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does anyone else remember that one trope in a few 2000s/90s cartoons where the adults dress like its the 50s but the kids wear modern clothes cause i think its fun and idk what to call it

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i know we're all sick of self-care being a marketing tactic now, but i don't think a lot of us have any other concept of self-care beyond what companies have tried to sell us, so i thought i'd share my favorite self-care hand out

brought to you by how mad i just got at a Target ad

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St. Edmund summer / Fourth year remus.

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I can't explain how much I love baguette child. I would protect them with my life.

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deena fear street my beloved: part two

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My TOP 10 couples of 2021 based on their chemistry.

It's almost the end of this year so it's time for a recap.

I chose 10 couples that I enjoyed in 2021, so let's get started:

1. Jackie & Leslie (Hightown s2) - Both are messy in their own way, but thet are perfect together. I didn't expect to like them so much. Chemistry is incredible. They could stand next to each other and not even look in each other's direction and the chemistry would be better than a lot of couples on TV. I hope the showrunner doesn't screw them up even more in the next season.

2. Gigi & Dani (The L Word: Generation Q s2) - Gen Q is boring as fuck. I had to fast forward many scenes to survive, but Gini scenes are the only thing I can watch over and over again. I blame Gigi for this :)

3. Vi & Caitlyn (Arcane: League of Legends s1) - I don't even like animated series, but I made an exception and I don't regret it. Not only is a fantastic show but Vi and Caitlyn are such a nice surprise. I can't wait for the next season.

4. Haniwa & Wren (See s2) - I really wasn't expecting a f/f couple in season two, and definitely not the main couple. Awesome surprise. On top of that, the writers gave them the most romantic story they could :)

5. Quinn & Isabela (Harlem s1) - Q&I are so adorable together :) Their chemistry is so strong that they didn't even have to kiss to get my attention. I hope for more of them in the next season.

6. Deena & Sam (Fear Street Trilogy) - Normally I wouldn't watch this, because I don't like horror movies, but this one wasn't that scary. Also, f/f as the main couple, that's pretty rare.

7. Sarah & Joline (Van Helsing s5) - I know they don't count as new couple, but I've been waiting for they reunion since 2018, so they should be here.

8. Marla & Fran (I Care a Lot) - None of them are good people, but this list is not about that. Chemistry between them is actually pretty good. But well... we're talking about Rosamund Pike after all, she has chemistry with all women :)

9. Taissa & Simone (Yellowjackets s1) - They may not be at the top of my list, but I'm getting more and more into them. Their kissing scene was really good.

10. Amy & Kirsten (Vigil s1) - I really wish they weren't separated practically the whole season. We only saw flashbacks from the time, when they were a couple.

Happy New Year!

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LGBT+ Identity in the Time of Mindless Self Indulgence

Mindless Self Indulgence isn’t an act that could have flourished at any other time. The emo/pop punk wave was gathering steam; hip hop was still a novelty one could distinguish themselves from the flock by cribbing. “Random” Invader Zim-style humor was in the decline, while “edgy” no-limits humor was skyrocketing. Nerds hadn’t become the dominant force they are today, but due to the internet and the rise in manga and anime sales in the United States, they were able to access nerdy content much more easily. Youtube was taking off, music piracy was booming, and reliance on both radio and local record-store gatekeepers was at a low for young music fans.

Perhaps most critically, our national understanding of politics and identity at the time, particularly LGBT+ identities, was in a different stage of development than it is today. “Punching up” vs. “punching down” was not a concept that most people considered in their comedy. “It’s just a joke” was more widely accepted as an excuse for transgressive entertainment than it is today. “I’m an equal opportunity hater” was a common refrain.

Early in their career, the band released multiple tracks where Jimmy Urine, a man who was certainly not black, used the n-word. The “Pantyshot” cassingle was a treasured possession among MSI fans, featuring an early song that supposedly lost them a record deal due to being about lusting over a 5 year-old. Little Jimmy Urine sold kisses for a dollar to fans after shows, including to the teenagers. As a whole, the band made punchlines of racial and sexual slurs, rape and child abuse, school shootings, prostitution, drug use, incest, and just about every other taboo under the sun.

The understanding was that none of it was real and that none of it had any real consequences. Calling someone a faggot didn’t matter if we were all in on the joke, that homophobia was stupid. Words were just words. The identity of the speaker didn’t matter so long as their ideology was clear. It was something of an inversion of the way we publicly navigate comedy now, in that their identity determines where on the ladder they are to punch up or down, and the contents of their ideology is of minimal consequence compared to the text of their words. The context of a joke is not a matter of what the audience believes, but of the many complexities of hierarchy that society as a whole believes.

“Who cares?” asks 2008. “It’s just words.”

“How could it not matter?” answers 2018. “Words create culture.”

So LGBT+ identity in the era of Mindless Self Indulgence.

Describing the difference between 2005 and 2018 to young queer people is a source of anxiety for me, because I feel like the old woman talking about how she walked uphill both ways to the library if she wanted to read a book. It’s difficult, however, to put in perspective how quickly the culture around LGBT+ identities has changed. As dangerous as it is for queer kids today, they have much freer access to information about their resources and history than we did, and far greater representation in all forms of media.

When I was a teenager, I was the first person openly LGBT at my school, and my only point of reference for LGBT identities were Rosie O’Donnell and Elton John. There was no “Born This Way” yet, no Halsey and Hayley Kiyoko and Ellen Page, no Troye Sivan and Adam Lambert and Frank Ocean, no Miley Cyrus, no Laverne Cox. There were no empowerment ballads.

Which was fine, because I didn’t want empowerment ballads anyway. I felt disgusting. In reckoning with my LGBT+ identity, I felt small, broken, repulsive, confused, discarded and doomed. I was sickened in my own skin and filled with self-loathing because of my sexual orientation. Sometimes I still am. When I was 15, I drew a map of my heart, and in between the “fields of sexual insecurity” and “possibly irreparable damage” I had written “guilt!” several times and underlined it.

“You’re beautiful” didn’t only feel false, it felt invalidating. I was fiercely defensive of my self-hatred. I was working so hard at it, spending so much time and energy convincing myself I deserved the beating I was giving myself. To this day the barriers I’ve put up against generic bromides persist, and songs like “Scars to Your Beautiful” or “Roar” make me cringe. Maybe someone gets something out of them, but I can only think of the teenagers like me who used that sort of sentiment as fuel for their own self-abuse. I remember once bursting into tears at a “Jesus Loves You” sticker because it served as proof that the whole world was playing a joke on me, telling me that someone so unlovable should have some hope.

It was impossible to internalize that queerness was not dirty, unnatural and loathsome. Any attempt to break that association was drown out by the rest of the messaging we were receiving and our own tried-and-true mental gymnastics. Reassurance could not reach us at the bottom of the well.

At the time, I was obsessed with Mindless Self Indulgence with the kind of all-consuming adoration that only teenagers can possess. I aped frontman Little Jimmy Urine’s fashion, writing slogans across my coats with white tape. “What Do They Know” and “Cocaine and Toupees” were my ringtones, much to my mother’s chagrin. I had catalogues of bootlegs, lovingly sorted and pressed to CD. Mindless Self Indulgence populated my artwork, both in classroom doodles and in art pieces for my portfolio that I labored on for weeks. They were the subject of my college application essay. I met my first love on an MSI forum (which I moderated) and lost a few romantic relationships over my inability to talk about anything else. I owned every shirt. When I was hired on at Barnes & Noble’s music section, I would nominate Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy for the staff recommendation shelf every single week, and whenever it inevitably got recalled to the warehouse for lack of sales, I’d order it right back.

Sometimes my friends and I would go to the mall parking lot at night and blast Mindless Self Indulgence from my car, dancing around the empty lot with our striped stockings, fingerless gloves and Hot Topic trip pants.

This band kept me from killing myself.

“I’m filthy, disgusting, horrible, irredeemable,” we’d say. “People tell us we’re beautiful and we know they’re lying. I’m a freak.”

“Yeah, you’re fucking ugly,” the music said. “So what? So’s everything else. Have some fun with it.”

Despite the fact that Jimmy Urine has never publicly labeled himself with an LGBT identity, we young LGBT MSI fans claimed him as our own. We enshrined the article where he described being sexually attracted to anyone regardless of gender. We imitated and revered his gender fuckery onstage, the skirts, the pink suits and tutus, the eyeliner, his yelping falsetto leaping up from the masculine shouting, the way he danced. We pored over lyrics - that we transcribed ourselves in many cases, through multiple listens and endless debate - for those nuggets of same-sex attraction and gender ambiguity.

“I make a good girl but I make a terrible boy,” went one song. “These things in my pants that we’re all waiting for, I never really knew what that thing down there was used for,” went another. And the most sacred text of all was “Faggot”, off Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy, the most beloved record of the vast majority of hardcore MSI fans.

“I played that shit straight / blowing suckas to the side hopin’ I get laid / now everybody knows / no way in hell I can ever live it down”.

Shit was a revelation.

Kitty, the drummer of Mindless Self Indulgence, once said of the band’s LGBT fans that listening to MSI’s music was like vomiting: it hurts at the time, but then you feel better. You got it out. And the band always cultivated their relationship with their LGBT fans. Gay marriage was one of the few political issues they openly took a stance on, in a time when states like my own were amending constitutions to protect themselves from Massachusetts’ same-sex marriages.

Thus, we had a place where we felt simultaneously seen and valued by the band, and unseen amongst the chaos surrounding us. The irreverent humor of the band created a safe space where homosexuality could be disgusting, but so was everything else. There was no shame at an MSI concert. You were listening to a man famed for drinking his own urine sing about whipping his meat out, who cared if you liked to kiss girls? That’s old news. We’re all freaks down here at the bottom of the well.

I’m 28 now, and I don’t know if the kids these days have an equivalent band. I don’t know if there’s a market for it anymore; I’m sure there will always be queer kids who have internalized the awful message that they are inherently unlovable, but I’m not sure if they can’t find more accessible and more inherently positive panaceas. I see mutations of the same style of humor in Willam from RuPaul’s Drag Race and in some of the undercurrents of Tumblr’s teen humor. “We’re goblins, trash, garbage babies.”

“Yeah,” my inner child says. “I fucking feel that.”

The paradigm of humor has changed since 2008, at least in my circles, and the reasons for that are manifold, political, social, capitalistic. In many ways, it’s been a good thing: bigotry can be exposed rather than cloaked in excuses. A basic understanding of social inequality is presumed of most audiences. People are responsible for the impact of their words, not the intent. “Equal opportunity hater” is seem for what it is: intellectually lazy and blinkered, the refuge of white guys who don’t want to own up to the fact that some jokes aren’t funny.

But I’ll always have a place in my heart for comedy that meets people where they’re at. Where we’re at isn’t always beautiful or acceptable or healthy, but sometimes it’s the place where we need the laugh most.

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the thing about dungeon meshi which i am always thinking about is that like. inherently desire is not bad. wanting something is not bad it does not make you a bad person it is instinct in all living things to want to fill our bellies, to find love, to experience happiness. it is a good thing to fulfill your needs as a person and as a being living among other beings on this earth! it is just that when desires are heightened, when they become wild and unchecked, when they turn into rampant greed and destruction and swallow without tasting-- that's when you start to have problems! when your desire becomes so focused that you stop listening to what other people say, even at the expense of their lives, when you become selfish and obsessed and unable to stop your own pursuit towards your unattainable desire... that's the demon's paradox. it feeds your desire without showing you how you can really quench it.