bi, fly, and ready to cry

mostly escapist coping mechanisms, except when not | thirties | also on bluesky @sharas-bae but only for backup purposes

[meruz]

bunch of lil coaster paintings i made for gallery nucleus portland for the SALUT! show. u can see them in person when the show opens on June 7th! mostly these r abt trains tho bottom right is abt the bus

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[hypokeimena]

#'this is present in the text' is often a good first step #but those second and third ones (naming it; describing its function) are vital (via @elucubrare)

[etakeh]

As Theodore Sturgeon said, ask the next question.

[doubleca5t]

imo one of the funniest genres of dude is the ones who post shit on social media like "in 2024 I don't have time for fake friends" "so many people trying to betray you and stab you in the back, can't trust anyone but yourself" "I got a lot of enemies, a lot of people praying on my downfall" and then they work at like the mall or something like bro what kind of life are you leading there cannot be that many people out to get you

[doubleca5t]

upon further reflection the type of guy I was trying to describe here is just drake fans

[doubleca5t]

[wingkink]

beaustrid is so good for a lot of reasons but partially because I think it would make beau really mad to have the same taste in women as caleb

[sasha-on-the-side]

Been talking about this with friends so I present to you, the cursed spectrum of media literacy

[sreegs]

You should take some time to read @3liza's post documenting the Phantom Report Bug (which she deserves praise for doing, thank you eliza) and see how fucking broken Tumblr's report tool is. I also want to reiterate something she is once again correct about: no one files bug reports. I have first hand experience working at Tumblr and I remember having to tell web devs on Staff "i saw a post about someone talking about a bug" and they were unaware because no one followed through to file a bug. I have fixed bugs that I saw people posting about that were in my domain (I'm a mobile dev) but were not in the system. No this is not an endorsement of "complain about it enough and eventually someone will see it", this is an endorsement of "file a bug report directly to computer companies and people will most likely read it and probably fix it". I mean it this is not a Tumblr-only thing. I've seen this at every company I've worked for. Just fucking file a bug report please I beg you, software gets complicated and the devs are just unaware that there's a bug until you bring it to your attention. And they want to fix the bug! I promise!

[3liza]

WHAT AM I ALWAYS SAYING TO YOU PEOPLE. COMPLAINING GETS THE GOODS. YOURE NOT ALLOWED TO GET MAD UNTIL YOUVE COMPLAINED ABOUT THE PROBLEM TO SOMEONE WHOSE JOB IT IS TO FIX IT

[3liza]

POLITELY

[ceescedasticity]

And not just computers! It's happened twice now that the walk signal request at the intersection by my bus stop has stopped working, for several days, but been fixed the morning after I left a message with public works about it.

[padmestrilogy]

must be so frustrating to be luke skywalker and have pulled off the first successful “i can fix him” and you can’t even prove it bc the him dies 5 min later

[stjohnstarling]

ST JOHN* STARLING; a bird of ill omen and author of unorthodox queer novels. My artist and editor is @beastliness.

For my nonfiction work on how we can start rebuild the internet that we want, read Regreening the Digital Wasteland.

For the creatures I make, see #my little guys.

My next project is A COMPANION IN VICE — a subversive tale of obsessive love and mad science. 🫀

Martin Rem knows that Dr. Avenroyth isn’t dead, because he brought him back with his own hands — although that’s more than he can say to the police. When people connected to Dr. Avenroyth start dying under mysterious circumstances, Martin must find a way to protect his own dark secrets, as well as the life of the man who may be trying to kill him. Can love survive the frightening transformation the doctor has undergone? What lies at the heart of this labyrinth of institutional corruption, professional ambition, jealousy, sex, and death?

A Companion in Vice is soon to be published serially, a chapter per week, in my (free!) newsletter.

JOIN THE EXPERIMENT HERE ->

Also available: WHAT MANNER OF MAN — a blasphemous gothic romance about a priest and a vampire. 🦇

Read WHAT MANNER OF MAN 💌 (free) or get the complete & final edition on Itch.io / Amazon

-

🗡️ PATREON | KO-FI | BLUESKY | NEWSLETTER 🗡️

[skodasforge]

WSPTOTC Pride Flag

Pride Flag but for people who think Pride should be a respectable SFW event free of sexual debauchery and provocative clothing. Differs from the Gilbert Baker Design in that its colors are sampled from this image of Reverand Lovejoy's Wife screaming "Won't someone please think of the children"

[sexysilverstrider]

the group chat when i ask whos available to hang out next week

[medusasstory]

Honestly this is one of the best formatted jokes of all time.

[movementnudge]

Movement nudge!

Source

[combeauferre]

the mighty nein + text post memes 15/?

[fictionadventurer]

One of my biggest literary pet peeves is when historical or history-inspired fiction pretends that "courting" is a synonym for "dating". Usually it's just a one-to-one word swap--in a modern context, these characters would be dating, but this is olden times, so they call it courting instead. Sometimes they'll pretend there's a shade of difference, and that courting is a more serious exploration of marriage or something. But I read a lot of fiction that was actually written during these historical eras, and the word "courting" is never used like that.

Two people do not decide that they are "courting". One person decides to "court" someone else. It's an action, not a stage in the relationship. A man decides to court a woman because he wants to encourage her to have romantic interest in him. He's trying to win her favor. It's not an exclusive relationship--a woman could be courted by multiple men at once. She'll spend time getting to know the guy who's interested in her, but they won't officially define their relationship as one where they only show romantic interest in each other. If they reach a point where they want it to be exclusive, that's when you propose.

There's no middle ground--either you're getting to know each other, or you're committed to marrying each other. This idea of a period where you kind of commit to each other until you decide you definitely want to get married is a modern one, and it occurs in eras where they use the word "dating" to describe it. The closest equivalent I can think of are times and places where they'd talk about a couple "stepping out together", but they're still not calling it "courting". Words have meaning, and the word "courting" has never meant that, so stop using it that way!

[starfieldcanvas]

the other mild historical disjoint i run into is when people talk about dating in the fifties like it automatically meant exclusivity. the whole reason we have the expression "going steady" is because the default was to or "go around with" or "go out with" multiple people. not in the sense of being in a stable polyamorous vee, but in the sense that archie is actively "seeing" both betty and veronica during the entire time the two girls are competing for his attention and they're both seeing other guys to make him jealous, and nobody involved considers this "cheating."

bizarrely, America has in many ways gotten more conservative about dating since World War II.

[penrosesun]

I ran into a truly wild cultural misunderstanding with my father some years ago, when I had to explain to him what “hookup culture” actually was, and that the thing he assumed it was was actually what we call “cruising culture”. His response was “how is that different from dating?” and when I explained how it was different, he said, and please note that this a direct quote: “That’s ridiculous! You can’t expect a woman to stop fooling around with other guys for anything less than a marriage proposal. I mean, she’s not a prostitute, you can’t buy her.” Now obviously there’s like… a lot to unpack there, but I think it’s pretty darn illustrative of a substantive cultural shift around the assumption of monogamy!

Also, following this, I asked my mom what her thoughts were on the matter, and she said that while she “wouldn’t put it in those terms” she broadly agreed, and thought that anyone expecting any sort of exclusivity when a marriage proposal wasn’t at least on the very immanent horizon was “nuts, honestly.” I hesitantly asked if she was including relationships with premarital sexual activity in that, and her response was “Of course. I mean, gosh, you know your Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week before she finally settled down.”

And this was when I learned, to my shock, that the oft-repeated story of how “Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week” didn’t just mean “Aunt Terri had a full dance card” but rather meant that Aunt Terri had a period of her life where she literally dated exactly seven guys at once, all of whom she was sleeping with (or, my mom was quick to disclaim, “well, fooling around with, I don’t know how far she actually went with any of them, but they were definitely all fooling around behind closed doors”), on a literal weekly rotation. Like, they had a schedule. A schedule that all seven of the guys knew.

America has gotten a lot more conservative about dating, actually.

[xalatath]

I have never, and will never, use "ofc" to mean "of fucking course". It literally stands for OF Course...

[beastliness]

ORNATE

[strongermonster]

i'm helping out at a creative writing workshop for uhhh i think 10-12s? 10-14s? idk. but that age range. and anyways

a) i forgot how fun this is

b) it's really hard not to like, re-write for them and stick to just "hey add descriptions here, change this grammar, really cool ideas!" bc i'm an adult and not trying to talk over/railroad these kids, but i'm just so excited for their ideas!!!

c) little boys write cool stuff like "what if we went to mars but it sucked so we left, but left behind all our technology and the technology rose up and created its own society and then went to war with us for abandoning them? what if transformers had 100x the war crimes? what if the earth blew up. what if we were the robots all along?"

d) little girls out here writing like "aunt melanie's skin was sloughing off the bones as her beloved dogs tore her apart, turning on her in blind animal instinct. the second she stopped providing food, she became food." and a lot of body horror and dark themes about group pacts and betrayals and ritualistic murder/sacrifices. like a lot

[strongermonster]

me, turning to the teacher who is also doing this: hey so, i'm personally really cool with the tone and direction these girls take, but is any of this? how you say... a red flag?

teacher: little girls have really rich inner lives to combat the way they're puppeted by society in real life. they'll learn to censor it out in a couple years, but it doesn't go away.

me, who was also a weird little girl who phased in and out of weirdness depending on social settings: nice.

[monamoni]