#yes I watched all 3 hours of that contrapoints video

[drawitblargit]

I hear there is new Twilight discourse in 2024!? Here's a Twilight cover I made.

[blindmagdalena]

This is mildly off topic but I watched the ContraPoints Twilight video and yes it is 3 hours long but oh my god I couldn’t stop thinking about your fics. The video isn’t entirely about twilight, but rather uses it as a frame for talking about female fantasies in erotica.

It was just especially funny because I feel like we psychoanalyze homie all the time, and now I’m being psychoanalyzed for sexualizing homie.

yesss i LOVE that video!! for those interested, please check it out. if you take nothing else from it, My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday is like. essential reading when it comes to understanding these types of fantasies. why things like bodice rippers became so popular, and why we still see so much non/dubcon in literary and fandom spaces.

this video was especially great as someone who both writes and consumes a lot of "ravishment fantasy."

"The nonconsent fantasy is not wish fulfillment in a literal sense, but in an emotional sense."

i think it's particularly interesting in the case of the Homelander fandom where we have a lot of people who are actively shamed or embarrassed for finding him attractive. it adds an extra layer to the idea of disavowing wanting him by turning it into a ravishment fantasy where you have no choice. he is a fantasy that can force you (or whatever character stands in as a proxy) to enjoy him, thereby alleviating any of those messy feelings you might have about him.

thank you for bringing this up! it's really such an interesting topic, and it's such a shame how often noncon (and similar taboo) fantasies get turned into something they simply aren't. fantasies aren't literal! they're devices for safe and emotional release. 🖤

[kolbisneat]

MONTHLY MEDIA: March 2024

……….FILM……….

Dune: Part Two (2024) Every piece of technology felt and looked so tangible. The baby worm too! Love the tactile nature of this whole production and I hope studios take note that CG can't be the only tool in your belt. So much bigger than I imagined and just enjoyed the whole thing.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) Ages surprisingly well and a script that lets the main quartet be both funny and layered.

……….TELEVISION……….

Columbo (1.01 to 1.03) Hey I'm starting Columbo! Love that each episode is feature-length and Columbo appears fully formed right out of the gate. The sets and costumes are all so glamorous and L.A. Very excited to keep going.

Succession (2.05 to 3.04) The Kendall play at the end of season 2 felt very much like the Kendall play at the end of season 1 and while I'm still a huge fan of this series, I just hope it's not the same going into season 3 and 4.

Delicious in Dungeon (Episode 1.09 to 1.13) Great adaptation that isn't just a straight recreation of the artwork in the manga. The more kinetic/frantic moments in the animation are a nice departure and while they don't pop up in each episode, now that I'm 13 eps deep I can appreciate how they're sprinkled throughout.

Love is Blind (Episode 6.02 to 6.13) It still amazes me that anyone goes on reality tv.

……….YOUTUBE……….

Twilight | ContraPoints by ContraPoints Yes I did watch a nearly 3-hour essay on Twilight, sexual expression, and all that comes with that. And you should too. VIDEO

Instagram fatigue and the rise of 'Resentment Reels' by Taylor Lorenz While I haven't noticed this specific phenomenon, I have noticed Instagram declining as an app (both as a user trying to see anything other than ads, and a creator trying to get my work seen in between those ads). It's a bummer. VIDEO

Saltburn: The Tumblr-ification of Cinema by Broey Deschanel Every since I saw Saltburn, I've been thinking about what wasn't quite sitting right with me. This unlocked a lot of what I couldn't describe and most of it stems from the writer/director's upper class upbringing. Saltburn isn't a "take down the rich" movie, it's a horror story from the perspective of a wealthy family. VIDEO

Why Is It So Hard To Cross The Street? (& What You Can Do To Help) by Strong Towns Accidents where drivers hit a pedestrian are going up in my area so this really hit home. And for those feeling like there's nothing you can do at ground level, consider taking their course (not a paid sponsorship I'm just in real support of community-lead initiatives). VIDEO

……….READING……….

Elric of Melniboné by Michael Moorcock (Complete) After picking up the last book in this series (which I've yet to read) I figured I'd start at the beginning. Love the fast pace pulpy action and I can see how this influenced the creation of D&D.

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie (Complete) This one would lose me for stretches but the final quarter of the book is stronger. A lot less cozy and a lot more action than I was expecting but skimming other reviews it sounds like this was written during her more...adventure-focused era. Three books deep and I have to give Christie credit that each has been a completely different experience.

Adventures of a Japanese Business Man by Jose Domingo (Complete) Always love going back to this nearly wordless epic that follows the titular Japanese business man. I love the complexity of the earliest panels and wish that could carry throughout more of the book, but it's always such a treat to discover just where each new panel will go.

Delicious in Dungeon Volume 5 by Ryoko Kui (Complete) Enjoying rereading this with shorter breaks between volumes as I certainly missed/forgot details on my first read. It's here that the story and tone shifts from light romp to a more dramatic and dangerous affair but it never loses its spot-on humour. Love those dryad pumpkins.

Ultimate Spider-Man HC Volume 11 by Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen, David Lafuente, and more (Complete) Going from some of my other comics back to this, I'm struck by just how wordy it can get. Now knowing where the story goes, it was a great idea to prime readers to the idea of Peter Parker dying even if it's not from this event.

……….AUDIO……….

Blank Check with Griffin & David (Podcast) Late to the game on this but really enjoying burning through their back catalog. Obviously started with their episode on Speed Racer as it's a near perfect film that you should watch right now.

……….GAMING……….

Oz: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The Tuesday group just killed a mayor! So the aftermath of that is going to play out over the next couple of sessions. And the Mof1 crew is investigating the aftermath of their own district-wide catastrophe and it's all looking rather suspicious!

Spot It (Blue Orange Games) I can't recommend this game enough. It's so easy to learn, rounds last maybe 5 minutes, it plays well with small or large groups of any age, and all it requires is pattern recognition and quick reflexes. Every time I've played this someone says they're going to buy a copy for themselves.

And that's it. See you in April!

[joys-of-everyday]

I just watched ContraPoint’s Twilight and so clearly, I need to write about BL. She even told me too! (2:42:40)

Firstly, if you know anyone who goes “why is BL so xxx (derogatory)”, this is an excellent video to point them to. Yes, it’s 3 hours long. That is how thoroughly it defends BL Twilight.

Secondly, I don’t particularly want to discuss whether I agree or not with the finer details of every statement Natalie makes. In broad strokes, it is an excellent video.

I hope from point 1, 2 it’s clear that I don’t want to reiterate too much that the video covers, so if you have time to do anything, I recommend going to watch it. That being said, I think there are interesting points to go deeper with the slightly different perspective of BL, so I’ll jot down some loose thoughts.

DHSM

So apparently… Twilight is yaoi coded? I’ve never watched or read Twilight in my life so maybe I’ve been sold the wrong impression.

Yaoi, and then BL, has always been constructed on narratives of power and its subversions. Pio makes an excellent post here linking to a neat interview which covers, from a different perspective to Natalie (who focuses on straight romance), some of the conversations around power and fantasy.

Natalie defines a framework in which this narrative exists: Default Heterosexual Sado-Masochism, or DHSM (1:26:47). This is a series of dichotomies that are often associated to each other: masculine, active, subject, lover, dominant, top… vs feminine, passive, object, beloved, submissive, bottom�� Yes. It’s seme vs uke, gong vs shou. The criticism and defense of such narratives have been well-trodden, and Natalie gives a good account. I’ll leave that for now.

What I find interesting, and what Natalie mentions, is the natural scope of BL to subvert DHSM itself. Notable is the myriad of tropes that seek to subvert the common dichotomy – the feminine seme, the muscular uke, the younger seme, and so on, so forth. Or works where both parties play the roles of gong and shou – WWX’s active pursual of LWJ’s affections… hell, almost the whole of MDZS is LWJ being reactive to what WWX does, flipping the dynamic in its entirety.

But I think that even in its most standard, vanilla DHSM version of BL is already subversive of these expectations. The almost infamous “but I’m a man!” uttered so often by the uke when faced with the affections of a man (wow, gayness, how terribly exciting) can be interpreted as mild homophobia, yes, but it occurs to me now that it is a subtle marker of agency. The uke is surprised to be the object of desire. And thus we learn that object/beloved is disjoint from womanhood, even if the work doesn’t go as far as to untangle it from femininity.

Is that surprise in itself referencing the default view that men are not objects of desire (women are), and therefore problematic? Who knows. Then again, it do be the case that you can’t comment on a thing without presenting the thing. (*cough* Scum Villain *cough*)

Ah Power

“Is it really fine though?” says Natalie, halfway thought the video. (1:23:07)

I’ve defended BL to the moon and back. I still would. But always there is a little person sat in the back of my mind reminding me of all the moments I cringed. The overwhelming DHSM, the casual misogyny, the slightly bizarre takes queerness… Don’t get me wrong, there exist BL works flying in egalitarian gay space communism, and BL isn’t like… uniquely bad among media despite the frequent bashing it gets (have you watched the average shonen?). But I like BL. That’s why I know intimately all the issues it has.

My gay male friends tell me that BL often disappoints them because it’s not reflective of their experiences. Fair enough. I think a lot of BL (by the nature of what it is) is on the whole reflective of female (and Asian) experiences/perspectives. While I have no intention of telling anyone what they can and can’t write, it… idk, feels strange, that so much of society’s perspective on gay men (overwhelmingly so in Asia, and increasingly so in the West) is shaped by… not gay men.

Food for thought.

Another question that sometimes strikes my darkest hours is… why yaoi and not yuri? Why BL and not GL? Well it turns out that a lot of women (the main target audience, if you weren’t aware by now) are into men (Surprise!), so I guess that’s not particularly surprising. Then again, it seems reasonable to think there’s an element of wanting a blank slate. Woman is Other, said idk… Beauvoir. For a woman to woman, there must be a reason she womans. A female character cannot exist without navigating – explicitly or implicitly – social structures that work against her. Even a world that removes those barriers with the good old worldbuilding becomes commentary on today’s society. And ngl, the last thing I want to be thinking about when reading my escapist fantasy is the unfortunate circumstances we live in (*big sigh*).

Is that internalised sexism? Should I think deeply about my biases and my apparent inability to think of women as just people? Maybe. Sorry, my political correctness is not high on my mind when reading smut.  

The seen seen, the desire desired

Who are you attracted to in BL? Some say you (the obviously female reader)(I’m feeling exceptionally sarcastic today, but I realise this doesn’t translate well to text) are meant to relate to the uke and feel attraction towards the seme. From experience… this doesn’t track. Often because erm… the audience of BL isn't all straight women it turns out.

But an interesting point that Natalie raises is the capacity for a reader to relate with characters in what are perhaps unexpected ways (cf Part 6: Identity). BL often jumps between the perspective of seme and uke. If straight fantasy gives women the opportunity to relate with both the desire and desired, then BL gives the capability of being everything at once – the powerful beloved, the pursued subject, the desire desired - through both the uke and seme. After all, how common is the sentiment “I don’t know if I want to fuck him or be him”? (I’m gonna digress and say I don’t think people mega-braining multiple POVs as they read BL, but I will highlight the way BL tends to portray both parties as loving and beloved.)

There’s something inherently voyeuristic or polyamorous about BL. Natalie states that blank slate characters are blank slate as to not generate envy – blurring the identity of the uke enough that they become indistinguishable from the reader. This is not the template of BL. The uke is often just as developed, if not more developed in character than the seme, with the reader’s capacity to relate to multiple POVs meaning they can see the uke from the outside, as separate, as object, as Other. Either the reader disappears in the narrative, everywhere and nowhere at once, or is tucked between them (“I want to fuck/be fucked by both.”).

Representation

In general, I prefer to be excited about what we do have rather than nitpicking the individual. Works that subvert tropes, tropes that subvert tropes, authors trying to better understand the queer community, conversations around what media representation we want to see etc. etc. get me excited. BL broadening its scope from escapist smut fantasy (tbc, nothing wrong with that) to more “mainstream” slice of life/fantasy type works is something I welcome. Some bits of BL fandom have been some of the nicest I’ve seen. It’s a community that I think is special, and whether I think media should be child friendly aside, I think it has the capability to be a really positive influence.

It strikes me that while BL isn’t reflective of the most standard gay male experience… it is, in some way, a gay male experience.

And I say this in a way that is literal for me and my trans brethren, but also maybe this is true more broadly, in an abstract sense. Natalie suggests that women relate to big, hulking alpha men in romance with a masculine element of themselves. When/if you relate to characters in BL, do you relate to them with a masculine element?

Well, not always and not everyone, and the gender of the characters themselves are often more complicated. ig what I’m trying to say, is that BL might not seem like an accurate reflection of the world to some, but it is a reflection of something, and maybe we should value that.

And as a final remark, I don't think anyone needs to intellectualise their interests as hard as I sometimes do. Keep enjoy what you're enjoying. You're doing great :)

[doublebubbletea]

So, I didn’t know whether I’d make this post or not, but I think we need some clarity considering the recent drama. I’m gonna address the claim that Contrapoints/Natalie Wynn is anti-Semitic over a t-shirt design she sells in her store.

Before we get started just so you understand my take on it: I think the shirt is bad. I think it should be taken down. However, I think that it is unintentionally anti-Semitic (that doesn’t make it okay, btw), and that’s what I’m going to explain.

Here is an image of the t-shirt.

So, let’s talk about what this t-shirt references.

1. Her set of videos about “What’s wrong with Capitalism”

Let’s talk about some specific time-stamps here that are important to the context of this whole discussion, beginning in Part 1.

3:15

For those who cannot watch here is the transcript from the subtitles:

“...So the masculinist alt-right analysis of society is exactly upside-down. Guys, you are not under the thumb of a Jewish feminist plot to turn you into girly soy boy cucks. Cultural Marxism did not turn you into placid IKEA consumers, capitalism did. So what you need to do is stop scapegoating non-whites, feminists and trans people and unite with the rest of us to actually do something about the real enemy: the blood-sucking goddamn reptiles.”

Here she brings up the notion that the reptiles are capitalists the first time.

5:36

“The CEO makes 36 million dollars a year while you make $14 an hour, which means that a lot of the value of the work you're doing doesn't get paid to you,       but goes straight up the chain of command and into the pockets of the chief lizards.”    

Here she suggests CEOs are part of the reptiles she is talking about. In fact, around this specific timestamp (maybe like 10 or so seconds continuing from here) she has quite a few lines further connecting management and corporation hierarchy to the reptiles. She is being very obvious about who exactly she sees the reptiles as.

IF THIS ISN’T CLEAR ENOUGH:

16:14

“Why do you keep saying reptiles when you mean capitalists?”

In Part 2, she explains all of this further, but begins the section with

8:08

“Another way to approach this issue might be to ask: Who are the goddamn reptiles? Well, they’re certainly not the Jews, I want to be clear, get everyone on the same page I’m not blaming the Jews for anything."

She goes on to talk about the problem with Capitalism in greater detail, I can’t summarize an entire video for you lol, but these are about the quotes that get her point across. 

2. David Icke

The whole reptile thing started with this dude, David Icke, who TLDR: claims that reptiles are controlling the world and this theory has been widely, widely criticized as when describing the reptiles he uses anti-Semitic sentiments people had (and in some cases still have) towards Jews during WWII. He has been criticized widely over this and most people do take his views as anti-Semetic.

SO

When Natalie says David Icke is right, she agrees with him on this fact:

We are being controlled by reptiles.

But, unlike Icke’s anti-Semitic views where he equates reptiles to Jews, Natalie claims the reptiles controlling us are the CAPITALISTS.

She isn’t being anti-Semitic, at least not intentionally.

Because let’s be real, nobody that hasn’t watched her videos are going to “Get” this shirt. And in my opinion, it doesn’t matter what your designs “intent” was, it matters what people get out of it. There are too many facets for someone to read it correctly. It comes across as anti-Semitic because it’s not giving enough context for what the shirt was, so yes, it IS anti-Semitic. It should be taken down.

So that being said, while we don’t take into consideration the intent when looking at the t-shirt alone, when looking at the overall situation, taking that intention and context in is important. It’s clear she is not anti-semitic, and perhaps you think she takes Icke’s views too lightly. This is a valid point and I’m honestly tempted to agree.

Look, I’m not saying don’t hold her accountable, and I’m certainly not saying don’t be mad or hurt about this, but for one misunderstanding to lead to people labeling her as anti-Semitic 100% FOREVER is simply false.