#or like iykyk i guess

[starflungwaddledee]

Hear me out…Meta Knight and Starstruck

✧˖°.✧ gravity ✧˖°.✧ ɡravɪti (noun) 1. the force that attracts a body towards the centre of the earth or towards any other physical body having mass 2. the degree of intensity of gravity, measured by acceleration 3. extreme importance; seriousness 4. solemnity of manner

[cozylittleartblog]

james outfit exploration, because i just realized i never did one for him. man's had one outfit this whole time while clara's had like 15

+ points at @kfrances for making me remember he looks cute with long hair. clara agrees

[star-anise]

So I've been watching this series of videos where a research-focused psychologist goes through Jordan Peterson's work to see which of his ideas and arguments are based on solid empirical evidence. I love it, even though she does mistakenly say his background is in counselling psychology (my field) when he's actually a clinical psychologist.

Anyway, that's got me thinking about Jordan Peterson, and how his response to criticism is, "People have been after me for a long time because I’ve been speaking to disaffected young men — what a terrible thing to do, that is. [...] I thought the marginalized were supposed to have a voice.”

So, here's my theory: Young men of the 21st century have grown up in a culture that is specifically hostile and punitive towards them. However, I think that while girls and women can participate in this culture, it is as much or more the work of boys and men. And I think that the problem with Peterson is that he's not particularly good at helping his audience escape the maze they are trapped in--and he's absolutely opposed to any attempt to dismantle a maze that is actually of fairly recent manufacture.

Case in point: The metrosexual.

The word "metrosexual" was coined in 1994 by Mark Simpson, a gay writer whose settings seem to be perpetually fixed at "critique the shit out of it".

"Metrosexual" describes heterosexual men who might be mistaken as gay, because they are interested in things very common among gay men, including: Caring about whether they're attractive; caring about how their hair is cut and what products they use in it; caring about what clothes they wear; working out to make their bodies look better; frequenting nightclubs. To be "metrosexual" was, in some people's opinions, to be a "man-boy" searching for his "inner girl".

To be metrosexual was, in some ways, to be called someone who looked gay.

The term didn't really catch on until the early 2000s, when media became briefly obsessed with talking about which celebrities were "metrosexual" or not. In that era of hotly divided opinions over the acceptability of homosexuality and queerness, it was implicitly asking, "Who looks gay? Is he gay? Tell me, fellow broadcaster: How gay does this guy look to you?"

(They got to have their cake and eat it too. A liberal audience, desperate to gather as many LGBTQ+ people and allies as possible in their race for 50% acceptance of gay marriage, cherished any signs that people with social clout might be on their side. And a conservative one, watching the same discussion, would heartily enjoy seeing a rogues' gallery of degenerate Hollywood types paraded before them, their every effeminacy pointed out in loving detail.)

Which of course got us: The Retrosexual!

When everybody's helpfully compiling lists of all the things a man can do that look gay or unmanly, dudes who don't want to get the shit kicked out of them by homophobes know all the things not to do!

Therefore, being "manly" became strictly defined by what was off-limits. To be a Real Man meant you shouldn't care about whether you're attractive, or what soap you use, or how your hair is styled. You shouldn't enjoy dancing or get too enthusiastic about music. A Real Man cares about sports and beer and being on top! Dominant!! A WINNER!!!

And, so like, here's a secret: In Anglophone culture, we are very affected by the Puritan legacy that says pleasure is inherently sinful. Vanity and pride--caring about how you look and whether you're attractive--are literal gateways to the Devil. Gluttony, and therefore seeking pleasure at all, is another such. And in Puritan religious theology, women are inherently more sinful. Yes, it goes back to Adam and Eve, and how Eve was tempted into sin first. Long story short, things associated with women became associated with sinfulness, and sinfulness became associated with effeminacy. And for centuries, you haven't even needed to be religious to drink these attitudes from the groundwater.

Okay, that's not the secret, this is the secret: Pleasure is not inherently sinful.

And liking how you look and feeling attractive and paying attention to your sensuality and your emotional life and connecting with art in a real and vulnerable way can feel really good, if you're able to handle it well.

Being raised to be a Real Man in a world where masculinity is perceived to be actively under threat is so uniquely painful, I believe, because every attempt to define yourself as "not gay" means denying yourself one of life's pleasures, and telling yourself you never even wanted it in the first place.

And then those desperate to be Real Men found a way to take some of those things back in what is surely the most painful context possible: They are allowed strictly as tools of your heterosexuality and masculine need for dominance. You are allowed to care about grooming and dancing, etc, purely as a strategy in playing a game called "Getting Girls", where you either score or you don't, where not scoring means you're worthless and unlovable, and scoring is often... strangely unfulfilling and certainly not enough to fill the aching void inside of you.

The mistake both Peterson and his fanbase make is that they get to this point, and then think: The reason I feel so empty inside is... I just haven't gotten enough girls!

Maybe some guys get out of the maze by finding a woman who is allowed to care about things like affection and love and dancing and looking nice, and their connection with her lets them express all the other parts of their souls that didn't fit in the Real Man box, but can come out in roles like Boyfriend or Father.

But humans aren't telepathic, so relationships can only "fix" you so much as you're willing to do the work of nurturing your own soul in a safe environment, so for a lot of men the maze never ends, and sometimes they don't even get the fleeting joys of relationships or sex, since they're so fucked up about them!

At this point, I as a queer woman am like, "Solution's obvious! Dismantle the maze."

And Peterson, who has worked his whole life to achieve the status of Best Maze-Runner in All of Christendom, is clinging to it like, "NO! DOWN, YOU DARK CHAOTIC MOTHER! THIS MAZE GIVES MY LIFE MEANING! THIS MAZE CONNECTS ME TO MY FOREFATHERS! I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT THIS MAZE!"

At which point, like... what can you do but just leave him there?

At least he's not in my area of specialization. The world would be too unkind if I had to deal with him in any professional capacity. I wish Clinical Psychology all their continued joy of him.

[stoneconeslober]

Jeff Blim as Professor Henry Hidgens in Team Starkid’s “Workin’ Boys” (2023) trailer

[skitskatdacat63]

2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix - Qualifiying - Fernando Alonso

[meteortrails]

the thing is that hardwon and moonshine are literally soulmates. ‘I’ve always been half elf ever since I met you’ shut UPPP we get it already… like she literally parts the sea for him. she’s the one who lays with him in his coffin and shares his fear with him before he gets reincarnated. he makes her feel loved and appreciated and valued, and loves her people and her heritage just as much as she does.

[morninkim]

highly recommend impersonating corporate twitter accounts on april fools just to tweet dumb shit, i've been having a lot of fun today

[kelsingra-by-night]

Fool's Envy

"I wanted your heart for myself. ..in that moment, I knew purest Envy"

[viridianv0id]

I think everyone will enjoy this mumbo skin i made based on @applestruda's s9 mumbo design!!

i cant get enough of this design it lives in my head rent free all the time for reasons

[travisdermotts]

"the inherent melancholia of being a sports fan is not knowing you're in the good ol' days when you're in them"

[flameswallower]

Reading For I'm In Your Walls

It’s not a place, exactly, but the best way I can describe it is still: once I found myself in another place. And when, later, certain other things happened, that place returned to me, and I found to my surprise that it was familiar. I’d expected to go somewhere, but I thought it would be an undiscovered country, and it wasn’t. I’d been in this room before.

0.

It’s a different place, but it’s not a different location. Maybe a better way to put it would be that you suddenly perceive new aspects of the place you start from. Imagine if you were a carpenter ant chewing through a portion of wall and one day, briefly, you could see the whole house. Or smell it, with your antennae. It wouldn’t seem like your home. It wouldn’t feel like somewhere you completely recognized.

But it does seem like my home. That’s the part that I think is unusual. It feels like I’m actually supposed to be there. It feels like I was born in it, but someone threw something over me— like a bandage over a hole in the skin, like a plastic cup over an ant— and I forgot. But maybe I’m wrong about that, maybe everyone feels/would feel exactly as I do. When I’m not there, I kind of wish I was. It’s hard to remember, moreso as time passes between visits. The parts that are great and the smaller parts. The parts that hurt. It’s hard to remember exactly what it feels like and how it’s different— but it is different! It’s hard to remember what you can see through the windows of that room.

I.

Like how many things are made of paper and smoke; they look solid, but you can push through them with a thought. Paper walls don’t have to contain you. The difference between you and an ant is not very much (zoom in) is everything (zoom in again) is nonsense; there are just shapes and pieces of material (zoom out) is ordinary and vast. You can hold her in your hand and you’ll never know each other, but you’ll know she’s there.

XXI.

The difference between you and a house is that houses were built to serve you. Similarities: good bones, weeping, black mold. The joy of inhabitants. You, the dream of so many cells, so many bacteria. The culmination of so many thoughts inside your brain, which you know looks and feels like clay. A clay city of ghosts. A maze of many rooms. A million tiny yous looking back through the windows, and then other things behind them (it’s not just solipsism). Other things like quick flashes of lightning, patterns.

X.

It’s hard to remember any of that. Yeah, it’s like trying to smell the air off the Ionian Sea by looking at old vacation photos. That specific quality of the air, not your general impression of what it was like, synthesized later. The air as you breathed it in the moment, in that specific place, at a specific time.

Only the place and time I’m talking about may be reachable, may come back, may be called.

[hellguarded-moved]

// me thinks i'll be moving blogs. honestly i would've done it sooner if i was better at coming up with url's but uh. due to the beta switch, among other things, this blog feels like a mess. and i need to step away from it. i'll be making that blog very private because i really do not want to be perceived so pls like this post if you want to remain mutuals once i make the move. there's a handful of ppl that i will follow first on my own ( esp. if we've talked/plotted a lot ) but for the most part i'll be gauging interest based on the likes on this post. even then i might be a lil picky. sorry.

[kirstielol]

i went grocery shopping this morning and as i was loading like 4 jugs of distilled water in my cart this older man comes up to me and asks why i need so much distilled water, so i told him i keep reptiles and frogs and use it for them, and then he tells me that he used to keep snakes and fish in the 70s, he said he used to have a huge salt water tank with a miniature shark and he loved watching it, but now he's too old to keep up with it 🥺 we chatted for a bit and idk it was such a nice interaction, it made my morning

[stylinson-spagghetti]

"I'm not evil now. I haven't done any of that. And I probably won't."

[amadeusevenstar]

As much as I love Cobra Kai, I also hate it.

I refuse to believe that Johnny just stewed in sorrow and self pity for thirty five years, I simply cannot accept it. Like his character development very clearly started at the end of the first movie/start of the second one, but no, he just had to stagnate for decades? Yeah fucking right.