Don't Change On My Account

things that are enjoyable:

things that are not enjoyable:

Thank you for engaging in the mortifying ordeal of being known so that I may partake in the euphoric experience of knowing you.

— John Green, The Sycamore Tree

he’s right and he should say it

A comic about the spectrum of responses to stress - we talk alot about the more extreme ends of this and trauma, but the more subtle and every day responses can be harder to spot. if we can understand our own and other’s responses better, problems Are easier to confront and blaming is less likely to happen :) hope it’s helpful!!

Make more male bi characters you cowards

yeah yeah yeah mortifying ordeal of being known and all that but sometimes a friend mentions something about you that you didn’t think was noticeable and it feels like your heart is being cradled in their hands

what I really like about all these vintage couple’s portraits is that there is a very certain romatic decorum kept up – certain themes and poses – which, while of course being the mainstream preferred view of couples repeated throughout many studios, are just… so nice to look at. 

this staged affection, a mix of theatricality and intimacy, the couple holding still for a couple of moments and now immortalised in a very set sequence of embraces and kisses. there is a charm to it even when I can’t tell whether this was a genuine couple portait or just actors hired by the photographer.

the kiss on the bare shoulder (eyes perfectly averted), the cheek caress, the piano and the violin, the interrupted embrace, the woman tilted back as in a half-stopped dance…

I simply must torment you a bit with these, let us see some of my personal favourites! (part one due to the image limit)

let us start with the kiss on the cheek (eyes averted! oh the pose! these were taken between 1910-1940)

or the nearly opposite energy (how daring!) of the kiss or caress with direct eye contact (1910-1930)

and then the innocent – yet so flirty – classic of the park encounter! (1890-1920)

and then the famed kiss on the bare shoulder – what an idea, what a vibe, such intimacy! (1910-1930)

and oh, I am not done, look at this – the adoration of the woman! look at this expression, this pose, this decorum! (1910-1940)

and then some of my favourites from the more playful or direct category, enjoy (1910-1930):

and, at last (thank you for still being here and witnessing my recent fascination with vintage polish photography) my three absolute favourites outside of any particular categories (1910-1930)

just look at her. just look.

STUDIO GHIBLI + FOOD

[ part 1 ] [ part 2 ] [ part 3 ] [ part 4 ]

— Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

WAKE UP LADS NEW MCELROY JUST DROPPED

Ana de Armas for Flaunt Magazine

As I get older I’m starting to let go of the guilty urge to build permanent habits. Like, a while ago I decided I would start jumping rope every day. I did it for like three weeks and felt good about it. Then I got bored, because of course I did, because I’m a human person. So now I do a bit of kickboxing because that’s what I like now. The other week I cut all sugar from my diet, just for a week, to challenge myself. Now I’m back to eating sweets but I don’t crave them as much.

Growth is about stretching, trying new things, and setting small, realistic goals for yourself, not picking a “good habit” you’ve decided you will be doing always and forever from now on. That’s not discipline. That’s pointless self-torture and unhealthy resistance to change.

What’s good for you today will not necessarily be what’s good for you tomorrow.

there are two scenes from fantasy novels i read growing up that for whatever reason have stayed with me—

one of them is from diane duane’s so you want to be a wizard, in which there exists a compendium that describes & in some deep sense defines the nature of everything in existence; the bit that Matters to me is specifically a scene near the end of the novel, in which our heroes are reading from this compendium in order to re-anchor a destabilized universe, and make an alteration to the final glyph of the antagonist’s name, to allow for the possibility of change… i don’t know why that image made such a strong impression on me, but it really did! i think because i want to believe in language mattering that deeply, because it does matter that deeply to me; and also because i want so desperately to believe in the possibility that eventually i might manage to climb out of my own dark stasis, and bloom into a better version of myself, in some sunlit space somehow metaphysically opened up for me…

and the other is from melanie rawn’s exiles series, specifically from the second book the mageborn traitor, in which the new head of a beleaguered faction of mages has restarted a school for training young apprentices in that tradition, even though much of the knowledge that once was handed down has been lost; and the initiation ritual that she’s settled on is, well, bricklaying: each of the new students is set to building a section of wall, in the hot sun, by hand, and the idea is that at some point it stops being such a sludge and they Experience Flow and it becomes a kind of meditation, i guess? (it makes a bit more sense in context, because it ties back to formative experiences of the founder’s own.) at any rate, when her niblings arrive at this school they’re set to this task in their turn, and the nephew builds his wall-section and has the transformative experience he’s supposed to, but the stubborn niece slogs away the whole time in sweaty resentful misery and never has it click over into any sort of smooth rhythm; and any time i have to write something i find myself thinking of that scene, as i grimly assemble my bricks…

Nope, you got mine right. :)

shout out to all the people who identify with gifted kid burnout syndrome who are probably just neurodivergent but werent diagnosed as a child, who used to devour books like it was nothing and never really understood why the protagonist would leave their cool fantasy world behind to go back home at the end of the story, and who are now extremely disappointed in reality and use escapism as their primary coping mechanism. how’s that bisexuality and deep-rooted anger at the school system going for you?

op you couldve jus come to my house n punched me in the face