That was heartfelt, Randy!

Winker in training.

[animentality]

[batsandboba]

when i say “girl” randomly as an interjection i’m speaking to the omnipresent all knowing being of Girl. asking her for mercy. taking girl’s name in vain

[junglejim4322]

90% of age gaps don’t matter when you’re a grown adult as long as you don’t have a repeated pattern of dating people barely legal. I would date someone 30 years older than me if I liked them who gaf

[junglejim4322]

This entire conversation is somehow 90% people infantilizing themselves and 10% actually people talking about the issue of men who never grow out of dating 18/19 year olds. No it is not a big deal when a 25 year old dates a 35 year old please get a grip

[junglejim4322]

Honestly if you’re in your mid twenties infantilizing yourself on this level maybe you shouldn’t be dating anyone

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Chimes with a thought I've had for a while, actually; sleep deprivation might mean I explain this badly, but:

What a red flag actually means: something here is an indicator of a potential problem (but might be fine with a reasonable explanation)

What people have now decided it means: abuse

I've lost count of the number of times I've now had to read variants of "My partner takes all my money and gives me back an allowance because he says it's a man's job to control finances, but he's racking up gambling debts" being met with "Wow this man is a walking red flag" no Becky that is abuse. That is not an indicator. He is an abuser. Call the police. We have lost the concept of a proxy: a thing that indicates a more important thing. And it's relevant to this conversation because I'm actually going to go out on a limb here:

With the obvious exception of paedophilia, age gaps themselves aren't a problem at all - they are a proxy for the actual harmful phenomenon. Hea me out, let me explain

The reason we don't like age gaps is because of the implied power dynamic. If one partner, usually male, is older than other - particularly if the other is still quite young - the risk is that what we're seeing is a worldly wise predator who is exploiting the lack of life experience of a young beautiful woman by mentally abusing her until she's no longer young and pretty enough to satisfy, at which point he'll move on to the next. There have been enough examples of this in human history. It's unfortunately not an uncommon pattern. Genders can also be diverse in this scenario

We can't necessarily see that dynamic from the outside. But we CAN see an inherent element of it: the ages of the people involved. So age becomes a proxy for the abuse. And, hey, it's often correct.

But here's the thing: the ages themselves are not causing harm.

The power dynamic is. The abuse is.

Plenty of age gap relationships are loving, healthy and steadfast. Two people met and genuinely fell in love regardless of the outer packaging, and have a relationship with all the highs and lows and challenges and rewards as any more traditional pairing. This happens all the time

Is the age gap a red flag? Sure! It indicates a potential issue.

Is it inherently abusive? Absolutely fucking not.

OP is right - we need to stop focusing just on the numbers and twisting the facts to fit by infantilising the younger partners, and start focusing on the actual harms. The DiCaprio Pattern of only dating under 24s repeatedly is itself a proxy, too, actually - but a much stronger one than the simple presence of an age gap.

(Even so, in DiCaprio's case, until any of his former partners come forward and describe him as abusive, actually, even that is up in the air - my personal interpretation, given how strong a pattern it is, is that he's a loser who views women as trophies (consciously or not). If any have come forward and I don't know about it, of course, fair enough. But those women were adults capable of making their own decisions, even if they might later come to regret it. And regretting poor decisions is part of life! That's how it goes, particularly with relationships. As long as they weren't abused, there's no biggie. And just as he was looking for young-and-beautiful, there's no way they weren't, on some level, looking for rich-and-famous; it goes both ways.)

Also, another element of this: I think a lot of modern extreme puritan discourse on this is actually ironically down to the age of those taking part. Up until your late 20s, ten years is actually a huge span of time to you, because in your own life you were in a completely different developmental phase ten years ago (teenager), and a completely different phase again ten years before that (child). That skews your sense of what a ten-year gap means. Whereas once you're in your 30s and beyond, ten years is like. Yeah I was an adult ten years ago, and I still am now. That's two adults. Who cares.

(Anyway I am hoping and praying I explained that well enough, and also that Tumblr's famous reading comprehension skills are solid enough to follow)

[waveoftheocean]

here's the full 2 page comic i did for @batfamilyzine ft. little richard sneaking away from a boring gala!! 🤸‍♂️

[feyburner]

Man at my job just told me to “hold your little horsies just a little longer ☺️” about the task I’ve been waiting for him to complete or at the very least update me on for six weeks. Brendan, I will fuck your adult son. You’re gonna start seeing me at family Christmas. Horsies in tow.

[depsidase]

[coolthingoftheday]

Scottish artist Sir Andy Goldsworthy (Order of the British Empire) rearranged leaves around the base of a tree in order to make it appear to be glowing. 

[iphigeniacomplex]

the cultural figure of the clown in post-wwii america is relevant to consider when discussing the themes of IT. following the family separation and civic duty foisted onto children during the war, there's something to be said for the way clowns (representing a sort of carefree silliness) were pushed increasingly toward child audiences, popping up in advertising and children's television quite a bit during the post-war economic boom. when georgie denbrough encounters the monster in the storm drain, he's able to draw from these associations (bozo the clown and clarabelle from howdy-doody are both referenced by name) to assure himself that the situation is a safe one, despite his fear. this is safe, because clowns are everywhere. this is safe, because adults say it is. the clown is obviously an uncanny figure, but at this point in pop culture young children around georgie's age don't really have language to justify any discomfort. so the way that IT as a novel looks back on the 50s as a simultaneously nostalgic and anti-nostalgia work, openly considering various forms of abuse protected by social structure of that era, ultimately comes back to this first confrontation in a gutter swollen with rain.

[iphigeniacomplex]

pop culture is never far from the characters in IT—a good number of the forms taken by the monster are perversions of monsters the kids see in movies, a sort of folklorizing of consumerism—but the clown as the first form taken, and the way it preys on georgie by allowing him to put his guard down to such an extent that its evocation of his fears around the cellar at home are able to be ignored in favor of the comfort the familiarity of the clown gives him ("he could smell cotton candy and frying doughboys and the faint but thunderous odor of wild-animal shit. ... and yet under it all was the smell of flood and decomposing leaves and dark stormdrain shadows. that smell was wet and rotten. the cellar-smell. but the other smells were stronger." page 14), signify the first time the reader is called on to note the violence under ideas of childhood.

[ufonaut]

Beyond his art, Neal Adams is rightfully remembered as an eternal champion of creators’ rights and for the part he & his work played in the Comics Code revision of ‘71 but his contribution to John Stewart’s creation is – I think –  a rather underrated aspect of his career, especially as it’s such a great reminder of the kind of person he was. Taken from an interview conducted and transcribed by Allen W. Wright over at the Green Arrow: Bold Archer fansite, here’s Neal discussing John’s beginnings (x).

[wifegideonnav]

“bits to use in everyday conversations”

[expressions-of-nature]

by Gerard Kingma

[reunmint]

my eeveelution as wild cat series !!

vaporeon - tiger

jolteon - cheetah

flareon - lion

espeon - eurasian lynx

umbreon - melanated jaguar (black panther)

leafeon - clouded leopard

glaceon - snow leopard

sylveon - serval

eevee - house cat (maine coon)

[riseofthecommonwoodpile]

a lot of people don’t tell you this when you’re starting to remodel your own home but occasionally under the floorboards you’ll find the entrance to an unimaginably sprawling and vast complex of underground lakes connected to each other through intricate networks of tunnels where suburbanite mermaids have set up mermaid strip malls with mermaid verizon, mermaid driving school, the mermaid liquor store, and so on. and many people will think this is a plumbing issue, but it’s actually a zoning problem

[uroko]

おくで/Kosuke Okude

[javert]

i could not eat a dozen fried eggs and would never want to do so. but i almost certainly could accidentally eat a dozen deviled eggs if i was at a party or perhaps a picnic and they were there. they are a highly dangerous food item in this way

[phaeton-flier]

The devil's greatest trick was convincing the world he doesn't exist. His second greatest trick was that egg thing hoo boy those are good

[omgshiftercat]

[northstareclipse]

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.

[northstareclipse]

I am giving this post a FAQ (of sorts - the "Q" there is very charitable considering these are more like "whatabouts" and "gotchas" than actual questions) because it has been the bane of my online existence ever since it broke containment, and yet I don't want to disable reblogs because I still think the message is important and I want people to continue seeing it.

"But caffeine IS addictive, though!!!"

I never even said the word "caffeine" in this post. I said "coffee." Decaf exists. Don't talk to me about the trace amounts of caffeine in decaf, either, I already know about them. They are not enough for an average adult nervous system to respond to, and that's not the point anyway. The point is, yes, caffeine causes physical dependency, but so do blood pressure regulating meds, corticosteroids, and virtually everything you might get prescribed by a psychiatrist. The point is also "find me somebody who would rather end up homeless or sell their friends/family's valuables than go a couple days without a latte and then we can talk."

"But my friend/SO/family member is addicted to their phone!!! They ignore me to use it!!!"

If you're feeling ignored, that is on you to talk to them about it and set boundaries. You may also want to consider the possibility that you are boring.

"But I'M addicted to my phone. I know this because I end up using it all day and I feel happy when I'm doing it but then I feel bad later. Also, you are probably also addicted to your phone - try not using it for a week and see how you feel."

This is still not addiction. This is having trouble with task transitioning/initiation, avoiding something difficult, "FOMO", struggling to trust that other activities will have as reliable of a return on investment, missing your own emotional cues that tell you when you're getting bored, living in a society where most things require use of a phone, any combination of the above, and/or probably also some other shit I can't think of right now.

I am an app-based independent contractor and if I did that on a whim, I would wreck my finances. But that's so cool how you're apparently so concerned about my well-being!

[the1920sinpictures]

1925 c. Maria Monaci Gallenga "Theodosia" tea gown of purple silk velvet printed with silver and gold metallic powder pigment; replica sleeves of purple silk crinkle chiffon embroidered with glass beads. From The Velvet Touch-The World of Maria Monici Gallenga and Mariano Fortuny, FB.