riverlet-arboreal

[riverlet-arboreal]

The problem with commercial F/M romance is that it's written by the most heterosexual women alive and reading it you feel yourself slowly suffocating from the Gender of it all like a fish in a eutrophying lake. And what we actually need as a culture is F/M written by insane bisexuals violently allergic to heteronormativity

[riverlet-arboreal]

This is one of those true, declassified government things that always sounds made up but one of the things Henry Kissinger did with his career was use the CIA to help turn small, prosperous socialist nations into fascist dictatorships just to keep those nations powerless and possibly to keep socialist systems *looking* doomed and futile to the American public, like maybe just to scare Americans out of demanding better infrastructure or universal income. Yes it sounds like an insane conspiracy theory a maniac would invent. It also happened multiple times and several generations of people around the world are still living in misery because of it.

[riverlet-arboreal]

Beautiful Street Art in Hollywood. Walk of shame. By the way .....FUCK DONALD TRUMP!

[riverlet-arboreal]

[riverlet-arboreal]

Great tip for anyone in need: you can easily keep dragons off your belongings with a trusty broom or a rolled-up newspaper :)

[riverlet-arboreal]

(A brief overview of the history of chromophobia in Europe)

(Academic articles on chromophobia in western cultures)

comments are turned off on this and i know it was a bloodbath in there

[riverlet-arboreal]

a detailed list of things i hate

hot weather

high temperatures

heat

warmer than average conditions

[riverlet-arboreal]

it rly is weird how theres this culture in progressive spaces where like you can be as mean, as CRUEL even, as you want as long as youre not being explicitly bigoted towards any marginalized group of people and still be seen as a really good person with good morals who nobody is allowed to have beef with bc theyve never done anything racist or homophobic

[riverlet-arboreal]

saying ao3 needs to censor certain content is like saying a museum can't have still life art that includes strawberries because you don't like them.

these are not real strawberries. you do not have to, and in fact cannot, eat them. no one with a strawberry allergy will be harmed by looking at them. no migrant workers were exploited in the picking of these strawberries. there were no questionable farming practices or negative environmental impacts from growing or transporting them.

because - and i cannot stress this enough - they are not real strawberries.

if you don't like strawberries, you don't have to look at the paintings. in fact, you can get a map of the museum that lists what works are in what rooms and just. not go in there. if you see one by mistake, you can look away. just keep walking. there's plenty of other stuff to see.

yes, real strawberries can cause real quantifiable harm to real people.

but again. these are not real strawberries.

you may have whatever feelings you like about strawberries, and so can i. you can draw and write about whatever fruit floats your boat, and so can i, even if that happens to be strawberries. and we can hang our art side by side in the same gallery, provided you understand that my strawberries are not about you (and your kumquats are, shocker, not about me) and that - and this is true - neither are real.

and when the fascists break down the doors and grab all the strawberry paintings and heap them in the street and set them on fire, please know that they are coming for your kumquats next.

so if you want a place where you can show off your beautiful kumquat art safely, you're gonna have to tolerate having some strawberries in the next room.

and that's okay. because the strawberries aren't real.

[riverlet-arboreal]

the most crucial thing that enhances a cruelty is the casualness with which it’s done

[riverlet-arboreal]

*me, getting ready to hit you with a sick-ass keyboard smash*:

[riverlet-arboreal]

purity culture ruins people’s ability to engage with works that deal with serious issues and it’s disheartening to see people entirely miss the point of a work because they are guided by a knee jerk reaction towards disgust and I need to ramble

so, I’m reading a book called Jawbone by Monica Ojeda and it’s a very interesting horror novel that centers around puberty and teen girls and their relationships to their mothers. One of the bigger themes in the book is the idea of shame revolving around sexual development. One of the main characters is a young lesbian who is developing feelings for her best friend and has a mother who is incredibly homophobic and disapproving and in part of the book there’s a scene where this character talks about her mother catching her masturbating and the way that she is disgusted by her daughter and kind of this horror around being viewed as having lost your innocence from experiencing something that is common and should be mundane. sexual development is seen as a horrific and sinful action and that causes this character trauma through the rest of the book surrounding the way that her mother looks at her and how her mother is going to react when she finds out that she’s gay it’s a book that deals with a lot of topics around sexual shame. For example, another character is so terrified of the sin of masturbation that she keeps herself from masturbating by imagining being raped by men in her family who she cares about because it disgusts her and keeps her from achieving sexual arousal. the book itself shows that the action of the character masturbating when she’s six years old is an innocent action. It’s one that comes from curiousity and just what happens when you have a body. The book is very clear that the act is being sexualized by the adults around her and their reactions feel violating.

So it is infuriating to then go from reading this book to trying to read reviews of this book and finding that the first review on Goodreads is a one star review that just says “in this book a six-year-old masturbates 🤮” participating in the same disgust with the natural sexual development of young girls that the book itself tries to depict as a horrifying and violating way to view children and puberty 

[riverlet-arboreal]

If I married Minthara I would move into an HOA neighborhood with her but not because HOAs are good or because she’d like the rules and whatnot. The antagonism she would form with the HOA president is the best enrichment you could give her while doing the minimum harm to society

[riverlet-arboreal]

I just love minthara's baffled expressions

[riverlet-arboreal]

If all else fails, kill the clown. That is sure to amuse the crowd.