#I'm loving the contributions but like. just to clarify what I meant by the original post

[bakasara]

I think it's fair to celebrate that we're now seeing queer genre stories featuring middle-aged actors/characters in addition to queer teen dramas, and I welcome that observation – but if I may, that wasn't exactly the point here!

Moving away from Western heteronormative consumerist beauty standards is part of the discourse, but it's not strictly necessary that your leads be 50 to do it.

The difference here is with media that, at its core, sells the dream of an ideal capitalist subject through conservative, heteronormative, sexually sanitized depictions of human connection and meaning-making.

All the coolness and the sexiness that kind of media is selling is entirely superficial; it follows solely the logic of consumerism, it corresponds to no substance underneath, to nothing of human value, to a careful avoidance of anything that could ever twist anything in anyone's guts.

On the one hand, it is following a principle that airbrushed-but-sexless is polite and non-upsetting to the minimum common denominator of consumerism: your average puritanical USamerican conservative, whether he identifies as right wing or as center-left liberal. The marvel movie (and its alike narratives) is not there to be in any way thought-provoking, or destabilizing of the status quo.

On the other hand, this kind of depiction also speaks to the well-established capitalist principle that the subject has to be empty for you to sell "it" a product. A subject that is stripped of meaningful ways of making connections (of all kinds) with others will fill the void with products that afford quick, short-term satisfaction. It's the logic that takes you from "societies everywhere have always put shit on their faces for decoration and social communication" to "the modern-day make-up industry".

Whereas narratives like OFMD have something of value to say about all these things like masculinity and sexuality and desire, and how they go into human connection. I picked the two images up there because to me they depict two characters who are fantasizing about each other sexually, among other connotations to their fantasies. The point of origin was the objects carried by dream!Ed and dream!Stede in these fantasies having phallic implications. Not in a pop Freudian "any elongated object is a penis" way, but based on the actual larger context of these scenes.

Stede has just been stabbed in the gut, but he re-lives the event in his fevered dream as dream!Blackbeard stabbing him instead. We don't see where, but metaphorically it's through the heart, sealing Stede's fate to fall in love with him. That attraction towards Blackbeard has a definitive erotic component to it, though, as much as any stabbing between Ed and Stede is later clarified to be erotic– with the 1x06 stabbing scene playing out as Ed teaching Stede how to sexually penetrate him/another man.

Something similar goes for Merman!Stede. He's obviously a romantic fantasy, but we know that Ed sees Stede as the best person to enjoy life with, that Ed values sex as a meaningful pleasure in life, and by putting two and two together, that he's wanting to have sex with Stede. It's not surprising that a fantasy where a beautiful, safe, loving Stede comes to save him from the brink of death would carry some erotic imagery with it.

In both cases, erotic desire and sexual intimacy are simply a part of how these characters experience significant connections to others/each other. These are far from the only examples of this rhetoric in OFMD, and the point the show keeps making is that it's fucking fine. It's ok to give it importance. It's a normal and healthy part of human life – a non-universal, but common enough experience, that is as legitimate as any other way of making meaning.

Look– to offer another facet to the topic– I remember picking up Prodigal Son at one point, because Michael Sheen was in it. The premise is that there's this Special Detective with Disorders (the son) who has to consult with the Genius Psychopath Serial Killer (his father). The family is upper-class, they have like a whole mansion or whatever, the women have beach waves, all the tropes of the genre are played straight and the way it's shot is super conventional, as are all the dialogues and plot beats. I remember I'd keep thinking, "Wow, this show wants so much to be the pop Hannibal, the version of Hannibal that goes mainstream instead of becoming a queer niche cult classic".

But you can't make a pop Hannibal. When Hannibal-the-series shows you these hyper-polished characters, Hannibal Lecter in primis, it's not playing that straight. The shots are experimental for a reason, the artistic exaggerations are deliberate, the dialogue convoluted on purpose. The contrast between "Hannibal as the rich, white, respectable host, esteemed doctor in psychiatry" and "Hannibal as the human-devouring monster" is studiously emphasized through the black humor that cuts across the show. The ultimate rhetoric behind Hannibal was that, stripped of social conventions dictating the appropriate boundaries we keep not to inglobate one another, at the heart of human beings is a visceral, impolite, amorphous thirst for impossible closeness with another being capable of understanding us. It was exploring and asking questions about that desire. You can't sanitize that! There's no "easy-consumption" pop version of it. You legitimate such things as part of the human experience, or you don't.

You know?

polar opposite of that "marvel characters are 30 and sexy and instagram-polished but actually none of them have a sexuality, they never eroticize each other and are never horny". if you even care

[clangenrising]

Hi! I really love the story you're building with RisingClan, and I'm so excited to see more. I just wanted to say I very much agree with your sentiment about tracing, there's no harm if you're open about it and not making money, and it's a great way to learn and improve. However, I would like to ask you to consider linking the photos you trace at the bottom of each post that uses them, or in a seperate master post that links back to the posts each photograph was used in, both to credit the original photographers and so those who might be interested in doing similarly can see the same poses and original photos! I saw that you said in a previous ask that you'd credit the photographers if they asked, but I feel that credit for their photos shouldn't need to be requested on a case by case basis, rather credit should be part of the baseline process. I feel that photographers often get the short end of the stick when it comes to crediting, even though so many of us artists would be completely lost without their contributions to the artistic world. I hope you will consider this perspective!

That's a really good point and I think I agree. Let me clarify what I meant:

From now on, I'll start linking photo references somehow (I'll have to figure it out since Ive heard that tumblr punishes posts that have external links in them) but posts I've already made will be very difficult to credit since I've since deleted the images I used to make them. I know this isn't a good excuse but I genuinely don't know if I can find them again so in that case if someone contacts me about it I would be happy to link from there.

Does that make sense? ^^;

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 21/01/2024

8​-​bit Fish With Dreams

Season 4 Episode 1 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume AI Also on: I JUST WANNA DO CATCH SOME FISHS

Ripped by l4ureleye

"This one's for you, buddy."

There's a time and place for everything, and honestly, right now really isn't the time for me to recount everything surrounding Marrow's place in the channel's history again. I've covered tributes to the ripper twice in the past, once with the heartachingly beautiful Telling Fish Tales, and later in the bittersweet cheerfulness of Turnabout Fishters. I won't repeat myself all too much here, so I suggest you read up on those posts if you're out of the loop in regards to StreetPass Fishing's place on the channel. And so, to round this topic off for the foreseeable future, we have 8​-​bit Fish With Dreams - one more tribute, yet one that seems to come from a rather personal place.

Honestly, in the recent months, in my time doing this blog, it's been a bit...strange, slowly assimilating into the more active parts of the SiIva community. I've said it a few times before, but before making this blog I was effectively nothing but a very invested observer - I kept my interest in the channel almost entirely to myself beyond leaving a couple of YouTube comments. That has left me out of the loop on occasion, primarily with in-jokes spawned from the SiIvaGunner Discord, yet I was content in knowing that I didn't really...have much of anything to contribute. And its with that preface said that I need to clarify once again that, I don't truly know much of any details regarding people's relations to one another in the SiIvaGunner team. Nowadays, with this blog and all, I've had the opportunity to finally talk with members of the team and other fans on a regular basis, and it's been a ton of fun - yet, I'll never know firsthand just how much Marrow meant to people. And honestly, its not exactly something that concerns me to begin with - it's not my feelings to hold.

Yet, the beautiful thing about music, about art in general, is that feelings that can be so hard to convey properly through words, through stories, through recollections and retellings, can be encapsulated so perfectly within a piece. And that is represented so beautifully within every single part of 8​-​bit Fish With Dreams. It's not a flashy tribute, nor some huge collaborative sendoff - but what is is, feels like a deeply personal arrangement made out of pure love. l4ureleye applies her signature flair and expertise for creating soothing, healing soundscapes in arranging 8-bit Kids with Dreams, an under-the-radar song made by fellow chiptune artist jankybit. Past the initial minute-long opening fakeout, so few parts of the original Beauford Pond remain, yet it still manages to feel...at home, with StreetPass Fishing's other music. It asks you not to be excited, nor to cry, but rather just invites you to sit by and enjoy the ride. As was the case with the original 8-bit Kids with Dreams, it feels like a gift made from one friend to another, a toast in their honor.

I really do not wish to intrude on the lives and mental states of these rippers to any degree - yet there's little I can do to avoid being emotionally affected by rips like 8​-​bit Fish With Dreams. As is the case with art as a whole, any rip made is inevitably going to feel like it has a piece of its ripper imbued into it. And its the ones where you can feel that most, the rips that feel almost like hearing one side to a conversation, waiting for an answer, that always end up sticking with me longest. Those are the rips like 8-bit Fish With Dreams, by rippers like l4ureleye.

"u cast your line at me when I needed it most, and helped pull me out from the murky depths of my anxiety and self loathing. I needed a friend like you, and I'm glad I got to have that. Hopefully I was good to you too, u more than deserve it. Rest easy gamer"

[party-gilmore]

Yeah i'm sorry but your baby post really isn't.. it. I know you mean well, but you basically contribute to the idea that parents have to shut themselves off from anything if they have a child that dares to make a noise. Like the "these are not acceptable baby venues" aspect is just.... do you have a child? Did you ever babysit for more than a week? If you happen to have a baby, by your desire, you would have to put 90% of what's fun on hold until they "learn" the "silence" order. And i mean, the parents have to pay the same amount of money to watch the movie as you. And they would need to pay a lot more to pay a sitter everytime they want to watch a movie, because "just don't bring your baby" is always connected to costs that they might not be able to afford. You do not need to respond to this. this is mostly meant to make you think and maybe consider a (single) parents perspective on the situation. I get that you are frustrated and it's okay. But be aware of what you're asking of people with babies.

I'm not sure you understood my post correctly - at no point did i contribute to the idea that parents need to completely shut themselves away or keep their kids out of public. That's... literally the OPPOSITE of my point, and why I said I mostly agreed with the other post I saw.

What I did say was in regard to SPECIFIC SITUATIONS - do not take a child that you know you can't keep from crying to an entertainment venue that specifcally asks for silence/quiet, so much so that every movie still starts with a PSA about turning off your phone.

(And here I do want to clarify, since in retrospect I realize it may not have been in the original post - i have no objection necessarily to the inherent Existence Of An Infant In The Space, although it does still annoy me tbh just personal feelings wise. This is about when crying, screaming, other typical Baby Behaviors start up and the parent tries to wait it out or does the shushing and comforting right there in the middle of everything causing MORE noise instead of taking the kid out to calm down - feeling entitled to stay and then getting pissy at people who ask them to leave. Hence, as I put it in that previous post, the parent not bothering to try and lessen the impact on others.)

Nobody HAS to go to a movie. You can stream it, bootleg it, or go do something else and wait until you have another opportunity. There's even matinee's of kids movies specifically designed for noisy crowds.

Going to a movie in theaters is just a fun splurge. That a lot other people are ALSO going to for a fun splurge. A fun splurge where patrons expect to enjoy what they're paying for. Why should all of them be expected to give up their night out for the sake of someone else's on the sole basis of them having a baby and no sitter? Why does that somehow make them more inherently worthy of enjoying this movie tonight than everyone else?

Like... again, i fucking love babies!!!! Theyre the fucking best!!! And I've seen firsthand how rough it is when you're exhausted and broke and can't depend on their lazy fucking father for anything and just want a little fun, so I'm MORE than happy to help and be patient and understanding when out in public. But a movie theater is not "public." It's a private event. You've paid for ticket for a certain, exclusive experience.

Dropping the rest under a cut, cuz it's basically just finding other ways to try and explain the same thing and kinda devolves into personal venting.

A parent's desire for fun night out does not take precedence over 30-60 other theater patrons' desire for fun nights out just because they have a baby. That doesn't make them special or more inherently deserving of seeing this film, at the expense of everyone elses enjoyment. If you can't afford a sitter, watch the movie after going to a nice family restaurant for dinner.

A parent's desire to study does not take precedence over other students desire to study just because they have a baby. Their education is not suddenly More Worthy than others just because they have a baby. If you can't afford a sitter, use the general library space instead of the designated silent study rooms.

And that, when you ARE out in general public, it is - when you can - your responsibility as the parent and as, hopefully, a decent fucking person, to step to the side a bit while calming your baby so that they aren't screaming right in somebody else's ear.

What I'm "asking of people with babies" is literally just not to be selfish jerks about how they want to have fun at the expense of everyone else's enjoyment. I'm not less deserving of an entertaining movie night than somebody else just because they have a kid. I have specifically paid to sit and see this film without interrupted. As have the rest of the patrons. I have a right to be upset when that's disrupted.

Also, in that same vein, why is the parent deciding that their enjoyment of a movie in theaters more important than their kids clear discomfort and even pain from the loud noises and flashing lights??? Shouldn't not putting their kid in that situation in the first place be more important? I have YET to see a baby that's actually comfortable sitting through a movie! Why is the parents fun more important that the kid's comfort?

[adickaboutspoons]

Mostly I was responding to the points raised in @scarrletmoon's response, but you raise some excellent points to which I'd like to respond. Feel free to ignore if you're tired of my bullshit. I completely understand the impulse. 1st, you're absolutely right; I was coming across as gate-keepery by saying that I find Stede's eccentricities charming as though that ought be the default experience. For that I apologize. I ought to have taken more care. When I said "And that's valid, but I would say that those are the parts that the crew and Ed grow to love once they embrace those parts of him instead of cringing at them" what I meant to convey is that the experience of 2nd-hand embarrassment when Stede does something that recalls to the viewer times when they have felt ashamed/were made to feel shame because of something they did is absolutely understandable, but we can take heart in Stede being accepted & loved for those parts of him, & find hope that so too may we be embraced for our own quirks & foibles. My intention was to encourage others to be more gentle with & accepting of their own perceived failings, but I can see now that I failed to adequately express that, & for that I am sorry. I do take issue with the suggestion that I am strawmanning, though; I would argue that how one views Stede's motivation & framing absolutely informs the extent to which/moments in which one finds his behavior cringe-worthy. In your original post, you contend Stede is "pretending to be this macho pirate captain who totally knows what he's doing" & your response above adds he's a bad manager & a jerk because he's praising himself & chiding his employees, whom you interpret as him treating as stand-ins for his own children. If that's how you're framing the scenario, then, sure - I can see how his behavior comes across as cringe to you. But that's not at all how I perceived it. I will grant he is pretending more expertise than he actually possesses, but he IS a pirate captain, & as to the attribution of "macho" I absolutely disagree, specifically because he is textually interested in a form of piracy that is not that. Because that is my understanding of the scene, in the debrief scene I see a person excited at the success of what, if Black Pete is to be believed, is their very 1st raid, & doesn't understand why everyone else wasn't also chuffed. He then listens to Wee John' criticism & encourages him to clarify WHY he feels the way he does. When Wee John identifies the lack of a flag as a contributing factor to his disgruntlement, Stede provides materials so they can rectify the deficit. This isn't Stede forcing arts & crafts on these grown-ass men (& Jim) - it's Stede hearing a problem & supplying the means to a solution. Similarly, he hears out Buttons about the crew's dissatisfaction, & tries to rectify it by finding a more appealing target for a raid, even though he obviously feels unequal to the task himself. To me, that's the complete opposite of a bad manager (to me he's a bad manager when he's being dismissive of the crew's input, like the fuckery brainstorming, & even then he climbs down from his high horse & apologizes. Which? GREAT manager!). Where you see Stede infantilizing his crew, I see them taking part in activities that, while generally relegated to childhood, aren't implicitly childish, & of their own volition, & Stede sowing the seeds that will eventually blossom into a found family (not imposing an established family structure). For clarity, I'm not saying my interpretation is objectively right, nor that yours is wrong. I'm just saying framing is going to influence perception of whether Stede's behavior is Cringe, & that's kind of what I was getting at with my myriad examples of Stede behaving "authentically" or "inauthentically" & when that is a viable predictor of a general fandom perception of when Stede is being Cringe. Because I really don't think it is. This is going to continue in the notes because tumlr thinks they can cut my mic.

listen I love stede a lot - I think he's the bravest character in the show. he changes everyone he meets for the better. he embodies what I think of as the thesis of the show. if he wasn't the way that he is, the show would not be very good, imo.

but in ep one he gives his pirate crew notes on the raid they just did as though they were a community theater troupe and his notes were 1) complimenting his own opening speech as "very inspiring" and 2) complaining that that the crew wasn't sufficiently enthusiastic about robbing two poor fisherman of a single plant.

during the raid his narration went "some men are born to be pirate captains, others learn on the job. me? well I'm a pretty solid mix of both" as though he has any idea what he's doing.

and AFTER the raid Olu has to gently point out to him that piracy isn't a game to the rest of the crew.

There's a reason that Rhys Darby was the only person capable of playing Stede without making him seem like a total dick. And I think that's bc Rhys was able to convey the idea that Stede's behavior in the first few eps is coming out of this deep sense of insecurity - he's doing some Stede-y things (flag making! paying the crew! bedtime stories!) that are great but he's also pretending to be this macho pirate captain who totally knows what he's doing. And it's the pretending that makes people cringe with second hand embarrassment. While also, often, seeing themselves in it and feeling a great deal of sympathy for Stede about it.

The reason Stede is like this is because HE thinks there's something deeply wrong with him, a belief that has been solidified by everyone around him his entire life, and therefore he needs to do everything he can to hide that deeply wrong thing about him. When he unpacks that and embraces the things about himself he originally thought were embarrassing (being weak, pathetic, soft, etc), he can stop pretending. And that's when other characters grow to love him! And so people will sometimes call him cringe because they aspire to be cringe like him, to embrace the parts of themselves that they were punished for and live more authentically.

because he changes! that's the point! he moves from cringe (pretending to be someone he's not) to cringe (being true to himself, always a deeply vulnerable thing to be) and it takes a lot of hard work. that's what makes me LIKE him as a character. that's what I think makes him the bravest character on the show. because he doesn't start out perfect. he's a puppet who grows into a real boy and that means that for a period of time he was a puppet, and that's okay.

[electro-kins]

Hi! Thank you so much for letting me ask your opinion, and sorry for the late response 😓 You’re always free to delete this if it makes you uncomfortable! Excuse my horrible grammar and formatting. I think there were many issues with this on both sides, and my explanation is terrible. I’m just worried I’m being a jerk, or, at worst, sexist.

James = Male friend (I’m not sure if it matters, but cisgender/heterosexual)

Skyler = Agender/bisexual/biromantic friend

- They’re not out to James, so he thinks of them as their AGAB (female) (<- I asked them if that’s okay to specify and they said yes). They’ve been dropping blatant hints that they’re bi, though.

Serenity = Me (biromantic/gender unlabeled; but assumed female)

All fake names, of course.

So, we were communicating on Discord by randomly changing the group chat name, and this happened:

Skyler changed the chat name: ✨Women✨

James changed the chat name: ✨Women are hot✨ lol

Serenity changed the chat name: True, but it sounds kind of weird when James says it*

James: Rude

James: Why is it strange when I say it huh?

Skyler (paraphrased because their original message was sort of confusing): I think with women it comes off more as friendliness/respect and with men it comes off kind of creepy

James (direct reply to Skyler’s message): This is why (some) men have it worse in society

And then it was basically turned into this thing about the problems that men deal with. It wasn’t a discussion, just him stating different things men go through because I asked him to clarify what he was saying.

TW: R#pe mention after red heart, safe after blue heart

Most of the things he brought up were absolutely true and I 100% agree with them ❤️ - topics like male mental health, r#pe victims, etc. 💙 My issue wasn’t that. I guess it feels different gushing with a fellow LGBTQ+ friend, and him coming in with the comment about women being hot just sorta… rubbed me the wrong way. To me, it’s like he’s saying that (some) men “have it worse in society” because I found the “hot” comment uncomfortable. But I’m worried I’m being a jerk/sexist/excluding him/misunderstanding/blowing things out of proportion, or something along those lines :(

* I know that this definitely wasn’t the best way to word things, it does sort of feel isolating or like I’m shaming him somehow 😥 I do plan to apologize.

hii hii, of course!! you're welcome, i'm happy to listen and give you advice <3 i just read through the whole thing and my advice would definitely be you two apologizing to each other!! i really dislike how your friend started bringing up men having it worse than woman just because you both called him strange, he's not oppressed because he made you both uncomfy LMAOO... i fully agree with you on how it sounds like he only brought that up because you told him he's strange and not because he genuinely cares about men's struggles that are often ignored. seriously rubs me the wrong way, if i were involved i'd be more upset by that than the original problem ʕ⁎̯͡⁎ʔ and when it comes to what he originally said about women being hot, it's valid you were uncomfy <3 but i think it's also valid he asked why and most likely got upset hearing the only reason it bothered you two was because he's a guy. if you and james are good friends and you've never felt he was creepy before him changing the group name, my advice would be apologizing for telling him he's strange for simply contributing to the conversation/joke your friend started about liking woman. in the future you can dm skyler when you feel like gushing with a fellow lgbt member, i also find it kinda awkward to talk about loving woman around cishet people sooo maybe just leave him out those convos HFBDHSHA ♪(๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)♪ i hope my advice and opinions on the situation helped <33 lastly, everything i said is meant to be lighthearted and taken from the context you gave so remember you know your friends best!! if you plan on apologizing i hope it goes well bestie ∩^ω^∩ have a nice day/night!!

[youraverageaemondsimp]

Not gonna elongate or anything but it's literally a war and in MY point of view, both the sides are definitely wrong for being the perpetrators.

If this was real life (ik I shouldn't compare it real life but this explains my above statement and why I've just oversimplied it to it just being a war) would you be choosing sides when the entire country and innocent people are affected because some people are fighting for power?

Also the term i meant to use was "more worse" but I was just mainly focused on the post that the blacks didn't just commit 4 crimes, so I apologize for the improper use of the word there, I'm not that good at english, the "just as"I used there didn't mean "equivalent to" (which is what the word means) but rather as a string to the word next to it (couldn't find a better word at that moment), people like to antagonize and pick sides based on how much less they contributed to the war but at the end, it's war, call it oversimplied but at the end it's still a war whether who started or what occured. But then again, house of the dragon wouldn't be house of the dragon without those elements!

You've reblogged my response two times trying to make me defend my point of view, and there's nothing I have to defend because I was just making note of what I observed in the original twitter post, which is why I literally said "they comitted more than just 4 crimes" (the saturation is just insane 😭) and also added "not trynna defend the greens" because I truly wasn't. I am not gonna sit down and list all of the stuff out cause frankly, I don't have time for it and neither am I that passionate about the entire greens vs blacks who comitted more crimes thingy PLUS I'm not as well aware as you are with the books even though I've read them too and I don't wanna argue based on what I "remember" cause I'll probably be wrong since it's has been awhile, and of course the war is the key point of the show, but the main reasons why I love the show is because of the characters be from TB or TG and I plan to stay that way.

Also before you claim that I am a misogynist (in case you somehow come to that conclusion cause idk) and "hate" rhaenyra, that's not true at all, she is one of my favourite characters and truly a fascinating one too, with bunch of other characters included.

I said "not gonna elongate" and wrote so much 💀 SORRY, and please excuse my grammar mistakes or typos in the response. This is just my point of view and you don't have to agree with it, just clarifying why I had said that, have a good day.