last 10 minutes of being sixteen so here are some random thoughts.
- sixteen is such a pretty number. 16. like damn. sucks to be me right now.
- I am now closer to my twenty-second birthday than my twelfth. that is simply too much for me to handle thank you
- this is a very old thought but I will never be sixteen again. or fourteen. or eleven. or nine or five or two. how odd.
- Iâll be the dancing queen in about 480 seconds. nice.
- I feel like all teenage romcoms/adventures and shit happen when the protagonist is like sixteen/seventeen and itâs really illogical but I feel like Iâll never get that. sure Iâve had some exciting moments in my time but Iâm missing out on so many chances to be the main character of my own story. itâs weird to think about.
- it doesnât feel like my birthday. it really just feels like another normal day and that scares me for some reason. like Iâm missing out if I donât make it an occasion. I know no oneâs going to read this post but to me it feels like it counts for something.
- age doesnât really change anything, does it? Iâm no different now than I will be in 5 minutes. but it feels so monumental, to tell people Iâm seventeen not sixteen. I feel like being dramatic about this (hence this post).
- you never really lose your younger selves, do you? I am an amalgamation of my fifteen, twelve, ten and six year old selves.
- in a year Iâll be eighteen. an adult. god I am so not ready for this. who allowed this??
anyway itâs nearly 12:00 am now, and Iâm in my last few seconds of being sixteen. cheers to almost adulthood, guys.
itâs happened. Iâm officially seventeen. happy birthday to me or whatever.
itâs been a year, and Iâm 49 minutes away from being a whole adult. (I realise no oneâs going to read this, but this is mostly just a letter to my future self).
This year has been equal parts terrifying, exhausting, and exhilarating (ok Iâm lying. Itâs mostly been terrifying and exhausting). And right know I know that it will continue being terrifying and exhausting, at least for a while longer. And I know that I should probably prepare myself for a terrifying and exhausting life. Because life is hard, right?
And this makes me sound weak as hell, but also inescapably human, but I hate hard. I really do. I donât want life to keep punching me in the face, with blood in my mouth, and having to keep getting back up and spitting on the ground and going for another round or whatever it is that people say perseverance is. I want life to be kind to me. I want mutual respect. I want challenges, Iâm not saying I donât, but I honestly donât see the point of continuing if âmy best years are behind meâ and itâs all grit and monotony from now on.
I know life will be hard. Life is hard for almost everyone. But why the fuck is it like that? Am I just unimaginably soft? Probably. But I still donât think Iâm being irrational for wanting a life that is as worth living as it is full of challenges. Right now Iâm getting through it by squinting at the possibly miraged light at the end of the tunnel, but what if there is no end? What if after graduation, I get a few months of respite and then itâs just this for the rest of my life?
I guess Iâd like to be optimistic. Adulthood comes with freedom, such a lot of freedom, and I have more privilege than most to be able to explore that freedom to a large extent. Iâm grateful for being able to do that, I honestly am. And Iâd like to work for that privilege in the future, because I want to use my privilege to benefit others (hello college essay material). Maybe life will be good. I have good people in my life right now, and honestly, they make it mostly worth it. I hope I continue to have good people in my life. Iâll work to make it that way.
So hereâs to the rest of my future: Hey, life. Please letâs be nice to each other. Iâm looking forward to it.
the foundation of a lot of conservative thought is that there is some kind of magical force keeping the amount of suffering in the world constant, and that any effort that would broadly reduce suffering a great deal can be safely dismissed as being useless or untenable without examining it very closely.
This goes along with a very deep fear or intuition that something very very bad will happen if people do not suffer enough. It is a belief that the innately corrupt aspects of human nature will run rampant without "punishment" both in the strict sense and in a bigger, more general sense of "being taught a lesson" about how the world is harsh and cruel.
Conservatives who aren't, like, openly sadistic monsters can only resolve the cognitive dissonance by placing a very sharp dividing line between "kind/good/compassionate behavior as an individual" and "things that would improve society."
You, as a conservative individual, can donate to a charity or do something nice for someone, but this cannot be part of any responsibility you have as a member of your society. An individual can be kind, but it is either necessary to make sure the society individuals belong to is cruel, or at least necessary not to try to make it less cruel.
Conservative folks that don't consciously embrace cruelty must rely on historical illiteracy to call upon a monolithic " The Good Old Days" where the cruel and coercive aspects of society were stable and accepted enough that they were tempered by the benefits of true absolute conformity to traditional morality and gender roles+ the pleasures of a Simple Homesteading Life.
They rationalize coercive social standards through the argument that it only FEELS like coercion if you are introduced to another possibility, and if you immediately go limp in the jaws of the role predetermined for you, you will never want anything else. Women for instance were all perfectly happy being submissive housewives, back when there was no choice socially or legally. Everyone would be straight if no one was ever exposed to a happy openly gay person.
There is also a deep conviction that the human brain can only handle a small amount of pleasure or happiness above a neutral baseline, and "too much" sexual pleasure or mercy or relief from pain always either comes from or causes something grotesquely evil.
Their view of pleasure and happiness is very cynical and economic Law of Equivalent Exchange type stuff. Often, lots of sexual things are evil in the eyes of these people basically because they offer a suspicious amount of pleasure with no obvious "cost." They will SAY that sexual deviance is all these terrible things, but they believe that "deviant" sex feels goodâtoo good, in fact, that's why it's that much more evil.
A lot of "trad" losers believe masturbation is from Satan because their schema for understanding the world can't accommodate the idea of something that gives you pleasure for "free," without hurting someone else or hurting you. For that pleasure to be "given" to you, it has to be "taken" from somewhere else (your soul or whatever)
It also works in reverse: the more you suffer in the present, through Hard Work or whatever, the more Good you will reap. It's a big reason why war and dying in combat are so romanticized by these people: that kind of Extreme Bad unlocks a level of Good not accessible otherwise (Freedomđđşđ¸)
You know, Iâd love to tell you but Iâm pretty unclear about what marks the difference between âspiceâ and âstrong-tasting plant that isnât considered a spiceâ
Pine needles are distinguished by the presence of a sheath-like structure at the base of the leaf, almost always holding bundles of two or more leaves. Yews donât have the sheath thing
this conversation reads like two shakespeare characters who come out in the middle of the play to talk about something completely unrelated for comic relief and then are never heard from again
Enter AERUH and MALUS SYL-VESTRIS, a pair of JESTERS.
AERUH
I tell thee, rosemary is like a pine
but with a spicy taste.
MALUS
            Art thou to claim
that needles base of pine have not a spice?
AERUH
A needle base of pine is merely base.
MALUS
âTis not when held, comparing, to anthos.
AERUH
My dearest Malus, needles thou'st eaten?
MALUS
How many moons have we as friends seen rise?
How many suns have we as friends seen set?
Thou sixteen seasons in my heart Iâve held,
and hope that I in thine hast been the same.
With brotherhood as rich and old as this,
thou needst not ask me such frivolities.
AERUH
I know thou likely has, to tell the truth,
but I would not assume.
MALUS
           Well, yes, I have.
A multitude of types Iâve eaten too.
Iâll tell thee now: the best (though it is strange)
is single-leaf pinyon.
AERUH
          And it has spice?
MALUS
I truly wish that I could tell thee this,
but now, i'faith, I cannot fully tell,
the difference in classifying thus:
to say âhas spiceâ or merely âherbal strengthâ.
AERUH
To tell this tale most clearly it would seem
that eating needles from a pineâs required.
MALUS
Aye, it would seem that thatâs the task at hand,
but caution tells that this is whatâs to do:
eat only needles of the honest pine,
and none of lying leaf with pinelike shape.
AERUH
Iâll eat them all.
MALUS
         I prithee, stay thyself.
AERUH
Roulette with leaves.
MALUS
          At least restrain from yew.
AERUH
Iâll do my best.
MALUS
        That is all can we do.
The scholars tell that needles true of pine
can be distinguished from the lying yew
by sheathlike clothing all along the base;
the yew has no such guard.
AERUH
             With this new truth
I now will venture out into the wood
and seek the pines and pinelike fakes alike
to stare them down and learn their secret truths.
MALUS
With this thou canst at long and weary last
Discover for thyself my lifeâs own path.
Exeunt.
Enter MACDUFF.
MACDUFF.
Yo dudes that king thereâs dead. Like dead as FUCK.
Okay I just posted about thinking Remus is gay and not bi and got called biphobic by like 3 different people. Sorry everyone! As a bisexual person myself I understand the importance of bi rep and did not intend to engage in bi-erasure - I just simply see the character as gay! My choice of words obviously didnât communicate my intended tone properly. I apologise. I think in a lot of cases peopleâs characterisation of Remus as bi comes from an attempt to make sense of his relationships with both Sirius and Tonks. This is fine, but I personally donât see Remusâ relationship with Tonks as anything other than an example of comphet (compulsory heterosexuality) in the canon. Everything about Remus was coded very gay in a literary sense, and his pairing with Tonks was a disappointing conclusion to an authorâs queerbaiting - not evidence of bisexuality, in my opinion. (Tonksâ own portrayal as female and not non-binary is another example of Rowlingâs queerbaiting and a separate issue, obviously). Iâm not biphobic and while I understand and recognise that bi!Remus is important to people in the fandom, I hope I have now explained my reasons for not vibing with it personally.
Bahorel dies first because there is no place for rashness in war; it is a calculated act. Or at least it ought to be.
Prouvaire dies second because there is no place for romanticism in war; on a battlefield, there is only blood and smoke and pain.
Ăponine dies third because there should be no place for love in war. There should not be. And yet.
Gavroche dies fourth because war has no mercy. She cares not for the lives she takes.
Joly, Bossuet, Feuilly, and Courfeyrac die fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth because one cannot fight against war for she walks hand in hand with death.
Combeferre dies ninth because there is no place for gentleness in war; it is every man for himself.
Enjolras and Grantaire die tenth and eleventh because, even so, despite it all, hope persists and so does love. From the embrace of all desolations faith leaps forth.
Time for some extremely funny news that feels fake but isnât! In case you missed it:
Today on the almost-anniversary of the rebellion featured in Les Mis, the official Les Mis musical twitter account decided to celebrate byâŚâŚ.tweeting an enthusiastic endorsement of the Queen. This is despite the fact that the primary goal of the rebellion in Les Mis was to eliminate monarchy. Despite the fact that all the rebels in Les mis despise monarchy as an institution and consider it inherently evil/useless/tyrannical.
It feels like satire! The fact that they used an illustration of a poor starving child who in the novel symbolizes the Suffering of the French People under tyrants and tried to turn it into a piece of unironic pro-monarchy art is just? (???)
Thereâs something to say here about how everything political in Les Mis gets stripped away when it becomes a product for mass consumption, including the now relatively popular political belief that monarchy is a Bad form of government. Like the original novel DOES have issues with being overly middle-class/moderate at pointsâ but there many aspects of the book that are radical and anti-authoritarian, and those aspects are always the first things to get sanded away. (See also: the way Les mis adaptations often portray police as Good Heroes fighting for Justice, which is the exact opposite of the ACAB point the book was going for )
But even putting aside all the political stuffââ the reason this fails is also because itâs Bad Branding? XD. If weâre gonna treat Les mis as a brand (ugh), then that brand is not about licking the monarchyâs boots. Les Misâs brand is about the exact opposite of that. The kind of Jubilee joke Iâd expect from a big corporate Les mis twitter account that understood its brand would be something like âLooks as if we havenât got around to overthrowing that monarchy yet! But thereâs still time!. ^_^ come see our next performance in {touring location}â. You knowâ a lighthearted toothless Revolution joke.
But we donât even gET lighthearted toothless corporate Revolution jokes!
Instead we get this bafflingly sincere âI want to buy a queen plate with a picture of a starving child suffering under a tyrannical government on it.â
But YEAH my favorite thing about this tweet is the way everyone unanimously mocked it:
