you're grabbing lunch with a nice man and he gives you that strange grimace-smile that's popular right now; an almost sardonic "twist" of his mouth while he looks literally down on you. it looks like he practiced the move as he leans back, arms folded. he just finished reciting the details of NFTs to you and explaining Oppenheimer even though he only watched a youtube about it and hasn't actually seen it. you are at the bottom of your wine glass.
you ask the man across from you if he has siblings, desperately looking for a topic. literally anything else.
he says i don't like small talk. and then he smiles again, watching you.
a few years ago, you probably would have said you're above celebrity gossip, but honestly, you've been kind of enjoying the dumb shit of it these days. with the rest of the earth burning, there's something familiar and banal about dragging ariana grande through the mud. you think about jeanette mccurdy, who has often times gently warned the world she's not as nice as she appears. you liked i'm glad my mom died but it made you cry a lot.
he doesn't like small talk, figure out something to say.
you want to talk about responsibility, and how ariana grande is only like 6 days older than you are - which means she just turned 30 and still dresses and acts like a 13 year old, but like sexy. there's something in there about the whole thing - about insecurity, and never growing up, and being sexualized from a young age.
people have been saying that gay people are groomers. like, that's something that's come back into the public. you have even said yourself that it's just ... easier to date men sometimes. you would identify as whatever the opposite of "heteroflexible" is, but here you are again, across from a man. you like every woman, and 3 people on tv. and not this guy. but you're trying. your mother is worried about you. she thinks it's not okay you're single. and honestly this guy was better before you met, back when you were just texting.
wait, shit. are you doing the same thing as ariana grande? are you looking for male validation in order to appease some internalized promise of heteronormativity? do you conform to the idea that your happiness must result in heterosexuality? do you believe that you can resolve your internal loneliness by being accepted into the patriarchy? is there a reason dating men is easier? why are you so scared of fucking it up with women? why don't you reach out to more of them? you have a good sense of humor and a big ol' brain, you could have done a better job at online dating.
also. jesus christ. why can't you just get a drink with somebody without your internal feminism meter pinging. although - in your favor (and judgement aside) in the case of your ariana grande deposition: you have been in enough therapy you probably wouldn't date anyone who had just broken up with their wife of many years (and who has a young child). you'd be like - maybe take some personal time before you begin this journey. like, grande has been on broadway, you'd think she would have heard of the plot of hamlet.
he leans forward and taps two fingers to the table. "i'm not, like an andrew tate guy," he's saying, "but i do think partnership is about two people knowing their place. i like order."
you knew it was going to be hard. being non-straight in any particular way is like, always hard. these days you kind of like answering the question what's your sexuality? with a shrug and a smile - it's fine - is your most common response. like they asked you how your life is going and not to reveal your identity. you like not being straight. you like kissing girls. some days you know you're into men, and sometimes you're sitting across from a man, and you're thinking about the power of compulsory heterosexuality. are you into men, or are you just into the safety that comes from being seen with them? after all, everyone knows you're failing in life unless you have a husband. it almost feels like a gradebook - people see "straight married" as being "all A's", and anything else even vaguely noncompliant as being ... like you dropped out of the school system. you cannot just ignore years of that kind of conditioning, of course you like attention from men.
"so let's talk boundaries." he orders more wine for you, gesturing with one hand like he's rousing an orchestra. sir, this is a fucking chain restaurant. "I am not gonna date someone who still has male friends. also, i don't care about your little friends, i care about me. whatever stupid girls night things - those are lower priority. if i want you there, you're there."
he wasn't like this over text, right? you wouldn't have been even in the building if he was like this. you squint at him. in another version of yourself, you'd be running. you'd just get up and go. that's what happens on the internet - people get annoyed, and they just leave. you are locked in place, almost frozen. you need to go to the bathroom and text someone to call you so you have an excuse, like it's rude to just-leave. like he already kind of owns you. rudeness implies a power paradigm, though. see, even your social anxiety allows the patriarchy to get to you.
you take a sip of the new glass of wine. maybe this will be a funny story. maybe you can write about it on your blog. maybe you can meet ariana grande and ask her if she just maybe needs to take some time to sit and think about her happiness and how she measures her own success.
is this settling down? is this all that's left in your dating pool? just accepting that someone will eventually love you, and you have to stop being picky about who "makes" you a wife?
you look down to your hand, clutching the knife.
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assorted bodies doodles (transcript of that messy relationship square under the cut due to my handwriting/incoherency)
TAKE THESE W A GRAIN OF SALT i am like 90% joking:
hillinghead -> hasan, and vice versa: immediate mutual respect
hillinghead -> whiteman: he's incredibly smart, deceptively cunning but very kind. but he is also so annoying oh my god--
hillinghead -> maplewood: "please someone explain science fiction to me"
whiteman -> iris, and vice versa: two friends secretly think of the other as the sidekick
whiteman -> hillinghead: annoying him is quickly becoming a favorite pasttime
whiteman -> hasan: will not admit it but he wants parenting tips from her
hasan -> whiteman: has slipped a parenting book to him
hasan -> maplewood: deja vu about their future weirds her out a little, but she trusts her
iris -> hillinghead: fond of him from the time they spoke in the prison. enjoys fucking with him
iris -> hasan: SHE'S THE GOAT
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Last episode, Eugenia Shadow said that Kipperlilly is a lot like Riz if he'd walked a darker path which has me wondering if Oisin is meant to be Adaine without the boldness to get out from under the thumb of her parents. We know he's rich with ancestral dragon gold and we suspect said dragon ancestor is up to shenanigans between the KVX logo change to blue and the dragon fight in the promo. There's no way to know yet because we've only gotten glimpses of him this season, but I can easily imagine their paths diverging because while Adaine has always been stubborn and contrary and amenable to patricide under the right circumstances, Oisin toed the line and did whatever was expected of him.
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reading the intro to decolonizing trans/gender 101 this morning by b. binaohan and one thing that has been particularly insightful for me is their description of the closet as a place only white people get to inhabit - not only because it is premised on having access to a private sphere (whose origin lies in the private property relationship of colonialism & capitalism, a type of ownership only white people have historically had access to), but also that the body itself can be private, a site of individual expression that you both 1) have control over and 2) a desire to assert a liberated, enclosed, individual agency separate from the social fabric of your life (a privilege that, again, only white people have full access to).
I think this diagnosis is very helpful in revealing that a lot of white discourse about transgender identity is, if not outright biologically-, then bodily-essentialist - that gender is expressed and mediated through the individual, that the decision "to come out as trans" is a decision that an individual makes, that being transgender is a wholly private revelation disconnected from the history of gender as a social system of control, that being trans is really not a social relationship to gender, that if you don't "come out of the closet" you are not "doing gender." it reinforces cisgenderism as a natural default, something you don't do but rather simply are, in contrast to transgenderism, a type of gender expression you can only do, and only do alone by emerging from a private realm into a public one. this is in contrast to, as binoahan puts it, "being a non-white person in this world, is to immediately be rendered available for public consumption."
This is not to say that white trans people (or any trans person who engages in the practice of "coming out") are making up the social exclusion, harassment, and violence they face by publicly transitioning or announcing their transhood, but that this imagined white universal trajectory of transhood is one of individual self-actualization, a breaking away from the world to be your own individuated self - to be liberated from the world around you, to forsake an original set of (insufficient, backwards, hostile) communities for a liberated, individuated queer one. This is, again, the product of a white imaginary and a trajectory of identity only white trans people have access to. Again returning to binaohan, "because my experiences in either the trans or queer community have made it very clear that the 'community' is hostile to my existence. and so the request to sacrifice my current communities, the communities to which I properly belong, just to fulfill some (imaginary) obligation to a community that regularly lets me know how much i don't belong, seems ludicrous. but it is not just that: it creates a situation whereby not only is the white trans/gender narrative normalized but your value/goodness as a human being becomes dependent for how well you are able to locate yourself within that narrative."
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I like the idea of Martlet staying with Toriel and help her protect Frisk, Not gonna lie, it would be really funny if Ceroba, Starlo and his gang also stay in the ruins to help Toriel watch out for humans, while Dalv is just living in Snowdin :3
the rest of the gang have their own place in this au :))) we'll see them wayyyy later, but it wont hurt to show yall what theyve been up to since uty!
dalv's still chilling in snowdin, though he visits starlo and the gang every once in a while for bar night and performs there! his new children books have been getting popular at snowdin's librarby :))
starlo and the feisty five are still up to their shenanigans in the wild east, putting up shows and bringing in plenty of tourists. they help out the farm when they have the time. ceroba's also working at the farm nowadays. the mansion feels way too big for just one monster so she moved into the farmhouse
they have a mail system to keep in touch ever since martlet ended up in the ruins :D usually dalv and sans meet once a week and they exchange letters. martlet likes hearing about whatever's going on outside the ruins and the others are just glad to know she's doing alright ever since uhhh....... the incident
also shitty bonus pic lol
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Well, it's that time of the year again!! Looking back it's been full of ups and downs (art- and otherwise) and overall I'm a little frustrated with where I'm at, but I do like some of the pieces I've drawn this year. I'll try to just focus on that :)
Anyway, I'll be leaving tomorrow to once again spend the holidays/rest of the year with my partner, so I'm going to take this opportunity to thank all of you for coming along with me on my art journey! Your tags, comments and support mean the world to me, so thank you for encouraging me to keep doing this despite the horrors lmao I hope you guys have yourselves a gay old christmas if you celebrate, and just a gay old time if you don't, and that you make it safely into the new year ♥
This also means that I'm taking a short break in my commission work, but I'll get back to everyone who is still waiting as soon as I'm back home!
See you all in 2024 (seriously h o w is it 2024 already that cannot be real)
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I think one of my “favorite” things is when people misinterpret what it means to be aroace. Watching people so clearly not understand the complexity behind the spectrum of aromatic and asexuality and then proceed to say they “stand with” aroace as an ally is so hilarious to me. Especially when they use this to start bashing on a perfectly fine ship, especially because said ship gets in the way of theirs.
Aroace does not mean no attraction. The plastered poster face for it is people who don’t feel ANY types of attraction, but that does not mean everyone. Aromantic people can date and fall in love. Asexual people can fuck. Aroace people can do both.
Yes, aroace rep IS needed. But we still have it via Luffy—just because Luffy kisses someone (hypothetically) doesn’t mean we just yeeted the aroace label off of him. He is STILL aroace. You know who else is aroace? Bon Clay, for one. Zoro as well. Yet I don’t see people screaming that shipping Zoro with someone completely erases the aroace label, now do I?
Ugh, I’d totally make a whole ass essay about this, but it’s half till midnight. It’s just. Been on my mind for a few hours and I need to say a little shit
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