he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
sheepfilms
Show & Tell
i don't do bad sauce passes
Three Goblin Art
trying on a metaphor
★
Today's Document
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Love Begins
YOU ARE THE REASON
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
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JBB: An Artblog!
cherry valley forever
taylor price
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@5imulacrum
Most people would consider 24 hours of Moby-Dick to be hell on earth. I went to understand the people who call it heaven.
This is (I think) a beautiful read about the experience of reading great literature -- specifically Moby Dick, and that specificity does matter -- in community.
To recite the whole novel in one unbroken sequence only intensifies Moby-Dick’s legendary obstinance. We are all trapped here, in the belly of the beast, one page at a time.
OUROBOROS WRAPPED:
you consumed yourself 74 times this year
you ended 4 cycles and started 13 new ones!
you did not break the pattern today, so the loop will repeat tomorrow
try again next year?
“stop traumadumping to your friends tell this to your therapist” my god they paywalled human connection
“If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. but if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me, I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted so that I might share in what I was entitled to share. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation.”
Oscar Wilde
I love the post-apocalyptic genre as much as the next horror fan, but there is something to be unpacked in how they often reinforce very reactionary political ideas. Not just in the more bluntly conservative ways of thematically rewarding ideas like
“shoot first ask questions never”
“never offer mercy”
“torture works”
“Strong Government may be doing Bad Things but it is the only thing stopping people from becoming roaming bands of cannibal rapists unless Strong Men with police or military training maintain order once society collapses”
But also in the less easily recognizable reactionary beliefs like
“power vacuums are real and inevitable” (implying that unless you plan to exert a similar level of power and take the top of the hierarchy then you should not seek to dismantle power)
“the people who survive are the best— the strongest and smartest and most resourceful, the ones who deserve it most.” (implying that eugenics is an inevitable biological force rather than a political ideology)
“If someone who deserves to live dies, it is due to the actions of a villain, ‘good’ ‘important’ people do not just die from sickness or hunger or chance or mundane accidents” (more eugenics tbh, or at very least a just world ideology & confusing storytelling conventions with how the world works)
I think this becomes an issue when people—who have not studied, for example, the way that communities engage in mutual aid during natural disasters even if disconnected beforehand—will assume that collapse will inevitably lead to evil cannibal hoards as the biggest threat to survival and therefore the most important thing to prepare for, instead of understanding that collapse is much more likely to lead to an absolute need for community interdependence and cooperation to survive in the face of environmental disaster. I think it’s an issue if you can’t picture disabled people during collapse because you watched a hundred depictions of post apocalyptic shows where disabled people are eerily absent or die immediately, instead of internalizing the much more likely reality that if you survive disaster even if you were able-bodied previously, you and everyone you know will likely be surviving as disabled people.
like the media is fun as a form of storytelling, but if you are approaching your imagination of the future with increasing climate crisis with images you got from zombie shows, you do need to take a break from the fiction and learn from communities that have actually experienced natural disasters in real life.
you'll like this:
[ID: an advance reading copy cover of the book The Lightest Object in the Universe by Kimi Eisele.]
wow, I checked some reviews & I can see why you recommended it!
"[At first] I found The Lightest Object in the Universe to be deeply frustrating. Here I am reading a novel about the end of the world [...] where were the nuke pooches, the marauding cannibal, road warriors, the blood thirsty packs [...]? The problem wasn't with Kimi Eisele, [...] the problem was me."
sounds like it's doing a good job of subverting these tropes to have a reader suddenly realize that their expectation of these ideas (as the obvious narrative of what happens in an apocalyptic scenario) has been cultivated through other stories in the genre. that the ubiquity of this one view of humanity and crisis in what they've read in the genre had reached a point where it was genuinely limiting this reader's imagination! that there are possibilities outside of these repeated stories.
thank you for the recommendation! I'll have to check it out.
This reminds me of a book I read some time ago called The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline. I remember it because it felt different from apocalyptic media like The Walking Dead or The Last of Us (though that might be because of the lack of zombies). It’s set in an apocalyptic Canada where climate change has destroyed the world, the water is toxic, and everyone has lost the ability to dream except Indigenous people.
The way the apocalypse happened — catalysts kept coming, like natural disasters, diseases wiping out thousands of people, etc. But everyone was expected to keep doing things the same way they did before. People were expected to keep working, churn out the same amount of products, even as half the labour force had died. The world changed, but none of the systems did. And eventually people lost their dreams.
The protagonists are all an Indigenous found family and the story focuses on their survival. I feel like it’s a lot calmer — and there seems to be a larger focus on the grief that comes with your world ending and losing your way of life but also needing to keep going.
I loved The Marrow Thieves! My wife and I listened to the audiobooks earlier this year and really appreciated them. We’ve since listened to a couple other books by the same author!
This also very much applies to fanfics. Some people need to take a step back and think before they make straight fools out of themselves.
listennnnn, please say it louder for the folks in the back.
y’all gotta learn to be ok when things aren’t about you/catering to your wants. and if you can’t learn to be ok, just don’t subject artists and writers to your whining.
"Your show might be delayed by the wga strikes!"
I watched Sherlock, mate. We waited three years for the 3 worst episodes you've ever seen. This is nothing
This is a Moving Forward PSA for everyone using AO3. I am witnessing the results of a culture clash and communication failure. Not a lack of communication, but a misunderstanding caused by changes in fandom culture.
Before fic tagging was common, fics weren’t tagged. You had a pairing, if applicable, an author’s note about genre or general content, and if they were feeling charitable, a vague content warning. There are even a few genres of fic where even vaguely tagging literally spoils the plot and impact (such as horror, psyche thriller, in which the likely content is implicit to the genre). As a result, there is a basic category tag that permits this, as a courtesy to “old-fashioned” writers.
“No Archive Warnings Apply” means the fic is PG13 at worst, probably fluff, totally safe.
“Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings” is the polar opposite. It’s a glaring Enter at Your Own Risk billboard. It means: a shitload of warnings apply but I ain’t telling because this story requires shock value. It’s very important to read the author’s notes for those fics because they might be using that older format from above.
But without the context of fandom culture that generated AO3, it’s understandably easy to conflate the two categories, given their similar wording.
“No Archive Warnings Apply” means there’s no
graphic depictions of violence
major character death
underage
rape/non-con
“Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” = HERE BE DRAGONS. (implies that one or more of the above exists, but the author doesn’t want to give anything away by tagging)
when i was a teenager it felt very revolutionary to be cruel to myself. like some kind of slow passive protest against how much everything hurt. i starved myself of sleep and food and tenderness because it felt right. it felt sharp and angry and radical and i wanted to be those things. adulthood is the realisation that the world is already working to cut into you well before you learn how to do it yourself. caring for yourself and others is the real protest
Michelle K, I Know I Deserve More
My latest cartoon for Guardian Books.
“You are responsible for the minors in your fandom!!!”
No, I’m fucking not. I’m not your parent. My past-times do not automatically sign me up to act in loco parentis. If you need someone else to monitor your own content consumption online, go get mommy and/or daddy to set up a content blocker on your computer.
Louder for the minors in the back, please.
What I’m responsible for in my fandom:
1. Making a good faith effort to include relevant and informative tags and labels on my creative works.
2. Making a good faith effort to use the “author chose not to warn” rating, a “contains potentially upsetting content” note, cuts or community ratings, or otherwise indicating that there might be untagged, triggering content if I’m not up to or don’t want to tag it.
3. Being a good fandom citizen; not sending death threats or hate, not bullying people, being kind and thoughtful to those I interact with, and leaving alone things that would prompt me to act otherwise.
4. Curating my own experience; not engaging with people or material that I know will be harmful or upsetting to me, disengaging when I realize that something is harmful or upsetting to me, and using tools such as blocklists and tag filters to hide content I don’t want to see.
5. Doing the opposite of whatever the fuck bullshit is going on in tiktok at all times.
KING SHIT BEHAVIOR BY ALEX HIRSCH
The people celebrating the overturning of Roe v Wade will tell you that Ruth deserved this death.
Calorie: Stop asking candidates if they ”believe in” climate change and start asking if they understand it. It’s science, not Santa Claus.
One of the most common reasons I hear for people being against abortion is because “life is sacred.”
Really? Since when? When has life ever been sacred in this country?
If life is sacred, how come we don’t have universal healthcare?
If life is sacred, how come we don’t pass comprehensive gun laws so first graders don’t get gunned down in their classrooms?
If life is sacred, why don’t we offer paid maternal leave so mothers can actually take care of the babies that you are now forcing them to have?
If life is sacred, how come we don’t bat an eye when the police murder black kids?
If life is sacred, why do we have the highest maternal death rate in the developed world, which is only going to increase now that women are being forced to give birth?
If life is sacred, why is the death penalty even still a thing?
If life is sacred, why are we still encouraging violence against the LGBTQ+ community?
Life has literally never been sacred in this country. Maybe anti-choicers like to pretend that it is because it makes them feel righteous when in reality, they’re just misogynistic pieces of shit, but it’s not. And as long as psychotic, reactionary morons continue to steal power undemocratically and make decisions that the majority of us do not want, it never will be.
