the whole guilt-tripping language in posts about important topics paired with how I'm still getting bitches in my notes talking about why it's actually good to tell "bad" people to kill themselves continues to prove to me that a lot of people have absolutely no concept of social justice or activism outside of assuming the worst of and then viciously attacking strangers on the internet

reverse transmigration for dove for SVSSSAction!

Lemony Snicket's Advice on Writing a Nice Thank-You Note

1. Do not start with the thank you.

2. Start with any other sentence. If you first say, “Thank you for the nice sweater,” you can’t imagine what to write next. Say, “It was so wonderful to come home from school to find this nice sweater. Thank you for thinking of me on Arbor Day.”

3. Then you’re done.

I recommend learning how to write a very good thank-you note. A child who can write a nice thank-you note can turn into a cocaine dealer five years later and be remembered as the child who wrote nice thank-you notes.

the way aragorn runs is so chaotic

the stuff going on at columbia campus rn is genuinely incredible

the fundamental tension between wanting to dissociate modes of dress from gender and people wanting to use modes of dress to signify their gender so they don't have to play the Pronoun Game

I finished Volume 3 of SVSSS, which encompasses the main story, and currently have my bookmark sitting at the first chapter of the Airplane Extras in Volume 4. I took a bunch of quote pics but have yet to review them and add thoughts.

Every time I read SVSSS, I forget how... incredible... the inside of Shen Yuan's head is. He's fascinating.

Like, he's misogynistic (even while criticizing Airplane's own misogynistic writing), he's homophobic, AND he's transphobic. Not in a way where I think he thinks anyone deserves fewer rights than anyone else (I think he's generally a nice person, although, holy shit, I would not trust this man to craft policy of any kind) or would prevent anyone from living however they chose to live, a lot of his problematic bullshit stays inside his own head as he tries to understand the world around him using the stallion novel formulas he was given, but he's carrying around SO MUCH unexamined bias that supports his refusal to examine himself and his own desires.

Some of it reads (presumably intentionally) a LOT like the kind of conflicting, problematic bullshit a lot of queer people carry around inside their heads as they struggle to untangle themselves and their beliefs.

And while I do wish that Shen Yuan had been forced to confront and address his misogyny and transmisogyny even further than it does come up (in part because it is DEFINITELY affecting the way he thinks about gay men as well, including and especially Binghe), I do kind of... appreciate on some level that he thinks this way? From a character standpoint? Because I think it's probably realistic for a privileged young man spending a lot of time on the internet reading shit like PIDW to look at the world this way. And it's clear even through his own narration that his blindness in certain areas is causing him a lot of trouble. While I do have criticisms and personal wishes, I do appreciate the depiction of personal character development that is just... a cringeworthy mess of internalized bullshit the whole fucking time.

Also, it's SO funny to me that he reads as SO aro-ace-spectrum to me (probably gay, but generally detached from sexuality and possibly also partially from gender) AND he actually knows... the word asexual, I don't think he has a very broad understanding of asexuality... but he knows the word and yet doesn't personally identify that way. He mentally accuses both Luo Binghe (main story, before finding out Binghe is into him) and Liu Qingge (Succubus Extra) of being asexual for showing no interest in women, only to fail to reflect on how he ALSO demonstrably has no genuine, personal interest in the women around them.

"I willingly read PIDW, that proves I'm straight!" he sincerely thinks to himself, even though his favorite wife is the one without explicit sex scenes and he also admits to skipping over a lot of them.

"I'm able to tell when women are beautiful, that makes me straight!" thinks the guy who mentally censors nudity whenever demon women lose their clothes, and keeps telling us how "the average reader" of PIDW would react to these beautiful women instead of conveying his own attracted reactions. (His actual reactions are generally centered on a woman's narrative significance.) The only people he personally seems to find attractive are Luo Binghe and maybe Liu Qingge.

Though my interpretation was that he does probably experience sexual arousal and have a sex drive (see his username), which probably helps with his conviction of straightness, I'm not sure that there's any mention of Shen Yuan even masturbating at all in the entire main story of PIDW? Apparently not a priority for him.

(EDIT: He does seem to enjoy sex with Binghe in the "Bing-mei vs. Bing-ge" Extra. He loves Binghe and likes the closeness and the physical pleasure. I appreciate the indication that they're working on moving on from the AWFUL intercourse pushed by Xin Mo's possession and possibly also the System's Scenario Pusher.)

And Shen Yuan seems to view women as being and behaving Fundamentally Different from men and gay men as behaving Fundamentally Differently from straight men (as soon as he learns Binghe is into him, he thinks about how Binghe isn't behaving like the characters in his sister's gay, non-con, BDSM erotica novels), seeing everything through the lens of novel tropes, such that he seems to view sex and sexuality and gender as being deeply mixed with a person's personality. So he can't be a gay man, because he's too "Normal", in his mind at first, because he doesn't behave like his own mental image of "How Gay Men Behave" (or "How Women Behave / A PIDW Wife Behaves"), while also demonstrably not being anything like "the average reader" of PIDW and also apparently not caring too much about his own masculinity? Like, I do think he likes being the gentleman scholar of Qing Jing Peak, he does like appearing dignified and strong and cool, he doesn't like losing, he doesn't really like playing "damsel in distress" roles, and I do think he likes being gallant towards women, but he's not too concerned about seriously competing with figures like Luo Binghe or Liu Qingge? He's happy enough to back down and let someone else take the lead if necessary. He puts up with being put into the roles of female leads even if it embarrasses him and he rolls with the punches to his pride easily enough. He seems to have decided his Sexuality By Default, so it does make me have a lot of thoughts about whether or not he's potentially going with Gender By Default / Convenience as well.

Someone get this man some amateur and academic literature on gender and sexuality (and a lot of other stuff), stat, so he can ignore it, probably.

listening to the columbia student radio show covering the ongoing situation around student arrests and protests, something easy to put on to feel less disconnected right now

Addendum to this poll which is itself inspired by this post:

"i cant watch shows about fantasy kingdoms without thinking about how they should be abolishing the monarchy" that my friend sounds like a skill issue

Please consider donating to my friend's escape fund.

She has survived an attack on her life and the lives of her brothers while distributing aid using our donations. And now she's gone back to her neighbourhood to see it completely leveled. Everything they've ever known is gone. Please help them. They're close to their goal.

the stuff going on at columbia campus rn is genuinely incredible

Maybe this is the wrong platform to pose this question given the average tumblr user but

Is it just me or did our generation (those of is who are currently 20-30 ish) just not get the opportunity to be young in the 'standard' sense?

Like, everyone I talk to who's over 40 has all their wild stories about their teens and 20s, being young and dumb, and then I talk to my friends and coworkers and classmates, and we just... dont.

The last character you drew/wrote about is now stuck in the last game you played. How screwed are they?