We Might Fly

Drac (they/them) I’m just showing you this cool thing I found, really

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

anyway hi hello I am back on my soap box that is addressing the sexual violence that is intrinsic to most vampire texts

[wizzard890]

repeating myself from the comments here but I think this atrophy is in part due to the fact that vampires are now seen in genre culture (derogatory) to Be About Queer People, when they are in fact an extremely flexible literary device that can be About many things, but especially rape.

so because Vampires Are Queer Now, writers are either morally against making that conflation with sexual violence, or are afraid of being read in bad faith if they do anything else with the idea. which turns both vampires as symbols and the conversation around them into sludge.

anyway

[lesslaivyy]

[vitchuatlocalhost-deactivated20]

[partywithponies]

Fascinating how what's considered feminine and what's considered masculine can change over time. The rebranding of being a horse girl into being a stereotypical feminine girly trait needs to be studied.

[partywithponies]

Look at classic children's novels. As recently as the 50s and early 60s, being obsessed with horses as a girl was depicted as strange and tomboyish, and the very concept of being obsessed with horses from early childhood and loving toy horses and desperately wanting your own horse being a "little girl thing" and not a "little boy thing" would send someone from the 1800s and earlier into a coma.

[partywithponies]

There's maybe a point to be made here somewhere about how when keeping and riding horses stopped being necessary to the functioning of society and became a more "frivolous" thing, it was rapidly rebranded as silly and girly and for women, but what do I know.

[dizzyghoast]

i wrote a paper in my masculinity studies class in college about this exact phenomenon, specifically about how high heeled shoes started as a practical way for Persian cavalry to keep their feet on their stirrups, then likely due to that association, became a popular fashion item and status symbol among the upper classes of Europe, before the Great Male Renunciation of the 18th-19th centuries, when men started shunning opulence in favor of utility, leaving them as a fashion item for women instead.

I've joked that the two genders are Aesthetic and Utility before but thats just kinda the case

[thelibrarybat]

[freezeframe]

You may be wondering how I got into this situation. That's good. Keep wondering. If you pay close attention to the rest of this movie and employ your critical thinking skills, you may find that the answer unfolds as it goes along. Sometimes it's good not to know yet, and to wonder. Sometimes that's the entire point.

[unfreezeframe]

[thatdisasterauthor]

Sometimes I remember weird things from my childhood that seemed totally normal at the time but now I’m like “wait, no, that was not even a little normal.”

In other news, my family once dressed me up as a dead Victorian child to scare hotel guests.

[prokopetz]

It's fun when the robot character in the sci-fi show gets cut in half because nobody working on this type of media knows anything about robotics and you never know what you're going to find inside. Green printed circuit boards? Meat and viscera, but like in a weird colour? Just a shitload of goo?

[youcanstillwhistle]

I think the "pre" and "post" parts in "preposterous" should cancel each other out but everyone else seems to find my idea completely erous

[maxknightley]

"it would be so good if it was good" will haunt you but "it's extremely good, except for the one or two parts which are so bad it's genuinely kind of insulting" will straight up drive you insane

[maxknightley]

one has you making posts like "okay but if the author UNDERSTOOD the POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS of the story they were telling, and leaned into it, it would actually be a really interesting exploration of..."

the other has you pacing your bedroom at one in the morning going "why. why would you ever in a million years do it like that. genuinely what possible thought process was involved. was the writer possessed by a fucking ghost or something."

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I'm so sick of defending shit I don't even like. I hate porn. I think gender and sexuality are boring. I've never taken an illegal drug and have no interest in doing so. But people won't back the fuck off and let people live their lives so here we still are, still on the front lines with this shit. "You guys make everything about" I'D REALLY LOVE NOT TO, MATE, BUT WE'RE NOT THE ONES CREATING PROBLEMS HERE. Stop trying to control people's lives and we'll all get a chance to shut up about it, but unfortunately the Moral Police are out here endangering lives and livelihoods so here we still are. Forever.

[ramquest-deactivated20260414]

God I fucking feel you. Too real.

[paulgadzikowski]

"Why do you have to make everything about" WE'RE NOT. YOU ARE. WE'RE RESPONDING TO YOU.

[mswyrr]

What Happens When Young People Actually Read “Disturbing” Books

Something is missing from the debate over educationally suitable literature

[mikkeneko]

[bobbole]

Anthony Machuca, Wake up Steve, our bowls are empty

[byjove]

at least now we know why he has yet to return when Britain is in peril

[kitkatmoose]

We need a flick where King Arthur wakes in modern Jamaica and is very confused.

[byjove]

I think that would be so much funny. He wakes up on a remote beach in Jamaica and he only speaks/understands Brythonic and Medieval Latin. Locals assume he was a tourist who fell from a cruise ship or received a head injury and floated away from a resort. The authorities cannot match his description to any missing persons reports and his fingerprints and DNA produce no hits on INTERPOL. They suspect he may be Welsh or French because the language he speaks resembles Welsh or Breton but France and the UK both state he is not a citizen of their country. Stateless and deeply confused, he is taken in by the community near the beach where he was found, being cared for by a number of local families and doing odd jobs. He slowly learns English and adjusts to the contemporary world, uncertain if his belief that he is the legendary King Arthur was formed by whatever traumatic event caused him to end up Jamaica or if he is actually King Arthur and Prydain is in eminent peril. Mysterious letters from Morgan begin to reaffirm his belief he is King Arthur. He must choose between staying in Jamaica and continuing the happy life he has made for himself or finding a way to get back to Britain without any documentation.

[thecyndimistuff]

I think you guys constantly undermine the exploitation and colonial abuse that Hawaiʻi and Polynesia endures. i promise you indigenous polynesians aren't focused on being excited about representation in the live action moana they're much more concerned by the disney tourism propaganda they've been constantly pushing in their slop movies

[thecyndimistuff]

[byjove]

Sherlock Holmes is a perfectly normal autistic guy with a roommate who is deeply perplexed by him.

[absolutejamer]

Sherlock Holmes demonstrates a remarkably sophisticated understanding of stimulant usage in neurodivergent individuals

[acethembo]

Something a lot of people forget about Holmes is that, because ACD was Like That, his 'relatable audience insert' Watson is actually a lot weirder than Holmes is

[byjove]

That is something that is so fun about reading the books, Watson being the narrator adds so much because you slowly realize how bizarre his perspective is and how strangely grounded a lot of Holmes’s ‘strange’ behavior is. There was something so fascinatingly wrong with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and he passed it on to his self insert.

[byjove]

I’ve said it before but most of what is ‘wrong’ with Holmes is largely understandable and a lot of what is wrong with Watson can be explained by him being a British man from the 19th century but there are just some things about Watson that make you go ‘Dude, what the fuck?’

[notaplaceofhonour]

the funniest possible Live Action Remake that Disney could make, and I would actually watch, is Cars

[notaplaceofhonour]

no eyes on the windshields, no faces, just footage of real cars

[foxglovedforest]

The kids are aight

[catchinghammers]

#those workers are not being paid enough to enforce this and it was a slightly funnier day at work

[banhmigoddess]

My one boring tip to anyone in their 20s is to resist the temptation to rot in your room every time you get a free moment. Dismiss any neuroses you have about going outside and "being perceived". Be a dictator about it, plan your hangouts like they are binding commitments. No excuses! Go to the bar with your friends. Be kinda hungover at work. Socializing is like exercise; even if you don't feel like you want to, you should still do it because it's good for you.

[tahthetrickster]

socializing works a little bit like a car battery and alternator. if you continue to make yourself go out and do things, your social alternator makes it infinitely more manageable for you to continue to go out and do things. if you let yourself be completely idle for too long, the alternator doesn't get to keep charging your battery and eventually it runs completely down and it's nearly impossible to go out and do stuff with a dead social battery. you can always get it jumped again by a friend who's willing to do so, but as with a real car battery it's kind of a whole Thing and the first time out with a jumped battery is still really shaky and weird and anxiety-inducing and all of this could've been avoided if you'd just gone to the arcade or whatever