Books and Berries

On storytelling: books, collaborative, fairy tales, mysteries, how-to, and such and so on and what have you Call me Bee or Berry or whatever! Pronouns are also whatever

[booksandberries]

it's a good thing summer vacation is coming up because i need to crash out so so so bad

[notahorseindisguise]

WOAH just saw spiderman eating pizza on a roof

[notahorseindisguise]

oh shit he ate the whole thing . he just like me frfr

[notahorseindisguise]

spiderman just left the pizza box on the roof but then came back a minute later and clearly felt bad for littering so now hes swinging through downtown holding an empty pizza box

[notahorseindisguise]

hes hit a street light

[notahorseindisguise]

he's swinging away now clearly very embarrassed and he thinks nobody saw it. i saw you spiderman

[nycswebhead]

fuck

[booksandberries]

so so mad i SWEAR i saw a post about how to make nice powerpoint presentations and i didn't save it because what am i an office worker? no. i'm a STUDENT who got assigned a PRESENTATION and i DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE GOOGLE SLIDES

[wetchickenbreast]

having a mutual who’s a good artist literally feels like beyonce saw me at a supermarket and decided to make me her best friend

[lastoneout]

The thing they don't tell you about dealing with ADHD is that sometimes when you really, really don't want to do something you absolutely need to do your brain will suddenly lift the barriers stopping you from cleaning or doing other chores you've been struggling to finish, and so you have to run around stopping yourself from doing all the dishes or laundry or deep cleaning the bathroom despite needing to because you do not have time for that right now, you absolutely have to do this other task, and the whole time it feels awful because you've needed to do all the rest of that too for a while and you couldn't, but you can now—only no, you can't—and yeah you can come back to all that after you do your thing you don't wanna do, but then you'll be back in "I can't do this" mode because you don't have another task to avoid, so you just have to accept it and it sucks.

Brought to you by me not wanting to make phone calls so badly I had to actively stop myself from doing like seven other chores, which felt like being hunted for sport.

[electrifiedmaelstrompower]

i hate that i understand this

[annabelle--cane]

yknow I'm feeling a bit brave so I will venture to say what this blighted essay's pitch actually is: reading project hail mary (novel and film) as a ravishment fantasy. in both main threads of the narrative grace is brought wildly out of his element and pulled into the orbit of a mysterious foreign stranger who is significantly stronger / richer / more powerful than him, forced to accept unsolicited lavish gifts and personal praise despite protests and discomfort, and made to live in isolated locations in extremely close proximity to these people with no say in the matter, all of which are common motifs in ravishment fantasies. on her own, stratt also brings in other common motifs of restraints, drugging, being above the law, multiple kidnappings (I'm doing crazy things with the classical definition of "rape" as in "abduction" and its shared etymology with "rapture" as in "being taken to the heavens"), and the very specific yet still common motif of "otherwise trustworthy partner goes too far and doesn't take 'no' for an answer." rocky on his own brings in the overprotective flavor common to a lot of dark romance novel heroes, i.e. "I make sure you sleep and I like to watch you while you do it, I make sure you eat enough even if you've got baggage about it, I make inhuman displays of strength when you're injured, and as long as I'm around I'll make sure nothing bad ever happens to you ever again."

the issue I was running into with researching this a few weeks ago is that almost all of the scholarly writing on the content of people's forced-sex fantasies focuses solely on women's fantasies and starts with the research question of "why would women enjoy imagining such a horrible misogynistic thing?" despite surveys often showing that men have force-fantasies (where they are the one being forced) at very comparable rates to women. my hypothesis for a bit was "either men's fantasies are exactly the same as women's or they're completely different in [x] way," which was disproven interestingly when I did finally find something about men's force-fantasies: in content they are almost exactly the same as women's fantasies but the emotional motivations are often different in [y] way, which I hadn't expected. and [y] also super applies to my buddy ryland, perhaps even more than my original [x] hypothesis.

my hopes for writing this are twofold: a) to address the question I sometimes see phm audience members come away with of "if grace likes his life by the end and doesn't seem that mad about all of that, is the message supposed to be 'violation of bodily autonomy is good, actually?'", and b) to lightly resist one of the prevailing notions in the study of forced-sex fantasies, that ravishment fantasies are solely abstracted and fantastical and pleasurable and are completely 100% separate from fearful paranoid imaginings of / flashbacks to realistic sexual violence.

[annabelle--cane]

oh also: the most common interpretation of why people have ravishment fantasies is that it allows the fantasist to disavow a desire they feel ashamed of because, in the fiction of the forcing, they don't *want* it at all, they're being made to do whatever it is and can't be considered at fault. as I allude to in my final paragraph of the original post, I think it's a tad more nuanced, but there's definitely a lot of truth to that. grace can tell stratt that he's not smart or important or capable or brave or selfless enough to do what she wants, but she'll ignore it, make him do it anyway, and kit him out with skilled staff members and expensive lab equipment and coffee just the way he likes it. it's a fantasy of being respected and heroic and good whether he likes it or not.

with rocky, the fantasy is of being forced to be loved and protected. rocky decides to initiate contact, he decides that he's moving into the hail mary, he decides that he's always going to watch grace sleep even if grace says he doesn't need it, he decides to gift grace the fuel to get home even when grace pretends he doesn't want it, and he decides he's not going to let grace die to save him even when grace says he's made his choice. the two scenarios allow grace to experience the rewards of being selfless without needing to be so gauche as to ever say he thinks he's that good of a person AND to experience the rewards of being selfish without saying he thinks he deserves to be cared for.

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[wizardarchetypes]

(guy who isnt beating the ocd voice) i know! maybe if i spend all night ruminating on something i feel guilty about until i’ve considered it from every possible angle and made myself physically ill, then i can finally forgive myself and i’ll feel better! 99% of morally abhorrent people stop self punishing right before they’re Absolved

[wizardarchetypes]

hi this tag is making me insane. OCD treatment and recovery are notoriously difficult because you have to give up all of your comforts and accommodations you've created, to actually lay the beast bare. i often say "the only way out of OCD is through" but i think this tag is far more evocative of what it actually feels like to find the strength within you to face recovery.

[librarycards]

i went to eating enough food world and they're excited to meet you. keep eating lots of meals and snacks and take my hand! we can go there.

[yorgen-sh]

The Chinese shoe manufacturer decided to demonstrate the indestructibility of their shoes

[scarlettohairdye]

And also the indestructibility of that woman's ankles

[blignick]

[doggirlpaws]

When I see a video of a cat minding its own business with nothing else going on I unmute immediately cause I know that mf is about to make a funny noise

[tonysaintborgi]

pushed over by ghosts! sad

[auroradiation]

[copperbadge]

I was innocently buying a soda and a Kit Kat bar from a snack shop recently when the cashier said, "Oh, a Kit Kat! That's what I named my cat!" and then launched into An Monologue.

Nobody was behind me in line, which seemed to be a good reason for her to treat me to a five minute retelling of the identification, rescue, and argument over initial custody of Kit Kat, who was so small they thought when they first heard him crying for help that he was a bird and not a kitten in a tree, and is now fifteen pounds of "pure, sculpted lardass".

And I didn't mind, precisely, I wasn't bored or anything, but around the time she was bringing me up to speed on Kit Kat's current status it occurred to me that this woman is a cashier in a store that primarily sells candy bars and beverages. People must buy Kit Kat bars from her multiple times a day. Does she do this every time there's nobody in line behind the purchaser? Did I just have that I Own Several Cats And Will Enjoy Your Cat Stories look about me? Was it the first time it occurred to her that she sold the brand of candy bar she named her cat after? Was she new to the job of selling Kit Kat bars?

The idea that every time she sees a Kit Kat bar she is gripped by the urge, Manchurian Candidate style, to retell the story of Kit Kat the Cat, elevates her from a friendly cashier to a deep enigma. Truly there is no knowing the mind of another.

[copperbadge]

IT GETS FUNNIER

I was in the same snack shop, which I'm in, like, once a month, recently. I only recognized her because I spent five minutes listening to this monologue in sincere wonder. But I did recognize her, so as I was buying a soda and a Milky Way bar (this time) I said, without thinking about how this would come across, "Hey, how's Kit Kat?"

She looked genuinely horrified and said, "What...how?"

"Oh fuck!" I blurted. "Sorry! You told me about him last time!"

This is still quite cryptic as responses go but she gave me a frankly frantic look of sudden recognition and said, "He's fine! You bought a Kit Kat! I was unmedicated!"

I did not inform her she is small town famous on Tumblr and instead just said, "Glad you're both doing well!" and we parted as confused and mortified friends.

Gosh she's fun. I hope she's there next time. I want to reenact the Spiderman Pointing meme with her.

[hundredsofsmallbirds]

everybody in management in this place is lucky i sealed my spiritual energy and took a vow of pacifism btw

[hundredsofsmallbirds]

i put hard work and effort into all my posts

[hypokeimena]

image description: screenshot of a google search for text reading: word that means chastity but for fighting /end description

[probuccalfat]

one time i told a group of lesbian and bi women that i have never watched wicked and they were shocked, gagged, gooped, “but you’re queer. you like pussy. how have you not seen wicked?” yeah. well. i like pussy, not musicals?

[probuccalfat]

i’m this exact post. all this just to fuck women.

[probuccalfat]

“are you going to the lucy dacus concert?” no. i listen to gucci mane.

[veil-of-exordia]

[gsirvitor]

[missingno-polaris]