sharin is carin

arthur| he/him | sideblog of merchantarthurn | im not posting art here and may post risque, suggestive or even explicit text posts, please don't follow/interact if you're under 18!!

[chrishohl]

listen up gay wizards

[papayajuan2019]

i feel like the only slice of onion in the pot that hasn't become translucent yet

[what-even-is-thiss]

I’ve been thinking a bit about Harry Potter again and specifically why it feels so different to me from other bad things I’ve enjoyed.

I’m trained in literary criticism, I personally study a lot of stuff from people with stupid opinions in my freetime, including opinions about people like me, I enjoy reading in general. What is it about Harry Potter that makes me just not want to come back to it?

I think it’s kind of how it became a part of culture for a while. And at the time it wasn’t criticized as heavily as other things I witnessed, at least from my child’s perspective. Poking holes in media has been a favorite pastime of mine for long time, including with Harry Potter, but the fundamental emotional core of the thing never quite felt flawed.

Yes Rowling put some stupid things in there but that’s to be expected from a white woman in Britain who has had most of her life being taken care of for her. At the end of the day, the intentions always felt solid even if the execution was less than perfect.

Then came the slow eroding of her reputation. I picked up on it before most people did. The moment she went “mask off” in 2020 I and many others were surprised that people saw it that way. She’d been consorting with transphobes for years at that point. In online trans spaces she’d been a known radfem apologist for a long time.

But then she got worse. Like she started materially hurting people with her money. And that’s about when to me I really started to get sick when thinking about Harry Potter.

It’s like. She’s not just a privately bigoted person who accidentally made a story about misfits finding a place that they belonged. She’s taking the power that the marketing machine behind that series granted her to cause active harm right now.

It’s at about that point I no longer found myself with the ability to turn on my critical brain trained in the ways of lit analysis or my casual consumer brain just liking fun things even if they’re bad. I just felt a pit in my stomach. I moved the family copies of the Harry Potter books from my room into the communal family bookshelf and then into my dad’s room because I couldn’t stand looking at them anymore.

It’s not just that Rowling is an author with bad opinions. I’ve read plenty of those. It’s not just that the series isn’t what I thought it was. That’s par for the course of most things you read as a child and revisit as an adult. It’s the combined power of her and her brand being everywhere and inescapable and her currently using the power that gives her for evil. Not only was the core of the series disingenuous but the series itself is currently actively causing people harm and normies just casually walk by it at Barnes and noble vaguely wondering if they should buy a mug for their cousin not knowing or not caring what that actually represents.

I can read dumb shit. I can handle my beloved childhood media being worse than I remember it. I can even handle my favorite authors turning out to be absolute garbage but the level of how all this happened with Harry Potter almost has no equivalent that I can think of because it is so big and so destructive and so intertwined with its author in the way that very few other things are.

The author cannot be dead with Harry Potter because she keeps coming back in to twist the knife. She has implanted herself into the series itself so firmly that trying to remove her from it make the entire thing implode on itself into something else entirely. And she uses that firm rooting that she’s established to materially harm people. People like me just one continent over. I’m sure she’d also interfere in other countries politics if she legally could.

It’s like. You can’t think critically through the full scope and ramifications of something when she hasn’t even stopped twisting that knife of hers. I can playfully stick my tongue out at shakespeares bad opinions because he isn’t alive right now spending his money on bad things. And even most authors alive now don’t have financial knives big enough to make much of a difference.

Rowling though? She can just throw a million dollars at something. It’s no wonder I can’t look at those books. My siblings are being threatened with them. It’s a lot easier to study a knife in a museum than one that’s currently being held to someone’s throat.

I don’t think I can be trusted to ever study this particular knife objectively ever again. Because I’ve seen what it can do. I’ve seen where it’s pointed. I can’t really have rational academic thoughts while I’m watching that.

[marlynnofmany]

It’s a lot easier to study a knife in a museum than one that’s currently being held to someone’s throat.

[segamascott]

[takereveng3]

Reporter: Why do you think so many countries’ governments around the world are just ignoring what’s happening in Gaza?

Greta Thunberg: Because of racism, that’s the simple answer, I would say. Racism, and basically desperately trying to defend a deadly, destructive system that systematically maximizes short term economic profit and geopolitical power over the well being of humans and the planet. Right now, it is morally difficult to defend that – it is impossible— but they’re desperately trying which is …. absurd is not the word, but there are no words to describe it.

- Greta Thunberg in Paris, after returning from Israel’s illegal abduction of her aboard the Madleen (10 Jun 25)

[tench-art]

Talking about Valentines

[fruitcupqt]

@gutted-computer @stefisdoingthings

[maculategiraffe]

one thing I really like about my relationship with my boyfriend is that we can express negative feelings about each other's actions without assigning blame or requiring apology. I mean like for morally neutral things like "it drives me crazy when you leave a wet towel on the floor instead of hanging it up"

cause now like instead of "oh I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to drive you crazy, I'm terrible and unsocialized" or "um well that's dumb, who cares" it's like

"it does? I didn't know that. how come?"

"because it will mildew and I keep tripping over it and I don't know whether you intend to reuse that towel or whether it needs to go in the wash"

"okay so usually if I intend to reuse it I hang it up, and if it needs to go in the wash I drop it on the floor. I guess because I thought I shouldn't put it in the hamper because it would get all the other dirty clothes wet and then THEY might mildew before we do the laundry."

"that's valid. what if we have a specific place to hang wet towels that need to be washed? how about this one hook here"

"perfect!"

no hurt feelings, nobody being made to feel shitty and sloppy on one hand or uptight and bitchy in the other hand. just, we're partners right? let's workshop this

[maculategiraffe]

in addition to intentionally not clarifying which of us is which in the above conversation I very cleverly used an example that has never actually happened. neither of us has ever been in the habit of leaving wet towels on the floor. I started to quote the actual conversation that led to this post and then I was like "no, mac. remember the marie kondo black pants post. remember the flood of input on what to do with worn out black pants. add in an extra layer of falsehood to insulate you from the unsolicited housekeeping advice of tumblr at large." and I was right

[hypokeimena]

#op youre a genius we all need to lie more online to throw off the advice givers (via @creekfiend)

[sitronsangbody]

"Oh so we should just eat anything we want??"

Well actually YES but also:

Restricting food Does Stuff To Your Brain. "Restricting" doesn't mean stopping when you're full. I feel like this is what gets misunderstood a lot. It means placing rules and limits on food that supercede what your body is signalling that it wants. Let's use cookies as an example. Restricting would be:

- I can only have cookies when I deserve them.

- I can only have cookies when I'm alone.

- I can only have two cookies.

- I can only have low-calorie cookies.

- I can only have cookies on set days, or so-called cheat days.

- I can't have cookies.

- I can't have cookies in the house.

- I'm bad when I eat cookies.

- Cookies are a bad food and I must compensate for having eaten them.

Whether or not you stick to the restrictions you set, your brain is learning to be an anxious mess around cookies. It might want to avoid anywhere that has cookies. It might feel shame for wanting or eating cookies. It might get exhausted from suppressing the craving and decide to binge. It might go into binge mode every time you eat cookies because you've taught your body that This Will Not Be Available Whenever. It might feel ridiculously important to eat all the cookies while you can.

I know we're all so used to constantly talking about food, diets, weight and bodies, and it's completely normalised to look at absolutely everything you eat and assign it the level of guilt you're gonna feel for eating it, and to brag about not eating this and that, and to announce that you know it's a Naughty Indulgence when you eat anything sweet.

But oh my god, it's such a huge weight off your shoulders to just let yourself eat cookies because you wanted cookies and stop when you feel satiated and know that the cookies will be available next time you want cookies because you don't need to earn them in any way. Because a brain that knows it can have cookies whenever it wants cookies, doesn't crave cookies all the time. Nor does it feel any self-loathing when it does crave cookies.

And I just wish everyone a very chill brain and some cookies

[timidsketch]

This reminds me of how food insecurity can cause unhealthy relationships with food. Because you don't know if you'll ever be able to have that food again.

When I was little, my family was very poor. I remember I felt so much anxiety about food because there was never any guarantee that I would be able to eat something again. So I had to eat it right now and eat all of it before it would be gone. And since I had three brothers, I especially had to eat the food right now and quickly or else there would be none left for me. If I wanted seconds, I couldn't take time enjoying the food.

I remember seeing my older brother with a bowl of ice cream when I was still so young that I was easy to fool. When I asked him what it was, he told me it was medicine so I wouldn't want any of the limited ice cream we had. And when my mom made him give me a bowl of ice cream, he gave me the tiniest, most pathetic scoop he could. I remember crying and running to my room because, yes, children cry, but also because I was already instilled with anxiety about not having that food ever again. My mom would even buy food that she knew none of her children liked so that it would only be for her. She would hide food from us so that only she could eat it. Going to my dad's house and being told that I can have anything in his fridge is still a family version of culture shock for me to this day. I can still recall my mom telling me the story of my oldest brother not being grateful enough for the food she had given him, and that story was told to me and my little brother so that we would learn to be obedient, accept, and be grateful for her extensive abuse of us.

And then since we were fat because fatness runs in our genes but diet culture wanted to tell us otherwise to sell us products, that food insecurity was then combined with diet culture and internalized fatphobia. (The fucking cruelty of blaming a child's fatness on "fat people eat too much" when any binges I ever had were due to not having enough food and being told the food I did manage to obtain I should feel ashamed for eating.) So now it was not only anxiety and fear about not being able to eat food, there was also anxiety and fear and hatred and disgust when we did eat food.

I can still vividly remember one day during lunch at school. My family was poor enough that I was able to get food from the cafeteria for a reduced price. That meant that school lunch was the one time a day that I was guaranteed an adequate amount of food and being able to eat what I wanted. On that day they had tiny cups of tater tots. The cups were only big enough for maybe 7 tater tots per cup. I splurged for the first time in my life and took two cups of tater tots. When I sat down, the girls who were barely even my friends started looking at me with disdain and warning me that if I ate those two cups of tater tots, then I would become fat. Because I wanted to eat SEVEN MORE TATER TOTS. And I already had so much internalized fatphobia, was already viewed as fat by other people in the first place, and had already been passed on the fatphobic generational trauma of my parents that I felt so much shame and guilt for wanting to eat a second cup of those tater tots.

I never ate the tater tots I had bought that day. And those girls didn't understand this, but they were shaming me for obtaining food using the one reliable resource I had. I still remember that day and it's almost 20 years later.

Ever since I found fat liberation and intuitive eating, I no longer feel anxiety about food or any desire to binge. I don't starve myself. I don't feel guilty for eating and satiating my appetite. I don't obsess about if a food will never be available again. The only real remnant of all of that fear now is that I instinctively buy enough food for leftovers. If I buy take out, I buy enough of the food to last multiple meals because I feel more comfortable having that certainty of the food still being there later and because I have difficulty leaving my apartment, so it's also difficult to go buy food when I want to. But I don't eat all of the food at once. I eat the amount that satiates me. I'm lucky enough to have found intuitive eating and no longer experience food insecurity that I don't have to view food as a finite resource anymore. And I can tell you that calling intuitive eating "freedom" is not an exaggeration in the slightest.

[thalia-ambrose]

<3

[sharkgirldick]

What they don't want you to know about gay sex is that you don't even have to stick anything in a hole. You can have gay sex just grinding on each other's thighs while you give your partner hickies.

This applies to t4t, too.

[anhedoniashoujo]

REJECT THE FALSE GOD KNOWN AS PENETRATION!

SEX IS SOMETHING YOU DO WITH YOUR TEETH!!!!

[rockergiirl]

coworker asks if i like harry potter and i have to make a disco elysium skill check to come up with a response

[heirtocragflame]

CIS COWORKER — Hey you seem really into wizards and stuff, I bet you love Harry Potter :)

EMPATHY — He’s just trying to be polite and make conversation. He doesn’t know about JK Rowling’s opinions on trans people. Let’s politely change the subject.

COMPOSURE [Trivial: Failure] — “Kill yourself.”

[bloody-monstrous-wolf]

[retroactivebakeries]

hold on a second. there is no way there were only six pieces of horny fanart of galacta prior to 2024. that just doesn't hold up

[retroactivebakeries]

okay yeah a cursory search pulls up over a dozen pieces circa 2012. this guy is just bad at finding porn

[kleptozoology-deactivated202511]

So what you are saying is not only is he a pervert, he's also an amateur. Harsh.

[retroactivebakeries]

he’s not even a pervert! galacta is just a standard sexy anime with a purple outfit. she was flavor of the month. this is like a few steps away from a guy complaining that there’s no fan art of midna from twilight princess

[kleptozoology-deactivated202511]

Midna is probably the reason I am so pathetically submissive for bossy goth shortstacks. Link acts so indignant and bratty but in the end he obeys, whereas I would *KILL* to be a goth shortstack's obedient guard dog. I'm starting to become convinced that the two biggest contributors to the my perversion throughout my life have been Nintendo, Disney, and the Catholic Church.

[retroactivebakeries]

didn’t ask!

[willgrahamscock]

can I just log in

[atomic-chronoscaph]

The Lord of the Rings - art by Donato Giancola

[feastofsnakes]

hey sorry for getting really pissy at you earlier because I could hear you chewing. see I have a condition called [remembers pathologizing my behavior is unhelpful] it's actually because I hate you, specifically,

[mallalada]

the voice of the devil

[phantomrose96]

Cant have fucking shit in Detroit

[phantomrose96]

[phantomrose96]

Cant have shit

[phantomrose96]

Okay so door saga

The only way into my building is through the front door which locks itself when closed. There's a back entrance but it's deadbolted from the inside. This means the only people who can get into the building are me, my cat sitter with the spare keys, and the people living in the other two units.

The door to MY unit now... has no doorknob. Impossible to get in.

There is a shared BACK hallway that leads to the shared basement/back entrance. My back door into this hall is always deadbolted. EXCEPT, fortuitously, right now, since neighbor (Molly) in unit 2 had heard Patches meowing when alone and offered to spend some time with her, so I had the cat sitter unlock the bolt.

This, LUCKILY, means there is A Way into my unit. But it requires getting into the building, then going THROUGH my neighbors' unit into the back hall, then up to my unit.

Cat sitter is effectively locked out from Patches, and won't be able to get in if not fixed by the next day.

Text neighbor about predicament. They're willing to look at my door bUT (it's Christmas) they're not home and not getting home until the next day.

Next day, text for an update but hear nothing. (Neighbors aren't attached to their phones much). Communicate with catsitter saying "okay if I don't hear back from neighbors, maybe you go over and I contact a locksmith who you can let in?" (since cat sitter has the keys to the building)

Catsitter is very not keen on the idea

Patches is unaware she's a prisoner.

Hear back from neighbors. Say they should be home around 5pm.

Okay... Good Enough... (Patches graze-feeds so Luckily she hasn't missed any meals but we're going on 24 hours of house arrest Patches).

6pm comes. 7pm comes. 7:40pm I text asking for an update. Nothing.

8:30pm I'm figuring out what friends I can call to break into my own house. Text neighbor again and notice this text doesn't go through.

Text neighbor's partner being like "hey sorry, can't seem to reach Molly--". Get a text back "Sorry this is Molly on David's phone! My phone died." Family Christmas plans ran late but they're on their way back and will be home soon. Thank goodness.

9pm-ish, they get back, give Patches attention and top up her food. I get a text "David fixed your door!" Woo!

Friday 5pm I finally get home

Lugging my suitcase up three flights of stairs while I hear Patches meowing like a dying Victorian child

Shoes off coat off suitcase down fish out keys unlock door grab doorknob

...Doorknob falls off

Falls off right into my hands

Staring at doorknob. Staring at door. Patches meowing. Shove doorknob against door like an idiot and no it does not go back on.

Fucking

Go down flight of stairs, knock on Molly and David's door. David is luckily home. "My doorknob fell off again can I go home"

David lets me in. I scoot past their dogs and apparently I startled the more nervous one since she apparently tried to nip at me but I didn't even notice because I'm like my cat.

Get in through the back hall.

Patches comes bounding over.

My cat.

Doesn't even know she was a prisoner.

Doesn't even know what a doorknob is.

Later that night receive a text from neighbor apologizing for the dog and I'm like "I Did Not Even Notice."

Any attempt to leave my house now is perilous until I fix the doorknob.

Can't even leave my door cracked open because I know Patches is gonna shove her stupid little face through it and become the opposite of a prisoner.

I wanna go buy a reeces peanut butter cup but by god it's not worth the risk

I'm gonna try to fix the doorknob

Or... buy? a new doorknob?

On Amazon searching "doorknob".

Merry Christmas

[phantomrose96]

You are completely right because I have now investigated the knob and can confirm the screw holding the knob to bar was loose. I have tightened the screw and it SEEMS fixed but I’m very Fool Me Once on this since my neighbor also thought they’d fixed it.

There is a Home Depot trip in my future. Or maybe an online purchase if Patches would get off my laptop

[phantomrose96]

Merry Christmas I hope I know how to install a doorknob

[phantomrose96]

Complication. Doorknob is here and I tried to install it, but because my door is older than God, the latch-majig (technical term) is offset like an inch higher than the knob. Modern doorknob has the latch LEVEL with the knob.

To swap in the new knob I'd need to cut a new knob-hole an inch higher in the door which

With what tools

That would leave an unused gaping doorknob-sized hole in my door which any robber the size of a weasel or smaller will use to rob my home. I don't need fucking Redwall in my home.

Probably bad for the integrity of the door

I don't wanna.

I think what I really want is just the knob like above tags said. Like the knob and the rectangular bar, which I can substitute in for my stripped-bare knob and rectangle bar. I WOULD do this with the new knob, but it's got two welded-on spokes poking out from the knob.

I can maybe drill two holes for the spokes in my door...?

(Squinting at shitty amazon listings trying to see if any knobs don't have the two spokes)

(I think the two spokes might be standard.)

Developing new respect for Jesus (carpenter).

In the meantime, because I'd already unscrewed a lot of things I DID take the genius action of flipping my current doorknob around.

This way the side that causes problems is on the INSIDE.

Doorknob fall of while INSIDE house significantly better than doorknob fall off while OUTSIDE.

I'm retightening all the screws.

Patches has offered no solutions.

[phantomrose96]

So it does!

Never heard the term "spindle doorknob" before so I never would have found this on my own.

They're also all labeled "vintage" which extra feels right since my door predates the Cambrian Explosion.

Crowdsourcing my door fix on Tumblr dot com! Doorknob 2.0 is ordered.

[phantomrose96]

At least 4,000 but we still got time

[phantomrose96]

New doorknob should get here tomorrow, but in the meantime things in the notes of this post:

Several dozen stories of other people getting locked in/out of bathrooms/basements/classrooms/bedrooms/buildings. Extra shout out to the person whose classmate managed to do this twice, in rapid4reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesdweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Patches is on my keyboard

whose classmate managed to do this twice, in rapid succession, to both sides of a classroom door after being saved the first time.

Several people taking this as a sign to go tighten their doorknob screws, including someone whose knob fell off in their hands while doing this

10 or so people reading the "can't have shit in Detroit" meme to mean I live in Detroit. Sorry to confess I'm a fake Detroitite. Doxxing myself by 0.00001% more by informing the world I live in not-Detroit.

Many many people wondering why I'm not pestering my landlord about this. Truth is my landlord is way too sexy, cool, fashionable, smart, pretty, funny, and popular on Tumblr to it's me. It's me. I'm me I'm my landlord. It's my condo. Including, with immense regret, every single doorknob inside.

3 separate professional locksmiths who have reached out offering advice, which is very cool. I have burst into a virtual hardware store clutching my shit doorknob and fainted, only to be caught by three very strong and cool locksmiths rushing to my aid.

Person with a story of dogsitting a friend's Tibetan Mastiff who managed to knock the entire backdoor down. Taking inspiration from this to train Patches in battering-ram techniques, should she ever get locked inside again.

[phantomrose96]

[phantomrose96]

DOORKNOB

ALSO MY PAPER TOWELS

(Ran out of paper towels)

Old knob coming off.

Wretched thing. Accursed knob of woe.

Get undid

New knob reign by forceful coup. Went to great pains to PRECISELY wait Patches is escaping

Patches retrieved

Anyway GREAT care was taken to ensure both knobs are ALIGNED, EVEN, SCREWED ON, with the wait hang on

Patches retrieved again.

Anyway

DOORKNOB SCREWED ON

KNOB

Still gonna keep the emergency screwdriver in the hall for probably the next month.

[phantomrose96]

In conclusion look at my cat

[certified-door-posts]

certified door post

[snoozu]

there should be an episode of mob psycho where an orchestra somewhere is panicking because their conductor has been killed by an evil spirit and reigan shows up thinking he and mob would exorcise the spirit but mob doesnt show up for his own reasons so reigan calls him while standing in front of the orchestra. Mob doesn’t answer so reigan goes on to leave him a very long voicemail explaining the situation but while hes doing so, all his hand movements make the orchestra think hes the replacement conductor. And so they start playing to his hand movements which results in a shockingly stunning and unique performance from this orchestra. People talk about it forever. It goes down in history as a moment that changed music forever etc etc

[ectojester]