Beneath me is nothing but brightness

can i be honest tho i kinda hate makeup bc i love licking my lips and rubbing my hands on my face like a cat or a fly annd i also love wiping my eyes like a sleepy infant all the time so basically i cant do it

this is like basic foundational misogyny 101 but the fact that it's almost unconsciously ingrained to consider trousers a more "practical" alternative to skirts across the majority of human cultures does make me feel a little kicked in the head. this isn't even anything against pants, it's just that skirts are functionally not dissimilar at all. they're comfortable, capable of being tailored to suit a variety of purposes both aesthetic and functional, and simply what some people prefer. and yet, because they're so strongly tied to women and femininity, they're derided. a long skirt is an impediment; shortening a skirt is a sexual act. throughout history humans of all demographics have worn skirts and skirt-like clothing for a variety of purposes, but to wear a skirt in our enlightened modern age is a heavily gendered and politically loaded notion. and we just tolerate living like this. fucking unreal.

take figures out of their boxes btw. sew patches on your favorite jacket. go to bed with your favorite plushes. wear the pants you usually save for special occasions. draw something cool on your wall. put a sticker on your laptop. dye your hair and pierce your lips. glass is meant to break, metal is meant to rust. items are meant to be used. that's how the world knows that somebody loved them.

When my aunt died of covid, we had to clean out a lot of stuff that she was saving. Foods she was going to try, she was a great chef, spices she'd never opened or only used sparingly, lotions and bath things she hadn't used. After she died I started making a point of using things up: the good vanilla that has to be imported, that we finally found more of, we'd used barely an ounce before she passed away. Even though we love it. I just got my family new bottles of it for Christmas because we used one up. We enjoyed that happiness. Sometimes I still get the impulse to wait for something special, or awful, to save nice things for celebration or comfort. The phrase that always echoes in my mind is "use the good vanilla". And I have been (burning the candles, squirting the body wash, dissolving the bath bombs, putting the saffron in things). And it's been great. Use the good vanilla.

#'this is present in the text' is often a good first step #but those second and third ones (naming it; describing its function) are vital (via @elucubrare)

[looking at people younger than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at people older than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at myself] its over

people will criticize works for being heavy-handed and yet when you see how a lot of people experience these works, one can only conclude they're not too heavy-handed enough.

i hate it when i can tell my perception of a character is diminishing in real time because of fandom wank. like nooooo i want to maintain an objective relationship with the text but everyone is so annoying about you nooooo

kind of fascinating how a lot of people don’t really know how food works

saw a twitter video of a dude making like fried broccoli with bacon or whatever and everyone in the replies was going “can’t believe he took something healthy and turned it into poison!!!!” i don’t really know how to explain to you that you’re still eating broccoli, and the healthy nutrients do not magically leave the broccoli just because you fried it

There's a recurring online tendency to aestheticize consensus itself. The imagined future village is full of emotionally compatible people who enjoy communal gardening, conflict resolution circles, acoustic folk music, mutual aid potlucks, and repairing bicycles together at sunset. Which is nice for the people who genuinely enjoy that lifestyle. But plenty of humans are solitary, prickly, obsessive, urban, nocturnal, sensory-seeking, technologically attached, contrarian, novelty-seeking, private, or just plain difficult. Those people do not evaporate after the revolution. They do not get Left Behind while you are Raptured into the Utopia. They become your neighbors.

everywhere on socmedia so much #progressive posting is like “never met a single zionist that is not ugly” “how u age when u r unproblematic” “ur face card when u support trans rights” on loop

It turns out that you can become the person you’ve always envisioned but you’ll still have the person you were before inside of you and you have to treat them with as much forgiveness and love as possible