Shiny Things For the magpie in me.

“Some relationships are sort of poisoned at the root, but not strongly enough that it actually kills the relationship — so instead, it grows like a dark twisted briar in your life, making some areas uninhabitable, or squeezing out other thriving plants. We end up indulging them and letting them persist because we are fascinated by them, and they often seem more “real” or authentic because they hearken back to an earlier time in our life that we aren’t fully ready to shut the door on. You can still have all those parts of yourself without having him along with them. I have people like this in my life — if they wrote to me now and wanted me, I would be in horrible knots of longing and dread. But I try to tell myself that these people are more invested in keeping their dream alive than they are in making me happy in the present tense — and that latter is something that they wouldn’t even know how to begin to do. I made a deal with all my former selves that they are allowed to ride along in my head with me, if they want. No one left behind. One condition — they don’t get to steer. They’re not qualified, they’re all still nursing these archaic hurts and their range of vision is so limited. Me, present tense: I’m the only one who gets to steer. Congratulations on finding a wonderful husband! No matter what you ever felt before, you deserve this marriage and are up to the challenge. It may not reflect who you were many years ago, but it’s you now and that is more than enough. posted by hermitosis at 9:06 AM on May 12 [76 favorites ] [!]”

“I am not kidding when I say that I find incredibly esoteric and specialized porn to be one of the most life-affirming things in the world. Even… no, especially the stuff that doesn’t do anything for me. Every giantess crush site, every furry vore gallery, every Shintaro Kago shit-and-dissection-fest, every body-inflation discussion group, every set of specialized apron-fetish films, every dendrophile fan club, every time I learn a new word like “boytaur” or “OT3″ or “docking” or “unbirth”… all these things bring me a genuine and unironic joy. These things, these kinks, these flights of imagination, are the impassioned obsessions of real people, everyday people. At least one of your coworkers, at least one of your family members. And that’s not creepy, that’s wonderful. Every one of those weird kinks is a shout of human individuality in a world that wants to reduce us down to buying patterns and demographic trends.”