i was like well i could ""compose a post"" or i could just. mine the way i explained this in chat the other day for parts—
anyway all this [trying to work out a congenial set of blogs to follow] has me thinking back to when i made a friend in my german reading class and was like 'oh right actually sometimes you meet people and it immediately feels good and easy and safe and fun. forgot that was how it was supposed to work!' bc unfortunately the reality is that as a now–chronically isolated misfit i'm strongly motivated to try and convince myself i could like people even when. we aren't actually compatible.
bc the thing is, it turns out that not feeling like you're part of either mainstream gender club is: really fucking lonely! bc you just feel constantly like. wow insane gender coercion is happening all around me constantly and it makes me angry and scared and i don’t know how not to vent incredulously about it but i'm also acutely aware that becoming someone who can't shut up abt their gender alienation is a great way to come off as a bore and (pun not intended) a drag…
not to mention that like. people are basically only nice to me when they girlbox me so like. i need it and hate it and feel guilty abt it!
miserable that there is no way 2 avoid being treated as either a man or woman
The Crown (Diu Crône) by Heinrich von dem Türlin translated by J. W. Thomas
Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal translated by Michael Resler
Erec by Hartmann von Aue translated by Cyril Edwards
Iwein Knight with the Lion by Hartmann von Aue translated by Cyril Edwards
Lanzelet by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven translated by Thomas Kerth
Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach translated by Jessie Weston
Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach translated by Edwin Zeydel
Tristan and Iseult Vol. I by Gottfriend von Straßberg translated by Jessie Weston
Tristan and Iseult Vol. II by Gottfriend von Straßberg translated by Jessie Weston
Wigalois Knight of Fortune’s Wheel by Wirnt von Grafenberg translated by J. W. Thomas
Wigalois Knight of Fortune’s Wheel by Wirnt von Grafenberg (in German)
Wigamur translated by Joseph M. Sullivan
at first when i was remaking i thought 'now i can voice all the controversial opinions i felt obliged to keep mum about before!' (to be clear, my controversial opinions are things like 'it's possible to oppose monarchy in real life AND still enjoy a fictional king from time to time.' 'i don't entirely reject the idea of so-called cultural christianity, but i feel strongly that the label should be reserved for patterns of behavior, rhetoric, etc, and not applied to individual people.' idk i don't keep a running list but you get the idea probably.)
but un/fortunately i've been so selective in my refollowing (which to be clear is still very much a work in progress) that i'm not actually encountering any of the discourse to which i'd previously built up all these objections! which is very restful, but doesn't exactly stimulate me to articulate my positions…
gotta say tumblr's little pro-cursive revival has really reactivated early middle school memories of being forced to write up assignments in crabbed horrible cursive and hating it more with every letter whose setup i failed to properly anticipate far enough in advance to connect it smoothly (possibly bc adhd but like. hashtag guy who's only ever had adhd so what do i know.)
i do wish my experience of having feelings (this isn't me being Vague, i do very generically mean 'having literally any feelings at all about anything ever') didn't automatically involve a meta-layer of feeling viscerally humiliated by the fact of my having them
like any time i get irritated or upset about anything it almost immediately tips into 'well okay but probably i'm the problem here bc i'm Oversensitive and Irritable bc i've failed to construct a life for myself which makes me happy in a way that would cushion me against being bothered by these irritants, which in the philosophical scheme of things i recognize i should Rise Above' (in this framing i am apparently an oyster and happiness = nacre). and it's not that there's no potential truth to this line of thinking but it also feels a little like i imagine having one's emotions blamed on one's menstrual cycle would feel (disrespectful & humiliating)
with things like sadness-about-everything-and-nothing-in-particular or, idk, private delusional romantic hopefulness abt people (nothing recent in this category but i have been known to experience it from time to time) it's slightly different bc there the meta-feeling is less about my failure to respond appropriately to other people and more about, like, why am i not advanced enough to have evolved beyond these feelings. like 'i understand intellectually how unfounded and ultimately laughable i look right now and yet. despite my ability to observe myself i still continue to experience this (unpleasant, humiliating) experience. why can i not think my way out of it.' and of course this is more or less equivalent to saying 'why can't i think my way out of the human condition' which. hello. and yet!!
anyway i think none of this is helped by the fact that my nearest and dearest are largely deeply phlegmatic, pragmatic people, at least in terms of the affect they present to me, and so by comparison i feel deeply histrionic and stupid and childish at essentially all times: Local Man Secretly Dancing Bear (unlike aubreyad where dancing bear secretly man). the answer is presumably 'don't compare yourself! you are a different variety of Creature! #IDIC!' but unfortunately the comparative impulse is i think. again. pretty deeply human (for feelings on which, see above)…
Spangle-cheeked Tanager
javier.chaves.photography
also. watched some of the new wot earlier and it really is wild to like. find something visually and narratively very enjoyable while also feeling absolutely zero interest in finding out what fandom is doing about it. like this show is full of very beautiful people of all ages and i just. i don't need fandom to bang them together. i don't need the showrunners to bang them together. i had fun watching as much as i watched and you know what i want to do about it? watch more soon.
Eurasian Red Squirrel/ekorre. Värmland, Sweden (March 16, 2025).
unfortunately every time i contemplate perpetrating a text post i get a sentence or three into it only to experience agonies over the hideousness of my own prose styling
which is putting something of a crimp in this whole 'what if i started blogging again' experiment
Terrace paddies in North Vietnam [Shortlisted in National Geographic Photo Contest 2015] by Quynh Anh Photography on Flickr
hedgehog ash tray set by walter bosse for herta baller, 1955.
little pig made of glass and his brother, little pig made of glass made of paint
Askos in the form of a zebu (type of cattle), Gilan Province, Iran, 1250-800 BC
from the Museum DKM