Related Recs

🎨

parallel play

The act of doing individual tasks in the same vicinity as someone else. This can be studying, crafting, reading, gaming, or literally anything else!

@moiraavalin

Jan 22, 2025

3

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parallel play

i just want someone next to me while i do things. i dont want to make conversation or feel pressure to keep someone entertained, sometimes i just want a presence here while i do homework or draw. a warmth and face to glance at

@swag

Jan 27, 2025

🎨

Parallel play

As I draw my friend playing guitar and my other doing origami in the same room. How nice is it to be close to people and not have to be anything other than yourself. Completely separate in activity but together in space <333

@notalex

Jan 3, 2025

Top Recs from @solitarytea

✂️

fuck yr friends

a queer ethos of intimate friendship is so beautiful to me. my friends are hot, i trust them, i love them. i don't feel the need to limit the ways in which we can feel safe and known and held if we're all into it. long conversations can evolve into sex -- two kinds of intimacy, one not held above the other. challenge: feel and do not hold on to jealousy. feel and grasp tightly a boundless love.

@solitarytea

Mar 4, 2025

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the left hand of darkness

ursula le guin just generally eats but the way she constructed Gethenian mores,,, so interesting to see how the environment shaped norms / how she interprets the formation of cultures. myths and legends of Gethen are interspersed to deepen the worldbuilding while also providing context to specific character beats chapters later; it's really satisfying to piece together. since it's le guin, you've gotta expect some really artful political commentary, and this book just nails it. the development of nationalism, despotism, and (fascistic) bureaucracy in this world,, goddamn. god damn. one beautiful passage about the complete illogic of the nation-state and i'm crying. le guin struggles a bit with her own premise (for a book about a genderfluid society it follows remarkably conventional gender and sexual norms) but regardless i found it thought-provoking to see what i liked, where i immediately found issues, and where i had to work a bit harder to figure out what the fuck i thought. also!! reading this in a particularly snowy winter made the oppressive cold of the planet hit so much harder. def recommend for a winter read

@solitarytea

Feb 21, 2025

1

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OKOK sexuality of CAnnibalism rant

fuckin uhhhh,, wrote this at like 4 am for a powerpoint night,,, examining cannibalism thru litcrit,,,, no promises about that part 2 but i do have Thoughts title: eating you (out): the inherent sexuality of cannibalism So much of our sexual language contains also that of hunger. Conversely, cannibalism contains within it the hunger of sexuality – the hunger for another’s body. “I’m starved for touch” “Oh I could just eat you up”  “they were eating each others’ faces”  “Eat my pussy” The knowledge of cannibalism as erotic — and eroticism as cannibalistic — is carried through our language of sexuality hunger from tender to sensual to pornographic. Cannibalism is the ultimate act of a possessive, starving sexuality. It is the ultimate knowledge of the other, from whence there can be no return. Once you have partaken of another’s flesh, you are something different. You’re full. The King James Bible often translates sexual acts as "knowing"; thus knowing someone, in the biblical sense, is a carnal knowledge. And what knowledge is more intimate, more totalizing, than the knowledge of another’s taste? Cannibalism is a carnal knowledge, but it also exemplifies the horrors of being known intimately, the fears associated with sex. Will I become absorbed by this person, this other? What does their knowledge of me mean for my selfhood? How much of me can they Know before I cease to exist entirely? Thus, cultural depictions of cannibalism are overwhelmingly stories where love and horror coexist. In the ancient greek myths, we can see these inklings of a cannibalism borne out of love. When Saturn, or Cronos, hears the prophecy of his destruction at the hands of his children, he knows he must kill them. But rather than merely dispatching them in some sterile, unphysical way, he retakes into his body that which came from it. He cannot allow his children to live, and yet he cannot live without them; they must become a part of him. This presents a painful physicality of love that could only be expressed as cannibalism. This is the erotic complexity of cannibalism – possession, love, knowledge, sex, fear, consumption.  Modern tv and movies have heightened awareness of the sexual nature of cannibalism to a degree that cannot be ignored. [slide w/ NBC Hannibal and Twilight posters] Both these depictions are deeply possessive, and certainly toxic – I need you so much that I must bend your body to my will and consume you totally — yet hold space for tenderness, intimacy, friendship, and marriage. In NBC’s 2012 horror/comedy masterpiece Hannibal, we see the ways in which cannibalism can present both this deep possessiveness and hunger (literally and figuratively), but also the ways in which cooking and eating someone is an act of intimacy. Hannibal spends hours making people into gourmet meals, familiarizing himself with their bodies before taking them into his own. Imagine the caress of spices before the heat of the gas stove flame. He remembers each of his meals like one might remember an old lover. We might say that the relationship between pleasure and pain is central to the cannibalism’s sexuality — the pleasure and the pain of being known, the dichotomy of possessiveness and tenderness.  Cannibalism is kinky, it’s sadomasochistic.  In Twilight, Edward's vampirism, the capital-b Bite, is a clear metaphor for sex. Metatexually, the story needs this metaphorical distancing because of Meyer’s Mormonism, but the choice of vampirism, of cannibalism, as the sexual metaphor exposes the already existing cultural linkages between the two. Bella’s erotic fascination with the Bite, and Edward’s shame at his bloody desires, entwine the cannibalistic act of vampirism with sex and sexuality. Let us not forget that Twilight spawned the massive softcore kink book/movie franchise Fifty Shades of Grey. Reading these texts together, we can see clearly how the vampiristic, cannibalistic hunger of Twilight IS the kinky, sadomasochistic sex of Fifty Shades. These authors are writing the same thing.  An interesting dynamic that arises with regard to the sexuality of cannibalism is the aspect of penetration. There is a double penetration occuring – that of the carving knife, and that of the flesh. In the first instance, the cannibal as the power-holder is doing the penetrating; this is to be expected in a cisheteronormative culture. But the second penetration is that of the cannibalized into the cannibal — the cannibal is allowing someone else’s flesh into them, is allowing their body to be changed by someone else’s. Here, although the cannibal is still (obviously) in a dominant role, they experience vulnerability and penetration at the hands of their partner. This is queer as fuck!!  Cannibalism is not just sexual, it embodies a queer sadomasochistic sexuality. Bones and All (2022) highlights this perfectly -- the eroticism of satiating a hunger that has been condemned and relegated to psychiatric institutions and subversive subcultures.  We as a culture have accepted --- and even adore --- the sexual nature of cannibalism in our media. But how has the sexual cannibal presented throughout history? What institutions does it support, and is the sexuality of cannibalism something that must be destroyed? Stay tuned for part 2 for a historical materialist analysis of sexy cannibalism :) 

@solitarytea

Feb 21, 2025