www.actions.com/consequences

It's time to kill the idea that we can only grow and heal when we're uncomfortable. You heal every time you have a good conversation with someone. You heal every time you laugh. You heal every time something makes you smile genuinely. You heal every time you have fun creating something - anything. You heal every time you get so absorbed in something fun that you forget your struggles for a while. There is, in fact, lots of healing and growth to be found INSIDE your comfort zone.

Adam Scott - Severance, Inside the Episode 2.10 "Cold Harbor"

patricia lockwood has officially completed 6 years of her full 1000 year sentence

the thing about sally reed is that she was the best character on tv played by an actress giving the best performance on tv

where the lines blur between shame, fear, guilt, desire, lust and need you'll find him

that kidnapped bride triumphant shit is everywhere in straight stories, it gets told over and over and over again and eroticized in the weirdest ways.

woman enters relationship with a controlling man under duress ——> woman’s efforts to protect and preserve her personhood Touches the man in his own fractured/withered inner personhood ——-> woman and man reconstruct a healthy loving relationship from the dubious origins of their coupling through the route created by the woman’s emotional fortitude.

I was talking an ex-cult friend of mine about romance novel storylines when they brought up how marriage is the only way straight women can dodge the horrifying shame of experiencing eroticism, the inappropriate feeling of which is supposed to be able to make god and your parents stop loving you. My friend explained that this is why you see so many kidnapped brides and arranged marriages in straight stories. The protagonist needs a culturally dictated non-consensual out so that she can feel erotic without life-threatening levels of shame. She can dissociate and compartmentalize different varieties of shame into any number of fragments and choose to inhabit the best and least sinful, which redeems and saves her. My friend said it made perfect sense to them according to the way they were raised. I threw in that it reminded me of my abuse days, of the way you could console yourself for feeling so tough and strong for putting up with appalling treatment, and they agreed. Plus, I added, it proves your love and value at the same time. Putting up with rough treatment at first, but being so good and sweet that you achieve better treatment in the future, it reminds me of that “keep sweet” attitude all those bigamist cult survivors kept mentioning.

but it is erotic. everything my friend and I talked about is in the queer lit that I’ve been inhaling for two or three years now— the idea of a taken prize, having an “out” to allow someone to experience eroticism without shame, everything about roles and duty and inhabiting powerful fragments when you have dissociative trauma — but always different, always with something vital and bizarre buried in the heart of it.

Flow (2024) AKA Straume

Severance: the only show where the relationship dynamic is so fucked up ao3 has four separate tags for the same couple

man it sucks so many people on here have absolutely convinced themselves that entire categories of consumer goods like perfume are bougie. you are depriving yourself of little treats by just assuming you cant ever afford anything! this isnt an avocado toast post either im not saying 'just save up and buy it lol', i would never say that, what im saying is perfume (that is: scents in liquid, paste, oil or solid form intended to be worn as a personal adornment) as a commodity starts at "free" and gradually increases in price from there. my favorite perfumes are priced everywhere between $0 and $300. one of the most lauded amber scents in the world (regrettably JUST discontinued), "Amber Paste" by Kuumba Made, is one of those little hippie oils you get at Whole Foods and it cost $10.

and im not telling you to wear perfume, obviously people have allergies and shit, or just dont care for it, im talking to the people who WANT to own fragrances. im saying they aren't all going to cost $150.

you can also get unlimited (unlimited over a long enough timeline, they limit you to a couple or three per visit) free samples at a lot of sephoras and nordstroms if you live somewhere that has those stores (this depends on the location and a lot of other organic factors, you'll have to check ahead of time or just try it if you're nearby, it's sort of random). if you're actually buying something at sephora (and they have a lot of stuff that isn't a million dollars as well, despite their branding) ask for every free sample at checkout that they have. they will often load you up, and not just with perfume. secondhand outlets like Value Village and Goodwill also do huge business in perfume because people are ALWAYS donating it.

sephora also does perfume refills. if you actually do buy a full size bottle, they can refill it for much less than buying a whole new bottle of the stuff. i don't know exactly how much it costs because i havent used this service myself. and idk how careful yiou have to be about reeceipts either, but look into it if you bought a full size and its running out

idk it just bums me out there are all these people who actually want perfume and seem to think it's out of their price range. the really basement-tier dupes of popular brand scents are so good these days it's often worth dropping the $10 at Walmart or Rite Aid too.

some of my favorite ever perfumes were some weird crap i got in a crystal wizard store, or a drug store, or a goodwill, or whatever. if you want perfume you can get it

Sorry to hijack this post, but I've frequently encountered similar attitudes when it comes to attending the opera or a live classical music performance. Ask any regular opera patron and they'll tell you that opera companies desperately need young people to come out to performances, that they can't keep solely relying on the financial support of a rapidly shrinking circle of upper class patrons. I'll hear "oh but it's so bougie going to the opera", no it's not, there's a reason why "Va, pensiero" from Verdi's Nabucco became an anthem for the Italian revolutionaries during the Risorgimento. "Opera only caters to elite tastes, besides I don't know Italian/French/German/Russian etc." I guarantee that it doesn't, and most modern opera houses use some kind of subtitle technology in their performance. "Attending the opera or symphony is too expensive." If you're under 30 or a student I guarantee that you can get absurdly cheap tickets. The Canadian Opera Company here in Toronto used to (they still might, I don't know) offer $25 tickets to under-30s, $35 if you wanted the best available seats the day of, which is how I wound up with seats that would've cost me hundreds of dollars otherwise on more than one occasion. Just go, please, it's always a wonderful experience.

Folks need to read more Emma Goldman:

Don’t fall into this trap of thinking pleasure and beauty are bourgeois. The whole fucking point of reforming the world is so we can all have pleasure and beauty and leisure time to cultivate them. You’re not a martyr to the cause by denying yourself pleasure. You’re just miserable, and your misery only serves the upper class, not the people you should be fighting alongside.

The Hollywood Bowl offers tickets for as low as a dollar for classical and jazz performances. I used to go with my parents ten times a summer because thursday shows were $5 for the cheap seats, and you can show up early with a picnic packed for dinner. People tend to think that the classical events are expensive and exclusive, but you have no idea how many times I listened to Mozart sitting on a bench with a chicken sandwich in my hand because it was cheaper to go see the LA Phil conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Bowl than it was to go to the movies.

I work for a Reasonably Well Known Regional Theater. We're *dying* out here, and there's usually a way to get tickets around $35 if not lower to most if not all of our shows. Call the box office and tell them you're on a budget, be kind, but make it known that you very much want to see a show. Usually there's a way.

Center Theater Group in LA, which has multiple venues, including the Ahmanson, where a lot of the national touring productions of Broadway musicals are staged, does $20 ticket sales on Tuesdays for a bunch of different dates and shows. You just have to sign up for their email list. There are wonderful regional and national shows for less than $40, which isn't *cheap*, but it's a wonderful night out for a special occasion.

star wars / daddy, sylvia plath

Adderall before weed, a fun time indeed. Weed before adderall, your dad's leaving after all

Björk by Han Lee de Boer, 1993