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It's called being happy

@secretgaygentdanvers / secretgaygentdanvers.tumblr.com

memes and gays and gay memes | trying to steal local jobs so I can piss off the sun | 19
“For example: A writer sets out to write science fiction but isn’t familiar with the genre, hasn’t read what’s been written. This is a fairly common situation, because science fiction is known to sell well but, as a subliterary genre, is not supposed to be worth study—what’s to learn? It doesn’t occur to the novice that a genre is a genre because it has a field and focus of its own; its appropriate and particular tools, rules, and techniques for handling the material; its traditions; and its experienced, appreciative readers—that it is, in fact, a literature. Ignoring all this, our novice is just about to reinvent the wheel, the space ship, the space alien, and the mad scientist, with cries of innocent wonder. The cries will not be echoed by the readers. Readers familiar with that genre have met the space ship, the alien, and the mad scientist before. They know more about them than the writer does. In the same way, critics who set out to talk about a fantasy novel without having read any fantasy since they were eight, and in ignorance of the history and extensive theory of fantasy literature, will make fools of themselves because they don’t know how to read the book. They have no contextual information to tell them what its tradition is, where it’s coming from, what it’s trying to do, what it does. This was liberally proved when the first Harry Potter book came out and a lot of literary reviewers ran around shrieking about the incredible originality of the book. This originality was an artifact of the reviewers’ blank ignorance of its genres (children’s fantasy and the British boarding-school story), plus the fact that they hadn’t read a fantasy since they were eight. It was pitiful. It was like watching some TV gourmet chef eat a piece of buttered toast and squeal, ‘But this is delicious! Unheard of! Where has it been all my life?’”

is the world really such a terrible place? yesterday i asked if oat milk was extra and the barista said yes so i said ok just regular milk then and when she gave me my chai latte she whispered “i used oat milk ;)” doesnt that make u want to live another day?

here is my life philosophy: next week there might be someone ahead of you in line at the store who’s short a quarter and you have a quarter and you can give it to them. if you weren’t there, they’d have to put something back. the week after that you could be getting lunch and the waiter might ask if you want some pancakes someone else ordered and never picked up. you could find someone’s lost cat. you could watch someone’s bag while they go to the restroom. there are so many ways you are going to touch other people’s lives and they are going to touch yours and there’s no way to know when it’s going to happen. so you have to keep living!!! i wouldn’t want to die knowing that tomorrow the barista will give me free oat milk just to be nice. 

When I was 11 years old - we went to Sea World for my birthday. This was to avoid the realization I had no friends, and no one to come to a birthday party and probably because someone gave my mother free tickets at work. It was kinda a shitty day despite being at a theme park full of cute animals. There was a new roller coaster there that had just opened so we decided to go on. I was nervous. I’d never been on a roller coaster.

A group of 6 college kids were ahead of us in line and started chatting with me. Full on just having a fun conversation with someone literally going through the beginning of a very awkward middle school period. I was so shocked they wanted to talk to me. I think my mom mentioned it was my birthday. They were very nice about it. When we got on the ride they told us to go ahead of them so we could sit at the front of the car since it held 8 people.

Now the ride (called Journey to Atlantis - I believe it is sadly no longer there) started with a slow ride of beautiful visuals of dolphins and oceans and computerized images of this imaginary Atlantis before going up the hill to the beginning of the coaster, where it paused for about 30 seconds, and then the ride started. The college kids must have known there would be a pause. Maybe they’d ridden it before I’m not sure.

But as we sat there on that peak, 6 people I’ve never known, and will never know again, sang a very very lonely 11 year old happy birthday. Loudly. And with gusto. They were happy and laughing and joyful. And it made me feel less alone in the world.

I am 29 years old this year, and I still remember them. I still remember that kindness. It is so important. It doesn’t go into a vacuum. It exists beside me in my daily life. And I love the idea that I have been that person to someone else too.

It’s stunningly lovely to be human when we’re kind to each other.

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OH THIS CAN’T BE LEFT IN THE NOTES

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PLEASE do share your thoughts on Jackie's parents 👀

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THANK YOU for the encouragement. this might get long

let's start with how a while ago i got an anon implying that jackie was pampered by her parents BASED on the scene with adult shauna and them on jackie's birthday. which was the first time it ever occurred to me that people watched that scene and saw something completely different from what i saw. absolutely incomprehensible TO ME to even imagine that because i remember watching it for the first time and thinking that jackie's parents are straight out of a horror movie. there is something so sinister about how they treat shauna all while essentially replacing jackie WITH shauna. shauna gets jackie's gift and i believe (although i'd have to rewach the scene to make sure) shauna blows the candles on JACKIE'S cake and shauna is there with jackie's high school boyfriend. jackie's mother went to her wedding!! the show is not subtle about them putting shauna in the role of the daughter they lost. so why treat her so horribly? when they have no reason to because they don't know she was sleeping with jeff before plane crash before it's revealed to them in that very scene

so what that tells me and how i interpret it is: that's how they were treating jackie when she was alive. there is this insidious sort of cruelty that's masked by fake kindness? but constantly puts you down in ways that's hard to shake off. and jackie was probably Never good enough no matter how much she tried. she only became the Perfect Daughter after death when they could start treating shauna the way they treated jackie. like WHY is jackie such a deeply deeply insecure character? why does she crave validation sooooo bad? and we know she doesn't have a good relationship with her parents from how she talks about her mother when she gives shauna the pills on the plane (and implies her parents are neglectful) and when she says she has curfew and it's very much implied her parents would react badly vs shauna saying she has curfew too but being so unbothered by it she finds time to fuck jeff on her way home lmao. and to me people who fail to notice that are fooled by the appearances. jackie's parents have money and a big house and AFTER JACKIE IS DEAD idealize her. but what they seem not to notice is that the purpose of talking about how perfect jackie was is to belittle shauna. this isn't grieving parents who miss their daughter to me

and now actually let's talk about how i think that interpretation influences jackie as a character. we see how in moments of insecurity she does say things that are... i suppose a mix of self centered and not INTENTIONALLY mean but still hurtful to shauna. but she does usually backtrack and says sorry and her (many many MANY) moments of kindness always come off as genuine to me like she's starved for approval, she craves being loved. i think she keeps coming back to jeff just because even tho she doesn't want HIM she wants to be wanted and wants to be seen as someone who's wanted. but so much of her kindness sometimes feels. how do i put it. anxious? and so i imagine how living with her parents was for her. you're a kid and your parents keep finding ways to belittle you and to shame you but in ways that aren't very obvious especially to a child. you're a kid! you want their approval! so you learn HOW to be and HOW to act to maybe get it. if i am sweet and compliment them and i become the perfect daughter maybe they'll love me. and then you start applying that behavior to all your relationships and you're not even self aware about it. you're a teenager and you're trying so hard

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I do think that the current trend of pathologising of relatively normal aspects of the human condition is very harmful and creates a culture where ‘neurotypical’ is very strictly delimited and most people don’t measure up (which parallels how gender theory has turned ‘womanhood’ into this weird, hyperfeminine, isolating concept that most women don’t fit, but that’s a distinct and related conversation).

Like it’s normal to be overwhelmed/stressed out by/unable to process things when there’s noise and multiple things happening at once. It’s normal to be upset with changes in routine, to dislike the feeling of certain clothing on your body or the texture of certain food, and to react awkwardly in social situations. It’s normal to struggle with motivation when you’ve gotta do something boring or hard, to feel like you can’t do a task unless you break it into little pieces, and to find little productivity tricks that make your life easier. Most people experience this kind of thing.

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i wish i could see this picture for the first time again

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Every time I see some gamerbro edit of a female video game character to make her 'prettier', I always see something I have mentally dubbed Cockroach Wife Syndrome (in honor of the guy who accidentally conditioned himself to only be aroused by a fantasy of his cockroach wife Ogtha).

That is to say, there is a certain subset of gamerbro who interacts so rarely with real women, that his primary touchstone for how women look is fiction: often video games and anime. So when a video game woman looks too realistic--too close to having traits that one might find in real flesh and blood women--this is foreign to them. This is unattractive. They have been jacking it to hentai and blender animation porn for too many years, and have inadvertently conditioned themselves to only be sexually aroused by the exaggerated cartoonish traits of animated women.

So now every time I see one such edit, I can't help but think. My. What a coincidence you've made her look more like an anime waifu. Truly dedicated to your cockroach wife.

You can’t just breeze over something like “the guy who accidentally conditioned himself to only be aroused by a fantasy of his cockroach wife Ogtha” without at least linking a 20 minute video breakdown of this man’s descent into madness.

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Oh is Ogtha not common knowledge? Eight years ago this was posted on reddit:

Two years ago, we got this update on the life of this roachfucker:

TLDR it's a guy who became obsessed with human-sized roaches with human intelligence after reading Kafka in high school, an obsession which eventually came to monopolize his romantic interests (and has sporadically had catastrophic impacts on his life ever since).

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what the fuck happened to my post

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apple bottom jeans — this is a reference to the apple that was eaten from the forbidden tree of Eden

boots with the fur — this references the way Adam and Eve had to clothe their nakedness once they had eaten from the Tree

the whole club was lookin’ at her — traditionally it is Eve’s fault for succumbing to the temptation, and most scholars blame her and future women for original sin

she hit the floor — this is a reference to the snake, who was cursed to crawl in the dust

next thing you know — the Lord immediately responded to kick them out of the Garden of Eden

shawty got low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low — this represents the way humanity fell from grace and gave in to temptation, and was repelled from the garden

favorite thing ab chatgpt is that if it doesn’t know something it’ll just start fucking lying. like blatantly fucking lying.

my dad teaches english classes and he just got a final paper with this sentence: “In terms of style, both poets are known for their use of imagery, but O'Hara's tends to be more straightforward and concrete, while Stevens' is often more abstract and metaphorical — for example, in O'Hara's poem "The French / Window," he writes: "A cat walks along the garden wall / and the tree waves its branches / The French / windows are blah" (lines 1-4).”

the thing about “The French / Window” is that it is not a poem that exists. at all. like, it was literally just written by chatgpt then inexplicably named as a famous frank o’hara poem. and it’s so. fucking. funny. sooo basically heads up for finals season — those of you who use chatgpt, be warned, because you will quite literally be citing nonexistent texts and your professors will show it to their daughters and together they will laugh at you endlessly and you will deserve it