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Hope was a dangerous, disquieting thing

@barelyevenwriting / barelyevenwriting.tumblr.com

Lalee | Chile | She/Her | Still hopelessly and madly in love with All For The Game | Occasional Writer | Taylor Swift owns me, like legally | Background and sidebar art belongs to my wonderful G
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It feels impossible sometimes to talk about your experiences as an asexual person without getting lumped in with purity culture because it’s somehow simultaneously true that society hates sex and puts sex everywhere so both people who want to express their sexuality and people who don’t want to participate in it end up having knee-jerk reactions to each other because we’ve all built up defense mechanisms ready to trigger at a moments notice so you try to talk about how sex and romance is everywhere and inescapable and you don’t wanna be involved with it and then people blame you for the kink at pride discourse when you weren’t even thinking about that

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fics that are like 500 to 1200 words or so often have a particular kind of energy to me - like the author sat bolt upright in bed, struck by the most brilliant inspiration of their entire lives, and then typed as fast as their fingers would allow them to in order to capture it all before it left.

oneshots that are just a straight, clear shot from the brain to the page with no real filter in between? that's good stuff right there.

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utopians

stepped on a plum (overripe plum) (barefoot) it was on the driveway got out of the car and accidentally (didn't know it was there) stepped on the plum (warm) (on the ground) (it had fallen from the tree) barefoot (no shoes) wearing long pants (too long) (need to hem them) plum viscera got on them (the pants) unexpected plum on the driveway (hot plum) (97 degrees out) already super hungover (throwing up all morning) (should not have been driving at all) and I stepped out of the car (black car) (97 degrees out) and onto the plum (unexpected) (didn't know the plum was there) and it burst (plum nightmare on my only good pair of sweatpants) still we find ways to keep ourselves going from day to day

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I don't know what paddington is doing on that list, but it made me think of the time someone drew a picture of the queen with paddington after she died, and we had scores of people losing their minds at the idea that paddington bear wasn't the same kind of communist as them

I love the sorrow in which you wrote this

The tragedy of growing up british & left wing is realising all your beloved childhood animals in waistcoats were monarchists to the core

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prince-atom

I feel like in many ways "How'd he manage to grow up a middle-aged middle-class British man in Peru, anyways?" is the wrong question but it's still the one I am hung up on, years later.

Hold on let’s do this properly:

Paddington - regrettably a monarchist but in that specific immigrant way. The only actual immigrant on the list. May possibly just be a monarchist as part of the processing stage and is also canonically a child.

Winnie the Pooh - is canonically a stuffed animal, I genuinely don’t think he has this level of thought/agency and is not written as such. The real living breathing animals (owl, rabbit) are not just monarchists, but actively and cruelly bourgeois.

The Velveteen Rabbit - doesn’t wear a waistcoat but not a monarchist either.

Angelina Ballerina - a monarchist and a bit of a little bitch tbqh

The Brambly Hedge mice - really unclear. But like worryingly unclear. Clearly some kind of caste system in operation (lords and ladies) but not capitalist or explicitly feudalist either, it seems a thin overlay over their real political intentions: incredibly intense cheesemaking forming the backbone of a post-scarcity economy.

Beatrix Potter / Peter Rabbit - monarchists.

Richard Scarry - actually I can’t make a call on this one

Animals of Farthing Wood - I … don’t know.

Wind in the Willows - Toad’s a fucking Tory, but I feel like the Water Rat is kind of a comrade

Watership Down - unfortunately many of these rabbits are fashy, even the ones you like. Ursula le Guin said it, not me. They wouldn’t walk away from omelas. However, they touch a lot of grass - enough grass to not be interested in the house of Windsor - which is a point in their favour.

Redwall - monarchists, though not for the British monarchy. and also, somehow, Mouse Anglican verging on Mouse Catholic. Worrying, fascinating.

Oakapple Wood - monarchists

Hobbit - not a woodland creature but wears a waistcoat and is sympathetic to Thorin, Aragorn. Provisionally extremely monarchist and the very earliest interpretations of hobbits appeared to think they are somehow bipedal rabbits, which pissed Tolkien off.

Rupert Bear - British bear in clothes attributed partially for the decline in the usage of the name Rupert - but I don’t know a thing about him

The Highway Rat - all Julia Donaldson creatures lick the boot that crushes them, even the highway rat. Possibly not the Gruffalo. The Gruffalo however is the most naked that anyone has ever been, thus not an animal that would wear clothes.

The Narnia creatures - don’t all wear clothes, but THE definitive monarchists

Fantastic Mr Fox - not a monarchist. and in the wes Anderson film is not even British although the farmers and setting are (brilliant artistic choices, especially including an excellent but fucking random possum that calls the entire ecosystem into question: ultimately these are North American animals subverting and undermining the British landowners in a strange political statement whose intentions and direction are unclear.) Not monarchists, but what?

I also asked my own small British child to name more notable creatures in waistcoats, and after suggesting the obvious (brambly hedge, Angelina) they said, devastatingly, “viruses,” and when I delicately questioned what they meant by this, pointed out that viruses have a protein coat. Thus:

Viruses - possibly monarchists, wear coats, and present in children’s literature as exemplified by the Usborne “See Inside Germs.” Ultimately more data is needed.

Thoughts on Toad and Frog?

They’re American

This post is bigger than me now but:

  • The animals of farthing wood/watership down aren't animals in waistcoats, they're just animals. they know nothing of the laws of man
  • Bagpuss/winnie the pooh/piglet etc. aren't animals at all, they're stuffed toys brought to life by the magic of a child's love and thusly transcend politics
  • Although they do wear waistcoats, the clangers are aliens and so aren't british, or arguably animals. I haven't given a lot of thought to the political structure on their planet and to be honest I don't plan to
  • Under certain circumstances, I guess I could see ratty joining a union and maybe even dragging mole along. I'll give you that one
  • Toad of toad hall is a tory donor

I feel like this is us OP

Rupert Bear is 100% a monarchist

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luimnigh

The Wombles are probably some form of socialist, though. They're an international group that lives in self-sufficient communes and were all in on recycling in the 1960s.

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If you're reading this...

go write three sentences on your current writing project.

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ezzydean

# my favourite part about this post # is that nowhere does it say to reblog this # but we’re all reblogging it # because if we have to suffer # so do other writers

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