Knitting, 2021 - by Joseph Ford, English

this is one of a [series] and they're all fantastic

joseph ford is the photographer and the knitter who made the pieces is nina dodd (ninadoddknits.com)

Do you guys remember how kidnap fantasies were popular on wattpad because young girls and queer teens were both made to feel shame at the thought of their own sexualities, so the fantasy of being kidnapped totally against their will was a way for them to engage with a romantic or sexual fantasy without feeling morally in the wrong for doing so? Added bonus that the fantasy involved being whisked away from repressive environments like home or school, right?

Finding out that Bram Stoker was in a sexless marriage and that scholars believe that he very likely was closeted gay puts the entire book into perspective as to WHY it reads EXACTLY like a self insert wattpad Dracula kidnap fic:

“I TOTALLY love my wife and would never do anything that an upstanding Good Straight Working Man wouldn’t do but oh nooo, big strong man with broad back and strong enough arms to carry me back to bed like a princess trapped me and claimed me as his, completely against my will 👉👈 But he protects me against the bad evil sexual women (who I assure you, I am TOTALLY sexually attracted to, as any straight man with a choice would be) but trust me, I do NOT want ANY of this. What’s that? The Count is not capable of feeling love? Would be a shame if I had the special ability to change tha-”

This is also the fantasy behind all those old bodice-ripper romances that people today like to mock or call problematic, by the way.

“Oh, my next forty years are going to consist of nothing but washing dishes and keeping house and bearing children for the disdainful man I married right out of high school because my parents said college was for men and I had no other obvious life path open to me? What if a pirate captain thought I was worth stealing away from it all? [what if I ran away but no-one could blame me for leaving]?”

#I read an article a long time ago about a woman who was raised in an incredibly repressive conservative christian community#where all that mattered was purity and virginity etc #She talked about how for a long time rape fantasies were the only way she could derive any pleasure from sex #because she couldn’t feel safe exploring the idea of wanting sex #it wasn’t really ABOUT rape or eroticizing assault or whatever #it was about creating a scenario where she was free from the shame associated with wanting #i think this is true of a lot of icky-seeming stuff in romance and erotica #it’s an imaginary scenario where nothing you don’t really want actually happens #but you can’t be blamed or feel guilty for it #you didn’t do anything wrong#anyway that article changed my perspective a lot #i think there’s also something to be said for people who have felt ugly and undesirable their whole lives #enjoying fictional scenarios where a hot alpha werewolf or whatever is so attracted to them he ‘cant help himself’ or whatever #because it can also be really shameful to want to be desired #when you feel like youre ugly and gross ( @headspace-hotel )

#i had recently similar realization when stumbling into pit of y/n x character stories about “your dad’s handsome best friend”#it immediately introduces age gap where the man (usually) is middle aged and generally experienced#and y/n is a young adult at best but always exploring their sexuality for the first time#of course part of why this trope is popular is that teens tend to have crushes on adults#but I kept wondering why it has to be dad’s best friend until it hit me: it’s about safety#person who is your parents friend is a person who isn’t scum bc otherwise your parents would be friends with them#they’re safe and not a predator preying on young and impressionable like a groomer might#they’re your parents friend so they care about you too#which makes the fantasy at the same time spicy (age difference) and safe (dad’s bestie can’t hurt you)#idk it’s just interested how sometimes our brains try to justify things to us

@thirstyforred i hope you don’t mind me pulling up your tags because you’ve made a GREAT point which I think is also echoed in the following tropes:

While irl age gap relationships very much have the potential to be predatory, it is worth recognising why some people consider them attractive in fiction and what these fantasies help them explore.

I’m sorry to bring up HP, but let’s take Snape, for example, since I remember him being a massive hot commodity back on 2012 Deviantart. I heavily doubt that most tweens girls who had a crush on Snape would actually want to get on with their teacher - it was just a fictional crush which allowed them to explore their likes and dislikes in a safe environment (and also let this man move on from his high school crush, which is also fair because let’s be honest he NEEDS to let go of it.)

So yeah, this post does put a lot of tropes and kinks into perspective, which I think is important because one’s squick is another’s fantasy, and neither of these people are inherently more/less virtuous/problematic for liking or disliking it. Fiction is fiction. Real life is real life. What is cool in a book isn’t necessarily what you’d like to experience irl and vice versa, and it’s good to bear in mind that people’s experiences are different than yours and their takeaway from a piece of media might be different from yours.

This reminds me of that deep dive post about the Labyrinth and how it came out in a time when girls weren’t supposed to like anything to do with sex. Yet here is an attractive older gent offering to give you everything and be your slave if you say yes and run away from your crappy family

YALL THE ONION BOUGHT INFO WARS IN THE BANKRUPTCY AUCTION

THIS IS THE FUNNIEST POSSIBLE OUTCOME ARE YOU KIDDING ME

there is simply nothing funnier than habsburg history

An “Austrian Blunder” indeed

*looking for a midnight snack* *gets flashbanged*

This is literally the plot of a Garfield comic strip

yes. and because of the rampant misinformation online and russia giving money to tucker carlson and other rightwing media (x) and because the DOJ refused to punish trump for his crimes and because russia literally called in bomb threats at key polling locations (x)

the misinfo played such a critical role. @ other countries. this could be you. put in rules and regulations to stop the spread of misinformation and to stop russia funding extremists to spread it. and keep young kids off social media till they're old enough to recognize radicalizing content spread by trolls for what it is. don't let what happened in the US happen to you.

I have a solution to female space marines

The Admech actually figured out how to make femmarines millennia ago. However, making Astartes documentation gender-neutral turned into a centuries-long struggle with the Administratum. It was just simpler to refer to all Astartes as brothers with he/him pronouns.

Advantages:

CANON

Likes to charge reblogs to FUCKING cast

Please for the love of god. You should be able to change controls WITHOUT TAKING YOUR EYES OF THE ROAD. There is no reason to have to look at a SCREEEN while DRIVING

i'll have what i'm having

both fish and women love me

give a woman a ring and she'll eat for a day. give a woman a lifetime fishing license and she'll be loved and feared by all marine life for eternity

Posts a spider would make

Hey chat, what the fuck did I mean by this?

official fish post

never wanted something so badly

the reviews are in!

(from fragrantica)

ok well this blew my mind

This is also true with filmmakers. Western filmmakers pan their cameras mostly left to right and Iranian filmmakers do right to left.

Time seems such a universal concept and then I find out the different ways people perceive everything and remember “it’s all appearances to consciousness”

But the coolest part of that time-direction study, was there didn’t seem to be a consistent pattern to how aboriginal Australians arranged the images, until it was realized that the issue was where the participant was sitting, because they were consistently arranging them East to West.

Because these languages have absolute direction. They don’t use left/right, but north/south/etc.

I love funky wildlife services. I aspire to be as funky and know as much about wildlife

Dude

idek what this says i just pressed post immediately after seeing the word 'blessica'

me reading this post

MANKEY??