“Pen And Inkwell”

The amount of shitty news coming out this week made me feel like this needed to be said, so.

For all the boys and young men currently afraid that being male means some kind of moral death sentence: the same world that produced Neil Gaiman and Donald Trump also produced Levar Burton, Steve from Blues Clues, and my (step)dad, who isn't famous but did look at a deeply traumatized child with a bunch of mental health issues and said "is anybody going to support that?" and then didn't wait for an answer. There are good men out there doing good work in ways both big and small. Choose to use your strength to help rather than hurt, your voice to speak for those who must be silent, and you can be one of them.

Be the man Mister Rogers knew you could be. He wasn't wrong very often, and he believed you could do wonderful things. I do too.

(Anyone clowning on here will summarily get their ass kicked and their blog blocked. Pain is pain and I know there are a lot of scared teenagers right now.)

My favorite thing in this fandom is how everyone drools over this look. Because it's the most boring outfit imaginable, and yet she's just glowing. Compared with how she was the entire rest of the series, the difference is night and day.

I also love that they kept her looking kind of windblown -- her hair's messy, her clothes are a little rumpled, something about her belt is just slightly off-kilter/cattywompus. And I love that she's still a bit shy or something, that even though she's happier and more alive now she's still recognizable as the same gorgeous awkward weirdo she always was.

Ugh. This was just really well done and I love it.

watched the finale of Deadloch and my main takeaway is this look™️

Best of favorite dance moves 💃🕺 via @ Ed People on Youtube https://twitter.com/TansuYegen/status/1560874626380857344

If I had a nickel for each time I've been told to stop "overthinking" this type of hypothetical or categorical question, I'd have...a lot of nickels.

The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation" is often not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily.

In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.

But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.

"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?

"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.

Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?

It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity, in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.

Quarters only, please [x <- prints here]

(done in procreate)

So I'm watching The Moth Effect with Kate Box. Most of TME I can take or leave but there's this one sketch in S1E3. "St Machiavelli's Political Breeding Stable"

I don't want to give anything away but...I really did not expect her to commit to the bit as hard as she did

Kate Box you perv, you delightful fucking weirdo <3

Patrick D Pagnano, selection from Empire Roller Disco, 1980

i will say this as a person who is not white: i think being called racist as a white person is like way lower stakes than anyone makes it out to be. and like, the reality is that white people have an inflated sense of anxiety about what being called Racist Means when like. let's be fucking real for a second. it does not meaningfully often result in Material Violence to a person for being "called racist." and I think being racist is just a thing that happens. and like if we are going to say that being accidentally racist from time to time is something that like, is relatively low stakes, that has to go hand in hand with being like. ok well I guess i should take some time to think about why someone might think I'm racist and like Do something about that.

like I think the paranoia and anxiety about how Being Called Racist is something that Does Violence to People is rooted in a white guilt racialized anxiety and if I am going to be real with you I do not think it is based in material reality. you can be a little uncomfortable it's not the end of the world. i think it's frustrating as a racialized person to see so many white people more frantically hand-wringing over the prospect of being called "racist" than over the prospect of Being Racist. it's annoying to say the least.