bi, fly, and ready to cry

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

[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]

[gaysie]

it’s really so awesome that the brain evolved to let you feel pleasure just from looking at beautiful things like the ocean or mountains or the theatre and television actor known as assad zaman

[awwww-cute]

[chainofclovers]

Put in the tags the completely finished (whether cancelled or wrapped up on its own terms) TV series that has YOUR perfect ending, however you define that

Please don’t include huge spoilers for the specifics of the endings, and it would also make me happy if people don’t use this to talk about the shows whose endings they hated

[professorsparklepants]

It is still sooooooo fucking funny that tumblr, the "fuck that old man" website, the villain apologist website, AND the paranormal boyfriend website read Dracula and went "Count Dracula sucks, we hate this dude." Planetary alignment levels of unlikely.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

Meanwhile in Denmark: My mom knitted a hat for my cat

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

The face of a woman who isn't disappointed that her only grandchild is a cat

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

Just one day later she sends me this... My cat in different homemade hat. The woman is unstoppable!!!

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

Taking over the world... One silly hat at a time...

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

The source of her power:

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

The most delicious little strawbebby...

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

Presenting the politest of little gentlemen

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

This little alien is kinda done with our bullshit

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

Guess who got himself a new little party hat!

[interestingmistakes]

Reblogging this manually. Op doesn't want credit for fear of being terminated.

[moghedien]

I feel like I need to share this because idk if Europeans are familiar with the presence of Aldi in the US, but at least especially in my area they’ve been growing a lot recently. Like Aldi bought out some local failing grocery chains where I live (Louisiana) and have opened Aldis in all these somewhat rural communities and small towns, which for the record I’m fine with

But as a result of this they are advertising a lot more in my area and also in many cases, the people in these areas have never been confronted with Aldi or any European grocery store. So the ads that Aldi is pushing out to its new US customer base feature a cowboy shopping at Aldi who is explaining to new Aldi customers how Aldi works. Like this cowboy is explaining you gotta put a quarter in the shopping cart and why there are very little name brands. A cowboy is how they want to reach their American customer base. They gave us a cowboy

[moghedien]

Here he is, the Aldi Cowboy

[sixappleseeds]

[ID: screenshot of tags that say #op I am Begging you to post a photo of this #I need to see the Aldi cowboy

followed by picture of a buckskin-clad man with a handlebar mustache and black cowboy hat, shouldering two very full reusable Aldi bags near the cart return /end ID]

[sexhaver]

lmfao the Scots in town for the World Cup have made a pilgrimage to Boston's world-famous Cop Annihilating Slide

[zeroducks-2]

I'd be against it even if the id verification bullshit only targeted full on pornography, but it is batshit insane that a picture of someone fully clothed, but posed in a vaguely suggestive manner, is lumped together with stuff you'd find on pornhub.

[zeroducks-2]

To be clear I'm not talking about pictures of deserts or couches or kittens mislabelled as mature. Yeah that's absurd too but it happens because Tumblr's AI is ass.

I'm talking about the very intentional fact that people in underwear or a swimsuit get labelled as mature, or people hugging, or a silhouette of a naked person without details, or a scene in which it is implied that the characters are being intimate.

Nothing of this is R rated. Nothing of this is explicit, or pornographic, and lots of times it isn't even vaguely erotic or sensual. I saw people on this site complaining about how easy it was to see "unlabelled sex scenes" on Tumblr and the example they brought was an art of two girls kissing in which one of them had a hand on the other's breast. That is not a sex scene. Wat the fuck are y'all on. I feel like I'm going insane.

[importantpics]