Hollywood Strike(s) thoughts, skip if you want
ngl: While I do see the huge boon that is having a show like Stranger Things stand in solidarity with this strike being a Californian with a bunch of friends who live and work in and around media makes me...less optimistic this will be over quickly than a lot of people here.
The issue here isn't just paying writers (or creators in general, given the other looming Hollywood strikes)—it's a fundamental shift in the business models of entertainment. The last 10 years of streaming have completely changed the way everything works in Hollywood, and that's before you take into account the fact that every single corner of the industry (and America) has felt the shockwaves of the pandemic financially anyway—which means negotiations aren't just about greed, but network restructuring AND transforming ideology.
I do think they'll win—the fact that they stand at 97% solidarity within their 11K union, and other creators across every industry and the world are backing them—but given writers strikes generally last 100-ish days and have gone on as long as six months? Combined with the fact that the actors + directors guilds will be joining them if it doesn't end in 55 days, which would be the shortest writers strike on record?
I'd settle in a bit if I were you lmao
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the funniest part is that like. some modern undeniably mcyt creators aren’t. even by definition “mcyt” bc they’re twitch streamers, not YouTubers. like. it’s just clear to me that it’s not a strict and defined label one way or another but rather a catch all for a certain subsection of content creators who either started in or have had major participation in minecraft related Things at some point (or are very heavily tied with people who did) yknow.
yeah!!! it’s actually a really interesting like, phenomenon. for the lack of a better term. just how much the label has expanded and changed to fit modern-day content creation. bc there’s this divide, kind of, between people who are a part of the community and those that aren’t. fans of mcyt will kind of label most ccs that even interact with mcyt as a mcyt themselves (crumb, for example) even if said creator hasn’t personally posted minecraft videos to youtube, or rarely stream it (if at all). and then you have people outside the fanbase that hold mcyt with a negative connotation that fight tooth and nail to argue that a specific cc isn’t an mcyt because they don’t want them to be, despite said cc fitting into the category perfectly, and being okay with the label. kind of an offshoot of lovejoy fans who don’t know that wilbur does minecraft content, but more extreme. idk fandom behaviour and the sociology of it?? for lack of a better term?? is always so interesting to me. there’s a lot of Very Specific Circumstances that led to modern mcyt and its development, popularity, and stigma, and i would dig deeply into all of it if i could
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Before starting T, when I socially transitionned, I was surrounded by radical feminists who saw masculinity as gross and inherently evil, something to avoid, something to make fun of, something to destroy. The other transmascs in my friend group, sometimes, told me that they didn’t knew if they really were non-binary or if they just were scared shitless of saying “I am a man”. Because they saw this as a betrayal to their younger self who had been SAd and abused.
I saw many of my masc friends and trans men around me hate themselves, not outing themselves as men because it would imply so so much, it was like opening the Pandora Box. Even when we were just together, talking about our masculinity was always coated with bits like “I know we’re the privileged ones but…”, “I don’t want to sound like I have it bad but…”, “Women obviously have it worse, but last time…” and we were talking about terrible traumas we experienced while taking all the precautions in the world in the case the walls were a crowd of people in disguise waiting to get us if we didn’t downplay the violence we faced, or like crying and being upset and being traumatized and afraid and scared and to say it out loud would make us throw up the needles we were forced to swallow every second of every day living in our skin.
Most of us weren’t on T yet, some of us were catcalled every day and harassed in the streets or in abusive relationships nobody seemed to care to help them get out of because they were “strong enough” to do it by themselves.
I was using the gender swap face app and cried for ours when I saw my father looking back at me through the screen. The idea of transforming, of shedding into a body that would deprive me of love, tenderness, and safety, was absolutely terrifying. I knew I couldn’t stay in this body any longer because it wasn’t mine, but I also knew that if I was going to look like my dad, my brother, my abusers, it would be so much worse.
5 years later and I’m almost 2 years on T, and almost 2 months post top surgery.
I ditched my previous group of friends. I was bullied out of my local trans community. But let me tell you how free I am.
I was scared that T would break my singing voice: it made it sound more alive than ever.
I was scared that T would make me less attractive: it made me find myself hot for the first time in my life.
I was scared that T would make me gain weight: it did. But the weight I put on is not the weight I used to put on by binging and eating my body until I forgot that it even existed. It’s the weight of my body belonging to me, little by little. The wolf hunger for life.
I won’t tell you the same story I see everywhere, the one that goes “I started going to the gym 8 times a week, I put on some muscles, I started a diet and now I look like an action film actor”, in fact if you took pictures of me from 5 years ago vs now I’d just have more acne, I’d have longer hair and still look like I don’t know what to do with myself when I take selfies.
But the sparkle in my eyes, my smile, tell the whole story way better than this long ass stream of words could ever.
I want to say some things that I wish someone told me before starting medically transitionning.
It’s okay to take your time. It’s your body, it’s your journey, if you don’t feel comfortable taking full doses and want to go slow, the only voice you need to listen to is your own. Do what feels right.
If you feel overwhelmed, it’s okay to take a break, it’s okay to ask for support.
Trans people are holy. Everyone is. You didn’t lose your angel wings when you came out because you want to be masculine. You are not excluded from the joy of existence, from being proud of yourself, from being sad, from being scared, from being angry. The emotions and feelings you allowed yourself to feel while processing what you experienced when you grew up as a girl and was seen as a woman are still as valid as before. Nobody can take that from you. If someone tries to, don’t let them.
It’s perfectly normal to grieve some things you were and had before you started to transition, like your high soprano voice or even your chest. Hatching is painful. You can find comfort in things that don’t feel right, so making the decision to change can be incredibly scary and weird and you deserve to be heard and supported through this. Wanting top surgery doesn’t make the surgery less intense, less terrifying, less painful to recover from. When it becomes too much you have the right to take a break and take some deep breaths before going on.
You don’t have to have a radical, 180° change for your transition to be acceptable or valid or worthy of praise. Look at how far you’ve come already. It doesn’t have to show, you’re not made to be a spectacle, you’re human and it is your journey.
Oh, and last thing, you know when some people say “Oh this trans person has to grow out of the cringy phase where you think that you can write essays about being trans or transitionning or just their experience because it’s weird” ? If you ever hear this or see this online, remember all the people whose writing you read and, even if they were not professional writers, helped you more than any theorists did ? If you want to write, do it. It won’t be a waste. It can help people. Or it won’t, and even then, if it helped you, that’s enough.
Love every of my trans siblings, take care of yourselves. You deserve the world.
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