itsaglitterbombshell

[itsaglitterbombshell]

so, I've noticed that some Discourse™ posts about adult content (and I am including my own in this) tend to have a kind of misery poker element to them. like, "well, when I was your age, I watched videos of people being literally set on fire, and I'm fine, so stop complaining about zutara!" or whatever, which just isn't really a good argument, considering that the response is going to be "no, you're not fine, you think it's okay to have porn of teenage characters on AO3!"

so, I want to tell a story about the opposite of that.

I think I've talked about this before on here, but my parents were extremely careful about the kind of media my siblings and I watched as kids. not for religious reasons; it was for the entirely secular reason of "screentime in general, but especially violent or sexual media of any kind, is bad for children's brains." I exclusively watched PBS (except for the news and Saturday morning cartoons on ABC) until I was eleven or twelve, because stuff like Power Rangers and The Power Puff Girls was too violent.

I started being allowed to branch out into "adult" media because I was considered old enough to self-screen for inappropriate content, and also pre-screen stuff for my younger siblings and, at least one time I remember, someone else's kids. this is why I started being allowed to watch police procedurals: I watched the first ten minutes or so of an episode of Numb3rs (it was Soft Target, I remember the imagery extremely clearly) and was able to convince my mom to let me watch it because a) it wasn't any more violent than Mystery, b) it had math in it and was therefore educational, and c) it came on at 9 PM on Fridays so it wouldn't keep me up too late on a school night.

the problem wasn't that I was incapable of filtering my own media. I was excellent at filtering my own media. the problem was that I was twelve years old and the most graphic thing I'd seen up to that point was Miss Marple, so my filter was wildly miscalibrated.

some things that I considered "inappropriate for children":

The Will Of The Empress by Tamora Pierce, both then and now my favorite author, not because of the two seconds of implied sexual content that flew directly over my head, but because one of the characters discovered she was a lesbian and kissed a girl onscreen a couple of times, and of course gay content meant something was automatically adult.

Eldest by Christopher Paolini, where I somehow completely missed all the nudity except for one scene where a pair of twin elves are described as dancing while naked, which to me made it basically porn.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, because of the scene where the Sheriff of Nottingham speeds through his wedding ceremony as quickly as possible so he can have sex with Maid Marian right there on the floor, not because it's a weirdly graphic almost-rape scene that's played for laughs for some reason, but because it had sex in it!

I think when someone talks about how X Show Is Problematic or Y Ship Is Morally Wrong, the response tends to sound like, "Suck it up and ignore any potential implications or problems it has, you big whiny baby!", which is not my point here.

my point is that when you haven't been exposed to a wide variety of content and/or life experiences, your Media Immune System is going to overreact to stuff that, in the grand scheme of things, is probably not that bad, because it's the first time you are experiencing it. it's also going to underreact to things that are so beyond your frame of reference that you can't even identify them as potential problems. your filter is going to be badly calibrated because you don't know what to calibrate it to.

I don't think being an adult is being able to handle The Most Viscerally Uncomfortable Movie or anything like that. I do think being an adult is, basically, microdosing on Problematic Content™ to expand your boundaries enough to even know what your boundaries are.

but if your response to anything potentially problematic is to completely avoid it because consuming it – or, horror of horrors, enjoying it – somehow taints you as a person, I can guarantee you that your filter is already wildly miscalibrated and you're doing your level best to keep it that way.

[itsaglitterbombshell]

I got curious and made this. Which do you see when you read? 

#1 #Not gonna lie it's never occured to me that people wouldn't just have a fully fleshed out scene in their heads when they read

[itsaglitterbombshell]

If I do something good because it makes me feel like a good person, is that technically selfish?

no, only if you're choosing to make others suffer to make yourself feel good

enjoying making other people happy is a great thing

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I am legit surprised that 911 has never gone the route of one of Buck 1.0's old hook ups showing up with a kid that he never knew about. Like, would it be low-hanging fruit? Absolutely. Would the fandom go feral over it? Also absolutely.

Evan Buckley + holding children

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Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Look buddy, i’m just trying to make it to Friday.

[itsaglitterbombshell]

how do you outwit your enemies

[itsaglitterbombshell]

A warrrior with abundant osteoptimism and one more skeleptical re: bone toughness.

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Every year… Every damn year…

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I'm not even gonna lie, my dream house is basically a Hobbit hole decorated in a Bollywood color palette.

people should just embrace jewel tones already if I see one more house entirely decorated in washed out neutral colours I’m gonna sue someone

[itsaglitterbombshell]

[itsaglitterbombshell]

Some of you need to realize that a woman doing something kind for a male partner is not always a sign of her own oppression wtf

[itsaglitterbombshell]

Nearly twenty years ago, I was sitting in my car in the midst of a TORRENTIAL downpour, psyching myself up to run into the house. To my surprise, when I opened my door, a half grown stray cat leapt in, hunkering down in the floor by my brake pedals. And thus began my adventures with Arwen. She crisscrossed the country with me, every stereotype of an aloof, unfriendly cat to everyone but me. I grew into myself with her companionship, experienced my greatest joys and greatest sadnesses while she purred in my lap, or watched from her perch on the cat tree, or draped herself around my neck. She was family. Today I made the difficult decision to have my beautiful Arwen put down. We've been dealing with a recurring infection and facial swelling that the vet said was most probably progressing cancer. With bad days starting to outnumber good, I made the choice to halt any further suffering. It's the bargain you make when a pet chooses to love and trust you, the most important thing you have to do for them.

See you on the Bridge my sweet girl. Thank you for jumping into my car :)

#tw: pet death #personal

[itsaglitterbombshell]

good things will happen 🧿

things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿

[itsaglitterbombshell]

no ad is as powerful as a tumblr mutual who has a new hyperfixation