redsavant

[redsavant]

“cats can’t do any tricks” well wrong.

cats can:

sniff

fall off things

Lick plastic (BAD trick)

[redsavant]

[redsavant]

One of those insidious little things I notice sometimes is how much the window of 'appropriate for children' content has shrunk within the past 20 years. The range of things it is socially acceptable to show a 10-year-old has never been more limited, and it's happened incredibly quickly.

Take, for instance, Star Trek: TNG. I grew up watching TNG. I was a little young for it as it was airing, but it got syndicated almost immediately and they would show an episode most weekday evenings on the Space Channel, and I'd watch it with my lifelong Trekkie mom. This was a very common thing. I was by no means unusual for watching Star Trek as a child.

Star Trek: TNG has lots of sex in it! It's never explicit (unless you have a particularly niche interpretation of some of the borg stuff) but on many an occasion you'll have a few characters doing a bit of making out followed by a closing door or fade to black, and then they wake up in bed together. If you know what sex is, you know that is what is being implied here. Even my 8-year-old self, whose understanding of the subject mostly came from books of ancient mythology that used words like 'ravish' and 'the pleasures of the couch' a whole bunch, could tell that what was happening was sex.

And I am not bringing this up as a 'see, I watched all this inappropriate stuff and I turned out just fine!'. I'm bringing it up to argue that TNG's level of sexual content is not inappropriate for children (I'm not using the legalese 'minors', because I think that lumping children and teenagers together in this conversation would make it nonsense. Star Trek is obviously appropriate for teenagers. Don't use 'minors' when you mean either children or teens, it just muddies the waters).

The point is that Star Trek: TNG was very obviously designed to be watched by children and teenagers. There's a whole character in the main cast whose role in the show is to be an audience insert for children and teenagers. The moral tone of TNG, its occasional dips into 'don't do drugs, kids' type messaging, and its general avoidance of graphic violence all scream 'we are designing this with an audience of children - but not just children - in mind'. It's a family show. It's supposed to be watched by the whole family.

Which means that, until at least the end of the 90s, this amount of sexual content was generally considered appropriate for kids to see. It's not pornographic - it's not even graphic. Maybe the very most conservative parents wouldn't let their kids watch TNG, but that might have had more to do with all the socialism and atheism.

So, why did that change? Why do we now have such a strong bullwark between 'things kids are allowed to know about' and 'things for GROWN UPS ONLY 18+ Minors DNI', and why have we relegated even the most discreet references to sex to the second category only?

And the next time you find yourself experiencing that knee-jerk 'think of the children' reaction, consider: would what you're looking at have been ok on Star Trek: TNG in the 90s?

[redsavant]

[redsavant]

[redsavant]

Did you know that JRR Tolkien wrote an unpublished epilogue to Lord of the Rings? It's achingly, beautifully wistful in the way that only Lord of the Rings is. I revisited it recently because I'm guesting on my friends' LOTR podcast, and THAT reminded me that I drew a comic of the epilogue back in 2021 (all text is entirely canon). Anyway I thought folks on this website might enjoy it!

[redsavant]

hey everyone. so i've been playing the horse gacha game umamusume pretty derby. two things about umamusume are that at the end of every race the horses who won the race perform an idol concert, and that every horse girl has a ridiculous unaerodynamic vtuber outfit. and initially to me these were both things that are obviously silly but which you have to suspend your disbelief for because you can acknowledge the doylean reasons for having them. but actually they make perfect sense in universe.

umamusume textually have strength and speed that vastly exceeds that of any normal human. historically it would obviously have been massively impractical to apply the same gender role constraints to them that were applied to normal human women in many cultures. you need your horse women to both be allowed to go to war and want to go to war, and while obviously you do also want them to reproduce you don't want them to then spend years raising the kids, something normal humans can do, when they could be using their time on things normal humans can't do.

so i feel like in a lot of cultures there would be similar kinds of social developments to machismo but for horse women (horschismo) to incentivise their participation in physically dangerous activities, they would overall be subject to different social pressures and expectations from normal human women, and probably to varying extents they would often be considered a separate gender from human women.

however, like horses in real life, since the industrial revolution umamusume in industrialised countries have become an entertainment commodity when previously they would have been vital to labour and warfare. and being cute girls makes them more consumable as entertainment.

so obviously the idol shit is a deliberate 20th century invention to emphasise the girlness of horse girls, which both makes them more marketable and folds horse woman gender roles into the broader concept of "women" for everyone's social comfort. probably there is a lot of in universe scholarship on this and different umamusume have and have had a lot of different opinions about it. like i expect in the early 20th century there would have been plenty of umamusume who were totally hype to be able to be "normal girls"

now i'm being tongue in cheek here obviously. but also this IS the logical implication of the information presented in the franchise. if cygames didn't want me to come to these conclusions then they shouldn't keep showing us ancient egyptian depictions of bronze age horse girls and shit like that. hope you're having a wonderful day 🏇

[redsavant]

Dead people are good practice for not doing that to living people.

At least two people are interested, so here are my thoughts on the anti-intellectualism surrounding queer histories and why it matters:

[redsavant]

My mother is all into homesteading and off-grid living videos right now. Every time I check up on her, this is what she wants to talk about.

It gives her a sense of peace and purpose I guess. Which is good, she’s been struggling to find that with her injuries and condition. She’s learning skills, and feeling prepared for “the worst”. Like I can’t get her to stop watching conspiracy theory bullshit on YouTube so at least this kind of content alleviates some of the anxiety the other content amplifies, because she feels like she can do something now to secure her safety later.

But to get through these conversations, I have to tell myself— hey, if natural disaster comes our way, some of this might be useful. But I know she’s not just thinking a big storm or natural disaster. She’s preparing for the collapse of society. And I don’t know how to break it to her that we wouldn’t survive that. You can make long lasting candles with crisco? Cool. Where you going to by crisco when society collapses? You’ll stock up now? Ok cool. What will you do when it runs out? Honestly, before it runs out, what will you do when people with guns come to take your various stockpiled supplies?

If we hit a point where society collapses, we’re done for. Food, medicine, etc. we can’t survive without society, without a world where people are working together trying to help each other out.

So, I’ll go through with this shit in the name of natural disaster preparedness, and because it helps her. But that’s as far as I’m willing to put energy into it. I refuse to prepare for, bet on, or hope for the collapse of society. I’d rather spend my energy trying to prevent society collapsing, what little part I can play in that. I’d rather spend my energy supporting people in my community. I’d rather work and build towards a better future, not prepare for the worst.

[redsavant]

[redsavant]

yeah we are horses and yeah we are gay

[redsavant]

anyway, I love adult content. I love erotic art having a space to exist online. I love seeing people making connections over creativity and shared hog cranking. I don’t love everything everyone is cranking their hogs to but it’s also none of my god damn business. fuck the evangelical rise of censorship. fuck ruining people’s livelihoods.

[redsavant]

The thing is, even if you were lucky and your parents taught you how to clean, they probably didn't teach you how to clean the stuff you clean stuff with, like brushes, mops, sponges, rags, and so on. Or how to clean your cleaning appliances, like a dish washer, clothes washing machine, and clothes dryer and its ducts (if you have a ducted dryer), or a carpet cleaner, vacuum, Or how to clean up clean messes, like spilled bleach or detergent.

My parents threw away all of these things (even the vacuum cleaners and the dryer) when they got too dirty to function, because no one even told them THAT they could be cleaned. Cost them thousands of dollars over the years.

All I'm saying is that cleaning is not intuitive, and not knowing how to clean is not a moral failing, but it is something you can learn.

I'm going to reblog this post with resources for learning how to clean things and how to clean cleaning things (I'm not at my desk at the moment). If you have any favorites, please feel free to add them in too!

[redsavant]

Not sure I can express this succinctly but there’s something vitally important about exploring, expressing, revelling in The Shadow in art, media, creative works.

By shadow I mean all the things we usually suppress in polite society; impulses & desires that are (self)destructive, harmful, shameful. things that would be Wrong, maybe a bit inappropriate or outright monstrous, if we did them in real life, can find expression in fantasy & imagination, in play & games. Nobody gets hurt and we’re just having fun

— or maybe we’re being confronted with uncomfortable truths about our psyche, but we have a safe container to really go there, go deep & not shrink back from it, go past the point we would have allowed ourselves to admit is in there. & it can be ugly & shocking & gross, like truly disgusting.

But again, it’s not real & nobody was hurt. It’s cathartic, but more than that: It allows us to be honest with ourselves and see what’s in us. It’s simultaneously repulsive and harmless. We can safely accept these parts of ourselves, we don’t have to push them down, deny them, disavow them, project them onto others.

Because that happens all too easily.

We end up seeing our own demons in others if we can’t allow them in ourselves.

And it’s not necessarily a one-to-one projection. Often our fears get mixed in with just a little bit of uncomfortable lurid excitement, but if we can’t allow ourselves this “moral failing” (an emotion, a thought), then we can end up on “righteous” crusades against imagined monsters & perverts.

I’m not armchair analysing rightwingers here btw, I’m speaking from my own personal experience. There’s something intoxicating about imagining yourself as morally pure, upright; bravely standing up against the corruption & crimes of those Others who are not like you, are persecuting you. You become, in your imagination, an innocent victim and righteous saviour at the same time. Any cruel, repulsive, evil thing your creative mind can conjure up gets a home away from you, in the perverts & criminals threatening your way of life, & any violence against them is justified.

You get all the lurid pleasures of imagining horrible things without any of the discomfort, shame or responsibility of considering they might be part of you. You’re free. You can’t understand that anyone could enjoy their bad thoughts, impulses, desires without acting them out in real life. You’re trapped.

Of course this is just one extreme, & certainly not inevitable.

Or you might recognise that darkness inside you & conclude that you’re a monster, a ticking time bomb, a danger to everyone around you. When chances are you’re just a normal human with normal thoughts. We’re animals and people, both.

& it’s such a tragedy to me, such a monumental source of shame & suffering, when the solution could be so simple: just be free to explore that shit in the safety of our own minds, in fantasy, and in art, media, games, creative expression.

[redsavant]

Cornifer's Latest Map

let's help Cornifer map tumblr! Just reblog this post to add to the map, I'm sure he'll appreciate the help. Naturally he's starting in the hollow knight community. If he passes through other fandoms feel free to introduce him to your blorbos.

[redsavant]

RIP Tom Lehrer 1928 - 2025

[ID: black and white image of a white guy with glasses and short dark hair smiling in front of a microphone]

(source)

I love Tom Lehrer's music and style of satire and from what I can tell was an all around great guy, who famously hated Henry Kissinger. He was an energetic person who inspired comedy musicians such as Weird Al.

He lived a rich life until the age of 97.

He made his entire catalog of music public domain before his death and it was mirrored by the Internet Archive.

You can find them here

[redsavant]

Sometimes reading Arthuriana feels like reading Alice in Wonderland.

“Well,” said Alice, “these are a dreadfully strange assortment of objects!”

“They all symbolize different aspects of Our Lord’s martyrdom,” said the Fisher King, casting a line into his teacup.

“Indeed. I am sure everything symbolizes something else, for if everything was only itself I should be very confused. Might I ask what the point of the bleeding lance is?”

Alice regretted asking the question as soon as she had done so, for she saw the pun that would likely be made about the word point. Instead, however, the room erupted in applause and shouts of “The Grail! She has achieved the Grail!”

The next castle she visited, Alice resolved to herself as the inhabitants of this one danced for joy, would be more sensible.