who are you to say that that girl i met tonight- the girl i was supposed to meet tonight- wasn’t the girl of my dreams?

man up (2015) written by tess morris

you're grabbing lunch with a nice man and he gives you that strange grimace-smile that's popular right now; an almost sardonic "twist" of his mouth while he looks literally down on you. it looks like he practiced the move as he leans back, arms folded. he just finished reciting the details of NFTs to you and explaining Oppenheimer even though he only watched a youtube about it and hasn't actually seen it. you are at the bottom of your wine glass.

you ask the man across from you if he has siblings, desperately looking for a topic. literally anything else.

he says i don't like small talk. and then he smiles again, watching you.

a few years ago, you probably would have said you're above celebrity gossip, but honestly, you've been kind of enjoying the dumb shit of it these days. with the rest of the earth burning, there's something familiar and banal about dragging ariana grande through the mud. you think about jeanette mccurdy, who has often times gently warned the world she's not as nice as she appears. you liked i'm glad my mom died but it made you cry a lot.

he doesn't like small talk, figure out something to say.

you want to talk about responsibility, and how ariana grande is only like 6 days older than you are - which means she just turned 30 and still dresses and acts like a 13 year old, but like sexy. there's something in there about the whole thing - about insecurity, and never growing up, and being sexualized from a young age.

people have been saying that gay people are groomers. like, that's something that's come back into the public. you have even said yourself that it's just ... easier to date men sometimes. you would identify as whatever the opposite of "heteroflexible" is, but here you are again, across from a man. you like every woman, and 3 people on tv. and not this guy. but you're trying. your mother is worried about you. she thinks it's not okay you're single. and honestly this guy was better before you met, back when you were just texting.

wait, shit. are you doing the same thing as ariana grande? are you looking for male validation in order to appease some internalized promise of heteronormativity? do you conform to the idea that your happiness must result in heterosexuality? do you believe that you can resolve your internal loneliness by being accepted into the patriarchy? is there a reason dating men is easier? why are you so scared of fucking it up with women? why don't you reach out to more of them? you have a good sense of humor and a big ol' brain, you could have done a better job at online dating.

also. jesus christ. why can't you just get a drink with somebody without your internal feminism meter pinging. although - in your favor (and judgement aside) in the case of your ariana grande deposition: you have been in enough therapy you probably wouldn't date anyone who had just broken up with their wife of many years (and who has a young child). you'd be like - maybe take some personal time before you begin this journey. like, grande has been on broadway, you'd think she would have heard of the plot of hamlet.

he leans forward and taps two fingers to the table. "i'm not, like an andrew tate guy," he's saying, "but i do think partnership is about two people knowing their place. i like order."

you knew it was going to be hard. being non-straight in any particular way is like, always hard. these days you kind of like answering the question what's your sexuality? with a shrug and a smile - it's fine - is your most common response. like they asked you how your life is going and not to reveal your identity. you like not being straight. you like kissing girls. some days you know you're into men, and sometimes you're sitting across from a man, and you're thinking about the power of compulsory heterosexuality. are you into men, or are you just into the safety that comes from being seen with them? after all, everyone knows you're failing in life unless you have a husband. it almost feels like a gradebook - people see "straight married" as being "all A's", and anything else even vaguely noncompliant as being ... like you dropped out of the school system. you cannot just ignore years of that kind of conditioning, of course you like attention from men.

"so let's talk boundaries." he orders more wine for you, gesturing with one hand like he's rousing an orchestra. sir, this is a fucking chain restaurant. "I am not gonna date someone who still has male friends. also, i don't care about your little friends, i care about me. whatever stupid girls night things - those are lower priority. if i want you there, you're there."

he wasn't like this over text, right? you wouldn't have been even in the building if he was like this. you squint at him. in another version of yourself, you'd be running. you'd just get up and go. that's what happens on the internet - people get annoyed, and they just leave. you are locked in place, almost frozen. you need to go to the bathroom and text someone to call you so you have an excuse, like it's rude to just-leave. like he already kind of owns you. rudeness implies a power paradigm, though. see, even your social anxiety allows the patriarchy to get to you.

you take a sip of the new glass of wine. maybe this will be a funny story. maybe you can write about it on your blog. maybe you can meet ariana grande and ask her if she just maybe needs to take some time to sit and think about her happiness and how she measures her own success.

is this settling down? is this all that's left in your dating pool? just accepting that someone will eventually love you, and you have to stop being picky about who "makes" you a wife?

you look down to your hand, clutching the knife.

"of course the straight couple gets a happy ending" the day yall grow a braincell is the day i'll know peace. i love how ppl who say shit like this just adore forgetting that every angel and demon are non binary. or that beelzebub uses they/them. like seriously, STRAIGHT couple??? fuck off

last night i got home kind of tipsy and very much in tears and my mother told me the force you exert to keep someone in your life is proportional to the force with which they will leave your life. if you have to fight tooth and claw to keep them, their leaving will be just as hard, just as harsh, and just as definite.

Ppl going "waaahh unpopular opinion but Alice is kind of annoying and obnoxious and I don't think I'd like be her friend irl" is so funny to me bc like.

God forbid a cast of characters be multifaceted and have actual flaws and unpleasant aspects other than "grr angsty hero" and "whoops i'm so clumsy". Sometimes character dynamics and arcs need to be prioritized above "who would i personally be niceys with irl"

2. bro just WAIT until you hear about season 1 jon lol

☆ love; heretical and divine

{☆} characters tsaritsa {☆} notes cult au, yandere, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings blood {☆} word count 0.8k

To love a God is heretical. It is an act of blasphemy– it is to drag them down from their throne of hollow gold, to topple the pedestal the worshipers uphold on their shoulders like lambs at the herders heel. It is the act of forcing them to their knees and ripping that beating heart of glorious gold and beautiful, cruel divinity from their chest, so pure it burns.

To love a God is to make them sin. To make them painfully, horribly human.

To love a God is to sin.

The love of a worshiper is no love at all, brilliant in its raw purity, untainted by sin. It is fear and obedience masked by adoration so overpowering it corrupts. It makes the lamb so unquestioning in it's faith it will never question the knife that cuts, the teeth that rip, the claws that tear. If the Creator deemed them unworthy of the very life crafted by their hands, then they must have committed a sin so grave there lay no salvation for their horrid soul.

But she is no worshiper– her lips speak of heresy as easily as she breathes, her words nothing but lies, cold and cruel like the ice that crawls along her skin like webs.

She loves a God like a lover should.

A damned sinner reaching longingly for the heavens.

She loves a God in the subtle brush of their lips, their muffled voices behind closed doors as they indulge in curiosity untamed. She is a sinner through and through, but she feels herself fall further with every brush of her hand across their cheeks, every touch she bestows upon them like a lover. She memorizes the imperfections of their body like memorizing a map– every scar, every mark, every line drawn on their body like a canvas, her touch the brush that stains the pristine white.

No devoted lamb shall ever see the painting they create in these stolen moments– it is for the eyes of a heretic so vile it makes them shudder, their body dirtied by the love of a woman so vile even their divinity is obscured by the ice.

The lambs may be satisfied with fleeting glimpses of gold and empty words from lips that guide them to the jaws of the wolves, but she is not. Her hands crave them like a starving hound, aching to touch that imperfect skin hidden by the veil of gold that obscures the painfully human body beneath. She longs to free them from the golden cage that binds them– to see their wings blot out the sky, their divinity tainted by sin and making them all the more beautiful for it.

It is a longing that leaves a festering wound that cannot heal, will not heal. Even if it could, she would not let it.

For as much as she tries, deny it as she may, she is no better then the blind lambs following the herder who holds a blade in their hand, glittering like gold in the sun, stained by dull red.

She is a fool, and what a fool they make of her with the touch of their hands against her skin– so cold it leaves frost on their fingertips. Yet they do not fear the cold, mapping out every inch of her imperfections, carved into her body by her own hands.

She has always been a heretic, cursing the divine until she could speak no more, but if divinity can be found in them – in this love that consumes, that burns her hands and her lips – then she is a Saint, praying at the altar until her throat bled.

But in the end, she has and will always be a cold woman with hands stained with blood. Until it is all she can taste, until it is all she can smell, until it is all she can feel. These hands of hers, heretical and divine, will bleed the God from their veins– she will become the wolf to their lamb until the rivers of Teyvat run gold with their ichor, until the gold bleeds into red, the taste of their divinity on her tongue.

Until she drags a God from their lofty throne and makes of them a monster.

There is no greater triumph to the heretic then to love a God into sin. To make a God sin to love.

To love is to be human, and they are no God.

Even if she must tear the gold from their very being until all that's left is something human. Even if Teyvat crumbles and decays, even if it begins over and over again..

She will do it again and again, until the gold can bleed no longer. Until her sins grow too great for Teyvat to contain.

To love a God is to devour, and be devoured. An endless cycle of sin that dulls the glow of gold into something new– something horrifying and divine, in it's own right. Something just as horrid as her, just as divinely corrupted by the sins she carries on her shoulders like a trophy, as gold as the sun and as cold as ice.

Divinity, carved into something human by love all consuming, until it all bleeds away and they begin their dance anew, for as many cycles as it takes.

An eternity, if she must, of dooming this world of theirs to fire and decay for a glimpse of the being snared by their golden shackles.

Maka and Death the Kid in the anime: the rational and smart ones

Maka and Death the Kid in the manga:

Maka eating Hot chip in the passenger seat: "why are you driving so slow"

Kid driving and going 80 mph with free bird playing on the radio: "Watch this drift"

Soul and Liz in the backseat: "we're gonna fucking die"

[Image description: a digital drawing of Elia, a blue-skinned vampire with pulled-back black hair from the comic Les Normaux. He's wearing black high-waisted pants, a sleeveless white turtleneck and frilly, wide green sleeves. There are red flowers in his hair, as well as in his hand and at his knees. The beige background is bordered with a red line. End description.]

I was planning to do just a little sketch of Elia because he's my fave (long-haired man, silly, blue), but I lose all sense of control and time when drawing beautiful men (*cough* terminally bisexual) so I ended up with a completed piece! Thank you to @alababwa and @theartofknightjj for creating him so that I may roll him around in my head indefinitely <3

i feel like there's good energies on tumblr and just in general rn. somebody's blorbo became canon bisexual. no queerbaiting just him getting to kiss some guy. i have zero involvement but this heals me for at least 10hp and makes me Believe

The funny thing is I've met ppl with both super deeply harmful and abusive occasionally incestuous family dynamics and I've met ppl with otherwise pretty regular romances to their sister or cousin or something. And it reminds me of how a guy I knew in HS told me age gaps are abusive because he was incompatible w his bf of 2 years older but i've known ppl who regularly date with larger gaps and are fine. Ymmv but if you only date people of your same class same age within 3 months same race etc etc. I think you have like some weird neurosis going on which is also not my business but I hope you become less anxious with experience and meeting different ppl and whatnot.

how can I stop internalised homophobia I can’t take this anymore

i will return on tumblr soon bcs i'm graduating hs soon and acads r done so i have a Lot of time on my hands for now Anyway can i just say am very proud of myself. got into the Top 1 school in my country, top campus, and a vv competitive stem course. yay 😁💝💘❤️‍🔥✨

venting in tags about gender n shit (long as hell) (u can comment and talk 2 me as always :3)

i think one of the best/most interesting things about the devil judge is that it's not really giving you a direct lesson or telling you what you should believe in. it's offering the morally gray area for you, as the audience, to dwell on and decide for yourself.

it's asking whether you agree with gaon and yohan wholly (and other plot points), or if there are bits and pieces you should take from them but not others.

i think the ultimate intention isn't to pinpoint yohan as the bad guy or gaon as the good guy: and here's 16 episodes on why. it's meant to ask you if either of them (and other character choices) are right, wrong, somewhere in between and how those choices have the possibility of making significant impact on themselves and society as a whole.

and that's one reason i genuinely love writer moon's take on this story. and even more specifically, gaon's question at the end: what should i do now to make the world that doesn't need yohan? gaon realizing he wasn't as effective as yohan - does that mean they're failures and are both wrong?

but what if they were both right and society doesn't see it? so now, how and why and what comes next? what mistakes were made that can be rectified? can it at all?

there are so many questions and possibilities, and it's the ambiguity that makes the story that much stronger. you get no answers. it's up to you to decide the moral telling. so which one will you choose?

god i need straight ppl to be fuckin normal abt gay intimacy like right now

I think you’re very wise so I’ll ask you: how does one make friends in their 20s. Like I have a friend group and stuff but I’d like to branch out more. Maybe fuck around find love. Who knows. But how …….

I’m pretty floored by this compliment not gonna lie…and I should be clear that I’ve also struggled with finding friends out of college. I wound up moving back to my college town where I had some connections already, but I can tell you what I did to branch out from those people and make new ones? This is just what’s worked for me, and it’s been slow going, but here goes :-) putting it under a readmore because it got really long and rambly hehe

I had a pretty rough summer when, after 5-6 months of my living here, two of my closest friends (literally 2/3 of the people I decided to move here to be near!) moved to other cities in rapid succession & i had a tough adjustment. What I did to heal was to take some time where I was very intentionally kind of scaling back my social life because I recognized that the irrational hurt that resulted from those departures made it so that I wasn’t in a healthy headspace (thinking a lot of thoughts like companionship is pointless, friendships are born to die, my life will be a long and pointless cycle of making friends -> they abandon me for a partner -> make new friends -> they abandon me for a partner). I had the wherewithal to recognize those thoughts as reactionary, and pretty far removed from the truth, but I was still having them all the time. But I gave myself a purposeful fallow period and I think it REALLY helped. I know that’s not your situation but it’s helpful to explain my experience. (And also just to say, see if you can recognize thought patterns and doubts you have around new friendships as fallacious or insecure if you think they are! Challenge them in your head, and correct them.)

Then, in the fall, I found myself opening up again. Because of my little break (I spent a LOT of time with my very close friend, which maybe wasn’t the most ideal for either of us— but we weathered it) I had the clarity to observe what worked for me and what didn’t, and set challenges for myself. I’m a pretty shy person, and the really fucking annoying truth I’ve come to realize over and over again is that in order to have a rich and thriving social life, I must grit my teeth and fight against those impulses nigh constantly. It is not my nature to cold text an acquaintance who’s on the brink of being a friend to make plans for the first time. That shit is scary to me!!! But I have been fucking forcing myself to make that kind of leap. Basically, the rules I have been trying (and oftentimes failing!) to hold myself to:

1. Almost every other young adult around you is also quietly lonely and hoping for more social connections, especially at that post-college stage. People are thrilled to be reached out to. Remember this first and foremost!! Reassure yourself that no one thinks you’re a freak for being friendly.

2. Text first sometimes (often). You HAVE to do this— if everyone sat around and waited to be enveloped into friendships, no one would have any friends at all. Think about how touched you are when someone makes the first move to you— asks for your number, uses it, suggests a hangout. It’s scary and it sucks but then it’s sooo worth it.

3. This one’s controversial…but I have a policy of “yes”. I do not say no to an invitation. And I do not allow myself to cancel unless I’m ACTUALLY ill. No “self care” excuse. No “I’m tired/depressed/long day at work” excuse. The ONLY exception is if I have a rigid commitment already (or if I’m vomiting or have covid which is…infrequent lol). I always go to the scary party, the nerve-wracking dinner at a friend of a friend’s. Sometimes I have a hunch I’ll hate it, and I do. But most of the time I have that hunch I’m proven wrong and very pleasantly surprised at how nice of a time I’ve had. This is how I’ve deepened acquaintance relationships into friendships, because it allowed me to see people a whole bunch of times and get accustomed to them and talk to them little by little and be less scared of them. but it was harrrrrrd, and it took a long time. I’m only now feeling like I’m actually friends with people I met like… 6-10 months ago.

Those are my rules, but basically it boils down to forcing myself out there way more than I’m comfortable with. And honestly, it’s already changing my personality and becoming more easy.

Also re: seeing people again a whole bunch of times. Become a regular somewhere!!! Join a club, my friend is in a writer’s group that has formed some very solid connections, I have friends who meet up all the time in an earth skills sharing capacity. I have a friend in some sort of trans baseball league or something? I’ve seen posts online for like idk a queer craft meetup, a diverse authors book club, affinity hiking groups, etc. A lot of my friends (and sometimes I!) go to a weekly themed night at a dive bar & over time have gotten to know a lot of the other regulars. Is there a bar near you that has a recurrent event that intrigues you? Goth night, dyke night, karaoke? it won’t happen overnight, you gotta go again and again and and again. But find social hobbies, and by seeing people again in the same place, you will first recognize them, then become friendly, then perhaps even become friends.

Now some disclaimers: I’m very lucky to be well positioned as the best friend and roommate of an incredibly outgoing person, who is the type to become a nucleus of any social scene he enters into. People love him, and want him around, and he loves me and wants me around! This makes things much easier for me, and without that connection, I’d be much more isolated! So I guess some advice there is to be on the lookout for the type of person who effortlessly gathers people. Sometimes I think (unfortunately lol) of the biblical phrase “fisher of men”. But it’s quite apt. If you find yourself being fished, go along with it!! Even if you don’t click completely with that gregarious person, the likelihood that you’ll be thrown into orbit with others is high, and you may find people through that. Let them invite you places! Meet their friends!! Friends who have served this role in my life have been absolutely indispensable for me & I try to actively emulate their modi operandi as much as possible

If you have a pretty closed off friend group, you could work on changing that? Another concrete piece of advice (and one that’s brand new to me lol) is to become a host! Have a brunch potluck or throw a birthday at your place. Invite your friends and have them bring along someone you might not know! Invite people you’re friendly acquaintances with. One of the nicest ways to build community is through like casual, open, and recurrent gatherings. Highly, highly recommend low stakes evenings like potlucks & yard fires & movie nights but especially potlucks. Sometimes you gotta be the gatherer if you want it to happen. I’m brewing up a brunch potluck later this month & im forcing myself kicking and screaming to include a few people I don’t know that well, despite the voice in my head that’s like “why would they want to come hang out with YOU…” (see rule one!!!!!). And again, I’m very lucky to live in a very special town with social people all around, but no one is going to come along and create that culture where it doesn’t already exist. Well, they might…but you can either sit around and wait for them to appear OR you can start fostering that community for yourself. I guess the idea is to take the connections you already have and BUILD! :-) I’m happy to hear you have some friends around you already, I’d really encourage you to start holding casual gatherings and make it explicitly clear that you’d love for them to bring people along.

Oh and also, I’ve found that hosting things TOGETHER is a huge help, it’s hard for me sometimes to put myself out there as the person for whom people will be showing up— but I have teamed up with friends to take the scary edge off. Me and my best friend had a combined birthday party last spring despite our birthdays being a month apart. No one cared about that, and we had so much fun with our goofy wacky theme!! And me and my roommates are all hosting a backyard party together at the end of Jan. This is a great arrangement for me as the shy one of the trio lol. So team up, if you and your friend see a tiktok of a theme dinner, or a costume party, or a scavenger hunt you’d like to recreate, toss it out there! Throw the soup party. Throw the dress like your fave character night. Throw the movie night with themed snacks.

My other disclaimer is that I have a healthy and moderate relationship with drinking, and because of that, I can have a glass of wine or something to help me out at a gathering where I feel very scared. They don’t call it liquid courage for nothing. That’s not an advantage everyone has, and I’m not necessarily advocating for it, but boy does it help me feel less like an alien robot when I’m out somewhere. Having a single g&t sometimes makes all the difference between going into the bar where my friend is playing a show and running back to my car and driving home listening to radiohead all alone. Weed has the opposite effect so I avoid it almost entirely lol. Just pay attention to the way substances affect you if they’re rife in your circles. If you’re sober, look for people who do lots of other things other than drinking— easier said than done, I know, but that’s another reason to throw your own little gatherings— they can be dinners or brunches or movies or hikes or museum outings where there’s no need for things you don’t partake in.

Ok the TLDR of all this is a) push yourself by force to put yourself out there. This is unfortunately an iron-clad prerequisite, like it or not (and I don’t like it…). Grab someone’s number, text them first, go to your random nice coworker’s birthday party where you’ll only know the host. throw a potluck so you can gather budding connections together. b) find what you love to do and do it with others, regularly. You don’t even have to like it that much I guess— just find a way to be exposed to the same people again and again and again. c) repeat to yourself over and over and over and over again that people are WAYYYY more receptive than you think they’ll be— they’re fucking lonely! Our way of life is fucking lonely!! And they think WAYYYY more positively about you than you think they do!!! I absolutely promise. I have ABYSMAL social self esteem and am frequently floored by this discovery but it’s very true. But people want me around because I’m funny and smart and kind and unique. And they want you around for all those same reasons, I promise.

And last thing, it takes fucking TIME. it takes forever. It takes practice and discomfort and stomping all over your hard-won instincts and behaving in ways that are terrifying and brand new to you. But keep seeing people, and take the leap of being the initiator, and give it time and effort and you can do it!!!!! Again these are just the things that have worked for me, your mileage may vary! But genuinely best of luck and I would LOVEEEE to hear updates :-)

PS (I hope this (or like any of this answer lmao help) doesn’t sound condescending, it’s not meant to come across that way, I just tend to ramble. And also I tend to forget that other people don’t always have as much trouble with these social skills as I’ve had so if I’m overexplaining that’s why!! Lol) you can rehearse things in your head as much as you want and no one will ever know. I literally have small talk scripts lmaooooooo. I’ve literally used strangers to practice a method of like interviewing people to get to know them where you just continue to ask questions relevant to what they just said. and you could practice saying things like “want to grab some coffee after this?” or like “hey let me make sure I grab your number, here’s my phone!” and no one will ever know you had to practice like you’re in an elementary school play LOL. I’ve learned so many like normal person social skills just by watching gregarious friends talk to people and straight up intentionally emulating them. bc im normal…. And also intentional and borderline saccharine phrasing like saying “I’d love to have you!” Instead of “if you wanna come” or something. Ok actually I’ve rambled on for soooo long now I hope at least a tiny shred of this was helpful :-)

Okay and another quick edit SORRY. CAMPING!!!!!!!!! If you have ANY desire to camp whatsoever DO IT!!!! NOTHING jumpstarts a new friendship like a camping trip, you can like fast forward through literal months of the early stages if you can get your friend to bring a friend etc. and if not, a nice long hike, if that’s something your body’s not gonna scream at you about haha. GO OUTSIDE WITH PEOPLE IM SO DEADLY SERIOUS.