I wish age gap discourse hadn’t spiraled the way it has because I want there to be a safe space to say “Men in their 40s who date 25 year olds aren’t predators, they’re just fucking losers”
… honey you just described a predator LOL
No, I said what I said. But thank you for providing an example of how this topic has become insufferable on the internet.
i am honestly burningly curious about how a 40 year old man who fucks around with college grads is not a predator
“College grad” is not a developmental stage, nor is it what I would describe a 25 year old as. I was 4 years out of college at 25. My mother had two children at 25. You can be a fucking congressman at 25.
There’s a difference between a man who is immature and buys into misogynistic views of beauty and aging and one who is a predator. Also, many actual predators? Not losers and able to move through society pretty freely being seen as cool and the ideal, so conflating the two isn’t helpful.
This is going to be my final response to any attempt at discourse. You’re welcome to continue amongst yourselves.
also sometimes a 40 year old and a 25 year old just weirdly find each and it’s a perfectly normal relationship - like all human relationships are complex and situational, it’s so rarely an either/or thing let alone just one thing only
if a 40 year old dude only dates 25 year olds, DiCaprio style or something adjacent to it, then yeah he’s a loser
if a 40 year old dude meets a 25 year old through social event or friends or whatever and they happen to hit it off and make a go of it, and this isn’t some sort of reoccurring pattern for the guy, that’s just a relationship with an age difference
being predatory means something specific, and man I agree w/ OP and really wish people just stopped ascribing it to any and all relationship dynamics they personally might not like
predator and groomer - two words that need to go up on the “can’t use till you learn their meaning” shelf
Fun fact but when you try to organize people into “good” and “bad” you’re going to be wrong considerably more often than you’re right. Your rules are arbitrary nonsense.
You can’t sort people like a card catalogue, folks. Either accept ambiguity into your worldview or be an asshole. There is, ironically, no middle ground.
we would find out later i had burned off my entire cornea - about 65% of my eye. my doctor told me it is the organ with the highest concentration of nerve endings - i was in an amount of pain that can’t be spoken.
and i was blind. for the first time in my life, i was totally blind. i kept thinking about reading, about writing. weirdly, just once, about driving. we had no idea if i would ever see again. just like that - my entire life was different.
it is a strange place to reference for a soft memory, to begin here.
my siblings were taking excellent care of me, but there was a moment in the hospital where, just through bad luck and timing - both of them had to step away for a moment. i was crying at that point; not emotionally. for 3 days after this i would still be crying, my tears, like a mermaid’s, a frothy pink with blood.
my brother worried about leaving me. he had another, just-as-bad emergency.
“i got her,” someone said. “don’t worry.”
a soft hand held mine, and then she started talking.
her name was jess. she has a wife named clyde. they live a few blocks up the street. clyde fell down, but the x-rays seem to be coming back better than expected. jess says she’s got long dark hair and “more wrinkles than an elephant”. jess describes every chair in the room and every person. she talks about her two kids and her cats and her favorite memories from college.
a doctor came. i had to switch to a different waiting room. i tried to stand up to follow the voice - i found jess’s hand, following me. she didn’t let go. she kept talking the whole way: lamp to your left, just a few more steps, okay to your right is the ugliest painting, good, now a little more walking straight, you got it baby
in the new silence of the next room she sat me down and called my brother for me, telling him where we’d gone to. and she stayed there for a bit, just chatting, her voice echoing in the eerie quiet. gently describing the room to me. and then someone was rude. from the sound of the voice, a kid, i think.
“why is she crying?”
“she just lost her vision,” jess said. “she can’t see.”
“oh.” said the kid. “that’s scary.”
the kid tells me he is here because he has peas stuck up his nose. that makes me laugh, his mom (?) groans. she tells me about the kid (he’s 6, he likes paw patrol and eating cheese), about herself, about moving from cali.
jess says she’s sorry, but she has to leave now, she’s gotta go check on her wife.
“don’t worry,” says the mom. “i got her.” and then i felt her hand press into mine.
for hours like that: i am taken care of by strangers. each person just talking with whatever comes to their head - not for any reward or celebrity or real reason, i guess. just because i am scared and alone and in the hospital and blinded and need to be distracted. not everyone even got told the story - they would just pick up in the silence with - oh by the way the television is playing HGTV - do you like that kind of a thing?yeah, me too, but could never quite get into those open-floor plans, i’ll tell you -
by the time my brother is able to come back, the room is buzzing. we talk to each other like old friends, laughing, cracking jokes about if you don’t like hospital food wait until you get on an airplane and can’t believe i’m up past two in the morning what a party animal i’m becoming. i am holding the hands of someone named drew, who likes my crow tattoo and making crochet snails.
there are many dark moments full of pain in this world. this - in the low of absolute-dark, absolute-pain: people find a way to paint in it anyway. the color splash of their voices: this triumphant, radiating kindness of - let’s be here together, let me help you, let’s keep going.
i never saw their faces. i can’t remember many of their names. but i think about them often, and the way we all took a deep breath - and did something gentle amongst the pain.
I pull the pin and throw the grenade straight up. Then I throw the pin straight up, and it slides right back into the grenade in midair, disarming it. When the grenade lands, it bonks me in the skull, killing me.
I’ve told this story ten thousand times and I will tell it for the ten thousandth and first: whenever I think about wearing a costume to work on Halloween, I remember the time I saw a doctor breaking what must have been devastating news to a sobbing patient while the doc was dressed as a ketchup bottle.
There’s a lot of good responses to this but I obviously very partial to the healthcare ones
A discord server called bar where strangers who drink alone in their room can go to socialize & there’s channels such as “bar fighting’ & ‘smoking a cigarette outside’ etc.
i love having adult horse girl friends. I’ll send them a 100x100px crunchy ass jpeg of a random brown horse and be like “thought of u🐴” and I can literally feel their sims relationship bar fill up in real time
When the knight wanted a token from his favorite jingly menace before the tournament for luck
Also adding my OG Jingly Menace x Knight art cause I guess this is where I’m keeping them
The knight likes to pretend that he finds the jester annoying and just tries to ignore him but he’s definitely secretly charmed by his antics
Not that you can tell beneath his helmet
For the people wanting to know more about them here are a few character facts:
-When they first met the knight did not like the jester. He found him infuriatingly ridiculous and silly. He is still mostly convinced that the jesters flirting isn’t serious and that he’s just doing it to make fun of him. Alas the jesters persistence is wearing him down. (How can you not like a silly little guy?)
-If you’ve seen my OG colored jester art then you may already know this but the Jester has heterochromia
-The jester has never actually seen the knights face. At this point the knight keeps refusing to take off his helmet just to annoy him and the jester keeps trying different methods to get it off of him which culminated into a game of strip poker where the knight removed every other piece of armor but left the helmet on
Couldn’t resist a quick sketch of the strip poker scene XD
The jester is losing his mind. He is both entirely frustrated for being thwarted but also into it
This is entirely @chronicoddity ‘s fault for sending me the slutty costume picture and then I couldn’t resist 😂
Not portrayed but a second later the knight panics and rips down a tapestry from the wall to cover the jester up with. If it was anyone else the king might have been upset given that it was a very old one but he’s enjoying the drama.
This addition is NOT for the jesters eyes so if you are him then leave now
Some knight sketch designs. I’ve had a pretty clear idea of what he looks like for a while now and finally wanted to do some for him. Also a few additional facts:
-The knight blames the jester for at least half of his gray hairs because of all the stress he puts him under. Fighting in battles is nothing compared to the stress of a jingly menace
-The jester likes to try and pick fights with guys bigger than him but then will do the “You can’t hit me! I’m just a silly little guy!” He is always delighted when the knight steps up to defend him and sometimes does it purposefully for just that
-The knight definitely has some type of Pavlovian response to bells. If he hears jingling he immediately perks up and starts looking for his favorite menace
-Also once the jester finally does get to see his face he definitely targets that scar on his mouth for kisses
ALT
