gavingwhiz - Tumblr blog

[gavingwhiz]

[gavingwhiz]

The captions cut off too early! Man in suit, emotionless and factual: itsmonday [No dialog is spoken for the final three seconds of video, allowing the as-yet unheard whirring of production equipment to fill the audiospace. All artifice of a morning talk show falls away as the sound of fans acts as the final punchline to just how little needed to be said about Monday.] End captions.

Unmute !

[gavingwhiz]

I got caught in the orbit of rewatching favorite WayneRadioTV videos which provided enough momentum to slingshot me over to catching up on Jerma985 videos, and now I'm about to enter my worst of content phases: intentionally watching 4 hour Jerma stream edits from Skye4. I will emerge a different person.

[gavingwhiz]

Team Fortress 2 Has a Bigot Problem

For those who aren't aware: the phenomenal, industry-changing shooter Team Fortress 2 is still alive and well as a free-to-play game. Unfortunately, the community in Quick Play matchmaking can be horrendously toxic. This is, in large part, a side effect of the game being free and wholly unmoderated. Valve both does not moderate the game in any meaningful way and refuses to implement even basic automated moderation on Steam profiles. Emboldened by this, bigots get weird with it in their newfound confidence they can rock an antisemetic username, transphobic profile picture, and straight up chant slurs in text chat with impunity. To (slightly) counter this, I have started a trans-haven Team Fortress 2 server. It's based out of Chicago, so all my Midwest queers will have decent connection and the coastal elite gays will be fine.

This whole venture was inspired by the YouTuber Uncle Dane, who through a little passion and disposable income created a network of high-quality servers. Shoutout to Dane for creating a corner of TF2 that doesn't let hatred slide. The gameplay ethos might be a bit sweaty for my casual tastes, but I respect the hell out of the moderation and commitment. Queertopia is in no way officially associated with Uncletopia, but the name is fitting, I argue. An oasis of queer love and fun in a desert of 13 year olds spouting right-wing conspiracy theories they half-remember their father ranting about. If you're ever in the community browser in TF2 and want to give the server a bookmark, the IP is 91.242.214.78:19001 The end-goal for this server is to build a community strong enough to necessitate more servers in more locations. I've spent the last few months fostering a Discord community of LGBTQ+ TF2 players and if there's one thing I can be sure of: it's that the TF2 community is full of queers. Hopefully Queertopia can become a fun hangout spot where people can play, have fun, and rest easy knowing if someone tries to spout grim statistics or debate womanhood, they won't last long enough to hear the drum roll of the vote-kick being called.

[gavingwhiz]

I do a series on Tiktok/Reels called “Good Trans News” the whole idea was to try and give other trans people a reprieve from the constant barrage of bad news and try to provide hope by showcasing positive news that affects trans people.

I’m not sure why I never posted those videos on tumblr, because I think they could do some good here.

So here’s some good news!

It turns out that most people don’t hate us

[gavingwhiz]

In case this of interest to my fellow gays and theys, I've started a side blog about writing in a gay way.

It begins.

Hello, internet! Nonbinary author here. I'm going to be real with you: I'm writing a queer cozy mystery novel for one good reason and one petty reason. Good reason: the world needs more normalized queer relationships in feel-good media. Petty reason: I picked up a cozy mystery at the library this week, an actual physical book published by a real company, and the first page was horrendously bad. I may not be the world's best writer, but I sure as hell can write a better introduction than someone aimlessly washing dishes. This blog will be where my ramblings about the writing process, market research I do (possibly mini-reviews of stuff I read?) and spitballing ideas for the book will live. Come along, won'tcha? There might be a talking cat involved.

[gavingwhiz]

[gavingwhiz]

Going to be honest with y'all: didn't expect Trigun Stampede to become about Knives having some deep-seated psychosexual issues that manifest in a Nick Cannon-level breeding fetish and kind-of wanting to fuck his brother.

[gavingwhiz]

There has never been a point in Steven King's life, from child to elder where Steven King's face didn't 110% read as "that has to be Steven King."

he looks like an animated rat with a brooklyn accent "i could get yooshed ta thish"

[gavingwhiz]

during an interview, game freak was asked if pokemon are sentient and this was their answer

[gavingwhiz]

Normal people: Wow that Trigun Stampede intro is good.

My broken brain: Notice everything manmade is crumbling to dust while Vash and the native wildlife remain. Vash's lifespan is so long he's doomed to watch everything humanity has built on this world crumble under the inevitability of entropy.

[gavingwhiz]

Twitter quietly edited out the text in their harassment rules that said intentionally misgendering or being openly transphobic counted as something you can file a harassment report on. Guess which billionaire that happens to benefit. Guess which behavior that openly encourages on his platform. I'm genuinely surprised he hasn't taken away the ability to limit who can reply to tweets, or the ability to break a QRT by just blocking the person. Those are the only two legitimate safety tools left on the site for minorities to stay in control of their own narratives to SOME degree. Fucking TikTok is safer right now given you can just delete comments from frothing phobes.

[gavingwhiz]

Thomas and the Racial Slur

A reminder that not only was Wilbert Awdry - the guy who created Thomas the Tank Engine - a grumpy old man who hated "political correctness," his origin story for those beliefs ties back to the 1970s when parents asked for a reprint of the 1951 book Henry the Green Engine. Why? Awdry used the n-word in it and now the kids who'd grown up reading that book wanted to be able to read it to their children without a slur. There's tweets going around that say he apologized but the official biography of Awdry basically opens with the writer and him shit-talking political correctness. If he did apologize it was likely due to pressure from his publisher (which likely made the pissy attitude even worse).

[gavingwhiz]

I dislike that fandom can dictate how media is produced now.

For real: letting any decision-makers on a television series with a fandom have any access to the internet is a bad idea.

[gavingwhiz]

See, this is how conspiracies form and thrive online. Nothing in that huge post is false, really, but the presentation and inflation of the story is built around making the tale as mysterious and conspiratorial as possible when, in actuality, the story is thus:

A guy mentioned a piece of lost media online. Someone in the same city as him duped an old tape and gave it to him under spooky circumstances to fuck with him/make the story memorable.

This story gains traction online. As does the concept of lost media. A curator of lost media then expresses interest in the shorts, and someone working at PBS anonymously sent an archive copy to that person in the interest of preservation. Something truly in the spirit of archivism.

The truth is someone clearly was dicking with Armond but that's not as fun as *there's a secret cabal*.

thinking about how an anonymous group (WHO DOESN’T SEEM TO BE AFFILIATED W/ SESAME STREET!!!) found out where jon armond lived and made him swear he wouldn’t show anyone cracks before they gave it to him

[gavingwhiz]

Make Book Covers More Fun Please

I grow tired of books that have such generic titles I genuinely thought Tiny Beautiful Things was Tumblr doing another Goncharov where they came up with the most generic marketed-to-suburban-white-ladies book title. The kind of title that'd be plastered on a book cover that's just one solid color with a single still life object in the bottom third, Twilight-style. And, of course, the font would be lowercase serif font center-aligned like a sophomore graphic designer's midterm project. Then I was informed this was a real thing and there actually was a cover of TBT that is JUST THAT.

[gavingwhiz]

I got fed up with how much modern streaming sucks and built my own damn service at home with nothing more than my Christmas bonus and stubbornness (and dozens of helpful posts by better nerds online).