OH MY GOD PREACH IT 🍿 👀💅

  (x)

Ummm… I’m pretty sure this is romantic. If he was following her around or doing this in front of her door it’s creepy, but a guy doing something that hurts literally no one to try to romance a woman is not a creep. You are just hyper sensitive.

ummmm…..NO. it’s not romantic. not by a long shot. did you even read the article?? he’s fucking pulling this stunt SO SHE’LL SEE IT and get back with him! what makes you think she doesn’t live nearby?? in any case, he chose a public location and is literally trying to use social media to pressure/manipulate her into changing her mind. and he has the audacity to call that love. fuck. that. shit. not to mention that they were literally together 4 months. 4. months. does that sound like healthy behavior to you????? even if they had been together a lot longer, there’s no excuse. he’s not just singing his blues in the park, he’s being obsessive and down right CREEPY and she dodged a bullet. A GIRL SHOULD BE ABLE TO BREAK UP WITH A GUY WITHOUT THIS SORT OF PUBLIC GUILT TRIPPING BULLSHIT

Yep. This is no different then him threatening to kill himself if she doesn’t take him back. It’s a guilt trip. Plain and simple. Guilt trips are *not* sexy or romantic at all. She broke up with him for a reason, she shouldn’t be made to feel guilty about it. He needs to move the fuck on.

Guilt-tripping, manipulative behavior is never romantic.

Oh a God, the women who have been inculcated by sitcoms and romcoms to find this shit romantic are much more likely to end up in awful toxic relationships with a side dish of occasionally dead. It’s terrifying how much unlearning there is to do, and it falls on other women to do the unteaching. Men are shit and they ruin everything.

Not ONLY is this not romantic, but he’s putting HIS shitty behavior on her. How much you wanna bet she’s had at least 6 people go “just talk to him so he’ll shut up already.” No. Just… ALL the nos. Learn to take disappointment without turning into creepy, stalkerish, abusive shitheads already?

The Story of Luke and Rapunzel, and why the Grand Gesture is Bullshit.

Anyone online in the UK this week has probably come across the story of Luke from Bristol - (see here for original story: 

http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/heartbroken-man-starts-playing-piano-450378), 

Luke decided (and announced publicly and on social media) that playing the piano non-stop on the village green would be an appropriate way to “win back” the girlfriend, known to him as “Rapunzel”, who rejected him after their four-month affair.

There was, understandably, a fair bit of discussion on this. Some people (mostly men, it seems) thought it was a romantic gesture. Others (mostly women) thought it wasn’t. After a fair bit of exposure and some fairly passionate debate, Luke from Bristol has finally stopped playing, after an incident at 4 am last night (someone punched him – I wonder why?). Since then, the debate has continued, with some people (mostly men) saying how ungrateful and incomprehensible women are to reject The Kind of Romantic Gesture All Women Want, and some (mostly women) saying; “Serves him right.”

Now I don’t know Luke from Bristol. He may well have problems of his own, and I don’t believe that punching anyone in the face is necessarily the best way to solve them. However, there is a conversation to be had about male perceptions of What Women Want, and women’s perceptions of What Makes a Romantic Gesture, and how those ideas can cause conflict, misunderstanding, and, in some cases, abuse.

First, let’s look at where the idea of the Grand Gesture came from. Given the nickname that Luke gave his ex-girlfriend, let’s start with Rapunzel.

The story: Rapunzel has been trapped in a tower for the whole of her life. Along comes the Prince to rescue her. After a number of adventures (tasks), he manages to do so, and thereby earns his reward – that is, the girl herself, all-too-often represented in fairytales as the prize the hero wins, after having fulfilled his tasks. This scenario exists in so many classic fairytales: Snow White; the Sleeping Beauty; Rapunzel. In all these cases, the girl has never even met the guy she ends up marrying. Snow White and Beauty are both unconscious: Rapunzel is at the top of a tower, and presumably only gets to see the top of his head. Not the greatest basis for a lasting relationship. But these stories are all based on the idea that the girl will happily put out out of sheer gratitude. The guy wins the girl by fulfilling a series of tasks. The girl conveniently falls in love with the guy because he fulfilled all the tasks. No-one ever asks the girl whether she really wants the guy. No-one asks what would have happened if she’d just said: “Thanks, but I never asked you to do these tasks for me in the first place. Now jog on, there’s a good chap, and let me get on with my own life.”

And here’s the problem. The history of the romantic novel is littered with this kind of bullshit thinking. The woman is all-too often a passive player in the game. And modern men and women are still being fed the myth that men should make grand gestures in order to deserve them.

But here’s the thing. Love just doesn’t work that way. If you don’t love someone, then no grand gesture is going to change things. The public proposal at the football match, the guy who fakes his own death before leaping out of the ambulance covered in theatre blood, clutching an engagement ring (yes, that did happen); the guy who swears he won’t stop playing piano until his beloved comes back to him – none of those gestures will actually make someone love you. At best, they will be embarrassing; at worst, they seem manipulative, coercive and downright creepy.

It’s hard to turn someone down in public. You’re afraid that the person will feel humiliated. You’re afraid that all the onlookers will judge you for being heartless. You say yes because you’re feeling pressured. Because you’re being publicly coerced by someone who knows exactly what they’re doing.

In the same way, when someone threatens self-harm, or even suicide if you refuse to give them what they want, you feel responsible, even when you’re clearly not. You may even see it as a sign of their love for you, rather than a sign of entitlement, mental illness or abuse.

But behaviour like that is abuse. It may not seem that way, but it is. The language of love has traditionally been all about the cruelty of the woman who won’t put out and the suffering of the man who wants her to. But really, all it comes down to is the wheedling of a naughty little boy going: “Please, Mum, pleeeese, oh pleeease, oh, pleeease, I’ll cry, I’ll scream, I’ll HOLD MY BREATH UNTIL I DIE AND THEN YOU’LL BE SORRY,” until his mother, out of sheer exhaustion, rewards him with a sweet or a toy, thereby feeding him the myth that all women will give in eventually, if pressured enough to do so.

Coercion has nothing to do with love. Public gestures are all about ego. They’re not for the recipient; they’re for the public. They’re not sincere. They’re theatre. In the same way, threats of self-harm (be that threatening suicide or just playing the piano until you drop) are not about love. They’re about manipulation, which is a form of abuse. Real love puts the other’s feelings before one’s own. Real love doesn’t want the control or coerce. Real love cares about what the other person thinks, and when the other person says: “no”, then real love backs off and shows respect.  

Fairytales may be lots of fun, but they’re not a template for real life. Neither are love stories in fiction. Heathcliff may say he loves Cathy, but how does he show it? By marrying and abusing another woman; by tormenting Cathy to death and taking vengeance on her child.

“He loves me with such passion that it comes out in violence” has been the cry of abused women throughout the ages, in fiction and outside of it. And yet it’s bullshit: the truth is that a violent man is violent because he can’t or won’t control his aggression. Love has nothing to do with it, whatever he might claim. And a man who blames women for his own lack of self-control is a man who may one day attack or maim or kill a woman because he doesn’t feel accountable for his actions. He’ll say: “She drove me to it.” What that really means is: “She didn’t give me what I wanted, which in my world is unacceptable.”

So, repeat after me:

It isn’t cruel to refuse the advances of someone you’re not interested in.

The moment you say no to them, your responsibility to the other person ceases.

Grown-ups don’t wheedle. No means no.

Returning unwanted gifts isn’t cruel: it’s necessary.

You don’t owe it to someone to love them, just because they made an effort to get your attention.

Theatrical, public gestures designed to make you do something you didn’t want to aren’t romantic. They’re selfish, childish and bullying.

Saying he loves you in public makes you just one of the audience. Saying he loves you in private – that’s between the two of you.

And most of all, remember this:

Women are not rewards for being a good boy. Women are not prizes at the shooting-range. Women are not there to be bought. They get to decide for themselves who they want. Men don’t get to tell them how to make their choices. That’s right: not even nice-looking men with romantic hair and a shy little smile who like to play the piano.

So. Fucking. Much. Real love respects both of the participants’ right to choose.

if you see someone active on social media or something, and you message them, and they don’t reply, they don’t have to. just because they are awake and alive does not mean they have to engage with you whenever you want them to. you are not entitled to someone else’s time. 

in the past, an abuser would see me post online and then hound me on aim until i answered. i felt like i had to hide. they also lived in my building and would pound on my door if they saw me online and i wasn’t responding to them. i had to completely ditch a screenname, lie about having skype, and turn off my phone to hide. if i saw they were online i couldn’t post on facebook or interact with anyone without them demanding to interact with me. the only legitimate excuse not to talk to them was being asleep. in their eyes, if i were really their friend, i would always want to engage no matter what, even if i had a migraine or work to do or wasn’t feeling very social. it didn’t matter. 

please do not do this. if someone doesn’t write you back, don’t guilt them about where they are or what they’re doing. if you see someone posting on tumblr or facebook and they aren’t signed into aim or google or skype or whatever, that’s their business. if they are signed on but don’t write you back, it’s okay. sometimes people can’t talk to everyone all the time every time. some people can only talk to one person at a time without getting overloaded. some people are signed on in case someone needs to contact them with something important and not to be social. they’re not always hiding from you, and you shouldn’t make them feel like they HAVE to hide from you.

this is probably jumbled and i’m probably missing a lot here, but pressuring people to always be available to you every hour of the day and always answer the phone or text or chat or pm or whatever…if you require that of someone, you might need to take a step back.

Tumblr makes a little bit of noise… but I turned off people being able to see me on it. Facebook noises were turned off the instant they started happening. Text messages do not make a noise. The technologies are there for my convenience. Skype was so invasive that people I love messaging me on it sent me into a panic attack and I had to turn it off because it was constant? I don’t even remember why it was constant? Like, I think at one point it made a noise if people came online?  The only thing that is allowed to make noise that I don’t often turn off is my phone.  Seriously, it is unreasonable to expect anyone to interact at all times. 

an absolute mood

“Terrorize heterosexual love” 💀💀💀

ENOLA HOLMES (2020)

lydsmartin: ENOLA HOLMES (2020)

damn this tea scalded me

mind opening post that should be in everyone’s dashboard

While this totally applies to other marginalized groups, I’d like to remind everyone House is specifically talking about an autistic child here.

Remember that.

Report: Trevorrow’s ego torpedoed his shot at Star Wars

Vulture reports on why Colin Trevorrow left Episode IX – per “speculation from a ranking Hollywood movie insider with direct knowledge of the productions on both The Book of Henry and Jurassic World” – that the director’s ego might have gotten in the way. Basically – do not mess with Kathleen Kennedy.

Previous reports claimed script issues were at the source of the split.

Something that’s fascinated me about the whole “why can’t Kathleen Kennedy keep a man [director]???” discourse is how few people seem to realize that Kennedy’s behavior is, in fact, something we should see more of, not less. Because what she is reacting to is a widespread problem that has, until now, gone unchecked: the problem of asshole directors.

Kennedy is in an unprecedented position in Hollywood for a woman. She is in control of the entirety of the Star Wars franchise—what movies are made, what stories are told, what merchandise is sold—and she is the final authority. Disney will no doubt replace her the minute the franchise stumbles, but the past two movies have gotten good reviews and staggering box office numbers and The Last Jedi looks to be just as successful, so she is, for now, in one of the safest spots in Hollywood. The last female executive with that kind of power was probably Lucille Ball.

Which means that if you are part of the franchise, you answer to Kennedy and moreover you have to play by her rules. The stories have to get her buy-in, the actors have to get her approval, and the directors have to behave the way she expects them to. And it’s very apparent that Gareth Edwards, Josh, Trank, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and now Colin Treverrow have all fallen short of those expectations in one way or another. (You may say to yourself “wait a minute, Gareth Edwards wasn’t fired!” To which I will reply, “lol.”)

Now, nothing hugely out of the ordinary has been reported in re: Edwards or Trank or Lord & Miller or Trevorrow’s antics — mostly it’s been stuff like “ego” or unprofessional behavior or whatnot. But that’s exactly my point: white male directors are, for the first time, being fired over things that they should have been getting fired for years ago.

Hollywood is far too enamored of the genius auteur trope (and Kennedy is no exception, hence why she hired these dudes in the first place) and indulges the most horrifying behavior from the men it deems “visionary.” Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Mel Gibson, Sean Penn, Johnny Depp, David O. Russell: men with long and ugly histories are venerated without a second thought, so much so that the ones who are merely outrageous don’t even ping the radar. Rupert Sanders has an affair with Kristen Stewart and gets her booted out of the sequel to “Snow White” (when Stewart played the title character); Jennifer Lawrence tears her diaphragm hyperventilating while filming Darren Aronofsky’s latest whatever-the-fuck thing “mother” is gonna turn out to be; Lars Von Trier…continues to be himself. None of it raises an eyebrow (with the exception of the Sanders/Stewart fling, but that’s because people blamed Stewart, who was 21, for seducing Sanders, who was 40) and all of those men have very successful careers. Being an asshole is perfectly acceptable — everywhere else but Star Wars.

On Star Wars, Kennedy is holding the directors she hires to a very basic standard of professionalism and none of them are able to handle it; and for the first time in their lives, they’re actually suffering the consequences. Bad scripts are thrown out and writers replaced; bad dailies and reports of cast unhappiness get directors the boot. It’s astonishing — but it shouldn’t be. There’s no indication that Kennedy is too demanding or that her standards are too high; but there’s every indication that these dudes have been getting away with absolute murder on their other sets. 

The real question then, the one that nobody’s asked yet and probably never will, isn’t “why is Kathleen Kennedy firing these guys,” but rather, “Why do any of these guys have a career in the first place?”

“there were no cases of autism before 1930″

Yeah mt Everest wasn’t discovered till 1856 but im sure the fucking mountain still existed

And much like Mt Everest, the people who lived on it for like all of human history damn well knew it was there even if they names they had for it are apparently less valid than the one an Educated White Man put on it.

victoria beckham at the dmv was a classic reality tv moment

Thess vs Bigotry

So some people (well, sexist fuckboys, but whatever) are really angry about the fact that a second Star Wars movie has come out with a female protagonist.

…

I am going to spend my last few before-bed minutes on you fuckmuppets, because clearly you want it to be All About You. So here’s All About You.

There are not enough of you to be a driving economic force anymore.

The economy is not great. People are having to revisit their marketing strategies. Some of them are slower than others (hello, the advertising industry, but even that’s getting better), but they’re starting to figure out that there are more people who will spend money on stories that represent them in a positive light than there are people who will boycott it if women and POC and someone other than cis het males are cast as the leads.

The Force Awakens took a risk, one that not a lot of people in the industry have been willing to take. It paid off in spectacular fashion. All those people who said they boycotted because of John Boyega, and didn’t go see it again because of Daisy Ridley? They were drowned out by the people who went to see it five or six times - in the cinema, which is hella expensive - and that was largely because, “POC AND WOMAN IN THE LEAD ROLES!”

The bigoted fuckmuppet contribution to the industry, on a financial level, is exceeded by the people who want to see themselves represented in the media. There are more women than there are bigoted fuckmuppets. More POCs than bigoted fuckmuppets. More LGBTQA people than bigoted fuckmuppets. They are making their voices heard the way you always taunted them - hell, us - about. We voted with our wallets. And our votes made a landslide victory for a move towards equal representation in lead roles in films.

We did what you told us. And we’re winning. And frankly we’re kind of laughing at you because right now we have the Almighty Dollar on our side, for once. We are proving once and for all just what we can offer to a company that does right by us - piles and piles of money. And that is all they want.

This is a pivotal time, and I imagine you know it. Some advice for you: GET USED TO IT. We’re here, we’re not going away, and we’re using what we’ve got to make sure that we’re going to be heard. A lot. Sure, there are still a lot of problems with racism and sexism and all manner of bigotry, but funnily enough, this shit starts with entertainment. When you start glorifying a woman for her competence instead of her tits, when you start showing a POC as a hero instead of a thug, when you start representing gay relationships like it ain’t no thing … when you do all this in people’s entertainment, it matters. What we take in colours our view of the world, and most of us live in pretty narrow bubbles where our only touch of the world outside our rat race is our peers and our media.

This is the start. Get used to it. We’re not taking anything away from you that you ever should have had. We’re going to keep throwing money at this stuff, your boycotting is going to be a spit in the ocean, and the people who want to make the money are going to see this and … well, you don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing.

This is how the world changes. And you’re not going to stop us. This is a rebellion, isn’t it.

We rebel.

^

“We are proving once and for all just what we can offer to a company that does right by us - piles and piles of money. And that is all they want.”

Whole thing’s a work of art, I just selected a pull quote.

The old adage of “XYZ doesn’t sell” is being… force-fully adjusted, if you’ll pardon the expression.

why do men do that thing where they can know absolutely nothing about a topic but will still find a way to talk to you like they have a PhD on it

i dont get offended at white people jokes even though im white because: 

my white friends that have reblogged this give me life

4. Sometimes I am a shitty white person and the jokes remind me to FUCKIN STOP

If ur white and like this post I fux with u

^absolutely

5. It’s hard to be offended when white people jokes involve bland food/tourist dads in socks and sandals/white girls in yoga pants obsessed with pumpkin spice/suburban PTA moms and other harmless and mostly true stereotypes while jokes about POC involve them being called thugs/criminals/slurs/uneducated/illegal immigrants.

i fucks with u heavy if ur white and you reblog this

6. They’re usually really fucking funny and don’t perpetuate stereotypes that will ever affect me economically, politically, or cause me any true harm, let alone create risks that “justify” my murder and/or death

THIS 

When someone is a Christian they are not constantly asked their position on the holocaust, the transatlantic slave trade, the extermination of Native Americans or any of the thousands of atrocities committed by Christians. So why do Muslims get asked about terrorism and Jews about Israel and are grouped in with specific bad people while Christians are not required to explain themselves.

Now, there’s a thought.

i hate when i go up north and go to restaurants and the waiter comes to take my order and im like “do yall have sweet tea??” and theyre like “no sweetheart but we have unsweetened iced tea and we can give you some sugar packets!!!” llike no you fucking yankee because now the tea is already cold so the sugar wont dissolve in it and itll all just sink the bottom and be nasty learn basic fucking solubility this is 9th grade chemistry thats why sweet tea exists in the first place you fucking heat the tea up to make it and then while its still hot you add the sugar and then you chill it and its sweet fucking tea i bet you pronounce pecan like peecan too you four seasons-having piece of shit

i hate when i go down south and go to restaurants and the waiter says “we dont serve gays”