#but no it’s ‘white feminism’ obv

[gendiebrainrotreceipts]

​‘pretending to be victims’ are you saying women aren’t routinely victimised by men? is this what feminism is now? Pretending women don’t require safety from men?

[cowboysmp3]

barbie was a good movie but it was a very cishet experience of feminism which is totally cool and has its place!!! but idk didn’t feel as like… revolutionary as i somewhat expected? it was fun tho

[allamericansbitch]

I mean that’s why we have security at the concerts????? Other artists are in danger too and speak up?!!! The threat is there no matter what so https://www.tumblr.com/fullmetalswift/719630510962458624/i-just-cant-stop-thinking-about-how-this-violent

i love describing being vocally against racism and bigotry as 'throwing tantrums'. it's giving 'fox news saying the blm protests were just woke mobs stating riots' energy

[mudzdale]

i wish this texturing on the light fury was more obvious at first glance... much prefer this leathery look to the skin, versus the weirdly.. almost grainy effect, that comes from the sparkles

[marciliedonato]

No bc I literally don't understand what the actual FUCK paramore were thinking joining the biggest tour in the world as an OPENER as a replacement for an EU tour that fans gave been asking for for the longest time *AFTER* the presale period for said tour tickets (that cost an arm, a leg, your first born child, a blood sacrifice and your kidney on the black market excluding accommodation and transport 🙂) has already ended a MONTH ago and somehow thinking fans would actually be happy abt this. Like I seriously cannot understand their train of thought behind this. Literally who signed off on this. Who genuinely thought this was a good idea and not a massive "fuck you" to EU fans, some of which (like us here, hi, remember us? It's been 12 years this week...) have been waiting for TEN+ years wishing and hoping and holding out hope we would have our special moment seeing everyone else get to have theirs and just have so much fun and awesome experiences while we sit and watch and tell ourselves someday, somehow, it will be us.... And then whenever it is time for shows to happen (bc pmore is not a touring band, there's only one shot and it's when there's an album out - so it's been at least 6 years for everyone here) we either get ignored or.. whatever the hell this is.

Like I don't think you understand so ill say it again... THEY ANNOUNCED THEIR EU TOUR IS AS AN OPENER FOR THE BIGGEST ARTIST IN THE WORLD WHEN YOU CAN'T EVEN GET TICKETS ANYMORE AND *BASICALLY* CALLED IT THEIR EU TOUR BC THEY HAVENT SAID ANYTHING ABT ACTUALLY DOING ONE OF THEIR OWN.... yeah.

And don't even get me started on the ppl trying to gaslight EU fans into feeling bad or make us the bad guy here for not being happy with this shitty arrangement... Yes, this is big for them. Yes, they're gonna make a shit ton of money and yes, h and t are friends so they're literally chilling with friends for months (extra fun for them) but bands are literally nothing without the fans and we're being told to just smile and suck it up and be happy for them bc somehow money and fame matter more than the people who got you where you are and are just asking you for something as basic as respect bc they're literally being treated below everyone else... That's all it is abt, right? The money and selling out arenas (bc 'tHeY cOuLdnT dO iT oN ThEiR oWn tHiS iS mAssIvE jUsT ShUt uP anD bE hAppY fOr tHeM')....as long as u can make a shit ton of money it's a free for all, fuck the fans and their feelings right lol 🤪🤪🫠 like 'omg ur upset one of ur fave bands is treating u like ass/lesser than?? omg grow upppp they dont owe u anythinggg 😒😐'

Anyway I'm still pissed and I do hope they will do the right thing and like, at least try to have their own shows between her gigs or smth and can fix this for everyone specially considering how many people are giving them pushback for this bc this is absolutely atrocious and a diservice to EU pmore fans and our right to be upset is valid and I will not be told to calm down by Americans (et al but mostly americans) who are used to everything being handed out to them on a silver plate telling us to be happy abt them making bank and that we're overreacting fuck that noise lol

[steviestits]

I Move the Stars For No One - Part 1.3

Written for a prompt dmed to me, which can be read in its entirety on this fic’s masterpost.

Pairing: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson Rating: T (E for later chapters) Summary: After running away from home after an argument with his father, Steve storms off into the woods only to accidentally stumble into the unseelie king's lavish party. The king, Eddie as he likes to be called, is taken by Steve and dances through the night with him. Though Steve enjoys himself, he feels the need to return to the mortal realm, but soon learns that he can't as he has become property of the king after trespassing on a sacred fairy circle. Steve is forced to stay and begins to learn that all is not as it seems, especially in regards to his own past. (Labyrinth inspired story but they share zero plot points.) Trigger Warning: None for this chapter Eventual Trigger Warning: Feminization, Mating Rituals, Heats/Ruts but not the Omegaverse kind

(Link to previous part)

Steve inhaled sharply as he was tugged near until he could see every freckle on the fae king’s face. He was dazzled for a moment, only able to stare into Eddie’s big, brown eyes, but he quickly regained his senses and tried to shove the other away roughly. It felt like pushing against a steel wall as the other refused to budge.

“I don’t want to learn!” Steve huffed, punching his fists uselessly against Eddie’s chest. “You can have anyone in this room! Choose one of them to be yours!”

“Those fae aren’t half as beautiful as you, sweetheart. I mean, you have to see how jealous they are of you.”

Blush dusted Steve’s cheeks. He knew he was good looking in the human world, but here? Everyone had a deep otherworldly feel that added a strange depth to their allure. Though, he supposed the same could be said for Eddie since he was used to seeing these types of people and hadn’t been exposed to those outside his realm. Once Eddie got used to Steve’s unnaturalness then he’d tire of him and move on, just like everyone else he’d dated in the past.

“Just empty words and empty phrases,” Steve said. “It’s the passing fancy of a king, like a child with a new toy. Nothing more.”

“I can promise you that it’s not,” the fae king whispered, staring Steve down with a smoldering gaze. “Let me show you.”

Eddie then ran the knuckle of his index finger down Steve’s face, and the next thing Steve knew he was standing in a circular room that had a giant tree growing in the center. Branches strewn with light pink apple blossoms stretched up towards a starry lit ceiling. Steve would’ve thought they were stars, but they twisted down the tree like vines and wrapped around the posts of a bed nestled against the tree’s trunk. Sheer, white drapes hung between the posts, which matched the pure white linen sheets spread across it.

Moments after they arrived, a table and two chairs appeared in front of the bed. It matched the other wooden furniture in the room, except that it was a bit fancier as carved, gilded vines wound their way around their legs and the backs of the chair. Spread out atop the table were several frosted pastries on a three-tiered silver stand accompanied by a porcelain teapot, painted with a sprawling array of the most detailed meadow flowers that twisted and curled along its sides. Steve had honestly never seen anything like it except in historical movies.

“You missed the feast at the start of the ball,” Eddie explained. “Eat as much or as little as you want. If there’s anything else you want, then it’s yours.” Steve opened his mouth. “Anything but letting you go,” he added quickly as if sensing what Steve was about to say. “You’re mine now, sweetheart. Going to spoil you rotten.”

“How do you know that I’m not already spoiled rotten by my own family?” Steve challenged. “They could be searching for me right now.”

Eyes lingering on the bruise forming on Steve’s face, the fae king said, “I highly doubt that.”

Shame and embarrassment ran through Steve as he hated how obvious it was that his parents cared so little about him. Or maybe it was Steve’s own fault for falling short of the plans that were laid out for him. Either way, no one at home would be looking for him as he knew his dad was waiting patiently for Steve to come crawling back.

“Enough talk about the mortal realm,” Eddie said. “Eat. Unless you’d prefer something else. I can change it to whatever you prefer.”

“This is fine.” Steve paused as his stomach grumbled. “They look tasty.”

“They’re yours. You’re free to have your fill.”

Steve stared longingly at the food on the table. He hadn’t had dinner because of the fight and had skipped lunch due to nerves after receiving his latest rejection letter. Legends had it that if one ate food in the fae realm then their fates would be sealed, and they would be unable to leave ever again. However, Steve didn’t know this due to his lack of fantasy education, and even if he did, his stomach gurgled loudly, demanding to be fed.

The rumbling was so loud that Eddie must had heard it, because he walked over to the table and picked up a flaky, round pastry with chocolate frosting to bring back to Steve. He held the pastry up to Steve’s mouth, waiting patiently. To Steve’s surprise, the fae king’s eyes were soft, gazing at Steve with a heated emotion that he’d never seen directed towards him until now.

Hunger gnawed at him further, and coupled with Eddie’s gaze, Steve leaned forward cautiously in order to bite the offered treat. His teeth dug into the flaky shell, only to be surprised when he bit into a pocket of sweet custard filling. The taste of the custard exploded on his tongue, causing Steve to groan with pleasure as he’d never had anything quite like this before, mostly because his dad thought sweets were girly but also because the flavor was just so good.

Eddie smirked affectionately. “Like it?”

“Yeah,” Steve said with a nod. “It’s amazing.”

“Then have the rest. This is all for you.”

With less reservation this time, Steve ate the remains of the pastry in Eddie’s hand, blushing when the fae king’s fingers brushed softly against Steve’s lips. Eddie didn’t stop, however, and soon another pastry was against Steve’s mouth as the fae king eagerly fed him. He could’ve walked to the table to get his own, but he instead allowed Eddie to serve him, as if Steve was the king instead of an outsider.

Heat pooled within the core of Steve’s being, only he barely noticed. He was too caught up in the moment to realize that there was something strange about the way he was feeling. A change was about to happen, one that would change his life forever and throw everything he knew into question, not that Steve noticed. Not that Steve could look anywhere except the fae king’s eyes.

Part 1.2 ~ Masterpost ~ Part 2.1

[cinderella-ish]

This is a VERY SILLY idea I got earlier this week and it took over my brain so please enjoy the Fruits Basket characters as cats! (Bonus fun: see if you can guess who they are before scrolling down!)

Mabudachi Trio + Kureno

Hatori - I went back and forth with him on whether he'd be a black cat or a Siamese cat, but his eyes are so striking! It was hard to find photos of black cats with naturally blue eyes (I'm sure they exist!)

Shigure - a Russian Blue, obviously

Ayame - clearly an elegant white long-hair

Kureno - a derpy and sad-looking chocolate tortoiseshell

Yuki and the Student Council

Yuki is the silver tabby who looks like he regrets all his life choices lol

Kakeru is the very silly tabby in the top left

Machi is the shy-looking dilute tortie in the top right

Kimi is the white long-haired Persian cat

Nao is the talkative (demanding) almost-still-a-kitten tabby

Kyo, Tohru, and their families

we already know what Kyo looks like as a cat lol but Tohru is the ragdoll cat next to him in the upper right (because she's OBVIOUSLY a ragdoll!)

Kazuma is the brown-ish Maine coon. Dignified but still a cat!

Kyoko is the light ginger and white tabby (did you know female oranges are fairly rare?)

Katsuya is a handsome adult black cat

Grandpa Honda is a sweet gray tabby

Kyo & Tohru's Friends

Arisa is a calico (did you know most calicos are female? I feel like that would fit Arisa's feminism)

Hiroshi and Yusuke are twin tuxedo cats! (Right?!?!?)

Saki is a gorgeous long-haired black cat ofc, and Megumi is her miniature

Youngest Zodiacs

Haru would obviously be a black and white cat. I think he'd have a unique marking, too, like a mustache, or a spot shaped like a heart.

Momiji is a blond German Rex (which is a breed I just learned exists!)

Kisa would be a Bengal kitten because she'd definitely look like a wildcat

Hiro would be a little baby tabby

Other Zodiacs

Akito would be a slightly intimidating black and white cat

Ritsu would be a rare male calico (and an exceptionally beautiful one, too!)

Kagura would be a very cute Russian Blue

Rin would be a skittish black cat who's actually a sweetie once she gets used to you, if you're her person

Everyone Else + Bonus Cat!

Mine would be a long-haired tuxedo cat, obvs

I thought about Mayu as a dilute tabby, but I like her as a tortie tbh

Mitsuru is an anxious white and gray cat

THE CUTIE IN THE BOTTOM LEFT IS MY CAT!!! HE'S SIXTEEN AND SO SNUGGLY AND I LOVE HIM!!! HERE HE IS TOTALLY ZONKED OUT BECAUSE THE SUN WAS OUT!!!!!

[louiswilliamtomlinsons]

Omg I really detest TS for her white feminism (called it back in 2015 and *gasp* she still hasn't changed!) but thanks to her Joe is now getting even more hate and I'm like??? Wtf has that man done? It's a crime he saw her red flags and didn't want to marry her? Idk that man but I'm about to go support his projects because he seems like an introvert like me and we must stick together! Also hope he turns up kissing boys just to make those swifties mad <3 funny how they didn't have this same energy for when she was dating an actual racist THIS YEAR but sure the man who actually signed a Palestine ceasefire letter while she hasn't done shit is obvs worse 🫢

NO BECAUSE WHAT THE FUCK????? his biggest crime was being an introvert and private person. meanwhile ratty healy is a racist and average crusty white football man joked about looking for a breeder to have children with. oh but joe is the villain right? and taylor is a poor baby who has done nothing wrong in her life 🙄🙄🙄

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

A Long, Unnecessary Love Letter to Comic Books

I’ve gotten way the fuck into comics lately, ranging from weird titles from publishers I’m pretty sure are defunct (Solar, Man of the Atom follows the ongoing adventures of an energy being whose origin story includes accidentally destroying his own timeline) to unsettling little horror tales (Gaiman’s Likely Stories disturbed me to the point of feeling physically ill once or twice) to big, bombastic superhero fair (just give me anything with Batman). It’s particularly this last category that I want to focus on, because it was while reading the 2018-onwards run of Justice League that I realised why I’ve been getting so into comics at the moment. They’re currently filling the niche that film used to fill.

You see, folks, I have a little problem when I go and see most films nowadays. The problem is very simple. While I still enjoy movies, that enjoyment is somewhat marred by the fact that NINETY PERCENT OF THE TIME I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING TO HAPPEN! I’m a progressive chap- I’m a commie, a sometime-advocate for fat acceptance (obvs) and I’m viscerally disgusted every time I hear about some fresh injustice perpetrated against non-white ethnic groups by the racist-as-shit American legal system. I’d never call myself a feminist, but I accept that feminism has a point in terms of its broad complaints and aims (I part company from both rad and third wave on a fair number of specifics, but that’s probably just because of my nine foot musical penis). And yet, as most of you already know from my previous spates of bitching and moaning, media wokeness winds me up. It’s not just that it’s obviously insincere and designed to curry favour with an imaginary demographic of humourless wankers- it’s that it also hobbles any story’s ability to surprise or engage meaningfully with its own fictional universe. Give me a list of characters and tell me nothing about them besides skin colour, age and gender, and I’ll tell you who’s going to live, who’s going to die, who’ll be permitted a redemption arc, and who’ll turn out to be a ‘twist’ villain (and I use the term ‘twist’ with heavy-duty sarcasm marks). It’s cloying, constrictive and a death sentence for any kind of creativity. It’s gotten so bad that, whenever a movie does manage to pleasantly surprise me, I have to fight back tears of fucking gratitude. Progressive values are all well and good- I actively subscribe to them myself every time I go out and assassinate a member of the fucking Tory party- but modern movies and telly don’t operate from a place of deeply-held progressive values (or any values). The mainstream media’s ‘wokeness’ is just a tired list of boring tropes that cowardly, talentless screenwriters cling to lest creating something original engender cancellation.

And so, we come to comic books (and on comic books, if they have General Zod in them. Kneel before Zod? I certainly fucking will!). I was about type the words ‘even mainstream comic books are great’ but then I started laughing like the Joker watching a snuff movie, because that would have been an idiotic sentence. You see, while Superhero comics are ‘mainstream’ in the sense that they’re the thing people most associate with the medium, they still have a relatively tiny readership. In fact, I suspect that requiring their audience to know how to read is the main barrier to entry nowadays- it seems like something of a lost art.

The point is that I’ve been reading the ‘Justice/Doom War’ arc in Justice League and I’ve noticed something about it. It has a huge, diverse cast of characters from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, different genders and different belief systems and walks of life… and not even one of them is an insufferable twat defined only by their relative privilege or oppression! To give you an example, Green Lantern John Stewart is a heroic space cop who happens to be black, but the plot never grinds to a halt so he can give us a lecture on race dynamics in modern America. He’s too busy using constructs of solid light to smash the ever-loving crap out of pan-dimensional cosmic monsters. When the plot does slow down to give him time to breathe, we learn more about his conflicted yet complementary history as both a soldier and an architect than we do about his skin colour. I mean, it’s not like it never comes up- the DC universe has some ties to reality and characters do occasionally find themselves on the receiving end of racism, but if it’s not relevant to what’s happening, the story doesn’t bend over backwards to include it. Conversely, Batman is a rich white dude, but the story never feels the need to ‘hold him accountable’. His main arc at the moment is about learning to be a good father figure to a sentient, telepathic starfish who wants to be the next Robin (yeah… the 2018 run is gloriously fucking weird). Hey! Here’s another example! On the surface, Hawkgirl is the epitome of the ‘strong female character’ beloved by modern media: a ferocious, take-no-shit warrior woman with countless lifetimes of carefully-honed experience. But she’s not some bloody sexless, characterless archetype designed as a flag for empowerment rather than a person: she’s a fully-developed character. She has complex internal motivations; she has romantic feelings for Martian Manhunter; she experiences grief and loss and is changed by them; she makes mistakes that she then has to triumph over. She doesn’t get to win just because she’s the first person on hand with a clitoris- she actually has to work and go through a character arc. Surprising and sometimes unpleasant things happen to her, making her a sympathetic and interesting character who I actually want to see triumph.

I could go on… and on… and on… and on… pretty much forever. I could probably write an entire essay just on how Lex Luthor uses his wealth for selfish ends even while purporting to represent a higher cause while Batman embodies an idealised version of how those with power and money should use it for the greater good. I could talk about how Superman is both effectively an immigrant and the most endearingly Rockwellian slice of walking Americana one can imagine. I could write fucking books on what the character of Perpetua says about the modern world’s complex relationship with faith and fanaticism and where the line is drawn.

But the real point is that I don’t know what’s going to happen next! Character who would never be allowed to triumph under their own power in movies succeed. Characters who would never be allowed to fail in movies get broken by horrible events and circumstances. Arcs are never what I expect them to be about, but always make sense when I look back and consider what I know about the character’s personality. It’s wonderfully refreshing in a way we just don’t get to see much nowadays… and I started to wonder why comics are so much better than everything else going on at the moment.

I was recently reading an Editorial in Metal Hurlant (basically the French 2000AD- a comic anthology of sci-fi and horror tales published on a monthly basis). The top brass were bemoaning the niche-ness of the comic book medium, asserting that comics should be promoted in bookstores and literary circles; that there should be a widespread push for them to reach a readership and audience that traditionally don’t engage with pulp culture (my term, not theirs). And what I realised is that this would be a terrible, terrible idea- because the main reason comics are so good is because they’re niche; their small; their disposable. Consider, if you will, the mainstream film industry. A big part of the reason that it mainly produces hot garbage is that it’s too big to take risks. Hollywood (for want of a better catch-all term) has spent its entire life-cycle pursuing larger and larger audiences so it can fund more and more epic blockbusters with bigger names and bigger, bolder FX. It’s a cycle of abuse in which each new generation of films has to outperform the generation before it. Meanwhile, because the audiences have to be so vast, the people making the flicks don’t think of those audiences as individual people with specific interests and ideas and a desire to be challenged and entertained. They think of them, instead, as demographic swathes; undifferentiated and united by broad, base commonalities that each project has to play to. But people aren’t demographics and the movie industry is currently getting a royal drubbing for its decades of ever-increasing contempt-of-the-viwer. Disney in particular is haemorrhaging money because it thought it would be a good idea to make Star Wars and Indiana Jones films and telly shows for a generic set of imagined demographics instead of people who actually like those franchises and are interested in the themes and ideas that go with them. As much as watching Disney fail gives me the warm fuzzies, I have to ask: who in their right mind would wish this fate on comics?

You see, folks, comics do sell plenty of copies- more than enough to justify the fairly modest expense of printing the darned things) but the overall audience for any one title is less than half the audience for any given major film release (I did some research and applied some maths that I won’t bore you with, but the absolute top selling comic books of recent years sold under a quarter million copies overall while an average film from any of the major studios sells around half a million cinema tickets in the US alone- and then there are the DVD and streaming sales on top of that. Notice how the latter number is more than double the former number. Regrettably, data on both films and comics is jealously guarded by vested interests, so I apologise for how ballpark those figures are, mind). Meanwhile the total audience of comics in general is much narrower in certain key respects. Perhaps the most obvious point is this: pretty much everyone who reads comic books is a comic book fan, whereas not everyone who goes to the cinema is a cinephile. But what does that actually mean? Well, for one, it means that comic book readers and writers are more of community- they tend to trust one another more; leaps can be taken that would be considered too chancy when dealing with ‘demographics’. At the same time, however, the writers’ connection to the fans means they have a better sense of when something is going to alienate large sections of their audience or piss people off (something film-makers have proved either bad at or wilfully blind to lately). The result is stories that know what bold ideas they can pursue while also knowing where to draw the line.

I think another reason comics are currently kicking the film industry’s pallid white buttocks in terms of creative merit is that they’re real cheap. Paper on ink is much easier to organise and send forth into the world than a vast audiovisual experience containing hundreds of actors, countless FX and goodness-knows-how-many extras, all put together by an enormous team of people who often never get to meet one another. If I wanted, I could probably write, draw and distribute a limited run of say, fifty comics, for the price of a Payday Loan. I wouldn’t, because it’s not where my talent lies, but the point I’m trying to make is this: companies and distributors are more willing to do interesting things when there’s only pocket change on the line compared to when there’s millions or billions of dollars. It’s why we get comics like Serial Artist (about a dude who claims his paintings are of his murder victims and becomes the centre of a vast government conspiracy) and W0rldtr33 (an ongoing slice of weirdness in which the internet comes to life and starts murdering people). It’s why something comparatively mainstream like Justice League can have an arc about Batman parenting a starfish and why the whole thing becomes Dark Nights: Metal and Death Metal for awhile (the Metal comics are end-of-the-world stuff inspired by- obvs- heavy metal albums… and they’re fucking great). It’s why stuff like Metal Hurlant and 2000AD is given a chance to find readers. So do comics need to be bigger and more widely accepted? Fuck no! The fringe is always where interesting stuff happens and aiming for mainstream acceptability is, it seems to me, a massive trap. The allure of more money and better social status is like one of the bug-zapper lights that draws in the moths and then fries their brains.

But what the fuck is the point of all this rambling? Comics are good- and thank goodness, since a lot of shit isn’t at the moment. There, I got it all down to once sentence, so what was the point of the rest? Well, I suppose there’s a lesson to be learned here. I’m a writer finally starting my career; finally putting work out into the public domain with a real publisher. No, I don’t do comics: I do sci-fi and fantasy books. But the lesson’s still applicable and it’s this: it’s a lot better to be good than popular and sometimes- just sometimes- you really do have to pick between the two.

[spookfished]

media roundup june 2023

hey guys guess who just went "oh its the 4th of july. that means that its july" here im going to talk about things i read/watched/played last month! i didnt read as much but did finish a couple books that ive had checked out Forever. ok actually i read a lot woops

books/comics/written media:

fake dates and mooncakes by sher lee: fake dating (obv) premise between a cooking boy and a rich heir! book that made me realized im honestly just not that interested in ya romance anymore LMFAO. pretty sweet and a decent read, but landed more heavily on the expository end of uhh i guess diaspora fiction? than i really prefer. i think i picked this up bc the author got mega cancelled on tyk twitter lol??

bird by bird by anne lammott: book about how to write. i love to read about how people do stuff :3 some of the advice applies pretty universally to creative efforts i think.. made me want to write more too

john dies at the end by jason pargin: DNF. comic/horror about this loser guy who discovers stuff. sigh i tried so hard to like this book its supposed to be pretty 'mecore'...talked about this with alena a bunch but its like hm... i know the sort of casual offensiveness sort of goes in hand with being poor and white and in the midwest and i appreciate how its like that creates its own doomed narrative or whatever. but also i feel like the protagonist would call me slurs or something. also the lowgrade but pervasive orientalism is kinda offputting. probably fun for some other guy! i did enjoy the horror elements though

the goldfinch by donna tartt: literary coming of age about a boys relationship with a painting (the goldfinch). also he flops a lot and its sort of homoerotic i guess? a movie was made of it. so something to note is that ive had this book out on loan since literally december. neil kept on being like hey man just stop reading it LMFAO. thoughts cp'ed from discord:

why does the goldfinch feel like a 600 page leadup to the actual book which is 800 pages

idk at this point im kinda sick of pathetic lovelorn self obsessed semi literary men. like toku men are also sopping and pathetic but i think its more appealing when they are also kind and can be vulnerable. this guy is just annoying and kind of incel coded. like does a grand gesture to make up for the fact that he killed your dog while dogsitting

i actually did enjoy the parts post timeskip but i still think the first two thirds could have been cut or Greatly compressed or interspersed w the present or Something, yk? prose was nice though

the bodyguard by katherine center: romance novel about a woman bodyguard who lives for her job. fresh from a breakup, shes given a new undercover assignment with a handsome actor, recently withdrawn from society. will they be able to break each others' shells....? my mom recommended this to me LMFAO we kind of have different tastes in romance.. ive read a book by this author before i think her platonic scenes are very strong? i wish there had been a couple more of those. also i like how she always includes a life affirming section at the end about how important it is for us to open ourselves up to love etc etc cute but not especially memorable

kiss quotient by helen hoang: (reread) a shy, autistic econometrician decides that she needs to get better at sex, and so hires an escort. helen hoang is one of my faavorite romance authors i really enjoyed this reread although i kinda forgot that both leads say, think and do some pretty embarrassing things. but you know a little embarrassment is endearing and all that.. i still prefer her other book (the bride test) but this one is pretty good too. vivid characters 👍

sisters of dorley hall by alyson greaves: web fiction - a trans woman infiltrates a secret force-feminization program. ok im just cp'ing my thoughts from discord again but i enjoyed it a lot:

my thoughts are that the first like, third? is really really good. it like idk takes the very real trans fears of like discovery and passing and all that and fictionalizes them a bit. but like its still grounded and swag. sooo tense once The Reveal happens n things w steph are pretty normal it gets kinda meandering? which i dont really mind bc i love interpersonal drama even if i miss how tense and scary it was. but also theres only like two major plot threads going on rn and theyre both pretty slowburn. a timeskip would probably benefit tbh like the point rn is kinda like. the 7 year meteor? yeah sorry

like it used to be sort of psychological thriller? and now its sort of more character focus and also surprisingly fluffy.. im surprised that the author has said they have a complete outline bc it doesnt feel very focused atm? but also like i suppose things are snowballing a bit re: revealing the sisters to the outside world

an unauthorized fan treatise by lauren james: a fangirl trying to prove her rpf ship is real uncovers a greater conspiracy. to me if something is able to capture a specific age/vibe from the internet its automatically pretty good. however more and more people are learning how to do that so maybe i should change my standards... i was never involved in All That re: rpf or even fandoms of live action shows until kamen rider? but like i definitely knew people in hs that were sort of like this LMFAO so it felt very familiar. i appreciate the author trying to make that $$ but i dont know if it really needs an expansion/sequel.. the ending is better off with some ambiguity imo

impossible us by sarah lotz: literary romance? a man and a woman fall in love online, but encounter difficulties when they try to meet. ok im just pasting my thoughts here again (spoilers btw):

ok that was a lot of stuff. onto movies/tv:

xo kitty: kitty goes to a school to connect with her online boyfriend, but all is not well. yall this was not good. i guess my standards shouldnt have been that high but to all the boys ive loved before was so cute!! (havent watched/read the others). but like.. the writing was bad and the main actress just wasnt very sympathetic or charming? characters waste time saying "i can explain" until time runs out for them to actually explain, additional (and nonsensical) romance plots are added for no reason, and the male lead isnt even that hot. sorry. also kitty deciding to move to korea to connect with her mom but not bothering to learn a speck of korean and insisting that everyone else speak to her in english really sucks honestly. not even my mom liked it so thats how you know its bad 👎

succession season 1: yesss succession. greg is my favorite cant wait to see him become evil. makes me stressed

shin kamen rider (hideaki anno): reboot of the first kamen rider by the guy who made evangelion. this guy kinda makes the same thing over and over but it looked sick as hell so i wasnt complaining. like stella obstinaterixatrix said, kinda more introspective or even insular to the point of kinda ignoring the usual kr theme of justice but it was still very fun :3 kinda want to watch the original now

ready player one (movie): my parents made me watch this movie. aggressively mediocre.

kamen rider revice and live and evil and demons: pretty fun if you have the disease that makes you think revice is good, but mostly made me miss revice. i think they should have gone more into the clone thing but i always think that so

kamen rider juuga vs kamen rider olteca: two-parter special for kr revice. i forgot what happened in this pretty much immediately after but karizaki was hot

roman holiday: a princess touring in rome escapes her duties for a day, and meets a dashing young reporter. classic romance!! i actually liked this so so much like it actually is very romantic and funny and like deserves the hype. didnt expect it to be in black and white even so audrey hepburn is really hot. (spoilers) more romances should have bittersweet endings though like it hit

kamen rider ryuki: a young man is inducted into a battle royale between those fighting for their deepest wishes, and decides to try and stop the rider battle once and for all. hey guys ryuki is so fucking good for those who have watched madoka magica a lot of it is very heavily based off of/inspired by ryuki! but ryuki does it better. pretty much The kamen rider has so much to say about justice and love and what it means to be a hero and sacrifice and *runs out of air and falls over* also it made me cry. if you ever try kamen rider try this one <3

EDIT OH i forgot about across the spiderverse 100/10 obviously groundbreaking in animation nice take on generational trauma and also like the nature of adaptation and being in a multimedia comics franchise and all that. really hope the sequel doesnt get crunched too bad. oh but copaganda not great 99/10

video games:

twisted wonderland: gacha game where random disney villains are bishie high schoolers instead. ill play chapter 3 sometime soon i swear. gameplay is terrible as with most gacha games but the characters are cute? i feel terrible guilt for being involved with a disney franchise. honestly pretty compelling character writing sometimes though sorry

apico: stardew-like about raising bees (in beta). sooooo cute and the devs obv care about bees a lot in real life. the gameplay loop + breeding systems are a little bit punishing right now though i really hope it gets adjusted. took over my life during finals (woops) and i got like half the bees and then burnt out. multiplayer is fun though!

legend of zelda tears of the kingdom: the next zelda game, now featuring building + vertical elements. yeah this took over my life for two months like it did for a bunch of other people i finished the main story a couple days ago! i might go back to do a couple more of the shrine puzzles, but other than that i think im done. LOVE the vertical elements and also all the little sidequests there are to do and how the world has changed since botw. dragons tears was really good and OMG PROVING GROUNDS. would be a 10/10 if zelda was the protag stop damseling her you guys cmon

paper mario origami king: newest paper mario game, which is a spinoff of the main series where theyre all paper (duh). im about halfway through this, i think? tried it out because of the dunkey video lol and also bc it was free at my library. very charming and inventive, has a really good soundtrack and really funny writing! i know the gameplay was controversial, but im enjoying it a lot (and theres a lot of room for error). might 100% it

it feels like this month i tried a lot of things that i didnt really like LMAO. also a lot of romance. im very happy about finally finishing the goldfinch! the only holdout on my libby is slaughterhouse 5 :P i did find some things that i really liked though! anyways this one feels a bit more scattered but if you got to the ending, congratulations! thanks for reading :3

[neotrances]

literally like im a lesbian and obv am not interested in men but im still like if men dont think im hot ill DIE like its patriarchy 101 babes

like i hate those post that r like “womanhood are xyz” bc a lot of the time they can be too generalized / thru a white lense / reducing being a woman to childbirth but it’s literally so common to see that thought pattern even with women like urself who aren’t even interested in men, like a big part of learning feminism is unlearning behaviors like that / or atleast recognizing them and trying to curb them, bc it’s hard to get rid of fully for anyone, and i just find it so….ugly and just anti feminism to attack ppl who voice things like that like ofcourse theirs a difference between someone actively pushing the patriarchy as a woman and doing / saying things that reinforce it even when u try to help them (examples being ppl who refuse to listen to cristicsm about makeup and instead retort with ‘someone cant do good eyeliner’) but simply acknowledging that many girls and ppl that later on realize they are girls have been conditioned to think this way bc of being victims of the patriarchy is like . the bare minimum

[mazzy-rockstar]

Taylor swift is mediocre. Truly mediocre and I hate that no one can criticize her before someone jumps in and screams misogyny. I’m sure she has been at the end of a lot of misogyny in her career, but criticizing her is not something people should start throwing out phrases like “internalized misogyny” and such. To me she does more damage to the feminist movement along with her boderline evangelical fundamentalist behaving fans.

Before I answer this, I wanna make one thing clear. I am not a Taylor Swift hate page, I will not entertain hate asks. This is the only thing I’m going to answer about this. While I recognise that she has talent (truly, she is a great lyricist), she is nowhere near talented enough to be as big as she is. But then again, no one is, and I rather it be her than a mediocre white man.

I actually fell out with one of my closest friends on here over TS. Like going from telling each other nearly everything to blocking and not talking. Which sucks, cause we went through some insane shit together like. I have been called a misogynist and other pretty words for saying I don’t like TS’s music (to which I now refer you to my Apple Replay and Spotify wrapped - and no. TS and Sam Fender are not the same genre) When I answered the insults with “If Taylor is so big on feminism and girls supporting girls she would hate you being so nasty to me rn” I got a reply back “actually she would love it cause she is the pettiest girl there is” which should tell you enough about Taylor’s feminism and (performative) activism lol

To be honest, I did enjoy her music when I was younger. But her fandom is the absolute fucking worst. Like the worst™️. (No offence moots, not you but like the crazies yk) and honestly that’s like the biggest reason why I stay away from her and her music. 1. It’s mediocre 2. Some fans in her fandom is borderline cultlike sometimes. And obv 3. She’s a rich spoilt nepo baby used to getting her way, which she has. At least she knows how to write songs and play instruments. And I’m sure she’s interested in world issues, but when push comes to shove she. Does. Not. Care. What. Doesnt. Affect. Her. And she never will. Rich people never will

[lovebugism]

swiftie here!!!! i’m so sorry if this is too long😭

oof 😮‍💨

i guess i can try and sum up what i’ve been talking about with my irl best friends

i think the whole thing is layered. taylor swift, at the end of the day, is a human being. there’s nothing people can do to change it. she’s going to fuck up and fuck up hard throughout her life. i know matty has been someone close to her for nearly 10 years, so it isn’t surprising that she would fall into his arms. i thought that he was just a rebound but new articles make me think that maybe there was some… not overlap… but evident feelings while she was with joe (and after taylor playing two songs about cheating yesterday, maybe joe had feelings for other people too)

i despised matty for years before this. he’s a white man who plays the role of a hardcore edgy leftist political satirist but it is not the revolutionary act he thinks it is- especially when he consumes “ghetto gagger” content which i cant even bring myself to google but i’ve heard it’s degrading and racist sexual content.

stan life aside, i’ve always thought that the people people hang out with are a reflection of who they are and after taylor being in a david o russell movie (the director SA’d his niece) a few years after covering time magazine for the me too movement, it’s safe to say that taylor has so far removed herself from the general public and has fully submerged herself into a selfish lifestyle that’s cushioned by insane financial gain. it’s interesting because it’s an undeniable side effect of fame- fame isn’t natural. but it has undeniably soured her for me to be honest.

taylor doesn’t have to live her life via fan rules and standards bc at the end of the day it’s her personal life. but she is actively working to becoming the most famous celebrity/entertainer in the world, if she isn’t already! eras tour has proved that and she loves it, she expresses it every night. but she is actively and consciously making herself even more famous and i think that if she were to do so, swifties cant simultaneously victimize her for facing backlash.

hopefully it’s just a phase she’s going through and they won’t be longterm. but it is just another time taylor has outrightly proven she does not have a backbone when it comes to issues outside of herself that she cant fix with money. it’s sad! and partly my fault for putting her on a pedestal.

(pt.1)

wow. i had no idea about the david o'russell thing and i'm... even more disappointed. the point you made about taylor working with him and then being a part of the me too movement is almost identical to what's going on now.

to me, it feels like taylor only speaks out about certain things if she benefits from it/if it's about her directly. if matty healy said all the shit he said about ice spice about taylor, her and her fans would obv have Nothing to do with him. but since he was talking about a woc, she's been totally silent (despite her "women supporting women" motto). her idea of feminism just seems very performative to me...

i definitely wouldn't say it's your fault for putting her on a pedestal, though! you supported a person who claimed to be a feminist. it's not your fault that her actions completely disregard that.

[dermuenzler]

fav colour?

ooh difficult one. several points play into this:

I dislike choosing one over all others. why can't I like multiple?

purple. as early as in kindergarten I had been thinking to myself "purple isn't so bad. it's the better girl colour (better than pink) so why can't I like it?" I even dreamt about it. now that I am older and way more based (queer and "links-grün versiffte kommunistin") I know that there are no 'boy/girl colours' (if there even are boys/girls), so obv I can like purple. I have worn purple nail polish multiple times in public.

non-colours like black, white and grey/gray. easy to throw together an outfit with them, black nails are a classic for femboys and i've also worn black nail polish in public multiple times (it matches the colours of my 50€ fountain pen and the ink I use). white for a bit of subtle feminity (the skirt I have is white) or in summer, black for winter and autumn and spring and also summer (def not masochistic of me nono). you stand out in no crowd in either of those. gray if you want variety, grey if you're depressed.

blue is my sisters fav colour, so it can't be mine. blue is off limits, cross it out from the list.

green. my opinion varies drastically depending on the shade and exact tone. the green of jungle leaves: nice, I have a hawaiian shirt in that colour. turquoise: idk. cool ig. not my colour tho. neon green/yellow: bleaugh. bah. no, denied. green is one of my irl lads' fav colour, so I support green enjoyers but don't claim it for myself. cross green half off the list.

yellow/orange: I just don't like it. you can use it well ig, but idk. not my colour. cross it off.

red is too aggressive. I do not want to end like king charles the III in a hellfire red portray (dunno if you seen that).

so in summary probably black/purple, maybe a bit green? sometimes white, but that's hard to do right.

[roobylavender]

when you say feminism theoretically frees us "all" from gendered oppression - i can understand why you feel this way, but the politics of that statement are about as radical as the barbie movie. an anticolonial movement like that of the Palestinians or of the vietnamese in the 80s didn't seek to free "both" the colonized and the colonizers, even though undoubtedly both IDF and american soldiers felt some negative effects like deteriorating mental health, etc from continuing their neocolonial occupation. the black american civil rights movement did not seek to free "both" black and white people, though some whites were negatively affected by gerrymandering and "separate but equal" laws. patriarchy harms men in the sense that the recoil of a gun hurts the one who is pointing it at his victim lol. true women's liberation WILL harm men just as the anti-slavery struggle disadvantaged white slave-owners, just as any liberation movement will cause the oppressor to lose the privileges he enjoyed beforehand. if you can't even acknowledge that the oppressor benefits at the cost of the oppressed, what sort of activism do you really believe in? or do you simply not take feminism as seriously as other liberation movements and ideologies?

also one more thing - "frees us all from gendered oppression" umm who do you think is behind the gendered oppression? do you think it materialized from nowhere, and it just suddenly appeared in society someday? if it benefited no one, if it helped no one, why would it exist? like this thinking is naive at best and actively misogynist at worst lol. men are the ones who are enforcing the gendered oppression in question, this is a non-controversial fact. imagine saying antiracism will "free us all" as if whites are harmed just as much by the system of domination that they enforce.

respectfully, that comment in the tags was a very generic one i made in reference to the male loneliness epidemic specifically and i really don't think you or i are stupid enough to believe that i think that all feminism boils down to generic inclusivism. obv oppressors will be at the other end of the gun by virtue of the way the movement would work on a material level and i wholeheartedly support that. my only implication by that comment is that it is baffling to see resistance to feminism wrt to how it revolutionizes relationships and human interaction, whether within the general international environment or within specific subcultures, bc it ultimately seeks to strike down gendered hierarchies that are harmful to everyone. that's something i speak to from my own experience as a pakistani woman living among other pakistani men and women. i can simultaneously acknowledge that certain gendered expectations have been made permanent via systems maintained by men and that this has in turn harmed men in my own immediate environment, many of whom i nonetheless have a litany of complaints of. i don't feel the need to explain my entire life story to you and frankly you aren't entitled to it but part of my feminism is very much driven by the hope that pakistani boys and girls younger than me are brought up and witness to a better ideology and means of maintaining relationships with each other than were any of our parents or grandparents. i really am somewhat baffled by you taking a split-second tag i made and reading whatever all of this is into it as if i've ever said anything else indicative of it. i would love to have a conversation with you on this in good faith if you're willing to bc i pretty much agree with everything you believe feminism to be. my comment simply was not directed at any of this nor should it have been taken to be

[trickortpwk]

Also not to be a Kim k defender cause I can’t stand the kardashians but the way people talk about how obvious it is how Kanye is controlling his new gfs is no one thinking he was doing the same thing to her when they were married which could lead her to doing what she did with the phone call but the only difference is she was able to get out of it and leave him and chooses not to speak on him because of their kids? Idk I know the kardashians are conniving and not to be trusted but with the way Kanye treats women I don’t know how people can ignore that. And I’m supposed to feel bad that Taylor swift “fled the country”??? Imagine feeling so bad you have the ability to just escape in another country lmao Whining about this with the current state of the world where people are fleeing bombs

idek what exactly what down/what's the truth with the whole kanye/taylor/kim stuff, in any case i don't doubt kanye did her wrong and he's a misogynist and manipulator etc etc, but 1) why is this still being chewed over and 2) with tswift it's alwayssssssss about her and how xyz hates her and how they're gonna get their karma bc she's obvs so pure and right and ppl just hate to see a woman win yada yada like yes sexism is real but taylor swift is THEEEEEE face of white feminism lmao not once have i seen her take a stance that isn't directly about her