#important thoughts..

[nick-close]

Hey. Don’t be sad. Nick close, okay?

[bandzboy]

since spotify wrapped is coming today i just want to bring awareness to the fact that around 86% of the songs on spotify are currently demonetized since spotify decided that tracks with under 1,000 cannot be monetized. not only that the ceo of spotify cashed out $35.8 million dollars in spotify shares in the third quarter of the year and it has been reported that he earns more than the top artists on the platform.

for a platform that claims to support artists, this is outrageous and i hope people realize that an artist who is starting out, cannot make a living out of spotify streams simply because daniel ek and his friends made it worse for the artists trying to start a career. if you wanna support musicians and the possibility for them to get a living wage please follow United Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) which are trying to make The Living Wage for Musicians Act a reality so musicians can be paid fairly through streaming platforms and get the cut they deserve.

[eosofspades]

i didn't have "i'm broken" teenage asexual angst i had "i'm literally being the only reasonable one about this concept and the rest of you are behaving like fucking freaks" perception issues

[daincrediblegg]

OK THIS IS NOT A FUCKING DRILL EVERYONE FUCKING REPEAT AFTER ME. THIS IS WHAT YOU WILL DO WHEN YOU WATCH MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL THIS YEAR:

You will navigate to the page on disney plus (and it has to be here. Unless someone has actually uploaded the REAL movie anywhere else you cannot get it elsewhere)

BUT YOU WILL NOT HIT PLAY. You won’t do it. Because it’s NOT THE REAL VERSION OF THE FILM AND DISNEY IS FUCKING LYING TO YOU AS IT ALWAYS DOES

You will scroll down HERE. To EXTRAS instead. You MUST GO HERE. This is non -negotiable

THEN YOU WILL SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE EXTRAS AND YOU WILL THEN HIT PLAY ON THIS BAD BOY: THE FULL LENGTH VERSION

And you will watch it. And you will thank me for having been so blind and led astray by that stupid fucking mouse. You’re welcome.

[octoberloved]

[nymph1e]

On Discomfort and Morality

My father finds gay men uncomfortable.

He's told me before that it's like a knee-jerk for him. Something he doesn't consciously control. He sees two men behaving romantically, and his body reacts with mild discomfort.

In the 1960s, when he was in high school, most of the boys in his form thought he was gay on the simple fact that he wasn't homophobic. He wouldn't participate in insulting queer people, he didn't care if someone was gay, he wouldn't have a problem hanging out with gay people. So people thought he was gay. That's how prevalent homophobia was in his formative years.

When I was 10, my dad told me very seriously that Holmes and Watson were gay. That it was obvious from the literature and the time period that they were meant to be a gay couple. When I was 14 and I came out to my parents as bi, when my mum was upset my dad ripped into her for it. Told her that she was being stupid, that it was my life to live how I wanted to and that she needed to get over herself.

My dad formed my views on censorship: that being that it was completely ridiculous and thoroughly evil. He didn't believe in censorship of any kind. If I asked him a question about sex, he answered it honestly. When I was 12 and I asked him about homosexuality, still young and uncertain, he told me that there was nothing wrong with it. That it was just how some people were. That there was likely an evolutionary reason for it. And that for some people it was uncomfortable on an instinctual level.

He taught me that just because you're uncomfortable with something, doesn't make it wrong. He also taught me that most people don't understand this.

I see a lot of this on the internet as of the last few years. The anti shipping movement, the terf movement, the anti ace movement. It all stems from discomfort that people have crossed wires into believing means wrong. Really every -ism and -phobia out there stems from this same fundamental aspect of humanity.

The next time you see something and you automatically think it's disgusting, or wrong, or immoral, I invite you to ask yourself: is this actually wrong or does this just make me uncomfortable?

[elodieunderglass]

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

[impishtubist]

I've never been explicit about this because I'm a Fandom Old, and back in the day it was simply understood that anything on the Internet was fair game to do with what you wish, but: if you see a story of mine out there and you like it, download it. Fuck if I care. Keep it for yourself, distribute it to friends, print copies for yourself and your friends, mail it to people, I don't give a shit. As long as you're not exchanging money, I couldn't care less. And tbh you should be doing this with all fanfics you love - print them, save them, put them on a flash drive or a hard drive or share them with friends, whatever. Fanfic authors these days are really fucking precious about their fics, but honestly we're probably going to start seeing queer art being disappeared (especially in the US under the next president) so do whatever you can to archive the things you love to read. Even if that means just printing them out and sticking them in a binder for yourself to read as a bedtime story.

[canisalbus]

[starfishinthedistance]

I talk to many people who say things like "oh I have trauma but I don't have PTSD", but then when I talk to them a little more I realize that they most likely do, they just can't recognize it as such due to how lacking PTSD awareness is, even beyond the whole "it's not just a veteran's disorder" thing.

The main reason they think they don't have PTSD usually has to do with flashbacks and nightmares, either they have one but not the other or have neither. But here's the thing, those are only two symptoms out of the 23-odd recognized symptoms. Flashbacks and nightmares are two of the five symptoms under Criterion B (Intrusion), which you only need one of for a diagnosis. The other three symptoms are unwanted upsetting memories, emotional distress after being reminded of trauma and physical reactivity after being reminded of trauma (i.e. shaking, sweating, heart racing, feeling sick, nauseous or faint, etc). Therefore you can have both flashbacks and nightmares, one but not the other, or neither and still have PTSD.

In fact, a lot of the reasons people give me for why they don't think they have PTSD are literally a part of the diagnostic criteria.

"Oh, I can barely remember most parts of my trauma anyway." Criterion D (Negative Alterations in Cognition and Mood) includes inability to recall key features of the trauma.

"Oh but I don't get upset about my trauma that often because I avoid thinking of it or being around things that remind me of it most of the time." Criterion C (Avoidance) includes avoiding trauma-related thoughts or feelings and avoiding trauma-related external reminders, and you literally cannot get diagnosed if you don't have at least one of those two symptoms.

"Oh I just have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, but I don't have nightmares." Criterion E (Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity) includes difficulting sleeping outside of nightmares.

"But I didn't have many/any trauma symptoms until a long time after the trauma happened." There's literally an entire specification for that.

Really it just shows how despite being one of the most well-known mental illnesses, people really don't know much about PTSD. If you have trauma, I ask you to at least look at the criteria before you decide you don't have PTSD. Hell, even if you don't have trauma, look at the criteria anyway because there are so many symptoms in there that just are not talked about.

PTSD awareness is not just about flashbacks and nightmares.

[lazylittledragon]

more domestics to warm the soul <33

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Soup solves everything.

[bunnieswithknives]

As much as I love angst I think it would be funny if he just didnt give af

[anticapitalistmongoose]

alright boys, girls, neither, both, and those in between we need to clear something up:

if someone says they are queer, they are queer.

no ifs, ands, buts, etc. they are queer.

and if they discover later that they're cishet, great, amazing, wonderful, i'm glad we gave them community when they were figuring themselves out and needed it.

no gatekeeping of queerness here, alright?

because when shit hits the fan queerphobes wont care whether you're a cis gay man who goes by he/him or a bigender aromantic pansexual who goes by it/its

so stop with the respectability politics.

we're a community, fucking act like it.

[wearenotjustnumbers2]

I am so sorry and sad to have woken up to this news, Hind's body was found alongside the two medics who went to rescue her, after 12 days.

Hind was killed. And Israel continues its crimes without consequences.

[cantobear]

咚咚锵!