#how mainstream was it because this was my childhood

[aceforwhatevenisthis]

you: i want more ghost files! me: quiet, we have ghost files at home ghost files at home:

[cookinguptales]

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

[lizbetlovesbyler]

my biggest personal byler proof is just how much they remind me of my first queer relationship before we started dating

queer characters are incredibly easy to fuck over, even without intention. often spelled out or intensely sexualised to prevent misunderstandings for a mostly heterosexual audience, queer storylines are exaggerated and thus become unrealistic.

stranger things doesn’t do that with its queer characters. take robin:

this scene is done beautifully. genuinely beautifully.

robin admits her feelings for tammy and how she locked them away, not just because tammy didn’t like her back, but because she is a queer girl in the 80s. her feelings are unnatural and unwelcome in hawkins.

steve’s acceptance of robin in this scene makes people forget how horrifically this could have ended:

As for Mike and Will

you don’t write a perfect representation of mutual teenage queer pining between childhood friends by accident.

queer pining is quiet and suppressed (especially for young people and ESPECIALLY in the 80s). It is unhealthy to suppress these feelings the way queer people tend to, it’s beyond the typical “secret crushes” straight people experience. queer pining can destroy people when they’re not supported.

through robins character, and wills arc in season four, we can see clearly the duffer brothers understand the nature of queer love, and wish to do it justice.

will ending up with some random last minute jock is unrealistic and does not do his character justice.

mike staying in an insecure relationship, constantly worried his girlfriend will grow out of him and leave him, rather than accepting will’s unconditional love for him, accepting his own love for will and letting himself be who he is, does not do his character justice.

even so, if they tried to set up byler in a way that would come across clear to the GA, it would, by default, become unrealistic and unrepresentative.

neither are yet able to admit to close friends and family they are queer, but they are supposed to convey that part of themselves to an (understandably) dense/heteronormative mainstream audience?

queer teenage love is not the same as straight teenage love, it doesn’t shock me that the majority of the audience isn’t able to pick up on byler beyond wills feelings, and they’re not supposed to.

we all say what we see, they don’t see the queer love brewing because they’ve never experienced it, they’ve never been mike and they’ve never been will. they’ve been max and lucas and nancy, steve, jonathan, etc etc

doesn’t make their heteronormative perspective accurate, they are just straight. they understand will and mike the same they do lucas and dustin. mike says they are friends, they have no reason to think otherwise. they do not know what queer love actually looks like, the duffer brothers do. the actors do. we do.

you are not delusional. you are queer.

if byler was widely agreed upon at this point in the story, it would not be an accurate representation of queer romance. that is the point.

my moneys on the latter and they better get every award for it.

[mermazeablaze]

This video is doing numbers on TikTok, but I wanted to share it here because I am so proud. The man being featured is my uncle Steve Smith.

Steve has been building drag racers & custom cars his entire life.

My grandma before passing away would tell the story of how when he was 10 or 11 years old - she came home to him taking apart the engine in her secondary vehicle (reserved for fancy outings).

She asked him why & he said he wanted to know how it worked outside of a schematic. & she told him that as long as he put it back together the way he found it, it was fine by her. & what's more - he put it back together from memory without even looking at a diagram!

If anything went wrong with the car, my grandma had him fix the car & it was that way until my grandma passed away. She never paid for a mechanic in her life again.

When Steve was a teenager he spent most of his time at the OKC Racetrack & raced with drag racers he built himself.

Also, as a teen he won the Bethany, OK wheelie championship by riding over a mile nonstop on his motorcycle on a single wheelie position.

All throughout my childhood he always had cars around in various stages of fixing up.

The city of Bethany refused to sell him the property next to his house to open his own auto garage. He had worked for Diffee Motors most of my life up until then. So he moved out in the country & opened his own garage.

Steve has been on several mainstream auto shows being featured for his custom work. He also built a custom car for one of the guys on Duck Dynasty. He was also offered a permanent role on an auto TV show, but he turned it down because it required moving out of state.

My uncle Steve is one of the sweetest, kindest & most generous people you will ever meet in your lifetime. He's as smart as a whip, has never met a stranger & gives the best hugs!

It just makes me so happy to see him getting the recognition he deserves.

The picture below is of him at a family function sitting next to his wife, Nancy.

[hyperlexichypatia]

This post reminded me of it, but my partner has observed that in contemporary gender discourse, maleness is so linked to adulthood and femaleness is so linked to childhood, that there are no "boys" or "women," only "men" and "girls."

This isn't exactly new -- for as long as patriarchy has existed, women have been infantilized, and "adult woman" has been treated as something of an oxymoron. Hegemonic beauty standards for women emphasize youthfulness, if not actual neoteny, and older women are considered "too old" to be attractive without ever quite being old enough to make their own decisions. There may be cultural allowances for the occasional older "wise woman," but a "wise woman" is always dangerously close to being a madwoman, or a witch. No matter how wise a woman is, she is never quite a rational agent. As Hanna K put it, "as a woman you're always either too young or too old for things, because the perfect age is when you're a man."

But the framing of underage boys as "men" has shifted, depending on popular conceptualizations of childhood and gender roles. Sometimes children of any gender are essentially feminized and grouped with women (the entire framing of "women and children" as a category). In the U.S. in the 21st century, the rise of men's rights and aggressively sexist ideology has correlated with an increased emphasis on little boys as "men" -- thus slogans like "Teach your son to be a man before his teacher teaches him to be a woman."

Of course, thanks to ageism and patriarchy (which literally means, not "rule by men," but "rule by fathers"), boys don't get any of the social benefits of being considered "men." They don't get to vote, make their own medical decisions, or have any of their own adult rights. They might have a little more childhood freedom than girls, if they're presumed to be sturdier and less vulnerable to "predators," but, for the most part, being considered "men" as young boys doesn't really get boys any more access to adult rights. What it does get them is aggressively gender-policed, often with violence. A little boy being "a man" means that he's not allowed to wear colors, have feelings, or experience the developmental stages of childhood.

This shifts in young adulthood, as boys forced into the role of "manhood" become actual men. As I've written about, I believe the trend of considering young adults "children" is harmful to everyone, but primarily to young women, young queer and trans people, and young disabled people. Abled, cisgender, heterosexual young men are rarely denied the rights and autonomy of adulthood due to "brain maturity."

What's particularly interesting is that, because transphobes misgender trans people as their birth-assigned genders, they constantly frame trans girls as "men" and trans men as "girls." A 10 year old trans girl on her elementary school soccer team is a "MAN using MAN STRENGTH on helpless GIRLS," while a 40 year old trans man is a "Poor confused little girl." Anyone assigned male at birth is born a scary, intimidating adult, while anyone female assigned at birth never becomes old enough to make xyr own decisions.

Feminist responses have also really fluctuated. Occasionally, feminists have played into the idea of little boys as "men," especially in trans-exclusionary rhetoric, or in one notorious case where members of a women's separatist compound were warned about "a man" who turned out to be a 6-month-old infant. There's periodic discourse around "Empowering our girls" or "Raising our boys with gentle masculinity," but for the most part, my problem with mainstream feminist rhetoric in general is that it tends to frame children solely as a labor imposed on women by men, not as subjects (and specifically, as an oppressed class) at all.

Second-wave feminists pushed back hard on calling adult women "girls" -- but they didn't necessarily view "women" as capable of autonomous decision-making, either. Adult women were women, but they might still need to be protected from their own false consciousness. As laws in the U.S., around medical privacy and autonomy, like HIPAA, started more firmly linking the concepts of autonomy with legal adulthood, and fixing the age of majority at 18, third-wave feminists embraced referring to women as "girls." Sometimes this was in an intentionally empowering way ("girl power," "girl boss"), which also served to shield women (mostly white, mostly bourgeois/wealthy) from criticism of their participation in racism and capitalism. But it also served to reinforce the narrative of women as "girls" needing to be protected from "men" (and their own choices).

I'm still hoping for a feminist politic that is pro-child, pro-youth, pro-disability, pro-autonomy, pro-equality, that rejects the infantilization of women, the adultification of boys, the objectification of children, the misgendering of trans people, and the imposition of gender roles.

[genericpuff]

Hi! So this is coming from a place of genuine concern, LR Persephone isn't going to have DID right? I know you probably can't reveal much but DID is already a very stigmatized disorder so I'm always worried when I see the Signs, I hope you understand lol

I understand fully your concerns, and I hope I can reassure you in my own intentions regarding Kore / Persephone that the goal is not to demonize or stigmatize DID in any way. I actually do regularly interact with a family member who's currently seeking an official diagnosis for it, and have my own firsthand experiences with my own mental health and symptoms of childhood trauma that are intersectional with that of DID. Of course, that doesn't mean that I'm immune to stigmatizing, but rest assured that I am aware of the stigmas surrounding DID and the misconceptions that a lot of people have about it, no thanks to how it's been portrayed in mainstream media.

If I can add some additional and necessary context as to why I chose to write Kore like this, much of how I'm writing her is based on how she was initially presented to us in S1 of LO, particularly through the personification of her wrath:

I really liked this concept and was subsequently disappointed when it seemed to get left behind (though considering how LO turned out, maybe that was for the better lmao) I've always enjoyed these "inner conflict" character dynamics, but I also understand from years of writing characters like this that much of these types of tropes are often intersectional with common misconceptions and stigmas surrounding personality disorders and mental illness.

Within the context of Rekindled, Kore does not specifically have DID but her experiences are clearly intersectional with it. Ultimately my goal is to empathize, not demonize. As much as "Persephone" may be currently presenting herself as a sort of snarky "alter ego" of Kore, she is not evil, no more "evil" than Kore herself, because they're ultimately of the same mind and body, flaws and all. Persephone is often speaking truths that Kore is simply not willing to admit or able to face, the worst of which we've yet to uncover, but will be necessary to overcome. There will certainly be times when Kore's actions - spurred on by the voice of Persephone in her ear - may be ugly or wrong, but I hope in the end that I'll achieve my goal in expressing that everyone - even immortal gods - can always have another chance to heal, to forgive themselves for their past, and to do right by themselves for the sake of a brighter future. This will apply to other gods in the story as well, many of whom also share Kore's struggles and experiences.

And, assuming I do my part and deliver on my promises, there will be closure for Kore/Persephone, the readers who relate to their struggles and experiences, and many of the other characters who were hung out to dry in the original comic. That's definitely one of my biggest goals with this retelling, at least! (•̀ᴗ•́)و It's definitely one of my riskier moves as the nature of the subject is very sensitive, but I'm giving it my all in the hopes that it pays off in a more nuanced and in-depth character arc for Kore/Persephone than what we got in LO that can hopefully be embraced as a message of acceptance and self-love. And y'all can hold me to that (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

[moonbyulsstuff]

Hi, could you please write a Dg, Jaeha and Sikyung x male! Reader who is androgynous, (he has an alt style) the reader always looks bored and cold but when you know him he is very affectionate and sweet, I hope I don't bother you and I really like what you do, thank you very much for your work 💙

Male Reader Who's Androgynous and Has an Alternate Style Headcanons.

Male Reader.

Requested.

Request Rules.

Masterlist.

I don't know if you want it headcanons or scenarios so I made it headcanons instead. I tried my best to mention the alt style and the reader being androgynous, I'm sorry if I did bad. And I don't know if you mean androgynous by physical characteristic or emotional but I did physical.

Jaeha Han:

You two were childhood friends as far as Jaeha could remember.

Due to your looks of looking like a boy and a girl, you were the target of bullying back in kindergarten.

Ever since the 1st day, you were constantly teased. You hated going to kindergarten.

But it all changed thanks to Jaeha, though he was one of the kids that constantly teased you about your looks. You were only one of the kids that didn't break the promise of playing with him.

He had a reputation of beating up the other kids if they ever broke a promise with him.

But you were the only one who didn't break that promise.

So, Jaeha has been protecting you from the other kids.

And that's how your relationship was until middle school when Jaeha had a revelation of going through the realization that he had a crush on you.

Especially when you started dressing in a way that was called alternate style, outfits that aren't on the main stream.

You looked hot and Jaeha never thought of being interested in another boy, but oh boy, ever since you started dressing that way.

It awakened his gay side of him.

Jaeha was overprotective of you, especially since you started to look handsome or beautiful.

Like you could pass of as a girl and you would still have girls falling over you.

And especially with your attitude of not caring a damn but you actually do, it just made girls and some boys attracted to you.

Jaeha didn't like that, so he constantly had a wall surrounded you whenever someone shows an inkling of interest in you.

And it got amplified when you two started dating.

It was clear as day that Jaeha was overprotective of you.

But you didn't mind since it wasn't overbearing and Jaeha tried to make sure that he didn't go overboard.

He always admired the outfits you put on, and always accompanied you whenever you go out shopping for new outfits.

And he protected you like always whenever someone mentions your look.

Diego Kang (DG):

Diego thought you were a woman at first when he first saw your photo for a song collab.

But he was completely wrong when you showed up, the deep voice was obvious that you were a man.

But the way you look made him think you were a girl.

You were a popular idol but Diego never really took a 2nd closer look, your songs were beautiful and you had a large fan base.

And he could tell why.

Not just with your look, the way you present yourself too.

Most idols follow whatever is trendy but for you, you don't follow those trends.

You make your own, and that is best resulted in your style.

Your outfits were what makes you stand out from the rest of the idols.

You dressed in your own style, in a way that South Korea mainstream wasn't used to.

But you caught Diego interest, the way you just didn't seem to care at all.

Bored look on every photo and photoshoot, not interested at the tiny bit at whatever was happening around you.

You seemed cold and uninterested.

The only reason why you worked with Diego was because your manager told you so.

You weren't a big fan of the mainstream k-songs, and Diego just fit right into the mainstream.

But you sucked it up because your manager told you so.

And to your surprise, you two worked perfectly well. Diego didn't care much too, and just what is best for him and in his own interest.

So when the news of you two having a collab broke out, fans were sorta mixed.

They felt excited and happy while others felt it was abrupted for two musicians from different genre to collab.

While you two worked on the music, you two grew to know more of each other.

Diego could see even if you looked cold and bored, being nonchalant. You do care, you care deeply.

You were kind, and caring to other people.

You made music for the people and always encourage people who have different tastes to embrace themselves.

You two spent so much time with each other to the point, Diego doesn't even notice that whenever he thinks of you. A smile appear on his face.

And he doesn't notice it until someone points it out.

Maybe he had a grown close to you...

Ryu Sikyung:

He didn't think someone could actually have physical attributes of both genders.

That was until he saw you.

You were a man but you have both attributes of both gender, Sikyung never really thought it was true but here you were.

You were an evidence to Sikyung that people like you do exist after all.

It always amazed him, so when he first saw you. He began to constantly follow you, asking you questions.

It always annoyed you since he followed you everywhere you go.

And always asking you about your weird outfits.

You were a weirdo in his words, having both physical of a man and woman and dressing "weirdly".

It was like having a parrot follow you, asking the same questions over and over again.

But you slowly got used to it and just ignore him like he's a ghost.

And Sikyung slowly started to get used to seeing you dress "weirdly".

In fact, he started to anticipate what outfit you would wear each day.

He began to like to see what outfit you would wear today, tomorrow and the next day.

In fact, he even gifted you outfits he knew you would love.

It's not like you two are dating or anything, cough though he catches feelings for you and he realized that faster before anyone else cough.

He was in shock but quickly got over it and accepted when he realized he has feelings for a boy, and that was you.

He can't deny it, it's the truth after all.

And it's the truth he doesn't want to hide.

[fish-in-need-of-a-bicycle]

I’m gonna repost this because I want more people to check my work. This is my racial development model for Ashkenazim, which I made for my child development class after learning about racial identity models that psychologists have made to show stages that people tend to pass through as they learn about their racial and ethnic background.

So, Jumblr, tell me what you think!

[ID: Infographic titled, “Ashkenazi Jewish Identity Model”. A bubble says, “White Identification”, with a paragraph saying, “Starting in childhood, the individual begins to notice racial features and identify themselves as white. Even when not necessarily passing as white, the individual sees that other community members who they identify with do pass as white and that they themselves don’t easily fall into other categories”. An arrow points down to the next bubble that says, “Exclusion Realization” with the paragraph, “The individual starts to see that white groups reject either their culture or ethnicity as not white. This can occur a number of ways, including exposure to hate crimes or through noticing how intertwined whiteness and Christianity are.” An arrow points down to the next bubble that says, “Racial Framework Conflict” with the paragraph, “Usually beginning in adolescence, the individual realizes they do not benefit from the full privileges of whiteness but are instructed by society to identify as white. They have similar experiences to other marginalized groups but are rejected by them as a privileged class. They want to learn about social justice and white privilege, but struggle to reconcile how their experience does not align with whiteness. The individual seeks to move into one of the next phases to resolve feelings of isolation, mis-fitting, and cognitive dissonance.” An arrow points to a triangle where the corners are labeled “Identification”, “Assimilation”, and “Insulation”. Next to Identification is a paragraph that says, “The individual embraces and takes pride in Jewish culture and resilience, possibly becoming more observant. They see themselves as being in a unique position to add nuance to discussions of identity. They feel assured in their values, even if those values are shared by people who reject them. They are conscious of the present dangers of antisemitism but remain confident in the continuation of their people”. Next to Assimilation, it says, “The individual rejects aspects of their Jewish identity to find belonging in a part of mainstream society, such as a political group. Their acceptance by the group is precarious and may be contingent on denouncing Judaism or maintaining the label so they can be tokenized”. Next to Insulation, it says, “The individual concludes that the Racial Framework Conflict is a consequence of there being no place in mainstream society for them. They take comfort in their Jewish community and may become more observant. They may catastrophize as a way to mentally prepare for rising antisemitism. They disengage from any political or activist spaces that discuss racial or ethnic identity”.

Extra visual details, feel free to skip: The “White Identification”, “Exclusion Realization”, and “Racial Framework Conflict” are light gray. The triangle has a horizontal color gradation from purple to blue to green. The corner labels are in bubbles that are the same color as the corner. “Assimilation” is purple, “Insulation” is green, and “Identification” is blue. There is a light blue-gray diagonal watermark saying, “fish-in-need-of-a-bicycle”.]

[mx-pokirby]

Alright, let's get pretentious.

I've come to start resenting those super popular Mario 64 hacks as of late, like B3313, the multiplayer mod, Mario 64 with Shotgun.

People came out of the woodworks making videos and articles about them, and I kinda hate how those are now "the mainstream", relatively speaking.

And it also sucks because they're all great hacks! But the fact that that if you asked most (relevant) people to think of what a Mario 64 hack is, it's either just the base vanilla game "with a wacky YouTube Content-y™ Twist" and/or within the ballpark of just creepypasta (/derogatory)/beta content.

Aside from Star Road back in 2011, which while groundbreaking had some pretty mixed design, the general online populous who even still cares about Mario 64 have no idea about the game's entire massive & passionate modding scene, full of incredible and original standalone experiences, both in gameplay and narrative, for free.

Elise, a beautiful Yume Nikki-like with cutscenes and voice acting, borrowing the base game's sense of exploration as a jumping off point.

SM64 Kingdom's End, a genuinely haunting story about Mario struggling until the last moment to save a dying world.

Mario Party 64, our childhood dream of wishing we could play in the boards & minigames of Mario Party like an actual platformer brought to life.

Detective Mario: Murder on Ice, mapping the genre of text-based murder mystery (complete with typing in commands) into a 3D Mario level with surprising twists and required deduction skills.

Mario breaks EVERY BONE IN HIS BODY (case sensitive), a hilarious Monkey Ball-like

Ceaseless Climb, exploring a tricky, warped reality beyond the game's infamous Infinite Staircase

My Dress-Up Darling 64 which, and I quote from the game's Romhacking.com page's description, "being the first hack to use HVQM full-motion video"

There's rhythm games, Zelda-likes, horror games, shitposts, puzzlers, slide hacks, what-ifs, massive collabs, the absurdly sized Star Revenge *series*, huge hacking competitions with cash prizes and often dozens/hundreds of submissions meant to incentivize newcomers to try, Mario slips on a banana peel and fucking dies 64, and literally hundreds more I could name

I'm just really passionate about this little niche internet community, and I'm sad it only got the thinnest spotlight once a tiny piece of it ended up being profitable for content creators. There's so much more than what most people see.

Besides. It's free video games; Surely that alone makes it worth checking out, right...? Everything is suuuper accessible/user-friendly nowadays~

[saintsenara]

hi ive been reading your delicious hp meta and in particular how voldemort has so much catholic theming as a villain and character in part due to the authors own views on religion. i was wondering your thoughts on a trend ive noticed in fic that makes this idea explicit by making wools a catholic institution or at least tying it closely to one. its an idea that i see the appeal of but to me always reads as a bit split from the historical context, that a broad london orphanage in the 20s would be catholic as opposed to anglican. as a yank it feels more like an association we would make, orphanage = run by nuns, because that was the situation here vs. an actual look on the plausibility of voldemorts own history with religion

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

i promise i will one day write the "lord voldemort and religion" meta i've had multiple requests for, but on this specific question...

i also like to headcanon the orphanage as a catholic one, because i'm irish, and so the image i have in my head when i think of poor merope staggering through the doors to give birth and to die is of the laundries and the other institutions - including orphanages - which were woven into their web.

as headcanons go, it's not really justifiable on the basis of what we find in canon - mrs cole is very much not a nun, and the description of the orphanage is clearly intended to make it sound like a state run one, which would mean it was a church of england institution [there being no separation of church and state in the united kingdom] and lord voldemort therefore raised in a sort of compulsory, bland, low-church protestantism.

[which, i think it's also worth saying, mrs cole's canon portrayal very much implies. i never really vibe with interpretations of voldemort's childhood which have him being accused of demonic possession and the like - this is really not something you'd expect to find in mainstream swathes of the 1930s church of england. the mrs cole we meet in half-blood prince is someone who is clearly doing everything she can to disavow any supernatural explanation for tom's magic, and this is definitely c of e of her...]

but there were catholic orphanages in the uk during the 1920s and 1930s [which would still be able to claim some degree of state involvement]. east london - which had a large irish population - would be a reasonable setting for one. mrs cole could presumably be a layperson on the payroll because the nuns didn't want to deal with the orphans themselves...

[morlock-holmes]

Part of my confusion about "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria" is that it's really just... not a good term? It doesn't really reflect what it's supposed to, which is the idea that some teenagers essentially take on a trans identity as a sort of social role spurred on by friend groups.

I think that this is likely to be actually true in at least some sense, so I was amazed at how unconvincing the Littman paper which coined the term actually is. The parental narratives advanced in that paper are just unbelievable on their face.

Ever since the gay rights movement I've felt that our vocabulary for talking about this stuff is deliberately incredibly stupid, for reasons I haven't quite been able to suss out.

In the gay rights battles, everybody got together and agreed that there were exactly two possibilities:

Gay people are born that way

Gay people made a choice to be gay

I think this is really dumb because those are really obviously not the only two options, and also because there's lots of biological "born this way" things we still treat or try to eliminate, and lots of choices that are still incredibly important to protect.

But also, like, okay, think about sexual fetishes. Say you have a guy with a cheerleader fetish. Cheerleaders are a contingent social phenomenon; no 12th century Breton had a cheerleader fetish. The possibility of such a fetish arose with the invention of the cheerleader.

But it's just as obvious that people do not choose their fetishes the way that they choose, say, a new car. Nobody says, "After listing out the pros and cons, I felt that having a cheerleader fetish was the best choice, because it combines a little bit of exotic spice while still being mainstream enough that it can't be used as blackmail if people find out about it."

No, one day you just realize that you think cheerleaders are really hot.

I do tend to think that gender identity is, for most people, a lot less immediately set in stone than sexual orientation is. My personal impression is that the vast majority of people start to understand very quickly whether they are attracted to men, women, or both, and that they only tell themselves differently because they fear social censure.

I'm not really convinced that the same is true of gender identity; I think that for an extremely large number of people it does function a bit more like a fetish, in that there are people who encounter the idea for the first time, go, "Huh, yeah that's cool or whatever" and after repeated encounters come to think, "Actually I am really into this."

I'm very, very suspicious of the tendency to then assert that this must inherently, then, be a discovery of something that always existed within the person since birth.

There's also the fact that gender roles exist, and people want to be legible to people around them.

For a lot of people, dressing up as a vampire on Halloween is fun, but dressing up as a vampire to go grocery shopping in June would be deeply embarrassing. Because on Halloween all the people around you understand why you're dressed that way and your dress makes you part of a larger social whole; in June you're going against the grain, marking yourself out from the people around you, probably drawing stares and hidden smiles.

Because sex roles in our society are so set in stone, there is a certain extreme dissatisfaction with not following them, even when allowed to do so.

I can wear chokers and frills and pretty hair ribbons if I want, but the women around me can do that anywhere in the country and have people think of it as normal, as obvious, rather than *a statement*.

Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, from reading the Littman paper, seems to refer to a parental conviction that their child essentially got the idea to be trans from a peer group who convinced them they were trans despite a lack of gender dysphoria in childhood.

Like I said, the general narrative is really, really hard to believe at face value, for example:

A total of 63.8% of the parents have been called “transphobic” or “bigoted” by their children for one or more reasons, the most common being for: disagreeing with the child about the child’s self-assessment of being transgender (51.2%); recommending that the child take more time to figure out if their feelings of gender dysphoria persist or go away (44.6%); expressing concerns for the child’s future if they take hormones and/or have surgery (40.4%); calling their child by the pronouns they used to use (37.9%); telling the child they thought that hormones or surgery would not help them (37.5%); recommending that their child work on other mental health issues first to determine if they are the cause of the dysphoria (33.3%); calling the child by their birth name (33.3%); or recommending a comprehensive mental health evaluation before starting hormones and/or surgery (20.8%)

So, like, the whole tenor of the paper is that these are basically very liberal parents who are sort of being cut off by their kids for no reason, but like...

This is typical of the general weasel wording used by Littman. Are the third of parents who called their kids by pronouns they used to use going, "She - Oops, he, I'm sorry" one time and getting blasted? Do they claim to be trying but just get it wrong literally every single time? Or do they just flat out refuse to call their child by their preferred pronouns?

When my brother was first entering high school, he joined the Sea Scouts, a division of the Boy Scouts dedicated to learning about sailing. He later entered a maritime college and has had a succession of maritime jobs, which will likely be his career for the rest of his life.

Is that the result of social contagion or was he born that way?

I think the question is obviously both absurd and irrelevant.

[sysmedsaresexist]

do you mind elaborating on why endogenic plurality cannot present as a CDD when exposed to extensive trauma?

like, i can see why an endogenic plural facing extensive trauma in adulthood wouldnt, however if someone was a system by age 9 with no childhood trauma and then faced severe bullying from teachers/peers with minimal support from parents could that not cause dissociative symptoms to affect their system?

i agree on using resources that help you, and i firmly believe that no resources for trauma should be blocked behind syscourse/other discourse labels, but im still struggling to understand how if endogenic plurality presents as a CDD why it would be classified as one

I want to answer this very simply, but I really want you to come back and reply! I know my response isn't the right answer.

I really want this to open some (hopefully) beneficial dialogue!

Before I answer, I want to reiterate that I am doing my best to learn about self identification and determination and how to respect it, and I can only do that by talking to people and hearing about their experiences.

Let's all have a good, healthy conversation!

So.

I disagree that 9 is the cutoff age. There are doctors that think it goes to 16! Personally, I think it's 12 based on my own research.

I think the question also ignores the important point of other conditions someone has. Autism is well known to make people struggle with their sense of self and shifting facets. ADHD and OCD do the same. The reason I bring those up is to point out that those struggling with various disorders in childhood are much more likely to experience trauma reactions in situations that are only stressful for other children without those disorders.

In addition, disorganized attachment becomes much more likely if the parents and teachers aren't properly equipped to handle those developmental disorders, or if they're not recognized early enough (reminder, disorganized attachment has been found to be the biggest predictor of CDDs).

My question to you is, if you have childhood trauma within the supposed cut-off age, why aren't you just a CDD system?

If endogenic plurality presents as a CDD in childhood/early teens, why isn't it just a CDD?

How can you be sure it's not a CDD? How do you judge your own levels of traumatizion? How important is that distinction? Why is it important? Does denial play a factor? What are the benefits to this type of identification?

--

Okay I lied, not so simple. Just to encourage discussion, I think I struggle with this because of the idea of the brain scans. This type of technology may never be used mainstream, but it does bring up the question of... if an endogenic system has childhood trauma and believes it's unrelated, but the brain structure is the same as someone with DID...

I'll leave it there.

I really want to see both sides' opinions on this!

[artist-issues]

What other movies has chris sanders done? (Also- watched Wild Robot. It was phenomenal)

If I have my timeline right, he worked in some capacity on each Disney movie during and after "The Rescuers Down Under." I know he made big contributions to Beauty & the Beast, The Lion King, and Mulan...but his big one, the one he came up with and wrote and directed and did the storyboarding and voices for, was Lilo & Stitch.

I know he left Disney because he was working on Bolt, directing it, and it was too zany and out of pocket and they wanted to go a different direction, so they gave the project to Byron Howard (who also did Tangled, Zootopia...he's great too.) So then Chris Sanders left Disney

AND WENT TO DREAMWORKS, where he directed How to Train Your Dragon (the first and best one) and then The Croods, and now The Wild Robot.

I'm told he also directed Disney's CGI-Live-Action adaptation of The Call of the Wild on Disney+ here recently, but I never watched that because I don't think Chris Sanders' storytelling style lends itself to such a savage story and the "weird mirage of maturity" people expect to come with "Live Action." So I was afraid watching it would taint my love for The Call of the Wild, AND force me to watch Chris Sanders bent out of his natural habitat.

But maybe it's good, and I'm wrong, I haven't heard much about it.

Then he did The Wild Robot!

I don't know if that is a good official list—you can also check out his IMDB page—but to my knowledge he doesn't really miss.

I mean. To give you an idea.

If Lilo & Stitch isn't impressive enough for you? Please consider that the scenes Chris Sanders came up with were "Simba meets Mufasa's ghost" and "The Beast dies" and "Mulan jumps across the fence posts instead of walking on the bridge because she always has her own creative way of doing things."

And he conceptualized Timon like this:

which has nothing to do with anything but like. look at him.

If people considered animation directors with as much mainstream limelight as they do live-action films, Chris Sanders' body of work would place him next to like, James Cameron, Stephen Spielberg, those sorts of guys. But as it is he's just the cackling genius behind a huge and memorable chunk of our childhoods and nobody knows it.

[whatbigotspost]

What I wish I could get people who didn’t grow up in highly controlled, abusive environments to understand is that when the very people who are forming you are really fucked up and bad, you are FULLY incapable of knowing that as a kid.

You’re not capable of “damn my dad is really not ok” or “mom is toxic” for a long time. It’s years and years of “this is life. That is my dad. That’s my mom. It’s just how it is.” It often takes PAINFUL moments of realization to get to even questioning if your life isn’t normal. In fact, in my experience, it takes many painful moments to eventually get you there. Someone at school making fun of your parents, for example. Or some outside caring adult noticing things they seem worried about w/ you. Or a particularly extreme incident of abuse that shakes you. Or reading/hearing someone recount abuse they survived and you get the sick realization it’s like a mirror for you.

When your primary caregivers are your means of survival, your brain wraps you in many many many protective layers of denial and whatever the fuck else it needs to so that you can get through it. Many folks like myself will spend more time healing ourselves as adults from our childhood than we spent in the childhood of trauma itself.

Also, let’s be real, an implication I’m making here is that a lot of folks don’t even pick at the thread of “was I abused?” because it’s too overwhelming all together. Or even “was my childhood kinda fucked up?”

Spoiler alert. If your childhood was kinda fucked up, it’s better, in the long run, to acknowledge and address that. Anyway, this is my characteristically long winded way of wanting to recommend some books on the subject that I have found deeply relatable and meaningful:

•Jeanette McCrurdy’s memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died: If you’d be up for an unflinching look at a deeply difficult childhood that includes physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and neglect and disordered eating in the Disney-universe, this is your read. Thinking about what McCurdy has had to overcome chills me to my core but the feelings she shares in words felt deeply relatable and I know they will help many.

•Ashley Ford’s memoir Somebody’s Daughter: I’m biased to love her because she’s a fellow Hoosier but you will love her too. Incredibly well written and deeply moving, Ford’s memoir covers her childhood with an abusive mother, a father in jail for rape, and survivorship of her own rape, as well as her place thriving now. She offers us such meaningful processing of her story. (And just writing style wise, this one is a mega fave.)

•Grace Cho’s memoir Tastes Like War: this one is a deep dive into Cho’s upbringing with a mother (who like one of my parents) has schizophrenia. I found her account of having a first hand seat to a parent’s mental health decline too relatable. The components of her story that focus on her mom’s experience of war and immigrating from Korea and the role that Korean food plays in their lives, are moving beyond words.

•Tara Westover’s memoir Educated: having been raised in a very isolated, survivalist Mormon family and tiny community in Idaho, Westover shares her personal story of a quest for escape and education. Although my family was nowhere nearly so unusual and isolated as Westover’s, I feel what she chronicles will highly resonate with anyone raised by someone who seeks to keep you away from “mainstream influences” or who is any level of survivalist.

Obviously, these are heavy reads and DO NOT check them out if you don’t feel in the right headspace. Each one moved me to tears multiple times. But if your awful/strange childhood and leaving it (them) behind makes you feel alone trust me YOU ARE NOT ALONE ❤️

I also recommend these reads for anyone who wants to see at an anecdotal level what are experiences of people raised in highly abusive environments and/or raised by parents struggling with mental illnesses and/or people raised in high control situations. Chances are you know/love someone who fits that description and you may gain helpful insights.

[starrycassi]

I think a lot of young queers folks (like me. Not trying to be all elderly about this I'm literally a gen z) today need to watch the good oldies about our community.

⚠️: I don't mean, in any way shape or form to insult the newer queer shows/movies. I love SPOP. I love TOH. I read and loved Heart stopper. However, because of the restraint of mainstream media, they have a very... palatable?? way to portray the community. I am NOT blaming the creators (who I'm sure would love to go a bit further down on their portrayals if given the option)

SO! I have nice recommendations that I, personally, enjoy a lot. They're in no particular order.

A classic, for starters. But I'm a cheerleader!: Very campy, barbie-y, funny and free on YouTube. A cheerleader is sent to a conversation camp when her social circle realizes that she might be into girls. (It has a very unrealistic portrayal of conversation camps, though. Very cartoony) my comfort movie fr fr

Priscilla, queen of the desert: A trio of drag queens travel across the desert on a big, old bus. They fight, there's some falling in love. They talk a lot about gender identity, queer childhoods and similar topics. I've only been able to find this one (and most of the ones on this list, since I don't have any streaming devices) on illegal websites. There's very, very direct homophobia, SA, physical abuse, child neglect, yk, the American dream. The queens are the funnier thing ever, the romance plotlines are absolutely delightful and well-rounded. Focuses a bit more on the community itself and interpersonal relationships. All around, a solid 10/10.

Kinky boots: A very prude, engaged man inherits a shoe fabric. He's running out of ideas to stay in business, until he meets a drag queen. Same warnings (and themes!) as the last one. This one has a stronger focus on how the characters become more accepting and how our queen navigates being faced with them. I've rewatched it like a hundred times.

The birdcage (2000's) or le cauge aux folles (1970'): A gay couple runs a drag club. Their son brings home a conservative girlfriend and her family. This is more comedy lenient, but funny as fuck nonetheless.

Paris is burning: this one is a documentary, btw. Focuses on the life of drag queens in the 80's. Nothing I didn't already say on Priscilla tbh.

Saving face: A chinese-american girl that lives in a VERY conservatory and secluded community is trying (and failing) not to fall in love with a ballerina. At the same time, her mother (a widow, how scandalous!) gets mysteriously pregnant and gets kicked out of their family home. This one will hit close to home if you're from any ethnic, homophobic household. Cried a lot. Then cried some more. Happy ending, though!

D.E.B.S: THIS IS THE FUNNIEST, CUTEST MOVIE EVER. It's a full on romance comedy for when the mind is a bit too tired! The main plot is that, in a school of girls being trained to be top-notch spies (very totally spies type) a girl who's the top of her class falls in love with the biggest villainess they ever faced. More of a coming of age thing, that also explores the good old dilemma of choosing what the hell you're supposed to do with your life once you turn 18 (relatable tbh)

And now, for a book (in Spanish, though) we have "Las Malas": Narrated by a trans, poor prostitute. Extremely realistic in its narrative voice, cruel and very hurtful sometimes. This is actually one of my favorite books ever, it's so fucking underrated that I'm going to die if no one reads it. There's EVERYTHING. It genuinely drives me crazy to read this. We have queer moms, a child found in a freezing park, suicides, literally anything happens. I love it.

If anyone has any suggestions PLEASE drop them. I'm begging u

[dandelionjack]

THE LEGEND OF RUBY SUNDAY ANTI-REVIEW, AKA: I WANT TO SCREAM. CAN I SCREAM. CAN I SCREAM REAL LOUD

well that was … depressing. might go and rewatch something from s1 or s4 or s5 or s8 or s10 to remember what good doctor who feels like. or listen to some big finish.

really thought that the VHS tape would be the truman show reveal. oh well. we all thought something. silly me, expecting complex postmodernist media critique from a disneyfied children’s show. this is my cue to go back to watching things intended for adults, i guess.

i’ll delve into why sutekh is a shitty villain to revive for the new era in my next post — this one’s just for moping.

when you’re autistic, realising that your special interest media will probably never be good again is like growing apart from a childhood friend. it’s a slow, nagging sense of grief and loss, however absurd that may sound. this show saved my life in november after i’d just dropped out of uni. that’s what i’ll remember it as. not… this marvel-ised lacklustre forgettable slop.

and please, don’t you dare put false words in my mouth. you all know how big of a doctor who fan i am. despite what the bigots, racists and homophobes say, it’s not the doctor being Black or openly queer or a woman that killed earnest enjoyment of the show. the openly progressive politics are actually one of the few remaining positives about it. no — what killed it is what killed every long lasting franchise: the inevitable enshittification of all mainstream tv, brought about by unregulated capitalism, a complete disregard for artistic expression in anything but independent/diy media. anything that’s funded by corpos such as disney inevitably turns into figurative capeshit (even if it’s not literally about superheroes, you know the semantic field i’m discussing when i bring up that word). not even a formerly brilliant screenwriter like russell t davies can avoid falling into the trap of becoming complacent. “family-friendly” suddenly means “safe, dull, predictable”. as if children’s minds can’t be challenged or unsettled. as if weird and outlandish art isn’t what children remember for their entire lives, forgetting the other, trite, generic TV they were shown.

casual audiences remember Blink long after watching it as kids because it was wild and experimental on a shoestring budget. it was like nothing else on TV. same with The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. the main issue with “series 1” (14) that i’m trying to express here is that, save two or three exceptions (73 Yards + to a lesser extent Boom and D&B), it is exactly like everything else on TV.

the only way out is to write our own worlds. fund them ourselves. cardboard, clingfilm and bubblewrap. that’s how doctor who used to be when it was funded by the BBC. that’s how it survived. whatever it’s trying to be now — well, that’s none of my business.

because business is all it’s become.