#gateway drug lol

[dropoutfailure]

you know, I used to only like the most wholesome socially acceptable relationships (although, looking long enough at something, you will find problematic aspects in anything ever) and was against shipcest until osomatsu-san came along and my comfort zone expanded ... because. well. there’s nooooo way those socially isolated NEET idiots didn’t explore each other’s bodies. no way in hell

[unitt-10]

Thinking about how one fictional character imprinted on me at such an integral time in my human development (middle school) and now all my favorite characters are just the same character in different fonts.

[intergalacticgoose]

I am very glad a post I made about social contagion and Steam Powered Giraffe is finding its audience.

BUT.

Even though this was intended as a joke, I have thought about it since and did see some things in tags that made me want to clarify what I mean by “social contagion” versus what I called “the station” in my tags. Someone used “gateway drug,” which is also apropos. Because there is a very crucial difference between the two, I think, and I want to make sure nothing I said gets misconstrued by the wrong people.

When cishet people say being queer is due to social contagion, what they’re saying is that were it not for exposure to queerness, or deviance, in media or in public life, people would default to Straight. That’s why they’re working so hard to scrub queerness, or any hint of queerness, from the public sphere.

But the thing is, they wouldn’t be so afraid of queer exposure if cishetness was that ingrained, right? It’s not that people are being exposed to lgbtq+ people or content and suddenly becoming queer, they already were or it was through that exposure that they realized they were. Those are completely different things.

It’s like going through your life being told you only have to be options A or B. There’s no other options, you’re A or B. But then one day you see option C and you’re like “woah, nobody told me about C, that looks way more comfortable/authentic” or “woah, I’m totally C, why did nobody tell me about that? If I don’t have to try so hard to be A or B anymore, I won’t.”

The humor for me is just how, to me, blatantly obvious, like it is a verifiable, Googleable fact that gender, sex, and sexuality are complex and largely social constructs and that binary gender is a pretty recent Western phenomenon, and yet conservatives (and centrists, even some Dems I hate to say!) are acting like social media is creating queerness, and it’s like no, more people are just more likely to see option C, D, and Etc. these days.

And it’s the type of things they’re trying to ban. Like, if the cisheterosexual institution can’t hold its own against a short haircut, certain colors, people kissing, or, in the case of my post, 2-4 singing robot mimes, perhaps the institution was not that strong to begin with!!! That’s just how people found their option C, and that’s a good thing!! More of that!! That they can’t see how obvious this is, that’s what’s absurd to me.

The thing is, before social media, people found ways before. They found their stations in other people, people whose genders they felt more aligned with their own, in spiritual centering, in nature, in everything. They wrote secret notes, experimented in private, tried new clothes on, and gave each other secret names. Queer people, trans people, nonbinary people, everyone else, have always been here.

Even if they ban queer lit from every public school (I hope they don’t, and they most definitely shouldn’t, but this is a catastrophic example), we will continue to find our ways out of this sour little cage of cisheteronormativity. Whether they like it or not.

[brutermonger]

Not peeps on twitter discovering Blue Submarine No .6 because progtag Tetsu Hayami is a Wolfwood "lookalike" 😵💀🤣

But seriously it's a great series even if the source material is damn near impossible to track down (1967 manga and 97' manga) the 4 part OVA series is a dystopian sci-fi treat. There's two video games that may have never been released outside Japan (good luck finding those). A favorite watch for me cause I loved the creature designs and it's an entertaining sci-fi romp. Blend up The Island of Dr Moreau, Waterworld, post climate crisis, battle subs and you got the gist of the series.

Go Give it a Watch 📺😁

[pencilscratchins]

I may or may not have scrolled through your entire avatar tag bc I love your art for it so much and I found out you were team zukka before it got really popular with the avatar renaissance (as far as I’m aware?? Maybe it was popular this whole time and I never noticed) anyways how does it feel to be a visionary with a massive brain

LMAO THANK YOU SO MUCH YES! im incredibly proud that my early zukka support is a part of my legacy. i was one of the few repping zukka on avatarspirit.net back in the day (if you remember AS.NET you are a member of an AARP) it was definitely NOT popular before the renaissance. the fandom wasn't hostile to it, per say, before that but it was barely considered in the top 10 ships. (theres a lot of old drama here i could get into but i shant lmAO) seeing it grow during the renaissance was such a joy and im so happy to be a part of that at all, not to be corny.

[misteria247]

The 87 turtles were around when artists like Prince, Michael Jackson, Wham and a few other 80s iconic artists.

Imagine them showing the other turtles these iconic artists.

[danhausensboots]

Mox smooches

[bisonofyesterday]

I've been reading a lot of conspiracy theories lately for fun and it's wild, sure, a glimpse into the mind of an insane person, but honestly it does kinda get boring after a while once you recognize all of the tropes

It's a real thing that happens and it was a fear for me at first but now? I genuinely don't get how "conspiracy reading for fun" could act as a pipeline to being a conspiracy theorist, like are you stupid?? Were you already susceptible to this brand of thought??? Literally all of these are either odd interpretations of economics, wishful thinking, reboots of antisemitism, or just plain regular bullshit, and like it's really easy to see that, like all of this is dumb, people who believe this are dumb, it's absurd

Fantastic fiction though, these could be good books or games or movies, and like that's what they are and that's their primary audience, people who want to pretend they're the protagonist of a movie, of a grand plot, every bad thing doesn't just happen or are perpetrated some random disturbed people! It's an organized movement at the top of everything responsible for every bad thing ever to keep us in line! It can be a kind of anti-religion in that sense, malevolent gods are better than none

There HAS to be gods at the top of it all, who put ridiculous references to themselves in everything and monolithically control the entire world, because if no one is in control, then that'd be terrifying

[skyburger]

i know their asses are fake music fans i know wamuu has never heard a single george michael song hes never even heard wake me up before you go-go. esidisi doesnt even KNOW about highway to hell. kars is also there

[scalpelsister]

Aja Volkman of Nico Vega, photography by Bryan Greenberg

[baddingtonbitch]

I recently got my hands on the DVD of Alptraum im Airport/Midnight Flight, a TV movie from 1998 featuring Giovanni Ribisi about a woman stranded overnight in a German airport and being targeted by terrorists after witnessing one of them sabotaging a plane. It was filmed in Germany and Belgium and while it was originally in English, it was only released on DVD in German.

Before now I was only able to find and rip a low quality version on youtube with the original audio but the DVD, while not having an English audio track (or even a menu) is a major upgrade in visual quality as you can see when compared side by side, it's clearer, more saturated, has a higher level of contrast and detail, and most importantly is not awkwardly cropped.

There are some odd choices made by the voice actor providing Giovanni's German dialogue, in some scenes they seem to be trying to make the delivery more subtle or lowkey but given how strange and over the top the original script and performance can get when dialogue gives way to grunting, screaming, and gagging, the contrast just makes it even stranger. There are moments where the absurdity of the writing and Giovanni's over the top performance make any kind of restraint a non-option but the voice actor seems unsure of how to match his theatrics so the end result is like a baffled, self conscious imitation of unhinged overacting. When Giovanni is waving a gun and shrieking at the man i can't decide which version of the audio is funnier.

There are also some editing changes like when Giovanni's character is killed it's much more gruesome in the original. The DVD version shortened the scene, cut out most of the blood and the severed thumb, and the voice actor once again tried to tone it down by omitting the screams and paring down the choking noises but like in previous scenes, the end result is just odd.

It was pretty interesting seeing how different the two versions are and seeing it in its highest available resolution all these years later. The DVD I ordered came sealed and in pristine quality so I'm not sure when it was released, most likely some time after the film aired on TV, but even then it's just been sitting unsold and forgotten somewhere for maybe 20 years. The English audio in its original quality is probably lost to time but I'm planning on digitising the DVD version and transplanting the ripped version's audio onto the higher res video so that both spoken versions exist with decent picture quality.

[curemoonliite]

i haven't seen kiki's delivery service since i was like tiny tiny but my anime subscription box gave me a whole-ass kiki's lunch set and i get the distinct feeling the world really wants me to rewatch it lol

[evilwriter37]

Roxanne/Megamind was my first enemies to lovers with an age gap ship.

[six-of-ravens]

made a little Halloween nook in my comics/manga shelf. previously my shojo manga and a bunch of random knickknacks were there, but it looked super crowded and was annoying me for some reason so I changed things up

[beebonkbiki]

hello are you the person who wrote the wataei with the robot wataru fic on ao3 . i would just like you to know that ever since i read that fic it has been on my mind 24/7 thank you so much

i am!! im so glad you like it that au was genuinely my gateway drug into this fandom ive had it sitting around FOREVER

[somebodycallixii]

YESSS GET TO KNOW MINGIIII <3

I MEAN THE PURPLE HAIRRRRR COME ON NOW mingi you have bewitched me body and soul.