meldanya44

[meldanya44]

#i know a lot of opera singers #all of them have cats like this

[meldanya44]

in my mind if dragons were real then western and eastern dragons would be only distantly related species filling the same ecological niche across different continents. but due to visual similarities got called the same thing in English. and it would be one of those things that you hear on trivia game shows and go "oh that's neat" about and then move on with your day, like how tanuki get lumped in with racoons even tho racoons are musteloids and tanuki are canids. do you see my vision.

[meldanya44]

#the reason luggage like this disappeared #is because the servant class evaporated #this trunk was only feasible if you had oodles of cheap local labour

[meldanya44]

when i was a tiny baby queer (aka a 24-year-old), i went to my first pride festival probably three months after i kicked ex-gay therapy to the curb and came out to my parents. being the people they are, my parents came with me. they weren’t really sure about this whole gay thing, but they loved me and wanted me to be safe and happy and wanted to be involved in what was important to me, so they came along. (i also think my mother still might have thought i might get drugged or murdered or beaten by a protester of which there were plenty.)

anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.

i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? what’d you get? so i showed her, and i was like, “I’m not sure why it’s a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.”

and my mom, who was some form of minister’s wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks i’m joking.

“What?” i say.

“…it’s a cock and a pussy, Jules,” she says flatly, and that is the story of how i died at the age of 24 while attending my first pride festival.

[meldanya44]

so i was fully prepared to rip into Tumblr for trying to pull its "queerest place on the internet" rainbow capitalism bullshit again this year... but it's actually feeling kind of disconcerting that it doesn't seem like they've actually done anything for Pride, as far as i can tell...

[meldanya44]

Enjoy a drink on one of my special coasters. Yea I custom made them (the coasters) to be so light the drinks condensation makes em stick to the bottom of your glass, but still heavy enough that when it (the coaster) finally clatters to the ground it's loud as fuck and shatters your nerves and makes you spill your drink everywhere. Why am I doing this? Well, it's a sex thing for me

[meldanya44]

let yourself be a cliche if it makes you happy. go to coffee shops and order something with too many syllables. cry yourself to sleep sometimes. kiss in the rain. draw on your arms. write bad poetry. write better poetry. fill notebooks with your crushes and hopes and yearnings. feel everything for the first time.

[meldanya44]

Happy Pride!

[meldanya44]

this is so sweet 🥺🥺🥺

[meldanya44]

sometimes i need to remind myself that i'm writing fanfiction for free and i'm allowed to have a shitty sentence or two

[meldanya44]

Happy Pride!

[meldanya44]

The Danish training ship “Georg Stage” (1934) dresses in rainbow colour, 2021 

[meldanya44]

Meanwhile, in Scotland...

[meldanya44]

wishing my good friend Jonathan Harker the best of luck on his journey 🙏

[meldanya44]

When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a huge lilac tree out front. It was mostly rotten, and it needed to be taken down before it fell. It took a while, but eventually, it was gone.

Mostly. A couple years later, little lilac babies popped out of the ground in its place. My mom was determined to get rid of them, because she'd planted a beautiful flower garden there, and the lilac trees would overshadow and kill the whole garden. I insisted on saving at least a few saplings. She said fine, but I had to dig them out and put them in pots myself.

So, I did. I spent days digging little lilac bushes out of the ground and putting them into pots. Some couldn't be saved, but some could. When all was said and done, I had five brand-new lilac saplings. Seven or eight years old, and it was my absolute pride and joy.

Three died due to sun scorching, severe drought that no amount of watering could save, and perhaps just being moved from their place in the ground. But two survived, and I was awfully proud of them! I'd go out and talk to them every single day. I watered them by hand and made sure they were fertilized properly. I learned all about their favored environments, and I was determined to make sure they lived.

One of my mom's friends saw what I was doing with the lilacs. She asked if she could have one to put in her backyard, and I agreed on the condition that she take very, very good care of it.

It's now fucking enormous. I'm talking ten feet tall and bursting with beautiful purple flowers every spring. My mom still gets updates each year as they start to bloom, which she forwards to me. And all I can think is, "That's my friend! Thriving some twenty years on, there it is."

The other tree nearly died, too. It lived in a pot for far, far too long. I wanted to plant it somewhere in my parents' yard, but my mom was reluctant. Eventually, we agreed to put it in the far back garden. It grew okay for many years, despite the shade, but in all these years, it's never bloomed.

Last year, the massive tree casting massive shadows over the lilac and the garden cracked in half and fell. It tumbled into the garden, crushing part of the nearby shed and destroying a few plants beneath it.

It missed my lilac by inches.

The clean-up is long done. The rest of the tree has been cut down, and my lilac has full sunlight for the first time in fifteen years. It won't bloom this year, I know. But it's got new shoots up. It's taller than ever. I spent half an hour a few weeks ago praising it for surviving all this time, dreaming about its future and telling it how I believe it'll become the tall beauty it's always been meant to be.

I think next year, I'll see flowers.

[meldanya44]

To lovely humans who were excluded from invitations, left behind when they tied their shoes, forced to walk in the grass when the sidewalk was full, spoken over when you tried to contribute, whispered about or laughed at, given side-eye when you tried to fit in…. you are so worthy of love.

[meldanya44]

you ever have a good time laughing with your friends and think this is it. this is actually the point of it all