There was a theory going around a few years back that the Hogwarts Houses are influenced by which Element someone is - Fire, Earth, Air, or Water. If you’re up to it, reblog this with your House and Astrological Sign, to compare how often it ends up right. It’s incredibly interesting to me.
GRYFFINDOR: The Fire Signs - Leo, Aries, & Sagittarius
HUFFLEPUF: The Earth Signs - Taurus, Virgo, & Capricorn
RAVENCLAW: The Air Signs - Gemini, Libra, & Aquarius
SLYTHERIN: The Water Signs - Scorpio, Cancer, & Pisces
People who are complaining about Superman’s glasses disguising his identity have obviously never worn glasses. You take them off around your friends, people who see you every single day, and they’re like ,,WHAT THE FUCK, YOU LOOK SO DIFFERENT! IS THAT HOW YOUR EYES LOOK LIKE?! NO WAY! WHO ARE YOU???“
a girl i went to school with for over a decade came into my work once, we had a full blown conversation while i checked her out and she had no idea who i was bc i have glasses now, the clark kent glasses effect is real.
also i will eventually write a post about this but are we really going to pretend y'all would recognize A Random Reporter ™ say from your local newspaper if he dressed in lycra and flew around punching stuff. do you even know what any of the reporters from your local newspaper look like. would you even recognize them in reporter clothes. would you. would you sharon
This is 100% real. I went to a very small middle school and high school and I had a REPUTATION, okay, everyone knew me really well. And then I came into class one day with glasses on and my hair down and someone walked up and warned me… about myself. The look on their face when I took my glasses off and went “Are you fucking serious right now” was one of abject horror. I am confident that Clark Kent would be absolutely fine.
My best friend and I are creating an app to help closeted LGBTQIA+ kids in abusive situations.
The app is finished, and we plan on submitting it to the Technovation competition in April.
But there’s one problem.
We can’t get the app to help people if we don’t have the data.
The competition states we must source our own data through a survey, and if we don’t get enough participants, we can’t submit or release the app until we prove that there’s a need for it.
We already polled our school’s relatively small GSA, but that gave us biased answers that weren’t enough to successfully draw a conclusion.
Please,take this survey. No matter your sexuality, gender, preference, race, or anything of that matter. We need data to make this work.
More importantly, we need you to make this work.
The difference between this app helping people, and sitting in a trash folder on my computer is the amount of data this survey collects.
I’m rewatching the first season of Borgias because my brain is a staticky mess from churning out 5K of original stuff in 6 hours today, but like.
Listen.
Am I gonna be the one to write a plotless thing about Cesare’s thoughts on the scars on Micheletto’s back and Claiming and Micheletto as a cherished weapon and about how scars are the heraldic symbol of Cesare’s own house.
basically, i think the general rule of thumb is: if someone REALLY wants the blood that’s inside of your body, and they’re like… a vampire, or a dracula, or some sort of mansquito, then that’s probably okay. a dracula and a mansquito are made for removing things like blood and swords from inside your body.
that’s basically fine.
if something wants to get at your blood, and they’re, say, some kind of murdersaurus, or maybe a really big frog, that’s where the problems start to arise. a really frog is not made for removing blood, and your blood knows this, which is why it is so vehement about wanting to stay IN your body instead of coming out.
unfortunately this will not deter a really big frog, because a really big frog is full of things like prizes, and value, and quite a lot of hatred, and it would REALLY rather like to replace any and all of those things with your blood, and basically by any means possible.
These words scan with a fantastic degree of confidence considering that together they make no sense at all
so in my greek class we were talking about oral composition and how something like the iliad must have been composed, and my prof asked us to consider how we would rapidly compose something like poetry on the spot. and i think it was a really important exercise not just for understanding the construction of an oral epic but also for reminding us of how great works can come from supposedly “humble” origins. so if anyone is ever snobby about their homer, just remind them that, as my professor put it, the iliad is basically ancient freestyle rap, and homer is much closer to jay z than to f. scott fitzgerald
basically what i’m saying is please imagine homer asking someone to give him a beat on the lyre and then dropping the sickest fucking meter ever. the ill-iad, by lil homie
I’m going to the airport wearing an expensive black dress with a diamond necklace and glasses of champagne in both hands, waltzing through, casually reminding my chauffeur to haul my bags in for me. I need 4-5 attractive people (race+gender doesn’t matter) wearing clothes that are not better than mine, and cool sunglasses begging me not to leave, on their knees, barely grasping my dress because they want me to stay but at the same time they know the dress is worth more than anything they can ever afford. Turning around every so slightly and almost spilling, but not quite all the way there, my champagne, I’ll laugh and say quite loudly, “darlings I have to visit my ACTUAL husband!”
how do i get in on this
I’ve only seen this is screenshots before, can’t believe it’s finally blessed me
…………………reblog this and say something nice about the person u reblogged it from because there’s too much hate on my dashboard right now and its making me upset so lets start a chain of love
i like to think about alistair and cullen training together but i mostly like to think about them in some chantry choir together and cullen is hitting every note and it’s beautiful enough to make the maker cry while alistair only knows half the words and the rest he just substitutes in what he wants for dinner
IMAGINE HEARING ABOUT THE DUDEBRO LIVING NEXT TO U IN THE DORMS “yah dave dropped out cuz he built a fucking person”
victor frankenstein was a little bITCH and he had no degree at all, he was at college for like, a year and then he was like “lol these bitches ain’t got nothing on me” and he just got an apartment and stopped going to school so he could build a person. i don’t think he even formally dropped out, he just kind of disappeared and nobody even questioned it because that’s what you expect when some cocky asshole comes to class like “i know more than everyone in this school and one day i’m going to prove it by ending dEATH ITSELF”
fucking bullshit victor, come home and eat some goddamn soup you wussass teenager
fucking trashass motherfucker 19 year old sin machine
go get ur liver pecked by birds u mess of a human being
i am never going to let the world forget that victor frankenstein spent 90% of the novel moping instead of doing literally anything else. actual quote from emo kid victor frankenstein “my only solace was silence - deep, dark, deathlike silence” like HOW EXTRA
You’d almost think Mary Shelly was taking inspiration from someone she knew….
*writes I LIKE GIRLS on every other page of my journals so future historians don’t try to insist that I’m straight”
Future straight Historians: “we see several examples of her prioritizing a sisterly bond with the women around her, for example on page 12 she says ‘I like girls’ and throughout the text she references loving women and preferring their company. This is not to say she prioritized above her romantic relationships because on page 78 she mentions talking to a man one time in her life. It’s hard to know just how much she valued her sisterly bond with women due to this one reference of men and the ambiguity of early 21st century slang. For example on page 12 when she said she liked women, the passage continues ’…in a lesbian way. I want to kiss girls, they are so pretty, I’m so gay.’ Now it’s difficult to understand just what that sentence means. We know that in the early 21st century kissing on the cheek in greeting had gone out of vogue but the word gay, a word with an archaic meaning of happiness gives the contextual clues that perhaps she is references that old fashioned practice.
Going back to the nameless man that is mentioned once on page 78 for one sentance…”
Someone asked me today what I’d learned from my thesis, and you know what?
What I’ve learned from my thesis is that, someday, aliens and humans are going to meet, out there in the starry black, and once we hash out the language thing to the point where our respective scientists can converse, the aliens will go, “HOW did you figure out artificial gravity so well, it’s been confounding our best engineers for years? Our ships keep hiccuping and then we’re all floating around for a week until we figure out what’s wrong?”
And the humans will laugh and say, “Well, we did it by accident and then we disregarded it for fifteen years because we didn’t realize it was any good for anything.”
Gregorian monks singing “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”
EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND LISTEN TO THIS RIGHT FUCKING NOW
Why is this a thing that exists?
THIS IS BEAUTIFUL
“on the boooooolovarrrd of brooookennnn dreeeemmsss”
I turned this on and at that moment my roommate opened the curtains, and I immediately had this epic video in my head of us cleaning our apartment, and raising a castle around it with hammers and magic.
i just imagined orcs getting into fights over how their wife is the biggest, most beautiful with the sharpest teeth.
“HOW DARE!!! THROG’S WIFE SHROKKA IS 10 FEET TALL, HER TEETH BREAK BOULDERS, HER BEAUTY SHAMES THE SUN”
Imagine Throg and Shrokka getting into the orc version of a cutsey couples argument.
“NO! SHROKKA’S WIFE THROG MORE BEAUTIFUL! THROG’S FANGS ARE SHARP LIKE MANY SWORDS, HER BEAUTY CAUSES THE MOON TO TURN AWAY AND HIDE! THROG WILL TAKE BACK HER WORDS, FOR THROG IS MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN SHROKKA!”
i’m so into reading tags like 500 of y’all could be reblogging my stuff and tag it as ‘me’ and ‘mood’ and nothing else and i’d still read every single one of y’alls tags
consider this tho: gwendoline christie plays rey and daisy ridley plays phasma bc a) have u seen that vid of oscar isaac and john boyega and gwendoline christie jamming all together to a led zeppelin song and b) small! terrifying! absolutely do not fuck with! phasma and c) rey using her size and strength to make dragging shit from wrecks easier and despite being able to beat junk selling food guy up does not bc she has no other way of getting food? pls consider
*gasp*
Anon.
Dearheart.
This…this is so beautiful…
I love this immediately, wholeheartedly, and entirely without shame.
Tall!Rey looming over Poe and Finn!
Small!Phasma staring Han down totally unimpressed!
*LONG GASP*
TALL REY BENDING OVER TO HUG FINN AND LOOKING SO AWESTRUCK THAT HE CAME BACK FOR HER.
bdsm ask anon here: thanks for that lovely, in-depth and polite reply (sincerely). tone's sometimes hard to carry through when it's just text, so thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt! that was quite an interesting read and i definitely have a better grasp on the concept now. cheers, vodka aunt!
No problem, anon! I’m glad to help.
Also, a short story for your good will.
My dad, upon coming across my answer to your previous ask: So…my question, as your father, is how you know so much about the BDSM scene.
What people think it means when we say "Language is evolving":
This pejorative term isn't bad anymore because it's funny to me and I say so.
What it actually means when we say "Language is evolving":
English has developed a specific verb for tricking people into listening to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up"
Part of your big spring break plans involve going to the costo where you can get all that shit they don’t carry anywhere up here.
Being able to ethically source your food AND reduce your grocery bill because FARM CO-OPS ARE AMAZING.
Rez Dog is a Real Breed and your Eurocentrism can eat my ass Linda.
Wind Chill Factor? You mean people live in places without constant wind???? that sounds fake but ok?
Meeting your flatlander friends at the airport and driving straight into the mountains to the highest point you can to see what altitude they pass out at.
Blaming literally EVERYTHING on the Altitude. “This weather is weird” “It’s the altitude”/”This steak tastes great!” “It’s the altitude”/ “My husband is a lyin’ cheatin’ son of a bitch” “It’s the altitude.”
In a similar vein, all precipitation from a light drizzle to six feet of snow is greeted with “we need the Moisture”
The four seasons are Winter, Still Winter, Those Two Nice Weeks In May, Tourist and Fire.
Being able to identify animal tracks not because you were in scouts but because you want to know what knocked over the dumpster and spread trash all over the parking lot this week.
The Ravens are practically citizens of your town and better customers than most humans.
MORE RURAL MOUNTAIN THINGS:
Knowing *exactly* what percentage above or below annual snowpack you’re at and worrying about it either way.
Sleeping with the Door Open so you can hear if a bear tries to break into your house again.
they’re a lot quieter than you’d think
Three-Dog-Nights are REAL and you’d better have enough canine to go around.
Three hour drives for supplies you can’t get in your town are now “adventures”, and you plan to see a movie while you’re out there because the local place can only Pick Two to show and they picked Fifty Shades and one of the outdated Star Treks for some reason.
There is ONE neuropharmacologist within five hours of you, but her schedule is depressingly open because the culture out here prefers shotguns to medication.
Watching Flatlanders lose their shit when you tell them the cute lil prairie dogs have Black Plague.
Is It Spring Yet? *20 inches of snow* I’m gonna take that as a Maybe.
Having your dog eat something off the ground, jamming your hand into his mouth before he swallows it, pulling it out and finding out you’re holding a Live Tarantula.
Your housing development backs up on to ranching land, and therefore there are sometimes Cows. This is fine, but the East Cost Transplants complain about it, While the West Coast ones try to feed them Quinoa.
yelling at the neighbors kids to quit playing in the gully while it’s flooding, dipshits.
That one neighbor with the prominently displayed Gun Collection that is meant to be seen from the front yard.
The tactile silence, cool and heavy like watermelon, late at night when you get to the edge of the neighborhood and there’s nothing but you, the stars and the dog and for a few minutes, you can see eternity in either direction and you know that one way or another, it’s going to be OK.
i’ve been thinking about that “a spell makes everyone fall in love with character A and character B doesn’t act any differently” AU trope idea and honestly it would work so well with enjolras/grantaire. like imagine an ABC meeting the day after eponine puts the love potion in the wine or something and everyone’s tripping over themselves to do things for enjolras and it’s freaking him out and it’s so weird but then R just strolls in and falls into a chair like “sup losers” and they all just stare at him and it’s like…
“grantaire, you drank the wine last night, didn’t you? you drank the vast majority of the wine…”
I just realized I haven’t told you guys about how 3rd President of the United States Thomas Jefferson haunts my dorm room.
Okay so basically at the beginning of the year, weird shit began happening in our dorm room, me and my roommate would hear/see things, TVs and phones and computers would start on there own and do other weird things.
We decided jokingly that the room was haunted and named the ghost Jeff and even made it a door tag.
Me and my roommate began to notice a trend it the activity of “Jeff” He always seemed to act up most when I talked shit about Thomas Jefferson or James Madison’s personality/policies/etc.
We began to joke that it was Thomas Jefferson or James Madison (hell we even joked it might be Dolley)
Well the other day, our ghost confirmed himself as “Thomas Jefferson.”
After a particularly rude attack on Thomas Jefferson character (I claimed the best thing he ever did was die.) A fucking giant ass jumbo size box of Mac and Cheese fell off of the tallest shelf in our dorm room.
I’m talking one of these babies but it’s like a 20 pack. To me it’s obviously that this is obviously proof that “inventor” of mac and cheese, 3rd President of the United States who was born and died in Virginia travelled to Upstate New York in an area he never even came close to in his life to haunt my dorm
My roommate is not convinced though: She still thinks it could be James Madison.
But a Madison-sized ghost couldn’t have reached the mac and cheese (We conducted an experiment to see if Madison would have been able to reach it when he was only 5′4″ and being 5′4″, I couldn’t even reach it jumping up and down.)
So yes, me and my roommate have proved undeniable that Thomas Jefferson haunts our dorm room.
Also she pointed out that we randomly named the ghost “Jeff” which is pretty fucking close to Jefferson. Coincidence? OBVIOUSLY NOT.
“But a Madison-sized ghost couldn’t have reached the mac and cheese”
I’m so glad I was alive to see this sentence written.
Why were you regularly shit talking founding fathers tho
So human babies REALLY need to be touched. Its totally critical for development. Small babies can literally die if you don’t cuddle them enough.
But imagine that the aliens are more like reptiles, in that they just sort of hatch and their parents feed them or stay around (and presumably, like, educate them, since they’re intelligent aliens), but don’t carry them around or cuddle in the same way.
So one of them gets stuck with a human baby that they’re responsible for and of course, they go ask a xenobiologist or someone ‘what do you do for a human baby, they’re all weird and squishy’.
And the scientist says: well, you have to stroke them. Like actually pick them up and stroke their skin.
Why, says the alien, what could that possibly accomplish. Does it make their skin tougher. Will they grow proper scales.
No, no, that’s just what human skin is like, you just… you have stroke them or they won’t grow right. They get a stroking-deficiency and can die.
Suddenly our obsession with petting everything makes sense to them.
“Why do they ask to pet our fur? Why do they touch every animal we find? Humans are so strange!”
“No, no, Pod Leader, we have discovered the reason for this. Humans require tactile contact for health. Their young will actually die without frequent touchings of skin, Even as adults, their health deteriorates if they are isolated from touch. Human Technical Adjunct Rupert is trying to nurture us and preserve our healthfulness with this touching they offer.”
“… they actually believe that touching our fur with their grubby paws is healthful?”
“For humans, Pod Leader, it is.A little unsanitary, we are understanding the reservations, but it is kindly meant. We think it is actually very nice of Human Technical Adjunct Rupert to be so concerned with our healthfulness.”
“We are still not sure we believe this. That sounds like a weak attempt at deceit to us.”
“Let us show you this vid of humans nurturing their young, it is very instructive.”
Some time later, Human Technical Adjunct Rupert is bewildered but pleased to find that fur-petting is now encouraged provided they have washed their paws. This seems reasonable to Human Technical Adjunct Rupert.
So because I like Dying and Being Dead, I was talking to @lathori about how every universe needs more time loop AU’s (like Groundhog Day but with more murder, given the kind of things I like), and that sort of led into her being like “Well, come up with a few then, be the content you want to see in the world,” and naturally the first thing I came up with since I’m rereading The Captive Prince was an AU where Laurent’s life resets every time he or Damen dies. Soooo…this is the first loop.
Laurent is drunk when the doors open and the
slave is marched through. It is possible
that this does dangerous things to his judgement.
He looks at the slave, dressed in the brief
silks of his barbarian homeland with his face ornamented with gold paint. The collar and chain are anything but decorative,
and the slave’s carefully blank expression does not hide the revulsion in his
eyes.
The slave is broad through his shoulders and
trim through the waist, with the muscles of a soldier and a handsome face under
the black curls. Sharp jaw, full mouth,
dark eyes that gleam under a strong brow.
A scar, ragged and bold even in comparison to the others littering the
slave’s body, rests at his shoulder.
Laurent feels something strike his chest,
like being slammed with an open palm and pinned to the ground, and the room seems
to vanish from around him. All he hears
is a ringing in his ears, and all he sees is the man in front of him, being
pushed to his knees with a look of raw, hot hatred flashing over his face. Laurent sympathizes.
He stands and walks forward, stops just paces
from the Akeilon, and savors the words on his tongue.
“I knew the King of Akeilos had sent me a
gift,” Laurent says, almost a purr, the most seductive voice he can put on. He tilts his head, lets his hair fall away
from his face and throat, summons every scrap of his brother’s proud nobility
that he can touch. “But I didn’t think
even the barbarian king would send me his own brother, shackled and painted
like a common whore.”
There’s a beat of silence, shock radiating
palpably from the courtiers and guards. Laurent and Prince Damianos stare each other
down.
Damianos surges to his feet, shrugging off
the guards, and Laurent moves.
His hand closes around a blade hidden in the
stiff material of his collar, draws, and thrusts it unerringly into Damianos’
exposed throat. Skin parts like silk, flesh like water. Blood gushes out in a
fountain over Laurent’s hands, the gleaming dark eyes wide as the Akeilon’s
bound hands make an aborted grab for his throat. Laurent drops to the floor with him, kneeling
over Damianos as blood pools and stains their clothing. Damianos jerks and shudders under Laurent’s
hands, gasping, blood bursting red over his lips and tongue as if he’s been
eating berries, or pomegranates.
The triumph that burns in Laurent’s chest is as
hot and sick-making as the grief that floored him when they brought Auguste’s
body back. He revels in it.
He feels the moment Damianos dies, the sudden
shivering loss of tension, and Laurent—
ok so the great wall is literally just two hours of helms deep crossed with attack on titan but with really cool dragons, the most beautiful army i’ve ever seen (led by jing tian), spine tingling drum scenes, and matt damon being literally married to pedro pascal. that’s it, that’s the movie. also jing tian saves all of china and matt damon’s sorry ass, willem dafoe gets blown up, and matt damon rides into the sunset with pedro pascal after sacrificing inestimable wealth and status for a life with him. please consider seeing this ridiculous flm. it’s literally worth it just for the drums and jing tian.
DID YOU WATCH SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON BECAUSE THAT MOVIE AND BALTO WERE MY CHILDHOOD
Okay…so.
My relationship with a lot of movies I watched as a little kid is messy. Spirit being one of them. On the one hand, I think I recall liking it quite a lot. On the other hand, I watched it with my cousins, which is pretty much a knee-jerk hate response because my cousins took their mother and grandmother’s perspective on me. There’s a lot of movies that fall into this category, or, alternatively, the category of “I was too fucked up to deal with this movie as a kid” like for example Spirited Away. It’s a pretty benign movie that I inexplicably had screaming nightmares about. All of these movies fall into the much larger category of ‘very vaguely recalled because they were casualties of memory repression.’
So…I guess the end result is: yeah, I watched it, but like…it’s complicated and I’ll probably rewatch it now that I’m an adult on the other side of some therapy and get a lot more out of it. Sorry this got kind of weirdly personal rather than being a response to the movie.
hey, if you're up for discussion: i noticed a lot of the arguments re: bdsm were the kind of arguments that in other situations might be used against queer relationships. what would the difference be between a bdsm couple having a leash in a grocery store aisle as opposed to two gay men kissing? is it that theres a stigma against choking (man, that sounds weird put like that)? arent they doing their thing wituout asking other ppl to be involved? id love to know ur thoughts if u dont mind.
Oh…kay.
*pours self
a drink*
There’s a
lot to cover here, so everyone buckle up while your queer dom vodka auntie discusses some stuff.
This is regarding this post for anyone who wants to follow along. Here’s the
major points we’re going to hit:
BDSM etiquette
Consent
Sexual vs sensual behavior, AKA sex
vs romance
First off,
we’re going to talk about BDSM—as it should be done, not the exploitative
imitation in 50 Shades. The core of BDSM
is trust: the sub trusts the dom to stop if they safeword out, and the dom
trusts the sub to know their limits and use
that safeword. The three major tenets of
BDSM are Safe, Sane, and Consensual, meaning that everyone in the scene feels
safe because they trust the person they’re with, everyone in the scene knows
what they’re getting into and what they’re doing, and, most critically, they
have agreed to those things clearly
and explicitly. Safe and Sane are pretty
predicated on the people involved knowing what they’re doing, but Consensual is
non-negotiable.
Which brings
us rapidly to point two, consent. This is the major problem with couples
practicing any sort of overt BDSM in public.
The public, merely by their presence, is part of the scene—you don’t do
stuff in public unless the response of the public, the feeling of being watched is somehow part of it, so the
public is involved in the scene—but they have not consented to participation.
Consent in BDSM is (or should be) an intricate thing, based on negotiations
of what people are or are not willing to do, discussion and acknowledgement of
their personal history, and establishing a safeword, a word used to indicate “everything
needs to stop now” that can be used
by anyone involved without protest from other parties. So, for example, if it was me, I might be
like “I have a history of abuse, so I’m not comfortable humiliating a sub or acting
like I’m punishing them,” and the person I was talking with might be like “I’m
not comfortable with being choked, but I’ve always wanted to be tied up.” And then we would go from there with those ground
rules in place, and establish a safeword.
Before we ever discussed a
scene, all of that would be hashed out, and then when we did discuss a scene, it would be something we’d already agreed that
everyone involved was interested in doing and had the option to opt out of.
So, this is
where public BDSM sort of falls apart, yeah?
Because the bystanders have not discussed their boundaries or their
histories, they have not negotiated what they’re interested in, and they do not
have a safeword that will let them opt out of the scene. Suppose one of the bystanders goes up to the
couple and asks, “Hey, could you not choke your girlfriend in public? You’re really freaking my son out.” The couple hasn’t had that discussion with
that bystander, they are not obligated by the BDSM contract to honor that bystander’s
request. Now, it’s the decent thing to
do, to respect someone’s request for what’s really an easy thing, but people…uh,
suck. People suck. Honoring the request to not choke your girlfriend in public actually takes less effort than
doing it anyway, but people suck, so they’re almost inevitably going to go “fuck
you” and do it anyway. Which is NOT how BDSM is supposed to work,
because see above re: Safe, Sane, and Consensual. So, like, there’s that. BDSM is about consent and trust. The bystanders don’t have that foundation of
trust, and they haven’t consented to being part of the scene, so everything
else aside it fundamentally violates the contract implicit in BDSM. If a couple does want to do that sort of public BDSM stuff, that’s what fetish
parties are for, they can pay the necessary money to do it with people who have
agreed and consented to being their audience.
Otherwise, it’s more like catcalling—you
might be getting off on it, but the other people involved just feel creeped out
and vaguely violated.
But here’s
the core of your question: the difference between sexual and sensual behavior.
Okay, so,
sexual behavior is exactly what it says on the tin, it’s about sex. Sensual behavior
is about physical touch and showing affection with no expectation that those
touches lead to sex, it’s about romance. This is where the analogy between BDSM and
queer couples falls apart, because it’s this simple.
Queer couples want to express
romantic affection through hand-holding, hugging, kissing, etc.
BDSM couples want to engage in
something that’s intrinsically for sexual pleasure.
And I don’t
want to hear debate about this, kiddos. I
know that BDSM can be nonsexual, I know that some people find it a deep relief
to let someone else take control or to take control themselves, but that’s not
the kind of BDSM relationship that gets flashily displayed in public. Let me posit a scenario, in which I have a
friend with whom I have a platonic dom/sub arrangement. When they’re under stress, they let me take charge,
and let’s suppose that during one of these agreed-upon scenes we’re going
grocery shopping. I might have an arm
through theirs, or I might hold their hand, while I do most of the talking and
instruct them on what to put in the cart.
Any passerby wouldn’t notice anything unusual there—my friend might be
tired, I might be a chatterbox, we might be doing a grocery run so I can make
dinner, hell, maybe I’m just a bossy person.
That’s not something that engages the public in any way, shape, or form. On the other hand, let’s take the example of
a couple who goes grocery shopping in the same way, but one of them has the
other on a collar and chain. That’s about the exhibition, it’s about the two
of them getting off on being seen to
have that power dynamic and all the trappings.
And that’s about sex. It’s about
being titillated by bringing something that’s normally private into the open.
A pair of
gay men kissing in public? That’s not
about sex. That’s about being
romantically attached. And it’s something
that straight couples get away with all
the time, is the thing here. Whereas
it doesn’t matter if that hypothetical couple with the collar and chain is two
women, a man and a woman, or three tentacle aliens and a grizzly bear, that’s
still about sex and therefore still inappropriate to be pushed onto the public
without consent. It’s not about our
culture having a stigma on choking, which…real fast, let me establish that
there’s a very serious difference between having a stigma on, say, tattoos, as
opposed to something like choking. The reason
we have a cultural stigma about choking is because it’s frequently used to hurt
or kill people. America, at the very
least, could stand to have some stricter stigmas about other things used to
hurt or kill people. Like guns. The reason overt BDSM like what’s described
above is inappropriate in public is because it is sexual and it does
disregard the right of the bystanders to consent to their own sexual experiences.
As long as
we’re on the subject, I want to hit one more thing. I think your ask is talking specifically
about the remark that used to be made about “Well, how am I going to explain
two men kissing to my kids?” And kids
are important here. Because, okay, let’s
suppose a four-year-old is presented with these two situations. The two men kissing is easy. That kid has definitely seen someone kissing their partner before, just tell
them that the two men love each other and kissing someone is a way to show that
you love them. Easy-peasy. However, explaining BDSM to anyone involves a
pretty in-depth discussion of human sexuality, and…like, listen. There is a reason that showing children porn
is considered abuse. By exposing the
public to intense BDSM play, you are also exposing kids to a sexual act,
without their consent or full understanding of what’s going on. And we have
pretty much agreed that pulling that stunt is Wrong.
TL;DR: BDSM
of the variety being discussed here is inherently sexual, whereas queer couples
engaging in affectionate contact is not.
Sex acts require consent, and the general public has not consented to
being part of your BDSM scene. Don’t be
an asshole, and if you really want to carry your power dynamics out of the
bedroom, do it in a way that doesn’t force everyone else to be part of
something they have not agreed to and cannot opt out of. I can do a separate post on that if you’re
interested.
Aaaaaaaaall
righty then. I think that covers everything. I hope you’ve all enjoyed this journey into
good BDSM etiquette and the fine art of consent.
so i was watching cinderella while doing my nails and waiting for them to dry which was clearly a Mistake because now i can’t help but think -
the evil stepmother was always evil, okay. say her abuse of her own daughters was different than that of cinderella’s - but it was still abuse. giving them impossible expectations, telling them they were never good enough, never pretty enough, never smart enough. and then she gets married, and anastasia and drizella are ecstatic because this man seems kind and warm and maybe just maybe he can temper their mother, maybe with him around she won’t be so cruel. so they’re on their very best behavior in the beginning, they do just as their mother taught - they trot out their best upper court manners in an attempt to get their new stepfather to like them. but it just comes off as cold and snooty and they’re trying, they are, they’re just bad at it. and they see how he is with cinderella, the smiling girl their own age, and they are jealous. they don’t mean to be, they try not to be, they know it isn’t becoming of young ladies. but she gets hugs and kisses and affection and they get rulers slapped on their hands when they reach for desert and sharp jabs to their sides when they slouch and - soon they hate cinderella, not for anything she’s done, but for what she has and they dont
but then her father dies. and it’s all a tumble of things and cinderella is crying and they’ve lost their only chance at escaping their mother’s clutches and it’s terrible. and everything settles and there’s no reason to be jealous anymore but resentment is hard to let go of and they don’t know what to do. they’re only kids too after all. and they’re so terribly bad at comforting people, they can do flowery words and know all the right bows but cinderella is so sad and they just don’t know what to do with that, because they’re supposed to be sisters but they’re not even friends
and slowly but surely their mother starts abusing cinderella, starts making her a maid in her own home, and she’s their mother, what are anastasia and drizella supposed to do? she rules them with an iron fist, and cinderella doesn’t even like them anyway, it’s none of their business.
except one night anastasia crawls into her sister’s bed in the middle of the night and wakes her up. “i was thirsty,” she explains, eyes wide and shiny, and they’re bad at this with other people but drizella has no problems with pulling anastasia into her arms. the younger girl clutches her sister and continues, “i was thirsty and i went down to the kitchen to get some water and - and cinderella is still up! she’s doing the dishes, and she should be asleep, mom is going to make her make breakfast in the morning and -” she cuts herself off with a hiccup and whispers, “it’s not fair.”
“life isn’t fair,” drizella says, echoing one of their mother’s favorite phrases. but her sister is staring at her with wet eyes, and it’s not like their mother is likely to get up before sunrise anyway, she hates waking up, so she pulls herself and anastasia out of bed and off they go.
