#it’s completely counterproductive

[ickypuppi3]

something deeply ironic about the fact this used to be my mindset about the people around me vs myself before i got help and was subsequently the reason i refused to go to therapy for so long

i fucking love willel so much because they're the perfect antithesis to certain characters like billy. here we're shown people who can love deeply and care unsparingly and not lash out at other because of their own problems. we're shown people who have so much trauma and have trouble seeing the world as it really is and have trouble processing what everything means, but still manage to be sincere and loving and just try their absolute goddamn best to be better and do better than the people who made them this way. and they're stronger for that, for trying and being good. it's like a fuck you to the people who never tried for them. it's better than giving up and succumbing to lashing out because you don't process your feelings. it's better than causing someone else pain because you don't know how to manage yours.

[klavierpanda]

Alloros will See romance repulsion and lovelessness and heartlessness and see it as an attack on romance. They will claim to be supportive of aros but caveat that with the requirement our support of romance in its current state rather than trying to understand the ways in which we have deconstructed amatonormativity

[nicollekidman]

god the thing with books is that there is room for literally everyone in every age group with every taste from every walk of life and every preference!!!!! it's literature!!!! a foundational part of humanity!! but publishing trends are squeezing kids/teens out of genres and markets created specifically for them to chase the childadult contingent, while at the same time, romance/erotica (which is healthy, fun, has always existed) is being marketed aesthetically similarly and to the same audience of what used to be YA. so now there's a very weird collapse that is simultaneously putting adult romance in front of children, squashing teen stories, and sanitizing actual erotica. it is VERY weird but it is not an issue with authors suddenly being bad or women suddenly being stupid perverts, it's a direct result of the publishing industry and how books are being sold/published/marketed

[good-to-drive]

would you say paul was a good husband to linda?

This is a super interesting question that I was actually just thinking about! The short answer is yes. The long answer is a little more complicated, but it's also yes.

In a way, all you really need to say about Paul and Linda is that they were happy. And I know a lot of people feel that trying to understand a happy couple is pointless (or possibly even offensive) because all that matters is that they were happy.

But I do tend to think that even a happy relationship can still be complex and interesting -- or, rather, that a real, human relationship can still be very happy. That's why I'm personally comfortable with thinking more deeply about their relationship, and those thoughts are under the cut.

Paul and Linda's relationship made them both happy and that is absolutely something to be celebrated. I also think that, like literally every other relationship in the world, the specific way in which they related to and loved one another was a product of their own personalities and experiences. It’s not necessarily fairy tale magic that made them right for each other. Or it is fairy tale magic, and fairy tales are just a lot more real and human than you might expect. 

I actually think to understand Paul and Linda it helps to look back at Paul's relationship with Jane, and how his relationship with Linda was essentially the logical follow-up.

This has been on my mind lately because I was just reading about a phenomenon where men, particularly of older generations, were shamed in childhood for wanting emotional intimacy or showing any vulnerability with their emotions (“man up,” “too old to cry”, etc.), which culminates a fear of intimacy/affection as an adult.

Because it’s generally acceptable for men to have high sexual appetites, sometimes these men will start to substitute sexual/physical intimacy for the emotional intimacy they’re deprived of, thus appearing to have a high sex drive.

(Obviously this can happen to women and young people, too, but everything I read specified that it’s most often seen in older men.) 

All this together reminded me a lot of Paul and how we often perceive him pre-Linda as having a high sex drive (i.e. cheating on Jane like a goddamn dog), and also how he seemed to fear emotional intimacy and platonic affection throughout his entire life (like when he thought George of all people was going to hit him for taking his hand on his freaking deathbed). 

It kind of makes sense given how massive and insane his life was (and how much grief and trauma he was still carrying from his childhood) that he would basically be a black hole of emotional need just like all the other Beatles were, and I genuinely wonder if he used sexuality as a band-aid for an enormous, unmet need for affection/intimacy/validation/etc. 

Which brings us to Linda, and the fact that he was able to be completely loyal to her. Which is an amazing achievement for someone who struggles with infidelity, and I definitely don't want to take that away from him, but I also think we can look a little deeper at why he was suddenly able to be loyal.

If I'm right that his high sex drive was band-aid for unmet emotional needs, then it would tend to follow that being able to be 100% loyal would mean that black hole of emotional need was being satiated, or at least soothed, by someone willing and able to do a lot of emotional caretaking to keep him happy.

Essentially, I think his newfound loyalty was a product of Linda's willingness to be a therapist/girlfriend/appeaser/etc. pretty much 24/7. (That’s barely an exaggeration btw – they spent a lot of time together). Looking at their relationship just in a practical sense, Linda really went out of her way to be with Paul all the time, to be involved in the things he cared about (even at the detriment of things that she cared about), and to make the relationship “about” him.

(Kind of a weird side note here is that John was loyal to Yoko under similar circumstances, at least until the level of emotional dependence between them got to be too much for her and she encouraged him to develop an outside relationship with May Pang, so it's arguably yet another unexpected parallel in John and Paul's lives after they “broke up” with each other.)

I've also wondered a bit why Linda was willing/able to devote herself to Paul's needs to an unusually self-sacrificing extent, but unfortunately Linda's childhood is something I know a lot less about. Some people (especially women of older generations) are deeply reliant on the need they sense in other people to give them a feeling of value. Only by being of service, by satiating the need, can they feel like a worthwhile person themselves. So in that way they're equally dependent on their partner. 

(Okay, maybe not equally, but they're still dependent).

Obviously love was the main reason Linda focused so much of her time and energy on being what Paul needed, arguably at the detriment of her own needs, but looking at it more in the context of her personality and experiences it does make me wonder about her upbringing and to what extent she was raised to believe she achieved value or lovability by being of service to others.

I think Paul's reliance on Linda to caretake his emotions for him (and Linda's potential reliance on Paul to require caretaking) could be part of why we see such extreme devotion between them, why they literally never (voluntarily) spent a single night apart in all of their marriage. It's an expression of love, yes, and also of how deeply they both relied on one another.

(It also probably indicates anxious attachment and potentially some deep rooted concerns about being cheated on, but that's speculation for another day.)

Now, all this being said, none of this changes the fact that Paul was loyal and he did adore Linda and they did spend every single moment possible with one another. I'm not bringing any of this complicated shit up to try to devalue their relationship or any of the things we love about it -- rather, I think the fact that it does come from a place of humanity and vulnerability is part of what makes it beautiful.

It's a good chance to remember that no relationship is 100% easy and simple 100% of the time, and we're all a product of our own messy internal stuff that we try to deal with and try to find other people who are also willing to deal with. And while it’s true that every relationship has a deeper story, it’s equally true that a relationship between two people with complex personalities and needs can still be extremely happy, loving, and positive for the both of them.

[re-decorate]

the point of discussing the saturday mention in backslide is not to point fingers and assign blame. we should just be reflecting as a community and thinking about how we each can do better. idk, whatever it is that we’re doing right now feels like the opposite of what tyler would want

[batw1nggg]

nothingggg more annoying than the chapter in a kmhn slowburn where chiaki and hajime are platonically doing something together as buddies and theres a misunderstanding and komaeda thinks theyre on a date and that hajime doesnt reciprocate his feelings . Get A New Jealousy Sub Plot. Please

[deviousdevilx]

Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I had a dad who was a better dad, and I was close to? Would I still possess this lack of desire to be in any kind of romantic relationship with a man or woman? Like I never been in a serious relationship much less romantic one EVER. I've had close friendships come and go, three friends I'm still kinda close with from high school, but dating? I never actually dated in any traditional sense. Mostly my social life in high school and 20s were going out with friends, going to raves, parties, hanging out at someone's house, or the mall, going out to eat/coffee.

Like "romance" or dating just did not happen for me during my teens and twenties. There were folk I was physically attracted too, but I never wanted to date, or be anyone's girlfriend, it just was not something that I even really thought deeply about. It just never HAPPENED. I got busy, work, school, trying to keep in touch with a few friends. My hobbies are often solitary ones (gaming, reading, movies/tv, online fandom spaces).

and I ain't sad about it. I just sometimes wonder if my dad was actually a source of trust, comfort, and affection, would I still be aromantic? Would I be so disinterested in dating/romance/marriage if I actually was raised in a household were my parents loved each other and were affectionate? I DUNNO.

[humanteethmarksonhumanbone]

nap fixed all my problems

i dont know how but it did

[andromeda3116]

had a lengthy conversation with a coworker yesterday, and she's sort of the... not-insane kind of conservative. the sort that's lived like this her whole life and seen only the bad sides, heard and taken to heart only the bad-faith interpretations of everything. and in that environment, yes, i can see the appeal of libertarianism, of withdrawing, of "burn it all down" and she is intelligent and thoughtful enough that i feel it's worth having these conversations with her, that i might actually be able to have an impact.

and i think i made headway! i told her about people tens of thousands of years ago making toys for their kids that look like the ones we make today, about how cave paintings come alive in firelight, about a healed femur from thousands and thousands of years ago proving that humans have always cared and helped one another, and yes, of course some people are awful, but they do not define us. and i think i made her think about it when she said that she believes we should allocate money to communities to better help one another and i was like "how is that not a government?" and she paused and then said "it's just that it's gotten too big, it's the bureaucracy that's killing us" and like. i can see that. i think there are ways to solve that problem, but it's not a fundamentally flawed belief. (again, sane. intelligent, educated, willing to consider alternate points of view.)

and i think that a lot of this... madness of the modern world is rooted in fear and despair and isolation and the sense that we've become completely disconnected from ourselves and our history, and we need to remember that this is not true. or -- it's only true if we choose to make it true, if we let it be true.

this does not have to be our legacy. this rage, this despair, this does not have to destroy us.

[tektologist-patchouli]

for modelo monday we are going to draw patchouli hunting down the people who spread slander insinuating she consumes alcohol

[somedudewithantlers]

ya girl Steve is not doing all that great in college work life

[unproduciblesmackdown]

speaking of the horrors brian goosebumpsphantomoftheauditorium is still So funny for being like yeah i'm a ghost i know i'm a ghost. & he's befriended the horror fan menace duo who are giggling clutching each other like omg omg okay. we're fine. we're breaking into the school at night to investigate the horrors aaaa what if there's a ghost eek ok ok!!! & brian ghost who knows he's a ghost is like omg guys aaaa stopppp ;;m;; suffering thee Most but he's not putting on an act to conceal his phantomly destiny. he's just like that

[savageboar]

like idk how else to say this but regardless of who you are identify wise, if you're out here publicly posting about how much you get off to ped*philia/inc*st/r*pe/r*ceplay there's this thing called consequences of your actions where people, especially the people that have been victimized by these forms of sexual abuse, have a right to say that's disgusting and want nothing to do with you. it's very easy to distinguish actual discrimination from "oh this person thinks im disgusting for my actions". like damn.

[wildfiowerss]

you know, i love that people keep hyping käärija and finland because he was my favourite as well, but i wish we could have that hype without the loreen slander. just because she wasn’t your favourite doesn’t mean she didn’t deserve to win. she got the highest number of votes from the jury and the second highest number of votes from the televotes.

[dykedragons]

trying to accept anxiety as just being "part of the process" rather than something that needs to be acted against or fought

[true-blue-sonic]

Just woke up here and the memory of that one ask you answered baaack there about a "weretenrec" Gold dominated every space...

How would Kamal, Maya and their kids react to this flufflier and bigger Gold?

The girls would be terrified of poor were-Gold at first, which would not help matters much. Rowan would remain calmest of all the children, and give his little sister the support she needs while chastising the others for exaggerating their fears (they probably would just a bit, they're all still quite young). And as for Kamal and Maya, it would be yet another issue their youngest daughter is causing... headache time for them both, rip. (They wouldn't be justified in reacting that way, I would argue, and Gold might also tell them off for it, perhaps?🤔)

Though, I presume this Gold is 15 already and thus closely interlinked with The Shenanigans Of The World, so she'll definitely be able to handle herself better than if she'd been 5. That helps her parents too with keeping a level head and work towards a solution while giving their daughter the support she needs. But everyone is happy once it goes away again, I think!