I’m not one of those guys who subscribes to the “Man Cave” idea. That theory that once you’re in a relationship, you’re required to forfeit 99% of your own home and be grateful to have one room in which you can be yourself and have your own possessions on display. I think if you’re in a relationship, you have a right to make your home reflect your personality and interests as much your partner does. I’ve run into a couple of instances where a woman thinking a man has no right to his own possessions has not gone over so well and it was hysterical.

I once knew a guy who worked in the telemarketing department of a company I worked at. One Friday night after work, he told me about how he ended up breaking up with his girlfriend.

This guy was like me, very clean and orderly and liked things a certain way but he wasn’t volatile about it or anything. He and his girlfriend decide to have a weekend sleepover at his house, a trial run in his mind for moving in together. She showed up and the red flags sprang up immediately. “Where’s your bag?” he asks. “For a weekend? I don’t need one.” she says. His mind reels. “So you’re not gonna change clothes…or shower…or brush your teeth…?” “No. Why would I do that in just a couple of days?” He tries to be okay about it but then she starts “cooking” and the kitchen looks like a war zone. Then there’s the fact that her B.O. seems to get stronger by the hour.

The last straw comes towards the end of the weekend when she walks around his place, eyes his Elvis Presley memorabilia collection and says “If I lived here, all this Elvis shit would get set out for trash, I’m not wasting space on all that.” When it finally comes time for her to go back home, she says “This was fun! Can’t wait to do it again.” “Yeah, about that…” and he dumped her in his own driveway.

He said if he had to choose between hygiene and an Elvis collection he’s built for years and her, he’s gonna be happier being single, cleaner and having his collectibles around than he would be with her.

Another instance happened when I had a garage sale and one of the things I was selling was a talking football player action figure from the 90s that someone had bought me under the presumption that because I was boy, I was into sports (I was not). The action figure was brand new in the box because that was how little I cared about playing with it despite my mother’s best attempts. A woman shows up, sees the action figure and loses her shit.

“Oh God, I am so sick of seeing these! My husband has the whole set and all I want to do is throw them in the trash!” A guy at the sale overhears this and says “Well, I’m sure your husband has a list of things that he’d like to get rid of that you’re partial to but he doesn’t say anything because that’s the give and take of being in a relationship” She blows him off and says “I should be the one to decide what goes in the house and what he can buy, THAT is how marriage works for ME.” The guy changes his argument. “Maybe on your husband’s list of shit that needs to go, you should be at the top of the list…” Everyone else at the garage sale (including me) was now watching silently and wondering when the throw down would happen…

“What did you say?”, she asks him a bit taken back. “I said if I was him, I wouldn’t take that shit that somehow being married to you means forfeiture of my belongings and personality and substituting it all for your bullshit. I’d sooner throw you out than my action figures.” After picking her jaw up off my driveway, the woman hurumphs and storms back to her car. I high-five the guy for making an excellent point after she leaves.

I have a lot of collectibles myself and am currently in the creative habit of going through my childhood Power Rangers and Pokémon toys and putting the ones I absolutely want to keep in shadow boxes and hanging them on the wall as conversation pieces and selling the rest.

I have Funko Pops. I have lunchboxes. I have special edition magazines and comic books in floater frames on the wall. I have more books than I have time to count or read. I have tub after tub of Halloween and Christmas decorations because that’s my favorite time of year. I would never throw all of this stuff away because I’ve purged plenty already and kept what I wanted to keep. It’s all a reflection of my personality and my story. If someone came into my life and said our life together would mean giving all of this up and doing what he wanted, I would consider that a toxic situation and I would end it before I got in too deep.

Men, gay or straight, can find themselves in toxic, abusive relationships, this is not a phenomenon only experienced by women. It just seems that way because men, especially straight men, rarely speak up about it and mistakenly settle on what they assume is some unchangable default result of being in a relationship. It’s not.

I would never move in with someone and tell them to throw everything out that has been a part of them or spoken to who they are in order to make room for me. I am all about organizing and making a space feel cozy, functional and fun and would go out of my way to make sure we both had space for our things and our personalities and stories. One does not have to overshadow or overpower the other in order to make a relationship between two people work.

Yeah, that last comment, that's how fucked up our society has gotten, because men have to conceal or hide or at best get ONE room to put their stuff in, and even then it's treated as terrible and regressive and should not be allowed. The 'Man Cave' aka the one space in a person's house where they're allowed to express themselves and their hobbies and it's treated as a terrible thing because he's 'excluding' his wife from it, while the things that are in there are NOT ALLOWED ANYWHERE ELSE.

Hey, it’s Hershey. We already got our first exciting fan letter! Let’s see what it says

It’s from Forrest. Hi, Forrest! You suggested that we should delete our account on July 17th, 2021. 

The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixate–neurochemical signaling (I hope I’m using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)…people like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply. 

significantly: the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady “return on investment”–and this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we don’t have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual “low batteries” in that regard.

that doesn’t mean these stories are “simple,” or that they lack complexity or value–only that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low “upfront cost.” which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readers–they are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).

the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. that–combined with the shorter average length of fics–means that fan fics very quickly start “rewarding” the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. that’s not a bad thing! and maybe it’s something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.

1- poor guy buys groceries at a local bodega.

2- the bodega owner pays his employees from the cash in the register.

3- bodega employee goes to Starbucks and tips the barista in cash.

4- the barista owes their roommate from lunch last week and pays them back

5- roommate buys something from an indie creator on Etsy

6- Etsy creator splurges on takeout & tips in cash

7- the takeout delivery driver fills up on gas

8- gas station manager (who got paid from the register) takes their kid to the ice cream truck

9- Ice cream truck driver buys a new tire and gets an oil change

10- mechanic gets lunch on a shift

….and so on.

It’s sung to the tune of The Ants Go Marching One By One song!!!

Oh, my god. I’m already crying with asexuality included.

Now you’re telling me other groups feel the same way?

There’s legit tears down my face.

The drag queen is holding a BLM sign.

There’s a Hijabi on the all races float (and if you look closely at the flag, I think the owl is indigenous).

One of the babas is disabled.

They could have just stopped at including all the flags.

But no. They said “I don’t care if they’re animals. I’m going to make it very clear we’re including all races and disabled people.”

And it’s such small details, but they’re there.

And I consider myself pretty versed in queer identities, but even I don’t know what some of these flags are.

Which really shows that you’ve never had the opportunity to feel validated like this, and that makes me love it even more.

Pride, Progress Pride, BLM Progress Pride, Lesbian, Gay Man

Trans, Nonbinary — Dolphin wheelchair user, Top surgery beaver

Gender Queer, Genderfluid, Intersex Demigender, Demiboy, Demigirl, Bisexual, Pansexual, Asexual, Demisexual, Gray Asexual, Aromantic — Blind bird

Bigender, Genderflux, Omnisexual, Neutrois, Maverique, Pangender, Drag — llama(?) with prosthetic leg

and in a KIDS show, like that’s insane, people will finally grow up knowing it’s ok to exist

More info:

ALSO IMPORTANT ( @allthecanadianpolitics )

This has been verified by a relative as the only legit campaign right now.

People, please be careful. There are also people tracking children and people and putting bids on them based on their profile pictures on whatsapp, tracking and kidnapping them. Especially young children, so please be cautious, especially parents who have their children as their profile pictures.

DO NOT CLICK LINKS IN TEXTS EVER. GO TO ACTUAL WEBSITES FOR ONES YOU RECOGNIZE AND TYPE IN THE URL. OR A BOOKMARK IF YOU HAVE ONE. DON’T CLICK LINKS IN TEXTS AND SOCIAL MEDIA MESSAGES/DMS AND EMAILS. EVEN IF YOU KNOW THE PERSON. TAKE EXTREME CAUTION. 

IF YOU’RE GUTS SAYS EH WOULDN’T DO THAT BUDDY. LISTEN.