#alas. women

[rotpunks]

the trials and tribulations i am subjected to (physical copy of my state's flora in the school library but one of the librarians is a bitch so i cant look at it)

[jq37]

Never Stop Blowing Up is so funny because Brennan is like obviously we're not going to have any period accurate homophobia but Botox does not exist yet so the doctor looks at you like you're crazy for suggesting you inject toxins into your body on purpose. Selective realism.

[baltharino]

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

[godly-mistake]

child Annabeth watching her father choose an easier mortal family without any demigod baggage attached to it over her and shunt her to the side

15 yr old Annabeth thinking she's watching that start to unfold a second time

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 285

oh we got green/red/purple color-coded goth women?? waow

[inkskinned]

you're grabbing lunch with a nice man and he gives you that strange grimace-smile that's popular right now; an almost sardonic "twist" of his mouth while he looks literally down on you. it looks like he practiced the move as he leans back, arms folded. he just finished reciting the details of NFTs to you and explaining Oppenheimer even though he only watched a youtube about it and hasn't actually seen it. you are at the bottom of your wine glass.

you ask the man across from you if he has siblings, desperately looking for a topic. literally anything else.

he says i don't like small talk. and then he smiles again, watching you.

a few years ago, you probably would have said you're above celebrity gossip, but honestly, you've been kind of enjoying the dumb shit of it these days. with the rest of the earth burning, there's something familiar and banal about dragging ariana grande through the mud. you think about jeanette mccurdy, who has often times gently warned the world she's not as nice as she appears. you liked i'm glad my mom died but it made you cry a lot.

he doesn't like small talk, figure out something to say.

you want to talk about responsibility, and how ariana grande is only like 6 days older than you are - which means she just turned 30 and still dresses and acts like a 13 year old, but like sexy. there's something in there about the whole thing - about insecurity, and never growing up, and being sexualized from a young age.

people have been saying that gay people are groomers. like, that's something that's come back into the public. you have even said yourself that it's just ... easier to date men sometimes. you would identify as whatever the opposite of "heteroflexible" is, but here you are again, across from a man. you like every woman, and 3 people on tv. and not this guy. but you're trying. your mother is worried about you. she thinks it's not okay you're single. and honestly this guy was better before you met, back when you were just texting.

wait, shit. are you doing the same thing as ariana grande? are you looking for male validation in order to appease some internalized promise of heteronormativity? do you conform to the idea that your happiness must result in heterosexuality? do you believe that you can resolve your internal loneliness by being accepted into the patriarchy? is there a reason dating men is easier? why are you so scared of fucking it up with women? why don't you reach out to more of them? you have a good sense of humor and a big ol' brain, you could have done a better job at online dating.

also. jesus christ. why can't you just get a drink with somebody without your internal feminism meter pinging. although - in your favor (and judgement aside) in the case of your ariana grande deposition: you have been in enough therapy you probably wouldn't date anyone who had just broken up with their wife of many years (and who has a young child). you'd be like - maybe take some personal time before you begin this journey. like, grande has been on broadway, you'd think she would have heard of the plot of hamlet.

he leans forward and taps two fingers to the table. "i'm not, like an andrew tate guy," he's saying, "but i do think partnership is about two people knowing their place. i like order."

you knew it was going to be hard. being non-straight in any particular way is like, always hard. these days you kind of like answering the question what's your sexuality? with a shrug and a smile - it's fine - is your most common response. like they asked you how your life is going and not to reveal your identity. you like not being straight. you like kissing girls. some days you know you're into men, and sometimes you're sitting across from a man, and you're thinking about the power of compulsory heterosexuality. are you into men, or are you just into the safety that comes from being seen with them? after all, everyone knows you're failing in life unless you have a husband. it almost feels like a gradebook - people see "straight married" as being "all A's", and anything else even vaguely noncompliant as being ... like you dropped out of the school system. you cannot just ignore years of that kind of conditioning, of course you like attention from men.

"so let's talk boundaries." he orders more wine for you, gesturing with one hand like he's rousing an orchestra. sir, this is a fucking chain restaurant. "I am not gonna date someone who still has male friends. also, i don't care about your little friends, i care about me. whatever stupid girls night things - those are lower priority. if i want you there, you're there."

he wasn't like this over text, right? you wouldn't have been even in the building if he was like this. you squint at him. in another version of yourself, you'd be running. you'd just get up and go. that's what happens on the internet - people get annoyed, and they just leave. you are locked in place, almost frozen. you need to go to the bathroom and text someone to call you so you have an excuse, like it's rude to just-leave. like he already kind of owns you. rudeness implies a power paradigm, though. see, even your social anxiety allows the patriarchy to get to you.

you take a sip of the new glass of wine. maybe this will be a funny story. maybe you can write about it on your blog. maybe you can meet ariana grande and ask her if she just maybe needs to take some time to sit and think about her happiness and how she measures her own success.

is this settling down? is this all that's left in your dating pool? just accepting that someone will eventually love you, and you have to stop being picky about who "makes" you a wife?

you look down to your hand, clutching the knife.

[stormviewcastle]

[archivebottles]

Caught between black and white

[sunfortune]

understated how important natasha’s character was for me in catws. like the first mainstream sci fi fantasy media i saw as a kid where the main character was a man (and they were 100% gaybaiting) but the narrative wasn’t constantly disrespecting or making fun of a female character for NO reason over it. like she was SO cool. a part of the team. not forced into a romance. a character in her own right. it was litchrally groundbreaking. still is even! bc people are STILL out here disrespecting women for yaoi that isn’t even happening in 2024

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

The prevalence of male violence means that the chances of a woman telling the truth about a man hurting her is INFINITELY more likely than the chances of her lying, but people will still believe the man over her

[relaxxattack]

"castes" are a bug equivilant of gender; but on alternia they are oft filtered through a lens of classism+racism. it's interesting to think about how for trolls, racism and misogyny are heavily overlapping (if not the same thing*)... which could be a statement about how human misogyny and racism are also heavily overlapping (since bioessentialism is so heavily rooted in colonialist white eurocentric standards). or it could just be a weird coincidence.

[rated-r-for-grantaire]

potentially hot take but there is literally no such thing as an “opposite gender/sex” and literally no one has a gender that is the ~opposite~ of theirs.

[weallpartyatybcpatricksfuneral]

"girls support girls-" okay but are you normal about queer women? are you normal about BIWOC? are you normal about disabled women? are you normal about autistic women? are you normal about fat women? alternative women? unattractive women? are you normal about women who choose not to shave their legs and armpits and faces? are you normal about butches and tomboys and masculine women? are you normal about trans women? are you normal about trans men? are you normal about nonbinary folk and people who lie outside the gender binary or renounce gender all together? are you normal about women who absolutely despise and detest the latest trends? are you normal about weird women who unsettle you with their interests? are you normal about women who don't wear makeup, who will never wear makeup, who openly dislike makeup and the makeup industry?

[kyoshi-lesbians]

ID: A series of gifs from the avatar episode The Beach. A teenage boy offers to carry Ty Lee's bag. She hands it to him and he immediately falls over from the weight of it.

Hey, you need some help unpacking? / Sure, thanks!

[hollow-dweller]

while i appreciate the sentiment behind "nonbinary people don't owe you androgyny" posts, the next level up from that is the understanding that androgyny as such doesn't exist in western society. the things that we associate with androgyny are almost uniformly masculine, but treated as neutral because under cissexism and patriarchy, masculinity is neutral. it isn't enough to assert that nonbinary people can dress however we want and still be nonbinary, if that assertion is still framed around the false dichotomy of femininity and masculinity. what we understand to be feminine or masculine is entirely socially constructed, and we have to train ourselves out of the impulse to neatly sort any individual's personal presentation into a box if we want to eventually loosen the grip that gender essentialism has on all of us.

[phanamu]

It always baffled me that Vlad 'Obsessed with Maddie' Masters ignored or forgot about Jazz as much as he did outside that one time Jazz manipulated him, even letting her get in harms way just to get at Jack.

But then I remember that her literal first words to him were criticizing his Packers color scheme, reminding him that he couldn't just buy them, and that she spent that entire weekend being an uncharacteristically sulky disinterested teenager.

Not exactly a strong first impression.

It just tickles me to consider the possibility that Vlad wrote Jazz off as a brat early on and completely missed both that she was smart and that he had the opportunity to use the fact she was already critical of her parents and wanted Someone to take her seriously to win her over.