cosmic partners

Aldehydes. Your blog is an inspiration to me.

Bergamot. I’d love to play mermaids with you at the pool.

Lemon. I follow you out of morbid curiosity, you’re fascinating to me (like a specimen).

Petitgrain. I have Tom Ripley-esque feelings for you (mix of crush, admiration and jealousy, would take your identity if the opportunity presented itself)

Neroli. I’ve shown or mentioned your posts to friends/people outside of tumblr.

Peach. I wish we could spend a summer evening getting wine drunk and talking on a tiny balcony in a big city.

Plum. Your posts sometimes really test my patience but I’m still here.

Red fruits. We could’ve had a good life together. But you didn’t want it. (=we’re not mutuals and I’m a little bitter about it)

Almond. I think you take yourself too seriously.

Coconut. I wish we could go dancing together.

Iris. If we found ourselves in an appropriate historical setting, I'd engage in sensual mistress/maid corset tightening with you

Heliotrope. We’re mutuals and I’ve reblogged posts specifically in hopes that you’d see them.

Peony. I’ve reblogged posts from you in hopes that you’d see me in your notes. (tumblr courtship)

Ylang-ylang. Songs have reminded me of you in the past.

Rose. I followed you because of the photos you post.

Orchid. I followed you because your posts are hypnotic.

Freesia. You’re always going through something and I’m sitting at the side lines shaking my head & nibbling popcorn.

Magnolia. I’m a little jealous of you and I’m working on it, but seeing your photos/posts sometimes sparks it in me.

Lavender. We talk and I have a crush on you.

Jasmine. I have a (parasocial) crush on you.

Violet. If we were stuck in a haunted castle, I think we could make it out together. (Crawling out as dawn breaks, dirt streaked on our faces, our chests heaving and clothes ripped in places)

Lotus. I admire you from afar.

Gardenia. You’ve been in my orbit for years now and although we don’t talk (anymore, or ever), I remember our shared coexistence on this website with fondness

Carnation. This is the tumblr anon ask equivalent of a little perfumed love letter slipped in your coat jacket for you to be found later.

Cherry blossom. Sometimes I see things outside of tumblr that remind me of you. Maybe because you’ve mentioned them before, maybe not.

Fig leaf. I long to have a toxic homoerotic friendship with you that ends in shambles and ruins this website for both of us for at least a year.

Sandalwood. Your voice is really nice.

Oud. You’re really pretty.

Cedar. I want to tag you in posts but I’m too shy.

Musk. I want to know more about you.

Amber. Your presence intimidates me.

Civet. I would like to talk to you, but I’m shy.

Leather. I regularly visit your blog and read through your new posts.

Vanilla. You’ve had an impact on me — I’ve read, watched, bought, … something because you talked about it.

Honey. We could have a sexually charged sword fight.

Tonka bean. At least one of the things you talk about constantly is of absolutely no interest to me, but you've betwitched and charmed me so I lovingly scroll past without unfollowing

Cocoa. if you were a 2013-era youtuber I'd watch your "what's in my bag" videos.

Patchouli. You’re passionate about your interests and it shines through in your posts. Whether I know a lot about these interests myself, I enjoy reading your posts about them.

Pepper. You’ve said things that hurt me before.

Vetiver. I long to court you like a medieval knight.

Benzoin. I long to be courted by you like a medieval lady.

Half-Life (1998)

AAAAAAAAAAYAUAUUUHUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

This month people have been tearing Flock cameras off their poles. Perched above public streets, they are birdlike things, weatherproof, and they photograph every passing car and file it in a searchable national database. Somebody cut two of them in half at Washington Avenue and Westcott in Houston, spray-painted the wreckage, and left an American flag on one of them. Police were notified on the morning of the Fourth of July. Somebody severed a camera in Rutherfordton, North Carolina. The police department posted the photograph itself and collected more than twenty thousand comments. “Not all heroes wear capes.” “Give them a medal.” Here is what the cameras do when nobody cuts them down. Cops use them to hunt immigrants and to follow ICE targets across state lines and to find women who ended pregnancies in states where that is a crime and to watch exes and to watch women they want, without a warrant and without a judge. A cop types a reason in a box and the box does not check. A man in Burleson, Texas, told deputies his girlfriend had taken abortion pills. He showed them the photographs, the FedEx envelope, the instructions. Deputies opened a death investigation into a non-viable fetus, and the district attorney told them the state could not charge her, and they searched anyway: 83,345 cameras across 6,809 networks, a month of everywhere she had been. The reason they typed was had an abortion, search for female. The search reached Illinois and Washington, where what she did was legal. They found her in Dallas. She came into the sheriff’s office a week later, and they thought she had come to explain the fetus, and she had come to report that the man who called them had put a gun to her head. A sheriff in Jerome County, Idaho ran his wife’s plate more than seven hundred times in three months. He typed the same reason every time. Test. The attorney general found nothing to charge him with. He retired in April. The Institute for Justice counts at least twenty-two officers who used the system to track people they were romantically interested in, and calls that almost certainly an undercount. And the cameras keep falling.