IneffableDoll

[IneffableDoll]

[anonymousdandelion]

The world may be in crisis, but the mulberries are ripe, and they taste just as good as ever.

The world may be in crisis, but the fireflies came out at dusk yesterday. And they will come out again tonight, and tomorrow, too.

The world may be in crisis. But today a breeze stirred my hair and cooled my face, and it eased the heat of the summer sun and I took a deep breath and I breathed.

The world may be in crisis, but a stranger smiled at me, and a dog found a good home, and a toddler told his baby sister he loved her.

The world may be in crisis, but the world still holds people who are working to heal it.

The world may be in crisis, but there is still a world. And the world contains us, the world contains love, the world contains beauty. And the mulberries are ripe.

There is still a world.

[anonymousdandelion]

Mulberry season is over for now. But the fruits will be back next year, they will ripen once again, and they will still taste just as good as ever.

And in the meantime, the nectarines are taking their turn to be in season.

(Thank you to everyone who’s been putting this post back in my notifications. I need the reminders at least as much as anyone else.)

[ineffable-doll]

The world may be in crisis, but through community and art, I am reminded again and again and again that healing starts and ends with nature, people, and breathing in deep the beautifully temporary as eternal solace.

The blackberries are ready to pick right about now. I will sleep with fingertips stained purple.

[anonymousdandelion]

The world may be in crisis. But it snowed yesterday, and the land is covered in white. Snow angels appeared in yards and in parks, and friends sent snowballs flying and then gathered around hot cocoa. I breathed in the air, cold and crisp and sweet, and felt its frozen life stir my own.

Someone tasted winter for the first time and marveled at its magic, laughing and dancing and asking again and again in wonder where did it come from?

The mulberry branches are barren of leaves and fruits alike, and the blackberry bushes frosted over. The winter will guard them, will shield their dormancy with ice and snow until the time is ripe for fruit again.

There is still a world.

[ineffable-doll]

The world may be in crisis, but this morning, with frosty fractals kissing each blade of pale grass, outlining every leaf, I still hung up the hummingbird feeders. I suppose most people think hummingbirds would leave for winter, and some do. Their bodies are so tiny, slim beaks and little squeaks, it’s hard to imagine them surviving the harsh conditions as the thermometer dips lower and lower.

And yet, there are several species that, as cold approaches, decide to stay and guard their homes. And they need to eat. So, as long as they are here, I will mix a cup of sugar with four cups of steaming water, watch it dissolve, and pour it into their freshly-scrubbed feeders. And every morning I will put them out, and every night I will take them in so they don’t freeze.

In this, I feel as though I am keeping the world alive.

Sometimes, I wish I was a hummingbird. Perhaps, as I look to them, I can share in their well of strength, and survive anything that is to come.

There is still a world.

[anonymousdandelion]

Just enough people have shared this one that there is a chance someone I do not know may glance at the notes in hopes of more reminders of the world.

So for you, lovely unknown note-glancer, I give you this thread begun by @kedreeva, which left me believing once again that not only is there still a world, there is still a world that contains life and love and color and hope and beauty and magic and joy

whether the mulberries are ripe or not.

[ineffable-doll]

The world may be in crisis, but yesterday, I made my friend laugh so hard, she almost fell out of her chair. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, but I felt so sure at that moment that if I can make someone I love laugh like that, then how could I ever think I, or the day, lack in worth?

The world may be in crisis, but the rain has made the grass so green and vibrant, I can’t help but think of the happy little worms in the damp soil. I was certain to pull up my blinds this morning, for the world beyond is not so dull and dreary if the grass is green. I am rewarded with the sight of deer, their dark winter coats shedding in clumps.

The world may be in crisis, but my mom and I sang along to random love songs for over an hour last week, just for the heck of it. From the 1940s to the 2020s, we explored how inherently human it is to have nothing new to say about love, but to feel it just as deeply.

The world may be in crisis, but there will be new flowers and leaves soon. Tulips, daffodils, rhododendrons, snowdrops, roses, peonies, orchids, snapdragons. Spring as hope is cliche imagery - for a reason. There’s a place I know where a single little tulip grows every single year, and I’m disproportionately excited to see it this spring. I hope the tulip knows that someone looks forward to it. I hope you, dear reader, know that someone looks forward to you.

There is still a world.

[anonymousdandelion]

I felt today that the world was in crisis, but I brought myself out into it anyway, and discovered that it was still there waiting for me. The sky was blue and the sun bright; the wind was cold and the sunshine warm. The earth was still frozen over, sheets of unmelted snow lingering where the trees and homes cast their shade.

But the flowers were beginning to bloom already, beautifully cliché and breathtaking true: snowdrops, budding side by side with snow itself.

I took a breath of the outside air and, once again, I breathed.

I came back indoors — and, though it may be in crisis, the world was still there as well.

And later, I saw that a friend had written words of hope and love and reality, appended to words once written by myself. And she sent those words to me, and shared them with strangers; shared them from her own heart so that, today, we might all feel a little touch of care and beauty through a screen.

The world may be in crisis. But oh, what a world there still is.

[anonymousdandelion]

The world is still in crisis. But the air is soft with spring, and though the mulberries aren’t back yet, already I can almost smell their soon-to-be fragrance in the air.

[ineffable-doll]

Sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes the world and its crises lead me to pull the blanket a little tighter in the morning, listening for everything to crash down around me. Sometimes, I need to say, “It’s too much” to myself and let it be. Let it fall.

But it’s a strange thing, how there always seem to be birds. Beyond the groan and creak of my bedframe, over the howls in my own head, the birds are always singing together. Trills and chirps and hoots. I wonder what they talk about. Food? Flirting? The humidity? I can listen in, but discern little but the resonance.

There are voices, too, ones familiar and loved that have so much to say about so many innocuous things. I will not remember this specific conversation in ten years, but I have memorized the cadence of your voice, the pitch of your laughter.

Music from a beloved artist sends colors and waves into the room, and I trace the shapes with the tip of my finger.

Trickling water, a soft gasp of breath, wind in the trees, my cat’s purr.

It’s too much right now, but there is still a world, and it has so many beautiful sounds that make it worth facing.

[IneffableDoll]

[rowark]

(X)

[moth-ee]

I wish this feeling upon everyone who wants to wear a dress, its really the best

[ghostlynblm]

this makes me so happy as a fat hairy guy who likes skirts and dresses i never get to see guys like me in dresses it’s always skinny twinks this makes me so happy 🥺🥺

[prismatic-bell]

If you are a larger gentleman, and wish to partake of the dress-wearing experience, please accept these tips to help fit your first dress!

1) You want something with stretch in it. Dresses are (often) built for people with boobs, and until you get familiar with how they fit your specific body, trying something super-stiff will 100% end in tears. I promise you, I am 32 years old, I have been wearing dresses all my life, and I still get pissed at dressing room mirrors because who the fuck designs some of these. There are fitted, tailored dresses designed by sane people who expect that their clothes will be worn by human beings, and they will make you look fine as fuck, but make your life easy and don’t start with them.

2) Dress sizes were designed by sixteen ferrets on crack and are not consistent between brands, styles, or vintage vs modern. Use them as a guideline, not a rule, and don’t let them upset you. Very often they’re adjusted in order to target a specific audience.

3) Lauren by Ralph Lauren is an amazing plus-size brand. Both of my fitted dresses are Lauren dresses, and that isn’t because I’m a label snob, it’s because I try on a dress that I think looks good and I go “YEEEEEEEEEESSSSS” and then pull it off and look at the label and go “ … . why am I surprised?” When you’re ready to branch out into fitted dresses, I strongly recommend finding your local Macy’s or Nordstrom and checking out their Lauren section. Even if you don’t buy anything from that section, it will give you a much better idea of how fitted dresses should look (flattering!) and feel (comfortable!).

4) Empire waists are your enemy. Those are the ones with the raised waistline that, on someone with boobs, sits right beneath said appendages. They will 1) ride up and 2) make you look pregnant, and without breasts to fill out the cups it’ll look like you don’t know how to fit your size. It does not matter who you are or how tall you are, if you’re above like a size four, empire waists are not going to be comfortable or give you the look you want. Just save yourself the time.

5) Arm holes on a sleeveless dress do not fit like arm holes on a tank top. They’re cut differently. Before you buy, MAKE SURE you cross your arms over your front and give yourself the biggest hug you can. Then put your arms behind you as far as you can. If you feel the fabric snag or chafe, you will end up wasting your money because the dress will be stupidly uncomfortable. You might be able to fix this by getting the same dress one size up, but if you choose to try one size up, prepare yourself for disappointment first. It’s often a sign of poor design or craftsmanship.

6) Part of trying on your dress should be SITTING DOWN. If this isn’t a dress you plan to wear with tights or leggings, you need to make sure it covers the backs of your thighs. (Either that, or you need to resign yourself to peeling yourself off chairs, and that fucking hurts.)

7) If you wear a mix of different underwear types, make sure you wear boxers when you go to try on dresses. Nothing will suck more than throwing on your dress and realizing you can see your shorts very easily underneath.

[justlgbtthings]

and if you don’t fit a dress you thought you would, don’t feel bad. it happens to girls all the time. dresses on average aren’t really made for anyone except really thin people.

[gothiccharmschool]

Do I reblog this every time it crosses my dash? Yes, yes I do, because it contains helpful information for finding and trying on dresses, and EVERYONE deserves to try on dresses if they want.

My additional piece of advice? Damn near everyone, when trying on clothes, suddenly has Good Posture when they’re looking in the mirror. So give it a few minutes, then see how the dress feels when your body has relaxed into what your Regular Posture is.

[neck-spike]

good advice for anyone who might want to wear a dress. It’s not you, your body is not uniquely fucked up, the clothing industry has just done so much coke they design for a hanger and then lossy resize it and call it good.

[IneffableDoll]

[asoriadraws]

Thought she'd look cute with short hair ❤

[IneffableDoll]

[inkskinned]

we were the liminal kids. alive before the internet, just long enough we remember when things really were different.

when i work in preschools, the hand signal kids make for phone is a flat palm, their fingers like brackets. i still make the pinky-and-thumb octave stretch when i "pick up" to respond to them.

the symbol to save a file is a floppy disc. the other day while cleaning out my parents' house, i found a collection of over a hundred CDs, my mom's handwriting on each of them. first day of kindergarten. playlist for beach trip '94. i don't have a device that can play any of these anymore - none of my electronics are compatible. there are pieces of my childhood buried under these, and i cannot access them. but they do exist, which feels special.

my siblings and i recently spent hours digitizing our family's photos as a present for my mom's birthday. there's a year where the pictures just. stop. cameras on phones got to be too good. it didn't make sense to keep getting them developed. and there are a quite a few years that are lost to us. when we were younger, mementos were lost to floods. and again, while i was in middle school, google drive wasn't "a thing". somewhere out there, there are lost memories on dead laptops. which is to say - i lost it to the flood twice, kind of.

when i teach undergrad, i always feel kind of slapped-in-the-face. they're over 18, and they don't remember a classroom without laptops. i remember when my school put in the first smartboard, and how it was a huge privilege. i used the word walkman once, and had to explain myself. we are only separated by a decade. it feels like we are separated by so much more than that.

and something about ... being half-in half-out of the world after. it marks you. i don't know why. but "real adults" see us as lost children, even though many of us are old enough to have a mortgage. my little sister grew up with more access to the internet than i did - and she's only got 4 years of difference. i know how to write cursive, and i actually think it's good practice for kids to learn too - it helps their motor development. but i also know they have to be able to touch-type way faster than was ever required from me.

in between, i guess. i still like to hand-write most things, even though typing is way faster and more accessible for me. i still wear a pj shirt from when i was like 18. i don't really understand how to operate my parents' smart tv. the other day when i got seriously injured, i used hey siri to call my brother. but if you asked me - honestly, i prefer calling to texting. a life in anachronisms. in being a little out-of-phase. never quite in synchronicity.

[snazzymolasses]

I imagine that the last generation to really feel this way, to really feel a before-and-after kind of world, was at the last turn of the century, which had 3 huge, life-changing inventions happen all at once.

In 1890, everybody rode horses, used candles to see at night, and communicated through letters.

By the 1920s (only 30 years later!), everybody had automobiles (or access to another form of 'self-driving' transportation like busses or trams) and nobody had horses. Nearly everyone had electricity in their houses. Nearly everyone had a telephone, or access to one.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine growing up, being taught by your parents all about how to ride horses and care for them and hitch them to a wagon, only to...not ever use that knowledge as an adult, because you have a car? Can you imagine learning how to make candles, finally getting good enough at it to be useful to your family as a teenager, only to flick a switch to turn on a light bulb as an adult?

I feel like that last huge change in technology is the same thing we are going through. I know how to read a paper map. I will never need to use this knowledge. But it's still in there; including the many patient hours my mother spent teaching me, and a lot of fond memories I have of her doing it. I know how to research a topic in a paper library, with actual books. Pretty sure I will never do that again. I memorize phone numbers, 'just in case'. In case what? The automobile (smartphone) gets un-invented? But I hold that knowledge in my head. It's there. It's part of me.

I wish I could speak to my great-great-grandmother, who had her first baby in 1900. To ask her, if what Millennials now are going through is what it was like for her Centennial generation. The absolute whiplash, from one way of life to another.

Kids born in 1890 knew how to make candles, and kids born in 1920 could not fathom why you would need to know this.

[prismatic-bell]

899-5204.

That’s my grandparents’ number when I was growing up.

You’ll notice it only has seven digits. If they were still alive, that phone line still in service, that number still wouldn’t reach them. It’s not long enough. But I remember tapping it in and the sound it made so clearly I could still hum it back to you today. I remember when it sounded just a teensy bit wrong and I was very confused, and when a man I didn’t know picked up I said “um, is my Grampa there?” and he said “who’s your Grampa?” and by some hilarious coincidence, 898-5204 was the number for my Grampa’s job.

My brain still expects Queen songs to skip when I’m listening on Spotify because I grew up with a scratched and damaged CD and I still know where all the glitches were and if you ask me how to fix a video game my first thought is “blow on it” and to this day I can fix a snapped VHS for you (and when did they stop being “tapes” and become “VHS” and when did all our VCRs morph into VHS players?) if you can give a bright light, a razorblade, and some scotch tape, and if the internet disappeared tomorrow I’d go get a phone book and look up my state rep in the blue pages to complain.

My niblings go to the bathroom differently than me when watching TV. I always go where the commercial break is (or would have been, if I’m watching an anime or old show on streaming). They go between episodes and I had to explain to them what a “commercial break” was because neither of them has ever lived in a world where you couldn’t just skip the ads. We’re twenty years apart and also centuries. The younger one wanted to play Roblox with me when I went to visit and as we worked our way through this absolutely hellish puzzle it occurred to me that when I was growing up it was considered revolutionary if you could make your game look 3D because all the systems were still actually 2D, and this puzzle was so fiendish—to me, not to her, she breezed through it like it was nothing—because it was the other way around, 3D masquerading as 2D. I remembered my mom struggling with the N64 and giving it up as a bad job while eight-year-old me quickly adapted and I wonder if me jumping from MarioKart to Roblox is what it was like for her, jumping to MarioKart from Pong.

The kids all have Tamagotchis again now, but HitClips have come and gone and so have iPods. In my first classroom we had maps of the Soviet Union because there was a waiting list for new supplies that said “Russian Federation” instead, and today there are “smart whiteboards” where you can interact with a projector like it’s a computer and get up-to-the-minute information. Is this why my teenage coworkers look at me weird when I say “blackboard chalk”? Did a decade and a half really change that much? Even the internet I knew growing up, the weird and wild and wonderful and new thing everyone was losing their minds over, is like a lost country under the desert. If I say “I was on a mailing list for a Geocities fanfiction webring,” that probably sounds like straight Babylonian to almost anyone on this site younger than me. Whenever I talk about my early internet days I have to explain COPPA wasn’t in effect yet and that’s how I was doing all this stuff at eleven years old without lying about my age. Sometimes when I see somebody blow a red light I’ll yell “the river is too deep for your oxen to ford, motherfucker” and wonder if any version of that game even still exists.

We have crossed a bridge of time, and when we set foot on wires and silicon cables the builders of that brave new world set fire to the wooden structure behind us.

[IneffableDoll]

[arodescence]

[IneffableDoll]

[alphacrone]

thinking about all the “small” art that’s ever existed. songs that were only ever sung in one village. stories written by children that got lost in the shuffle. personal paintings that didn’t survive the test of time. how they affected the lives of just a few, but still existed, still mattered to someone.

[alphacrone]

this is not a sad post!!!! this is a celebration!!!!! art is part of the human condition!!!!!!! we were born to create and share!!!!!!!!!!!

[IneffableDoll]

[sleepyurl]

imagine someone thinking of you and buying you flowers

[coolxatu]

ok now imagine a horse as a skeleton with a blue fire mane

[IneffableDoll]

[aces-to-apples]

Being a sex-positive personally-sex-repulsed ace is weird cuz like reading about sex? Awesome. Writing about sex? Not much more intolerable than writing about anything else. Sex is good. Sex is normal. Sex is only as important as you let/want it to be. Kinks are natural expressions of sexuality. Sexual purity is a scam. Bodies are nothing to be ashamed of. Sex work is no more exploitative than any other kind of labor. If you touch me I will throw up on you.

[aces-to-apples]

Reblogging for pride month

[IneffableDoll]

[thefreak0fhawkinshigh]

Just so you know, by the way: Hollywood lied to you.

Happy Endings where everyone gets what they want is actually not cringey. Happy Endings where the couple that everyone was rooting for actually ends up together and neither of them die is not cliche or childish.

Let yourself believe in Happy Endings because Hollywood has been trying to convince you this entire time that the only "acceptable" way to end a story or a character arc is by having someone fucking die or lose whatever it is they've been fighting for this entire time.

And fuck Hollywood.

We deserve some fucking Happy Endings.

[dunkthebiscuit]

Happily Ever After can be so important. Sometimes, if you’re a member of a minority who is underrepresented in media, seeing characters Just Like You get their happy endings is something that keeps you going. Maybe you’ll be happy too, eventually, without becoming something you’re not?

And, selfishly, if I wanted a realistic ending, I’d switch on the news. I want my Escapism to leave me feeling better and uplifted, not sad and anxious.

[IneffableDoll]

[thefreak0fhawkinshigh]

Just so you know, by the way: Hollywood lied to you.

Happy Endings where everyone gets what they want is actually not cringey. Happy Endings where the couple that everyone was rooting for actually ends up together and neither of them die is not cliche or childish.

Let yourself believe in Happy Endings because Hollywood has been trying to convince you this entire time that the only "acceptable" way to end a story or a character arc is by having someone fucking die or lose whatever it is they've been fighting for this entire time.

And fuck Hollywood.

We deserve some fucking Happy Endings.

[IneffableDoll]

[metanarrates]

escapist media in general is an ongoing fascination for me. media written with escapism as a main priority typically requires very little thought from the reader - the whole point is to kick back and live vicariously through a fun story, after all. they're narratives written to prioritize reader comfort.

but because they are written to be as unchallenging as possible, they often come with a set of underlying assumptions that can be just fucking fascinating to unpick. like yeah, why IS it assumed to be escapist and indulgent to enjoy colonial wealth without thinking about it in regency fiction. why IS the self inserty female protagonist, who is assumed to be as universally relatable as possible, written to be sweetly naive and sexually inexperienced. why does this "queernorm" contemporary world replicate patriarchial structures exactly but just with Gay People Allowed. why are these ideas assumed to be easy and comforting? can the writers not imagine anything better than the status quo but except maybe with more gay people and poc if you're lucky?

the fact of the matter is that "unchallenging" fiction tends to just simply replicate dominant cultural narratives as a point of comfort. we won't challenge the reader, so we won't think about the way we write certain things. everything we think of as comforting and safe are, of course, universal, and could not be founded on any harmful ideological assumptions. there is nobody who could be alienated by this.

and that's the sticking point to me, in terms of escapist fiction: it's always necessary to ask whose comfort is being prioritized. you've got to interrogate who gets to escape and the mechanisms by which that escape happens. escapism can be good and necessary to survive the current world, but it does not exist in a vacuum separate from the real world, even if it pretends it does!

[iaiamothrafhtagn]