#and it gets tiresome. and is tiresome to read

[genderqueerdykes]

this may not be your wheelhouse and if so feel free to ignore but: do you know how to get past the sense of imposter syndrome wrt being punk? like. i'm punk, have always been will always be, it's objectively not debatable. but i've had to make some very un-punk decisions (ex. getting a degree and a normie job) in order to survive. and i haven't been well enough to do the work out on the streets or go to the venues in a while now. obviously i didn't magically become a poser, i still know the music, history, fashion, theory, etc... but i still kinda feel like a fraud :/ any advice?

you know, that's a pretty good question, actually, because i've noticed in a lot of alternative scenes, people really like to get uppity and make fun of people who are just getting into it, or may be into it for a while and then move on

i noticed it firsthand when i lived with other punks in a house venue. i saw probably hundreds of people filtering in and out of there over the course of months and a lot of conversations were leftist infighting and it just kinda became the same old garbage over and over again. some people have superiority complexes that make them feel "Above" everyone around them because they are counterculture. it can become a bit tiresome

what i would say, is that you cannot make decisions that line up with your beliefs/politics/etc. all the time. anticapitalists still need to make money. punks very well may need an established career in order to survive. people who live in food deserts have to rely on shitty companies in order to get their groceries and necessities. i don't think that makes anyone 'unpunk', fortunately, because despite how much we despise this capitalist hellhole, we can't just magically exist completely outside of it without engaging in every single thing we oppose

there's no reason why a punk can't be 'formally employed', so to speak, because not everyone is capable of living off of donations or running their own shop, selling zines, selling customized clothing, selling things they've grown ethically and organically, and so on. the thing is, is money moves so fast in capitalism that two weeks can easily break you. most people are one missed paycheck away from the worst situation of their life

as long as you actually follow through with what you believe and stand for in the areas where you can, that's what's important. as long as you behave in a way that doesn't oppress others, support your local community, participate in harm reduction events, or whatever your specific focus is on breaking down the structures firmly built around us to divide us, you are very much a punk.

respect for others, standing up for one's self, and other's when possible in situations where remaining peaceful is not an option, unlearning racism, trans/misogyny, transandrophobia, transphobia, lesbophobia, homophobia, intersexism, biphobia, and other queerphobic beliefs, learning to respect demonized and heavily oppressed people such as people of color, homeless people, addicts, people with personality disorders, people with schizophrenia, people with bipolar disorder, people with DID, people with OCD, people with autism, people with ADHD, and other neurodivergent and mentally ill people, and breaking down other internalized oppressive structures in your own mind to prevent perpetuating it, you've achieved your goal

the thing is is not every punk is a master of punk history, most punks are in the scene to meet with like minded people who very well may have other interests outside of the community that take up more of their time. many people don't have the time to read up on literature and zines because they live transient or busy lives. many punks don't listen to entirely punk music, some don't listen to any at all. i don't listen to a lot of music, due to being autistic and easily overwhelmed by sound, myself, so that is an area that i am not super versed in. i have very basic knowledge from sitting around and listening to other punks and their music, but i'm more focused on activism. but that's exactly the thing:

not every punk is an activist, either. you can wade as far as you personally want to into these waters. there are different kinds of punks, for sure, and that's not a bad thing at all. some folks are really passionate about music and want to spread a message that way, but may not have the time to become involved with local activist organizations. some punks are in it for the art. some are in it because they like each others company and personalities. some people like that there are a lot of trans and queer people in general in the scene so they find it a safe place to meet other queer people. some people like the casual atmosphere and ability to do whatever substances they want with other people in a safe environment without judgment, and around other people who have experiences with these substances. some people literally just dress alternative and like hanging out with other people who do and that's not bad, either.

all of these are okay things

as long as you acknowledge where you're at and not pretend to know more than you really do, you'll be fine. ultimately it means lot of things to a lot of different punks and just like any other identity, every punk will describe it slightly differently. i thought i was an outcast because i was the only real activist in that household, most other folks were there to be around like minded people who hate the way out society is run, and that's totally okay. if that's their vibe, that's their vibe. i can't tell them they're not punk, what would be the point of that? they play in and listen to punk bands. i'd be an idiot to tell them they're not really punk, you know?

you are the one who defines what punk looks like for you, as it is your experience. don't worry about someone else bothering you about it unless you've genuinely stepped out of line and said something potentially fascist, racist, queerphobic, etc. be open to genuine criticism but if someone gives you shit for not knowing some obscure detail about punk history it's not worth your time. i literally knew a punk girl who ran an anarchist reading club and she herself didn't read the book and just listened to everyone else talk about it and discerned her opinion from there.

punks come in all kinds- however:

THE ONLY WAY TO NEVER, EVER BE PUNK IS TO BE A NAZI, COP, OR OTHER KIND OF FASCIST. queerphobes, abelists, racists and their enablers aren't welcome either.

that's the main takeaway, if you ask me. i hope that helps, i have imposter syndrome with a few mental health things so i understand, it's a pain in the ass. if you have any more questions feel free to ask!

[mrdarcysdadbod]

Still mulling over Anne with an E and I think I need to watch another adaptation or two of AOGG bc I want to criticize the... Misappropriation of narrative space, I suppose, but I suspect that's also just a side effect of the medium, you know? Because what I mean by this is that Anne of Green Gables as a book is very, very narrow in its scope, as it is purely and solely about Anne and, especially early on, she doesn't give other people's stories or perspectives much space in her narrative, and is somewhat ruthlessly self-interested at times in a way that actively constrains the scope of the narrative. To me that's an interesting and delightful aspect of the book as a childhood/coming of age novel, because especially at an age like nine or ten, children really are focused on their own internal world primarily and are still in the earlier-to-middling stages of being more conscious of those around them and their lives and perspectives. A side effect of this is that, for example, we have no clue what's going on with Gilbert other than a few comments from secondary characters and some of Anne's own accidental, quickly interrupted mentions. I find this deeply charming, especially the way that it hints at Anne having editorial sway over the narrative, because she clearly thinks about him far more than he comes up in the text, and I think it could be adapted in a cute and inventive way to the screen, but that's neither here nor there.

The way this relates to Anne With an E is that I think AWaE got too ambitious in widening the scope of the narrative. I'm not even necessarily against the idea of, say, exploring Anne's history and behavior with a modern understanding of trauma rather than an Edwardian children's novel that absolutely wasn't interested in or intending to tackle the emotional realities of traumatized children. And that's a place where it shined (the scene of her cheerfully telling her classmates about "the mouse in a man's pants" to their growing horror was painfully accurate to the experience of not understanding that your funny story is actually deeply worrying), even if it got awkward at times (unfortunately the Anne actress did not carry off the flashbacks well and they were just kind of corny). Unfortunately I do think that there's, I suppose, a maximum amount of gritty reimagining that any narrative can reasonably bear, and I think AWaE way overdid it.

(putting this under a cut bc it got long and wandered away from the point)

I think there's space in that narrative to explore something like, pick two: residential schools or early 20th century modes of queerness or some B plot about con-men that came out of nowhere and mainly served to undermine the notion of Green Gables and Avonlea as a fundamentally safe place - frankly I'm not even against the idea of undermining that notion, in a "challenging the narratives of settler-colonial pastoralism" way, but I think that the residential school plot should've been the thing to do that, as a way of emphasizing that the idyllic safety of Avonlea came not as a result of hardy white Protestant goodness but very much at the expense of displaced and oppressed First Nations people, but I think the way they chose to do the conman B plot was actually counterintuitive to that end, because it positioned the outsiders as the ones seeking to extract profit at the expense of the good hardworking white Protestants of Avonlea, who then became the victims of a thieving invader, when, like. Colonialism, y'know? I digress.

Returning to my original point about the scope and space of the narrative, I may have the most issue with Gilbert's entire plotline. On the most basic level, it requires a significant reframing and rewriting of his and Anne's relationship at this point in their story, which I just... disagree with. I think it's a misstep to try and reimagine a deliberate erasure of him from the narrative via Anne's (somewhat petty) refusal to include him, even though he's very much present and the reader is regularly reminded of his presence in her life outside the text, as an opportunity to actually remove him from Avonlea and do some weird shit with him. Gilbert Blythe doesn't really need to go on a personal journey justifying his passion for medicine and wrestling with the realities and impacts of the Atlantic slave trade. (If I read that sentence after reading the book but before watching this show, I would find it completely bewildering.) It's not even that I don't think "Canada, as an English/French colonial project, has always benefited from and enabled the violence of slavery even if actual chattel slavery wasn't present there in nearly the same amount as it was in other parts of the empire" isn't worth exploring as an element of the showmakers' clear desire to interrogate and challenge AOGG as, unavoidably, a work of colonial fiction. I just don't think putting Gilbert on a boat achieves that. I'm not sure exactly how I'd achieve it - frankly I'm not well-versed enough in Canadian Black history to have a take - but, to me, deciding to literally import a character to make the point about Canada needing to wrestle with anti-Black racism as much as anyone is, like... I mean it's kind of decentering Black Canadians, isn't it? And the whole thing puts Gilbert in this really weird position of clumsily lampshading the white savior in relation to Bash, but also kind of a white savior by proxy in terms of Bash's relationship to the Black community in Charlottetown. I don't know, I'm not qualified to have much of a take on this, it was just all so bizarre and unnecessary to me.

Returning again to my original point, I ultimately just think that, while the text of AoGG leaves a lot unsaid and implied about what's going on with other characters in the novel, there's only so far you can stretch that and still be telling the same story, you know? And while the core of the book is Anne exploring her place in the world, and that can be expanded to include more serious questions about things like childhood trauma and various societal bigotries, I still don't quite know how I feel about the necessity of committing to, essentially, a change in genre for the sake of tackling some of these issues, because at the end of the day, for all it doesn't shy away from things like Ruby's or Matthew's deaths and the attending grief, AoGG is a children's book, and those challenging episodes still come with a resolution and catharsis, and that's... not really something you can achieve, if you're going to include residential schools as a B plot. Like, for a show set in 1890 or whatever, there's absolutely no way to have any sort of resolution or catharsis about a residential school without egregiously whitewashing the reality, especially in, what, 2019 this was airing? After several years of mass graves getting uncovered? I don't know, I think they were just too ambitious. It's not that the legacies of slavery and ongoing Native genocide don't deserve to be explored, but I'm not sure that an adaptation of a book that is firmly rooted in an idealized image of a rural Canadian childhood is the place for it. It's kind of weird to have the horrific violence of the residential schools sharing space with Anne putting liniment instead of vanilla in the cake, you know?

[marzipanandminutiae]

women who were the only girl with F/F ships in their mostly-sapphic teen friend group, and had to feign interest in the Pretty Gay Anime Boys Of The Week to talk to their friends at all, deserve financial compensation

[enden-k]

my only day off and i wanted to draw but instead i slept my evening away bc my migraines kicked in fully and meds didnt work 💀

[13eyond13]

8 and 3 for DN? (:

thanks! 8. DN + common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about: Light would NOT remain in denial about being gay forever, nor would he perhaps be extremely self-flagellating about it... in fact I feel like he actually already knew by the end of the story (around the time when he was inwardly like "yeah, you're right, most of this WAS because I was just that obsessed with L....") My headcanon is he might still be pretty inclined to lead a double life around it, but he's probably not actually that ashamed of the idea of being gay once he actually realizes and accepts it 3. Screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on Tumblr: Any of those in-all-seriousness hot takes that go something like "Light was SO stupid for not changing the causes of death in the notebook, nobody would have tracked him down if he was more creative with it lmaoo what an idiot." MY BROTHER IN CHRIST HE DID THAT ON PURPOSE BECAUSE HE WANTED TO BE NOTICED / WAS TRYING TO BECOME A GOD PASSING RIGHTEOUS JUDGEMENT ON THE MASSES, it's literally in chapter/episode one, he says it's "the best thing about the notebook" that it defaults to a heart attack, and HE ALSO WAS TRYING TO LURE L IN WITH A LOT OF WHAT HE DID ON PURPOSE SO HE COULD FIND AND KILL HIM AS WELL etc etc etc dafjajaja it literally makes me foam at the mouth and turn into the most ackshually know-it-all keyboard warrior if I don't give myself a moment to calm down lol

[choose violence]

[1000sunnygo]

Still thinking about Law stealing Kidd's box of apples in the ED. This is the closest to manga the anime has ever added in a Law scene

[ghostoffuturespast]

Being a writer is weird.

[sarahreadstoomanycomics]

I must admit sometimes it gets tiring week after week reading comics and thinking to myself “Man people are going to get mad/fight about this”. Only to be proven right every single time. 

[isfjmel-phleg]

Strongly disliking the current readings for not one but two separate reading groups I've gotten roped into, and I'm having a crisis over whether these books (which aren't usually my sort of thing) are really this bad, or if I'm just obnoxiously critical and impossible to please.

[susansontag]

working myself up to getting dressed and going out bc I need to buy food. I’m feeling like such a hermit today and I don’t know why. I’ve been feeling so much anxiety and panic and everything feels like a chore. ugh

[dentist-brainsurgeon]

The way my aunt jumps through hoops to choose the stupidest options available to her whether it be passively or actively makes me want to bash my head into wall

It used to be an occasional thing that was irritating before but ever since she retired, and she does nothing all day except watch AI generated tik toks, buying drop ship shit off tik Tok, watch novellas that all share the same plot and play mindless phone games is imo actively making her not think. Like at least my grandma reads her Bible and goes through her bills and tends to her garden, my aunt does nothing, besides occasionally driving, and helping clean the kitchen, and mop, but we all do cleaning throughout the day, she doesn't even read the books she buys from Amazon

Like when she clicked on a scam link on her phone and then proceeded to not say anything about it for four weeks, when she got logged out of Pokemon go and somehow managed to just send the verification code to some random persons email and thought that email WAS the verification code itself and honestly so many other things. She really didn't do her hobbies much before retirement but damn at least work made her think and do stuff. I don't even know where I'm going with this post, but it's so frustrating and concerning. I've tried suggesting things she could do or we could do but she doesn't really entertain those ideas outside of just going to the park for Pokemon GO

[satans-knitwear]

This flesh vessle is cursed for sure.

[dukeofriven]

My biggest worry about Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves is that it might make people for whom this is their first introduction to D&D think that Forgotten Realms lore is cool.

[candied-cae]

Izzy the character is beloved and by the writers and within the show. If they wanted him to suck and be unloved they would've directed Con differently or cast a different actor. Con didn't even audition for Izzy, Jenkins saw his audition for another character and asked him to read for Izzy instead. Your hate of Izzy is biasing you to authorial intent and ruining the show for you, not the other way around.

You are free to your opinion, so are the folks who worked on the show, as am I.

This is obviously in response to this post I just made earlier, but, as I literally said in that post: I know.

I am aware that the people who worked on this show liked the character and wanted to do a redemption for him. And just as you accuse me of being blinded by my Izzy-Hate, they (and you) can be blinded by Izzy-Love, there is no subjective metric to see which side is more "correct." I simply expressed an opinion that his redemption was rushed.

I never bash Con's portrayal of the character. I never say he did his job incorrectly. I never even say that Izzy shouldn't get a redemption arc. I also never go and tell people they are wrong when they post happy things about Izzy, even though I don't like him.

People are allowed to like his character, I even acknowledge that in the tags under "I know I'm not an Izzy-Enjoyer so it's not catered to me. I know some people are excited this is how it's working out. Good for them." I'm happy you seem to be enjoying how the show is handling his character, congratulations, I wish that was how I felt about it, it'd be nice.

As I also state that those are just my barebones opinions being posted and I am currently writing up more while I rewatch to explain myself further, in which I do look into Izzy as a character deeper than "he was an asshole in S1" for your information.

But my biggest point is that it felt rushed from where we left off in Season 1 and I wish we'd been given the screen time to explore more of that part in-between the seasons where the crew makes the decision to be more open to him. I just wanted more development and evidence of growth, a reason for Jim to have accepted him as an important member of the crew, a reason for Frenchie to have comforted him like he did.

We didn't get that. And maybe it's the fault of the cast and crew having too much fun with each other they've gotten a little divorced from the events of season 1, maybe it's the fault of the studio not giving them enough time to show it even if it was scripted and had to be cut to fit in the episode amount, maybe it's no one's fault.

But, I went through the trouble to even tag that post "Izzy Critical" so folks who do like him have the option to block the phrase if it improves their experience on the internet. Feel free to try that if it'll help you. But I am going to continue expressing my opinions and analysis on shows I like, because it's fun and I love this medium of storytelling.

Have a good day 😊

[unproduciblesmackdown]

also more odds & ends orville info & more not Not orville/phil info as well:

"In Steinkellner’s version of Summer Stock, Jane Falbury (Danielle Wade) and “Pop,” her father (Stephen Lee Anderson), are struggling to hang on to the family farm. Their farm is one of the few in the Connecticut River Valley that hasn’t been absorbed by the Wingates, whose holdings completely surround theirs.

The widow Margaret Wingate (Veanne Cox), whom son Orville (Will Roland) aptly describes as having eyes “as cold as death itself,” plans to absorb the Falbury farm by the simple expedient of having Orville marry Jane. After all the two kids had decided they were engaged in first grade!

Enter the prodigal younger sister Gloria (Arianna Rosario) who has been seduced by the lure of the Great White Way. She returns to the farm bringing along Joe Ross (Corbin Bleu in the Gene Kelly role), the director of the show that will make her a star, its composer Phil Filmore (Gilbert L. Bailey II), and the entire company. She has generously offered the company, which can’t afford rehearsal space in New York, the use of the family farm’s barn. Sister Jane reluctantly agrees to the intrusion with the proviso that the thespians will double as farm hands.

As rehearsals progress, Phil discovers that Orville, a bit of a doormat who has been raised with the understanding that he will never have to work, is a musical wunderkind. He is enlisted to work his magic on the show’s score and begins to blossom.

Widow Wingate takes umbrage with all this and vows to shut the enterprise down. Fortunately, the cold embers in her soul are stirred to renewed life by her encounter with Montgomery Leach (J. Anthony Crane), the has-been ham enlisted to give Ross’s show some cachet, so all might not be lost.

[...]

They make this Summer Stock a veritable feast of nostalgia. I was especially taken by the amusing way Steinkellner used Jackie Gleason’s theme song “Always” to further widow Wingate’s plot to get Jane and Orville hitched.

[...]

Orville, who has found personal liberation in show biz, is accorded a moment that reminded me of a similar scene in the musical version of The Producers. In a triumphant declaration of his emergence from under his mother’s thumb he exults, “I’m in the theatre! And I love it!” The audience loved it, too.

[...]

As director, Feore has elicited some wonderful performances, especially from subsidiary characters. Veanne Cox is splendid as Margaret Wingate as is J. Anthony Crane as Montgomery Leach, the faded matinee idol. Will Roland (Orville) and Gilbert L. Bailey II (Phil) both have wonderful moments and their intense professional friendship is one of the show’s highlights."

INTENSE PROFESSIONAL FRIENDSHIP you say....and also ofc everything about orville and wanting to be a musician and being in the theatre and he loves it sounds so good. i love it

[proustianrevelry]

"Pointing out that a [cis] US federal politician's shoes don't match his belt is discrimination against poor people, and helpless innocent trans men who don't know fashion rules b/c they didn't gwow up wearning them fwom their pawents"

Hello, fellow transmasc. I see you are in the delicate early stages of transition where you see every post about men as being about you specifically, and perceive slights against you in every post about a man's appearance because you feel like you'll never be accepted as a man, let alone a handsome or fashionable one.

As someone who also went through this phase: don't reply to posts that make you feel bad, just block them. Blocking is a free and harmless tool to protect your feelings and stop you from making unreasonable demands of strangers on the internet. The emotional distress you feel is real and needs to be addressed and worked through, but strangers on the internet probably won't help you, and the ones that DO think your comments are valid are worse than no help at all.

Make moodboards. Bookmark or save pictures of masculine clothing you think is neat and would like to wear. Even if you wouldn't pass, even if you don't pack or bind, you can take your own measurements and figure out which sizes you'd like to wear. You can look up tailors or seamstresses in your area (if you don't get results, look for dry-cleaning services that also offer alterations) who can take those men's clothes from a thrift store or a big&tall warehouse and cut and sew them to fit you right. You're not hopeless. Don't talk about trans men (including yourself) like we're helpless babies who Will Never Be a Man. We're not. You're not.