#Area Movement

[ryllen]

and some extra unused stuff while they are in affectionate mood

[bigboard]

Counter Attack Arras /2

Counter Attack Arras /2

[internationalemeteorologie]

Wayne Thiebaud

Reflected landscape. 1966-68

[biologist4ever]

Illuminating the brain through art and science

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

In the North and South, women's standing as citizens had always been refracted through their normative adult status as wives, and by the state's equal or greater commitment to upholding marriage and the law of coverture. That law put women under their husbands' legal power in the interests of marital unity. The transformation of woman into wife made "citizenship--a public identity as a participant in public life--something close to a contradiction in terms for a married woman." The terms of female citizenship had always been set by the perceived necessities of marriage and its gender asymmetries between man and woman, husband and wife. In the North by i86o, agitation for the woman citizen's natural right of suffrage had, in conjunction with antislavery, already made serious political inroads. Increasingly women's continued exclusion had to be dignified by an argument. But nowhere in the nineteenth-century United States did any women's rights, not to mention demands for the vote, emerge outside of the context of antislavery politics. So in the South, where a proslavery agenda set the tone in politics and where politicians regularly dragooned marriage into the work of legitimizing slavery (as just another desirable form of domestic dependence suitable to the weak), women's status as citizens hardly mattered. There, politicians were habituated to thinking of women as existing at a remove from the body politic, as part of the family or the household, and not of the people and the citizens.

stephanie mccurry, confederate reckoning: power and politics in the civil war south

[chillydownhere2]

The rains have done well. All streams & lakes are full.

Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge

SW Oklahoma

Source Me laf@ilyF 🥰

[missmastectomy]

Absolutely hate how “queer” has become an acceptable way to refer to LGBT people, as if it’s not a slur. I can’t tell you how many times young straight people have asked if I was “queer,” because most people don’t assume I’m a straight woman.

Like… y’all really have no clue just how offensive that word is. In my conservative southern town, queer = gay = pervert = invert. Less than, disgusting by nature of being SSA or GNC. Not to mention that literally all the older gay people I’ve talked to absolutely think of it as a slur. It never was an identity the way it has become now. It was a degrading term people spat at the time before people were kicked out of their houses, abused, or killed.

Which makes it even more repulsive to me when straight people call themselves this. It’s why I hate the term so much. It is utterly meaningless. You’re queer? Well what the fuck does that mean? And if you push a lot of these people and ask if they’re bi or gay they hardly ever give a straight (lol) answer. Without fail these kinds of people are “queer” because they’re non-binary or demisexual or some made up crap.

Like that Bambi girl from Eurovision. As far as I know she’s not attracted to women or at least never talked about it. Her ENTIRE basis for being LGBT is that she’s non-binary and alternative. But how is that the same as being SSA, or transsexual for that matter?? You live life as a straight woman. Nobody sees you as anything but a woman.

You’re not “queer.” If an LGBT person wants that label then fine. I don’t get it, but call yourself what you like. But not if you’re not SSA. I will always hate these straight activists who had the gall to take our community away from us and make a slur against us mainstream.

[oncanvas]

Bay Excursion #2, James Weeks, 1984

Acrylic on canvas 84 x 74 in. (213.4 x 188 cm)

[kundst]

Richard Diebenkorn (US 1922-1993)

Still Life with Ivory Handled Knife (c. 1964) watercolor and acrylic on paper (42 x 32 cm)

[deepseacityunderground]

i think that veganism as a political movement has a lot of interesting things to say about how food agriculture has been shaped by consumerism and the way its alienated the average westerner from food production especially around meat. its a cruel cruel industry for everyone involved and it sucks.

unfortunately it also overwelmingly falls victim (like a lot of other socially progressive political movements lol) to a complete inability or perhaps a refusal to engage with rural indigenous communities especially in the global south. which is ironic because (like a lot of other socially progressive political movements) much of their theoretical framework for reforming society Depends on rural indigenous communities especially in the global south ^.^

[ryllen]

it’s okay for things to be messy sometimes

[pynkhues]

You write such great Louis meta that I was curious about your opinion on something. I’m not sure if you’ve written something about this before or not so if you have please disregard!

The show is very clear with us since the first episode that Louis is capable of violence against those he loves most obviously including Paul and Lestat. But I also see a connecting thread with Louis conflating/connecting sex and violence as well. The scene at Antoinette’s is the most obvious but when I started thinking about it, it seems like this is a common thing for him. The murders in the park in Paris, where he’s seeing dreamstat. The 128 boys in SF. Maybe his relationship with Armand, even. Maybe with Jonah, where he was biting his own arm to keep from killing him (probably also because of hunger so I’m less sure about that one, or maybe that’s part of it too).

I started thinking about this reading analyses of the long face lyrics and people’s confusion about Lestat calling himself piano and Louis forte. And on the one hand I’m like *shrug* maybe it’s not that deep or it’s meant to irritate Louis- and on the other I’m like welllll Louis does kind of come at him aggressively sometimes, so maybe this is Lestat’s actual pov.

Thank you for your kind words, anon! And yeah, I definitely see what you mean and agree. I’m not sure if it’s necessarily the conflation of violence and sex themselves, but I do think an enormous part of Louis’ character is about the repression of self until that self explodes violently out of him. To me, it’s ultimately that that feeds into Louis’ complex relationship with power and control which is often reflected in exertions of physical autonomy, both over his own body and the bodies of other people (and not even just sexually – a huge part of his relationship with Claudia is in his platonic dominion over her body, from having Lestat make her for him in the first place, to trying to control what she eats, what she wears and, most significantly, her role within the family unit [her transition to sister is, after all, just a placation. Dreamstat proves that, just as the coven calling her a feminine denouement of his name ‘Baby Lulu’ is. She is always her father’s daughter]).

Louis’ repression vs Louis’ oppression

One of the most interesting changes that the show has made is in changing Louis’ race, and while there has plenty said about that, the shift from the book as a purely repressed character, to one who’s repression is fueled by racial and societal oppression has elevated not just the character, but the show. Louis’ limitations aren’t just the ones he internalizes anymore, they’re externalized – when we meet him, he hasn’t picked a role as he has in the book, it’s been a role forced upon him by the era, the city and the systemic structures in place around him. He has to play the tough pimp down in the Black brothels he himself runs to cement his social power there, but he also has to play subservient, placating, and second-class to white society to gain any social power there.

The result is Louis represses different parts of himself as a result of oppression twice over – he’s repressing the softer, loving parts of himself working the part of Storyville he has power in, while repressing the harder, more ruthless parts of himself working the part of Storyville he doesn’t, to say nothing of having to repress his queerness in a religious household and a homophobic society. I think this makes him a melting pot in more ways than one, because it makes his authentic self hard even for him to identify within himself. He spends so much of his time code switching and repressing different parts of himself, yes, to survive, but also to advance which I think is a less talked about part of his character.

Like, Louis’ not just a survivor of his situation, he’s an ambitious man who seeks to elevate his social position and gain social power. I do think that’s partially borne out of the implied fall from grace his father had, and being pushed into the role of family patriarch at a pretty young age, and his singular rage at being locked out of NOLA’s upper echelons in the 1910s through 40s, but I also think it’s just a vital part of his character. Louis’ a social climber first, and a capitalist second! It’s one of the things that I find most interesting about him, and I love that the show leant into it with Louis actually gaining social power through his relationship with Lestat, even if it doesn’t always look like it (i.e. him having to play Black employee to his white husband at the opera).

Louis leverages that social power (and Lestat’s whiteness) to allow first professional advancement through the acquisition of The Fair Play Saloon – both his biggest competitor and a symbol of the white society he was locked out of, and turning it into The Azaelia, but also I’d argue the perception of personal advancement through having Lestat make him a child, something he also believed that he was locked out of as a gay man. Claudia's not just self-affirmant to Louis, but a symbol of achievement over society in the same way The Azaelia was, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she was born out of the death of it.

Okay, but what’s that got to do with body autonomy, sex and violence?

Yes! Right! Get back on track, Sophie, haha. Look, both Louis’ survival and advancement are really determined by his ability to control himself and choose what to be and when. Like I said above, he has to repress different parts of himself to be able to work different parts of society, and I do think there’s a resentment of the fact that he has to do that at all. He can’t float through life authentically because he’s not granted the same privilege of straight, white men, and even when he has someone who passes for that on his arm, he’s still limited in how he’s able to wield Lestat’s social power out of the house in that particular era.

That – understandably! – stokes an enormous amount of feeling. Yes, rage is a big one, but I also think grief and hurt and sheer weight, and Louis as a character tends to repress all of that too. He struggles to self-manage his emotions because he’s never been allowed the space to, and even when Lestat tries to give him that space, Lestat has exactly 0% capacity to understand him. Louis and Lestat are very, very different characters from very, very different eras and countries, and I think fundamentally don’t understand each other, despite loving each other deeply, and in a lot of ways, that’s probably part of the appeal for them.

Louis though I think does view managing his emotions as intrinsically linked to controlling himself / his body, which comes to this point that Louis presents himself as a very cerebral character, but he’s not really. He might talk a lot, read a lot, enjoy art a lot, but Louis’ always been both practical and physical. How he handles himself, how he processes trauma, how he hides from himself and others, hell, how he enjoys himself isn’t necessarily something he thinks about, it’s something he does, and usually does with his or somebody else’s body.

He hides his sexuality using Miss Lily's body, he represses his vampirism with an animal diet, he combats feelings of powerlessness, boredom, malaise with exertions of power, pleasure, comfort over and with other people’s bodies, whether that’s making Lestat turn Claudia (an exertion of power not just over Claudia, but Lestat too), the scene at Antoinette’s (significantly being after an enormous loss of power with Lestat’s act of abuse), murdering Lestat at the Mardi Gras Ball (and saving him / grabbing Claudia too), depending on Claudia for his own happiness in Europe, grabbing Santiago’s tongue at the restaurant, his D/s relationship with Armand and using Armand’s body to perform power over the Coven, the murder of the coven and Alderman Fenwick to process trauma and oppression, the 128 boys in San Francisco with Armand waiting at home, the rocks in his ankles, the comfort of the embrace in the reunion with Lestat. Hell, even the interview becomes a physical act given the way he flies Daniel out and then weaponises his Parkinson's against him.

We spend so much time with Louis playing passive as he narrates the events of his life in Dubai that I think it can be easy to overlook how physical he actually is as a character, and the importance bodily autonomy plays in his connection to himself and his connection to others. The fact that that can and does manifest aggressively / violently sometimes (particularly after periods of feeling powerless, traumatised or overwhelmed) is absolutely a part of that, but even beyond that, I think he does have a real physical vocabulary that he often tries to depict as more cerebral because I think it makes him feel more in control of himself.  

So yeah, I think you're right in that Lestat thinking Louis' forte probably is pretty accurate to how Lestat sees him.

[astriiformes]

Place your bets on if John Darnielle plays union songs again at the concert in Saint Paul tonight

[manyblinkinglights]

I'll never understand pro models with kind of shit weight painting.

WHY'S THE BUTT COME WITH, THOUGH.

THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT PART OF ANY TAILED MODEL. ;o;

like I GUESS the creator is assuming nobody wants to see the asshole, and that it would be posed and filmed the etc to hide hole anyway. And now that I think of it, of all the cats, I bet on snow leopards you actually DON'T see cat asshole continually, because it's cold, and they probably keep it protected.

but not like THAT.

[biologist4ever]

Illuminating the brain through art and science!

[shimenchus]

it's so telling when someone says radical feminism is "white woman shit" and you bring up the fact that in many places such as africa or asia, the only feminism that prominently exists is radical feminism, and for those places it's just considered regular feminism that you get told those women live in places that aren't progressive enough for them to understand their actions properly. to say these women are too dumb to realize that their beliefs are "bad" simply because they don't align with western mainstream liberal feminism is rooted in xenophobia and racism, not to mention a lack of understanding of the struggles and violence women from these countries regularly go through, which can range anywhere from fgm to men rubbing and wiping their cum on the back of women's clothes in trains. but of course, as usual, there's no intelligent response to this so you just end up getting blocked or get rape wished on you.