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[ruinedchildhood]

[vintagehomecollection]

Abundant planting. The effect of the herbaceous planting on either side of this straight flight of steps is to give it a meandering line. This is an example of excellent grouping of plants to complement a structural feature.

The Garden Book, 1984

[specialagentartemis]

Thinking about it, and I’d like to forward the idea that prejudice against single people (aromantics, asexuals, and also just… anyone who does not have a romantic partner) follows dynamics less like anti-queer bigotry and more akin to anti-fat bigotry.

Fatness, like singlehood, is seen at large as a state of failure. Everybody is supposed to want to be [thin / partnered], and if you are not, that is a personal failure on your part, and you are pathetic and mock-worthy. The popular idea is that of course everybody wants to be [thin / partnered], and everybody is striving towards the goal, and anybody who is not [thin / partnered] is either temporarily inconvenienced on their way to correctness, or has something fundamentally wrong with them. And because [fatness / singlehood] is something that is treated as fixable, if you have not fixed it, then there is something wrong with you—and thus discriminating against you is acceptable, because your [fatness / singlehood] is based on your own bad choices.

The world is, in some cases quite literally, not built for fat or single people. If you are fat or single, the world is much more difficult or expensive to live in, because it is structurally designed for the assumption that you are thin or that you have a partner. The normative Person, after all, is thin and romantically partnered. If you are not thin or not romantically partnered, there is something fundamentally less human about you.

[Fatness / singlehood] is something embarrassing, something worth mocking others over, something that reflects your fundamental unworthiness. Every fictional hero is thin, every fictional happy ending ends with romance. Everyone in your life is either quietly or not-so-quietly worried about you.

And all this is fine and acceptable. Because in the general perception, [fatness / singlehood] is not a real axis of bigotry. It’s a choice! You could just become a different person and stop being [fat / single]! You deserve the mockery, the derision, the attempts to fix you, the world not accommodating you, because you could just become a better person and stop being [fat / single] at any point. So it’s your own fault people treat you badly, really.

[innerchildabortionclinic]

your cat was an honor to see in the window

[yesornopolls]

Have you ever traveled outside of your home country? Even if it was only briefly

Have you ever traveled outside of your home country?

Yes

No

Remaining time: 6 days 9 hours

[catchymemes]

[literary-sparks]

“Why don’t you use ai” idk man beyond the obvious environmental and “this machine causes psychosis and encourages people to kill themselves” thing I think asking the equivalent of a solid D student who is also a pathological liar if they can answer my question/do the work for me seems pretty fucking stupid

[clementine-kesh]

call me terminally academia-brained but i do think a lot of the fun of character analysis is figuring out how to build a compelling argument for a particular reading using lines of evidence from canon as well as meta/intertextual support

[clementine-kesh]

and you could say that what i’m saying here is basically “a lot of the fun of doing character analysis is doing character analysis” but let’s be real a lot of fandom character analysis is pretty heavily vibes-based. and i think that’s where i really chafe up against the traditional thought-terminating fandom attitude of like, everyone’s opinions hold equal weight and any interrogation of that is inherently hostile. because i think it’s fascinating to dig into where others are coming from in terms of their views on characters or dynamics or whatever, especially when they differ significantly from more commonly expressed views, and part of that digging is asking people okay what parts of canon are you drawing from to support your opinion? what parts of canon are you disregarding or downplaying? how does this argument hold up in the light of how race, gender, class, ability, etc. operate both in the piece’s in-fiction and real world contexts?

[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.

[qilingxiong]

normalize not bringing your partner unsolicited to every hangout with YOUR friends please for the love of god. was there a plus one specified on the invite? no? then bestie they will live if they're on their own for one (1) evening

[vifetoile]

A house isn't a home without the ineffable contentment of a cat with its tail folded about its feet. A cat gives mystery, charm, suggestion.

Emily's Quest, by LM Montgomery

[damndorothea]

i saw this somewhere else but reply / tag what you did today so everyone can see that we all did something different today

[awesomebutunpractical]

You can have any animal for a pet. Any complications such as “keeping the animal healthy and happy” and “the time and effort it would take to keep happy and healthy pet” and “keeping yourself uneaten” and “the pet I want is kind of extinct” have all been solved perfectly. You don’t have to think of that.

What is your pet?

[holespoles]

Haruka Kawakami

かわかみはるか

[pocketdogs]

dog is once again left with no choice but to use raggedy shoes as a pillow. if only he were able to lounge on some red sofa with the yellow cushions he likes so much. sadly, no such thing exists.

[enchantedbook]

The Wild Swans by Hans Christian Andersen Illustration by Harry Rountree, 1934

[petefoxshend-deactivated2018062]

“Big Pharma” okay are we talking about how privatization and monetization has deeply corrupted the field of medicine or are you talking about how you think chemicals in the water are making the frogs gay

[greyramblings]

“GMOs”? Are we talking seeds that grow sterile plants and patenting genetic modifications then destroying any competition no matter how small they are? Or are we talking life saving rice with vitamin a to make sure kids don’t go blind in regions not suited for other high vit a veg? … or are we talking about your chidoodle?