in grade 12 we were reading romeo and juliet and we were at the romantic-ass balcony scene and this hot girl in the class volunteered to read juliet’s parts and i put up my hand to volunteer for another part and the teacher goes ‘oh do you want to be the nurse, amanda?’ and i was like ‘no i wanna be romeo’ and the hot girl swiveled around in her seat to give me a Look™
she and i later ended up making out at a bunch of parties in university lmfao
in retrospect this moment was absolutely pivotal to my butch awakening but it was also just a lesbian power move
I too got a girlfriend over this play. In grade 10, I was reading the balcony scene to study with two other people (one guy and one beautiful girl) and I insisted point blank I had to read as romeo, because he had the most lines and I’m a dramatic little shit.
So the other two in my group are used to my antics by now. We’re all friends, so the pair of them decide that the one guy in our group gets to be the nurse. Now, my Juliet and I have been friends for a couple months by this point, so I decide to be a little more dramatic.
We put Juliet on a spinny chair, and pump it up as tall as it goes, and my baby, closeted lesbian ass crouches on the floor, ready to be as melodramatic as possible. Like, I’m about to do a rendition that makes William himself walk into the class and tell me to take it back a notch or twelve.
And then I look up.
And holy shit.
There she is, Juliet, haloed in the worst fluorescent light known to mortals across the globe. Light just streaming down around her, that weird off-green colour that it always is. And she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. My little gay soul is barely holding on as the words barely leave my lips, breathlessly. “But soft… what light from yonder window breaks?”
And Juliet was the sun. Romeo was not exaggerating that line at all.
Juliet and I have also been together for more than 4 years now. She’s every bit as spectacular as she was when I was a lovestruck teenage Romeo, kneeling on the yellowed linoleum floor of second block english.
A child is a person at every stage of development, and they deserve the right to life.
At what stage of pregnancy do they gain the right to use someone’s body against their consent? And what stage do they lose it? Because that isn’t a right extended to any other population.
Also 7 week old fetuses do not respond to touch. They don’t yet have a sense of touch. The receptors in the skin begin to form at 7.5 weeks, but the spine cannot transmit any input from those receptors to the brain until 19 weeks. 19 weeks is when Fetuses begin to feel ‘touch’ and cannot differentiate between types of touch until 30 weeks, when the brain is awake enough to begin processing the input.
They have reflex responses before they have the capacity to feel touch, but a reflex response and actually feeling something are totally different things. (x)
As Oh-Snap-Pro-Choice pointed out too, a fetus, even if you consider it a person, would not have the right to use the pregnant persons body without their consent. Because literally no one has that right.
so, in the harry potter books, we know that harry’s neighbour is a squib called mrs figg, but there never seems to be any mention of a mr figg. so i propose a theory. harry is faceblind and there are two mrs figgs
evidence for this theory:
harry is incredibly unobservant
they own lots of cats
she’s on good terms with dumbledore, another Known Gay™
she has absolutely ZERO problem with straight-up lying to the government
i just read a washington post article on romcoms aging poorly due to the pushiness (and oft-stalkery conduct) of the male characters therein, and it got me thinking about pride and prejudice, and specifically darcy saying, “one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”
because, like, that’s the seldom-portrayed romantic dream in the patriarchal hellscape that is our world, isn’t it?
a dude being willing to say, “i understand if you don’t feel the same way about me, and i’ll leave you alone forever about this if my attention is unwanted.”
so simple, yet so wonderful in its basic human decency
and dudes to this day wonder why women still swoon over darcy
Note also: Elizabeth turns down Darcy’s first proposal, and in the process, accuses him of doing some stuff he did not do (and also some stuff he totally did).
The next day, he surprises her on her walk. He hands her a letter, asks that she read it, and then takes off.
When this happened to me after I had turned someone down IN REAL LIFE, the letter contained a passionate argument to the tune of “actually you’re wrong and you do like me and you should go out with me” and it was creepy af.
Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth starts with: “Be not alarmed, Madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments, or renewal of those offers, which were last night so disgusting to you”. He goes on to set the record straight about the stuff he didn’t do (as well as the stuff he did) which is *actually relevant* to Elizabeth. And he, as promised, doesn’t romance her further.
It’s totally bizarre that even now, this can be considered unusually great dude behaviour.
Darcy’s first proposal: “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
Darcy’s second proposal: “One word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”
His whole arc in the book is about learning to consider other people’s feelings and not just his own, but the fact that it’s expressed via who gets to talk and who is told to shut up is so, so telling. The first time around, he imposes his voice on her whether she wants it or not. The second time, he asks how she feels, and in exchange, offers her the gift of his silence.
And yeah, the fact that dudes still! have! not! learned! this! lesson! is exhausting.
How surprising is it that Pride and Prejudice was written by a woman, when many romantic comedies are produced and directed by men?
Answer: not at all
200 years later and the world is still full of guys who think they’re a Mr Darcy when they’re actually a Mr Collins.
200 years later and the world is still full of guys who think they’re a Mr Darcy when they’re actually a Ross Geller.
How dare this fandom not have a fanfiction written about this very specific and complex idea that only I have thought of and never asked anyone to write about.