Noelle

i don’t know what i’m saying half the time

[wingkink]

btw it's so fucking stupid you can be anxious physically in your body even after you've decided mentally you don't care. I'm supposed to be in charge here

[tuesday-is-a-good-day]

“there’s no platonic explanation for this”

Well there is actually, they’re friends. They’re friends and they love each other and it doesn’t mean any less than if they were dating and they loved each other. They’re friends and that means devotion and affection and loyalty and love, and there is no point in which that love reaches a level that immediately indicates that their relationship must be romantic.

[inkwhelp]

people who are gay: yeah i’m gay

people who are straight: yeah i’m straight

people who are aroace: have you seen project hail mary

[noworneverphantom]

The headcanon that Ryland Grace is aroace is so important to me. Because the respresentation of his relationship with Rocky being the most important relationship in his life is SO meaningful.

Like that’s just his buddy. His little guy. A friend, and that’s ENOUGH for him. It’s the most meaningful relationship he has and will have and he’s perfectly content with it

[radioactive-lettuce]

felt this in my aroace soul

[radioactive-lettuce]

they hate to see queer characters win

[radioactive-lettuce]

….just gonna leave this here

[radioactive-lettuce]

mixed feeling about the finale ofc. still think some of the fan theories and ideas were way better and had some issues. on the other hand, the ending was so ugh 🥹🥲🥲. feels like a big portion of my childhood is ending and feeling very mushy. fml. thanks everyone for being such a beautiful fandom to be a part of.

[radioactive-lettuce]

alr wtv get those fix it fics started ig

[radioactive-lettuce]

wait, i’m back with hopefully a little more coherence.

first off: i DO appreciate and love the power of explicit, very mainstream queer representation. i like the sentiment that acceptance of ourselves is more powerful than merely being in a relationship, AND i loved the support everyone exuded during wills (mostly) beautiful coming out 🥹 (i have some issues with the coming out scene; more later). making the ga HAVE to see queer people in what they perceive to be their space is a win.

on the other hand, i just don’t really understand. the WHOLE plot of season 4 pointed very clearly to some kind of heavy, emotional resolution with both will AND mike that we have not yet got. there’s very important aspects of mike’s character/behavior in season 4/the other seasons that were either glossed over or forgotten. mikes development now has (what i perceive to be) very little time to resolve the issues that anyone who was truly paying attention still has with mikes arc.

i think if they hadn’t inserted very clear indicators of reciprocation, i would be fine with the direction this show seems to be going. the pain of releasing a (completely unreciprocated) romantic love for a lifelong friend would’ve been painful, yes, but bittersweet and largely satisfying. it would’ve been successfully demonstrating letting go of your idealized wishes in favor of truly understanding and accepting yourself. but the strong evidence we have seen that indicates that there is some level of reciprocation severely damages this. will even seemed to now think there was a level of reciprocation (mwtfdydg).

now it’s just very beautiful potential for great queer relationship representation that has been reduced to “oh he’s just my tammy”. bc not only did there appear to be some level of reciprocation, but ALSO mike is NOT just his tammy!! will actually KNOWS him. they already have a deep, true platonic love capable of being built on that robin DID not have with tammy (hence, the realization that she idealized tammy). girl, so confusing.

ill probably keep editing this/posting more about my continued thoughts.

[superbylerfanfanfan]

surely this is not what noah meant by hap-satisfied

[radioactive-lettuce]

nah i’m so fucking pissed off about this 👎👎. i srsly don’t understand why it’s so hard to make and keep a show storyline GOOD and CONSISTENT. will and mikes arcs had SO MUCH POTENTIAL AND BUILD UP just for this? nah im not even joking this is not canon to me. “he’s just my tammy” shut UP bc who tf was in charge of this. i wish i had more coherent thoughts about this, but tbh im just so sad and disappointed. i was SO convinced we were about to see what could’ve been one of THE best queer representations ever.

[bylerworld]

this switch up on will byers coming from the ga is pissing me off so bad i am SO bitter 😭 where were you when he was being the biggest victim of hate bandwagon after hate bandwagon I WAS IN THE TRENCHES FOR HIM!!!!! I WAS THERE FOR HIM WHEN NO ONE ELSE WAS!!!!!! IVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU DONT GET TO COME HERE AND CLAIM YOU LOVE HIM SO MUCH JUST BECAUSE HE HAS POWERS NOW!!!!!! GET A JOB AND STAY AWAY FROM HIM IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!! IF YOU DIDNT SUPPORT AND LOVE AND BELIEVE IN WILL THE WISE YOU DO NOT DESERVE WILL THE SORCERER!!!!!!!

[radioactive-lettuce]

nah, fuck it, i love community. i love Actual Empathy. i like the fact that everyone belongs to some niche group(s). i love changing how you see someone when you learn more about them. i love compromise. i love learning about the menial things like people’s favorite type of weather and what kind of cheese they’d be. i love third spaces. i love diverse viewpoints and backgrounds. i love lending a hand. i love thoughtful conversation. i love the glow in your chest when someone makes your day better in a seemingly tiny way. i love defending the rights of groups i don’t belong to. i love waving at babies and talking to elderly people and playing an instrument in an ensemble and seeing others for who they are and being seen. i love community, even when it sometimes feels like a dying art.

[radioactive-lettuce]

“will thinks that most people will never love him because he’s too feminine but that mike will never love him because he’s not feminine enough”

paraphrasing from a fantastic analysis of will’s story representing sa and his story as a whole, and idk why but this line GAGGED me. OUCH.

[radioactive-lettuce]

i wish i was exaggerating when i say that i got so excited for stranger things that i choked on my food.

[our-queer-experience]

helen “trans people are perpetuating gender steriotypes” joyce is now upset that the scientific american is writing about how women were hunters too back in the day, not just mothers and caretakers. feminist win!

[the-gummy-worms-have-me]

I think I found the article!

The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong

The influential idea that in the past men were hunters and women were not isn’t supported by the available evidence

Read it if you have the time, it's very interesting.

[mikkeneko]

Reading the article I see why TERFs are mad about it; it explicitly makes the distinction between gender as a social entity and sex as a biological category, and defines biological sex having multiple factors, both of which are anathema to TERF philosophy.

It also includes these fascinating paragraphs about the role of estrogen in different types of physical activity, directly debunking the widespread notion that estrogen is the weak human's hormone and only does weak human things:

Given the fitness world's persistent touting of the hormone testosterone for athletic success, you'd be forgiven for not knowing that estrogen, which females typically produce more of than males, plays an incredibly important role in athletic performance… The estrogen receptor—the protein that estrogen binds to in order to do its work—is deeply ancient. Joseph Thornton of the University of Chicago and his colleagues have estimated that it is around 1.2 billion to 600 million years old—roughly twice as old as the testosterone receptor. In addition to helping regulate the reproductive system, estrogen influences fine-motor control and memory, enhances the growth and development of neurons, and helps to prevent hardening of the arteries. Important for the purposes of this discussion, estrogen also improves fat metabolism. During exercise, estrogen seems to encourage the body to use stored fat for energy before stored carbohydrates. Fat contains more calories per gram than carbohydrates do, so it burns more slowly, which can delay fatigue during endurance activity. Not only does estrogen encourage fat burning, but it also promotes greater fat storage within muscles… which makes that fat's energy more readily available. Adiponectin, another hormone that is typically present in higher amounts in females than in males, further enhances fat metabolism while sparing carbohydrates for future use, and it protects muscle from breakdown. Anne Friedlander of Stanford University and her colleagues found that females use as much as 70 percent more fat for energy during exercise than males. Estrogen's ability to increase fat metabolism and regulate the body's response to the hormone insulin can help prevent muscle breakdown during intense exercise. Furthermore, estrogen appears to have a stabilizing effect on cell membranes that might otherwise rupture from acute stress brought on by heat and exercise. Ruptured cells release enzymes called creatine kinases, which can damage tissues… Linda Lamont of the University of Rhode Island and her colleagues, as well as Michael Riddell of York University in Canada and his colleagues, found that females experienced less muscle breakdown than males after the same bouts of exercise. Tellingly, in a separate study, Mazen J. Hamadeh of York University and his colleagues found that males supplemented with estrogen suffered less muscle breakdown during cycling than those who didn't receive estrogen supplements.

The article also talks about sexual dimorphism in different species, concluding that "Modern humans have low sexual dimorphism compared with the other great apes," and that overemphasis on averages obscures the wide dispersal of individual traits, which is what I keep saying.

[aethersea]

Anthropologists also look at damage on our ancestors' skeletons for clues to their behavior. Neandertals are the best-studied extinct members of the human family because we have a rich fossil record of their remains. Neandertal females and males do not differ in their trauma patterns, nor do they exhibit sex differences in pathology from repetitive actions. Their skeletons show the same patterns of wear and tear. This finding suggests that they were doing the same things, from ambush-hunting large game animals to processing hides for leather. Yes, Neandertal women were spearing woolly rhinoceroses, and Neandertal men were making clothing.

I also thought this part was cool :)

[genderqueerdykes]

PLEASE read this article, this information is incredible for everyone looking to unlearn bioessentialism

[anti-terf-posts]

official anti terf post

[stonegoddex]

what if we admitted to each other that it's not always really romance that we want. What if we admitted that what we're really craving is intimacy and society taught us romance is the only way to get it.

[radioactive-lettuce]

being exmormon who grew up where it wasn’t extreme and whose family is still active is so weird. it’s like. yes the church hurt me. no it’s not easy to articulate how.