#online over there; at least within like; queer stuff

[tokencisgirl]

i'm not sure if i really want more online friends outside of the people already inside my circle atp honestly because tldr; Discourse

[our-alterous-experience]

hi sorry about this being venty but uh

i like being alterous, sometimes. i like not being stuck between just platonic and romantic but it just feels so lonely. im the only alterous person i know and it just feels like no one else is ever gonna feel the same way i do about them, or that im somehow doing love wrong. i just want some one who loves me like i love them or someone who feels love the same way i do. how do i find community (or at the very least, feel like im not alone in this)?

I think this is something verrrrry true to my heart as well anon. I sit there and really feel how i want things to do differently than others. a long distant person who doesn’t talk to me much anymore is the only other person I’ve heard talk about alterous attraction within their friend groups. I have only dated alloromantics to my knowledge.

But to your points, I don’t think you have any idea how many people feel alienated like you do. And it might be hard to find them, or hard to find people who understand. But they are there, they are also alterous, or aro or aspec or queer. They are not queer and they still can see what you mean. It’s not worth explaining yourself to every person. But you will meet the right ones, and they will be kind as you explain how you feel. Even taking the word alterous out of it. You can still get your feelings across, and you may even introduce it to people who relate more than you think.

Connect with your aro side of the community. Hear more from loveless aros. Research cultural practices for the unpartnered— or the romance annexed. Speak out, at the right place and time you might find people. It’s what implored me to make this blog and archive and collect all that I can. I would say search for non romantic committed relationships— or talk in the tag about fictional relationships you find alterous. We are all people, many of whom aren’t writing down their experiences. It feels similarly to qpp’s getting on the map because people lived it and talked about it.

and if posting is too much, come over here and submit something, or ask a question to other blog goers. Or when someone brings it up be honest when you say you don’t relate to romantic and platonic relationships as they are usually displayed. And don’t feel diminished if you feel hurt by a look or a comment. If they were in your skin and lived your life they would get it. But they haven’t and you don’t owe them anything about the way you feel connected to people. It can be as long as “it’s not for me” “probably not” or “For quite some time when i thought of participating in traditional romantic things it felt like I would be lying. Even when I do romantic relationship stuff in my own ways it feels disconnected to me. But I still feel strongly for people. I still want to be with people or a person who understands and wants to build a special connection with me.”

Interact, find more people who see the world differently, find people appropriate to chat to online, engage with the small parts of the community. I reblog from a ton of different blogs. And if you ever need somewhere else to land, come chit chat here. You can still understand others, and others can still understand you. It might take time, and this might be the lonely season in your life. But prepare good energy to send to others. Do small things to fill up your life. It will be okay.

[misscammiedawn]

Are there any skills, proficiencies, or interests that each of you have a little more than the others? Or do you tend to share your interests very closely?

Wanted to keep this one as long as possible because it's a hard question to answer and I'm like-- the least equipped part of us to answer it (it's Camden coded tbh)

But--

Yes and No

We are the same person-- we KNOW that-- our intrigues and desires and skills all come from the same mind and there are times where that fact is a comfort and there are times when it's the most horrid and damning brick wall that we despise and cannot break through

Do we have preferences and things that we each gravitate towards? Yes (there are things that summon me out by proximity-- Daja has a better map of them than I do as she is the one who notices when our leg starts bouncing while someone else is fronting)

Do we have repulsions and bans that some of us cannot interact with? Also yes (I cannot handle erotic stuff AT ALL despite Dawn priding herself on that aspect of our soul)

But there's nuance within it

No matter who is fronting, even Dawn, if someone touched our pre-surgery genitals we would freeze up and feel a wave of--- ice? Like our entire soul would just STOP and we would stop being inside our body

Dawn can override that and ride the storm and just make us operate in that dizzy trance state and then suffer a massive drop later

Science wise we are just pushing ourselves through being SEVERELY ACTIVATED at like a brain chemistry level and the body will feel that, even if Dawn ignores it

Wonder how that relates to Wynn's aversion to being touched? Last time we had a freak out over a glitch in a video game she grabbed me and fronted while partners tried to do that "soothing touch" thing and she almost lashed out at them when they didn't get their non-verbal signal to "please don't touch me right now"-- feels like an invasion of the soul, like falling super fast and not being able to get a grips on the body or emotions or--

ANYWAY

Point is, we don't notice it unless one of us is offline

When we cannot reach a part of us then we get really fucking weird about the things that should be giving us pleasure and comfort-- Wynn being gone leaves us feeling listless and unmotivated, me being gone makes the spark of emotion go away etc etc

So like, I'll read comics on Wednesday and Dawn will be happy-- she doesn't need to front for it-- and we consider our habits and traits to be "ours", even stuff like the kink things which I can't even interact with comfortably-- it's why our online space is the unfiltered experience--

In our previous life we hid things from one another-- the amount of times that we discovered Dawn had an entire hidden online life for presenting as a kinky woman before we could accept it-- SCARES Camden to a disturbing degree

Like we feel SUPER guilty when we discover things like that because it's such a helpless feeling to just-- not be the person you thought you were? To not be sure how you acted, what is true and to fuck around with people by just losing connection with them

Wish we had better words for it--- was discussing this with a friend yesterday that dissociation is difficult to describe because language is rigid and these are more ethereal and vague concepts that aren't as black and white as language

Like normally when we are confronted with evidence of our actions we'll fill in the blanks or pave over the cracks

But like when we got an invite to "Queer Hypno Girls" in the 2020s we found out that we had been a member since 2017, years before we came out as trans, and were exclusively referred to as Camden and even Miss Dawn while there

Which does not mesh with our inner narrative AT ALL, to us we didn't accept we were trans until 2019

And upon seeing the posts and reading them, including some moments we opened up about our home life we could 'remember' discussing things with our former partner, we could feel some level of association and ownership over the events but it still rubbed super hard against our understanding of truth and so it messed with us, like the retrieved memories felt fake and our recognized history felt true and that's what I mean about it being impossible to describe with rigid language

It's evidence that two parallel experiences in our brain were true at the same time and we are pushed towards the more comfortable version of the two

And this includes Dawn, who was likely the one who lived it-- we don't just switch a lightbulb and suddenly we associate in perfectly

ANYWAY!!!

We are SO far off topic

STAY ON TOPIC CAMMIE!

Some skills are locked in with specific alters-- especially pre-transition when we didn't know how we functioned-- we have forgotten to drive while behind the wheel and have forgotten how to do our job while on a busy shift-- like approaching a projector to fix it and realizing we don't remember the code to log in or how to switch to the HDMI cable input-- honestly, looking back it was pretty amazing how we had no idea this was happening to us until we came out of the closet

These days we have a shared pool of knowledge and skills and interest

That's what I'm trying to communicate-- we exist in Venn Diagrams and live a single life and though some of us have different drives and desires and tolerances for things, we try our hardest to not compartmentalize our life anymore

This is the raw and unfiltered Cammie Dawn experience!

Sorry this was a rambly reply

[chevelleneech]

Circling back to Namjoon to say that while again, we don’t know who he’s dating, I think it’s very telling how the usage of things usually considered common knowledge within pop culture goes disregarded when it’s BTS related.

For example, Jungkook was once asked (although he shouldn’t have been) “Top or bottom?” and he answered, “Top.” Can it be said he wasn’t sure of the context? Yes, but at the same time, that is more of a reach than him just answering the question. It makes less sense to assume a man in his mid twenties, who grew up just as online as the rest of people in his generation, does not know what too or bottom means. They’re not unheard of terms in South Korea either, given how heavily they play a part in how queer male relationships are depicted on screen over there.

So with that example in mind, it kind of blows me how many people disregard an even more basic pop culture thing, by claiming Namjoon is completely naïve to what putting heart emojis over people’s faces tends to mean.

That is some of the most basic, normal ways to indicate a person means something to you, but particularly online it is often a signifier of being in a relationship or having romantic feelings for whoever is being covered up. So why would it be different for Namjoon? Especially because as far as I can recall, the only time he’s ever used a red heart was when fans were speculating about the guy from 2021.

He came online deadass in the middle of the drama and posted a photo with the heart over a man, and while I do not think the guy he chose was the same guy he’d been consistently posting about leading to the conversation at that time, I do think he did it for the laughs. I do think he did it to intentionally fuel the conversation, because he probably thought it was funny and watching us get another “clue” made him laugh. That said, I do also think the other guy whose build was much more consistent for a little bit, was likely his partner at the time. The same way I think the guy he used to post about on Weverse (or whatever app they used prior to IG) was his partner back then, because it was pretty consistent.

Now we jump to recent days, where he included an emoji which at the very least says, “I like this” over the face of someone who appears to be a man. And the caption to the series of posts that this is included in, is “just waiting for you.” And yes, he could be referring to a million and one things under the sun, but again, the reach is not people going, “Oh, he seems to be in a relationship again.” The reach is people trying to rip away the most basic way in which most of the world uses social media, because they don’t want Namjoon to be “mistaken” as queer.

It makes more sense for people to double down on saying this person is just a friend, thus implying Joon doesn’t know what emojis mean, despite the fact that we’ve seen him use other emojis to cover faces. As well, the song he attached seems to be about time passing, the same way the wall in his photo dump is.

So no, the person in question may not be someone he is romantically involved with, and could just be someone he is appreciative of for helping him move forward in life after a tough situation. At the same time though, the person in question could also just as easily be someone he’s dating, whom he feels has helped him move forward after a tough situation, and speculating/joking about them dating is not invasive.

As long as people don’t try and hunt the man down or hack into Joon’s personal devices or ask his public friends who the guy is, nothing will come from fans posting on social media about whether or not he has a boyfriend. Particularly not when he himself is publicly posting photos where he’s placed a heart over someone’s face. Namjoon is not stupid. He knows what this stuff means, same way he knows what comes from releasing music about his exes, or posting photos and captions on IG about shitty relationships. Just because he doesn’t confirm who he is or was dating, doesn’t mean he is uncomfortable with the topic of his love life now being public conversation. He quite literally responded to someone asking him who his girlfriend is or was on live, and said he didn’t have one. And that was during his peak, “Relationships are shit, people suck.” era.

Namjoon talks openly about having been in relationships, so it is not the place of any fan to decide which types of relationship he might have been in and is allowed to be speculated on. Not when he is the one who posted photos of these men, he is the one who said “We don’t have boyfriends or girlfriends.”, and he is the one who rapped, “She a pro-rider/He a pro-rider.” Yes, to some people that may point toward him being in straight relationships or being misunderstood in an interview, but to others the interpretation is he dates men and women.

Neither is right or wrong until he tells us it is, but he also doesn’t have to do that. We are not owed an answer on his sexuality, but speculating on who may have broken or mended his heart is not the same thing as demanding he out himself to confirm his potential queerness. He’s allowed to post whomever and write whatever lyrics he wants if the muse in question left a mark on him, and it’s not fair to dumb down his intelligence just because you’re afraid of said muse being a man.

[bfwonho]

AITA but i dont wanna use reddit

ok you know what here is the situation. my (only recently) 20 yr old friend (i met them four years ago when we both worked at mcd) lived with their strict, emotionally abusive, overprotective parents until recently. their parents would confiscate tech for yrs at a time, wouldn't let them get vaccinated (i had to help them do that), guilt and shame them, etc. also obviously homophobic and my friend is transfem nb and queer. theyre also the eldest sibling of quite a few and had to handle the pressure of that responsibility and their parents never wanted them to do normal things like getting a car and moving out. i was always there encouraging them even when we stopped working together bc i was like fuck this naive gullible homeschooled kid has no one and they remind me of my younger sibling and im gonna be there for them as much as i can. the only reason they even got a car eventually is cus i kept telling them to so they cld move out

cut back to barely a year ago, they're still so naive and gullible they've lent like 1k+ to ppl who won't pay them back, but they still have like 10-20k in savings and now their own car. they also get into digital art with my help and get into furry porn or whatever. im like ok i guess ur an adult now do what u want. and then theyre like "ive got an online partner from CANADA!!! (we r australian) don't freak out i know it's bad but he's 30." i'm like oh god. they've been together 3 months ish and my friend RLY wants to visit their fuckass boyfriend and i'm like please be careful, please wait at least a year, i know u wont wanna listen to how i rly feel about this but at least just take these precautions. i'm also like when you do meet irl he should come here ur barely 19 and he's 30 like it only makes sense. and theyre like "thank u i promise i will do that"

and then maybe 10 or 11 months into their relationship i find out my friend is in canada with their bf, and has been for like a month, and i only know this bc they're asking if i can pick them up from sydney airport. im like errr that's pretty far away but take the train and i'll pick you up from the station and they're like ok sure! and i ask a bit more about it and find out they believe their parents have been hacking into their laptop because why else would they be suspicious that this canadian guy is their boyfriend, i'm like actually no offense but it's really fucking obvious i don't think they did that... and they're like "yeah anyway my parents are no longer picking me up which is why i need a lift, i admitted i have a boyfriend and they're calling him a pedo (and i almost agree but i just smile and nod) and so i'm not going back and taking their bs anymore, i'm gonna sleep in my car if i have to" so i offer for them to stay at my place for a few weeks.

they go get their stuff from their place, i buy them a pizza cus they havent had dinner, i help them get their stuff inside, set up a temporary bed. they tell me they plan to be out within a few days, i tell them they can stay longer if they need to, but currently their only job is doordash and they should focus on getting a real job so they can find a place and i'm more than happy to help them find somewhere. theyre the type of person to say sorry for everything and not let themselves ever feel comfortable, so i make sure they know they can use the kitchen and bathroom and everything while they're here and to not feel like a huge burden, im gonna be charging them a tiny bit of rent anyway so yeah.

now tell me why it's been over a month, they've applied to only a few places, i specifically put in a good word with them at my job and told them to call back and ask about the application and they just haven't, they've just been doordashing and filling my entire fridge and cupboard with their food, i tell them to use the laundromat cus we don't have enough space for their washing too and they end up asking if they can use our washing machine anyway (i reluctantly say yes), they destroy all my kitchen sponges on washing this one shitty pan i have cus they have to cook an entire grand meal from scratch for breakfast lunch and dinner, they wash up but i'm the only person who cleans the floors and the bathroom so now i'm feeling cramped and stressed out...

i ask my mum about what to do, she says give them 2 weeks to move out, my mum is a guarantor on my lease so in the group chat i explain the situation and say they have 2 weeks, they NEVER RESPOND and start not coming home until late at night... i'm considering moving into another place with a friend atp so i'm like yo maybe you can get on this lease and THEN they respond and start showing up again... and today i called and updated mum on the situation and her partner got on the phone, me and my sibling only got this place cus he apparently called in a favour cus we were rly struggling to find any fucking housing, and so he says "tell him i mean THEMMM if theyre not out tomorrow i will forcibly remove them" and so my sibling makes sure to tell them this face to face so they cant avoid actually responding. i also find out today that this whole time they've been flat broke (to the point they had to borrow my money just to get petrol despite doordashing like 40 hours a week) because they HAVE BEEN HELPING. PAY. THEIR GROWN ASS. SHITTY FUCKING USELESS. PARTNERS. RENT. THIS GROWN ASS MAN NOT ONLY HAD THEM PAY TO GO SEE HIM AND SUCK HIM OFF AND COOK FOR HIM. NOT ONLY WAS LETTING THEM GO BACK TO AUSTRALIA AND JUST BE HOMELESS. BUT HE IS ACTIVELY TAKING THEIR FUCKING MONEY. despite all of this i am deep down INCREDIBLY GLAD that my mum's partner put his foot down to get them out of my house and i feel guilty about it despite risking eviction cus im breaking my lease agreement by having them here loooll

tldr my 20 yr old friend has been living in my house illegally for over a month bc they refuse to go back to their shitty parents, they are however broke and don't have a stable job and their 30 yr old boyfriend is leeching off of them, and now i'm essentially kicking them out of my place within 2 days because my own housing security is at risk

[rosieuv]

That whole 1-10 rating thing people use on dating apps makes no sense

I don't use dating apps because I'm a minor and I have standards but I've noticed this trend within the past 2 ish years where people on the internet refer to each other's looks with a 1-10 rating. Is this some secret stat only straight people can see? How does one even calculate such a stat? I assume it's based on conventionally attractiveness but not everyone finds the mainstream attractive so it just leaves me confused.

What would my rating be? I'm not conventionally attractive as I have shoulder length wavy hair doing the emo swoop, pale skin, thin lips and almost nothing in the cups but I've been complimented by other girls (mostly on my hair) so I must have at least some form of prettiness. Then there's stuff like being tall, which the western culture deems all tall people as more attractive than shorter people (yet still make buying bigger clothes a pain in the ass) but then there's people online who go off about how tall women are too masculine (which in the context of whatever they're saying means that they're ugly) so what even is the convention? I assume Instagram models with crap tons of surgery and skin cancer but I've seen this same logic applied from those incels who want a stay at home traditional wife and if there's no standardised rating system then why make a rating system at all?

Thumbnail off this video (I didn't watch it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jsj6Qr7Z7o0

Lonely straight people will do crap like this and then wonder why they're still single.

It's not the group's fault, it's those stupid dating apps where you just go swipe swipe swipe without even getting to know then first. Which leads me onto another point...

Is this a thing within the queer community? Because I've only seen this from women to men and vice versa. I guess when there's less of you then I guess you can't afford to be picky.

Seriously, there's whole web pages and shit dedicated to this:

From what I've gathered, the overarching theme seems to be with women: being old, being fat and having any kind of physical deformity, which compiling a bunch of strangers' faces into a webpage to call them hideous is unbelievably rude but I guess people forget empathy over on good ol' internet land.

Image from this article (I skim read parts of it): https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa16/2016/10/19/what-makes-people-attractive/

This image rubs me the wrong way as I'm fairly sure the "attractive female target" is wearing light makeup as there's no way anyone has skin that clear due to the way the sun hits your face, acne in puberty etc but also the "unattractive female/male targets" look like they're either sick, really tired, or have something swollen in their lip. Their expression doesn't look the same: they look slightly annoyed while the attractive ones look mildly happy. My point being that they're clearly not in the best state that they can be, while the attractive ones are so this feels a little biased.

In conclusion, stop using dating apps and either go outside while some places are still in business (like night classes and pubs/bars) or use the old fashioned websites where you can actually talk to them and find out their hobbies and stuff.

[themomsandthecity]

Jesse Sullivan and Francesca Farago Talk "Surreal" Pregnancy Journey

When Jesse Sullivan and Francesca Farago announced their pregnancy on March 31, Trans Day of Visibility, their videos on social media were met with an outpouring of support: "Congrats to you both! Thanks for sharing this journey," one user wrote. "You are going to make the best parents ever," another commented. Of course, they got questions too - about how they would raise their future kids within a queer family, what their IVF journey was like, and how Arlo, Sullivan's 15-year-old, is feeling about becoming an older sibling. But the good news kept pouring in. On April 7, the couple revealed they were expecting not one child, but twins. They both readily admit they'd been hoping they'd have twins, if only so that they don't have to fight over which one of them gets to hold the baby. "We already do it with our cat and our dog, so if we only had one baby, it would be bad," Sullivan jokes. "Once I was seeing the heartbeats on the scan, it felt so real." We caught up with Sullivan and Farago a couple weeks after their announcement, and they were both giddy as they talked about expanding their family. They were still a bit in disbelief, too, given that they went through a failed embryo transfer last year. As Farago put it, despite all of the planning, hormone shots, and everything else that has gone into making this pregnancy a reality, "the fact that it's happening feels surreal." Keep reading to find out what Farago has been craving during her pregnancy, how Sullivan deals with the "hate" he gets online as a trans man, and why it's so important for them both to be open about their relationship and their journey of growing their family. On How Pregnancy Is Going Francesca Farago: All the first trimester stuff - nausea, feeling tired - it all started hitting me this week. I'm feeling a little under the weather, to be expected obviously, and because there are two in there, I definitely feel a little bit worse than I'd feel if there were just one. It's a little bit of a struggle to do day-to-day things, but everyone tells me that when you get into your second trimester, all of that goes away. So I'm excited for that. I'm hiding it with makeup. Jesse Sullivan: I basically have been like a little caretaker. I make her all her meals, and she's craving very specific things. So anytime she's craving something, I try to surprise her. I'll add a little apple with caramel, and she gets all excited. I take care of the animals, and I've been taking care of the house. Kind of doing everything I can to make her days easier, because she's been going through so much. Not only the twins, but because this was IVF, she's on all these hormones and it's been extra hard on her body. So the least I can do is sort of be like full-blown Mr. Maid. FF: I'm craving healthy foods, and my favorite thing right now is cinnamon raisin toast with vegan cream cheese and berries on top. JS: Or a bagel with vegan cream cheese and cucumber. FF: I'm big on cucumbers right now. I could live off cucumbers. I don't know what it is. I think maybe the freshness. On What's Been Most Surprising Since Starting Their IVF Journey JS: Although we intentionally did this and put so much blood, sweat, and tears into making this happen, once it happened and once I was seeing the heartbeats on the scan, it felt so real. And it sounds so weird, because obviously I knew this was going to happen. But it hits you really hard. And it's like, we're bringing human beings into this world together. FF: I remember the other day, I was thinking like, "Oh my god, we're actually going to have two babies? Who's letting us do this?" I feel like a teen adult. My mom started having kids when she was young, but I'm like, we're ready, but also who let us do this? It's crazy that it's actually happening. JS: I think that's a normal thing when you're pregnant or at any stage, you get hit with the reality really hard. It happened to… https://www.popsugar.com/family/jesse-sullivan-francesca-farago-twins-interview-49355599?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[elkian]

Alright I'm back.

So this is sort of a storm of three issues I've seen coming together lately:

Reduction of offline community opportunities

General enshittification and commodification and commercialization of fucking everything, particularly on the internet

Loss of older fandom spaces and experiences, partly as a result of the above

Okay, so I live in the USA and this is mostly going to be about my personal perspective, YMMV, etc.

It's really damn hard to make irl friends right now, and the ones I have live a pretty decent distance away and also are working adults. Public transit is virtually nonexistent, so meetups require some scheduling.

COVID is a big part of this but it's not the only part. Corporations benefit from isolation and the nuclear family (every household has to buy everything for themselves at least once rather than a community owning one or two of whatever, is an example I saw a while back), and people being pretty much perpetually online means a lot of opportunities to advertise. Plus a bunch of other stuff but this is about fandom.

Archive of Our Own is great for what it is, but it's also great because a lot of fandom spaces have just... dropped away. If they still exist, I don't know how to access them. Forums are being replaced with Discord servers if at all which is a whole thing (the writing server I'm about to mention? It's the second version. The first was deleted by an estranged mod in the middle of the night with no warning, and we lost everything posted on it).

I used to write a lot on fandom memes on Livejournal - which eventually nuked so, so much, because card companies didn't like The Filthy Queers having an iota of fun, so advertisers yelled at LJ and LJ ripped out a bunch of shit under the guise of "protecting the children". I moved to Dreamwidth, but my momentum had been curbed. On the LJ memes, I was writing between 3-7 one-shots some nights! And the key thing was that people responded almost immediately! Sometimes within the hour, sometimes within the week. People would feed into each other with suggestions, feedback, even misunderstandings and typos could end up contributing! And making something on a forum meme meant you were responding to a request (so it was polite for the requester to respond back), but also people could drop in on a whim. There was a lot of interaction.

Now forums and fanfic sites are getting dropped or nuked by ad-revenue-hungry hosts, and web 3.0 looms ever closer and worser.

What this has all lead to, as far as I can tell, is a lot of first-timers coming into fandom with the expectation of it being a Market in which they can Consume Things - with the attitude of a Customer. But that's not what fandom is! That's not what it's about! On a certain level, fandom as a whole is more mainstream - but it's also, still, very much not. It's just that the mainstream version which is being identified as fandom is more like an advertising space. @shinesurge (who has a great comic btw) has a pretty good post about the bleakness of advertisers crowding into fandom spaces over here.

(I had a pretty lousy recent experience with a new fandom where people came into my work with critique like I had sold them a product. This is fundamentally not what fandom is.)

When people share fanfic, the idea is that you are sharing a story with people who have the same interests with you. Anyone can write that for any reason, but posting it means you want people to see it. Wanting people to see it means, almost always, that you want to see a response from them. As in-person meetups become increasingly difficult, online spaces are the core way to engage in fandom.

Key: engage.

Not soulless marketing engagement; engaging in mutual activities with fans of the thing you also like.

When irl meetups are difficult, digital communication has become the norm. This is convenient, but on top of everything else, it's a little easy to get mixed up and conflate "talking to my actual friend" to "chatting with fellow fans" to "surfing a tag for a thing", and I think that's part of the issue.

Back to Generative AI.

People, and I genuinely want you to consider this in the absolute most compassionate, sympathetic light you can: the bulk of people I see talk about using Generative AI frequently don't seem to have anyone in their actual life to talk to about this.

When character chat AI was just getting off the ground, a couple of people in the writing server I'm in tried it. But as far as I can tell, none of them kept up with it, and I think part of that is because both RolePlaying and general character conversations are a frequent element of that server. Because we have other people to talk with about it, gen AI has no niche to fill.

When you're showing someone your art irl, they can't really plug it into a slop generator and give a result - they have to observe it themselves and then provide feedback based on their experiences. The people on my writing server, there's not a one of them I would expect to dump my rough draft into ch*tg*t and churn out an edit of if I asked for beta reading help.

Functionally, the majority people I see using gen AI are people who don't have a working relationship with anyone they can genuinely talk to about art, writing, and creative work - whether because the user is a tech bro who genuinely can't understand the difference between ch*tg*t word salad and soul-searing literature, or, as in this case, because they have no friends to talk to about it.

I wish I could say there was an easy fix for this, but even dumping acid into every server farm isn't going to fix our core issues (I mean, still do it, but) - the devaluation of art by tech bros which then feeds into marketing because marketers are tech bros or owned by them, which then generate advertisements that commodify and devalue art which is then seen ad nauseum by impressionable humans with no one by their side to give them a different perspective... and now we have fandom newbies wandering in and trying to order milk shakes at hardware stores.

Fandom news: understand that when you're entering fandom spaces, there are practices and rules in place that you're expected to abide by. You are not a customer ready to be served; you are a participant as much as anyone else involved. And that's a good thing! It's an opportunity! Sharing means both giving and receiving, but the important thing is that people are sharing things with the expectation

Fandom olds: try to meet the newbies with grace and understanding. It can be frustrating, but they need a soft landing and a lot of help.

This whole post is a mess and honestly kudos if you managed to read the whole thing. o7

I gotta go but I keep meaning to make an essay about the rise of gen AI dovetailing with human isolation in the west and the largely digital nature of friendships and human due to societal factors

[borderline-gays-club]

I think I have an obsession starting to form…

But strangely enough this feels possibly healing?

I just found this singer/performer and wow…In love. I watched her performance on YouTube like 15 times within the last 2 days? Like literally can’t stop watching. Her vocals, the lyrics, the whole performance…literally mesmerizing.

But anyway I’m not really here to gush abt her lol.

Point I’m trying to make is that she’s one of the few obsessions I’ve had in which the attraction was based in something admirable about the person. Vs the obsession being that specific thing I had toward older loser men (the desire of being desired which felt like power and control).

And important to mention that she’s queer and trans. And also I’m protected bc she’s a celebrity and I’ll most likely never actually meet her.

Like I’ve only been obsessed over older men. And only one time one girl. And I’m like really starting to suspect that I was never actually attracted to cis men. But instead that attraction I had towards men was (at least majority) based in fuckin daddy issues.

Another thing to note abt obsessions in general is if I put my obsessive energy into something that Is beneficial to me then I at least come out of the obsession with self growth.

Like for example if I have an obsession with someone and I want to gain their attention and one way I can do that is to make art or watever. And then I’ll become obsessive with making art with the end goal of fulfilling watever fantasy I have of the person. (I’ll expand more on this later)

But yah we’ll see where this goes. Might’ve spent the last two hours looking up all her stuff online hehe

[keepthisholykiss]

The results from my Dracula Daily survey are in! Just like with my Hamlet survey in the past, these are the highlights of data that I found from the survey. Folks shared valuable insights that are soon to be shared with the purpose of advocating for further free education resources like these. The data in these graphics is not all the data received but that is because I never share 100% of results, only the interesting parts. This is also probably my final survey I will do like this unless there is desire for me to do more research, if you have a topic you’d like me to cover send me an ask! Otherwise I will be working on my child, my magnum opus, my future PhD dissertation.

Onto the post mortem thoughts and alt text which are both under the fold!

This survey was originally done with the purpose of a specific conference I was to attend and share my thoughts on accessible education with. However that conference was, ironically, incredibly inaccessible. I am a queer disabled scholar and I face a lot of challenges in academia so making my case for why educational resources like Dracula Daily should be promoted within academia is very important to me. Unfortunately my original plans for this research could not happen due to my having to pull out of the conference. Now this data is being shared with a new and much more accessible conference, so at least I can still have use it for its original purpose!

Also of note is that this survey, unlike work I have done in the past, received some really nasty responses. Specifically terfs (idk why they wrote gross stuff in my survey answers though) and people who wanted to belittle the way or the content of what I was researching. This is not okay. I want to reiterate that I am a queer, disabled scholar who has zero tolerance for some of the responses I received. Studying fandom is never fully free of this but I want to hold people accountable always for the way people are treated within a community. My studies of online community are basically done (because I am moving onto my PhD work which does not involve the same research) but if I come back to doing it I will be implementing other methods to avoid the way I was treated. Regardless of the bad eggs and struggles I have with most all of academia this was fun. I appreciate everyone who participated and thank you for the feedback. Please enjoy these results!

ALT TEXT:

Slide one: Dracula Daily survey results Slide two: About the survey -  A survey was conducted to gather data from fans of Dracula Daily to gain insight on accessible education and fandom. The survey received 863 responses these are the data highlights. Slide three: Disclaimer - The data presented here is a summary of information and highlighted portions of responses. This is not all of the data and the entirety will never be released. Also some responses were omitted from final numbers due to abusive language entered into the survey toward the researcher. Slide four: Before Dracula Daily - 62%  of respondents had not read Dracula before Dracula Daily.  More than 50% of respondents answered that they had been avid readers at some point in their lives. Slide five: 85%  of respondents noted that they had consumed other gothic or vampire media prior to Dracula Daily. Slide six: Finishing the story - 66%  of respondents finished Dracula Daily. 15.7% plan to finish. Slide seven:  92% of respondents said Dracula Daily improved their understanding of Dracula and/or classic literature Slide eight: Stopping short -  The majority of those who responded that they did not finish stopped reading sometime in October.  The top reason for not finishing was: lack of motivation. Slide nine: Let’s Talk About It - 82%  of respondents talked about Dracula Daily online, in person, or both. Over 50%  cited memes as their favorite part of participating. Slide ten: One More Chapter -  Many respondents indicated their desire to read more books in this format, the titles with the most interest were: Sherlock Holmes, Jane Austen, Phantom of the Opera, and Les Miserables

[olderthannetfic]

The YA/SFF book drama on twitter is always entertaining and scary, but I think now I can safely say that 90% of the time, it's about eliminating competition when authors call out other authors for their works. Recently, the trans writer Maya Deane has traditionally published her book Wrath Goddess Sing, an Iliad retelling featuring trans Achilles and received criticism from another author who said her story was racist for featuring "Brisewos" (trans masc Briseis) as Achilles' slave and tacky because Deane strayed from the original myths. To be fair I don't personally like Deane's novel because it warps too much of the Iliad and Greek mythology in ways that don't make any sense ~like making Achilles the daughter of Athena and not Thetis, which would, in turn, mean the Trojan war wouldn't have happened because there would be no wedding for Eris to not get invited to~. I was willing to read other people's thoughts too. It's like twitter critics skip over the part of reading the original text wherein it's about Greek warriors and Briseis was Achilles' war trophy. After the critic was confronted by others saying he's making an incorrect reading of the geopolitical readings of ancient Greece and pointing out Hittie people weren't Black, he tried to backtrack his words. He liked a lot of tweets of people quote retweeting him, saying Deane is a racist and shouldn't have a career as a writer and calls for people to completely not buy or promote her book, significantly affecting her livelihood. Then, people realize he has his own series of romance books based on Greek mythology he's trying to get picked up by any agent featuring an Athena who has a sexual relationship (what?) with Dionysus (what? why? how? What happened to following the Greek myths closely?).

In other news, we all know what happened to Isabel Fall. One of the writers who defended the harassers of Isabel Fall after the fact put out a long twitter thread, basically saying she's tired of consumer-as-identity, bad faith readings, and purity culture in bookish online spaces. It's a fair statement, but it ignores her own cultivation of this growing trend for at least the last 7 years by calling a queer book critic a nazi for just saying "to understand any genre, specifically SFF, you have to read the 'classics' in the genre, not just new stuff or stuff you like." And calling a gay author a homophobe based on reading 2 chapters of his book preview online. Turns out, this author just got published traditionally. Her book is a m/m political arranged marriage fantasy featuring the r*pe and forced outing of one of the male characters in the first 20 pages. So, it ticks the boxes on everything her audience of purity-enthusiasts (and herself) would hate another author doing *insert anti-fujoshi rhetoric and paper-thin ownvoices talking points here* My best bet is within the month, more people are going to read her book and try to call her out, so she put out this twitter thread to get ahead of the bad press. Let's all start thinking for ourselves and take twitter media criticism with a grain of salt from now on.

--

No. Let's all stop reading twitter entirely.

[mywingsareonwheels]

Some hopefully reassuring observations on fandom and human beings

1. Sometimes (more of the time than not) when two fans of something disagree sharply on their interpretation of a character or event in the story, neither of them is actually wrong. Especially if the source material is any good and thus complex and open to more than one way of looking at things. The more simplistic an interpretation the less astute and wise it’s likely to be, but that doesn’t mean that even someone who holds an opinion like that has missed everything important about it! When portrayals of a character in fanfic vary wildly that’s... actually probably a feature, rather than a bug. (Even if it is occasionally saddening to be halfway through a fic and suddenly realise that this excellent writer hates your favourite character/adore your least favourite! ;-) Such is life, doesn’t mean anyone’s doing anything wrong.)

2. It is totally reasonable to unfollow or even block an entirely lovely strange or near-stranger on tumblr/refrain from reading their fics because their interpretation of the story or a character is so different from yours that it’s just stressful to read their takes. But if it’s someone you already know and like, especially a real-life or close-online friend, it’s really *really* not worth falling out about that.

3. Relatedly: I think we all got so damn burned out by “you need to not just follow/like/befriend people you agree with about everything” being used to attempt to guilt us into listening to fascists, or otherwise put up with bigotry or constant microaggressions or generally get exhausted by nonsense. So let us all agree that instantly blocking bigots or others with views that we find dehumanising is a Really Damn Good Thing. BUT ALSO... over issues that aren’t that crucial, writing friends off due to any possible difference of opinion (fandom-related or otherwise) is a bit miserable. And absolutely awful as a pattern for activism, given that people of goodwill who may disagree with each other over some stuff working together is an absolutely necessary bit of activism.

4. When a fandom has a pattern of preference over characters, ships, and storylines that conforms to societal biases, a) that’s a bad thing and worth talking about, b) it *doesn’t mean that everyone in the fandom who has that preference is doing so because of those social biases*. Group tendencies do not generally predict the motivations of every individual within the group.

5. “It is an especially good thing when A happens” and “It is a bad thing when B happens” are not the same thing. (I most want to make the point that “queer actors playing queer characters is extra awesome” is true but so also is “sometimes het actors play queer characters beautifully and as long as they do their jobs well that’s totally okay”.)

6. It really is okay to ship characters because you fancy them rather than for any more supposedly exalted reason. (Which isn’t to say that other reasons to ship characters aren’t valid and interesting! But “I ship these two because they are/would be hot together” is a complete reason. If indeed any reason is needed.)

7. There is no moral dimension to what gender(s) you find attractive (if any).

8. There is no moral dimension to what gender(s) you are (if any).

9. Not everyone in fandom is a woman, let alone a cishet woman.

10. Actors and other artists are all human beings first and foremost, and should be treated accordingly. And being human beings, it should be trivially obvious that the theory that all of them are motivated by the desire for publicity and nothing else is absolute nonsense.

11. Being kind and generous with yourself and other people is a very very good thing.

[absolutebl]

So I know the point of your blog is BL but do you think with the increase in BL we'll start seeing more GL? There has historically been decidedly less GL (once you filter out the porn made for straight dudes) and as a queer woman I want more!! Western media doesn't seem to do the same kind of storytelling as Asian BL. Even if Asian BL

aren't always telling queer stories, they are doing romance in a way I haven't seen over here yet (like give me a queer romcom or a queer crime drama Western media! Does it exist)? And I want that for GL.

ASIAN GL

OMG another ask for me to spin into stats. WEEEEEEEEEE!!!! (Thank you!) 

SO

I REALLLLLYYYYYY hope so. I WANT THIS SO BAD. 

I actually love GL as much as BL, but there just isn’t very much of it. Unfortunately, I don’t think we are going to see much in the future either. So sorry to say, but I can explain. I have data! 

But I’ll need to talk about the source materials and why the lack first. 

So ready... here we go... 

History of GL - Popularity Struggles 

So BL comes from Yaoi manga. There is a female version of this, Yuri. Historically, in Japan it is MUCH less popular than Yaoi. 

On the other side of the globe at round the same time (late 90s early 00s) there are lesbian-centered queer indie films from the USA, also historically less popular than the gay stuff. Although both really struggled. (There are series too. One could contrast the ratings and viewer numbers of say, Queer as Folk against The L-Word.) 

Now, let’s look at the romance literature industry because it is a demographic bellwether for romcoms and romantic films, TV, and web series in general. (More on that in the next section.) 

F/F, lesbian, and non-gay queer focused romance novels sell the least within the romance genre. If we divide that genre purely on sales lines, it goes: het, m/m or gay, f/f or lesbian, other forms of queer. 

There are exceptions, especially when popular romance het authors branch into ff. But this is not the norm. 

Sales Demographics for BL 

I’m talking broad brush stroke sales demos here. Please don’t take it personally. This is just following the eyeballs, to the numbers, to revenue generated. The entertainment industry is a commercial industry. It desires to make money first and foremost. 

Yaoi, BL, and gay romance has been historically consumed almost entirely by women of a specific age demographic (25-65). Hollywood will occasionally refer to this demographic as the Apple Pie demo (see Lynda Obst’s book Sleepless in Hollywood.) I personally think this demo is skewing younger right now, but I haven’t tunneled into the data because, frankly, there is no point until we return to normal (this post from 2020). I specialize in predictive analysis and what we have right now is a non-predictive culture state. (It definitely skews younger for BL because of the technological barrier to entry - AKA the general need to consume online or illegally.) 

Anyway, Apple Pie is ALSO the demo that consumes romcoms and romance novels. This is a powerful consumer demographic for material objects (they do most of the shopping for most households in terms of goods) but historically not a very powerful demographic in terms of entertainment. The Apple Pie has a habit of doing pretty much anything else instead of stopping their lives to watch or read. 

When they do get obsessed with a piece of pop culture Apple Pies move mountains, see Twilight. (Which is one of the reasons it’s SO VITAL to have positive representation in these kinds of films, even if only as side characters, Apple Pie is also a powerful voting demographic when it comes to culture change like marriage equality. When I talk about being pro-normalization this is that angle.)

Unfortunately, the Apple Pies are easily distracted and easily placated. Historically they will go along with media that other demographics would rather consume (those demos being children, teens & college age, men age 25-55, and retirees). Teens, college age, and men 25-55 often share similar tastes, they also spend the most on entertainment, and historically dominate the entertainment field’s focus. (See superhero tent pole movies etc...)

Okay so, this means BL is most popular with the Apple Pie demographic. (Particularly over the last year and a half because Apple Pies have been less distracted from pop culture than in prior years. I anticipate watch numbers going down when C19 has been dealt with.) I liken this to the popularity of lesbian porn amongst straight men. There’s fetishization, fantasy, exotic appeal, distancing from an act that one cannot participate in oneself, and whole lot of other psychological things going on here. (No shade. This is a pro sex, pro kink, pro self analysis and self understanding space here.)

BL is also popular with gay and queer identified individuals but there just aren’t as many of us to significantly tilt the scale of watch numbers when pitted against the majority of viewers. Sad but true.

Sales Demographics for GL 

GL/lesbian film watchers and Yuri/lesbian/queer romance readers are ALSO members of the Apple Pie demographic. But, in broad brush strokes the only people who actually regularly consume this kind of pop culture are an even smaller wedge of that demo. They are:   

women/female identified individuals who identify as lesbians, bisexual, or pansexual 

gender non-conforming individuals who identify as queer or within the LGBTQ+ culture 

In other words, GL is not consumed by straight identified women and they make up the vast majority of Apple Pie. Yet the Apple Pie is already one of the hardest demos to market to. So GL watchers are the smallest wedge of an already difficult target wedge. 

So this is a VERY long way of saying that GL doesn’t have the demographics to be profitable. There just isn’t a big enough audience for it to sell well at volume. There’s basically no market. 

Which is not to say we won’t get some GL. It just a long way of saying I don’t see GL ever going the same way as BL. 

I would LOVE to eat these words - as if they were apple pie. But I can’t see how a surge in GL popularity and production, demographically speaking, would be possible in the current social make up of consumers. 

Here endith the market analysis lesson for today. 

All that said...

Some GL that DOES exist 

Couple of Mirrors (Chinese - sad end, censored romance) 

Dear Uranus (Taiwan - cliff hanger ending) 

Friendzone 2: Dangerous Area (Thai - subplot) 

The Handmaiden (Korea) THIS MOVIE IS A MASTERPIECE (it comes from Fingersmith, which is also great, and the same author as Tipping the Velvet which is fantastic) 

Handsome Stewardess (Taiwan - sad ending) 

Hormones 2 (Thai - subplot)

Nevertheless (Korea - subplot) - warning the surrounding het characters are unbearable 

Pair of Love (Taiwan) 

Pearl Next Door (Pinoy) 

Ride or Die (japan) VERY DARK murder lesbians 

Transit Girls (Japan) - stepsisters trope 

Triple - Do You Want? (Korea) - experimental one act where 3 couples (BL, GL, het) each perform the same first love scene with the same dialogue 

Very Complicated (Thai - subplot)

Water Boyy (Thai - subplot) 

Yes or No 1 & 2 (Thai)

Ones I haven’t managed to watch yet or dropped 

Afraid Of (Korea) 

Albino (Japan) 

Between The Seasons (Korea) 

Butterfly (Hong Kong) 

Chasing Sunsets (Pinoy) 

Club Friday The Series 12 (Thai) 

Diary of Tootsies (Thai) 

Girls Love (China) 

He's a Woman, She's a Man (Hong Kong) 

i STORIES (Thai) 

Intimates (Hong Kong)

Jellyfish (Japan)

Joshi-teki Seikatsu (Japan) 

Legend of Yun Qian (China) 

Life is Peachy (Korea) 

Lily Fever (Korea)

Love My Life (Japan) 

Love/Juice (Japan) 

Love Songs Love Stories: Pae Jai (Thai) 

My Dear Friend (Korea) 

On Air (Korea) 

Our Love Story (Korea) 

Out of Breath (Korea) 

The Painter of the Wind (Korea) 

Spider Lilies (Taiwan) 

The Substitute (Taiwan) 

We Are Gamily (Taiwan) 

White Lily (Japan) 

X-LOVE (China) 

GL Trends by Country

Like with BL I’d be wary of the stuff out of Japan and China as it has a tendency to go dark. 

Hong Kong seems particularly interested in exploring cross dressing and gender identity. 

There are more from Korea than I expected and less from Taiwan. Sadly, the Korean stuff is particularly difficult to get hold of internationally. 

The Thai stuff is all over the place but sometimes can be cute and sweet. 

Here’s @heybisexuals Asian WLW Media Masterpost which is full of tasty links and more information.  

This post and list date 2021, GL occurring after this will not appear but MAY be in the comments. 

(source)

[katyspersonal]

I think the most wholesome thing I saw today was a Twitter artist accused, and instead of instantly dogpiling on the easy reason to bully and "cancel" someone, people who enjoyed their art mostly instantly went like 'this is a shame if true, hope they will do better since they clearly have a skill and did so much good stuff already' and 'but I really love their works, hope this is a misunderstanding and will be cleared up'.

Like... I can't stress it enough that creators who do not mind growing rather than staying within small audience of like 4 friends, MUST aspire to build this sort of following. The kind of neutral people but thankful ones, who will not jump into conclusions or at least won't turn so easily. I've seen so many kinda big creators get cannibalised by their own "fans" who instantly forgot everything good this person provided them so far. The trademark "supporting attitude" of the so-called "allies", huh? It is just so terrible how easily the audience you basically have been serving can turn on you once things get bad. All to win cheap sense of moral superiority of throwing the 'strong' person off the platform.

The easiest way to avoid letting this sort of treacherous fake "fans" become your following is, honestly, avoiding catering to the people who pretty much just live to fight (online, of course). Twitter zombies that only care for what race/gender/sexuality someone is and nothing else is the quickest example of the audience that WILL betray you and ENJOY tearing your whole online life apart when they get a reason - even if you are same minority as them or whatever. Like, there is little difference despite what you might expect. If you are a cishet ally being supportive - you are wrong because you are a cishet, if you are a queer person - you 'do not exist in the vacuum' and just queered the 'wrong' way.

Although I intend to stay a niche artist until I die, seeing this happen over and over is more or less why I never draw focus to my queer headcanons even if I have plenty. It is just a good course of action. Like, no flags unless June, no specific words unless asked or relevant to the discussion, etc. I've noticed just depicting love between same gender characters attracts more chill audience than drawing strong focus to how gay/lesbian they are or whatnot, for example. Just drawing different people as people, not as revolutionary statement to "piss off the bigots". Making your designs not white, drawing your favs as not cishets out of love and not out of "spite" is probably the first prevention from attracting the blood thirsty squad who, I can assure you, will absolutely not have your back or remember your services once you disappoint their expectations from you as a perfect pure person with perfect pure history.

Nobody wants THIS sort of audience, really. Attracting people who are here for your style and talent, not for seeing you as a valuable 'blade of justice' is IMPORTANT. Like, may be cynical but when I see a creator that clearly 'serves the community' rather than simply expresses themselves or what they know, I just can't help but go 'yeah, wonder how soon they'll make a mistake and get cannibalised'. "Accountability" is just a justification for witchunts.

[thanotaphobia]

on philza, technoblade, and qprs

i’d like to start this off by saying i am on the ace spectrum. i don’t really label myself as anything other than “queer” but here i acknowledge the fact i am somewhat asexual and aromantic

now onto what i actually want to say, mostly about the conversation surrounding philza and technoblade and their relationship as viewed by the fandom. i’ll go through this in three parts: 1. canon relationship 2. fanon relationship 3. my take on boundaries, qpr, and society stuff and how i think some of the fandom surrounding these two characters need to chill on the depiction of certain relationships

1. phil and techno’s canon relationship is centered around a few very important lines and interactions. mostly “for you, the world phil” and other statements declaring techno and phil as besties. i don’t think either of them are bad friends in any way! i think in canon their relationship is strong and has several moments on stream that can back it up. techno constantly showering philza with gifts is part of his love language- phil is a bit different, but his acts of service come with helping him farm wither skulls and supporting technoblade during doomsday. canonically, their relationship is strong and i don’t deny that.

2. fanon has taken it different ways, as fandom is wont to do. many people are interpreting phil and techno as best friends, some as father/son, apprentice and master, etc! it’s great- all these headcanons are awesome. the problem that some people have come to find is with the depictions of philza and technoblade in a qpr, or a queerplatonic relationship. for anyone who’s unclear on what that is, a queerplatonic relationship is by definition “a term for a relationship that bends the rules for telling apart romantic relationships from non-romantic relationships.” this is straight from the LGBTA wiki, although the definition can shift and change depending on the person you ask. this is not an issue. headcanons are fine and chill and dandy and philza himself has said headcanoning is fine including qprs! the problem lies within:

3. the fact that some people take it way too far. 

unfortunately, in the society we live in, there are some things and actions that have been coded to be romantic. every day these items are challenged by real life queer people who are in qprs and who do live their lives in opposite to how society demands we do. however, when it comes to minecraft roleplay and the content creators performing, this is not the hill to die on. you can say you want something to be platonic and still slap romantic-coded actions all over it. kissing and marriage are two of the most contended i’ve seen, as well as lingering touch and other intense, close parts of a relationship that are often coded as romantic. this doesn’t mean that those actions always have to be romantic. that’s the whole reason for qprs in the first place- to challenge and go against the idea that all of these actions must be romantic. however, for the real life people concerned (who may or may not understand what a qpr is) it WILL COME ACROSS AS ROMANTIC.

there is no way to fix that. there is no way to erase cultural norms grown into a person. some things will always be taken as romantic no matter how hard we try to denormalize it. you can’t just say it’s platonic and expect the whole world to go along with it. that is not how it works, however much i or you disagree. change is slow- it takes years, even decades. 

that being said, it’s of my personal opinion that some fan content depicting techno and philza in a qpr goes too far. i block and mute anything that makes me uncomfortable, and i urge everyone else who feels the same to do so, because that’s how you react in an online space when you see something you disagree with. block and mute and move on. but i also wanted to get my thoughts out there in a way that makes sense (at least to me) and to just remind people of boundaries that exist and that while the world is more progressive than ever, it is still not perfect and likely will never be. is this a hill to die on? i just urge anyone making content to think about how one of the content creators involved would view it- if they came across it, or it was shoved in their face, or blew up to an immense amount- how would they react? 

tl;dr: im not a personal fan of some depictions of techno and phil in qprs. i block and mute and move on, so should you. disclaimer: all of this is my opinion and should be taken as such. i don’t legitimately care enough to really argue on the matter of opinion, so. take it as you will

[terpia]

Early Modern Drama Rec List (Non-Shakespeare)

So I just spend a year reading a lot of early modern drama and I thought I might as well put my degree to a good use and make a list of some of my favourite lesser known (i.e. not written by Shakespeare) early modern plays. All of these plays are in the public domain, so it should be very easy to find them online.

Comedies:

The Roaring Girl by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker - a fictional story featuring a dramatized portrayal of a real person, Mary Firth, also known as Moll Cutpurse. Moll was a notorious pickpocket, wore a doublet and breeches, smoked a pipe, cursed, and was generally infamous for her 'mannish' behaviour. And she's a character in this play!

It is open to interpretation how positive the play's depiction of Moll really is, but she does play a very important role in getting the main pair of lovers together and ends the play happily continuing to live her life the way she wants, which is in itself pretty incredible. Overall, just a really fun read.

Galatea (or Gallathea) by John Lyly - a 16th century play that is both gay and trans??? Sign me up! In a village where the fairest virgin needs to be sacrificed to Neptune every 5 years (or he'll drown everyone), two fathers decide to disguise their beautiful daughters as boys and hide them in a nearby forest. While wandering around the forest the two girls meet and, falling for each other's disguises, fall in love. In the end (spoilers for the ending, but this is not exactly a play you read for the plot, lol), Diana stops Neptune, the two girls find out each other's true identities and decide they're still in love, and Venus turns one of them (we never find out which one) into a boy so that they can get married.

As must be clear from this summary, this comedy plays around with gender a lot. To add to the gender cocktail, remember that the two girls would have been originally played by boys. Although the ending was seen as heteronormative by early queer critics, the emergence of trans criticism within queer theory has led to a lot of interesting readings of the play. Well worth a read.

(also, if you have a device on which you can play DVDs and some money to spare, consider buying a DVD of the Edward's Boys production of the play. Edward's Boys is a group that replicates the format of early modern boys' companies, with all roles in their productions being played by boys. I will admit, when I bought a DVD of their 2014 production of Galatea, I expected to watch a glorified high school performance, but it turned out to be so good. All the boy actors were amazing, way better at performing Shakespeare than a lot of Hollywood actors. This just straight-up felt like a professional theatre production, I highly recommend it.)

The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont - I don't even know how to describe this play other than 'fantastic and fun'. A meta-theatrical city comedy, which starts with a pair of audience members (who were actually two dressed-up boy actors from the boys' company performing the play) jumping onto a stage and demanding to see a different play than the the one being set up. Things get only wilder from there.

A genuinely really funny play. I don't know of anyone who has read it and hasn't immediately loved it.

The Sea Voyage by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger - one of the least well known plays out of this list, which is unfortunate because this play is really fun. Short and sweet, it's a story of a bunch of (surprisingly honorable) pirates, who get shipwrecked on an island inhabited by a tribe of Amazon-like women. Predictably, hijinks ensue. An interesting look into early modern gender relations (apparently the main reason why living without men would be difficult for women is because of how horny they would get? I think Fletcher and Massinger need to take a lesson or two from Lyly).

The Alchemist by Ben Jonson - want to see three assholes con a bunch of idiots in increasingly ridiculous ways? Then this is the play for you.

Jonson's city comedies, which satirize the people of early modern London, tend to be much meaner in tone than Shakespeare's comedies and the other comedies on this list, but in many ways, that's what makes them fun. Viciously clever and at times really funny, there's an edge to the writing that makes it very entertaining. I had a lot of fun reading this (Jonson's Epicoene is also great, if you want a comedy that's even meaner and also has some very questionable gay stuff in it).

Tragedies:

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe - probably the most famous non-Shakespeare early modern play, and for a good reason. It has everything; pacts with the devil, a melodramatic anti-hero protagonist, homoeroticism (I mean of course, it's Marlowe), and a suitably gory and tragic ending. What more can you ask for?

The Tragedy of Mariam by Elizabeth Cary - this play is more interesting than fun, but I think it's still well worth a read. It's the first original play written in English by a woman. The play takes place in ancient Palestine. It looks at the way Mariam, a Jewish queen, reacts to the news of the death of her husband, the tyrannous Herod (yes, the baby-killing guy from the Bible). Most people seem to be relieved. Except oops, Herod is not actually dead.

A fascinating look at gender ideology in the early modern period, with the play centering around the conflict of a woman who tries to live up to the ideals of a perfect wife and woman, while stuck in a marriage to a tyrant. This play would also be a great read for anyone interested in how gender and sexuality intersected with race in early modern England, because this play uses a lot of racialized language to describe women.

The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster - a classic revenge tragedy. A recently widowed Duchess wants to marry her steward, but her asshole brothers throw a fit. Intrigue and death ensue. At one point a fake wax hand and some fake wax corpses appear on stage.

This play basically reads like a good thriller. Fucked up in a way that only an early modern revenge tragedy can be, this is a fun and thrilling read.

The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley - speaking of fucked up. If you're planning to read it, be mindful that this play contains sexual assault. It's a story of a young noblewoman called Beatrice, who wants to get rid of her fiancé after falling in love with a visiting nobleman. To do it, she enlists the help of her villainous servant De Flores. Things end up going extremely badly.

This play can get very uncomfortable at times, but just like The Duchess, it's as gripping as any good modern thriller. Very engaging. The ending is as engrossing as it is stomach-churning, although probably not for the reasons it was originally meant to (reading criticism about The Changeling, it is genuinely shocking and disheartening to see how long it took for critics to start addressing the clear issues of consent in the play). The story also includes a bizarre virginity test that uses a potion which makes you drowsy or which makes you sneeze and laugh depending on whether you had sex or not, so hey, at least that's fun?

Antonio's Revenge by John Marston - ok, so this is definitely the least... good of the plays I've recommended so far, but listen. Do you like trainwrecks? Do you like violence so over-the-top that people to this day wonder whether it's actually supposed to be a parody of the revenge tragedy genre? Are you looking for a reading experience that will make you go 'what the fuck' throughout? If so, this is the play for you!

Very much in the so bad it's good category. Ridiculously gory. The only thing that makes it better is knowing that it was originally played by children (on a related note, I haven't seen this production, but I know that this play has also been played by Edward's Boys). If you like horrible, gory horror movies, you'll probably enjoy this play.

That's it for now! Hopefully at least a few of these plays catch your interest.

Btw, LibriVox, which is an organisation that makes public domain recordings of public domain texts, has most of these plays available as free audiobooks, if you're interested!