanons reaching the same level of notoriety or prevalence/relentlessness/joyful enthusiasm as cis gay/queer headcanons back in like the early 00′s when we (fandom) decided we could just shout “THEY’RE GAY GET OVER IT” with no further explanation and i still support that right with every part of me.

BECAUSE! Everyone could and can be gay or trans for no fucking reason, because we said so, because we need it. But Rae and i love to talk, and it’s brought up an interesting split in priority in the stories we are telling: the deep desire for normalization in “they’re just trans (stop making a big deal out of it)” vs the desire for understanding and identification and exploration in “They are TRANS!!!! OK!!!!!! >:O”. 

It’s the difference, per se, between having a Trans Hero and a hero that is also trans, which mainly depends on how the thematics of identity, belonging and the struggle reflect on and connect with the main plot. Trans or cis, most all of our queer media explores Otherness and separation because … we weren’t like other kids. We just weren’t, and it hurt, and we continue to hurt because there aren’t any people like us on screen that don’t end up dead or shamed or a lie. We are caught in the valley between people rolling their eyes that we dare claim different pronouns and be “so extra, it’s 2018 get over yourself” and being faced with massive violence and gender policing and murder for existing altogether.

So the question for narratives often is this: do we want to be like everyone else but also trans? or do we want to be trans heroes? And I think the answer is, we need both kinds of stories in our world.

We need stories that have a trans character who is just hanging out. Transness is not the largest part of their life, but neither is it a footnote. it’s like … veganism maybe. I mean, yer gonna know, it’s a part of them, but what you decide to do with that info is your own decision and may only come into play if you (following the metaphor) take that person out to eat lol lol. It carries the statement “hey im a fucking person outside of my XYZ” and … i mean hey thats fucking important and clearly some people are still in the dark about this ok.

But we also need stories with unapologetically Trans heroes – heroes whose story is one of Becoming, who struggle, and fight with themselves and others to be the person they want to be, the person THEY ARE, and the narrative reflects that and draws the ignorant in while venerating and affirming the trans reader. This will lead us into the kind of empathy that demonstrates that not only are we people, we are extraordinary, and we have something to add to the world. 

We can be heroes not despite of our Otherness, but because of it, because we see things and have seen things no one else can see, and that’s immensely fucking important as well.

Identities fluctuate in and out of the spotlight of our lives. Not to say they’re in vogue one minute and gone the next, a fad, but that some days you are a BALL of trans or queer or gay anger and you cannot IMAGINE how you are supposed to fit into this hateful ignorant and dangerous world, and your body is at its max and just can’t hold anymore pain or disappointment. Other days, it’s alright, and your body is behaving itself, and you’re more concerned with your status as Caffeinated person, or Art person, or Gonna Get a Promotion person who is also trans.

Anyway, all this to say … y’all are heroes. Be yourself. write what you want to write about people like you because every viewpoint matters and I honor your story.

My Shinsou is trans and a queer disaster (he has a crush on the entirety of 1-A) and Aizawa is very fucking proud of him. So here’s a snippet in the hypothetical Eri arc with a freshly-on-T Shinsou and his dadzawa having a conversation about what it means to be “manly” RE: the fact that Aizawa’s sweet hero husband is currently cooking pancakes with Eri and Shinsou wants to join in but is AFEARED of gender roles:

“Getting over yourself is important,”he admitted, when he’d thought for a bit. “Life is short. Do whatinterests you. You’re not going to gain anything by playing toothers’ expectations. You want to learn how to cook, learn how.”

Shinsou’s expression was serious as hetook in that bit of wisdom. Looking him over, Aizawa reached out andthumbed the kid’s head to the side, then curtly flicked his nose.Shinsou grunted.

“Also, shave.”

“Says you?” he snorted, grinningonce more. Aizawa frowned.

“It’s inappropriate for a Hero Coursestudent to be scruffy,” he stated. “You have reason to be proud,but there’s decorum to consider.”

(He’s still a hardass tho. A very proud hardass! He loves his scruffy son!!!! TAKING AFTER HIS DAD!!!! AAAAAAA)

thank you for the beautiful message anon!!! You are great!! and I’m glad it resonated with you!! I put a lot of heart into it and I’m glad you felt it.

#trans #bandages and bravado #queer #trans shinsou #love a boy #demyrie writes #trans representation #i think about stories a lot #we need trans heroes #we need queer heroes #love #identity #you are enough #demyrie dissertates #Anonymous #shinsou hitoshi

[karanan]

Eleven Questions Meme

I was tagged by @the-empires-weapon, thank you!

Favorite band? Sleeping At Last. It’s like streaming music straight from my soul

Would you rather live by the beach, or by the mountains? BEACH. I grew up in a coastal town and have always lived close to the sea (and rivers). I feel quite lost if I don’t live by the coast or some other body of water

Have you attended university, and if so, what did you study? If you didn’t, what’s your area of expertise, or what would you have studied if you went to a school of higher learning? I attended uni in Sweden where I studied video game development - 2D graphics. It was pretty awesome but I dropped out halfway through because the programme was just too nonsensically academic whereas I wanted to learn more practical skills. Also for personal reasons

What character has influenced you the most in life? I don’t know if I can answer this with a singular character because there are many that have probably had a pretty profound effect on me. For starters, Link from the Legend of Zelda, who was like the first character I as a child identified a whole lot with. Gave a quiet kid a bit of extra courage. Mass Effect’s Commander Shepard was really important to me during my art school years, she was a symbol of like everything awesome in humanity that I aspired to. And of course, my own Roscoe, he’s been incredibly important to me for these past 6 years. I’ve learned a lot about myself through him. I’m not joking when I say that I think he’s helped me explore and find my own queerness and I love that. There are others, I tend to pick up stuff from characters all over the place, like Luke Skywalker and Fox Mulder and many others, but those are the ones that stick out to me right now.

What kind of art do you like seeing from others? What’s your favorite style, of sorts? I like seeing a whole variety of styles! But of course I’m a subjective little goblin with my own goblin hoard of favourite art. I tend to prefer (and strive toward) a somewhat realistic painterly style where the painting/drawing hasn’t been overworked and you can still see elements from the painting/drawing process, like the brushstrokes. Some of my art heroes are Alphonse Mucha, Anna Dittmann, and Ali Franco (nsfw)

What do you prefer: Youtube, Netflix, or cable? All 3 bring something different to the table. I don’t go to Youtube for films or shows, just as I don’t go to Netflix for independent content creators. I only ever watch cable if I’m at my grandparents’ place, but it’s kind of nice to not have to pick something, you just turn the TV on and get your eyeballs blasted with whatever happens to be on. If I had to pick, I’d probably go with Youtube because that might be the only place where the contents of all 3 intersect

What kind of sensations belong with sex? (I’m curious because I’ve *always* had the idea that pain is just a part of sex, regardless of virginity, and apparently that is not the case??) Depends on what you’re looking for. My automatic response would be pleasure. Some people might enjoy more of an edge with that, like pain, but only if it’s deliberate.

To my trans friends: how and when did you learn that you were trans? It was more of a drawn out realisation through experimentation than any one exact moment for me. At some point it was just the only way forward and it suddenly seemed incredibly obvious, looking back at how I related to gender all my life in the past. The seeds of gender questioning have been there for an indeterminate amount of time, but I consciously thought of it maybe 5-6 years ago, and then I seriously started considering transness about 3 years ago.

What is the earliest meme you can remember from your first days on the internet? Oh shit. Back when the first “memes” were forming, they weren’t even called memes. The first actual meme I remember (as in when people called them memes) were the fucking rage comics. But like before that? Ancient flash animations and the like. Also when I was in 4th or 5th grade, there was a Swedish website that had sound clips parodying a stereotypical Finnish man complete with the accent and swearing and everything, which was peak humour for a bunch of 10-11 year olds. The teachers were of course not pleased.

What’s one weird thing that fascinates you? Not sure how we define weird in this case. I mean, space is weird as hell and it sure fascinates me to no end. But as an interest, it’s not that weird. I guess getting obsessed with little seemingly inconsequential details can seem weird, like the iridescence of magpie feathers, or the etymology behind some of the words in my dialect, or aurora borealis, or--

Do you believe in the supernatural. If you do, what kind of things do you believe in? If not, what’s the reason? I believe that the supernatural is really just the regular natural that we don’t understand or can’t explain yet. I’m fascinated by--ayyy there’s one--the paranormal, I’ve tried hunting for ghosts and I always scan the sky for UFOs but I haven’t seen shit. Which is disappointing. Because a lot of people claim they’ve seen things and I believe that they believe what they saw (exception for people who make it up for shits and giggles)--however they might not have seen what they think they’ve seen, or what they have seen must be perfectly explainable by science. I grew up in a “haunted” house that several people with no connection to each other would claim they saw the same thing all the time in--I never saw anything weird apart from mirrors breaking or stuff flying/falling over but it was an old house, could’ve been anything. But my point is, I’ve heard some shit and I don’t think the people I’ve talked to are lying, I just think there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for it. And I’m of the mind that everything can be explained scientifically, that’s the only way the world makes sense to me. Maybe ghosts are echoes from a different dimension or a parallel universe? Quantum physics or some shit, I don’t know. I’d love to see something one day though. Basically; I want to believe. One day we’ll be able to explain all the weird shit throughout history, and laugh at how we didn’t understand.

Thank you for the interesting questions! Now for my 11 questions for you guys, I’m going to steal my own from when I did this meme years ago because I’m lazy:

1. Do you have any persons of note or otherwise interesting stuff in your family history? 2. You have been given a budget of several million dollars by your developer/company of choice to create something (film, TV show, theme park etc.) for your favourite franchise. What do you produce? 3. You’ve been offered a spot on a one-way trip to Mars, do you take it? 4. Sith or Jedi? 5. Which one of your own OCs is your favourite? 6. Congratulations your government has approved a citizen wage/basic income system and implemented it flawlessly. What do you do with your time now that you don’t have to work to survive? 7. Playing it dirty or by an honour code? 8. Do you have a certain type of character that is always your favourite? 9. Any guilty pleasures? 10. What’s your favourite word? 11. You now have to fight a superhero, which one do you pick?

11 tags: @starrypawz, @aspyforthethrone, @lhunuial, @tehjai, @darthvronton, @hoiist, @catpella, @s0tc, @cathuia, @lukeskywalkersbutt, lastly I’m tagging you back, @the-empires-weapon As always, feel free to ignore

#meme thing #about me #long post