#the fact that it’s white means nothing

[scoundrellyfeline]

From here on out, when I finally save up enough money to get my dream car (really long white van with removable seats) I will be the unofficial tumblr Uber driver for all of u

“nobody in miami knows how to drive” “nobody in austin knows how to drive” “nobody in chicago knows how to drive” maybe we shouldnt have cars

[chieana]

I'm still convinced Pete and Gerard should be besties because this is the most Gerard-coded thing I've ever read, except Gerard is mr Oblivious-Due-To-Ego

"I went to sleep a poet, and I woke up a fraud"

[thegreatimpersonator]

its genuinely so crazy how far up taylor’s ass some of you are. even a colonoscopy can’t get you out.

[yellowsubiesdance]

i think i’ve learned a lot when it comes to not applying my own values to the media i consume

for my script analysis class yesterday, we discussed two gentleman from verona, and nearly every classmate of mine was up in arms about how sexist the story is.

and i'm not saying it's not, or that it's not infuriating to read. but i'm also not putting my energy into getting upset about something written 500 or so years ago. and i'm not about to put my own beliefs onto these characters that are not me. i'm going to let their choices speak for themselves, and interpret it in the context of the story.

all that said, this now brings me to the point of alastor in episode 5, and how viscerally people are responding to it. those of you up in arms about the choices he’s making, and the violent threat he gave husk, you’re missing the entire point of his character, of this place they’re in, of the story being told. he’s an overlord, and he became an overlord by killing much bigger overlords and broadcasting their deaths over the radio.

HE IS NOT A GOOD PERSON.

if you started this show with the belief that every character working the hotel is a good person, you’re in the wrong place. watch the good place if you’re looking for a good wholesome story about getting dead sinners into heaven, because that’s not what this show is about.

you’re more than welcome to hate him after seeing the way he exerted power over a being whose soul he owns, but you’re doing the media you’re watching a disservice by writing it off so quickly. if you don’t like to be uncomfortable watching media, watch something else. this is an uncomfortable show, it handles uncomfortable topics, and it’s going to be an uncomfortable ride, and if you’re not up for something like that, then you should take a break from it and pick up something else. you don’t have to get online and defend your own ideals while you watch a show that goes against your ideals.

[aeolianblues]

was kinda thinking about this when I saw Renee Rapp live recently-- I didn't know her visual vibe, I'd heard a few songs here and there but I hadn't really *seen* her, and her attire at Osheaga was really casual, a jersey (baseball/basketball?) and slacks. And that was so amazing! I couldn't help thinking, the work Billie Eilish has done for how women in pop music are allowed to dress is incredible. Seeing her up there all comfortable you just know that Billie walked in her oversized tops so that Renee in her slacks could run; Billie walked through all the critcisms about how she dressed slobbily and having to assert that she didn't owe anyone a display of skin, so that Renee could be comfortable and unquestioned running up and down the catwalk in front of 10,000 people. How iconic.

And I don't think we even realised at the time how much something as simple as letting Billie dress the way she as a (then-) 17-year-old teenager dressed, could end up meaning for a future generation of women in music.

Obviously there is still way to go, there were weirdos complaining about how 'plain' Dua Lipa's Glastonbury outfit was this year (in 2024!!), l have to ask, are you at Paris Fashion Week?? She is the musical HEADLINER of an entire day of music at one of the biggest music festivals in the world, and you can't grant her the space to exist as an artist, you have to moan about her dress not being excitingly revealing enough. There's work to do, it's still dismal out there. But the space Billie Eilish has created for a most ordinarily-dressed woman popstar is still heartening.

[romeosdistress77]

"this is what i use for my goth makeup #tradgoth" and its a list of makeup worth easily in the ballpark of £200. i use black eyeshadow and a crusty white facepaint stick ive owned for 2 years. ive only owned a makeup brush since like last year so for 5+ years was applying makeup via fingers only. i only do my makeup while stoned. theres nothing #tradgoth about consumerism. if youre TRADITIONAL goth youre at least inspired by 80s goths and they used to put glue in their hair

[hiimcanadia]

I have never met a single person in real life who has used a dental dam but please imagine with me Ed and Stede picking up some free grape-flavored dental dams at pride and then Stede absolutely going to town on Ed when they get home because he wants to see how long the flavor lasts

[mabelsguidetolife]

i actually do have a lot of royal ancestors but first off most of them are not from direct lines and second of all…… who actually fucking cares????

[tariah23]

The only white rapper I can tolerate is Jayeazy. Sure he’s awkward, but that man likes his queer fans.

I’ve never heard of this dude until white tumblr ppl kept on talking about him if I’m being real

[valodia]

Real thing somebody said IRL today "the christmas tree in itself is from pagan culture so it doesnt count as religious"

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[shapelytimber]

Hey...... I'm technically an art blog, and I studied art and design for a long ass time (even if I studied applied art, I still had a lot of history and theory). So instead of wallowing, let's do something about it by sharing "weird", either unsettling thought provoking easily dismissed by the general public or just not white american centric art :) and many other kinds of art pieces that can fall in the very large and nebulous definition of "weird". Because what is weird here ?? Against who are you mad op ? Weird in the sense of gore/disgusting ? Horny ? Underground ? Queer ? Hard to understand ? Not aligned with christian or white sensibilities ? Transgressing taboos ? And challenging in what sense ?? Politically ? Culturally ? Intellectually ? Aren't we mad at a strawman here ? Weird means nothing. And you can't even ask random people for a definition, because everyone has a different answer. If you ask my boring kinda anti vax and very much far right voter sister for what is weird, you'll find out that pretty much everything is.

Anyway this whole thing is just an excuse to share "weird" art so let's ! (And it's mostly contemporary art- because I am merely human and I do have favorites)

Pissed, made by Cassils in 2017

Cassils is a transgender artist from Quebec that uses their body as a material and main actor of their art. Pissed was a performance, a sculpture, photography and sound project. For 200 days, the artist collected their urine in orange containers, and for the final one they stand before an audience to share the everyday act of drinking and pissing. Then they exposed the sculpture, a cube of 200 gallons of urine. The goal of the project was to protest the 2016 trump election and more specifically the rollback of the american law that allowed transgender students to use the bathroom matching their gender.

“It seems insane that I have to make a cube of piss for people to get this idea. I shouldn’t have to make this. I shouldn’t have to hold my own urine. It’s crazy that we have to go to these extremes but this is the culture that we’re living in.” -Cassils

Link to their website if you want to read more

An Oak Tree, created by Michel Craig-Martin in 1973

Part of the conceptual art movement (that prioritize the idea, mental process and concept of a piece, while rejecting aesthetics), it's a glass of water on a shelf, and an interview of the artist, by the artist, to explain why the glass of water on the shelf is an oak tree. It's the same idea of the act of the artist transforming mundane objects that duchamp and his ready made already demonstrated. It's a very well known art piece of the movement, and the epitome of the plague on contemporary art : "but *I* could have done that >:(" or the extra condescending "my *kid* could have made that !". Well you didn't. And you wished you could be as funny as Michel Craig-Martin interviewing himself.

"Que le cheval vive en moi" (may the horse live in me), by Marion Laval-jeantnet performed the 22/02/2011.

Bioart my beloved ! For this performance, french artist Marion Laval-jeantnet had her partner Benoit Mangin inject her with horse blood, in front of a croud in the Kapelica Gallery in Slovenia, in the goal of altering her perception and symbolically become closer to the horse (become a sort of centaur). She then put on prosthetic horse legs and tried to communicate with a horse.

English article that talks about it if you want to read more

Link to the video of the performance (cw blood, needled, tits and a horse)

Let's finish by talking about movies ! Even tho that's not the domain I studied in, I'm still very interested in it (and if I continue talking about bioart I'll have to talk about the guy who grafted an ear on his forearm), tho this is mainly just recommendations of short films I love- won't be able to go into much depth

La jetée, directed by Chris Marker, 1962 (28 minutes)

Link to watch it (with english subs)

Taking the "weird" definition very generously here- but well ig any french sci fi movie of the 60s would feel weird to americans either way- and it *is* weird in it's presentation and questioning of the film form... and it's my post so if I want to talk about my favorite short film I very much can ! It's a reference of the genre, it's very acclaimed and it's made by a man that my friend want to force fem so bad (they want to time travel to the 60s, then madame Bovary Chris Marker with estrogens because and I quote "that would have fixed him") ...Also he played second life extensively idk where else to tell you that

There will come soft rains (Будет ласковый дождь), directed by Nazim Tulakhodzhayev, 1984 (10 minutes)

Link to watch it (with english subs)

A short animated movie based on a short story, based on a poem who was published during the height of the cold war. It's incredible !

Science Friction, directed by Stan Vanderbeek, 1959 (10 minutes)

Link to whatch it (no need for subs)

A second animated short film about the cold war has hit the post. Just watch it it's 10 minutes long jkljknjk and the letterboxd page can tell you a lot more than me-

But please to respect the vision and will of the artist you must watch it here.....

in the movie dome, projected on every wall of course.

Anyway I'll stop there this is already too long and I have way to much open tabs this is stressing me out xoxo

PS : I may have become lost in the sauce at one point idk

“we need more weird art!” but not anything that makes me feel uncomfortable or alienated or challenged. “weird art” but i don’t want to consider the perspective of anyone i might have real irrevocable differences from. “weird art” but everything must be carefully couched in the language of white middle-class american sensibilities at all times. “weird art” but it has to be picked from a list of pre-established “weird” tropes that i recognize from carefully curated lists on letterboxd.

[wild-at-mind]

Sometimes just from someone's username you know they would reblog a post that's like omg Trump will do genocide and Harris will do genocide but with emojis and memes!!

And then you see that they did in fact reblog the post and you're like ohhh can we stop pretending this is any kind of leftism.

[markrosewater]

I want to speak out against the whole push towards DEI. I feel that ever since you made the push to make identity the forefront of a character it has hurt the stories you tell. Captain Sisay's race was never the focus of her character and she was a complete badass! And I fear if you did it over again Gerrard would be trans, black and disabled just because. It also cheapens the stories of world devastation when characters worry more about their gender than Bolas destroying everything.

The reason I started this blog is so we can have frank conversations about things, so please let’s talk about this.

Imagine if every time you turned on the TV or watched a movie, no one looked like you. For some of us, that’s never happened. We see ourselves constantly, so it’s hard to truly understand what not seeing yourself represented in media is like.

I do have a personal window to this experience. While I am white and male, there’s an area where I am the minority - my religion. Jews are just under two and a half percent of the US population. I have had many experiences where I’ve been in situations where everything is geared towards a group I do not belong to, and zero consideration is given that not everyone at that event is part of the majority.

You just feel invisible and like an outsider. It’s not a great feeling. And I just experience it a tiny portion of time, only things that are geared specifically towards something religious. Most minorities have this feeling all the time, whenever they’re outside their personal community.

Now imagine, after years of not seeing yourself ever, you finally see someone that looks like you, but nothing about the character rings remotely true. They don’t sound like you, they don’t act like you, the facts about their day-to-day life are just wrong. It’s clear whoever wrote the character didn’t truly understand the lived experience of the character, so the character feels fake.

You bring up Sisay. Michael Ryan and I didn’t technically create Sisay (she played a small role in the Mirage story), but we did do a lot to flesh out her character as the creators of the Weatherlight Saga. We turned her from a minor character into a major one.

And while I’m proud, in general, of our work on the Weatherlight Saga, I don’t think we did justice to Sisay as a character. Neither Michael nor I have any knowledge of what it’s like to be a black woman. Nor did we ever talk to someone who did.

And if you’re someone like us that has no knowledge of that experience, you probably didn’t notice. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.

Imagine if we made a movie about your life, and we just made everything up. We invented people you never knew, we gave you a job you never had, and we had you say things you’d never say. The movie might even be a good movie, but your response would be, but that’s not my life - that’s not me.

Now imagine we put the movie out, and people that never met you assumed that was what you were like. When people met you for the first time, they assumed things, because, you know, they’d seen the movie.

That’s what misrepresenting people does. It not only makes them feel not seen, it falsely represents them, spreading lies, often stereotypes, making people believe things about them that aren’t true.

Our move towards diversity is just us trying to better reflect the world and the people in it. We’re trying to do to everyone else what a certain portion of people get every day without ever having to think about it.

But why are we “making it the forefront of their character”? We’re not. We’re making it a part of their character. But in a world where you’re not used to ever seeing it, it feels louder than it is. Things that are a natural part of the world that you’re used to feel like the background of the story because you understand the context to it.

If a man kisses his wife before going off to a battle, that’s not a big deal. It’s just a thing a husband might do to his wife when he leaves. It’s not the forefront of his character. It’s just part of his life. But you’ve seen it hundreds of times, so it feels normal.

When someone does something that isn’t your lived experience it pulls focus. It seems like a big deal, but only because it’s new to you. It’s just as mundane a thing to that character as the man kissing his wife is to him.

Even the turn “pushing” implies that it’s unnaturally here, that we’re forcing something that naturally shouldn’t be. But why? That thing exists naturally in the real world, and it doesn’t make the real world any less. Maybe you’re less aware of it, but is making you aware of how others live their life “pushing” something on you?

How you live your life is represented constantly, everywhere. Why isn’t over-representing your experience at the expense of everyone else’s “pushing” it? Why is media only being the experience of those in power the “proper way”?

Having more depth and variety doesn’t lessen stories. It makes them deeper, more rich, more nuanced. In short, it makes them better stories. In my former life, I was a professional writer. I took a lot of writing classes. One of the truism of writing is “speaking truth leads to better stories”.

There’s another famous quote: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” You’re used to being over-represented, so being a little less over-represented feels like something has been taken from you. But really it hasn’t. Having a better sense of the rest of the world comes with a lot of benefits.

I’ll use food as an example. Let’s say all you were ever exposed to was the food of your heritage. Yeah, that food is really good, but sometimes isn’t it nice to eat foods of other nationalities? Isn’t your life better that you have a choice? Isn’t your exposure and access to the food of other nationalities a positive in your life?

Exposure to variety is a positive. It allows you to learn about things you didn’t know, experience things things you’ve never experienced, and get a better sense of understanding of your friends and neighbors.

Our actions are not to harm anyone, and if you think that’s what we’re doing, please take a minute to actually absorb what I’m saying. You’ve spent your whole life metaphorically eating one type of food, and we’re just trying to show you how much you’ve missed out on.

And while this might not impact you directly, we’re making a whole bunch of people felt seen. We’re bringing joy. Think of it this way. We make a lot of cards. Not every card is for you. But if it makes someone else happy, if they get to include it in a deck, and it makes Magic better for them, how is it harming you that we include it? You have so many cards that you can play.

To this poster or people that share their viewpoint, the narrative that a gain for someone else is an attack on you is just not true. As I just pointed out above, you play a game all about personal choice, about players getting to choose how they play and enjoy the game. Why should life be any different than Magic?

Thanks for reading.