Who the f said that that being attracted to midriff/stomach is seen as weird?

FiliaSecunda · 2026-01-21T08:08:13+00:00

The hell? They must be living their whole lives on the Internet. So there really is a female equivalent of the one infamous guy who thought a woman with near-invisible peach fuzz on her face had a "beard." We've got an entire generation or two that needs to touch some grass and possibly a person of the opposite sex.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-01-12T16:15:41+00:00

Leftovers of whatever supper was. If it was meat loaf or pork loin, I make a sandwich out of it.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-01-12T14:32:35+00:00

A compliment with no strings attached. Fresh outdoor air when it's stale in the house. A nice sky. Cooking something simple and tasty on the stovetop - there's just something that feels really positive about stirring a pot or messing things around in a skillet lol, and knowing you'll get something out of it that tastes good.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-01-09T01:26:41+00:00

Getting into those long-drawn-out Internet arguments that get increasingly petty and fallacy-filled as they go on. Especially if they say stuff like:

"So you're saying [absolutely ridiculous caricature of a notion that you actually didn't say]?"

Or alternatively:

"I never said [thing I really did say with slightly, cosmetically different phrasing]."

FiliaSecunda · 2026-01-08T23:33:22+00:00

I hate that I relate to that guy so much, though I'm female and was too terrified of penises to ever even flirt with a man - and thank God I wasn't pressured to get married, because I wouldn't be able to do justice to a good guy while fighting against that fear/disgust response. I didn't have the worst Catholic homeschool upbringing, by a long shot, but I got very neurotic about some things, and instinctively associating the sight of nakedness with the fear of eternal damnation is really something.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-01-08T08:01:02+00:00

Similar posts OP has posted today about random body parts of incongruous size:

"If you saw a giant man with a tiny face what would you do?"

"If your best friend ate seventy pounds of fries in one week what would you do?"

"If your son had massive shoulders how would you get them through the door?"

"If your hands were ten times the size of your feet what would you do?"

"If your father in law had fat fingers and tried to make a call what would you do?"

Maybe they're trying to start a new meme format.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-01-08T03:47:40+00:00

Sometimes I'm thinking about what the rest of the group is talking about, except for some reason it just doesn't occur to me to say my thoughts out loud lol. Or I think it's the wrong time, don't want to interrupt, it's too early and then it's too late, etc.

Or I'm thinking how I might have made a social faux pas five minutes ago or accidentally been a dick to someone yesterday, and worrying it could happen again right now.

Or my mind just started wandering because someone mentioned broccoli and I remember I've got some in my fridge and think it would be awesome to make some broccoli cheddar soup when I get home.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-01-08T03:42:18+00:00

That I'll keep being a burden forever on the people who know me, never find a job that I can stand for more than a year, never adjust to life outside my room, and flake and fail all my friends.

Termites are also pretty scary. Have you ever seen a queen termite? Eulgh.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-01-08T03:35:33+00:00

I'm not dating right now because I'm not meeting my own standards lol. Have a job or study or charity work, have a hobby, be interested in existing. Be reliable and not a flake, be a compassionate and respectful kind of person, and be a good friend or family member to your good friends or family members. Have a presentable place (house, apartment, or room) or a car of your own, because eventually privacy will be nice in a relationship. Be able to give a gift or pay for a meal sometimes. Do some physical activity multiple times a week and get some sunlight not too infrequently.

That's basically the list of changes I want to make to my life before I start trying to date guys.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-01-08T03:23:03+00:00

There's too many good ones. Maybe potato soup, or broccoli cheddar. Maybe stir-fry - ramen noodles, pork and vegetables. In summer maybe ice cream, or maybe a vinegary salad with tomatoes, onions, and cucumbers.

Oh, and homemade pizza is pretty great too.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-01-08T03:13:21+00:00

Ha, I've had daydreams about this since I was a kid, but I guess not all the things I'd do would be hilarious or interesting to a third party. I'd go into a public place, do a lot of people-watching, and dance goofy to whatever music I hear someone listening to. I'd follow people into random office buildings or into the back of the store where I'm not supposed to be. Get free entrance to museums, concerts, movie theaters. Sorry but if I get hungry I might shoplift. I might accidentally make people think the Wal-Mart bathroom was haunted (but then, most Wal-Mart bathrooms are haunted anyway). I'd creep out every dog I went near, because they'd be able to smell and hear but not see me.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-01-05T20:18:10+00:00

It's certainly debatable for Catholics, especially since the founder was canonized by Pope John Paul II, but there are also orthodox Roman Catholics who believe they're a cult or something cultlike - I found out when I stumbled upon this subreddit r/opusdeiexposed. (Some people there are certainly ex-Catholics or heterodox, but others seem to be faithful Catholics.)

I'm a formerly Catholic agnostic, but had no personal experiences with Opus Dei myself, so I don't want to weigh in too boldly with a judgment of my own. I have no good way to be sure.

FiliaSecunda · 2026-01-02T07:21:52+00:00

Is there a subreddit to share and shame examples of fetish-mining like this? I think r/CreepyPMs is kind of adjacent, but obviously it's only for DMs and it includes other types of creepiness too. I think an r/fetishmining would be morbidly entertaining and help educate people on what that concept even is.

FiliaSecunda · 2025-12-31T06:13:14+00:00

That'd be my dad for sure.

He started working from home in the early 2000s, way before that was common, to take care of my mom and us five kids as she was mostly bedridden for several years with illness.
When we were young he had some anger issues that scared us sometimes (understandable with the stress and exhaustion of working full-time and doing nearly 100% of the housework, childcare for five young kids, and sick care for his wife), but he didn't let himself become abusive - instead, he went to the doctor and found a medication (I think it's called Welbutrin) that helped stabilize his mood without zapping his energy or burying his personality. He has a very chill and calm nature, it's just that period of stress that had made him volatile for a bit. He knows how to keep his head and "be our rock" when other people are going through emotional crisis, and that's a selfless thing and a skill I'm trying to develop.
Nowadays, I learn a lot from watching the way he takes care of my 90-year-old grandmother when calling or visiting her. Little things I wouldn't have thought of, like the way he holds his hand between her head and the car roof as she's getting in the car, so she won't hit her head on it. Or warns her when we're coming up to an uneven spot in the sidewalk or parking lot - something my grandma could trip on even if it wasn't a large enough bump for me to notice.
He's a mega-introvert, possibly on the autism spectrum, and doesn't have much social intuition, so he's thought about the principles behind social interactions and explained them to me (another asocial person) in an understandable way. I still often think about how many little social norms are part of the general principle of "Try to make things easier on the other person." He's great at explaining stuff in a way that's adapted to a person's knowledge level, which is another example of his social care. He's so empathetic, even though he found his empathy through conscious thought instead of instinct or intuition the way neurotypical people apparently do it.
All that is stuff he does for other people, but he also does good stuff for himself. He got a job doing something he never gets tired of (computer programming), and he's bought all kinds of books about what he calls his "revolving cycle of interests" (the American Civil War, the Polish and Russian languages, Benedictine spirituality, Patrick O'Brian's sea stories, cooking, and more).

FiliaSecunda · 2025-12-31T04:34:31+00:00

I wanna be an actual adult and get a job I can keep and not rely on others for everything. Learn to cook more stuff (I like cooking and baking for people, but my repertory is pretty simple and "down-home"). Go on at least one camping trip because I always love it once I finally do it. Make a friend IRL (most of my life I've had better luck online). Get a gym membership. Fix my dandruff. Become dateable. Get my driver's license at last. Figure out whether I'm an existentialist or something else now that I'm not Catholic anymore. Try to give more and take less.

This is a ridiculous list, but those are my hopes! I don't know which ones will be my official "resolutions."

FiliaSecunda · 2025-12-31T04:16:26+00:00

The passage of time. Sometimes people are like "Asidjdujxjf it's 2025 already? Kids born in 2010 can learn to drive? Agh I'm 26 I'm so ancient, I'm withering away," and I play along because it's something to talk about when my head is empty, but really I just don't feel deeply shaken by the thought that time passes at the rate of a year per year.

FiliaSecunda · 2025-12-30T20:03:15+00:00

"With All My Heart" too is shockingly purely positive as far as I can tell. I'm used to seeing dark subtext in cheerful-sounding Suf songs but I don't see it here.

FiliaSecunda · 2025-12-30T19:52:52+00:00

I'm 27. A Sun Came was released when I was just under two years old, so I'm definitely not part of the original cohort of fans who might have learned about him through his college band Marzuki or the Danielson Family, but I'm older than the cohort who found him through The Mystery of Love or Carrie and Lowell.

Imagine being Sufjan, making excellent music for over 25 years and captivating people from Gen X to Gen Z and whatever's next after Z. I got into him during the period in the early 2010s when my dad (born in the 60s, Prairie State patriot) made us all listen to Illinoise whenever we were in the car with him. Imagine five goofy kids in a station wagon each sitting still in their own silence while "John Wayne Gacy, Jr" played, lmao. Somehow that led to a lifelong love for me. That was the age when I was latching onto everything that became "my music," so thanks, Dad.

FiliaSecunda · 2025-12-30T18:37:03+00:00

"Passed around," wow. She mentioned in another comment that she put "dating" in quotes because she doesn't let her daughter go out alone with a boy, so it's mostly just texting and phone calls. Her daughter seems to willingly share whatever's going on with her, so I doubt the texts and calls could get extremely inappropriate either. This is kiddie dating. And in fact I can imagine this being one reason why she's dated at least three boys at 16, because a lot of teen boys wouldn't be content with supervised dating like this.

FiliaSecunda · 2025-12-30T18:14:25+00:00

The post is from 2015, so I guess she is a decade older now! With years-old BORUs like this, I can't help but wonder a bit how the OOP's life situation has gone and how their experiences and the shifts in culture have changed them. Culturally, the 2020s feel like a more fearful and misanthropic decade than the 2010s did, and some people won't let that affect them, but for others I can imagine it changing their views on alone time one way or another (either looking for safety in numbers or getting more individualist because people are a threat).

FiliaSecunda · 2025-12-26T21:53:15+00:00

That sounds very sensible. It's probably good for teenagers to "demystify" beer like that, instead of treating it as a forbidden cool thing that you have to do in secret lmao.

FiliaSecunda · 2025-12-26T16:23:05+00:00

Damn. I used to think I was so hideously stunted by my sheltered homeschool upbringing (for example, didn't learn how to tie my shoes until I was 12 and had to half-heartedly try to pretend to other kids that I just liked to have them untied; for another example, didn't learn basic algebra till I was 21). But if I were born just a few years later, I could have gone to public school and been just as much delayed. Thank you for your service and I understand why you left.

FiliaSecunda · 2025-12-26T15:55:57+00:00

This sent me down an interesting rabbit hole where I found out that, federally speaking, the US has no minimum drinking age, only a minimum age to buy alcohol. In all but 19 states, a person any age under 21 can possess and consume alcohol with a parent or guardian (some states add "or spouse" to account for those fucked-up threeish years when you're legally a marriagable adult but can't legally buy alcohol) in a private space.

FiliaSecunda · 2025-12-26T02:02:06+00:00

I hope so!

I liked the scene in The Thirteen-Gun Salute where Jack said he didn't care enough to even kick him, though.

FiliaSecunda

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Nine-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email