Peter Solarz
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Andulka
noise dept.
we're not kids anymore.
cherry valley forever
@theartofmadeline
Cosimo Galluzzi
RMH
Stranger Things
DEAR READER
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
trying on a metaphor
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
titsay
No title available
Show & Tell
Three Goblin Art
JBB: An Artblog!
hello vonnie
seen from Indonesia
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@theartistboy
i love when a character is very clearly going through their own shit badly and is able to be sympathised with yet they are also being awful to others and hurting people who don't deserve it, and the narrative is showing how they got here but not letting them off the hook for being cruel just because they are hurting.
i dont like ☝ what happens when you introduce this type of character to a large fandom
especially if she is a woman
12 year old girls in the early 2000s watching the accidental kiss in episode 3 of naruto
[Gif Description: alternating shots of Shane and Ilya from Heated Rivalry looking at an offscreen TV in astonishment. End Description]
freud really did oedipus so dirty. like i get that you're trying to come up with a deeply terrible psychological framework regarding sexual abuse, but oedipus very much did not want to fuck his mom OR kill his dad. like, the entire myth is predicated on this. an "oedipal complex" should be someone who is hellbent on avoiding fucking their mom.
i just feel like oedipus is mostly treated as vaguely taboo, like he's a fucked up monster, and NOT like he's basically the same as any other greek hero. he's roughly as moral and strong and clever and whatever as achilles or jason or hercules or whatever, he just ALSO is a guy the gods fucking hated.
actually its kinda fitting that freud made so many theories that mostly tried to link socially deviant behavior and weird fetishes and sexual abuse, and he decided to name that shit after a guy who very notably did not engage in weird fetishes or sexual abuse and had nothing but wholesome filial love for the people who raised him, but was doomed to be thought of that way anyway by his people. basically anyone with an "oedipus complex" didnt actually have that shit going on either, freud was just a hack.
anyway here's my new mental health framework: cassandra complex, where you just fucking lie all the time and everyone knows it and hates you for it.
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.
There is definitely a phenomena where people try SO hard to avoid anthropomorphism they end up looping around into this quasi-religious stance that humans have some essential non-biological quality that sets us apart from other animals. Like being so cautious about how you describe emotion experienced by a nonhuman animal that you go "that animal is not 'happy' it's just demonstrating a response to positive stimuli and receiving chemical reward signals" as if that's not also what human emotion is at the fundamental level.
i've always believed the fixation on 'mean girls' specifically is because it's a violation of gender roles first and foremost--a 'mean boy' in high school is a regular high schooler. the internet isn't ready for this take yet though so be careful
they need to start making epileptic-safe versions of movies and music videos and video games and I'm dead fucking serious
there is actually literally 0 reason you can justify for not having an epileptic safe version unless you are making a very specific kind of thing. epileptics deserve to enjoy the art you make
Please be normal about trans women. Please be normal about trans women in the closet. Please be normal about pre-e trans women. Please be normal about just-started-e trans women. Please be normal about trans women that have been on hrt. Please be normal
Please be normal
Please be normal
objectively I understand why non-binary is a stepping stone identity for a lot of binary trans people but its hard to wrap my head around it personally cuz I only had the binary options
i really like how the milkman exists as an entirely fossilized character who now serves no purpose other than to fuck people's wives for the punchline
the other other thing with the weaponization of socialization theory against trans women is that it's extremely defeatist and it serves the patriarchy, rather than challenging it, as the theory was developed to do
they've molded the theory into an extraordinarily powerful weapon by asserting that even people who literally change the sexgender class they belong to cannot do anything to change the shape the patriarchy has attempted to beat them into
you spend the first x years of your life with your environment attempting to shape you, and then, like clay hardening, you're stuck in that shape forever. if you were not taught confidence, you can never learn it. if you were not taught humility, you can never learn it. if you were taught ideas that harm you, you can never unlearn them
if you truly buy into this version of the theory constructed as a prison cell for trans women, you're putting yourself in the cell too, aren't you? how can you believe in feminism at all if you conceive of yourself as forever stuck in the shape of a helpless doormat? if not even a trans person can do anything to leave the cell you've constructed, surely you have even less hope of it
no, obviously you can and will change and break out of the shape the patriarchy attempts to beat you into, and trans people and feminists have been proving that throughout history
socialization theory describes an attempt by the patriarchy to mold you into the shape it wants. to conceive of this as an all-powerful force is to lie down and let it do the molding. one of the greatest tricks of the patriarchy has been co-opting socialization theory and managing to convince so many people that somehow not even transition itself represents any challenge to the efficacy of its untouchable socializing forces. feminism would have nowhere to go if that were true, and that's why it's so important to understand that it isn't true
I feel like the fundamental issue with Bluesky is it's central concept is essentially "Twitter was a good site before Musk bought it" and that is simply a complete misread on reality
As someone who has overcome substance abuse, I find this decade’s framing of addiction incredibly insulting.
Somewhere along the line, we decided that any repeated behavior, any source of pleasure, any coping mechanism, any habit that isn’t monk-like and productivity-optimized must be labeled an addiction. You like scrolling art before you create? Addiction. You watch comfort shows after work? Addiction. You check your phone in line at the grocery store? Addiction. You drink coffee with breakfast? Addiction. The word has been stretched so thin it barely means anything anymore, except “a behavior I personally disapprove of.”
Addiction is not “I enjoy stimulation.” It is not “I have habits.” It is not “I seek input before I produce output.” Addiction is a specific, devastating pattern of compulsion, harm, loss of control, and often self-destruction. It dismantles relationships. It corrodes trust. It hijacks the reward system so thoroughly that survival itself becomes secondary. It is not equivalent to liking Pinterest boards or needing music to focus.
When everything becomes addiction, nothing is. The language gets diluted, and with it, the gravity of what actual addiction is. People who have clawed their way out of substance abuse know the difference between compulsion and preference, between destructive dependence and deliberate engagement. Collapsing those distinctions into a trendy moral panic about “dopamine” is not enlightened. It’s sloppy. Unserious, even.
There’s also something deeply puritanical about it. The 2020s seem obsessed with pathologizing pleasure. If something feels good, it must be suspect. If it captures your attention, it must be hijacking your brain. If it isn’t explicitly productive, it must be rot. We’ve replaced older moral frameworks with neuroscience-flavored shame, but the tone is the same: you are wrong for enjoying things.
What bothers me most is how casually the word is thrown around in creative spaces. If you gather inspiration through music, images, movement, conversation, suddenly you’re “stimulus addicted.” If you can’t brute-force a novel in a silent white room with no input, you lack discipline. Never mind that many artists throughout history have relied on immersion, community, environment, and cross-media inspiration. Now it’s framed as weakness, as though the only legitimate art is produced under self-imposed sensory austerity.
This framing flattens nuance. There is a difference between avoidance and incubation. There is a difference between doomscrolling to numb out and deliberately engaging with material that fuels your imagination. There is a difference between compulsively chasing a hit and consciously choosing input that enriches your work. But nuance doesn’t trend. Alarmism does.
There’s also a strange individualizing move happening here. Instead of asking why people are exhausted, overstimulated, underpaid, isolated, or burnt out, we zoom in on their coping mechanisms and label them addictions. Instead of examining structural monotony, economic precarity, and social fragmentation, we scold individuals for having “bad dopamine habits.” It’s easier to diagnose people’s scrolling than to confront the conditions that make endless scrolling appealing.
Calling everything an addiction also erases agency. It suggests that people are perpetually hijacked by their brains, incapable of intentional choice unless they purge all sources of easy stimulation. That’s not empowering. It’s infantilizing. Adults are capable of enjoying things without being enslaved by them. Adults can have rituals, comforts, and creative processes without it being pathology.
When I hear the word “addiction” tossed around to describe normal human behavior, it doesn’t sound like insight. It sounds like moral grandstanding dressed up in pop psychology. And for those of us who have actually lived through the wreckage of substance abuse and fought to reclaim control, it feels like watching something serious get turned into a meme.
We deserve better language. We deserve distinctions. We deserve a culture that can tell the difference between compulsion and preference, between harm and habit, between numbing out and nourishing ourselves. Not everything that holds our attention is a disorder. Not everything pleasurable is a vice. And not everything repetitive is an addiction.
I've been seeing a lot of posts lately that tell dropouts "you can always go back!"
And that's not bad! It's true for a lot of people! You CAN go back later! You can apply to university, you can get your GED, you can pursue whatever level of education you want. It's not bad to share that message. If you dropped out and want to go back eventually, there is zero timeline. You can go back at any age, with any life experience. You do not have to graduate by a specific age.
But as someone who dropped out of college over a decade ago, sometimes "you can always go back!" starts to feel a little like an empty platitude. Sometimes it starts to feel grating instead of hopeful. Even when it might technically be true, sometimes it still feels like a hollow sentiment.
I just want to say, to anyone else out there who feels that way, who dropped out and CAN'T go back, potentially EVER, whether it's due to poverty or disability or any other reason:
It's okay to drop out and never go back. It might feel shitty, and you may even feel grief over it. That's real, and painful, and allowed. But you are not lesser. Even if you never go back, you are not a failure or a loser. Academics do not define your worth. You are not stupid. And it is almost certain that the system actually failed YOU.
With love,
A fellow burnout
this is a message to all babytrans. you may come across a subreddit or maybe even a 4chan board that is made up entirely of the most miserable trans people you’ve ever met. they have their own lingo borrowed straight from incel communities. but instead of being an incel where cishet men tell each other that women will never want to fuck them because of 2 mm of browbone, it’s trans women telling each other that they will never be a woman because of 2 mm of browbone. it’s trans men calling other trans men pooners for having a round face instead of a chiseled gigachad jawline. but they swear it’s not a toxic community because they’re all hiding under several layers of irony, so you can never really tell if someone is being serious. and it’s very important that you never visit these forums, even out of morbid curiosity
your mom jokes don't work when you know someone too well. I would never be in bed with such a wicked woman. That's not even what I had your mom saying last night. I wouldn't speak to her.
[Image of text saying,
Some AAVE speakers pluralize 'child' as 'childrens'. People get racist about this ("It's already plural!"), but 'children' actually comes from Middle English speakers doing the same thing: slapping their plural marker on word already pluralized by an extinct plural marker.
To oversimplify: in Old English, 'childer' ('ċildra') was the plural of 'child' ('ċild'). Middle English developed an '-en' plural marker, which we see in 'oxen'. Instead of updating to 'childen', people slapped their preferred '-en' onto the end of 'childer' - so now we have 'child-er-en'. AAVE carries on this tradition with 'child-er-en-s'.
"Pure" language is just impurity obscured by the passage of time.
End ID.]
