into the void

no gender but if you must then use the masculine - I talk soccer and sewing sometimes - working on fluency in: 中文, العَرَبِيّ

[saltedplumtea]

You are loved and appreciated and the world is made better by you living in it.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

Martina McBride didn't win Country Music Association Song of the Year for a song about how burning your house down with your abusive husband still inside it is good, noble, and an allegory for the American Revolution for people to act like the genre belongs to bootlicking fucks

[dragon-in-a-fez]

other things people didn't do for you to act like country music belongs to bootlicking fucks:

Garth Brooks winning video of the year at the ACMs for a song about how none of us are free as long as there's racism and homophobia

Reba McEntire charting with a gothic horror song about an innocent man being executed by an incompetent judge and a corrupt sheriff

Willie Nelson being, well, his entire self tbh

Dolly Parton recording the hating capitalism banger of all time

Kacey Musgraves telling everyone to ignore the haters, smoke weed, and be a bisexual slut

[dragon-in-a-fez]

how the hell did I leave Morgan Wade off this list. wrote a song about being depressed, alcoholic, and suicidal and how mental illness stigma sucks, saw how much people connected with it, wrote a Part II of that song about how she's doing better now but you're never totally free of the risk of relapse. fucking icon.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

I specifically curated this list so people couldn't be like "ah yes but you see here is my simple binary of good and bad country music which always works", I made sure to add different genders, eras, subgenres, etc and y'all are still pulling that shit in the tags!

listen. Alan Jackson, the archetypal mister big hat man sitting on a tractor singing about a pickup truck, wrote a shockingly normal song about 9/11 that was like "yeah I don't know jack shit about politics but my copy of the bible says we're supposed to love everyone" and then went on the radio and explained how he specifically wanted to write a song about that day that "wasn't vengeful". Miranda Lambert took the southern leftist slogan "y'all means all" and made it the title of a corny ass pop-country song for the Queer Eye soundtrack. Kenny Chesney stole a horse from a cop and Tim McGraw put the cop in a chokehold defending him, and I know that's not about their music but it is, and this is very important, fucking sick as hell

it's fine if you only listen to female country artists or pre-1990 country artists or whatever the fuck you want but stop acting like you've cracked the secret code to dividing a whole genre of art into good pure anti-establishment folk songs vs bad corrupted right-wing sellout pulp

[dragon-in-a-fez]

updating this post for 2025:

Luke Combs covering Fast Car and keeping the line "I work in the market as a checkout girl" and doing an interview about how he couldn't change a single word because it's not his story. king shit

Morgan Wallen doing I Had Some Help, literally the first song that spoke to me as a male survivor of domestic abuse. also shoutout to the guy for getting caught saying a racial slur and responding by specifically telling his fans not to defend him and raising a bunch of money for the Black Music Action Coalition. bro had an engraved invitation to the culture war and said "nah I'd rather be normal"

Shaboozey just absolutely obliterating the drunk roadhouse anthem glass ceiling

Maren Morris and Brothers Osborne with a song that okay, released in 2019 but I didn't hear until recently, about how good friends mind their own business and let you love whoever you want and also get high with you when you're broke

Kimberley Perry! If I Die Young Part 2!! "actually I'm glad I lived, bitch" ass song that I bet is gonna mean a LOT to kids fighting depression

Kelsea Ballerini and Noah Kahan with Cowboys Cry Too. okay it's shallow and corny but genuinely a shallow and corny song about how men shouldn't be afraid to have feelings is what a lot of men need

[dragon-in-a-fez]

bringing the full version of this post back around because people are pissing me off today

[100493503004422]

embarrassing yourself sucks but it is Not the end of the world. I'm telling me this

[damndorothea]

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

[highladyluck]

Hello my beautiful human body! I’ve invited you here today to discuss adopting non-mucus-based solutions to common challenges—

[xn3city]

[chamacafeahorrible]

getting into the shower: evil evil evil

being in the shower: there is no past and there is no future, there is just the here and now, i am alone but i am not lonely, i am calm and one with the universe, existence is sublime

getting out of the shower: evil evil evil (wet version)

[2seeitall]

Roof of the Library of Celsus, Ephesus, Turkey

[aropride]

if your animal is lying on the floor, furniture etc, it’s important to take a picture of them. then, if they move or shift in any way, it’s important to take another picture. with this technique, you can take many pictures of your animal

[longsightmyth]

I bring a real 'actually people who are pregnant do deserve some special consideration because they are effectively at least temporarily disabled if not permanently after some complications' vibe to the party that a lot of people don't seem to like

[the-aro-agenda]

the thing is that i actually do enjoy romance in fiction but i also believe that romance-repulsed aros have the right to complain that NOTHING is made for them except maybe kids media. once you start to realize how pervasive romance is in every sector of society it's impossible to ignore. like you remember when there were barely any gay shows on television and straight people expected us to be grateful for the one gay side character on a network show? that's exactly how it feels with romance all the time. i want to see media created by adults for adults that doesn't involve romance anywhere in the plot. i want to see characters (main characters!!!) not want romance and not be treated as broken or crazy. i want a world where my romance-repulsed friends aren't confined to kids media (and even then, to only a limited selection)

[pollen]

happy Barely Keeping It Together Wednesday to all who celebrate

[pawthorn]

Really hate that most people don’t understand the difference between “self-expression” and “artistic-expression.”

I say this as someone who sells pottery, and many people who see my art assume I am using art as an outlet to “express myself.”

I am not.

I use art to challenge myself. A lot of what I do is the equivalent of doing a hard sudoko or a half marathon, answering the question of “can I do this?”

I use art to question things and explore ideas. Finding physical synthesis between concepts and working out a design to its end state.

I use art to make money. I make some things just because I suspect they’ll sell well, and I keep making them when they do.

This idea that an artist is “putting themselves out there” every time they create is not only stupid, but harmful, and it kills critique and analysis.

Yes every creative work is influenced by its creator, but the most preliminary step of analysis is to define the purpose of a work of art (functional, narrative, entertainment, persuasive, decorative, ceremonial, etc.) and a vanishingly small percentage of that is self-expression. Even then, it’s generally tied to the self’s relationship with something else—perception, society, etc.

It’s very tiresome to have people assume they know you because they like (or dislike) your art, to make assumptions about who you are and how you approach the world. It’s nothing new— people called the Impressionists insane and the Fauvists degenerate. And now people are expected to hand out their identities and traumas to prove they have the right to explore certain subjects.

But to actually understand art, you have to contextualize it beyond assuming it’s just what the artist felt like making at the moment and it’s somehow coming from their deepest soul, or you’ll badly misinterpret most art you come across.

[zinesbycee]

(nods sagely) (nods basily) (nods rosemarily) (nods saltly) (nods star anisely)

[thestuffedalligator]

Collecting books is great until you have to move all of them at once and realize that every one of the little bastards weighs about as much as a brick and collectively have the mass of a neutron star

[martybaker]

Trying to tag wuxia/xianxia characters be like:

name / courtesy name / honorary title / sobriquet / secret identity / another secret identity / name of past reincarnation /…

[woodsdyke]

i have no justification for this other than personal expertise but doves are such a gay animal. there's some eurasian collared doves hanging out on the beach near me and just.... they're so clearly dykes. they're lesbian birds.

[woodsdyke]

[banchie]

i've been phasing the phrase 'google it' out of my vocabulary and going back to 'look it up'. fuck you youve lost your generic trademark privileges