#idk if that’s even wild… it’s kind of mainstream

[boleynqueenes]

👻 What is your wildest headcanon?

Pfffft, ummm… Anne domming?

[throwing-roses-into-the-abyss]

so today I found out that 1) emo style (for men) and tumblr girls fashion are in the FIT's online fashion timeline, and 2) they're very, very wrong about both of these styles.

for emo style, they wrote:

"On the other end of the spectrum, the indie rock look saw the rise of skinny jeans for men, band t-shirts with blazers, black fingernails, skinny ties, and side-swept bangs covering part of the face. This was initially inspired in the early part of the decade by bands such as The Strokes and The Libertines whose style was intertwined with fashion through Dior Homme designer Hedi Slimane (Gallagher). Slimane, inspired himself by indie music, favored slim-fit trousers with blazers, skinny ties, and bedraggled hair (Fig. 5). In the middle part of the decade, this also included Hussar jackets inspired by The Libertines and worn with jeans by both men and women in Britain especially (Fig. 6). By 2007, Slimane’s stylistic preferences were being adopted by high street stores such as Zara and H&M (Gallagher)."

Aside from them only writing about emo in the mens fashion section (which is also very confusing), this whole bit is baffling to me, because how do you not even mention emo essentially being a new version of punk (with more depression). How do you not even mention the biggest band names involved in the scene like My Chemical Romance, Paramore and Fall Out Boy. How do you not even mention it was about expressing how you felt different, like an outsider.

And then there's their bit about Tumblr girls:

Tumblr Girls, so named for the blogging site and who reached their peak in 2014, followed closely on the indie sleaze of the late 2000s. Their style incorporated elements of grunge like Dr Martens and dark colors, along with logo t-shirts (Fig. 7). Refinery29’s Maggie Zhou described their wardrobe:

“Skinny black jeans with knee rips, a pair of Doc Martens, faded band tees, fishnet stockings, chokers, and denim jackets could be found in her wardrobe rotation.”

As a sign of how quickly trends moved during the decade, while Tumblr Girls faded in the middle part of the decade, the e-girls of the late 2010s adopted elements of Tumblr Girl style, updating it with tennis skirts and striped shirts.

To me, Tumblr style at the time was a mixture of emo, hipster, and nerd (so, for example, having Doctor Who shirts with skinny black jeans and the glasses with big black rims like the hipsters).

In fairness, my main source for my thoughts on this can be summed up as "I WAS THERE", I have 0 actual sources backing this up beyond my memory, but still. I'm well aware that my own personal experience is not representative of the whole style, but these articles don't describe my experiences in emo style and on tumblr at the time at all.

[notashadowbutawave]

i almost posted this on the true detective subreddit episode thread but thought better of it:

I've gotta say… I feel like a lot of complaints people are having about this season of the show don't pass muster objectively when held up against Season 1. Melodrama, "unrealistic" dialogue, complaining about being shown too much about people's personal lives and not caring about the characters…

There is so much unrealistic dialogue in season 1. The way Marty and Rust during their video interviews just come in talking about some big philosophical idea or "life wisdom" nugget in the middle of the episode (nobody talks like that IRL). The scene with Marty's daughter and the princess crown, for example. Marty cheating on his wife multiple times isn't like, objectively "more interesting" than Evangeline's sister having mental health issues or Liz being sexually promiscuous and a mess.

I've seen season 1 probably 10 times and I adore it but a lot of the angry comparisons people are making to S1 kind of just come off as straight up misogyny at a certain point. Like it rubs people the wrong way because it's women. Complaining about Liz and Evangeline going to the dredge without backup but when Rust and Captain America Marty Hart do something like that it's believable?

I don't think anyone's obligated to like the season by any means but you can just say you aren't feeling it as opposed to trying to make these apples-to-apples comparisons to season 1 that really don't hold water; I think people are just a lot more willing to accept this type of storytelling when it's about men and kind of has a fetishization/shame angle with masculinity in general. Like S1 is very masculine but it's also a love story. idk. I'm gay so I should probably stick to Tumblr for talking about this show, ya'll are wild.

----

idk watching people who are probably white dudes complain on Reddit that we are seeing too much "native culture" on the show strikes me as really icky.

i recognize that these are reddit comments and not like, actual media criticism but i think it says a lot about how people are conditioned to understand storytelling in general. like there's still so much fucking misogyny and white supremacy in our mainstream media and i realize a lot of people wouldn't say it out loud but i think they genuinely just find it exhausting that they're being asked to contemplate the interior lives of native alaskans and women by watching this show lmao

(that's not a value judgment about how well it is doing at depicting  Iñupiat culture because i'm not the person who gets to make that judgment but it REALLY rubs me the wrong way that people can't STAND even seeing it depicted)

(i think the fetishization of the American south also has a lot to do with it, like people are very willing to accept the aesthetic style of the American south as a vehicle for crime/mystery/possibly supernatural storytelling because it really doesn't challenge any conceptions they might have about the genre) (it helps that Woody Harrelson and Matthew McCounaughey are native southerners with great acting talent and natural screen chemistry who really took Season 1 to a higher level, in no small part thanks to their uncredited script doctoring. with lesser actors I think the story falls flat as hell because you need them to sell a rich relationship and complex inner lives with their performances because SO MUCH of their relationship is subtextual) (so when people see these great acting performances in the context of a police procedural set in Louisiana i think they're very pre-conditioned to elevate it to an almost mythical status in the genre because it doesn't present TOO many challenges to a conventional worldview about who has power and agency in stories)

like I said i've watched season 1 probably 10 times. it's very good. but it does MANY of the same things that people are complaining about regarding season 4/night country in terms of showing a lot of relationship/sexual drama for the leads and their Tragic Pasts. they just don't like it. which is fine. i just think it's a disingenuous angle to approach criticism of the show.

like if any actor other than McConaughey were doing Rust's monlogues in S1 it would not have been very good because it would have come off like self-serious edgelord shit, which is what it actually was (pizzolatto sucks) before it ended up in the hands of competent producers and performers. instead it really comes off like a man who has suffered and developed this worldview genuinely, within himself, not as a way to wield power over others but to protect himself from harm.

anyway....

for my part, i wanna know what the fuck is up with the spirals and the bad CGI polar bear visions and i'm going to be disappointed if it's not just some massive red herring designed to freak people out a little because that's what we deserve.

but in terms of like, the characters' lives, i generally find them very interesting. the opening scene of episode 3 with annie genuinely moved me to tears. annie seems like a fucking cool person and i would love another flashback about her.

i love that liz is a fucking asshole who is constantly being forced to confront her own behavior as racist, self-centered, impulsive, etc.

i love that evangeline is a very lonely person just barely keeping it together. kali reis is putting on an amazing performance. also, for the record, i'm VERY gay.

i wanna know more and there are only 2 episodes left and i hope it sticks the landing so i can write a big actual essay about what it did well from a storytelling perspective!

gosh i just love serialized fiction on the television

[quiet-admirer]

This is just a ramble so I'm not composing my thoughts in any way, and this is my perception from only being in limited online circles, but it feels like the past year or 2 was like feedism and fat fetishes got a little wave of normie exposure and people shitting on it with the usual first-argument-that-pops-into-your-mind societal regurgitated bullshit (on tiktok for example from what I hear anecdotally), but then that was coming up right as there was this growing wave of 'can we stop with the no kink at pride discourse'//'stop being puritan cops'//'there are no thought crimes' and I think those two waves coinciding has kind of combined into a weird thing where I've been seeing a ton of neutral and positive references to feedism by non-feedist online accounts/people in the past few months alone.

Like that burger kink post that has 17k notes last I saw it?? Regardless of whether that op has a feedism kink, their blog isn't a feedist blog, and I impulsively went to look in the notes and all of it is like 'lol I thought that said feudalism not feederism' and not 'umm you can't joke about feederism it's problematic' which is SO WILD to me. 17k people are willing to see a funny pun about feedism where it is not the butt of the joke and it's not at the expense of feedists and laugh along without needing to turn it into hysterical discourse like it's just a normal kink we can make puns and laugh about, and it's so normalizing??

It's not even just been that post either, it's wild to me. I know I've been much more active in this kink community in the past 3-4 years, so my experience is limited but it has really seemed like there's been increasingly bigger waves/cycles of exposure -> backlash -> pushback for acceptance -> exposure

And of course there are the vocal naysayers but the fact that there even IS anyone else out there other than anti-fat fetishists and us? Idk it gives me hope. I know there will be more cycles of backlash but seeing very slowly that there are starting to be people outside our community that are willing to have our back or just be willing to be seen standing next to us in a manner of speaking is weirdly healing. Like, I love being weird and I don't really like the idea of feedism being "mainstreamed" and am sceptical of feedism being "normalized" except for in other kink and queer communities, but there was NOTHING even close to this 12-15 years ago when I was first discovering my kink. It gives me hope that baby feedists will be more likely to stumble upon informative and positive ideas about themselves while they're figuring it all out

And that maybe we can move from being vocally and universally stigmatized from the few who've even heard of us to maybe being perceived like furries have been in recent years where it's started to mostly be like 'yeah they're weird but their art is kinda cool and they're just vibing'?

I don't know man, TL;DR I almost teared up about that burger kink post yesterday and I keep seeing posts everywhere about feedism that aren't filled with hateful comments and I'm just like what the Fuck is going on

[retrobr]

for the post regarding natm headcanons—

ive always loved thinking about the different ways that holidays would be celebrated by the exhibits, especially since there would be an absolutely insane amount of them all throughout the year

like there’d have to be a bunch of back to back celebrations in december just to accommodate everyone around the winter solstice/christmas

and exhibits constantly approaching larry about organizing parties for super niche religions/practices and he just has to go along with it

there’d be hella conflict too bc holidays like halloween/samhain might be regarded as evil and demonic by the more puritan exhibits who would try to put a stop to it at first

(but i think the whole concept of dressing up in costume would be enough to win most of the exhibits over—they’d have a blast with trading clothes with one another, and larry wouldn’t have the heart to tell them that that’s not technically how it’s supposed to work)

and honestly every holiday would be chaos considering the fact that a handful of the exhibits are at a point in time where most mainstream holidays hadn’t even been created yet

and then there’d be stuff like weddings and birthdays, all with conflicting cultures and practices, that somehow clash well in ways they shouldn’t

i’ll stop here before this gets too long lol

but i think the idea as a whole is really cool to think about !! :)

Wow dude- it's quite a long but interesting headcanon!! I too think that the exhibits could celebrate their holidays, which are related to their religion and customs, as well as modern holidays that didn't yet exist at their respective times

For example, Theodore Roosevelt or Jed could give Larry the idea of celebrating Christmas (as far as I know Larry is Jewish, so in fact he doesn't celebrate the European holidays; please correct me if I'm wrong). I like to imagine how beautifully the museum could be decorated for this holiday and how the rest of the exhibits, who don't know about this holiday or simply don't celebrate it, just look at it all with their mouths open lmao

And on Halloween Larry could take the exhibits outside, because they already look like they're wearing holiday costumes and just have fun with them idk :D

I think what I like the most is the idea of celebrating birthdays!! Like, it's quite a funny thing for me: "Happy birthday, Oct, today you're turning 2000+ years old" or something like that XD

Or, as you mentioned, celebrating weddings!! I think there can be two scenarios: either the wedding is held alternately according to the traditions of both sides, which may take two days to celebrate, or it all gets mixed up and it turns out to be some kind of wild wedding that the world hasn't seen yet-

Anyways, this is a pretty interesting topic to discuss, but my brain isn't working so well right now and I can't think of any more examples yet...

Thanks for your ask!!

[crazyboy3million]

Sound off about how you feel about this bc I truly have no problem with discussing it even if you disagree... Here is one of the main reasons why I can't get behind "transandrophobia" as a real term and can't really take posts using that term seriously even if I agree with the points made themselves.

I think it's a very vapid and misrepresentative term for the unique experiences with transphobia that transmascs experience. I think that it stems from transmascs reading about "trans misogyny," which represents the unique intersection of transphobia and misogyny that trans women face, and the thought process from there is "well, we should have a word for our version of that too, let's just change misogyny to a word that means anti-male."

My issue with this is that androphobia does not exist in the wild. The patriarchy has no room for "anti-masculinity" or "anti-maleness." These are baseless ideals reinforced by terfs alone that are typically just used as weapons against trans women.

My theory is that there is an extremely uncomfortable and unfair truth that the transphobic bias against transmasculinity is also a product of misogyny. "That's what we mean by transandrophobia" is not an explanation for the way people actually use that word. Transmascs who post about "transandrophobia" are not a monolith, but every single one of these posts that I've come across has at least undertones of trans infighting and trans misogyny, and an underlying or even overt agenda that mainstream society has a problem with men. I've seen a lot of very obviously fake or exaggerated stories about trans men being belittled by trans women and I believe that these stories are used to spread the bitter idea that trans women hate or envy or look down upon all trans men, when really it seems like the storyteller just met a tgirl who's kind of shitty in her own way. (Btw, I've seen plenty of posts from trans women that seem to have a weird bitterness against trans men, and those seem to also contain sweeping generalizations based on anecdotal evidence. It goes both ways and it's always bad).

Terfs hate us because they want us to be women. They see "deviance from womanhood" in trans men as a product of undiagnosed mental illness or the manipulation of vulnerable little girls. The way I see it, it's rooted in misogyny and anti-masculinity in women, and not anti-maleness. This is of course stupid bullshit that is incredibly dysphoria inducing, and my first instinct would be to come up with another explanation for it as well. Still, white men--it's a different story for black men, which can't be chalked up to "androphobia" either--are not belittled for being masculine in a society where the patriarchy dominates not only social rules but laws and politics. This is why I sort of get an early stage mens rights activist vibe from "transandrophobia."

So to conclude, I think this term indicates a lack of critical thinking about roots of the unique experiences that we, as men, have with transphobia. I think it's used too commonly among trans men who want to establish a hostile division between us and trans women. Solidarity is hard. Sometimes it's an uphill battle. I think if we all approached discourse with the desire to understand and appreciate everyone's point of view, it would just make us all feel a little more peaceful at the very least.

I understand where transandrophobia truthers are coming from. I've been there, I've regrettably touted transmedicalism in the past, I've resisted educating myself out of the fear of being wrong, I've started useless arguments with people online that just raised my heart rate, and now I've given up on being divisive within the trans community and all I want is for people to just hear me out on this stuff even if they still end up hating all of my points and disagreeing with me in the end. Idk if anyone will even see this, it's just something that's been on my mind lately. Pls if you disagree with me at least try to be nice about it 😭 ok bye I'm done

[yuri-is-online]

Love how we're both back on our ace shit at the same time <3. Also, I'm getting back into writing (just working on short stories before I get into fanfiction, and am very quickly realizing my flaws T-T) and I'm thinking about working on an 80s aduecyuu au. Yuu and deuce are punk because I'm punk 😗 but for a wider audience I'm thinking of making yuu grunge or hardcore? Something a bit more neutral. Don't know what Ace will be yet. He might get to be generic the 80s asshole jock 😍. Somebody gotta do it ace <3. But Grimm will be a weird ass cat who seems to have way too much of an attitude and seems a little too human?

But yeah. The au is just 3 idoit doing stupid shit, sharing a braincell, trying to figure out where the line between friendship and queer throuple is while trying to ignore the impending scene of dread because a lot of weird shit™ keeps happening in the background.

Also cater will show up at sometime. Don't know when. Don't know where. But by God I will make it happen, and he will be the skaterboy we all know he is.

Idk if lolitas existed in the 80s but if they did I'll make riddle ouji lolita for you ❤ or atleast ouji lolita adjacent

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! GO YOU! MAKE SURE TO TAG ME WHEN YOU DO!! I promise to be only a little unhinged in your comments.

That's the thing about writing. The more you do it the more you realize what you're bad at but that's not always a bad thing. You can't improve on what you don't know needs improving.

Don't pressure yourself to make Yuu grunge or hard-core for wider appeal. I think all twst writers put a little bit of themselves into their povs, so if you know punk the story will probably be a lot easier to write since that's you! (If you wanted them to be different than Deuce and Ace I'd vote trad goth. That style goes so fucking hard and so does their music bauhaus my beloved. Also i guess kind of fits with Ramshackle?) Is this meant to be a sort of classic horror vibes? Because I dig it. I think Stranger Things did us all a disservice by sucking ass and making people think 80s horror should die because it became too mainstream :/

I'm going to put my unhinged rambling about lolita under the cut but oh my God you don't have to do that I'm so grateful you thought to though I've got such a big smile on my face rn cccc;

OK so to make a very long thing short, yes lolita did exist in the 1980s but it didn't really look like anything it does today. It was pretty much all handmade, and though the first brands were around we have no idea what their peices looked like since the fashion wasn't really widely worn or photographed until the 1990s. It didn't even have its name until the 90s. Lolita as it exists today is very much a 90s/early 2000s fashion which is honestly wild to me. As for ouji, it pretty much grew alongside Lolita so that would also be a no go.

Given Riddle's backstory I can't really see him as an 80s lolita. He doesn't seem like the sewing type to me... but there is this one brand that helped influence Lolita fashion called PINK HOUSE that was stupid popular in Japan in the 80s. I'll link you to this blogspot article which is both about the brand and the misconception in English speaking spaces about the term "natural kei" but I think it suits Riddle if you wanted to give him a lolita like vibe. The tl;dr of the article is that it PINK HOUSE and it's original designer Kaneko was a staple in 80s fashion in Japan, and is referred to as just PINK HOUSE or Kaneko fashion. As it lacks the community or aesthetic of kei fashions or lolita it is not considered a part of those groups... which does sort of fit Riddle in a way as his mother isolates him from both 💀

[chappell-roans]

margot's too much of a shiny polished movie star rn to be convincing to me in an indie or arthouse movie even if its something more high concept like poor things. not that she couldn't act it well but her vibe and image kind of overpowers her in a way it didn't before. I can see her reentering that scene if she takes a break from acting (which I think is likely) but if she jumps right back into it i can see her getting a nom for another wolf of wall street or once upon a time in Hollywood flic.

other movie stars can kind of bypass their own stardom but I think the nature of barbie specifically as it relates to her image makes it harder to pivot, whereas someone like jlaw easily could after thg.

This is a very interesting point. She's definitely in a place very few others are right now, and tbh I love that she's using it to uplift neat projects and as a producer. Like she is a smart businesswoman and person period. Yeah I feel like she'll take a step back/she's not in that many movies as it is and is very selectively on screen, so I think she's quite smart in that way. Not pushing herself (or her image) till she breaks. Like she's in a lot but idk I get the vibe she turns down a TON of stuff. (She's been in some shit, dgmw lol.)

But yes I agree!!! THG was like its own thing, but it was more gritty ig and so very different from Barbie yeah. I get what you mean exactly.

I forgot this is her next movie, which is an indie almost akin to Poor Things (though not really at all lol, but like big-but-not-mainstream exactly). I'm excited for it. I bet it'll make Kogonada so much more mainstream which is wild.

[tuiyla]

Something that I still find insane with Glee is just how much professional content was put out about it, both during and after the show. They had the actual show, the concert tours, the (3D) concert movie, the reality show specifically to get cast on Glee (two seasons of it which is one more than most shows even get now), the billboard charting songs/albums, the cast podcasts, and the recent fucked up docuseries. Not to mention the insane number of "Glee Audition" YouTube videos and other fan-created content like SimGM, fanfics, covers, GIFs, etc. I genuinely cannot think of a single other show that has ever had that much going on around it. No matter where you looked or what kind of content, you'd likely run into something Glee related. I first learned about the show because my classmates would singing "Don't Stop Believing" on our bus all the time, like the entire bus would sing the entire song. No one and no where was safe.

Also books and other merchandise iirc?

It's truly an insane scale. I think there were similar properties, but not at the same intersection of teen media and music as Glee was. Music really elevated it above other TV shows, in terms of revenue as well, I'm sure. I mean, what other show I could do as something as unhinged for as the singing database? They just produced so much content, and to think that the cast had to not only learn their lines and do the acting but record their songs AND learn choreography and do talk show appearances and other promos on top of that is already wild. Add to that the tours and musical appearances? It gets to a level that I'm pretty sure should have been illegal. Like, for real, the Glee cast was so infamous for being crazy overworked that it shouldn't have been allowed. Hard enough to film 22 episodes a year and that's without all the extra stuff.

And the fan stuff! That can be a tremendous amount even if the property itself isn't as accomplished as Glee was but you're right, that was - and continues to be! - impressive too. Again the scale of it, organized events and forums and popular videos like SimGM. You really couldn't go anywhere without Glee content.

I think I've mentioned this once or twice before, but I heard Landslide for the first time through the GCV. I didn't search for the Glee version; I had just read The Perks of Being a Wallflower and I wanted to know what the tunnel song sounded like. This is September of 2012 btw. So I typed landslide into youtube and the very first result, probably the second and even third, was the Glee version. So that was the one I listened to for years, exclusively, even though I had zero to do with Glee at that point. I'm sure there were other GCVs that sneaked into my life and certainly the mainstream, too. The show itself had a stranglehold on pop culture but the music was a whole new level. Glee was a machine producing so much content and I can only assume making an obscene amount of money. Idk what the cast got paid but I'd be willing to bet it wasn't enough.

Through godawful documentaries or in more positive ways but Glee's still part of the public consciousness because that kind of omnipresence doesn't just go away. Fascinating. Kinda terrifying. But very very interesting.

[a-very-normal-boy]

Honestly the school I went to was just too transparent. "Yeah, these atrocities happened but we're still team Catholic Church". "Yeah, that doesn't make sense in the bible, so we're just gonna gloss over that and say it's because it was written by men a long time ago". "Science is a thing and we've been wrong before, so please listen to your science teacher". Most of my teachers weren't even Catholic. The "theology" (only Catholicism, to be clear) teacher WAS REQUIRED to be Catholic, but that basically means nothing when every one of my theology teachers practiced some kind of intellectual honesty. I remember raising my hand and asking why God would tell Abraham to kill Isaac and she was like "idk man, it was just a test. I don't really get it either, but it's just an example story. I don't think it literally happened". THAT SHIT WAS WILD TO HEAR FROM AN ADULT. WHO. WAS. CATHOLIC. They spent so much time in every other class telling you to think for yourself, so theology ended up just being a Catholic history lesson. It was like that class was only there to check off a box to be considered a Catholic school. Also my school nurse, shout out to her. She gave me resources for trans healthcare before most people in the mainstream political sphere were even talking about it like today.

Truly love the number of people I've met that have been like "Well I went to a Catholic school as a kid, which is to say I'm not Catholic" like damn Catholic schools really out here doing the exact opposite of missionary work.

[themostefficientwaywithwater]

plagiarism from a random ass indie game studio is such a non issue though nintendo is doing something evil with this shit

Oh no no don't get me wrong, Nintendo's trash for doing this, I can't be on their side when they are so "trigger happy" at suing people for the most inconsequential shit (i.e. cease and desist orders for uploading fangames, nuking Citra, that one man they put in jail for 3 years and stole all his income for the rest of life, etc.). And I'm completely against software patents, which do nothing but limit the creativity of developers just because adding to a game something as simple as checks notes "an icon that points at the character's orientation when they're behind a wall"? could get you sued so that company can suck out your money.

What I meant is that, although Pocket Pair's action is a lesser evil, I still have to disagree with a company whose main strategy is to blatantly copy features from other "mainstream" games without other reasoning than "if it worked for them it'll work for us", without adding anything meaningful of their own creation. Specially when, besides Pokémon and Breath of the Wild, they allegedly plagiarized from Hollow Knight, "another"* indie game, so the excuse of "they're doing it only to big companies lmao cope" doesn't really apply. I just don't want indie games to become yet another souless field where everyone tries to copy everyone just because a game with X genre/feature succeeded so now everyone has to forcibly add it to their games to try to appeal to players, even if it's detrimental (it's kind of happening already, with the surge of farming simulators and metroidvanias in response to stardew valley and hollow knight, just like it happened with open worlds in AAA's in response to BOTW). Pocket Pair has exhibited an utter lack of creativity, I've watched some gameplays of Palworld and I've found it… souless, and I think it only succeeded because people where disillusioned with Pokémon (as someone who likes Pokémon: god same) and Palworld is a pokémon shitpost made game. And if you like Palworld? Good for you! Honestly! But I don't think we should support these kind of practices just "to own Nintendo/Gamefreak/insert-shitty-company-here" when they seem to be willing to steal from indies too.

That being said, I don't support what Nintendo is doing. Software patents, as a whole, are a mistake, specially at the hands of a company who has done shit like fucking stalk a fangame developer or sue a family for putting a pikachu in their son's grave. I'm not going to defend them for this, no matter how much dislike the company they're suing. But I still dislike Pocket Pair, and I'm not going to idolize them just for facing the titan that is Nintendo. That's all. Both of them suck. It's just that, while they both fart, one is louder and smells worse.

(*) I want to add that the lines between indie/not indie are a bit blurry right now but, while Pocket Pair is small in comparison to the AAA industry, I don't really think the "indie" label fits it; or, at least, it feels a bit unfair to put a game like Palworld (made with a team of 50-something people and a budget of 6 million) in the same group as Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, Celeste, etc., which much smaller teams and budgets. IDK, just rambling tbh

[nakedmonkey]

Yeah her writing is super fun but Dorn’s distaste for gnc lesbians is wild. All her protagonists have this delusional idea that the ‘typical’ lesbian is a butch woman that is over represented everywhere and it makes no sense like it’s such a dated homophobic idea…. Like you can turn in on any show w gay women and see 2 long haired, feminine straight woman hesitantly kissing like they’re being held at gunpoint 😭 Unless it’s something like the L Wird (which is literally one of its kind and even then) there are zero butches. Not even in books or movies. The most masc woman might have shirt shit but will be wearing lipgloss and eyeshadow lol. Idk where she gets this is idea like it’s so dated and odd. Also odd are her characters obsession with gay men. Feels pointed and lowkey misogynistic like I don’t get lesbians who live gay male culture but hate lesbians and think we’re boring like girl look within lmao

I SO agree, anon! I think at first reading her work, I couldn't figure out if she was giving her character these traits on purpose to make some sort of statement, like wow look at this mess of a girl and how much she hates her own identity, but the more I read, the more I feel like she is projecting her own views onto her stories, and it is a very strange, very dated way to view queerness. Purely from an anthropological approach, you can learn a lot from her books if you think about it. Particularly about mainstream entertainment and how heavily it influences cultural shifts within queer spaces.

I feel like there's a deeper conversation to have about shows like The L Word (a show Dorn constantly mentions in her work) and the damage it caused despite the good it did. Because I do feel the show did some good. Speaking from personal experience, it helped me embrace my lesbian identity for the first time in my life. It really stripped the negative connotations I associated with that word and I know it did the same for a lot of girls my age when it was originally airing. BUT it also alienated a lot of groups, it perpetuated so many harmful stereotypes about sapphics, and excluded any brand of sapphic that didn't fit into its very limited spectrum of lesbianism. Dorn's books are such a good example of the culture shows like the l word, and Will & Grace, created.

All that being said, you have a responsibility to yourself and your community, as a queer person, to educate yourself and unlearn problematic and harmful behavior, and Dorn needs to, as you said, look within and do that, because it's becoming pretty evident she's stuck in 2002 lol, or at the very least, her characters are.

[but-the-library-of-alexandria]

idk how spicy of a take this is but I feel like in the modern day, the scope of using objectively dangerous fantasy creatures or magical traits as a one-to-one allegory for oppressed minorities in real life is limited at best and possibly harmful at worst - because it simply does not translate

obviously many irl minorities face similar kinds of fear responses in society as your fantasy werewolves or your x-men mutants, but the key difference is that real minorities are not, and never have been, a legitimate source of danger to mainstream society. it's a (very offensive and harmful) myth that gay men are likely to be predators, or that black people are more likely to be aggressive, or that jewish people are trying to take over the world, and society believing these myths doesn't translate into fantasy worlds where, in spite of those individuals who 'have it under control' or 'use their powers for good', the fantasy-minority genuinely comes with some sort of extremely dangerous superpower which, if unchecked, could destroy the fantasy world. nothing like this exists on any scale in the real world, and I think it's reductive to compare these things directly to reality. suggesting that, for example, the mages of dragon age are a direct metaphor for queer oppression or slavery, kind of ignores the fact that real-life humans can't accidentally summon demons capable of wiping out entire villages lmao. in the real world, the idea that innocent people have a right to freedom whatever their circumstances of birth is pretty simple, but in the real world, we don't have good-hearted and innocent people who could wipe out a continent by pure bad luck, and real-world morality politics don't easily apply in a world where public safety is actually, mortally, threatened by unchecked superpowers running wild

I'd even go so far as to say that fantasy races with no inherent dangerous traits, but who historically oppressed, enslaved or genocide-d the now-majority society and as a result are the victims of lingering fear and hate (such as orcs in many fantasy settings), are a pretty poor-taste metaphor for oppressed ethnicities considering that in general it's the oppressor who has a violent history and not the other way around lmao

tl;dr - if your fantasy race/magic users/sci-fi mutants come with legitimate and concrete reasons for society to consider them a threat and want to limit their freedoms, be it hard-to-control apocalytic superpowers, a history of extreme violence, or a tangible potential to take over and destroy the world, they're probably not an ideal metaphor for real-life minorities, who are not and never have been a legitimate danger to society

[thedreadvampy]

aaaaarghhhhh just thinking about my comic script and realising that the plot point that made me Mildly Uncomfortable But Felt Probably Ok in 2015 is like. about the worst possible idea from a 2021 perspective. so I'm going to need to rethink the whole script again if I ever want to use it

like. It's a noir tragedy and part of the story is adapting The Bacchae, which involves a powerful man trying to break into a space of wild women in order to spy and destroy it, dressing as a woman, being exposed by his inability to act like a Fucking Person, and being torn apart and destroyed.

and I had it as a musing on lesbophobia and cishet men's fixation on queer women as a symbol of both fetishised sexuality and horror and the ways that that (in my life and others) has manifested in violence, with like a cathartic murder and then ultimately a tragic ending touching on the criminalisation of survivors. But it did retain the element of Pentheus dressing as a woman to enter women's spaces and assault women, and I tried very hard and worked with some pals who are trans women to try and make sure that my script and thumbnails draw a clear distinction between Pentheus the man-entering-a-woman's-space-deceitfully and trans women who are just Being. like half of the protagonists are trans wlw, I tried to be explicit about the difference between what Pentheus was doing vs what the women he was targeting were doing, I did my best to avoid transphobic tropes about like drawing Pentheus as a Stubbly Invading Man In A Dress and all the ~good trans women~ as being Perfectly Feminine, and the story I was telling intended to be pretty explicit about the fact that people prefer to twist the truth to frame the actions of cishet white men as a reason to exclude marginalised people.

so like, it isn't that I hadn't noticed the issue in 2015. and part of the reason that I haven't carried this work forwards over the interceding few years is that it is very much About Bigotry and some of that (misogyny, homophobia, ableism) is in forms I've experienced but a lot of the stories are About racism and transphobia and homophobia against men specifically and as someone who doesn't experience that I think it's risky to write those stories unless it really is being done Extremely Right and very carefully and with a lot of discussion.

but. In 2015 I thought this was justifiable. six years later with TERF rhetoric and policy so absolutely mainstreamed I don't think there's any way to do the Bacchae storyline in a way that isn't open to TERFery. however explicit the story is about trans women having an entirely deserved space in closed wlw communities I can't think that there's any way to handle the image of a man dressing up as a woman to spy on and assault women that doesn't play into the utter bullshit ideas that are unfortunately mainstreamed about The Trans Menace. even if you're explicit about that person not being trans even if every part of his story is very clear about his cisness and his motivations it still fundamentally comes back around to the image of a man in a wig pretending to be a woman to invade spaces that are closed to men. which is fucked.

and idk it sucks a bunch to have to yeet this whole script. there was a lot I really liked in it and of all the stories in Underworld Blues it was in many ways the most personal for me, it touched on the joys of queer community, polyamory, of defining womanhood in your own ways, and very directly on the ways that power and spite and entitlement can absolutely destroy that. like the story I wrote was very about My Trauma (me me me it's about me) and the frustrating thing is that honestly the beginning and end points I think are salvageable, but I'm not sure how I'd reconstruct the story to include the ideas about safe and unsafe spaces and the treatment of wlw spaces as playgrounds for straight cis men with an expectation of power while excising the bits that are. a) kind of grossly gender essentialist by accident, implying that the problem with men is that they're The Enemy rather than that some cishet men are socialised to entitlement and b) feeding into some EXTREMELY transphobic ideas about gender expression as costume and about the deceptiveness people associate with that idea.

like six years ago I talked this through with trans friends and we discussed the need to feel able to (carefully) risk writing problematic shit and being prepared to be held to account but ultimately it seemed justifiable. it doesn't now. if I could think of a way to get Pentheus from point a) which is 'the Gay Parties Are A Threat To Our Ordered Society I'm Going To Spy Creepily On Them' to point b) which is 'Pentheus attempts to take advantage of what he percieves as a consequence-free environment to do what he wants, Is Rightly Shot Dead' while retaining the stuff I want it to say about gender, queerness, power, judgement, sexualisation and rape culture, I would. but I'm. not good at original plot points that's why this is an adaptation of Greek plays.

so. idk. this thing might need to go off the backburner and in the bin for now. which sucks.

[likeadevils]

hey! for your post about sun moon and rising but with taylor albums, can you list out the characteristics of each album? i'm having a hard time associating them and it'd make it a lot easier, if you could do that :)

oh totally! Its really all about your personal association, so i’ll give vibes for the era and the album. a good rule of thumb is to read the prologue if you want the tone for the era quickly. honestly, there’s no set system, go wild

taylor swift (2006) “debut”

era: blue and teal and brown. cowboy boots and sundresses, wild curly hair, trucks and mud and wildflowers. very 2006, very high school, very country

album: swings between pining from a distance and wanting to destroy a boys whole ass life and feeling like you have no friends and no one understands you in the whole world. like I said, very high school, but also full of whole ass bangers

fearless (2008)

era: yellow and white. 24/7 prom. she’s got the fairy tale aesthetics set in high school, she’s got calling your ex boyfriend out on national television, she's got so many headbands. god to be 8 years old when the joe jonas/taylor swift drama was going down

album: again, fairy tale set in high school. lots of crushes, lots of realizing men aren’t shit. it’s about the pull between childhood ideals and real life tearing them down, and deciding how much you should cling to your dreams and how much you have to let them go. it’s also a pull between knowing that these little moments are kinda ridiculous but also taking everything so goddamn seriously

speak now (2010)

era: purple purple purple. she’s starting to grow up! her look has evolved out of sundresses and prom dresses and into a more preppy style. she’s moved out of fantasy and into this like. circus aesthetic? 30s movie type thing? watch the mean music video, idk how to explain it. her hair is still curly and but under control, and she’s solidly Famous at this point. the idea that she can’t sing is Big, and the man-eater stereotype is starting to get popular 

album: she’s starting to grow out of country. she’s experimenting with rock, but her pop sound is starting to take off. it’s all about Dramatics: she’s experienced her first heartbreak, broke someone else’s heart, and was in an emotionally abusive relationship all within two years. she’s moved out of her parents house and is both infantilized and forced to grow up to fast by the media.

red (2012)

era: its 2012 hipster style. her hair is Straight and she’s wearing vintage dresses everywhere, and she’s posting sketches of red lips and quotes from fitzgerald about heartbreak and finding yourself on instagram. she is dating and breaking up with harry styles Very Publically, and its the last major relationship she’ll have for two more years. the idea that she dates to much is everywhere, and she’s being slut shamed to an insane degree, while also being dismissed as a goody-two-shoes

album: it’s designed so each song has the opposite emotions of the song before it. it’s dramatic and it’s heart wrenching and it portrays these relationships that were toxic and messy and captivating. has the last vestiges of country, some more rock, and the first pure Pop songs, all nestled against each other to give you the epic highs and lows of being 22

1989 (2014)

era: its the height of her stardom, and she’s more beloved then she’s ever been and (probably) will ever be again. she’s cut her hair and moved to New York, she’s wearing high waisted stuff and taking polaroids, and she’s been single for two years and it’s has given her the freedom to find a “tight” group of friends and herself. shes talking about third wave feminism all the time, she’s papped every day, and she started dating c*lvin h*rris; they date for a year, he was the first boyfriend to be posted on social media, and the one she was with the longest (until her current bf). publically, she’s the happiest and most successful she’s ever been. personally, it’s more complicated, especially by the last few months. “she lost him, but she found herself and somehow that was everything” and “from the girl who said she would never cut her hair or move to new york or find happiness in a world where she wasn't in love”

album: single handedly brings 80s pop into the mainstream. (like seriously, her only contemporary influence is lana del rey, and even that is only on a few tracks. listening to this when it came out was a religious experience). it sounds basic now but only because she influenced all of the pop music that came after her. its also her first sonically cohesive album since fearless. subject matter wise, its very 80s movie. it’s the first album without a break up song that ruins a man's whole career— no cold as you, dear john, or all too well type. the relationship is on and off again, but more muted and mature then the tumultuous ones portrayed on red. its very star crossed; two people who just can’t find the right time. she’s also writing about how fame has affected her— blank space, shake it off, and i know places all directly reference it, but the idea that the whole world is watching is woven all throughout the album

bleachella (2016) 

this isn't an album but its definitely an era

taylor has become so oversaturated that people are starting to turn on her, and her mental health is suffering. her relationship with c*lvin h*rris is falling apart, she's changing her hair every couple of moths (most notably she bleaches it, and goes to coachella. so like bleachella), and then all of a sudden The Phone Call happens. kim and kanye release edited footage of a phone call that makes it seem like taylor swift is a liar who intentionally plays the victim to stay in the public’s good graces, and the world pounces on it. between that and the idea that her friend group is super cliche-y and exclusionary, her reputation is ruined and she goes in hiding for months. before going into hiding though, she breaks it off with c*lvin (he throws a FIT on twitter) and starts a whirlwind romance with tom hiddleston that includes them flying all over the world on vacations and meeting each others parents super quickly. this all happens in one summer.

reputation (2017)

era: black and white and gold. very edgy, very rich, lots of snakes and casual wealth. there’s the aesthetic of her being very hurt and defensive and lashing out, but the reality of her being the happiest she’s ever been. she’s still famous, but she’s learned how to have a private life and healthy relationships. the tough times have shown her who and what’s important to her

album: pretty much that. the first half is brash and bombastic and playing off what people expect her to be like, how they expect her to fall in and out of love quickly and manipulate those around her to see her as a good person (while exploring sounds that no one expected her to explore) and the second half slows it down and shows her falling in love more explicitly and sweetly and under cover. “in the death of her reputation she felt truly alive” and “finding love through all the noise”

lover (2019)

era: bright pink and pastels and bright colors and happiness and butterflies!! she’s in love and beloved by the general public again, but all of her past albums have been stolen from her by a man she thought she could trust. sadly cut off short by covid. “step into the daylight and let it go”

album: her messiest album (sonically) since red. a popular saying when it first came out was that it had the writing of speak now but the sound of 1989, which is... understandable? its the kind of thing you have to form your own opinion on. it’s on the surface all bubblegum pop and being in love, but it has some of the absolute saddest songs of her entire discography. a 18 song long rollercoaster

folklore and evermore

preface: these are definitely two separate albums and there’s a definitely a difference but this girl has so many albums and it’s taken me an hour to answer this ask and it’s 1am right now so i’m gonna smush them together. go listen to them, and we’re in the era right now

eras: it been covid so all we’ve got are a couple performances and the album visuals. cottagecore, a return to the small town setting of her first two albums, very understated and timeless. one noteworthy element is that both albums were surprise releases (especially after lover had almost a year of build up that kinda worked against it). she’s reached a level of artistic respect that she’s never had

albums: folklore is a level of sonic and thematic cohesion comparable to 1989, as well as having a similar feeling of like. oh god we’ve been waiting for you to make an album like this for years and you’ve still exceeded every exception and made it surprising. evermore is mostly a continuation of its sound, though it’s a bit more experimental. both albums are incredibly mature, and move into non-autobiographical storytelling for most of the songs. it’s easy to build your own world based on one or both of the albums. their main themes are also mostly divorced from relationships, and more tied to personal identity and mental state (though there is quite a bit about divorce and heartbreak in both)

[i-did]

1/ 4 oh it's funny you brought up the ace people thing bc i'm actually aro/ace so i can elucidate on it a little xD i don't currently write smut but i sure have read a lot of it. i think a lot of ace people find fic a safe way to like? satisfy their curiosity about sexual things without having to look at real people or even watch porn which (esp mainstream porn) can be a lot. and also to like.

2/4 idk when you don't get something but it's such a big part of what so many other people seem to find super important it makes you kinda want to figure it out? i guess? and also a lot of people have a libido even if they don’t experience attraction so that’s a thing too. 3/4 part of the reason m/m is so popular is bc it’s just like. been that way in fandom so long that it’s a habit, and i don’t think the percentage of people fetisizing m/m relationships is really as high as it’s made out to be (although it does still exist, more or less prominently in every fandom) 4/4 my closest friend is a trans dude and he identified as a lesbian for a very long time and he’d never written lesbian porn and one day he was like. “its bc im not a lesbian and i want to write about dudes bc i am one” and i think there are a lot of younger people who are still figuring stuff out which is why i try not to be too harsh on individual people. i do still think it’s important to critique and look at why broader fandom trends turn out the way they do. anyway sorry for sending you a barrage of asks i just get excited about fandom meta xD

-mild nsfw and pwp discussion-

Hey! Yeah no worries, my blog has been pretty quiet activity and ask wise until just now so I'm kind of surprised by the amount of asks I started getting literally over night, but yeah I dont mind getting them lol.

I think "habit" is an interesting word to use in regards to people whipping mlm over wlw, and probably a pretty accurate one. I think however that the percentage of people who are fetishizing mlm is higher than people realize, because from my point of view... i haven't really heard many people talk about it or take it seriously. I don't think its just fetishization, I think its also lack of well written women as well as the default in lgbt being gay man, but i also think the fact that well developed characters get flattened out and a heteronormative dynamic gets placed on them, and the abundance of pwp proves that there is definitely fetishization and people need to start to unlearn it in fandom imo. It makes it a very uncomfortable place to be for mlm otherwise.

Also I know a lot of similar stories to the one you're saying about your friend, trans guys who didn't know who they were, especially gay trans men feeling like they fetishize mlm when they don't they're 100% mlm too, and having room for exploration is important like you said. Your friend is a straight trans guy but the point still stands.

About the ace thing: yeah and I totally get that, I know someone who reads pwp of mlm because its unemotional unlike wlw pwp and as someone who is aro they want to not feel like theyre missing out and know whats up with sexual psychology.

I've heard of a lot of ace people reading pwp to "figure out what the deal is" but its interesting to me how many people look into pwp that would be outside of their demographic, aka cis women reading pwp mlm. I think its important to note that probably 97% of mlm pwp isn't written by mlm for mlm, and isn't actually accurate not only in the mlm gaze, but also functionality and how sex feels. Its porn. Porn exaggerates things, it makes things sound bigger and more extreme and extraordinary because it os inherently performative in a way to arouse the consumer. In had an ace friend tell me they were sad sex wasn't something that they could experience in pwp but, no one can lol. I mean there is more toned down realistic pwp, but the vast majority talks about full body feeling (which btw amab people experience orgasums localized while afab experience more full body)

I get the appeal to not want to look at real people but wanting to know, but why only read mlm if thats the case? Why not also wlw or wlm, etc.

Also its important to note it still isn't actually accurate in a lot of small ways beyond gaze, but also proper prep, health, sanitization, eating habits, body hair, positions, terminology, sensations, culture etc.

I've had someone state that if they wanted accuracy they would go out and actually sleep with someone, but still that person was a cis woman reading mlm pwp, and I think accuracy is important to a degree to prevent issues like fetishization, but also unrealistic expectations.

You stated that mainstream porn is a lot, and it is, but also so is pwp imo, especially as a mlm. The pwp tag in ant fandom is quite wild lol. Thats. Thats my 2 cents, its quite wild.

But yeah overall the best thing is to assume people don't have ill intent, they usually don't! But that doesn't mean that overall some people aren't also causing harm by doing such things like fetishizing mlm in fandom.

Cool asks lol wasn't expecting this everyones been chill so far thanks for the lack of anon hate and remember that the internet is a public space and to try to be respectful of others.