#the vast majority of these kinds of artists are white

[iamnotyourbabe]

god i am soo soooooo weary of art by cishet men that's just "sexy (often nude) lady"

tired. uninspired. no subtext besides 'makes my peepee hard.' the stench of objectification dulls any impact it could have.

this post is not for terfs.

[auckie]

I think the things that offend me most nowadays in like, smaller interpersonal interactions rather than grand, sweeping trends in culture, are when people chose to not partake in a wide set of things. Like musical close mindedness, or refusal to try different foods from different cultures. Not watching an entire subset of films bc they’re ‘french’. Avoiding reading bc you say you have adhd and it’s too hard. Like dude I get it, I’m busy. I can be picky. Everyone can. But the willful ignorance of closing yourself off to those VAST portions of the human experience, and not having curiosity and a lust to learn and explore art that was made by someone worlds apart from you either in terms of their culture, era, whatever. I dunno man it just pisses me off so bad. I think it’s arrogant. Like oh you’re comfortable in your safe little bubble huh? And you’re enforcing its barriers with the excuse that you’re autistic and have sensory issues. With music made by black people?? lol okay. It is pretty presumptuous for me to assume malicious intent but I think those prejudices are borne from either the comfort of being someone who’s wealthy and probably white not feeling the need to learn past what they think is enough, or it’s a reflection of a society that’s taught you to prioritize what it shills— popular, current (white, depending where you live ig) artists who are making streamlined, easy to digest content. Often when I meet people with these issues they’ll have one particular ‘niche’, and it tends to be like. 70s music. Victorian literature. Anime and Japanese games. But they’re still not really investing beyond the media presented. Like there’s so much more to Japanese culture than liking some cartoons put out between 2010-2020. You don’t gotta become some sorta Einstein who learns the background of every little freak in FGO yeah. But don’t you wanna aim higher? Aren’t you interested in any of the historical figures? And nothings wrong with hopping onto a trend. You read Dracula bc of that Dracula daily thing. Cool! Read more. Some people will say they’re chronically ill or disabled and can’t get outside. That’s okay. The internet is full of things you can read other than fanfiction, YouTube has a shit ton of free music. There’s Wikipedia and free articles online if you have questions about things. Yeah nobody is spending four hours a day looking at the national archives website and studying art history but it’s imbued in the things around you, and youll absorb it ambiently as you go along. you dont have to be a jack of all trades and cover every major genre of every major medium, but it never hurts to try! I really love seeing ppl ask too. Bc it can be kind of humiliating to admit to what seems like some jackass hipster that you’ve never delved into, idk, Serbian films (lol not that one). And hopefully if whoever you’re asking will give you honest good recommendations and not berate you. I’m kind of berate a straw man rn I guess. The hostile tone def doesn’t lend to an atmosphere of sharing but I cannot tell you how many times I’ve rbed anything involving specifically jazz only to see someone rb and add the stupidest comment on the post, or in the tags, or go into my inbox to be like waaah I don’t like jazz bc it’s boring and old and for pretentious hypocrites who hate neurodivergent people! Like what are you TALKING about. Fine if you don’t like it but don’t try and rationalize that as a moral standing you shit lark. And just as they’re allowed to dislike jazz I’m allowed to not really enjoy people who don’t like jazz. Or country. Nautical knots. Knit wear. Watching urbex YouTubers get their shit rocked by squatters. Korean food. Pachuco fashion and stupid ugly low riders. Bollywood films. and they don’t want to try any of those things either yknow? The next thing I’m getting into is circuit bending.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #38 – Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion

Didion is one of those canonical authors I always feel like I should already have read at some point (isn’t that what high school English class was supposed to be for). Of course this was a very vague feeling, and not attached to a single scrap of actual information about her and her work beyond the general time period and cultural milieu – so I grabbed this from the library and started it entirely blind (partially my own fault for skipping the introduction by a different and much worse author tbf). Fascinating book, artistically successful and emotionally affective, but not one I’m able to say I really found enjoyable, or even necessarily beautiful (it’s no Giovanni’s Room, to compare another bit of canonical latter-20th century high literature).

The book follows Maria Wyeth, an (increasingly former) actress in 1960s Hollywood, through her slow decline from up and coming starlet and wife of a prestigious young director to an enforced retirement as an isolated upscale sanitarium/hospital resort. Which is hardly a spoiler – the book starts at the end and jumps through the timeline freely, and in any case the whole thing feels telegraphed to the point of inevitability. Maria’s life in LA is contrasted with how she grew up in a tiny desert town in Nevada, so small it at some point stopped existing, and in the process more or less gives you the narrative of her life.

Which is as close to a plot as the book has, really. Maria and her internal monologue are the near-sole focus, and her view of the outside world and what’s happening around her basically always says more about her than the world. Watching Maria’s life falls apart really is watching a car crash in slow motion – you’re never really surprised at any point, but the shearing metal and flesh are hard to look away from.

The book’s very much capital-l Literature, here meaning that the style and prose is at least half the reason to read the book. The story’s told through short vignettes (I’m not sure a singe chapter was more than ten pages, whereas the vast majority were two or three) and the deliberate, generous use of white space, both figurative and literal. Maria is pretty relentless in her self-deception and lack of self-awareness, and in any case is quiet elusive and vague with descriptions of people and events – reading between the lines is quite necessary. This overall really does work for me - the imagery is vivid and memorable, and Maria’s head is a compelling and believable place to be.

It’s also just intolerable. I have no particular issue with deeply unsympathetic, tragically unselfaware, or wince-inducingly self-destructive characters, but Maria sure is all three of those to a degree I rarely see. More than that, she is just profoundly passive. It is, for me at least, far easier to be invested in operatic delusion and hubris leading to ruination than a just resolutely thoughtless and pettily cruel person letting her life rot around her. Which is a failure of literary empathy on my part, probably, but did make this a somewhat frustrating book to read. You’re left want to scream at Maria to just do something (anything!) that she isn’t led to by people around her like an ornery goat to water.

This is probably exacerbated by the supporting cast. Who are all very much portrayed as hopeless, clueless gamblers and unprincipled, hypocritical Hollywood decadents,, absolutely – but despite that, keep trying to reach out and offer her lifelines or support. Which is mostly surprising because she might literally not say a single kind word to another human being in the entire book, is relentlessly caustic in her internal monologue, and sure isn’t doing favours or advancing the career of anybody. The real tension of the book ends up not being whether or not she’ll destroy her life and more how long before everyone around her just lets her.

It’s a blisteringly cynical novel overall, really – both in its portrayal of individual characters and of society as a whole. I joked while reading it that it felt like American Psycho without a Patrick Bateman, and while that’s a bit too far – everyone’s still very recognizably human, most of whom do care about at least a few things besides status symbols and dick measuring contests – but the portrayals of Hollywood and Wall Street certainly feel like they rhyme.

Though the implicit politics of that cynicism do feel do feel very different here. Very possibly because the back cover called it something like ‘a blistering satire of the excesses of the ‘60s’ (paraphrasing from memory), but the book definitely ended up feeling very (socially) conservative, full of worries about broken families and marriages of convenience and just generally decadence. The whole plot where Maria gets a motel-room abortion to deal with the consequences of her affair which almost kills her, sends her spiralling into months of total, life-ruining depression, and destroys her relationship with both her husband and her paramour feels like something you’d only see coming out today in explicit pro-life propaganda, for example; certainly it’s a trope I’ve seen complained about more than (until now) I’ve ever actually seen done. The fact that Maria’s foremost redeeming feature is always her love for and desire to be with her (disabled and permanently hospitalized for vague reasons), and that the climax of the book is a suicide directly caused by infidelity, also. None of which should exactly be surprising, really – a book almost as old as my parents has dated opinions on social issues! - but for some reason I always expect canonical authors to have been free-wheeling libertines and bohemians.

Speaking of being written nearly sixty years ago – the time capsule quality of this book is positively fascinating. Which I say whenever I read something from before the millennium, but still – the ‘60s are still so profoundly mythologized I do love the chance to see anything written about them at the time, if only for ‘the past as a foreign country’ tourism reasons. The Hollywood of exploration, drug abuse, meaningless sex, vicious gossip and every combination of the above feels like it could almost be written about today, right up until the point where an easy divorce means finding an amenable judge and finding a witness to corroborate the husband’s admission of wanton emotional abuse (which becomes a stark reminder of how horrifying even a historical five minutes ago was when you consider what happens if you can’t meet any of those conditions). The illegal abortions, the utterly casual homophobia, the auteur theory being a hot new thing, the cult of the open road. It all adds up to an interesting effect.

Speaking of the cult of the open road – Maria’s only real sense of peace, happiness and self-control in the entire book is when she’s spending all day cruising the highway at dangerous speeds just for the sake of it, without itinerary or destination. No real coherent point to make, just that there’s something truly and incredibly American about that? The descriptions of the Nevada desert and highways, too.

But yeah, an expertly written novel that’s positively lovely in places (the opening monologue is near-sublime, for example), but not one that really awed or oved me the way some other literature has.

[goodluckclove]

Hi! Have you ever felt ashamed of yourself because something made you feel like your taste in books/film/music wasn't diverse enough? I'm here to tell you that having that be the case does not necessarily mean that you're a bigot that hates minorities!

I mean, if you only read books by cishet white men specifically because you think they're the only good kinds of books - yes, that is sort of indicative of a problem in your perspective.

But most people don't pick books because of the author's background. Most people don't even know the author's background. Sometimes you just read books you think are good, and it isn't until you look back and notice the lack of a certain voice and think "huh, that's weird that I haven't looked into that".

That's okay! There are many brilliant minority authors that you might not have a way to know about unless you search the right term or have someone tell you. This is not a moral failure on your behalf, but an opportunity to see just how vast your favorite genre is.

Consider science fiction, or speculative fiction as a whole. Philip K. Dick has a deeply specific type of science fiction influenced by his gender, the era he was born in, and his rampant and intense schizophrenia (look up The Exegesis, it's wild). Kurt Vonengut has an entirely different take on the same genre that was heavily, heavily shaped by being a literal prisoner of war and being in the Dresden Bombings of World War Two. He was, I believe, also rumored to be on the schizophrenic specturm.

But let's widen the scope! I have only read a few books of Octavia Butler and wasn't as impacted by them as other books I've read, but I definitely noticed a major shift in atmosphere in a narrative world formed by a black woman. The air tasted different. It was a truly remarkable way to expand my vision of what the genre can do.

There's also Yoko Ogawa's The Memory Police. I have a complicated relationship with this book. I read the first chapter, loved the environment of an Influenced sci-fi dystopia, but then immediately realized this premise would destroy me and stopped reading. I still have it. I'm going to read it, it's just a tough subject for me.

If you want to widen your scope of art consumption you can do it as easily as taking a book or movie you like and seeing what art influenced it or what art was influenced by it. Websites like Tastedive are great for that. You can also look for lists of minority authors that have written in your genre of choice and see what sounds appealing.

You also shouldn't do it all at once. I don't think a minority artist would appreciate that you rushed through their work solely because someone on the Internet told you you're a bad person unless you experienced every oppressed perspective immediately. You have time.

A while back I did research and made an effort to read more female fiction. I looked at my bookshelf and saw that a majority of the women I read were either nonfiction writers or retro lesbians. So I bought a few short story collections by women writers that I found online, because I was also inexperienced with that. It was great. I really enjoyed it. My next goal is to gather more perspectives on experimental fiction, my favorite genre. I've read mostly Western, czech, Italian, Spanish and French. Some women, mostly men. I would like to see what else is out there.

Also if anyone has a suggestion for a book on black existentialism other than Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, I sure am hungry for it. Invisible Man is one of the most painful and beautiful books I've ever read.

I'm rambling. Art is exciting, is what I mean to say. If you feel the way you take in art is missing something, instead of scolding yourself for that it's actually a lot more effective to do a lil' bit of internet searching, get a new book or movie, and see what it makes you feel and think. I'm pretty confident that's the ideal viewing experience in the eyes of the minority creators who made these pivotal works.

Consider race, sexuality, era, disability, gender identity - all of that and more changes the way a person makes art and it's truly enlightening to explore!

[holmesillustrations]

Blog Info 🔎

Current Bracket: Just Dogs 🐶 (Complete) Just the illustrations with dogs in! Bracket - All Polls - R1 - R2 - R3 - Semifinal - Final

Misc. Polls

Illustration // Fanart (not polls, just sharing cool art)

Closed/Past events: Full 700 Illustration bracket - Info Post

General Info:

Image Catalogue: I'll mostly be running brackets using selections from the 700 illustrations included with first publications of each story or novel, this means the initial magazine printing in the uk and us (usually the Strand and Colliers, though other magazines get involved too especially in the later stories) plus the first novel edition if i could find it. I currently do not include reprints or translations, but it might be fun for a later bracket if people want them!

Poll Format: This will vary slightly depending on the bracket theme, but i'll typically have a partial caption next to the artist name and story abbreviation (STUD, SIGN, SCAN &c.) in the poll options, and in the text, i'll include the full captions, and a list of the characters or subjects present left to right. Image descriptions will be in the alt-text.

You can see the list of story abbreviations here if you're not familiar with them, and that site also has a lot of publication info/history if you're curious about that kind of thing!

Offensive Imagery and Language: For the smaller and more curated brackets coming up, these are less likely to show up at all, but I wanted to keep the blanket warning for this blog: These are drawings by white men in the 1890s-1920s, the vast majority are fine, but there is a handful that portray racist and classist imagery in line with what is present in the stories themselves. I can't consistently warn for these individually out of a list of 700 pieces, but i also dont want to pretend they arent part of this history or set myself up as an authority on which cross a line or not, so ive decided not to automatically exclude illustrations that might be offensive. Likewise, im not censoring any of the captions that are part of images, but will do my best to remove offensive terms where i'm typing out the captions.

[cipheramnesia]

Appendage is part of a good movie, but not completely one. Early on, the lead character, Hannah, is accused of being unoriginal in her fashion design. In a movie which treads the territory of the evil doppelganger / monstrous manifestation of negative emotions, I hoped this was an understated way of acknowledging movies like Malignant, Us, The Dark Half, Brain Damage, Basket Case, The Brood, and so on. Demonstrating an awareness of the genre and promising to do more than put a nice new button on someone else's earlier and better work.

It has a fair interesting promise about it too, using self-loathing as the foundation for the doppelganger. It makes for an interesting reflection of the social experiences of depression, anxiety, and self harm. Particularly notable examples is how Hannah's mentor / fashion mogul using unpaid interns encourages her after seeing the work she produces in response to her doppelganger. At one point the creature overwhelms her psychically with "you are unlovable" which is a very familiar situation for severe depression, and features other scenarios such as toxic social relationships with people encouraging self hate, and lashing out at those who care about you as a result of high levels of depression. This is all good, solid material to use as a foundation.

Where it falls down on the job is more to do with the contrast of Hannah against the conflict of her doppelganger. I'd like to contrast this with Us, because it's probably the most illustrative of the problem. In both instances, the protagonist(s) are fairly well to do - the kind of upper middle class people who very nearly no longer exist. There is a separate discussion to be had about why so many movies build their plots around people whose financial security is wildly out of touch with the vast majority of actual lived experiences - fantasy is one thing, but it's gotten more to the point of deliberate fabrication. The point here is that the protagonist in Appendage comes off as a poor little rich girl, and the Wilsons, in Us, do not come off as spoiled wealthy.

First and foremost, Appendage initially sets up Hannah as someone with effectively a safety net - a really bad one, but nevertheless, an option to fall back, and puts her in a place that would require an enormous amount of wealth for most people (internship in a city, living in a large apartment, doing fashion design with no other income to support her). The very first dress the viewer sees is not dismissed out of hand by the mentor - it's obvious and underlined as trite and essentially a rip-off of someone else's old work (a wrap dress that uses a different closure). There's... nothing in Hannah to latch onto as a empathetic or relatable character. The Wilsons are a family of four with several immediate demonstrations both that they are not necessary the same ilk of old money wealth as Hannah - that in fact there is a degree of constant worry over being seen as less successful than their peers which lurks under the middle class veneer. Hannah is not only confident of her talent, she receives constant assurance from a support network.

This is not to say depression is picky about someone having greater or lesser wealth, but the contrast between the protagonist of the tale versus the amount of conflict is an important element of a story. Not everything needs to be earth shattering, but Hannah being a mediocre artist with great friends and truckloads of financial support from otherwise emotionally abusive parents versus a single mean doppelganger feels like a weak conflict. Which is bringing me to the reason I picked Us out of the other doppelganger options.

How to say this. It's 2023. We have been having the conversation about race and race in film for long enough that a director this young probably saw it her whole life. I have to wonder how she let the most white-bread, privileged character like Hannah turn to a woman of color and say "you don't get pain." What I was hoping was, because the groundwork for the portrayal of depression was solid, we'd get to a place where that line was a lynchpin of where Hannah starts to see how self-directed and myopic her view has become. That would have been amazing. It doesn't get there. Instead her friend, Esther, an Indian woman, saves Hannah from her depression and helps her save her own relationship, and stand up to her abusive mother - because they are besties and just... do you SEE what you are doing, I want to shout at the screen? And she saves her boyfriend, a black man, while her own manifest depression is draining away his life and there's no awareness at all of this?

Contrast with Us, with a black family, whose friends and support are a white family - work friends of Gabe Wilson. Racism is not the whole point of Us, but awareness of it makes the movie stronger. His friend Josh is show constantly chipping away at Gabe's confidence. Dahlia (Josh's wife) tries to undermine the Wilson familial bond. We are reminded of racialized violence on their way to the idyllic beach. Us is a movie about a lot more than doppelgangers, about a very different kind of metaphor, and honestly kind of a cheat as a comparison seeing as Jordan Peele's work is just like "is it a Jordan Peele or anything else" level of art.

However, I'm sticking with it because the point is the level of awareness. Appendage is shows a thoughtful and intriguing understanding of mental illness, but seems completely unaware of any context pertaining to its characters. It's very possible to make exciting, interesting, and thoughtful movies even when the protagonists are in positions of extreme privilege, but making a thoughtful movie requires being self-aware, which Appendage sadly is not.

[hyenabeanz]

My in depth reactions to the names and logos. First overall is: I don't hate any of the names. They're all okay. 🎉

Minnesota Frost: The name is fine to good. It's going to make a killer arena chant. "let's go frost" is three syllables so will avoid the sing song of four, and ending on a hard consonant? That's gonna sound goooooood in the X. It'll be like the "we want the cup" chant since we swallowed the third "the" syllable mostly anyway and damn it was a kick. @hsavinien also pointed out "killer frost, killer frost" which mmmm tasty. The logo is.... Okay. My main problem with it from an artistic standpoint is they gave it a long tail which is clearly making it a bitch to put on merch and stuff. It looks off center on a lot of things. They need to smush it up a little. But I'm not super worried about logos because those are more easily changed than names. I require a yeti mascot

New York Sirens: Sirens is neat for the ability for it to play on city noise, goal siren, and ferocious sea monsters. I know some people are cringing because of that last one because siren can be a little gross applied to women on a mythological level but uh, I'm here for owning the powerful man eating sea creatures. The logo is not awful. I think New York's text logo is the best one, that echo effect on it is cool. I'm less into the NY but idk it's growing on me. If their mascot isn't a rat mermaid they're wrong

Ottawa Charge: my other favorite team. Oh babies, what have they done to you. The name is fine. The logo is not. It evokes the Flames. It's kind of just awkward and abstract looking. It looks like a logo for a group home. I really liked their black and red, it did not need yellow. Uffda.

Boston Fleet: eh it's ok. I truly think Wicked and leaning into witches would've been cooler. Fleet is a generically interesting name I guess. The logo makes sense. to me it's safe, kind of boring, but inoffensive. Which is fine, and the vast majority of sports logos. I am glad I don't have to be tempted to get a Boston jersey like I would've if it was witches lol 😏

Montreal Victoire: RIP the pronunciation outside of Canada. Cool name though. Logo is a little busy for me but is evocative of a but of heraldry which is always neat and fitting (no one's jerseys are cooler than the German national team, for example.)

Toronto Scepters: the name is ... Fine. It is no longer problematic to women so that's good, but I feel like they went with a slightly more colonial than necessary team name. Scepters aren't unique to European culture, but combined with the logo and styling it does evoke that particular type. It is unique though. And Reign would've stung, because I know Minnesota will want to still casually use purple reign. I don't like the logo. I loved Toronto's clean blue and white, and that yellow is not it. I in general don't like that text logo style even though its classic. It also is just the St. Thomas logo with a holy hand grenade on the top instead of a shield, in worse colors. And as a Katie, mortal enemy of the Tommies, there's just a natural visceral dislike there. 😏 But it's not the torch. So. Win. 🎉

So, my Minnesotan based review: could be worse.

[inimitablereel]

For the Ask a Vidder meme, 5, 1, 16!

5. Hardest vid to edit?

Hm depends on how you define hardest...

I think the biggest technical challenge I've had, which was entirely self-inflicted, was trying to get rid of all the zillions of stupid hallmark channel logos on my hallmark hanukkah vid with absternr, which was very fussy and also unsuccessful and something I volunteered to do while absternr was away from a computer because I like fiddly technical things for the first hour of them... BeatriceEagle's cleancredits program was really great for getting rid of the simple hallmark logo! It was surprisingly easy to get rid of just a white circle with an H in the middle. But they also stuck this big countdown to Christmas thing on the bottom of some of the movies that had a mistletoe border and was kinda faded in and I tried a bunch of different mask options and all of them looked awful... Anyways this has been an unnecessary rant about something I did 100% for fun.

From more of an artistic perspective I think a little wicked was the hardest vid to edit, partially because looking back on it I have pretty mixed feelings about it. I had some pretty specific things I wanted to say about the character but also the way she was being treated in the shows at a meta level and I was trying to make one unified statement about who the character is like and how she's treated in these shows across 3 shows and a movie where she has different amounts of screentime and is treated differently by the narrative.Like I opened with a shot of a badass moment and a moment of her unnecessarily falling on her face from each show but in the one movie, she actually only loses when it's appropriate (e.g. fights with superpowered oponents) and I was sorta faking it with a shot of her falling down in a fight that she eventually won, and in one of the shows I had to work really hard to find those shots of her being badass. (Which is why I wanted to make the vid in the first place - if you have a female character who dresses cool and is verbally said to be badass and in charge but you only ever have her falling over and getting undermined on screen that says something!)

What program do you use?

Davinci resolve! I guess if we're being comprehensive I've also used avidemux a bit for clipping as well as as using ffmpeg/someone's python script to run ffmpeg for multiple clips from a spreadsheet. (Resolve freaked out on my old computer with more than a handful of whole episodes of a show and tomb shows are too many episodes not to clip regardless.)

16. Favorite thumbnail for one of your vids?

I've gotta admit I've always gone with one of the default youtube provided options (though I try to choose whatever one of those is not actively misleading?) Pulling them up, my vimeo thumbnails are way better because vimeo just lets you choose a shot from the video (which is to say they're still just whatever still looked good). I have not uploaded all that many of my vids on vimeo. But maybe I should! For example this is the youtube thumbnail for Emerald City

It looks okay! It's a shot of a car on the infinity train, which is the VAST majority of what's in this vid so you'd think that it'd be very easy to get, but going in to edit the video the other automated options for thumbnails are more focused on characters and it's hard to see what's going on with the train car, which was the focus of the vid. I get why youtube's algorithm thinks that people should be in a thumbnail, it's just wrong with this one.

In contrast this is the vimeo one which I'm pretty sure is just the beginning of the vid. It's still not great! I could have actually made a title screen! But it is a focus on scenery and I think it's fun to have the thumbnail for something titled "emerald city" as a shot of a green room.

Anyways this didn't really answer the question... This one from love is an open door is pretty good - the thumbnail is kind of the ship manifesto for this one (which is real character Wu Xie, who has in other shows in this universe been played by Zhu Yilong, serious actor/the random side characters made up for him to have someone to do exposition with in this 10 episode show) - look at them! they have weirdly a lot of chemistry for how little there is in the character of the guy on the right! (sometimes a "good thumbnail" can be me going I still think this ship and my vid is funny)

[abyssal-debonair]

so here’s what’s been going on:

a couple days ago on July 2nd, TGC, again, retweeted fanart featuring whitewashed characters, this time white skykids. now, I’m not on Twitter much anymore, but I was that day. I was among others who commented how offensive it was for TGC to be promoting artwork that utilized this racist practice. 

at first came the usual opposition, I gave my piece, then the convo died down. thought that was the end of it. by the next day, it picked up again with an incredibly mean-spirited tone — insults, bad faith takes, attempts to shame my friends and I. it was pretty disgusting.

eventually another Twitter user reached out to me and shared a Reddit link. someone had reposted a few of our tweets without censoring our usernames to r/skychildrenoflight (an unofficial subreddit not affiliated with TGC) with full intent to mock and deride us. that post currently sits on the subreddit with over 250 upvotes and over 200 comments, the vast majority of which are so stupid, asinine, and unsurprisingly racist. it explains how the discussion picked up again — the thread had been brigaded, my friends and I were being harassed.

I’m not here to talk about why this is an instance of whitewashing and why it is bad — I have already done that, though it’s overdue for me to make a more comprehensive, eloquent write-up.

Sky is a wonderful game. I love Sky, I love the world, I have invested so much creative energy into it. I love playing music on the game. I have multiple fics in the works. I used to engage with lorechat in Skycord on the regular, enjoying sharing my thoughts and discussing theories with others there. I am always fascinated by the artwork the community produces, even started trying to draw myself. the fanart TGC retweeted the other day isn’t even that bad compositionally — the artist is incredibly talented — the problem is the whitewashing that is all too common here.

I have never been in a fandom where a disgustingly racist practice, among others, was so accepted. I have never been in a fandom that harbored bigots who were so hateful towards the kinds of people Sky normalized, that they were playing as and interacted with. this community frequently proclaims itself as welcoming, diverse, and wholesome, but those words are hollow when many perpetuate bigotry then attack those who call it out, saying “it doesn’t exist here” and “you’re making shit up to get mad at” and “your ancestors would be ashamed of you.”

on that last one, I should mention that the commentary got disgustingly personal. I stated that I was Black in the Twitter thread, which many latched on to. they said I was entitled, never faced real racism, was a child, was pulling the race card, was “the real racist,” was why Black people are not taken seriously in discourse.

I shouldn’t have to mention that I have faced racism irl, including violence, including followed by a police officer on campus in the dark that could have ended poorly. I shouldn’t have to mention the racist harassment I have faced both online and offline. I play Sky and engage with its community because the game gave me the idea that I could escape the world that hated me for one where I felt seen and welcomed. if someone was being hateful, adding more to pile of bigotry I have to fucking live with, I thought I would have the backing of the community to support me when I fought back. I was wrong.

what happened over the last couple of days exposed me to some of the worst the Sky community has to offer and it didn’t even surprise me.

it is well documented how people of color like myself are mistreated in white-dominated spaces. our discomfort is viciously denied as false or exaggerated. we are told to suck it up because fandom is supposed to be enjoyed, an escape, “don’t bring politics in here.” except fandom perpetuates the same problems we are trying to escape from. we are not given a damn break.

[johannestevans]

Update - 27/02/2023

Good evening, good evening, good evening!

I've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes this week - I'm about halfway into a new Norse mythology-based novella that I'm very excited about, as well as a few other short stories and essays; I've also been getting some of the planning done for this year's Monstrous May! The prompts will be out some time around mid-March, which will give people a bit more than a month to prep and plan if you prefer to plan out your fills in advance.

If you haven't taken part before, the Monstrous May Challenge is a prompt challenge that I run every year, and this is going to be the third year going - I set up a prompt for every day of the month of May, all themed around different monsters!

If you're interested in seeing the last few year's prompts, these were 2021's, and these were 2022's.

I don't have a wide variety by way of media recommendations this week, but I did enjoy a double bill with the boys that I think is worth recommending:

Calendar Girls (2003, dir. Nigel Cole) - This is about a Women's Institute chapter (the WI is a kind of British club for women to do hobbies, charity work, and community activities together) who want to raise money for a leukaemia charity after the death of one of their husbands, so they do a nude calendar. Because they're all older women from Yorkshire, it becomes a huge media sensation. Helen Mirren and Julie Walters star, but every woman on this cast is fucking class, and it's such a fun, silly movie.

The Full Monty (1997, dir. Peter Cattaneo) - This is about a group of unemployed ex-steelworkers in Sheffield, suffering the after-effects of Thatcher's Britain - after the Chippendales (a male strip group) come to town, they decide to learn to dance and put on their own strip show where they, unlike the Chippendales, will give their audience "the full monty" - they'll be completely naked.

These two films came out half a decade from each other, and while both are set in the Yorkshire, they offer starkly and drastically different windows into life in the two counties (North and South) that are largely divided by class and gender. Both are explicitly about mainly cis heterosexual people (there is a canonical gay couple in the main cast in the Full Monty who get together during the course of their stripping, and they're adorable) navigating work that is adjacent to sex work, and a lot of the shame that that comes with.

Calendar Girls is about middle and upper class white women, many of whom are retired or running their own businesses, in a small country village - these are quite affluent women, and their difficulty in fundraising is depicted far more as coming from the boring nature of WI offerings rather than as a shortage of money in the community.

Throughout the film, they go, "No, no, we won't be naked, we'll be nude," and there's continuous repetition of the idea of the calendar as "art", and therefore far more elevated over mere pornography, even though the idea for doing the nude calendar is inspired by Helen Mirren's character paging through her teenage son's titty mags and then seeing a sexy nude calendar at her local mechanic's.

While there's of course a lot of nudity in the film, it's largely not extremely sexualised and is artistically posed - most of the women don't really discuss or seem to have active sex lives, again because these are affluent women for whom such things would be largely considered very gauche, even having posed nude for this calendar.

The Full Monty is wholly different.

This is not a film about affluent or well-off men - the vast majority of them are working class lads who were basically left without options after all the factories closed, all of whom are hunting for jobs that aren't there between picking up their dole every week: the most well-off member was previously the foreman at the factory, and he's in the same boat as the men he used to manage. Of the rest of the crew, the majority of them are white with one of them Black (played by Paul Barber, my beloved), and two of the lads, as I've said, are queer.

There's far less pretense in here about their strip show being about elevated high art - the lads quite rightly note that the women who'll want to see stripshows want to because they think men are hot, and that it's a good laugh seeing strippers. There's a moment where they're discussing a woman in a magazine, discussing the size of her breasts and then saying, "Oh, I wasn't criticising her personality, just her tits," and they then talk about how when they're dancing on stage, the women in the audience are going to be discussing them in the same objectifying manner.

This is a film that's broadly about masculinities and the shame of not being able to support their households financially with the pittance they're given on the dole, and how disposable they feel, especially because Robert Carlyle's character primarily wants to pay his arrears in child support to his ex-wife, and is very hostile to her new boyfriend because of how insecure he makes him feel while already feeling awful about his position.

Calendar Girls is a film about quite affluent women who are doing "artistic" nudity to raise additional money for a charitable cause - The Full Monty is effectively about a group of working class men who are doing one of the more acceptable forms of sex work for survival. The fictional town of Knapley for Calendar Girls is based on Rylstone - that's only an hour and a half away from Sheffield by car, but they live very, very different lives. Even just the panning shots are starkly different, Calendar Girls filled with beautiful sweeping shots of the Yorkshire moors, swelling green hills and blue skies, and Sheffield continuously showing shots of a dilapidated and neglected town, a car submerged in the canal, the towers from a factory no longer belching out steam, buildings half falling down and left empty.

There's just one more point of comparison I'd like to make, and one of my favourite aspects of The Full Monty - so, throughout Calendar Girls, a lot of these women are quite anxious about ageing and the way that their bodies look now that they're in middle age, fearing that they're no longer attractive or as desirable as they were. They talk about wrinkles, breast size, sagging, et cetera.

In The Full Monty there is a little insecurity from the lads as a whole, especially from the foreman and Horse both about being older men, and from the wee ginger lad about having "pigeon tits" (they're very cute) - but my favourite subplot is actually about Mark Addy's character, Dave. Dave is fat, and his friends make a lot of jokes about his being fat and therefore undesirable, and a lot of his insecurity about actually doing the stripping is anxiety around his weight and a lot of fear and anxiety about being undesirable. we see him a few times being intimate with his girlfriend and panicking that she's not attracted to him, and ultimately ending up feeling very empowered by doing the stripping.

Both movies obviously have those themes of boosting esteem and feeling somewhat more empowered through being viewed and presenting themselves in these desirable contexts, but the plotline with Dave is far more developed and considered than any of those in Calendar Girls, and is super impactful.

Mark Addy is also hot as fuck in this role, but that's my typical slutty commentary on most films.

Anyway, I've seen both of these films a bunch of times, and despite their numerous respective flaws, I absolutely think they're both work checking out and watching, especially The Full Monty. The latter is honestly one of those films that is just watchable again and again, and I love it to fucking bits. The soundtrack alone makes it a triumph.

Anyway!

New Works Published

Fiction Short: Without Mercy

2.6k, rated M, M/M. A retired mercenary seeks out another Spartan — the man, in fact, responsible for the deaths of his family. Featuring massage, guilt, banter, back-and-forth.

On Medium / / On Patreon

Blog Post: Advice on Being A Slut

Anonymous asked:

Possibly an odd question, but……do you have advice on how to be a slut? I’m recently out as a gay trans man, in my 30’s, only ever been with straight cisgender men, and I have no idea where to start. Being on testosterone has helped with the dysphoria, but I can’t seem to let go of old habits from when I was a girl having sex with guys. You can ignore this if you don’t feel comfortable answering, I just thought given the nature of your blog you might have some really good insights

This is a really big post digging into some of the differences between M/F casual dating culture and M/M cruising culture, how it feels to go between the two as a trans man, and also some more practical slutty tips!

On Tumblr.

This is another post from the same asker, following up a bit more on navigating trauma responses from disrespectful and coercive partners, and also on communicating in the bedroom. Also on Tumblr.

I've been answering more asks of recent, which I'm loving by the way!

Apart from advice stuff, I absolutely love getting asks about character or analysis topics, I really feel like I'm easing into a period of writing a lot more non-fiction, and I'm super excited about it!

Writing non-fiction alongside my fiction always comes super naturally to me, I just rarely publish as much of the non-fiction very formally, so I'm really into the idea of going a bit more of it going forward.

Oh, and if you have any particular requests or hopes for Monstrous May this year, feel free to hop into my asks and let me know!

[the-genial-humbug]

Tremontaine

Welcome to Tremontaine! The second-largest isle of the United Isles of America, not counting the territory of Nod, it is the “hub” location for most stories set on the Pariah’s Tides. It boasts the largest fleet in the UIA, and makes most of its money from seafaring activities, mainly the whale trade and shipping goods and messages across the Tides, though fishing is a large industry as well.

Tremontaine has 11 separate districts, each supervised by a member of the city’s Board of Selectmen. They are as follows.

The Heart: Supervised by Mayor Josiah Quincy, the Heart features the centre of the isle’s government, situated in the Old Isle House, as well as being a centre for commerce of all kinds, home to the largest markets in the city. If you want to buy something, you go to the Heart.

Waxmire: Supervised by Jonathan Bruce, the Waxmire is a vast greyish bog in which very little life flourishes. It is the fe facto dumping ground for all trash in Tremontaine, as well as unidentified corpses or those without next of kin, and believe me there are a lot of those. The adipocere generated from the unusual decomposition of these corpses, combined with the sludgy water caused by the dumping of trash and refuse, have resulted in the place’s name. At the centre of the Waxkire is the Taper, a vast light tower which illuminates all of Tremontaine with its glow.

The Candlelight District: Supervised by Charles Bulfinch, the wealthy reside in the well-lit Candlelight District, with the light of the Taper fully beaming down on them. It is never nighttime in this district, and someone’s always throwing some ball or party or something of that like.

Candle’s Shadow, or the Penumbra: Supervised by little Charles Sumner, spokesperson for the district’s two largest waif-gangs, the Candle’s Shadow exists too close to the Taper’s base for its light to reach, and thus exists in perpetual gloom. It is rife with criminal activity, and many of its rickety, half-collapsed structures have still not been repaired since the destruction brought by the Great Storm of 1783.

The Stomach: Supervised by Reverend Ebenezer Oliver, the Stomach is rather confused about its identity, halfway through residential and commercial. It literally only exists because I didn’t know what to do with the chunks left after I parted up the districts. It has a large number of churches and a large waif presence.

The Fingers: Supervised by Captain Enoch Silsby, the Fingers are Tremontaine’s many docks, home to all sorts of maritime activity. The waters are constantly stained red with whale blood, as the denizens of the deep are chopped up and processed right there. Full of bars and brothels, anything to keep a sailor’s mind off his life.

Downtown: Supervised by Patrick Tracy Jackson, downtown is incredibly boring. It’s literally just a commercial district. Factories exist there, I guess.

Foxhall: Supervised by William M. S. Doyle, Foxhall is a brightly-lit district that has many music halls, theatres, restaurants, and similar entertainment-focused locations. Also possesses the majority of Tremontaine's sparse green spaces. A haven for artists and Tremontaine's most bizarre and fantastical residents.

The North End: Supervised by Paul McMathews, it is one of the city's oldest and most crowded districts, once a rather fashionable place to live, now generally catering to the middle class. Has its very own set of piers, which are as far from the Taper as one can get. This darkened mini-district, dubbed the "Black Sea" is home to a quite frankly staggering number of brothels, gambling dens, and similar seedy joints. Besides the brothels, the smuggling, and the gambling, it has less of a dangerous criminal element than Candle's Shadow, but you certainly wouldn't wander down any alleys without protection.

The West End: Supervised by Dr. John White Webster, it is a somewhat newly developed district. It's not as grossly rich as the Candlelight District, but it still has its share of mansions while also having many lower income residents. Home to the Hospital and the Gaol.

The Stump: This district is actually unsupervised by any individual, and largely shrouded in both mystery and a constant blanket of mist. It is almost entirely cordoned off for some sort of construction project, the nature of which is unknown.

Mishawum: Not a district, but another isle that is notably connected to Tremontsibe via a bridge that is either incredibly long or incredibly short, and rarely in between.

[justinefrischmanngf]

despite the horrors the other day when i tried to make this post i do really think it’s interesting how kind of beautiful it can be to interact with other people of colour and have that immediate understanding . because regardless of the fact that that author turned out to be white, the cashier saw me and knew that she could talk about how sweet it was to see more fantasy authors of colour, we will never see each other again but she knew and i knew and i know we both had the widest smiles on our faces talking about it. and when i met that director/dj we were at an event where the vast majority of us were not-white and she was talking to this other woman and she was trying to point out someone and she was like “this is what happens when you actually have multiple brown women in a space! normally we are so easy to spot!” and the three of us were able to have that interaction and know that like yeah, we live in a place where if you’re a person of colour you stick out, but here we didn’t! and it was a relief! and one of my managers had such an immensely sweet conversation with me about being uncertain in your ethnicity and identity when you’re not really From a place and he knew i knew and i knew he knew and we could hold that, and it was really casual because we were at work, but the other manager was on the phone so it was just us talking and we got to have that moment and it was such a moment of understanding. and this girl in my film class and i had a 3-4 hour lunch together the other week and we were speaking about how it feels to grow up wanting to be white, about how we both feel so much more grounded in ourselves now even if it’s still contentious, we were able to sit and speak about the ways in which we move through the world and it was kind of sad, but it was also about that understanding that we could have. and i met this man at a gig the other week who was talking about how he was always looking for artists who “look like us” i.e. asian and it was just in that “us” that collective pronoun that was so incredibly moving because it was this immediate understanding. i could go on. i won’t but i could and there’s something very beautiful about the fact that i could

[hexagonopus]

Yeah Okay

Fictional Women:

Alice (Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland) (Honorable Mention to Ariel from The Little Mermaid)

Alyx (Half-Life)

Beverly (It)

Biologist/Ghost Bird (Annihilation/Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy)

Catherine (SOMA) (Honorable Mention to Tasi from Amnesia: Rebirth)

Heather (Silent Hill) (Honorable Mention to Angela)

Katran (Myst)

Lara (Tomb Raider)

Laura (Twin Peaks) (Honorable Mention to Lucy)

Samus (Metroid) (Honorable Mention to Princess Peach from Super Mario)

Bonus: Velma (Scooby-Doo!) (Honorable Mention to Daphne)

Real women:

I have five sisters in real life so I'm kind of cheating when it comes to naming ten real life women I like. But I guess I'll go out of my way to disregard family members, and I'll even assume friends don't count either.

Eartha Kitt (the actress, musician)

Emma Watson (the actress)

Jaiden (Animations) Dittfach (the YouTuber, animator)

Jamie Lee Curtis (the actress)

Jennell Jaquays (the artist/illustrator, video game designer)

Jennette McCurdy (the filmmaker, author, actress)

Mary Shelley (the author)

Peggy Lee (the musician, actress)

Rebecca Ann Heineman (programmer, author)

Sarah (PushingUpRoses) Wilson (the YouTuber)

Bonus: Zendaya (the actress, musician)

I'm not doing this to like, flex, or something, but to demonstrate that like, if you think you CAN'T make a list like this, then (1) you probably can, if you search through your life and your interests enough, (2) you really ought to highlight those women in your life (real and fictional) more in the day to day, and (3) you probably should still try to learn more about and expose yourself to more women, in real life, in your studies, and in your fiction.

And I'm not even perfect or anything! A lot of those fictional women are like, from stuff I consumed as a literal child. And the vast majority of them are white (or light-skinned), which is a whole other blind spot of mine!

Lastly, I know this is a tangent, but if you'll permit me, I wanted to share some fundraisers on the behalf of just two different women trying to survive with their families, amid the ongoing destruction of Palestine. These women are:

Safaa Al Khatib

Shymaa Taiser

Both of their fundraisers are vetted/verified(x 👈), and they both have a ways to go before reaching their respective goals, with donations currently coming few and far between. If you have anything at all that you can spare, please do. You can make a difference and help these women and their families reach safety and stability today.

Name ten female characters you like, you get zapped if it's jsut a male character you call a babygirl or other feminine nicknames because I can't see people calling Lestat coquette again

[annazimmercapstone]

Prototyping, v1.3

This week I drafted up some posters and then printed them using the risograph.

But first, I spent some time familiarizing myself with some worldbuilding projects that have gained some notoriety online.

RESEARCH

Mystery Flesh Pit has been a staple reference point for the worldbuilding aspect of my capstone. This week I looked back at the fake advertisements and government-issued flyers the creator Trevor Roberts fabricated.

Lesle Kieu's "Recovered Documents" is a great source that stays true to its artistic style while still keeping in line with the found document style exposition. It includes some gnarly illustrations serving as photographs and realistic communications. It's very tactical and served as a major stylistic inspiration for a personal comic I've been cooking on the back burner.

Local58 was one of the first of its kind in the genre now known as Analog Horror (in fact, it was what coined the term). While the vast majority of this content is videographic, it is still a strong example of worldbuilding through limited channels of media.

The Hookland Guide run by David Southwell is a semificitonal exploration of the lost county of Hookland, England. It emphasizes word over visual medium, although it does semi-regularly employ black-and-white photography in the posts/entries. The author describes it as "the psychogeography of a place that doesn’t exist built around the real myth circuits, Albionic shadows and actual places of a 1970s childhood."

My biggest takeaway from these projects is the grounding in reality and knowing when to exaggerate and when to pull from our own cultural reality.

PROTOTYPING

All images included are either my own or free to use from pexels.com. I think using the risograph was apt since it does use soy-based ink and rice-paper in its process. Very biological.

Get Connected is like this world's version of Got Milk? except it's a government program encouraging people to tap into the Mycelliac Network. It's highspeed and a great solution to the growing power deficit caused by too high demand for traditional biological power agents. The fungi pictured here is Physarum polycephalum, the single-celled slime mold that can efficiently navigate a maze. It's also yellow and ended up dictating the color palette for this first batch of prints.

Who doesn't love the saints? Except for the protestants, I guess.

This is exploring some deeply ecologically ingrained spirituality that still poses an authority as an organized religion/ideology. I reused the Physarum and overlayed it behind the icon of the Madonna.

Might redo this one with an original illustration and change the name to Anthropocene... or maybe there will be multiple saint figures!

Tourism is alive and thriving in Our Beautiful Country! You should totally Come Visit. I just photoshopped some mushrooms into this one. Honestly, it's quite comical and definitely warrants a redo since I couldn't find open-source images of the fungi I was imagining in my head (the giant stalk-like prehistoric phototaxis).

And finally one risograph in "full" color (approx. CMYK) at 8.5''x11''. I made this design a day or so after the others and after Wednesday's group critique. I was advised to continue iterating and include more advertisement images since "capitalism has us all in a chokehold." I'm still considering what the economic system of this world I'm archiving will look like, but the image and consumption exist both in and outside of systems of consumption.

This is an ad for a hypothetical archival organization branching out to individual denizens seeking memory aid services. I imagine this is deeply associated with the government as this world has little privatization. The bottom text reads:

"Contact your government-appointed community representative at your local connection point for more information. MycellNet cannot be held liable for any damages sustained by consenting participants. MycellNet should not serve as a full replacement for your district’s community-sustained archive. MycellNet is filed under government license 536B and enjoys all powers litigated to 536B organizations."

I'm attempting to tap into some world concerns regarding the preservation of memory and data to decay, both on a community level and an individual level. The "Get Connected" mycelium will certainly help solve this issue.

[tumble-d-wumble-phd]

So I was talking to a friend today who is sort of fond of AI features. He’s a tech guy, loves the latest trends, and is a very receptive and kind-hearted person who does photography but cannot draw. We were discussing pornography of Clippy the Microsoft officesona, which he immediately assumed had been created by AI. I had seen this particular art piece at around the age of 16, so I told him that was impossible and that, anyway, AI cannot make art because it does not have a soul. It can make images, but it cannot make art.

He balked at this and suggested we debate it, which I don’t think personal opinion with zero impact on the other party needst be debated but off we go because it’s fun. His argument was that art is defined by having a passionate reaction: love, hate, fear, disgust. Therefore, if you hate AI art, that makes it art. We were chatting over pizza in a loud bar, so he didn’t get to elaborate much between slices. However, I think following this line of logic is interesting. It makes me think of urinals in museum displays and swastika graffiti. Do we preserve that which we hate, despise, find generally offputting?

When?

Why?

Recently, I saw images of a sculptural set here on Hellsite. They were made to look like litter in a big stark-white modern museum, scattered haphazardly. One piece got thrown away: a dented soda can.

It was relocated and got a clearer label.

The soda can does not make me disgusted, angry, or insulted. Moreover, it does not summon any sort of passion I can name.

Why do I think it’s art?

My first prong of the argument back was on that very question. I pointed to cathedrals first as I struggled to conjure a better point: they weren’t meant to stir passion, but devotion. Here was something big and vast that had to depict its major facets in pictures because the holy men spoke a weird language you didn’t necessarily grasp called “Latin” and sometimes they couldn’t speak it either and a guy got so mad about it he made a whole other religion. I think I choked something out about brutalist architecture too, more art made to make you feel humble and collective. Therefore, art does not have to stir a passionate reaction in order to be classified as art.

There’s obvious problems with this, namely that we can slightly shift his argument to encapsulate any sort of emotional reaction whatsoever. In this case, the discovery of a spider web by walking face-first in and screaming is art. Maybe it is, to God.

Via the water slide that is ADHD, I found myself discussing artistic depictions of Muhammad (a subject I do not feel qualified enough to explain on the internet) before cascading into Christianity. I told him about how Eastern Orthodox produced depictions of Jesus and co. in what some might find a more “medieval” or “unrefined” style well past the renaissance. They knew about the trends and the gay Italians. However, to them, holy art had to summon up to otherworldliness, sanctity. The face of God cannot cast shadows. Even in Italy itself, the brief rise of Dominican friar Girolama Savonarola (whose name I butchered horribly) in Florence allegedly had even Botticelli torch some of his paintings. To Savonarola, it was to combat the heresy of vanity. All these works cared about was the beauty of delicately rendered bodies, not Christ himself!

The Catholic Church had him executed.

Jesus HAD to stay sexy.

They really needed this at the time.

The second point I was trying to make with this, before I got distracted misnaming dead Italians, was that what ACTUALLY makes art is the meaning behind it. The bit of our soul we mix in is how much fun we’re having with this new brush, or that we really hate our stepdad, or that I need something to cheer me up after school. The soda can is art because the artist meant to make it. They meant to make it SO close to the original that someone could easily be mistaken, which I’m sure took weeks of hard work. They succeeded.

AI cannot make art because it doesn’t mean anything to the machine.

God did mean for me to run into that spider web though. The bastard.

[mintdecor]

The Role of Textiles in Bedroom Interior Design Kerala

Do you know that textiles can change the vibe of your bedroom? If not, this blog is exclusively for you! The interior textiles like curtains, cushion covers, bed covers, pillow covers and so forth can turn your Bedroom Interior Design Kerala from a normal one to an extraordinary sanctuary. In addition, you can bring Kerala’s cultural heritage and authenticity into your bedroom with these fabrics. In other words, this would help us create a unique and inviting bedroom design in Kerala by Mint Decor to secure ultimate relaxation in an elegant style. 

Add the Touch of Tradition with Textiles to Bedroom Interior Design Kerala

Earlier, we said,  we could bring culture and heritage as the bed room design Kerala style with textiles. When elaborating, we can use Kerala’s traditional handloom fabrics like Kasavu, which is popular for its elegant and rich golden borders on off-white cotton, for bedspreads, pillow covers, and curtains to evoke the richness of Kerala room design. This kind of fabric frees us down to the history and craftsmanship of Kerala by spicing up with a touch of elegance and heritage to the Bedroom Interior Design Kerala decor by Mint Decor. The intricate patterns and motifs in the textile narrate the artistic excellence and craftsmanship of Kerala. This makes each corner of the bedroom unique and a cultural artefact. 

Design of Comfort and Ambiance

Though the aesthetic beauty of the Bedroom Interior Design Kerala by Mint Decor provides richness to your bedroom, the textiles you choose for your bedroom must provide you with the comfort and ambience you always wish for. The tropical climate of Kerala always compels you to select fabrics like cotton and linen, to create a soothing effect inside the bedroom. The major reason why people in Kerala always prefer these fabrics for bedroom interior Kerala is because they provide comfort, especially during humid nights without losing the sense of coolness and relaxation. When pairing it with lightweight throws or blankers with adds vibrant hues of warmth and texture to the bedroom, making it a welcoming retreat. 

Give a Modern Twist to Your Bedroom with Mint Decor

Though there are immense options for Interior design bedroom Kerala, contemporary style might be the favourite choice for every person. To create an ambience that complements the style of Contemporary bedroom interior design Kerala designed by Mint Decor, there are vast choices in fabrics. Such textiles would not only add depth and texture to the bedroom but also inject modernity into the ordinary bedroom. 

Elegance with Functionality for Bedroom Interior Design Kerala

The people in Kerala give importance to functionality when they design the bedroom interior Kerala for their residences. In this sense, textiles serve multiple purposes beyond adornment. The curtains that fall under the category of light cotton or sheer cotton, not only frame the windows but also allow natural light and airflow into the bedroom. This practical approach to the Modern bedroom interior design Kerala by Mint Decor is not only for curtains but extends to rugs and carpets. They add warmth to underfoot by improving acoustics in spacious Kerala homes. In other words, these textiles provide a delicate balance between aesthetics and functionality, that ensures every element contributes to a harmonious living space. 

Textiles make the Interior design bedroom Kerala by Mint Decor intertwin with tradition, comfort and functionality seamlessly. From the timeless beauty of Kerala to the contemporary charm, the interior designers at Mint Decor, help you in choosing textiles that reflect Kerala’s cultural tapestry and the ever-changing taste of the residents. On the other hand, recently the residents in Kerala preferred the blending of the elements of modern and traditional in the Bedroom Interior Design Kerala of their home. In alternative words, textiles become the thread that binds past and present together in every corner of your bedroom. 

By including textiles tactically into your bed space, the interior designer at Mint Decor for the bedroom design in Kerala and homeowners can together create a space that not only showcases their personal style but also reflects the essence of Kerala’s vibrant aesthetic beauty and cultural legacy.