one of the reasons why I did straight white boy problems was because I wanted to grow as a person. This blog was my medium and I pushed myself to create, and to create, I had to expand my perspectives.
In some ways, the straight white boy character that you became acquainted with was an exaggerated version of myself. Many of the problems were real life occurrences/observations/events that I drew from personal experience, but some problems also came from friends or were satirized to the point where the anecdote was unrealistic. Straight White Boy Problem #965 is honestly one of my personal favorites because this “problem” was actually a real situation in my life, and this situation could apply for several dudes that are questioning the meaning of masculinity.
The person that started at problem #1 is not the same person that finished with problem #1000. I was very much a self-entitled brat when I started this blog, but i have grown since then. I will be graduating college in december with a dual degree, leadership positions in student organizations, and the confidence that I can go out and do anything I set my mind to.
having a level of internet popularity (this blog finished with just over 164k followers) on a medium such as tumblr is very scary. one bad move, and you lose your rep – we have seen that with zubat, pizza, and most recently, sixpenceee. my advice to yall is to keep holding people in these positions accountable, but NEVER elevate internet famous people above other people. not everything i said over 3 years was 100% politically correct, but when i was in the wrong, i had fair and jovial conversations with people to figure out why i was in the wrong. no matter where you go in life, try to treat everybody fairly and equally – hopefully they will do the same to you.
as for my name, you can call me alec. i did promise i’d tell you guys who i was after everything was said and done so there ya go.
thank you for following this blog and thank you for being a part of this experience. this blog was a giant, beautiful mistake that just kinda happened and im happy that yall enjoyed it as much as i did. i may do something in the future, i may not, but i leave this blog a changed and better person.
sincerely,
swbp
swbp actually being a straight white boy is imo the biggest plot twist of the year
when you become a hockey fan, you’re going to be sorely disappointed if you’re expecting these men – the majority of whom are white and straight, and have been coddled since childhood just bc they’re skilled at hockey – to be well-versed in social justice.
i can gurantee you your fave has used gendered slurs before – misogynistic and homophobic language is deepy ingrained in hockey culture and unless a player is making an active effort to combat it, it’s likely that yeah, your fave is kinda sexist. that doesn’t make the rampant misogyny in hockey okay at all – like i said about homophobia, it IS a part of the game, but a part that is ugly and gross and needs to change. but pretending like you’re morally superior for hating crosby is hypocritical unless you want to call out the entire league, bc casual use of these words isn’t a unique thing that only a couple of problematic players are guilty of. (it’s okay to hate crosby for no reason yall, you can stop pulling up random receipts that aren’t specific to him in the least to justify your hatred.)
*everything* that’s considered romantic has been conditioned by society, it’s performative, like the emotion can be genuine but romantic *gestures* are a societal construct, chocolates, flowers, rings, there’s no inherent act of romance, the purest form of what is conceptualized as “romance” can probably be boiled down to emotion + intent, and the manifestation of that combo’s gonna be different for everyone
an action evoked from a feeling of adoration and the need to express it can be constrained by what society provides, but once it’s made irrelevant the meaning becomes tailored to those experiencing it; someone giving fancy chocolates to their s.o. because it’s ‘the thing to do’ can’t measure up to someone giving the chocolates because they know their s.o. thinks the boxes are nice and really likes hazelnut fillings, same gesture, but former lacks ‘inherent’ romance because romance isn’t ‘inherent’, the later has a standard approach but it goes beyond what’s considered ‘romantic’
Hello I am a big fan of Obstinaterixatrix’ Romance Meta and I’m just gonna add to this bc it’s a good post.
I feel like what makes the difference between something being romantic and something being What Society Says Is Romance is the connection between people.
Let’s say two people arrive on my doorstep. One of them has a bouquet of expensive roses from the florist. The other one has a dead bird in a plastic bag. We all know which one is to be considered the romantic gift (hint: it’s not the corpse)
And it’s not like I don’t like flowers or am allergic or anything, I would probably be flattered. But I have no connection to roses, and like, you can give roses to more or less anyone
Dead birds are not a standard gift, for pretty obvious reasons. A person bringing me a corpse in a plastic bag had to know me well enough to know that I collect bones and process them myself, and you don’t go shopping for birds in the Dead Bird Shop around the corner, so that means this person didn’t go out with the intent of getting me something and came back with an Appropriate Gift, they probably stumbled across something and thought about me (this ‘something’ just so happens to be a dead bird, because I’m weird)And then they had to go through the process of picking this bird up and bagging it and bringing it to me, probably pretty spontaneously and without a calendar event that says Find Dead Bird For Raptor with a timeslot between three and four pm.
You can’t have Corpse I Found In a Ditch be romantic without some sort of connection here. Roses can be romantic, but it can also just, be a formula. Two plos Two Equals Romance. A shortcut for ‘I care about you‘, even though the person might …. not, actually.
If it’s someone who loves fresh flowers in their home but rarely has the money to buy large arrangements, or like OP’s example where person A gets the chocolates because they know their s.o. thinks the boxes are super cute, then we have Standard Romantic Actions actually be romantic, but they might as well not be.
This is where my squad has the joke of someone posting a picture of a dead rat to the skype chat and goes ‘Raptor I saw this and thought of you‘ and I go -exaggerated gasping noise- “how dare you blatantly flirt with me right in front of my girlfriend“ from (and also THIS JOKE that bunch of people were confused about). Because there’s INTEREST and CONNECTION there. They’re obviosuly not actually trying to steal me from my gf, but there is a human connection and a knowledge of who I am and what I want to be associated with. The humor then comes in from the self-awareness that this could very much be the opposite of a compliment in, like, probably most other situations ever.
So TL;DR: Things can’t be romantic without the connection between people, no matter how ‘inherit‘ people claim the gesture is. However, more or less anything can be a romantic gesture if there’s the right connection and consideration behind it. Taking out the trash can be romantic. Bringing home a dead fox can be romantic. There’s no Romance Shortcuts. You have to actually care about the other person (sorry, Writers Of Like 9 Out Of 10 Mainstream Movies), there’s no way around it.
So basically: Care about each other!! If you’re writing, write characters who care about each other!! And if you don’t know what character A could do for character B, you might wanna look into whether or not you’ve made a Cardboard Love Interest, like I feel many mainstream writers do. But that’s a whooooole ‘nother can of worms.
There’s so many cans of worms.
Oh god there’s so many worms.
Please help.
I’ve wondered for a long time why so many fictional romances feel forced and this is the exact reason. So many main couples in media only express their love through performative romance.
This is also why a lot of platonic fictional relationships are seen as romantic because for some reason screenwriters have a habit of making friends express their love for each other with actual thought and intent to their actions.
wow. My bro just told me one of my bros is….…gay. don’t know how to feel about this right now. Its….interesting but also weird because it is challenging my notion of heternormitivity – i thought he was just one of the bros. Like….I had no idea. It’s not like I’m going to think any less of him, right? He’s still a bro and he can totally keep playing football with us. Better tell Hunter to stop making the gay jokes though……
I’m not sure if this blog is total sattire or an actual cishet white boy somehow becoming self-aware.
(by ‘like Carey Price’ I have interpreted as ‘all the awards/medals’)
By the time Anton lands in Montreal, he hasn’t sorted out how he feels. Shitty, as they say, but that was a given. What he really hasn’t sorted out is how he feels about Vinnie right now, about the gold hanging around his neck, gold they took on Russian soil. Mostly he’s wary of how he’ll react when he sees Vinnie. Vincent.
Carrying gold home to Canada, him and Pointedexter. The fans will love it.
Anton has no time to adjust. Ten seconds in practice and Vinnie is hopping in, ignoring the slightly sarcastic applause to stick his face in the crook of Anton’s neck. “You’re still my favourite defenceman,” he coos, and then wanders off, and Anton ignores the way the back of his neck feels hot.
So I am already hearing people defending Kent because he was just playing the game and is a good player. Here’s the thing, they wouldn’t have been calling him a rat if he had just tried to score, he went in there and almost crashed into Snowy. If he had hit Snowy, it would have been a serious penalty. This was a dirty play.
I know people don’t like to think of their favorites as playing dirty, especially since he is considered a great player, but I am sure we can all think of great players and teams who played dirty and this may be part of how Aces play. They will do anything to win. (Which makes sense since Jack and Kent used to play and train together and we know how Jack was about winning, Jack had an opportunity to grow up since the overdose, I know there is some thought that Kent is still stuck in that place)
just moving along like everyone else 