#without understanding how integral they are to queer women and fandom history like

[gentil-minou]

I'm reblogging my own tags from an ask I got but:

#plus people are being very rude in the comments calling us mysoginists#not knowing that mxtx novel is just guy yuri and like 75% of mdzs demographic is queer women like bruh#danmei and BL have such a rich history in being outlets for queer women especially those closeted and struggling with their own sexuality#i hate that folks deny us that and put us into a category of whatever they put us#especially considered CW never even made supercorp canon it's just more queerbaiting#how can they be better than a canon queer couple that defy gender boundaries and embrace their kinky lifestyle with wonderful communication#like its genuinely kinda sad#im remembering why i dont like fandom polls they just make everyone into assholes and im sure the mdzs fans are also being mean#which is just NOT COOL ugh

AO3 Top Relationships Bracket- Quarterfinals

This poll is a celebration of fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

[evertomorrowart]

Best of YouTube 2023

Yes, I did spend the first week and change of January on this. I wish I could have had it done for New Years, but too many people came out with incredible work in December, so waiting turned out for the best.

What these creators do are a huge influence on my life, I would honestly have difficulty doing what I do without them. That isn't to say that my favorites of the year are *only* on this image--It was almost impossible to narrow down my favorites. Many creators I wanted to include couldn't fit on a single page, and too many of them made more than one video I wished I could draw too!

But, to all of you, thank you for what you do. You're an inspiration.

For those who don't know, further is an explanation.

At the bottom center is an artistic masterpiece by Defunctland: "Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History." Over the last several years, Defunctland has risen from delightfully-entertaining commentary on decommissioned theme park attractions to occasionally dropping profound statements on the creation of art itself. "Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History" is worth treating like the cinematic experience it is: No second screen, you sit your ass down in front of a TV, set down the phone, and then you *watch it.* Any Disney, theme park, or independent film fan needs to pay attention to this one.

Bottom left is Caelan Conrad with their piece "Drop the T - The Deadly Consequences of Gay Respectability Politics." While I do think they've done more visually or artistically-daring pieces before, "Drop the T" is one of the most important videos released on YouTube in today's current climate of hate. We as queer folk (and our allies) need to understand how integral every identity of the queer experience has been since the start of the Civil Rights movement (and before!). While we are not identical, we *are* inseparable, and we deserve having our real history easily accessible.

TERFs and other conservative mouthpieces need not reply. Your opinions are trash. 😘

I cannot stop watching and rewatching this video by @patricia-taxxon, "On the Ethics of Boinking Animal People." It's not just a defense of furry fandom and its eccentricities, it's a thoughtful and passionate analysis of what the artform achieves that purely human representation can't. Patricia goes outside of her usual essay format to directly speak to the viewer about the elements that define furry media (the most succinct definition I've ever heard) and just how *human* an act loving animal cartoons really is.

As an artist who can draw furry characters, but never really got into erotic furry art, this video is a treasure. Why did I choose to have her drawn as a Ghibli character, hanging out with one of the tanukis from "Pom Poko?" Guess you'll have to watch, bruh.

Philosophy Tube continuously puts out videos that I would put on this list--I'm not even sure that "A Man Plagiarised my Work: Women, Money, and the Nation" is the best work she released in 2023. However, this video got many conversations going between myself and my partner, and the twist on the tail end of the video shocked us both to such a degree that I had no choice.

At the very tail end of the year, Big Joel released "Fear of Death." On his Little Joel channel, he described it as the singularly best video he's ever done, and I'm inclined to agree. However, for this illustration, I ended up repeatedly going back to a mini-series he did earlier in the year: "Three Stories at the End of the World." All three videos are deeply moving and haunting, and I was brought to tears by "We Must Destroy What the Bomb Cannot." While it may be relatively-common knowledge that the original Gojira (Godzilla) film is horror grappling with the devastation America's rush to atomic dominance inflicted on Japan, Big Joel still manages to bring new words to the discussion. Please watch all three of the videos, but if, for some reason, you must have only one, let it be "We Must Destroy What the Bomb Cannot."

Y'all. Let me confess something. I hate football. I hate watching it, I associate seeing it from the stadiums with some of my worst childhood experiences, I despise collegiate and professional football (as institutions that destroy bodies and offer up children at the feet of its alter as a pillar of American culture)--

I. L o a t h e. Football.

But.

F.D. Signifier could get me to watch an entire hour-plus essay on why I should at least give a passing care. AND HE DID IT. I might think "F*ck the Police," the two-parter on Black conservatism, or his essay on Black men's connection to anime might be "better" videos, but this writer did the impossible and held my limited attention span towards football long enough to make a sincere case for NFL players--and reminds us that millionaires can *in fact* be workers. That alone is testament to his skill.

Sit down and watch "The REAL Reason NFL Running Backs Aren't Getting Paid." Any good anti-capitalist owes it to themselves.

CJ the X continuously puts out stunning, emotional videos, and can do it with the most seemingly-inconsequential starting points. A 30 second song? An incestuous commercial? Five minutes of Tangled? Sure, why not. Go destroy yourself emotionally by watching them. I'm serious. Do it.

Their video Stranger Things and the Meaning of Life manages to to remind us all why the way we react to media does, in fact, matter. Yes, even nostalgia-driven, mass-media schlock. Yes, how we interact with media matters, what it says about us matters, and we all deserve to seek out the whys.

Folding Ideas has spent the last few years articulating exactly why so much of our modern world feels broken, and because of that his voice continuously lives rent-free in my brain. While the tricks that scam artists and grifters use to try to swindle us are never new, the advancement of technology changes the aesthetics of their performances. Portions of Folding Ideas' explanations might seem dry when going into detail of how stocks work in This is Financial Advice, but every bit of it is necessary to peel back the layers of techno-babble and jargon and make sense of the results of "Meme Stocks."

Jessie Gender puts out nothing but bangers, her absolute unit of a video about Star Wars might be my new favorite thing ever, but none of her work hit so profoundly in 2023 than the two-parter "The Myth of 'Male Socialization'" and "The Trauma of Masculinity." There's so much about modern life that isolates and traumatizes us, and so much of it is just shrugged off as "normal." We owe it to ourselves to see the world in more vivid a color palette than we're initially given.

Panels drawn after Kate Beaton and "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands."

"This is Not a Video Essay" is one of the most intense and beautiful pieces of art I've ever put into my eyeballs. Why do we create? What drives us to connect?

I don't even know what else to say about the Leftist Cooks' work, it repeatedly transcends the medium and platform. Watch every single one of their videos, but especially this one.

The likelihood you are terminally online and yet haven't heard of Hbomberguy's yearly forrays into destroying the careers of awful people is pretty slim. Just because it has millions of views doesn't mean that Hbomberguy's "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" isn't worth the hype. Too long? Shut up, it has chapters and YouTube holds your place, anyway. You think a deep dive into a handful of creators is only meaningless drama? Well, you're wrong, you wrong-opinion-haver. Plagiarism is an *everyone* problem because of the actual harm it creates--the history it erases, the labor it devalues, the art it marginalizes--which you would know if you watched "Plagiarism and You(Tube)".

Watch. The damn. Video.

In fact, watch all of them!

Thanks for reading this if you did.

[likealittleheartbeat]

Just going through the gay subtext tag as one does, and it’s just amazing to see so many characters and series mentioned that really center on super masculine environments, or, more specifically, homosocial groupings--and by that i mean a singly gendered group to the exclusion of womanhood and femininity. and so even as these blogs are shipping two men together, both characters get to preserve their masculinity as they work in and for the proliferation of their masculine groups--boat crews, armies, sports teams, rock bands. 

It’s such a shift from the prominent understandings of gay coding from the past 100 years, where you’d be looking for the “sensitive boys,” lovers of the arts (and those arts they loved would often be threaded through queer history), the bullied and lonely who find that one true friend and maybe an inspirational teacher along the way. It was a pretty Platonic understanding of queerness in the relational aspect for better or worse. And it centered the swishy and effeminate for their marginalization.

The new “gay subtext” draws focus to more masculine characters who tend to exist easily enough in hyper masculine spaces and groups without discomfort. You’ll see comic characters like Bill and Ted loving their bros or militant types like in Master & Commander constructing intricate rituals among a whole hoard of other men. And shows like or Black Sails and Our Flag Means Death are making these kinds of gay relationships narratively explicit, but by situating them within a highly masculine context, even a typical effeminate character like Stede is validated through his participation and upholding of the masculinist exploits of the crew and the patriarchal laws of the sea. 

In these iterations, the emotional arcs of characters can hyperfocus on the challenges of deviant sexuality and coming to the conclusion that, actually, its not really disruptive or deviant to these environments. There’s more humorous levity in a lot of these depictions, which I really appreciate. But does the audience’s allowance for that levity come from a stronger sense of security for these characters? A masculinist gay sexuality tightens the knot of patriarchal power in a lot of these depictions, creating repackaged separate gender spheres that exclude women from participating in masculine exploits. Yes, they offer representation of transness, and, in fact, i’ve noticed a lot of trans-masc folk being drawn to these kinds of depictions, but the stories instate a culture in which trans folk have been assimilated into gendered categories that have merely accepted trans people without reducing hierarchical separation. 

when the netflix wave of avatar the last airbender fans arrived into the fandom, it was striking who they shipped: a pairing that had been rare in the fandom up to that point. not only the who but the how stood out. these two male characters were loveable as goofs, as clowns, as bros--just guys being guys. this pairing was perfect for fluff and modern au’s. they were devoid of the angst and passion that had previously marked the ships (and the infamous shipping wars lol), because they as a pairing were kind of devoid of the show’s central integrated themes. while together, they could suggest a resistance to empire, their time together in the show and in fan portrayals is marked by tropes of masculine revolution--protecting/saving women, shallow and befuddled emotional communication, and urges toward revolutionary violence. these are not bad things necessarily. the interest in these motifs simply stands out in this wing of the fandom when we compare it to the broader pacifist and feminist center of the show. the willfulness of this audience to focus on characters that provide potential for more traditionally masculine themes is telling when you have actual protagonists, aang and katara, who embody and force the audience’s contention with feminine values and their integration into a larger understanding of power structures, especially colonial power structures.

when i look at this trend of centering homosocial gay relationships more broadly, what i hope is that it’s simply making a pocket for the experiences and values considered masculine to exist peacefully and without shame. everyone has the potential to experience and participate in them, after all, and they can be important. my fear, though, is that it indicates acceptance of a “diversified” patriarchy, in which defined representation of diverse identities is a more important narrative goal than questioning broader hierarchies of power that limit and oppress the characters and force them into definitional boxes, especially definitional boxes that allow them to retain their unearned societal privileges over others. there’s just some level of responsibility that one can take when they choose their brotp’s and create content to still illustrate the limits of homosocial gay representation, to see how little two gay bros do to narratively disrupt much of anything.