sometimes you see Takes™ that make you go "mmmhmmm okay yeah i see we both interpreted that differently based on what the show gave us, but i see how you arrived at your ideas even if they're different from mine," and then sometimes you see Takes™ that make you go "brother what show did you even fucking watch"
Last year, I befriended a Catholic seminarian. We've gotten to be pretty decent friends. Seeing as he was staying in town for the summer and I wasn't, I entrusted him with caring for my plant.
He did a wonderful job, but as he was returning my plant to my custody, he explained "I watered her every other day, I gave her new dirt, moved her into the sunshine, prayed the rosary-"
"What?"
He looked at me, confused. "Isn't she a plant you pray with?"
"No," I said slowly. "She's a prayer plant. That's the... colloquial name of the plant."
Upon seeing his stricken face, I realized something went wrong. Turns out, this entire time, he's been including my plant in on his prayers and leaving her near icons.
Listen, totally cool. My plant becoming Catholic is a great deal for her not dying over the summer. But now I must navigate this interfaith household. Keep me in your thoughts.
i read an anecdote ages and ages ago from a gay person who grew up with gay parents, and struggled to find any kind of belonging in the gay community because everyone else there was bonding over having homophobic parents. everyone else was defining themselves by their suffering and oppression rather than by their sexuality, leaving this gay person to feel like they weren't really gay because they didn't have the right experiences. they wondered whether more gay people would feel this way as more children grew up with gay parents, if the gay community would leave them behind for not having suffered enough. i think about that anecdote a lot.
a lot of the current rhetoric around gender reminds me of that anecdote. a lot of people are willing to go "transgender people are oppressed for their gender presentation, therefore if you're not oppressed for your gender presentation, you're not trans." but i don't think we should be defining ourselves by our suffering and oppression. what will we do, in a few years, in a few decades, as there start to be, say, adults who were supported in their transition as children? what will we do when a stereotypical trans person can genuinely say they didn't suffer hardship for being trans?
i'm afraid i know the answer. i'm afraid that people are going to close ranks as they've already started closing ranks against intersex people, against nonbinary people, against double binary people, against closeted people. as some people have started closing ranks against people who transitioned in the opposite direction from them. as many people have closed ranks against people with edge case gender experiences. "i don't consider you to be oppressed, therefore you are not welcome to share in this community you might otherwise belong in."
i wish people would understand that we shouldn't do this. i wish people would understand that we benefit from a broader, more inclusive community more than we benefit from whatever purity testing oppression olympics it is that i keep running into.
rocky's crew dying from radiation exposure, something humans go to great lengths to prevent and are very scared of and grace's crew dying in their "sleep" with nobody watching, something eridians go to great lengths to prevent and are very scared of. cool book that is easy to read through your tears.
thinking about how fucking bitter jon was towards leitner in mag 80. like it’s not just the fact that leitner’s the one who ruined his life, it’s also how both of them were in positions of power and were spared while their assistants suffered. jon regrets it—regrets it all, even though he was the cause of some of that suffering. jon, who didn’t trust his assistants and didn’t want them to be around him, still didn’t want to lose them. he wanted them to be safe. but leitner doesn’t give a shit. leitner talks about his assistants like tools to be discarded instead of people who had lives to live that were tragically cut short. he doesn’t care at all. and i think jon hated that. jon regrets everything and is so deeply sorry to his assistants, and yet here leitner is, with decades to think about these events and still not regretting a damn thing. like no wonder jon hated his ass
Putting Broken Horses on your sleep Playlist is not a good idea . Because now every time I hear the song I get sleepy. Which is not great if youre trying to turn it into an animatic
jon really went through a checklist of the most traumatic and horrifying events humanly possible. he was hired with the intent purpose of suffering. his job is to be Miserable and In Pain and Scared.
and only after going through the worst things imaginable, he learns that BECAUSE he suffered, the world will suffer. not only did his suffering not serve a productive purpose, but it brought about the apocalypse.
imagine you're jonathan sims, you've spend the past few years getting kidnapped and tortured and watching all your friends die, and you receive a letter in the mail that says 'hello jon :) remember all that trauma you went through? well now it's time for you to condemn all humanity to eternal suffering. if only you hadn't suffered, then the world wouldn't suffer. but you went through every horrible thing imaginable, and now. look at the world that has come into being through all the blood and tears you shed.'
when i was younger i loved the blade and the hook and the tear of a tendon. for a long time i was feeding myself on pain alone. it felt like a needlepointed symmetry: internal anguish can be expressed in external injury. everything had to be hard and loud and fast and violent. i drove erratically and had rough sex with the wrong people and made terrible friends and let people feed from my bloodstream. the only way i knew how to handle the rot was with violence, to rip it out of me, to put my body down like a sick dog. in some mental quarry of self-hatred i'd try to blunt-force pickaxe out the misery from my brainstem; as if i could drown what was already underwater. i was perpetually disgusted by my own failure to comply. no matter how many bitemarks or burnt bridges or bloodstains or bruises or bad nights; i was still me. i was still hurting.
so who am i, then, to speak about softness. it's been years since i touched a blade like that, but i still wear the scars in the summer. i know i could get in my car and drive off the face of the map but instead i get in my car and i visit my friends. i could kill myself i suppose but how could i ever explain that absence to my dog, and besides - i haven't been to my own wedding yet.
all i know about softness i learned from the bottom of a sharp pit. there's a younger, hungry version of me, a growling tiger still unsated. every gentle thing is still alien to her. she doesn't understand the concept; it is abhorrent. she thinks it's boring. she thinks it's letting go. she snarls: i made a promise. we would rather burn out than go quiet, remember? i made a promise i would rip all the meaning from this life like a peach pit.
this is the meaning, beloved: today there are cherries waiting for me to eat them. i put my hand on warm moss while on the phone with shannon. i made a new matcha recipe today, and it's quite delicious. tomorrow i'm going to get in my car and instead of screaming or crashing it or disappearing, i am going to go visit my cousin.
in my youth i think i wanted to be loved like a bent needle - under the skin, permanent, an emotional scarification. i have been in the middle of broken glass my whole life. i think i replaced the concept of peace with the numb fear at the edge of a knife.
i know now i can only be loved as far as the sound travels, otherwise it's all just echo. i want to be loved like a purring cat, quiet and gentle. although she's still romanceable, i generally steer clear of blue-winged strife. she sits in the dark corners of my room, pouting, and i teach her how to do the laundry and get to work on time.
the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be a part of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.
What helped me write trauma better is remembering that the nervous system learns predictions. If danger used to come after quiet, calm can feel threatening. If kindness used to come with a price, kindness can feel suspicious. So healing is not just “they know they’re safe now.” Healing is the slow, annoying, deeply unfair process of teaching the body that the old prediction is not always the present truth.
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sometimes i wonder if we have forgotten that sharing creative work is, fundamentally, a bid for human connection. like I'm not posting art or fic for 'engagement' i'm posting it looking for other sickos to play with! i'd be making it anyway for my own gratification because there's something wrong with me, i'm sharing it hoping we can have something wrong with us together <3
Phoenix @phoenixartemis1010 - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag