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[itslenagain]

Me: Dammit, I lost Lexapro!!! Everyone: *starts frantically preparing for my crazy unmedicated ass* Me: Ooh, there you are! Everyone: *sigh of relief* Lexapro: prrrrrrrrrrrrrr

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Ballet dancing Kiki and Namari

Another version of them here

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sometimes i’m jealous of hardcore muna fans because their favorite band has a podcast but i think if boygenius had a podcast i would not ever EVER be able to think about anything else and that might be unhealthy. so maybe it’s a good thing that they don’t.

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"the love of a good woman changes you."

I don't often think about my father at all, but right now I am thinking about something he said once.

He was drunk and intentionally trying to get on my mother's nerves by talking about the woman he dated before her; the woman who helped him get off of drugs and finish high school, but ultimately left him. He'd talk about how she was kind but also firm, beautiful in a unique way, wise beyond her years. He'd lament about how he was young and stupid and regretted fucking it up. And then, he'd say to nobody in particular, "you know, the love of a good woman changes you." My mother rolled her eyes and puffed away at another one of those menthol cigarettes she liked.

I thought this whole idea was incredibly misogynistic. Why put that kind of pressure on a woman? Why is it her responsibility to change you? What even is a "good woman?" I was 12 (and hadn't figured out my gender and sexuality yet) and I was imagining myself snarling at the man who'd look up at me over the rim of a bottle and demand I fix him.

When I got a little older, I dated men. I dated a mess of a man whose scars were eerily similar to mine, who called me a "good woman" but still would cheat then break up with me the night before my high school graduation. I dated a man who drank gluten-free beer and had PTSD-fueled nightmares about car wrecks and didn't think 18 and 23 was too wide of an age gap since we were both in college, who told me he was ready to settle down and have a family, but then quickly changed his mind when he realized what that meant. I dated (and married, then divorced) a man who at 26 had never even kissed someone before and believed God brought him my 19 year old, fresh-out-of-inpatient-psych self so that he could have a good Christian family that would make his "born again" pastor father proud.

I didn't snarl at any of them. I should have. Maybe even done worse. (Or maybe snarled at myself for having bad taste)

13 years after dad told me about Gladys and the love of a good woman, at 25 I figured out I'd never be a "good woman," because I'm not a woman. 2 years after that, at 27 I figured out I didn't love men. I felt free. I'd never have to be the "good woman" that fixes a man with my love, I'd never again have to waste myself on some boy who couldn't take responsibility of his own damn problems.

And then, well, I found myself in love with a woman.

Nothing could have adequately prepared me for what it feels like to love and be loved by a woman. The way she looks at me is utterly devastating. It's like she sees me as something so incredibly special that I start to believe that maybe she's right. The world melts away when I'm with her. In my universe, I want to make her my sun and let all the other pieces fall into place around her. She's intelligent, she's sincere, sometimes stubborn, always nerdy, and I can't get enough. I didn't know it was possible to feel this way about anyone.

And, curiously, I find myself thinking of my father's words in a different light.

You see, I am a mess. I have trauma and baggage and more bad habits than you could count. I like to cause myself suffering. I trade one bad coping mechanism for another in an endless cycle. I self-sabotage. I leave things that feel good behind and stay too long when it hurts. I didn't think I was worth fixing. I didn't think I deserved to be happy.

Being loved by her makes me think I could be wrong.

How can I hate what she holds so dear? How can I neglect the thing she treasures? When I sit here and think about it, my self-hatred unravels.

She makes me want to love myself.

It's foreign to me, a bizarre feeling that aches sometimes. I've hated myself for so long that I feel like I've forgotten how. Healing is a long, difficult journey that I used to shy away from. Sometimes I still want to turn back, but these days, the steps fall more easily.

I still don't believe in a "good woman." This is an impossible standard set by an alcoholic man who hit my mother in front of me, maybe even an idealized fantasy about something unobtainable. The connotations of it feel disgustingly sexist.

And honestly, I don't think it even needs to be a "woman." Being truly loved by anyone, that is a life-changing experience. Not because they change you, but because knowing what it is to be loved, that's the thing that changes you.

She can't fix me. Nobody can really fix you. Nobody should feel like they have to fix you. But she makes me feel like I'm worthy. She makes me feel like it's worth it to try to fix myself. Her love makes me feel significant. I hope one day I'll feel that way on my own, like I'm worth it even if the unthinkable happens and we find ourselves on different orbits. With time, I think I will.

She's not the hand guiding (or dragging) me through the myres of my trauma, she's not the builder repairing my crumbling house. It's more like... the forest I'm lost in isn't so dark anymore, she's a lamplight illuminating it so I can see the way, so I can choose the path I take. My healing is not her responsibility, it's mine, but she inspires me to want to do it.

Love changes you, but maybe it's not because another person does that for you.

It's something you choose for yourself, because you are loved.

[itslenagain]

They were counting on him being out for the day smh

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sequence of dyke drama in atn is like so: harrow gets furious that ianthe fooled around with gideon while she was gone (tried to do surgery on her), attacks ianthe with skeletons -> this gets ianthe wet -> gideon gets mad harrow is attacking someone ELSE with skeletons instead of her -> gideon starts flirting with ianthe in front of harrow to make her jealous -> ianthe flirts back because she loves it when harrow is mad at her -> all of this drives them into ianthe's most heavily anticipated threesome but she spends the whole time in a chair to the side while harrow and gideon cry on each other and have something that technically could count as sex (alecto is also there but she's just standing in a corner)

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when the function got a high achieving deranged little magic freak who will commit acts of sorcery that undermine every ethical framework and interest of self-preservation in order to sort-of-resurrect their lesbian situationship

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Lucy Dacus in suits, that’s it. That’s the post.

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actually funny reddit reaction content

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I love being a lesbian. I love women. I love the community I have found. I love my girlfriend. I love feeling the grip of cisheteronormativity loosen around me. I love the diversity. I love that I finally understand my sexuality. I love the history. I love the different labels and styles and gender expressions amongst lesbians. I love lesbian media. I love lesbian stories.

Coming out saved my life and has changed me in ways I only dreamed of. It never would have happened if I had not discovered the lesbian community and had lesbian friends to help me understand what I was feeling.

❤️🧡🤍🩷💜 Happy Lesbian Visibility Day ❤️🧡🤍🩷💜

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25.04.2024 📖 today's anthy!

i need finish reading this book because i got half way through and i really wanted to look up fanart because everything described sounded so cool but then i got spoiled for the ending of the first book and it just turned me off of reading it 😭 i really like gideon and harrow though and i was enjoying the book a lot !! so im going to give it another try on the train on my way to see my friend. theyr the one who gifted the book to me actually haha

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[itslenagain]

My heart is

A boat

With more

Holes in the bottom

Than hands and feet

To hold them shut

The water

So familiar

The sea floor

I know well

Fragile air

Inflates the lungs

That fail to carry

The scream building

Inside my throat

Bracing for

Unforgiving waters

Legs unsure

If they can

Outpace the undertow

If I go under again

Will I come back this time?

If I go under again

Do I want to come back this time?

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if lesbian visibility week, why

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happy lesbian visibility week

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I saw a post that was like "Marcille is just Harrow with less autism" and I'm like

I don't think it's less autism, I think it's just different autism

Very funny to me to see the tlt fandom overlapping with Dungeon Meshi. We saw bloody bones, necromancy and lesbians and went, Yay! We’re Home!

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SOMEONE PUT IT INTO AN UNDERSTANDABLE FORMAT AAAAAASKSHGSKAV My neurodivergent brain feels SEEN by those comic panels

i don't really like when people say dungeon meshi is accidentally good autistic representation, because while i understand not wanting to make conclusions without explicit confirmation from the author, there's always the weird assumption that non-western authors somehow don't know about things like neurodivergency/queerness/etc. (on top of the assumptions that east asian authors are somehow more naive or oblivious to "western" social issues).

given that dungeon meshi started being published in 2014, it's not really a "work belonging to its times"—it's as contemporary as any other media we discuss on this site, which means it should be fair to assume it engages with contemporary topics (and at the very least, you shouldn't say that the representation is accidental with so much confidence)

but anyways, the chapter "perfect communication" in ryoko kui's "terrarium in a drawer" is some of the most straightforward autistic representation I've seen, and from now on I'm going to assume that laios's character writing is absolutely intentional in that regard: