#about how social media helps subcultures to connect

[fanhackers]

Anne Kustritz’s Identity, Community, and Sexuality in Slash Fan Fiction

Anne Kustritz’s new book, Identity, Community, and Sexuality in Slash Fan Fiction: Pocket Publics has just been released by Routledge (2024).  You might know Kustritz, a scholar of fan cultures and transmedia storytelling, from her early essay “Slashing the Romance Narrative,” in the Journal of American Culture (2003) or maybe from some of her more recent work on transmedia and serial storytelling. But this new book is an exciting addition to the fan studies canon, and Fanhackers readers might be particularly interested, because the book “explores slash fan fiction communities during the pivotal years of the late 1990s and the early 2000s as the practice transitioned from print to digital circulation,”--which is the era that a lot of the fans involved in the creation of the OTW came from. As I noted in my book blurb, “​​While there has been an explosion of fan studies scholarship in the last two decades, we haven't had an ethnography of fan fiction communities since the early 1990s. Kustritz's Pocket Publics rectifies that, documenting the generation of slash fans who built much of fandom's infrastructure and many of its community spaces, both on and off the internet. This generation has had an outsized impact on contemporary fan cultures, and Kustritz shows how these fans created an alternative and subcultural public sphere: a world of their own.”

Kustritz doesn’t just analyze and contextualize fandom, she also describes her own experiences as a participant-observer, and these might resonate with a lot of fans (especially Fanhackers-reading fans!)  Early on in the book, Kustritz describes her how her own early interest in fandom blurred between the personal and the academic:

Because I began studying slash only a year after discovering fandom on-line, my interest has always been an intricate tangle of pleasure in the texts themselves, connection to brilliantly creative women, and fascination with intersections between fan activities and academic theory.  I may now disclaim my academic identity as an interdisciplinary scholar with concentrations in media anthropology and cultural studies and begin to pinpoint my fan identity as a bifictional multifandom media fan; however, I only gradually became aware of and personally invested in these categories as I grew into them.  This section defines the scope of the online observation period that preceded the active interview phase of this research.  In so doing it also examines the messy interconnections between my academic and fannish interests and identities. Trying to pick apart what portion of my choices derived from fannish pleasure and which from academic interest helps to identify the basic internal tensions and categories that slash fan fiction communities relied upon to define themselves, the pressures exerted upon these systems by the digital migration, and complications in academic translation of fannish social structures.

Later in the book, Kustritz discusses how fans have organized and advocated for themselves as a public; in particular, there’s a fascinating chapter about the ways in which fandom has adopted and transformed the figure of the pirate to forge new ways of thinking about copyright and authorship.  If the OTW was formed to argue that making fanworks is a legitimate activity, the figure of the pirate signifies a protest against the law and a refusal to be shamed by it: 

[F]ans also use the figure of the pirate to make arguments that validate some fan activities and consign others to illegitimacy.   At the urging of several friends involved with slash, I attended my first non-slash focused science fiction and fantasy convention in the summer of 2004.  The program schedule announced a Sunday morning panel discussion provocatively titled “Avast, Matey: The Ethics of Pirating Movies, Music, and Software” with the subheading “Computers today can distribute [more] intellectual property than ever before--not always legally. Is it ever okay to copy, download, and/or distribute media? Sorry, ladies, none of us will be dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow.”  The panel’s subheading, which obliquely warned away both lusty women and pirates, led a small contingent of slash fans to shake off Saturday night’s convention revelries unreasonably early and implement a plan of their own for Sunday’s panel.  As many fan conventions encourage costumes, known as “cosplay,” one of my friends and research participants happened to have been dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean that weekend, so I entered the piracy panel with Captain Jack and a motley crew of slashers, some of them intent upon commandeering the discussion.

The clash that followed exemplifies a structural fault line between various types of fan communities regarding their shared norms and beliefs about copyright law, the relationship between fans and producers, and appropriate fan behavior.

If you want to find out how this clash played out–well, you’ll just have to read the book. 😀

–Francesca Coppa, Fanhackers volunteer

[irishthings]

I just went for a scroll back in time and realised that during my 2018-2019 tumblr hiatus I was on the Late Late Show and I forgot to tell ye

It's the only solid proof I have that Ryan Tubridy is real and not a really high tech vtuber piloted by multiple people who work in shifts

[mitigatedchaos]

Re: The 'Chillers' Discourse

(~1,200 words)

I've been asked to comment on the recent increase in the practice of parents placing their children into cryonic stasis in territories where this is legally allowed, which this emerging subculture are referring to as "pausing" the child.

The public-facing justification given is that this is essential when parents are suffering from severe physical or mental illness.

First, I'd like to address the health concerns. Cryonics as a field has advanced tremendously since the early 21st century. While opponents of this practice are horrified for moral reasons, they are blowing the potential health effects out of proportion. Several freeze-thaw cycles before age 18 is well within the acceptable limits laid out by most health authorities. Typical post-thawing symptoms are mostly nausea, dizziness, fatigue, and frequent urination, and clear within about two weeks. (This is assuming that it's a good-quality facility with competent staff. There are rumors of fly-by-night cryostorage facilities not rated for medical use engaged in the practice, but those are outside our jurisdiction.)

Second, I'm going to discuss why Orbital Operations & Planetary Security (OOPS!) are divesting our holdings of conventional murderers that were sent to lunar cryoprison by the pre-War government and shifting our focus primarily to a combination of wealthy patients and individuals convicted of crimes against humanity.

Placing someone in cryogenic suspension and then reviving them can cause acute and chronic psychological distress, as the period of time appears to pass 'instantly,' and while obviously they lose connection with current events, media, fashion trends, etc (and thus lose the context of society), they also lose connection with social contacts (who could help recontextualize). This condition, which we refer to informally as 'time shock,' is something we treat with an expensive reacclimatization period which covers the contents of the 'missing' time period and rebuilds social contacts with a pool of volunteers.

Without this therapy program, which is quite costly, a significant minority of subjects will request to go back into cryostasis, commit self-injury, or enter a prolonged period of depression. (It also accompanies a worsening of other mental health stats, including a risk of delusion. This is the 'cryo-psychosis' you've probably heard about.)

For children, this could seriously interfere with proper development. We therefore recommend that children are generally not placed into cryostasis, unless this is necessary for medical reasons, or the parent is also placed into cryostasis for some reason. (This is the official position of the OOPS cryonics branch.)

During the final phases of the war, our faction came into the possession of the previous government's unfilled mass cryoincarceration facilities. As part of strategic planning it was considered whether to use this capability to take a very large number of prisoners of war, and thus gain additional leverage during an ensuing occupation.

Due to both the practical and ethical ramifications, this decision was put to the central committee (composed of representatives of the biomechanoid officer corps) and guidance council (composed of representatives of the elders).

The real problem with cryoincarceration - and this also applies to 'chilling' children - is that it's cheap to keep prisoners on ice, but expensive to take them back out. This means that every year, the government (or parent) has the incentive to keep the prisoner on ice, and make paying to remove the prisoners the problem of the next government.

This was not a hypothetical at the time. This is how we came into the possession of so many conventional murderers and other prisoners to begin with. It was resolved to begin a 20-year drawdown, set to start at the end of the war.

Third, regarding the prisoners themselves...

There are a lot of theories on Earth about why we are getting rid of the prisoners. To go over some of these...

This is not a 'new form of warfare'. The prisoners are being delivered to prisons on Earth, not released into the general population.

If prisoners are being delivered to prisons in your territory, your government has agreed to take them. (Usually this means they were originally from your territory, unless they were previously from territory currently controlled by the World Union.)

In some cases, we may be paying your government to take the prisoners. In other cases, your government may be paying us.

None of the prisoners are from space. There is very little crime in space. (Due to the extremely contingent nature of life support, there is very little tolerance for crime in space.)

No prisoner released by this program has been deemed an "extreme escape risk."

Now, regarding the criminals we're either keeping or gathering (much smaller in number)...

Many of my colleagues have been happy to hint to outsiders that we are holding frozen criminals only until we can devise suitably awful punishments for their crimes. Many on Earth accept this without thinking about it due to our behavior during the war. While this might have some deterrent effect, this is not the reason.

Some on Earth believe we are keeping these prisoners to study them. They're apparently split on whether this is research to prevent future crimes, or to build even more terrifying human weapons. Some research is occurring, but I'm going to be honest with you - it's not very much. Most of these people are either so mundane that there's not much to learn, or so unique that nothing we learn about them usefully generalizes.

In this era, it's essentially impossible to entirely prevent a few people from going insane from ideology, or developing an ideological or psychological feedback loop with somatic capital, and exiting the normal human range of behavior (in a bad way).

However, having "defeated aging" (through somatic capital technology, even if deep rejuvenation inherently causes some pretty serious memory loss), people prefer the illusion of immortality.

When someone mounts their brain to a robotic scorpion and kills every woman in a sorority after dosing themselves with illegal neuroplasticity enhancers for over a decade, society demands that 'someone' "do something." (Even the biosocialists have this problem.)

So whenever the authorities manage to capture the perpetrator alive, they stick his brain in a rocket and blast it into outer space. "We're sending this terror to OOPS," they say, "the only group to ever successfully prosecute a sixth-generation war. Who knows what horrifying and incomprehensible things they will do to this horrible individual?"

It's about the best the non-religious ones can do.

The primary purpose of the cryoincarceration program is to preserve enough functional tissue samples of the cryoincarcerated for Earth-side governments to maintain their genomic ban on individuals convicted of crimes against humanity.

That's it. We don't plan on waking any of these people up.

Fourth, to bring it back to the 'chillers,' as their opponents have been calling them, I recently read a study out of Shanghai.

About 1,400 individuals with a child in cryonic storage for non-medical reasons were studied, and compared with 1,400 parents without children on ice as a comparison group. Hardship was only part of the study, but the researchers estimate that only about 20% of the individuals studied were experiencing hardships greater than the those typical in the comparison group.

I expect that over the next 10-20 years, laws will be changed to add more legal limits to the procedure in most (though not all) jurisdictions where it is currently legal.

[michelledrawz]

What Inspires Centralia?

Happy Friday! Excited to announce we're on day 4 of the Centralia VOL 2 Kickstarter less than $300 away from 50% funding!

Folks have asked me about how I created the story of Centralia, so today, I want to talk about the themes and inspirations that make up the world and story.

The Setting

The story takes place in the year 2050; a distant future, but not so distant that it feels alien. Phones are still tangible rectangles, cars still drive on the ground. Modern technology is more deeply-enmeshed with everyday life; what is ground-breaking for us in the present is now mundane, and people live comfortably alongside technologies once thought to be intrusive. In Centralia, sleek skyscrapers loom high over bustling streets packed with strangers, while magnetic elevated SkyRail train tracks weave vein-like throughout. At night, starless skies are flush with the hazy colorful glow of the city, an endless artificial twilight that seeps through the windows of every home. In a society that prizes and caters to the individual, people still yearn for that most basic desire of belonging, of community; and while businesses are happy to offer solutions, they too ring hollow and leave us feeling more lonely than before.

 When it comes to the visual design of Centralia, I take a lot of inspiration from my own experiences living in urban settings. Growing up in the Bay Area, my big city was San Francisco. Since 2016, Los Angeles has been my big city home, and I pull a lot of inspiration from both places!

The Genre: What is Cyberpunk?

Cyberpunk is a subgenre of sci-fi that juxtaposes high-tech urban settings, often with futuristic technological and scientific innovations, with themes of societal collapse, decay, and dystopia. The protagonists of cyberpunk stories are typically marginalized loners living on the fringes of an oppressive society. Popular examples of Cyberpunk stories include Bladerunner, The Matrix, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and the aptly-named Cyberpunk 77.

To be honest, when I set out to tell the story of Centralia, I didn't start with genre in mind! I think that's what sets Centralia apart from other entries in the realm of cyberpunk, where many creators start with a vast library of cyberpunk media to reference from, and build the world and story from there. While many great works can be inspired by existing media, pulling from the same major popular staples in the genre can cause cyberpunk stories to feel a little... samey. I also couldn't help noticing that the "marginalized protagonist" often did not resemble the actual marginalized people in our society. When the majority of cyberpunk creators are statistically white, male, and straight, the diversity of stories begins to dwindle, and as a female creator who is deeply involved in queer spaces, I find myself repeatedly alienated. The aggressive, solitary and violent nature of subcultures in cyberpunk stories did not reflect my lived experiences in subculture spaces. In Centralia, I wanted to focus on the persistence of community in an oppressive society, not its destruction, which brings me to the comic's core theme...

The Beauty of Human Connection

When I began working on Centralia, I was lonely. Social media was still a fairly new thing-- while it helped me keep in touch with high school friends who'd scattered to the wind, as well as new college friends who I worried might find me too weird, it felt shallow. I don't vibe with hyperbolic depictions of people chained to their tablets, or living in their smart phones like tiny literal prisons; I grew up on the early internet and formed many friendships on obscure message boards and artist hubs like DeviantArt. But the old, weird internet feels increasingly distant, and today's social landscape is dominated by corporate interests that would rather keep us frustrated. Lacking. Wanting. All culminating into a persistent sentiment I see among my friends and strangers both on and off the internet, in statistical reports and think pieces in droves-- we're lonely.

 When Midori arrives in the city of Centralia, she's alone, too. Thrust into a crowd of indifferent strangers, she feels invisible. Desperate for belonging, she sets off in search of a mysterious missing girl who may hold the key to her past, and perhaps to a family waiting for her. But unlike your usual cyberpunk protagonist, Midori is optimistic and friendly. She's fierce and spirited, but she's not cynical. 

Her newfound friend Grey, on the other hand, is fluent in the language of isolation and secrecy that pervades Centralia-- keep your head down, don't make waves. But beneath the carefully-crafted veneer of a black-clad, chain-smoking, motorcycle-riding tough guy, he's as awkward and lost as the rest of us. Completely unaffected by his grumpy demeanor, Midori forms an unlikely friendship that becomes a core piece of Centralia's story.

A cyberpunk story isn't complete without an underground resistance, and Centralia's Switch is yet another example of the power of community. Here, the marginalized members of society gather not only as a rebellion, but as a found family.

 This too is where Centralia is special-- many cyberpunk stories paint the underside of society as grimy, cruel, where it's "every man for himself". But as someone who moves through many subculture and queer communities and is more at home with the weirdos than polite society, I find these stories miss the communal spirit of marginalized spaces. 

Throughout Midori's search for belonging, her developing friendship with Grey, and her involvement with Switch, Centralia 2050 shows us that the warmth of human connection survives even in the stark chill of dystopian society.

The Inspirations

Lots of readers are curious about the inspirations for Centralia. Visually, I'm inspired by a lot of the cyberpunk staples I mention before, as well as my experience living in cities. I'm a huge fan of the works of Satoshi Kon, creator of incredible animated works like Paprika, Tokyo Godfathers, Millenium Actress, Perfect Blue, and Paranoia Agent. Kon's unique style so beautifully captures his character's expressions, both subtle and exaggerated, in a way that feels undeniably human. His stories capture the interpersonal and internal conflicts of characters in a way that feels genuine, and have been a great influence on how I portray the characters of Centralia.

I'm also a huge fan of psychological horror, especially survival horror games of the '90s and 2000's. While Centralia isn't a horror story, surreal moments and otherworldly vibes can't help but sneak in from time to time!

Most of all, I'm inspired by my own experiences and the lives of people around me. I love reading autobiographical novels and comics, listening to people tell their stories on podcasts, and just hearing about, well people! I think that's what helps me give dimension to the characters of Centralia. I'm less inspired by characters from other stories, and more so inspired by the complexity, diversity, cruelty, beauty and indomitable spirit of my fellow humans.

And I think that about covers it for now! For my next Kickstarter blog post, I'll be diving into each of the main characters of Centralia; whether you're a longtime reader or new to the series, it should be a fun read! Until then, I'd love to hear your thoughts about the inspiration and themes behind Centralia, and if you have any topics you'd like me to explore in future blog posts!

Til then,

~Michelle

Get Centralia 2050 VOL 2 on Kickstarter!

[prefrontal-bastard]

I remembered your post about commercialism and I wanted to ask some questions, if not for myself then for my brain that won’t stop thinking about them:

When you say that you struggle to connect with some people because “some people's entire sense of identity is based in media, content, products, or commercial lifestyles,” can you give a few examples of that scenario? I just want to make sure I understand.

This is from, admittedly, a slight fear and insecurity of mine, so sorry if this question is weird, but would participating in a group centered around an independent piece of media be considered an example of what you listed? I don’t call a few things my entire personality, but I am very enthusiastic about them. Plus, the majority of stuff I post about is just what I think people will like seeing, as well as specific milestones, but I have a entire life separate from my online presence.

I am asking these because I want to calm my inner conscience down, since it has a penchant for internalizing helpful information in a way that puts myself in a negative light.

Oh I can see how the phrasing I chose is stressful, and I’m sorry for not making it more clear in the OP.

So, the takeaway from that bit is not that “people who identify deeply with some sort of consumer media don’t have rich personalities.” People are complex by default, and what they like and bond over doesn’t degrade that at all.

Instead, I’m critical about the fact consumerism has invaded everywhere culture grows here in the US, to the point where many Americans view these as symbiotic concepts. Culture is a vector through which we shape our identity and bond with each other, but if that culture requires us to participate in consumerism to belong within it, it’s going to Pavlov us into associating self-identity with what it is we consume.

Some examples that come to mind: Back when I was in school, I remember people would use clothing brands as a way to demonstrate the clique or subculture they were a part of. People also grouped and socialized according which shows they watched, which bands they listened to, and what websites they went on for entertainment. (It honestly baffled me and frustrated kid-me, because my interests were in things like space, geology, folklore, and making up original stories.)

I don’t think it’s a bad thing for people to like media and to socialize around it, even if it’s the main thing you love and adore. After all, media is art. But there should be accessible options beyond this. Having consumerism this be the only thing where people can accessibly define themselves through, outside of their careers or religion, creates a situation where people aren’t sure how to own the contextualizing framework they use for their self-definition.

Plus, not knowing how to participate in a culture without consuming it creates a ton of problems.

[fultonkyed82]

Exceptional Information About Utilizing Facebook Advertising To Your Great Advantage

Facebook or myspace is populated by huge numbers of people around the globe. Every one of people individuals might want to purchase what you're supplying, nonetheless they won't know you exist up until you start marketing to them. Use the methods in this post to acquire your Facebook or myspace marketing strategy started on the proper feet. If you are using Facebook or myspace to advertise your company, ensure that you entirely fill the "about" section. This is a terrific way to interact what your company is about. Additionally it is an excellent place to put in information, locations, telephone numbers and also other helpful tips relating to your organization. Give your Facebook or myspace web page an extremely robust concept. Really know what your about and provide it in the graphical look of the webpage. Bear in mind, you might have one chance at generating a great initial effect on your own new Facebook or myspace visitors. 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After people start to understand these are a part of one thing unknown, they will almost certainly unlike the webpage and offer their close friends a stern warning. Try out sending up-dates. Fb Web page Managers can give information to every person who "Likes" their site. Once you have some thing useful on your own Facebook or myspace enterprise webpage that your particular supporters should know about, you are able to deliver them an upgrade to ensure they're aware of it. Be smart with how many times you do this by only sending changes to supporters when it's important. Use instruments to measure the effectiveness of your Facebook marketing. You can find a number of equipment out there currently to aid offer you an idea of how strong your Facebook or twitter advertising is. You could potentially take a look at something similar to Sprout Sociable as being a paid out support or simply just look at your Klout credit score to see if your efforts appear to be transferring the needle. 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Will not be as well serious on Facebook. You may be an experienced but still go on a lighting-hearted strategy to stuff. You will definately get considerably more connection with the followers this way, and people will also sense more like they are able to recognize along with you when you are not so inflexible constantly. Know the reason you might be taking part in Facebook or twitter advertising. Your factors will make any difference in the kind of articles you talk about. You might be working with it to market product sales, market your company or fulfill other pros in your town. Discover the type of publish that may help you reach your targets. Attempt to incorporate photographs with the Facebook up-dates. People like to view aesthetic representations of the things they read through. Pick your pictures wisely, so they sell your messages and products successfully to your readers. If you are going to share discount coupons and discounts on your Facebook page, ensure that they are well worth one thing valuable. No-one wishes to be constantly swamped with information providing 5 dollars away from, specifically if the median expense of things you have on the market is a couple of one hundred dollars. Since siapjitu have all this fantastic guidance when you need it, you will need to put it to make use of. Take every hint one at a time and discover how it can squeeze into your own Facebook or twitter marketing plan. You could find you are greater able to picture what exactly is essential to attain good results.

[top10withme]

How to make money on TikTok: 15 strategies to use in 2023

TikTok has remained a vastly popular social media platform since its inception, capitalizing on its early fame as people gravitated toward its light, short-form content. This surge in popularity means TikTok is ripe with revenue opportunities, something that your TikTok marketing strategy should make room for. From the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt trend to devoted subcultures like #BookTok, brands are finding creative and authentic ways to position and sell their products or services directly to TikTok audiences. You can too, by making engaging and helpful short videos that speak directly to your audience’s interests. But where do you begin? In this article, we break down the top 15 strategies for how to make money on TikTok. Table of Contents

1. Run TikTok ads

About 67% of 18-19 year olds and 56% of 20-29 year olds are on TikTok. This makes TikTok marketing a strong advertising choice for brands wanting to market their products to Gen Z. TikTok ads come with simple, powerful tools to help you advertise to millions of users. Ad formats vary by region, but all let you personalize your targeting by age, location, interest and other factors. You can select one or a few formats that work best for your brand. The most popular types of TikTok ads include: In-feed video: Appear on the For You Page of TikTok users who meet your targeting parameters. Brand takeover: This lets your ad expand to the width of the whole screen for a few seconds. Then it becomes an in-feed video ad. Hashtag challenges: Create appealing challenges that encourage user-generated content. These challenges appear in the Discovery section on TikTok. This option is only available to managed brands that work in collaboration with TikTok sales representatives. There are several more types of TikTok ads you can experiment with, but note that some are only available to certain types of accounts.

2. Collect tips or donations

TikTok has introduced a tipping feature that allows select creators to earn money from tips and donations. Fans can use this feature to show gratitude to the creators they love. Video gifts let viewers send creators virtual gifts and coins. Some creators can collect gifts during a live stream. Gifts can be redeemed for Diamonds—TikTok’s digital currency. When you save up enough Diamonds, you can trade them for real cash.

Creators can also use tipping platforms to earn money. Tipeee, Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee can be connected to your TikTok account to function as a tip jar.

3. Collaborate with a creator

The latest Sprout Social Index™ shows that 33% of Gen Z and 28% of Millennials value brand/creator content collaborations. TikTok’s thriving community of content creators makes it an excellent channel for collaborating with influential people with highly engaged communities. The key is to collaborate with the right creators who can authentically position your brand to their audience, as creator-made branded content has 83% higher engagement rates.   TikTok’s Creator Marketplace is where you can connect with content creators on the network. In a few steps, you can find influencers and run campaigns with them. Locate creators based on business goals, budget and industry, and find comprehensive performance and audience metrics for data-driven decision-making.

TikTok has some eligibility requirements for the Creator Marketplace, so only select creators can join. This assures marketers that creators they partner with are some of TikTok’s top influencers.

4. Try affiliate marketing

Through affiliate marketing programs, creators and other businesses can promote and sell another company’s products or services for a commission. To be a successful affiliate marketer, you need to generate sales online. Focus on promoting products that best align with your target audience. Create engaging videos that present affiliate products, showcasing the value and why you recommend purchasing them. Try promoting brands you like and trust, sharing affiliate links or codes to track purchases influenced by your account. If a follower makes a purchase through the link or code provided, then you will receive a commission from the brand for that sale. TikTok doesn’t allow personal accounts to place clickable links within video descriptions. But you can ask followers to copy and paste links into their browsers, or enter special codes at checkout. Sites like Beacons allow you to create a free webpage containing affiliate links and details for products being promoted. If you have a business account, you can add a link in your bio. If you’re an in-house marketer, create an affiliate marketing program with clear guidelines and instructions on how to participate. Invite TikTokers who align with your brand values and target audience to participate. Encourage affiliates to promote the products or services that best align with your goals and shared audience. And most importantly, implement a tracking system so you can monitor affiliate performance and commission payments.

5. Grow and sell TikTok accounts

Organically growing a TikTok account could take months. However, you can buy an established account to get an instant boost of followers. To successfully make money selling TikTok accounts, creators should focus on niche topics that can be sustained by the buyer. This will make it easier for the buyer to continue posting similar content and maintain follower engagement. Brands considering buying an established account should perform due diligence. An account with a lot of followers but low engagement may not provide the return you’re looking for. Also, ensure the account serves an audience you target and the content aligns with your brand and goals. Brands can purchase an account with active followers from platforms like 123accs, Accfarm and Fameswap.

For smaller activations, brands can sponsor posts that live directly on creators’ profiles. Similar to creator collaborations, these campaigns allow brands to pay content creators to promote their products in organic posts. Sponsor single posts or create a series. If it starts trending, you can boost the post to expand its reach even further.  

7. Create a Patreon account

A Patreon account lets creators generate revenue from fans through memberships that allow exclusive access to content. Use TikTok to promote membership sign-ups. Try to keep your subscription costs low to encourage subscribers and consider rewarding new subscribers. For example, giving away merchandise or exclusive content access to your most loyal followers. Add the link to your Patreon page in your videos or add it to your bio to make it easy for followers to subscribe whenever they are ready.

8. Sell your products and merchandise

Merchandise, merchandise, merchandise. This tried-and-true strategy applies to TikTok as well. Turn original artwork, quotes or your brand’s logo into merch and promote it on TikTok. Feature your existing products in tutorials or showcase your product alongside a trend. @useloom 🕯 New from Loom: Lighten your calendar and brighten your day with Cancelled Meetings by Loom — the first candle designed to help you get back your time. Featuring:✨ 8oz, hand-poured candle✨ “Peace on Earth, Peace at Work,” a free zine✨ The relief of knowing you can cancel a meeting with Loom #loomunlocks ♬ original sound – Loom   Listen to your audience if you are unsure what to sell. Create polls or ask them directly to learn what they might buy. If you have a personal account, create an ecommerce website to process sales transactions and promote it on your TikTok account. Add the store to your videos, and encourage your followers to check out your products. If you have a TikTok Business account, you can connect platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, Square Online and Ecwid store to your account.

9. Set up a TikTok shop

TikTok partnered with Shopify to launch the TikTok Shopping feature. Brands and creators can become official TikTok merchants and sell directly in the app.

By creating a TikTok Shop, you can showcase products on in-feed videos, lives and product showcase tabs. If eligible for this feature, you can signup to become a seller in the TikTok Seller Center, where you can manage inventory, orders, creator partnerships, promotions and more. However, the seller center is only available in select regions.

10. Join the TikTok Creator Fund

Users with a creator account can monetize their profiles through the TikTok Creator Fund. Creators need to hit some prerequisites to join the program and begin receiving money from the platform. Creator Fund members earn money based on the number of engagements they get on their content.

11. Offer exclusive content on TikTok

TikTok just launched a new monetization feature in June of 2023 called TikTok Series. This new feature is a way to create exclusive content that lives behind a paywall. Interested creators can apply to get access to this new feature, but there are other criteria they need to meet as well: - Creators must be 18+ - Their account must be at least 30 days old - They must have at least 10,000 followers - They must have posted 3+ public videos in the last 30 days - They must have at least 1,000 views in the last 30 days Creators that have less than 10,000 followers may still be eligible if they can provide a link to premium content they’ve successfully sold on other platforms. Your Series can include up to 80 videos total, each up to 20 minutes long. This can be a great way to provide valuable educational content to your audience for a one-time fee. You can set the price for each TikTok Series you create, with payment options ranging from $0.99 to $189.99.

12. Provide virtual gifts

Another monetization feature is virtual gifts on your videos. People who really enjoy your content can send you virtual gifts as a token of their appreciation—which can then be converted into actual money. Turn on the gift option to have a small gift box icon appear next to the comment box. Users interested in leaving a gift can tap it to visit this interface:

Coin packages can be bought in the following increments: - 20 coins: $0.29 - 65 coins: $0.99 - 330 coins: $4.99 - 660 coins: $9.99 - 1,321 coins: $19.99 - 3,303 coins: $49.99 - 6,607 coins: $99.99 - 16,500 coins: $249.99 These coins can then be used to buy and send virtual gifts to a user’s favorite creators, with gifts ranging from 5 to 3,000 coins. Turn on virtual gifts to offer this option to your viewers.

13. Host live events or workshops

TikTok Live is another great way to make money. Similar to virtual video gifts, users can also send live gifts. The little gift box icon will appear at the bottom of a live video for users to tap and buy different gifts. The ranges on these are even bigger, with some being just a single coin and others going up to 10s of thousands of coins.

Several TikTok creators have shared how live streaming can be used to make money. One creator makes between $20-300 every time they go live and another brought in $34,000 within a single month—just from live streaming. Make sure your live videos are entertaining and valuable so that users keep wanting to tune in. The more consistent viewers you get, the more likely they are to stick around and send you virtual gifts.

14. Offer personalized shoutouts

If you have a large following, TikTokers who want to grow their accounts may be willing to pay for personalized shoutouts. Pick a price point and sell shoutouts as yet another way to make money. Your price may be a bit of trial and error. If you’re getting no bites, you may want to lower it. But on the other hand, if you’re getting a ton of interest, you might be able to increase your price. You can then shout these people out during a live video or during a feed video. You might even choose to offer two different price points (with feed videos costing more) so that users can choose where they’d like to be shouted out.

15. Sell digital products

Finally, consider selling digital products. You can create a shop with TikTok and link to your digital products from there, making it easy to make a sale. Promote your products within your videos and include your shop’s URL in your profile so users can easily find it.

Learn more about TikTok for business

These strategies can elevate your TikTok game and put you on a clear path to making money on the app. Learn how to get more TikTok followers so you can increase your earning potential even more.

How to make money on TikTok FAQ

How many followers do you need on TikTok to make money? For some of the features mentioned in the monetization strategies above, you must hit a minimum follower count on TikTok. For example, the Creator Fund requires at least 10,000 followers to join. On the other hand, you need only 1,000 followers to receive virtual gifts on TikTok Live. But to receive tips and gifts from other types of videos, you must have at least 100,000 followers. How many views do you need on TikTok to make money? To join the Creator Fund, you must have received a minimum of 100,000 views on your videos within 30 days. Otherwise, you don’t need to have a certain amount of views to share links to your products in videos or your bio. How do you get paid on TikTok? Once you meet the criteria for TikTok payments you should see your money in your Creator Fund Dashboard about three days after your videos got views. To get to your Creator Fund Dashboard, just head to your profile, click on “…” to open settings, go to “Creator tools,” and then hit “TikTok Creator Fund.” Once you’ve got at least $10, you can take your earnings out 30 days after the month they were earned in. You can send the money to your preferred payment method, which could be PayPal or Zelle. Source link #money #TikTok #strategies Read the full article

[t--amodernicarus]

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Click "Read More" (May not be complete due to Tumblr's restraints. Completed bibliography turned in separately).

This article, written by a collection of researchers, focuses on the culture surrounding Tumblr that promotes self-harm. The article deeply discusses how social media can push people to self-harm by creating a culture that is not sympathetic to the illness but one that actually promotes the illness. The article claims that there is a large community of self-harmers that are connected through discourse on Tumblr, relating to each other through the way their acts are vilified and infamous within the grander community of Tumblr. The article also claims that Tumblr’s regulation of certain hashtags (such as #ed or #selfharm) continues to promote this culture. By “silencing” this community, it only encourages them to look for alternative ways to post, making the community even tighter. This is because only those with an “in” to the community can even find it. 

This article is an anthropological article that has been peer-reviewed and has its methodology listed plainly. Furthermore, the article does not list names or usernames when discussing the events taking place. This article is useful as it helps to give context and reasoning as to why the communities on Tumblr are so tight-knit and have been able to resist multiple bannings and censoring of keywords. The authors provide a wide and detailed study that is a great resource for my project.

Fyfe, Melissa. “Rise and Fall of Jess Miller's Pizza Empire.” The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 May 2016, https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/rise-and-fall-of-jess-millers-pizza-empire-20160512-gotftv.html. 

Griffith, Frances J., and Catherine H. Stein. “Behind the Hashtag: Online Disclosure of Mental Illness and Community Response on Tumblr.” American Journal of Community Psychology, vol. 67, no. 3/4, June 2021, pp. 419–32. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12483.

This article examines personal accounts of mental illness through hashtags like #depression or #mental illness. The article explores the tendencies of Tumblr users to post about their illnesses and about how these postings can create subcultures and communities that revolve around propagating mental illness, not combatting it. The article talks about how the rates of Tumblr users who post about mental illness (by “post,” the author means more of a romanticization of illness, not awareness) increase when paired with a community that encourages that type of behavior. This way, the author shows how subcultures arise because of Tumblr and why they become so popular. This article can also show the detriment of these subcultures and how users can get sucked into difficult behaviors to maintain a community.

This is a peer-reviewed scholarly article written through the lens of psychology to observe the effects of these subcultures. It uses personal experiences, accounts, and public blog posts of 14,626 Tumblr users disclosing ten different mental health diagnoses using hashtags. This article is useful to me because, like the NSFW subculture, the mentally ill subculture is another window into how Tumblr propagates specific and unique cultures and the effects these subcultures have on the site's culture as a whole.

Nipples, Memes, and Algorithmic Failure: NSFW Critique of Tumblr ... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1461444820979280. 

This article discusses the banning of adult content on Tumblr, mostly in regard to the destruction of valuable subcultures on Tumblr, but also about the ways that Tumblr users resisted this ban. The article claims that Tumblr’s automatic filter does more harm than good, as it not only deleted adult content but unrelated pictures, like those of fully clothed people. The claim that Tumblr was banning “female-presenting nipples” also sparked many controversies, and the article talks heavily about the backlash Tumblr faced from its users because of this banning. The article also talks about the “memes” that came from these bans and how, even with the destruction of so many subcultures, more subcultures came to take their place.

This is a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal in which methodology and research are clearly defined and available for the reader. The article uses “7306 posts made between November 2018 (when Tumblr announced its new content policy) and August 2019 (when Verizon sold Tumblr to Automattic),” to base its findings around and provides a myriad of video and photo sources. This source is valuable to me because it discusses not only culture and community on Tumblr but also the failure of the Tumblr algorithm and how resilient these cultures can be.

“The Downward Spiral of a Tumblr User Ligaturemarkings.” YouTube, YouTube, 9 Oct. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLarLdHA-NE

“The Evolution of the Tumblr Girl.” YouTube, YouTube, 28 Mar. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1TF7pcYePw. 

“The Fatphobia of Early 2010s Tumblr.” YouTube, YouTube, 7 Mar. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKhmwRwHjtU

This video goes in-depth about the fatphobia and shaming that was heavily incorporated into the culture of early 2010’s Tumblr. This video talks about cultural moments in history that shape the culture of Tumblr, such as the formation of boybands and the 2008 recession. The creator, Jessica Blair, also mentions that beauty gurus were immensely popular during this time and uses personal anecdotes and experiences to convey her message. She speaks about certain aesthetics that were popular at the time and how these aesthetics might affirm the biased ideas against fat people at the time. She claims that in the early 2010s Tumblr, thinness was everything and that almost every trend or clothing aesthetic that circulated at the time excluded fat people and promoted almost unhealthy thinness. Blair also talks about eating disorders on Tumblr, the normalization and glamorization of anorexia, and how brands like Brandy Melville helped to romanticize being thin. Blair also talks briefly about the domination of whiteness in this era and how fatphobia is linked to racism, specifically toward black women.

This source is a well-documented video in which the author uses scholarly articles and personal accounts to prove her claims. Blair uses direct photos and quotes from Tumblr accounts that were popular during the early 2010s and references many possible outside influences that affected the culture of thinness at the time. This video is useful to me because it is a highly detailed account of not just a certain time in Tumblr’s history but also of a specific detrimental culture being promoted. Blair also gives many examples of pivotal cultural aspects of the time outside of Tumblr, which can help me understand how certain times and actions change how culture manifests on Tumblr.

“The Story of the 20,000 Dollar Furry Commission.” YouTube, YouTube, 18 Jan. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTHgEV-xUSg. 

“The Tumblr Era Is Back...and We Should Be Worried.” YouTube, YouTube, 27 Sept. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fz30qZ35UY. 

“The Tumblr Exodus.” YouTube, YouTube, 8 June 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyekDJU2iOY. 

Tiidenberg, Katrin. "Boundaries and Conflict in a NSFW Community on Tumblr: The Meanings and Uses of Selfies." New Media & Society, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814567984 Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.

This article also talks about banning adult content on Tumblr and the culture surrounding selfies or “self-shooting,” as the author calls it. The main goal of this article is to explore how selfies affirm, destroy, change, or conceptualize community and culture, specifically through the lens of “NSFW” (not safe for work, a phrase that refers to pornographic or gory material) photos. The article also talks about how the banning of NSFW content from Tumblr affected the subculture of “self-shot” pornography and what this ban meant in the grand scheme of the overall Tumblr community. It goes in-depth on a very specific community and culture, defining the good and bad parts while maintaining a sense of neutralism. 

This is a peer-reviewed article published in a scholarly journal, and like the others, it serves as an ethnographic, anthropological study. The study uses various “not safe for work” examples from personal blogs with original content or blogs that recirculate content and provides a detailed section describing their methodology. This source is useful for me because it provides another and objectively unique look into the ban on adult content and provides a specific and centralized community and culture that was effective. It also defines a huge cultural moment in Tumblr’s history that had a lot of affects on Tumblr as a whole.

“‘Tumblr Is Dominated by America:" A Study of Linguistic and Cultural Differences in Tumblr Transnational Fandom.” Taylor & Francis, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10714421.2022.2126589

This article focuses on the dominance of American culture on Tumblr, specifically through the lens of linguistics and how non-Americans are affected by this Western domination. This article analyzes non-American fans’ engagement with Tumblr and explores the motivations of non-English speakers and non-Americans to join Tumblr. The article builds on the idea that websites are extremely large cultural spaces and explores the differences between communities produced by English-speaking American users and transnational users. The article discusses the idea of “transcultures,” what blended cultures look like, and how social media sites propagate and encourage blending even the most distinct cultures.

This is a peer-reviewed article with the methodology clearly and boldly listed, and the author is participating in ethnographic research in the field of anthropology. The study uses interviews with 19 Tumblr users, both transnational and American fans, to accurately study these blended cultures. This article is useful because it allows me to garner proven examples of how Tumblr affects and morphs cultures and communities. This also shows that Tumblr is a site that is not just significant in Western cultures (ie. America) but also in many parts of the world. I talk a lot about the blending of subcultures within Tumblr, and this article really helped me understand how cultures become blended and what the overall effects of these blended cultures are.

TumblrMart – Help Center. https://help.tumblr.com/hc/en-us/articles/7467765335575-TumblrMart. 

“Tumblr.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Apr. 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr. 

“Why Tumblr Died so Quickly.” YouTube, YouTube, 4 Sept. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esUriEoFfUc. “Tumblr.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Apr. 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr. “Why Was Tumblr so Queer ?” YouTube, YouTube, 21 Nov. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvlLrd-BKW0.

[potteresque-ire]

Can you talk more about the usage of the word "wife" to talk about men in the BL context? I've noticed it in BJYX (particularly with GG), in the (English translations) of MDZS, and then it came up in your recent posts about Danmei-101 (which were super helpful btw) with articles connecting the "little fresh meat" type to fans calling an actor "wife." My initial reaction as a westerner is like "this is very problematic," but I think I'm missing a lot of language/cultural context. Any thoughts?

Hello! First of all, for those who’re interested, here’s a link to the referred posts. Under the cut is arguably the 4th post of the series. As usual, I apologise for the length!

(Topics: seme and uke; more about “leftover women”; roster of feminisation terms; Daji, Bao Si & the origin of BJYX; roster of beautiful, ancient Chinese men; Chairman Mao (not part of the roster) ...)

[TW: feminisation of men]

In the traditional BL characterisation, the M/M (double male) lead pairing is essentially a cis-het relationship in disguise, in which one of the M leads is viewed as the “wife” by the creator and audience. This lead often possesses some of the features of the traditional, stereotypical female, but retaining his male appearance. 

In BL terms, the “wife” is the “uke”. “Seme” and “uke” are the respective roles taken by the two male leads, and designated by the creator of the material. Literally, “seme” (攻め) means the dominant, the attacking / aggressive partner in the relationship and “uke” (受け), the passive / recipient (of actions) partner who tends to follow the seme’s lead. The terms themselves do not have any sexual / gender context.  However, as male and female are viewed as aggressive and passive by their traditional social roles, and the attacker and recipient by their traditional sexual roles respectively, BL fandoms have long assigned uke, the passive, sexual “bottom”, as the “woman”, the “wife”. 

Danmei has kept this “semi” and uke” tradition from BL, taking the kanji of the Japanese terms for designation ~ 攻 (”attack” is therefore the “husband”, and 受 (”receive”), the “wife”. The designations are often specified in the introduction / summary of Danmei works as warning / enticement. For MDZS, for example, MXTX wrote:

高貴冷豔悶騷 攻 × 邪魅狂狷風騷 受

高貴冷豔悶騷 攻 = noble, coolly beautiful and boring seme (referring to LWJ)  邪魅狂狷風騷 受 = devilishly charming, wild, and flirty uke (referring to WWX) 

The traditional, stereotypical female traits given to the “uke”, the “wife” in Danmei and their associated fanworks range from their personality to behaviour to even biological functions. Those who have read the sex scenes in MDZS may be aware of their lack of mention of lube, while WWX was written as getting (very) wet from fluids from his colon (腸道) ~ implying that his colon, much like a vagina, was supplying the necessarily lubrication for sex. This is obviously biologically inaccurate; however, Danmei is exempt from having to be realistic by its original Tanbi definition. The genre’s primary audience is cishet females, and sex scenes such as this one aren’t aiming for realism. Rather, the primary goal of these sex scenes is to generate fantasy, and the purpose of the biologically female functions in one of the leads (WWX) is to ease the readers into imagining themselves as the one engaging in the sex.

Indeed, these practices of assigning as males and female the M/M sexual top and bottom, of emphasising of who is the top and who is the bottom, have been falling out of favour in Western slash fandoms ~ I joined fandom about 15 years ago, and top and bottom designations in slash pairings (and fights about them) were much more common than it is now.  The generally more open, more progressive environments in which Western fandomers are immersed in probably have something to do with it: they transfer their RL knowledge, their views on biology, on different social into their fandom works and discourses. 

I’d venture to say this: in the English-speaking fandoms, fandom values and mainstream values are converging. “Cancel culture” reflects an attempt to enforce RL values in the fictional worlds in fandom. Fandom culture is slowly, but surely, leaving its subculture status and becoming part of mainstream culture. 

I’d hesitate to call c-Danmei fandoms backward compared to Western slash for this reason. There’s little hope for Danmei to converge with China’s mainstream culture in the short term ~ the necessity of replacing Danmei with Dangai in visual media already reflects that. Danmei is and will likely remain subculture in the foreseeable future, and subcultures, at heart, are protests against the mainstream. Unless China and the West define “mainstream” very similarly (and they don’t), it is difficult to compare the “progressiveness”—and its dark side, the “problematic-ness”—of the protests, which are shaped by what they’re protesting against. The “shaper” in this scenario, the mainstream values and culture, are also far more forceful under China’s authoritarian government than they are in the free(-er) world. 

Danmei, therefore, necessarily takes on a different form in China than BL or slash outside China. As a creative pursuit, it serves to fulfil psychological needs that are reflective of its surrounding culture and sociopolitical environment. The genre’s “problematic” / out of place aspects in the eyes of Western fandoms are therefore, like all other aspects of the genre, tailor-made by its millions of fans to be comforting / cathartic for the unique culture and sociopolitical background it and they find themselves in. 

I briefly detoured to talk about the Chinese government’s campaign to pressure young, educated Chinese women into matrimony and motherhood in the post for this reason, as it is an example of how, despite Western fandoms’ progressiveness, they may be inadequate, distant for c-Danmei fans. Again, this article is a short and a ... morbidly-entertaining read on what has been said about China’s “leftover women” (剩女) — women who are unmarried and over 27-years-old). I talked about it, because “Women should enter marriage and parenthood in their late 20s” may no longer a mainstream value in many Western societies, but where it still is, it exerts a strong influence on how women view romance, and by extension, how they interact with romantic fiction, including Danmei.

In China, this influence is made even stronger by the fact that Chinese tradition  places a strong emphasis on education and holds a conservative attitude towards romance and sex. Dating while studying therefore remains discouraged in many Chinese families. University-educated Chinese women therefore have an extremely short time frame — between graduation (~23 years old) and their 27th birthday — to find “the right one” and get married, before they are labelled as “leftovers” and deemed undesirable. (Saving) face being an important aspect in Chinese culture introduces yet another layer of pressure: traditionally, women who don’t get married by the age agreed by social norms have been viewed as failures of upbringing, in that the unmarried women’s parents not having taught/trained their daughters well. Filial, unmarried women therefore try to get married “on time” just to avoid bringing shame to their family.

The outcome is this: despite the strong women characters we may see in Chinese visual media, many young Chinese women nowadays do not expect themselves to be able to marry for love. Below, I offer a “book jacket summary” of a popular internet novel in China, which shows how the associated despair also affects cis-het fictional romance. Book reviews praise this novel for being “boring”: the man and woman leads are both common working class people, the “you-and-I”’s; the mundaneness of them trying build their careers and their love life is lit by one shining light: he loves her and she loves him. 

Written in her POV, this summary reflects, perhaps, the disquiet felt by many contemporary Chinese women university graduates:

曾經以為，自己這輩子都等不到了—— 世界這麼大，我又走得這麼慢，要是遇不到良人要怎麼辦？早過了「全球三十幾億男人，中國七億男人，天涯何處無芳草」的猖狂歲月，越來越清楚，循規蹈矩的生活中，我們能熟悉進而深交的異性實在太有限了，有限到我都做好了「接受他人的牽線，找個適合的男人慢慢煨熟，再平淡無奇地進入婚姻」的準備，卻在生命意外的拐彎處迎來自己的另一半。

I once thought, my wait will never come to fruition for the rest of my life — the world is so big, I’m so slow in treading it, what if I’ll never meet the one? I’ve long passed the wild days of thinking “3 billion men exist on Earth, 0.7 of which are Chinese. There is plenty more fish in the sea.” I’m seeing, with increasing clarity, that in our disciplined lives, the number of opposite-sex we can get to know, and get to know well, is so limited. It’s so limited that I’m prepared to accept someone’s matchmaking, find a suitable man and slowly, slowly, warm up to him, and then, to enter marriage with without excitement, without wonder. But then, an accidental turn in my life welcomes in my other half.

— Oath of Love (餘生，請多指教) (Yes, this is the novel Gg’d upcoming drama is based on.) 

Heteronormativity is, of course, very real in China. However, that hasn’t exempted Chinese women, even its large cis-het population, from having their freedom to pursue their true love taken away from them. Even for cis-het relationships, being able to marry for love has become a fantasy —a fantasy scorned by the state. Remember this quote from Article O3 in the original post? 

耽改故事大多远离现实，有些年轻受众却将其与生活混为一谈，产生不以结婚和繁衍为目的才是真爱之类的偏颇认知。

Most Dangai stories are far removed from reality; some young audience nonetheless mix them up with real life, develop biased understanding such as “only love that doesn’t treat matrimony and reproduction as destinations is true love”. 

I didn’t focus on it in the previous posts, in an effort to keep the discussion on topic. But why did the op-ed piece pick this as an example of fantasy-that-shouldn’t-be-mixed-up-with-real-life, in the middle of a discussion about perceived femininity of men that actually has little to do with matrimony and reproduction? 

Because the whole point behind the state’s “leftover women” campaign is precisely to get women to treat matrimony and reproduction as destinations, not beautiful sceneries that happen along the way. And they’re the state’s destination as more children = higher birth rate that leads to higher future productivity. The article is therefore calling out Danmei for challenging this “mainstream value”.

Therefore, while the statement True love doesn’t treat matrimony and reproduction as destinations may be trite for many of us while it may be a point few, if any, English-speaking fandoms may pay attention to, to the mainstream culture Danmei lives in, to the mainstream values dictated by the state, it is borderline subversive.

As much as Danmei may appear “tame” for its emphasis on beauty and romance, for it to have stood for so long, so firmly against China’s (very) forceful mainstream culture, the genre is also fundamentally rebellious.  Remember: Danmei has little hope of converging with China’s mainstream unless it “sells its soul” and removes its homoerotic elements. 

With rebelliousness, too, comes a bit of tongue-in-cheek.

And so, when c-Danmei fans, most of whom being cishet women who interact with the genre by its traditional BL definition, call one of the leads 老婆 (wife), it can and often take on a different flavour. As said before, it can be less about feminizing the lead than about identifying with the lead. The nickname 老婆 (wife) can be less about being disrespectful and more about humorously expressing an aspiration—the aspiration to have a husband who truly loves them, who they do want to get married and have babies with but out of freedom and not obligation.

Admittedly, I had been confused, and bothered by these “can-be”s myself. Just because there are alternate reasons for the feminisation to happen doesn’t mean the feminisation itself is excusable. But why the feminisation of M/M leads doesn’t sound as awful to me in Chinese as in English? How can calling a self-identified man 老婆 (wife) get away with not sounding being predominantly disrespectful to my ears, when I would’ve frowned at the same thing said in my vicinity in English?

I had an old hypothesis: when I was little, it was common to hear people calling acquaintances in Chinese by their unflattering traits:  “Deaf-Eared Chan” (Mr Chan, who’s deaf), “Fat Old Woman Lan” (Ah-Lan, who’s an overweight woman) etc—and the acquaintances were perfectly at ease with such identifications, even introducing themselves to strangers that way. Comparatively speaking then, 老婆 (wife) is harmless, even endearing. 

老婆, which literally means “old old-lady” (implying wife = the woman one gets old with), first became popularised as a colloquial, casual way of calling “wife” in Hong Kong and its Cantonese dialect, despite the term itself being about 1,500 years old. As older generations of Chinese were usually very shy about talking about their love lives, those who couldn’t help themselves and regularly spoke of their 老婆 tended to be those who loved their wives in my memory. 老婆, as a term, probably became endearing to me that way. 

Maybe this is why the feminisation of M/M leads didn’t sound so bad to me?

This hypothesis was inadequate, however. This custom of identifying people by their (unflattering) traits has been diminishing in Hong Kong and China, for similar reasons it has been considered inappropriate in the West.

Also, 老婆 (wife) is not the only term used for / associated with feminisation. I’ve tried to limit the discussion to Danmei, the fictional genre; now, I’ll jump to its associated RPS genre, and specifically, the YiZhan fandoms. The purpose of this jump: with real people involved, feminisation’s effect is potentially more harmful, more acute. Easier to feel. 

YiZhan fans predominantly entered the fandoms through The Untamed, and they’ve also transferred Danmei’s  “seme”/“uke” customs into YiZhan. There are, therefore, three c-YiZhan fandoms:

博君一肖 (BJYX): seme Dd, uke Gg 戰山為王 (ZSWW): seme Gg, uke Dd 連瑣反應 (LSFY): riba Gg and Dd. Riba = “reversible”, and unlike “seme” and “uke”, is a frequently-used term in the Japanese gay community. 

BJYX is by far the largest of the three, likely due to Gg having played WWX, the “uke” in MDZS / TU. I’ll therefore focus on this fandom, ie. Gg is the “uke”, the “wife”.

For Gg alone, I’ve seen him being also referred to by YiZhan fans as (and this is far from a complete list):

* 姐姐 (sister) * 嫂子 (wife of elder brother; Dd being the elder brother implied) * 妃妃 (based on the very first YiZhan CP name, 太妃糖 Toffee Candy, a portmanteau of sorts from Dd being the 太子 “prince” of his management company and Gg being the prince’s wife, 太子妃. 糖 = “candy”. 太妃 sounds like toffee in English and has been used as the latter’s Chinese translation.) * 美人 (beauty, as in 肖美人 “Beauty Xiao”) * Daji 妲己 (as in 肖妲己, “Daji Xiao”). 

The last one needs historical context, which will also become important for explaining the new hypothesis I have.

Daji was a consort who lived three thousand years ago, whose beauty was blamed for the fall of the Shang dynasty. Gg (and men sharing similar traits, who are exceptionally rare) has been compared to Daji 妲己 for his alternatively innocent, alternatively seductive beauty ~ the kind of beauty that, in Chinese historical texts and folk lores, lead to the fall of kingdoms when possessed by the king’s beloved woman. This kind of “I-get-to-ruin-her-virginity”, “she’s a slut in MY bedroom” beauty is, of course, a stereotypical fantasy for many (cis-het) men, which included the authors of these historical texts and folklores. However, it also contained some truth: the purity / innocence, the image of a virgin, was required for an ancient woman to be chosen as a consort; the seduction, meanwhile, helped her to become the top consort, and monopolise the attention of kings and emperors who often had hundreds of wives ~ wives who often put each other in danger to eliminate competition. 

Nowadays, women of tremendous beauty are still referred to by the Chinese idiom 傾國傾城, literally, ”falling countries, falling cities”. The beauty is also implied to be natural, expressed in a can’t-help-itself way, perhaps reflecting the fact that the ancient beauties on which this idiom has been used couldn’t possibly have plastic surgeries, and most of them didn’t meet a good end ~ that they had to pay a price for their beauty, and often, with their lowly status as women, as consorts, they didn’t get to choose whether they wanted to pay this price or not. This adjective is considered to be very flattering. Gg’s famous smile from the Thailand Fanmeet has been described, praised as 傾城一笑: “a smile that topples a city”.

I’m explaining Daji and 傾國傾城 because the Chinese idiom 博君一笑 “doing anything to get a smile from you”, from which the ship’s name BJYX 博君一肖  was derived (笑 and 肖 are both pronounced “xiao”), is connected to yet another of such dynasty-falling beauty, Bao Si 褒姒. Like Daji before her, Bao Si was blamed for the end of the Zhou Dynasty in 771 BC. 

The legend went like this: Bao Si was melancholic, and to get her to smile, her king lit warning beacons and got his nobles to rush in from the nearby vassal states with their armies to come and rescue him, despite not being in actual danger. The nobles, in their haste, looked so frantic and dishevelled that Bao Si found it funny and smiled. Longing to see more of the smile of his favourite woman, the king would fool his nobles again and again, until his nobles no longer heeded the warning beacons when an actual rebellion came. 

What the king did has been described as 博紅顏一笑, with 紅顏 (”red/flushed face”) meaning a beautiful woman, referring to Bao Si. Replace 紅顏 with the respectful “you”, 君, we get 博君一笑. If one searches the origin of the phrase 博 [fill_in_the_blank]一笑 online, Bao Si’s story shows up.

The “anything” in ”doing anything to get a smile from you” in 博君一笑, therefore, is not any favour, but something as momentous as giving away one’s own kingdom. c-turtles have remarked, to their amusement and admittedly mine, that “king”, in Chinese, is written as 王, which is Dd’s surname, and very occasionally, they jokingly compare him to the hopeless kings who’d give away everything for their love. Much like 傾國傾城 has become a flattering idiom despite the negative reputations of Daji and Bao Si for their “men-ruining ways”, 博君一笑 has become a flattering phrase, emphasising on the devotion and love rather than the ... stupidity behind the smile-inducing acts. 

(Bao Si’s story, BTW, was a lie made up by historians who also lived later but also thousands of years ago, to absolve the uselessness of the king. Warning beacons didn’t exist at her time.)  

Gg is arguably feminized even in his CP’s name. Gg’s feminisation is everywhere. 

And here comes my confession time ~ I’ve been amused by most of the feminisation terms above. 肖妲己 (”Daji Xiao”) captures my imagination, and I remain quite partial to the CP name BJYX. Somehow, there’s something ... somewhat forgivable when the feminisation is based on Gg’s beauty, especially in the context of the historical Danmei / Dangai setting of MDZS/TU ~ something that, while doesn’t cancel, dampens the “problematic-ness” of the gender mis-identification.

What, exactly, is this something?

Here’s my new hypothesis, and hopefully I’ll manage to explain it well ~

The hypothesis is this: the unisex beauty standard for historical Chinese men and women, which is also breathtakingly similar to the modern beauty standard for Chinese women, makes feminisation in the context of Danmei (especially historical Danmei) flattering, and easier to accept.

What defined beauty in historical Chinese men? If I am to create a classically beautiful Chinese man for my new historical Danmei, how would I describe him based on what I’ve read, my cultural knowledge?

Here’s a list:

* Skin fair and smooth as white jade * Thin, even frail; narrow/slanted shoulders; tall * Dark irises and bright, starry eyes * Not too dense, neat eyebrows that are shaped like swords ~ pointed slightly upwards from the center towards the sides of the face * Depending on the dynasty, nice makeup.

Imagine these traits. How “macho” are they? How much do they fit the ideal Chinese masculine beauty advertised by Chinese government, which looks like below?

Propaganda poster, 1969. The caption says “Defeat Imperialist US! Defeat Social Imperialism!” The book’s name is “Quotations from Mao Zedong”. (Source)

Where did that list of traits I’ve written com from? Fair like jade, frail ... why are they so far from the ... “macho”ness of the men in the poster? 

What has Chinese history said about its beautiful men? 

Wei Jie (衛玠 286-312 BCE), one of the four most beautiful ancient Chinese men (古代四大美男) recorded in Chinese history famously passed away when fans of his beauty gathered and formed a wall around him, blocking his way. History recorded Wei as being frail with chronic illness, and was only 27 years old when he died. Arguably the first historical account of “crazy fans killing their idol”, this incident left the idiom 看殺衛玠 ~ “Wei Jie being watched to death.” ~ a not very “macho” way to die at all.

潘安 (Pan An; 247-300 BCE), another one of the four most beautiful ancient Chinese men, also had hoards of fangirls, who threw fruits and flowers at him whenever he ventured outside. The Chinese idiom 擲果盈車 “thrown fruit filling a cart” was based on Pan and ... his fandom, and denotes such scenarios of men being so beautiful that women openly displayed their affections for them. 

Meanwhile, when Pan went out with his equally beautiful male friend, 夏侯湛 Xiahou Zhan, folks around them called them 連璧 ~ two connected pieces of perfect jade. Chinese Jade is white, smooth, faintly glowing in light, so delicate that it gives the impression of being somewhat transparent.

Aren’t Wei Jie and Pan An reminiscent of modern day Chinese idols, the “effeminate” “Little Fresh Meat”s (小鲜肉) so panned by Article O3? Their stories, BTW, also elucidated the historical reference in LWJ’s description of being jade-like in MDZS, and in WWX and LWJ being thrown pippas along the Gusu river bank. 

Danmei, therefore, didn’t create a trend of androgynous beauty in men as much as it has borrowed the ancient, traditional definition of masculine Chinese beauty ~ the beauty that was more feminine than masculine by modern standards.  

[Perhaps, CPs should be renamed 連璧 (”two connected pieces of perfect jade”) as a reminder of the aesthetics’ historical roots.]

Someone may exclaim now: But. But!! Yet another one of the four most beautiful ancient Chinese men, 高長恭 (Gao Changgong, 541-573 BCE), far better known by his title, 蘭陵王 (”the Prince of Lanling”), was a famous general. He had to be “macho”, right?

... As it turns out, not at all. Historical texts have described Gao as “貌柔心壮，音容兼美” (”soft in looks and strong at heart, beautiful face and voice”), “白美類婦人” (”fair and beautiful as a woman”), “貌若婦人” (”face like a woman”). Legends have it that The Prince of Lanling’s beauty was so soft, so lacking in authority that he had to wear a savage mask to get his soldiers to listen to his command (and win) on the battlefield (《樂府雜錄》: 以其顏貌無威，每入陣即著面具，後乃百戰百勝).

This should be emphasised: Gao’s explicitly feminine descriptions were recorded in historical texts as arguments *for* his beauty. Authors of these texts, therefore, didn’t view the feminisation as insult. In fact, they used the feminisation to drive the point home, to convince their readers that men like the Prince of Lanling were truly, absolutely good looking.

Being beautiful like a women was therefore high praise for men in, at least, significant periods in Chinese history ~ periods long and important enough for these records to survive until today. Beauty, and so it goes, had once been largely free of distinctions between the masculine and feminine.

One more example of an image of an ancient Chinese male beauty being similar to its female counterpart, because the history nerd in me finds this fun. 

何晏 (He Yan, ?-249 BCE) lived in the Wei Jin era (between 2nd to 4th century), during which makeup was really en vogue. Known for his beauty, he was also famous for his love of grooming himself. The emperor, convinced that He Yan’s very fair skin was from the powder he was wearing, gave He Yan some very hot foods to eat in the middle of the summer. He Yan began to sweat, had to wipe himself with his sleeves and in the process, revealed to the emperor that his fair beauty was 100% natural ~ his skin glowed even more with the cosmetics removed (《世說新語·容止第十四》: 何平叔美姿儀，面至白。魏明帝疑其傅粉，正夏月，與熱湯餅。既啖，大汗出，以朱衣自拭，色轉皎然). His kick-cosmetics’-ass fairness won him the nickname 傅粉何郎 (”powder-wearing Mr He”).

Not only would He Yan very likely be mistaken as a woman if this scene is transferred to a modern setting, but this scene can very well fit inside a Danmei story of the 21st century and is very, very likely to get axed by the Chinese censorship board for its visualisation. 

[Important observation from this anecdote: the emperor was totally into this trend too.]

The adjectives and phrases used above to describe these beautiful ancient Chinese men ~ 貌柔, 音容兼美, 白美, 美姿儀, 皎然 ~ have all become pretty much reserved for describing beauty in women nowadays. Beauty standards in ancient China were, as mentioned before, had gone through significantly long periods in which they were largely genderless. The character for beauty 美 (also in Danmei, 耽美) used to have little to no gender association. Free of gender associations as well were the names of many flowers. The characters for orchid (蘭) and lotus (蓮), for example, were commonly found in men’s names as late as the Republican era (early 20th century), but are now almost exclusively found in women’s names. Both orchid and lotus have historically been used to indicate 君子 (junzi, roughly, “gentlemen”), which have always been men. MDZS also has an example of a man named after a flower: Jin Ling’s courtesy name, given to him by WWX,  was 如蘭 (”like an orchid”). 

A related question may be this: why does ancient China associate beauty with fairness, with softness, with frailty? Likely, because Confucianist philosophy and customs put a heavy emphasis on scholarship ~ and scholars have mostly consisted of soft-spoken, not muscular, not working-under-the-sun type of men. More importantly, Confucianist scholars also occupied powerful government positions. Being, and looking like a Confucianist scholar was therefore associated with status. Indeed, it’s very difficult to look like jade when one was a farmer or a soldier, for example, who constantly had to toil under the sun, whose skin was constantly being dried and roughened by the elements. Having what are viewed as “macho” beauty traits as in the poster above ~ tanned skin, bulging muscles, bony structures (which also take away the jade’s smoothness) ~ were associated with hard labour, poverty and famine.

Along that line, 手無縛雞之力 (“hands without the strength to restrain a chicken”) has long been a phrase used to describe ancient scholars and students, and without scorn or derision. Love stories of old, which often centred around scholars were, accordingly, largely devoid of the plot lines of husbands physically protecting the wives, performing the equivalent of climbing up castle walls and fighting dragons etc. Instead, the faithful husbands wrote poems, combed their wife’s hair, traced their wife’s eyebrows with cosmetics (畫眉)...all activities that didn’t require much physical strength, and many of which are considered “feminine” nowadays.

Were there periods in Chinese history in which more ... sporty men and women were appreciated? Yes. the Tang dynasty, for example, and the Yuan and Qing dynasties. The Tang dynasty, as a very powerful, very open era in Chinese history, was known for its relations to the West (via the Silk Road). The Yuan and Qing dynasties, meanwhile, were established by Mongolians and Manchus respectively, who, as non-Han people, had not been under the influence of Confucian culture and grew up on horsebacks, rather than in schools.

The idea that beautiful Chinese men should have “macho” attributes was, therefore, largely a consequence of non-Han-Chinese influence, especially after early 20th century. That was when the characters for beauty (美), orchid (蘭), lotus (蓮) etc began their ... feminisation. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which started its reign of the country starting 1949, also has foreign roots, being a derivative of the Soviets, and its portrayal of ideal men has been based on the party’s ideology, painting them as members of the People’s Liberation Army (Chinese army) and its two major proletariat classes, farmers and industrial workers ~ all occupations that are “macho” in their aesthetics, but held at very poor esteem in ancient Chinese societies. All occupations that, to this day, may be hailed as noble by Chinese women, but not really deemed attractive by them.

Beauty, being an instinct, is perhaps much more resistant to propaganda.

If anything, the three terms Article O3 used to describe “effeminate” men ~ 奶油小生 “cream young men” (popularised in 1980s) , 花美男 “flowery beautiful men” (early 2000s), 小鲜肉 “little fresh meat” (coined in 2014 and still popular now) ~ only informs me how incredibly consistent the modern Chinese women’s view of ideal male beauty has been. It’s the same beauty the Chinese Communist Party has called feminine. It’s the same beauty found in Danmei. It’s the same beauty that, when witnessed in men in ancient China, was so revered that historians recorded it for their descendants to remember. It doesn’t mean there aren’t any women who appreciate the "macho” type ~ it’s just that, the appreciation for the non-macho type has never really gone out of fashion, never really changed. The only thing that is really changing is the name of the type, the name’s positive or negative connotations.

(Personally, I’m far more uncomfortable with the name “Little fresh meat” (小鲜肉) than 老婆 (wife). I find it much more insulting.)

Anyway, what I’d like to say is this: feminisation in Danmei ~ a genre that, by definition, is hyper-focused on aesthetics ~ may not be as "problematic” in Chinese as it is in English, because the Chinese tradition didn’t make that much of a differentiation between masculine and feminine beauty. Once again, this isn’t to say such mis-gendering isn’t disrespectful; it’s just that, perhaps, it is less disrespectful because Chinese still retains a cultural memory in which equating a beautiful man to a beautiful woman was the utmost flattery. 

I must put a disclaimer here: I cannot vouch for this being true for the general Chinese population. This is something that is buried deep enough inside me that it took a lot of thought for me to tease out, to articulate. More importantly, while I grow up in a Chinese-speaking environment, I’ve never lived inside China. My history knowledge, while isn’t shabby, hasn’t been filtered through the state education system.

I’d also like to point out as well, along this line of thought, that in *certain* (definitely not all) aspects, Chinese society isn’t as sexist as the West. While historically, China has periods of extreme sexism against women, with the final dynasties of Ming and Qing being examples, I must (reluctantly) acknowledge Chairman Mao for significantly lifting the status of women during his rule. Here’s a famous quote of his from 1955:

婦女能頂半邊天 Women can lift half the skies

The first marriage code, passed in 1950, outlawed forced marriages, polygamy, and ensured equal rights between husband and wife.  For the first time in centuries, women were encouraged to go outside of their homes and work. Men resisted at first, wanting to keep their wives at home; women who did work were judged poorly for their performance and given less than 50% of men’s wage, which further fuelled the men’s resistance. Mao said the above quote after a commune in Guizhou introduced the “same-work-same-wage” system to increase its productivity, and he asked for the same system to to be replicated across the country. (Source)

When Chairman Mao wanted something, it happened. Today, Chinese women’s contribution to the country’s GDP remains among the highest in the world.  They make up more than half of the country’s top-scoring students. They’re the dominant gender in universities, in the ranks of local employees of international corporations in the Shanghai and Beijing central business districts—among the most sought after jobs in the country. While the inequality between men and women in the workplace is no where near wiped out — stories about women having to sleep with higher-ups to climb the career ladder, or even get their PhDs are not unheard of, and the central rulership of the Chinese Communist Party has been famously short of women — the leap in women’s rights has been significant over the past century, perhaps because of how little rights there had been before ~ at the start of the 20th century, most Chinese women from relatively well-to-do families still practised foot-binding, in which their feet were literally crushed during childhood in the name of beauty, of status symbol. They couldn’t even walk properly.

Perhaps, the contemporary Chinese women’s economic contribution makes the sexism they encounter in their lives, from the lack of reproductive rights to the “leftover women” label, even harder to swallow. It makes their fantasies fly to even higher, more defiant heights. The popularity of Dangai right now is pretty much driven by women, as acknowledged by Article O3. Young women, especially, female fans who people have dismissed as “immature”, “crazy”, are responsible for the threat the Chinese government is feeling now by the genre.

This is no small feat. While the Chinese government complains about the “effeminate” men from Danmei / Dangai, its propaganda has been heavily reliant on stars who have risen to popularity to these genres. The film Dd is currently shooting, Chinese Peacekeeping Force (維和部隊), also stars Huang Jingyu (黄景瑜), and Zhang Zhehan (張哲瀚) ~ the three actors having shot to fame from The Untamed (Dangai), Addicted (Danmei), and Word of Honour (Dangai) respectively.  Zhang, in particular, played the “uke” role in Word of Honour and has also been called 老婆 (wife) by his fans. The quote in Article O3, “Ten years as a tough man known by none; one day as a beauty known by all” was also implicitly referring to him.

Perhaps, the government will eventually realise that millennia-old standards of beauty are difficult to bend, and by extension, what is considered appropriate gender expression of Chinese men and women. 

In the metas I’ve posted, therefore, I’ve hesitated in using terms such as homophobia, sexism, and ageism etc, opting instead to make long-winded explanations that essentially amount to these terms (thank you everyone who’s reading for your patience!). Because while the consequence is similar—certain fraction of the populations are subjected to systemic discrimination, abuse, given less rights, treated as inferior etc—these words, in English, also come with their own context, their own assumptions that may not apply to the situation. It reminds me of what Leo Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina,

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Discrimination in each country, each culture is humiliating, unhappy in its own way. Both sexism and homophobia are rampant in China, but as their roots are different from those of the West, the ways they manifest are different, and so must the paths to their dissolution. I’ve also hesitated on calling out individual behaviours or confronting individuals for this reason. i-Danmei fandoms are where i-fans and c-fans meet, where English-speaking doesn’t guarantee a non-Chinese sociopolitical background (there may be students from China, for example; I’m also ... not entirely Western), and I find it difficult to articulate appropriate, convincing arguments without knowing individual backgrounds.

Frankly, I’m not sure if I’ve done the right thing. Because I do hope feminisation will soon fade into extinction, especially in i-Danmei fandoms that, if they continue to prosper on international platforms, may eventually split from c-Danmei fandoms along the cultural (not language) line due to the vast differences in environmental constraints. My hope is especially true when real people are involved, and c-fandoms, I’d like to note, are not unaware of the issues surrounding feminisation ~ it has already been explicitly forbidden in BJYX’s supertopic on Weibo. 

At the same time, I’ve spent so many words above to try to explain why beauty can *sometimes* lurk behind such feminisations. Please allow me to end this post with one example of feminisation that I deeply dislike—and I’ve seen it used by fans on Gg as well—is 綠茶 (”green tea”), from 綠茶婊 (”green tea whore”) that means women who look pure / innocent but are, deep down, promiscuous / lustful. In some ways, its meaning isn’t so different from Daji 妲己, the consort blamed for the fall of the Shang dynasty. However, to me at least, the flattery in the feminisation is gone, perhaps because of the character “whore” (婊), because the term originated in 2013 from a notorious sex party rather than from a legendary beauty so maligned that The Investiture of the Gods (封神演義), the seminal Chinese fiction written ~2,600 years after Daji’s death, re-imagined her as a malevolent fox spirit (狐狸精) that many still remembers her as today.

Ah, to be caught between two cultures. :)

[woman-loving]

I’ve been reading some articles about lesbian identities in Indonesia, from the late 80s to the 00s, and wanted to share some quotes that highlighted a couple trends that I’ve also noticed in reading about butch/femme communities in other countries.

1) There are different expectations about sexual distinctiveness and marriage to men are attached to butch and femme identities. There is a greater expectation that femmes will marry men, and femmes more often do marry men, though some butches do as well. Marriages to men seem to be for convenience or in name only, and women may continue to have female lovers.

2) Distinctions are made between real/pure/positive lesbians (butches) and other lesbians (femmes) who are “potentially normal.” This shows the flexibility of lesbian identity, where they can be gradations and contradictions in what it means to be a lesbian (e.g. a woman being a lesbian but not a “real lesbian"). The category has cores and peripheries, rather than everyone being equally lesbian or else completely outside of it.

3) There are disagreements between members, which cross butch/femme lines, about the meanings of these identities and whose lesbianism or community involvement should be taken seriously. The first passage describes femmes as engaging in a “more active appropriation of lesbianism as a core element of their subjectivity.” The boundaries of lesbianism can potentially expand or contract as people struggle to define it.

4) People don’t always meet the community expectations attached to their identity.

I think these passages help complicate the picture of what lesbian identities can look like, and some of these same tensions and debates are common features of lesbian identity in many different cultures. I also think these issues--the (differential) weight given to relationships with men, the notion of positive versus negative lesbians, and the active appropriation of lesbianism by peripheral members--are relevant to bisexual interest, since these questions also shape bi women’s engagement in lesbianism/lesbian communities. (And we can say that without claiming that any particular women in these narratives are “really bisexual.”)

Anyway, without further ado... (this first one picks up right in the middle of a passage because I couldn’t get the previous page on the google preview :T)

From “Desiring Bodies or Defiant Cultures: Butch-Femme Lesbians in Jakarta and Lima,” by Saskia E. Wieringa, in Female Desires: Same-Sex Relations and Transgender Practices Across Cultures, eds. Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia E. Wieringa, 1999:

“[...]negative lesbians. We are positive lesbians. We are pure, 100% lesbian. With them you can never know. Before you know it, they are seeing a man again, and we are given the good-bye.”

Father Abraham, who had entered during her last words, took over. “Let me explain. … Take Koes. Again and again her girlfriends leave her. Soon she’ll be old and lonely. Who will help her then? For these girls it is just an adventure, while for butches like Koes it is their whole life.”“Yes, well, Abraham, … my experience is limited, of course, but it seems to me that the femmes flee the same problems that make life so hard for the butches. So they’d rather support each other.”

“In any case,” Sigit added, ‘they have become active now, that’s why they’re here, isn’t that so?” And she looked questioningly at the three dolls behind the typing machine, Roekmi and my neighbour. The most brazen femme had been nodding in a mocking manner while Sigit and I were talking.

“So we’re only supposed to be wives? We’re not suited for something serious, are we? Maybe we should set up a wives’ organization, Dharma Wanita,[23] the Dharma Wanita PERLESIN? Just like all those other organizations of the wives of civil servants and lawyers?” …

“Come on, Ari,” Sigit insisted, “why don’t you just ask them? You could at least ask them whether they want to join?” Ari found it extremely hard. Helplessly she looked at the other butches.

“Do you really mean that i should ask whether our wives would like to join / our / organization?” One of the butches nodded.

“Ok, fine.” She directed herself to the dolls.

“Well, what do you want? Do you want to join us? But in that case you shouldn’t just say yes, then you should also be involved with your whole heart.”

“You never asked that of the others,” the brazen femme pointed out, “but yes, I will definitely dedicate myself to the organization.” Roekmi and the two femmes at her side also nodded. (Wieringa 1987:89-91)

The above example is indicative of the social marginalization of the b/f community. it also captures in it one of its moments of transformation. The defiance of the femmes of the code that prescribes the division of butches and femmes into “positive” and “negative” lesbians respectively indicates a more active appropriation of lesbianism as a core element of their subjectivity. At the same time it illustrates the hegemony of the dominant heterosexual culture with its gendered principles of organization.

Yet, however much the butches conformed to male gender behavior they didn’t define themselves as male; their relation to their bodies was rather ambiguous. at times they defined themselves as a third sex, which is nonfemale[…]. [...] [Butches’] call for organization was not linked to a feminist protest against rigid gender norms. Rather they felt that nature had played a trick on them and they they had to devise ways to confront the dangers to which this situation gave rise. Jakarta’s b/f lesbians when I met them in the early eighties were not in the least interested in feminism. In fact, the butches among them were more concerned with the case of a friend of them who was undergoing a sex change operation. They clearly considered it an option, but none of them decided to follow this example. When I asked them why, all of them mentioned the health risks involved and the costs. None of them stated that they rather preferred their own bodies. Their bodies, although the source of sexual pleasure and as such the object of constant attention, didn’t make it any too easy for them to get the satisfaction they sought or, at least, to attract the partners they desired.

From "Let Them Take Ecstasy: Class and Jakarta Lesbians," by Alison J. Murray, in Female Desires: Same-Sex Relations and Transgender Practices Across Cultures, eds. Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia E. Wieringa, 1999:

Covert lesbian activities are thus an adaptation to the ideological context, where the distinction between hidden and exposed sexual behavior allows for fluidity in sexual relations (“everyone could be said to be bisexual” according to Oetomo 1995) as long as the primary presentation is heterosexual/monogamous. It is not lesbian activity that has been imported from the West, but the word lesbi used to label the Western concept of individual identity based on a fixed sexuality. I have not found that Indonesian women like to use the label to describe themselves, since it is connected to unpleasant stereotypes and the pathological view of deviance derived from Freudian psychology (cf Foucault 1978).

The concept of butch-femme also has a different meaning in Indonesia from the current Western use which implies a subversion of norms and playful use of roles and styles (cf Nestle 1992). In Indonesia (and other parts of Southeast Asia, such as the Philippines, Thailand’s tom-and-dee: Chetame 1995) the roles are quite strictly, or restrictively, defined and are related to popular, pseudo-psychological explanations of the “real” lesbian. In the simple terms of popular magazines, the butch (sentul) is more than 50% lesbian, or incurably lesbi, while the femme (kantil) is less than 50% lesbian, or potentially normal. Blackwood’s (1994) description of her secretive relationship with a butch-identified woman in Sumatra brings up some cross-cultural differences and difficulties that they experienced and could not speak about publicly. The Sumatran woman adopted masculine signifies and would not be touched sexually herself; she wanted to be called “pa” by Blackwood, who she expected to behave as a “good wife.” Meanwhile, Blackwood’s own beliefs, as well as her higher status due to class and ethnicity, made it hard to take on the passive female role.

I want to emphasize here that behavior needs to be conceptually separated from identity, as both are contextually specific and constrained by opportunity. It is common for young women socialized into a rigid heterosexual regime, in Asia or the West, to experience their sexual feelings in terms of gender confusion: “If I am attracted to women, then I must be a man trapped in a woman’s body.” Women are not socialized to seek out a sexual partner (of any kind), or to be sexual at all, so an internal “feeling” may never be expressed unless there are role models or opportunities available. If the butch-femme stereotype, as presented in the Indonesian popular media, is the only image of lesbians available outside the metropolis (e.g., in Sumatra), then this may affect how women express their feelings. However, urban lower-class lesbians engage in a range of styles and practices: some use butch style consciously to earn peer respect, while others reject the butch as out-dated. The stereotype of all lower-class lesbians whether following butch-femme roles or conforming to one subcultural pattern is far from the case and reflects the media and elite’s lack of real knowledge about street life. […]

The imagery of sickness creates powerful stigmatization and internalized homophobia: women may refer to themselves as sakit (sick). An ex-lover of mine in Jakarta is quite happy to state a preference for women while at the same time expressing disgust at the word lesbi and at the sight of a butch dyke; however, I have generally found that the stigma around lesbian labels and symbols is not translated into discrimination against individuals based on their sexual activities. I have been surprised to discover how many women in Jakarta will either admit to having sex with women or to being interested in it, but again, this is only rarely accompanied by an open lesbian (or bisexual) identity. I have found it hard to avoid the word “lesbian” to refer to female-to-female sexual relations, but it should not be taken to imply a permanent self-identity. It is very important to try and understand the social contexts of behavior, in order to avoid drawing conclusions based on inappropriate Western notions of lesbian identity, community, or “queer” culture.

From “Beyond the ‘Closet’: The Voices of Lesbian Women in Yogyakarta,” by Tracy L Wright Webster, 2004:

Most importantly a supportive community group of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women is essential, given that these sexualities are thrust together in Sektor 15. Potentially, a group comprised of women from each of these categories, that is lesbian, bisexual or transgender, may prove problematic to say the least, given that the needs and issues of each group are different. Clearly the informal communities already in existence in Yogya are indicators of this. Any formal or organized groupings would certainly benefit by modeling on current, though informal organisations. In the lesbian network, transgendered women (those who wish to become men or who consider themselves male) are not affiliated, however many ‘femme’ identified women who have been and intend to be involved in heterosexual relationships in the future, are among the group in partnership with their ‘butch’ pacar (Indo: girlfriend/boyfiend/lover).

Organisations of women questioning sexuality have existed in Yogya in the past. A butch identified respondent said she was involved in the formation of a lesbian, bisexual and transgender network in collaboration with another Indonesian woman, who also identified as butch, 20 years her senior. The group was called Opo (Javanese:what) or Opo We (Jav:whatever), the name highlighting that any issue could be discussed or entered into within the group. Members were an amalgam of both of the women’s friends and acquaintances. The underlying philosophy of the group was that “regardless of a woman’s life experience, marriage, children…it is her basic human right to live as a lesbian if she has the sexual inclination”. The elder founding member of this group, now 46, married a man and had a child. She now lives with her husband (in name only), child and female partner in the same home. Although this arrangement according to the interviewee “is rare… because the husband is there, she is spared the questions from the neighbours”. Here I must add that it is common in Java for lesbians to marry to fulfill their social role as mothers, and then to separate from their husbands to live their lives in partnership with a woman. This trend however is more common among the ‘femme’ group.

From "(Re)articulations: gender and same-sex subjectivities in Yogyakarta, Indonesia," by Tracy Wright Webster, in Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, Issue 18, Oct 2008:

Lesbi subjectivities Since gender, for the most part, determines sexuality in Java, sexuality and gender cannot be analysed as discrete categories.[64] For all of the self-identified butchi participants, lesbi was the term used to describe their sexuality. This is contrary to the findings of two key researchers of female same-sex sexuality in Indonesia. Alison Murray's research in Jakarta in the 1980s suggests that females of same-sex attraction did not like the term 'lesbian'[65] due to its connection with 'unpleasant stereotypes' and deviant pathologies.[66] In 1995, Gayatri found that media representations depicting lesbi as males trapped in female bodies encouraged same-sex attracted women to seek new, contemporary descriptors.[67] The participants in this research, however, embraced the term lesbi as an all-encompassing descriptor of female same-sex attraction and as Boellstorff has noted in 2000, Indonesian lesbi tend to see themselves as part of a wider international lesbian network.[68]

The term lesbi has been used in Indonesia since the 1980s, although not commonly or consistently. Lines, les, lesbian, lesbo, lesbong and L, among others, are also used. Female same-sex/lesbi subjectivities in Yogya are not strongly associated with political motivations and the subversion of heteropatriarchy as they were among the Western lesbian feminists of the 1960s. By the time most of the participants in this research were born, the term lesbi had already become infused in Indonesian discourses of sexuality among the urban elite (though with negative connotations in most cases), and has since become commonly used both by females of same-sex attraction to describe themselves, and by others. Most learnt from peers at school and through reading Indonesian magazines.

However, public use of the term lesbi and expression of lesbi subjectivity has its risks. Murray's research on middle to upper class lesbians suggests that females identifying as lesbi have more to lose than lower class lesbi in terms of social position and the power invested in that class positioning. This is particularly in relation to their position in the family.[69] Conversely, her work also shows that lower class lesbi 'have the freedom to play without closing off their options.'[70] As Aji suggests, young females, particularly of the priyayi class may not be in a position to resist the social stigma attached to lesbianism and the possible consequences of rejection or abuse. Yusi faced this reality despite the fact that s/he had not declared herself lesbi. Hir gendered subjectivity meant that s/he did not conform to stereotypical feminine ideals and desires.

With so much at stake, many lesbi remain invisible. Heteronormative and feminine gendered expectations for females in part explain why lesbians may indeed be the 'least known population group in Indonesia.'[71] Collusion in invisibility can be seen here as a protective strategy. The lesbi community or keluarga (family) is what Murray refers to as a 'strategic community' of the lesbian subculture.[72] The strategic nature of the community lies in its sense of protection: the community provides a safe haven for disclosure. Invisibility, however, also arises through the factors I mentioned earlier: the normative feminine representations of femme, their tendency to express lesbi subjectivity only while in partnership with a butchi, and their tendency to marry. Invisibility, as a form of discretion, however, may also be chosen.

Gender complementary butchi/femme subjectivities [...] Due to the apparently fixed nature of butchi identities and subjectivities and their reluctance to sleep with males, they are seen as 'true lesbians,'[79] lesbian sejati, an image perpetuated through the media.[80] Similar to the butchi/femme communities in Jakarta, in Yogya, butchi are identified by their strict codes of dress and behaviour which include short hair, sometimes slicked back with gel, collared button up shirts and trousers bought in menswear stores, large-faced watches and bold rings. Butchi characteristically walk with a swagger and smoke in public places. In her research in the 1980s, Wieringa noticed that within lesbi communities in Jakarta the strict 'surveillance and socialisation 'may have contributed to the fixed nature of butchi identities.[81] In Yogya, this is particularly evident in the socialisation of younger lesbi by senior lesbi (a theme I explore elsewhere in my current research).

The participants held individual perspectives on butchness. Aji's butchness is premised on hir masculine gender subjectivity and desire for a partner of complementary gender. Yusi expresses hir butchness differently and relates it to dominance in the relationship and in sex play. The participants who told of the sexual roles within the relationship emphasised their active butchi roles during sex. As Wieringa suggests, this does not necessarily imply femme passivity as femme 'stress their erotic power over their butches.'[82] It does, however, indicate one way in which the butchi I interviewed articulate their sexual agency.

Femme subjectivities, on the other hand, are generally conceived of as transient. As many of the interviews illustrate, femme are expected by their butchi partners to marry and have children: butchi see them as bisexual. In public, and indeed if they marry, they are seen as heterosexual, though their heterosexual practice may not be exclusive. In the 1980s, Wieringa observed that femme 'dressed in an exaggerated fashion, in dresses with ribbons and frills...always wore make up and high heels.'[83] In the new millennium, the femme I met were also fashion savvy though not in an exaggerated sense. Generally they wore hip-hugging, breast-accentuating tight gear, had long hair and wore lipstick and low-heeled pumps. Their feminine representations were stereotypical: it was through association with butchi with in the lesbi community that femme subjectivities become visible.

[sofreshsosoulful]

Pics that brought hip-hop into focus!

When we think of the music culture we love we often have a visual image in our head straight away. Music videos and photography have had a powerful impact, and have been very important in helping develop music icons for decades and decades. James Brown, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Bob Marley, Tupac, Biggie and Beyonce, are just a few artists that spring quickly to mind here, but in truth it can be almost anyone famous. The photographers who take these shots are unlikely to ever be celebrated as much, and are happy to stay behind the scenes, but it’s always worth acknowledging their contribution to the culture too.

  This year hip-hop has already lost two of it’s great photographers, in Ricky Powell and Chi Modu, and both left a huge mark on hip-hop culture. Closer to home we have amazing photographers too, and it’s always worth acknowledging that one of the most influential photographers in hip-hop history, Brian Cross, is originally from just up the road here in Limerick. 

When news of Chi Modu’s passing broke last weekend, his photos were quickly shared all over instagram and other social media sites. I had heard of Chi Modu and was aware of some of his most famous shots, but it only struck me then how much of them I actually knew. Album covers for Snoop, Method Man and Mobb Deep were accompanied by shots of Tupac, Biggie, Mary J Blige, Ice Cube and more legendary figures from most particularly the 90’s, the decade where hip-hop really became a commercial juggernaut that took over the world.

  These photos are all amazing and capture the transition of hip-hop from it’s 80’s innocence into a time where the innocence was left behind. The photographers own passing adds extra poignancy but many of these rappers would soon pass too, and it’s hard not to get nostalgic looking at the striking shots of Pac and Biggie and others. Biggie standing in front of the twin towers, which he had referenced in “Juicy”, captures hip-hop and indeed New York only a few years before the world changed forever. 

Ricky Powell, who died recently too, was an important figure in documenting the previous era of hip-hop, in the 80’s, at a time when hip-hop transformed itself from being a subculture in the Bronx into something much bigger. The other major elements of hip-hop, such as djing, breakdancing and graffiti, are still important now, but back in the late 70’s and 80’s all of these elements were much more pronounced. Acclaimed artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat were largely unknown by the time Powell started photographing them, but it was it his work with Run DMC and the Beastie Boys which helped expose this still relatively new music genre to the masses.

Both of these great photographers captured musical movements just at the right time, before the masses got on board. The art and photography was obviously important in promoting this music culture too. The fact that a guy from Limerick did the same over in Los Angeles always fascinated me, and in early 1994, I purchased “It’s not about a Salary”, an amazing book of essays, interviews and photos by Brian Cross (aka B+). Again, the photographer was there at the cusp of an amazing era, documenting artists such as N.W.A., Cypress Hill, The Pharcyde, Freestyle Fellowship in an era when the West coast was taking over.

In subsequent years B+ has become known as one of the most important photographers and film makers in hip-hop, and he has famously shot everyone from Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu to Kendrick Lamar and J Dilla. He also published the amazing “Ghostnotes: music of the Unplayed”, and he is very active promoting hip-hop and it’s many connected sub cultures. 

In Cork, Deirdre O’Callaghan, has created an unbelievable body of work over the last couple of decades, spanning the world of street culture, music, book publishing and advertising. From her work with the original Dazed and Confused team, right up until the present day, she has shot important music artists such as De La Soul, Gang Starr, Questlove, Tony Allen and more, and her book projects have been amazing too (these are well worth checking out!) Also in Cork, the photographer and film maker Lovro is currently documenting the underground drill scene here, and again, it’s another example of a talented photographer capturing a music genre just when it’s on the cusp of something special!

*This article appeared originally in the print edition of Corks Echolive on May 28th

hip-hop, photography, rap, soul, chi modu, Ricky Powell, B+, Deirde O’callaghan

[rotationalsymmetry]

There’s two ways in which I can see being on social media a lot potentially surprising real life interactions (for people who mostly interact with people they don’t know from offline, or who don’t live in the same area.) One is, it’s possible that social media time scratches the loneliness itch just enough to make socializing in person seem less urgent. In particular, socializing with new people you don’t know yet is less immediately rewarding than socializing with people you already feel comfortable around (realistically, often not rewarding at all), but in the long run you don’t get close friendships without starting off by having awkward small talk with people you don’t really know.

The other thing is: look at this site, everyone’s got really strong opinions about things no one gives a shit about anywhere else. This can make it harder to interact with people who don’t have the exact same worldview you’ve been cultivating. (And I don’t mean these opinions are irrelevant either. But the, uh, Overton window doesn’t really exist on tumblr, and it’s been kind of replaced by a wide range of extremely subculture specific “windows”.) For instance, I’m on team “queer is a great word.” Now, this is largely influence by people I know offline using the word “queer” all the time. But let’s say I came out on tumblr and all the queer people I know are on tumblr. And then I go to an in person event and meet someone who’s personally uncomfortable with the word. And I start making a whole bunch of assumptions about how this person also views asexuals and trans people and so on, which would be fairly justified assumptions on tumblr because people who don’t do getekeep-y exclusionist bullshit on here tend to either learn quickly to keep their opinions on “queer” to themselves or else get sucked into an exclusionist silo, but which is not an accurate assumption off of tumblr. Anyways, what I’m saying is getting really into this stuff on tumblr can make it harder to interact with people off of tumblr, it makes routine interactions feel a lot more strained.

So, I don’t think smart phones or widespread social media use are “causing” a rise in loneliness, there’s much likelier culprits that have been around longer, and I for one was an extraordinarily lonely teen before even MySpace and Livejournal. But on an individual level, I think it’s worth having some self awareness around this.

Especially since the one thing that you really, really need in order to have meaningful and lasting connections with people is the ability to talk through conflicts, and that’s really hard on social media.

Mutuals liking each others’ posts and dropping each other compliments can feel really nice of course, but if your only available tools for someone posting someone that gives you the oogies is to either ignore it or quietly unfollow, then you don’t have a particularly robust connection.

I’m also noticing this problem with my online church: the lack of in person connection makes it hard to figure out what to do about conflicts. I mean, not that I felt I could do anything about my grievances at my previous brick and mortar church either. But that was because I started going there as a young adult who fully expected (probably accurately) to be dismissed if I brought anything up, and because as an isolated kid who was, sorry mom and dad I love you, raised in a fairly authoritarian “we’re your parents so whatever we say goes” way, I had no idea how to bring up grievances constructively. Whereas with the new church, the little I do know (“talking about emotionally charged things in person tends to go better than talking about them by phone, text, etc”) is just not helpful.

[inscapeblog]

Subculture in Design: Through Kpop Subculture-Deylin Patel

Introduction

The main topic hat will discussed in this essay is Subculture in design. When people think about subculture they think about what that subculture have to do with design, what impact does it have on the design world. The only way to understand why subculture in design is really needed is to see if it has been applied to a certain subculture and how it has influenced design or not. This essay with argue if Kpop subculture in design is important and the influence it has on graphic design. The essay will show his by defining what subculture is and what Kpop subculture is. The characteristics of Kpop subculture, as well as the characteristics of Kpop subculture’s style in graphic design. To support my argument the essay will cover how Kpop has influenced the  graphic design in the styles of designing. The examples that will be discussed with make decide weather Kpop subculture has either helped design or not.

  2. Defining Subculture in Design

To understand what Subculture in Design is we need to understand the definitions of what subculture is and design. The meaning of subculture is when ideas, art, the way of life that a group of people within society are different to other people of society.(Definition of subculture, 2021) this basically means that people are different in the way they are because of the ideals of the subculture. The meaning of design is is to have a particular purpose or intention in view of an individual or group. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2021). Understanding what subculture and design is we can know put them together we then understand that we can say that subculture can be connected through values, in the way of design we can then decide what works with the style of the subculture, thus making that different subcultures might have the same sign for something but they mean something else. This is when a designer needs to understand the context of what happens. (Design & Subculture, 2021).

To focus on the subculture of design I will be looking at Kpop as the subculture to argue if it impacts design or not. The meaning of the Kpop subculture is an international music genre that has different music styles that began in South Korea. (Spatichia & Otolorin, n.d.)  Kpop has become a huge part of the music world. The thing that makes Kpop different from the normal kind of music is that they have a particular design style that they use for what they want to do. 

The Characteristics of Kpop subculture 

Before one goes into Subculture in Design, we must understand the characteristics of what Kpop. These characteristics include large groups which means that the music group is from four people to about 23 members, this is mainly because they want fans to have different people to look and support. They have a hybrid sound which makes use of he traditional Korean music elements with the influence of jazz, soul, hiphop and funk, this is what makes their style of music so interesting. They have a Unique style which relates to fashion design this helps in that the style of clothing that they go for will influence design in many different ways.(MasterClass, 2021) 

Now knowing what the definitions are and what the characteristics are it makes it clear that Kpop can very much be an influence on graphic design in that they have different views on how they do things and they have a connection to design to make them different from other subcultures. This is shown with how they produce their music videos, it is shown that they have themes and stories that are about unrequited love and coming to age and the other things that happen in life. (Lee, 2019)

This helps me as a designer in that I can argue that Kpop subculture is something that subculture in design can help with graphic design and make a difference in the way we think about subcultures and the design style they bring. 

3. The significance of Subculture in design in identifying and solving a design problem

The significance of Kpop subculture in terms of it being used in graphic design. This is made significant in that Kpop’s art is influenced by Pop Art in terms of the art and illustration. Kpop uses the idea of sleeky minimal deign work, this is shown by the work of different artists playing with photography, typography, colour, illustration.  When wanting to understand the style that makes graphics important is that it has a very different take on the use of different elements to make the design stand out. 

Some unique characteristics of Kpop design is the ability to tel a story, this is mainly shown in the music videos of Kpop, the idea of making something a story of something is important in that as designers we need to think about how will the subcultures influence the way the work is done and influence the way design thinking goes with everything that has been done. Kpop’s idea of making the subject matter light they have a unique way of making it look amazing in tat the viewer can be part of that journey. 

Kpop also keeps in mind who the audience is and who they are advertising to and how they market themselves. This helps with social media in that when graphic designers need to look for ideas on how to promote new ideas they need to make sure that they follow the tight ideas of who will people see and what they think of them. 

Kpop design is also very particular in the way they use colour. They make sure that they have captured the right amount of attention. This achieved in that they make somethings stand out in some cases but in others they make it over colourful that they make it look like a dream party filled of colour. They also make use of black and which which can also mean a lot depending on what they want to achieve. 

The most important trait that stands out of Kpop and graphic design is the use of the design principles. This is because they make use of good balance, positioning, symmetrically and visual balance and unity as well as using the idea of persecutive in their work. (White, 2016)

With all this the idea of Pop art comes in, in that Kpop artists and designers think about how to make the audience feel as if they are the best and they are the ones that everyone needs to see. 

This brings us back to the idea that subculture in design is important in for graphic design. Thus saying that the ideas that Kpop subculture is a strong example to show that they think in creative and unique ways that they are not just a subculture that dresses a certain way or creates music in its own style but it rather creates a place that makes them think in a designer way to make design more easy on the eye for everyone. 

4. Examples of successful application of Subculture in Design through Kpop  in spatial design

When looking at examples of how the techniques of subculture came into existence in the albums of Kpop albums is that they used colour, typography and photography .  

   Figure 1 - Poster (Lee, 2019)

When looking at this poster one gets the feeling of balance and good use of colour and harmony. This is because the use of how the idea of the subculture is still evident in the work. The application of the use of typography makes one look at the image and makes them interested in away. 

 Figure  2 - Flashmo Instagram (Lee, 2019)

When looking at this image we can see the idea of pop art being used. In terms of the Kpop subculture it shows that they also took inspiration form the west and took the idea of using typography and a pop art take on creating this new type of design. Which is something graphic designer would do and see how to make it fit with the idea of how things work and get made. 

Figure 3- CD cover (Lee,2019) 

In this CD cover we can see different elements with use of colour and photography and very little typography. The way that design is used to show the subculture for what it is and what it stands for. The colours and photography makes one want to see what is happening and what will happen next. 

The application of all the examples help to create a feel that graphic design has a part to play in designing covers and ideas to make the message that Kpop artist want to show off. The whole idea that being Subculture in Design is important and it is also very important to make ideas and traits in to design. 

5. Conclusion

As a whole for my argument I can agree that Subculture in design is important. Thus saying that subculture can bring about new ideas and influences in the way we work and do things as designers. The exploration of subcultures and design is that subcultures have an influence in the way we think and look at design. With going into depth of graphic design in Kpop culture shows that design is used in different ways but it can always be connected when one looks and analysis’s the fine detail in what they do. The final argument is that subcultures need to be taught on how things are and how designers can apply the thoughts and ideas of subcultures in their design work. Subculture in design is important and it makes the world of showing things in different ways can open doors for people. Graphic design might not be the core components of Kpop but it can start becoming one of the factors.  

Reference List

Definition of subculture. (2021, March 10). Collinsdictionary.com; HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/subculture

Design & Subculture. (2021, March 10). Blogspot.com. http://globaldesignstudies.blogspot.com/2009/10/design-subculture.html 

Lee, G. (2019, May). How to design for K-pop: the design queen for BTS on branding idol chart-killers. Digital Arts. https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/graphic-design/how-to-design-k-pop-bts/

‌MasterClass. (2021, January 14). All About K-Pop: Inside K-Pop’s History and Signature Sound. MasterClass; MasterClass. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-kpop#what-are-the-characteristics-of-kpop

‌Merriam-Webster Dictionary. (2021). Merriam-Webster.com. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/design 

‌Spatichia, D., & Otolorin, M. (n.d.). K-pop Subculture International Impact K-pop Subculture International Impact. Retrieved March 10, 2021, from https://scholarshare.temple.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.12613/472/p15037coll12_2705.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y 

‌White, J. Z. (2016, June 28). What k-pop can teach us about design. FreeCodeCamp.org; freeCodeCamp.org. https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/what-k-pop-can-teach-us-about-design-6253a85f469c/ 

[bubblegumchaos]

TW: Violence, dark humor, all that jazz. Go no further, angry shit, yadda.

So, yanno...i'm just gonna yell into the void about something.

When i was very young, I read a lot of encyclopedias. Most of my knowledge of the world was attributable to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which my mother kept because well, a home should have a nice, impressive looking set of books. Along with a bunch of other old books that just...really weren't the best choice for a regressive anti-technology apocalyptic fundamentalist cult, but then, as we used to joke, my mother doesn't have to make sense, she just has to make decisions.

So, I eventually started plumbing the depths to try and figure out "what the hell is wrong with my family."

While i didn't get an answer about my family in general, I did note that i seemed to be oddly suited to the definition of "psychopath," minus the whole "being a problem for society at large" thing. Asocial, low empathy, lack of guilt, inability to plan cohesively, difficulty conceptualizing consequences, near total lack of emotions except curiosity and rage, both of which are carefully stifled, aggressive tendencies...frankly, I look at my younger siblings and i can definitely assure anyone that asks that had I not been raised quite far away from society, or if I'd stayed in the cult, I would most definitely have been a problem for society.

But psychopaths are *monsters,* you see. They're so, so bad, you see. Everyone assured me, at great length, that I couldn't be that, no, no sirree. I was too nice. Too kind. I didn't punch people nearly often enough (largely because I don't like being punched outside of sex, and I like to be in charge of where I'm being punched, and even that mostly cause I'm kinda badly out together physically, but that's aside the point.)

I wasn't *hate-able.* My empathy was too high.

On that last note, I have spoken elsewhere and i believe here regarding my empathy. My empathy is specifically a learned skill picked up by reading Edgar Allen Poe's Auguste Dupin stories. Dupin explains his near preternatural ability to get inside people's heads by his learned skill of micro-mimicking body and facial language and then analyzing what he feels when he copies someone else. Works absolute wonders, particularly as up to that point (i was 8-9), I was using the classical technique of provoking and hurting people around me to experimentally figure out how other people worked. Admittedly, it's somewhat like recording a speech and listening to it at the lwvel of a whisper in a crowded room, but then mimicry is far less likely to get you punched, and see previous for my feelings on getting punched.

But now i had, for all intent, a system to demonstrate empathy. Thanks to my mother's abuse, I had a complete paranoid delusion aping guilt. I could check plans past others, and once I got my hands on Google at 14, I had the capacity to directly look up what the general, societal consequences of most actions were and model behaviors that achieved my ends. I further had 18 years of direct training in mind control and manipulation, thanks to my cult.

You may notice that what you just read sounds like the origin story of a serial killer. Ape people around them to avoid detection, paranoia making them scrupulous enough to not get caught, and careful study of laws to find the lines, plus a hyper manipulative persona.

Roll with me here. This continues forward.

So, i'm out and about, 2, 5, 6 years free of my cult. I have married a self avowed psychopath who actually HAS been diagnosed with antisocial disorder thanks to a teenage habit of theft and punching people. He is fairly sure I am not one, since I perform guilt and empathy fantastically, by rote at this point. I literally have days that my face hurts from faking emotions for too long, i am slowly developing agoraphobia because there are far too many people to mimic in a retail job, and my guilt subroutine is just a voice chanting in my head, "they're coming to get you, don't fuck up" 24/7 to the point that i am developing hallucinations, but yeah. It's definitely not psychopathy. At this point, that's just ASPD, and i'm just too darn social. Never that. I'm no monster, you see. I'm "nice."

About this point, I have learned to use mind control techniques to help people, carefully applying them with direct permission to help people open up and discuss problems. My near preternatural ability to get into people's heads, my ability to find information, and my absolute lack of fucks about morals (thus making me wildly nonjudgemental), makes me the go-to confidant for many of my friends. This neatly surrounds me with people that can smooth my life out, but you can't tell people you're friends with them cause the world is made of grey paste and you're deathly bored 24/7 and being allowed to pick through people's minds and help them optimize is the closest you get to not wanting to shoot yourself or others. Or that you carefully maintain contact with people so you can check and make sure you're not doing anything jail worthy. Or that a large group to mimic lets you blend in easier, and finding one that also is transgressive, but socially permissable (thanks, kink) blows off some steam.

Of course, people that don't know me find me deeply off-putting, as I am at this point rapidly learning to turn off the mimicry when not immediately interacting with people. This results in me appearing utterly emotionless, but as soon as people talk to me, bing, back on. I had also joined the kink subculture, giving my hedonistic and transgressive sides an outlet.

I'd also gone to the trouble of getting a multifaceted degree. Ostensibly, my degree is "multimedia journalism." If you aren't aware, this means I have a degree in research, interpersonal communication, public speaking, written communication, mass communication, some psychology, critical thinking, media creation and analysis. In short, I have the literal perfect degree for figuring out, communicating with, and functionally understanding people, as well as a vastly enhanced ability to locate obscure information.

Fast forward again. Three mental breakdowns, four years of therapy, poking at my gender, figuring out a lot of mental health problems, and a rotating series of diagnoses, life is...slowly improving. I've left a toxic marriage (toxic on both sides), moved to a completely new place, started over. I have sort of resigned myself to focusing on my (admittedly annoyingly complex and wide ranging) physical disabilities.

And it comes up, in talking to my partner, that his adoptive mother displayed (she's dead) quite a few signs of ASPD. And he asks curiously if there's any connection between ADHD, autism, and ASPD, mainly cause the "personality disorder" part. PD's can, with long or early exposure, sometimes be passed on, you see.

Guess what's being studied, right now? Not a connection between ASPD and ADHD. A connection between psychopathy and ADHD. Wait, but I thought psychopathy wasn't a thing, says I? I thought there was only ASPD, now?

Ah, but for you see, the DSM is a load of horseshit. And i have heard that from multiple communities with different relations to it, and from multiple therapists, psychiatrists, professors...as a general rule, when the people who use it, the people it's used on, and the people who teach it all agree that a document is manure, I get a touch distrustful. I get more so when current studies use umbrella terms disavowed by a document known for being reductivist and that has been noted as having a great number of entries that were manipulated deliberately to make them as narrow and unusable as possible.

So anyway.

Turns out that while no, ADHD and Autism don't make you a psychopath, there's a distinct overlap. Empathy issues are a possiblity in all three, though both ADHD and autism can create *hyper*empathy. Inability to navigate social constructs is another point of overlap.

But really, it's the serotonin deficiency that hurls it across the line for me. And the genetic factors. Can psychopathy result from environment? Yeah, seems so. But there does seem to be a genetic and neurochemical component. Which is...curious for a disorder presented as purely a traumatic abreaction that creates dangerous amorals.

I then looked it up. And wouldn't you know, psychopathy is only pathologized as ASPD/APD, and DPD? The former is the sort of psychopathy that is characterized by violent amd criminal antisocial behavior, and the other an inability to understand and perform social mores at all. But this is the DSM, so these are of course diagnosed by problems caused for others as a first line.

Violation of societal norms, lack of emotions other than rage, aggression...it's almost like the same people that named a serotonin and function deficiency Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to enshrine the disorder only by those aspects that make neurotypical people uncomfortable rather than seeking to help the neurodivergent person, the same people that invented torturous behavioral correction therapies to "fix" the neurodivergent person? Those strike me as people that might possibly have looked a serotonin deficiency that causes rage, limited emotions, impulsivity, difficulty conceptualizing consequence, and potentially a hell of a lot of other fun side shit and decided to call that "Doesn't get along with others well" disorder.

What really kicks it in the teeth for me, however, is that psychopathy used to mean more than "a social pariah." You see, Theodore Millon, the guy that wrote the book on personality disorders, noted between 5 and 10 subtypes. Do you know what they are?

Nomadic

(including schizoid and avoidant features)

Drifters; roamers, vagrants; adventurer, itinerant vagabonds, tramps, wanderers; they typically adapt easily in difficult situations, shrewd and impulsive. Mood centers in doom and invincibility

Malevolent

(including sadistic and paranoid features)

Belligerent, mordant, rancorous, vicious, sadistic, malignant, brutal, resentful; anticipates betrayal and punishment; desires revenge; truculent, callous, fearless; guiltless; many dangerous criminals, including serial killers.

Covetous

(including negativistic features) Rapacious, begrudging, discontentedly yearning; hostile and domineering; envious, avaricious; pleasures more in taking than in having.

Risk-taking

(including histrionic features) Dauntless, venturesome, intrepid, bold, audacious, daring; reckless, foolhardy, heedless; unfazed by hazard; pursues perilous ventures.

Reputation-defending 

(including narcissistic features) Needs to be thought of as infallible, unbreakable, indomitable, formidable, inviolable; intransigent when status is questioned; overreactive to slights.

(It should be noted: the features listed above are simply what each presentation is most likely to display if disordered. A reputation-defender may not display narcissm, a risk taker may not be histrionic. A malevolent [what a terribly judgy name...] could be negativistic, or avoidant, or histrionic. And so on.)

Now, ya may be going, "wait, hold up, narcissism is on there! We still have that! Schizoid is on there, we have that! Sadism, paranoia, we got all those things!"

Flash quiz: do you know what a personality disorder is? It's a series of learned behaviors that require moderation and unlearning.

Why yes, they did spin multiple neurotypes off into diagnoses that require behavioral therapy to "fix." Why on earth would you think they wouldn't? They're still trying to use reparative therapy on auties. Hell, near as I can figure, histrionic got spun into Borderline Personality disorder. You know what the therapy for that is? DBT, aka, "it IS your fault and you SHOULD feel bad."

Beyond knowing there used to be different flavors, did you know that there is about a millionty scare articles about how psychopaths are everywhere? Guess why.

What do you get when someone has an absolute need to see what's on the other side of the hill and no real fucks to give about how you get there? You get scientists, explorers, people utterly driven to find out. Think about how many of our science and exploration heros are noted as deeply weird and off-kilter. We have whole stereotypes about this. There are books and articles devoted to the transgressive personas and behaviors of famous scientists and explorers.

What do you get when someone is belligerent, paranoid, truculent, violent, fearless? Snipers. Literally. The army has openly stated they like psychopaths quite a lot. Someone that can look at a map of human lives and commit calculus with the phrase "acceptable losses" makes a damn fine general, wouldn't you say? Hunters, too. Make a good king? Or bounty hunter. Or, if we're going to be honest, a martial artist. Hell, think of all the ways our society accepts violence in real terms and symbolically. Management. Video gamer. Espionage. Actuary. Pest control. There are THOUSANDS of of societal uses for people like this.

Covetous? Well, banks are openly quite loving towards psychopaths. CEOs are indicated here. Businessmen. Fandoms with collection as a function have any number of anecdotes of individuals who have an intense drive to get more. "Focused on the chase, rather than the victory, to the exclusion of all else" is considered a positive, laudable personality trait. To put it in other terms, "can't stop, won't stop, never done." Sports players, yes? Football, rugby, hockey...

Risk takers are the real standouts, in terms of societal love. Doctors. Firemen. EMT's. Skydivers. Extreme sports players. Equipment testers. The list goes on. Society loves risk taking psychopaths. Hell, look at the diagnostic criterion up there: it's mostly traits with high positive connotations.

Reputation defending? Politics. Law. Advertising. Acting. Writing. Religion. Leadership of any kind.

I'm not talking out my ass here. All those fields have been noted as friendly towards, attractive to, and having a high representation of people who fit the behavioral model of psychopath.

But only if they're useful. Like literally every other non-normative neurotype.

Society loves ADHD and autistic people when they're displaying savant abilities or when they can mask well enough to use their sensory and cognitive differences to societal ends.

And if they're a problem for people around them, that's treated. The underlying difficulties? The societal structures that punish and harm them? The pain of adapting their entire neurobiome to do all the work of interfacing with different neurotypes while being driven to harness anything useful and discard the rest of their brain? No, we don't treat that. That's just the price of doing business. "Pull yourself up and don't be a problem."

And here's the problem, in plain terms: psychopaths who learn to cope, to mask, to adapt like I did are never diagnosed. I have spent most of my life fairly concerned about the fact that I seem not to have emotions or compunction, that i am always consciously working to figure out and connect to people around me on the most basic level, that I am constantly working to keep an active model of social norms going at all times. And I don't mean "shake hands, eye contact." I mean I have the same mental conversation regarding "don't shoot that person" and "use a turn signal." All prosocial behaviors, all social behaviors period, are a struggle to understand.

The funny thing is, it also makes antisocial behaviors difficult. Shooting someone seems remarkably inconvenient in many cases. Regardless of whether I care about getting caught or not, shooting somone will interrupt my day.

Not shooting them also seems remarkably inconvenient in many cases. Yes, it'd be a pain in the ass to shoot them, but then again, if I do it correctly, I only have to do it once.

But again, "correctly" is a wildly unfixed variable, and the whole question won't come up if I always ensure I fail the "do i currently have a firearm" step. And I don't. Ever.

That's how my brain works. Y'all go on about moral and ethical and legal reasons. That's an exhausting conscious mental conversation to have every other day, so my shortcut is:

"Should I shoot them? Oh, right, I don't have a gun. Guess not. Should I get one? No, cause I might shoot someone, and that'd be a pain in the ass. Welp, no shooting people."

And so it goes. I don't understand any social norms. Good or bad. I have all the problematic issues still, mind you. Environmental factors. I mimic and I was raised in an apocalypse cult in Oklahoma. I spend a lot of brain space sorting between prosocial behaviors and the violent antisocial behaviors I was taught were prosocial.

Because, you see, I can't really understand the prosocial behaviors, but I can see they work. And antisocial behaviors don't, really. Have i impulsively pocketed something? Couple times. Even got away with. Can't steal a house, though. And theft gets boring, for me.

Ok, except piracy. I may quite enjoy piracy.

Cooperation with a larger whole can and does yield benefits. Forcing myself to sit through mind numbing gratification delays does seem to yield results that are beneficial, though I really try to keep that one to a minimum. I refuse to be bored if I can help it. Making nice talky sounds gets me shit faster than making angry talky sounds.

Possibly this is a result if being raised manipulative. No idea. Kinda don't care.

Point is, I'm one of the psychopaths that, while not immediately useful, is also not actively a problem. So no-one will listen when i talk about everything being gray and cold and exhaustingly complicated because people make no sense and almost all my emotions are dialed so far down it's a joke i lack the ability to laugh about.

No one has believed me that the one emotion I have in spades is rage and that i have to literally consciously work out from first principles why violence is a bad option as my sole method of controlling that, my ONLY EMOTION OF ANY STRENGTH, which I cannot allow myself to feel for any length of time because I start losing sight of that consequence model and I worry i'll make a mistake I can't unmake. Or that it took me two decades to learn not to smash things I need when someone looks at me funny. Or just smash them.

Or that i have to keep my hands in my pockets and chant "don't steal" in my head some days. That I wear tight clothing with shallow pockets to make stealing harder so that, like guns, I simply can't do it easily and therefore short circuit my behaviors.

People are more than happy to hurl me at any problem that requires a lack of emotion, but if I dare to be less than appropriately emotional on a date? At a wedding? Funeral? If I make an error and don't diagnose it myself and perform contrition appropriately, regardless of if I knew there was a social or personal rule there? Well, I'm fired/broken up with/punished/evicted.

But I am not actively a problem for society. So none of those things are worth diagnosing. Or helping in any way.

And those that are useful? Are often fed utter horseshit and encouraged to break society. Bankers creating recessions. Generals commanding useless wars. Cops. Doctors that uphold a broken system. Politicians that pursue a broken society.

I know, I can see, that ASPD people catch a shit ton of shit cause they get blamed for "useful" psychopaths mistakes, and none of the benefits when said same psychopaths are lionized. Looking back at what it was, and what it is now, pathologically speaking, it makes perfect fucking sense for the asshats that designed a diagnosis to only include the people they don't like as the "sick" ones, and label the "good" ones as "heroes." Makes a nice distinction there between people we want to demonize and people we want to lionize for having the exact same chemical imbalance, and neatly creates a fall group when any of the "heroes" trip up. Silence those who can't cope, elevate those that can, treat neither effectively, and if an elevated one stops coping, we can just "realize" they were "sick" all along, and oh, yeah, those sick people are so bad, you guys, nothing like those heroes at allllllll.

I am...so tired of this society bullshit.

So anyway, I'm a psychopath. Paranoid, some schizoid. So whatever grains of salt you feel like taking, grab 'em, I guess. I'd mostly like for people like me to stop being weaponized, lionized, or punished for having a different neurotype. I'd like to be able to talk to a doctor about that and for there to be some options beyond "stop that," "get locked up," "have you considered the army" (yes, a doctor actually asked me that as a teenager) or "you seem fine, tho."

And if you resonate with this, well...I'm 32, never been arrested, mostly managed to avoid terrible shit, and I've got a life, couple partners, and I'm surviving, so like. You can do this. Lotta people wanna tell you you can't have this or that cause "you're not bad, tho." They're stupid. Y'ain't evil, just different. Don't let them get to you.

And (this is a joke) if you decide to shoot someone, do it once, correctly. Saves time.

[gigslist]

6 Voiceover and Radio Casting Calls - Paid Remote Jobs

Short Film, TV, Commercial, Corporate and Comedy Radio Talk Show

6 Voiceover Casting Calls - Paid Remote Jobs

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Subcultural - an interactive audio show examining interesting subcultures

VOICEOVER

REALITY TV & DOCUMENTARY COMEDIANS & IMPROV

PAID WORK FROM HOME

Deadline: May 1, 2021 4:59 PM

Company Spoon Radio

Clint Sears, Head of Content

Production Description

Looking for a CREATOR/HOST to develop their own weekly, interactive, hour-long Spoon Originals audio show (please see http://spoonrad.io/originals) on the Spoon Radio network app based around the following concept: "Subcultural: A quirky and interactive exploration of the most unique groups in and outside of society." This show will be a PG to PG-13 exploration of interesting subcultures (here are just a few examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_subcultures.) The host will research and breakdown a new subculture each week while finding ways to keep the interactive audience (chat, polls and live call-in audience guests) engaged. This is a concept to build the show around but in the end it will be 100% YOUR show. Feel free to explain YOUR take and how you'd tackle it.

Roles

Host/Creator (WOC strongly encouraged to apply!)  (Voiceover): Female, 18-23

The creator/host will do their own research, develop the content and book their own guests (if they want them).  This is our concept but it will be YOUR show! 

If you are naturally curious, gregarious and can get others excited about the things you are into, then you are the person we need.

Rehearsal and Production Dates & Locations

No professional equipment needed, we pride ourselves on the audio quality of our technology.

Compensation & Union Contract Details

Professional Pay: $100/Weekly

Key Details

Seeking talent:

Nationwide (United States)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/clintisawesome

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Pillow Commercial

Actors / Actress at Home Shoot for Online Ad (Pillow)

ONLINE COMMERCIALS & PROMOS

PAID NONUNION

Deadline: May 10, 2021 5:00 PM

Company

Stephen Tegel, creative dir. Production states: "[Stephen] has helped dozens of national brands create high-volume ads and sales campaigns with well-known doctors, spokespeople, and marketing professionals."

Casting an online advertisement. Note: Actors will bring to life real stories from real customers.

Roles

Man (Lead): 31-39

this character brings life to a real customer’s story using our product

We are looking for a man in his 30s who has a great attitude and personality to record themselves at home promoting one of our products a pillow. The production process includes: downloading a free video teleprompter app into your Iphone , loading the script up on the app, filming yourself reciting the script + additional b-roll shots, and exporting the scripts via gmail/google drive. To be eligible for this role, you must additionally have a basic knowledge of framing and lighting as well as a basic understanding of google drive. If you own a tripod, that is a plus, as some of the shots need to be hands free.

Required Media: Headshot/Photo, Video Reel

Required Skills: Acting Techniques: Improvisation

Woman (Lead): 22-65

this character brings life to a real customer’s story using our product

We are looking for a woman between 20s-60s who has a great attitude and personality to record themselves at home promoting one of our products - a pillow. The production process includes: downloading a free video teleprompter app into your Iphone , loading the script up on the app, filming yourself reciting the script + additional b-roll shots, and exporting the scripts via gmail/google drive. To be eligible for this role, you must additionally have a basic knowledge of framing and lighting as well as a basic understanding of google drive. If you own a tripod, that is a plus, as some of the shots need to be hands free.

Required Media: Headshot/Photo, Video Reel

Required Skills: Acting Techniques: Improvisation

Shoots the month of April

Compensation & Union Contract Details

StipendPays $140

Seeking talent from: Newport Beach, CA

More Details

Please include a headshot and if you do have a video reel, feel free to submit that as well! If hired, you’ll be shooting with a Commercial Director who has shot ads for several large national campaigns. His focus here is finding actors capable of delivering powerful, emotional performances: men & women who can bring dramatic stories of transformation to life.

Shooting instructions

information about the product and script will be provided

consumersteve@gmail.com

13237428551

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-tegel-99a13822

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Telehealth Explainer Web Video

VOICEOVER: CORPORATE & INTERNET VIDEOS (VOICEOVER)

PAID WORK FROM HOME NONUNION

Deadline: April 13, 2021 4:00 PM Company Ergo Possum Ltd. (Client: TeamHealth)

Production Description

Seeking a female voiceover professional, 40s-60s, to narrate a 45-second web explainer video for website, social media, and email use. It's a lightly comedic piece focused on the relatable frustrations of conventional doctor appointment scheduling, and the better alternative provided by telehealth services.

Roles

Narrator (Voiceover): 40-60

Comforting, relatable narrator with a sense of humor about the craziness of conventional healthcare appointment scheduling who also speaks with some enthusiasm and authority about the alternative offered. Final piece is 145 words.

Record remotely. Must have access to professional recording setup and provide completed recordings with your own resources.

Professional Pay: $200 - $300 Perpetual license to use the voiceover in this one piece, which itself has a likely shelf life of 18 months but may be used beyond that if needed.

Note: "We do not have any non-compete stipulations and talent are free to pursue other opportunities with similar clients."

Key Details

Seeking talent:

Worldwide

913-284-1366

philipwh@gmail.com

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'Kiss Of The Incubus'

 FILM & DOCUMENTARY (VOICEOVER)

PAID NONUNION

Deadline: May 7, 2021 8:19 AM

Company: Acid Unlimited, Black Fog Pictures

Cory A. Jones, writer-dir.-prod.

Production Description

Casting "Kiss Of The Incubus," a feature-length film. Synopsis: An erotic psychological horror story about a young woman's struggles to liberate herself from a toxic past only to be faced with a powerful sex demon that visits her in the night. Production states: "Candidates should be aware that this production will feature some very strong material with regard to Sexuality, and some Horror Violence/Gore. May not be suitable for everyone, please keep this in mind when submitting. Looking for strong, confident, responsible, and professional talent of all experience levels." Note: Still accepting new submissions for secondary lead; Jonelle.

Jonelle (Supporting): Female, 25-45

Richly textured supporting/secondary lead role that will require a highly talented and open minded actress to portray. Jonelle is our lead character; Lillian's Girlfriend of almost 4 months. She is a confident, tomboyish, fitness-oriented, openly Lesbian professional bartender. She takes her work, and lifestyle seriously, but does not take herself too seriously. She has a sassy, sarcastic sense of humor, but is always sincere and humble. Having been a romantic free-wheeler for some time; her deepening connection with Lillian is motivating her toward desiring a more serious relationship. Her outward confidence masks an emotional sensitivity that comes with deep rooted self compassion struggles resulting from Jonelle's complicated personal history. She should be a relatable, and lovable character whom the audience will naturally want to root for. Note: Full nudity required for two simulated sex scenes, one shower scene and two non-sexual nude scenes where the actress will be in simulated bondage. Only talent who are comfortable with nudity and sexuality as part of their performance should apply. Pays $450/day and is available to Nonunion talent.

Ethnicity: Ethnically Ambiguous / Multiracial, Latino / Hispanic, White / European Descent

Required Media: Headshot/Photo, Cover Letter

Requires Nudity: Yes

Required Skills:

Sports/Fitness Dance Comedy Acting Techniques: Drama Training Rehearsals expected to commence in late April in Lodi, CA; tentatively begins shooting in Aug. in Lodi and Sacramento, CA.

Professional Pay: $450/DailyPays $450/day. Travel expenses, hotel, and meals will also be provided.

Seeking talent from: Lodi, CA; Sacramento, CA; San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Reno, NV

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-jones-96098329

https://www.productionhub.com/profiles/details/225332

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Voiceover for Animated Television Series

VOICEOVER: ANIMATION & VIDEO GAMES (VOICEOVER)

PAID WORK FROM HOME NONUNION

Deadline :June 8, 2021 4:59 PM

Company: New Ray Studios

Lisa Swanson, casting dir.

Production Description

Casting voiceover talent for an animated television series in pre-production (being prepped for a pilot). Specifically seeking female voice artists who can perform a young boy's voice ranging from 6-12 with an American dialect. Also casting various male and female adult roles.

Roles

Josh (Lead) (Voiceover): Female, 9-12

Languages: English

Accents: Midwest American

Required Media: Voice Reel

Recording remotely.

Professional Pay

Seeking talent: Worldwide

An email application to casting@newraystudios.com.

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'Cold Feet'

CATEGORY:

FILM: SHORT FILMS (VOICEOVER)

PAID WORK FROM HOME NONUNION

Deadline: April 20, 2021 4:59 PM

Company: Hawk Zindell, prod.-dir.

Description

Casting "Cold Feet," a short film. Synopsois: Based loosely on Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart," "Cold Feet" is a psychological horror/comedy about a young woman who’s navigating the frustrating world of wedding planning, while being haunted by an extremely tacky wedding dress.

Roles

Olivia (Lead): 24-28 pays $250. 

Olivia is a stressed-out young woman trying to plan her wedding. She is a perfectionist (she's the girl with the desk drawer dedicated to her artfully organized bullet journal supplies), loves beautiful things (she’s the girl with the Instagram life you want), but most of all Olivia likes peace, quiet, and being left alone. Unfortunately, those things are in short supply, both as her family and friends pester her about wedding planning details, and as a terrible wedding dress mysteriously appears and seems to haunt her.

Ethnicity: All Ethnicities

Required Media: Headshot/Photo, Video Reel

Brenda (Supporting): Female, 55-60 pays $100 (audio-only role). Olivia’s well-meaning but intrusive future mother-in-law. If Olivia has a minute, Kathy just has a few more questions about where to seat Uncle Teddy.

Required Media: Headshot/Photo, Audio or Video Reel

Rehearsal and Production Dates & Locations

Shoots May 8 and 9 in Colorado.

Stipend: $100 - $250Pays $250 for two shoot days, with pre-production time and pickups as needed. Supporting role pays $100.

Key Details

Seeking talent from:

Boulder, CO; Denver, CO

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hawk-zindell-5833025a

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[canmom]

i do think it’s fruitful to examine how “fandom” exists as a specific cultural practice within capitalism, shaped by the commodity form etc., and it certainly is true and extremely frustrating that people can easily get absorbed in questions of media representations and media criticism to the exclusion of almost anything else, and fantasise we’re doing some kind of great radical work... that it’s somehow virtuous to focus one’s energies on forming a perfectly morally pure set of media consumption habits, promoting the Progressive works and denouncing the Problematic (this was absolutely me a few years ago! it happens!)

but the idea that the answer to the problems this causes is to build an “anti-fandom” political movement is just, um, kinda goofy lol. like what exactly are you proposing to do, harass people on the internet if they draw shipping fanart? form a bloc and attack cosplayers at the next local convention? you’re just gonna become everything you hate!

and I also would want to be careful not to view ‘fandom’ as a conspiracy to coopt radical energy or whatever (not sure to what extent people believe this); nobody put any deliberate effort into that happening until it was already well underway, and I’m pretty sure ‘fandom’ is yet a fairly small part of the whole process of commodity circulation, even in the entertainment industry! i suspect the vast majority of people who buy Star Wars or Marvel branded products do not see themselves as ‘fans’, or participate in that specific subculture. most of the money will be in selling toys, shirts etc. to parents of kids who have only a passing familiarity with the Franchise.

(there might be exceptions to this. phone games tend to make a large portion of their profit from ‘whales’ who spend a lot more microtransactions than most people. certain industries like anime figurines almost exclusively sell to ‘fans’. but taking the industry as a whole, I think ‘fandom’ can overestimate its own significance.)

rather, I think that in a world so saturated with spectacle and commodities, it’s not entirely surprising that as people start to realise ‘actually this world is kinda horrendously fucked up’, the first places they’ll face up to that are in those immediate cultural contexts: fandoms, subcultures etc. and yeah, sure, from there it kind of takes on a life of its own, but still...

moreover, I suspect it would be better to ask what needs ‘fandom’ is presently fulfilling in an atomised capitalist society where most social relations are mediated through money (most, because every time you buy something, you’re taking part in a social relation with the producers, right?).

yes, fandom is spectacle, yes it can and usually will be turned to help valorise entertainment-industry capital. yes I never want to see those two blokes from g*od om*ns again. so why, then then do people go to ‘fandom’? why are they excited to log on and read fanfiction, or catch the latest episode of a thing, chop it up into gifsets and screenshots and so on, discuss meta, get into bitter arguments with other self-defining fans over rather esoteric fictional things?

some hypotheses: something to do with

the capacity of “art” (in a broad sense) to create a sense of emotional connection that is otherwise hard to come by, even if it’s illusory/parasocial. artistic creations may be commodities, but they are also communications that express something

a kind of appearance of Hegelian recognition [nb: all i know about Hegelian recognition is a youtube video but I think it applies]: “I see this experience I’ve had reflected in another person’s creation, therefore I feel seen/less alone with it”. this is perhaps the origin of a lot of desire for “representation” in media

the usual sort of ingroup/community function that also exists in e.g. sports, feeling ‘part of something’, feeling like you have ‘your people’. as dangerous as it may be, this is probably a particularly big draw for isolated people

a severe lack of alternatives to media consumption to ‘fill downtime’, especially when tired after work etc., under the capitalist dichotomy of ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ time. there may be more ‘fulfilling’ pursuits, but media consumption is often all people feel up to.

a need to have a shared context with the people around you, to have something to talk about

‘escapism’ and temporary distraction from insoluble, or at least difficult problems - which certainly isn’t an intrinsic evil, it is good to take a break and rest and can allow you to actually face up to those problems

a socially sanctioned way to practice skills like writing, with a readily engaged audience and without the same expectations of fulfilling a certain standard of ‘quality’ or aiming for publication which feels out of reach for many people

these (and whatever else you might think of) are actual needs a lot of people have under present conditions. even if you think they shouldn’t be! and they’re not going to disappear just on the strength of moral injunctions. certainly they’re not only achievable through ‘fandom’, and ‘fandom’ can easily catch people up in its insular bubble... but it’s not that people are being tricked into this, it’s that faced with a particular capitalist hellscape, they take whatever solace they can find.

so if you don’t like ‘fandom’ (and there sure is a lot to dislike), then seek to find a reproducible way to realise those needs that isn’t shackled to capital reproducing itself, or help to obviate them (e.g. if people don’t have to work they have more energy for other things...). at least to me, that seems more likely to get somewhere than telling people they shouldn’t participate in fandom.

(also: I reckon a lot of this line of thinking helps to explain online political subcultures, which a lot of the time function much more like ‘fandom’ than many participants would like to admit.)