chuplayswithfire

[chuplayswithfire]

Thinking about religious horror as a genre, and how it kind of had its heyday in the late 60s and 70s with movies like Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973) and The Wicker Man (1973) and The Omen (1976). And of course, religious horror never really went away, but I don't think that any of the movies in the genre since then have really had the cultural cachet of any of these ones. And I think that what it comes down to is that these movies came out right at the point where the overwhelming hegemony of Christianity in Anglo countries started to go into decline. Like, Rosemary's Baby explicitly tied its horror into Time Magazine's infamous 1966 "IS GOD DEAD?" cover:

In The Wicker Man, Lord Summerisle explicitly says that the island reverted to Paganism because the Christian God had his shot and blew it. It's not subtle. And I think that the problem with the religious horror produced since then is that it, by and large, isn't really responding to a widespread cultural anxiety so much as it's just reshuffling tropes from the 70s. "Exorcism is scary, right? Throw in an exorcism! Ooh, spooky Nuns!" You can get some scares out of it but not the same cultural reach.

Anyway, I think that if you wanted to make horror that responded to contemporary religious anxieties, you'd almost be better off with premise that God isn't dead.

[chuplayswithfire]

Obsessed w her

[chuplayswithfire]

The problem with having a child with an attorney that has spoken to the child like an adult since birth is that she's 4 years old and she's negotiating the order in which we're going to complete tasks as a family to best suit her idea of an ideal day.

[chuplayswithfire]

I do realize that this is a small thing compared to the loss of human life but it horrifies me and upsets me that that fucker also murdered Melissa Hortman’s golden retriever

[chuplayswithfire]

newborn pudu fawn named petal via the san diego zoo

[chuplayswithfire]

I can’t find a previous post I made like this but one of the many bleak things about the past decade is that Trump showcased just how important civic engagement is, and how everyone should be informed citizens and vote because the GOP is insanely evil and elections can have dire consequences, and people’s response was to scream and rage at the expectation to give a shit about any of that. To the lazy and selfish, there’s nothing more offensive than asking them to pay attention and give a shit about anything but themselves. They’d rather let everything go to hell in a hand basket than read the news and fill out a ballot

[chuplayswithfire]

i feel like nobody has NOTPs anymore. like if you hate a ship now it has to be for some deep moral reason and you have to justify it to everyone what happened to just not liking stuff that isnt inherently bad but just because you personally think it sucks

[chuplayswithfire]

Full offense to those who swallowed “rainbow capitalism bad” but rainbow capitalism has always been a neutral barometer for social acceptance of LGBT people. When rainbow capitalism is big, a corporation sees marketing to LGBT people and projecting at least an image of acceptance as potentially worth losing homophobic customers over. And when they scale back, the opposite.

So yeah to the gays celebrating the death of rainbow capitalism, you are a useful idiot.

[chuplayswithfire]

fuck "girl lunch" fuck "girl math" a woman is a hairy animal who sweats and grunts and excretes and hungers and gets wrinkly and dies eventually. you have to love that.

[chuplayswithfire]

Y'all better learn how to ignore people who are not feeding, fucking, or financing you, or you're gonna be in for a long, uncomfortable ride trying to get through life.

I'm not even saying to hate them, because the opposite of love isn't hate - it's indifference.

[chuplayswithfire]

I'm worried there's a sort of cultural amnesia coming over OFMD fandom and people are forgetting how this canyon stuff developed, which is understandable. I think a lot of fandom newbies come in and think Izzy Canyon started out as a normal side faction that just really liked a supporting character kind of a lot until the end of season two when their fave died, after which they kind of went nuts and became bitter toward the show and started lashing out.

That would totally make sense. I understand why people assume that's what happened because honestly it would make way more sense than what actually happened. But it is not true. The canyon was exactly as deranged and toxic as they are now long before season 2 dropped. The only difference is that they used to aim the toxicity only at other fans who were insufficiently deferential to their interpretation of Izzy, and now they also aim it at the creators of the show and the show itself.

Here's just one example and it's something everyone can agree objectively happened. In January 2023, long before season 2, an OFMD charity fanzine was published. There was a purchase price, with the proceeds going 100% to Rainbow Youth, a nonprofit org providing support for queer youth in Aotearoa. The zine contained some meta essays. One essay was about Izzy - specifically, about why he's a really compelling character who the author liked a lot.

The essay notably tried really hard to avoid taking any particular stance on ANYTHING remotely controversial about how to interpret Izzy as a character; for instance, it didn't take any stance on whether or not he's queer OR on whether or not he's homophobic OR on whether or not he was destined for redemption. It did, however, describe him as an antagonist in season 1, and as a character many fans "love to hate."

This essay was considered so deeply offensive by the proto-canyon that they not only complained en masse about it, they WANTED REFUNDS. I don't mean they said "shit man this sucks I want a refund" in a jokey way, I mean significant numbers of people LITERALLY IN FULL SERIOUSNESS DEMANDED THEIR MONEY BACK. From a CHARITY ZINE. Money that was going TO CHARITY. The makers of the zine actually had to put out an official response to this because it was a serious thing.

The zine was called The Art of Fxckery. You can look this up.

That's what the canyon was already fully like by January 2023. That's why those of us who've been here the whole time always knew it would end this way: even if David Jenkins made an active decision to pander to the canyon, there was no possible way the show could kowtow to the canyon's demands thoroughly enough to be spared. Even describing season one Izzy as an antagonist was enough.

#509.

[chuplayswithfire]

I’m at a sociology conference and just attended a memorial for one of the giants of our field, and one of the panelists told this story…he was at a meeting with this guy, who he got his PhD under and had a long standing relationship with, and he was bemoaning the current state of the world, and he asked this old professor, “how can you be so optimistic? I can’t ever be anything but a pessimist.”

and the old professor said, “you little fucker, I’m going to make a statement and then I’m going to take you out to the parking lot and beat your ass. What good does your pessimism do?”

and that really struck me. not the least because I also knew this old professor and he very rarely swore, so I know this was something he was really worked up about. what good does your pessimism do? What GOOD does your pessimism DO. I’ll be thinking about that for awhile.

[chuplayswithfire]

Stede is so unused to anyone caring about him that i really believe if Ed witnessed something terrible happening to him, watched Stede be visibly upset and on the verge of tears, and then naturally went to comfort his boyfriend and said "hey do you want to talk," i really think Stede would wipe the tears from his eyes and say "sure :) what do you want to talk about"

[chuplayswithfire]

On my dashboard today, I saw some non-American rage-shitting over an old photo of Kamala Harris wearing a rainbow jacket for Pride, and then I saw news of the Trump administration terminating the Trevor Project's contract with the federal government, removing the option for LGBT youth from the government's suicide prevention hotline. I feel like that sums up the tumblr experience: some terminally online jackass who doesn’t even live here screaming and crying and throwing up over anyone pointing out anything positive about Democrats while the Republicans in power take action to seriously harm marginalized people.

[chuplayswithfire]

I think I'm just going to cut and paste this meme I made whenever someone who didn't vote for Hillary in 2016 screams at someone for pointing at the blood on their hands

[chuplayswithfire]

I actually think an underdiscussed solution to the male loneliness epidemic is for lonely men to stop killing people. I think if lonely men didn’t kill people because they felt entitled to the love and attention of others that would really do a bangup job of helping male loneliness. Perhaps they could even make friends with a woman without thinking that if they’re nice to her 3 times they deserve sex from her. Just spitballing here.