*in the fading light*
[ID: A digital illustration of a gay trans couple sharing an intimate moment , drawn in two panels. The top panel features the couple cropped close, just showing them kissing, with a transparent starburst around their mouths. The second larger panel is cropped from the shoulders to the thigh. One figure is in the center, sprawled back as their partner touches their stomach and kisses their shoulder. They are both shirtless with top surgery scars, and the center figure has boxers on. There is a third narrow panel on the left side, showing a simple skyscape of a orange star falling through clouds. The whole illustration is done in a restricted palette of soft warm green and teal, with pops of orange. /. End ID]
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you're grabbing lunch with a nice man and he gives you that strange grimace-smile that's popular right now; an almost sardonic "twist" of his mouth while he looks literally down on you. it looks like he practiced the move as he leans back, arms folded. he just finished reciting the details of NFTs to you and explaining Oppenheimer even though he only watched a youtube about it and hasn't actually seen it. you are at the bottom of your wine glass.
you ask the man across from you if he has siblings, desperately looking for a topic. literally anything else.
he says i don't like small talk. and then he smiles again, watching you.
a few years ago, you probably would have said you're above celebrity gossip, but honestly, you've been kind of enjoying the dumb shit of it these days. with the rest of the earth burning, there's something familiar and banal about dragging ariana grande through the mud. you think about jeanette mccurdy, who has often times gently warned the world she's not as nice as she appears. you liked i'm glad my mom died but it made you cry a lot.
he doesn't like small talk, figure out something to say.
you want to talk about responsibility, and how ariana grande is only like 6 days older than you are - which means she just turned 30 and still dresses and acts like a 13 year old, but like sexy. there's something in there about the whole thing - about insecurity, and never growing up, and being sexualized from a young age.
people have been saying that gay people are groomers. like, that's something that's come back into the public. you have even said yourself that it's just ... easier to date men sometimes. you would identify as whatever the opposite of "heteroflexible" is, but here you are again, across from a man. you like every woman, and 3 people on tv. and not this guy. but you're trying. your mother is worried about you. she thinks it's not okay you're single. and honestly this guy was better before you met, back when you were just texting.
wait, shit. are you doing the same thing as ariana grande? are you looking for male validation in order to appease some internalized promise of heteronormativity? do you conform to the idea that your happiness must result in heterosexuality? do you believe that you can resolve your internal loneliness by being accepted into the patriarchy? is there a reason dating men is easier? why are you so scared of fucking it up with women? why don't you reach out to more of them? you have a good sense of humor and a big ol' brain, you could have done a better job at online dating.
also. jesus christ. why can't you just get a drink with somebody without your internal feminism meter pinging. although - in your favor (and judgement aside) in the case of your ariana grande deposition: you have been in enough therapy you probably wouldn't date anyone who had just broken up with their wife of many years (and who has a young child). you'd be like - maybe take some personal time before you begin this journey. like, grande has been on broadway, you'd think she would have heard of the plot of hamlet.
he leans forward and taps two fingers to the table. "i'm not, like an andrew tate guy," he's saying, "but i do think partnership is about two people knowing their place. i like order."
you knew it was going to be hard. being non-straight in any particular way is like, always hard. these days you kind of like answering the question what's your sexuality? with a shrug and a smile - it's fine - is your most common response. like they asked you how your life is going and not to reveal your identity. you like not being straight. you like kissing girls. some days you know you're into men, and sometimes you're sitting across from a man, and you're thinking about the power of compulsory heterosexuality. are you into men, or are you just into the safety that comes from being seen with them? after all, everyone knows you're failing in life unless you have a husband. it almost feels like a gradebook - people see "straight married" as being "all A's", and anything else even vaguely noncompliant as being ... like you dropped out of the school system. you cannot just ignore years of that kind of conditioning, of course you like attention from men.
"so let's talk boundaries." he orders more wine for you, gesturing with one hand like he's rousing an orchestra. sir, this is a fucking chain restaurant. "I am not gonna date someone who still has male friends. also, i don't care about your little friends, i care about me. whatever stupid girls night things - those are lower priority. if i want you there, you're there."
he wasn't like this over text, right? you wouldn't have been even in the building if he was like this. you squint at him. in another version of yourself, you'd be running. you'd just get up and go. that's what happens on the internet - people get annoyed, and they just leave. you are locked in place, almost frozen. you need to go to the bathroom and text someone to call you so you have an excuse, like it's rude to just-leave. like he already kind of owns you. rudeness implies a power paradigm, though. see, even your social anxiety allows the patriarchy to get to you.
you take a sip of the new glass of wine. maybe this will be a funny story. maybe you can write about it on your blog. maybe you can meet ariana grande and ask her if she just maybe needs to take some time to sit and think about her happiness and how she measures her own success.
is this settling down? is this all that's left in your dating pool? just accepting that someone will eventually love you, and you have to stop being picky about who "makes" you a wife?
you look down to your hand, clutching the knife.
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my guide to getting started on firefox is the only one you need
step 1: download firefox from the official website
step 2: import your passwords and such from your browser. this sounds complicated, but it should take no time at all
step 3: download ublock origin from the firefox add-on website
thats literally all you need to do in terms of out of the box setup. you may wish to do more, such as downloading more add-ons (see under the cut for some i recommend), but this is all that is needed for most people
my recommended add-ons:
sponsorblock & her sister dearrow. sponsorblock allows you to skip sponsors in youtube videos, dearrow changes clickbait titles and thumbnails
dark reader. forces all websites to have a dark mode
the wayback machines official extension. allows you to archive and see archived versions of websites with 2 clicks
right-click borescope. allows you to view and save images, even on websites that disable it
search by image. what it says on the tin, including like a billion different image search engines, and you can customize which ones it uses
ruffle. a new flash player that is supposedly safer?? idc i use it because i have nostalgia for flash
xkit rewritten, my beloved. a suite of tumblr features you can toggle on the fly, including one-click reblogs with tags, blocking entire posts, loading the vanilla versions of audio and video, and much, much more
dont accept webp. does what it says on the tin, kills webps FOREVER
wikipedia vector skin and old reddit redirect. forces the old, better layout for those two websites
tampermonkey. allows you to write and use scripts for any website
redirector. make websites redirect to any other website, like forcing fandom wikis to go to breezewiki, forcing youtube to display shorts as videos, or forcing tumblr to display images in full quality (plaintext of these rules)
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It's so wild to me that as a community we're still so hostile to multigender and genderfluid people existing in gay and lesbian spaces.
You...are aware that people who are both men and women are allowed to be gay, right? And lesbian? Their other genders doesn't cancel their connection to womanhood, or manhood, or whatever else they id with. They are allowed to be gay despite their fem-alignment, and they are allowed to be lesbian despite their masc-alignment.
It comes from these weird online spaces that the standard to be gay or lesbian is to be a "non-woman" or a "non-man," which is inherently transmultiphobic and...extremely ahistorical. And completely misunderstands nonbinary identity. So if you're both then you just don't belong anywhere I suppose.
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I LIVE FOR BOOK AZIRAPHALE AND CROWLEY
Apparently in the book, Aziraphale and Crowley are implied to be a gay couple MANY TIMES.
A girl at Warlock’s birthday party calls Aziraphale a faggot.
Anathema automatically assumes that Crowley and Aziraphale are a gay couple after Crowley says “Goodnight miss. Get in, Angel.�� to Aziraphale
Also, One scene I wish would’ve been acted out as it is in the book is when they both get shot with the paintball guns. How it happens in the book is Aziraphale ends up FALLING BACKWARDS INTO A RHODODENDRON BUSH and Crowley sinks down on a statue.
Crowley believes he is bleeding YELLOW and DYING and instead of, ya know, helping Aziraphale UP AS HIS ANGEL HAS JUST SAUNTERED VAGUELY DOWNWARDS INTO A BUSH, HE JUST CHOOSES TO CRAWL INTO THE BUSH AS WELL, BELIEVING SOMETHING IS SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH BIOLOGY. Aziraphale tells Crowley it hurt and it hit him under his ribs, which he brushes off TO ASK IF ANGELS BLEED BLUE.
Aziraphale proceeds to the same self examination as Crowley.
Crowley only figures out it is PAINT when he TASTES IT. They conclude it is PAINT.
6000 years on earth, and these idiots don’t know what a paintball gun is.
I LOVE THESE IDIOTS.
(EDIT: how did this post get so many likes???😆)
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