#gidget talks

[mathmagical]

i love baby yoshis so much. They give off such lazy asshole energy compared to how happy grown yoshis are

its like if an ancient asshole cat who eats all your food digivolved into a 2 month old golden retriever

[kyriey]

lil gidget comic under the cut for the OW fanwork contesttttt

i swear to god if tumblr kills the quality. ive never posted an image this... long... so rn it looks kinda pixel-y. but it looked normal before????? I'm a little dumb but its okay

[potatochip-oc-dump]

what if we were both lonely

[itsthesinbin]

woke my dog up and i guess her mouth was dry bc her lips were just stuck like that

[steamanband]

I'm the #1 Gidget fan I think about them All The Time as if we see them do anything but be like "Rav wtf are you on"

[love-and-i-am]

The Prism Archive: Manson Interviews

Manson: Olivia Newton Bundy

Manson: Gidget Gein

Manson: Daisy Berkowitz

[brimk-personal]

I took Gidget out for a quick potty break a few minutes ago, and there was a group of three (assuming 2 girls, 1 guy) sitting and chatting in the main lobby for my side of the building. They seemed fine, at least one of the girls pointed out Gidget to the group, cooing

We were outside two minutes, tops, and when we got back in, one of the girls was bailing, with her friends trying to calm her down. I brought Gidget back up to the apt, and ran back down to give them an extra box of tissues I had

I didn’t want to be weird so I just got one of the friends’ attention and handed them off, and skedaddled off back to the elevators, but from the snippets I heard in the two passings, I think she just went through a break up. I for sure heard the female friend firmly telling her to “not call him” and the girl saying something about “- - loves me” while crying

I feel so bad for her, I’m guessing they all have roommates and that’s why they’re in the lobby in the first place, so she’s stuck there even if her friends could help guide her to the elevators =(

[robins-egg-bindery]

ever in your favor by @iron--spider

Peter startles awake when someone shakes him. 

“Sorry, honey,” May says. Peter blinks a couple times and she comes into focus, her hair pulled back from her face. She’s trying not to look a certain way, but he can see it in her eyes anyway. She clears her throat, keeps talking. “But it’s…” She glances away, wets her lips. “You gotta get ready.”

He remembers what day it is, and his heart beats like a drum at someone’s execution. But he tries to put on a mask, make it all seem normal. It’s everything but, despite the fact that he’s been dealing with reaping day since he was born, between himself, Ben and May. That fear that one of them could be taken away. Sent to surefire slaughter. But now Ben is gone, taken despite never having his name drawn from a bowl, and May’s finally safe. Now Peter’s name is in there alone. The last Parker sitting on the chopping block. He doesn’t know how to be. He doesn’t know what normal is, when the Hunger Games are looming on the horizon.

fic by @iron--spider

art by @angel-gidget

624 pages / 153,984 words

Title Font: PP Hatton, Rustic Printed

Body Fonts: Californian FB, Moonglade, Bebas Neue, War Is Over, Architects Daughter

More on the process below the cut!

I have...SO much to say about this project! This fic was one that I've wanted to do ever since I started fanbinding, and it was one I saved until my technical skills caught up with my vision for the book. @iron--spider is my favorite author and a wonderful friend, and I wanted to be able to do this masterwork justice!

Given that it's a Hunger Games AU, I wanted to touch on the Hunger Games aesthetic while still being unique. I started with the cover; I knew I wanted red and yellow, something bold and evocative of the Iron Man, Spiderman vibe. It also doubles as an implication of the blood spilt during the games, especially in volume II - when Peter actually enters the games. I chose the spider for the cover, and painted it on the cover paper with inky black paint; I cut a stencil, and while the images did have some drippy areas, I don't mind it so much. It's meant to look like graffiti, Peter's symbol that the people of the Districts scrawl everywhere they can get away with it.

In turn, I also experimented with a paint pen on this one of the titling, done on the spine piece, which is black Better Than Goat leather! Again, I went in with a stencil, and opted for blockier letters, like something you might see spray painted onto a wall.

The endpapers are custom; I messed around with a weird cityscape I found and came out with the image you see above. The setting for the games is a futuristic city, much like MCU NYC would be, complete with an Avengers Stane tower.

And then of course, there's the typeset itself! The Hunger Games books don't have particularly striking typesets, but I did go for the dystopian vibe with the Rustic Printed font on the chapter numbers, and Moonglade for the chapter titles, giving it a very industrial feel.

It was also a pleasure to include the art that @angel-gidget did for the fic as well! Her book covers are so gorgeous and I love her manip style so much <3 I also included the short drabble @iron--spider did on her Tumblr, a post-story snack-sized fic, as well as a meta question she answered via her asks that I thought was particularly interesting. The District guide at the back, including what Districts each character belongs to and whether or not they are deceased was interesting to put together, and I hope I didn't make any mistakes!

Last, but certainly not least, this book was the first one I was able to do really nice headbands on. Shoutout to @morningstarbindery who helped me learn how! They look phenomenal and I never would have figured it out on my own <3

I'm excited for everyone to see these books! One day I'll have all your works on my shelf ;)

[rhythmicjester]

💜💜🥳🥳🥳🥳 HAPPY BIRTHDAY GIDGET!!!!!! 🥳🥳🥳🥳💜💜

(this was meant to post yesterday actually during their bday but tumblr shat itself ARRRGHHHH… alas..)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY FAVOURITE OUR WONDERLAND CHARACTER WHOM I LOVE WITH ALL MY HEART 🥹🥹💜 featuring my lovely friends who enable my insanity

edited floaty gidget and me being stupidly sappy n rambley under the cut..

okay so I started playing our wonderland like a year ago now and safe to say its like totally taken over my life 🥹 and gidget. aagh. gidget. aagh. aaagh!!!!

im really bad at articulating stuff (probably on account of my mental impairment but… YKNWO… XD) and there is lots of feelings and thoughts and agh gidget. GIDGETTT!!!! i will try my best to word

our wonderland as a whole has grown to mean a shit ton to me (but ill talk more abt that at length in a later post) and i love all the characters so so fucking much and especially gidget and iggy. especially gidget, oh gidget has thieved away with this aching heart of mine. or something.

im always extremely drawn to n obsessed w characters and storylines around like… a self suppression, muting, coiling up into some unreal ideal and reality so deeply it becomes some 'new reality', until you can barely see yourself anymore…. im crazy abt that shit. it rules. and gidget is all that. and also just a silly illy billy booly looly who i want to put in my mouth and chew up like a wad of paper. uh

i think about them like all the time 24/7 366 (cause its a leap year!) and im always like. thinking on new angles and perspectives and little intricacies and probably a solid 80% of it is just all in my head but god. i love them sm they are so awesome n well written n silly n WAAAAAAAAAAAGH

i love gidget so much. i love our wonderland so much. thankyou carrot so much for your wonderful phenomenal storytelling, characters and art, im like consistently entranced and blown away by it istg.

again, HAPPY BIRTHDAY GIDGET!!!!!!!!! 🥳🥳🥳💜💜💜🥹 and i hope all of you have very fantastic days. i luv this game n fandom n gidget so much. life may be very stormy and dark and scary but oh it truly is joyous i think. but maybe thats a little too sappy even for me

i eep now

goodnight !

(oh and heres the floaty gidget. im really proud of how it turned out. i keep on flying around the print out of it and saying 'look they have smelled some delicious pie…' i am a very predictable and simple person.)

[just-a-carrot]

What would Iggy do with his L’s on Valentine’s day?

I ASSUME THIS MEANS LOVE INTERESTS?? LKDJFALDKFA otherwise am unsure what L could mean, so i'll just go with that

I GOT A BIT INTO THIS

With Genzou: I feel like Genzou is the one out of the three that would make the least big of deal out of Valentine's Day in general. Mostly because Genzou doesn't make a big deal out of most things and doesn't like a lot of extravagant stuff. If he and Iggy were dating (but not living together), he'd probably invite Iggy over for the night and cook something. He would pretend it's not a big deal at all but he'd probably be rather nervous about it turning out good. And they would exchange gifts. And Genzou would probably have gotten Iggy something Iggy had casually mentioned in their convos at some point and/or something he simply knows Iggy will like probably game or Kirby-related. And then they'd have a relatively low-key evening just spending time together. At some point Genzou would probably casually instigate a cuddle and potentially rub Iggy's back while Iggy is draped over him or something... I think that would be very sweet 😌 And then they'd go to bed and Genzou would probably work himself up to say something sappy that he would immediately regret and feel embarrassed about but Iggy would laugh at him and say it's very sweet and then they'd fall asleep all curled up under the covers.

With Orlam: THE OPPOSITE OF LOW-KEYYYYYYY. Orlam would organize everything extravagantly. First, Iggy would get suddenly picked up from his apartment in a limo. He'd be so overwhelmed and confused already. Perfect. The limo would drop him off at the fanciest gaudiest establishment ever. Extremely black tie. Where Orlam would have booked them a private curtained-off table on one of the balconies. It would be a 5-course set meal. Afterwards, they would drive around in the limo for a while to let the food settle. Probably drink some wine. Listen to The Greatest Love Songs of All Time. Orlam might instigate some random silly game to get Iggy all flustered. Then they'd go dancing at some high-class establishment until they're so tired they can barely stand. After which the limo would take them back to Orlam's apartment (ofc). Which would have been pre-decorated with flowers and he'd already have romantic music playing over the Sonos. Depending on their tiredness levels (and Orlam's luck perhaps), he might at this point be able to convince Iggy to take a bath to relax and Orlam would was his hair and it would be very sweet lkajdlkfa And then afterwards, they'd curl up together in bed and Orlam would run his fingers through Iggy's hair until they both fall asleep.

With Gidget: Gidget's I could see as being somewhere between the extremes of Genzou's and Orlam's. Not quite as low-key as Genzou's but ofc not nearly as extravagant as Orlam's LOL I could see them planning something special, like a night out to a concert or show or some special valentine's day themed event. Maybe it would even be dinner and a show. But if not, then they'd also catch dinner somewhere first. It would be somewhere rather relaxed but that both of them love. And within walking distance of the event so they could have a cozy little stroll there while holding hands, I think that would be very sweet lkajdflad They would have both agreed beforehand that they're not going to get each other gifts. But then after the event, Gidget would reveal something cute and small they got for Iggy because they physically couldn't not get him a gift LOL And this would make Iggy feel awful, but Gidget would insist it's fine and they'd share a sweet moment. Afterwards, they'd come back to Gidget's apartment and have some drinks and snacks while talking and maybe playing a silly board or card game. Then they'd finish up and go to sleep all cuddled up in bed.

[stellareveriey]

My Positive Rambly Thoughts About The Our Wonderland Arc 5 Finale

(Spoilers for OW Arc 5,bad grammar,self-indulgent/personal thoughts -nothing crazy though!-)

Here are my thoughts on the Arc 5 Finale of Our Wonderland and the game as a whole! (This is long and very rambly as I was still processing everything that happened!)

the beginning of the end. I like the group of four’s interaction in the cabin. it was nice. poor iggy though,remembering what happened. gidget too (even though they caused it). gen and orlam remembered things too but were too caught up in arguing with each other lmao. good on gidget for breaking that up.

“don’t I…deserve to be warm?” yes! you absolutely do iggy! unfortunately I had to choose the neutral option since I think my game glitched out my progress and my affection was too low for everyone..(it’s fine I’ll make up for it later!) at least iggy realizes that he needs to focus on himself for once! good!

I can’t lie when the screen went dark and Iggy mentioned being wrapped in something hard,I thought it was because Bucks got him (I was wrong of course).

“good morning starshine! the earth says hello!” lmao I love genzou (/platonic).

I liked the shot of the door opening and everyone’s reaction to it. when I saw the monster I had no clue what it even was at first and denied the idea that it could be bucks out of bewilderment (oh how wrong I was…). “we don’t stay long after that.” yeah I wouldn’t either! genzou leaving his beanie as good luck was cute and bittersweet. not going to lie I was kinda frustrated when Iggy’s friends acted reluctant about Iggy having a weapon (he can’t have self defense?? and then he ended up saving them w/ a necklace anyway!).

the “defeat it” part caught me off guard (like a lot of things in this arc would/pos). the game is very good at creating a sense of dread! and then..there was that monster that I thought was crazy even for wonderland standards. the last way I thought arc 5 bucks would look,the monster design is incredible though and that roar is terrifying! the fight scene was very impressive! it’s cool how it’s so dynamic even just using sprites and effects! also THE OFW REFERENCE?! that’s awesome to see tied in the main game again!

Iggy’s hand being cut off while using the doll to reach bucks genuinely made me gasp (the sketchy artstyle of that scene looks nice though!). the screen going red after that is really effective for conveying pain and terror. the sight of his injured hand is brutal. seeing the flashback of the group as kids and bucks and Hunar being cute gave me the strongest emotional whiplash ever. i felt bad for Bucks getting called a monster by her friends,brothers,and even her husband later down the line. Her going from happy to miserable. Her saying she hates her life and breaking down.

“You’re not a monster,Bucks…So please just come home…” Her seeing Hunar in Iggy and hugging him was beautiful. And then…finding the tree. God. Saydie never deserved any of this. She was a baby. I can’t imagine how Carrot felt while drawing that,seeing it uncensored. That tree is the absolute worst. Iggy being seen as a vessel is so sad. Him getting his soul separated from his body was not something I expected at all.

The “Child Of Nihility” stage is my absolute favorite part of this arc and probably the entire game overall. It’s so bright and peaceful. Child Saydie is adorable. Seeing her reunite Iggy with his (younger) friends and himself was really heartwarming. I adore when a story has the main character talk with the younger version of themself in person. Side note: Child Genzou wishing he could see Iggy again was so sweet. The music starting up already made me emotional since I already recognized the song but the visuals and Saydie’s dialogue made even more so. Iggy breaking the 4th wall and making his own choice was remarkable!

Him cutting down the tree was both tragic and incredible. Seeing the creatures of Wonderland fade away too. Young Iggy’s wish of wanting his friends to be happy forever. Best animatic / cutscene in the whole game!

A younger Iggy seeing his childhood friends again in the forest felt like a fitting way for them to leave Wonderland behind. The Saydie doll speaking back and being kept makes me like she’s not fully gone which is bittersweet to me. This scene and the epilogue makes me think their lives got reset but I could be wrong.

The neutral end epilogue. Bucks and Hunar leaving their own wedding was funny and sweet. Good for them! Also Hunar is pretty in his dress! And the better reactions to things in childhood! Past Iggy apologizing for what he did! Letting Orlam sit with him! Being with Genzou in the hospital! It’s all so great! Everyone’s new futures too! Iggy even having a better connection with his friends and discovering himself! The epilogue even ends with a Our Cinderella tie in! I love it all! Beautiful!

Final thoughts. This arc and game was a emotional rollercoaster in the best way possible! Making me feel sadness,anger,joy,sympathy,and more! Everything is so well executed! Art,music,dialogue,story,all of it! I especially loved the animatic / cutscenes parts! Overall,this was an amazing way to end an amazing game. I’ve loved it since starting it in February 2023 to now :)! Through playing OW,I’ve even gotten my artistic motivation back and have been inspired to get back into storytelling/series making! For that,I thank you,Carrot! I hope to experience more of your work in the future (no pressure! you definitely deserve the break)! Have a great day and year! ❤️ @just-a-carrot

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Joseph Burgo, Ph.D.

Published: Jan 17, 2024

As my thoughts began to coalesce around the subject of this essay–adolescents in history rebelling against their parents–memories of an old movie from my childhood kept coming to mind. Even readers who haven’t seen it have probably heard the name–Gidget, a low-budget California beach movie starring Sandra Dee, James Darren and Cliff Robertson. It was released in 1959 and spawned two film sequels, two TV series, and several made-for-television movies. In early December of last year, I tracked down the original Gidget on YouTube and watched it again–some 50 years after I’d first seen it.

The title character’s obsession with surfing, and her transformation from tomboy to infatuated teenager and finally to wise young woman don’t concern me here. It’s the subplot focusing on two other characters that resonates with my subject matter. Kahuna, a man somewhere in his late 20s or early 30s, lives in a shack at the edge of a surfing beach. After serving as a pilot during the Korean War, he has decided to drop out of society and live as a bum, following the sun and traveling the world in search of waves. His only true companion is a parrot named Flyboy, although the gang of teenage surfer boys who hang around him that summer look up to Kahuna as their leader.

One of those surfers, nicknamed Moondoggie, is home for the summer after his freshman year at college; he has resolved to drop out instead of returning to campus in the fall, team up with his hero Kahuna, and pursue the life of a beach bum. Both men have rejected the rules-driven adult world. Neither wants the responsibility that comes with adulthood, viewing it as a kind of prison. In a gesture of defiance, Moondoggie tears up the allowance check he has received from his father and vows to go it alone.

[ Sandra Dee as Gidget (left), James Darren as Moondoggie (middle), and Cliff Robertson as The (Big) Kahuna (right) ]

In 1959 when this film was released, Western Civilization was on the verge of major social upheaval as youth culture began challenging long-standing social norms about sexuality, marriage, and family. But there on the cusp of this revolution, Gidget’s world seems confident that the generation of young people coming of age will eventually submit to the values of their parents. At the outset, Moondoggie and Kahuna are both adolescents rejecting the authority of the existing social order; but in the end, they embrace it. Kahuna gets a job as a pilot. Before returning to college, Moondoggie gives Gidget his pin, a promise of future marriage and a new generation of children to come.

Adolescents rebelling against the authority embodied in an existing social order and eventually becoming reconciled to it—this is a story we’ve been telling for generations.

By identifying as “trans” in today’s youth culture, adolescent rebellion has found a new way to express itself. I don’t want to be simplistic about the society-wide dynamics here. There are other obvious factors involved: a permissive social order in which it’s hard to find any behavior extreme enough to count as true rebellion, for example, and a social media landscape that makes teens feel insecure, insignificant, and desperate to prove they’re unique. But here I want to talk about the way a rebellion against authority can fuel trans-identification in our children.

My 16-year-old client Sophia, for example, had given her parents no trouble as a younger girl. For most of her childhood, she’d been a respectful daughter and a good student. Because her family had moved around quite a bit due to her father’s shifting business, she hadn’t made close friends and rarely socialized outside the family. Her mother had always taken an active interest in Sophia’s schoolwork and athletics. And then one day, Sophia announced that she was trans, told them she wanted to be called Finn, and insisted that her parents use he/him pronouns.

I’ve had other female clients with a nearly identical background, and I’ve heard similar stories from other parents who’ve consulted me about their trans-identified teens. The announcement often comes out of the blue following a mostly non-conflictual childhood, causing a lot of angst and opening a rift between child and parents. Nothing the parents say–no evidence they bring or logic they apply–makes any difference. The child rejects it all from a place of absolute certainty. “I know I’m trans,” they’ll say. “I’ve always known it.”

These children have often been a bit different from the other kids, struggling to fit in. Maybe they were highly gifted or on the autism spectrum. They might just have been “quirky” and beloved for it by their parents. But especially during the teen years, the need to belong to one’s peer group overrides almost everything else; and as American teens have done for generations, these quirky kids reject the values of their parents for new ones held by other kids their own age, especially as they pertain to sex and gender.

Back in the 1970s, Goth became the dominant form of youth rebellion. The Goth scene rejected traditional sexual mores while celebrating new and occasionally deviant forms of sexuality. There are obvious similarities between that movement and today’s transgenderism. Dr. Az Hakeem, a British psychiatrist with extensive experience treating gender distress, has actually referred to Trans as “Goth 2.0.”

The main difference between the two is obvious, however: teens and young adults immersed in Goth might have pierced or tattooed their limbs, but they didn’t have healthy body parts removed by surgeons. They no doubt consumed illicit drugs, but not off-label anti-cancer medications and cross-sex hormones that may leave them sterile. Once they grew out of Goth, young adults were probably left with a few embarrassing tattoos or piercings but no other visible scars, unlike detransitioners today who may be scarred for life.

Contempt for parents often plays a role in youth rebellion, be it mild or toxic. Back in Gidget’s day, the kids were hip while the adults holding onto their old-fashioned ways were square and not at all with it. Today, moms and dads who quaintly cling to the duality of biological sex are clueless about the multiplicity of possible genders; if they refuse to affirm their child’s new identity, insisting it’s impossible to change from one sex to another, they’re deemed transphobic and therefore unworthy of respect. Most of the trans-identified teens I see in my practice feel and express utter contempt for their mothers and fathers. Two of them will turn 18 within the next six months; they both regard their parents with scorn and intend to have no further contact after coming of legal age.

Behind the contempt, I sense a lot of terror about impending adulthood. The teens in my practice look forward to their medicalized transition as if it will be a major accomplishment, more significant than anything else they’ll ever do, but they have little understanding about how to lead a responsible adult life. I often say to my young clients that transition is not an achievement: they still have to figure out what career they’d like to pursue, and how to make enough money to support the lifestyle they want. One of these clients poo-poos the very idea of earning money and insists she’ll live in a camper van, free from responsibility. Another imagines devoting her life to collecting vintage motorcycles, believing that about $30K per year is all she’ll need. None of them ever imagines having children or building a family, much less planning ahead for retirement. They have a narrow vision of their own future that seems to go no further than attaining the freedom to start taking cross-sex hormones.

In this sense they remind me of Kahuna and Moondoggie, those two characters from Gidget in flight from the responsibilities of adulthood. While my clients apparently look forward to escaping their parents’ control and attaining the legal right to make their own choices, they don’t really want the responsibilities that go along with such freedom. On some level, they see transition as an escape from the dreaded reality of adulthood, a triumph over the tedious world of facts, financial obligations, and inevitable limits.

There’s another classic film you might know, The Graduate, directed by the brilliant Mike Nichols. Benjamin Braddock, the main character, spends most of the movie rebelling against the limitations and responsibilities imposed by the real world, the world of his stodgy parents; at the end, after he has relentlessly pursued young Elaine and disrupted her more-or-less forced marriage to another man, the two run off, she still in her wedding gown, and escape on board a city bus. The final shot shows realization slowly dawning upon them, their facial expressions collapsing from elation into dread.

Now what are we going to do?

At the close of The Graduate, Benjamin and Elaine realize that however fun and even exciting it might be to rebel against their parents, at the end of the day, they’ve achieved nothing beyond wrecking their families; in the aftermath, they’ll have to pick up the pieces and make a life for themselves in the real world. You can’t outrun reality, of course. It will always prevail in the end. In a softer way, you see Moondoggie and Kahuna coming to this realization at the end of Gidget.

For millennia, parental authority has been the primary means of transmitting a culture’s values: parents teach their children to abide by standards embodied in their culture, and the world-at-large has almost always supported the parents in exercising that role … at least until now. Honor thy father and thy mother says the Fifth Commandment; today, children learn that if Mom and Dad won’t affirm their new identity and use the designated pronouns, they should cut off those parents and embrace a new glitter family online. In California, a state court deprived Adam Vena of visitation rights because he wouldn’t affirm his four-year-old son’s new gender identity. The modern world often undermines parental authority when it takes a stand against gender ideology.

By severing ties between parent and child, a cult does the same thing; it appropriates parental authority onto itself as a way to bind members more tightly to the group. The votaries of gender ideology likewise subvert parents, replacing their guidance with cultish dogma. A great many influential forces today promote this dogma, from primary education to medical boards to professional associations–a society-wide rebellion against parental authority and, I would add, against the ultimate authority that is reality.

Every parent I’ve consulted with has felt helpless in the face of this phenomenon. Based on their love and better knowledge of their own children, they believe they know what’s best for those kids but feel unable to wield authority as parents to guide them. In my own case, when I insisted there were obvious psychological reasons why my daughter might have wanted to become a boy, I was treated with contempt by the medical establishment and colleagues in my profession. Meanwhile, all around my daughter, every influential voice in her world told her that I, her father, was wrong.

But I also believe that we, as parents, bear some responsibility for the erosion of our own authority. Many mothers and fathers today seem uncomfortable with the very idea of parental authority, preferring to be buddies with their kids rather than authority figures. Maybe we don’t want to be viewed as square or stodgy, droning on about antiquated notions like taking personal responsibility and showing respect for your elders. I remember the slight feeling of shock and discomfort I felt upon first hearing myself say the words “because I said so!” to my own kids. Why should I have felt so uneasy when exerting myself as the adult in charge and expecting my children to mind me?

Writing for The Atlantic, the psychologist Joshua Coleman says that family ties have shifted over the last century from a focus on duty and obligation to one promoting personal growth and the pursuit of fulfillment. He quotes the historian Stephanie Coontz, who says: “For most of history, family relationships were based on mutual obligations rather than on mutual understanding. Parents or children might reproach the other for failing to honor/acknowledge their duty, but the idea that a relative could be faulted for failing to honor/acknowledge one’s ‘identity’ would have been incomprehensible.” In our youth-driven culture, words like duty, obligation and authority sound almost quaint. Today there seems to be no valid authority outside of one’s personal “lived experience.”

What’s to be done? How are we as parents to regain authority and prevent our children from permanently damaging their bodies when a cultish ideology encourages them to do so? This is the question every parent of a trans-identified child would like to ask, I imagine, and I wish I had a simple answer. The longer I work in this field, the more I feel that gender ideology must be questioned in every area where it dominates; only if we loosen gender ideology’s stranglehold on our cultural institutions can we hope to return parental authority to its rightful place. Get involved in the pushback–that’s my advice to parents. Run for your school board, get to know your local politicians, challenge this new orthodoxy wherever you see it. Don’t play the pronoun game.

I’d also like to say something in particular about fathers. As a father myself, I’m concerned with specifically paternal sources of authority: What is the role of fathers in helping our families to navigate this crisis? Does paternal authority differ in any important ways from maternal authority? And where are all the fathers, anyway? I’ve had a few joint consultations with both parents of a trans-identified child but it’s invariably the wife who does the talking. More often, I have consultations with the mothers alone. I sometimes wonder whether empathic, nurturing mothers are so desperate to maintain contact with their children that they won’t or can’t draw a firmer line. Perhaps the fathers, by deferring to their wife’s lead, have failed to mount a more vigorous defense of reality.

Could that be a paternal function? I honestly don’t know. I think of Chris Elston–better known as Billboard Chris–who addressed himself to Rachel Levine on Twitter, saying that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones would be normalized for children “over my dead body.” Is that an implicit threat of violence? As fathers, do we need to take a more aggressive stance?

I’m prepared to be told that I’m just projecting here, or possibly overgeneralizing. Questions about my exercise of paternal authority within my own family–or my failure to exercise it properly–are on my mind a lot these days. With the modern world the way it is, it sometimes seems as if there’s nothing that even an authoritative and loving father can do. I often feel helpless and without any real power, an ineffectual if well-intentioned dad.

Which brings me back to Gidget. We’re all familiar with the bumbling father motif in television and commercials today–the clueless man set right by his clever wife and children. Al Bundy, Homer Simpson, Ray Barone. I used to think this was a more recent phenomenon but there it was in a movie from 1959. Gidget’s dad seems constantly baffled by his daughter’s behavior, issuing hasty pronouncements that are promptly undermined or ignored by his wife and child. He wears an expression of near constant bewilderment. It’s up to the two women in his world to set him on the right path.

I dug a little deeper and learned that father figures from 1950s sitcoms like “Make Room for Daddy,” “My Little Margie,” and “Life with Father” typically tended to be hapless buffoons. As a culture, we’ve been ridiculing the very notion of paternal authority for decades. Even the series title for “Father Knows Best” was originally intended to have a question mark at the end, to make it ironic and thereby underscore the well-known reality that mothers were the real heads of households. My friend the historian Peter Filene tells me that this belittling of fathers goes even further back–to the 1920s when comic strips began depicting men as shorter than their wives.

Then there’s the classic teen rebellion movie Rebel Without a Cause from 1955, with James Dean playing the main character Jim Stark. Jim’s father, overshadowed by his domineering wife, is a weak man unable to wield any kind of authority. In one famous scene, Jim comes upon his dad kneeling on the upstairs landing of their home wearing a frilly apron. Dad has dropped a dinner tray he prepared for “mom” and is cleaning up after himself, obviously fearful that his wife will discover the mess he’s made. Jim clearly wants and needs his father to stand tall and stop humiliating himself.

This might sound like I’m blaming women for usurping authority from their husbands by belittling them, but that’s not what I believe. I think it’s a society-wide problem where, for more than a century now, the force of paternal authority has been undermined through ridicule and mockery. In recent years, our ongoing critique of the “patriarchy” often makes it seem as if all sources of power and authority exercised by men are inevitably bad.

In Totem and Taboo written back in 1913, Freud opined that fathers embody the symbolic order of society, law, and external reality; they set boundaries, establish rules, and help their children to navigate the external world by introducing principles of discipline and order. A lot has changed in the last hundred or so years, and even to my ears, Freud’s view sounds quaint and out of date. Besides, how can you maintain rules and boundaries when the external world will only encourage your children to violate them?

But still, I cling to the belief that there’s an important and distinctive role for fathers to play in fighting this gender madness, even if I can’t yet define it. If you’re a father who’d like to discuss this issue, I invite you to reach out, in confidence and at no charge.

==

Here's the interesting thing. You can only rebel and exist at the margins if the margins actually exist.

When everyone is special, no one is special.

Queer Theory is self-contradictory.

[chirpbudgie]

Hmmmmm, 31. doing a pinky swear with Serene maybe? (Can also send a diff one)

serene is referred to as stanley in this piece

cws: brain fog/disassociation, stuttering

Gidget doesn’t notice when Stanley enters the living room, basket of crafts in hand. But he does notice when the couch dips beside him under the weight of another person. 

“Hi,” he forces out. His eyes won’t seem to focus on anything in particular, much less Stanley’s face. A part of him gets frustrated because he knows it’s polite to look at someone when you’re talking to them. 

“Are you feeling okay?” Stanley asks, resting one hand on Gidget’s.

He opens his mouth, but nothing but sound comes out at first. He can feel the words working in his head, but it’s like trying to hurry along molasses. “Head feels like. Like filled with… white stuff. Um.” Gidget frowns, realizing he can’t remember the name. 

“Cotton?” The other suggests. 

“Yeah! It-I feel yucky. Everything slow and hard. And hard to… make words. Make sense.” He gestures as he speaks, trying to put signs together to substitute, but most of it doesn’t get anywhere. 

Stanley moves to wrap his arm around his shoulder instead. “Oh, hun. I get like that sometimes too. It’s not fun.” His arm is warm. Gidget leans into the touch, an unconscious plea to stay. 

“Not fun. Can’t do things. Anythings. F-fu-f-fus-tating.” 

Stanley makes a sound of agreement. “Do you want to try and help me knit? I have some yarn I want to use, but it needs untangling.” 

Gidget looks up at him and then down at the basket. After a moment, he nods hesitantly. Stanley gives him a reassuring smile and it makes him feel a little better. 

After a little while, the room is filled only with the sound of knitting needles clicking against each other. Gidget is comfortably leaning against Stanley while Simon has draped himself over their laps. It’s warm and comfortable. 

“If you ever need somewhere to go and there’s nowhere else,” Stanley finally says, “you can come here, okay?” 

Gidget hums. “Pinky p’omise?” 

“Pinky promise.” He curls their little fingers together. 

The fluffy dog lifts his head to sniff their hands. “And Simon doesn’t have a pinky finger, but he promises too,” Stanley says with a smile. 

(set pre-rtaos.)

[lovevalley45]

#fictober23 day twenty-five

"Is it over? Is it really over?"

fandom: dc's legends of tomorrow

word count: 581

Zari never thought she’d be so disappointed to be back in her 45 million dollar mansion. Especially after suffering the Waverider’s one bathroom for three years.

But as she walked through the echoing entry, she found herself missing that stupid small, cramped bathroom. 

“So, am I going to the guest house, or do I have to crash on one of your couches that cost more than rent near Wharton?”

She turned around to look at Behrad, standing awkwardly in the doorway. “No, you can go to the guest house.” Zari took a deep breath, then raised her hand. “Actually, no. Is it over? Like, is it really over? We’re just- done?”

“We signed a contract. I know I didn’t drop out of law school, but that’s kinda binding,” he reminded her. 

“We’re time travelers!” Her voice was amplified by the tall walls. “We didn’t even have a notary there! What would be breaking, the time law?”

Behrad held out his hand, listing out, “Well, there was the Time Masters, then the Time Bureau, then whoever rehabilitated Eobard Thawne and made him ensure Archduke Ferninand gets assassinated-” 

“Okay, so maybe there was,” Zari snapped. “Or is.” She huffed and plopped down on the first step of her sprawling staircase. “We’re just expected to back to our normal lives and act like we didn’t spend a chunk of our lives time traveling.”

With a heavy breath, Behrad joined her. “It’s certainly an adjustment.” He bumped his shoulder against hers. “I mean, I’m dating a girl who’s a quarter-century behind us right now.”

“Not just that. You all get to do cool things. You become a musician - a successful one, I mean. Astra becomes the president. Sara and Ava become parents, I guess. And I just go back where I started.” Zari looked down at her hands, resting in her lap. “It feels regressive.”

“Not completely. Just- look at us.” Behrad threw an arm around her shoulders. “Two, three years ago, we never would have been talking like this. We would’ve just been fighting.”

“And frankly, I still think we need some therapy,” she commented. 

He unlooped his arm. “Even if you go back to doing the same things, you’re not the same person you were before you stepped on that ship. None of us are. And it’s not great in some ways - I died and learned I was supposed to be dead in another time - but we’ve grown. You’ve grown.”

“I don’t feel like it,” Zari muttered. “When I stepped onto the set of Da Throne, I had to step right back into the Zari everyone knows and loves. My fans don’t want me to grow.”

“Maybe it’s time for a rebrand,” Behrad said. 

“Rebranding takes work, B. I mean, I have to hire a PR firm, I need to come up with a new aesthetic, new- everything.”

“Yeah, there’s a reason I didn’t want to do the marketing route,” he replied. “But, if I’ve learned anything with the Legends, the best rebrand starts-” He put his hand against his chest. “Here.”

Zari raised her eyebrows. “I don’t think a boob job is what I need, B, but thanks.”

He shut his eyes and attempted to flatten himself against the stairs. “Don’t make me think about that!”

She chuckled, standing up. “I know what you meant.”

“Thank God,” Behrad said weakly, not moving. 

“My Dragon Girl era is over,” Zari declared. “Screw Computer Gidget, I’m doing more with my life than audible lipstick.”

[itsthesinbin]

dumb shithead dog who has never lived in a room with active sun doesnt know how to not stand it and not blind herself

[basedkikuenjoyer]

Last one of these until I have some really cool stuff I've built to show off. Just learned of the Buildertopia where you can make a blank slate to work with and I'mma do something cool with the lagoon layout. But we talked about this, the Mirror of Ra and breaking the transformation curse on the Princess of Moonbrooke.

So if you take it back to the first chapter island Furrowfield, there was a pupper that helped sniff out seeds. Turns out she was a girl all along! And as a great evolution of the bit, she was stuck as a dog so long she kinda still acts like one. I called her Gidget so it was good she stuck with that name. Sally Fields is a queen.