About aspects of it? Some less marketable kink, too much libido, not enough libido, the level of emotional involvement required to make things work, preferences towards monogamy or polyamory, anxieties about gender roles… I know it doesn't really compare, but scratch the surface and it feels as if almost anyone has a…

Okay, they've done it. They've redeemed Agustin to me. Have him reference Virginia Woolf and I'm officially won over. Guess I'm a simple girl.

If you're interested in that period, I recommend Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety, about the rise and fall of Danton, Desmoulins and Robespierre. One of the few novels I've reread as an adult - heart-breaking story, very thoroughly researched, inspired a lot of soul-searching. (You can't avoid the question…

Or simple hedonism?

I found The 120 Days of Sodom at a flea market and read a couple of pages. Seemed extremly repetitive.

Christianity does seem to have more of a place for the weak, at least on paper.

On the topic of Siggy - I'm really holding it against Rollo that after all this time he apparently still considers Lagertha the great love of his life (since he presumably hasn't done too much waiting in the reeds for Siggy). He really doesn't deserve Siggy.

ah, good old projection; nothing quite as biting as a bit of outward-directed self-loathing….

They still have to pretend that he has a rad personality and they're actually in love.

Good point. I actually want the job, so there's no real question of including the quote. (Just a little flirtation with the imp of the perverse; Usually being vaguely clever on the internet is enough to get it out of my system.)

Well, everything has its flaws and merits. I think there's something to be said for nuance and precision. People who feel more secure about these things will often eventually drop the quest for perfect accuracy, but in the time leading up that, it can be a helpful affirmation of identity facets that are frequently…

Tumblr would say yes, totally normal. Lots of people there insist on a distinction between sexual and romantic orientation. (That's why you get those endless strings of signifiers in tumblr biographies - hetero-demi-sexual bi romantic genderqueer lumberjack or what have you - which are such a popular subject for…

Women also get a lot more pressure to not be superficial - there's an endless parade of fairy tales in most cultures teaching girls to look beyond appearances, and approximately zero stories with the same lesson for boys. So, I share your observation, but I'd like to point out that it's pretty certainly a matter of…

““I learned that the world of men as it exists
today is a bureaucracy. This is an obvious truth, of course, though it
is also one the ignorance of which causes great suffering.

Congratulations, you're in the throes of limerence! Enjoy the ride, but keep things in perspective. Don't put her on a pedestal and don't do anything rash.

"Now, idiotking is wondering how to get a girl he likes to sleep with him
when she knows, unfortunately, that he’s also definitely done gay
stuff. Like, a LOT more gay stuff." - To some that may be a feature, not a bug. If you don't mind a bit of fetishization.

I'm not sure you made the wrong choices at all. Sounds like you might have saved yourself quite a bit of drama with the first one (whether you had a shot with her, chances are there _would_ have been some ill feelings about the timing), and if it truly had been meant to be, she could have said something herself. She…

That's the one scenario where I do have a lot of sympathy, because it kinda sneaks up on people before they can minimize the potential fall-out. Sorry that you had to go through to that. For what it's worth (which is not much, i'm afraid), I've often observed that if there's a sufficiently substantial foundation to…

It's selfish, but it's the healthy kind of selfishness, I think. Feelings are not about fairness and nobody should expect them to be. I've said the "but I'd like to be friends"-thing to a guy (because I did like him and would have liked to be friends) and I wasn't the least bit surprised or offended when he politely…

I think you're doing everything you can already. "Sublimation through art" is my go-to-advice in these situations - even if you fail, you do at least have something to be passionate about and will gain interesting stories to tell in the process. I would much rather talk to someone who has crashed and burned with a…