I Will Never Forgive The Internet For What It Did To The Word “mansplain”

Teach ME a new word, please! Make it one nobody has said before.

[in my head] “snek.”

I’m very very sad because as a kid I had learned that Thomas Pynchon was really good (I knew this from oral tales about books he had written, from fellow high school students knowing about him in hushed tones)

Then I discovered he was a crackpot and an eccentric and he thought that he was Jesus Christ’s replacement (I’m paraphrasing here)

And then I found out he was a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, reactionary zealot, he’s the guy who wrote V for Vendetta

And now I’m wondering if he’s ever going to stop being an interesting, unique and ultimately terrible human being

Poem: I lik the form

My naym is pome / and lo my form is fix’d Tho peepel say / that structure is a jail I am my best / when formats are not mix’d Wen poits play / subversions often fail

Stik out their toung / to rebel with no cause At ruls and norms / In ignorance they call: My words are free / Defying lit'rate laws To lik the forms / brings ruin on us all

A sonnet I / the noblest lit'rate verse And ruls me bind / to paths that Shakespeare paved Iambic fot / allusions well dispersed On my behind / I stately sit and wave

You think me tame /   Fenced-in and penned / bespelled I bide my time /   I twist the end / like hell

* “lik” should be read as “lick”, not “like”. In general, the initial section on each line should be read sort of phonetically.

Written for World Poetry Day, March 21, 2018. When I had this idea earlier today, I thought it was the worst, most faux hip pretentious idea for a shallow demonstration of empty wordsmithing skill in poetry ever. So I had to try to write it. I mean, how often do you get to fuse the iambic dimeter of bredlik - one of the newest and most exciting verse forms - with the stately iambic pentameter of the classic sonnet?

I’m just saying that maybe it wouldn’t have turned out quite as bad.

scrupulosity in These Uncertain Times

do you think you are a bad person? do you feel like you constantly have to do something, anything, good to balance out your miserable existence? 

does Chidi from The Good Place hit home to the point where he isn’t funny, because you see too much of yourself in him? 

are you constantly worried about the impact your actions have on others–  to the point where you avoid your friends, deprive yourself of things you want or need, or outright starve yourself? 

you may have scrupulosity.

scrupulosity is a mental health issue that crops up with a lot of different diagnoses- c-ptsd, ocd, autism, and adhd are some of the most common, but a LOT of ND and traumatized people have it. 

scrupulosity makes you overly concerned with morality. you feel like you are Bad and have to do Good things. you obsess over your own Badness and the Badness of the world. you feel like you, personally, need to fix everything that’s Bad, and that if you don’t, you’re Worse Than Twin Clones Of Hitler.

you might try to expiate your badness by becoming a doormat– letting other people walk all over you. you might donate money to charity or GoFundMes, even if you can’t afford it, because You Need To Be Good. you might avoid Problematic things, to the point where you can’t enjoy a bar of chocolate or a children’s cartoon.

and that’s in fairly normal circumstances where the world is not actively on fire.

at times like this– where the world is full of legitimately horrible shit, where it seems like everything is fucked up beyond repair and everyone needs your help- scrupulosity can fucking kill you. 

 this post is already too long, so I’m going to reblog with some suggestions for how to help take care of yourself for people with scrupulosity, and some advice on how people without scrupulosity can help support their friends rn. 

tldr: constantly obsessing over the Badness of the world and feeling like you need to fix it can be a brainweasel called scrupulosity. it is normal to be scared and want to help, but your brain can take that to an extreme that isn’t healthy. 

And did you know that talking like a pirate derives from the dialect in a certain part of England that was a particular hotspot for, and exporter of, pirates? The “West Country” I think it’s called. In all probability you could go there and they’re still all talking like pirates

I said this long ago, but it is still true, and is posted here because you might need this knowledge.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Cinematography by Douglas Slocombe

Fear Itself

I get the point of all the “can’t you just wear a fucking mask, it’s not like anyone’s asking you to storm the beach at Normandy” discourse, but I think it misses something about our current predicament. 

Wearing a mask is actually a big deal. I mean for me it is. It feels really weird, it restricts your air flow, and the longer you wear it the more you have this big wet cloth sticking to your nose and mouth which makes you feel like something is very wrong. And all of that makes the whole pandemic thing real in a sensory way and not just an intellectual way. It’s scary.

I do it anyway, and just, you know, am scared, and am learning to get over it, the way I’ve always learned to deal with my various anxieties.

It occurred to me at some point that this is probably true for a lot of the anti-mask assholes too. Wearing a mask is a scary prospect. It involves acknowledging that the risk exists…and also *feeling* and *seeing* the risk in a way that you don’t have to if you don’t wear them. All the macho bullshit about “freedom” is really a screen for a completely different kind of emotion, which would be fear. Not just fear of the virus, but fear of fear itself. 

This truly deranged behavior that we see people exhibiting when asked to wear masks is of course a product of entitlement, but it is also, I am willing to bet, driven by fear. Instead of accepting their fear and dealing with it, these people turn their anxiety into anger and direct it outwards, attacking the people who ask them to mask so that they don’t have to think about *why* they’re being asked to mask. They go after people who they think they have not only the right but the *ability* to defeat, in order to protect themselves from the fear that the real danger is beyond their control.

That doesn’t make any of it right. But we would all probably benefit from acknowledging that wearing a mask is not a trivial thing that is easy for everyone to do. Wearing a mask requires us to acknowledge that we are surrounded by an invisible and potentially deadly threat, and that we have a terrifying responsibility now for the wellbeing of total strangers because your own breath could now actually kill people. It requires us to be aware, on a visceral level, of the danger we are all in.

Anyway. Good for you if you’re wearing a mask even though it makes you feel weird and unsettled and freaked out. We are grateful to you for being brave and doing it anyway.

A lot of people use tumblr for a mix of personal posts and fandom/ aesthetic/ whatever else posts. And the funny thing about that is just, followers can just kinda come and go at random. They have no sense of what the continuity is with these personal posts. They’re joining spontaneously in the middle with no context of what the blogger has been blogging about for years. They just saw a a good piece of Gravity Falls fanart in the tag and hit follow. 

From the blog owner’s perspective the personal posts make up one long coherent narrative about what’s been happening in their life, posts building on older posts, updates about changing schools and jobs and houses, personal threads of drama and conflict. Meanwhile unsuspecting Gravity Falls fan hits follow five years into the blog’s existence and the first thing on their dash is Update, part 47, yes my head is still stuck in the fence. good news is i can now reach the garden hose so i have a steady stream of water to lap up. Jonathon has not returned with the butter

A GUIDE FOR YOUNG LADIES ENTERING THE SERVICE OF THE FAIRIES, by Rosamund Hodge

I.

This is the lie they will use to break you: no one else has ever loved this way before.

II.

Choose wisely which court you serve. Light or Dark, Summer or Winter, Seelie or Unseelie: they have many names, but the pith of the choice is this: a poisoned flower or a knife in the dark?

(The difference is less and more than you might think.)

Of course, this is only if you go to them for the granting of a wish: to save your father, sister, lover, dearest friend. If you go to get someone back from them, or—most foolish of all—because you fell in love with one of them, you will have no choice at all. You must go to the ones that chose you.

III.

Be kind to the creature that guards your door. Do not mock its broken, bleeding face.

It will never help you in return. But I assure you, someday you will be glad to know that you were kind to something once.

IV.

Do not be surprised how many other mortal girls are there within the halls. The world is full of wishing and of wanting, and the fairies love to play with human hearts.

You will meet all kinds: the terrified ones, who used all their courage just getting there. The hopeful ones, who think that love or cleverness is enough to get them home. The angry ones, who see only one way out. The cold ones, who are already half-fairy.

I would tell you, Do not try to make friends with any of them, but you will anyway.

V.

Sooner or later (if you serve well, if you do not open the forbidden door and let the monster eat you), they will tell you about the game.

Summer battles Winter, Light battles Dark. This is the law of the world. And on the chessboard of the fairies, White battles Black.

In the glory of this battle, the pieces that are brave and strong may win their heart’s desire.

VI.

You already have forgotten how the mortal sun felt upon your face. You already know the bargain that brought you here was a lie.

If you came to save your sick mother, you fear she is dead already. If you came to free your captive sister, your fear she will be sent to Hell for the next tithe. If you came for love of an elf-knight, you are broken with wanting him, and yet he does not seem to know you.

Say yes.

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