What have I learned from transitioning? I can’t overstate the biggest joy, which is really seeing yourself. I know I look different to others, but to me I’m just starting to look like myself. It’s indescribable, because I’m just like, there I am. And thank God. Here I am. So the greatest joy is just being able to feel present, literally, just to be present. To go out in a group of new people and be able to engage in a way where I didn’t feel this constant sensation to flee from my body, this never-ending sensation of anxiety and nervousness and wanting out.
When I say I couldn’t have ever imagined feeling that way, I mean that with every sense of me.
[…]
Euphoria: Summer, it’s hot out, and I’m just in a white T-shirt that fits me, walking down the street, shoulders back, enjoying the sun and the day. In the past, that would’ve been a very different walk. Instead, you have ideas blossoming in your mind, not constant feelings of shame and self-hatred.
The jury agreeing that it was defamation to call her allegations a hoax while also deciding that she defamed Depp (with malice) over one sentence in an op-ed is legitimately insane.
if the jury acknowledges that her abuse allegations AREN’T a hoax, they’re admitting that she was abused by depp. so… they’re saying that it’s defamation to call out (even vaguely!) your abuser, even if there’s proof that you’re being abused. this is about silencing abuse victims. they’re acknowledging that she was abused by him but it’s “defamation” for her to say anything about it
As you all know I’ve been rabid for Severance the past few weeks, and I’ve been mulling over various theories, ideas and character arcs. But I did notice that food is a running theme on the show: food, its absence, its uses, its meaning.
Severance is a show about connections, what happens when we lose or lack them, and how we can grow by developing these connections and relationships to other. Food is often used as shorthand for community and togetherness, and Severance uses food – or the lack of it – to help underscore these bonds, whether broken or whole.
Mark, a grieving, alcoholic widower, is rarely shown to eat. His normal post-work routine is beer or whiskey or wine on the couch. There’s no montage of him even making a lonely bachelor dinner. He typically eschews food entirely outside of his interactions with others.
When Devon tries to pull him out of his house and away from himself, knowing the anniversary of his wife’s death is approaching, they find themselves in a dinnerless dinner party, a pretentious, masturbatory bit of nonsense. The participants describe food as mere fuel for higher things, and not worthy of weight in and of itself. But these are hollow people, tactless and empty. Their relationships are plastic. There is nothing real about them, and thus, nothing real about their “dinner party.”
The only real relationship that is explored here is Mark and Devon’s.
Look folks. The 80-year-old leather daddies that you see marching in our Pride parade in MPLS with a huge Leather Pride flag watched a ton of their friends die while our government and our society laughed at them. Their Leather families were sometimes their only families. 1/
People who are too young to remember AIDS need to take several steps back and learn some queer history. Those folks deserve our respect, and deserve our collective joy that they can be who they are now, and our collective grief that so many of them are gone.2/
Queers have been indicating to each other through various means since forever that they are queer whether it’s where they’re wearing their keys, or what color their bandana is, because they were afraid of getting killed by people If they were more overt, and rightfully so. 4/
Pride is the only time where we get to collectively publicly celebrate our queer elders who died so that we could stand here, and take advantage of the full freedom they fought for, such as it is. Erasing kink and especially Leather from Pride erases parts of our history. 5/
If you don’t like it, don’t go. If you don’t want to have conversations with your kids about our dead elders and why those leather daddies are dressed like that, don’t go. There are kid-friendly events all over the place. But corporate Pride is not our history. 6/
A lot of people want to enjoy the benefits that our elders fought and died for, without honoring the history, and frankly it’s fucking gross. And it’s gross that so many people are so loudly proclaiming their ignorance, and their lack of love for our elders. 7/
If you think Leather and kink don’t have a place at Pride, you are not my ally. Just say you want to have a big party with all of the free stuff, and a giant parade, without having to learn anything about our history, and leave.
also i’m sorry to tell everyone that waymond’s “laundry and taxes” line that everyone is going feral over is actually slightly mistranslated in the english/north american release subtitles. what he actually says in mandarin is “if we had another life, i would still choose to do taxes and open a laundromat with you” (如果有来生我还会选择和你一起报税，开洗衣店）which…i actually like more than the official subtitle translation
because he’s not just yearning for another life where he and evelyn are married into domesticity. this is an ultra-successful super-rich businessman presumably at the top of his game, who made his fortune and won the american dream, yearning for the ghost of lost chances – confessing that he if he had to choose between money & luxury or a profession considered “lesser” by his countrymen, he would still yearn for the latter if he got to choose evelyn. out of all the universes, out of all the lifetimes, if he had the chance to give up the wealth and power, he would. that’s trulyinventing romance.
to give this more specific context: the dialogue deliberately uses 来生 for “another life”, which most closely translates to “reincarnation”. it seems to be a deliberate nod to chinese folklore and afterlife mythology where reincarnation is often embedded into the stories, especially commonly (although not exclusively) seen in those that deal with doomed romances and star-crossed tragedy.
but overall, i think it’s just a really interesting part of everything everywhere’s metatextual storytelling, because at the heart of every “see you in another universe/an alternate timeline” story, there is a reincarnation story – it’s about the central theme of ‘this time around, i’ll find you again’, ‘this time around, i’d get to choose you’, ‘this time around, we’ll get it right’ and yes it drives meabsolutelyinsane.
*lemony snicket voice* police cars say ‘protect and serve’ for the same reason a box of dry, unflavoured rice cakes might say ‘delicious treat’. rice cakes are not a delicious treat, nor are the police there to protect and serve, but if you are unfamiliar with either you’re likely to believe what you’re told.
had the realization that the innie/outie terminology in severance is likely because innie/outie -> belly buttons -> umbilical cords -> severance -> rebirth and now. Thinking Thoughts. Birth & death are absolutely extremely high presences in the show. in terms of birth you have devon, you have the senator’s wife, you have mark & gemma not being able to have kids, you have the doula, you have dylan & his kid, you have helly being the daughter. in terms of death, well. you have gemma/casey, you have burt, you have helly’s suicide attempts, you have the daily death/rebirth as they become their inside selves. i think there’s something here with the idea of severance as tether; you have characters who want to become unsevered despite being previously very firmly pro-sever like dylan (and to some extent irving) which continues the thread of: why sever? is severance antithetical to love? clearly no bc dylans discovery of his son enables him to realize the innies as a family to the point where he transcends his desire to leave to find his son for his innie family & therefore both literally & figuratively becomes a bridge between worlds (holding two buttons at once that he shouldn’t be able to, knowing the outisde & inside, loving ppl on both sides)death on the outside (gemma) drives them to rebirth on the inside (innies) but then death on the inside (helly’s suicide, burt) drives them to rebirth on the outside. then of course u have the anti-capitalist message that soulless work cannot be compartmentalized and neither can the human be seperated from the employee without some form of violence, at least not permanently. permanence and definitive exclusion is not natural & will always necessitate violence in maintaining its borders. anyways birth & death are both tethers between worlds & this is also probably related to the heavily religious tones of the workplace, especially given helly’s jesus vibes, how her name is covered in certain scenes so it looks like “hell”. the idea of outside being real life & inside being the afterlife is also somehow linked to the moralized concept of afterlife in christianity (which i do not know too much about to be fair so feel free to correct me). something something you will be punished for your sins on the outside when you return to the inside. you get heaven or hell on the inside based on your outside performance
i love the idea of ghosts not being dead people but just places where time is kind of thin
like one of my friends & his girlfriend have a ghost in their very old new england house that’s apparently an old timey little boy who does shit like jump on the bed and slam doors but if they tell him very sternly “daniel, stop that” the activity stops immediately
and i love the idea that years ago theres this rowdy little 19th century boy just being alive and playing in his room but if he gets too loud sometimes, the ghostly form of my 21st century friend shows up and is like “Hey! Cut it out.” and then vanishes and no one believes this child
ALT
