You know what bugs me about soulmate aus? So, I’m assuming that this whole “the first thing your soulmate says to you blahblahblah” is a worldwide thing. So many of the aus I’ve read have a quote at some point that addresses how tragic it is when people have soul words that say something like “hi” or “‘sup” which makes NO SENSE! In a world where the first thing you say to people is THAT important, WHY GOD WHY would the culture still use standard greetings? Who the fuck is still saying hello at this point? Everyone in these worlds would surely develop a personalized greeting different from everybody else’s to prevent confusion. Like how no 2 racehorses can have the same racing name? The best part is that every time people met someone new for the first time, they would try to say something that no one else had said. You’d have people meeting eachother at a job intetview, they’d shake hands, smile politely, then one of them would be like “Every Tuesday, I hard even grape purple farm house sunsets too” and this would be perfectly normal. Or you’d go up to the cash register at Starbucks and instead of saying “Hello, what can i get for you today?” She’d look you right in the eye and say “I don’t know what Space Jam is” THEN ask you what you want and she’d repeat that to every customer in the line for the rest of her career. And because they live in the AU, nobody would think it was weird.
^^In which AUs get interesting with their world building. I love it.
A world where everyone has their own, increasingly bad, pickup lines
Sounds like my kind of world
I actually read one singular fanfic that actually used this idea and it was great, but for the life of me I can’t even remember what fandom it was for
Y’all, please listen to this song. This is Mongolian folk rock by a new band called the HU, it’s the only song they’ve got out so far but it is a strong start, holy shit.
According to one of the comments on the video, it’s sung from the perspective of the spirits of the ancestors, who are lamenting that politicians aren’t keeping their word, Mongolians are discriminating against each other over their provincial origin or bloodline, and the traditional wisdom of the elders is being lost. The English translation in the captions isn’t great, but you really don’t need it to enjoy the song. This is going to be stuck in my head all weekend.
IT’S ON SPOTIFY!!!!!! THEY’LL HAVE DATA TO KNOW HOW MANY TIMES IN A ROW WE LISTEN TO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The feel of it is ‘finnish black metal, but also cowboy’. It’s very good. Mongolians got some dope music.
So much of the Euro-American understanding of being trans (or anything other than 100% constantly identified with your assigned gender) focuses on discomfort.
Some people take this idea to an extreme and claim you can’t be trans unless you hate your body and want every surgery available to you. As many other writers have said before, that’s not true. It’s perfectly possible to be trans with only mild dysphoria or none at all. It’s perfectly possible to be trans and have a mental map of your body that looks just like the one you already have.
But I’d like to push even harder against the idea that trans=discomfort. I’d like to offer this: sometimes the exploration of one’s gender can be motivated by pleasure rather than discomfort.
Let me give an example. Let’s say there’s a person named Cal. Most people think of Cal as a boy, and Cal’s all right with that. So far as Cal’s concerned, a boy isn’t a bad thing to be. But sometimes, Cal likes to imagine being a girl and being treated as a girl. Those fantasies are always accompanied by feelings of pleasure, satisfaction, anticipation, and warmth. Eventually, having had these thoughts for years, Cal asks people to use ‘she’ pronouns in private and to refer to her as a girl. Cal does this for another year before claiming the label “trans”.
Some people would say a person like Cal can’t be trans because there’s no dysphoria, self-hatred, distress, or even discomfort. There’s just a pleasure-based preference. But why is distress necessary? Why are trans people supposed to be defined solely by our pain and self-hatred?
It’s my opinion that defining trans people solely by discomfort is an aspect of transphobia. The idea behind trans=discomfort is that being anything other than 100% cis is so awful that no one would do it unless the alternative were unlivable. Think about that: defining trans people solely by their experiences of discomfort means believing that being trans is so awful that only misery could drive us to it. And to me, that sounds like the thinking of someone who really hates trans people.
So I’ll come out and say it: sometimes transition or self-exploration of gender is not just about lessening discomfort, but is about improving and deepening the pleasure we take in our lives.
“Think about that: defining trans people solely by their experiences of discomfort means believing that being trans is so awful that only misery could drive us to it.”
Big Gay Dracula Does a Shitpost 