Common Craziness

^ kinda self explanatory (bi, she/her, 29 years old)

[puppygirllaika]

one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal is the ability to be normal about stuff. be normal about sex. be normal about bodies. be normal about sex work. be normal about peoples kinks. and then, most importantly, when someone gets prudish, or puritanical, or conservative, recognize that you are the normal one in the conversation, and act like it.

"You think she should be ashamed? that's weird man. why do you care so much. You think that's gross? okay... kinda weird that you care though. you found out about her kinks? what are you, like, stalking her or something? what, you think her job sucks 'cause it involves sex? what's it got to do with you? you're really obsessed with other people man, it's kinda creepy."

the duality of shame and normalcy is not static. you get to decide what is normal and what is shameful, and you can do it by your own standards. If you let someone else make that decision for you, you're ceding more ground than you could possibly know.

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[megapope-deactivated20220531]

god damn this is a QUILT ('late day shadows' by nancy messier)

[cyber-seagull404]

THIS IS A QUILT?!?!?!?

[laterkiss]

happy pride month 🏳️‍🌈

[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

After school care pulled me aside about my child dropping an f-bomb “without remorse” and I put on my concerned face and nodded a bunch.

Apparently he was building something with a younger kid “who really looks up to him and is just starting to make friends” and said “Hey, you’re really fucking good at this.” which is, in my estimation, really a parenting victory.

[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

I absolutely failed at doing this:

[mousegirlheart]

fondly remembering that time I was working as a cashier when I was 19-20 and my former bus driver and his wife came through. He says to me "Hey, you look familiar" and I reply "Yes, I was one of the bus kids you drove, specifically the one you screamed at and threatened to ban from the bus and make walk home because I was crying out in pain while the other kids were ripping huge chunks of hair out of my head but you did nothing about them." and his wife slowly looked at him like this

[bonelessgoblin]

prev this is amazing actually

[frontmansdefender]

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Big and small henchmen for the villain in one of those secret-life-of-mice movies from the 80s

[wickedsnack]

[depsidase]

[depsidase]

[sentimentalslut]

what people dont get about divorces is the Whole Thing About Dogs

[sentimentalslut]

i have written custody plans for labrador retrievers more complex than i have for children. i went to four years of undergrad, three years of law school, and sat for the bar exam to write up custody exchange provisions for dogs with hyphonated last names

[sentimentalslut]

my clients are paying $295 an hour for me to go to court and litigate who makes veterinary decisions for Chuckles the Goldfish and theres literally nothing i can do to stop them

[sentimentalslut]

framing these tags and hanging them up in my office to remind me that it can always be worse

[depsidase]

[depsidase]

[lonestararchive]

Dakar, Senegal 2024 shot by me 🇸🇳

[sourcreammachine]

love love love Renaissance Africaine, every time i see it is omg

[stealingpotatoes]

doodle for my friend who put himself through rewatching TROS

[weonsinnombre]

[shieldfoss]

oH RIGHT This was before LotR pioneered cgi for massed crowd behavior

There was so much cool cgi in those movies I just assumed all the clones were too but back then I guess they still couldn’t really be

[chilewithcarnage]

this is so sexy

[luckyladylily]

I wonder what happened to all the agent smith masks

[roomtemperaturesuperconductor]

I can actually answer this! So the latex/rubber they used, while standard for Hollywood at the time, reacted REALLY BADLY to being doused in pouring water nonstop for an entire day of shooting. They ended up corroding, which caused them to stink really badly and glob together at the seams. The original plan was to hand out masks to various crew members on the final day of shooting as souvenirs, but the sopping wet, melting, rotting rubber got so gross that by the end of that shooting day they’d already thrown most of them out. Somewhere in a landfill are hundreds of disgusting, bloated, slimey Hugo weaving heads fused together into a nightmarish rotting amalgam :)

[roach-works]

it’s what he would have wanted

[depsidase]

[hammersanvil]

Rewatching Book 3 of ATLA and cringing at how dumb the Iroh fanservice plot twists are:

"Iroh lied about killing the last dragon before Zuko was born because he wanted to protect them! They actually deemed him pure of heart and worthy to learn the truest form of firebending🥰" .......... even though he continued to be a violent general in an evil genocidal empire long after that...? I'm questioning the dragons' wisdom now.

"Actually Iroh and all the other old guys in the show are senior members of a super secret society working for the good of the world!!" ..... even though one of them flat out refused to teach the Avatar waterbending for misogynistic reasons, another refused to teach the Avatar firebending for personal reasons, and Iroh was an evil war general barely 6 years ago so I suppose he's only a recent member?

[muffinlance]

I love AtLA as much as anyone, but yeah it is, uh. Pretty abundantly clear that the White Lotus didn't exist in the writers' room until at least season two, and they didn't have a full idea of its role in the narrative probably until season three. The timeline on Iroh "Did A War Against All The Rest Of You" Azulonson joining and being trusted so high in the membership is also. Very questionable.

Which is all to say I think it would be perfect if we got to the season three end game and realized Iroh was actually still an errand boy initiate in the White Lotus. And Piandao pulls aside the main tent flap to reveal our Supreme Grand Lotus:

Gran-Gran

Canonically traveled the world without Committing A War, thus reasonably having met and networked with most of these other people in a positive way? Check

Saw the Avatar and told her only grandkids to go help that kid ASAP, don't worry Gran-Gran's just going to stay riiiiiight here while you're gone and definitely not relive the excitements of her youth? Check

Would recontextualize Pakku's constant sour grapes face (and his reaction to seeing Katara's necklace) to "my ex left me and now she's my superior, if I don't train her grandkid she will mobilize a global movement to Kick My Ass"? CHECK

Gran-Gran for White Lotus Grandmaster 2026

[carolofthebell]

You are Iroh, you finally land a job in your new field. This is the first time in your life you’ve ever had to work your way up. This time, this time you will succeed or fail entirely on your own. No weight of expectation bears down from your father, no brother waiting in the wings, salivating for you to slip up. No legions of men looking to you with trust and hope and faith shining in their eyes. You feel… free, hopeful, ready.

Then your kid assaults your new boss.

Or not really your boss, more like your boss’s boss’s boss.

And it turns out everything is really really hard when everyone around you isn’t trying to curry your favor or affirm your ideas. Outside of the fire nation people don’t just nod and go along with you. They ask follow-up questions and instead of adopting your plans and automatically beginning to work on adapting and generating solutions they instead point out flaws that you hadn’t considered. Nobody is troubleshooting for you, nobody stands ready to spin anything that goes wrong in a favorable light. You are repeatedly written off at best and criticized at worst.

Turns out you kinda suck at this new thing you’re trying, and while it’s a novel experience you do kind of want to ask Agni why you had to be so GOOD at destroying the world and so BAD at uniting it. Why will nation and sons alike follow you so readily towards certain death, but not turn back with you towards peace and life? Were you ever the leader you imagined yourself to be or have you always been a fool riding a mighty riptide and believing yourself the fastest swimmer.

[muffinlance]

Iroh having to go have a little lie-down after his nephew assaults his boss's boss? CANONICALLY CHECKED