#a good one!

[queeringclassiclit]

Ralph & Jack

from Lord of the Flies by William Golding

submitted by @probably-an-alien who said:

they have a pretty interesting dynamic in the beginning of the story before Jack turns on Ralph which I think can be read as something of a young teenage crush with the way they're constantly seeking each others' approval.

[forthegothicheroine]

New-to-me movies seen in 2024: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)

"Go to Italy. It's a peaceful country, nothing much ever happens there."

[come-see-our-show]

Into the Woods is clearly a story about growing up, but I want to acknowledge the underlying sexual themes in the story, specifically growing into one’s own sexuality, because there are so many allusions to that and I can't be the only one seeing it.

Fair warning, this analysis is going to be a mess.

CW: Discussions of rape and pedophilia.

(Also, when I refer to "sexuality" and "sexual indentity," I'm not taking about one's sexual orientation, but rather one's interest in sex and relationship to it.)

1. The Witch

I’ve always seen the Witch’s backstory as a metaphor for rape. When she says the Mysterious Man was “Raping [her],” she means that he was stealing from her. However, even since biblical times, gardens have represented temptation, maturation, femininity, and sex. The witch was told from a young age to protect her garden, and when the beans are taken, she feels an intense loss. She is cursed with ugliness because she has been “deflowered.”

This was clearly a traumatic event for her, much like how sexual assault is traumatic for victims. It reminds me of the scene in Maleficent where her wings are taken from her while she’s asleep. There’s something so graphic about it. From a young age, girls are taught to protect our virginities, and if we are too proud of it then it will get taken away from us. We are shamed for being comfortable in our sexual identity, but at the same time we are forced to make it a huge part of our identities. The Witch does not know who she is without her power, and the thing she loved most was taken from her.

2. Baker’s Wife

BW is also shamed by the narrative for having a sexual identity. We can infer that she’s had sex with the Baker because she knows they can’t have children, but the only time she is explicitly shown as a sexual being is when she cheats on him with Cinderella’s prince, which results in her demise. Again, female sexuality is seen as destructive.

3. Cinderella

Cinderella’s character doesn’t have any explicitly sexual themes like the Witch or BW, but I feel like that’s intentional. BW admits to Cinderella that she’s attracted to the Prince. It’s all described in a very tame way, but given the fact that BW has sex with him in Act 2, we know in hindsight that there is some sexual desire there.

Cinderella doesn’t show any desire for the Prince. She talks about how amazing the ball was, but doesn’t talk about the Prince unless BW coaxes it out of her. It’s weird to BW that Cinderella isn’t really excited about him, because shouldn’t all women feel that way?

I don’t think Cinderella is attracted to men at all (I see her as a lesbian or aroace). Her arc ends with her dumping the Prince, thus claiming her independence and rejecting the traditional expectations of female sexuality.

4. Rapunzel

The Witch projects her own trauma onto her “daughter” (bc uhhhh generational trauma 🤪). While she is undoubtedly abusive, you can see why she wants to protect Rapunzel from the world so badly.

Rapunzel’s first introduction to the world is by a man who enters her home and has sex with her after knowing her for maybe a day or two. We don’t know if she was the one who asserted the sex, but given the fact that she lived in a tower all her life and doesn’t know anything about the world, I doubt it.

Despite how dubious the consent is, Rapunzel probably enjoyed it since she was so happy to reunite with her prince after. Sex should be a beautiful and exciting thing, but she pays the price by becoming pregnant, another thing that I highly doubt she was educated on. Imagine how terrifying that must have been, to wonder why your body is changing so durastically, then giving birth to TWINS. Nightmare fuel.

Rapunzel’s storyline reminds me of Wendla’s in Spring Awakening. A sheltered girl is entering womanhood, but because she isn’t taught how to handle these aspects of life, she is sort of taken advantage of by a more experienced partner, and her first time having sex isn’t 100% consensual (even if she enjoyed it), she becomes pregnant, then dies. Rapunzel and Wendla never get full control of their bodies.

So, yeah, teach your children about sex because “children will listen.”

5. Little Red Riding Hood

Most actors portray the Wolf as a lustful character with lots of sexual undertones. The story of Little Red Riding Hood does sound a lot like a story about a little girl getting taken advantage of by a predator. That IS the story, even if it’s about a wolf eating her instead of a pervert molesting her. The lyric “Look at that flesh, pink and plump,” has undeniably sexual undertones. He’s attracted to her youth and purity (cough cough her virginity). He reacts to her the way a pedophile would react to a child. And yes, it’s disgusting.

Many victims of pedophilia don’t see the perpetrator as a threat initially. They’re kind, funny, maybe even give you treats. That was how Red initially saw the Wolf.

Red’s solo, I Know Things Now, is about not trusting strangers. All children are told to not trust strangers. In fairytales, it’s so you don’t get eaten by a seemingly-kind wolf. In real life, it’s so you don’t get kidnapped by a seemingly-kind adult. She acknowledges that “even flowers have their dangers,” again drawing the parallels of nature and sexuality.

Young girls are seen as women once they are objectified by men (hello barbie movie). So, we learn to be wary of men by protecting ourselves with keys or pepper spray. Red begins her introduction into adulthood once she is objectified by a wolf. She learns to be wary by protecting herself with a knife. However, Red reclaims her power by wearing the Wolf as a coat. She's hardened by this experience, which is tragic because she's still a child, but she holds her head up high by wearing her abuser's dead body. She views herself as a survivor. That's a power move.

6. Jack

Jack’s solo also has some sexual undertones, though less obvious than Red’s. The Giant’s Wife “draws [him] close to her giant breasts” and he "come[s] back again, only different than before."

In real life, boys are congratulated for having sex, but girls are shamed. Jack and Red, the two tweens in the show, have the same reactions to their pseudo-sexual experiences. Jack becomes greedy and impulsive, but Red becomes wary and guarded.

While I don't see Jack as a victim of the giant in the same way that Red was a victim of the wolf, his experience also parallels how male victims are treated (if you want to interpret his experience as statutory rape). They are congratulated for being assaulted because boys are expected to always enjoy sex (even though assault/rape are not sex!). Jack's Mother is the only person who acknowledges that he could have been hurt, and that he is "still a little boy." But of course, she gets killed trying to protect her son from that danger.

7. The Princes

I’m lumping the two princes together because they’re very similar. Much like men in real life, they rarely face the consequences of their actions!!! They treat women like prizes (evidence: all of Agony), but soon after, they cheat on the prizes they used to want so desperately. They aren’t satisfied because the patriarchy teaches men to view women as sexual conquests.

Also, it’s notable to me that after CP and BW have their affair, BW has to pay a much bigger price. While CP is dumped by his wife (and tbh he’ll just move onto the next girl), BW is literally KILLED. The Giant is not literally killing her for having sex, but it’s rather coincidental that these two events coincide.

BW and CP’s aftermath is similar to the real life aftermath of sex. If you’re a man, you’re gonna be fine. If you’re a woman, you need to pay a price because you’re a whore. I’m not saying BW should have cheated on her husband, because that’s wrong. But it takes two to tango, so it’s interesting that CP gets out scott-free. On the plus side, CP is still seen as an asshole and BW remembered as a loving person despite her flaws. A slight win despite all of the tragedy.

Anywho, that my spiel. I may edit it in the future, but I was just in a production of Into the Woods and HAD to get my feelings out at once. Toodles.

[industrial-tox]

🎺 - playing an instrument

It’s literally my job. The hacking/sleuthing stuff is my side hustle, but my actual job is being Kirah’s producer. I make the music.

[ober-affen-geil]

I found you off that post about preserving fandom history. I'm very interested in history in general, and fandom specifically, and now that Twitter is dying I feel extremely compelled to preserve history. Any...pointers?

Hello! First of all thank you for asking me this, I'm flattered. Second...I took a while to respond because this is a really hard question that I can't...really actually answer?

The short answer is, when it comes to digital preservation, which is what it seems like you're asking me about, I don't know all that much. It's a very new field and tbh the archiving community as a whole doesn't know all that much (though there are people who specialize in it and I invite any who do who may see this to add commentary). You're best bet as far as I know is the folks over at the Internet Archive.

The long answer. Look at it this way: the world wide web as we know it really only started coming into existence in the late 1980s-early 1990s. That is. Just about 30 years ago. The first roughly ten years of The Internet is basically already lost to history because we had NO idea how to deal with preserving what's called "born digital" material. None.

If you want the absolute truth of it, at that point the archive world was still reeling from the invention of the Xerox machine and the sheer amount of paper records it was generating and I'm dead serious. When this newfangled thing called "electronic mail" started to come about the archival solution for preservation was to print it out. Yes, really. There are a lot of places that still do this btw, because there still *isn't really* a widespread solution to preserving emails long term.

We know some things. We know that .tifs and .pdf-as are the best file formats for longer term preservation. We know that you have to update your formats every few years or so or the files will no longer be able to be read. We know about "bit rot" and some about how to prevent that. But otherwise...digital preservation is the wild frontier of archiving. It's really fucking hard and everything is new and changing constantly.

Basically, the best pointer I can give you is to talk about the things you want remembered. Put your eggs in more than one basket, screenshotting a tweet and putting it on tumblr in a way preserves that tweet and certain information about twitter as well (what is the format for tweets, what's the layout of the site, what's the user interface look like, etc). Start a blog or a web page to "collect" things ("know your meme" is, technically, an online archive!), even create a physical scrapbook or diary about fandom experiences you want to preserve.

That is, for better or worse, the best advice I can give you. Again, my specialty is really more in physical items (my experience is with paper documents and photographs as well as some objects and textiles) so there may be others with the ability to give more informed advice. But yeah. Keep asking questions like this!

[vaciena]

I have a new art tablet !!!

[catmask]

i dont consider myself a 'fashion guru' by any means but one thing i will say is guys you dont need to know the specific brand an item you like is - you need to know what the item is called. very rarely does a brand matter, but knowing that pair of pants is called 'cargo' vs 'boot cut' or the names of dress styles is going to help you find clothes you like WAAAYYYY faster than brand shopping

[desperatepleasures]

one time I used the ben affleck smoking reaction image in the family group chat and my mom replied with the funniest possible response which was: "mommy doesn't know who the guy is???" and that phrase has not left my brain since. I'll see blorbos on my dash that I don't recognize and I'll be like well it seems mommy doesn't know who the guy is.

[marisatomay]

People will claim to be a fan of some thing and then hate all of the themes and motifs and story lines and plot lines and protagonists and antagonists like man I don’t think that you actually like it here

[sanguinifex]

You gotta read and watch some old books and films that aren’t 100% modern politically correct. I’m not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.

Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.

Kill the censor in your head.

[captainjonnitkessler]

>Join a union

>Hear people constantly complaining that the current union leadership is super corrupt, it's all just the same ten guys making all the decisions in secret and nobody else in the union ever gets to know what's going on

>Go to the monthly union meetings that are completely open to all 1200 union members

>The only attendees are the same ten guys every month, giving detailed reports about everything that's going on

[fly-chicken]

A Pragmatic and surprisingly comforting perspective about the Trump 2nd Presidency from the ACLU

***Apologies if this is how you found out the 2024 election results***

Blacked out part is my name.

I’m not going to let this make me give up. It’s disheartening, and today I will wallow, probably tomorrow too

AND

I will continue to do my part in my community to spread the activism and promote change for the world I want to live in. I want to change the world AND help with the dishes.

And I won’t let an orange pit stain be what stops me from trying to be better.

A link to donate to the ACLU if able and inclined. I know I am

[gwydionae]

Behold, one of my best friend's Halloween costumes, recorded and uploaded by a complete stranger with over a million views on tiktok! (I'm so proud!!)

[kochei0]

I turn to Ares.

Thanks to Tyler Miles Lockett who allowed me to draw inspiration from his ARES piece for page 2! Look at his etsy page it's SICK

⚔️ If you want to read some queer retelling of arturian legends have a look at my webtoon

[lotrmusical]

never let anyone tell you that trawling through mediocre victorian poetry isn't worth it. we just happened upon an absolute BANGER of a worm poem. go read it or else 🪱🪱🪱