‘dating rules’ are so fucking stupid btw. “don’t talk too much about your hyperfixation on a first date, it’ll scare them off!!” it’ll only scare them off if they’re a coward. Someone worthy of my affections will listen to me talk about my goal of visiting every whale exhibit with a life-sized effigy of a whale in it in the world for a solid half-hour and come away from that experience desiring me carnally.
One time I went on a date with a guy who stared at me with raised eyebrows while I told him about my plan to go to ComicCon as Daphne Blake, and then he scoffed and said it was weird for me to be so into Scooby Doo at the age of 19. Last year I told my boyfriend (before he was my boyfriend) that next time I got ComicCon tickets I wanted to go as Rapunzel, and he gasped and said “NO WAY I WANTED TO GO AS FLYNN RIDER”. So, like, not only is talking about your hyperfixations on an early date a good way to learn quickly if someone is going to treat your whole personality with respect or not, you might also find a kindred spirit.
This doesn’t just apply to dating btw. Any platonic acquaintance who acts like you’re cringe for having a lot of enthusiasm about something is not someone you want in your life. The people who matter will do things that you want to do with you because they love you and like when you are happy. Case in point I could not have paid my high school official-best-friend to spend four and a half hours in London’s Natural History Museum taking photos in the whale gallery but my adulthood best friend agreed in a heartbeat despite knowing the bare minimum about whales.
So yeah. Be openly enthusiastic about the things you love and the right people will love you for it.
Hey, in the most respectful and platonic way possible? I desired you carnally off the first post alone, and that gave me seconds of you.
If someone does not love and respect both your proper and your freak? They were not meant for you.
No more ‘being on our best behaviour’ for first dates. Let them see your gremlin. Perceive their gremlin. Fall in ooky, whacky, gremlin love.
MWAH kissing you in a nineteenth-century-author-writing-a-letter-to-a-close-friend-that’s-now-heavily-debated-as-evidence-of-their-queerness-by-historians kinda way <3
YOU GET IT
I ended a 15 year friendship over this exact thing.
I loved my dear friend, but it became clear to me in recent years that my friend did not love me.
Oh, she was happy to come and stay at my house half the weekend and tell me all her woes and how excited she was to do pottery and about her job and the men she was pursuing.
But she could not handle a five minute conversation about comics or movies or books or art that I was working on. She would sit there silently and say ‘I have nothing to contribute’ or she would start watching TikTok WHILE I was talking until I gave up.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t try, I only brought up topics in those genres I thought might interest her, or referenced things she’d talked about in the past, but it starting being very obvious that she didn’t want to have a conversation, she wanted me to listen and affirm while she told me things.
And it genuinely hurt my feelings, because I don’t particularly care about pottery or glazing, but I listened and learned and asked questions and eventually learned enough to have an actual conversation on the topic with her. Because I loved her and that is what she loves.
A few weeks ago, I went to see a different friend and she asked me if she could play a video game while we talked. I didn’t mind, I was used to trying to fight with TikTok for attention.
We spent five hours talking, actually talking. Five hours of me getting to talk about the novel I’ve been working on for nearly two years at this point and for her to tell me all about the construction and design of her favorite game franchise, and not once did I feel like I was fighting for attention. It felt very much like hanging out and playing video games when I was a kid.
If someone isn’t willing to try to meet you where you’re at, especially if you’re doing it for them, it’s not a good relationship. You deserve someone who’ll meet you at your level of freak, you deserve to be listened to and treated with respect.
“These acquaintances are making every effort to distance themselves from Elon, whom they have come to see as a liability and a hindrance to their goals. Even those who have only briefly dealt with him over social media say they no longer wish to be associated. It’s obviously a bad look to have blown up every last one of his interpersonal connections, but knowing Elon, that’ll only make him dig in his heels and make things even worse.” The source added that while the acrimony between Musk and everyone he had ever met was likely irreversible, the falling out had only strengthened his relationship with ketamine.