pick up a pencil or die

mia and vada from the fallout (2021): this movie covers super heavy themes and isn’t ronance centric but it’s one of my favorites and mia and vada are so fucking adorable. strangers -> friends -> lovers

carmen and julia from netflix’s carmen sandiego: i love them so much, they’re constantly flirting and in the end it’s implied that they get together but omg. also finn wolfhard voices one of the characters!

rapunzel and cassandra from tangled the series (not canon): y’all i watched this show as a kid and i genuinely didn’t know queerness was a thing until like 5th grade but i recently rewatched it and holy shit, they’re so gay. i mean whatever they had going on was more than best friends or whatever, or that’s what i headcanon. rapunzel’s bi to me, idc. also, soundtrack is a 100/10, i’ve been listening to that shit for almost 10 years and i’m still not bored. and the plot? morally gray and complex characters?? they have it all. if you let me, i could ramble about how much i love this show for days. it’s a masterpiece and one of the best spinoffs/sequels out there.

IVE BEEN WAITING SO LONG FOR SOMEONE TO ASK ME THIS.

CARULIA HCS YAYAYAYAYAYAY

- First off is how I interpret their relationship dynamic if they were to date…lots of people believe Julia would be the shy one in the relationship, but I wholeheartedly believe it’s Carmen. Because she has been on Vile Island for so long, and is trotting round’ the globe 24/7, she’s had no time for relationships. Julia on the other hand went to middle school, highschool, and collage/university. She’s had plenty of time for relationships, and has dated many girls during her school years, lots of those relationships being quite messy, hence why they never lasted. In short, Julia is the more experienced one whilst Carmen has no clue what she’s doing.

- When it comes to labels, Carmen doesn’t really care for them. She does like labelling herself as sapphic though, because she definitely knows she’s attracted to women. Julia is a lesbian through and through. She knew from a very early age she was lesbian. Her parents supported her 100% so navigating her sexuality was not as messy as Carmen’s.

- Carmen leans more to the fem side. Julia is her masc 😋

- Julia still has Carmen’s coat and hat even way after the “To Steal or Not To Steal” interactive. She keeps it tucked away in her closet at the very back after the CS finale though because after Carmen disappeared, she couldn’t bring herself to even look at the coat without fighting back tears.

Carmen did think about Julia a lot during her 2 year disappearance. She often wondered if she was still teaching at the university, or went back to ACME. She wouldn’t admit it out loud, but a part of her kind of wished Vile would make a comeback just to have an excuse to possibly see Julia again.

- A part of Julia was angry at Carmen for leaving. She only knew Carmen left because Ivy had broken the news to her when asked about Carmen’s whereabouts. Dare Julia even admit she felt a little led on by Carmen. The flowers, the nicknames, the immediate trust that never seemed to falter. To Julia it seemed like they did have something special, only for it to completely crumble when Carmen disappears. Like shi I’d be angry too if a girl treated me like that and suddenly went bye bye tf 😭💔

- On a less angsty note, when they do eventually see each other again, Carmen takes it upon herself to ask Julia out and they go out to eat at a fancy restaurant, go for a late night walk, and have a blast. Yaaaay!

- Carmen isn’t much of a drinker. Only on special occasions does she fancy a little red wine. Julia’s refrigerator on the other hand is stocked to the brim with alcohol erm (She only drinks occasionally guysss! Or when Chase used to stress her tf out. She’s gonna need a couple glasses after Chase somehow waterboards every single vehicle they own.)

- On a very specific date, Julia got mad at Carm because they planned to get dessert together, but Carmen only bought it for Julia and nothing for herself. Carmen assumed she was doing a nice thing so she was absolutely bamboozled when Julia didn’t even say a word on the car ride back to her apartment, and claimed she didn’t even want the dessert anymore. She wasn’t aware one of the number 1 dating codes is if you’re purchasing any food item or dessert, you MUSTTTT get it for YOURSELF and your partner.

- They actually have a lot of silly arguments cuz Carmen has no idea what the hell she’s doing in their relationship, but it always ends with them laughing it off and kissing trust

- Carmen’s love language is gift giving and words of affirmation (she gets so many trinkets for Julia…) and Julia’s is physical touch and quality time 😋

- Kisses on the cheek get Carmen even more flustered than on the lips. After their first date, Julia kissed her on the cheek goodbye and Carmen stayed awake the whole night thinking about it…

- If you see Carmen getting manhandled by Julia, do not intervene. She’s right where she wants to be….

- Expanding more on the “manhandling” bit, Julia is always the one dragging Carmen everywhere. Suddenly grabbing her hand, holding her waist, interlocking their arms, gently pushing her into a specific direction, and Carm loves every second of it.

- Julia is very vague/cryptic with her flirting so it takes Carmen a good second to realize “oh she’s flirting with me”

Rumination is probably the most common type of OCD compulsion, but I rarely see anyone talking about it. I've talked to multiple people diagnosed with OCD who didn't even recognize it as a compulsion.

Basically, if you have OCD you have terrible intrusive thoughts. They can be about anything, but common themes are fear of being a bad person, fear of hurting someone, fear of contamination. etc.

Rumination is when you get stuck in a spiral. Rumination is when you spend hours catastrophizing, overthinking, analyzing, telling yourself it's going to be okay.

I'll say it again:

Rumination is a compulsion.

Rumination is a compulsion, and that means you have to stop doing it.

I did ERP (exposure response prevention) for my OCD with a therapist! For 9 months! And it did help, but the idea didn't really click until I found this website a couple years later.

And Oh My God. It made things make so much more sense, and I was able to pull myself out of an episode even though I wasn't in therapy or on meds at the time.

Genuinely if you have OCD, or even if you suspect you have OCD, I'm begging you to read some of these articles.

Like this was genuinely life changing for me.

Here are some of the ones that were most helpful to me:

Defining Rumination

How to Stop Ruminating

ERP Exercises for Compulsive Rumination

Bonus:

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

you have to be kinder to people who are slow processors.

you have to be kinder to people who don't understand your jokes.

you have to be kinder to people who forget important dates.

you have to be kinder to people with cognitive decline.

you have to be kinder to people who were always this way, too.