a helpful guide bc i know my cats look a bit similar and i tend to oost pictures of them together with little explanation about who is who.
clicking the images may make them easier to read

@altruistic-meme / altruistic-meme.tumblr.com
a helpful guide bc i know my cats look a bit similar and i tend to oost pictures of them together with little explanation about who is who.
clicking the images may make them easier to read
I think the key to celebrities who survive Tumblr is that they understand we’re not here to follow them, they’re here to hang out with us.
We’re here building a fort out of scraps of stuff we found in a dumpster and if Ryan Reynolds would like to sit down in the mud and contribute, he is welcome to. But the fort comes first. Neil Gaiman found an old couch cushion. Wil Wheaton has a cool rock. Sometimes Taylor Swift shows up to say how nice the fort looks. That’s the way of things.
since there is apparently a heck ton of you who love young royals & do some kind of fibre art (knit, crochet, embroider, sew, etc.), i'm curious to know
(this is like the first and only time i’ve ever done embroidery tho)
worst thing in the world is when you're working and you think of like 10 things you need to get at the grocery store but the MOMENT break hits and you pull out your phone to make a list, you can't remember a thing.
Anne Sexton, from A Self-Portrait in Letters
insane exchange on blue bird app
When I think about American attitudes to parenting there's something that always comes to mind, but I don't know whether it's a real thing. All my life in American films and TV I've heard child characters addressing their dads as "sir" or being told off for not doing so.
Is that really a commonplace thing in American families, or is it just a shorthand way of showing that the character is a shitty dad?
There's still time to increase the sample size!
When I think about American attitudes to parenting there's something that always comes to mind, but I don't know whether it's a real thing. All my life in American films and TV I've heard child characters addressing their dads as "sir" or being told off for not doing so.
Is that really a commonplace thing in American families, or is it just a shorthand way of showing that the character is a shitty dad?
There's still time to increase the sample size!
i've experienced popping and cracking in all of the above so i wanna know how normal this is
There’s always a lingering question that I ask myself, which is why do I, a cis bisexual woman, enjoy romance between two men so much?
There are easy answers, like that it’s just fetishizing. And like, I find men attractive, yes. But I also find women attractive. I don’t have a problem with enjoying het romance, assuming I can find good ones. I enjoy stories with female characters I can relate to.
But there’s something much deeper at play, IMO. A friend of mine who is a gender studies professor was the first person to point this out to me, but a lot of women enjoy m/m romance and gay porn because of the lack of women. It removes a source of pressure and sexism. Without any women present, you don’t have to constantly evaluate the sexism of their portrayal, or be reminded of negative experiences in your own life. It allows women to experience romance and especially sexuality without all the baggage that comes with it in our patriarchal society.
This was recently illustrated to me rather dramatically. I read a recommendation for a het romance. And it sounded cute, and came highly recommended. The tropes at play were fun. Until I read a snippet and realized this was a romance between a woman and her boss. I had a visceral negative reaction.
Instantly I’m thinking of sexual harassment stories I’ve read and heard from other women. I’m thinking of how uncomfortable it would be to have your boss develop feelings for you. How icky the power dynamics would be, etc.
And then I realized…this wouldn’t bother me if it were two men. Now, there’s no logical reason for that. Sexual harassment is just as wrong when its object is a man. But I know I’ve read fics with a similar premise and never thought about it. Because when it’s two men I can accept this is just a light romance, a fantasy, meant to be fun and sexy and not to represent the real world.
But I can’t when it’s a het relationship. There’s too much baggage there. Too much societal history of abuse. I can’t relax enough with the premise to enjoy that story.
Now some people can. And that’s fine. And some people are never going to be okay with power imbalances like that regardless of gender. That’s also fine. I don’t think having either reaction makes one morally superior. It’s okay to just enjoy light entertainment for what it is without going into deep analysis.
But it’s much more difficult for me, and I think for many women, to relax and enjoy romantic and sexual stories when they involve female characters. We’ve been burned too many times by shitty depictions, by shallow role models, by abuse portrayed as romantic. We have developed a stress response, a trauma response to heterosexual romance. We are hyper-reactive to a wide variety of triggers in regards to it. But removing women from the equation makes stories safer for us. And maybe it shouldn’t? In an ideal world? But for many of us, that’s the truth.
So this post blew up in the last 24 hours, for whatever reason, and I was looking through people’s responses, as you do. I’m quite moved that so many found it relatable.
But I wanted to highlight one set of tags (via @reallifepotato )
Because I AM comfortable with my sexuality and fairly comfortable with my body, but still, this resonates so hard as someone who has always been overweight. The amount that our society teaches women to constantly compare ourselves, almost always negatively with every other woman out there, can utterly ruin our enjoyment of this kind of thing. Like how many times have you tried to watch a mainstream romantic comedy where some utterly gorgeous actress is bemoaning that she can’t get a date, or WORSE is made out to be less than attractive. And you look at her and go…but she’s fucking perfect? And you just want to puke.
But with m/m romance you can put yourself in the place of either character and…not compare yourself. You can enjoy a character being attractive without feeling bad about yourself, which is REALLY HARD to do for any woman in our fucked up culture.
oh my god someone put it into words!!!!!
there are soooo many nuances and reasons that many of us aren’t even conscious of which makes me doubly angry when it’s dismissed as fetishizing. fuck off and let me read my love stories pls.
nail on the goddamn head there
Also, a lot of m/m fiction offers the notion of an actual friends-to-lovers storyline that isn’t cluttered by sex-first. There’s a foundation there that doesn’t get allowed for in m/f fiction. If there’s a m/f friendship in any media, it’s usually either an automatic love interest on the immediate horizon, or it’s dismissed and not explored as any kind of important to a story. People complain about m/m fiction like “Why can’t two guys just be FRIENDS?!” and i’m over here wanting to know “Why can’t two -anything- just be FRIENDS?!” and m/m fiction is usually the only place i can get that. Also… “fuck off and let me read my love stories pls.” This.
fuck man, this post just summarized something I’ve been trying to put into words for years
Like, fetishization of same sex relationships is a serious issue but it’s very different from what this post talks about and its really important to distinguish between the two
would you mind talking a little about enjoying traveling solo? I've always wanted to explore, but so many people paint traveling as this group activity, and I've always felt bad not having friends to do it with
My god, how much time do we have?
So, I could indulge in a little free therapy here and talk about some fucked-up experiences of travel I had as a child, but that's not really applicable, so...let's leave it at the fact that until I was out on my own, I didn't get to pick what happened to me on trips. I do often travel with my friends, who are always up to do the dumb shit I concoct for us, but any travel with another person involves compromise, and sometimes I just don't want to compromise, or to irritate my friends. Even though I know they probably won't be, I still worry they will, and sometimes I don't want to worry.
I also never internalized the idea that doing things alone was sad or weird. It's a social cue that I completely missed. The first time a friend of mine randomly came across me eating alone in a restaurant in college, she said, "Sam, why are you eating alone?" and I said, baffled, "Because I wanted dinner?"
I was twenty years old before it occurred to me that other people would feel strange eating alone in a restaurant, and then only because she told me she'd be too self-conscious. I was thirty before I realized most people would be self-conscious traveling alone, something I'd been doing since I was seventeen. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to be with other people -- some people love company or are nervous traveling alone or just plain don't get the appeal, and that's entirely fine.
But I love knowing that everything I do is for me alone. I can go to the weird museum or check out the odd store or do strange secret things to delight myself and never worry that I'm making life unpleasant for someone. I can be as selfish as I want. That's very rare for me and very precious. Also why I will probably never have a permanent romantic partner, but that's also free therapy for some other time.
The truth is, when you are alone, nobody actually knows that. Yes, if you're the only person at your table in a restaurant you're obviously alone, but nobody knows you aren't just getting a bite to eat before meeting up with your many cool friends. I don't look at anyone I see out in the world and go "Oh sad sack, look at them without anyone to hang out with." I think most of us worry everyone is saying that, and none of us actually are saying that.
And when I have been asked if I'm with someone and said, "Oh, I'm traveling on my own", people universally react with envy. "That must be amazing. I couldn't do it," or "I've never gone on a trip by myself, is it fun?" I've never had anyone say or imply that I'm a loser who couldn't find someone else to travel with. Quite the reverse.
Recently I had the thought that if I was more afraid of being alone I would probably have more intimate friendships or at any rate a much wider social circle, because I would need someone else to go with me on adventures and I would have to internalize the idea that it's okay to inconvenience or bore someone else at times, which I never really have. But that's kind of a tautology; "if I was less okay being alone I'd be less alone" is cyclical reasoning, when the truth is I'm someone who is a little fucked up about other people but also just genuinely enjoys solitude.
I love my friends, and I try very hard to form strong bonds with them despite that being really hard for me. I do get lonely, and I spend more time alone than is probably good for me. I get very anxious before solo trips. But I will also always need times when I am alone and only ever have to worry about myself. And once I'm launched on the trip I fucking love it. There are very few joys to rival walking out early in the morning into a strange city and knowing that the day and the city are both yours and yours alone.
Also sometimes I pretend I'm a spy, or an art historian on the trail of a stolen painting, or an academic writing a very important book. That's fun as hell.
Anyway, even when I do travel alone my friends are only a text message away, and I get to see cool stuff that I bring back to my room at night and share with all of you. I love sharing my adventures with you guys.
So yeah. My thesis is that nobody will even notice you're alone and if they do they'll probably think you're fucking cool for doing it, and meanwhile you get to do exactly what you want and nothing you don't. I think everyone should at least try it. You don't have to do a four-country trip through Europe for your first time out; you can just find something in another city that you want to see -- a museum or a zoo or a play or a cool burger joint -- book a trip, arrive Friday night and leave Sunday afternoon. And if it turns out you don't like traveling alone, that's okay too. There's no inherent moral virtue in being alone any more than there is in not wanting to be.
I just think it's super cool to sometimes go haring off on my own and do dumb shit. :D
New Ea-nāṣir lore just dropped and I don't know how to feel about that. I hate the meme but the guy having thugs coming after him for bad copper sales is perfect.
Wait wait WAIT
As someone who hard agrees with all your tags re: tired of the meem
BUT who is also invested in antiquities
Is it possible for you to drop the new lore
So the building in Ur where the infamous tablet was found (1 “Old Street” Ur Excavations VII) was actually full of similar tablets, all detailing how badly this guy's deals went. All of these tablets were collected and put into storage at the British Museum. Typically this kind of thing gets forgotten about, many of these tablets have been sitting there for a century, untranslated or partially translated.
This was recently partially translated and it's incredibly fragmentary, but it's a letter from the man himself reassuring a customer in Larsa about a bad shipment (a lot of goods were missing). He is upset that the customer sent thugs to collect (which is located in a different tablet). In turn, he sends his own to the customer's home. They are to make offerings at the temple of Šamaš together to symbolically "smooth things over". They are taking an oath.
He later goes on to blame the customer for the missing ingots. He (Ea-nāṣir) decided to employ a third party to deliver said ingots to the customer (all the way in the next city-state in the Sumerian cultural sphere). It seems like the third party either stole or got into a fight with the customer over the goods.
Ea-nāṣir now has to haul his ass to Larsa to deal with this personally. There's a lot of "Why don't you believe me?" "They don't listen to me!" "Please don't send-" going on in the tablet. But from what I can gather it looks like this peace offering (making an oath at the temple of Šamaš) broke down too. Everyone is blaming each other for the missing copper ingots and now the man himself has to take the three-day journey to sort out this issue. We have a name for one of the thugs: Mr. Shorty (kurûm). He seems to be a bit scary. The man from Dilmun got kicked out of the Merchant's Guild for a reason, he's had this problem before with copper shipments from Elam. Either he's the world's worst judge of character or he's embezzling, and badly. This is his side hustle stage where he's selling everything from used clothing to speculating (badly) on real estate. He may have dabbled in money lending too. He's your classic failed finance bro.
Oh these are lovely! Posts about hilariously bad punctuation become depressing after a while. How joyful to celebrate the witty and masterful!
me: *makes gifs* me, 2 seconds later: oh wait hey
SO the first real close up shots we get of Wilhelm and Simon’s hands are approximately a minute apart from each other. and as i was looking at them, i realize they both kind of say something important about the characters and now i’m going to talk about it some (bear with me, i should be heading to bed by now so i have no idea if this will be coherent at all)
we’ll start with Wilhelm’s hands, since they appear first.
first thing of notice is the specific context behind this shot: Erik tossed the etiquette book at Wilhelm. naturally i am looking way too into it, but it reflects not only that Erik "gives” his role to Wilhelm, but also the abruptness of it -- Erik tosses the book when he’s not looking. Erik’s death comes during a time when we really aren’t thinking about him, Wilhelm isn’t thinking about him, he’s distracted by Simon.
next, he’s inspecting the book. it’s a book of etiquette and rules, stuff that is expected of him. we’ve already seen that Wilhelm has to live up to high expectations (and that his family doesn’t think he reaches them), we’ve seen him getting angry at these expectations. he just wants to be normal. but now he’s at the school he never wanted to attend, and there are more rules. it’s an acknowledgement of his world, or the world he lives in. it’s rules and expectations and etiquette.
all of this paired with the lecture that Erik is giving him and his anger about it continues to let us in on how much he dislikes his position as Prince.
then we have Simon
I think Simon’s is a little special in a different way. we JUST had the scene above, Wilhelm arguing with Erik about not wanting to be at the school, which is an extension of his frustrations about having to uphold certain appearances solely because he was born as a Prince.
and then we get Simon quite literally giving a middle finger.
it shows us Simon’s attitude in general, how hard he tries to not be bothered by anything. but i feel like it also represents Simon’s feelings towards the monarchy. he doesn’t care, he doesn’t give a fuck.
and, most importantly, the final shot of Wilhelm seconds before is him standing alone in the hallway. Simon doesn’t give a fuck that Wilhelm is the Prince. that has never factored into Simon’s feelings towards Wilhelm (with the brief exception of their first time talking).
hands - a young royals study 1/? [ season 1, episode 1, 1/2 ]
new production starring edvin ryding, felicia maxime & zara larsson, titled "a part of you", coming to netflix in 2024 ❤️🔥
discovering the queer country scene has honestly been so healing because most queer musicians i've seen recommended for years i just couldn't really connect with because it wasn't the sort of music i listened to or had investment in and with queer country it's like. yes. this is the language i speak in. this is Fuck You, I Belong Here Too, not just as a queer person in the country but as a rural person among (sub)urban queers, and saying it with a laugh. when will my hometown take pride in me, goddamn it
Drop the list!!
FIRST: rachel holst does the adobe & teardrops blog as well as the rainbow rodeo newsletter & zine. look into the black opry also, there are plenty of black queer country/folk/americana artists & there is a lot of collaboration between them and other queer country/folk/americana musicians
my personal list:
discovering the queer country scene has honestly been so healing because most queer musicians i've seen recommended for years i just couldn't really connect with because it wasn't the sort of music i listened to or had investment in and with queer country it's like. yes. this is the language i speak in. this is Fuck You, I Belong Here Too, not just as a queer person in the country but as a rural person among (sub)urban queers, and saying it with a laugh. when will my hometown take pride in me, goddamn it
Drop the list!!
FIRST: rachel holst does the adobe & teardrops blog as well as the rainbow rodeo newsletter & zine. look into the black opry also, there are plenty of black queer country/folk/americana artists & there is a lot of collaboration between them and other queer country/folk/americana musicians
my personal list: