#how to tell me you don't even know who alison bechdel is or where this thing came from 'tHe bEchDEL TeSt jUsT PoLIcEs wOmEn Talking'

[lucienne-thee-librarian]

You can't just leave this in the tags, the point's too good!

Also gotta love how once it was ripped out of context, it got passed on to so many people who clearly didn't know shit about who the test was named after, because otherwise you'd think people would remember that Alison Bechdel (and Liz Wallace) were DYKES. Two lesbians who were dealing with literal crumbs of nothing in terms of representation, crumbs that make what we have today look like a sumptuous feast, via what started as a little jokey joke between pals.

Yes, let's all think very hard about the total mystery as to why these women might want women to have more meaningful conversations without a man. Let's think hard about this...oh, I know, the answer is FEMINISM!!!

And honestly?? I think it's a perfectly legitimate complaint for women to want more female characters who have connections of all kinds with each other, including platonic, just the way male characters get to. (And I kinda DO wish the people who bitch about it would ever get to the step of thinking for more than two seconds about what it says about modern media that this bar is so incredibly low, and STILL so few films pass it. That DOES say something meaningful, albeit accidentally, about the way women are portrayed as having no interior lives outside of their looks or a family/a man.)

But also like, ohhhh my god. Oh my fucking GODDDD y'all. Y'all sometimes it really is not that deep. Or at least it didn't start out that way. But it's like it really doesn't occur to people that lesbians are allowed to just fuck around and have jokes and ship things and have fun without our words being taken out of context and made into some Big Feminist Statement it was never originally intended to be.

you people will just. say anything

Keep reading

[arecomicsevengood]

My Favorite Thing Is Drawings

Got book two of Emil Ferris' My Favorite Thing Is Monsters out from the library yesterday. I read book one courtesy of the library too, and so did not necessarily remember all the finer details of the story, but was able to follow along pretty well. The reader is reminded of the basics up front. Ferris is an incredible artist, especially in color, able to capture painting-like effects of depth and texture through the crosshatching of colored pens, and it's always impressive. The thing that is weird about the book is that the most impressive images have basically nothing to do with the overall narrative: Images are copied from paintings in a museum, or from monster magazine covers. (It is possible the monster magazine covers might actually be Ferris' own designs, but within the context of the story they are copied images.) The main character is an artist, named Karen Reyes, narrating her life and telling her story, as well as the story of her family and other people that live in her apartment building, but there is almost a negative correlation between how important something is to the story and how much gusto she attacks it with. One important piece of backstory, once Karen learns it, is specifically described as being so upsetting that she has to draw it in a cartoon style rather than be overwhelmed by it. The book keeps going, chugging along, remaining compelling in its narrative. But then, the book's climax is not depicted at all, elided in a blackout of in-story head injury, as if setting up the story to be resolved in a third volume.

This last part is particularly bizarre or galling because the book is labeled as the conclusion of the story. Ferris and Fantagraphics were engaged in a legal battle after Book One became such a huge success - She made a shocking amount of money in royalties, but it seems like she was offered large advances for future books, and now has a contract with Pantheon for upcoming work, one of which is apparently a prequel to My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. But all of this is on some level besides the point when discussing the work itself. (Although I do think it's weird that reviews say the book ends on a cliffhanger rather than doesn't end. You get to a certain point in the reading when you realize the amount of pages left before the end is not enough to wrap everything up at the pacing the story has been told so far, and then you end up being basically correct.)

But what I think is interesting is, this book is blurbed by Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, and Alison Bechdel. I'm not tryinand g to offer a hot take where I say the book isn't good - it's quite clear why people would like it. I think one could make a case that this book is more like illustrated prose than comics, but on a certain level, who cares, why make rules when the work is effective. Still, there is a take, which I guess I associate with Sammy Harkham, although I don't know who would disagree, that the way a comic works is, you draw all the parts equally. You make everything as visually interesting as you can, even the boring parts. I haven't seen anyone make the case that Ferris' book is effective because the drawing is sometimes really impressive and other times perfunctory. People instead note that she can really draw, wow, you immediately realize when looking at the book that she can really draw, and then there's this story that's really compelling that pulls you through.

What I have seen though is plenty of people that like comics just not really care, not really engage with the work, given its level of success and price point, and the sort of maybe-resentment that animates a dismissal of "that doesn't seem like it's for me" when a comic hits with the NPR crowd. These people are perhaps not wrong: The book is based around a very specific set of formal specifications that make it unclear what Ferris could do if she didn't have Reyes as her narrating main character to excuse her indulgences and the things she gives short shift to. There is this sort of disjunct of values that emerges between the comics that are like by people who read maybe one comic a decade and one comic a day where maybe the latter would never peruse the comic the former had so enthusiastically recommended to them. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters doesn't need to be good comics in order to be a good book. But you can see in how it doesn't conclude that it still benefits from the expectations people come to comics with, that for all the novelistic structure employed in its nesting stories it is still deferring its conclusion like the soap opera of a classic comic strip or a superhero serial. Part of me loves that, that comics are so much about you living with them and the jokes and energy a drawing conveys that add up to a worldview that they don't need to cohere into a form that carries a conclusive third act. But I'm not seeing anyone make that case for Ferris specifically, the same way I'm not seeing argue that her approach to having the best drawings be narratively extraneous is what engages the reader. I'm just seeing enthusiastic critical hosannas, which the book itself can't quite deliver on, at least in terms of eliciting from me.

[mariamagdalenaposting]

Let's talk about genitalia

Crossposting my own essay from Reddit that I wrote for r/actuallesbians because why the hell not. Enjoy!

*****

Dear community,

Yesterday, I happened upon a post on here - that in the meantime, went down - by a trans woman asking the community the simple question whether they liked women with penises. I clicked on that post despite my experience telling me not to expecting the comment section to contain the usual flow of love and wholesomeness that this community shares. But I was disappointed.

After I blew off some steam yesterday I decided to share a few thoughts on the matter in the form of this small essay. It is not meant as a call out post, rather, I wanted to offer a fresh perspective on that topic that I hope all people on here, explicitly including cis lesbians, can benefit from. I am happy about feedback in the comments.

I am currently reading a book by the great Alison Bechdel - if that doesn't ring a bell, do look her up - that reminded me of a simple fact: The lesbian movement, at its inception - obviously distinct from lesbianism as a whole - offered the promise that it would not simply replicate heterosexual relationships, adapted for relationships of women towards other women. It would rather strive to develop something entirely new, so profoundly distinct from heterosexuality that lesbian love and lesbian desire would be recognized as clearly distinguished from heterosexual relationships.

In my limited experience, what that has meant for me on the part of desire has been recognizing that what comphet made me believe about desire was that desire sprang from the partial fulfillment of a fantasy by something that happened in reality. As it always is, recognizing that has not yet let me stop holding on to these fantasies. So I get it. Especially when I am starved for affection and when my need to experience pleasure and desire is not met, it is soothing to make the trip to wonderland. And all of us, from time to time, need soothing.

At the same time, I am grateful for another experience: That where expectations end, true desire reveals itself. When I let go of this search of my touches of an experience some fantasy told me would be there, I am free to turn my touches into an exploration. It is such an immense joy to experience the never ending diversity of a body in this way, over and over and over. And it is a profound expression of love to be cherished in this way.

I was lucky to get a whiff of what posibilities desire harbours and I hope that my life will continue in this exploration.

I think that it is natural for any exploration to come to a crossroads from time to time and to explore down one path but not the other. I even think it's an integral part of it; some of the joy of exploring comes from making a decision and seeing where it takes you. And no one can judge you for not being pac-(wo)man: You don't have to go down every path.

That brings me to the diversity of women's bodies. As I said, for me, it has been a bottomless well of joy to get to know very diverse women and their bodies and to overcome my preconceptions to meet on a much deeper level. But I would lie if I said I overcame every preconception I have. There are women who don't inspire desire in me. This area of unknown is a temptation for me to fall into one of two judgements: Either I, myself, am a bigot for not experiencing this desire which I know could be there. Or this person is undesirable.

It should have become clear how ridiculous both statements are. Yet at the same time, I fall into these judgements every day, because it is easier to have the false security of knowing everything than to let the unknown be. At the same time, letting the unknown be, in this case, is the only option to not unnecessarily hurt myself or others with my preconceptions. So this is what I strive for, and I invite everyone to do the same. As I said, the unknown can be your greatest friend when search turns into exploration. But i know that it sometimes just isn't.

That said it is time to return to yesterday's post and specifically the comment section under it. The sentiment I found there numerous times, repeated over and over, condenses to the following: "I don't like penises on women, but I am sure there are other lesbians who don't mind." This strongly resonated with my experience of the false alternatives I mentioned above: First, people told OP that they themselves didn't experience desire for penises so far, then, they went on to tell that the highest they thought other lesbians would go would be accepting penises, which is very different from desiring them.

At this point I want to remind everyone that it is typically not people asking these questions who are already very secure in their belief in their capacity to be desired. Transphobia tells trans people that their bodies are undesirable because they might not 100% conform with the phantasies we soothe ourselves with. The same, I have been taught by others, goes for racism, perisexism and ableism. That doesn't mean that these bodies don't fall victim to fetishization. I am talking about the same, unbound desire I was talking about above. As I said, I think it is natural to not explore every possibility; but telling someone who is possibly asking for reassurance that they are not desirable is a whole other deal. And I think we should all strive to refrain from that in the future.

I firmly believe that all our diverse bodies are beautiful and desirable and hold infinite treasures for those willing to explore. And this is the sentiment I want to spread in this community.

I mentioned it above, but I once again want to thank all the intersex-ed people that shared their experiences under yesterdays post. For me, a perisex person, these things are invaluable to hear. I want everyone who is not perisex, not white, not able-bodied, not cis, not ..., to feel encouraged to share their experiences below, in support or in criticism. (also true for tumblr!!)

[montdargent]

mid-year book freak out tag

thank you @pinkasrenzo for tagging me (? maybe accidentally? was it just a mention who knows)

1. Best Book You’ve Read So Far in 2023? The wee free men, by Terry Pratchett: witches, scottish fairies and a coming of age story set in the discworld universe. what's not to like? officially my new favourite discworld series

2. Best Sequel You’ve Read So Far in 2023? A hat full of sky, by Terry Pratchett: these are just excuses to talk about the tiffany aching series tbh. also granny weatherwax is back, so that's easy money

3. New Release You Haven’t Read Yet, But Want To? Deadly ever after (Rivers of London graphic novels), by Ben Aaronovitch: the rivers of london novels, novellas and short stories are not enough. i need to inhale these graphic novels too. i can't wait for chaotic river goddess twins shanenigans!

4. Most Anticipated Release For Second Half of 2023? The deep sky, by Yume Kitasei: not many anticipated releases for that time, but it was reccomanded to me and the synopsis sounds right up my alley

5. Biggest Disappointment? Leave the world behind, by Rumaan Alam: a cool premise but incredibly boring execution and not my preferred writing style. a disappointment mostly because it was so amped up

6. Biggest Surprise? No exit, by Taylor Adams: i'm not usually into thrillers, so i didn't have particularly high expectations. but it was really good at building tension, delivered a satisfying ending and had a badass final girl that was easy to root for

7. Favorite New Author? Alison Bechdel: read "Fun home" because a friend of mine wanted to show me the musical and fell in love with it. i can already tell why her works are considered queer classics and i plan to read everything i can find by her

8. Newest Favorite Character? Tiffany Aching: see point 2. most children protagonists fall a bit flat for me or they have at least a couple of moments where their actions or internal monologue feel just unauthentic. and then an adult british cis man writes a smart, lonely, strange little girl and he makes me feel like he knew my child-self better than most family members. and that's why i love terry pratchett (among many things) and why i would die and kill for tiffany aching. she is the one true heir of esme weatherwax and i can't wait to read more of her

9. Newest Fictional Crush? Jordan Baker (from The chosen and the beautiful by Nghi Vo): what can i say, i could never resist a bisexual brunette who was too smart for anyone's good and falls a bit in love with everyone <3

💕Best Ship💕 Blue/Hamal (from Taproot by Keezy Young): just some cute friends-to-lovers fluff with plants and ghosts. honourable mentions are: the extremely toxic polycule from tcatb. that's for new ships, but i have to mention peter/beverly: they're still the best power couple in the greater metropolitan london area (i know i cheated and said three but i can't choose)

10. Book That Made You Cry? I'm glad my mom died, by Jeanette McCurdy: a very tough read, especially with the audiobook narrated by the author herself with all the emotion she puts into the reading. not for the faint of heart, but the pain is absolutely worth it

11. Book That Made You Happy? The fey and the furious (Rivers of London graphic novels) by Ben Aaronovitch: it's a comic version of a series i love, about fairies and drag racing. the pun in the title! i was smiling ear to ear the whole time

12. Favorite Book Adaptation You Saw This Year? Nimona (2023): i just finsihed rewatching it and i will do it again. i was obsessed with the gn at 18 and i'm obsessed with the movie now. between this and she-ra nd stevenson just owns my ass at this point. even with all the changes from the original, it still captures the spirit of it beautifully, with all the added layers of how the author changed and grew since then. i love it with my whole queer heart <3

13. Favorite Review You’ve Written This Year? i don't write reviews anymore, but maybe i should start again just for myself

14. Most Beautiful Cover? The priory of the orange tree, by Samantha Shannon: colour scheme? on point. lettering? beautiful. a dragon? fuck yeah

15. What Books Do You Need To Read By The End of The Year? ideally i'll complete my reading challenge, but for now i just hope i finish the ones i already started, so "One hundred years of solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez "Cemetery boys" by Aiden Thomas and "Circe" by Madeline Miller