#or don’t at all

[the--last-great-american-dynasty]

i think we need to remember that sexuality and labels mean something different to everyone. what lesbian means for me is different for others. i identify as a lesbian but finn wolfhard is fucking gorgeous and i giggle a bit watching kit connor, and jake johnson being all grumpy as nick miller does something to me. but i also can confidently say that i will never date a man. i absolutely don’t want to. like some men are fucking gorgeous and i can totally appreciate that and still have no interest in dating men and identify as a lesbian. and like, that’s ok. but also for some people maybe they feel like that but identity as bisexual. and that’s totally fine because it’s their fucking decision how they choose to identify. and it’s the same for gender identity. just because someone presents femme or masc doesn’t mean they follow that binary. a trans masc can present feminine. a non-binary person can present however the fuck they want and they’re still fucking non binary. the whole point of the queer community is acceptance and defying labels and being just who we want to be. if you’re trying to push labels as a queer person on another queer person it’s so hypocritical. let people live their lives, whether they choose to label themselves or not and whether their labels make sense or are the same way you think of labels. it’s not about you. it’s about them. let people live.

[frownyalfred]

Tips for writing those gala scenes, from someone who goes to them occasionally:

Generally you unbutton and re-button a suit coat when you sit down and stand up.

You’re supposed to hold wine or champagne glasses by the stem to avoid warming up the liquid inside. A character out of their depth might hold the glass around the sides instead.

When rich/important people forget your name and they’re drunk, they usually just tell you that they don’t remember or completely skip over any opportunity to use your name so they don’t look silly.

A good way to indicate you don’t want to shake someone’s hand at an event is to hold a drink in your right hand (and if you’re a woman, a purse in the other so you definitely can’t shift the glass to another hand and then shake)

Americans who still kiss cheeks as a welcome generally don’t press lips to cheeks, it’s more of a touch of cheek to cheek or even a hover (these days, mostly to avoid smudging a woman’s makeup)

The distinctions between dress codes (black tie, cocktail, etc) are very intricate but obvious to those who know how to look. If you wear a short skirt to a black tie event for example, people would clock that instantly even if the dress itself was very formal. Same thing goes for certain articles of men’s clothing.

Open bars / cash bars at events usually carry limited options. They’re meant to serve lots of people very quickly, so nobody is getting a cosmo or a Manhattan etc.

Members of the press generally aren’t allowed to freely circulate at nicer galas/events without a very good reason. When they do, they need to identify themselves before talking with someone.

[stimmingandstruggling]

more good news from tiktok: they’ve started blocking celebrities.

they’re calling it block party 2024. just blocking and ignoring countless celebrities who havent said shit about palestine. influencers, actors, anyone who went to the met gala, whatever, they’re getting blocked. and people keep talking about how cathartic it is, how good it feels, how they never realized they could DO that. there was some kind of subconscious law against blocking famous people, but it’s broken, and people are LOVING it. and it’s WORKING. a social media/digital advertising coordinator was talking about how ad companies are PANICKING, because they can’t accurately target anymore. so many big influencers, including fucking LIZZO started talking about palestine the MOMENT their follower counts started going down. and the best part? no one is forgiving them. lizzo posted a tiktok asking people to donate to palestinian families, and all the comments just said you’re a multimillionaire. put your money where your mouth is. blocked.

i feel like i’m witnessing the downfall of celebrity culture, right here right now. people are waking up.

[fosliie]

College roommates, lab partners, to basically married pipeline

[yeah-yeah-beebiss-1]

in case you were wondering how things went down at the pokemon world championships this weekend:

-during the top 8 of the TCG masters division, chilean player fernando cifuentes was running a gimmick deck that consisted exclusively of four iron thorns ex and a whole ton of control-focused trainer cards in a strategy that either completely shuts down opponents or shits the bed entirely

-through skillful play and some good luck, fernando made it through 2 days in a tournament with over 1100 players to get to the quarterfinals

-fernando lost 2-0 to ian robb, who was running regidrago vstar (widely considered one of the best decks in the current format)

-in an overexuberant victory celebration, ian did what can only be described as a jacking-off gesture, on a stream with tens of thousands of viewers run by a company with very firm player conduct expectations

-the judges determined that this warranted a penalty of game loss, but for some reason, rather than applying it to ian’s next game in the semifinals, they applied it to the one he had just won in the top 8

-(it should be noted that the prize money for making top 8 is $15k while top 4 is $20k, so this jerking gesture cost ian robb $5,000)

-nearly an hour after fernando came to terms with his loss and the end of an impressive run, he was told that he was to get back on stream because he’s now playing in the semifinals due to winning by default

-the player he was up against in the semifinals was playing a deck (miraidon) that happens to get shut down hard by iron thorns’s gimmick, so fernando wins the semifinals

-said player, jesse parker, had notably had an undefeated run throughout the whole tournament up to this point, and likely would have continued that streak had his intended semifinal opponent not gotten a game loss penalty for miming a lewd act on stream

-meanwhile, the other semifinal winner is japan’s seinosuke shiokawa, running a deck (roaring moon) that players had largely written off as underwhelming months ago

-the grand finals are on the following day, so saturday evening was abuzz with a lot of people baffled by the absurdity of the situation

-come sunday afternoon, the grand finals are set to begin, with fernando cifuentes running iron thorns and seinosuke shiokawa running roaring moon

-it should be noted here that the roaring moon deck doesn’t rely very much on abilities, so iron thorns’s gimmick has very little effect - this is basically an even matchup

-fernando wins the first game of the set, and seinosuke wins the second

-the third and final game of the set is a bonafide cheek-clencher, with both players reaching a state where a single KO will win the game, but fernando manages to clinch it at the last minute

-and that’s the story of how a guy pretending to jork it led to the first instance of a pokemon world champion who also lost the quarterfinals

[zytes]

this manatee looks like it’s in a skyrim loading screen

[limelocked]

[elliesbelle]

emily gwen, the creator of the sunset lesbian flag that we’ve come to commonly use, still continues to live in poverty.

multi-billion dollar companies have used their design and made profit from it, and yet they have not seen a cent for their creation.

i’ve been friends with emily for years, and i have not once seen them be financially stable the entire time. i’ve seen them homeless, unemployed, starving. right now, they need our help more than ever.

please consider donating to emily’s ko-fi, especially if you’ve used their design to create something and profited from it.

[eatyourdamnpears]

I’ve been in such a funk since the concert. I’m not even sure I enjoyed myself that much. maybe I did. I don’t know

[seren-dipitous-art]

I’ve been obsessed with the Olympics for the past week, and obsessed with Dick Grayson for longer, so here’s the crossover we all deserve.

Plus, gorgeous sweaty acrobat in gymnastics poses? Only positives.

[aristoteliancomplacency]

Guys.

Y’all.

I…

I just. I just… i have discovered something. And I have laughed too much. I have laughed every time I have tried to explain it to someone. I cannot get through this.

Look. Okay.

There are two things you need to know, here.

First: There’s a style of Greek pottery that was popular during the Hellenic period, for which most of the surviving examples are from southern Italy. We call them ‘fish plates’ because, well, they’re plates, and they’re decorated with fish (and other marine life).

Like this one, currently in the Met:

Or this one, currently in the Cleveland Museum of Art:

They’re very cool. We’re not 100% sure what they were for, because most of the surviving ones were found as grave goods, but that’s a different post.

The second thing you need to know is that when we (Classics/archaeology/whatever as a discipline) have a collection of artefacts, like vases, sculptures, paintings, etc. and we do not know the name of the artist, but we’re pretty sure one artist made X, Y and Z artefacts, we come up with a name for that artist. There are a whole bunch of things that could be the source for the name, e.g. where we found most of their work (The Dipylon Master) or the potter with whom they worked (the Amasis Painter), a favourite theme (The Athena Painter), the Museum that ended up with the most famous thing they did (The Berlin Painter) or a notable aspect of their style. Like, say, The Eyebrow Painter.

Guess what kind of pottery the Eyebrow Painter made?

[pebblume]

pots n picks week day 7: free day

[wafflesrisa]

Reblogs appreciated to increase sample size!

[skipppppy]

No offence but I feel like some people got a little too comfortable with telling people to touch grass and swung all the way round to just straight up shaming anyone who might have a less active social life than them to feel better about themselves. “She should be at the club” was a really funny meme until people started acting like fucking middle school bullies towards people who don’t go out with their friends a lot. All those drinking/drugs/sex milestone polls were fun to engage with until it became a wierd circlejerk making fun of people who haven’t done those things before. People on twitter are once again dogpiling someone for wanting queer social spaces that don’t revolve around alcohol or loud music and telling them it’s their own fault for not having friends.

Like I get that nightclubs and sex have strong ties to queer culture and are often the first targets in the hellscape of respectability politics. It’s important we remember our roots and protect these spaces from conservative scrutiny. I mean that. They are important. But just on a surface level it seems like people are starting to see having an inactive social life as some kind of moral failing which…it’s not. I feel like an insane person for feeling like I have to say this on the fucking queer autism website but like. You aren’t inherently a bad person if you don’t have friends. You aren’t “falling behind” if you haven’t had your first kiss in your 20s or never done drugs. The real world isn’t a movie. And if you see someone who doesn’t go out much and instinctually think “wow what a terminally online loser. I bet their social life sucks because they’re a sheltered creep and not because of systemic barriers beyond their control” you need to have a long hard look at why you feel that way.

There are very real barriers that prevent isolated people from finding community and connection. Do you think you’re superior for being able to breach them? Time, money, sobriety, accessibility, none of those factors were a problem for you, so it shouldn’t be for them, right? Right?

[swordy-da-goat]

i connected two dots

[jaybee2000]

I must not watch election coverage. Election coverage is the mind-killer. Election coverage is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will cast my vote. I will permit the result to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the election coverage has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.