#btw did you notice what all these artists have in common?? THEY ARE ALL WOMEN <3<3<3< /div>
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2024 RECAP – MY TOP 18 ARTISTS (playlist + list of artists under the cut)
MY TOP 18 ARTISTS + TOP SONG FROM EACH ARTIST 1. SZA – Snooze / 2. Victoria Monét – Touch Me / 3. Tyla – Truth or Dare / 4. FLO – Caught Up / 5. Tinashe – Nasty (No.1 Song) / 6. Beyoncé – Bodyguard / 7. Chappell Roan – Good Luck, Babe! / 8. aespa – Supernova / 9. Rachel Chinouriri – So My Darling / 10. Sabrina Carpenter – Bed Chem / 11. Red Velvet – Cosmic / 12. Charli xcx – 360 / 13. Jae Stephens – Body Favors / 14. YVES – LOOP / 15. ARTMS – Virtual Angel / 16. Doechii – Alter Ego / 17. Loossemble – Confessions / 18. Chuu – Strawberry Rush + HONORABLE MENTIONS: Megan Thee Stallion & Raveena PLAYLIST (3 hours of my top and fav songs of this year): apple music / spotify
#dailywomen#femaledaily#dailywoc#femalegifsource#dailymusicqueens#blogmusicdaily#userpcultures#chewieblog#userbbelcher#useraashna#usermusic#megantheeedit#99#09#90#gifs#*mv#*wrapped#since i use apple music i waited for january bc apple music counts till the very last day of the year bc if i did this at the start of dec.#victoria monet would’ve been my no.1 artist#but with new sza songs she retook no.1#btw did you notice what all these artists have in common?? THEY ARE ALL WOMEN <3<3<3#i listen to a lot of music while working but i listen through my macbook speakers which means its me and my patients listening to music#thats why kpop is so low and megan is not even in the list :(
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Whittled down some drafts at last, so now I’m going to post a Munday and go for a walk! For new followers, on Monday (Mun Monday/Munday) I sometimes just dump a bunch of OOC in one post so I get it out in one go and aren’t clogging your dash with it the rest of the week. It’s just completely random stuff.
- Watched “Cryptozoo” today which was why I didn’t start posts earlier! It’s a movie you really have to pay attention to. It’s very artistically interesting, and not to spoil but I really like the commentary in it too. Like it gets more complicated than bad guys who want to exploit them and good guys who save them and I enjoyed that angle. Warning, it’s got explicit sex/nudity and some very graphic violence, and one of the first things that happens is a unicorn getting its head brutally bashed in with a rock. So, if I kept watching after that, you know I *had* to be interested! - When we brought Georgina to the vet, we passed a family holding a rabbit on the way out. When we got in the car, I immediately answered “it looks like a bad case of ear mites” because I had noticed the ears had severe crusting which is a sign of ear mites for rabbits. I was then instantly amused that not only did my dad assume I would know, at a glance, what was wrong with a small creature, but also that I (maybe) did! - I got the best Christmas gift, which is that I got to go spend time with my grandmother. She’s my last living grandparent and I really want to make the most of the time we have left. And I got to tell her about how Michael Rockefeller was most likely eaten by the Asmat tribe, which is a REALLY interesting topic btw! - According to one daemon analysis site, I can add “Atlantic ghost crab” to my list of potential daemons for myself (I’m pretty sure I’m a chinchilla or dormouse, but I always like to keep my options open) - Speaking of animals---you know how a really common trope is that aliens or gods or elves or whatever come to this planet/world/plane/etc and they may have nefarious intentions or at least feel they’re superior to humans, but by the end of the movie they come to the conclusion humans are super special? Like that was the entire thing in Eternals, that we’re just SO SPECIAL we’re worth the Eternals rejecting their mission and creator? What if that idea, but instead of the being in question deciding that this planet is worth preserving and protecting not for the humans, but the ANIMALS. Like, I know if I it were me, I’d be like, shit, we have to save this place, it has POTOROOS!!! - Really, I’m just having a lot of feels about extinct and endangered animals, especially those that aren’t glamorous and well-known enough for most people to know or care about them. Very few mourned the loss of the Bramble Cay melomys, for instance. It just makes me sad when a species is wiped out not through an organic natural selection, but the careless or even malicious actions of human beings. Especially when it's something most people won't care about or even know about. I didn't even hear of the bramble cay melomys until it went extinct in 2018. And it was just a little brown rat, but even the smallest, most humble, most unglamorous species have a place in the ecosystem, and have value beyond whether they're pretty or useful to humans, and should be preserved. I try to focus on the potoroos as my animal passion project of choice, but I wish there was a way to help them all. - I wrote on a previous Munday post that a lot of the assumptions and questions I encounter from people about lesbians seems fixated on thinking we hate me or wondering why we hate men, etc. And while I’ve never been a gay man, I’ve just never seen people act as if all gay men hate women and being a gay man means you must hate women or been hurt by them, etc. I’m sure that attitude exists somewhere to some degree (I think there’s actually a Japanese term for gay men that translates for “women-hater”?) but there really seems to be no equivalent trope here for the man-hating lesbian; at worst gay men are depicted as grossed-out by women’s bodies/sex with them, but never as hating women themselves (even tho irl they’re perfectly capable of being horribly misogynist)�� And my theory for a long time for this has been because patriarchy positions women as being All About Men, and our sexuality must be All About Men. The idea it’s not is so BAFFLING that people, especially men, especially but not exclusively cishet men, believe that we still must be OBSESSED with them in SOME way, even if it’s negative. The idea we hate them is more comfortable to them than the notion we just simply don’t care and aren’t interested. But it occurred to me recently, I think there’s another reason too. And it’s that patriarchy trains people---and I mean everyone---to hate women that aren’t considered “attractive” to men. Women who aren’t skinny enough, young enough, pale enough, this enough, that enough---they are the focus of ire and disgust in media and real life, from men and other women. It’s why men can look like total slobs or just NORMAL and it’s fine, but women have to be dressed up and made up and look twenty years under our real age and twenty pounds underweight just to avoid insult, in real life and even more so in media. So I think the assumption from some men is. . . given the way that some men will treat and view women they don’t find attractive, maybe they assume that women who don’t find men attractive, view men the same way. Like garbage. Like if you’re not fuckable to them, you’re not worth basic respect. That’s how a lot of shitty dudes are, and I’ve noticed that shitty people IN GENERAL tend to assume everyone else is shitty in the same way they are, whatever that is, so maybe that’s the case here too. It’s probably, like many problems in society, a lot of different reason. - I just really unironically love the Brides in "Van Helsing" and always have since I saw it in theaters when I was like. ..14, lol - Feels about Mommy Fortuna. Also, I posted on FB about how the fact that the same woman (Angel Lansburgy) voiced both Mrs. Potts in “Beauty & the Beast” and Mommy Fortuna in “The Last Unicorn” just BLOWS MY CHILDHOOD SELF’S MIND as those were my fave movies as a wee one and SUCH DIFFERENT CHARACTERS and a friend replies “That’s my immortality, eh?” and I just fsjgfjhjfdjhdgfj it is!! IT IS!! - Which reminds me, I totally need to watch Bedknobs & Broomsticks - Really interested in Hurrem Sultan and Lucrezia Borgia this week. I’m just really interested in women who are stereotyped by history and media as cunning manipulative scheming Lady Macbeths but in reality were people in a bad situation making the best of things they could, which rarely allows them to behave like angels---and even if they do, they’re remembered as wicked sluts anyway regardless of facts. It just seems no matter what era we’re in, women get backed into corners by men and society, and then blamed when they do anything they can to get out of it, or even just work within it, as in the case of Hurrem, or are used as pawns by those men, as in the case of Lucrezia. It’s not that I think women are always angels, but we do get cast as demons whenever we’re NOT angels, it’s one or the other. It’s like how when I read historical fiction, the female characters who want to marry rich are all cast as absolutely horrible people for it (unlike our heroine, who of course wants to marry for love!) and like. . .looking at the situation for women in those times, that was the most sensible thing for a woman to do. Basically, women are considered evil if they ever have self-interest like Hurrem, what a shocker. Or, if they are good girls and do what daddy wants like Lucrezia, still get cast as evil by everyone else after the fact even with no evidence. - History video: Pope Alexander VI loved his illegitimate children, all historians agree on that History video: He used his only daughter as a pawn and married her off to to a stranger twice her age when she was 13 - By the way, Hurrem gave birth to many sons, but just one daughter, Mihrimah. Allegedly she was upset by this, as she’d vowed only to have sons, but apparently Mihrimah became the Sultan’s favorite child. And it doesn’t surprise me, given that his sons were all scheming on the throne and he even took out two or three of them himself. But Mihrimah outlived all her brothers, married a Croatian noble, and did charity work for the rest of her life after she was widowed. I think she wound up ok and idk why but that means something to me. - I've noticed, Duggan seems to have a REALLY bad case of Protagonist Centered Morality. PCM is when the protagonist doesn't do things because they're good, they're good because the protagonist does them. Basically, if the hero kicks a puppy for no reason, somehow this is a heroic and justified act. This isn't to say protags can never do shitty or just morally questionable things, but the vibe with PCM is that these things AREN'T shitty or questionable at all. It judges morality, and tells us who to root for, not by the act itself but who's doing it. If Shaw had somehow done the EXACT same thing to Laura that Lorna did under the EXACT same circumstances, I think it's a fair bet that Laura would be written reacting far more negatively. Because Shaw is a bad guy and Duggan doesn't like him. But since Lorna is a protag and Duggan likes her, she can do the exact same thing and it's not portrayed as "bad" to the reader, nor will other characters treat it as such (and will be portrayed as in the wrong if they do) PCM is like, one of my PET PEEVES in fiction, big time.
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wuxia: a general yet probably too verbose introduction to the genre, pt2
and now we get to the actual conventions -- although more accurately, these are just the ones that I either noticed the strongest or had the most difficulty adjusting to, when I was first getting into wuxia.
Not all stories have these elements, and of course in a genre as varied (and as old) as wuxia, there are twenty exceptions for every rule. What’s more, one story’s mild admonishment (”well, X is frowned on, but I guess if you’re just low-key about it”) can become the next story’s worst taboo (”omg you did X, you must be shunned! SHUNNNNNNNNNNed.”).
Like any other living genre, authors will shift/tilt convention as needed to drive a story’s conflicts.
btw, it’ll probably be a few days before I can do an introduction to MDZS, which should give time to @guzhuangheaven, @atthewaterside, @dramatic-gwynne, @the50-person, @drunkensword (and anyone else) to point out everything I misunderstood, over-emphasized, misinterpreted, or just plain missed.
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1. Hierarchy still matters. A student’s respect for their teacher, a child’s respect for their parents, younger siblings/students to elder. You’ll see this in how people are called (ie 3rd uncle, elder sister, 2nd brother), but this doesn’t mean everyone goes around dutiful and obedient. Err, wuxia is actually more of the opposite. I mean, a good story requires conflict between characters, and what better way than someone overturning (or at least appearing to overturn) the hierarchy?
In that vein, creating new relationships that take precedent over old relationships is anywhere from disrespectful to a full-on violation of natural law. As in, learning from someone other than your teacher, joining a new family in lieu of your birth family, running away to get married -- hell, just running away! -- are all potential sources of trouble. At the same time, wuxia has a really strong comedic streak (all the martial arts also make for great slapstick). Squabbling families with headstrong, misbehaving kids who break the rules, well, that’s a classic that can be played for melodrama, comedy, or both.
2. Swordsmanship is the pinnacle (or the most prevalent) of martial arts. The protagonist is either going to be (or end up) the best swordsman (or swordswoman) ever, or they’re going to use a weapon that’s unlike any other -- and if the latter, they’ll either be reviled for it, or lauded.
3. Despite the fact that swords are heavy and a real pain to carry around, characters carry their swords. All the time. Everywhere. In historical dramas, swords hang from belts, but not wuxia. Plus, characters will place swords on the table, across their lap, lean them against chairs, put them on the floor, and it doesn’t seem to map to whether they’re among allies or enemies, on guard or relaxing. The sword goes with them everywhere, and is always within reach. (And again, this general convention can go strict in some stories, like MDZS, where the failure to carry a sword is seen as a major breach of etiquette.)
4. The general term for ‘members of a sect’ or ‘people who study martial arts’ is ‘cultivators’. To cultivate is to grow something: cultivating [internal or spiritual] fields to gain a [skillset] harvest. Cultivation isn’t just going to the practice hall and swinging a sword three hundred times; meditation, study, even copying out texts are also ways to cultivate.
5. Wuxia characters may also be called swordsmen/swordswomen, wandering heroes, or martial heroes. If the story pivots on getting into a sect (or achieving some rank in a sect), then the characters will be considered cultivators (of a given path). If they’re introduced as just swordsmen, that seems to indicate it’s a story where sect politics plays less of a role. Or both terms may be present, to differentiate between sect-members/students versus people who defected (or are self-taught).
6. Wuxia as a genre is remarkably egalitarian. Expect women martial artists to throw down with (and hold their own against) male opponents. Learn to fear the older women in wuxia; they’re often the most dangerous. Not to say there aren’t damsels in distress in wuxia, just that there are usually as many female warrior characters, too.
If the story has multiple sect leaders, usually at least one is a woman -- and if not, one of the men is married to a woman that everyone knows is the truly powerful/skilled one. Near-equal cast percentages are common, too, both in the foreground (and not always for the sake of pairing off for romance), and in the background, when you catch shots of the rank-and-file sect members.
Basically, you can expect the average wuxia to pass the Bechdel test with flying colors. It may not always pass all the other gender tests, but conversations (and deep friendships) between female characters are usually on-screen (not just implied), and often a strong part of the storyline.
7. The super-hero-like skills -- leaping from or to an extreme height, tossing someone a great distance, getting thrown far and getting up again -- are a good map to things like gunslingers who can shoot a playing card at eighty paces blindfolded. Or Robin Hood getting a bullseye through the arrows of someone else’s bullseyes. Wuxia tends to expect even superlative skills at a beginner’s level (so you’ll see student-characters doing such), but it’s all just ways to say, these characters have studied the sword while the rest of us were waiting for the translation team to release the next episode.
8. Those skills are not magic, which occupies a different category. Whether shown or implied, wuxia’s ‘martial arts’ (if exaggerated and unrealistic) are still studied. When magic shows up, it’s often derided, because it’s a shortcut. There’s an insincerity, a kind of bad sportsmanship. The reaction in-story is much like real world reaction to athletes using performance-enhancing drugs. It’s cheating, and it’s disrespectful towards your opponents, that you refused to match their efforts with equal effort of your own.
9. Every story has its own definition of what is, or is not, ‘magic’ and thus a shortcut. Wuxia is usually pretty good about making clear what the story considers ‘orthodox’ or ‘right’: look for characters introduced as authoritative voices in the story’s world, and what they do is probably a good indication of accepted skills (that is, not-magic). Well, unless the character cackles a lot, in which case they’re probably an example of magic/unorthodox approaches.
9. Qi -- energy -- is the root of a character’s power (or lack thereof). Plenty of wuxia only reference this concept in passing, but some codify it into a necessity -- as in, some people have the ‘right’ kind of qi, and some do not. Or that it takes years to develop so the hero is permanently behind until they finally get to doing the work. Whether nature or nuture, this qi is how a cultivator can leap high bounds while the background farmer or merchant characters must scramble to find a ladder.
10. Over the years of television, ‘manipulating qi’ -- shoving energy at someone through the hands/feet, a sword, a musical instrument, something else -- has developed its own set of stylized movements. It’s a lot of arm-waving and finger twirling and whatnot (often circular). I think of it like riding an invisible bike to charge the generator; releasing it means the TV has the juice to kick on. Or the tazer can release, or whatever.
11. There are a bunch of virtues being promoted by wuxia, from a tangle of daoism, buddhism, and confucianism -- things like loyalty, sincerity, honesty, humility, respecting one’s parents (or teacher), benevolence, and justice (or righteousness). Plus a disregard for wealth or glory for personal gain.
The good (or enduring) wuxia stories seem to be the ones that find a way to make a virtue into a point of conflict -- as in, loyalty to what/who, questions of what it means to be righteous in this circumstance or that, and so on. The virtue is still at the heart of things, the conflict lies in how it’s interpreted or applied.
12. Wuxia predates Confucianism and Buddhism (and possibly Daoism), so it’s got a long history of cherrypicking to mix and match as it pleases. Some things you might see, and the influencing source:
horsetail whisks, used for purifying a space and removing evil influences, traditionally carried by Daoist priests as a sign of their rank.
an emphasis on Yin and Yang as driving opposing energies (sometimes good and bad, sometimes required to be balanced), also a Daoist concept.
most mystical elements are also Daoist influence: like qigong (coordinated posture and movement to increase/improve health, spiritual strength, and martial prowess), alchemy, astrology, etc.
mudras (hand gestures, cf Naruto) are predominantly Buddhist, meant as a way to focus oneself. When these show up in wuxia, the origin is still ‘to focus oneself’ but being wuxia, the result is usually a burst of visible power.
if a story revolves around learning to forgive/forget and to have compassion (over vengeance), that’s the Buddhist influence showing.
if filial piety, the observance of rites, or questions of ethics/morality are significant themes, that’s probably confucianism’s influence.
The lines are way blurrier than I’m going into, here. After all, the three perspectives have competed and coexisted for hundreds of years. There’s a fair bit of cross-contamination, as it were.
13. A lot of wuxia -- and I mean a lot of wuxia -- can be boiled down to coming-of-age stories: a young hero faces trials and tribulations on his (or her) way to finding a place in society. Sometimes it’s working their way up through the levels to claim the top spot; sometimes it’s being rejected from the school they wanted, and continuing to fight that fate until they’re accepted and demonstrate they deserve to be there.
This focus on younger heroes also means that wuxia is rife with idol dramas, where the majority of the cast are young/first-time actors, chosen for their looks and their similarity to the character (so as to not require too much of a stretch for them, acting-wise). On the other hand, this does often mean the pretty is almost overwhelming, since it’s looks and not long-time acting experience that set the bar.
14. Compared to other Chinese literary genres, wuxia is somewhat unique in its emphasis on individualism, but this isn’t to say you should expect full-throated american-style rugged individualism. I’d say it’s less about the individual breaking free of social rules, and more that the individual must find a way to interpret those social rules and forge a compromise between what they’re required to be vs who they want to be.
The best illustration I can think of is a parental dictate of “I want you to marry and have a family,” that sets off the story’s conflict. By the end of the story, the now-adult child realizes the message wasn’t meant literally so much as a way to say, “I want you to grow up, have a place in this world, surrounded by people who love you.” The error wasn’t in the parents’ blindness to the child’s needs, but in the child’s interpretation of the parental message.
(Unlike historical or modern dramas, which often have a lot of daddy issues -- thanks, Confucius -- wuxia is relatively free of that. Child-parent conflict is common, but truly dysfunctional on the level of modern melodramas, not quite so much.)
15. The fights are balletic and acrobatic; they’re meant as an abstract representation of a fight. You want reality, go watch an HK or Korean action movie/show. Wuxia is where you go for the twirling, the leaps, the spins, all the kinds of moves that no decent fighter would ever do, ‘cause turning your back on the enemy gets you killed -- but wuxia isn’t about that, it’s about the cool visual factor.
16. Historically and aesthetically, the costumes are closest to the Ming dynasty -- layered and belted ankle-length robes with long, flowing sleeves. Partly because the Ming dynasty seems to be a favorite setting (for whatever quality of actual time period a story even bothers to identify), but also (at least, my theory is) because those big sleeves make for dramatic gestures when swinging a sword.
17. There are newer wuxia that show some Game of Thrones influence (or, in the movie adaptations like The Four, some grimdark-slash-steampunk influences) but for the most part, wuxia is rather brightly-lit. My theory is that it was traditionally designed to be visible on (literally) smaller TVs, out in rural villages and whatnot. Frex, the darkest things get in wuxia, visually, is a day-for-night blue, since filming at night for real makes for an awful dark screen.
This is changing -- I’ve seen a lot more wuxia that are genuinely filming at night -- but the same show may also do day-for-night just cause they’re on a tight schedule and can’t sit around until it’s dark again to shoot the next scene, so they make do.
18. Older filming styles still dominate in wuxia, and the one you may notice the most is a particular move where the speaking character turns away from whomever they’re talking to, walks towards the camera, and speaks in the direction of the camera. It’s just not something people normally do, but it happens all the time in wuxia.
I think it comes from the days of only having one camera, so either you took the time to reshoot to get reactions (not really possible on shoestring budgets with tight deadlines), or you made sure the frame could include the speaker and the listeners. (Or it might be coming from the stage, where the actor must face the audience to be heard.)
The basic blocking, lighting, and so on sometimes reminds me of afternoon soap operas from the 80s, done with videotape rather than film. Not cheap so much as lower budget.
19. If you want historical authenticity, this is the last place to look. The costumes will be flashy, especially for the hero and his love interest: layered and embroidered, with modern fabrics in bright, sometimes neon!, shades and combinations (Nicholas Tse, I see you).
Older wuxia, the characters rarely got dirty, a wound from a fight was represented by a streak of clearly-fake (and somewhat diluted) pink syrup, and plenty of times a character will go through an entire battle and not even be sweaty or dirty. (Game of Thrones is changing this, too, though -- I’m seeing more dishevelment, though it’s still relatively minor compared to post-battle LotR or GoT.)
20. You can tell the budget from two things: how many costumes and how many wigs. A lower-budget wuxia (or one made at rapid pace) means characters go to bed in their day-clothes, with headpieces still on. Wigs are expensive, and a quickly-made wuxia means you get one wig, and that’s what you’re always wearing, rather than a wig for sleeping and another for waking. Same goes for showing characters in their day-clothes versus what they’d wear for night, or when relaxing, or whatever. (Or having two versions of the same costume, one pre-battle and one post-battle.)
21. About that historical bit -- at least up to the Qing dynasty, Chinese men usually wore their hair in a top-knot once they reached adulthood. Wuxia’s aesthetic is for everyone -- including elderly men -- wearing their hair mostly down with only a small top-knot to pull back their bangs. This just isn’t how anyone wore their hair, but it’s a massive visual clue that the story takes place in the jianghu, where normal society’s rules don’t apply.
22. I think I mentioned the Ming dynasty -- not sure why, but it seems to be the most favorite target. (You’d think it’d be the Qing, since they were outsiders, but nope.) The literary precursors of wuxia had a strong streak of ‘the government is corrupt and/or full of idiots, we’re better off doing our own thing over here,’ which led to various dynasties cracking down on wuxia as a kind of rebel literature.
It’s kind of ironic that wuxia’s history of overturning the natural order confucian principles (that is, treating individualism as an equal virtue, and elevating commoners to hero-status for *gasp* leaving their place of birth to wander around and do good deeds) is what made wuxia immensely popular during the cultural revolution, when China was busy deconstructing (often violently) so much of its cultural past. Wuxia stood apart, as something that had been quietly deconstructing all along, and thus shot up in popularity for finally being in tune with the zeitgeist.
(Wuxia in all its forms has always, perhaps unsurprisingly, been massively popular among the common classes. Wuxia is not, never has been, a high literary form; watching wuxia means you’re watching the latest iteration of an ancient yet truly pop-as-in-popular-as-in-common culture.)
I get the impression the chinese authorities have an uneasier relationship with historical dramas (which can walk a fine line of implying that imperial past as a good/positive), whereas wuxia’s place in the mythical jianghu diminishes its ability to threaten via social commentary. This isn’t to say wuxia isn’t in dialogue with the social and political environment in which it’s made; all literature is, by virtue of being of its time. It’s just a bit more coy about it, and its loudest political-type trait -- of dismissing the imperial system/capital as corrupt, evil, or otherwise contemptible -- fits with a desire to see the dynastic past as something to be discarded and/or dismissed, not emulated.
23. Oh, and one last thing: wuxia is very, very, very chaste. A lot of the romantic relationships are almost entirely implied -- a lot of longing looks, maybe the exchange of a significant gift, I mean, we’re talking a genre that considers holding hands to be pretty daring. I’ve seen entire series where you know those two will end up together, but if you can’t read the visual cues, you’d think they were just close friends (if not socially-awkward acquaintances).
That said, when wuxia breaks that so-chaste rule, it’s like having a table dropped on you. There’s a drunken makeout scene in The Legends that had my jaw on the table because holy smokes, that was unexpected. Mad passionate wild abandonment just isn’t a thing in wuxia.
[ETA: don’t get me wrong, wuxia in general is hugely passionate. Just not on a sexual level; it’s on the emotional level that wuxia will go to eleven, repeatedly.]
...okay, that wasn’t even in the neighborhood of brief. hell, it wasn’t even in the same state as brief, but I did warn you. Wuxia’s a huge genre, after all. An entire book might still only scratch the surface, but hopefully this suffices as a general introduction.
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Ok so, I wrote something about groupies and GVF a few days ago but I don’t know why it never showed on the ‘search’ page and the tags didn’t work that time so yeah. It seems that they work now so I’m putting it under here ‘cause posts with links still have problems with tumblr tags. It would be great if you give it a read [and feel free to reblog it if you think the same way as I do]. Btw you can find the original post on my blog on #greta van fleet tag. The original post has source links and pictures and other links about groupies 💛 Of course my asks is open for opinion on the topic. Thank you 🌻
-GROUPIES and GRETA VAN FLEET and PEOPLE WHO JUST DON’T RESPECT MUSIC- [my own opinion]
So, these days I’ve been reading a lot of things about Greta Van Fleet and what the fans are doing at their concerts. Apparently some girls flashed the boys and some of them threw their bras on stage. I’d like to point out that I think there’s nothing wrong with this, things like that have always happened at concerts and it’s certainly not a matter of different “eras” or “times”. But some other fans expressed their dissent over those behaviors stating that such ways of doing do nothing but change the attitude of the members of the band towards their audience, distancing them more and more from the fans. Some of them claimed not to endure this kind of behavior and they immediately labeled those girls as “groupies” underlining that those girls are just seeking for attention, at the expense of those fans who really love the band and support it.
Faced with this kind of statements I felt involved because I’ve always defined myself as a “groupie” and I’ve always been proud of it. I struggled and I’m still struggling to make people understand the REAL meaning of the word “groupie” making clear that it’s just a cliché that groupies are nothing more than “girls seeking for fame” or even worse “backstage whores”.
I read someone saying that groupies “are usually known as women who follow bands they want to sleep with and that’s exactly what groupies were known for back in the days”. This thing really made me super mad. So now I’d like to explain some concepts and reflections on this.
I want to start saying that it is true, the component of sex and physical attraction was a very strong thing “back in the days” especially in the 60s and 70s (remember that at the time there were the so-called “sexual revolution” and the “free love”, very important elements in what is known to all as counterculture of the 1960s). Many girls enjoyed going to bed with the band members and there’s nothing wrong with that, there’s nothing wrong with free sex, even if it’s a woman who practices it. In support of this I’d like to ask somthing to you: which of you isn’t somehow physically or emotionally attracted by one/or more of the Greta Van Fleet boys? Which of you wouldn’t be happy to date one of them and maybe become their girlfriend? Probably none;
another thing is about fame. Just like it happens nowadays some people just wanted to take advantage of the fame of famous people in order to shine with reflected light and become important. Therefore some girls did nothing but date the band to get in some pictures or some scoops of magazines. But THOSE WERE NOT GROUPIES.
Summarizing these points, it is a common opinion that groupies are nothing more than women seeking for fame and party time with musicians. Even Wikipedia says “The term is almost universally used to describe young women who follow these individuals [musicians] in hopes of establishing a sexual relationship with them or offering themselves for sex”. THIS IS THE POPULAR OPINION, A COMMON PLACE and nothing else. Just a cliché.
Now I’d like to discuss what it really means to be a groupie and what I do and believe as a groupie.
being a groupie goes beyond sex, goes beyond fame and goes beyond the thirst of attention. Being a groupie means, and I quote, “to truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts”. Groupies are there for the MUSIC, they’re there for LOVE and GRATITUDE towards music and those who create it and groupies don’t care about becoming famous or going backstage and get noticed. As a groupie I go to concerts and I show respect to the band and musician’s work and support them every day and I love them for the emotions they make me feel. That’s it. Of course, it would be amazing to be the girlfriend of one of them and to go on tour with them and live a life like that but THAT’S NOT THE PURPOSE OF A GROUPIE. The purpose of a groupie is to SUPPORT the band, IDOLATE the band, and NOT to go to bed with them;
being a groupie means RESPECTING the band and its members and their choices. This is a very important point especially for all the stuffs going on here on Tumblr over Greta Van Fleet. There are bands that love crazy and promiscuous fans willing to go backstage and "having fun” but NOT GRETA VAN FLEET. The Greta Van Fleet boys have specifically stated that they don’t want to get into that kind of things. Josh said to Rolling Stone: “All of those wild, absurd things that you would like to romanticize about are very honest truth. The amount of excess always around. The amount of women that always want to hang out. It really is all there. It’s tempting, and crazy stuff. But we don’t seem to have too much interest”. And he is not only talking about sex but also about everything else: wild parties, drugs, alcohol… everything. That said, a true fan and consequently a real groupie RESPECTS the decisions of the band and doesn’t try to behave exactly the opposite of what the band wants. Do you understand what I’m trying to explain here? RESPECT is the first important thing. This is what a groupie does: SHE RESPECTS THE BAND.
I summarize these points too: being a groupie means respecting the band in all its decisions, it means to love music and those who create it, it means to support them for what they do and above all it means to go to a concert and enjoy the show because that feeling of being there in the front row is indescribable and it’s the best thing ever. This is what it means to be a groupie.
I want to close this thing saying that as a groupie and proud to call me one I think: those girls who know the intentions of the band [in this specific case Greta Van Fleet] but continue to behave in such a rude way, stripping in front of the band and throwing underwear on stage, THEY’RE NOT GROUPIES but they’re just trying to get visibility from the band without respecting the band itself. They’re not “bad girls” but if they really love and respect Greta Van Fleet and if they really are fans then they should avoid certain behaviors, trying to respect the artists and their work.
Now I ask you, please stop to juxtapose groupies to girls who are just seeking for attention but please know that you too can be a groupie. If you respect the band, if you love musician’s work, if you want to support them in every choice and if you are polite when you approach them, both at concerts and when you ask for an autograph or a photo, then you are also groupies and there’s nothing wrong with feeling that way. Being a groupie is beautiful, it means to love music with all your being and with all your soul.
🌻 Thank you 🌻
[Of course the discussion is open for those who want to express their opinion and same will be my asks. Feel free to say what you think about the subject]
#greta van fleet#josh kiszka#jake kiszka#sam kiszka#danny wagner#groupie#groupies#gretavanfleet#joshkiszka#jakekiszka#samkiszka#dannywagner#relevant with all the groupie discussion going on#me#mine#words#opinion#gvf
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Let's Talk: Donald Glover/Childish Gambino and Black Male Nerds
So, This is America is out and it's poppin - there's a million and one think pieces and everyone is in love with it, understandably so. During this time, a picture surfaced of Mr. Gambino and his white girlfriend/partner and some people are mad. There are all types of debates and arguments calling his blackness into question, along with his wokeness. A lot of the people engaging in these conversations or who have an issue are black women (as it seems - and generally black women don’t really be caring bout these things but whatever lol).
In response to this, black men have started saying that black women would have/did reject Mr. Gambino because of his perceived weirdness and interest in things like anime and that "they wouldn't have wanted him anyway." These men (and black women who agree with them) redirected/changed the conversation to black women being closed-minded when it comes to blackness and rejecting black men for liking things like anime and being weird (I'm not sure how weird is being defined but I'm going to assume it means being awkward, liking music other than rap/hip-hop, just anything outside of the stereotypical black male).
I believe that black men can be woke and date non-black women. Your blackness and wokeness are not defined by the race of who you date and love. However, this does not mean that our preferences and who we choose is not affected or influenced by society. And our society (while it is changing), is still an overall racist, sexist, heterosexist, classist society and there are a slew of problematic beliefs and ideas that society teaches and attempts to ingrain in us. All of us are problematic to some degree or another and all of us have come into contact and been influenced by these ideas and beliefs. These ideas and beliefs cause and reinforce the oppressive actions that are taken against oppressed groups. These ideas and beliefs are in our language, in our day-to-day actions and are present in aspects of our lives that we don't tend to notice. It is everywhere.
With that being said, when it comes to race, dating and attractiveness, white women have been society's standard of beauty. Since white women are the standard of beauty and upheld as the most desirable female mate to have, then subconsciously (or even consciously for some), white women or women who have white features (light skin, straight/ curly-ish hair, slimmer bodies, etc.) are seen as better quality mates than their opposites - black women. Dear White People is a show that actually discusses this. It's why you got black men like Trick Daddy who compare black women to women of other races and put them down essentially. And Trick Daddy is far from the only one who does this.
And since Mr. Gambino lives in the same world that we do, it's crazy to pretend he hasn't been influenced by this - we all have. This doesn't mean he does not love her. It doesn't mean that men can't be with white women or women of other races for reasons outside of the subconscious bias we all carry to some extent. But with Mr. Gambino, he does have a lot of problematic behaviors (or did, I'm not sure if he's changed) centered around race and women - for starters, the fetishization of Asian Women in his earlier music which is super prevalent, or him talking about how a non-black woman calling him a nigger turned him on, and honestly he has a lot of problematicness about him in general but we'll just stick to women and race for now.
On the subject of black women, he's said in songs he doesn't think black women are into him and on Atlanta I've noticed that darker-skinned black women on the show are more likely to be depicted in a negative way (Van's friend at the party who was basically the "angry black woman" and Paper Boi's girl Sierra who comes off as stuck-up and materialistic). So, I don't know his explicit views, but it can definitely be implied. However, it's not for us to attack anyone for it (not like Gambino or his woman care anyway lmbo) but I do think it's important for us to have these conversations without immediately shutting it down as "black women being jealous." Things that can be discussed: How has society's racism affected how black men and women view each other and interact with each other? How has it affected how we view ourselves? How does it affect how and who we date? How does it affect the art we create and images we put on display? What messages do black artists send about black folk and black relationships (if that's their thing) and why is that message there and is that message helpful or harmful?
Which leads me to the whole "black women wouldn't have wanted Gambino anyway." Excuse my language, but that's a damn lie. There are plenty and have always been plenty of black girls/women who are awkward, nerdy, and just plain ol' weird who share the same interests as Gambino and men like him (I'm one of those women btw). Now, all these women don't fit the societal idea of having light/fair skin, straight/curly hair, slim or hour-glass shaped thick bodies - but they out here and been out here. They may not be popular - but they out here and been out here. I have a theory that a lot of the black male nerds may have looked over these women when going for black women who may not have had as much in common with them and/or who had the look they preferred who rejected them - which is fine, do you, but don't blame all of black women for that and don't erase the black awkward girls/women just because it helps make your incorrect point.
Black men keep saying things like black women don't want smart men, only want men with money, that they only want thugs...and on Iyanla Fix-My-Life, I heard a black man say that black women were passing him up because he was a God-fearing man. None of this is true. I really think these men saying these things need to reexamine themselves and look at who their choosing (is she even compatible with you or did you just pick her for her booty?) and if there's a possibility that maybe it's not all black women's fault that a few black women rejected you (and sometimes people just aren't attracted - welcome to life). Also, black awkward, nerdy, and weird women been rejected by and overlooked by niggas, probably the same ones complaining now lol.
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