#006478

i.e. all the Homestuck kids just taking it for granted that their relationships with the trolls should be categorized according to the quadrants, with no mention of trolls adapting to human conventions of romance for the sake of their partner; fanon about the Lans being Super Ultra Monogamous and/or taking Marrying For Love very seriously being executed with the expectation that the love interest in question go along with that, and no mention of said love interest having their own, divergent needs that the Lan partner might need to take into account; probably something about Tolkien fanon re: elves and romance and what that means for human partners, but I haven’t seen that as much.

To be clear, I’m generally in favour of romanticization in a fandom context! I will confess though that in this case i’m unsure what the underlying fantasy is. There are plenty of romance tropes that I don’t like, but can understand the appeal of - paranormal romance tropes that would be stalkery in real life I get are about the fantasy of being wanted by some mysterious and powerful creature, and I doubt that many Twilight fans seriously think Edward Cullen’s behaviour would be acceptable in real life at this point. But here, I can’t quite figure out what the fantasy is - because a lot of these scenarios are told from the perspective of the character who has to adapt, so it doesn’t feel as if the reader is meant to see themself in the character who’s having their long held notions of romance fulfilled?

from thinking about it for a couple minutes, i can spot a couple things that appeal about this entire thing

1. sacrificing for someone is inherently kind of a romantic fantasy? especially because in real life sacrificing some aspect of who you are in order to conform will make you unhappy, but in fiction you (general you) get to make characters have different emotions entirely, and you get to act out the part of yourself that would like to sacrifice something important for someone you love and have it actually mean something/lead to more happiness instead of less.

2. you know how some trans people say they wish they were a cis person of their assigned sex? that exact fantasy in a different place. magical dick that makes you acceptable and normal and loved seems like something people would desire if they’ve been kept on the margins all their life and - regardless of how their politics play out - it’s compelling to imagine someone giving in and being better off in the narrative for it.

The candidate for political office stood in a plaza, naked, bracing himself against the punches and kicks. The crowd roared, pulsing around him like a beating heart. People for whom he had risked his life in war after war hurled blows and insults from all directions. The candidate breathed deeply. Trained as a warrior, he knew he had to stay calm to reach the next phase of his candidacy.

This ordeal, documented by a Spanish priest in the 1500s, was merely the beginning of the long process of joining the government of the Mesoamerican city of Tlaxcallan, built around 1250 C.E. in the hills surrounding the modern city of Tlaxcala, Mexico. After this trial ended, the candidate would enter the temple on the edge of the plaza and stay for up to 2 years, while priests drilled him in Tlaxcallan’s moral and legal code. He would be starved, beaten with spiked whips when he fell asleep, and required to cut himself in bloodletting rituals. But when he walked out of the temple, he would be more than a warrior: He would be a member of Tlaxcallan’s senate, one of the 100 or so men who made the city’s most important military and economic decisions.

“I’d like to see modern politicians do all that, just to prove they can govern,” says archaeologist Lane Fargher, standing in the shadow of one of Tlaxcallan’s recently restored elevated plazas. Fargher has led surveys and excavations here since 2007, studying the urban plan and material culture of a type of society many archaeologists once believed they’d never find in Mesoamerica: a republic. “Twenty or 25 years ago, no one would have accepted it was organized this way,” says Fargher, who works at the research institute Cinvestav in Mérida, Mexico.

Now, thanks in part to work led by Fargher’s mentor Richard Blanton, an anthropologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, Tlaxcallan is one of several premodern societies around the world that archaeologists believe were organized collectively, where rulers shared power and commoners had a say in the government that presided over their lives.

Interfaces typically offer us tools such as likes, shares, comments and retweets to give us the impression that these are sufficient to understanding how platforms work. But these are just a small part of the data used to analyze our activity and then shape our experience and influence our behavior. The mechanisms that actually dictate what appears on our feeds include a multitude of elements, including the algorithms that arrange what will connect with who, at what time and how, as well as the automated advertising market that monitors us and bids on space in our feeds in auctions that take milliseconds. Facebook spies, measures, and records many of users’ “silent” actions and decides which ones to make visible according to what will yield more profit.

It depends. Like anything else on the internet, it could just sit on the Archive forever.

But if you want something more than that, then you might want to look into a Fannish Next of Kin (FNOK). This is a person you choose to get control of your account if you’re ever incapacitated or if you die. 

How do you choose them? They can be a real life friend or family member. They can be someone you know in fandom. Whoever it is, it should be someone you trust because they’ll be given access to your account in the event of your death. You’ll need to be able to talk to them about how you feel about your fanworks and what you want to have happen to them. Do you want them to stand just as they are? Do you want them added to the orphan_account? Do you want your entire account deleted?

After you have chosen your FNOK, both you and your chosen person will need to send a message to the Abuse team - they’re the team who also manage next of kin requests. Both of you will need an AO3 account in order to do this, so if the person you choose isn’t involved in fandom they’ll need to get an account first.

You don’t have to be next of kin for each other. It’s fine if the relationship is just one way. But, you can only have one next of kin. If there are 2 or more, there is the possibility of disagreements about what you want done, and AO3 has no way to arbitrate those disagreements.

You can end the agreement if you want to. If you have a falling out with your friend, or if they leave fandom and you lose touch, or if you want to end this part of the relationship for any reason, either one of you can send another message to the Abuse team and provide both usernames of the people involved. They’ll send you both a message to let you know the FNOK relationship has ended. 

How does AO3 know you’re dead? Your FNOK will tell them by submitting another report to the Abuse team. The Abuse team will then send an email to the address they have on file. If you don’t reply back within 10 days, they’ll pass control of your account over to your FNOK. It is important that you keep your AO3 account email up to date so you don’t miss this message. Remember that AO3 doesn’t know your real life identity, so if the person you trust says you’ve passed and you don’t tell AO3 that you haven’t, then they’ll believe them.

If your account is transferred but you’re still alive, submit a form to the Abuse team and let them know! They’ll do their best to get your account back to you.

In effect, Gandhi ran a big-business-friendly autocracy. Perhaps that is why her Emergency was backed by most industrialists, including JRD Tata who held that parliamentary democracy was not suitable for India. Heads of leading universities even colluded with the state to punish dissenting students. Gandhi also had the support of certain intellectuals and a large section of the middle class, which saw her as restoring law and order and social discipline. Their democratic spirit and commitment to the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity were evidently much weaker than their deep-rooted sense of hierarchy and respect for authority. (It no doubt helped that Gandhi also lowered duties on middle-class consumer goods.) Crucially, the state bureaucracy played a pivotal role as the vanguard of her repressive regime. A cartoonist called it “the dictatorship of the Secretariat.”

Tumblr has made it extremely easy to use 2FA and has beefed up security in a lot of ways over the years.

And none of that matters if users haven't changed their passwords since 2013 or reuse passwords across accounts or have handed account access to third party apps with ToSs that people never read.

Change your password, use a password manager (my rec: bitwarden - free, open source, and simple to use), don't reuse passwords across accounts, and enable 2FA on every site that gives you the option to do so.

And what shows up when  I look up my email address:

The way HIBP works is that they collect lists of breached data, sort it into a database, and search it when someone sends a request to check their credentials. They show their work and you can download some of the lists yourself; if you’d like to learn more about why it’s not possible for tumblr to protect against these kinds of attacks without some action on the part of the user I’d recommend reading Have I Been Pwned’s FAQ: https://haveibeenpwned.com/FAQs

or: a few of my favourite poems about unreciprocated feelings, short-lived flames, messy partings, & loveless lovers. for those who carry the torch, those who hope against hope, those who know it was never meant to be, those who still mourn the one who got away, those who want to learn how to grieve, & heal, & then finally move on. in no particular order:

“lady of miracles”, nina cassian (since you walked out on me / i’m getting lovelier by the hour. / i glow like a corpse in the dark.)

“lessons in hunger”, anne sexton (blackness lunged in my heart, / and something that had been good, / a sort of kindly oxygen, / turned into a gas oven.)

“time does not bring relief; you all have lied”, edna st. vincent millay (and entering with relief some quiet place / where never fell his foot or shone his face / i say, “there is no memory of him here!” / and so stand stricken, so remembering him.)

“poem”, lucy ives (that person does not know where i am, does not think of me. / does not know i have exhausted every argument against him. / that person does not know i no longer love freedom.)

“the more loving one”, w. h. auden (were all stars to disappear or die, / i should learn to look at an empty sky / and feel its total dark sublime, / though this might take me a little time.)

“donal og”, isabella augusta, lady gregory (you have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me; / you have taken what is before me and what is behind me; / you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me; / and my fear is great that you have taken god from me!)

“mad girl’s love song”, sylvia plath (i fancied you’d return the way you said, / but i grow old and i forget your name.)

“letter to the past after long silence”, sarah murphy (love, it is a little lonely without you. / i sit on the porch swing and whistle, / but stillness still stings. love, i loved / your stories. above all other things.)

“one last poem for richard”, sandra cisneros (richard, it’s christmas eve again / and old ghosts come back home. / i’m sitting by the christmas tree / wondering where did we go wrong.)

“i know i have been happiest”, dorothy parker (i will not make you songs of hearts denied, / and you, being man, would have no tears of me, / and should i offer you fidelity, / you’d be, i think, a little terrified.)

“pad, pad”, stevie smith (what i cannot remember is how i felt when you were unkind / all I know is, if you were unkind now i should not mind.)

“i’m glad your sickness”, marina tsvetaeva (thank you for the nights i’ve spent in quiet. / thank you for the walks under the moon / you’ve spared me and those sunset meetings unshared.)

“yesterday he still looked in my eyes”, marina tsvetaeva (i know everything, don’t argue with me! / i can see now, I’m a lover no longer. / and now i know wherever love holds power / death approaches soon like a gardener.)

“you thought i was that type”, anna akhmatova (and i swear to you by the garden of the angels, / i swear by the miracle-working icon, / and by the fire and smoke of our nights: / i will never come back to you.)

“bruise ghazal”, sharon olds (sleep and dream—but not of his return. / since it cannot harm him, wound him, in your dream.)

“litany in which certain things are crossed out”, richard siken (hello darling, sorry about that. / sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we / lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell / and how i ruined everything by saying it out loud.)

“no, i wasn’t meant to love and be loved”, mirza asadullah khan ghalib (knowing you are faithless keeps me alive and hungry. / knowing you faithful would kill me with joy.)

“letter to ____”, mary oliver (just as well. time / to read books, rake the lawn / in peace, sweep the floor, scour / the faces of pans, / anything.)

“love after love”, derek walcott (give back your heart / to itself, to the stranger who has loved you / all your life, whom you ignored / for another, who knows you by heart.)

Aw, that’s very sweet of you to say. I haven’t read Oliver Sacks’ Hallucinations so I’m drawing on my own definition of dream-like and vision-like, but I’d say exploring surrealist and magic realism-adjacent poetry might be a good bet, in general. It’s all about substance morphing, isn’t it? Think absolutely Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations (trans. by John Ashbery or Louise Varese), Paul Éluard’s Capital of Pain (trans. by Mary Ann Caws, Patricia Terry and Nancy Kline) and Fertile Eyes (can’t find a translation on this one—the poem, yes, but not the book); and my favourite, Mallarmé, especially The Afternoon of a Faun (trans. here by A. S. Kline).

Personally, I’d recommend Alice Notley’s The Descent of Alette, Angela Carter’s The Unicorn, H. D.’s Sea Garden, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Traumgekrönt/Dream-Crowned (trans. by Lorne Mook). Oh, and there’s Alice Oswald’s Nobody: A Hymn to the Sea and A Sleepwalk on the Severn. 

Not necessarily about dreams or visions, though they do come up, but hallucinatory in their own ways, Ilya Kaminsky’s Dancing in Odessa, Odysseus Elytis’ The Sovereign Sun (trans. by Kimon Friar), and Maggie Nelson’s Jane: A Murder.

ben’s memory is a blessing. that’s extremely jewish. spiderman is inspired not just by the shame of his death, but by the moral teachings he’d given peter in life. and his name given to these babies is another part of it: babies named in spiderman’s honor are also very honestly and truly named in his honor, and continue to be blessings to the world. 

Fiction & Poetry:

A Life Apart, by Neel Mukherjee

A Thousand Dreams Within Me Softly Burn, by Sahil Sood

Babyji by Abha Dawesar

The Best at It, by Maulik Pancholy

Blue Boy, by Rakesh Satyal

The Boy and the Bindi, by Vivek Shraya

Bright Lines: A Novel, by Tanwi Nandini Islam

Cinnamon Gardens, by Shyam Selvadurai

The City of Devi, by Manil Suri

Cobalt Blue: A Novel, by Sachin Kundalkar

Funny Boy, by Shyam Selvadurai

High Noon and the Body, by Kyla Pasha

My Magical Palace, by Kunal Mukherjee

Marriage of a Thousand Lies, by SJ Sindhu

Mohanaswamy, by Vasudhendra

My Father’s Garden, by Hansda Sowvendra Shekar

Ode to Lata, by Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla

The Paths of Marriage, by Mala Kumar

The Pregnant King, by Devdutt Pattanaik

Quarantine, by Rahul Mehta

She of the Mountains, by Vivek Shraya

Stealing Nasreen, by Farzana Doctor

Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, by Shyam Selvadurai

The Tree Outside My Window is a Drama Queen, by Avinash Matta

Trying to Grow, by Firdaus Kanga

The Two Krishnas, by Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla

Valmiki’s Daughter, by Shani Mootoo

The World Unseen, by Shamim Sarif

Non-Fiction & Anthologies:

AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories from India, by Amartya Sen and various authors

Because I Have A Voice: Queer Politics in India, edited by Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan

Dirty River, by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love, and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India, by Parmesh Shahani

Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures, by Gayatri Gopinath

The Invisibles, by Zia Jaffrey

A Lotus of Another Color, by Rakesh Ratti

Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West by Ruth Vanita

Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India, by Maya Sharma

Made in India: Decolonializations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects, by Suparna Bhaskaran

Me Hijra, Me Laxmi, by Laxminarayan Tripathi

Moving Truth(s): Queer and Transgender Desi Writings on Family, by Various authors

Neither Man Nor Woman, Serena Nanda

Out! Stories from the New Queer India, by Minal Hajratwala

Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, by Ruth Vanita

Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics, by Naisargi Dave

Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India, by Giti Thadani

Same-Sex Love in India, edited by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwal

Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in South Asia, by Sanjay Srivastava

Sex Longing and Not Belonging: A Gay Muslim’s Quest for Love and Meaning, by Badruddin Khan

Shikhandi and Other Tales They Don’t Tell You, by Devdutt Pattanaik

With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India, by Gaytri Reddy

A Truth About Me: A Hijra Story, by A. Revathi

mikey way. okay, here we go.

so, in the summer of 05 is when most people think it started because fob and mcr played warped together, but, they had also played the year before and thats when i think it started. as many know, pete single handedly wrote the entirety of from under the cork tree, which was released may 3rd of 2005, which means he had been writing some of it the previous summer. most of the album is quite cheery, depicting the emotions of someone who is battling some darker force within themselves, but is also experiencing a happiness from someone else they dont think they deserve or should have (short version: an emo is in love). also, theres the parallel between dance dance and favorite record- dance dance depicts a literal and emotional dance, and then in favorite record you have “i cant remember just how to forget the way we danced”. so, based on research and educated opinion, i believe that the petekey fling started in 04.

then, the next summer both bands were again picked for warped, which only intnsified the relationship. after weeks of spending excessive time with each other and attending each others shows, the media took notice. in an interview that summer, when asked about it he responded “me and pete wentz arent dating. we are both heterosexual males… sort of… maybe… umm… next!”. on may 16, 2005 mikey was spotted at a fueled by ramen show watching fob at house of blues wearing a white jacket that allegedly belonged to pete. a few days later, pete posted a list on live journal of things that get him hot and bothered. on taht list were a.having a crush on a person i speak to nearly every day and b.white denim jackets….

on tuesday, june 28, 2005, pete posted the following on livejournal: “Amazing New Mexico sunset. im hanging on a bridge with my friend mikey from my chem. its all orange and pink above us. we went to another water park again. i love high fives again. totally back in love.” on july fourth he posted an entry that ended with “hot and miserable but totally back in love”. on july 15 he posted “Though I am over hearing your thoughts on haircuts and pants. I’m over us trying to be perfect tens for your little eyes. We don’t care what you think of us. Listen to a song and time your heartbeat. Let it be okay to fall asleep slow tonight. Think about a good friend. Think about god. Think about death. Think about someone elses hand clumsily on your belt in the dark. Think it will be okay. No more rants. No more poetry. Not tonight. True love for the believers”. on july 17 he posted “wrote you a goodbye note (you just wrote me off) on your arm when you passed out. bestfriends, exfriends- better off as lovers not the other way around. racing through the city in the back of yellow checkered cars. the takeoffs are the worst but the skin from your shoulder to your ear makes it all worth it. and im sorry the way my moods flicker on and off like old light on your porch, but i know you wouldn’t have it any other way. sneaking in your window instead of out. the way you hold a cigarette cause you don’t know what to do with your hands when we are sitting this close. the way the waists of pants feel better at the ankles. the way you always were my best excuse for calling in sick on everyone else. i miss you”. which later became the song bang the doldrums, which was origionally titled summer of like (pete mentioned this in a rolling stones interview), which is now what fans call the relationship between pete and mikey in 05.

during that summer, fans claimed that mikey and pete didnt want to be photographed together, which is kind of suspicious…. but there are a few circulating the internet, and quite a few of mikey wearing clandestine (petes clothing line). at this time it was also common for fob and mcr to trade band members, mikey would play bass for fob so pete could take his mic into the crowd. pete also frequently watched mikey play with the stupidest smile on his face….

there are also fan reports of them being seen together. “at my warped date i got there early in the morning and hung out by the fob bus because i wanted to get a pic with patrick and around 10 am the door opened and a very tired looking mikey stepped off with pete right behind him and they appeared to be holding hands until they saw the people around and they both refused to have their pictures taken together”. and “during Fall Out Boy’s set (they were one of the closing bands that night) they dedicated one of the songs to Mikey, who was watching from the side of the stage. Pete said, “This song is about revenge. Right, Mikey? Revenge!” Mikey smiled and nodded, and during “Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy” he mouthed along to all the words.”

pete also posted at one point “i wish you were my bass, not just my friend”. on august 19 he posted “Warped tour was fun. Since being home I remembered that showering and sleeping are fun too. My real feelings on the sunburst bass. I loved that thing. But then it started cheating on me with mikey way. I had to hit it. Its not my fault- spousal abuse is an ugly thing. I’m in therapy that includes playing lots of warcraft online. Writing messages on your arm for someone to see at a show is the new away message - stealing peoples real diary is the new livejournal”.

on september 4, pete posted “on the getaway car, the rush of blood to the head: it’s strange to find myself again back at the feelings of the blue cover after going through the red and the gold. its kind of always like that. i am sorry if i am not making any sense. but everybody likes to take chances and make bets. i always put my money on the longshots. and no matter where my head was in the world i always dreamed of waking up next to the biggest brown eyes i have ever seen/’meandyouunderneaththehoneymoon’. “go back to what it meant back then”: and you imagine yourself moving deep into the summer and disappearing, and for me it was always with you. and then things got crazy. you stopped calling me back. i stopped trying to call but not in my head. and then you got malicious but i’m guessing only because you learned from the best- take back your taste and all. i never thought it would be just me again. but that’s okay. we’re gonna hole up and wait it out. i feel like i can see for the first time, like i was born just in the last minute. wake me up. baby boy, you’re gonna be okay. hearts between our knees sticking to the summer sheets. are you catching my drift…. its gonna be alright. your love would be hell but its just not hot enough baby.” (Note… baby BOY)

after petes nudes were leaked, hey chris wrote him a public letter which contained the following: “you know the friends i have and you know how we feel about loyalty. you know who im talking about and you know they’re not happy either.” and shortly after chris posted pic of him and mikey saying he’d “found new love”

the summer of 06, peter once again had some interesting things to say. on july 7 he posted “im so sorry, but not really. (‘straighten up and die right’) i said i want to be rebuilt like a frank lloyd wright only without all of the water damage. or painted over like a monet only less blurry. she said “no, youre something different”. like what? “something better”. it gave me the rush of warm blood like you see in cartoon dogs right before their eyes pop out and all of the bells go off. my head is spinning like a car off of an icy guardrail. show me what you are made of. your eyes were always rolling but youd tilt your head so they were somehow always still stuck on me (have your cake and eat it too). i feel safe but not like a bet more like the way mothers feel when the lock the car doors in bad neighborhoods. i am blue waves across the red rootlike veins in the bodies drawn flat in medical books. i wonder at the way that someone can write thousands and thousands of pages about my insides. when i met you i gave you a name- not your own- but in my head so i wouldnt ever mix you up with anyone so ordinary- i cant tell you- but to me it meant salvation. you only wanted reaction. but i cant be bothered. not anymore. ill see you in the spring. first pew on the left. wear your white veil and dont forget the words. warped tour. sun drenched days. bestfriends. new roads. so long salvation. dont worry your pretty little heads. i am sleeping safe tonight.” then the next day, on the 8th, he posted “the fraternal order of the handsome boy. ive been watching you from afar. my breath on the inside window as you walk in from the carcandy caned lies in red and white against clashing patterns bending in and out of understanding. ”youre the stranger ive been dreaming of”, stranger than any ive ever known. love through a telescopic lens. when the air is clear i can see how perfect you are for me. late at night when the city sleeps i cast a spell on you to make you think of me the very same way i think of you. i only love how the words feel in my head when i write them. fireworks over the valley. how can i tell you i gut people for a living. that everything you say is likely to end up as evidence when i rewrite history. over and over again. how everything you do reminds me of something else, someone else. how i get paid to be humble and arrogant at the same time,to be chased and never caught. that i just want to stay up late and wake up early to talk to you. that i want to show you all of my jealousy and insecurity and have you not care. youre like a light switch and i just want to turn you on and watch them all shrink away. the words come out of my fingertips on impulse. it is instinct. my head cant keep up. i envy the comatose. i admire the bedridden. i am addicted to the way i feel when i think of you. ”im blowing smoke rings around the moon….” i wish i was the exact opposite of how the world knows me.”

then, there is infinity on high, which is basically completely about mikey (especially bang the doldrums, because it was born on live journal right after that summer of like…) and ab/ap, due to the constant reiteration of a past love, my favorite being fourth of july with “you are my favorite what if, you are my best i’ll never know”

also othe fact that neither of them can hold a true relationship with women without it ending badly. perhaps because there is someone out there that they are simply destined to be with….