I Feel This In My Soul - Tumblr Posts
I wanna talk about my s/i but I keep swinging between “this is too out there even for hellsing” to “fuck it they have Nazi a cat boy I can have my fox nonby”, pray 4 me 😔
while i grew up i had like 7 different versions of an mp3 device and i learned how to use all of them. my house had a landline and a fax and dialup and then internet and i learned how to touchtype and write in cursive. out of personal choice, i didn't get a smartphone until kind of late in my life (23), and then i had to learn how to operate an android, which was fine, until last year, when i had to switch to iphone due to a carrier thing. which meant i had to relearn all the things i'd gotten used to; and meant sometimes i fucked up like, doing a screenshot, but - if you practice, you get used to it. if you're like me, you had to learn how to use most apps natively (fuck a tutorial screen). you learn the culture and the lingo and how to get things on or off your "feed" which now that i think about it is disturbingly akin to "trough". but you know "op" and "reblog" and "notes" and whatever else weird shit comes per app. because like, that's how the world is.
the other day in therapy i mentioned that the hardest thing i had to learn was how to be kind. so much of what my heart-at-the-time wanted was to be angry. i wanted to burn down the whole world with me. my therapist tilted her head to the side. how do you feel you learned it?
my agent says i might have to get a tiktok so i can prove that my book can make money off of the internet, because that's how books are sold these days. my book can't be proven to be marketable because the majority of my following is on tumblr so i need to learn how to use instagram which is more profitable which is to say i need to learn to use canva. i need to get good about daily updates and reels and ring lights. maybe i will teach my dog how to write and we can have a joint account for each side of the internet. i need to learn SEO and viral viability - all of which will be outdated within a few weeks. when i first started writing this post i was going to complain about the culture of comments and how pronouns are so much easier to learn than we pretend they are - seriously, do you think your mom's given name is "mother" or do you think she just got used to your pronoun for her - but then my computer restarted and crashed and i had to google error that says undoing changes made on my new iphone with a cracked screen protector because i learned how to use a screen protector because i am not good with technology and it's all flashing screens and diodes and blue light and the future is now ! and it's warm in february! and the earth is dying! but you can purchase a change for 8.99 a month with applepay layaway!
and the future is now, isn't it. the other day i brought peanuts out to the crows that live around my apartment complex. i am going to teach them i'm kind. i'm going to teach myself how to be better than the circumstances i was raised in. i am going to be a 90's kid for the rest of my life, i guess - i still think chokers are in.
my mom laughed when she heard my big plans for your birthday and how the baking and decorating will take 48 hours more-or-less. "you're always doing so much for your friends. i just - where did you learn it?"
i take the little bird of rage in my heart and i open her beak and i blow into her sternum so it looks like breathing and i take the fire she gave me and i say - oh, it all hurts. it's always been hurting. but we spent so much time learning. and now wait and see. we are going to be kind. we will be kind. god fucking help me.
“what are you reading?”
“its a…online book.”
THIS. My god. ALL OF THIS.
There’s always a lingering question that I ask myself, which is why do I, a cis bisexual woman, enjoy romance between two men so much?
There are easy answers, like that it’s just fetishizing. And like, I find men attractive, yes. But I also find women attractive. I don’t have a problem with enjoying het romance, assuming I can find good ones. I enjoy stories with female characters I can relate to.
But there’s something much deeper at play, IMO. A friend of mine who is a gender studies professor was the first person to point this out to me, but a lot of women enjoy m/m romance and gay porn because of the lack of women. It removes a source of pressure and sexism. Without any women present, you don’t have to constantly evaluate the sexism of their portrayal, or be reminded of negative experiences in your own life. It allows women to experience romance and especially sexuality without all the baggage that comes with it in our patriarchal society.
This was recently illustrated to me rather dramatically. I read a recommendation for a het romance. And it sounded cute, and came highly recommended. The tropes at play were fun. Until I read a snippet and realized this was a romance between a woman and her boss. I had a visceral negative reaction.
Instantly I’m thinking of sexual harassment stories I’ve read and heard from other women. I’m thinking of how uncomfortable it would be to have your boss develop feelings for you. How icky the power dynamics would be, etc.
And then I realized…this wouldn’t bother me if it were two men. Now, there’s no logical reason for that. Sexual harassment is just as wrong when its object is a man. But I know I’ve read fics with a similar premise and never thought about it. Because when it’s two men I can accept this is just a light romance, a fantasy, meant to be fun and sexy and not to represent the real world.
But I can’t when it’s a het relationship. There’s too much baggage there. Too much societal history of abuse. I can’t relax enough with the premise to enjoy that story.
Now some people can. And that’s fine. And some people are never going to be okay with power imbalances like that regardless of gender. That’s also fine. I don’t think having either reaction makes one morally superior. It’s okay to just enjoy light entertainment for what it is without going into deep analysis.
But it’s much more difficult for me, and I think for many women, to relax and enjoy romantic and sexual stories when they involve female characters. We’ve been burned too many times by shitty depictions, by shallow role models, by abuse portrayed as romantic. We have developed a stress response, a trauma response to heterosexual romance. We are hyper-reactive to a wide variety of triggers in regards to it. But removing women from the equation makes stories safer for us. And maybe it shouldn’t? In an ideal world? But for many of us, that’s the truth.
Guy about to invent sparkling water: water is so good but I wish that it tasted terrible and hated me
Bob’s burgers makes me feel safe idk how to explain it. Don’t even remember how many times I’ve rewatched it at this point.
Practicing piano remembering why I never actually got good at piano bc I hate practicinggggg AUGH
I‘m reading Twisted Games right now. Just one question?
WHY ARE MEN CALLED RHYS SO SUPERIOR?
I think all of Jonathan sims' problems would be fixed if Martin K Blackwood lay on top of him like a weighted blanket
“Your voice sounds completely different in different languages. It alters your personality somehow. I don’t think people get the same feeling from you. The rhythm changes. Because the rhythm of the language is different, it changes your inner rhythm and that changes how you process everything.When I hear myself speak French, I look at myself differently. Certain aspects will feel closer to the way I feel or the way I am and others won’t. I like that—to tour different sides of yourself. I often find when looking at people who are comfortable in many languages, they’re more comfortable talking about emotional stuff in a certain language or political stuff in another and that’s really interesting, how people relate to those languages.”
– François Arnaud, for Interview Magazine
When you understand that kids and teenagers being salty about literary symbolic analysis comes from a very real place of annoyance and frustration at some teachers for being over-bearing and pretentious in their projecting of symbolism onto every facet of a story but you also understand that literary analysis and critical thinking in regards to symbolism is extremely important and deserves to be not only taught in schools, but actively used by writers when examining their own work to see if they might have used symbolism unintentionally and to make sure that they are using symbolism effectively:
long ass car trips are alot like the modern day whaling voyage if you think about it. I think itd really be improved if the passenger seat could launch harpoons at passing pickup trucks though
she hurdy on my gurdy till i *continuous drone sound*
I'm not crying after listening to Alfira sing The Weeping Dawn, I'm sobbing uncontrollably