#media gifs

[itsmyfriendisaac]

♉ May 2nd: Louisiana Native, Dustin Zito.

[prokopetz]

Reading fandom character analyses for 1990s visual novels can be kind of a trip because you'll come across this thoughtful and nuanced reading like something out of 19th Century Russian philosophical novel, then you look up the actual source material and the character in question is a bug-eyed, mitten-handed gremlin with permanent Dreamworks face and a recurring catchphrase about butts – but then I'm not really in a position to complain, because I know this is precisely parallel to the experience of some uninitiated soul stumbling on one of this very blog's long-winded meta-analyses of the role of narrative determinism in some popular work of online seralised fiction, and then they look up the work in question and see this:

[alpaca-clouds]

Why the media CEOs will always learn the wrong lessons

Yesterday a friend and I talked about how the entire (AAA) game industrie looked at BG3 being as popular as it is and going: "Oh, we need to produce 100+ hour games, I guess! Those sell!" Which... obviously is not why it is popular. The game is not popular because it has 100+ hours of gameplay, but because it has engaging characters, that are well-acted and that work as good hooks for the players. Like, let's face it: The reason why I so far have sunken 160 hours into this game is, because I wanna spend time with these characters - and because I wanna give them their happy endings.

But the same has happened too, just a bit earlier this year, right? When Barbie broke the 1 billion and every Hollywood CEO went: "Oh, so the people want movies based on toy franchises! Got it!" To which the internet at large replied: "... How is that the lesson you learned from this?"

Well, let me explain to you, why this is the lesson they learn: It is because the CEOs and the boards of directors at large are not artists or even engaged with the medium they produce. They mostly are economists. And their dry little hearts do not understand stuff more complex than numbers and spread sheets.

That sounds evil, I know, but... It is sadly the truth. When they look at a successful movie/series/game/book/comic, they look at it as a product, not a piece of art or narrative. It is just a product that has very clear metrics.

To them Barbie is not a movie with interesting stylistic choices that stand out from the majority of high budget action blockbusters. It is a toy movie with mildly feminist themes.

Or Oppenheimer is not a movie to them with a strong visual language and good acting direction. No, it is a historical blockbuster.

And this is true for basically every form of media. I mean, books are actually a fairly good example. In my life I do remember the big book fads that happened. When Harry Potter was a success, there was at least a dozen other "magical school" book series being released. When Twilight was a big success there was suddenly an endless number of "teen girl falls in love with bad boy, who is [magical creature]" YA. When the Hunger Games was a success, there were hundreds of "YA dystopia" books. Meanwhile in adult reading, we had the big "next Game of Throne" fad.

Of course, the irony is, that within each of those fads there might have been one or two somewhat successful series - but never even one that came even close to whatever started the fad.

Or with movies, we have seen it, too. When Avengers broke the 1 billion (which up to this point only few movies did) the studios went: "Ooooooh, so we need shared universe film series" - and then all went to try and fail to create their own cinematic universe.

Because the people, who call the shots, are just immensely desinterested in the thing they are selling. They do not really care about the content. All they care about is having a supposedly easy avenue of selling it. Just as they do not care about the consumer. All they care about is that the consumer buys it. Why he buys it... Well, they do not care. They could not care less, in fact.

So, yeah, get ready for a 20 overproduced games with a bloated 100+ hours of empty gameplay, but without the engaging characters. And for like at least 15 more moves based on some toy franchise, that nobody actually cares about.

And then get ready for all the CEOs to do the surprised Pikachu face, when all of that ends up not financially successful.

Really, I read some interviews yesterday from some AAA-studio CEOs and their blatant shock and missing understanding on why BG3 works for so many people.

Because, yeah... capitalism does not appreciate art. Capitalism does not understand art. It only understands spread sheets.

[sukinapan]

based on Dotek motýla (1972) •⩊•

[drferox]

So part of parenting is slowly exposing the small child to various pieces of media.

There’s a balancing act between trying to present media that I loved at that age and allowing space to explore it, and becoming acutely aware of confronting content in ‘kids’ media. The child’s brain is like a sponge and I have no idea what’s going to be absorbed on any given viewing.

For example, going from Disney’s Frozen to Disney’s Cinderella is confronting and kind of scary for a little kid, because we jumped from one idea of what ‘sisters’ are to wicked ones. Like yeah, I have to agree in context that it’s scary.

But Sleeping Beauty, with the monsters and dragon and fire, is only ‘pretend scary’. It does, however, cause questions to be raised about kissing. (Because, being a single mum, the child doesn’t see me kiss anybody so has no context for that)

But anyway, now we’re finally grasping more complex stories and while we’re nowhere near developing a moral code yet, kiddo is currently obsessed with The Last Unicorn movie!

And I am so happy about it!

It was a movie I first saw at about that age, though I nowhere near understood it at the time.

You gotta be careful about what words you let I be your brain because some of them will re-write your mind. The Last Unicorn was one of those influences for me and I’m delighted to be passing it on.

[academiclover]

[vampiresque]

SHARON TATE as SARAH SHAGAL DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES (1967)

[five-one-two-station]

@halfalive-chaos - Context

Oh BOY do I have some big giant feelings about this!

The short answer is yes, I think people/The Audience has forgotten this - but I also don't think it's entirely their fault.

Part of the reason I was really impressed by how Arcane used and executed the scene, and why I keep going on about it, is that this whole subject is kind of an ongoing concern of mine.

I very sincerely think that the documented decline of, not just sex, but horniness, in media has narrowed the spectrum of contexts we're used to seeing sex and sexuality happen in our storytelling, in ways that are doing us harm.

Because mainstream media has started shying away from engaging with sex to the degree that it has, sex is now almost invariably depicted in extremes - either "Aren't we edgy big boys now?" stuff like The Boys, or miserably sad traumatic drama grist - or else not at all.

And because "regular" tv has been scared off showing sex, it's vanishingly rare to see characters who are in love have sex, or to be sexual as an expression of that, certainly without some negative element to it.

That means we're almost never asked to think of it in terms of sincere, meaningful character communication, or as a storytelling mechanism, or ever presented with it in the context of a positive wider relationship.

I think the hazard of this is obvious - if our media and storytelling doesn't engage with healthy sex in that wider context, or use it purposefully, then we're conceding the whole conversation around it to porn, to novelty edgelordism, and grimdark miseryfests. Those things will define all our language and imagery around it, and the only time we'll ever see it will be upsetting, harmful or ugly. When it is easier to stumble across a scene of rape than it is to see a consenting woman orgasm, it's little wonder people can become reflexively suspicious of any sexuality at all.

But even when it's not so extreme as that, more often than not it's depicted as a casual fling instead, divorced from a bigger picture, or a distraction, an alternative to a grander and truer romantic interest. There's nothing at all wrong with sex for pleasure, don't misunderstand me, but it's odd that our media landscape has engineered a situation where depictions of sex in the context of a bigger love story almost never happen. It would seem then that we can have one or the other - sex or romance - but never at once.

And we're diminishing it with all of this. We're saying this incredibly important, intense, uniquely vulnerable and intimate feature of the human experience doesn't matter enough to talk about. We're saying that sex and love don't have any functional overlap. Even at best, we're pretending that sex isn't important in relationships, or increasingly, that the only good sex is... well... sexless. Sterile. Permissable and virtuous only when it's so "clean" and so perfect in circumstance that it becomes an unattainably impossible kind of ceremony.

The venue must be perfect. The characters must be not only unimpeachable, but historically and permanently so, and exactly as faultless as each other - they must be exactly the same social status, age, background, emotional state and situation. There can be no power imbalance or even a risked perception of one. No chequered history to leave behind, no overcome adversities, nothing that had to be learned. No transgressions to have been worked through, and comprehensively put to rest now. There can be no gaps they've had to bridge, one painfully hard-won inch at a time, to finally reach for each other in this way; and there can never have been.

Indeed, the moment must be so sublimely judged that it's unlikely to ever actually arise in a drama to start with; the characters must be in such a stable and identical situation that there's no actual storytelling to be done here warranting the scene in the first place.

Which is convenient, because in this framework, the only unproblematic sex is the sex nobody can possibly have. Because nobody is perfect. Nobody can have "perfect" sex. That's not how it works - the fundamental nature of intimacy is taking each other for what you actually are, in all of the reality involved. If it can't be messy, it's not true.

All of this comes with extra points and splinters too when it comes to the matter of lesbian sex in particular, and the complicated history of how we've been either exploited for disposable male titilation, or else rendered chastely invisible by well intended feminists of all persuasions. We were already being presented with a sex or romance dichotomy, and never mind if either one worked. Our sexual desire is something for everyone else to trade in, either to commodify it, or else to minimize for Our Own Good, and use the neutered cardboard cutout versions of us remaining as benign talking props for their own purposes.

It's a dysfunctional either/or. Asexuals & friends notwithstanding, physical intimacy is an incredibly important feature of the lives we spend together, and the bodies we live our lives in. And as much as we'd like to think we're all too cool and aloof for it, for most of us lust is impossible to entirely detach from sentiment, when it comes to the real people we form bonds with.

People falling in love want to fuck each other. People who are in love want to fuck each other. People fall in love in the process of fucking each other. It's not some abstract thing that happens in isolation to our feelings for each other.

I don't think it's good for us to perform such weird acrobatics to pretend none of this is true, whatever the reason for doing so; but that is effectively what modern media does.

And I think we're all poorer for it. We're poorer for missing out on the most private, intimately human kinds of moments in our stories that live in the space where love and lust can intersect. Because that's the only place those moments happen.

[sweeetestcurse]

Gillian Anderson as Media in American Gods

[desire-mona]

to anyone who was also insane about the rsl hug gif: im about to make your life infinitely worse

[prettysweetprettysweet]

Achi and Jinta:

queer besties

introvert4introvert

mind-reading virgins

Cherry Magic (Thailand) (2023)

[itsmyfriendisaac]

♎ October 22nd: Beefcake, Collin Simpson.

[chaptertwo-thepacnw]

1977

[iladygaga]

Tryin' to be a lady at home but feel the gaga coming on Lady Gaga, TikTok

[coffeeandfreethoughts]

I’m not even a Nicholas Alexander Chavez Stan but y’all are getting pathetic now.

Watching religious people fall to their knees and start wailing over Nicholas Alexander Chavez taking bts pictures and doing a popular TikTok dancing while in dress for his role shows just how fickle religious people really are.

First people need to stop being obtuse, he is in character. The lack of acknowledgement of that fact gives “anti intellectualism core”. Stop acting like he dressed up as Jesus randomly. It isn’t a costume it’s a role he’s portraying. The character he plays isn’t Jesus or Jesus adjacent.

In the show a cult of people are going around killing others and leaving religious symbolisms behind. His character, Dr Mayhew, is killed and staged. Nothing more to see here people. Also the lack of knowledge about the show is throwing me. The show is a thriller that heavily deals with religion and the deadly sins. Much like many of its counterparts the show isn’t going to portray religion in a respectful or holy way. It wouldn’t be a fictional thriller if it did. Stop acting as if this was a religious documentary meant to explore the significance of the crucifixion. It isn’t and hasn’t been that. So please don’t start now.

And let’s be so for real half the people in his comments weren’t screaming blasphemy when the priest and nun (two people who have very sacred roles known for their dedication to faith and their chasity) were pictured having xes under a crucifix. Suddenly him doing a TikTok dance while in his character is to far. Please, this is a Ryan Murphy production not the Passion of Christ.

I’m convinced the same people frothing at the mouth about this are lukewarm Christians with a complex. They pick and choose when something is disrespectful and when it’s not. I’m sorry mom didn’t teach you this in kindergarten, but everyone doesn’t share the viewpoint or reverence for your beliefs as you do and they don’t have to. It’s understandable to want others to have respect for your religion but the current art(the show) was not created to do that.

Go ahead and unfollow, turn the tv off, and go to bed. I promise Nicholas isn’t loosing any sleep nor money over your lack of support.