flummoxy

[flummoxy]

FFS STOP BRAGGING ABOUT SHIT FOR CLOUT! GET MORE ANALOG!

I just saw this over on Bluesky and...

Look, maybe I'm unusual and lucky in my exposure to Holocaust lit in school. Most people don't get well-versed enough in these memoirs and histories and historical novels that they know what's about to happen and "all the ways the bad guys get you" the way horror fans shout at the TV, "No, don't lean over the body to see if he's really dead, poke him with a stick, what are you, *trying* to die?!"

But for god's sake, y'all, does it really take more than plain old common sense to have basic opsec? If you make a list of federal government workers resisting the takeovers happening now "for inspiration for the masses" and send it around social media...who the frick else do you think can see that list? And what might they do *other than* take inspiration from it? If I'm a fascist government goon looking to stifle dissent and make an example to everyone, what a great shortcut you've given me!

And it doesn't even take that; if I'm someone like a garden-variety LibsOfTikTok follower, maybe I get it in my head that going Pizzagate on these people is a patriotic thing to do. Or maybe I just fall back on the basic hyper-online alt-right MO of doxxing and harrassing people to the point that they pack up and leave town or, god forbid, commit suicide.

I should not have had to tell people, during Occupy in around 2012, that announcing your protest on Facebook and asking people to click to say they'd be there is a bad, bad, stupid, baaaaaaad idea. The NSA leaks wouldn't come out until about a year later, but IT SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN THAT to understand that compiling a list of people who would be at your protest against the government, with pictures of their faces and their past drunken college escapades along with their workplaces and social affiliations, is a terrible and unsafe way to organize.

This is something that scares me deep in my bones about what's happening: Americans don't understand *how* to mistrust authority anymore. We might have the general sentiment, but we don't know what to do with it in a practical way. Do you think someone who lived under the Stasi for decades or who grew up on stories of their parents barely escaping the Ayatollah or Saddam or Papa Doc's crackdowns and purges would call the concerns people *absolutely have been voicing for at least a good 20 years now* paranoid or overreactive? Our comfort and relative stability have spoiled us into complacency, and now we don't know how to even think about this stuff.

I am begging you: get cynical, guard your privacy (and other people's), and learn not to run your mouth. It is no longer paranoia. It never was, and if we had all understood that for the past two-plus decades, maybe we wouldn't be where we are now.

[flummoxy]

Hey, did you guys know that voice actress Michaela Swee aka Hera Wolf 359 finished her PhD in clinical psychology and currently works at a hospital with the aim of helping people struggling with deep seated self criticism and shame? Did you guys know this?

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Black people have culturally subsidized this country since our arrival

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I can’t stop thinking about this.

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neil got tired of hearing the "if they don't kiss, it's queerbaiting" bs and gave us t h e most angsty kiss ever seen just to shut them up

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That was NOT a good kiss.

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Oh yes, especially mirrors.

dissociation discussion

bonus:

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dissociation discussion

bonus:

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I did not clean up well, nor was I any good at sports, so I was doomed. Lucky I could perform like a seal grades-wise.

also while i’m ranting about gender i always see debate about whether girls are rewarded for being tomboys or not and it’s like. actually girls are rewarded for mirroring whatever the situation demands of them. girls can’t be too prissy and refuse to play in the creek, but girls also can’t show up to girly events covered in mud. girls can’t have makeup art as a hobby or else they’re superficial, but if they never wear makeup they’re a slob and dumpy, etc. it’s not that girls are universally rewarded or punished for being tomboys, they’re rewarded for bending over backwards to always be exactly right for any given situation and punished for breaking those boundaries. so yes a classically pretty girl who cleans up nice is rewarded when she can ALSO be a tomboy. but a girl who is a tomboy all the time is definitely punished for never being able to achieve that prerequisite feminine side. this debate is over now thanks

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I wish they knew how cringey they were smh

[flummoxy]

Cw: divorce, mental illness, self harm

I've been listening to romance podcasts, waiting for the time my divorce can be finalized, while my spouse keeps harming themself in a mental hospital. I try not to be a messy bitch all over the internet, but nobody notices me on Tumblr.

I'm listening to Look Up, a podcast about two queer teen boys kind of thrown together with long unspoken crushes on each other that come to fruition as their mom's are about to come back from Mars and it's not been spoken yet, but their lives are possibly set to diverge after that. Chronologically it's not THAT slow burn, but it feels like it with weekly episodes. Listening to it is so intense. I held my breath for several episodes as the tension built and when there's finally payback, I literally burst into tears.

Falling in love with my spouse was so beautiful. Holding their hand for the first time (awkwardly, on a beach), kissing them for the first time, telling them I loved them for the first time, that makeout-for-hours stage that wasn't a phase, the way they used to smile at me. I had been holding my breath all my life for that. Meeting them and loving them and marrying them was such a privilege. They were the most magical creature. I had come out before we met, but no one really believed me until we were together, so sharing that was so special.

Mental illness is really cruel to relationships. It was the cause of the devestating abandonment that led me to move to England in the first place. It hurts the people around you too, as I found out. Maybe I felt I had something to prove, that I could love someone in a way that I wished I had been loved. Maybe I wasn't tough enough, I feel guilty all the time. Likely nothing I could have done would have changed what happened. I should have pulled myself together after my client died suddenly so I could have been more emotionally ready for their 2nd puberty. I shouldn't have gone on holiday alone and maybe they wouldn't have self-harmed so badly. To anyone else I would probably say it was so far beyond the normal expectations of what a relationship could endure, that there's no shame in just not living with the trauma and mistreatment anymore. But the guilt is going to stay with me.

The summer before we got married, we flew to America and went on a road trip through the Redwoods. I took a picture of them smiling and hugging a tree. After they had left me several times, they reposted the picture and said it was one of the best days of their life. When I asked why, they said "Because I got to see the trees." I think that's when I knew it was over. That cruelty that had once been love letters. They had gone from smiling at me through their eyelashes to sneering at me like I was a piece of shit on their show. It was time for me to have a baby, and they actively stood in my way, knowing it's the one thing I want out of life. Everytime I left for work, they would text me that they didn't think we should be together. Now they talk about the divorce like they are being led down a path against their will and are powerless to fight it, but I don't think it's that they want to stay married, especially to me, just that they don't want to be divorce. They've never asked me to stay, never even said "yes" when I asked if they wanted me to, never said they wanted me to come back, never said they would join me here. No grand gestures were ever made.

I had been single for ten years before I met them, and the last relationship before them had been such a spectacular mistake it hardly counts. I feel like I don't have the capacity to fall in love again. I'm 37 and will never get that summer love feeling again.

[flummoxy]

Wait, go back, are there apples really named after the composer?

Someone said to me, “I’m going grocery shopping. Do you want anything?” To which I answered, “Hans Zimmer apples, please,” and they brought me some (they looked like Granny Smith apples but I didn’t get to taste them).

[flummoxy]

Mission accomplished! A flock of butterflies takes flight in my stomach every episode.

Entertainment Spotlight: Briggon Snow, Look Up

Briggon Snow, the creator of the queer coming of age fiction audio fiction Look Up, gives us a look in to the recording (and then re-recording) the podcast with costar Evan Bittencourt (PLL: The Perfectionists), and what he'd put in a time capsule sent to mars. Look down to check out the first episode of Look Up.

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Entertainment Spotlight: Evan Bittencourt, Look Up

Evan Bittencourt, who you may recognize from Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists, discusses his most recent project – the audio-fiction podcast Look Up, created and written by Briggon Snow and produced by The Bright Sessions' Lauren Shippen. Give this week's episode of Look Up a listen right here:

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Read more here:

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