#idk. I'm tired. very tired. and been thinking a lot

[identitty-dickruption]

I'm playing around with the idea that constantly not being able to be productive is a sign of needing rest in the same way that constantly thinking about food is a sign of being hungry. as someone who sucks at interpreting my body's signals (and as someone who has a lot of difficulty around feeling lazy all the time!) it can be really hard to know what "tired enough to take a break" looks like. and I think if my brain keeps wandering towards restful activities instead of "productive" activities, that might be a pretty big signal that I need to take a rest

when I first started following the rule that thinking about food = hunger, I felt like I was eating way too much food all the time, and that I maybe shouldn't be listening to my body, but that's evened out over time. it turns out I was just starving myself for a really long time, and my body needed a lot of food!

and I wonder if the same could be true with rest. it feels like I need an absurd amount of rest at the moment, and it's been really really difficult to convince myself that I actually need the rest, and that I'm not just some kind of lazy slob. but you know what? maybe I NEED that rest! maybe I've been working myself to the bone lately, and maybe it'll take a while before I can be Properly Productive again. and that's something I'll just have to be okay with while I figure out what resting enough looks like for me

[hecatesbroom]

did I finally manage to write a brand new fic? I sure did!! with many, many thanks to the lovely @eeblouissant for inspiring me with these beautiful drawings of Blanche dipping Dorothy (and the incredibly sweet follow-up with Rose playing the piano, after our chat about this scene!!) I hope I managed to do it justice ;)

Summary

When Dorothy mentions she’s never been dipped before, Blanche and Rose decide to take matters in their own hands.

[taiyami]

I just wanted to reach out to folks and say thanks for not scrutinizing me for interacting with a little more selfship content than usual lately. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, and I just hope I'm not being overbearing with that kind of content ?

[nervocat]

man.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

.

one of my major problems with my job is that I get sososo tired of trying to figure out how to interact with people in a way that is honest, productive, but also doesn't bruise anyone's egos, and I can feel myself getting worse at it as time goes on and it's genuinely what drains me and stresses me out the most by far

[disco-lizard]

im gonna fuckin bash my head into the wall lol july is almost over and this year has been utter shit for me and i don't see any end to any of it and i'm sick and tired of harboring so much rage towards the people who have hurt me and living in constant fear that everyone else in my life is going to hurt me too

[navree]

I need to hear all your alicent/criston thoughts after this episode!!! My religious repressed courtly love babes!

(anon i have been singing the "i want more of alicent and criston having scenes together" song since literally episode two it's why i shoved criston into my alicent fic for no reason)

I've said this already but it really is a perversion of Lancelot and Guinevere, a twisted version of the fairy tale trope of the fair maiden and her knight in shining armor. And that's amazing because a lot of GRRM's stuff is about deconstructing things like fairy tale and fantasy tropes, the entire Dance is a deconstruction of the "deposed heir must rally to regain their throne that was stolen by a relative" fantasy/fairy tale plot.

One thing I genuinely really love about Alicent and Criston's dynamic is that it is heavily religion based. It's where they found common cause. Alicent in the scenes we got with her after her marriage to Viserys and before the first time jump is exactly the kind of person who would find solace in religion, a lonely person who is isolated from all her friends, unsure who to trust, in a marriage she did not seek out, no familial support, exactly the kind of person who would look to higher powers to make her feel better, and Criston clearly is already deeply religious based on describing his liaison with Rhaenyra as a sin, even though in the moment the big issue was the violation of the law that had occurred, not the violation of religious norms. It's something that binds them together, and it's something that heavily tinges their interactions.

Criston says in this episode that "every woman is an image of the Mother" and what is Alicent? She's a mother, that's primarily what her role has been throughout her entire marriage (when Viserys wasn't exercising his marital rape license for us to see on screen no I'm never gonna be not angry about that scene) and what a lot of her interactions have been, and not only that, to him she is The Mother, she was the holy figure that appeared out of the fog in the godswood as he was about to kill himself because he'd soiled his cloak and his good name and saved him, in his head she literally redeemed him. And Alicent sees a friend, she sees someone she can bond with, now that her dad is gone and Rhaenyra isn't to be trusted and whatever rapport she has with Larys clearly hasn't been built yet. The scene in her rooms has a cute moment where she pats the bench to have him sit next to her and be more at ease, which I love because it's precious, but also because it shows that she just wants a friend and companion, and Criston is clearly willing to be that for her, and eventually becomes that for her.

They are, simply put, exactly what the other needs, and that's why they cling to each other the way that they do.

But I also appreciate that Criston isn't blindly loyal, that there are things that he won't do, that when Alicent told him to take out Lucerys's eye he said no. I like that it's something he could do without completely breaking whatever's going on with them apart, I like the depth that it adds beyond just the Queen and her gleefully subservient man. He's willing to defend and protect her, yes, like when he goes to enter the fight between her and Rhaenyra and has to be stopped by Daemon (there are parallels there, there's something more to talk about there but now isn't the time), but in this episode, when she goes to shield Aegon and gets him out of the way by telling him to look to Helaena, he doesn't try to dive in front of her, he lets her put herself on the front lines. There is no relationship in this show that is not fraught with power dynamic differentials, and this is the closest we will get to people seeing each other on something that might resemble an equal footing.

It's about trust, it's about bonding, it's about friendship, it's about religious fervor shared, it's about camaraderie, it's about a twist on fairy tale tropes and the nuclear family, it's about Criston feeling "everything" for Her Grace, the Queen, it's about Alicent knowing that and letting it remain present but unspoken nonetheless.

One last thing before I stop subjecting you to my ramblings, anon, and I haven't thought on it much because honestly this was the first episode since, like, episode six to give us any concrete Alicent and Criston scenes, but I think anything they could do with these two would have been so much less impactful if there'd been any kind of physical intimacy. It really works that they're both so determined to be honorable and good and pious that they wouldn't go there, or even think about talking about anything that would bring them there, and it really drives home their twisted version of courtly love (love is for love's sake so no fucking, Alicent is the exalted lady therefore Criston cannot sully her with something as sinful as fucking, love being an enobling factor so we can't endanger that with fucking, the unfulfilled desire that is literally the basis of courtly love so in order not to have the whole thing fall apart, no fucking).

I'm really looking forward to how they explore that more, especially once the Dance starts and all the traumatic things happen (Blood and Cheese are gonna happen early on in season 2 and Alicent was there for that, I'm ready to see the aftermath!!)

[firstroseofspring]

thinking pondering to me john torres is like. what if u met a woman. with confidence and dignity and a strong moral backbone. you meet and she makes a distinct impression with her honesty and her frankness and she seems like she's always sure of what she wants and what she needs and she's so different from anyone else you know and thats exciting and she's exciting and she likes you specifically you. and you don't think much of you but it feels good to be liked by someone like that. you love her of course. you marry her. of course!

[quarklynx]

Casually flirting with the idea of fucking around and getting a master's degree. The time will pass anyway, right?

[death-rebirth-senshi]

I don't want to look at whole lore videos but I still don't know how or why Marika made the land of shadows or what the Scadutree is exactly. And I'm kind of tired of playing the dlc.

[magentagalaxies]

having a moment about my gender rn and i'm just like ugggggh @ my brain do we have to. like can we just not

[piplupod]

every day i see people talking about things that I simply do not understand no matter how much I look into it and think about it and try to figure it out. i cannot tell if it's brainfog and fatigue or if I'm just ,,,, incapable of being intelligent enough for it all :[

[britneyshakespeare]

i have been working with kids for four years and i had to write my first ever note just now about a seventh grade boy being inappropriate towards me. i don't know what the hell this could possibly lead to or what. he was trying to feel my legs repeatedly to the point where i had to stop sitting next to him (and i was subbing for his one-to-one para!!!). he's got high support needs. in that kind of job, you're supposed to sit next to them all day and look over their work.

the teacher whose classroom this was happening in could also tell something was wrong. the whole class was acting kinda crazy because it was the day before school vacation week and there was another class coming in to share projects. so like, he was swamped with keeping order already. but we were sitting two feet away from his podium at the front of the room. the kid was giving him and me a hard time when he wouldn't take out his chromebook as he was instructed. and then when he did take out his chromebook, he immediately, for some reason, places it on my lap. he had been ogling my legs the whole time. he puts his computer ON MY LAP. and i'm just like, stunned, because what the hell? can you not keep it on your own lap, for some reason? i don't even know what to say, i just hold it a little above my lap while i'm thinking why on earth would this be happening? he would NOT do this to his regular para if she were here, would he? this can't be normal.

and the teacher sees this and within a minute places a stool in front of the kid for him to put his laptop on. and i'm like. oh ok. yeah. he notices exactly what's happening and that that's not appropriate. and then when the other class comes in to share projects he tells me "miss b——, you don't actually have to sit next to c—— this whole period if you don't want to." and he grabs me a chair for me to go sit with the other paras in the back opposite corner of the room. like he KNEW. and thank you mr. d—— for recognizing that because i was just kind of shocked and didn't know if i was overreacting in my head to all of this.

when there's a point in the class where the kids are discussing stuff, i privately mention what's happened to the para who's sitting closest to me. and she says that the thing about him calling me pretty is something he's been known to do, but the fact that he kept trying to touch my legs is new behavior. and that's a completely different class of behavior. i was telling him NO, don't do that, and he kept doing it. and the fact that he was calling me pretty repeatedly, even when i was giving him instructions that he wasn't taking. and this is the second to last class before the end of the day, so she says she'll take a walk with him before learning center and talk to him about it, and i'm grateful for that. she does. the kid apologizes to me as soon as i come into learning center. but like. WHAT the hell.

i'm STILL like what the hell. this is unfathomable to me. the other adults who i told about this or who witnessed it were supportive of me. but. what to do??? i wrote a long note to his regular para about this, because i knew she was going to hear about it at least from the first para i told. the second para i told about it after school had a kind of... i'm not gonna say enabling reaction, but i suppose since it had already been "taken care of" (or at least, he had been spoken to and apologized) she didn't really have much to add in the way of discipline. i told her what happened after school and she was just like... a little bit, laughing? like oh, yup, that dog. she at the very least confirmed he KNEW what he was doing, that that was not an accident. she said to me "i had a feeling he was going to develop a crush on you" (me and these other paras were together for most of the beginning of the day too). but it's like. it's not about that.

i have worked with children for FOUR years. children have had crushes on me before; i'm quite unfazed by it. boys from the ages of 5-to-15 have told me i'm so pretty before and asked me to marry them. i've never had them feeling up my legs before. i've never had them making me physically uncomfortable. it's NOT about this seventh grader having a crush on the pretty substitute. he is NOT unusual for that, at all. but i've never had a boy of any age or education level repeatedly touching my knees and thighs. THAT is problem behavior!!!

because what if i wasn't assertive enough with him to tell him to stop? what if i was a girl his age? worse, what if i was an adult who encouraged this behavior? i don't come to the middle school to be a seductress. i had no intention in putting on a pair of tights and a skirt this morning of being viewed as an attractive object, especially not by a pubescent boy. what if i did though? what if his interpretation of me wasn't so incorrect and offensive? what if i let him keep touching me inappropriately and saying flirtatious things to me? me, an adult in my mid-twenties, towards a middle school boy?

in no world would that be ok. if i had been feeling up and overly-complimenting a CHILD at my place of work, holy shit would there be reports about me. so a child acting that way could never be ok either. if it'd be firable for me to be reciprocating that action, then that action should not be happening to me. ever. and that child should never repeat that action again to any other adult again.

like i am simply not there to be treated as an attractive young woman. i put on a skirt that shows too much knee and get paired with a boy, though, and that's apparently just a natural consequence. hooo-ly shit. like i don't know what to do. first of all, the more time passes since this has happened, the more i am just unable to stop thinking about it. i wasn't "hurt" or too emotional in the moment but i'm just still processing it and it gets worse. i'm just more and more disgusted.

i don't know what i expect to come out of this, or the email i sent to his regular para. like, am i gonna have to attend a fucking meeting? what is the precedent that this sets for him? WHY do i feel BAD for him about this? well, because he's a child, of course. a child who has done wrong he may not be able to understand. but he knows WHAT he did. he just doesn't know WHY it was wrong.

and i couldn't even say something to him that was like, "well, how would you like it if i was touching you like this?" because young boys do not understand how inappropriate it'd be. i'm sure this kid thought he was gonna get away with what he was doing at the very least. but probably not unlikely he (being a child with no concept of how wrong it'd be) thought he could get some sort of "positive" attention for treating me like this. either way he was simply doing what he wanted to do, with no perspective of how it would make me feel or that it could be classified as harassment. teenage boys think it'd be awesome if the older attractive woman would reciprocate their affections. they're wrong. i, as the older attractive woman of his affection, cannot be the one to convince him of that, though.

i don't know. i don't know. like it's just so not ok. but if i didn't tell another adult about this, he would've gotten away with it. he would probably do it again. and him being in trouble for it is not the same as him understanding that it was wrong. unless someone has a REAL talk with him about inappropriate attention and consent, it's not unlikely that he'll just repeat the behavior in a setting where he thinks he won't be caught or told on. THAT'S the problem. me, i could just never have to be this boy's para again. in my email, i didn't say that i would never be ok working with or around him ever again. he already knows i didn't like it and i'm not afraid to tell on him; as far as that lesson applies to me, individually, i think he's become too ashamed to repeat that.

i don't know. i don't know. i very much expressed that i, i guess, "forgave" him in the email that i wrote. i clarified that i was writing it for the sake of having it on the record. i think that could potentially be very important for the purposes of preventing further similar or escalating behavior from him in the future. i don't want him to be in trouble. i don't think i will be blamed for this, especially not with how promptly i acted, although i don't know to what extent this will be framed as me thinking i'm a "victim." i'm not... i don't feel victimized. i feel disgusted. i feel afraid for the sake of what could happen to or with him in the future, if he thinks behavior like his towards me today is ok.

i feel like if i end up having to further respond to this, this will be made about me. in a way it kind of was. is? in the moment it was happening, it was certainly about me. because i was the one this boy was giving all this unwanted attention to. but to make the consequences of this about me and to involve me any further, i also don't want. because i said what i said already, i don't care if a student has a crush on me. this isn't about me being the pretty substitute. i'm the pretty substitute all the time, to tons of people. that's not really something i've been concerned about up until now.

but do i have to reexplain my personal embarrassment? that i was wearing a skirt? that he was ogling my legs? really? what more do i have to gain from sharing that, other than having the adults at my place of work confirm or deny me in their heads as the pretty substitute? i don't know. perhaps that's REALLY overthinking it. but i don't want to be the substitute that caused a problem for this special ed kid. i don't wanna be the reason that he can't be around me anymore, the person people think of when they're monitoring how he's acting around girls and young women. i DON'T want to be the one people think of when they think of his past misbehavior. i'm NOT here for that.

that's just fucking humiliating. and in this being a thing that could follow him, i have to be ogled and touched over and over again in people's minds for this to be taken seriously. but for this to be swept under the rug would be even worse, no? i don't know. i hate this. the principal is a nice guy; i wouldn't be surprised if he and/or people from the special ed department reached out to me sympathetically about this. but i don't wanna be reached out to. i don't wanna have ppl i work with tell me "sorry that kid was just so attracted to you he couldn't help himself" like come on. if the kid himself doesn't change then i don't really care to remember this incident. and no one reaching out to me and saying they've talked to this kid will actually prove to me he understands. this is the kind of inappropriate behavior it takes years for people to understand why it was wrong, especially a child who has no idea. i mean come on.

[solitarelee]

Liberals will deadass be like "ah yes the three great evils: the British Empire, America, and Jews" and then wonder why Jews don't feel safe lol

[aeide-thea]

having a post make the tumblr rounds really will teach you all sorts of things about yourself that you never previously understood, lmao

like, okay, the notes on the 'masturbatory' post fall into a few distinct categories—plenty of reblogs without any comment at all, of course; a lot of people saying, somewhat tediously but unexceptionably, that in their view the term should really be a compliment; a lot of other people claiming that it's inappropriate to share art they personally deem unappealing, just as it's inappropriate to share unsolicited dick pics (i take strong exception to this argument but it's very popular!); and finally a few people who admit that sex-negative insults aren't really compatible with the sex-positive stance they otherwise nominally concede is correct, and who choose to resolve the issue by gleefully leaning into the inconsistency—like, there are some tags on that post that are just straight up like, 'i love hypocrisy :)'

and like, the 'unwanted dick pics'/'artists i don't want to see naked' camp drives me fucking batty, for sure, but i can at least respect that they're trying to come up with a unifying principle, even if i personally think what they've come up with is pernicious nonsense ('consent' is an idiotic lens through which to contemplate the problem of 'viewing art,' imo); but the people who just—outright reject the idea that they should have consistent values to which they adhere, and that where they encounter resistance in themselves to these values, they ought to interrogate what's motivating that resistance, and attempt to find a consistent throughline? really, really alienating and—frightening to me, if i'm honest!

[songofwizardry]

ok look I've had a really really really busy/exhausting few weeks, work related and otherwise, and I have had to mark a lotta papers (they are all done now!) but like. I do really, really, really love my job. it is wild and so weird to me sometimes that I just. get to do this, and i am grateful as hell for it.