#love that i can make things unrebloggable now

[owlbelly]

body thoughts (fatness, self-image, social dynamics, etc.)

just coming out of a period of dealing with more intense internalized fatphobia, which happens pretty regularly when my stress over other things goes through the roof (it's an extremely frustrating "coping" mechanism because it is absolutely not coping & in fact makes everything worse, but it is a thing my brain does, this rerouting of uncertain stress into certain self-shaming)

& it's weird to emerge from it, even though i always do, for the past 12-13 years since i actively committed to deprogramming from diet culture & engaging really intentionally with fat lib. i have some tried & true methods of helping myself - the most effective one is to really up my intake of photos of fat people, especially queer/trans fat people, living joyfully & being loved (the photography of Shoog McDaniel is my lifeline), because it helps me reconnect to the idea of myself as a whole person & my fat body as natural, complex, awe-inspiring/beautiful/striking/impressive/whatever-i'm-good-with-feeling

i spent a LOT of my fat life (which is not my whole life - i'd say i was an "average" child, increasingly "chubby" as a teen & finally "small" fat in college - now in my mid-30s i am definitely fat, but also much more aware of myself in the spectrum as being on the upper end of mid-fat or the lower end of large fat) - even after getting into fat lib! - hiding from photos & avoiding mirrors. i have also, for my entire life, most often been the fattest person my social circle, which has extremely skewed my self-perception & made me feel very consistently conspicuous. i think this has a bit to do with the general class/race dynamics of the places i've lived but it could also just be shitty luck. at this point i am craving in-person friendship with people my own size & not sure how to go about facilitating that as i am pretty fucking exhausted by social events & also not really up for just hanging out with a bunch of college kids (which is most of the valley scene)

i think i'm also just carrying around a lot of grief over how forcibly disconnected i've been from my own body via growing up with a fucked up relationship to food, a fucked up relationship to sex & desirability (first ever experiences were non-consensual/abusive, my fat/trans/disabled body is culturally devalued/dehumanized), a fucked up relationship to movement (diet culture & fatphobia make "exercise", sports, dance, etc. inaccessible or actively hostile to me, sometimes i can't move anyway due to pain/fatigue even if the environment is good). like when i see people who seem to be enjoying their bodies in an uncomplicated way (which is probably impossible so we'll say less complicated way) i get so fucking jealous & sad. i've been trying to work on it but i think i still mostly just dissociate from my body a lot of the time, which means when someone takes a picture of me & i see it there's usually an element of shock & i'm so tired of it. i'm so tired.

anyway i was at a workshop recently where folks were taking pictures of us & a friend sent me one of me & i actually liked it, which is how i know i'm coming out of the rut - i looked at all the pictures from that workshop & yeah, there i was being the fattest person in the group (though not the only fat person thankfully) & looking like myself & it was fine. good even. but god what wouldn't i fucking give to be in one of Shoog's photoshoots with a bunch of other queer/trans fat people. what wouldn't i give to experience just enjoying my body without the hooks of fatphobia constantly ripping me apart. i used to think i could experience that if i somehow managed to get thin & now i know that's such a rancid fucking lie - if i did i would still spend the rest of my life in terror of regaining weight & i would still be obsessively measuring myself against some ridiculous ideal. i figured out years ago that the only way out of this is to completely let go of trying to control the shape of my body - to make my goal just caring as best i can for the body i have - and it's been the same thing as letting go of gender for me. i am so much happier & freer without it, and also there's such a huge fucking target on my back because of it. internally i am more often at peace & externally i am more often at risk. i don't regret making that trade but oh my fucking god what if people could just live free!!!!!!!!!

[autistickaitovocaloid]

Hi everyone it's that time of year again welcome to the third year of inbox trick or treating.

If you wish to you're more than welcome to come into my inbox, tell me who you're dressing up as (optional, if applicable), and in return I will give you some kind of treat (probably some kind of candy but also maybe not smiles)

Huge disclaimer this isn't 100% my original idea, however the post/posts I based this on have been lost to the sands of time so I unfortunately can't find them :(

[bluedalahorse]

So over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about what is it makes it hard for me to participate in the broader fandom discussions of/squeeing over Wilmon, even when I personally enjoy them as a couple and love having individual conversations about them. I’m putting this behind a cut, leaving this untagged, and making this unrebloggable. I’m not really intending to start a public reblog chain here—it’s less a public discussion, and more personal introspection that I’m okay with people seeing and interacting with. I’m also okay with people commenting and offering thoughts, as usually I work thoughts out through conversations with others. This post is really ideal for the livejournal era of like, I have people on a special filter and post to that filter, but that doesn’t exist, so you get this version.

You’re also welcome to skip my silly introspection, if you wish. Plenty of other things to read out there on Al Gore’s internet!

What this isn’t is a criticism of how other people ship, or of fandom as a whole. It’s not a call-out post. There’s a lot of individual nuances to how everyone goes about their shipping, and it’s in my individual conversations that I’ve gotten to hear those nuances. I always delight in learning about where individual folks’s feelings are!

I’m just trying to sort through my own brain right now. I hope people will take it as such.

Anyway. As someone who ships and enjoys Wilmon but who struggles to participate in the community experience of Wilmon shipping that most of the rest of YR fandom seems to enjoy, I’ve been trying to work out like… what’s behind that. Like, what about these conversations makes it hard for me to get involved in them? Why do I have trouble stepping in? So I thought about it a lot.

What I’ve noticed is that within YR fandom, there’s this general undercurrent of like… Wilmon is sometimes held up to be this Idealized Model Romance. And for me personally, the idea that like, so many people seem to be interpreting them as Ideal and Model, it just adds a lot of pressure to how I interpret or talk about their relationship publicly on tumblr. I find I rebel against that kind of pressure. It makes it less fun to publicly invest in their love, for me personally, if I feel like I’m supposed to talk about them being soulmates and destined and perfect and 100% healthy in their communication at all times. If I’m supposed to profess that they have never done anything wrong in their lives, and believe their love will last forever and ever and they will have a perfect marriage. If they always touch one another perfectly and have beautiful moments of intimacy! I mean, I’m exaggerating a bit here. And yes, fandom will always idealize their favorite pairings and characters a bit. But the general tenor of the more communal fandom discussions can lean that way, and those are the discussions that always leave me feeling a bit like I don’t belong, and like I am not properly following Community Protocols For Enjoyment of The Ship.

I also am conscious that this is helpful for other people, to have a romance they can believe in as good or ideal. That for some people it’s a form of escapism. And that’s okay! I’m just trying to figure out why I work differently than others.

What, blue, so you just think Wilmon are toxic? No. I don’t. I think they’re human. I think they way they grow as a result of their relationship is fascinating and wonderful. I like the way they each have to question what they value as a result of their relationship. I like that Wilhelm has to confront his privilege and starts questioning the systems that don’t treat people like Simon fairly. I like that Simon has to think critically about how he sets his boundaries, and radically accept his feelings. I like the way they start to clarify their values as a result of their relationship with one another. But I also like the way there are lots of mistakes in that journey. I live for this moments of drama. I like the cute moments as well! And the intimacy is so well-choreographed! Sometimes, however, I feel guarded about discussing the part where Wilhelm and Simon have flaws—even though the flaws and drama are part of what pull me in!—because I’m preemptively expecting someone to come in and say “well actually they’re good people and have never done anything wrong and here’s why; are you saying they are toxic?” So I don’t end up making the post in the first place, or weighing in on the discussion. Or like, sometimes I do make a blog post that gets into the growth/change aspect of their relationship I discussed above, and reblogs take it in a direction that goes back to the language of them being a perfect moral ideal, and I’m like, hmmm that’s not where I was going with my original post. Which is fine, because once you post something to tumblr, the reblogs do what they will. But I do notice that discussions float in a certain direction. You know?

Maybe a better way to say this is, generally speaking, I’m a person who likes romance but isn’t a hopeless romantic (and, for the record, I’m also aromantic) so the draw of romance stories for me is less in a sense of soulmate destiny or happily ever after, and more in watching how romantic love pushes a person to change and grow. Often this growth is positive. But you know, I’m also truly fascinated by the moments where relationships can make people more jealous or selfish, or moments when a difficult breakup helps someone clarify their own values. These moments, and how characters process them, are as much of a draw for me as cute kissing scenes. It’s okay if that’s not you, and you mostly like more idealized romances, or fluffier ones, or whatever! We can like different stuff, and different approaches to a concept. But I think what I see in these fandom discussions is that like, collectively we assume we’re all on the same page and look for the same things in romance, and maybe we’re… not as much on the same page as we thought?

Which leads me to another thing about the mysterious fandom undercurrent that posits Wilhelm and Simon as the Ideal Model Romance—I feel like it creates less space for shipping other pairings or considering other romances within the YR universe. If Wilmon is not just a thing that is well-written and enjoyable (which it very much is! it’s so good!) and is instead held up by fandom as a sort of Moral Ideal, then every other pairing in the YR universe is going to get judged against them as a standard. Like why ship a rarepair like stedrika or like, idk, Ayub/Felice or something when you could be focused on the Moral Ideal of Love? And every other character’s morality is going to be determined by how much they support or oppose Wilmon, too. Linda is Good and She Supports Them While They Hook Up At Her House. Kristina is Bad and Threatens To Break Them Up With Her Royal Scepter. And so on and so forth. It feels like Wilmon is the ruler (haha no pun intended) and all the other characters are measured against it. Like other characters should be thinking about them or talking about them at all times or they’re just not worth our time enough.

This idealization is, I think, part of why people see shipping Wilmon and shipping something like sargust as mutually exclusive practices, and even occasionally view the practice of sargust-bashing as like… a community activity we all do as the YR fandom, that we do in support of Wilmon. Periodically I get comments from well-meaning humans who are like “well, you know people don’t ship sargust because of what they did to wilmon, right?” Which, I acknowledge that this is likely well-meaning, when people remind me of this. I also agree that a little bit of August-bashing is good times—hell, even I, someone who owns a cute plush effigy of August that I have no intention of burning at the stake, get in on bashing him. And at the same time I’m like, YES, of course I know what sargust did, I am 100% aware that August is a shitbag who needs accountability for his actual crimes and Sara thought he was kissable anyway. It’s very fair that that’s a dealbreaker for many people who like the show, and I get it when that’s why you (general) don’t ship them. And also… the moral dilemma of it all is part of what I personally find hot? And the part where August spent first season saying he’d rather die than sell his father’s stuff but then in season 2 he sells his father’s stuff to buy Sara her precious horse but also it’s a dick power move but also it shows so much change in August’s character even if it’s not the change we want for him? The stab in the gut that scene is as I watch both of their hearts break??? Y’all. Y’all I like that scene as much as I like “everything is fake” and Wilhelm’s hands covered in football dots. I am allowed to like both. Given what I usually look for in love stories, of course I’m going to like both.

What, blue, so you’re just saying that sargust is the ideal love story instead? No! No I’m not! IT IS IN FACT A SUSPICIOUS AND PROBLEMATIC SITUATION IN MAY WAYS. I’m saying I find them terribly fascinating, as fascinating as I find Wilhelm and Simon. And I’m also saying that the notion of any love story being ideal or a moral model isn’t a draw for me in the first place.

I like specific love stories, about specific people trying to work through specific shit in their lives. I like stories where people stay together forever. I like stories where people stay together a while but ultimately part ways with one another having learned a lot. I like Second Chance Romances. I like spectacularly explosive breakups. I like a lot of things.

So when I’m watching the discussion like the one currently going on at the confessions blog—where someone says something like, “I’m worried Wilmon won’t be endgame” and someone chimes in with “they probably will be, don’t worry!” I can personally vibe with that. I’m actually in favor of Wilmon being endgame for the series, whether they stay together into adulthood (something I would very much enjoy!) or break up a few years later. But when the discussion snowballs into Wilmon being perfect soulmates who are destined to be together, and they’ll never break up because they’re the perfect fairytale couple, I like… I start to feel that uncomfortable pressure to publicly express support for them as a Moral Ideal, instead of just as interesting people in an interesting situation, and I find myself retreating back inside my shell and staying quiet instead of participating.

And again I 100% get that like… for other people the opposite is reassuring. And that some people need that escapism, and that idealism. I don’t think one way or the other is a better way to be a fandom person. They’re both valid ways of fandoming.

I guess my question is… how do we all coexist with each other? Am I actually deluding myself, and maybe I’m just fandom broken? Or is there a certain level of amatonormativity and toxic monogamy that pervades fandom in general (extending this now to other media franchises as well) that’s getting to me, an annoying aro? I’m not saying we all have to change (again, this is not a call-out post) but I am saying I am still trying to figure out where I belong in fandom spaces now that I’ve returned to them after being away for a while, and I want to know how to curate my fandom experience accordingly. A lot of the general advice on curating one’s fandom experience does not work the same way in smaller fandoms than it does in larger ones, so. You know.

I feel like this kind of thing was easier on LJ, but I am probably idealizing my LJ years. I wonder if anyone feels the same way.

Anyway, there’s no conclusion here. I’ve basically vomited my brain onto the page and now I’ll see what happens.

[starlit-mansion]

i might make the post where i was very critical of laundry stripping specifically in one person's 50k note post unrebloggable soon because my problem with the original post is that it's a bad resource for probably 90% or more of people and situations, and i don't think mine is a sterling resource either. I just think that it's important to be really critical of life hacks, ESPECIALLY one's with really dramatic visual stim elements like seeing a bathtub full of brown sludge as proof it's worked.

So my slightly more articulated points are:

Based on OP's comments, OP has uncommonly hard water and issues with at least one of the big common detergents, and specifically was talking about very old worn clothes. All of these are probably not applicable to you if you don't think your clothes are gross right now. If they smell and feel clean as is, then you don't need to torture them for no reason.

You can make your own laundry soap, it's cheaper than storebought but also particulate inhalation is no joke, and you might be at some risk from it from borax... if you can buy borax; it's banned in some places. i'm not fucking doing that, because i want the laundry detergent that i like that already has blueing in it.

The particular practice of alkaline soaking isn't bunk, but it can be harmful to a lot of fabrics, is better for whites and lights rather than your dark clothes (again, dye leech!)

You can just do this with oxygenated cleaners (oxyclean), and you don't need to make your tub unusable for 12-24 hours. the tub thing is a very bright white surface that you can see a very visible change in, but you can soak things IN YOUR WASHER. if it's modern, it probably has a setting for it. if there's not a reason for you to haul heavy wet clothes from your bathroom to your washer, you don't need to see the dramatic visual results of soaking, the same way you don't need to see your dirty dishwater when you've got a dishwasher right there doing the work for you

the real thing that experts have to say on it is just wash your clothes more effectively. don't overload the washer, use 2-3 tablespoons (or the 1 line in the cap) of detergent per load, don't use scented additives or fabric softeners, look up how to clean your washer, add white vinegar into the fabric softener dispenser or add it in and run another rinse to deal with any issues from your clothes not being rinsed out. this is not as tiktokable but it's easier and cheaper and overall a good choice for the environment

if you need to do this for stuff, you probably need to do it once before doing laundry in the above way to maintain it, to strip out buildup from fabric softener, deodorant, body oils, lotion, etc. I'd only bother with it if the laundry was gross! I don't actually have stuff that feels and smells nasty. I used to have a polyester dress that had a body odor funk, but i stopped wearing it and donated it to a thrift store. It probably could have stood a good presoak to get rid of the gunk. i'd have done it in the machine drum or a bucket next to the machine, personally.

really, this is just rebranded presoaking. it sucks that most of us aren't taught how to do laundry correctly and there is a genuine pitfall of residue-leaving products that make things worse, but i also think Big Laundry is less out to get you than it seems. washers are helpful and efficient and we don't need to start mistrusting them and doing laundry by hand

line drying in sunlight is genuinely nice and also good at getting rid of germs and saving power and wear on the dryer. I can't do it where i live now but i used to. If your really want to do something old-fashioned for the aesthetic, a line of nicely hung clothes is lovely. (You can pop them in the dryer for 5 minutes to get rid of crunchiness, esp on towels)

I would be hypocritical if i said wash stuff less. I don't, because something in my head says it's gross. i want my clothes clean and i won't rewear stuff after 8 hours of wear unless its an emergency or a polyester skirt. however, you can hang and air stuff for longer wear. just don't do it for stuff directly touching your junk and pits and feets. wash that.

...also fast fashion is not purposefully trying to get your clothes dingy to make you buy more. the other problems with it vastly outstrip those and that was the one part of the post that genuinely bothered me. why invent a problem when you already are dealing with another separate problem (people don't know how to do laundry effectively and rely on info from commercials, and also there's a lot of hard water in most places.)

finally: research this stuff on like at least one reputable news/interest site. they're gonna write articles about every trend some tiktokker popularizes, that's good clickbait right there.

[dokidokiliteraturegirls]

Working on the menu

Hey everyone! I just wanted to make a quick post to let you guys know I'll be working on fixing the menu during the next following weeks. The way it's hosted right now is by being a private, unrebloggeable tumblr post that I can edit to keep updated. However, this has proven to be a less than serviceable solution. For starters, the link only works on desktop, mobile just sends you back to the blog and you gotta scroll all the way down to the original post to see it. For seconds, it doesn't even work well on desktop! It shows the images way too small until you click on them, and once you do you can't easily switch between them without clicking out. Tumblr sucks at hosting things admldmlkasndlkasm

So what I'll do is that I'll start hosting the menu on a separate website. If everything goes well, this should be more comfortable to both mobile and desktop users. And if everything goes more than well, we might also add some new features! No promises yet though, we're gonna focus on making a menu that works, first and foremost.

I'll do my best to give you guys a user-friendly gameplay experience! So please be patient as I work on improving things for now ❤️

I love y'all, thank you for the support~!!

-Yui ❤️

[trivalentlinks]

I made some (un-beta'ed) Discount Tumblr Bells as a Firefox Add-on!

EDIT: Temporarily making this post unrebloggable, because I think I might have figured out how to actually put them on the dashboard.

It hasn't quite finished Mozilla's Review Process yet, but if anyone wants to test it as a temporary extension on an instance of their browser (meaning you open a Firefox browser and load the add-on to that browser, but it goes away the moment you close it) and give advice etc, I'd be grateful!

This is how to test it:

Download the zip file here:

(You do NOT need to extract the file to try the add-on, but if you want to, you can unzip the file and look at the code, almost all of which is in the folder called "popup". I largely cribbed the structure of the code from beastify, which is Mozilla.Org's 2nd demo extension, aka Your Second Extension.)

Then open a firefox browser (or go to a new tab if you have one open), put

about:debugging

in the url, and go to that page.

Then, on the left panel, click "This Firefox" and then "Load Temporary Add-on". Then you navigate to wherever you downloaded the zip file and select it.

Now there should be a little blue bell icon to the upper right (next to the Firefox hamburger menu icon) that looks like the following but much smaller:

Click the icon and it should pop up something that looks like:

Unfortunately, they are overlaid on top of, and not actually on your dash the way tumblr bells are. This is because I am BAD at javascript and html; this is literally the second web extension I've written in my life, after PlusEqualsQWAT, which was an order of magnitude simpler than this one.

(I tried to get the bells to end up on the dash like tumblr bells were, but could not get the code to work that way. If you do know how to do this and are willing to offer advice I would love that and be very grateful!)

Also I know this is not how the tumblr bells looked, but I don't actually remember how they looked well enough to draw them, and these bells were in the public domain.

Anyway, when you hover over a bell it should turn blue like this:

And it should play the bell sound.

The bell sounds are vibraphone sounds. Tumblr bells were jingle bells, but I started this add-on long after tumblr bells were removed, and I couldn't find jingle bell sounds in even one full octave, much less two.

(So, yeah, they unfortunately don't look OR sound how the tumblr bells did, and also don't appear on your dash; I'd love help on any of these fronts, but in the meantime, this is why I called them Discount Bells.)

Typing a number from 1-8 or a letter from Q,W,E,R,T,Y,U,I, also plays a relevant bell sound. (It is Not case sensitive with the letters.)

'q' though 'i' is one octave down from 1-8. Note that this means 'i' and '1' are actually the same note, that's why there's no bell for 'i'.

(You get two octaves. Tumblr Bells only had one octave, but I prefer two, sorry.)

You can also type into the "To Play" thing, which is also not case sensitive.

In the To Play textbox, anything that is Not a letter among q,w,e,r,t,y,u,i, and also not 1-8 gets treated as a rest.

You can also set the tempo of the To Play box, which is defined as the number of milliseconds between notes, so for the default, which is 500, this means two notes a second. (In particular, larger tempo means Slower music, which is not how music works, but as a non-music person I totally forgot what 'tempo' meant until after I submitted the add-on for approval, and approval takes hours if not days so I can't change that.)

For example, my best approximation of Hallelujah (both verse and chorus) is:

et,tt,ty,yy,et,tt,ty,yy,ty,yy,yy,tt,et,t,,,,,,,,et,tt,ty,yu,ti,ii,yi,12,12,22,23,33,21,1,,,,,,e,ty,,y,,,,,y,te,,e,,,,,e,ty,,y,,,,,y,te,,,rew,,,,qq

With Tempo set to 250 or 300.

When you hit the Enter key, it plays at your specified tempo (unless your specified tempo contains letters or other non-digit characters, in which case it sets to the default of 500).

I'd appreciate any comments!

EDIT: Temporarily making this post unrebloggable, because I think I might have figured out how to actually put them on the dashboard.

[daz4i]

PLEASE elaborate i love hearing about people on tumblr being unhinged

ajskfkg ok ok take this with a small grain of salt bc there's always a real chance i made a mistake and the blog i think is theirs is actually someone else (tho, i found it through old dms, and unless I'm really misremembering stuff it's probably the same person. but yeah the chance is still there so keep that in mind, and that's also why I'm gonna make this post unrebloggable oof. don't want it to spread and accidentally hurt someone unrelated)

soooo we met on tumblr in 2018 through a common fandom and had a long-distance relationship that, as you can tell, didn't work out. i was still figuring out my aromanticism but really the main factor of why we also didn't stay friends after the whole thing, is they had a p big and sudden personality switch tbh. nothing bad but like it was weird to me and ig set off some alarms in my head to cut things off there

back then i was 19 and iirc they were 21 and in college

they presented themselves as a russian who moved to the us to escape their abusive father

they did post in russian sometimes (mostly in the tags of vent posts), very rarely, but they did. yet still some things didn't entirely add up

when we did voice chats they had an average american accent, which is definitely possible for someone who moved there from russia ofc, but considering how they moved to the us alone, that implied they did so as an adult, i'm p sure?? i can't remember if they mentioned having help with that but. yeah it was a bit odd, esp looking back

(also while i don't wanna doubt someone's tale of their abuse, esp in case I'm wrong, what they said abt how their dad abused them doesn't really work with "learned how to speak in perfect english with a perfect american accent". not gonna elaborate more than that)

another thing that didn't stand out back then was a conversation where they mentioned their grandma being jewish, to which i said that makes them at least partially jewish as well, and they really ran with it and put it on their blog and started mentioning it often, esp in relation to me and our relationship (bc yknow, I'm jewish). again, nothing too bad

but yeah we ended up cutting things off. fast forward 5 years i found old dms on one of my sideblogs and went "oh hey i wonder what they're up to"

and their bio says they're a native american + palestinian + 20 years old. which. um. as you can tell very much doesn't align with what i knew about them. no mentions of judaism no mentions of russia and a way younger age from what i knew. they only sent me one pic of them before and they looked very much white in it

so the real question is. did they lie to me about their age and backstory? are they lying now? both?? who knows!

(also i do gotta say. if i did indeed get the blogs wrong. there's only one other person i can remember who could be behind the blog i found now. and they claimed to be 16 when we met in 2016ish so things still don't add up lol)

and yeah that's it 🫡 I'm sorry if it's not a thrilling story but i hope you enjoyed it 🫡

[thesporkidentity]

this turned much more into a dump about my personal emotions and the importance of queer history rather than actual dracula meta, so it's going under the read more, untagged and unrebloggable and a rather unintelligable mess so i can stop bitching about it in my head and move on lol

so my usual shippy jokes aside for a moment, i'm actually quite emotional (in like, 2 completely opposite directions) about the "Godalming and Seward are both happily married," and not even about the line itself, but about certain reactions to that line. and to be clear, this is not a criticism at all of holmward or doing queer readings of older texts at all, i think those are both great. it's more a very specific subset of reactions i've seen of people talking about how funny it is that stoker wrote it ambiguously and never imagined it could be read be read in anything but a straight way, framed as a "lol, how clueless," and it really drove home to me how much things have changed for our community and how quickly.

when this was published in 1897, oscar wilde had just been released from his 2 years of imprisonment and hard labor for the "gross indecency" of homosexuality, which the judge lamented as an inadequate maximum sentence for such a horrible crime. a little over 50 years later in 1952, alan turing was chemically castrated rather than imprisoned for gross indecency and killed himself 2 years later. they didn't even start official decriminalization until 1967, and even then only in a very limited fashion (higher age of consent than for straights, still no sodomy allowed, only when two people are alone in a structure, so no hotels or even another person in a completely separate room of the house, etc., restrictions not repealed until 2000). same-sex marriage wasn't legalized until between 2014 and 2020 depending on where you were in the uk.

just. the idea of same-sex marriage being a read someone might reasonably have would have been unfathomable in 1897, let alone something it would be laughable not to anticipate. hell, i'm not even middle-aged, and i remember my own country's striking down of sodomy laws in 2003 and the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015. i was a full grown man when that happened. that wasn't even 10 years ago! that's an insane turnaround in just a few decades.

and now we have youngins, some who are even full grown adults now, who think it's silly that stoker never considered someone might interpret that line differently because of course he should have specified "to women and not to each other," blithely unaware of a time in which that clarification wasn't necessary because even the act of being queer, let alone marrying, was illegal.

like, there's a huge difference between "straight goggles" making someone unaware of a very obvious queer read and the realities of their environment precluding certain interpretations in such a way that further elaboration isn't necessary. (and given the inescapability of the wilde trial and the intentional differences between the english and american publications, i don't think stoker was unaware of the homoeroticism in his novel.)

and my first reaction was frustration because god, please learn your history! i love jokes and memes as much as the next guy but i'm begging you to read up on your country's queer history, this progress is so new and so fragile, and you really do need to know the history of your community for a multitude of reasons i don't want to get into on a dracula post! like, it almost hurts to see this lack of awareness, it feels like a denial of our very real lived experience of less than ten years ago or like y'all believe it's not worth learning about.

and then my second, completely opposite reaction, was a sort of begrudging happiness because that's what we want, what we've been working towards. (or perhaps not exactly because my ideal world would have things like queer history included in curriculum so kids actually learn it.) a world where it is silly to think that two men marrying each other isn't an equivalent and obvious interpretation of being told that two men got married. so i'm just sitting here genuinely thrilled that these kids have no emotional memory of a world before the acceptance of, if not legalization of, same-sex marriage. while also being incredibly frustrated by that ignorance because that wasn't and isn't the reality for so many of us, and that very acceptance of marriage equality as a given is what also blinds them to the way their statements can feel so unintentionally dismissive.

like, i'm so glad you've never had to go through what those before you have, but also you need to sit down and read a history book because even if i never want you to have that experience you do need to have that knowledge and understanding of the past.

and then it feels silly to be having all these feelings over a single line about a possible ship between two victorian blorbos, but really the emotions aren't about the ship or the blorbos or the book at all. i just really want people to learn some fucking queer history.

[knifewieldingenby]

I'm making this unrebloggable cuz this isn't meant to start a fight but I know people will still try, that's just tumblr, but I think part of the issue with this whole 'ofmd is getting the pirate show reception black sails should have' thing is that a lot of black sails fans promoted the show with "if you like queer pirates watch black sails you'll love it." They're frustrated and don't understand why that didn't work. It's not because we were all like "there can be only one queer pirate show!" It's because they were under the impression that the main reason we flocked to ofmd was because it's about pirates, and we just must not have known Black Sails existed, otherwise we would have loved that equally, right?

I can't speak for everyone, obviously, but I'm fucking exhausted. I'm running on knock-you-on-your-ass stress like 95% of the time. I wake up from stress dreams and lay awake for hours with crushing anxiety each night. When I started to see people encouraging ofmd fans to watch black sails I was like...huh. maybe? I followed a few black sails fans already so I went to their blogs, took in some gif sets and meta (same thing I did before watching ofmd), and of everything I came across not once, not ONCE, did I see so much as a humorous quip. I'm sure they exist! Even the most dramatic of shows tries to get a little something funny in now and again, but damn. Black Sails, from the dialogue to the set/settings, just comes off so fucking dreary. Do yall realize how absolutely depressing your show comes off to outsiders? Do you know how heavy that feels when you're already walking around with an anvil on your chest at all times?

I think ofmd roped so many people in not only because it's a diverse queer show, but also because it's a comedy. It still deals with heavy topics right from the get-go (so bs fans can stop acting like the show has no depth, k?) but we're given a careful balance of stress and relief. We're reminded that although shit is a mess, there is still room for smiling, for laughter, for affection and love, for the bonds of a found family to be both deep and light-hearted. We're reminded of this often.

I haven't seen black sails and tbh I don't intend to. I wanted to give it a try, but the shit coming out recently has put a bad taste in my mouth. But even before this, I didn't think I could stomach the show with how much I'm forced to stomach in real life. If I'm going to let a show break my heart, I want it to be a show that constantly reminds me that the heartbreak is worth it in the end, that laughter and kindness and love will always win.

Edit: shout out to tumblr for changing the settings to anyone can reblog! It won't let me change it to nobody, either. Don't be a dick on this post.

[tedturneriscrazy]

I'm about to do something foolish: talk about why I'm not into Raeda.

Gonna put it under a readmore and omit the Raeda tag, so Raeda stans, you can keep scrolling along peacefully if you don't want to see this.

Also, this will be unrebloggable by default, because I am not in the mood to debate this or have people tell me why my feelings are wrong. These are my opinions, nothing more. If you're that interested in reblogging me, feel free to DM me and I can tag you in this post if I feel comfortable doing so.

Not too long ago there was that stream or interview or whatever (I forget what it was exactly) that revealed that Raine was initially conceived to be a love interest for Eda. When I heard that, things really clicked into place and made sense in a way they hadn't before.

Now, for plenty of people (and pretty much all Raeda stans), one thing they appreciate is how Raine had so much development aside from their relationship with Eda, and I'm not looking to take that away from them.

For my part though, I had to ask myself: Did they? And personally, I don't really think they have, and that combined with the aforementioned revelation just makes the whole thing fall flat to me.

See, for Luz, Amity, Willow, and Hunter, they all had substantial development independent from their respective love interests. Luz and Amity go without saying, and even Willow and Hunter have had their arcs and motivations aside from their own shared relationship.

And to be sure, Eda has had tons of development, as well. Hell, she had a whole season and a third of stuff going on before Raine ever entered the picture.

Which brings us to Raine.

Raine Whispers, who didn't even have half an episode before it was clear there was a thing going on between them and Eda.

Raine, who feels like they aren't in a scene without it reminding us how in love they are with Eda or how in love Eda is with them.

Raine, who has had very little screentime without it being connected to Eda in some way. Heck, who doesn't even seem to have any substantial relationships aside from Eda.

(And yes, there's Darius and Eber, or even Terra, but those are nowhere near the degree of interaction as with Eda, at least on screen, which is the key attribute here)

It took me a while to realize this, but I think overall I've been somewhat disappointed with Raine and Raeda overall. And that's unfortunate, because there's a lot of potential there. Raine is an appealing and likeable character, and I did enjoy the interactions in Eda's Requiem and K³OHD. However, by the time TtBK came along and played out, my interest just evaporated completely, and I'm honestly saddened by that.

To be clear, I'm not trying to invalidate other people's feelings on all this, and I don't think less of people who are into this ship and this character. Hell, I wish I could be there with you! It's just that I find myself unable to, and it sucks.

[manthrochap-blog]

well well well. look who finally figured out what email he used for his old blog....

so, hi. the last post on this blog was from december 2016, so... i’d expect most of my followers are inactive and the few people i follow who are still active probably unfollowed ages ago, unless they never cleared out their accounts... but i thought i’d make a little post here as a sort of update and finally offer a means of contact

so. i’m freshly 23 years old now (jesus CHRIST). i’m not using this blog anymore, so i won’t be updating my bio/about/whatever to reflect that, but i’ll note i exclusively use he/him now. while homestuck is still constantly in my periphery (more literal than that sentence should be, there’s a dave strider vinyl figure in a bin almost within eyesight of my desk chair...) i haven’t really engaged with it in... years... other than a recent look at its unfinished japanese translation, seeing as i started learning the language a few years ago and got curious. i still stan aradia hardcore, btw, nothing in life will Ever change that

as you can probably (hopefully) predict from the fact that i was 17 when i last used this blog (and 13-16 when i used it actively) and i am now 23, this blog, uh... would not be a great reference point for determining what kind of person i am now. i won’t write it off as completely detached from my present identity, and i’m not saying this because there’s some sort of “dirt” you could dig up from looking through my posts (there... really isn’t, just a whole lot of cringe), i’d just like to make it clear that judging the present me by whatever the hell was wrong with me when i was a teenager would leave you with a lot of inaccuracies about me. being a teenager sucks and you’ve got way more things wrong with you mentally than any other stage of your life and i’m happy to report many of those things wrong with me have resolved themselves with time, but also, the cringe. the cringe. my god the cringe, please for the love of god know that while i am still cringe i am not as bad as i once was

anyways, what i am trying to communicate is that while the person who ran this blog and myself may technically inhabit the same body, we’re not quite the same person; and yet, this is still my body, my face, my words, my thoughts, all contained here, even if i no longer understand those thoughts and feelings and words, no longer feel like the face depicted is my face. going through and making every single one of my old posts unrebloggable would be not only tedious but a ridiculous, gargantuan task, considering my post count is just short of 50,000 and no matter how many of those are reblogs that i wouldn’t need to alter, it took long enough just deleting a bunch of old selfies that i truly don’t think it would be worth it

thus, my request is this: my art is all fair game, but any (old) personal posts or selfies i'd like left alone. no likes, no reblogs, just let them be, please. while i've left a good portion of the latter up for posterity, i'd prefer you not even look for them. likewise, i've gone through and deleted all instances of my deadname; do not try to seek it out. or i may smite you in real life

other than all of that, i'm willfully leaving this blog up as an archive. please don't abuse that, please respect my requests regarding what i am and am not okay with being interacted with, and please keep a healthy barrier in your mind between who i was as a teenager and my new, adult self, because even i don't know what i was going on about back then

with all of that finally out of the way, if you're looking to contact me for whatever reason, you'll find my new blog in my next (and probably final, ever, for this blog) reblog. that post is a plea for a friend of mine who i miss and have completely lost contact with to come and talk with me again, if they'd like, so i'm hoping that posting this here and giving them a way of contacting me might help if they ever come back and look at this blog, which was the impetus for me hunting down my own log-in info to begin with, though not the sole reason (i really did want to purge this fucking thing of its evils even if only a little i've been meaning to do that for ages)

i don't intend to ever deactivate that blog just as i won't be deactivating this one, but as a failsafe, you can also email nisutitja @ gmail, because i don't really wanna just... put my discord where everyone can see it. that is not my main email, but i do own that address. might be a little late on the response but it should be reliable enough

[fandom-hoarder]

Love that I can make things unrebloggable now. Hate that there's selfies I apparently hadn't deleted yet.