#but leaving is so hard and so many steps

[snuffalufagus]

sudden realization that i really need to leave the country to live my life hmmmm

[ping-ski]

i know the pain is nauseating. i know you are disappointed. i know you feel betrayed. i know it feels hopeless and bleak. i know you're tired.

please don't disappear.

please be kind.

please continue to take care of yourself.

please keep living day by day.

please live. out of spite. out of hope for a better tomorrow.

if you are POC, queer, femme, trans, disabled, you are loved. you are wanted. i may not know you, but i love you with my whole person. there is still good in this world, this isn't the end.

[moonchild-in-blue]

I just want everyone to know that in the span of 3 days, I have made 3 loads of laundry, and have a 4th already sorted and ready to go (which includes towels / blankets / bedding). I still need to fold them and put them away BUT the important part is done 🥹

[dykedvonte]

If Ulysses has a million haters, then I'm one of them. If Ulysses has one hater, then I'm THAT ONE. If Ulysses has no haters, that means I'm dead. If the world is with Ulysses than I’m against the world.

[itspileofgoodthings]

.

[sirenofthegreenbanks]

i know that ep12 with its sunbathing scene at the market place is known as one of the most romantic scenes in the show and i dearly love it too BUT HAVE U EVER LAID EYES UPON THE RIVER SCENE AT THE START OF EP12 BECAUSE AAAA

[rockmonopoly]

Its so hard to get out of the mentality that helped me survive high school

[aro-ortega]

i think it would be funny if in the future daniel + julia try to convince sasja to give polyamory/them as a throuple a shot

[ne0nwithazero]

It's strange how I kind of went from consistently disliking my art, to like, disliking individual pieces, but when I look at my overall work I just get filled with so much joy and pride

It's not like I'm doing anything groundbreaking or utterly amazing, but I guess it's the thing of like, seeing myself as an ordinary human capable of creating things? I just see so much beauty in humanity's capacity of creating things, and I guess I had to teach myself to see that beauty in my own capabilities as well, no matter how mediocre they are

It's hard to say I like things I create because I fear people will think I'm full of myself, but I just have so much pride in my work. If I start looking too closely at my art, I start seeing all the mistakes and everything I hate about it, but if I step back and take in the bigger picture of all I've done and how far I've come? I don't know, it's a strange feeling to describe

It's best described as this sentiment of fulfilment that makes me realize that there's nothing else I'd rather be doing with my life other than creating art I love and sharing with people

[lavender---sunshine]

in all seriousness i 90% sure im going to quit my job tomorrow and for a while i will have just enough money to live on and will have to spruce up my resume and job hunt and stress but MY GOD i need to do something else because this is making me suicidal

[vanillabat99]

The other day I was hanging out with my partner and I got overwhelmed and wasn't able to communicate verbally, which happens sometimes, and I ended up stringing together various discord emojis to communicate. This then prompted my partner to provide me with my own communicative emojis to use, which is so sweet!! Even though I am able to communicate through words the majority of the time, it has been fantastic to have the addition of special emojis :3

I have been worried about trying alternative communication, and while the reasoning behind taking this step was a frustrating necessity, I am very glad to have gotten access to a wider range of ways to communicate :3

[rockandrolldisgrace]

sometimes lifes is cruel to you for no fucking greater meaning but u still have to go through it and just endure

[masqueradeoftheguilty]

i need to do some prep for it but wouldnt it be fun if i did novella november and did a emiluc fic

[intcrastra]

I like to think Moze developing a crush on someone is just. Not going to wind up resulting in any way a conventional fluffy sort of situation. At least not at first.

[webism]

pornstar!satoru who knows there are a million eyes on him, he’s seen his view counts—the whole world has seen his form. He’s cocky, loves knowing just how many people have gotten off to the sight of him.

pornstar!satoru who, despite his infamous confidence, gets nervous when you walk on set and offer him your camera-ready smile. You’re such a pretty thing, the dictionary’s definition of perfect.

pornstar!satoru who can’t help but excuse himself before the shoot, so he can was his face and sate his nerves. Locks himself away in a bathroom just to pull his phone out and google your name—and god does he like what he sees.

pornstar!satoru who is minutes away from having to be balls deep inside of you and can’t help himself from touching himself in the bathroom. scrolling endlessly on his phone, pictures of you in different positions, different little outfits, looking fucking perfect in each one.

pornstar!satoru who cums harder than he has in months, in a porn set bathroom, just to the fantasy of his hand being yours. he feels like a sex-driven teen again, hands clammy as he washes them clean from the receipt of his desperation.

pornstar!satoru who is hard again the second he steps out to find you already naked on the scene bed. your skin looks satin soft against those sheets, eyes soft and lips softer as you watch him stalk over to you. consent checks and camera placement talk goes through one ear and out the other, he can’t get his eyes off you.

pornstar!satoru who forgets he’s a pornstar the moment his hands touch that sweet body of yours. he’s completely fumbling the scene laid out, the scripted dirty talk is forgotten the second his lips open. the only reason cameras aren’t cut is because the filth that leaves his mouth instead is more pornographic than the scene at hand.

pornstar!satoru who presses you down into the mattress in a mean mating press when he’s supposed to have you face down ass up. who would he be to deny himself a long look into those pretty eyes of yours? no way is he losing this opportunity for a paycheck he doesn’t really need.

pornstar!satoru who loses his curated pornstar persona the minute he bottoms out inside of you. his usual moans and groans are replaced with desperate whines of real pleasure. this is sex, he’s a mess of need and want and sweat and god do you look good stuffed full of his cock. he can tell you’re feeling it too, that something else, that electric eroticism that gets lost when you fuck for a living.

pornstar!satoru who can’t stop wondering what you’d look like pinned down in his own bed, away from the harsh light and prying eyes of the production crew. who has such a visceral feeling of dread knowing how many people are going to see you like this, fucked out and cockdrunk by his doing. it’s possession, a need to keep you to himself, sequester you away for his eyes only.

pornstar!satoru who cums ropes way too quickly. he’s usually good at holding his orgasm at bay for long enough to make a porno, but your pussy clenched around his cock was too much, your nails in the corded muscle of his biceps, your lips against his, your body in his fucking vicinity? he can’t help it.

pornstar!satoru who, after filming, invites you back to his for a drink or three, and gets swiftly rejected when you bat your pretty lashes at him and mention your boyfriend waiting for you at home.

pt 2!

[steveyockey]

To be aware you might be trans but unwilling to do anything about it is to create endlessly bigger boxes within which to contain yourself. When you are a child, that box might encompass only yourself and your parents. By the time you are a gainfully employed adult, that box will contain multitudes, and the thought of disrupting it will grow ever more unthinkable. So you cease to think of yourself as a person on some level; you think not of what you want but what everybody expects from you. You do your best not to make waves, and you apologize, if only implicitly, for existing. You stop being real and start being a construct, and eventually, you decide the construct is just who you are, and you swaddle yourself up in it, and maybe you die there. There is still time until there isn’t.

This reading of TV Glow’s deliberately anticlimactic, noncathartic ending cuts against the transition narrative you typically see in movies and TV, in which a trans person self-accepts, transitions, and lives a happier life. Owen gets trapped in a space where he knows what he must do to live an authentic life but simply refuses to take those steps because, well, burying yourself alive is a terrifying thing to do. The transition narrative posits a trans existence as, effectively, a binary switch between “man” and “woman” that gets flipped one way or another, but to make our lives so binary is to miss how trans existences possess an inherent liminality.

Humans’ lives unfold in a constant state of becoming until death, but trans people are uniquely keyed in to what this means thanks to the simple fact of our identities. You can get lost in that liminality, too, forever trapped in a midnight realm of your own making, stuck between what you believe is true (I am a nice man with a good family and a good job, and I love my life) and what you know, deep in your most terrified heart of hearts, is real (I am a girl suffocating in a box).

And yet if you want to read the film as being about the dangerous allure of nostalgia, you’re not wrong. I Saw the TV Glow totally supports that interpretation, too! But in tempting you with that reading, the film creates a trap for cis viewers that will be all too familiar to trans viewers. Somewhere in the middle of Maddy’s story about The Pink Opaque being real, you will make a choice between “This kid has lost it!” and “No. Go with her, Owen,” and in asking you to make that choice, TV Glow is simulating the act of self-accepting a trans identity.

See, the grimmer read of the film’s ending truly is a nihilistic one. It leaves no hope, no potential for growth, no exit. Yet you must actively choose to read that ending as nihilistic. If you are cis and the end of I Saw the TV Glow left you with a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction, a weird but hard-to-pin-down feeling that something had broken, and a melancholy bordering on horror — congratulations, this movie gave you contact-high gender dysphoria.

In an infinite number of possible universes, there is at least one where I am still living “as a man,” embracing my fictionality, avoiding looking at how much more raw and real I feel when I “pretend” to be a woman. I think about that guy sometimes. I hope he’s okay.

Consider, then, my cis reader, that TV Glow is for both you and me, but it is maybe most of all for him. I hope he sees it. I hope he breaks down crying in the bathroom afterward. I hope he, after so many years locked inside himself, hears the promise of more life through the hiss of TV static.

Emily St. James, “I Saw the TV Glow’s Ending Is Full of Hope, If You Want It to Be,” Vulture. June 4, 2024.