[hellomelancholic]

Direct byproduct of being neurodivergent and growing up isolated from your peergroup is having no idea when it's appropriate to define someone as your friend

[hellomelancholic]

Is this person I met yesterday my friend? What about this person I've been talking to every day for three months? What about this person I've known since middle school? Is friend a title I have to earn? What are the limits of friendship? Is it a static state, make-or-break, or is it some endless dance-dance-revolution style cavalcade of prompts and challenges and social cues I have to hit perfectly to keep it up? Does it bend? Does it break? I don't fucking know man I just work here.

[dubiousculturalartifact]

i still remember when the dude doing my autism assessment asked me how many friends I had, and I was like "okay but how are we defining friendship?" and he just like, stared at me for a second and then wrote down some notes

[grimdark]

i may not be beautiful but at least i know a lot of useless information

[distraughtlesbian]

ok i’ve washed my hair and put on a big t shirt there is no mental illness in this body

[literally-jasmine]

The art history version of “you’d look prettier if you smiled more”

[furbearingbrick]

you know what? fuck this *un-smiles your painting*

[greelin]

like i’m ever going to let some absolute godless pervert see the bottom half of my face ever again. in a TARGET, no less

[greelin]

you want to see my chin so bad, huh? my mouth? nose? want me to rawdog the air? freak

[adampvrrish]

my fatal flaw is that if i don't want to do something i just won't do it like mama raised a quitter for sure.. i'll be doing something and suddenly be like damn what if i just didn't 🤔. very freeing but also i suffer so many consequences

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

Not to be dramatic but seeing/coming into contact with ancient stuff is an overwhelming experience. I can’t look at a damn mummy without imaginging every facet of who they may have been in life. I was in a cave once to see a stone full of grooves where people had sharpened stone weapons thousands of years ago and I was told I could touch the grooves and my spirit left my body on contact. I fell through time and space. What the fuck

[curseworm]

actually i never experience negative consequences due to procrastination. i am occasionally blighted by god for unknowable reasons though

[left-reminders]

[dandiliiontea-deactivated202105]

It’s INSANE to me how controversial romance novels are. Romance novels. Like, being openly a fan of them immediately opens you up to people constantly coming at you like “but don’t you think it’s ~limiting- and ~juvenile~ to have a genre of books with happy endings for women?”

Like.

No?

Why is it such a big deal to want to read stories where women have sex and then don’t die at the end? Jesus Christ.

Why is the concept of female characters being happy seen as less creative than female characters suffering? (Trust me, creating a world where women win in the end takes a lot more creativity and artistic vision lmfao)

Anyway, literary bros will pry my romance novels with their happy endings from my cold dead fingers.

[jennyredford]

Or die in the very beginning of the book. But no one calls out James Patterson for writing another formulaic thriller in which a woman is horrifically killed after getting laid and then some man solves her murder. Every. Damn. Time.

But hey, those romance novels where women get happy endings are so limiting, eh?

[dandiliiontea-deactivated202105]

Real talk: realizing how common it is for female characters to be punished for on-the-page sex with death was a big part of my embracing the romance genre. Once I noticed it I couldn’t unnotice it. It’s everywhere. A woman having sex in literature or non-romance genre fiction is the literary equivalent of a red shirt on Star Trek.

[roo-bastmoon]

It’s not just the sex thing, though that’s a key element. It’s that, in romance novels, the heroine gets to be cared for the way she normally would care for everyone else. It’s wish fulfillment in that her romantic partner will do emotional labor, spend a great deal of time thinking about her, or sacrifice his desires or fortune or reputation to be with her, or spend days nursing her back to health, or risking his life to save hers. In romance novels, you’ll find men taking care of children, talking about their feelings, putting effort into their appearance—even if they are adorably bad at it. Watch how many romance novel protagonists fall in love with a man who happens to be rich or handsome, but she didn’t give in until his behavior changed and he starts mentoring her, or providing for her, or being gentle toward her, nourishing her, listening to her, appreciating her… I suspect romance novels are looked down upon not for being juvenile formulaic “beach reads” but because they paint a fantasy world that leaves men feeling uncomfortable or even emasculated. But whether you’re a Midwest housewife or a big city CEO, women who read romance novels just want to read about men loving women the way women are expected love everyone else—with a nurturing and protective form of unswerving loyalty. Great sex they don’t have to die for is also a huge bonus, but the *romance* part of the novel is genuinely more about the woman being appreciated (for her beauty or spunk or intelligence at first, and then for all of her by the end).

[codenamecesare]

“women who read romance novels just want to read about men loving women the way women are expected to love everyone else—with a nurturing and protective form of unswerving loyalty.”

[obsessionisaperfume]

THANK YOU.

[lyricwritesprose]

According to the website smartbitchestrashybooks, which analyzes romance novels to a great degree, one common element of the average romance novel is what they call the grovel.  That is, there’s a turning point near the climax of the book where the leading man says, in effect, “I hurt you.  I had my reasons, but they don’t make it right.  I am devastated that I hurt you, and I will do whatever it takes to make it okay again.  Leaving you is completely on the table even though I find the prospect horrific.”

And that’s a very important fantasy.  To have your feelings, your pain, be made so absolutely central to the narrative, to someone else’s world.  You could call it a power fantasy, but I don’t think that’s exactly right.  It’s a significance fantasy.  A romance story is a story in which the woman is the most significant damn thing in the book.

And when you think of it like that, you realize why some people are really, really threatened by it.

[memecucker]

new favorite conspiracy theory is that the lottery only exists to capture time travelers

[such-justice-wow]

I also now have a new favourite conspiracy theory

[li4r]

[andletforsakendidodie]

my approach

[prokopetz]

Productivity is down today on account of maladies, or possibly afflictions.

[lordmogatron]

*tips plague doctor mask*

“Maladies.”

[silenthill]

man i hate the allure of a good grilled cheese. you make one and eat it and its so good and perfect, maybe a little bland but in a good way and you instantly think “man that was a really good grilled cheese, im not entirely full yet, maybe i’ll have another…” dont do it. don’t even think about it. it’s the opposite of oreos. you make your second grilled cheese and 3 bites into it you’re so overwhelmed by the monotony. “this isnt nearly as good as the last one” despite being practically identical. The grilled cheese is a sacred food, it must be eaten hot, and quick. A second one only allows you to stew in the memories of the past (your previous cheese) and your nostalgia clouds your mind, creating an epic fail bite in your newest creation of dairy and grain. Show some restraint. 

[wannacuppatealuv]

Still trying to come to terms with the fact I’ll never be a librarian who can speak a dead language and be recruited by a ruggish but handsome explorer for a quest to lift the curse and save the world

[lustformcgrath]

because of the pandemic travel restrictions?

[brawltogethernow]

Because of the pandemic travel restrictions.

[lizzibennet]

i just want to one day be loved like elle woods’ sorority sisters loved her

[lizzibennet]

they all simply do not understand why elle wants to go to harvard so bad… yet they help her study, grade her tests, motivate her and all around fully support her from the moment she decides to go and never stop believing in elle not for a single second… like wow name me one sweeter moment in all of cinema, i’ll wait

[lizzibennet]

sorry to be legally blonde blogging on main once again but i just wanted to talk about how easy it would’ve been to screw that movie up. the entire premise is based around a girl doing the most to get a guy, the main conflict of the film is the one between elle and viv, elle and her friends are stereotypical girly girls, etc - all that is just a perfect setup for a kind of passive aggressive lowkey misogynistic film that aims at actual feminist themes but falls short at #girlboss. but it doesn’t! while vivian is certainly catty to elle at first the insults aren’t sexist, vivian is just threatened but the confrontation is surprisingly and refreshingly… levelheaded? is the best way i can describe it. there is none of that one scene that a lot of 90’s movies seem to have where the two female protags have a fight where they insult each other’s appearance and then latch onto each other’s hair and yell bloody murder. ya know the one. there is none of that, none of the throwing around lowkey insults to women left and right, and in the end it works out quite beautifully because the only character we meet who is actually outright sexist is warner, which sets him up to be a gigantic asshole without having to have him like kill a kitten or something. it’s clever writing! and for a movie that came out in 2001 to toe that line between empowerment and sexism so well and come out the other side an enjoyable story with realistic women that does not fall under sexist tropes and stands the test of time is very admirable imo

anyway,

[calamardoybobesponja]

[waitwhatdidtheysay]

[captions]

“well, hello fellow hunker-downers! coming to you high on half’a ambien, my doctor prescribes 10mg  for when i can’t sleep and i get so wound up over all this but i only take a half otherwise i’ll eat everything in the house, but look- another way i calm down is i write in my journal! and i put little stickers- [chuckling] i decorate- i’m a high school cheerleader stuck in a 65 year old male body… my violette stickers came today, LOOK!! aren’t they beautiful? i think i fell outta the womb and landed in my mother’s high heels. i just like things pretty, i think that’s why homosexuals were put on this earth, just to make things pretty! rabbits!!”

[aliceliddellsmirror]

I am cry laughing… God I love this man and his Ambien high.