#because people our age DO want change!
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
gothsuguru · 21 days ago
Text
the world would have been so much more different and hopefully progressive if bernie would have won all those years ago… hoping someone like that comes again!
3 notes · View notes
dbphantom · 5 months ago
Text
Hate having adhd went to go work on my fallout modpack, got distracted while going to disable the steam overlay, ended up in the points shop, went to go edit my profile, decided to change my pfp, found a buried folder I forgot existed, found some old Veneer art I forgot existed, spent 45 minutes looking at all the old photos, STILL HAVE NOT TOGGLED ONE SIMPLE OPTION THAT SHOULD'VE TAKEN 30 SECONDS AT MOST
#I'm shocked I have these drawings scanned on my pc I don't remember doing that I must've done it before I left in case my mom threw all my#Art out again#Anyway at age 12 I was writing a better '3 merpeople go on land to find a 4th one that has been disguised as a human all his life' story#Than Ma/ko Merm/aids EVER did so uh. Take that Jonathan#God it sucks so bad that kid me would've LOVED MM if it just DIDN'T HAVE THE STUPID GENDER WAR BULLSHIT#Literally the entire first and second season is just. So fucking stupid. I wrote a God damn essay about how they fumbled Erik's story SO BAD#I don't even LIKE Erik BUT THEY DID HIM SO DIRTY#THE CHARACTER POTENTIAL AND WRITING COULD'VE BEEN BETTER THAN ZANE B. S1 OF H2O BUT THEY THREW IT AWAY AND FOR WHAT!!!!!!!#Seriously you're telling me a kid who was abandoned his entire life for being male didn't have a bigger impact on the pod than FUCKING ZAK?#That plot twist of 'oh actually Zak was a merman all along' was 100% so they could guilt free write Erik out#Instead of like. Having him face his actions or redeem himself in like. Any way. He just fucks off. THEN the pod is like lol Zac were sorry#We're sorry for literally not doing anything to you because you were privledged enough to have a mother who was super ultra powerful#So you were never really affected by our actions until JUST now. Unlike that other fuckface Erik who suffered his whole life alone#Also then in s3 there are STILL no mermen in the pod. Not even little mermen babies. No kids and teens they've welcomed back n apologized to#NOTHING#God. Mm pisses me off dude#AND I STILL HAVENT TOGGLED THAT FUCKING OPTIONS AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH#Cruddy rambles#God I'm not done I'm sorry fallout can wait YOU ARE TELLING ME THE GUY WHO TELLS US HOW SHITTY MERMAN BABIES R TREATED BY THE POD. IS NOT#THE SAME ONE THE POD APOLOGIZES TO IN THE SEASON FINALE BECAUSE THEY WROTE IN A SHITTY PLOT TWIST?#AUUUUUUUHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG#It's so bad. It's so fucking bad. It's so needlessly gendered and for what. They could've just had 2 rival warring pods#What pisses me off the most is that s3 (4) completely pivots and never really follows thru with the s1 and 2 story arcs#The writers just kinda wash thsir hands of that because 'hey the pod said sorry to zac' BUT THEN NOTHING ACTUALLY CHANGES!!!!#Maybe instead of having a constantly rotating cast of characters s3 (4) could've instead focused on Ondina and Erik's relationship a bit#Maybe have Ondina tell him she wants to just stay friends because she can't trust him. Have him IDK grow and change as a character?#Maybe so you can show kids nobody is born evil and we all need support systems and healthy relationships to grow and become better people??#THAT would've been a GOOD FOLLOW THROUGH#But no instead u just write him out of the show and never show any OTHER mermen who were exiled being welcomed back#Like u had Ondina becoming a teacher... Why not have Zac become a teacher for all the new mermen who were just recently welcomed back??
13 notes · View notes
arrowpunk · 6 days ago
Text
Sometimes I think about how I used to know this like fairly popular artist who made a decent living off commissions who like, very purposefully put in her terms of service that she wouldn't draw ships. Which is fair, artists can do what they want- but I was friends with her at the time and so I knew the entire reason she had that in her terms of service was because she didn't want to draw any queer ships.
And the thing that gets me about it is that the majority of her fan base was/is queer. And so fairly frequently people would commission her to draw like 2 different bust portraits of the different halves of their gay ship- which! Good for them! But she like knew it was for ~gay shipping~ reasons and she wouldn't turn it down but she would come into the group chat and complain about how uncomfortable it made her. And how she hated how when she sold charms the most popular were always the popular fandom gay ship. Like she made/makes her entire living off of queer people. And like. Hates us. Behind the scenes where her fan base cannot see.
She would sometimes show the group chat asks she got asking if she was homophobic because it isn't actually that difficult to figure out if you pay attention. Because in spite of it all she did draw a lot of het ship art. And she would fret and worry that people would Find Out that she's. Really homophobic. And then she'd lose her entire source of income. (She would of course just delete the asks and never answer them)
And she always had such a victim complex about it too. Like The Queers were conspiring to get around her terms of service to make her, a Good Christian Woman draw their dirty little gay ships.
Like not a single thought spared for how she was profiting off of a marginalized group of people by publicly making sure she seemed totally fine with queer stuff. (In her charm sets she did always include the popular fandom gay ships, in spite of how much she complained about how she hated that people bought the charms for gay reasons) While behind closed doors she would mock and deride queer people and participate in discussions about how awful it is that queer stuff is so Normalized these days, and whatever happened to the sanctity of marriage and all that conservative evangelical bullshit.
And like I haven't interacted with her in many years, for uh. Obvious reasons. And it doesn't happen often but Every Now And Then some of her art will show up on my dash. Usually reblogged by someone openly and proudly queer, and I will just be sitting there like. Damn. You have no idea how much she hates everything about you. This sucks.
5 notes · View notes
aroceu · 2 months ago
Text
shame is the self killer shame is the authenticity killer shame hides the honesty of your art and the beauty of your own individual uniqueness and voice and thoughts. without embracing the parts of you that people might think are annoying or imperfect or cringe the road to self acceptance and inner peace and lasting happiness will continue to stay that much harder
#telling myself this right now because it's true but feelings are complicated#and i currently have complicated feelings about some stuff#but i know intellectually this is true#addendum and if people tell you otherwise and that you should be ashamed of who you are#instead of recognizing your capacity and ability to be willing to grow especially when you are#then you still don't have to change yourself. you don't have to be someone for others to not think of as shameful#who cares what other people think as long as you know and have confidence in yourself#this is why I say that really knowing and understanding yourself and the person you want to be is the primary step of unlearning shame#because it absolves the chronic shame but also is a reminder when you do feel that guilt again#that if you know who you are and do what you feel is right and stand by your own humanity and decision making#then that's all you really need. you don't need approval from others even if they try to make you feel otherwise#because i think we're here to be ourselves and connect with others in a way we can see their authentic selves#while being our own authentic selves. allow ourselves to grow together because we want to#not because of the intrinsically imperfect and black and white methodology of judgment and expectation#shame is ingrained in a lot of people because we grew up seeking the approval of those around us including our peers#whether it manifests in bullying or overly critical adult figures or anything else#a lot of us are taught from a young age to act and become someone in order to not face that abuse again#but as we grow into adulthood we're straddled with this feeling in an adult world that is always changing and doesn't always treat ppl#like this. so then it becomes that the biggest arbiter of shame in our lives is ourselves and that fear of perception and judgment#when in reality it is much simpler and more fulfilling to not mind that judgment and just accept yourself for who you are#regardless of what other ppl may think of you
3 notes · View notes
wild-at-mind · 11 months ago
Text
Don't want to tone police anyone else, but I kind of hope that if anyone sent me a misguided ask trying to 'correct' some terminology I used for my own self-identity, I'd be able to reply in a way that didn't frame myself as superior for being out longer than the asker.
#i've only been out for like 5 mins anyway so i kind of hate that anyway for maybe personal reasons??#i met a lot of trans people my age this year who also didn't come out during their entire 20s for Reasons#and we all agreed it fucking sucks and feels like wasted time#and i'm well aware people come out much much later than that and the same applies#as a transmasc person i have detected a small amount of 'well how would you know you only just came out like 5 mins ago'#from other transmasc people about my age who have been out way longer#and i understand where they are coming from i guess but i also can't help it#and i hope our community never has to be divided by supposed privilege lines of who came out when and who spent more time as 'cis'...#maybe people are already trying to do this but i hope not because none of that stuff is fixed enough to be an axis of oppression#though it does change our experiences of life of course it's never as simple as 'privileged vs oppressed' on things like this#in particular there's one transmasc person in my local area (there aren't many lol) who i really want to connect with but who has made#implications that they see people like me as trans babies of sorts#like not talking about me but someone else they said of a long-time friend of theirs who just came out as transmasc#'i could have used that support 10 years ago!'#i was just like :/ well they aren't talking about me but is this how people in my community see me??#anyway i think if we can't have compassion for and acceptance of each other's unique experiences it will stand in the way of intra-communit#connection
5 notes · View notes
yutadori · 6 months ago
Text
it's so crazy and isolating hearing my friends talk about how they want kids u__u
#i saw my friend for the first time in months on sun (we've still been keeping in touch though so it doesnt feel like that much time has#passed) and she's always been staunchly against having kids#but then we started talking about ivf (thanks to pussypedia when i flipped it open to a random page) and she talked about how she'd conside#having kids in the future and i was like HUH ???#not out loud of course but .#she's been with her bf for almost a year now and i think being with him has changed her mind#she mentioned how he has a big family like he has a lot of siblings and his parents each have a lot of siblings themselves#so i dont really see him shifting towards the idea of not having kids bc of that idkkkk#and she said that she sees it as a chance to give kids a better life than she had and :/#idk i'm really set on never having kids ever because i dont think i could ever do it + i dont have any sort of desire or pull towards the#and i never really felt bad about it or swayed but now that my friend who was really firm on Not having kids is changing her mind i feel#kind of bad about it for some reason !?!?!?#idk it feels a bit selfish to be upset that she changed her mind but idk it's kinda isolating#i think i only have one friend now who doesnt want kids#but if that changes then its going to probably feel .__.#i know none of my friends are going to shame me for it but :/#idk . it feels weird and bad lol but also i dont want to have kids just because i feel left out or looked down on#ss#its even scarier because we're getting closer to the age where people start having kids..... like what do you mean we're not in our late#teens / early twenties anymore....................
5 notes · View notes
reconnecting · 1 year ago
Text
rambling dont mind me
#thinking about how the difference between me n my other indigenous friends is like a border or two#thats it#and how that really just can totally remove everything i have to say from relevancy with other indigenous people#like my yukayeke vs my cousins tribe n clan#function completely differently#which makes sense like we're ages apart#literally different countries and opposite sides even if we werent#but i think like#as soon as you get south of the border the 'rules' that northern dudes have made kinda stop applying how you think they do#like my cousin is metis and taino because theyre my cousin#or more theyd be a part of my yukayeke if theyd learn about it i guess is more accurate like#its a bit more complex than how im saying it but yk#but i cant be part of their clan or tribe#which mind you is FINE like its not a bother or anything like that and i dont necessarily even know if id join given the choice#but i find it really interesting like#something about the timezone of when you got colonized and where that border is really changed us#i dont think we need to be this divided in our views is kinda the other thing but also i think that we currently need how certain things ar#like how theyre different#just in order to deal with the surrounding population of people#like shit my boyfriend's family would NEVER admit theyre indigenous even though he wants to reconnect#whereas white cherokee grandma is a whole thing here#well excluding the aztecs but his family considers them dead so im not counting that rn#versus like my taino ass#we're having a whole resurgence of people trying to be proud of their blood in puerto rico#its a HUGE thing to say 'oh fuck we're not dead' like its a MAJOR event thats been happening for the past few years#and its great! its like actually fantastic!#and i really GENUINELY hope it doesnt end up with our yukayekes becoming even more closed off#i hope it ends with 'youre taino? come learn then.' and then we learn#because fuck if i dont love my people but fuck if im not sick of people claiming shit for fun too#idk
3 notes · View notes
timeisacephalopod · 1 year ago
Text
I saw a post the other day that kinda pushed back on the way all coming of age movies are about sexuality and all high school stories basically center around who wants to fuck who and how that's like. Not really all coming of age and high school stories should offer since you know. Youth isn't about who you have a crush on and probably coming of age stories in particular should be far more diverse in subject matter than they are.
Honestly as someone who, when I was 'coming of age' age, hated coming of age stories and still do for the exact reason listed above (see the weird scene in It where we all sexualize a 13 year old girl because boys have crushes and surely there's no other way to portray this than feeling a child up with a camera to demonstrate boys have ~feelings~ Bev gets no equivalent scene because she's the object of affection rather than the subject feeling desire) I also wish there was diversity in those stories. And coming of age stories about adults- we don't stop going through huge life moments that change everything forever, but back to kids. When I was a kid I could have desperately used a coming of age story where the character has a sick and dying parent who does die by the end of the story and what happens after that. Granted I did just fine without it, but even without being asexual it's always irked me that coming of age stories don't seem to appreciate that kids have way larger problems and way better stories to tell then first crushes and first kisses for shit sake give kids who went through what I did as a kid some kind of story about what happens when your parent gets cancer and how complicated that is and stop assuming the biggest thing that happens around puberty is discovering sexuality that, if you were queer, you probably already noticed what you felt wasn't in a coming of age story anyway.
#winters ramblings#id actually LOVE to see a coming of age story about an immigrant child moving to a new country#and have the coming of age center around THAT instead of these bizarre vaguely adult explorations of sexuality#that honestly ive never related to anyway like maybe the allos get it but even THEY deserve more diversity in stories#SURELY even your local allos have a dad dying of cancer they desperately need to know what to do with#like deadass a therapist told me at 26 i was robbed as a child because of what i went through and i STILL cry when i think of that#but no coming of age is all sex shit because children according to adults dont have real issues#which tells me adukts writing the stories are MASSIVELY privileged or stunted by execs or straight up assune kids wont watch#a REAL coming of age story. also i want a coming of age story about a 40 year old who is going through a career change#and the struggles that come with late career change. the benefits of a late career change. all the complicated family goo around all this#just give me decent stories that arent too focused on fycking RELATIONSHIPS for once. have them there sure i dont care#but for FUCK sakes can we stop pretending a 13 year olds biggest concern us who they have a crush on??#my dad was DEAD and i knew only one other person who lost her mom way younger than me at 8#we did not understand each other and how could we when our situations were so different. BOTH of us were so highly alienated#because NO ONE not even each other could relate to a lot if the people around us. the only thing we DID have in common#was the sick feeling we got when someone would bitch about their parents having fair expectations or not giving them literally everything#we both had an 'at least you HAVE parents to hokd you to reasonable standards and all you do is SQUANDER it' even if our feelings werent#faur to our peers anymore than their feelings were fair to us. wheres the coming of age story about THAT#tell me a story about a 16 year old whos mom has been dead HALF her life already like my friend. i was lucky enough not to deal with that#until i was 24. she deserved better out if high school and coming of age stories too. believe it or not kids have REAL lives and problems#and im SO tired of no one writing anything but some sad kids books about it even if the books are SOMETHING to start with#like for shit sakes must NICEthat the worst thing YOU went through was realizing you had a sexuality but my queer ass#ALWAYS knew i was different and highschool highlighted that a BUNCH so unless we're exploring aroace teens that doesnt appeal either#great yet ANOTHER story about straight teenagers because THEYRE the ones who need guidance on how to express themselves#like they dont see strsight people storoes and sexuality EVERYWHERE plus the ACTUAL opportunity to date in high school#that most queer kids dont get or dont get in the same way. why is THAT the only story being told when its the most saturated and BORING#and also ignores that kids have REAL issues and NO angency. explore THAT. do ANYTHING but yet another fucking coming of age story#about straight kids having crushes on each other and thats IT like come on SERIOUSLY
6 notes · View notes
sammygender · 2 years ago
Text
i’m sorry i have psychological problems because thinking too hard about tris and four from hit shit YA trilogy divergent still makes me want to sob. even tho i haven’t thought about them in like five years
#suddenly want to cry not at them but at twelve year old me#God. jesus christ. jesus fucking christ#we change and we grow up. & stuff we held most dearly in our arms becomes a subject of mockery!#but we still have a little soft spot for it deep down because we remember who we were when we liked it#& i remember who i was when the biggest part of my identity was being a divergent fan. giggling whenever someone said the number four.#obsessed with dauntless because i wanted so badly to be brave and strong and able to protect myself. the way i still do now!#the way i always will#i was so little i had so much hope :( before anything shit had happened to me yet. or actually not really not at all. but before i’d#processed most of the shit that had already happened.#i can’t believe i was real back then. when i look at kids from that age now it’s scary they seem so little and so not real but i was so#real. i felt so much. i sorta wanted to kill myself aged 11 & i really almost did aged 13#but i was still always so full of hope. i thought i’d get older and get a romance like tris and fours. one that leaves you dead but still#ultimately loved. important. and i thought i’d be brave; excited; jumping from trains and off roofs. i always told myself i’d be the first#to jump.#i think i would; think i was right#the little version of me that had discovered for the first time that he was brave.#i’m the friend who makes the other friends do stupid shit. i like that about me. on buses i see tattoo parlours and jump and go WE SHOULD#ALL GO GET ANOTHER PIERCING! and then we do. a lot of my life is based on random moments of impulsivity. that’s really nice.#but i used to lose myself in other people’s writing; now it’s always my own. that feels so easy#just to consume. to give nothing back. feels so freeing#& i used to be free; no academic pressures or worries. the way i’d kill for that again.#oliver talks
2 notes · View notes
megumins-wizard-hat · 7 months ago
Text
Ur just with the wrong people
do you guys ever feel like an outcast even in a group full of outcasts. like i'm autistic and even in groups full of neurodivergent people i'm still excluded sometimes. i don't understand why
#i work at a retro game store where the bulk of the employees; the owner included; are all neurodivergant#that workplace has been one of my favorite places in the world to be simce i started working there. i get along well with everyone because#each of them see me and know me for who i am and the work that i do; and while they have their faults i care for and accpet them as they are#and they do the same for me. the one “gripe” i sort of had with the newer staff we were hiring was that patience and care we had with#each other wasnt being readily extended to our lower functioning customers; arguably the ones who need that understanding the most#so i started doing double shifts with them and slowing introducing the idea of “making their experience a good one”#because a lot of our lower functioning customers have caretakers that come into the store with them; which means coming to our store is#not just something they're doing on a whim; it's a planned part of the day that for some of them is meant to be a highlight#so when i phrased it like that; and brought to their attention that this is kind of job that isnt for people who arent good with empathy#the good news is empathy is like creativity. it's a muscle that you can make stronger#point being; i had to make that chamge among my coworkers/friend group and for their own good; but for the good of people like us that'll#walk into the store. the magic about this is thise skills will benefit them outside of this job; the skill to be kind and gentle and#considerate with people you might not feel comfortable with is invaluable this day and age. if you're worried you cant?#dont. they thought the same thing and now we get 5 star reviews about the both of them. you can be the change you want to see in the people#around you. if youre just not getting that around yoj? find some new friends
13K notes · View notes
sirfrogsworth · 4 months ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
I think in this new age of A.I. the general public is going to need to increase their photography and lighting literacy. The response to this photo has just been a shit show.
There are people pointing out perfectly normal edge lighting and misunderstanding how reflections work.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
First the plane is parked at an angle. The tail is farther back than the nose. But also that is a curved surface and it tapers. It's reflecting the area to the right of the photo.
And the bottom of the plane is reflecting what is directly underneath. Which is the tarmac, not the crowd.
It should also be noted that photo was shot with a very telephoto lens and everything is super compressed. The crowd appears much closer to the airplane than they actually are.
But then someone who should have good understanding of lighting said this...
Tumblr media
And now I'm worried for her clients. Because that's very... wrong.
Well, wrong-ish.
First, let's try to understand why this photo is setting off some alarm bells.
Tumblr media
The crowd toward the rear is in shadow, but they are still very well exposed. But then there is also a bright light source creating a strong edge light on them. Looking at this photo with just the context of what is in it, there are some things that seem uncanny.
The information we do not have is the people in the shadow area are inside a very brightly lit airplane hangar.
Tumblr media
So they have artificial light blasting them from the top.
But that light is still much dimmer than the sunlit areas outside so they appear in shade. But we are used to shade being much darker than areas in direct sun. So the balance seems off in our brain. We expect the people to be darker because we don't have the context of the bright hangar lights above them.
But the other issue is that the photo was post processed. It wasn't manipulated. The pixels weren't changed. But the exposure balance was altered.
If I were to guess, the original photo looked more like this...
Tumblr media
But newer digital cameras can have 13 to 15 stops of dynamic range. And if you shoot in RAW, you can easily lift shadows and bring down highlights. You can balance the exposure so the dark parts aren't as dark and the bright parts aren't as bright. This photographer might have overdone it a bit in this case, but this is a fairly standard edit used to bring balance to photos.
And lastly, where does the edge light come from?
Tumblr media
Edge lighting or backlighting or rim lighting (all the same) should probably be called wrap-around lighting if you want to be more accurate.
It comes from a homogenous light source that is larger than the subject being lit. So with my knife photo, I placed it on a large LED panel light.
Tumblr media
The light source was bigger than the subject so it wrapped around the edges.
And I'm afraid the airplane is not nearly large enough to create a light source to wrap around everyone in the crowd. It isn't even reflecting direct sunlight. So I'm sorry to say that lighting designer was mostly mistaken despite the confidence.
The light source is... everything.
Tumblr media
That entire red area I highlighted is the light source.
As well as everything above and everything to the sides.
And the biggest aspect of that light source would be the sky above. I think people always forget the sky is a light source. If you are seeing blue, you are seeing light. And I guess the plane is included in that, but that entire highlighted red area is so bright, and so filled with sunlight bouncing around, that it creates basically a giant softbox. It becomes a huge single light source for the people in the hangar.
If you look at footage taken from way inside the hangar, you can see the camera adjusting exposure for the crowd inside, but look at what happens to the sunlit area outside.
Tumblr media
What does that look like?
A giant softbox.
A single homogenous light source blasting light inside the hangar.
The sun is so incredibly bright that even when it is not directly lighting something, the light just bouncing around outside is enough to overpower the very bright hangar lights.
So, what have we learned from this?
Perhaps people should hire me to be their lighting designer.
Though I'm sure she is actually very talented. She seems to work with stage lights and this is more physics and photography.
Phystography.
4K notes · View notes
inkskinned · 1 year ago
Text
no, actually, where is the whimsy?
my ex had a best friend named larry who asked me once: what do you think comes after irony?
we were at the bar where larry worked. it was a quiet night, and he'd hopped over to sit with us on the patron side. i swirled the lemon around my limoncello martini.
earnest positivity, i said, while my ex said, art self-destructs.
i stared at my ex. he stared at me.
his argument was the cinemasins argument: look how bad media is becoming! look at the loopholes and the dumb shit!
it was roughly 2011. galaxy print was still in. at the time, i had a favorite shirt that was a wolf howling at the moon. it got ripped in half in the wash and i honestly still mourn it. i dressed like effie stonem, because everyone did. and irony was the name of the thing. men liked MLP "ironically." the internet liked the kind of crass, "anti-mainstream" vibes of things like fuck romance, touch my butt and buy me pizza. we put cats in sunglasses everywhere, which was because we only liked things in irony.
and media had the same vibe in it: anti-hero white men would be "hard to love" and then storm off the scene. nobody was just earnestly trying to save the world: they were jaded, angry, unoriginal. mad you even asked them to try to help.
my ex ends up not being wrong. cinemasins becomes super popular. a lot of people start viewing media with this lens that is the cruelest, most jaded depiction. it's wrong for your character to have unexplained powers, even if the entire movie is about how strange it is she has unexplained powers - that is still considered a "loophole." characters make thoughtless, panicked choices? loophole. characters are actually kind people, despite hardship? loophole. features a woman doing literally anything without assistance? loophole. movies become hyper-aware of scrutiny, and now irony rules the media.
which means you go to a movie, and the character has to turn to the screen and say "beats me!!" or one of the side characters has to have some kind of quip like "are you seriously telling me that you think this is normal?" because nothing can happen in earnest. like a sitcom laugh track, we now anticipate the fourth-wall break: the moment that the media acknowledges it is telling a story. the media has to apologize for itself, or else someone like my ex rolls their eyes.
but here's the thing: i wasn't wrong either.
the difference might be that i am (and always have been) so soft-hearted that any crack in the light of this world will spear me into the ground. and i was the poet in the relationship. (he thought that was the same thing as being naïve and stupid). i was making things daily. i knew how all of us artists are driven by some strange desire to evolve. he notably liked to critique art, not to create it.
so yes, i've made things that are bitter and angry and even ironic. i've made long, sharp poems with all capital letters, and i've made poems about how the silence stretches out like a song. someone wrote once that we will spend our whole lives just circling the place we grew up. i think it's more that we spend our whole lives trying to remake a home. i think it's that as we age, it becomes less exciting to build the castle on the beach - we become aware of erosion, of windforce. we realize what we really want is to come home to our dog, castle or not.
and while art in the foreground is mired in white male violence and irony, and aggression, and not taking anything seriously - i don't think that's true of all art. i think more and more artists are leaning in to the things we love. the world has changed so much. they have taken so many things from us. the only thing we have left is love. at the bottom of the moving box - all we get is the faint sense that we have to appreciate what little we've got. i can't enjoy this stuff ironically anymore: what room do i have for irony? if it makes me happy, that is an amazing thing. there are so few happy places left for me. i want to be happy because of how leaves shiver beside each other like nestling birds. i want to be happy because of the color pink, and how magenta doesn't exist. i have spent so much of this life suffering, i have earned my right to a gentle ending. if nothing matters, i get to assign meaning to the nothing. i get to create meaning. i am an artist first and foremost, which means creation is my thing.
where is the whimsy? wherever i fucking put it. because if this is my last fucking chance to do any good in this world - i want to do it earnestly. i want to write things that make you happy. that make people feel heard and seen. what comes after irony has to be positivity.
it was close to my 21st birthday. in 7 years, i would end up writing a book about this relationship, which is hopefully coming out somewhere around May 2024. i come back to this bar scene in my memories a lot. i keep thinking of how pale my ex was. the look that crossed his face. how i looked back at him. how for a moment, both of us couldn't recognize the other person. like the gulf between us was a suddenly wide and cavernous thing. like we were alien to each other. he never took my opinion seriously, and he always seemed surprised whenever his manic-pixie-dream-girl ever broke free of the plot. like in the whole time we were together, i wasn't human enough.
this knowledge: where he said nothing comes after, my only instinct was what comes after is love.
14K notes · View notes
likeumeanit9497 · 7 months ago
Text
the re-do | m.s. |
matt sturniolo x fem!reader
summary: y/n participates in the triplets' "dirty q&a" video, where she accidentally infers that her experience losing her virginity to matt back in high school had been mediocre. instead of taking offence, matt makes it his mission to show her just how much he has improved since then.
warnings: SMUT; established friendship; m/f oral; unprotected p in v; dirty talk; 18+
notes: hi guys! this is my first ever one shot so pls be gentle with me (i'm genuinely so terrified to post this). it has absolutely NOT been proof read forgive me, but i hope you all enjoy <333
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
“Guys why am I actually nervous to film this?” Nick proclaimed from his place in the backseat of the car beside me. “No I am genuinely so scared right now.” Replied Chris from the seat in front of me as he began passing out our respective orders from McDonalds.
“We can’t act nervous or else the fans are gonna go even crazier than they already will.” Added Nick as Matt adjusted the camera on the dash. “You’re sure you’re gonna be able to handle the inevitable shit talking that’s gonna come from all this?” Matt asked as he turned to face me in the back. I took a deep breath but nodded. “The more they see me the more desensitized they’ll be. They’ll have to eventually get over it.”
As one of the triplet’s closest girl friends, I had been on the receiving end of a fair amount of hate from their fangirls on the internet. Because I had known them since elementary school, I had been a part of many of their earlier videos when their fans had still been pretty chill about our friendship. But over the past year, a new wave of younger fans had found the videos and had made it their life mission to publicly bash me any chance that they could. It became too much when, a few months ago, one of them decided to spread a rumour that Chris and I had slept together based on nothing other than strategically edited clips of us smiling at each other. It was then that the guys and I had made the decision to keep me as out of the public eye as possible.
However, the guys had sat me down last week to explain how fed up they were with how restricted they felt they had been in their content. They wanted to make an attempt at reclaiming a fandom built primarily of viewers closer to our age, and they thought that the best way to try that was to ignore the petty complaints and make content that they wanted to make. So, since I had been staying with them in Los Angeles for the month, I had agreed to not only be in one of their regular videos, but I had agreed to be in their ‘dirty q&a’ video. I couldn’t lie, I was a bit nervous, but mostly I was excited that my friends were finally confident enough to make videos with more extreme topics.
“Alright guys, ya’ll ready?” Chris asked, intaking a sharp breath while his hand hovered over the record button on the camera. We all responded with a falsely enthusiastic “ready!”, and the camera was turned on.
“Alright, first question,” Nick began after his long-winded introduction filled with disclaimers and explanations for their change in content. “How many people have you slept with?” Already with the first question, it was obvious that the guys were tentative about answering. “Bro I don’t know, next question.” Chris responded, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hands. “What do you mean by ‘I don’t know’ Chris?” Asked Matt tauntingly. “I mean I haven’t fucking kept track of everyone I’ve slept with.” He responded bluntly, before realizing how bad that had sounded. We all, however, erupted into laughter immediately. “Okay okay it’s not that bad guys I swear, I just have a bad memory is all.” He attempted to remedy his previous answer, but all three of us continued to laugh.
“Matt, how about you?” Asked Nick, to which Matt simply held up five fingers to the camera. “Same with me.” Nick agreed before turning to me. “Y/n? Spill it.” I rolled my eyes before answering truthfully. “Seven.” I shrugged, and I caught Matt’s smiley eyes through the rear view mirror.
“Alright next question is…” Chris was scrolling through the responses to their Instagram threads. “How old were you when you lost your virginity?”
“Sixteen” We all responded in unison, and immediately buckled over in laughter. “Not all at once though ya’ll.” Nick explained through his laughter, while mine and Matt’s eyes flew open and Chris’ laugh turned into hysterics. “Well…” Chris began before he was cut short by the three of us telling him to shut up. “I’m definitely gonna have to cut that one out. Sorry you two fools, I kind of set him up there.” Nick rolled his eyes as he looked between Matt and I.
Ironically enough, the fans had been half right in their rumour about Chris and I sleeping together. I had slept with one of the triplets before, but it wasn’t Chris.
When we were sixteen, Matt and I had decided that we wanted to lose our virginities to each other. It had been a no-strings-attached decision, and our friendship thankfully never wavered after it was done. Both Nick and Chris had already lost theirs that same year, and we had both just kind of wanted to get it over with. Obviously, this piece of information was known only by Matt and I, and of course Chris and Nick since they had barged into the room while we were in bed together. Even though the vindictive side of me would love to have the fans know this piece of information and shatter their dreams, I knew that the fallout would be an absolute nightmare.
“Okay let’s see…” I had been handed Nick’s phone to choose a question to answer and was scrolling through my options. “Here’s a simple one. Favourite position? Mine’s speed bump for sure.” I placed the phone down, satisfied with my confident answer, only to be met with multiple pairs of confused eyes. “I beg your pardon? The fuck is speed bump?” Asked Nick as he took his phone back. “The one where you’re kinda just lying flat on your stomach with the guy behind you. Trust me it’s chef’s kiss.” I responded simply. Chris’ facial expression turned from confusion to one of understanding. “Ohhh yeah that’s a good one.” He replied as he dapped me up. “Great, gonna have to edit that out too unless you want the rumours to get really bad again.” Nick said as he rolled his eyes. “Shit, sorry Nick.” Chris said, giggling slightly.
“Let’s just move on.” Matt said as he began scrolling on his own phone. “Best and worst sexual experiences.” He read off of his screen. There was a moment of silence while we all thought of our answers. “I had a girl throw up on my dick once. The problem is I don’t know if that makes it the worst or the best though.” Said Chris, earning a loud groan from each of us. “You’re sick.” Replied Matt, giving his brother a disgusted look.
“I mean I guess the worst sex would probably be my first time right? Like that makes sense right?” Asked Nick in an attempt to steer the conversation away from Chris’ confession, to which I nodded in agreed response without thinking. I caught Matt’s eyes in the rearview mirror again, this time seeing them filled with a pleading expression. Realizing what I had done, I silently prayed to the universe that my action would go unnoticed by the others. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, my head nod didn’t make it past Chris, which was made incredibly clear when he mumbled to Nick behind his hand that was hiding his smiling mouth from the camera.
“Did you see that?” He asked, and Nick looked confused so he continued, “Y/n agreed with you about her first time.” He managed to get out before erupting into laughter at the expense of his brother. Matt threw his hands up in the air once Nick joined Chris in his giggling, and I winced from my place in the backseat; also mouthing an apology to Matt’s reflection in the mirror.
“Bro come on it was my first time! I guarantee you were trash your first time too.” Matt said in an attempt to repair his ego as he threw his empty cup at Chris. “Maybe so, but I don’t have the girl who I lost it to here in the car to confirm it.” Chris snarked back, playfully nudging Matt’s shoulder. “We all gotta start somewhere dude.” He added when Matt didn’t respond. As Nick continued choking on his own laughter, Matt crossed his arms and stared out the window, very clearly wishing he was anywhere but there in that moment.
“Okay okay,” Nick began catching his breath. “We need to cool it because 90% of that what we just filmed is completely unusable. Let’s please just try to make it through this video without exposing Matt and Y/n’s bumpy sexual history again.” He pleaded as he began scrolling through his phone to find new questions.
─ ⊹ ⊱ ☆ ⊰ ⊹ ─
“God, that was rough.” Said Chris as we all climbed out of the parked car. We had finally finished the video. It took us an hour to film, and would still be edited down to just twenty minutes of content where we weren’t exposing big secrets or directly fuelling past rumours.
“At least it’s done. It might be a while before I ever want to do that again.” Nick responded as he opened the garage door leading into their house. “Agreed.” Added Matt from behind me as we climbed the stairs to the main level. We all walked over to the fridge to grab drinks, as if the beverages would clean our dirty mouths.
“Alright,” Chris began after a hefty chug from his Pepsi, “I’m going to my room. Matt, Nick, get on Fortnite with me.” He began descending the stairs. “I’ll get on once I shower Chris. I have a desperate need to scrub this FILTH off of my body.” Replied Nick, and he began walking towards the stairs leading to his bedroom. “Y/n, come upstairs whenever you want to go to sleep and I’ll get off the game.” He called over his shoulder as he disappeared at the top of the stairs.
Matt and I were left alone in the kitchen, him sitting at the table and me sitting on top of the counter in between the stove and the fridge. Swinging my legs carelessly, I decided to break the silence first. “I’m really sorry about all of that in the car Matt. I didn’t mean it.” He looked up at me and chuckled. “Yes you did, and it’s not a big deal. I know I wasn’t great back then.” He responded before taking a drink from his can. I smiled softly at his response but decided to leave it be. There was no use in trying to deny it. The sex was just boring, short, and awkward; the way that most first times are. At least he didn’t take any offence to it.
“You know,” He began after a few moments of silence, his eyes shooting to mine as he stood up from his place at the kitchen table. “I’ve gotten much better.” A playful smirk travelled to his lips as he began walking towards my frozen figure on the counter. He stopped just a few short centimetres away from me, so close that I could reach out and touch any part of him that I wanted. I couldn’t tell if he was fucking with me, until I felt his early signs of arousal press lightly against my knee.
My throat was dry, and I felt like a deer in headlights. Even though Matt and I had slept together when we were younger, the dynamic was much different than now. The proposition came about awkwardly, and we were a fumbling mess with very little understanding of how it felt to be aroused. But in this moment, I was very very aroused just from this conversation.
In my silence, he placed a firm hand on my hip, rubbing his thumb across it gently. “I can do just about anything. Just let me know how you want it and I can give it to you.” My stomach did a somersault at his words, and I felt my panties dampen. He used his free hand to push my legs apart so that he could stand in between them, and my limp hands subconsciously moved up to grab onto his shoulders. At the first sign of my willingness, Matt quickly leaned forward and peppered soft, teasingly slow kisses along my neck. His lips travelled up to my ear, where he bit the lobe playfully before whispering, “Well, tell me. How do you want me Y/n?”
His words caused me to clench on nothing and I nearly moaned from the anticipation. With him still waiting on my response I whispered back, “You can do anything you want to me, Matty.”
Without missing a beat, he attacked my lips with his own and I melted from the immediate relief. I moved my hands from his shoulders up to the base of his head, and as his tongue danced along with mine I pulled gently at his messy hair; my own mouth filling with a moan falling from his lips. His right hand traveled up my grey hoodie to find that I had nothing on underneath, and he lightly brushed the bottom of my left tit with his thumb. Suddenly his hands moved from under my shirt and gripped my ass as he effortlessly lifted me off the counter and into his arms. I wrapped my legs around his waist and he stumbled towards his bedroom.
Once inside the undisturbed room, he placed me down on his desk, my ass hitting the mouse and causing the computer to turn on; casting a light on the otherwise dark room. He wasted no time in removing my hoodie, leaning me back slightly so he could easily twirl his tongue along each nipple. I hummed in pleasure from the warm, wet sensation of his mouth connecting to my skin, and brought my hand down in between our bodies to softly run my hand up and down his clothed hardness. After a few moments, he pushed my hand away and dropped to his knees in between my legs.
Pulling my grey sweats off my body and pushing my thong to the side in one quick motion, Matt took a moment to relish in my swollen, dripping hole. “I don’t remember you being this wet for me last time.” He smirked as he looked up at me with blown out pupils. “Let’s see if you taste the same.” My eyes rolled to the back of my head at his filthy words, and a moan slipped from between my lips as his mouth made sloppy contact with my sensitive bud. I subconsciously grabbed onto the back of his head, suffocating him with my heat as he continued to suck and kiss my clit. As his tongue worked on my nerves, he released a guttural moan that vibrated against my heat, causing my back to arch at the intense feeling.
When we had done this all of those years before, Matt’s movements were lacking in confidence. He had fumbled around my clit blindly, and had ate me out cautiously as if he was afraid of hurting me. Now, this Matt had clearly gained experience, as my stomach was already beginning to fill with the familiar pressure from the build up of an orgasm once I watched him find all of my most sensitive spots; his eyes blissfully closed.
Suddenly, he pulled his mouth away from my heat and I groaned at the loss of contact. He straightened his body back up to my level and brought his face so close to mine that our noses were touching. “Kiss me. I want you to know how good you taste.” He whispered through his glistening bright red lips. More on fire than I had ever been in my life, I immediately attached my open mouth to his, moaning at the distinct taste of my sweet arousal on his tongue. As we deepened the kiss, his fingers found my heat and he ran two of them up and down my folds to collect my wetness before slamming them into my cunt; finding my spongey g-spot on the first pump with his curled fingers.
My head rolled back, lost in the euphoric feeling of his fingers filling me up, and he watched my facial expressions intently as the wet sounds of my upcoming orgasm filled the space between us. “Holy fuck, Matt.” I slurred, my voice coming out choppy as his fingers continued to relentlessly pound into me; never losing contact with that one spot that drove me crazy. “I-I’m gonna-” I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling the very beginning of my orgasm roll over my body.
Suddenly, all of his movements stopped and my eyes shot open out of frustration. In the time since my eyes had screwed shut, his own had darkened in arousal. My body trembled from the sudden halt in its pleasure, and he smirked at me. “You want to cum, sweetheart?” He asked, his kind words a harsh paradox to his sinister expression. Still, I nodded eagerly to which he pulled his fingers out of me completely before leaning up and placing his wet mouth right against my ear.
“You’re gonna fucking wait for me.”
I attempted to squeeze my legs together to take some pressure off of my throbbing, unsatisfied core as his vulgar words scrambled my brain, before he pulled me off the desk and pushed my head down so that I was now the one on my knees. Confused, I looked up to find him gazing down at me. He gestured towards his clothed member. “Go ahead.” I grinned slyly.
My turn.
I had made an attempt at giving him head the first time we had sex. Just like him, I had struggled with confidence due to the sole fact that I had no clue what I was doing. Since then, I had had plenty of practice, and I was excited to now be the one to show him my improvements.
I grabbed onto the waist band of his pyjama pants and pulled them down to his knees. With only his tight red boxer shorts covering it now, the outline of his thick cock and the small wet spot at its tip from his pre-cum made my mouth water. I brought my mouth up to the skin on his lower stomach, right above the Calvin Klein logo on his boxers, and began peppering excruciatingly slow kisses along the light sprinkling of hair there. I glanced up at him through my eyelashes to find him peering down at me with curious lust, his mouth open slightly and his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths.
After a short while, I grabbed his boxers and pulled them down to meet his pants at his knees. His hardened cock smacked his stomach on its release from the tight material, where it left a wet patch from his pre-cum. Grabbing it with my left hand, I collected a pool of saliva in my mouth and stared up at him as I let it all drip down his swollen member. After pumping my hand for a few strokes, I placed only the tip in my mouth as I watched his eyes dilate. I swirled my tongue teasingly along the swollen tip, tasting the the saltiness of his fluid. Eventually, I began pumping my hand up and down his shaft in rhythm with my head bobbing along the top half of his cock. He shifted on his feet at the new sensation and let his head fall back. I kept my pace agonizingly lazy, knowing that it would drive him crazy.
With my tongue, I licked a strip from the base of his ball sack, up his shaft, and to his tip, earning a hushed whimper from his lethargic mouth before he grabbed my hair and shifted his hips. Looking down at me and holding my head firmly in place, he began thrusting his hips as he kept me still. He started slow, but when he realized that I could take more his pace began to pick up and his cock began to hit deep in my throat. I looked up at him through my tear-filled eyes, and saliva began to drip down my chin. “Fuck you look so good with my cock in your mouth.” He grunted out through each thrust. I lifted my hand to cup his balls, giving them gentle squeezes that seemed to send him towards his climax.
As a moan fell from his lips, he pulled my head back so that his dripping cock sprung free before he got the chance to fill my mouth with his cum. He stood there for a moment with his eyes closed taking deep breaths as if he was fighting the urge to finish right then, before he opened his eyes and gazed down at me. “Get on the bed.”
I pulled myself up off the ground and, on shaky legs, walked over to his bed with him following close behind. Once I reached the edge of the bed he stopped me, turning me around to face him and pushing me down so I would sit. “Put your feet on the bed and pull your knees up to your chest.” He commanded, and I did as I was told, albeit I was a bit confused. “Good girl.” He praised me as he pulled me right up to the edge of the bed before pushing my legs further apart.
Placing one of his knees on the bed beside me, he lined his cock up with my entrance; rubbing it tantalizingly along my wetness. Placing one arm around my waist to brace my body, he slowly pushed his cock inside of me right there on the edge of the bed. His trusts were slow but harsh, and the position he had placed us in made it so that my cervix was barrelled into each time his hips met mine. He placed his sweat-coated forehead against my collar bone and released small breathless grunts with each deep thrust. “So fucking good Matt. Oh god.” I whined as his pace began to increase in speed. He planted his teeth into my shoulder as we fell back onto the bed; his body now completely on top of mine as he continued to drive into me.
He lifted his head and looked fixedly at my fucked out face, his eyes glossed over in erotic pleasure. With this visual, I was brought back to the first time we had fucked, in a position so similar to this one. His rhythm was slower and much more tentative, and we were both certainly much less pleasing to the other, but still I suddenly got hit with a wave of recognition in how much we had both grown since then.
I was pulled out of my trance by Matt’s commanding voice. “Move back real quick and get on your stomach.” I did as I was told, feeling the emptiness that came from his dick sliding out of my soaking wet pussy. Assuming he wanted me in doggy, I got on my knees and arched my back; my head and shoulders pressed firmly against the soft mattress. I felt the bed move as he climbed on all the way, and in a moment of animalistic desperation I pushed my needy cunt subconsciously back to meet heat of his cock.
“No.” He stated simply, his veiny hands massaging my ass. Confused, I looked over my shoulder as I waited for him to explain. He had an ominous smile as he moved his gaze from my fully exposed cunt to my face. “I wanna see if your favourite position is really worth the hype.” He used his hands on my ass to push it down flat to the bed before adjusting himself so that he could line up correctly. Still looking over my shoulder with glazed eyes, I watched his expression as his cock sunk into my core once again. His jaw was clenched tightly and his eyelashes fluttered slightly from the new sensation that the position gave him as he bottomed out. “Oh fuck.” His eyes were fully shut now as he stayed still for a moment. Small beads of sweat traveled down his stomach as I took in the beauty of the man who was making me feel so so good.
Getting turned on even more just from Matt’s visual pleasure, my walls clenched subconsciously and I whined, “Please keep going Matty.” His eyes snapped open and landed on mine, before he leaned forward — one hand beside my head and the other planted firmly to the small of my back — and began pounding into me relentlessly.
The depth of this position allowed me to feel every inch of his cock, and it became impossible to keep the moans and strings of profanity from escaping my lips. This seemed to be the case for Matt too, as over the sounds of my own moans and the wet sounds of our bodies connecting, I could hear the gruff throaty moans of his own pleasure. “Fuck. You’re so fucking tight Y/n.” Even though I was aware that we were both making far too much noise that Chris and Nick would definitely hear, I couldn’t get myself to bring it to Matt’s attention, as the animalistic vocalization of his indulgence was bringing me closer and closer to my climax.
“I-I need to cum Matty.” I managed to vocalize as my nerves began to unravel. “Hold it. Want you to cum with me.” He responded, leaning even further forward so that his body was practically lying on top of mine. He took a free hand and wrapped it around my throat, lightly squeezing the sides as my pleasure became dangerously close to bubbling over.
“P-Please cum for me. I can’t hold it anymore.” I begged, digging my nails into his silk bedsheets and feeling my walls quiver each time he drove his cock into my cervix. His breathing became hitched in my ear and his movements became sloppier. Biting my ear, he asked, “Where do you want me to cum, Y/n?”
Without wasting time, I moaned my response. “Cum in me please. Want you to fill me with it.” At that, Matt slammed his twitching cock into me a few more times before finally telling me what I so desperately needed him to.
“Okay sweetheart. Go ahead and make a mess for me.” Even before his words fully left his dirty mouth, I gave into the overbearing pressure in my stomach and felt my intense orgasm over-take me. Practically screaming his name, my pussy convulsed uncontrollably. I felt the immediate relief and heard the gush as I squirted along his cock and down his legs. “Jesus.” He moaned out as his body suddenly stilled. As my legs shook, I could feel his cock twitching inside of me; painting my walls with his cum.
After we both came down from our highs, catching our breath and reconnecting with our minds, Matt slowly pulled his dick — freshly bathed in my own juices — out of my swollen core. With a satisfied sigh, he threw his body onto the bed beside mine. Both of us laid there for a moment, facing one another with glazed over expressions, before a shameless smile crept onto Matt’s face.
“Well you definitely didn’t squirt the last time we slept together.” He chuckled proudly, and I knew his ego had been inflated. I rolled my eyes. “Well, you didn’t whimper the last time we fucked either.” It was my turn to smile as he covered his face bashfully. We laid there in silence for a moment, both of us lethargic and fucked out.
“If that was anything like when ya’ll lost your virginities then I am extremely impressed.”
Matt and I both shot our heads up and looked around the room for the origin of that familiar voice. We were alone, but my eyes focused on the lit-up computer. On the screen, Matt’s Discord was open to the group with Nick and Chris. I turned to look at Matt, who had also clearly made the same discovery that I had, and whispered, “Did you for real leave the channel unmuted?” He tucked his lips together and shrugged apprehensively, before climbing off the bed and over to the computer.
“Chris, how much of that did you hear?” He asked into his headset. I heard a laugh through the mic. “Oh Matt, I heard it all. Good work. I’m a proud brother.” I covered my face in embarrassment as Matt rolled his eyes. “Fuck off. You’re a perv.” He mumbled to his brother, but I caught the small smile that tried to creep to his lips.
“I’m gonna need a fucking lobotomy to get over the trauma that I was just put through.” I heard Nick’s voice now through the mic and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Bro you could have just left the server, you act like I forced you to listen to the entire thing.” Matt argued with his older brother. “You think I stayed and listened to the ENTIRE thing? What are you crazy?” I was full out laughing now, despite the embarrassment. “I left as soon as I figured out what was happening, but I still heard waaaay too much.” Matt laughed now and muted his mic — perhaps a bit too late — then walked back to where I was on the bed, propped up on my forearms.
“Whoops.” He simply said as he pulled his boxers back up. I shook my head and smiled shyly. “We are literally never going to be able to live that down.” I replied as he draped his body along the bed beside me again. Rubbing his eyes awkwardly, he shrugged softly. “Well, at least they’re gonna have to stop teasing me about my skills.” I smacked his arm playfully and he responded by grabbing me swiftly and pulling me to his side.
“You were impressed, weren’t you?” He asked teasingly, as he held me close. I closed my eyes and sighed, “I was, Matt. Really, really, impressed.” He giggled into my neck at my truthful response and I swatted him once again.
“I’m glad we got our re-do. I’d been wanting that for a while.” He said after a moment. I looked at him with a smile and ruffled his hair. “Me too, honestly. I always knew you had some potential in you.” I teased.
“Well, if you don’t want to have to face Nick right now, you’re welcome to sleep in here tonight.” He offered and I sighed in relief. “That would be great, actually.” I said as I began to sit up. “Let’s get cleaned up first though.” He began as he got up and grabbed us both towels from his closet, “You’re not allowed to get under my sheets until you wash my children off your thighs.” My eyes shot open at his disgusting choice of words and I quickly covered myself with my towel. “Matthew Bernard you are sick!” I exclaimed as we both headed towards his bathroom. “Sure am. But so are you.”
He pulled me into a hug while we stood in the bathroom waiting for the shower to warm up. As he rubbed circles on my back with his hand, I sighed. “I think this is the secret to good friendship.” He chuckled before asking, “What is?” Playfully, I smacked his ass over his boxers. “Fucking the shit out of each other once in a while.” He laughed and pulled away from the hug before getting into the shower; leaving the glass door open so that I could follow him. “Shut your weird ass up and get in the shower with me, friend.”
4K notes · View notes
aromantic-pantyanarchy · 11 months ago
Text
It's me. I'm the cis, heterosexual, aromantic man. I will never marry, I will never be married, I will grow into middle age and elder age and I will die unmarried. I will be forced to support a household of myself on only my wages alone for the rest of my life. I will be asked about women and marriage and children by my family for the rest of my life (or men, the progressive ones might say). I may not ever come out to them. I feel like I burned my coming out on something stupid. I don't want to explain it. I don't want to run them through the definitions and intricacies. I don't want the acceptance without understanding, placating me with ceased questions and poor explanations to other, drunk adults.
I like my hair to be long, I spent a year with it dyed a golden blonde with dark roots because I like the trashy party girl aesthetic. I want to dye it again with pink tips. I like painting my nails, black and blue are my favorite colors. I like wearing chokers. I also like wearing baggy jeans and ratty hoodies. I like having stubble. I like having chest hair. I like having a square jaw and broad shoulders. I wish I had a flatter stomach and a thinner profile frame. I don't know what this makes me, perhaps this is something no more GNC than Machine Gun Kelly. I think about this a lot, how queer my appearance truly is. I should think about it less. I have thought long and hard about if I could be trans or if I could be non-binary or if I could be genderqueer and the conclusion I ultimately came to is that I most enjoy being a man open to whatever self-expression I want.
I don't date, but I've thought about it. I would like to meet people, and I would like to have sex with them. But I don't want to hurt them. I fear if I explain what I am beforehand it'll scare them away. I fear if I explain after they'll feel manipulated or abused. I don't know how many people in the dating scene want what I want. I fear my own lack of experience will make me a bad lay, an embarrassing story to tell to confidants in hindsight. I fear my own virginity, a boundary to those I wish to be like. All of these fears are baseless, as I've not been able to even begin a single relationship in my life. Despite this I still heavily identify with terms like "slut" and "manwhore" and "thot" because my interests lay so deeply within casual sex, sex without great intimacy or emotion. This may be some form of stolen valor. I hope the true sluts are not too mad at me.
I made this blog several years ago because a mutual of mine reblogged memes making fun of aro and ace people, making fun of the concept of aphobia, and in addition well known aphobes. I didn't feel comfortable talking about aro stuff on my main blog, for as little as I talk about it. Living through the ace discourse of the 2016 era has largely caused me to cringe in embarrassment any time I am forced to discuss my orientation with people who aren't aro or ace themselves. I no longer follow this person. I unfollowed many people I was mutuals with from that time, most of them because they posted too often about how much they hated men and I didn't want to see that, some because our interests simply drifted too far apart, only one for explicit aphobia reasons. (Also one because they became a "both sides are bad, any vote is wasted" libertarian, but that's unrelated.)
I guess at this point I don't care deeply about what strangers on the internet think of me. If a trusted friend told me that they don't think I'm truly queer that may hurt. But I am going to continue to use the word for myself. I take up no resources. I go to events that are open to me. If an event was not open to me, I think I'd not want to go anyways. I am not a hypothetical, I am not a strawman, I am a person with lived experiences both within and exterior to the queer community. If you hate me, I will permit you to continue to do so. But ultimately, I am who I am, I cannot change these facts, and I would not choose to do so even if I could.
5K notes · View notes
star-anise · 5 months ago
Text
Warnings: Doomerism, climate grief, child death
The thing about having studied history and the psychology of trauma so much is that I can't pretend to myself that the world used to be better at sometime in the past.
Don't get me wrong; things are absolutely terrible right now and need to change, quickly.
But also, they're better than they've ever been for us as a species. It is literally mindblowing how much worse life was for us historically.
Have you seen one of those charts of the human population over time? Have you thought about what it actually means?
Tumblr media
Because here's what I see: Humans have always loved things like living to old age, like having sex, like raising babies. Those are things we have always wanted to do. It's not like pre-industrial humans were giant pandas like, "Nah, rather not reproduce as a species. No thanks," and suddenly the Victorians discovered horniness.
Instead, for most of human history, we have died. At terrifically young ages. The few who made it to adulthood could make babies as much as they liked, and then overwhelmingly watched pregnancies miscarry, births end in tragedy, or babies die. Their own lives were constantly at the mercy of a world that could kill them without a second thought. To be human meant to live in a world full of a million little tragedies, all the goddamn time.
And then what happened was: The babies stopped dying. The effects of a lot of things from higher agricultural yields to public health efforts to mass communications made us the master over the diseases and maladies that once had us by the throat.
When we look ahead at catastrophe and terrors, yes, they're bad. But they'd have to be extremely bad indeed to measure up to the number of people who wouldn't even be alive in any other century.
And even the obvious bogeyman then, overpopulation—did you notice what's already happened? On that chart, there's the green measure of total population, but the thin purple line is the rate of population growth. Please notice that it peaked in 1968. It is, in fact, projected as entirely possible that within a century it could go lower than it was twelve thousand years ago, at the end of the last big ice age.
The moment babies started to live longer, people went, "That is too many babies. An absolutely unsustainable number of babies. People are crying out for help because taking care of that many children is completely overwhelming. We need to be able to fix this problem," and they invented birth control and fought to get it legalized. It hit the market in the late 1950s and in less than a decade, it had caught on like wildfire.
To me, this is the absolute opposite of an argument for passivity and political inaction. It's not that everything's going to be okay so why even try. It's that as it turns out, the human capacity to grow and thrive and make the world better is absolutely reality-defying. I don't have faith that all of our problems will be solved, but I do have faith that those problems are all the subject of passionate obsession of millions of people.
And apparently we have a really strong track record at that kind of thing already.
2K notes · View notes
wilwheaton · 2 years ago
Text
The GOP wonders why young people (and others) don't want to vote for them. Some wise scribe assembled this list.
1.) Your Reagan-era “trickle-down economics” strategy of tax breaks for billionaires that you continue to employ to this day has widened the gap between rich and poor so much that most of them will never be able to own a home, much less earn a living wage.
2.) You refuse to increase the federal minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour (since 2009). Even if it had just kept up with inflation, it would be $27 now. You’re forcing people of all ages but especially young people to work multiple jobs just to afford basic necessities.
3.) You fundamentally oppose and want to kill democracy; have done everything in your power to restrict access to the ballot box, particularly in areas with demographics that tend to vote Democratic (like young people and POC). You staged a fucking coup the last time you lost.
4.) You have abused your disproportionate senate control over the last three decades to pack the courts with religious extremists and idealogues, including SCOTUS—which has rolled back rights for women in ways that do nothing but kill more women and children and expand poverty.
5.) You refuse to enact common sense gun control laws to curb mass shootings like universal background checks and banning assault weapons; subjecting their entire generation to school shootings and drills that are traumatizing in and of themselves. You are owned by the NRA.
6.) You are unequivocally against combatting climate change to the extent that it’s as if you’ve made it your personal mission to ensure they inherit a planet that is beyond the point of no return in terms of remaining habitable for the human race beyond the next few generations.
7.) You oppose all programs that provide assistance to those who need it most. Your governors refused to expand Medicaid even during A PANDEMIC. You are against free school lunches, despite it being the only meal that millions of children can count on to actually receive each day
8.) You are banning books, defunding libraries, barring subject matter, and whitewashing history even more in a fascistic attempt to keep them ignorant of the systemic racism that this nation was literally founded upon and continues to this day in every action your party takes.
9.) You oppose universal healthcare and are still trying to repeal the ACA and rip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans and replace it with nothing. You are against lowering the cost of insulin and prescription drugs that millions need simply to LIVE/FUNCTION in society.
10.) You embrace white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and other groups that are defined by their intractable racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and intolerance. You conspired with these groups on January 6th to try to overthrow the U.S. government via domestic terrorism that KILLED PEOPLE.
11.) You oppose every bill aimed at making life better for our nation’s youth; from education to extracurricular and financial/nutritional assistance programs. You say you want to “protect the children” while you elect/nominate pedophiles and attack trans youth and drag queens.
12.) You pretend to be offended by “anti-semitism” while literally supporting, electing, and speaking at events organized by Nazis. You pretend to hate “cancel culture” despite the fact that you invented it and it’s basically all you do.
13.) Every word you utter is a lie. You are the party of treason, hypocrisy, crime, and authoritarianism. You want to entrench rule by your aging minority because you know that you have nothing to offer young voters and they will never support you for all these reasons and more.
14.) You’re so hostile to even the notion of helping us overcome the mountain of debt that millions of us are forced to take on just to pay for our post K-12 education that you are suing to try to prevent a small fraction of us from getting even $10,000 in loan forgiveness.
15.) You opened the floodgates of money into politics via Citizens United; allowing our entire system of government to become a cesspool of corruption, crime, and greed. You are supposed to represent the American people whose taxes pay your salary but instead cater to rich donors.
16.) You respond to elected representatives standing in solidarity with their constituents to protest the ONGOING SLAUGHTER of children in schools via shootings by EXPELLING THEM FROM OFFICE & respond to your lack of popularity among young people by trying to raise the voting age.
17.) You impeach Democratic presidents over lying about a BJ but refuse to impeach (then vote twice to acquit) a guy whose entire “administration” was an international crime syndicate being run out of the WH who incited an insurrection to have you killed.
18.) You steal Supreme Court seats from democrats to prevent the only black POTUS we’ve ever had from appointing one and invent fake precedents that you later ignore all to take fundamental rights from Americans; and even your “legitimate” appointments consist of people like THIS (sub-thread refuting CJ Roberts criticisms of people attacking SCOTUS' legitimacy).
19.) You support mass incarceration even for innocuous offenses or execution by cop for POC while doing nothing but protect rich white criminals who engage in such things as tax fraud, money laundering, sex trafficking, rape/sexual assault, falsifying business records, etc.
20.) You are the reason we can’t pass:—Universal background checks—An assault weapons ban—The ‘For the People/Freedom to vote’ Act or John Lewis Voting Rights Act—The ERA & Equality Act—The Climate Action Now Act—The (Stopping) Violence Against Women Act—SCOTUS expansion.
21.) You do not seek office to govern, represent, or serve the American people. You seek power solely for its own sake so you can impose your narrow-minded puritanical will on others at the expense of their most fundamental rights and freedoms like voting and bodily autonomy.
22.) Ok, last one. You are trying to eliminate social security and Medicare that tens of millions of our parents rely on and paid into their entire lives. And you did everything to maximize preventable deaths from COVID leaving millions of us in mourning.
Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/e8DBZLH
14K notes · View notes