sometimes i write things

In my 30s, I'm truly just having a time. Stonestrewn on AO3.

[feytouched]

2025

BE A STUDENT OF WHAT YOU ADMIRE

DO IT BADLY RATHER THAN NOT AT ALL

TO DESPAIR IS TO CEDE VICTORY TO THOSE WHO DO NOT DESERVE IT

BROADEN YOUR CULTURAL HORIZONS

REVEL IN THE ANALOGUE

ACTION ABSORBS ANXIETY

GRIEF IS PRODUCTIVE; GUILT IS NOT

[rossenn]

Just looking at Merrill these days :)

[gatheringbones]

[“A basic premise of straight culture is the idea that gendered bodies, especially women’s bodies, require purification and modification to be desirable—shaving, perfuming, toning, refining, shrinking, enlarging, and antiaging. But in queer spaces, it is often precisely the hairy, sweaty, dirty, smelly, or unkempt gendered body that is most beloved. I recall the first time I entered a gay men’s sex shop, in the 1990s in the Castro district of San Francisco, and encountered a barrel full of lightly stained and dingy-looking “used jock straps” for sale. It was my introduction to the fact that there were people in the world who desired men’s bodies so much that they wanted deep, intimate, and seemingly unconditional contact with them—even and especially the parts of men’s bodies that straight women seemed to want to avoid.

Most straight women I knew, no doubt due to their socialization as girls and women, appreciated men’s bodies for their sexual functionality but not as a site of objectification that they were excited to dive into and explore—to smell, taste, or penetrate. Similarly, I have been to dozens of dyke strip shows, burlesque shows, drag-king shows, and sex shows in which women’s armpit hair and leg hair and facial hair or their body fat or their genderqueer bodies have been precisely the objects of the audience’s collective lust. Fat bodies and hairy bodies are also staples of queer dyke porn, not relegated to a fetish category. In other words, queer desire is marked by a lustful appreciation for even those parts of men’s and women’s bodies that have been degraded by straight culture. Like a food adventurer who delights in those parts of the animal or plant deemed undesirable by the narrowing of mainstream tastes, queer people’s desire for the full animal has been less constrained. Recognizing this suggests that gay men may have a deeper or more comprehensive appreciation for men’s bodies than do straight women, just as lesbians’ lust for women is arguably more expansive and forgiving than straight men’s. But most importantly, because queer circuits of desire do not rely on the erotic encounter of “opposites” embedded in a broader culture of gendered acrimony and alienation, queer lust need not reconcile a conflict between wanting to fuck and generally disliking one’s fuckable population.”]

Jane Ward, The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

[shitiunderline]

“What can I say, except: I forgive myself for every time I neglected to take a risk, for all the narrowings and winnowings of my life. I understand that fear beckons to a person as much as possibility does, and even more strongly.”

— Sheila Heti, Motherhood

[useyourtelescope]

Taskmaster 14.05: Chip Biffington

[kdramasource]

The Glory (2022) | Dir. Ahn Gil Ho

[wibblyrlin]

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) dir. Céline Sciamma

[drugstoreperfumemp3]

You give me army? You turn these pumpkins into Cinderellas overnight, huh? Phew, we could take over Burmese mafia, go back to fifty-fifty with Cristobal. Or you could just take the whole thing for yourself. Fifty-fifty with Cristobal. I like the sound of that.

[flowergrenades]

BBC GHOSTS + out of context | S2

S1

[tvandfilm]

Barry (2018-2023) bestest place on the earth (S04E02)

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

We've all gotten just a bit too comfortable being jerks to strangers on the internet I think

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

So I've hidden this reply, both because it's obnoxious and because I don't want the person who wrote it being harassed for it, but I need you to understand: I don't know you. We are not friends. This is not fun or cute, we are not sharing a charming joke together. You are just being an asshole.

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

literally that is what the post is about, I am saying people should be less eager to jump on any chance to be snarky and rude to total strangers on the internet

[howling-science]

Moebius

[userarmand]

loustat + full body shots

[random-brushstrokes]

Zinaida Serebriakova - Ballerina in changing room (1922-24)

[a-ramblinrose]

― Louise Glück, from ‘Mitosis’        Poems 1962-2012

[random-brushstrokes]

Adolph Menzel - Church Interior (1852)

[ineptshieldmaid]

If my partner is in the next room over and hasn’t spoken to me in 15 minutes, I can easily convince myself that it’s not just because he’s reading but because the last thing I said to him was wrong somehow, and he’s stewing and ready to scream at me any second now about how awful I am. This belief, though, is wrong. He doesn’t get upset about infinitesimal things, and when he is upset, that isn’t how he handles it. He’s not my father.

It absolutely makes sense for me to process information this way — in many situations I’ve been in, that instinct would have been correct, and helped me stay safe. But it isn’t correct anymore, and it would be unhealthy — and unfair — to act as if it were. I’m not wrong for feeling the way I do, but if I forced my partner to treat my feelings as reality — if I called him five times a day while he was at work to have him reassure me he wasn’t mad at me, if I forbade him from ever taking time to himself without reminding me it wasn’t about me, or ever being outwardly upset about things like having a bad day at work because it makes me anxious — that would be a terrible relationship for him to be in. I’m not wrong for feeling how I do, but it’s on me to make a plan for how to cope with it: to remind myself to look at the evidence and ask whether there’s any suggestion that I’m actually about to be harmed, to develop my own coping strategies, to be self-aware of my own history and the way I map it onto my present. I can certainly ask my partner for support in this, or to make some concessions to my history that he agrees are both fair and healthy for him, but I can’t ask him to bend over backwards for me because I’m not willing to do the work at all. We can’t justify harmful things we do to others by pointing to the ways they’re related to how we ourselves were harmed — a reason isn’t a justification.

Rachel at Autostraddle (in an agony aunt column that’s actually about biphobia, but took this excellent turn into Why You Don’t Have To Grovel To People’s Neuroses)