Not taking sides or anything, as the little centrist fuck I am apparently, but I just find queer discourse on all sides so interesting. There’s like, two kinds of camps for heteronormative gays, which is “Who’s the man and who’s the woman?” And Very Gender Conforming. These camps doesn’t really touch anything outside the circle, and considers outsiders or people who like to more play around with gender roles, relationships, and their femininity and masculinity, to be deviants. Not necessarily malicious towards them, just would rather not show something like that to the Grander Public. On the very opposite end, it’s the exact same but kind of reversed? More of the same with a coating of counter culture, which is exactly what the previous one is trying to be too, It’s weird. This isn’t really discourse I guess, but a common element I’ve seen popping up, distinct camps people will take, opposed to one another, and it’s influenced by their own ideals, preferences, and experiences, and instead of realizing it’s a personal thing for everyone, tries to make it the new norm, specifically by appealing to the current one.

Personally if I was in any position, I would try to shatter any preconceived notions of normality, it is a flawed notion and something that holds humans people and persons back from personal and societal progress. I don’t like the “We’re normal too!” attitudes of many queer rights movements and peoples, trying to appeal to the cis-het sense of comfort and normality, because it’s so simple and eye catching and easy to understand, like the fake smile of a secretary and her obviously fake soft voice she puts on telling you to wait until he’s ready to see you. It’s disgusting to me! It’s patronizing, and belittling not on a level of age or maturity although it certainly does that, but on a level of philosophical progress. Really, nothing is normal, and you’re stupid if you think anything is, because everything will change, and nothing will stay the same or mean the same things, so really, what the hell is “normal” really about?

When will we learn nature is unnatural? When will we learn there is no nature? That we are all nature? Human nature is somewhat of an oxymoron, as we as humans separate ourselves as entities independent of nature and its cycles, while desperately trying to appeal to a sense of nature and normality. Nature is a freak of chance born to grow and kill its own. God was made from nothing and has no reason to exist except to perpetuate existence, and as we are made in Gods image, we are meant to simply exist as there is no greater purpose. And that’s enough, it’s not disheartening to me, it is simply fact. I hate the magicization and mysticism of nature and humans and technology, because it eventually leads to an organized religious thought and belief in something, beyond rational or reason, and into fanaticism, and not the kind an individual can be proud of, it isn’t losing yourself in the love of your craft or the pursuit of an ultimate thought that drives you mad, you know, the respectable stuff, but a call to a flock from shepherds and become philosophical slaves to a pattern of thought, and I hate organized religion for that, it’s a blight on a humans ability to reason and their individuality. But, I respect the decision to be a slave, it is a noble one apparently, and who I am to deny a martyr’s nobility?

I believe in a Jesus, a God, a Heaven and Hell, and many more written in other old books, but I do not worship any God or gods, because there is no set universal hierarchy to tell me to, and one of us, any one of us but only one of us, could overthrow top-dog-arch-angel-capital-G, maybe only with the support of everyone, but it’s only one of us, because there is only one of you, or me. This set idea of hierarchy and order is in fact unnatural, and man made, hell, if it is made by the gods, or is God’s will, I say, fuck God’s will. What God says is not always right, because I decide what is right and wrong, and I decide what I do depending on what I want to know and feel. Righteousness is not handed down by hierarchy, and morality is not taught by God, it is all you, the individual, who has been swept up in a sea of millions of others, in an even bigger sea of time, and space, much bigger than any of us can consciously or subconsciously know, but we are still mightier than God over the kingdom of our own fates.

And that’s why I hate saying queer people are normal, or the attempts to heteronormatize queerness into either The guy and The girl dynamic, or the just two gals or just two guys dynamic, because when it feels obvious when other examples like it haven’t, it’s because it is made in an attempt to rationalize queerness and queer thoughts into the larger system, and you can tell when it’s done legitimately and from a place of trueness like queer people of a specific kind, or for the sake of being less offensive to the Grander Societal Eye, (mostly in corporate advertisements trying to take your gay money) and even if I was cis-het, I’d still hate the system and its mentality. It is desperate to incorporate new ideas into itself, and when it finds a conflicting one, like anti-capitalism, it just picks out the less desirable bits until its a little useful shell of its former self. It’s really about a lot more than queerness, it’s about the caged thoughts of people who thought they were on earth, slowly realizing they’re just floating through space too. I describe myself as an inverted centrist. I’m everything on the outskirts and the scraps of whatever I like. I hate using these words like centrist, communist, right-wing, because their meanings and values are as solid as the dollar, and I want to stop putting my faith in United Debt Notes.

Yeah that’s right, you thought this was just about the interactions happening in your sub community! Bet you didn’t expect me to extrapolate a larger narrative about a collective consciousness that silently influences all of our thoughts and a larger narrative of the folly of modern thinking’s refusal to leave the past and use it as a represented microcosm of a much larger human condition that seeps its way into everything we see and do social, did’jya?

I’m sorry, I’ve been testing this new thought process. I call it three dimensional thinking, because it shapes a subject like it’s a 3D object, with theoretical height of thought, theoretical length of thought, (not necessarily regarding time per se) theoretical width of thought, and the secret fourth element to a three dee thing, the depth, a triangulation of its height length and width. It can be hollow however, or spongey, weird depth, so be careful, donut thoughts are an easy trap to fall into when exploring 3D thoughts with a 2D mindset. Not to say one is good or the other is bad, but they have a time and a place, and while 3D is a literal upgrade, I’d rather use simpler tools sometimes, as they can prove more effective. It’s more about preference and mental diseases than anything, don’t trouble yourself too much. Thinking in 3D will actually be harder, take up more time and energy, and be more confusing than 2D thinking, but there are some concepts you can only comprehend in a new dimension and can’t properly be replicated without immense dedication. Also, as demonstrated, three dimensional thinking can become near incomprehensible at times, but it all makes sense, it’s just very non linear and is very expansive compared to 2D. Don’t even get me started on 4D stuff! Because our language is made for 1D and 2D thoughts to be conveyed, if I tried to translate 4D thought into this language I might as well sound like I’m on drugs. Unfortunately, I’ve been sober for the past month, and my memory is still as spotchy as ever even without alcohol.

HOLY FUCK WAIT! Someone coined my dimensional thinking idea first?! Well, there’s is stupid, as it isn’t actually about thinking thoughts, just processing outside stuff. I want to talk about the actual realms of thoughts, like how in my mind math is blue and english is red, or how my internal avatar is a drawing but they live in a 3D thought house. Really, the words I use are just shadows of thoughts, like how a 3D object casts a 2D shadow for a 2D being to see and mistake it for only being that and nothing more, when really, all they see is a shadow of its true self, or how we would see a 4D being, casting its 3D shadow as all we can see and comprehend. So yeah, mine’s better. My little thought train goes choo-choo and it has polygons, that’s what I mean by dimensional thinking! And I think I did a pretty good job. (Am I laying it on too thick?)

GLAD EVERYONE ENJOYED THE ANDROID INFO UPDATE ABOUT INTERFACING DFGJNDGKGNMXGHNCBNM

gotta say, i do not like how lately i've been seeing posts from people who use a person having colorfully dyed hair as a sort of shorthand for "leftist who is actually secretly an asshole." like people making comments like "the girl with blue hair and perfect eyeliner wings is also the one who won't give up their seat for a disabled person on the bus". like we already have to deal with the right-wing fascists using "blue hair and pronouns" as a shorthand for "leftist (trans) person who is insufferable and oversensitive", can we please not turn brightly colored hair into a caricature in leftist circles as well. having brightly dyed hair is not some magic symbol of "person who claims to be a leftist but is actually secretly an asshole". it is a morally neutral trait. and while i'm not discounting anyone's experience with someone with brightly dyed hair who treated them badly, i think that turning it into some kind of shorthand for "asshole" is just going to ultimately hurt us more than it's going to help.

my bakugou thought of the day is: do you think he goes down without a fight ??

like in the event that he never manages to make his move on you for whatever reason and you meet and eventually become engaged to someone else, does he let you go ??? without ever saying anything ??? bc....idk !! i don't think he seems particularly like a homewrecker kind of guy, and i think he respects you enough to not question your life choices and if you're happy—he can live with that.

but if he really, truly believes he would be a better partner for you, does he keep it to himself ?? or give it one last shot before the wedding ??

how bad is the pain right after surgery? im hoping to schedule my reduction next year. im a 32K and want them gone SO BAD but im a baby lol

there is DEFINITELY PAIN, but it's not the worst pain I've ever felt. I think I clocked it at a 7 when I woke up from surgery- my nurse asked me to rate it to get a ballpark of how heavily to douse me in pain meds before I left lmao. I felt so exhausted from the surgery that I slept an absolute ton, also, so a lot of that day-of pain is being blotted out while you're unconscious! hooray! they give you pain meds immediately, and keeping on top of the doses (not letting the meds Wear Off inbetween) keeps it to a dull roar. On day 3 rn and the pain is already muchh more manageable! That's how it's been for me, anyway. It could be diff for you, I know some people feel basically numb, or others are more sensitive to pain, whatevs. but it's not Too Bad.

i actually cant stand people who dont know politics or watch the news because its "too much" or its "too complicated to keep track of" like actually kill yourself no one is asking you to glue your eyes to the news 24/7 but what good can you think possibly comes from not knowing what the fuck is going on around you and what your actions are doing. and these people are always the ones who are annoyingly centrist or "my politics are based on my moral compass" KILL YOURSELF KILL YOURSELF KILL YOURSELF.

Sticking this on here even tho it's a general Sitewide Problem - I'm sick of people making excuses for retroactively adding more bigotry into tf2. It feels like people are only capable of thinking about marginalized people (especially "in the past") as our suffering, so writing a gay character, or a trans character, or a black character, or etc. must involve them suffering somehow. People go to such fucking lengths to pull hypothetical marginalized people out of their ass who LOVE writing about characters like them experiencing hate crimes as "coping", but In My Opinion your coping should not involve publicly making a bunch of joke characters from a comedy video game get called real slurs that affect people in real life. Even if your point is "bigotry is bad", not every single fucking thing that has a black character or a gay character in it has to be About Bigotry. You all let white characters just be characters, but the minute you wanna put Demo tf2 in your fanfiction you need to take some great stand against racism and choose to do this by portraying him suffering. I don't care if it's to show that Racism Bad - you NEED to learn to love marginalized people more than you hate bigots. Never mind everything I could say about how actually no, it would not be "period accurate to the 1960s" for everyone to constantly be spewing or facing racism and homophobia. Acceptance and taking stands against bigotry aren't new concepts. Your "historically accurate" tf2 fanfic has done absolutely nothing except show a bunch of already marginalized people that our suffering is more important than our joy. In My Opinion

A Game of You/ Brief Lives

I'm seeing some people complain about Thessaly in such a way where it implies that they think the narrative likes her? Guys, she sucks on purpose lol. I am begging all of you to pay attention in English/Lit class more often. Wanda is clearly the hero of the story, everyone treating her badly are dicks, it could not be more clear. I love Wanda so much. Thessaly should die in a fire lmfao. (the parallels between her and Esther from Dead Boy Detectives are fascinating, I wonder if they ever met?) All the people giving Wanda shit are wrong; Thessaly, The Animated Severed Face on the Wall, the Moon Goddess, her family, etc.

Death, the most level headed, kind, compassionate character in all of Sandman is on Wanda's side. It's generally bad form to read the author's personal stance from one particular character, but Death is as close to a stand in for Neil Gaiman's personal opinion as we are ever going to see in a story as far as I can tell. She is always who he gives the final say to in terms of morality over every other character, very much including Dream. (We also got Barbie being a ride or die, and the disaster lesbian neighbors Hazel and Foxglove being confused but supportive, and the homeless lady Wanda helped talking about her grandson being like Wanda and how dumb it was that people were so cruel and just because some people are different it doesn't make them bad.) Go read it again.

Neil Gaiman literally talked to his Trans friends about their lives and the stuff that was happening to them and then put it in his comic in 1989! I repeat, 1989! (through to 1996). No, the terms and language aren't all going to match up to 2024, Think, please, I beg of you. He wrote Desire as non binary before that was really a thing "Well why didn't he just use They/Them" IT WAS 1989 PEOPLE!!!!!! (the concept obviously has existed for longer, I'm talking specifically about language trends).

(Characters in stories doing or saying bad things to other Characters does not make the Story Itself racist/ sexist/ homophobic/ transphobic/ etc).

I've also seen people talking about Thessaly and Dream dating, again Dream is making poor life choices, as per usual! I think he was initially attracted by her audacity and strength, and her longevity. Him sulking Byronically and inconveniently in the rain he himself creates to be more moody and Goth about being dumped is meant to contrast sharply with the scene after You Know What happens at the end of Brief Lives. He returns home to the Castle and quietly walks through the corridors, being polite and kind to everyone (freaking them out a bit in the process), he slowly washes the blood off his hands, and collapses into a chair to mourn deeply in solitude and silence. No more drama, no more rain, no more epic windswept shots of him staring pensively into the distance, just true sadness. It's almost like his earlier performance about being upset by Thessaly's absence doesn't actually matter that much in the face of true tragedy.

The first is shallow and dramatic, He's the Prince of Stories, he falls in love at the drop of a hat, but he's bad at maintaining relationships. The Drama is inherent to his being. He IS stories. But in the second situation it's more real, he's more real. The Grief is too much to bear turning it into a story. Dream is being forced to face harsh Reality. After all, like Dream said, stories are how we keep ourselves alive, "If you rob them of their Dreams, if you take away their hope, then yes, this is the truth of Mankind." Perhaps it's also the Truth of the Collective Unconsciousness of Mankind? His path forward was set from that moment on.

bath

(hello!!! please be polite and respectful; im very sensitive and i am not comfortable with comments like 'hot/sexy' or anything objectifying 😭😭 but something like 'he's pretty' etc is welcome! thank you so much!! 🥺💖💖)

btw about Neil Gaiman I periodically agree with the 'Neil Gaiman is annoying' stuff bc I feel like both he and Amanda Palmer seem like people who I would go insane stuck in a room with bc we have very different ideas about art and suchlike. and I also do think that the career trajectory he's on lately is cynically redoing his greatest hits and pretending that was the dream all along when it clearly was not. which is at best meh.

having said which

as far as I can tell by far the most common complaint about Neil Gaiman is "Snow, Glass, Apples is problematic/gross/it's got incest and rape and frames the child as the aggressor"

which strikes me as a weird complaint to pull out of a 40 year body of work tbh when that short story is pretty clearly coming from a place of 'how far can I push this'. like you don't have to like the story. I don't really like the story. but it is. a horror story.

like and this is the thing with particularly 90s alt horror right? a lot of the interest is in transgression and sitting in the worst possible perspective and seeing what happens if you pull those strings. like I really like Clive Barker for example but there's a good chunk of his short stories that I'm like I'm not picking up what you're putting down Clive this seems Kinda Off. but that willingness to write some trite or Bad Message horror fiction that doesn't land is imo a side effect of being willing to try writing uncomfortable and unpleasant fiction at all. which is what horror is for, among other things, it's for creating discomfort as a form of catharsis or engagement.

like I am not a huge fan of the type of sex-horror that pops up in a lot of Gaiman's work and other contemporary horror writers - to me I don't find it upsetting or horny it just ends up feeling kind of edgy and tryhard - but I'm also a bit like. it does seem like a lot of people's beef with Neil Gaiman is that In The 90s He Was A Horror Writer

and this approach to Problematic Horror in Snow, Glass, Apples I find kind of microcosmic of how The Discourse often approaches art in this kind of 1:1 way. if you write a story which seems to line up with rape apologia it can only be because you agree with it. if you write a story about transphobia you're a transphobe. if you write a story that makes me genuinely uncomfortable you're attacking me.

but artwork, especially art like horror that's not necessarily trying to provoke enjoyment as its main response, is necessarily hit and miss. and if what you're shooting for is discomfort then whether it works, falls flat or goes too far incredibly depends on your audience. and making good art - as in art that makes its audience think, art that opens the audience up to discomfort and catharsis and sticks with them and changes them - requires the space to experiment and tbh the space to fuck up. like they aren't all going to be winners and they certainly aren't all going to work for you as a singular audience.

personally I don't see the appeal of Snow, Glass, Apples, less cause it's nasty and more cause it's hack. ooh an edgy monstrous version of a fairy tale where there's lots of rape and cannibalism? you're soooo original Neil. but like. that's fine. I don't really vibe with like 70% of Neil Gaiman stuff I've read but I still like Neil Gaiman because the stuff that works for me really works for me.

idk I think there's a lot of folk on this website who shouldn't interact with horror cause they clearly aren't interested in being horrified. that's not everyone who dislikes Snow, Glass, Apples, but it's a real undercurrent to a lot of the criticism and tbh this kinda vibe is shit for art. making standout art What Is Good also requires being ready to make art which stands out for the wrong reasons. sometimes they'll be the same art to different people.

In response to this

Dravena: Wait, so you’re basically just a glorified schoolteacher’s assistant?

Dravena: I thought legends did more interestin’ stuff than that.

Dravena: Uh, no offense of course!

Dravena: But like, what do ya even like to help teach about? I’m sorry, it’s just…surely there’s more interestin’ stuff you’d like to do with your abilities, right?

Dravena: I mean every legend’s got abilities! That’s what makes ‘em legendary.

//@the-feral-one

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Questioning NPD culture is thinking "Man I feel like i'm faking it." and panicking slightly because what if you were faking some shit for attention and you aren't actually as egodivergent as you thought you were.

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I think advice like this is generally good and am aware that me complaining about it will probably be the "why doesn't your post account for my personal circumstances specifically, internet stranger?!" thing people love to make fun of, but nonetheless I can't help but feel bitter because "repeated positive low stakes interaction" for me has almost always fizzled out before it could deepen because the effort is just not worth the reward for either of us and pretty much all my significant friendships have been formed by (a) being approached by someone with enough confidence and extroversion to make "treating a stranger like a best friend" actually work or (b) instant familiarity because we're bonding over a shared interest and our enthusiasm over the topic is more important than how well we know each other or (c) quick recognition of each other as similar personality types and agreement to cut the bullshit and communicate in a way best suited to our type. And the tone of this type of advice always makes me feel like it's saying "the way you do friendship is wrong and you're wrong for thinking it could work, grow up". Which is uncharitable of me, I know op of that post is just trying to be helpful and has been helpful to many people reblogging the post! Still feel bitter about it though.

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also i have to say there's smth consistently eye-rolly about the idea of going "oh you can't blame me for leaving her there !! i thought they were good people !! i didn't think they would do anything bad to her !!! that's why i left her there i thought she was safe !!!" as if "they" even broke that trust. according to literally all accounts the incident in question happened before you left and nothing progressed further after you were gone. accusing "them" of being horrible nasty people when again, the only wrongdoing alleged at all was on the part of one of them ???? like you can just say that while drunk you didn't make the right judgement call and once you woke up sober you checked in with your friend because thinking back you were worried abt her comfort levels without crying wolf about how you simultaneously "thought they were good safe people" and they took advantage of that after you left (by doing nothing after you left, because the whole incident being described here happened with you in the room) and also knew she was uncomfortable which is why you checked on her immediately (which is somehow being used to blame two people who had zero access to the texts asking her if she was comfortable at all and therefore made the assumptions that she was comfortable based on what they themselves saw)