I Can't Wait To Read All The Darklina Fanfics Once The Netflix Show Comes Out

I would have shipped murven but memori is just too pure and adorable 🥰🥰

i'm thoroughly convinced that i would feel a millionth time sexier if i wore a dagger straped to my thigh all the time

On Fandoms, Age, and Gender: The Politics of “ Putting Away Childish Things”

Weighing in on yet another round of “fan spaces are youth spaces” (aka “go home and knit, old lady” or “You’re old enough to be my/someone’s mom! gross!” )

Consider these thoughts:

There’s a whole set of interests and behaviors that you might become interested in as you grow from child to adolescent to young adult and take greater interest in the wider world.

You might like horses, or dolls.  Or building models.  You might play soccer, or follow baseball every summer and learn about  box scores.   You might follow the college football draft, or love a pop band.  You might deeply admire a rock band and learn to play the guitar.  You might love superheroes and see all their movies.  You might love space opera and collect paperback books.  Maybe you collect trading cards of your favorite team players – or movie moments.  You probably get t-shirts and posters of teams, or media outlets.  You might get deeply into a social or political cause.

Those are all expressions of interest in the world, all with associated social aspects, many with associated creative actions. 

And then you get older.  And here’s the thing about that list.  The things on that list that are “for boys?”   Are also “for men.”   But the things on that list that are “for girls” or “for nerds?” Are only “for children.”  

Adult men wear brightly colored team clothing and paint their faces without shame.   They join fantasy football leagues and hang out online.   They follow Phish (or continuously talk about how they did when that was a thing).  They spend vast sums on tickets to bowl games.   They get excited all over the internet about Geddy Lee’s greatest hits.  They spend long afternoons on the golf course, playing very bad golf.

No one tells them to grow up 

An adult woman who turns a childhood dollhouse into a beautiful scale model of a real Victorian home is “eccentric.”  An adult man who builds a vast HO train layout in his basement is a “train enthusiast.”   An adult woman who displays her favorite Bryer horses is “odd,” an adult man with a shelf of signed baseballs is “a collector” or even “an investor.” 

Adult women making fanart of attractive movie stars is “creepy,’ while adult men decorating their garages with calendar art of scantily-clad very-young women is “just what guys do.”

Interests and hobbies that were feminine and are taken up by men become acceptable.   When The Beatles were greeted with mobs of fainting teen girls, they were a “boy band.”  When young men discovered them, they became Serious Musicians.  

Over and over, across fields of interest, things that girls like are “toys and games and childish” and should be left behind by adults, while things that boys like are “hobbies and sports” that are lifetime pastimes.  And acceptable “hobbies” for adult women?   Most are things that could be coded as household chores, but generations of women have worked to turn into enjoyable pastimes:  knitting, sewing, quilting.  Home decor.  Baking.   Many adult women (myself included) enjoy doing those things in their free time and have elevated them to art forms.  But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re rooted in utility, while “men’s hobbies” are, by and large, rooted in leisure.

Look around you and follow the pattern.  And then, before you ask “Why are adult women in fan spaces,” maybe ask “why do I feel like adult women don’t get to have fun?” 

i eat men like you for breakfast

literally

i had you in my mouth

at 3 pm

that’s breakfast enough for me

how many cigarettes will it take to make the sun set

how many heartbreaks to set my life in motion

stupid country girls with innocent smiles

dreaming of a husband and nothing more

girls like me dream of a husband too

we just pretend there’s so much more

we pretend life isn’t a simple game

with simple rules

paint me

on paper or just my body

exercise your right to use me

i gave myself to you long ago

on a foggy night in the hudson valley

// i hope you didn’t forget

When Adam bit the apple he did it because he trusted Eve. Because he loved her. Adam bit into the apple because the woman he loved told him to, no matter what God said. No matter the rules of heaven. What’s heaven to a woman’s love anyway? What’s God to your wife? The first sins of humanity, were trusting others. Eve trusted a snake, Adam trusted Eve, and I trust you. Maybe that’s a sin, just like the first couple. Maybe everyone’s right about us and we’re sinners and we offend God. But like I said, what’s God to a woman’s love anyway? What has heaven got that I can’t find sitting next to you on a cool autumn morning?

Pink skies and quarantine

Reasons to Stay Alive by Mathew Gray Gubler

kaz: knows seventy three different ways to kill a man, could rob you in plain sight, pulls off a major heist in the most heavily guarded government building in the world.

also kaz: doesn’t know how to tell the girl he loves how he feels so avoids her like the plague.

I am lowkey gonna miss these quarantine days.