#dissertation (vague) blogging

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

Tip for researching certain educated nineteenth-century people: They will leave large chunks of text untranslated just to flex that they can. For example, if they had a conversation in French, you will get large stretches of French when they quote it. So, you do actually have to speak all of the languages that person speaks, because they're going to be pretentious about it.

They really desperately need you to be impressed that they are so cosmopolitan.

[amyoffline]

In Defense of the Phandom (Mostly): Dan, Phil, and Our Parasocial Social Club

Refer to my previous pinned post for an explanation of and outline for this project. Now that I'm done going through my old reblogs (god, it took forever), it's time to actually research and write this script! This will be my pinned post for the foreseeable future, so you can come back to it by clicking on my blog for the current status of this part of the process. (Note from February 15 - everything is on hold for now while I wrap up my dissertation!)

Script word count: 2,350 | Last updated: January 9, 2025

Research

Peer-reviewed or published literature: ⚫︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎ Social media, forum archives, and fanwork: ⚫︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎ The great rewatch: ⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎ Discussions with other phannies (hey! that could be you, if you want!): ⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎

Writing

Introduction, background, and conclusion sections: ⚫︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎ 2009-2013: ⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎ 2014-2018: ⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎ 2019-2025: ⚫︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎ Long tangents (fandom, RPF, and PSIs/PSRs): ⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎ Editing: ⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎⚪︎

More details below the cut!

Research → peer reviewed or published literature:

I read a few things (like Haidt's The Anxious Generation) while I was in the process of searching academic databases, but most of the 403 works I have saved to Zotero for this are currently unread. They're not all the same length or will take the same amount of time to read, so the completion proportion is just getting updated based on vibes. I'm absolutely not referencing all 403 of these things in the script - I just cast a wide net for materials I thought might be relevant. Furthermore, there are some things I didn't save that I know I'll be referencing, like some of the Pew Research Center's work in the early to mid 2010s on teenagers and technology, or the journalistic coverage of what got my school district in huge trouble in 2011.

Research → Social media and forum archives:

The collection of posts, art, and fic (other than mine) to reference in the video. For regular posts and art, especially by people who have long since abandoned their accounts or whose content went pretty viral, I feel comfortable just showing things in the video with credit as examples. For fic, I intend to just discuss trends more broadly and vaguely since, as a fic writer myself, I know we tend to get more flack and less acclaim for our work and therefore prefer to stay out of the spotlight. Let me know if you think I should handle this differently - the academic impulse is to credit sources and reproducible searches for every single thing you do, but that's definitely not best practice for phandom history since we have so much "forbidden" lore. I'll also be reading the IDB forum front-to-back, listening to things like the phandom podcast, reading the current generation of phanzines, and looking at recent (and historical, if anyone has any) surveys done of phannies within the community. I'm assuming those folks would appreciate credit and/or a shoutout.

Research → The great rewatch:

Rewatching everything DNP-related so I can talk about it from more recent memory (and read what's left of the original comments for DNP videos that are still up at their original locations). I know there's a playlist for this but I also know it's incomplete, so I have been doing some poking around myself and will probably continue to.

Research → Discussions with other phannies:

I read a few things (like Haidt's The Anxious Generation) while I was in the process of searching academic databases, but most of the 403 works I have saved to Zotero for this are currently unread. They're not all the same length or will take the same amount of time to read, so the completion proportion is just getting updated based on vibes. I'm absolutely not referencing all 403 of these things in the script - I just cast a wide net for materials I thought might be relevant. Furthermore, there are some things I didn't save that I know I'll be referencing, like some of the Pew Research Center's work in the early to mid 2010s on teenagers and technology, or the journalistic coverage of what got my school district in huge trouble in 2011. The first task is to sort that whole Zotero collection into more manageable sub-collections (on PSR on PSIs, on mental health, on YouTube platform history, etc), which is what I'm currently working on.

Writing → Introduction, background, and conclusion sections

See old pinned post for the outline. Will expand details here once research is mostly done (I plan to read and watch everything in the research section aside from talking to other phannies, then complete the script's rough draft, then talk to others on call, then integrate that with and finalize the script).

Writing → 2009-2013

See above.

Writing → 2014-2018

See above.

Writing → 2019-2025

See above.

Writing → Long tangents (fandom, RPF, and PSRs/PSIs)

See above. These tangents are kind of mini video essays in and olf themselves, so I may write them while I'm reading through my saved stuff in Zotero and before I rewatch all the DNP videos.

[librarycards]

I am so curious as someone who was mainly lurking/no tags reblogging for many years of tumblr existence...what is the art of shooting your shot with or dating a tumblr mutual

so i've done this a couple different ways and/or had them done to me.

tumblr/ig mutual i share/d communities with sent me an ask as a friend. we chat, switch to texting, remain friends, facetime, fall in love. we're no longer dating but still friends!

@campgender, who i owe a very overdue discord message rn (sorry!!!)... i don't quite remember how this started, but i believe it was through mutual semi-vague hornyposting after a shared history of exchanging scholarly messages, me partaking in Mac's grad research/getting feedback on my dissertation, etc. this rapidly graduated into a heady mixture of sexting and emotional support, given that we tend to be compatible in both respects.

@gwenderqueer, i think they messaged me first (?). gwen and i have been mutuals since the beginning of time, but we started chatting as friends and then ~flirtatiously~ a couple years ago. she came to visit when passing through the area i lived and made a compelling case by being smart, funny, gentle, and supremely sexy, and we have been dating ever since :3

idk i'm just kind of a flirt i think and love making the first move and find that The Dykes™ also enjoy that/find that attractive. i can't really imagine being or wanting to be with someone in any capacity (beyond like a one off hookup) that i wasn't already friends with (i guess this makes me demisexual technically? idek) so i just send friendly lil messages to people, tag them in things i think they'll like, and, if i'm interested, get a little flirty with it and see how they react. if it's positive, i do a little more, and so on. generally i figure out if they're open to it by looking at their other blog interactions - do they generally welcome nsfw interaction? how open are they with discussing crushes? and, crucially (for me) are they polyam? i suppose this is a weird kind of internet courting. those are the steps i follow.

[mpchev]

hello hello! welcome to my academic blog!

my name is marie! i'm currently doing a dissertation on fanfiction bookbinding!

[updated 9/7/2024]

the original purpose of this blog was to find research participants (you can read what my call for participants looked like here — thank you so much to everyone who liked, reblogged, and/or replied!!)

i now use it to reblog/store the resources I come across on tumblr and elsewhere relating to fan studies, folklore, and ethnology, and eventually share the results of my own research. i'm also trying to document the big steps of the dissertation (which will include binding a fic!), both for the auto-ethnography aspect of it and because academia is a weird place — as a first gen uni-goer + international student, i would have loved any extra info i could've gotten my hands on before getting into this, so if that can help anyone, yay! (and if you have questions, ask away!)

tags:

# fanbinding dissertation -> for anything that's directly diss-related

# fanbinding resources -> how-to's, inspo, lists of resources

# fanbinding lit -> everything i'll hopefully have the time to read and might want to cite/reference

more about me & how i ended up here:

i’m in my 30s, white, queer (bi, genderqueer, she/they), and physically disabled.

i first studied music (i used to play the accordion!)

then translation (that’s still how i pay the bills — we do not dream of labour, but as far as labour go, that’s a pretty sweet gig)

then linguistics (words are fake and we love them <3)

and now folklore and ethnology! (yes as in tales and legends, but more broadly as in culture in context, which includes online communities and vernacular crafts, hence the lovely dissertation topic)

i was a big harry potter fan growing up (my final linguistics paper was called expecto transphobia: a study of dogwhistles on twitter, we live and we learn)(at least some of us do, looking at you joanne) and i vaguely remember enrolling in online hogwarts circa 2005 (took notes and studied for the exams and everything), but i sadly wasn’t around for the golden/cursed days of 2010s tumblr, and i only recently fell (head first) into fanfiction. started with all the young dudes, currently reading some wolfstar, some ofmd, lots of good omens, lots sandman, some tma. also trying to follow along dracula daily. and i’m halfway through a supernatural rewatch, so who knows what the future holds.

if i’m not reading (neverending tbr of academic papers, fics, scifi novels old and new, folktales anthologies, epic poetry, translated plays in beautiful metres) or working, i’m probably trying to translate beowulf in french (not enough people have, it’s a fun story with monsters and dragons, more people should!), with star trek playing in the background.

open source resources are my love language (let me know if there's anything i might help with), the internet is my happy place (thank you for your contribution), transmediality gives me warm fuzzy feelings, folksonomies are works of art, my kingdom for a good AU.

header: The Concert by Gerrit van Honthorst (1623)

pfp: Watermelon and Grapes by John F. Francis (1863)

(both taken from the open-access collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington)

[on-a-lucky-tide]

Yea I get that, Sabaton is the only risky metal band I listen to because I really enjoy the beats and learning more historical contexts.

My top three are Resist and Bite, To Hell And Back, and The Last Battle.

I try to stay away from anything even vaguely right because my country has a horrific history with it(German), but Sabaton songs got me through some pretty hard times.

-same anon from a bit ago(Hi!! Really love Nikolai and your blog has the most amazing things with him)

Fantastic choices. I went and listened to Resist and Bite and it is 👌 also, the history is totally why I started listening to them. The Cliffs of Gallipoli was the first song I heard while I was a mere history student at university, and it stuck in my craw something fierce.

(I was the only queer in the military history units, which was fuckin' weird cause I was there for the uniform kink and the whole Aesthetic. Shock/horror, I was surrounded by a certain type of trilby-wearing straight arsehole... But my lecturer was... Hrggg, I still get hot for that man. My dissertation sat at the crux of military and cultural history and he actually referenced me in his fuckin' book because I did some unique research at the British library around cartoons and the transition from hearts of oak to ironclads in the British consciousness, which, brrrr.)

Oof, and I feel ya on the right-wing front. I know the AfD is getting boosted by Musk rn. Keep fighting the good fight, Non.

[ottiliere]

hello! ur posts on the vagus nerve and its connections to digestions have encouraged me to do a lil mini dissertation thingy kinda focused on it/around it, ur big thread on PVT and everything really piqued my interest when i read it and i just held onto it for like a year or smthing until like last week when i started the project. Ik u said recently in one of ur posts i believe that ur not going to post the big dirk PVT post and im not here to be like yo post it because i also think u said that ur kinda moving away from like hs/dirky stuff rn ?? (im forgetting if i saw that sorry) but yeah i just wanted to say thank u etc etc, like ive never done an ask before so sorry if this is phrased weirdly but ur blog is just like one of those blogs that fundamentally changed how i view certain things in life for the better lol, like whether its ur beautiful representations / depictions of mental health in like just beautifully painted art (seriously the way u make it look like idk how to word it cartoony/really 2d but then it stands out against the background + if u zoom in and see the tiny pixel details == it makes me mad) or just like the huggeee long form posts that i like to chew on and save cuz theres so many details that AFFAAT like the way you talk abt the topics u portray has made me concious of how i would want to do so in the same way ig u get me. anyway this got really long and idk if i come across coherently, but ur just a random person on the internet whos art and written thoughts that u decide to share makes me happy when i see it == makes me pace around my room and distract me from this fat essay lmao so tldr: i really appreciate what u do + i hope like that ur doing well and that u keep arting and thoughting no matter what it is that u choose to focus on

(uve made me comitted to reading jthm, playing psychonauts and giving jjba w/ dio another go lmao) 🫶🫶

Hello! I’m sorry this reply is coming so late, this ask in particular is very sweet and has stuck out to me.

I’m really happy to have introduced you to PVT, this is something I’ve heard from a few different people on here and it’s very sweet… I did my thesis on it in college and the time really flew by while working on it, things you don't think could possibly attributed to "nerve issues" being nerve issues is always an eye-opener, isn't it? being able to research things that interest you & access information in general really is a privilege in this day and age.

“The topics [I] portray” are very important to me, so it’s heartening when others take interest in spite of the obvious deterrents. A lot of what I love making art about is unpalatable to most, and while I do understand the reasons for that on principle, it can make things feel a little insular. I genuinely believe there’s a lot of value in depicting tableaus of misery.

The last year has brought a lot of very unforeseen changes, and my life is quite different from when I initially made this blog to post about him! That’s also part of why I’ve been so sparse here…though I’m working to change that quite soon. I love sharing my work, and I’ve had the privilege of meeting some truly wonderful people through this website. That said…with where I’m at now, I’m not sure I’ll be posting the Dirk essay anytime soon, I’m afraid.

I’ve undertaken a few ongoing projects, one of which in particular is an original project I plan on sharing publicly here hopefully within the next month or so. I hope it’s something you & anyone else who’s stuck around with me here will enjoy, but failing that, I’ve really enjoyed working on it thus far.

Thank you for the sweet ask, take care, and good luck with your project!

[orpheusbeheld]

Not sure what is with the live blogging this afternoon but currently zoning out in the sun instead of working on dissertation or essays like a good student..my burnout era continues. A small and very weird part of me was vaguely hoping I'd have some kind of serious heart problem that could get me out of writing my dissertation, but I'm normal thank christ

[liskantope]

Back in late 2020 I made a post which mentioned as a side comment the impression I get from a lot of the more aggressive SJ people that writing/saying a lot (e.g. writing long, nuanced, qualifying, and/or perhaps defensive-sounding responses) is seen as evidence in and of itself of being wrong in the argument, specifically the type of wrong that comes from a position of privilege (I thought a little later I wrote a short post focusing only on this, but I can't seem to find it now). The example in the above-linked post is in the strangely-proportioned screenshot, where someone who is being attacked for not bowing down to the Correct political opinions keeps responding with lengthy, articulate, nuanced comments (which include some acknowledgment of her own weaknesses) and is met only more vehement attacks declaring checkmate explicitly on the grounds that her comments are long. The end of the exchange happens when she leaves a comment raising her eyebrows at being attacked for long-windedness, and the entirety of the response is "...you and your privilege". It's a finale that's stuck with me.

I was reminded of this today when an unexpected spurt of activity showed up on my Tumblr: an activist with whom I got into a contentious exchange well over two years ago for some reason chose now to abruptly reblog a several of my lengthy responses with pithy remarks (okay, plus one which includes a link to her own independent blog post about it which I don't think I'd seen before), and a minor flurry of likes and replies followed. I don't care to reblog any of this now, or even link to it, because my getting into that debate is something I'm really not proud of: the topic is not a hill I want to die on, and I dislike my awkward defensiveness and repeated apologies and semi-retractions. If I'm going to spend time and energy arguing something really controversial, I would rather it be a discussion where I can be really incisive and not catch myself arguing carelessly and sloppily and feel the repeated need to step back and clutter everything with caveats and apologies. But, if you are curious, I was defending a YouTuber I respect from being cancelled for being Problematic, and this exchange happened in spring of 2021.

The one new bit of substantive information for me coming from today's activity is the link to a separate blog post written at the time, which further confirms that there's no point in me continuing to defend that YouTuber to this activist: apparently among the list of things that makes this YouTuber's case worse and confirms their guilt are (1) publishing an earlier video which made all of the exact right points but which (surprise, surprise) got noticed by more people than a written article by a lower-profile person from the Relevant Marginalized Group making essentially the same points, (2) acknowledging that the Relevant Social Justice Cause is a good one and including a link to a fundraiser, and (3) momentarily sighing with a slight look of exasperation when first bringing up the accusation of being Problematic in a video. (Sorry I'm continuing to be vague here.)

Continuing to argue with this activist would be a waste of time, since our rhetorical values and norms are clearly too far apart for us ever to reach each other. Looking at it makes me grateful to have found a part of Tumblr that does share my basic notions of how discussions should work.

But what strikes me most of all is how my lengthiness itself is somehow treated as evidence of my guilt or wrongness or privilege or something. One of my lengthy reblogs got met today with a single sentence mocking it as a "dissertation" and managing to weirdly characterize my thesis without explanation, while another later one got met with "Have you considered just.... never talking again? Because you are not good at it." Again, these little zingers were fired off probably within a few minutes earlier today, in response to things I wrote back in spring of 2021.

That's the exact same kind of back-of-the-hand dismissal that I mentioned above having witnessed done to someone else (with the "...you and your privilege" comment). It reads like "This person talks too much, that's how you know they're in the wrong, so no need to address any of their points, if I smack them with a one-sentence response saying 'Haha that just further confirms you're wrong!' then I win."

And it's like, usually I consider my ability at cognitive empathy to be quite good, but it's hard for me to figure out what the other party is actually thinking in a situation like this: I can sort of get my head around not respecting nuance in certain selective situations and thinking the ability to feel nuance is a sign of privilege or something, but I can't quite figure out how they justify these one-sentence blanket dismissals on the grounds that the other person's comments are too long without imagining that they must be aware on some level that they're just being domineering-in-an-internet-way and deliberately going for a cheap and empty slam-dunk. This isn't very charitable, but honestly I have a hard time understanding such people's motives any other way.

[claudehenrion]

Les dangereuses ''Européennes''

Que toutes les européennes, mes sœurs en origine, en histoire partagée (le plus souvent en se tapant sur la gueule, mais on dit que ça rapproche, à la fin du compte), en cultures --en réalité assez proches-- et en ''métissages croisés'', se rassurent : ce n'est en aucun cas contre elles que je porte ce jugement lapidaire. Elles, au contraire, je suis prêt à les aimer toutes, puisque nous voici unis dans ce qui risque d'être une catastrophe majeure de la grande Histoire : l'effondrement de la plus immense civilisation ayant existé ! Je parle, dans ce titre ambigu, des élections éponymes !

Et à notre habitude, je vais me hâter de mentionner leur importance exclusivement continentale pour aussitôt ne parler, limité par la taille de ce blog, que de leur aspect ''franco-français''. Sans que j'en tire la moindre fierté, je constate que tous les candidats et toutes les listes présentes à ces ''JO pour politicards éclopés'' (c'est un autre format du ''Paralympisme''!) semblent avoir les mêmes limites de taille que moi : pas un seul ne dit un mot des autres nations concernées, ni des autres peuples engagés dans la même quête d'un futur-que-l'on-cherche-dans-la-mauvaise-direction, la seule où on soit sûr de ne pas le trouver..

La question se pose aussitôt de savoir s'il est dans le rôle d'un pauvre petit ''blogueur'' de quartier de donner son avis, de recommander, ou d'exclure... et les lecteurs un peu anciens connaissent la réponse : ''Certainement pas'' ! A la rigueur, je puis dire à la petite communauté des lecteurs de ''Comprendre demain'' pour qui je vais voter, pourquoi je vais le faire et surtout pourquoi cet aveu n'engage que moi... mais cela va me permettre de critiquer sévèrement ceux qui n'ont ni la modestie, ni la prudence (ni l'intelligence ?) de ne pas confondre leur vide cérébral avec LA Vérité éternelle. En France, le journaliste moyen (et Dieu seul sait à quel point ils le sont, moyens !) semble avoir posé une fois pour toutes un signe ''égal'' entre ses pauvres idées, pour la plupart superficielles, absurdes, ou fausses, et ladite Vérité éternelle : Dame... tous sont de Gauche !

Avez-vous prêté attention à ce que blatèrent les soi-disant ''leaders'' (et principalement les ténors ou prétendus tels) de cette pseudo-campagne où je n'ai rien entendu qui réponde aux défis posés aujourd'hui ou pour demain ? Il ne s'agit que d'un vaste concours (si j'osais, j'ajouterais ''entre cons courts''!) pour savoir qui va oser la connerie la plus … conne contre ce que ces perroquets s'escriment à décrire comme ''l'extrême droite'' (NB : pour ces cuistres incultes, toute pensée à droite ne peut être que ''extrême'', puisque les idées fixes de la Gauche le sont, l'ont toujours été, en vont l'être de plus en plus, partie comme elle l'est... et que la Droite finit toujours par s'aligner sur elle !).

Nos finances sont à la dérive, notre industrie est ''au 36 ème dessous'', notre école foutue, notre sécurité intérieure insécure, notre diplomatie bafouée par la Terre entière, notre moral tombé au niveau de notre morale, nous sommes derniers en tout ou presque, rien ne va plus, aucune solution n'est en vue, nous sommes submergés par des vagues d'immigrants qui ne rêvent que de nous voir disparaître, on détruit l'un après l'autre les fondements de notre magnifique ''corpus'' civilisationnel, qualifié de mots incongrus pour les (mauvais) besoins de la (mauvaise) cause, et il ne tourne dans les têtes que de (très) mauvaises idées... Résultat : le pays avance comme un canard sans tête, sans but, sans direction, sans sens et surtout sans bon sens... Mais nos génies en rupture complète d'intelligence ne savent disserter, dans leur vide sidéral , que du fait que ''le projet des autres (= les imbéciles qui ne pensent pas comme eux) est flou, pas bon, pas clair, etc...''.

On croit cauchemarder : les bandes de bras cassés qui nous ont précipités, en moins de dix ans, des sommets dans le classement des nations à une place honteuse parmi les losers, les ratés, les nuls et les corrompus, qui n'ont rien proposé d'autre que des mauvaises solutions, qui ont fait, à peu de choses près, tout ce qu'il ne fallait pas faire... se permettent de se proposer, eux, comme solution pour demain, alors que la seule vraie question qui se pose est : ''Devant leurs résultats calamiteux, qui aurait fait pire ? Devant tant d'échecs cumulés et tous azimuts, on est en droit de se demander si on n'a pas eu tort de ne pas faire passer Marine le Pen à la Présidentielle précédente : même en admettant qu'elle ait été très limitée pour le job, tout permet de croire que Macron, le soi-disant ''Mozart de la finance '' (= le pire faux mozart qu'on puisse imaginer ! Même pas un Salieri !), a fait bien plus de mal qu'elle n'aurait pu en faire, dans les mêmes circonstances !

Disons-le tout crûment : la nullité encyclopédique de notre mozart en matière financière (citez-moi une seule bonne chose qu'il ait faite dans ce domaine ?), a totalement ''cramé la caisse''. Le tiroir est vide et on continue à promettre monts et merveilles à l'Ukraine... On continue à raconter des craques sur le covid... qui n'a pas été une catastrophe du tout (même leurs mensonges odieux ne convainquent plus personne) : ce qui a été catastrophique c'est la façon dont un problème extrêmement mal posé a été encore plus mal traité ! A l'étranger, après avoir détruit notre ''Corps diplomatique'', Macron a fait perdre tout crédit à la France, mais cela n'est rien : son inexpérience puérile nous rapproche chaque jour, par son orgueil mal placé, d'un méga-conflit que personne ne pourra plus contrôler : cette faute-là risque d'être définitive ! Arrêtons là : ça fait trop mal !

En face de ça, une gauche qui a perdu toute raison d'être est en train de nous rejouer le coup de l'ancien ''Parti de l'étranger'' par tropisme historique avec une extrême gauche qui n'a plus d'électeurs potentiels que parmi celles des populations immigrées qui refusent la France, la rejettent et la vouent aux gémonies... En face, la Droite –systématiquement (dis)qualifiée ''d'extrême'' par une Presse d'une malhonnêteté intellectuelle ''pas croyable''-- présente pour une fois des figures attrayantes : Bellamy est excellent et courageux. Propulsé au Pouvoir, il pourrait faire des merveilles, comme l'aurait fait Fillon sans ''le scandale d'Etat le plus honteux de notre histoire''.

II reste (''last but not least'', diraient nos amis britanniques) les tandems Marion Maréchal/ Eric Zemmour et Bardella/ Marine le Pen. Les deux jeunes ''loups'' ont beau être des ''louveteaux'', que de talents dans ces jeunes-là, structurés par les arcanes électorales au lieu d'avoir été isolés du monde réel par les bureaux bien chauffés de la Compagnie Rothschild. Je reste persuadé que ni l'un ni l'autre n'aurait fait aussi mal que les dégâts irrattrapables causés par le duo de cavaliers de l'Apocalypse que sont Macron et Le Maire.

Et puisque je vous avais promis de vous révéler ''mon'' secret de l'isoloir (étant entendu que ce n'est que ''mon avis personnel, que je partage''), c'est dans ce sens là que me portent mes envies. S'il n'y avait pas l'ombre portée de ''Marine'' derrière Bardella, j'aurais hésité longuement. Mais elle est là, et elle appartient tellement à l'ancien monde que je vais donc faire confiance (hors de toute fausse science électorale et de tout calcul soi-disant savant qui fait tourner le dos à ses convictions pour un vote qu'on croit ''utile'' mais qui se termine toujours en ''attrappe-couillon''), sur le concentré d'intelligence vraie et rare que constituent Zemmour et Maréchal pour essayer de dynamiter cette Europe pourrie, nocive, néfaste et mortifère dont, au fond, personne ne veut, et, semble-t-il, avec juste raison : il faut revenir aux fondamentaux, vite !

J'espère ne pas trop m'attirer les foudres de ceux qui pensent autrement. A ceux-là, je veux dire qu'un des facteurs initiaux de ma ''dérive dans ce bon sens'' a été dans l'immensité des reproches et critiques contre ces deux-là (qui n'ont jamais –je dis bien jamais-- été confirmés ni vérifiés) dont notre Presse gauchère se fait une spécialité... cette Presse sans foi ni loi dont dont il semble de plus en plus que ''il faut et il suffit de faire le contraire de ce qu'elle dit pour ne pas se tromper''.

H-Cl.

PS – J'aurais dû vous dire : ''A demain, pour des sujets plus pacifiés... ''. Mais (comme je vous l'avais annoncé la semaine dernière), il se peut que le nombre de km à parcourir pour aller d'un mariage à un autre me fasse faire ''faux bond'', demain. Je vous en demande pardon, si c'est le cas.

[losercomputers]

Miku, Kikuo, My Childhood.

Not to sound lame or anything, but I hold a special place in my heart for Hatsune Miku, specifically her features in Kikuo's discog. Though, I def feel like this is a given, being that I raised myself here on this very internet, exposed to anything and everything vocaloid (and just a bunch of cringe weeb shit, in general, lol), and that I like the color blue, and miku has that long ass blue hair haha.

But I guess my point here, especially regarding this blog, is that Kikuo (aka Asian melancholic btw) was a major catalyst in encouraging my current ongoing love for electronic music, and while in the midst of listening to Miku 4 earlier today, I had the sudden urge to start writing about it.

Now now now, let me just say that Kikuo is a fucking MASTER track-maker. Their compositions are just soooooooo blissful to listen to and his tracks pay great respect and homage to their rightful sub-genres of orchestral, DnB, synthpop, ambient, glitch, etc while simultaneously portraying highly cryptic and evocative imagery via his lyricism.

I think if it weren't for the language barrier (I know a very super minimal amount of Japanese), I would have very different perspectives on life right this very moment had I even had a vague understanding of what any of Kikuo's lyrics meant, and another thing that I love about Kikuo is their attention to detail and clever use of Japanese colloquialisms.

"If I fall to hell, I'll be saved. If I rise to heaven, I'll meet you again. I love you, begging to be constricted in comfort. I love you, gasping in a childlike voice, "Strangle me, More, more"."

LIKE?!?!???!?

Love and companionship may be the very death of us and yet we struggle for it so badly. We fight tooth and nail for it, even if it suffocates us, even if at times we know it is the martyr of breaking us down and building us back up over and over again. As humans, we love that bullshit.

;

However, this is only one of the lighter themes that Kikuo explores...

A lot of the narratives they depict are typically quite grotesque and/or abstruse. From tracks that explore themes of abuse and suffering to tracks containing discourse on the concurrence between intimacy and cannibalism, they do not hold back.

So I'll keep this short and sweet and wrap this up here (or else I'd end up writing an entire dissertation on this).

What once stemmed from an innocent love for vocaloid music has now blossomed into me writing whatever the fuck this blog post is, and also experiencing a series of several mini existential crises after unpacking and developing my own interpretations of Kikuo's tracks.

Here's to Life, Death, Love, and Kikuo.

AND MIKU OFC

[rcbertsugden]

A year since BBB and my entry to the show, here's my long and boring story of how I started watching because occasionally, I remember this is a blog and not just incoherent screaming.

I'm on tumblr, of course I'd known about it for years. I'd heard little bits, controversies, the Hen and Eva stuff had come up briefly on a tv site I follow, and obviously, I knew about Thee ship. I kind of vaguely followed lone star here and there, but the main show seemed messy, so I didn't really want to get involved - with either show really, to be honest. I looked at the tag when it trended occasionally, but pretty quickly, I'd blocked every tag associated with the show (no foul, I just didn't want it clogging my dash, as I do with many shows). I remember seeing the gifs after 7x03 with one half of thee ship touching some guy that nobody had heard of's arm and I was like, okay this seems like a stretch but I'll wait and see next week. (I also saw something about one of thee ship dying which confused the fuck out of me for far too long, I really hadn't looked at tumblr in a while!) And so on that fateful Friday, I logged onto tumblr not long after I'd woken up, just out of mild curiosity. And I was pleasantly surprised, if mildly... okay so I had preconceptions about the show and the concept of queerbaiting attached to it and as I've said, I'd heard about the controversies, so I think something just didn't fully fill me with joy at the win, even if I was happy for my mutuals who watched the show.

So, I decided to investigate. I wanted to challenge my assumptions about the show and work out how... how they'd got to bi Buck. I read some interviews, watched the Buck scenes in 7x04, and then went back to 7x03 to watch that stuff, too. I listened to some podcasts, read more interviews, and ended up watching the Tommy episodes in s2 (and This Life We Choose bc it also had Freddie in it).

All the while, I was working on my uni dissertation, and it seemed like a nice distraction, this investigation of a different kind. I watched Buck Begins and just started jumping around to build a picture of the show (I think there were a couple of comments on an old reddit post that highlighted important Buck episodes and good general episodes) - really early on I went for Full Moon, I guess because I remembered the Eva stuff?

I told my flatmate a few mornings after 7x04 how tired I was because I'd spent most of the night watching a show I was never going to bother actually investing in for research purposes. I honestly believed that as well. I made a list of episodes I'd watched and then 7x05 aired and I was awake so I thought, fuck it, and watched it live (still the only episode I've actually watched live). I still told myself I was doing this for research, though, until I watched Powerless, and that episode was a massive turning point for me. I needed to see the next episode, I couldn't keep jumping around. So I did. Chronological order from then on, until I finished s6 and looped back around. My entire April was spent on about 3 hours sleep, working on my dissertation for 8 hours and spending every other minute of the day watching or reading about the show.

I never did get into Thee ship on more than a basic level, much as I wanted to (I will still give the shooting, that remains insane to me and I will never argue that) but my research uncovered a really fucking brilliant show that I judged way too quickly. I'm so glad I have this show in my life. It's been my lifeline more times than I care to admit in the last year. So, thanks to Buck for being bi. You really made me eat my words on this one.

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

If these dead people (in the historical sources) could agree on a spelling of the word "französisch", that would be very helpful.

[anghraine]

One of the things I love about Austen's work is how layered it is and the various ways it can be interpreted by readers. Nevertheless, do you think we tend to lend too much to the romantic angle, particularly in the case of Pride and Prejudice, and neglect the biting satire of Regency life and social commentary of the status of women?

This may be a surprise (or not), but I actually don't think so.

It really depends on what you mean by "we." If you mean fandom circles, that's how fandom is about pretty much everything. I don't think Austen's commentary on Georgian culture is at all uniquely neglected, and fandom often ignores things that are more immediately pertinent to our lives than the failings of Georgian England.

For instance, I'm very fond of Rogue One fandom in general, but I find the fandom's treatment of politics and revolution much more anodyne than the actual film's because of this, and it does bother me at times. It's not to say that Austen's critiques and satire have no relevance to modern life, of course, just that in the grand scale of fandom fixating on ships, it's nowhere near the most objectionable case to me and I don't really mind.

Also, we don't always know what people are paying attention to outside of what we see from their blogs/fandom presence. You wouldn't know from my blog that P&P plays only a very minor part in my dissertation, say!

And if we're not talking about fandom but are including academics and such as well ... IMO Austen academics are, if anything, vaguely embarrassed about the romantic elements of Austen's writing (esp with regard to P&P, the most iconic of them all). They constantly work to tie those elements to satire, social commentary, and/or nuances of characterization to legitimize their presence. In my experience, there's not much sense that the romantic angles have value in themselves or are really worth focusing on.

And I'd add that I actually think it's more justifiable with P&P than any other Austen novel to focus on the romance, because it's so central to the structure, main characters, and themes of the book. That is not true of every Austen novel, or most Austen novels in my opinion. But it's center stage for P&P and I think fandom's sense of the romance as particularly essential to P&P and to the general appeal of P&P is quite accurate. That's also true of Persuasion, but P&P is much more cheerful and in some respects more polished, so it's not surprising that it matches fandom tastes so well.

[foxounderscorecube]

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline

¼⭐

I'm leaving a review at all because I really passionately hate it. It's probably one of the worst books I have ever read.

As a disclaimer, this isn't a book that appealed to me a whole lot conceptually. I did my dissertation on cyberpunk media and this was one of the books I read for it, and I really wish I'd read some of the other books I'd bought and never ended up getting round to instead. I finished it only because I couldn't let such a terrible book beat me.

The book follows Wade Watts, an insufferable young man, as he competes to find an Easter egg within the OASIS - the MMORPG everyone plays in Cline's vision of the future - and win a whole load of money. Wade is very poor and very sad and so he wants to win the fortune, and because he knows so much about video games and 80s culture (much like the creator of the game), he wins, obviously, and he kisses the girl he likes and everything is lovely and happy. A lot of critical literature I read for my dissertation spoke about how cyberpunk as a whole had a tendency to be a way for nerdy guys to write a fantasy story where they were really cool and powerful as a direct result for their nerdiness, and I'd say this particularly applies here.

The misogyny is really out there. It's that weird "nice guy" flavour of misogyny. Apparently, all the girls in the OASIS have avatars that either look like supermodels (read: too skinny for Cline's self-insert) or porn stars (read: too "fake" and large-breasted for Cline's self-insert). The girl Wade likes isn't like that. She's curvy. Nerdy, too. And Wade saves all the pictures of her avatar that she posts and stalks her obsessively for years, because, you know, normal behaviour. Yes, of course he ends up dating her. No, he never faces consequences for being a massive creep, unless you count a falling-out they have at one point where he wins her affection back by stalking her some more. As in, she blocks him on everything, stops posting on her very popular blog, so he visits her in-game home repeatedly to harass her, because he reckons that's really romantic. I reiterate: he never faces consequences for this.

Similarly, there's a degree of racism, mostly in the characters of Daito and Shoto, who are always going on about "honour" and are essentially walking stereotypes. Daito gets "disappeared" by Generic Big Evil Corporation in the real world, and Wade asks if he could have possibly killed himself after losing access to his avatar (on which he had made good progress in the Easter egg hunt, and maybe you can only have one avatar, I don't recall). Shoto says "No, Daito did not commit seppuku," because, you know, he's Japanese. Not like seppuku is a very specific form of ritual suicide or anything. The scene is meant to be very serious and dark, to my recollection, and it feels like a weird joke that doesn't land.

There was a missed opportunity, I think, in that Wade would have made a good main character for something satirical, or at least something where the overall goal of the story was for him to grow from his mistakes. Instead, he remains whiny, immature, and generally dislikable, and the most character growth we see is probably after a point where he becomes depressed and stays inside masturbating constantly, and eventually decides to stop doing that.

The book relies on the reader thinking "Hey, I get that reference!" very, very heavily, and so most scenes that are clearly meant to be really cool and epic end up reading as… a bit sad, honestly. I have my own niche and/or obsessive interests, and will never put people down for loving a franchise or whatever, but "Ooh, my car is the DeLorean from Back to the Future and also the Knight Rider car and it has the Ghostbusters numberplate!" is just, I don't know. A bit much, maybe. A bit fanfic.

The book tries to have a vaguely anti-corporate message, presumably because Cline felt that was needed as part of the cyberpunk-y vibe he was going for, but it falls on its face even conceptually when it is so indulgent in the consumerist nostalgia that's so prevalent in media currently in the real world. I personally think it's perfectly fine for a book to be fun fluff in general, don't get me wrong, but I still feel like the irony is worth mentioning.

If you like to get references and you miss the nerd culture of the 80s, maybe you will like this book. A lot of people do and I would guess there's a reason for it. If you want to emulate the experience of this book without actually reading it, then I recommend reading Reddit posts by lonely "nice guys" and switching to a tab to read an entire Wikipedia article about an 80s video game every so often. I'd say that'd be rather more fun.

[daughters-of-liberty]

Pro-choice aesthetic blogs out here being like "if you're pro-life, kindly unfollow me now! Fuck off!" Like, first of all, telling me to fuck off is not kind, but thanks. I needed that. Secondly, it's a free country, I can follow whomever the fuck I want. You do not have to interact with me. Do you know how many of my followers have furries or anime cat girls as their avatar? Do you think I go to their blog and interact? No. No, I do not, because the few times I've looked at some of my weirder followers blogs, I've seen shit I can't unsee. But, they apparently love my political hot takes and my aesthetic reblogs, so...

What I'm saying is...get the fuck over yourself. First and foremost, I am a political blog, not an aesthetic blog, I just reblog aesthetics to fill the spaces when I have nothing to say. If you are a photography blog or an aesthetic blog, that is what you are, above all else. And you can reblog your shit political takes, because it's your blog, and I ignore them for the most part. They may inspire a post, like this one, but I'm only going to reference what you said vaguely, not reblog what you said and write you a fucking dissertation on why you're wrong. It's your blog, post what you want.

But telling your followers to unfollow because of a difference of opinion, and further telling them to fuck off, is completely illogical. You are on a social media platform. You will interact, or merely cross paths, with people with whom you may wildly disagree. Such is life. Pull your head out of your ass and just ignore us. Like you probably do 98% of the time, anyway. Carry on, business as usual.

[werebiyourside]

Bi-Erasure (Part Two) - Fandoms' Faults

Though respect works on both sides of the screen. To build off of my last blog, while the writers themselves need to get more educated on the matters of bisexuality and their representation in media, the fans developed from these media also needs to respect bi characters. Sadly, whether or not because of the stereotypes presented onto these characters, or whether or not the vagueness of their orientation leaves headcanon to skew one way or the other, the fact of the matter is that the collective’s voice matters as well.

Case in point, de Barros (2020) look on two pieces of supernatural media (The Hunger and Buffy The Vampire Slayer) shows how both medias were praised for strong lesbian relationships, while dismissing the fact that each women did engage in romantic and/or sexual relationships with men as well. Both pieces of media were praised in their modern handling of the female relationships, fighting against stereotypes of their time and trying to be more progress, open, and overall wanted by both characters. Yet, while these are very good progressive steps for lesbians, both critics and fans erase the male encounters - Miriam in The Hunger had a long, devoted relationship to her partner John before he passed, and is revealed to have had both many male and female lovers in the past; Willow in Buffy had relationships in the show be men (her best friend, and then another prominent character, before she then fell in love with her partner Tara. Both medias also erase their bisexuality themselves, either by not being detailed or, in the case of Buffy, the character claiming to have been gay now instead of bisexual (pp.106-108). This kind of erasure is what fuels the fire for fandoms and critics to only see one side of the story, when in reality there’s multiple paths these characters’ orientations can take.

Then there’s the massive amount of examples in Cocarla’s “Straddling (In)Visibility” (2016). From the term “bisexual chic” gaining rise in the 1970s and then again in the new century - a time of sex revolution and many a celebrity coming out as such - many articles paraded bisexuality around as “the new sex style”. Yet there was merely interest and intrigue into the bi community and away from boredom, rather than truly supporting and learning about the bi community and all the terminology. A fad, and nothing more (pp.87-90). The plethora of tv shows and movies they also point out as erasing bisexual identities through fandom interpretation of acts or mere writing flaws, or the thought that characters could be bisexual outside of more homosexual or heterosexual mainstay relationships (pp.93-109) fervently and rapidly displays the sheer lack of diverse or respectful bi orientations. 

No matter if it’s the writers’ lack of context or detail, or fandom interpretation becoming law, the representation of the bi community in media needs to be respected and brought out more so into the light. No more vagueness and ambiguity, or characters being skewed in such a way through writing or representation that they can only be one way or the other. The media at large needs to be bi our side on this, or else no progress will be made on shedding light on the bi community.

Citations

de Barros, A. C. (2020). “Gay now”: Bisexual erasure in supernatural media from 1983 to 2003. Journal of Bisexuality, 20(1), 104-117.

Cocarla, S. (2016). Straddling (in) visibility: Representations of bisexual women in twenty-first century popular culture (Doctoral dissertation, Université d'Ottawa/University of Ottawa).