#our way

[posi-pan]

pansexual characters that have stayed with me, are favorites, or i think about often 💗💛💙🌈

i don’t know if any other character will be able to come close to the impact of my beloved david rose (schitt’s creek). it was the first time i heard the word pansexual used on screen and the wine analogy is iconic at this point. harry (the thing about harry) is also a big one because name another on-screen pan lead of a new adult m/m romcom. i’ll wait.

while pansexual isn’t used on page in the “ode to pansexuality” all of the above (juno dawson), it represents a conceptualization of pansexuality as an anti-identity/label or an attitude of not wanting or needing the strict, neat boxes that society forces on and expects of us. it speaks to the time when before learning of pansexuality, i had that mindset, and kinda still do. (and that cover?!)

miss meteor (tehlor kay mejia and anna-marie mclemore) has probably the only instance of love being expressed for the word pansexual. so often pan rep is a shoulder shrug situation, where the character doesn’t feel strongly about the word. but this mc says she loved pansexual the moment she heard it. and that’s really important to me, as is her journey of accepting her pansexuality and coming out.

loveless (alice oseman) has a side pansexual discovery storyline, which i always love. the mc’s sexuality arc in our way (t.l. swan) is the only thing i like about the book. a man who was only attracted to men for 30+ years finds himself attracted to women, and through a journey of analyzing his attraction/feelings and dealing with the assumptions/pressures of other people, he realizes and accepts his pansexuality.

honorable mentions: while amy raudenfeld (faking it) and the mc of black iris (elliot wake) aren’t canon pan, they’re mspec characters i read as pan and relate to the portrayal of their sexualities. amy is the first tv character i saw express that sort of label reluctancy and not viewing attraction based in gender. black iris (elliot wake) is one of the first queer books i actively sought out and the mc’s sexuality has that “fuck gender, fuck labels” vibe.

feel free to share what pan or queer characters have spoken to you or stayed with you!

[firerose]

Ahsoka having to deal with the fall of her Master/accepting that it wasn`t her fault

Shin having to deal with the fall of her master/accepting that it wasn‘t her fault It’s like poetry……it Rhymes

[yumingpai]

Rakkauden Valo (M1)

🔝🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔝⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡🔝 We Shine, We Light Our Way ✨ Loistamme, Valaisemme Tiemme 🌟 攜手閃耀 照亮彼此 💫 #同行 #Yhdessä #Together https://youtu.be/Ddupml0BXmY?si=bafl_CJdEBKcW9U3

[sadclowncentral]

my family is fucking addicted to macgyvering and it's becoming a problem. every time something in this house breaks, instead of doing the sensible thing of replacing it or calling someone qualified to fix it, we all group around the offending object with a manic look in our eyes and everyone gets a try at fixing it while being cheered on or ridiculed by the rest.

it's a beautiful bonding activity, but the "creative" fixes have turned our house into a quasihaunted escape room like contraption where everything works, but only in the wonkiest of ways. you need a huge block of iron to turn on the stove. the oven only works if a specific clock is plugged in. the bread machine has a huge wood block just stapled to it that has become foundational to its function. sometimes when you use the toaster the doorbell rings. and that's just the kitchen.

it's all fun and games until you have guests over and you have to lay out the rules of the house like it's a fucking board game. welcome to the beautiful guest room. don't pull out the couch yourself you need a screwdriver for that, and that metal rod makes the lamp work so don't move it. it also made me a terrifying roommate in college, because it makes me think i can fix anything with enough hubris and a drill. you want to call the landlord about a leaky faucet? as if. one time my dad made me install a new power socket because we ran our of extension cords

[hellenhighwater]

My office divvies up part of our caseload alphabetically, and one of our secretaries just sent me a new file that's not in my part of the alphabet. Because I'm so very helpful I responded:

Moments later, the printer in my office fired up and spit out this piece of paper:

[boltlightning]

when a brit is playing an american and it's getting really emotional and the actor is holding onto those hard r sounds by their fuckin fingernails

[edlucavalden]

Learning to eat with your hands.

[artern]

SOMEWHERE SOMEPLACE'S EPILOGUE

(claps) let’s recap:

let me tell you, the universe. the universe is an undercover agent sometimes. they be smirking when you’re excited about something, only to say to be continued and take you elsewhere. somewhere only your dreams have conjured up, and reality blurs with otherworldliness. they be laughing with you, cheering for you, or making you trip over air only for you to learn how to balance. a charmer, a stealer of the hearts, but a good friend.

welcome to the end, or shall I say, the beginning? (winks)

[captainjonnitkessler]

The second you start talking about some mysterious "they" that are controlling society in some fashion, you are engaging in dangerous conspiratorial thinking even if you're being woke about it. "They" did not institute the 40 hour work week specifically so you would be too tired to revolt. "They" did not invent the sleek minimalist aesthetic in order to crush the spirit of art in the common people. "They" are not pushing mediocre media into the mainstream in order to poison people's critical thinking skills.

Your best case scenario after that is you talk to someone who actually knows what the fuck they're talking about and you get embarrassed because you can't answer basic questions about your own ideology because you never learned anything past "the ruling class/capitalists/politicians are making things bad and if we got rid of them the bad things would all go away!"

Your worst case scenario is obviously the woo-to-fascist pipeline and you end up believing Jews are poisoning American food supplies with GMOs in order to turn us all into beta cucks, so like . . . maybe just stop blaming "them" before you fall down that route.

Obligatory round of disclaimers: Yes, sometimes people do bad things. Be specific about exactly who is doing what instead of ascribing it to some vague group of shadowy elites. Yes, sometimes things in society are bad. Learn to identify the root causes of complex social issues instead of assuming that they're actually extremely simple to fix and we're just not doing it because of some vague group of shadowy elites. Yes, minimalism isn't for everyone. Learn that some people don't share your tastes and get the fuck over it for the love of god.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[slapstick-funeral]

Me to me: girlboss, I don't know if we can wu wei our way out of this one

[theshadowrealmitself]

I like to think that Vulcans who come to understand that Humans just can’t try to process emotions the same way as them, it’s just healthiest to let it out in harmless ways, decide that venting and stuff should be taken just as seriously as Vulcan’s meditation time, and will encourage the Humans around them to complain about what’s upsetting them

People who are used to aloof Vulcans who avoid Humans at all cost running into one comforting a Human

“-and then they said my cheesecake was subpar, and they didn’t even bring a dish!!!”

“The purpose of this event was that every participant brings a food item of sorts, correct?”

“Yeah!!”

“And they did not follow this rule while insulting dishes that were brought?”

“Mostly just my dish but yeah >:(“

“How illogical”

“That’s what I’m saying!!!”

[secondbeatsongs]

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[3rdsday]

Tommy basically said "the DSMP was good because it was, and still is, loved" and that basically sums up my feelings on the matter too.