#i just think that you are what you love

[septembersghost]

babes, i hate to say this, but i need you to please not send me negative/toxic discourse that i cannot do anything about. you already know i'm going to agree that it's wrong and i commiserate with why it's upsetting, but there is no power that i, or we, have to change it, and i've learned from my time and various battles in fandom that it simply is not worth it, it only makes you miserable. i know none of you are intending to take anything from me in having these discussions, but it's honestly really stressed me out and taken the edge off what began as just pure happiness and/or interest, and i can't engage with that, i'm trying so hard to do better with my mental health.

i know it sucks when people attack something or someone you enjoy and admire, i know it makes you want to fight back, but it's, to borrow what a friend just said to me, a sisyphean task: "don't waste energy on people you know don't care. your opinion does not have to be validated by the entire internet, especially when ppl have a vested interest in popping off hot takes about things they don't understand bc it gets them Views." you can't ever win with people who won't listen and whose entire goal is to stoke misinformed outrage, you're only going to keep hurting yourself in the process. spending your time engaging with that negative feedback cycle is detrimental and will do nothing but steal your joy. you do not have to fight every war, ESPECIALLY with people who don't know what the fuck they are talking about! let them be performatively angry/dismissive/whatever and ignore their nonsense takes. curate you experience! if this means blocking people, block people. i personally take great care to not see these things, so i wouldn't know a lot of stuff if people didn't bring it to me, and i am always understanding in the feeling of protective defensiveness, but it is ultimately not something i want to engage with and not fun.

if this means your fandom experience becomes you, the thing you love, one trusted friend, a teddy bear, and a corn chip, then that's totally fine! you do not need to prove your own informed opinions or the reasons for your love or constantly be validated by fools frothing at the mouth over the dumbest arguments you've ever heard. let the haters seethe. they are not worth your energy, they don't deserve to get their needles into your spirit.

take the thing you love and hold it close to your heart and look at their cute little pictures (or listen to their songs or watch your favorite episodes, whatever the subject is we're talking about, however you can access that and get that enjoyment from it!), and remember THAT is what matters. what it means to and does to uplift you makes it valuable, and you deserve to engage with that in a passionate way, but it shouldn't be doing you harm. what it provides you is what lasts. that's yours and no one can take it away from you!

[sunbloomdew]

do you ever see a person and you are overcome with incredible fondness? and you just think "oh." but not in a romantic or sexual way you are just filled with warmth and it makes you happy, it just does. and you think "i'm so happy you exist. i'm happy you are somewhere out there in the world, doing your thing". it's love but also not entirely

like people are lovely and i feel it in my entire chest like a burning candle that smells like roses and a sunny day

[inkskinned]

she's singing in another room and my dog is asleep at my feet. my grandma asked me why i haven't found a man yet and i laughed. oh, you know. i like my house clean.

my girlfriend is also my man is also "my partner" if i'm in a professional setting. yesterday we went to a ren faire and a man mimed at me - you're together? and at my delighted nod, his baffled, you're gay? made me laugh. a woman with rainbow hair said i love the two of you together. you're both so beautiful it's absurd.

my dad introduced my partner as my "..... friend. or whatever" the other day. he knows we're dating. in the same way, i was never able to get my sister's husband to stop saying that's gay like it's 2008. he still uses the word fa***t, and my sister's defense of him has always been well, he's just kidding.

my lover and i dance to old music in a tiny kitchen. we judge new music together and take food critique very seriously. we watch love is blind before we fall asleep and agree that if they had a queer season, it would be bloody but also make for excellent tv. of fucking course queer people would know someone for only 2 weeks and agree to get married. what are you saying.

at a bar with friends, a man puts his hand on my wrist. got a boyfriend? and yes, i do have a boyfriend, she's amazing. i am texting her while i wander around a gas station named after geese. i am visiting a swing state for a wedding. in the candy aisle i overhear: she's actually like a lesbian it's disgusting. two teenage girls with packaged sandwiches in their hands, giggling. no literally, like. i'm not, like. okay with her being there while we're all, like, naked and changing.

my girlfriend and i tailgate, drink gin and cider out of cups. from the frat group beside us, a man corrects himself with one of his friends: bro, i mean, nonbinary entity, and it makes everyone around him laugh, myself included. he razzes his friend the same way i would have killed for at 19 years old - like nothing happened, he continues: you apply sunscreen like an alien. he does a little sassy (and fairly accurate) dance interpretation of the motion. his friend is laughing so hard they're crying.

i am lucky, i live in a safe neighborhood in a safe state. my masc passenger princess comes up from DC. i drive her for an hour to where all the leaves are a violent arrangement of color. we walk along the trails, letting autumn into our blood. in this part of the state, there's a lot of pickup trucks and trump signs. when we chastely kiss before getting into the car, i accidentally make eye contact with a woman holding her child's wrist. she looks disgusted. she looks fucking pissed.

two hours later my girl and i are eating dinner on a patio, soaking in the last warmth of new england sun before the chill of winter sets in. we are giggling and trying to talk through plastic vampire teeth. at another table, i see a young woman sit up straighter. i watch her watch us. she blushes and takes her partner's hand from across the table. shy, like the taste of evening has just become something deeper.

it's worth it for this moment, i think. my lover is still humming the same song she's been singing for four days straight and i don't want to kill her for it. her guitar is beside my bed. her toothbrush is in my bathroom. in a few moments i will make us lunch. we are lucky enough to have found each other. it is lucky enough to be in love.

[mroddmod]

they are like puppies. 2 me

[wormspoodle]

more

[ciderjacks]

dwarven brew

+

[brainrotcharacters]

the easy grip on the knife. the leg over the seat. the hand over the other seat. the sassy "come get it" move. you know the bitch is smiling behind that mask even as he said the line.

[fair-itself]

There's a lot I could say about The Subtance as an unflinching, gruesome close-up portrait of systemic misogyny, internalized sexism, self-hatred, and the brutality of fame, but more importantly, you know what I bet? I bet there is exactly one customer of The Subtance who is doing everything right. Week one, makes a living as a fitness influencer; week two, enjoys a lavish retirement funded by her other self's earnings. Week one, jogging, yoga, filming tiktoks, enjoying the vitality of youth; week two, Alaskan cruises, mahjong with the girls, enjoying unlimited free time and liberation from the crushing weight of the societal expectation to care what other people think of you. Keeps her other self on a nice air mattress with a quilt and always cooks a big recovery breakfast to be waiting for her when she switches. Walks out of that creepy alley every week whistling. Has no idea potential complications even exist. Every other user is living a psychedelic horror show of trauma, goop, and rage, and she's just at Barnes and Noble picking up the latest selection for book club. I know I'm alone in this, but I would happily watch that sequel.

[septembersghost]

i love you ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard? have i known you twenty seconds or twenty years? can i go where you go? can we always be this close, forever and ever? help me hold on to you. i want you, bless my soul. i like shiny things, but i’d marry you with paper rings. barefoot in the kitchen sacred new beginnings that became my religion, listen - i hope i never lose you, hope it never ends. darling, i fancy you! we’d still worship this love, even if it was a false god. this ultraviolet morning light below tells me this love is worth the fight. i once believed love would be burning red, but it’s golden like daylight. you’ve gotta step into the daylight and let it go…let it go.

i just think that you are what you love.

this album is a love letter to love itself - all the captivating, spellbinding, maddening, devastating, red, blue, gray, golden aspects of it

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF movie Vanessa’s thoughts when meeting Abby..

[watmalik]

Shawn Levy, when I FIND YOU. Was this butt pressed on crotch shot necessary? Hell yes

[inkskinned]

the thing about some men is that they want you to remember, at all times, that you are underneath them. that with one word or look or "joke", you will stay beneath them. that even "exceptions" to the rule are not true exceptions - the commonly cited statistic that one in eight men believe they could win against serena williams.

women's gymnastics is often not seen as real gymnastics. whatever the fuck non-euclidian horrors rhythmic gymnasts are capable of, it's often tamped down as being not a sport. some of the most dominant athletes in the world are women. nobody watches women's soccer. despite years of dancing and being built like a fucking brick, men always assume they're faster and stronger than i am. you wouldn't like what happens when they are incorrect. once while drunk at a guy's house i won a held-plank challenge by a solid minute. the party was over after that - he became exceedingly violent.

what i mean is that you can be perfect, and they still think you're ... lacking, somehow. i hope you understand i'm trying to express a neutral statement when i say: taylor swift was the possibly the most patriarchy-palatable, straight-down-the-line woman we could churn out. she is white, conventionally attractive, usually pretty mild in personality. say what you will about her (and you should, she's a billionaire, she can handle it), but a few things seem to be true about her: 1. she can write a damn catchy song, and 2. the eras tour truly was a massive commercial success and was also genuinely an impressive feat of human athleticism and performance.

i don't know if she deserves the title of "woman of the year," i'm not debating that in this post. what i am saying is that she was named Woman of The Year, and then an untalented man got onstage at the golden globes and made fun of her for attending her boyfriend's football games. what i am saying is that this woman altered local economies - and her dating life is still being made into a "harmless" punchline. the camera panned, greedy, over to her downing a full glass of champagne. congratulations taylor! you are woman of the year! but you are a woman. even her.

fuck, man. write better material.

a guy gets onstage at a college graduation and despite the fact like half the crowd is made up of women, he spends a significant proportion of it warning these people - who spent possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars on their education - that they were lied to. that the "real" meaning of femininity is motherhood. that they shouldn't rest on the laurels of that education-they-paid-for but instead throw it away to kneel at a man's heel. imagine that. sweating in your godawful polyester gown (that you also had to pay for!), fresh out of 4 years of pushing yourself ever-harder: and some guy you've never met - who knows nothing about you - he reminds you this "win" is a pyrrhic one at best. you really shouldn't consider yourself that extraordinary. you're still a woman, even after years of study.

god forbid you are not a pretty woman, but if you are pretty, you must be dumb. god forbid you are not ablebodied or white or cis or straight or good at swallowing. you must be beneath a man, or else they are not a man. the equation for masculinity seems to just be: that which is not a woman or womanly (god forbid). anything "feminine" is thereby anathema. to engage in "feminine" things such as therapy, getting a hug from a friend, or crying - it is giving up ones manhood. therefore women need to be put in their place to ensure that masculinity is protected.

this is something i have struggled to explain to terfs - they are not doing the work of feminism, but rather the patriarchy. by asserting that women and men must be (on some secret level) oppositional and in conflict, they also assume that being a woman is akin to being another species. but bigotry does not stem from observational truths or clarity - that is what makes it bigotry. there was nothing in my childhood that made me fundamentally different from my brother. we are treated differently nonetheless. to assert there is some biological drive that enforces my gender role is to assert that women have a gendered role. men do not see women as equal to them not because of biological reality - but instead because the core tenant of the patriarchy is that women aren't full, realized people.

we are told from a very young age to excuse misbehavior as a single man's choice - not all men. it is not all men, just that one guy. all women are gold-digging bitches who belong in the kitchen - but if a man is mean, bigoted, or violent to you, it's just that particular guy, and that means nothing about men-as-a-whole. it is only one guy who got mad when you gently rejected him. it is only one guy who warns her this trophy is heavy, are you sure you can hold it? it is only one guy who smashes her face into the cake. it is only one guy talking into a mic about hating our bodily autonomy.

i have just found that they often wait until the moment we actually seem to be upstaging them. you sit in a meeting where you're presenting your own findings and he says get me a coffee? or you run to the end of the marathon and are about to finish first and he pushes your kids out in front of you. you win the chess game and they make some comment akin to well, you're ugly away. we can be the billionaire and get the dream life and finally fucking do it and yet! still! they have this strange, visceral urge to say well actually, if you think you're so great -

it's not one just one guy. it's one in eight.

[time-to-write-and-suffer]

I love how on Tumblr, "media literacy" has become "Um, just because someone writes about this doesn't mean they're endorsing this. I hate all these media puritans ruining everything."

I'm sad to inform you that knowing when and whether an author is endorsing something, implying something, saying something, is also part of media literacy. Knowing when they are doing this and when they're not is part of media literacy. Assuming that no author has ever endorsed a bad thing is how you fall for proper gander. It's not media literacy to always assume that nobody ever has agreed with the morally reprehensible ideas in their work.

Sometimes, authors are endorsing something, and you need to be aware when that happens, and you also need to be aware when you're doing it as an author. All media isn't horny dubcon fanfic where you and the author know it's problematic IRL but you get off to it in the privacy of your brain. Sometimes very smart people can convince you of something that'll hurt others in the real world. Sometimes very dumb people will romanticize something without realizing they're doing it and you'll be caught up in it without realizing that you are.

Being aware of this is also media literacy. Being aware of the narrative tools used to affect your thinking is media literacy. Deciding on your own whether you agree with an author or not is media literacy. Enjoying characters doing bad things and allowing authors to create flawed or cruel characters for the sake of a story is perfectly fine, but it is not the same as being media literate. Being smug about how you never think an author has bad intentions tells me you're edgy, not that you're media literate. You can't use one rule to apply to all media. That's not how media literacy works. Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! Aheem heem. Anyway.

[garbean]

I love dunmeshi for the like.. built in horror of consumption. Like they eat to survive, they eat to honor their prey, they eat to possibly mourn someone. Laios eats monsters because he wants to learn more about the things he loves, Senshi eats monsters to feel included in the ecosystem because he didn't fit in with the outside and with most creatures in general, Chilchuck DOESN'T eat as much as he could because eating too much could kill all the party members, Marcille eats monsters and hates it but she still does it because she'll die before she could save Falin.

[theoldkyokodied]

The Allegiance of the Ascended Vampire and the New God of Magic