As Hard As It May Be For You To Understand How I Cannot Feel Sexual Attraction, Please Respect that

The 2021 Gender Census is now open!

[ Link to survey ]

The eighth annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 10th March 2021.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, retweet this tweet, boost this Mastodon post, check out this post on Reddit, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks like Facebook. Every share is extremely helpful - it’s what helped us get 24,000 responses last year.

Survey URL: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/gendercensus2021/

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

It’s my first giveaway, and since I’ve been wanting to do one for a while. I decided to make this the best one I can! Thank you to everyone who’s been following me, and thank you to my awesome mutuals who I’ve come to think of as friends!

The rules are the same as most other giveaways: just like or reblog this post and if you’re following me, you’re automatically entered! Every additional reblog adds one extra entry for you. You need to be following me to enter, but new followers are welcome. Just please only follow me if you’re genuinely interested in the content I post.

Now, the good stuff! Prizes! There will be three winners, picked randomly using a number generator.

First prize: One OTP-based oneshot written by me and one aesthetic board for an OTP or OC of your choice.

Second prize: One OTP-based oneshot written by me.

Third place: One aesthetic board for an OTP or OC of your choice.

Some examples of my writing are here, here, and here. As a quick list of fandoms I can write for is below, starting with what I can be the most versatile with:

Fallout 1, 2, and 3

Dragon Age: Origins, Awakening, II, and Inquisition

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and V: Skyrim

Fable I, II, and III

Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3

As far as aesthetic boards are concerned, I have no limitations. I can make boards for any character, even characters from original stories! Some of my boards are here, here, here, and here.

The giveaway ends on August 20th! Good luck!

So let me tell you about the shittiest parent on the motherfucking planet.

I work at a grocery store and this man comes in with his 11 year old son. He buys a pack a cigarettes and a two cases of beer. The son was holding a two dollar drawing pad and placed it on the belt and I guess the dad didn’t notice it at first but when I was about to scan the pad he asked where’d it have come from and turned towards the kid and asked “Did you put that shit up there?”. He told me to put it back and then told his 11 year old child that he “ain’t paying for that gay ass notebook.”.  So I looked at the kid, who was close to tears and saying how he ran out of paper at home and my heart broke. So I gave the pad to him, for free, and told the dad I would take care of it. I gave the kid some tokens for a game outside and said I would look forward to buying some of his drawings and paintings when he’s all famous. He kids face was so priceless and I thought everything was good. But then, about 10 ten minutes after giving the kid his notebook, I walked outside and saw this. The drawing pad all ripped up and tossed on the pavement. I could only imagine what happened in the parking lot, but I know that that poor kid heart is fucking ripped apart, just like this pad.

I’m fucking horrified that there are parents like this, who, just because it’s not masculine or gender specificthey won’t let their children follow their true passions or explore interests that lead to their happiness. Even more so, I’m horrified that parents don’t care about the fine arts anymore because it doesn’t have job security. Since when did it ever matter to a child if their passion makes them money or not? Parenting is about supporting whatever makes your child happy. Have some fucking consideration for your child’s wants not your homophobic and anti-art ideals. 

carletoncolton - GPOY 2

We encourage you to share the link to this rather than reblogging the entire post (since this is frequently updated and we want to minimize the spread of outdated info!): bit.ly/FergusonAEM

As the folks from Sexplanations say: stay curious! Know that this is just one drop in the bucket. We encourage you to do your own research and follow the links so you can make your own informed opinion.

The Ferguson Masterpost: How To Argue Eloquently & Back Yourself Up With Facts

carletoncolton - Handwriting Meme

(Tagged by mmedemertuil. Kinda sorta. *shuffles feet*)

Your name:

Your url/handle:

Your blog title:

Your favorite color:

Your crush/significant other’s name: (Robert's the S.O., Casandra the platonic crush.)

CAPSLOCK SOMETHING.

Your favorite band:

Your lucky/favorite number:

Your favorite drink:

Tag your buddies. (If I could rightfully say I had any here, I might. But if you're reading this and feel inclined to take it up, well ... let's just say I did.)

So, TV ratings are complicated, unwieldy, and truly loathsome things. It’s hard to explain how they come up with the numbers, what the difference is between the numbers, and how they’re actually relevant to broadcasters in any simple terms.

I’m going to try.

Before I start with the incredibly...

2000 (+) Followers Givaway

To thank my followers old and new for their support, I’m giving away some stuff. Here’s what you can get:

a copy of my "Sherlock after the Fall" Fanbook

a t-shirt with one of my Beowulf designs (lilac, sizes S, M, L)

another Beowulf t-shirt (white, sizes L, XL)

a set of six postcards with motifs from my book Beowulf and the Dragon

a set of eight postcards with my Tolkien illustrations (LotR, Silmarillion)

an drawing of a Sherlock scene of your choice in ink or pencil, size A4, motif to be negotiated.

And here are the Rules:

REBLOG and/or LIKE this post. No need to spam your followers, though.

NO GIVEAWAY BLOGS. 

This is for my followers, so you have to be following me.

You must have your ask box open, and be willling to give me your address.

If you’re not of age, make sure your parents are okay with someone sending you stuff.

I will ship anywhere.

Giveaway ends September 9th 23:00 GMT+1

I’ll use the random number generator to pick the winners. First person picked is the first to choose something and so on …

Good luck :)

10 Questions Meme

I was tagged by unluckyycat. (And I'm terribly flattered. Thank you!)

rule 1: always post the rules rule 2: answer the questions from the person who tagged you rule 3: tag 10 people and link them in your post rule 4: let them know you’ve tagged them

1. What names did you like growing up that you wish you could have changed yours to?

Ahah, well. As a child I didn't covet other people's names so much as furtively dislike my own. Still, when I was very little my mother found me out and decided the best course of action was to rechristen me "Stinky Mud" and only call me that until I admitted that my birth name wasn't so bad after all... Anyway, once I was twelve and could brave the possibility of it  happening again (it didn't) I've been going by Jack.

2. What’s your favourite shirt look like?

Mind if I give you the top two? I'm torn between them. (It feels like there's some kind of awful fabric pun in there somewhere, but I'll spare us - this time.)

3. How do you take your hot beverage of choice?

Coffee. That's my choice hot beverage, and I take it with sweetened condensed milk and a touch of vanilla. That, or with two sugar cubes and a splash of cream. 4. Any scars with cool stories you’d care to share?

Oh, there are a few - I'm prone to minor accidents. Lately my favorites are these, though:

That's what happens when you carelessly scrape chopped vegetables from your cutting board into a skillet full of overheated oil. In uprolled sleeves. 

5. What’s the best bad decision you’ve ever made?

This one's been boggling my mind since I first read it through, and I think it's because I ultimately can't regard a decision as having been a bad one if it produced a good result. But I've got it now:

One morning on the bus to my high school I was pressed against the window listening to Joy Division on my CD player, when I heard a voice I didn't recognize cutting through the music. Worse, no matter how high I turned the volume, or how hard I crushed the earphones up against my ears, I couldn't come close to drowning her out. Usually, this early, everyone on the bus was half-asleep - but I could hear every word out of this girl's mouth with infuriating clarity. By the time we hit the schoolyard I was livid. So when I noticed my friend Ringo kicking his heels outside around the back of the bus I marched myself right up to the toes of his boots and launched into a tirade, complete with a mocking imitation of what I considered to be one of the more ridiculous parts of her overheard conversation - something to do with her boyfriend incorrectly registering on her caller ID as "Robert Smith", and it being fate because she was such a fan of The Cure. I think I was positively snorting with derision at this point. (As you might have gathered by now, sophomore carletoncolton was a bit of an ass.) And that's when Ringo cut in, "That's my girlfriend".

Haha... honestly, I don't remember how I didn't faint after that what with all the blood draining out of my face. The upshot of it all is, that when Ringo told the girlfriend in question what I'd said she only laughed. We're BFFLs now. 6. Do you remember most of your dreams when you wake up?

For the most part, no, I don't - unless they're either so mundane that I worry for the health of my imagination, or so strange that I'm convinced someone else must've dreamed them.

Example of the former: I have a recurring dream where all that happens is that I wake up in my S.O.'s house, don a pair of my politer, more presentable pajamas, and sit down to a meal at the counter bar or the dining room table. I eat it alone, in silence, with an especially small fork, and then pack my dishes away in the dishwasher when I've finished. That's it, really. I have noticed, though, that if it's after dark in the dream then everyone else is asleep, the cat included, the windows closed and all the blinds shuttered, with only the light over the kitchen sink on. And if it's light out, then all the windows and doors are open, the sun is scorching and almost too bright, and the house is empty. Excepting me and the cat, of course.

Example of the latter: About a week ago I had an unsettlingly detailed dream in which my seventeen-year-old brother, a very technical person with an eye for coding and computer hardware assembly, helped me into a full military-grade black stealth camouflage suit complete with mask and night-vision goggles. Think Splinter Cell, Metal Gear, that sort of thing. He handled all the closures and straps on the back of the suit and I the ones in front. It was dark outside, and we were standing in my old bedroom at my great-grandfather's house as it looked before I moved in - unfurnished, with pastel pink and blue wallpaper. We were crowded near the small open widow; the neighbor's security spotlight, bolted over their garage door, filtered through the chain link fence and gave the whole scene a harsh yellow quality. My brother and I didn't speak, but stared unblinkingly at each other, faces neutral. Our entire family has nearly identical dark brown eyes and I remember being uncomfortably aware of the similarity just then. The whole thing had a hushed, anticipatory quality about it... but the oddest part was that we both knew we were doing this so I could sneak through the window and pick blackberries from the field across the street before the sun came up. In the (real) morning I rolled out of bed bewildered and craving them. 7. What are you hoping happens this week for you?

It'd be everything if I got a response out of any, really any, of the job applications I've sent out recently. Or ever. 8. What’s the biggest, most exciting travel destination of your dreams?

My family has never been more than a lost paycheck or two away from eviction, between evictions, so we haven't ever traveled other than to visit relatives - and that was with help. I've been resigned to things remaining the same way for me all my life for years now. So... I haven't got one. Still, I would like to go back to southern Georgia someday. To visit. I can't say that I enjoyed living there; as a mixed-race asexual atheist it could be distinctly unpleasant, even if only the first and last of those descriptors were obvious to the people around me. The place itself, though... sometimes I have dreams about kneeling outside in the knee-high grass at night, curling my fingers into the red soil, or lying on my roof in the summer until the searing heat of the sun overhead permeates my body to the bone and I see the veins illuminated in my closed eyelids. I'm always cold on some level, in Michigan. 9. How many songs are on your MP3 player of choice? Do you listen to them all?

I could tell you exactly if I hadn't lost it like the bumbler I am, haha. My YouTube favorites playlist, though, has one hundred and sixty-five songs on it, all of which I do listen to. Add my other, artist-specific lists (Lana Del Rey, Blur, Gorillaz, Damon Albarn, Massive Attack, etc.), and that number goes up to three hundred and nine. Less than I'd have thought, actually. 10. Any tattoos? Any plans for more/your first one?

No, and no. Well. There aren't any concrete plans.

Aaaaand done! *pats brow* Whew. Call me a poor sport, but this time 'round I won't be writing any new questions or tagging anyone - the way I write, if I ever wanted to get this thing posted sacrifices had to be made. (;¬_¬) That, and I've already tagged just about everyone I think'd tolerate me asking once before.

"If you refuse to shoot the gun, don't mean the gun ain't deadly,"

J Cole re-entering the rap beef