#and i'm upset that they feel the need to

[inkskinned]

there are a lot of posts out there that are positive and healthy coping mechanisms for handling the holidays. this is not one of them :)

i think there's like. going to be times in your life you will be stuck in a social situation that you cannot escape from gracefully. i do not know why the internet doesn't believe these times exist. it's not always just that your physical safety is at risk - sometimes it's legit like "i just don't currently have the energy or time to put in the effort of responding to this." sometimes it's a coworker you hate so much. sometimes it's just like, fine, you know? like you know you can handle your aunt when she's cheerily horrible, but if you actually set a boundary around her, it's going to be weeks of fallout with your father.

i don't know why people think the answer is always just "cut them out!" or "don't let them get away with that!" because ... the real world is tricky and complicated. i think kind of a lot of us have an internal "radiation poisoning" meter for certain people. like - i'm talking about the ones who are absolutely giving you gradual ick damage. like, you can handle them, but you'll be exhausted.

and yes. you absolutely should listen to your therapist and the good posts about handling others and set good boundaries and take care of yourself. prioritize peace.

HOWEVER :) ...... since im often in a situation with a Gradual Sense of Ick person i cannot just "cut out" of my life (without losing someone else precious to me) - i have sort of developed the most. maladaptive form of mischief possible. because like, if i'm going to have to listen to this shit again, i like to have a little bit of private fun with it.

now! again, i am physically safe, just mentally drained by this man. you should only do this with people you are not in danger with. which leads me to my suggestions for when your Unfortunate Acquaintance shows up and says oh everyone pay attention to me.

my favorite word is "maybe!" said as brightly and happily as possible. whenever the Horrible Person starts in on a topic you do not want to go further with, particularly if they make a claim that you know to be inaccurate, do not respond to it. you and i have both tried to actually argue with this person, and it hasn't gone well, because this person just wants the drama of an argument. however, "maybe!" gives them literally nothing to go on. it is incredibly disarming. they are used to people having some response. they know they can't prove what they're saying, and maybe! treats them like the child they are. it dismisses them in the politest way possible.

i like to say maybe! and then, in their stunned silence, immediately change the subject. this is because i have adhd and i will have something unrelated to talk about, but if you can't think of topics fast enough, i recommend just pointing to something and saying, "isn't that lovely?" because fuck you let's bring in some positivity.

by the way. that second trick - of pointing to something and stating an opinion about it? - that just works on its own, like, 70% of the time. i picked it up from teaching preschoolers. it's an intentional "redirect". it stops children crying and it also stops grown adults from finishing their explanation on why women belong in kitchens. dual wielding!

keep it silly for yourself. i absolutely do not care if people think i'm fucking stupid (it's more fun if they do) and as a result i will purposefully misunderstand things just to see how long it takes them to realize i've completely removed them from the subject at hand. when they say "women aren't funny" i get to be like. "which women." "all women." "all women in america?" "no in the world." "like the mole people? the people in the world?" "what? no. like, alive." "oh are we not counting the mole people?" "what the fuck are you talking about." "you don't believe in the mole people?"

similarly, i play a personal game called "one up me." my Evil Acquaintance literally knows this game exists (my family & friends caught onto it and now also play it) and it always fucking gets him. i don't know why. you have to be willing to be a little free-spirited on this one, though. the trick is that when they make one of those horrible little bigoted or annoying comments they are always making, you need to go one unit weirder. not more intense, mind you - just more weird. "you don't look good in that dress." "yeah, actually, my other dress was covered in squid ink due to a mishap at the soup store." "you shouldn't wear such revealing clothes." "wait, what? oh shit. sorry, your son tears off strips when no one is looking and eats them. i swear it was longer before we left the building."

the point of "one up me" is to completely upend this person's narrative. we both know this person likes setting up situations where you cannot "win" and then they really like telling other people how badly you handled it. in a usual situation, if you respond "please don't say something that rude", you're a bitch. but if you let it happen, you're letting yourself be debased. they are not usually expecting door number three: unflappably odd. because what are they going to say when they're telling everyone how badly you behaved? "she said my son eats her dresses" ".... okay?"

if you can, form an allyship with someone whomst you can tagteam with. where they can pick up on your weird "soup store" story and run with it.

the following phrase is amazing and can be deployed for any situation: "oh, be nice :) it's the holidays!" i do not know why this works as often as it does. i'll say it for the most random shit. i think this is bc most of the time these people know they're being impolite, they just like to fight.

godbless. when in doubt, remember that you could always start stealing their pens.

the whole point of this is - if you can't escape. maybe see how long you can just be. like. a horrible little menace.

[lazylittledragon]

the thing that i love so much about my relationship is that i feel absolutely zero pressure for us to be in eachother's pockets constantly. not just in the way that we like to have our own space sometimes but that i don't feel guilty for getting fixated on a project and not texting him or leaving him on read for a few hours. we have a system where i just say "i'm so sorry, i fell down the Art Hole again" and he says "that's ok, was the art hole fun, can i see what you did in there?". or if i have a feeling i'm going to draw until late at night i'll be like "pre warning, i might be in the art hole this evening" and when i'm done he's texted me goodnight anyway.

tldr: find someone who doesn't get mad at you for crawling into a hole and instead helps you out of the hole and asks what you saw down there

[madneywedding]

the way i would pay for oliver to write meta about buck's character

[theloveinc]

OlderDad!Bakugou who gets a haircut and his baby doesn't recognize him and he doesn't want his dad to pick him up 😭😭😭😭😭😭

Bakugou has a cry in the bathroom and you have to spend the rest of the night consoling him.

Also Hiiiiiii, miss u, hope youre gooooood

head in my hands bc of this, just thought abt bakugo growing out his hair a little bit right after baby's birth...takes him months to go and get a real haircut cuz he doesn't wanna burden you more than he already has and by the time he's okay with the thought (but only for "AN HOUR MAX," is what he says), he has a mullet thing going on and all this scruff on his chin🥺🥺🥺

so he gets home with his regular ol' haircut, maybe a little shorter just to account for ... not wanting to go again so soon, and baby's HOLLERING bloody murder as soon as they see him and refusing to be taken out of your arms, doing that thing where they're flipping their face back and forth to dodge a kiss...

it's so tragic bc not even a little cheek nuzzling helps to calm them bc bakugo's CLEAN SHAVEN and smells like aftershave instead of like dad when he tries!!!!!!

and after, you watch him kinda sulk into the bathroom, thinking like aw yeah thats a bummer but also pretty funny, too (esp bc the haircut does look good🫣🤓), AND HE DOESN'T COME OUT FOR LIKE an hour???

....until you finally have to ask him if he's okay in there and you're opening the door to him sitting on the toilet seat, arms crossed and red cheeks a little streaky with tears...

LJFKASDJFADSJK it's the cutest, most sad sight you ever did see!! ofc Bakugo tries to deny it, but the way he tears up again (after you're done assuring him he did nothing wrong) when his baby finally realizes it's him and smiles (and then how he refuses to give them up again until bedtime) has his ass. EXPOSED.

(i love and miss u more than air, earth, water, dirt + HOPE YOU'RE GOOD TOO BESTIE ILY)

[ride-a-dromedary]

Halsin would tell you to go touch grass but mean it 100% sincerely.

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

to that anon I got about my last posts: if you're hurt that I'm talking about antisemitism on tumblr rather than the Israel/Palestine conflict itself then you're going to have to make your peace with a star wars blog not being an effective platform for activism.

This is the point I've been trying to hammer home perfectly illustrated. I deviated ever so slightly from what's allowed on the subject to say that I can't participate in this website's idea of 'raising awareness' (distributing real facts and misinfo alike without a care and being a bunch of fanatic Jew haters in the process) and that I don't think I'm able to critically and accurately examine every piece of news that gets passed around here, and you're taking this to assume I don't care. So no, I'm not going to spend my time trying to prove that I do care to that particular crowd.

You're upset with me for not treating this like I did fandom and assuming I value fictional characters more than real people because of it, but it's precisely because this is infinitely more important that I'm not going to be doing real people the disrespect of giving my two cents on their suffering and deaths on the same platform I did STAR WARS.

[tmascfaggot]

yknow. sometimes it's hard to not feel like i'm too late to kink stuff in particular. namely when i see ppl like 5 years younger than me engaging in stuff i've fantasized about for years and years and years. i know it's not true and there r ppl who get into it way later it's just the nature of being in spaces like these sometimes

[lunarharp]

"Found out" set in kind of a made-up chapter where the girls are in trouble, or something.

[tired-teacher-blog]

I was almost kidnapped today.

For reference, my house is only 15 minutes drive to work, so sometimes I prefer to go on foot instead of driving there, especially if I have late classes, and that's what I did today.

The walk there was fine and peaceful, but the walk back home was frightening.

I was minding my own business when a car stopped by and the door to the passenger seat opened, the driver called out and offered to give me a lift but I politely declined and kept walking.

He drove again and stopped right in front of me before stepping out of his car.

He looked offended that I declined his offer and grabbed me by the arm to force me into his fucking car.

I was shook to my core but thank goodness I was able to fight back and push him away which apparently took him off guard so he jumped back in his car and drove off.

I'm still trembling I swear, and the disgusting feeling of his grip on my arm is still there!

The path I take is usually safe and filled with passersby, but today I was practically walking by myself, probably because it was cold and rainy, so people prefer to drive instead of walking.

[antianakin]

I'll never understand how some fans are so incredibly willing to just be okay with "it happened in a timeskip" to excuse bad writing lol. Like "oh yeah these two characters who have been enemies for like four seasons of a TV show had their entire reconciliation OFF SCREEN in the time skip between episodes right at the end so it works" or "oh yeah this character who was left basically broken had their entire growth and development where they came to terms with the thing that broke them in the time skip so it works" kind of stuff. Like that's literally the ENTIRE emotional climax of a story that's been building for a while and you're FINE with not getting to actually SEE IT???

Can't relate.

[cleradinel]

maybe bylers can be forgiven for the overall sentiment (far from being everyone’s though) of indifference or dislike towards steve/eddie/steddie when everyone and their mother started pretending eddie spent the whole season gay pinning in gay despair when will byers is right there and steddie was the talk of the town when the byler storyline has been happening for 4 whole seasons and steve was put at the very top of the gay ally pedestal when jon has been the most supportive brother since the beggining. maybe, just maybe it was okay for will byers lovers & byler lovers to be a little pissed. everyone and their mother is a dramatic way of me saying, maybe the actual mlm love story in the show being overshadowed by a wildly spread headcanon rubbed us the wrong way and maybe it’s okay to feel like that, even just a tiny bit, or a whole lot.

[wishuponroses]

I adore how Tatsuya Endo writes his characters, especially the women. They can be warm, soft, cute, cool, tough, scary... all, if not most, of his ladies in Spy x Family are equally wonderful in their own way, both in character design and personality.

[the-acid-pear]

[wispforever]

god is dead

[dirtytransmasc]

thinking about how Spider was neteyam's big brother. losing my mind. ripping out my hair.

was 'teyam scared of storms or the dark? did he confide these "childish" fears to his big brother? did he get shy with all the attention he got in the village? did he hold Spi's hand when he got nervous?

did Spi have habits with 'teyam like 'teyam had with lo'ak? did Spi mess with his hair or reach for his shoulder or cuff his neck?

did Spi ever worry for 'teyam after he "stepped up" and became the Big Brother when the humans returned? did he worry something would happen to him? did he want to protect him despite being a human? was he proud? did his pride outweigh his fear?

did he think about 'teyam after he was taken? did he wonder where he was and if he was safe?

what was Spi thinking when he saw the bullet hole in his baby brother's back? did he freeze when he saw the blood, when he realized he failed to protect him?

what was 'teyam thinking? when he looked to Spi, did he want him to be the big brother again, did he want to stop being brave and let Spi do it? did he want to say something?

I have so many questions. I don't think my heart could take the answers.

[iirulancorrino]

Feminism has, in recent years, rebranded itself as a kind of generic movement on behalf of the oppressed. If old-school feminism was all about insisting women feel entitled to take up literal and metaphorical space — remember Lean In? Remember the campaign against manspreading? — then the new variety is more geared towards self-flagellating for doing so. Yes, earlier incarnations of feminism overemphasized the challenges facing female CEOs and presidential candidates. But the new ones have overcorrected, implicitly agreeing with the age-old anti-feminist adage, that privileged American women have nothing to complain about.

A ladylike impulse to apologize, socialized or otherwise, channels itself into privilege disclaimers, or passages in feminist essays, social media posts and so forth where a woman will explain that whatever her plight, she’s keenly aware that a marginalized woman has it worse. So it’s not quite that defenses of abortion entirely disappeared from the feminist landscape. Rather, it’s that they were now phrased as sanctimonious insistence that while we would be fine if Roe were overturned, those other women, the tragic underclasses, would suffer. Hence the need for a New York magazine piece in May on “the limits of privilege in a post-Roe world,” refuting that notion. “If you have paid attention to mainstream progressive politics in recent years,” writes Rebecca Traister, “you have likely heard some version of this message: that privileged women — middle- and upper-class women, cis women, white women — are not going to experience much of a change to their circumstances when Roe v. Wade goes.”

If the “cis” jumps out here, it could be because common sense suggests that women with the typical anatomy and the usual sexual orientation — cisgender, heterosexual women — are in fact the people most impacted by the legality of abortion. Even if trans women have a tougher time of it, all things equal, they are not often found wondering why their period is late that month. And yet, per a capitalization-happy tweeter, Roe’s demise “IS AN LGBTQ+ ISSUE AS MUCH AS IT IS A WOMEN’S RIGHTS ISSUE!” Think of the gay men here, many of whom are lined up at Planned Parenthoods around the nation for emergency IUDs.

To care about abortion rights — and to do so in a way that made clear that these were your own rights you cared about, and not those of some more oppressed woman far away — simply became passé.