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desert demons / the american southwest 35mm film washed in the laundry

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okay gang what do we think rust did with sophia’s belongings

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was visited in a dream by a shelved manuscript that basically went

princess, wrist to her forehead, fainting couch pose, bunched skirt exposing waaaay too much thigh: my father says I must find a lover who won’t get me pregnant—

trans empresses at war with her country: [visibly sweating]

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The Pitt(blr) + loser princess hours

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how I deal with hitchhikers from the greenhouse

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dear mads qesii née milfelsen, what are 5 of your favorite novels? :)

oh this was fun! thanks!

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Mongrels by SGJ

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

The Bone Season (series) by Samantha Shannon

Bastard Out of Carolina Dorthy Alison

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okay gang what do we think rust did with sophia’s belongings

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how I deal with hitchhikers from the greenhouse

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to the anon currently sitting in my drafts: I would very much like to respond but I’ll need time to think about it, I appreciate your trust and patience

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do not underestimate how many times i can listen to a song in a row

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happy pride month to HIM

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crash.

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I just wanted to drop by and say that I am obsessed with the Crash scene where he infiltrates the biker gang and asks Ginger “Do I look dead, motherfucker?” with that breathy little laugh. Pretty sure that's his most explicit display of amusement in the whole show. Idk what it is about that but it makes me feralll

oh oh oh how his dry amusement scratches an itch in my brain— but also his ease of lying, like he slips into the persona so quickly, and the subtle smugness of pulling it off

The only thing that tops that for me is the interaction that might be ten seconds long during the montage where he’s interviewing sex workers and the one is like ‘i might be able to remember with more money :)’ met with the lower, flirty ‘oh, you might?’ + smirk + lean in combo gets me every time— like get that fictional man off the streets he’s a danger to sluts everywhere (me)

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I should have clarified my ask was just an addendum onto your answer to the other anon and not an accusation that you were defending the show's creator, I apologize. But yes, I agree that is how men tend to uphold misogyny in their daily lives. It's very disheartening to think about because I'm a woman and if I catch myself thinking of men as weak or pathetic for lusting so arbitrarily, I still try to give them the benefit of the doubt. I do not think that sentiment goes both ways for them. I also agree with your take on older man-younger woman relationships. I think most of them do just envy the youth of young women and are just angry about their ageing spouses and have no interest or investment in being an actual replacement for any father issues said young woman might have. It's very surface level (call me Daddy and let me fuck you) without the rest of the stuff attached on. They love to gloat about how younger women love older men, but fail to mention how many of these younger women soon realize that most older men are as immature and backwards-brained as their young counterparts.

no no! I didn’t read it as an accusation! I just wanted to be clear I don’t care for nic lol especially for reasons you detailed.

I do my best to give everyone the benefit of the doubt but sometimes people talk long enough i’m just like are u fuckin’ dumb? do you have eyes? critical thinking skills??? Let me just roll back to sociology guy for a minute because omfg did he drive me nuts— twice a week he always had somethin to say— with his whole chest, he really said, “male privilege doesn’t exist because I can’t sleep my way to the top”— and I remember looking over at another student (lil older than me, four kids, already doing social work and earning a degree not for high pay but to expand her responsibilities, a great woman) and she gave me this nod and I tore his ass apart— the gist being having sex with anyone because merit is denied or ignored is not a privilege. Years later, I’m still mad as hell over my second cup of coffee. Anyhow, she and I always chatted after class on our way to our cars and ran into each other during lunch that day— I learned she shared an english class with him where he used almost every assignment to write about his mother or the woman who wronged him and how angry he was at them (like ah okay things are clicking) and then she told me how she was forced into prostitution at age seventeen (people just love to tell me things, i swear csa victims can sniff each other out with unnerving accuracy) and how hurtful some of his comments were. I get a upset when women are almost required to give people the benefit of the doubt, when time and time again our autonomy is attacked or betrayed or stolen, but one woman cheated on this guy and suddenly our entire gender is discounted. That double standard, the lack of sentiment going both ways as you said, pisses me off.

Successful relationships between younger women/older men, whatever that might look like, getting married or her outgrowing the relationship and moving on on good terms etc, really needs a nurturing element, not just emotional growth but of other goals too— education, careers, motherhood— and knowing there is security in the one you trust most in the world. It’s not necessarily let me heal your daddy/mommy/abandonment issues, but let me help you grow into the person you want to be with the support and encouragement that wasn’t previously available from whoever in your life— dad, mom, shitty ex, a life long best friend that ghosted u idk

The disillusionment provided by immature older can be sorta helpful. The guy I dated before my husband was 23 (not exactly Older Man, but walk w me), soooo nice and fun at first then sooooooooo deeply boring and insecure, but I actually dated him a month longer than I wanted to because 1. his mom would make me lamb chop dinners and steak and eggs for breakfast and I pathologically can not pass up good food and 2. ten inch dick— anyways, it gave me the time to really think about why I was into him, was it because he was five years older than me, full time job, a college degree, and a full tank of gas (my friends were ‘$5 bucks on pump 2’ so you can see how this was a step up)? I was like what could he be missing that I need in a relationship? We split, but I’m lucky that i’ve never dated anyone that I couldn’t still be friends with afterward. I was still a naive 18 yo no doubt, but with an inkling of what I was looking for so when I met my husband shortly after I moved to Alaska, his weariness toward my age only emboldened me lmao

I think another thing is that some people confuse younger woman/older man with straight up sugar baby/daddy relationships that is a whole world away. Pay 4 play, call me Daddy, might get u through college but goddamn, Goddamn, you’ll probably end up playing therapist to his daddy issues

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hey :) so how did you decide that instead of going to college, you wanted to find a husband and move somewhere far away? what made you feel like alaska was the state? i feel like that's what i’ve wanted to do forever, but i’m afraid of disappointing my parents, and i don’t have the mental fortitude (plus, i have some legal stuff to deal with as an undocumented person). but anyway, i really admire you. any advice or just a story of how it all worked out for you? thanks <3

hello! I don’t have advice because I can’t control the compatability I have with old man or the luck of finding a decent man in Alaska, but once you find your partner, making decisions isn’t as scary, living isn’t as scary. Falling in love won’t solve your problems but holy shit does it help to overcome them, but seeking safety is probably the best thing I’ve ever done for myself (something I wish for you)

You’re talking about back when I was 18– so let’s paint a full picture here— I’m a deeply dependent person, just graduated high school, and was looking to get as far away from my abusive mother as possible (I don’t fear disappointing her, which maybe helps?). I moved in with my grandpa (actually my mom’s step dad from way way back, he ended up divorcing her mom but kept in touch— I met him first in middle school when he bought my mom a used ford escort because he couldn’t believe what she was driving me to school in lmao he bought my first car too it was like his love language) in Wasilla because my time with him in the summers was like a sanctuary. I fully intended to go to college (Mat Su College because it was cheaper than UAA) but decided to take a gap year to raise more tuition money— my dad created an roth IRA at some point so I had about seven grand (a lot more than the $152 I left Florida with lol) but ended up getting in a car accident without insurance and forked most of that over to fix the door of some toyota sequoia

I watched my mom work herself to the bone, I was raised by day cares, and I didn’t want to do that for me or my kids! I didn’t want to scrape by and move constantly looking for a slightly cheaper life. She was primarily a waitress when I was growing up, we benefitted from rich patrons who doted on her. We got to use one of her boss’ season tickets for like all of the Seattle sports— I went to football, baseball, and basketball games for the price of a train ticket from Everett to Seattle. All I knew was money = security and men = money and men in Alaska with a North Slope job = money + gone for weeks at a time— I wasn’t necessarily looking for love, I wanted security and to not get abused (which I found without the money lol). What I’m saying is that it wasn’t the most rational choice to tell myself ‘i’m going to Alaska, I’m going to find a husband to take care of me because lord knows I can’t’ but I also had a childhood dream of owning my own stripclub so you’re not dealing with a well-adjusted individual here babe

I was making more money than old man when we first met because I had two jobs, we had a shitty apartment, but I knew we could be more, I can bare an uncomfortable financial situation pretty well, I can live paycheck to paycheck— and we did for the first year of our relationship (also the first year of my life no one called me a bitch which is sayin’ something, probably). The life I have now is from making the best, frugal decisions we could like: we moved to the midwest where the price of living is much lower than Alaska (childhood skill of seeking the cheaper rent lmao), old man’s family lives here so we have extra support, we got a construction loan with a 2.5% interest rather than a more expensive mortgage, we lived with his parents the first four years after we moved/built our house behind theirs, I go to school on grants and scholarships, I don’t believe in buying new cars, I don’t like traveling far for vacations, I hardly like paying full price for anything, we don’t have much savings because we’ve invested so actively in our house (we just finished a patio!) and put as much into the 401k that old man’s employer is willing to match. I live a comfortable, middle class, small town life because I strive to let my kids have a safe, stable childhood that wasn’t possible for me.

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About the woman in true detective…the creator of the show actually wrote a novel where the women were very similar (think sex workers that end up dead). He actually made an attempt to make the male main character have a heart and sensitivity but he was still violently disparaging women inside his head and/or objectifying them before falling into the “sigh, but I’m such a decent guy I can’t be mad at them forever.” I also remember someone on here throwing up a big stink about people writing Rust with female characters who have a big age gap. Newsflash: the shows creator seems to prefer that dynamic for whatever main character he writes because he did so in the book (though she is a prostitute and she does end up dead while the MC who was meant to be dying of cancer somehow gets to live a long life, almost like he sapped the essence of this young girl)

I wasn’t trying to defend the creator of the show, but real life men think and operate like that— men can think their sensitive and compassionate and still look down on women, men objectify women while thinking they deserve everything in the world. Misogyny isn’t a self-aware man declaring ‘i hate women!!!!’ it’s sneering at mom’s wearing sweats to the grocery store, it’s claiming women are terrible drivers, it’s painting an impossible picture of women in their minds and punishing women for not meeting it, it’s the guy in my sociology class claiming male privilege doesn’t exist because he can’t sleep his way to the top* etc etc etc so when I said misogyny as a storytelling tool, I was mainly thinking of A&P by John Updike, 1961, which takes the perspective of a young man working as a cashier as three young, teen girls walk in with just bikinis— a common enough thing today, but not 1961, and they’re punished for it, they came for a can of sardines (i think) and the manager goes out of his way to deny them service for being improper. The other women in the store are called hags and slaves. Updike’s inner misogyny created snapshots of what the main character would think of women his entire life, of women of different ages, their purpose or lack thereof in his eyes, all in about twenty minutes of this kid’s day you get a full picture of what he will grow into as an adult. The most sinister part of that story for me was when I read the answers to a discussion prompt on if the kid was a hopeless romantic (or something along those lines) and soooooooo many classmates went oh totally! the kid is looking for love! like…………………… no

Sex workers that end up dead piss me off so much, it makes me think of my mom (lets not get too freud about that) During the height of the pipeline build in Alaska, Butcher Baker is actively targeting sex workers in Anchorage to release and hunt down in the woods, she was around sixteen, a ward of the state since fourteen, and trafficked by her social worker. I have no idea how she survived, it would have been so easy for so many people to make her disappear again— I’m already on the low end of the empathy spectrum but it’s hard to picture myself in the same scenario where I make it out alive. There are so many stories where women end up dead for committing the sin of selling sex, without ever acknowledging the men involved or forcing that decision— Without Remorse by Tom Clancy comes to mind, John Kelly avenges his murdered girlfriend by hunting down her killers, but she’s still a murdered sex worker. Even the sex workers who get to live, like Beth (!!!!!!!!!), are fumbled and misunderstood and punished for what has happened to them (however, Rust interacting with sex workers is like a cool cloth on my feverish head maybe because all we see is the soft spoken empathy, the teasing ‘you might’, rather than what he might actually be thinking of the women he’s speaking to— we see him telling Lucy he ‘wouldn’t arrest anyone for hookin’’, but we don’t know his previous records or how many arrests for solicitation he’s made— we don’t see his treatment of the house mouses during his time in the bike gang— I say while somehow maintaining an iron grip on my delusions about his ideas of honesty). I’m really not interested in any other work Nic Pizzolatto has done, I consider True Detective a collaborative piece between him, the directors, the producers, and the actors.

I think I remember someone complaining about the rise of ‘coquette’ relationships— wrong word btw means flirting insincerely, like talking to the guy next to you at a bar for free drinks, it has nothing to do with the dynamic between younger women and older men that I choose to write— and how ‘Rust would never be in a relationship with an unbalanced power dynamic’ like uh huh, sure babe, not in my world tho. The reasons why I like to explore such relationships (that I’ve called for years and years, father-without-daughter/daughter-without-father, i’m v open with what i’m going for) is far different than whatever the hell nic is doing with curing cancer (what the fuck guy)— sometimes when men do it, it feels like it’s something they know they can’t act on their attraction to young women, mad that they’re young and beautiful and unattainable, mad at their own aging spouses, but still wish to inflict harm somehow and make up these narratives to do so (terrible cynical of me maybe but idgaf).