#which is what i've been most excited for

[jazzypizzaz]

hmm response really fell off on recent chapters for my wip which could be anything, like it's really long lol & I know I'm being silly, but also curious - was it the fisting??? was it the angst and insecurities and consequences for poor decision making and all that, or was it the fisting? i swear it's very hot and sweet and full of love, despite the circumstances, but also there was fisting. i must go where the story takes me

[winteriron-trash]

rdj the (whitewashed) electric boogaloo

This is a reminder to everyone who's excited about RDJ's casting as Doctor Doom that this casting is whitewashing. Victor Von Doom is a Romani character and has been a Romani character since his introduction in the 1960s. (Fantastic Four Annual #2 [1964]) Not only that, but his Roma identity and the persecution he and his family faced due to it is integral to his character, it is what forms his identity. (Books of Doom by Ed Brubaker) Even if on the off chance this casting is meant to not be Victor but instead be some variant of Tony or whomever else becoming Doctor Doom, it is damaging to the character to rob him of that important cultural background. Doctor Doom does not exist without that history. Fans have been pushing hard to cast Doom as a Romani actor for years, especially since the MCU has whitewashed other Romani characters. (Wanda, Pietro, etc) This casting is not a celebration moment, it's fucking heartbreaking that the MCU repeatedly ignores the important and nuanced cultural backstories of characters.

I know I can't change anybody's mind on whether or not you want to be excited about RDJ's return to the MCU. But I do think at the very least you should be mad that the MCU is baiting us all and destroying nuanced and interesting characters for the sake of self-referential easter eggs and nostalgia bait. Because that's what it is. Feel how you'd like to feel about RDJ's return, but personally, this is soul-sucking. I had such a deep love for the MCU as a teenager, it was obviously something incredibly formative to me, especially Tony Stark. This isn't recreating what I fell in love with the MCU for. This is turning a well-planned and artistic storyline of adaptations into cheap cash grabs and fan service. Because, I think we're past the point of being able to call the MCU an adaptation of anything. They can use existing characters' names and powers, but to say they're being properly adapted is laughable.

This is not an adaptation of Doctor Doom. This is RDJ the Electric Boogaloo because Marvel's fear of losing the interest of dedicated MCU fans overrides their willingness to tell stories that are genuine to the characters. I don't know what there is to be excited about that. The MCU has lost its authenticity and aside from a few projects, feels heartless. Every movie is a copy of a copy. This announcement isn't something celebratory, it feels like a death knell of a cinematic universe that's so desperate to cling to relevancy it's resorting to nostalgia for a character/actor who hasn't even been dead for a decade. We're not getting anything new, we're just rinsing and repeating the same song and dance.

I get it. I love Tony Stark, his death destroyed me and I to this day, rue the ending he got in Endgame. It misunderstood his arc and it robbed him of a satisfying conclusion. But the solution to that isn't dragging the corpse out of the grave five years later to whitewash an existing character with rich and interesting nuance, just to forcibly tie his existence in the MCU to Tony. Whether he is a variant or not. Why would you want someone else's fave's legacy to be destroyed simply so your fave's legacy can go on? Hell, if we were really all so hellbent on the return of RDJ and/or Tony to the MCU, we have the multiverse for a reason. There were other ways to do it that didn't whitewash and ruin someone else. This just. Isn't something to be happy about.

[kyouka-supremacy]

(╥﹏╥)

[sysig]

The brainworms are winning, clearly (Patreon)

[muirmarie]

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[screambirdscreaming]

I used to like saying "gender is a social construct," but I stopped saying that because people didn't tend to react well - they thought that I was saying gender wasn't real, or didn't matter, or could be safely ignored without consequences. Which has always baffled me a bit as an interpretation, honestly, because many things are social constructs - like money, school, and the police - and they certainly have profound effects on your life whether or not you believe in them. And they sure don't go away if you ignore them.

Anyway. What I've taken to saying instead is, "gender is a cultural practice." This gives more of a sense of respect for the significance gender holds to many people. And it also opens the door to another couple layers of analysis.

Gender is cultural. It is not globally or historically homogeneous. It shifts over time, develops differently in different communities, and can be influenced by cross-cultural contact. Like many, many aspects of culture, the current status of gender is dramatically influenced by colonialism. Colonial gender norms are shaped by the hierarchical structure of imperialist society, and enforced onto colonized cultures as part of the project of imperial cultural hedgemony.

Gender is practiced. What constitutes a gender includes affects and behaviors, jobs or areas of work, skillsets, clothing, collective and individual practices of gender affiliation and affirmation. Any or all of these things, in any combination, depending on the gender, the culture, and the practitioner.

Gender encompasses shared cultural archetypes. These can include specific figures - gods and goddesses, mythic or fictional characters, etc - or they can be more abstract or general. The Wise Woman, Robin Hood, the Dyke, the Working Man, the Plucky Heroine, the Effete Gay Man, etc etc. The range of archetypes does not circumscribe a given gender, that is, they're not all there is to gender. But they provide frameworks and reference points by which people relate to gender. They may be guides for ways to inhabit or practice a gender. They may be stereotypes through which the gendered behavior of others is viewed.

Gender as a framework can be changed. Because it is created collectively, by shared acknowledgement and enforcement by members of society. Various movements have made significant shifts in how gender is structured at various times and places. The impact of these shifts has been widely variable - for example, depending on what city I'm in, even within my (fairly culturally homogeneous) home country, the way I am gendered and reacted to changes dramatically. Looping back to point one, we often speak of gender in very broad terms that obscure significant variability which exists on many scales.

Gender is structured recursively. This can be seen in the archetypes mentioned above, which range from extremely general (say, the Mother) to highly specific (the PTA Soccer Mom). Even people who claim to acknowledge only two genders will have many concepts of gendered-ways-of-being within each of them, which they may view and react to VERY differently.

Gender is experienced as an external cultural force. It cannot be opted out of, any more than living in a society can be opted out of. Regardless of the internal experience of gender, the external experience is also present. Operating within the shared cultural understanding of gender, one can aim to express a certain practice of gender - to make legible to other people how it is you interface with gender. This is always somewhat of a two-way process of communication. Other people may or may not perceive what you're going for - and they may or may not respect it. They may try to bring your expressed gender into alignment with a gender they know, or they might parcel you off into your own little box.

Gender is normative. Within the structure of the "cultural mainstream," there are allowable ways to practice gender. Any gendered behavior is considered relative to these standards. What behavior is allowed, rewarded, punished, or shunned is determined relative to what is gender normative for your perceived gender. Failure to have a clearly perceivable gender is also, generally, punished. So is having a perceivable gender which is in itself not normative.

Gender is taught by a combination of narratives, punishments, and encouragements. This teaching process is directed most strongly towards children but continues throughout adulthood. Practice of normatively-gendered behaviors and alignment with 'appropriate' archetypes is affirmed, encouraged, and rewarded. Likewise 'other'- gendered behavior and affinity to archetypes is scolded, punished, or shunned. This teaching process is inherently coercive, as social acceptance/rejection is a powerful force. However it can't be likened to programming, everyone experiences and reacts to it differently. Also, this process teaches the cultural roles and practices of both (normative) genders, even as it attempts to force conformity to only one.

Gender regulates access to certain levers of social power. This one is complicated by the fact that access to levers of social power is also affected by *many* other things, most notably race, class, and citizenship. I am not going to attempt to describe this in any general terms, I'm not equipped for that. I'll give a few examples to explain what I'm talking about though. (1) In a social situation, a man is able to imply authority, which is implicitly backed by his ability to intimidate by yelling, looming, or threatening physical violence. How much authority he is perceived to have in response to this display is a function of his race and class. It is also modified by how strongly he appears to conform to a masculine ideal. Whether or not he will receive social backlash for this behavior (as a separate consideration to how effective it will be) is again a function of race/class/other forms of social standing. (2) In a social situation, a woman is able to invoke moral judgment, and attempt to modify the behavior of others by shame. The strength of her perceived moral authority depends not just on her conformity to ideal womanhood, but especially on if she can invoke certain archetypes - such as an Innocent, a Mother, or better yet a Grandmother. Whether her moral authority is considered a relevant consideration to influence the behavior of others (vs whether she will be belittled or ignored) strongly depends on her relative social standing to those she is addressing, on basis of gender/race/class/other.

[Again, these examples are *not* meant to be exhaustive, nor to pass judgment on employing any social power in any situation. Only to illustrate what "gendered access to social power" might mean. And to illustrate that types of power are not uniform and may play out according to complex factors.]

Gender is not based in physical traits, but physical traits are ascribed gendered value. Earlier, I described gender as practiced, citing almost entirely things a person can do or change. And I firmly believe this is the core of gender as it exists culturally - and not just aspirationally. After the moment when a gender is "assigned" based on infant physical characteristics, they are raised into that gender regardless of the physical traits they go on to develop (in most circumstances, and unless/until they denounce that gender.) The range of physical traits like height, facial shape, body hair, ability to put on muscle mass - is distributed so that there is complete overlap between the range of possible traits for people assigned male and people assigned female. Much is made of slight trends in things that are "more common" for one binary sex or the other, but it's statistically quite minor once you get over selection bias. However, these traits are ascribed gendered connotations, often extremely strongly so. As such, the experience of presented and perceived gender is strongly effected by physical traits. The practice of gender therefore naturally expands to include modification of physical traits. Meanwhile, the social movements to change how gender is constructed can include pushing to decrease or change the gendered association of physical traits - although this does not seem to consistently be a priority.

Gender roles are related to the hypothetical ability to bear children, but more obliquely than is often claimed. It is popular to say that the types of work considered feminine derive from things it is possible to do while pregnant or tending small children. However, research on the broader span of human history does not hold this up. It may be true of the cultures that gave immediate rise to the colonial gender roles we are familiar with - secondary to the fact that childcare was designated as women's work. (Which it does not have to be, even a nursing infant doesn't need to be with the person who feeds it 24 hours a day.) More directly, gender roles have been influenced by structures of social control aiming for reproductive control. In the direct precursors of colonial society, attempts to track paternal lineage led to extreme degrees of social control over women, which we still see reflected in normative gender today. Many struggles for women's liberation have attempted to push back these forms of social control. It is my firm opinion that any attempt to re-emphasize childbearing as a touchstone of womanhood is frankly sick. We are at a time where solidarity in struggle for gender liberation, and for reproductive rights, is crucial. We need to cast off shackles of control in both fights. Trying to tie childbearing back to womanhood hobbles both fights and demeans us all.

Gender is baked deeply enough into our culture that it is unlikely to ever go away. Many people feel strongly about the practice of gender, in one way or another, and would not want it to. However we have the power to change how gender is structured and enforced. We can push open the doors of what is allowable, and reduce the pain of social punishment and isolation. We can dismantle another of the tools of colonial hedgemony and social control. We can change the culture!

[godgavemenoname]

if anyones been wondering what ive been doing while being so offline, ive spent the last few months trying to get my shit together and failing and succeeding and coping by getting really obsessed with star trek for the first time since i was a kid :-)

[morelikesin]

Sam's blueberry pie 🫐🥧 Which he's, as per the running joke on this blog, just as normal as U◠⁠꓃⁠ ⁠◕⁠ ⁠U

[2hoothoots]

WAIT IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY????? OMG HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY FAVORITE PSYCHONAUTS ENJOYER YOU ARE SO COOL I HOPE YOU GET SOME NICE PRESENTS AND CAKE

(it was yesterday but) thank you!! i got a milk frother

[doctorweebmd]

accidentally* brainstormed a very complete outline for chapters 4-8 for eih, which should theoretically take us through Part 1. which is. you know. a godsend or whatever.

*accidentally meaning i was just eating delicious pancakes and the thoughts happened. usually its me crying screaming and shitting myself in front of an empty word document where ideas manifest. this is notably much more pleasant.

[red-dyed-sarumane]

i draw to draw & not exactly for results. i mean sure i have an end goal in mind for things but its not really about that. so. i generally just assume people will see the art & look at it for all of 20 seconds maybe go 'neat' to themselves & maybe hit like & thats it. i dont expect it to particularly catch any interest that anyone would save it and especially not something anyone would come back to look at frequently. i dont even look at my own stuff much after its done (usually) how can i expect others to. its not even a sad thing for me i appreciate those 20 seconds of consideration & every like i get. to think it means more to people is always deeply surprising

[yououghtaknow]

genuinely kind of terrified as to what will happen to me when i see bare live in three (three!!!!!!!!) days. i will either go fully insane or transcend mortality or perhaps both. either way i will most likely end up full weeping.

[chocolate-cream-soldier]

-.-

[onrainynights]

I'm about to be so annoying btw

[daz4i]

local man way too excited abt a fic idea with no real plot that he hasn't even written yet

[taexual]

im getting real tired of oc acting like she has everything under control and is this amazing manger when all she does is order people around and can’t be serious when it comes to confrontations. i mean she yells and questions others for their behavior but they have to draw the line when it comes to her? that’s hypocritical. her saying that she was hiding behind the bet and only bc she was scared of jungkook‘s feelings being real is and was obvious from the very beginning but she also lied to herself again i mean let’s wake it up right?

how come YOU work with your ex boyfriend that is in a band that YOU are the manager of and allow YOURSELF to work with when YOU act like YOU don’t care about him, while YOU also try to control him for petty sht that has mostly to 65% nothing to do with the work environment. she always wants others to give her time and let her get her thoughts right before she has to talk but others for example jungkook has always an ultimatum like what is wrong with her and her entire mental health atp? im on jungkooks side with, that yes i as a reader am tired too if her acting like she doesn’t want to be with him when that’s all she wants but she‘s selfish (in my opinion no shade) bc she wants to see him beg a little more to avoid a) the confrontation about their fucked up relationship that happened from both sides and b) bc it makes her feel worthy of something again bc he didn’t care about her enough in those 4 years he was with others right? then yeah i wouldn’t give my time and energy to get that kind of person back and not bc jungkook wants to be better for her he needs to be better for himself and her never giving him that reassurance is unfair and disgusting bc she can want that from him right?

like i seriously need people like her to just either be direct or get out of that persons life forever. she sees that jungkook has other SERIOUS issues like his mental health and addiction to always downgrade himself as not worthy for any-little-thing but all she focuses on is „omg u did a bet now i can’t be with you and also bc nick wants me on the renaissance tour so ughhh idk everything is so heavy and omg i fainted am having so much stress ugh:((„ like shut the fuck up. she knew what she was getting into when she signed the contract for being a manager could she know how much stress she was getting into? no but that’s no here or there bc she allowed herself to not have a break that is on nobody but herself.

i have so much to discuss about her character but i really don’t want to just know that im tired of her and also thank you for writing something that’s truly new and fresh! i like this story it makes us think and have thoughts about the the chapters in general so yeah i hope you don’t get offended of how i view oc i don’t want to bash your characters ig it just that everyone has a different opinion in certain matters right? still thank you and have a great day! ☺️😊

omg babe you are having some very very interesting thoughts!!!! thank you for reading and for getting invested!!!!!!! 🥺🥺

the characters will have a discussion about a lot of the things that you mentioned soon--mostly in the next chapter--so i'm not going to elaborate much, but again, some very interesting points!! they are people with clear issues, and insecurities ranging from their past relationship to parental trauma to toxic friends. you know what i mean?? and i can't wait to show you what's nextttt!!!! 🤍🤍🤍

adding a spoiler bc i feel like it 🤌🏻

baby you said oc "can’t be serious when it comes to confrontations" and that is going to be one of the key plot points in the upcoming chapters!!!!

their whole relationship, they dealt with the chronic let's-not-talk-about-this illness, you know?? and jungkook is overcoming it! but now that's coming back to bite oc a little bit, because not only does she have to talk too, but she also has to face her demons from the broken relationship she had grown up in