If I was born as a blackthorn tree

Uncomfortable facts of life:

like so much of Everything today is premised on the idea that the earth-shattering catastrophe which happened within living memory of everyone older than a third grader has had no meaningful material or psychological effects on the general public and i don't think that's good, lol.

"why is everyone so angry and paranoid now?" "why is politics so dysfunctional now?" "why is [x] [y] and [z] now? blah blah blah"

I’m trying to get the boys I coach to stop saying “I’m gonna kms” after every little inconvenience (it’s my fault tbh) and last night my goalie missed an easy shot and screamed he’s gonna run away to Africa, become a National Geographic photographer and win the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.

"But there is another insidious implication to all this, too. [An M/M romance] isn’t a story about a woman being “folded into a pretzel and fucked”; it’s a story about queer men. [The M/M romance genre] has been constructed around an absence of women as opposed to the positive presence of queer men. I cannot emphasize enough that [these are] stor[ies] about gay and bi men. To rhetorically center M/M relationship[s] around (cis, het) women’s purported desires erases how [these are] stor[ies] about men loving men. To argue that [] M/M pairing[s] [are] the only chance a woman has to see a sociopolitically “equal” partnership, devoid of violence or power dynamics, is to flatten and make M/M relationships one-dimensional by ignoring that queer relationships also have complex sociopolitical dynamics and can include violence. Male>Female is not the sole sociopolitical dynamic in interpersonal relationships. A queer romance should also uncomfortably question and rethink the gender hierarchy and gendered roles; you cannot and should not be able to escape this when watching a story about two men falling in love, something that inherently questions gender. Additionally, to believe that this genre allows women to avoid the taboo ignores that queerness is still taboo. The story types people claim women find refuge in are full of tragedies that devastate queer people. Having to hide a relationship is a tragedy. Being inadvertently outed is a tragedy. Homophobia is a fucking tragedy. To argue that the women watching this feel a bystander effect or an anthropological-like removal from the narrative is to argue that the women watching cannot identify with or sympathize with stories about queer men, stories that may bring up very real traumas (especially for queer women, who will be affected by the reminders of queer trauma, homophobia, and taboo)."