My Family In Gaza Is Suffering Beyond Description. The War Has Left Us With No Choice But To Live In

I absolutely LOVE the song "No Such Thing As A Hollywood Ending" from the 2018 movie "Anna And The Apocalypse"

It is an amazing beginning song as it fits with how the main characters, Anna and her best friend, are feeling. It fits with emotions and it gives little bits of insight as to the lives of random background characters. Any song can do this, but what makes this song special?

Warning, spoilers for this amazing Christmas musical under the cut. I recommend you watch the movie before reading all of this

First, it is called "No Such Thing As A Hollywood Ending" which hints to the fact that the film isn't going to play out how you would generally guess it to. This is then reinstated with the line "this is not the story you're dreaming of, the one where you get all you want, so stop your pretending, no such thing as a Hollywood ending" which then calls to the fact that many of the things you may want don't happen. The father isn't saved, the couple don't make it out alive, the grandma dies, the best friend is zombified.

Then there's John(the best friend)'s lines. He says that "the nice guys don't always get the girl" and he doesn't. He never gets to have that more solid relationship with Anna because he sacrifices himself for her, letting her live. He, the nice guy, doesn't survive and instead the bully does.

Then there's the lines of the couple. Christian and Lisa want a "love never ending" and Christian directly states "I'll never disappear" and these things ring true. They are both zombified in the end and are set to eternally linger in that room, occasionally bumping into one another. They are forever together in their undead state.

And then this all ties back to the very message of the song: "No Such Thing As A Hollywood Ending". No one gets what they want, it doesn't end how everyone expects. It's a comedy musical set during Christmas and so it would generally come to mind that there will be a happy ending where the main cast survives, but that doesn't happen. Only two of the original cast survive in the end, with Anna being the only one of the initial cast to survive. The bully and the butch are introduced later on, with the bully receiving even less of an introduction than the butch.

As the film progresses you want Christian to arrive to the musical number Lisa sings, you want Anna to get back to her father and survive, you want Anna and John to eventually get closer or maybe even get together.

But none of this happens.

"So stop your pretending, there's no such thing as a Hollywood ending"

half baked morning rant

I do want to make it clear that the reason I talk about HRT and its biological effects so much is not because HRT or medicalization defines your gender.

Its because, for me personally, the interface of my biology education and my transition was mostly centered around figuring out what sex hormones do. I learned about basic biology principles like DNA organization, gene regulation, cell biology, and physiology in high school and undergrad. Taking that understanding and extending it to the mechanisms that hormones use to change gene regulation, and by extension, the rest of your body broadly, was something I did as my understanding became more complete in later undergrad and grad school. It was the key to me starting my own transition.

Why?

Because it was the first time I realized that the "basic biology" arguments of transphobes were complete and utter bullshit. From that point, it was a cascade. As in, wait, if dynamic changes in gene expression aren't considered "biological" to them, then why am I believing anything they say about anything else? When they talk about gametes, and try to include infertile cis people in their definitions of biological sex by talking about what gamete you're "intended" to make, what do they even mean? Why does my current gene expression not define that "intent"? And wait, back up, why is the brain suddenly not considered part of our biology? Why are neurological differences suddenly not "biological"? Why can we say someone's thinking patterns aren't "biological"?

Backing up even further, why does any of this matter more than psychological gender, or sociological gender? If the way we navigate society is gendered, that affects a lot of our lives, and we're just throwing that away?

Basically, being educated about how deep the biological changes of HRT really go was the first domino to fall when I worked through my internalized transphobia.

This is one of many reasons why I hate, hate HATE the concession that uninformed allies and even many trans people themselves give: "well NO ONE is saying that you can change your biological sex, sex and gender are completely unrelated, sex is binary and gender isn't!!!!!"

Well. I am saying that you can change your "biological" sex, I am saying that biological sex isn't binary, and I am saying that misunderstanding of those points has set back transgender advocacy. It makes medical decisions surrounding us less informed, it poisons conversations about how we interact with society, and it makes trans people feel like their gender and sex are less "real" than cis people's.

Not to mention the horrific way it discards intersex people from the conversation entirely.

Recently, I've seen this point enter the mainstream a little, by using intersex people and variation of sex in other species as a "counterargument" to "binary biological sex" thinking. It still doesn't sit right with me. One, because it uses intersex people as a prop for trans advocacy while not actually addressing the needs of either group. And two, because it completely disregards that your current biology and physiology is not 100% predestined from birth, and using people who were "born this way" as a prop does absolutely nothing to increase people's acceptance of trans people who change their biology later in life.

Ugh. This got away from me but yeah. That's my sipping coffee ramble for this morning. If anyone wants to add comment or correct me on discourse here, please do. Especially if you're intersex- this is all the observations of a perisex trans woman.

09/13/2024

At around 11:25 pm

It was a nice man and his friend who I decided to help get to a destination since they were stranded. The nice guy was saying how he had been having a terrible day earlier while I was just getting gas. It was mostly all fine, just awkward as they hailed from a different type of town. Probably in a gang of some sort. They asked if I was into weed, but I declined. When I got to the destination I declined payment from the nice man and he got out of the car. His friend said something, probably implying something dirty, but I was too dissociative to fully register it or think about it. He attempted to reach for my chest from the back seat. I stopped him. I should've made him pay more than $5 for every time he attempted to get me to kiss him with his words. He tried to kiss my cheek after giving me the money. He got out of the car. He told me I was pretty.

Nothing truly happened that night but I was nearly groped and was harassed. I don't even know if this could count as SA at all. It made me shakey when I got back home. I needed to get the smell of the men out of the car so I just doused everything in as much perfume as I could handle. The smell burned my nose and stung my lungs. I couldn't be that touchy with my partner, not when the image of his hands reaching from the back seat was still in my head. It's just a really bad memory, though it was two days ago.

I swore to myself the day after that I wouldn't let the ignorant man make the word "pretty" a venomous thing. That I wouldn't let myself entirely break down. I have weapons and not weapons in my car now, and on my body. Two items created by me, and one item originally for cutting paracord. I'm still shaky and weak. I'm still recovering from the bad memory from three days ago, still calming down.

I refuse to let cruelty take my heart, though I'm more weary now of who I should help. Who I should let in my car. Hopefully this world changes for the better soon.

like/reblog if u are:

a bitch

a bastard

an all around fool

an omnipresent all-powerful being

a sparrow

c̵͙̳͕̈͛ụ̷̔r̸̗͎̽̓͗͜s̴̨̈́̿͘e̸͍̰̜͊̈́d̵̛̫̙͍͝͝

capable of moving at immense, incomprehensible speeds

an eldritch being

no one will know which one u chose! :D

Day 4!

Happy Thoughts!

EDIT: I SHOULD SAY THAT I'M OKAY PPFPFFFT

standing with us gives us hope in life we ​​ask you to help us and look at us with a humane eye and you have all our love and respect

I can help you by spreading this word so others who have more can aid you and your other companions

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