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we're not kids anymore.
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PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
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@suspup
[At the Burial Grounds] Wen Qing: Why are there little handprints all over the walls? Wei Wuxian, whispering: Why are there little handprints all over the walls? A-Yuan, whispering: Because I have little hands. Wei Wuxian: Because he has little hands.
Apollo 17 vs Artemis II
Despite everything, it's still you.
-------------------------------------------------
Also prev tags:
That's really cool actually
#excuse me but are you telling me that the Apollo pic is made with the help of the SUN and the Artemis one with the help of the MOON??? #that's actually so poetic i want to cry
@gorandomshesaid wait i need to sit with this one. wait.
newborn chudling noises…
via
MNK NK NGAAHH HMNGAA GAAH NGUH HMMRRFF FFFIFF MMHMMH HIHHH KHHH
I’ve been obsessed with this tiktok for days now
ok I just wanna say if you see a kink on tumblr or wherever that really turns u on and then you try it irl and it doesn’t make u feel the way you hoped it would THATS OK!! You can let that kink live in fantasy!! There are a lot of things that turn my brain on that I don’t enjoy during actual sex!! Isn’t human sexuality interesting!!
Certified Sex ED Post !
You don't even have to try them out IRL. You're allowed to find things hot in fantasy that you'd never do IRL.
“there’s an ai tool for that” okay ?? there’s probably an ed sheeran song for it too who gives a fuck
Unmute !
Fuck you I was expecting comedy and now I'm crying?!
This is beautiful.
one thing I respect the hell out of is little kids lying down on the floor in public. they have had ENOUGH and are ready to go HOME and are willing to be a HUGE INCONVENIENCE about it. we can learn so much from them
still thinking about how much WORSE running errands is for kids. they aren't even your errands! sure it sucks for adults, but kids are 1) forced to tag along, 2) no personal investment in the outcome, 3) get no say on location, duration, timing. a kid stuck in a grocery store aisle while their parent gossips with an acquaintance is a Hostage Situation. at the bare minimum hostages should be allowed to lie down and get some rest
My oldest kid was especially intolerant of extra bullshit during errands. He wanted a list of where we were going, and would get irate about new ones being added to the list after we started. He called this rule “No Secret Trips,” with special contempt reserved for the bank.
i think your kid should be put in charge of a major government agency. i want him ruling the FDIC with an iron fist. i want him usurping total control over the Department Of Motor Vehicles
I’d certainly love if our government officials took fewer “secret trips”
Here’s a severe chronic illness and camping story, in the hopes that the residual good vibes pass on to you and yours.
Years ago now, one of my favorite people got mono. She never got better. These days she needs 16-18 hours of sleep a day. When this story takes place, it was closer to 22 hours a day.
My friend had been an avid hiker and camper all her life, so losing the outdoors hit hard. The first summer she was sick, several of our friends—most of us chronic illness sufferers ourselves—decided to see how much of a camp we could put together with her medical needs taken to account. We pooled our money for a cabin with good A/C and real beds on a pretty mountainside, with a scenic view right off the porch.
Someone hauled a recliner up the mountain, and we set it up on the porch overlooking the hills. We’d planned things so that there were always people around in our friend’s short wake windows. We’d help her into the chair, get her set up with a meal replacement drink and electrolytes, and make the most of each 15-60 minute window she got.
All my best camping memories are from that trip, because every one of us threw our energy into getting her the time she deserved on that mountain.
A few years later, when my chronic health issues got bad enough that I needed that kind of support myself, my friend showed up to my hospital room (a big deal on its own) with a sleeping bag and a ridiculous amount of marshmallows. “Camping out” in a hospital bed with sensors and IV tubing everywhere isn’t great, but the laugh alone made me feel so much better.
Wishing you, Ship, and everyone you love the best. May your nights be restful and your pain so minor that you forget to number it. I’m rooting for you!
😭😭🥺💕💕💕 THIS IS SO LOVELY thank you for this message. I hope you and all yours friends the best as well!
a case of you by ausgezeichnet / @oldguardians Summary: Ilya and Shane soulbond with a handshake in a freezing parking lot in Saskatchewan. It actually doesn’t change very much, until Shane’s concussion drives everything haywire, forcing them into close proximity and an earlier confrontation with all the feelings they’ve been trying to ignore. Or: as it turns out, it’s easier than you’d think to be in someone’s head and still not know how they feel.
Illustration for a great fic!
‘Gentleman Jack’ Brings a Quiet Revolution to Ballet
Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s new ballet, based on the life of one of the first modern lesbians, is changing how dancers view their traditional roles.
by Laura Cappelle - The New York Times, March 2, 2026
One morning last August, the female dancers of Northern Ballet tried something most of them had never done before: partnering each other.
In one of the company’s studios in Leeds, England, there were giggles and some near falls. Carefully but eagerly, the dancers tried to steady their partners on pointe — in ballet, usually the task of men. By lunchtime Federico Bonelli, the director of Northern Ballet, was demonstrating the correct way to hold out an arm for support — palm up, not too close to the body, at bellybutton level — to women in line for coffee.
“It’s the opposite,” said the dancer Nida Aydinoglu, 20, miming how she usually gives her hand to a male partner, palm down.
“It’s just a new technique,” Bonelli replied with a smile.
Six months later, Aydinoglu and her female colleagues are now flying through closely entangled lifts and turns — and will soon showcase them in a landmark new work that premieres on March 7 at Leeds Grand Theater: “Gentleman Jack,” Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s adaptation of the 2019 television series about Anne Lister, a 19th-century English landowner known as one of the first modern lesbians.
For most of ballet history, heterosexual romance has been the default. Telling Lister’s story is a quiet revolution. Openly queer characters are a rarity in the art form’s repertoire, and allusions to romance between women are always fleeting: a scene in Bronislava Nijinska’s 1924 ballet “Les Biches”; a pas de deux in Roland Petit’s “Proust” half a century later; a kiss in Wayne McGregor’s “Woolf Works,” a 2015 production inspired by Virginia Woolf.
Rachael Gillespie, foreground left, and Gemma Coutts in a rehearsal for “Gentleman Jack.” Sophie Stafford for The New York Times
By contrast, Lopez Ochoa offers an intimate, in-depth look at Lister’s relationships with two of her long-term lovers: Mariana Lawton, who has chosen to be married to a man over staying with her, and Ann Walker, a local heiress whom she “marries” in a secret, symbolic ceremony. Both women are described at length in Lister’s diaries, which were partly encrypted to hide her sexuality.
“To actually have a ballet centered on a queer woman — that’s a really radical shift,” said Clare Croft, a dance historian and theorist at the University of Michigan, and the dramaturg for “Gentleman Jack.”
The idea came to Bonelli, he said, after he was appointed to lead Northern Ballet in 2022. The company of 36 dancers has long specialized in storytelling, and boasts a repertoire of original ballets inspired by literary works and historical figures, like David Nixon’s “Wuthering Heights” and Cathy Marston’s “Victoria,” based on Queen Victoria.
Yet Bonelli wanted to diversify the stories ballet often tackles, and “Gentleman Jack” “felt right in so in so many ways,” he said in February. In Yorkshire, the English region that is home to Northern Ballet, Lister is also a local celebrity: Her estate, Shibden Hall, is about a 20-minute drive from Leeds and open to the public for visits.
When Bonelli pitched the idea to Lopez Ochoa, an in-demand Belgian Colombian choreographer who has created a number of biographical ballets, her answer was a resounding yes. Her interest in gender fluidity had already led her to develop a script with the writer Luke Jennings for a ballet adaptation of “The Danish Girl,” the 2015 film inspired by the life of the pioneering transgender woman Lili Elbe.
But no ballet company wanted to produce it, Lopez Ochoa said, adding: “They told us, ‘We think our patrons wouldn’t want that.’”
Left, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, the ballet's choreographer. Sophie Stafford for The New York Times
She could relate to Lister’s struggle with gender norms. Lopez Ochoa “wanted to be a boy” growing up in Belgium, she said, and struggled with ballet’s expectations of dainty femininity throughout her training as a dancer. “I wanted to be taken seriously,” she said, “to have a voice.”
In “Gentleman Jack,” the women performing Lister’s role have had to undo some of their classical training, too. For most of the ballet, they are in flat shoes rather than the more unstable pointe shoes, to allow them to be more grounded. They also wield canes and have gotten sore arms from lifting their partners, albeit not overhead. “The more you allow yourself to take space, the better it is,” Lopez Ochoa told them in rehearsal.
To help the dancers, Croft, the dramaturg, showed them video compilations of the commanding walk developed by Suranne Jones, the British actor who played Lister on television. “She looks like she’s always on a mission,” said Gemma Coutts, a 24-year-old dancer who is set to dance Lister on opening night. Instead of stretching her feet elegantly, Coutts had to think “heel-toe”: “I’m not just wafting off the stage,” she said. “I’m going from A to B.”
For Coutts, who said she usually gets “nervous and shy in front of a lot of people,” playing the unapologetic Lister has been confidence boosting. “Gemma has come out of her shell,” said her colleague Julie Nunès, who plays Ann Walker.
The women of Northern Ballet have also embraced portraying same-sex romance. “I think they are less prude than I am,” Lopez Ochoa said with a laugh. Coutts said that she was a little anxious at first about kissing a woman, but the feeling went away fast. “Female or male now, I realized that I’m just acting,” she said, pointing out that gay men in ballet companies “have to pretend like they’re in love with women all the time.”
For “Gentleman Jack,” Lopez Ochoa, who is straight, put together a creative team that included several members who identify as queer. Croft, who grew up taking ballet classes and later edited a book on queer dance, was especially elated. “Ballet is my first dance love, but the codes of chivalry are so deep in it,” she said. “When it shows up in relation to queerness, it tends to focus more on the men.”
Gillespie, center, as Ann Walker, whom Anne Lister “marries” in a secret, symbolic ceremony. Sophie Stafford for The New York Times
Initiatives like #QueerTheBallet, a collective started by Adriana Pierce to bring queer women and nonbinary artists together during the coronavirus pandemic, have improved visibility in recent years. Pierce, a former New York City Ballet dancer who is now a choreographer, said she has gone “from being the only person I knew to meeting people every day in the New York dance scene who are young and queer.”
Still, challenging ballet’s gender binary through choreography takes the kind of research and time that mainstream ballet rarely provides. “I don’t see a lot of larger companies investing in specifically queer voices and stories, or even anything that’s different,” Pierce said. Queer retellings of ballet stories have come instead from independent artists, like Kade Pyle, who has produced queer versions of classics including “Giselle” and “The Sleeping Beauty” through her company, Ballez.
By contrast, an established company like Northern Ballet, which tours widely around Britain, can bring a story like Lister’s to “a massive audience,” said Croft, who described the “civic function” of the art form: “People take pride in their ballet companies.” One worry for Bonelli was that the male dancers of Northern Ballet would have little to do in a production like “Gentleman Jack,” with only two soloist roles for them. But Lister “lived in a man’s world,” Lopez Ochoa said, and throughout the ballet, she squares off against businessmen to defend her financial interests, as she did in real life.
The men haven’t complained. “People are interested that the company is willing to take this direction,” the dancer George Liang said. “And having a strong woman challenge me onstage is so much fun.” Aydinoglu, who performs the role of Lister, commented with a laugh: “I’ve really enjoyed bossing the men around, I’m not gonna lie.”
“The more you allow yourself to take space, the better it is,” Lopez Ochoa told dancers in rehearsal. Sophie Stafford for The New York Times
Northern Ballet hosted an open rehearsal in January to gather feedback from women from Calderdale Friends of Dorothy, a social support group for lesbians, and a handful of younger queer women. They took their role to heart: In the discussion afterward, a sensual pas de deux between Lister and Walker came under criticism because Lopez Ochoa had opted to have two men — embodying genderless “words,” a reference to Lister’s diaries — carry the women aloft in the scene.
“One of them said, ‘You cannot put men into an intimate moment between two women,’” Lopez Ochoa recalled. “I let it simmer. Then I thought, I have to fix it.” Now, the women are alone onstage.
The group of queer women who sat in on the rehearsal were “blown away,” said Rachel Lappin, the Anne Lister program coordinator for Calderdale Council, who organized the outing. “One member commented that it was the best day out she’d had in decades.”
Support for “Gentleman Jack” has also translated into “incredibly successful” fund-raising for Northern Ballet, Bonelli said. Last year, the project, which is co-produced by the Finnish National Ballet, won the Fedora - Van Cleef & Arpels Dance Prize, a prestigious European award that supports the development of innovative stage productions. A crowdfunding campaign that runs alongside the prize “not only met but surpassed its target,” Edilia Gänz, the director of Fedora, said in an email.
Ahead of the premiere, the dancers of Northern Ballet say the effects of embodying Lister’s bold individuality are already felt. “As a woman, you often try to blend in, even in real life,” Aydinoglu said. “It’s been really, really different to just be my own person. At the end of the day, you don’t need to please everyone.”
And for queer women in dance, “Gentleman Jack” is a special milestone. When asked about it, Croft paused, visibly moved.
“It’s probably telling that I’m trying to catch myself from tearing up,” she said. “It’s rare you get to do something that you never imagined would happen.”
Middle Kingdoms paperback weirdness
I’m working on the paperback editions of the Middle Kingdoms books and the usual challenges are coming up… like OMG I FORGOT TO WRITE BACK COVER COPY I HATE THIS SO MUCH… And then things got… a bit odd. :)
…Don’t ask ME. I just work here. :)
(But I seriously think it was a mistake by Marvel not to have Luis / Michael Peña do an all-the-previous-movies recap, available online or wherever. It would have been glorious. :)
ETA 1: [facepalm] …Not Encino: Tarzana. “I don’t think this is Tarzana any more.” (For those of you not familiar with the San Fernando Valley: Edgar Rice Burroughs and his family moved to that part of the Valley in 1919, and ERB named the ranch he bought after his [then] hottest-selling character. In fact it seems likely enough that the success of the Tarzan books enabled him to afford such a big chunk of land, as the first of the stories in book format came out in 1914 [the pulp magazine version dates back to 1912], and for at least a while there I think he published a new one every year or so.)
ETA 2: I’ve been meaning to transcribe the above image to text for a while. So here it is finally.
And a side issue here: a lot of folks have heard me going on about the joys of prose dictation using Nuance’s Dragon products. I want everybody to know I just spoke the above into Dragon Anywhere on the iPad in about three minutes, and it transcribed every word correctly except the “shit”s and the word “whoa”. It also seemed to like splitting “asshat” into two words. (shrug) I think I can forgive it that.
…Strange, though: historically it’s been a lot better about getting the vulgarities right. In fact in the older versions of Dragon, it used to get those right even when other vocabulary went awry. Go figure. (Or else this is just a rare instance of non-enshittification.) :)
[transcription starts]
THE TALE OF THE FIVE BEGINS
…OH FECK I HATE WRITING BACK COVER COPY
WAIT, LET’ GET LUIS TO DO IT INSTEAD
So my cousin Enrique who lives down in West Hollywood has this weird side job with the LAPD, right, financial forensics or something, and there’s been some kind of heist in the Valley at this big house in the hills that belongs to the estate of this famous writer, all Tarzan and Mars and shit, and Enrique is down in the basement checking out their wine cellar, which is the second biggest wine cellar in LA and it’s earthquake-proof and full of expensive reds, but nothing I can do about that, man, some people’s taste is in their mouths, you know what I mean? But then Enrique finds this secret door with chains and padlocks and shit all over it, and Enrique says wow, this is short on subtlety, must be some real deal stuff inside, and finally gets this door open and goes in and whoa, he’s in another world and everything, like Narnia, except instead of lions they’ve got this nice Goddess, well no they have regular liens too but not that kind, and also there’s a lot more sex
Not that he finds out about that until later, because he’s in this big empty place with all these doors, and they all go different places, other worlds and shit, and in the middle of it all of a sudden he runs into this tall curly-haired guy and curly says to him, You lost, bro? And curly has a big sort of not-finished sword and is ripped and looks a bit concerned so Enrique says yeah, I came in this door but I don’t think this is Encino anymore, and Curly says Too true, bro, this is no place for you to be, I’ll help you get home. And Enrique says if this is no place to be what are you doing here? And Curly says I just finished rescuing my one true love who is an exiled prince seeking the throne that was unjustly stolen from him but we had a fight and he ditched me to run off and steal a lot of money so he can hire an army to be King again but he’s being kind of an asshat at the moment and I’m feeling kind of bruised at how he just dumped me here with my sword that won’t channel my power, and also with my fire elemental who I think maybe I love too but is kind of a rough ride if you take my meaning.
And Enrique says hey man, not gonna judge, to each his own, and then along comes this babe, and she is hot, no I mean seriously hot, like with her hair on fire and all, and Enrique is very impressed, especially when all of a sudden she turns into a horse, which is on fire as well, and Curly says to the horse babe, or the babe horse, I don’t know, he said it was kinda confusing, no no don’t do anything rash, the Goddess has sent us this stranger so we can get him home safely, and Enrique says I really appreciate that. And they go looking through all these doors, and finally they find one that looks like a lot a lot like the 405 when you’re up by Mulholland, and meanwhile they tell Enrique all about their kingdoms, which are in the middle, and how the Goddess has made it so whoever you love, that’s your business, and everybody runs into her some time when they’re alive, and she gave people this power except not men anymore because something got screwed up back in the day, but Curly says he’s got this Fire thing and when he makes it work he’s going to go save his asshat boyfriend some more and fight all these armies and throw the bad guys out of his country. Then he’s gonna stick his boyfriend, his name is Freebase or something, onto his dad’s throne where he can finally do an honest day’s work instead of running all over creation getting his ass in trouble, and then they can get married and live happily ever after. If they don’t get themselves killed first by monsters from the outer worlds.
Oh, and there are dragons, like as big as 747s, how cool is that! But Curly said that was another story, and he pushed Enrique through the another of those doors, and there he was with all these dusty wine bottles.
My wife’s idea of decompressing after the busy holiday was to rearrange every piece of furniture in our home is this an ADHD thing or just a her thing
I’m not complaining the way she’s done it is much better than it was it’s just like how is this your idea of a relaxing weekend
Listen I don't get to decide when the drunk elf that is my executive actually does the functioning but when he does we have a SMALL WINDOW OF TIME before he finds the schnapps again and we're done
yes this exactly
So to me, there are spoons (general energy cost) and carnival tickets (specific energy cost).
Spoons can be used pretty much anywhere.
Carnival tickets are only good for the carnival, and it’s only in town for a limited amount of time.
So like, if I get “kitchen cleaning” carnival tickets, I can’t use that to clean my bedroom, that’s not where the carnival is.
phrase added to permanent vocabulary
Anyone want to help out a little queer zine in Ohio? We need submissions for our 2026 issue: Resistance, Resilience, Utopia.
If you're from or live in Ohio and have something to say about Queer Resilience, please consider submitting either written work or visual work to gINKgo this year.
I just submitted mine. =D
Stumbled on it again and it's a scene from bluey that like. Fucking destroyed me like. It's gotta have been two years now, maybe more, and I still think about it. But it's an episode I about one of the kids having ADHD and. Like. There's two kids in the backseat, the boy with undiagnosed ADHD and then the younger sister. And he's kicking his feet and happily looking out the window and the sister is like daaaaad he's kicking his feeeet. And Dad is like can you please stop that. And he's like oh! Yeah sorry. And the dad is like did you bring your jacket? And he's like whoops. I forgot it. And during this interaction he has started kicking again unconsciously and the sister calls for dad again who reminds him to stop kicking
And then the sister says like. This line fucking haunts me.
She says: why can't you do as your told?
And he says: ...I don't know.
Jesus Christ dude. This scene is less than thirty seconds but it genuinely haunts me. Undiagnosed ADHD kid who is trying to be good. I stopped kicking, I don't know why I started again. I forgot my jacket. Everyone is mad at me and frustrated with me because I did things bad and wrong and I just... Don't know why. It seems so easy for everyone else. There must be something fundamentally wrong with me. Why can't I just do what I'm told? Why do I forget to do my homework? Why don't I remember what my mom told me to do today? Why did I act out like that? What can't I do as I'm told? I don't know.
Taking pictures of a black cat is like.. here’s my nothing… petting my nothing… my nothing looks so cute today
#mynothing
