#more queer media like this AHHH

[risingshards]

i got an arc of bury your gays and ohhh my god I wanna talk about it so bad HRHGGHGH plz read it when it comes out it's brilliant

[yesornopolls]

To those confused by how the panopticon theory can apply to dating, think about this way. As the mod explained, the theory holds that “people can be controlled when they believe themselves to be under constant surveillance even if no one is watching. The theory stems from the intended effect of having a central guard tower in a prison that all the prisoners could see, even though they could not see the guards.”

So in the context of dating, if you’re NOT aware by the social panopticon, you’re chill when dating people. It’s just about you and your partner. There’s no one watching you, whether literally or metaphorically, digitally or in real life. So there’s no performance, no anxiety about the larger context, no sense of being surveilled and judged by others, no need to prove your love to the world.

On the other hand, if you ARE aware of the social panopticon when dating, the larger context of what it means to date in the modern era is always (potentially) watching you. It’s not just you and your partner, it’s you and your partner both against the world AND in the world. But it’s also subtly you against your partner, cause what if they’re with the world? You have to test them to make sure.

Social media is a huge part of this cause it includes soft-launching and hard-launching partners, posting them the right amount of times but not too much, keeping the mystery or revealing more. It’s things like National Boyfriend Day or subtle boyfriend tests on TikTok. Even just being in a queer relationship can come with its own panopticon, its own rituals of surveillance and performance. Everything is the relationship as product, the relationship as lifestyle brand.

To use well-known celebrity examples, Taylor Swift who knows she can’t escape the social panopticon with dating so she leans into it. Chappell Roan is someone who is very aware of it and scared of it. And Sabrina Carpenter’s song “Please Please Please,” where she sings, “ Please please please don't prove I'm right/Please please please/Don't bring me to tears when I just did my makeup so nice/Heartbreak is one thing/My egos another/I beg you don't embarass me/Mother fucker ahhh” is a perfect example of this phenomenon too.

Most of us aren’t celebrities, but the basic principles remain no matter the scale. But some people seem to have the freedom to truly not be influenced by it.

Oooh, when Googling it, I just found this article which I think captures the concept well: https://helenaaeberli.substack.com/p/dating-in-the-digital-panopticon

FYI

[mulitfandomshipper100]

How are they going to react to Brooklyn being alive… I feel like that is going to destroy the whole group AGAIN!! Also.. how could Brooklyn do this to them!?😭😭😭 Plus she is working with the officer that knows Darius!! THE BETRAYAL!! AHHH!! On a much more positive note, YASAMMY IS GOING STRONG!! They definitely have some obstacles to over come still, but I’m so glad that they are still together!! I hope we see Sammy grow more as a character in the next season. She clearly has some intense anxiety. I related so much to her anxiety attack while the van was sinking. ALSO THE WAY THE WRITERS GAVE US NOT 1, BUT 2 Kisses between the two. They weren’t even just light kisses, they were full blown smooching. I’m so happy that the writers didn’t try to hide how gay they are!! After all the hits queer media has taken recently, this is refreshing and gives me hope for the future. If CT does NOT get a second season… I’m going to be SO ANGRY!! The writing for this show… FANTASTIC! Anyways.. this post is getting too long lmao imaa end it here.

Thanks for reading my rant if you made it this far.

[not-poignant]

@morbidlizard replied to your post “Can I ask, why do you love BL romance better than...”:

I mean it's unfortunate but asian BL is just hands down better than western for so many reasons <: / I've been reading asian BL for literal decades now (AHHH) and I can maybe count on one hand the western series I've enjoyed that had some sort of queer romance that had all I wanted or at least a part of the tropes I like...And even then, it's usually F/F relationships 9_9 (and when I say asian, I mean japanese, korean, chinese, some indonesian too! etc etc...)

​Actually yeah this is also really where it's at

I think a lot about how we're still getting extremely like... milquetoast wholesome queer narratives (most of the time) in western m/m romance media (I have nothing against Heartstopper, but it's extremely 'all queer people are pure wholesome need-to-be-protected jellybeans' and like, cool, but I want more than that as well - like give me 20 shows that are 'all queer people' in 20 different genres, thanks. BL will give me that - BL will pay people to give me that.

The only way I can get that from western media is fanfiction, and sometimes - kind of - from published m/m, when it's not paint-by-numbers rapid release that isn't about telling stories from the heart and it's about telling stories from the bank account instead (which is a valid reason to write, it's just not what I'm looking for as a reader - most readers who end up loving and writing fanfiction aren't looking for this imho)).

Thomas Baudinette is actually doing incredible work in this area of Media Studies, where it's literally a known thing that BL - particularly in countries like Korea, Thailand and Taiwan - is actually taking huge strides ahead in the genre, comparatively, especially when up against western BL.

It almost feels like we're on a giant lag, buffering behind them, and about the only place we aren't is in fanfiction, which makes sense, because the cross-pollination between fandom and south-east Asian BL is incredible (literally, they got omegaverse and guide-verse from western fanfiction and western fandom, and imho are doing a lot more with it for money than we are, see: Pit Babe).

I've been reading up pretty heavily into Baudinette's work, and also a lot of the recent and up-to-date work in BL Studies (a thing), and like, it's just kind of fascinating the different interrogations of BL we have going on in different cultures and subcultures, and how different senses of place and culture and ethnicity and minority and belonging can influence our tales, along with many different manifestations of capitalisation, economy, influence etc.

And that isn't to say there aren't huge problematic areas for BL in all countries, not just western, I can critique western BL so easily because I am western, and it's been really interesting reading critiques of BL from academics who live within other countries from their perspectives too. But I do think if I want really great BL romances, turning to fanfiction and then turning to other cultures and what they're doing is often the first thing I do. I just don't have to search as hard to find what I'm looking for. And like, I'm lazy, lol, I don't want to search through 100 published works to find like 1-5 stories I might reread but not over my favourite manhwa or like fanfiction or whatever.

This has been my area of like... personal study for a few months now (literally reading Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media and Masculinity in Tokyo by Baudinette atm) and I have a lot of thoughts of which this is just a very generalised ramble and not actually anything of great meaning but like sadkljfas TL;DR yeah

[respectthepetty]

some ppl are saying that thua outing akkayan is so unnecessary. some say he's just bitter and jealous. what are your thoughts about it?

Short version -

Ahhh, so the fandom is talking about the closeted bully trope:

Adam from Sex Education or Nate from Euphoria, anyone?

Perhaps Akk from The Eclipse?

Yes, Akk is a bully. [definition - A bully is a person who harasses, abuses, intimidates, or coerces people, especially those with less power than they have or those considered weaker or vulnerable in some way. The word often implies that such behavior is repeated or habitual.] A key element in the closeted bully trope is being straight passing.

“But Thua and Namo caused harm to The World Remembers too!”

Namo lit fliers on fire. Thua lit a dummy on fire. Akk tried to run people over and pushed objects off a second story into a crowd. Namo and Thua destroyed objects. Akk tried to destroy people. I’m all for be gay, do crime, but two would be property damage, and the other would be attempted murder. They are not the same.

Therefore, Thua isn’t outing Ayan and Akk because they are *gay (are they gay if they don’t say it? More below!). Thua is outing them as an attempted murderer and the guy who kisses him on occasion for covering it up.

Long version –

Fiction

In 2001, fictional attorney extraordinaire Elle Woods waited in line to get a drink of water from a fountain during a break in a murder trial. As she waited, she stomped her little last season Prada shoes at Enrique, the pool boy, and the current witness testifying in the case that he and the defendant were having an affair. Because of his testimony, it appeared the defendant did kill her husband. However, when Elle heard his comment, she realized “gay men know designers” therefore, Enrique was gay and NOT having an affair with the defendant. He was quickly exposed in court, lost his boyfriend, and Elle was applauded for her great deductive skills.

Reality

*I’m not including a picture because he doesn’t deserve it. I'm petty 24/7, 365*

Aaron Schock was an American Congressman for six years from 2009-2015. During his term, he voted on several key issues, but the ones that need to be highlighted here are:

He voted against gay marriage (marriage equality)

He voted against allowing people to serve openly in the military

He voted against homophobic acts falling under hate crimes

He voted against sexual identity being protected under employee discrimination

Plus many others (he was the pile of poop that kept smelling)

He also actively worked on policies like Defense of Marriage to ensure the gays didn’t get the rights they were fighting for

In 2014, reporter Itay Hod, who is a gay man and has written on many queer issues, wrote a Facebook post asking if it was ever okay to out someone. Then, he gave a hypothetical scenario regarding “a certain GOP congressman, let's just say from Illinois” who voted against several gay-supporting policies yet showers with his male roommate. *the post is still up if you want to search it*

Although Hod never stated a name, everyone knew who this was about because the representative for Illinois was none other than Schock, and the people were divided. This has been an ongoing conversation in queer communities since before the HIV epidemic when known closeted gay politicians weren’t doing anything to help, some believed that outing them would be justified while others disagreed.

There were always whispers about Schock lurking on gossip sites, so Schock was asked when he was running for his state position in 2004 if he was gay. He was asked all of the time during his six years serving as a Congressman by everyone and their mother. Each time, he said no.

Hod, in that infamous FB post, asked “doesn't the media have an OBLIGATION to expose his hypocrisy?” like when it comes to a closeted gay man imposing inequalities on gay people.

Once again, the people were divided. Do we weaponize sexuality this way? Where is the line? Schock said he wasn't gay, so how could Hod write that Schock was gay?!

Schock never addressed the post but resigned in 2015 amid allegations that he had misused public funding to throw parties and redecorate his home and office. He plead guilty in 2019, served probation, and the charges were cleared.

In 2020, he came out as gay.

Why does any of this matter?

Is a person gay if he doesn’t say he’s gay?

What makes someone gay? Is it the sex? What if they are a virgin? Is it the attraction? Can someone be attracted to the same sex every now in then and not be gay? Does the attraction have to be consistent? What makes gay gay?!

Outing a person is harmful, but does it supersede the harm that person has caused others?

Is it ethical to out a closeted hypocrite for the sake of the collective?

Where is the limit?

How much proof do we need to out someone?

What makes this different than outing a preacher who hires sex workers or a family man who has a mistress?

Is it just the hypocrite we out or the sex worker, the mistress, and the male roommate as well?

Enrique was outed by Elle because his lying would cause a woman to go to prison for murder. Schock was outed because he gained privileges he was openly denying from others. Were Elle or Hod ethically right for outing Enrique and Schock? Fictional or reality, is it ever okay to out someone even if it is a side effect of a larger issue?

Thua isn’t jealous or bitter; he is angry at the hypocrisy. Ayan is demanding for the school to admit wrongdoing while he sleeps next to the boy who started the car and pushed it into the crowd. Akk is winning the Best Boy Award after he tried to break heads with a potted plant.

I truly want you to think about when outing someone who has caused harm is acceptable, if ever? I’m not asking about the Lance Bass and Ricky Martin type situations. I’m asking about the Aaron Schock and Carlos Divar (Spanish judge who voted against marriage equality in Spain but used public funds to go on luxurious trips with his secret long-term boyfriend) type of situations. Can we even distinguish between the two types? Are there even types or is an outing harmful no matter how we look at it? Is an outing ever justified?   

I’m not the moral monitor, but if I’m honest, when it comes to people in positions of power using that position to cause harm to others while reaping the benefits of that position (and the people who enable them to continue to abuse their power), I’d be a Thua every time.

Adding - Ayan outed Thua to his mom and blackmailed Akk with the cheek kiss photo. Ayan also outed Akk to his mother at the house and the women on the beach. Sani outed Dika to the students. Keep the same energy.

[inventedfangirling]

BEST of BL's in 2023 [Thai edition]

(more accurately my favourites from 2023, so that i have something to show for the 100s of hours i spent watching them lmao)

I Feel You Linger In The Air - Head & Shoulders above (almost) every single piece of queer media i've ever watched. Khun Yai and Jom will be forever icons. That drunk poem confession will NEVER be topped. Also LESBIANS AHHHHHH also the way the show explored intimacy AHHH just end meeee

2. Moonlight Chicken - Aof strikes again. Gave me Uncle Jim, Heart, Li Ming and my baby boy Gaipa- the music, the cinematography, the writing, the found fckin family - i will recommend it to EVERY one on the planet if i could.

3. Be My Favourite- I did not expect to enjoy this show as much as i did. I loved what they were tryna say. I LOVED the queer undertones in EVERYTHING. if not for the asexual erasure and Not being an absolute asshole this would have been quite the perfect show. And man is Gawin so darn sculpted perfection, LOOK AT THAT FACE, how to not admire!? Also Pearmai my beloved. AND THAT POEM in episode 11 ARGHHH

4. Bed Friend - I know this was a polarizing series in a lot of ways and I agree to some of the complaints raised BUTTTTTT NET MY FRENZ NET! How am i supposed to not melt into a complete puddle watching King pretend to not be absolutely in love with Uea, and treating him like the babygirl he is, when he looks like THAT. I'm but a mere mortal.

5. La Pluie - I kinda liked the show and disliked it in equal amounts. Saengtai annoyed me quite a LOT towards the end BUT his brother Sangtien - Suar Kritsanaphong had me in the palm of his hand. Him and his kiss with Lomfon is etched firmly in my brain. It HAD to be on this list.

6. Only Friends - Gawd. The Promise. The Promise of it all. Thats what maddens me THE MOST. There was just SO MUCH that they could have done. Even if they stuck with a lot of their similar choices i would have still put it higher up on the list if they hadn't undone all the good work they did in the final episode. I couldnt even bring myself to rewatch anything from this one cos of how disappointingly it ended. That being said - FirstKhao KILLED it as usual, i CANNOT wait for their next one, BOSTON deserved better and my MVP- Mark Pakin AHHH i NEED him on EVERY SHOW EVER but also in ways concerning to me GAWD WHAT A TALENT AND WHAT A FACE.

7. Laws of Attraction - Charn you guys. Charn and his utterly deranged expressions and his even more deranged ex. And ofc everything else the show offered. The drama. The mystery. The family. The romance. THE LESBIANS!!!!? Few things not to love. Especially the finale with all the domestic husbanding going on. Precious af.

8. Hidden Agenda - Far too much nonsensical plotlessness going on here for this to claim this position BUT i'm just a girl watching Joong swoon over his man and losing it in the corridor and proceeding to do that myself cos man he's so damn good in these kinda scenes. I think he'd be good in more serious ones too but I would much prefer it if it was with somebody who could offer more than Dunk (no shade he very cute himself)

POTENTIAL FAVS

The following is a list of shows i loved/liked it a LOT but still watching/running so I can't fully judge

(in no particular order except the first one cos who am i to put an aof show not at the top of any list)

Last Twilight [BEST THING EVER I AM WHOLLY AND IRRETRIEVABLY IN LOVE IM GONNA REWATCH IT LIKE ITS MY JOB PLS I NEED IT TO STICK THE LANDING SO BAD]

Love in Translation - episode 4 what a beauty, one of my fav episodes of any BL in 2023 ever- just LOVED the whole fake date thing - it was EVERYTHING

Wedding Plan - Leads are cute. Lesbians are cuter. Made me laugh. Also CUTENESS hello

Night Dream - Who doesn't love a long unrequited but actually totally requited love story?

The Sign - nothing i can ever say is gonna be enough to encompass just how mind-blowing this series is from concept to execution to CGI to costumes to the gorgeous leads with fckin electric chemistry AND the PINING and the will they won't they arhhhh- TOP TIER STUFF

Cooking Crush - i went into this with minimal expectations, the trailer didnt do much for me BUT oh my gawd i had SO MUCH FUN with each episode, i laughed SO much and i am very much looking forward to the rest of it

Cherry Magic - TayNew back again together. Karan and his gorgeous existence. Loved the og. The trope where one believes they are hard to love & someone who loves them like it’s breathing- its literally made for this show and i am SUPER excited where it goes. PLS PLS PLS let them keep the aroace character aroace PLEASE!?!?!?

[sammysprivatecorner]

List of Fictional men I have a crush on because yes <3

#1 MEDIC - TEAM FORTRESS 2 (Lasted ever since I've known tf2 so give or take 3 years and going)

Reasons:

He's German

Tiddies

He's insane

Villain characteristics

Tall (6'1)

He's a DOCTOR that has a morbid fascination with ANATOMY

Needs sleep

Workaholic

Probably a coffee Addict

Sadist

AGE = EXPERIENCE Not exactly on character but I really love it when ppl draw Medic with a bit of chub, for example @/sNeighbrhood on Twitter has this Medic OC Emil, and he has chub and it's just cuddly idk bible accurate Medic has a bit of stuffing

#2 SAMMY LAWERNCE - BATIM (Has last since chapter 2 came out so around 8 years and still going!)

(Go check out my Sammy blog @asksamuellawrence) Reasons:

Male wife material

He a strong boi

Goofy

His VOICE AUUGHHDNJFKS

Musical man

@inkdemonapologist Human design for Sammy. (P.S. Go check out their work they do amazing stuff :0)

He's Insane <3

Villain

Tall HC (6'2)

Needs sleep

Grumpy ass man

Workaholicccc

#3 DR. SMILEY - DR. SMILEY'S FUNHOUSE (Lasted 3 years THIS GAME IS LOST MEDIA AND IT'S SAD TO ME)

Reasons:

Masked figure

His hair is so goofy

A doctor that is probably insane

Villain

ManlyBadassHero's interp. of Dr. Smiley's voice (Idk it just gives me life)

AGE = EXPERIENCE

Probably tall lmao

#4 SILCO - ARCANE (Lasted 3 years aka since the show came out and is still going quite strong)

Reasons:

Visual appeal

His VOICEEEEEE

A Villain (ARE WE SEEING A PATTERN?)

TrAuMa

His animation (I walked like Silco for a very long fucking time without even realizing it after first watching the show)

AGE. EQUALS. EXPERIENCE

SHORT KING (5'9)

#5 VIKTOR - ARCANE (Lasted since I got back into the show so about 1 year)

(I can make that exact face) Reasons:

Russian/Slavic in origin (AKA his voice)

Skinny ass dying man

Visual appeal

Queer Subtext??? (WAITAMINUTETHISISN'TMYBEDROOM-)

In need of a Divorce Arc

Will hopefully have a Villain Arc in Season 2

EVEN SHORTER KING (5'8)

#6 RUVYZVAT/RUV - FNF MIDFIGHT MASSES (2ish years by now)

Reasons:

Russian man

Tall as shit (8'11 and I think 9" standing fully)

Comfy ass looking clothing

A quiet boi

A total loner and Introvert

Protective of Sarv <3

#7 ADAM - HAZBIN HOTEL (Since the final episode of S1 came out so 5 or 4 months)

Reasons:

Visually to me he is appealing under the mask

Alex Brightman

I wanna steal his clothes

"Let himself go since Eden" WE NEED MORE CHUBBY ADAM APPRECIATION

I wanna nom his wings

His hair looks like ears in the photo and I wanna ruffle them

That thing on his chin Idk the technical term for it

Alex Brightman

Rock 'n' Roller (Introduced me to School Of Rock and Stick It To The Man)

Da Villain

#8 ORIN SCRIVELLO D.D.S - LSOH (2 years and going!)

Reasons:

A greaser

Has a fucking cool ass Motorcycle

I want to steal his Gender

I want to BE him/hj

SaDiSt

An Antagonisttt

Sick ass song (DENTIST!)

Goofy ahhh talk

Introduced me to Greasers and got me fixated on those for a while month

Silly ass death scene that made me so upset the first time I saw it

DREAM ROLE IN ACTING!

HONORABLE MENTIONS!

CONNOR - DETROIT BECOME HUMAN

RALPH - DETROIT BECOME HUMAN

GABRIEL - ULTRAKILL

DR. MASACRIK - PSYCHO CUTIES (I do NOT support the artist but I do like the show!!!)

Anyway Yah that's it, there's more but I literally haven't slept at all. Good night!! <3

[cambriancrew]

What is Young Wizards, is it anything like The Aepects by L C Mawson at all????

(And if it isn't that's even more of an excuse to Tell Us About Young Wizards!! Win-win!!!)

AHHH YES. We could talk about Young Wizards literally for hours.

So. It's, in a nutshell, a series by @/dduane Diane Duane, about teenagers who get the ability to use magic, which is enacted primarily by use of the wizardly language The Speech, in exchange for using it to fight the Lone Power who created death and entropy. The main wizard characters are Nita Callahan, a nerdy bookworm with an affinity for plants; her best friend Kit Rodriguez, who has an affinity for mechanical things; and Nita's little sister Dairine, who is a geek whose Wizards manual is a walking laptop. The books are incredibly inventive, with places in them like an alternate universe Manhattan where cars and other vehicles are alive; multiple distant planets, each with amazing aliens; the bottom of the ocean; Ireland where the myths really are true; a Mars where people's ideas of Mars from various forms of media including War of the Worlds and Marvin the Martian from Looney Tunes are present.

They're also beautifully diverse and life affirming. The Senior Advisory wizards are a gay couple. Kit is Hispanic. One major side character is black and autistic. There's other various queer characters. The series deals with serious topics like bullying, cancer, death and loss. But there's a throughthread of determination and hope.

Also, supportive adults! Parents who really care about their kids and support their wizardry! Family dynamics that are actually really good! (Most of the time. Nita and Dairine have their moments lol.)

And then there's the Oath. It's so wonderful, we patterned our Code of Conduct partly on it. There's many different versions, but the one we love the most is as follows:

In Life's name and for Life's sake, I assert that I will employ the Art which is Its gift in Life's service alone, rejecting all other usages. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve that which grows and lives well in its own way. Nor will I change any creature unless its growth or life or that of the system of which it is a part are threatened, or threaten another.

To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will ever put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so, looking always to the Heart of Time where all our sundered times are one and all our myriad worlds lie whole in That from which they preceeded.

Also an art version of the Oath:

I can't seem to find the original creator of the art, it was someone on Tumblr but Tumblr search isn't helping, as usual.

We want two tattoos based on this series. One would be Wizard's Knot plus the first little part of the Oath, "In Life's name and for Life's sake". The other would be the traditional greeting of the Lone Power: "Fairest and Fallen, greetings and defiance." Probably would have that one surrounding the semicolon for depression survival, as suicidality is our personal battle with this universe's version of the Lone Power.

They're also super cheap to get as ebooks through the author's own website, as long as you're not in the UK due to Brexit.

We cannot recommend this series highly enough. If you do end up buying the series and reading it, let us know! We'd love to hear what you think. :)

[thatdebaterguy]

I am Isrseli. About a month after the 7th, I think I began using a tag "Free Palestine Movement is a Death Cult".

Very early on I think I pinpointed a few very concerning characteristics of the movement: be is indoctrination, "do and don't do", the listingings upon listingings of "acts" that will brand touch as good and deserving". Came across one aimed specifically at minors that has elements of "authority/parents/teachers at school are not on your side". A very hard element of "saviors", absolute "baddy" vs absolute "goodie".

Who to dismiss and brand as guilty of hindering achievement of "the cause".

There is a very strong element of charity for a cause. And ao many other lines of cult like behavior that I am not sure I manage to pinpoint right now, but it's there.

But the most striking element, that really cements this, is that this is an unachievable cause by design. You can't "Free" Palestine. It has no strategy, no boundaries. It's not a goal. Not an achievable goal. It is such by design, for people to throw themselves at, to beat themselves about, to despair about, to throw away emotional labor, and money at, and to never achieve a thing.

It is deliberately tied to each and every possible so called humanitarian cause on the globe, derailing them. It is designed to cultivate a bedrock for recruitment, be it intentional or not.

It sicks in people, as far as I can see, that have a sense of purpose they have nowhere to ahhh go about. How do I even put it into words. Apart from the obvious bullies, I cab say for sure: people tgat are looking for a sense of purpose. That are lacking such on their lives, they are fractured in identity and belonging.

Wr have seen this before. We, Israeli, saw this before. The suicidal trajectory of the intifadas and the Jihad, they are cultivated atop ideologically infused mysery and despair. The more miserable the better. It works just tge same as any other cult.

And if in 2 years time tops, an acne riddles girl with pink hair blows herself up on a subway screaming "For Palestine" I would not be surprised.

This is genuinely a depressing reality with the way media works in the modern age, and it's a whole new way of pushing agenda and propaganda, and I'm sure in the future the methods used on social media will be studied because it's far different from any wars going on at this moment, or in history. One technique I've noticed is one that's taken straight from the playground, and it's like "if you don't like this, you can't play with us" and I've seen this predominantly in the LGBT community or certain fanbases, with posts like "You aren't queer if you don't support Palestine" and just immense social pressure to pick one side or the other, as if being neutral is social suicide. And I honestly have yet to see a post saying "You're anti-Semitic if you don't support Israel". I'm sure it exists somewhere honestly, but it's far more prominent for Palestine. Another thing that really pushes this idea is the complete lack of attention for various other wars going on or issues globally. Currently in Afghanistan, years of attempts to push some level of equality for women are being reversed in months, but I haven't heard anyone crying out for equality in Afghanistan. I've also seen no Palestine supporters in the west protesting against Egypt's blockades of aid to Gaza, and their refusal to accept any refugees, despite the fact Gazans were legally Egyptian until the 80s, making it seem like a complete u-turn from embracing Gazans as brothers and sisters, to ignoring their calls for action entirely.

As for your last comment, that's a scary thought. I somewhat doubt that'll happen unless Israel wins the war overwhelmingly and people stop talking about Palestine, cause while I know many of the supporters for Palestine, especially on tumblr, have some obsession with pushing Palestinian agenda constantly and making it part of their identity somehow, it's very similar to the people in America going "I hate America" but refusing to try make any actual good changes, refusing to even consider leaving the country, I feel like these Palestine supporters will hop on another trend when the war in Palestine grinds to a halt.

What's curious is how 99.9% of them have only joined in after this most recent war, despite the fact there were skirmishes just a few years ago so it isn't an age thing, people weren't too young to know what was going on when that previous conflict occurred, and I think it's generally because once again Hamas instigated it, hurling a few dozen rockets at apartment buildings in Tel Aviv, but when Hamas targets civilians and Israel doesn't retaliate strongly, no one seems to bat an eye. It's like once a movement starts spreading the way this one did, with a mob mentality and where 99% of the people in the movement have done little to no historical research on the conflict, it becomes a dangerous thing having so many people believing in something so much simply because of how many people they feel like they can relate to, have also supported this cause, rather than supporting it due to logic or reasoning.

The person I responded to before this is a prime example of the 1% who actually do research and are willing to hear out the other side in a civil discussion because they use logic rather than just believing mass media and being almost bullied into supporting Palestine. The sad thing is, the people who did research that support Palestine are very unlikely to call out the mass indoctrination of beliefs and agenda-pushing that's been done, because it benefits their cause, so they won't call out how immoral and disingenuous it is.

But yeah some people follow this thing like a cult, intermixing it with their personal lives. To me it's always been clear to have an obvious line between personal and political unless you're a politician, where you can use your personal life to benefit your political standing if used well, hence why I limit my posts about hobbies to very rarely, since tumblr is a social media after all. But the amount of obsessing over this conflict really seems to indicate a lack of previous meaning or purpose, lack of motivation, and desperation to feel included in something, from a psychological point of view, rather than forming opinions based on information. There is a few people who support Israel cause they don't wanna appear anti-Semitic, but from what I've analysed, it's much more in the minority when compared to Palestine supporters. As for the ones who actually do their research, thank you for not being brainwashed into a cause, and being logical. Even if we're on different sides, at least we can both say we used our brains rather than be bullied into believing something.

[vidreview]

VIDREV: "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" by Hbomberguy.

[originally posted december 7th 2023]

i didn't initially plan to do a full VIDREV for this one. it's a long video that speaks plenty for itself, revealing a veritable cottage industry of video essayists who've found great success in brazenly stealing the works of marginalized creators. it's an infuriating watch, especially as someone who has put a lot of work over a lot of years into getting better as an essayist. at a moment when the gormless profit-chasing business degree havers of the world are pretty unambiguously winning in every avenue imaginable, it's gratifying to see someone like Hbomberguy use his significant platform to at least make a dent in that trend. i had a few gripes, sure, but i didn't figure they were worth the trouble. of course now it's been out for a few days, the video already has over 6.8 million views, and people are still talking about it on every single social media website of note. watching that discourse evolve from afar has sharpened some of the round edges on my aforementioned gripes, and given me reason to think that maybe weighing in isn't a totally fruitless endeavor. and besides, what's the point of having a video essay review blog if you're not gonna review what is arguably the video essay of the moment? ahhh, there's a Faustian bargain if ever i heard one.

in this post, i'm going to be critical of Hbomberguy's "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" on a few fronts of debatable importance. but first, i want to make it clear that i am genuinely grateful to Hbomb for putting so much time and effort into this investigation. plagiarism is a serious accusation that requires commensurate evidence, and Harris's got that covered in spades. the case is made so much harder to deny by the frequent juxtaposition of a plagiarist's voice-over with the original plagiarized text on screen reacting to minor trail-covering alterations. these sections occupy the bulk of this video's near 4 hour runtime, and while i have some issues with that length, i understand that the deluge of evidence is precisely to make sure that none of the plagiarists in question can continue dodging accusations the way they have done previously. in this process, Hbomb lays out a consistent playbook utilized by all manner of plagiarists, and (hypothetically) gives viewers the tools and awareness they need to better spot plagiarism in the future. this matters because, as he rightly points out, youtube isn't a fun little hobby site for posting silly cat videos anymore, there's real money to be made on the platform and virtually no oversight to protect creators with ethics and integrity (i wanted to pull a direct quote here but alas, you can't ctrl+f a video). it's an open question as to how or whether we can fix this problem, but we don't get to that conversation until we acknowledge that plagiarism is a legitimate, widespread, materially harmful phenomenon online. none of what i have to say in this review is meant to minimize its broad success in calling attention to a very real problem!

that said…

in the days since its release, i've seen a lot of back and forth over what this video is about. on one side you have folks calling for the blood of James Somerton and others mentioned in the essay, saying "fuck these people specifically." yet on another side, many insist that you're missing the point if all you see is more drama for the drama mill. "this is a systemic problem" they say, "that's what the video is about." i'm inclined to agree more with the latter than the former, as Hbomb does consistently circle back to talking about the unpaid victims of plagiarism, ending the video by explicitly highlighting underrated queer creators and even saying outright that he doesn't want the end result to be limited in scope to just retribution against these specific plagiarists.

and yet, when i see a meme like this one:

i can't help but think… is that what the video is about? is someone who just sees the drama missing the point? yes, certainly, Hbomb says as much, but how much does he actually say it compared to everything else? what's the proportion of (to be overly reductive) "drama content" to "systemic criticism"? because it seems to me that anyone who only/mostly gets "wow fuck these people in particular" out of this video has done nothing less than take the video in aggregate. the bulk of its runtime is spent detailing very specific acts of plagiarism, and while yes, as i said above, this abundance serves a very real purpose, it shouldn't go unacknowledged that the tone of these sections is often one of ridicule and mockery. i don't mean that as a criticism in and of itself, to be clear. you can draw a line from here directly backwards through all his "Measured Response" videos, dude cut his teeth on knocking overconfident hacks down a peg, a bit of ridicule and mockery is to be expected. but that does ultimately mean that Hbomb spends most of the video saying "fuck these people in particular," in a tone of voice he honed through many other videos devoted to saying "fuck this guy in particular", only occasionally stopping to add that "plagiarism is popular and insidious and even creators you trust might be doing it" before moving onto the next scornworthy particular guy. so it kind of doesn't matter that one is "the point" and the other is "missing the point" because he's genuinely saying both things, and he's saying one of them significantly more often than the other. you can't tell me the dunks aren't at least part of the point, and if they're part of it then they can and will be misconstrued by some as the whole point. the entertainment and spectacle of knocking these plagiarists down a peg is an indulgence that, while certainly earned, does exist in concrete tension with the systemic arguments that are meant to take priority. now, some of this does come down to how internet culture has shifted in the last decade to facilitate a much more aggressive style of engagement overall, which Harris cannot control no matter how often he says "don't harass the plagiarists." there isn't really a perfectly right way to go about this, and under the circumstances i do think he did far better than others might have done in his stead.

but even still, i think this misapprehension is made worse by the essay's conclusion, which in my opinion largely fails to tie the whole thing together into the systemic argument that supposedly is "the point" some viewers are missing. Harris commendably points out how the so-called AI revolution is at its core an act of automated civilization-scale plagiarism, and that future instances of plagiarism may be harder to catch precisely because of this technology. frankly i wish that perspective had taken up a solid 10% of the runtime rather than a couple paragraphs at the very end, seeing as on balance it's the far bigger and more likely threat to the livelihoods of people watching than old-school direct plagiarism, but that's me. what really bugged me was the brevity with which he discussed possible solutions to the problem. he rightly points out that youtube implementing a plagiarism reporting system would just be another tool for bad faith actors to silence marginalized creators on the platform, and then… he kinda gives up? he shrugs his shoulders and says, well, for now, just talking about plagiarism and spreading awareness of it is enough. for as well-intentioned and, generally speaking, true as that is, it bugs me as an essayist because i believe that a big part of the job is or ought to be expanding the audience's ability to imagine what's possible even if you aren't 100% sure about the answers yourself.

these are all very much "how i would have written it differently" criticisms, so they aren't particularly worth much, but i do feel it's odd that he doesn't even broach the subject of federal regulation, platform control, unionization efforts, or even just good old-fashioned consumer activism. virtually every website that the creative economy hangs on is a venture-capital backed corporate venture, and their ad-driven models for profiteering at a moment when wages are stagnant and layoffs are happening everywhere is, like, the reason this is such a problem. to address plagiarism as a systemic issue, we need to understand the systemic enablers of it as a behavior. if creators weren't getting such a small slice of the revenue pie, if we had more control over the platform and what rises to the top, if the companies that owned these platforms were beholden to federal regulations, if the government increased arts funding and gave out grants to independent creators that involved third-party quality checks, if online video creators had any manner of collective labor power, if the cost of living was lower by way of public healthcare, free education, mass public transit, and affordable housing, then this would be a drastically different conversation. these are not non-sequitors! this is as much an economic problem as it is a cultural one, so any proposed solution that stops at changing the culture is necessarily incomplete and doomed to fail.

look, i don't expect Hbomb to have the answers. nobody has the answers. but i think it's a bit short-sighted to leave so many possibilities unsaid when the one concrete possibility discussed is immediately (correctly) written off as a bad idea. it leads to a conclusion that feels iffy, a bit defeated, lost at sea, and that's an infectious mood. if the first step to solving plagiarism as a systemic problem is to encourage talking about it openly, i think it's equally important to at the very least gesture in the direction of the many possible avenues for a systemic solution, no matter how impossible or ridiculous they might seem in the current political climate. in point of fact, i think it's of utmost importance to include these possibilities precisely because they seem impossible, otherwise we will forever be trapped in a world of insufficient half measures, meekly reifying the conservative austerity of the liberal order because it's easier and safer than taking a wild shot in the dark.

again, i want to stress that this is a deeply subjective criticism. i'm an ornery Marxist, of course i have these kinds of gripes. and it's easy to get lost in criticizing what isn't there, which as an exercise generally tells you more about the critic than the object being criticized. so, to close out, i'm gonna shake my fist a little at something that is there.

there's a moment at about one hour thirty-five minutes in where Harris turns on some colored lights to get that patented blue-purple Bisexual Lighting, and then he says this:

This is a whole style of video now, and by "style" I mean one person did it first and then a bunch of boring people ripped her off. Stealing from lots of places is inspiration, but stealing from one place is plagiarism… unless you call it The BreadTube Style, and then it's fine. I don't even know what a BreadTube is, I just woke up one day and was told that I was in it, and that people hated me for being in it. I don't even know what it is!

i understand where this jab is coming from-- the whole BreadTube scene was a melodramatic nightmare, on account of being an audience-invented genre which that audience (and later creators who emerged from that audience) often inaccurately treated as a coherent movement. i understand the frustration expressed by a lot of creators in that first generation of left-ish essayists (Hbomb, Lindsay Ellis, Dan Olson, Contrapoints etc) with the atmosphere of that moment, and certainly don't begrudge them a desire to distance themselves from it and ridicule its shortcomings.

but this brief little jokey aside left a bad taste in my mouth. the creator he's talking about being "ripped off" here is obviously Contrapoints, who brought a colorful theatricality to her early work that elevated it above being something she shot for cheap in her apartment. this went hand in hand with her Socratic style of essaying, giving her characters a strange and vibrant world to occupy. i don't want to say she "did it first" because, let's be real, Natalie Wynn did not invent the idea of using dramatic lighting on the internet. but she was certainly the first person i saw on youtube doing it in video essays, and yeah, a lot of people followed her example including me!

but that's not the same thing as plagiarism, is it? this whole video is an extensive exploration of what genuinely counts as plagiarism: taking someone else's words and pretending that they're yours. style is almost never part of that conversation across the whole 4 hours, except where it involves use of prepackaged assets like transitions and stock footage, which Hbomb deliberately notes is fine and normal except when people act like they're the ones who invented it (this particularly comes up in the Legal Eagle section). by the terms of this joke, Abby Thorne of PhilosophyTube falls under the category of "boring people" who were "ripping off" Contrapoints even moreso than those who just lit videos like her, because she even does the Socratic-style dialogues! but somehow i don't think Harris would call that plagiarism. if the concern re: bisexual lighting in BreadTube is attribution, all i can say is that Natalie Wynn is one of the single most discussed and cited creators in the whole field. virtually everyone i can think of who "ripped her off" back in the day openly acknowledged being inspired by her at every possible opportunity. of course that's just my own biased recollection of the history, so who knows, maybe there are people out there acting like they did it first. but unlike most of the other victims of plagiarism provided in this video, Natalie Wynn is not wallowing in obscurity. her work is IMMENSELY successful, to the point where she's arguably the closest thing to a household name you can get from this space.

now, i'm sensitive to a joke like this because i always felt like if anything Natalie got too much credit for "inventing" the so-called "BreadTube style". her use of colored lights was striking and unique, yes, but it was also rudimentary and not particularly complicated. i worked in film lighting for enough years to see this "style" as equivalent to late 1910's era silent films blindly grasping at the bare fundamentals of montage that have become the backbone of all cinema. it's good, but it ain't Citizen Kane. i really hoped people would take Natalie's baseline not as a concrete template, but as a challenge to get even more ambitious and filmic with their lighting setups! instead things have stagnated, and we've kinda circled back around to a very slightly more colorful version of the standard pre-Contrapoints look. this is by no means to play down the work that Natalie did, because i know from my own years making video essays that it is NOT easy or simple to set up even rudimentary lighting that looks good. but come on man, have some perspective. she's a philosopher, not an electrician!

what's worse is that later on in the video, Hbomb talks about how many creators were inspired by AVGN to do twists on his formula, and why this was a good thing. near the end, when he's very rightly shouting out many underrated queer essayists, he spends a good chunk of time celebrating the spirit of remix that is so unique to the internet, insisting that there's a real tangible difference between plagiarism and inspiration. this is good! i agree with him! which is why it's so bizarre that there's this one aside that equates using bisexual lighting to plagiarism! it's a disarmingly hypocritical moment in an otherwise relatively on-point video, and its presence kind of weakens the rest of the essay for me (especially if you're sensitive to how near this comes to being all-out drama youtube, as clearly even Hbomb is by his own admission in the video).

the last i'll say is that i find it frustrating when a creator in Hbomb's position tries to act like BreadTube wasn't A Thing. no, it wasn't A Thing the way quite a lot of people thought it was (including many who called themselves BreadTubers). but these creators were often collaborating with each other to make guest appearances, read quotes, etc. certainly they mentioned each other often enough, which couldn't help solidifying in the audience's mind that there was indeed A Thing happening that involved multiple people with similar creative & political goals, regardless of whether or not that was the creators' intent. it wasn't formal, and it certainly wasn't A Movement (the lack of an articulated ideological spine is a BIG part of why things went sour the way they did), but they were happy enough to play along before Drama blew the whole endeavor to smithereens. and notably, successive generations of creators (like Sophie From Mars, Jack Saint, Lily Alexandre, CJ the X, and yes, also me again) saw the BreadTube genre as a place where interesting things were happening, where the kinds of things they/we wanted to create were encouraged and supported vociferously. it's no coincidence that a LOT of up-and-coming trans creators doing very BreadTube-y things got a huge boost from guesting on Hbomb's DK64 Nightmare Stream in 2019 (including me again, haha, oops), because there was A Thing happening even if most people were wrong about what, exactly, it was. none of this is to say that Hbomb should call himself a BreadTuber-- god no, i hope no one does that ever again, i'm embarrassed that i did back in the day! but this history does exist. mostly i just think this joke would've been better left on the cutting room floor.

okay, i think that's enough criticism for one day. one thought i had coming out of this is that i wish more video essays would publish concurrently with a written version on a dedicated website. not just a transcript but an article-format version. i wonder sometimes about the difficulty of indexing video essays, of getting their contents into a historical record that can be printed out and put into a library. but anyway, all my gripes aside, it's a good video and you should go watch it! preferably in chunks over a day or two!

[dear-indies]

Hi! Would you please give me some suggestions for faceclaims fitting for a "stereotypical" punk character? He's male and between the ages of 23-29. I was originally thinking Matthew Lillard in Senseless (1998) but I'd like to have more options.

Julio Torres (1987) Salvadoran - is gay - has younger roles but also looks very young.

Eric Graise (1990) African-American - is a double leg amputee - Queer as Folk.

Tyler Posey (1991) Mexican / English, Scottish, Irish, German, distant French - is queer and sexually fluid.

Yves Mathieu East (1994) Afro Asian - is queer.

Rish Shah (1995) Indian - Do Revenge.

Ashton Sanders (1995) African-American - Native Son.

Ryan Potter (1995) Japanese / Ashkenazi Jewish, Swedish, English, German, Scots-Irish/Northern Irish - is bisexual - Titans.

Liam James (1996) - Deadly Class.

Evan Mock (1997) Bisaya Filipino / Unspecified.

Murakami Nijiro (1997) Japanese - Alice in Borderland.

Pedro Pascal (NYPD Blue) White Chilean.

and not a man but I don't get to suggest him as much as I'd like and he totally fits this ask:

Chella Man (1998) Hongkogner Jewish - is Deaf and genderfluid (he/they) - Titans.

Why is there such a lack of punks in media ahhh!!

[junkdyke]

hey 🌷🌷 i just wanna say i hope you’re doing well! seeing you on my dash makes me wanna be me best black lesbian self fr fr <3 i’m struggling w being in/out of the closet and finding my style, esp with a lot of queer rep being very white and american-y, if that makes sense? so thank you for just Being You and sharing it w ppl.

Ahhh thank you so much, it makes me happy to know my dumbass helps a lil bit!! Totallyyyyyy get you on style when so much lesbian rep, esp femininity is so white! My feminine style heavily relied on eurocentric beauty, straight hair + colored contacts, and it's been hard shifting away from that and suddenly feeling less attractive. It helps immensely to keep looking at people who look like you, you see the beauty in them and it helps to see it in yourself! Lesbian attraction and style is also just so far from mainstream beauty anyway, and most media does a piss poor job of representing the community whatsoever lmao. Going out to lesbian events has also been great at reminding me what this community actually looks like, and how varied the styles are! Just have fun with it, think about what would be interesting to try, what would look cool, and style is a constant evolution! I have plans for my hair and other things that are probably going to make me look even more weird, but it's the confidence that makes it sexy! Sorry this got so rambly lmao but thank you for sending me this, I hope you're doing well too!! 💖

[kiwiana-writes]

4, 22 and 37 for the fanfic authors asks please 🙂

Ahhh thanks pal!

4. What made you start writing fanfiction?

I have always been someone who processes my shit via writing and so even at 13 I recognised fanfic as another avenue for that—but with characters that I already loved. As someone in a tiny rural town just beginning to understand their own queerness and not having any role models or representation of that either in media or in real life, fanfic was my gateway into that idea of like… if the stories don’t exist, write them! And when my high school English teacher was telling me that I couldn’t include queer characters in your short stories because it wasn’t ‘appropriate’, fandom was there to say “why the fuck CAN’T Remus and Sirius be gay” 😅

I was in a few different fandoms pretty steadily from like 13-21, and then I needed a long-ass break from it all. I didn’t write fic again until I was 30, when I binged all of Schitt’s Creek in nine days during covid lockdown, and it was a fundamentally different experience approaching fic for a media whose queerness was not only textual but CELEBRATED. (I’d been in some fandoms with canonical but very ~toxic~ queer pairings lol.) I’d obviously lived a whole bunch of life by then as well, so writing fic became less of an escape and more of a celebration. Still a way to process my shit, though 😂

22. Which do you do more: read fic or write fic?

Well. Per my reading tracker I’ve read just over 1.17 million words of fic in the eight and a bit days of 2024. I have written… significantly less than that 😂😂

37. Which character is your favorite to write for?

Currently it’s one Alex Claremont-Diaz. I too am a caffeine addicted ADHD early Aries mspec clumsy disaster, so, you know. A lot of aspects of him come pretty naturally 😅

[fanfic author ask game]

[broomsticks]

you tackled that tonks/lily post so gently, so elegantly, I am in awe. (also I wrote tonks / lily for efficiency sake but I do think it would be an interesting ship to explore!). for me - my priority in HP is sibling relationships tbh and FRIENDS. like I wrote a romance and 80% of it was about platonic relationships. also - I dislike how people are like 'mlm is for straight women!' and erase the fact that so many women writing mlm are queer (that was in a reply re: wolfstar), as shown by statistics (which you probably have, you are so clever!)

ahhh thank you that means a lot! glad my hard-earned wisdom from my (one year's 😂) long experience shipping both remadora and wolfstar is coming in handy LMAO. but seriously - fandom Means Something to so many people and that's wonderful, that shared passion and excitement and joy and connection and vulnerability, but the flip side of that, when it means different things to different people, the "why don't you see this the way i do?" / "how can you not care about this as much as i do?" / "why does this not mean the same thing to you as it does to me?" hits so much harder. i get it, it's a horrid feeling!

but i've realized that what often comes across as remadora bashing/ erasure from some wolfstar folks is really them trying to say, in maybe not so many words, that canon acknowledgement / a happy ending for wolfstar would really have meant a lot to me, and therefore i am creating in fic what i would have wanted to see on the shelf/on the screen, just these small ordinary happinesses that's been denied same-sex couples over and over and over and over, in mainstream media and in real life.

and conversely, often what remadora shippers are trying to say is that remus and tonks, individually and together, mean a lot to me too, and so it hurts to see tonks' character sidelined/ assassinated even more than it already was in the books, it hurts to see it repeatedly insinuated that just because it's het m/f makes it automatically less queer, less 'cool,' less valid, less worthy of thoughtful consideration and affirmation and celebration, especially now that canon is long dead and buried and the fandom has really become its own thing.

(i don't know the jegulus and jily fandoms well enough to say, but.. you get the idea)

are gay people and same-sex relationships discriminated against? absolutely. are women a marginalized group? for sure. what about bi people, especially bi folk in m/f relationships? oh gosh don't get me started.

but. one side claims misogyny, the other claims homophobia, something something 'protecting male friendships,' something something biphobia, … it's tiring. it's the oppression olympics and i'm not about that (especially in this fandom! this fandom!!! of all places!). i'm tired. everyone has scars and hurts and is just trying to have a nice relaxing self-indulgent time. i would love for more people to read/write femslash, fic about the actually unlikable or morally complicated characters, and dark fic, but more than that i want people to enjoy themselves and be happy in fandom! ship and let ship. write whatever you want. don't want to read it? don't read it. fandom is for joy and silliness and fun. and for writing and gifting me james/lily/peter fic, obviously 😊

OKAY WOW SOAPBOX. i have feelings about ship wars, especially of the political moralizing and activism sort.

-#-

anyway yes gen fic is another area that's so hard to find a community for. AO3 already does better than most in having the & tag (the platonic 'regulus & sirius' made it into the top 10 tags of fics written last year! amazing) but it's inconsistently tagged: this first war longfic i'm currently reading, Power the Dark Lord Knows Not, is far more sirius & james and sirius & regulus, heck even remus & peter and sirius & peter, than it is wolfstar, but the slash ship is the only one tagged -- this is a delightfully chaotic minerva & peeves oneshot that's not tagged -- and ... even if it IS tagged, who really goes looking for remus & professor binns fanfiction? i'm a little sad that genuary never really came back after that first year too. ah well.

-#-

also hahahaha yes the stats you want are here. these stats are from 2013. 2013. imagine how different they probably look now, and in this defiantly queer section of the HP fandom at that.

[artbyace]

for the ask 🦚💙

🦚 - are there any queer books/shows/etc. that you would suggest?

AHHH i love queer media yes yes yes. young royals and heartstopper are obvious choices for queer shows like GO WATCH THEM NOW IF YOU HAVENT. and we all know how much i love the last of us but like UGH. that show is so good if you’re looking for heartbreaking queerness. i love their portrayal of both young, dumb queer love but also old and tender queer love!! i feel like you never see queer love stories of older gay men like you see in that show. and the fact that the directors and writers actually talked to older gay men about their experiences to make sure they portrayed it right <33333 ugHhhh

now for books, most of my answers are the pretty basic ones. BUT. i will never stop hyping up The House on the Cerulean Sea. SOOOOOO HEARTWARMING AND CUTE!! this book has queer characters that are queer without it having to be their whole personality!! and found family!! and again, old and tender queer love. i love this book.

aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe is also SO SO SO SO GOOD and they’re coming out with a movie soon !! WATCH IT!!

same goes for red white and royal blue which i enjoyed but definitely not more than aristotle and dante

💙 - When you first learned about the Queer Community, did you immediately realize ‘That’s me!’ Or did you consider yourself a ‘really good ally’ for some time?

definitely the second half… i have a lot of queer family and other people in my life that i knew from a very young age so i was also just the REALLY good ally until i realized it was more than that heehee

[talenlee]

Defending The Defended

Defending The Defended

Discourse.

Ahhhhh!

Okay, cool, now you’ve got that out of your system, we can move on.

There are layers of discourse (ahhh, there I went and said it again) that can affect and infect the ways you engage with a space. I use discourse neutrally here; I’m talking about games, you’re reading about games, chances are things I say influence you either to agree with me or to disagree with me more vehemently, but none of that is ‘discourse’ as a perjorative. It is a conversation that happens over time and place and there’s no sin or crime in engaging with it.

I know that especially in queer circles, there’s this treatment of discourse as a poisoned term, which is frustrating. Discourse, academically, represents a thing that happens, like you’re observing a meterological event or a particular type of river structure, it’s not an activity you do like a punch-clock job at the discourse factory. I was way too used to using the term ‘take’ to describe people’s individual perspectives and described relationships to things before I found that for some reason, a lot of people I knew considered calling something a take was insulting. I don’t think of it that way, and I don’t mean it that way – it just seems a more ready way to attribute an opinion I think of as interesting to its actual source rather than say something like ‘X’s autoethnographic reflective hypertexts’ or whatever term would make people feel properly alienated from me refering to something as their opinion.

These opinions are vitally important to me, as you might imagine as someone who runs a blog where I dedicatedly give you my opinions on things, even if those opinions can be framed pretty defensively as ‘mostly just true,’ like ‘this is a technique for achieving this graphical effect I like to try and achieve’ like when I made ripped paper in GIMP. I think that one of the most frustrating things that we can get in the habit of experiencing and expecting is that when we want to make sure our opinions are shared, we somehow elevate them, as if by borrowing the constructive language of a particular legitimising media form – usually a review, but sometimes an ‘essay’ (which is often ‘a review, but longer’) – then we can tell people about something that we experienced and related to without ever expressing something of who we are and why we think that.

And that gets to this strange place of feeling like our feelings of things like alienation or isolation, or having our opinions disregarded, is something that can be represented by the media we experience. If I like a type of media, then I see people making fun of that media, it can be very easy to internalise the idea that that ridicule is implicitly being cast on me! I need to get up and get in their face and make sure they understand that they’re wrong to make fun of that thing because after all I like it, but then rather than say that, I have to find some way to express that my liking it is a part of an objective fact.

That’s how we get into this squirrelly position of talking about things that may be in fact, very big, very successful, and completely fine without our defenses, that we nonetheless may find ourselves leaping to protect and defend because we aren’t really even that concerned about the thing, but rather, upset by the idea of our feelings not mattering. Which we then compound by not treating our feelings like they matter by, say, explaining that that’s what we want to talk about.

This is all predicated on a recent example of this that I thought was very silly but which I haven’t stopped gnawing at in the back of my mind.

Somewhat recently, I saw someone taking to a public space to talk about how they were sick of holding back the opinion that The Last Of Us was good, actually, and they wanted to stop pretending it wasn’t. This is the same The Last Of Us that has sold over 20 million copies, a 95 on Metacritic, near universal acclaim, numerous 10/10 review scores, a recent remaster that also got near universal acclaim, and a prestige drama TV series on HBO. It seemed that somewhere in the pocket of the internet this person was spending their time, it was somehow a controversial, defiant opinion to say that they were one of the twenty million people who played The Last Of Us who didn’t walk away going ‘wow that sucks.’ This prompted a little back-and-forth, but hopefully nobody was upset by it and I really hope this doesn’t look like me coming in to bat for trying to win an argument that’s months old because I have a blog and the other person doesn’t.

Rather, I want to think about the kind of contention that can happen when you see talking about things, a social experience you do with people you want to relate to socially, as defending things, a moral activity you do against people who are buttheads. It turns liking media into moral code, and it can create these strange squirrel hole situations where you wind up seeing something like (say) God of War or Final Fantasy XIV or The Matrix Revolution as being media that needs ‘defending,’ where without your input, without your position, on it, everyone who doesn’t like it the way you want them to is somehow doing something wrong, or is missing something obvious, or just plain bad because they don’t get it.

I feel like one of the worst things I’ve seen happen to the discourse I’m in is the proliferation of a particular form of media critique that can be cooked down to ‘X is good, actually.’ or ‘X is bad, actually.’ It’s a framing that presents itself as correcting me, and that immediately puts me on the back foot, and that correction brings with it the idea that my opinion is an incorrect thing that they, the presenters of the argument, can correct me on, and that I should want to do that. It presents a world where media has inherent quality and your opinion is not worth examining on its own.

You gotta remember: Media isn’t good.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media