Anyone else getting really fucking sick of this support:condemn dichotomy where folks online act like the only two possible responses to anything ever are to wholeheartedly support it or wholeheartedly condemn it?

"Oh you said that you dont think that random stranger should be sent full on death threats and doxxed for their iffy artwork? Why do you support racism" how about we all go outside and interact with real people and see how they react when you say things like that!

"I dont think you should full on ruin this persons life and all their chances of existing online forever over something that could very well be a shitty mistake that can be corrected" seems to be a real hot take among the same crowd who claims to support prison abolition

goodnight 💤

they’re back in business

(>first business is being a tired dad)

(>second business is eating everything you shouldn’t eat)

Video of a kitten at a vet’s office protesting loudly as it’s scooped from the floor. Another kitten turns around the corner and walks up to the camera, also protesting loudly for its friend. From here.

Hi new Tumblr users

Please know this sites hashtagging system is categorical and NOT clout based

Aka if I look up the “Wendell and Wild” tag, I should find clips, media, art and posts related to Wendell and wild ONLY. Same with any other random tag searched

If I spy a selfie, a random neighborhood, or any other kind of “insta” post trying to take likes for a popular hashtag, I’m reporting you for spam. Most other long term users will too and your acct will be fast tracked as a spam blogger and blocked.

You will not ruin the last non corporate site for us, especially by trying to treat this site like influencers matter. If you get popular, it’s bc you’re a clown w a skill not bc your hot or rich or skinny, got it?

#holy shit at people in the notes this isn't 'tyrannical' it's basic courtesy AND against the tos #the spam report button is easily accessible for this exact reason #cross tagging is absolutely reportable spam according to tos so just don't do it #it also doesn't get you any more notes it just pisses people off

don’t let the people who have hurt you ruin the things you enjoy. you used to watch that show with your ex? if you love it, keep watching it. your former friend introduced you to your favorite band? don’t stop listening to their music. it might hurt at first, but eventually it’ll stop feeling like it’s their thing and start feeling like your thing again.

not to be like “oh my psychology teacher said blah blah” but in my psychology class, we are learning about classical conditioning and pavlov’s dogs. and you can, of course, become conditioned to associate a stimulus (your favorite band/show) with another stimulus (your former friend/ex). but the thing is, when you keep interacting with the former stimulus without the latter, then a process called “extinction” happens, where you stop associating the stimuli when it keeps occurring without the other. so, this process of reclamation actually has a scientific basis!

SEIZE THE MEANS OF DOPAMINE PRODUCTION!

I laughed so hard I actually made a poster and put it on my wall

I really don’t feel like we as a society are talking enough about this

TURN THE FUCKING AUDIO ON

tiny fawn, determinedly approaching the camera on wobbly legs on an empty road: mee! mee! mee! mee!

deep human voice: I'm not mama, mama's over there!

fawn, plaintively, continuing to approach: mee!

deep human voice: there, little guy! you're teeny-tiny!

fawn: (continues to approach)

deep human voice: here, let me-- we'll put you next to my coffee cup, so we can see how little you are.

fawn: (wobbles forward, lies down next to a travel coffee tumbler set down on the road. the tumbler has pictures of cute woodland creatures on it)

deep human voice: *chuckling in wonderment* ohhh, you are teeny-teeny-tiny!

I don’t know all the reasons why I like dark things, and I don’t think I need to know them all, but… I was just looking at the blog of that person who said I “dehumanize and fetishize” gay men, and I saw that he was quite young (15) and his blog was all full of pastel colors and references to his mental illness and something dawned on me that I hadn’t thought about in a Tumblr context at all.

Part of my PTSD is about experiences I had in hospitals, and because of that one of my triggers is… not pastels, all by themselves, but like… have you ever stayed in a hospital as a kid? And everything is covered in soothing soft colors and all the nurses wear scrubs with like… cute animal drawings on them and everyone talks in a sing-song voice and reassures you things won’t hurt when they OBVIOUSLY will and you’d rather they tell the truth, accept that you have good reasons to be scared, and get it the hell overwith?

Yeah, I think I just figured out why those kids’ blogs give me a weird tingly feeling of creeping dread.

And I think I figured out, also, where my intense leeriness of “safe spaces” and trigger warnings comes from too–even though as a person with PTSD I’m supposed to want them.

It’s because in my experience, people who were trying to make me feel safe were LYING. They were lying because it was in their interest–in mine, too, but in theirs–for me to feel calm and soothed. For me not to feel despair, or anger, or blind screaming rage.

…Is it any wonder I like the stories where the people with the knives and the cruel smiles and the mind games are blatant about it? Or that I might want a few knives of my own, even though I have no desire to hurt anyone who isn’t going to get off on it?

I don’t want those kids to not need safety.

I want them to stop pretending safety looks the same for everyone.

Yes, this.

When people tell me “You’re safe,” I don’t think of Helpful Adult saving me from the monsters under the bed. I think of my teachers, saying the people who hurt me would never do such a thing, and I should stop lying because I was perfectly safe. I think of the people who used to hug me until my lungs wouldn’t fill and my ribs creaked, and got away without a whisper of a reprimand. Because they were pretty and soft, and I was cold and harsh.

That’s not safe, to me. That’s the most dangerous place in the world, because the people who live there will do anything- anything at all- if it means they don’t have to acknowledge how nasty their walled garden has really gotten. Because if I defend myself, they can’t pretend anymore. And they sure as hell won’t defend me.

THIS.

I have experienced a lot of passive-aggressive emotional abuse in my life and let me tell you – my abusers had a vested interest in keeping me calm. 

Upset means resistance. Upset means that they have to face the damage they’ve caused. Upset means that you may finally realize that you should leave. Upset means that you might just get up and leave. So they soothe you. They make you doubt the validity of your feelings. They make you feel guilty for getting upset. They make you think that the issue was your fault in the first place. They make you feel like getting upset is pointless. They make you feel like you have wronged them and yourself by being unhappy. 

You do not have to let yourself be soothed. You do not have to let them take the fight out of you. If you do not feel safe; you do not have to feel guilty for getting yourself out. You do not have to feel guilty for being upset when someone has wronged you. You do not have to feel guilty for seeking your own brand of safety.

This is the most poignant description of what it actually feels like to be helpless in an institution that I’ve ever read.

It’s a special kind of violence to be hurt and to be told that it’s kindness. It’s intensely intimate and perverted. Succumbing to it is… spiritually destructive in a way that I have a hard time putting to words. Just… in my safe space I’m always fighting because as long as I continue to struggle that very special form of violence can’t take hold of me and I’ll be okay.

Like… when I get triggered about some of these experiences I’ll even have fantasies about dying while resisting. I mean… I don’t want to go into details because super triggering but… just think about that for a moment.

“It’s a special kind of violence to be hurt and to be told that it’s kindness. It’s intensely intimate and perverted.”

My experiences are not exactly the same as yours, but this, yes.

This is why I have such intense reactions to unkind SJ, whether it’s “sit down, shut up, and listen” (gee, what might that resemble?) or “representation means heroes with no serious flaws.”

Because that particular “shh, shh, shh, if we pretend utopia is already here, it soon will be” lie has hurt me EVERY TIME I’ve heard it.

I’m learning now that the roots of a lot of my trauma was this exact “your life is perfect, you’re not allowed to feel anything other than happiness, you’re ungrateful,” yelling more if I cried, any inkling of talking back or standing up for myself was met with twice the punishment, etc

So while it’s understandable that those in a dark place seek softness and gentle color, and there’s nothing wrong with that, those of us forced into it seek the grime as a form of truth and expression that wasn’t allowed for us, or a fictional playground of violence and anger where we can actually scream our frustrations onto a canvas.

And telling people that they should ditch such exploration for holy goodness is just another form of telling us our anger shouldn’t exist

Boom.

Someone reblogged this today and I want it on my blog again.

Interesting perspective. Maybe this is why I was so deep into dystopia as a teen.

I was surrounded by the “clean, sterile” environment of my grandparents’ nursing home (it definitely didn’t smell clean though) and nurses infantilizing my grandparents, my parents, and me. One nurse in particular likely is the reason my late grandfather ultimately passed away.

I’ve needed a break from some of the darker fiction, but I definitely see where if you’re in it, you might need this to cope. And tbh I still need a balance of sunshine and rain in stories.

Thank you all for sharing your perspective.

You’re welcome! And I like what you have to say about a balance of sunshine and rain. I think sometimes people forget that a story can have both, and that good ones often do. You can have a believable dystopia but can still have characters be happy or hopeful sometimes, and you can have endlessly depressed characters who see no way out in a world any of us would kill to be part of, where there are no isms or violence. It’s as much about how you write your characters responding to their environment as it is about what the environment is.

A lot of people talk like there’s hopepunk and then there’s dystopia, when… hopepunk can be the plucky YA heroine leaving the dystopia and building the solar powered cottage and never giving up her dream of doing this.

Mix and match is okay. Mix and match is FUN.

(I show my writing to my therapist sometimes, and she keeps marveling that the cyborgs in authoritarian dystopia crack wise and are funny. I’m thrilled the humor works but at the same time it saddens me she thinks I must be especially talented to pull it off. Everyone can laugh. Everyone tries.)

There’s a … type … of harm that comes deliberately wrapped up in everything commonly associated with safety, help, calmness. It’s camouflage predation with a side of endurance predation—the former to divest you of the ability to recognize it and, should you recognize it, the ability to credibly ask for help escaping from it, and the latter to wear you down by avoiding any overt acts that you could use to justify evasive violence (and they’ll define any resistance as “unreasonable” evasive violence) until you’re too exhausted to continue protecting yourself.

It’s like being suffocated alive by a mimic, and everyone in your party telling you you’re imagining things and/or that you should like and be grateful for what they’re doing to you.

Compared to that, a blatant darkness/evil/violence can be a comforting relief, because you don’t have to doubt your own perceptions.

It’s kind of a shame that “Catholics worship the saints and Mary on the same level as god” is the prevalent thought among non-Catholics because “Catholics treat the saints and Mary as a divine call center” is both more true in my experience and INFINITELY funnier

“Hello, thank you for praying for intercession.  My name is Saint Anthony of Padua, for quality and training this prayer will be recorded.  How can I help you today?

Oh, you’re losing your mind?  Ok so unfortunately this line is for lost items and not lost minds, so I will go ahead and connect you to... mhm this sort of thing happens all the time so it’s totally alright... mhm... so what I’m going to do is connect you to St. Dymphna at our mental illnesses department and she should be able to assist you with any questions you have about your problem, if you will hold just a moment please...”

[image description: a screenshot of tumblr tags that read "#the hold music is a smooth jazz cover if I Am the Bread of Life". /end description]

I actually enjoy celebs being here. You only thrive if you don't try.

Madonna is on here. Her posts get like, 60 notes. Is she trying to make it anything more than a feed/extension of her Insta, though? Nah. She's just here. You want to see a Madonna thing? You can find it.

Neil shares thoughts and answers questions when the whim takes him, billions-deep ask box.

Ryan Reynolds will thrive if he's just...that guy reblogging gifsets of himself like "haha you guys are creative".

Not to be cringe on main but you just have to be...not a glossy product of yourself, to maintain some kind of comfortable nook and easy back-and-forth with the userbase. When it works for the people it works for, it's quite enjoyable for everyone involved.

Like we've all known for years Hozier is SOMEWHERE around here, just reblogging pictures of moss. You go, you moss-collecting cryptid man.

Stephen Colbert admitted in like, 2016 he has a Tumblr account that he runs anonymously and to this day I've yet to see it

Stephen Colbert has the right idea.

Sweatpants website

Eugene gets me

HAPPY LIMINAL SPACEMAS, COUCHES

dear lord...