#and hoping others will understand it

[pinkbunny888]

That's even more ironic(?) to me because when I'm the one people reach out for, I feel honored. I take pleasure in them trusting me and in being able to help them. I make sure to remind them to always reach out because I WANT to be "bothered". But then we think of ourselves and we think others will be completely annoyed if we reach out to them. That's so ironic. You prove yourself wrong every time, yet you still believe your own lies huh

i have GOT to get over my obsessive worry about being a burden on others oh my god. it is okay to inconvenience people! people in your life who really care about you won’t mind being inconvenienced!! it’s literally just the human experience!!! communicate your needs for the love of god it’ll be FINE!!!!!

[eydilily]

would you bite the hand that feeds you?

[keferon]

Some more Mistakes on mistakes until fanart because ehehe I love this scene

[feelo-fick]

um ok cool thanks for letting me know .... why are you telling me this

[dancinghannigram]

flea-biting is a sign of companionship :) - thank u therexorcist for uploading the one video i havent been able to get out of my head since 2020 (X)

[lastoneout]

Pacific Rim is the best movie ever made for the same reason Sif is the best boss in Dark Souls. It's not bcs of quality or craftmanship or whatever it's bcs when I hear "giant robots fighting giant monsters with the power of love" and "huge wolf with a big fucking sword" I am overcome with the urge to scream "HELL FUCKING YEAH" at the top of my lungs before headbutting a wall so hard I leave a dent in the plaster.

[aarghone]

He's just a gunky goopy lil guy

[rejoiceinsilverlight]

thinking about super cousins post-season 2 and potential effects of being exposed to kryptonite so many times

[official-english-major]

Truly no other fictional couple can match each other's freak like Odysseus and Penelope, because a normal couple reuniting after years apart would be hugging and crying, meanwhile odysseus is spying on her in disguise and she's gaslighting him to see if he knows about their marriage secrets

Like for a while there they were literally just both eyeballing each other distrustfully like:

[haridraws]

Excuse the format (I made this for instagram since that's what the publisher wants, rip) but this is basically a shorter, easy-to-read version of the history section at the back of my new book.

(Part 2 || The book)

---

Disclaimer: I'm extremely not an expert, and this is only scratching the very surface of complex topics that are hard to simplify. I mostly made this to EXTREMELY rec these books and podcasts, and would urge you to go check them out if you're not familiar!!

This stuff might seem obvious to some of you, but let me tell you, I do NOT think it's widely known in the general UK population.

Imo a lot of the general (especially white) public think that the Windrush generation - Caribbean migrants brought in to help rebuild postwar Britain in the 50s - were the first Black communities in the UK. And yet there's deliberately not much focus on why the Caribbean has links with northern europe. HMMMM

(Britain loves, for example, to celebrate the abolition of slavery without mentioning WHAT CAME BEFORE IT - Britain being the biggest trader of enslaved people, with more than 1 million people enslaved in the British Caribbean. They literally just did it overseas.)

Telling the truth about history or British imperialism gets this massive manufactured backlash at the moment. There are so many ideas prevalent in UK politics - anti-Black, anti-refugee, anti-trans - based on going ‘back’ to some imaginary version of the past. Those are enabled by a long tradition of carving parts out of the historical record, and being selective about whose histories get told and preserved. Even though the book I was making is a fun rom-com, by the time I finished researching, I decided to make an illustrated history section at the back too (this is a mini version). My hope is that readers who haven’t come across these histories might get an introduction to them - and some pointers of what they could read next to get a clearer view of our past.

[mossy-aro]

ultimately i think my insistence on aro positivity honestly is as much a political stance as a personal one.

when i say aro positivity is crucial and that i dislike doomer-ist posts that express sentiments like 'I hate being aro so much I wish I was dead instead’ it's not because I don’t think there can and should be a space for negativity and acknowledging self-hate, or the many ways being aromantic can really suck sometimes. i find that to be very important!

that being said. there is smth here about how self-hate posts are sometimes just arophobia that we inflict on ourselves. and when we put that out into the ether it (intentionally or not) can become arophobia that we inflict on other members of the community. i think there absolutely needs to be a place for negativity and the expression of anger and frustration and self loathing even - these are all good things to talk about because these are things that we experience. that being said, it can also be genuinely upsetting and triggering to people to have what is essentially arophobia shown to them and then have that be validated by other aspec people. your personal thoughts can affect your wider community on a level you may not anticipate. and i understand it i truly do! it took me so long to be able to recover from accepting being aroace - it threw my entire world off kilter and made me question everything about my place in the world.

but my insistence on aro joy and positivity is because ultimately i do believe that building is at the core essence of it all. that ultimately discussions and the purpose of community should be about construction, not destruction. and this is both a personal and a political stance. talking about how much you hate yourself and cultivating online discussions/spaces where negativity about aspec identity is the main and only theme is destructive - if that’s where we let the conversation end. these thoughts can and should be used as a vehicle to look for a path forward!

joy and positivity create a space where the focus can become on forging a path forward, on construction, on community building instead of tearing ourselves and others down with negative thoughts. it’s not productive or healthy when it stops at a place of negativity - it becomes actively destructive to the essence of community.

and i do think that this is especially poignant considering the fact that being any kind of queer, but especially aromantic (and/or asexual) means forging a path for yourself and making your own happiness where there is no obvious way forward. our communities exist mostly online (right now, anyway), there is little recognition of our existence in the real world, the effects of amatonormativity are both pervasive and actively dehumanising, and there are legal, economic and social structures in place actively making our lives more difficult. yes that all sucks! it’s good to acknowledge that. we need to in order to change it. but more importantly, that’s not the end. we are still here and our happiness, our future is for us to determine. even if we can’t change the laws or society, loving yourself and understanding aromanticism as a political identity (as well as personal), as a radical worldview, and as a protest against amatonormativity is essential for both community and personal well being. the personal is political.

tldr. i guess my point is that as a community, we should focus on building, improving, and nurturing ourselves and each other (construction) as opposed to destruction. we should recognise aromanticism and asexuality as political identities as well as personal ones and rely on community and self-love in the absence of anything else as a form of protest and political power. destruction (the recognition of everything that is wrong) is essential as a starting point - but where do we go from there? we rebuild.

[kbsd]

when a lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes

OR: what were we supposed to take away from episode 4 if not ‘bucky is a war widow’

[gammija]

Horseys! inspired by this banger of a post by @pinkravat-art

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I've been doing a lot of reflection as of late, especially after this past class.

This past class was about the Torah and Tanakh in general, and the way the rabbi talked about the commandments (specifically the ten commandments) has made me really reflect on how I interpret them, specifically the fifth commandment, or honoring your mother and father.

This is a commandment I have wrestled with for a long time - in fact, it brought me away from g-d at multiple times. I was severely abused when I was incredibly young by my mother, and I used to feel insulted at the implication that I were to honor her while she got to live a better life. It was hypocritical, in my eyes.

But this rabbi surmised that this particular commandment was because parenthood is an act of creation, something that is like the g-d from which we come from. My realization is this: I don't think we're necessarily meant to take even these commandments literally.

I this particular commandment is more of a call to honor creation - creation is a gift, and like any gift, many people simply will not like it and will discard it. The person who abused me created me, but she did not honor creation. She didn't honor me, but I can still honor it.

I have started to honor creation much more. I'm too young, too unstable, not mature enough to be a father (though I fantasize about it), but I create all the time. I create relationships, I create with my hands through crochet. I create memories, I create my world. And I can honor who I am and where I came from that made me who I am. I've been learning one of the mother tongues of my family (Italian, since part of my family originates there) and it was judaism that inspired me to do this.

I don't think g-d wants me to honor my abuser. I think He wants me to remember the Holy action of creation. When I am a father, that act of creation will be Holy, and indeed, I am already joyful about the thought.

I have seen many people struggle with this particular commandment, but I think this perspective helps me personally. I don't think I ever have to forgive my abusers (plural), and I don't think I am commanded to simply because they happened to be family. I am commanded to recognize the holy, to elevate the mundane. In doing so, I will remember g-d. Through creation, I honor g-d and everything he has done for us, for me, and for our collective people.

[annamaryllis]

Richard wrote misogynistic portrayals for most pjo women into his books, then went off and repeated it onscreen but worse

literally. girlbossified and fucked up sally's character, athena is unnecessarily villainous (while poseidon is sanitized...coincidence I think not!), frederick's actions are blamed on his new wife (and they literally didn't address that whole annabeth having regrets thing but I have a feeling it was about annabeth not reaching out to her dad...it's not the child's responsibility to reach out and try to mend the relationship...like richard's handling of their relationship was already bad enough in the books), thalia adding onto annabeth's trauma and "making her work for it" like wtf was that, annabeth getting stripped of her personality and turned into the stoic child soldier smart girl who struggles with emotions because how dare she act like a 12-year-old girl, percy "saving" her from her incorrect worldview and Showing Her The Way and how to act like a human (BOOOO annabeth is literally his mortal point, what reminds him of his humanity! she is the idealist! she's the one to not give up on luke, not him! like no the point is not that he's always been Not Like Everyone Else; percy spends the whole pjo series building up his worldview which is the accumulation of all of the lessons he's learned from all of the other characters and his experiences throughout the series. but ofc in the show he just shows up with it. I'm sure he'll be talk no jutsuing everyone soon enough ughhh), no goddess appearances, etc etc. and to think they thought they ate with that medusa redemption...athena is criticized for her actions and yet poseidon is never really scrutinized for assaulting her and is redeemed to be a loving caring father...

[alteregomp4]

I hope that old man is the hottest piece of ass on the vampire market and everyone has a turn on that ride next season. I said what I said and I speak the truth.