Six Impossible Things

Words, words. They're all we have to go on.

[ironychan]

A world where humans have no innate magic but our pets do.

Cat magic is pretty raw and they mainly use it for getting into places they’re not supposed to. They can be trained if you’re patient, and will sometimes do favours for their owners out if the blue, but only if they want to.

Dogs have been bred for specific magic over the centuries and each breed can do certain things. Showing off your magic is an essential part of a dog show.

Horses come in horse, pegasus, and unicorn, each with their own magical talents.

Fuck knows what birds can do, I don’t trust birds.

[ironychan]

For an obvious example… dalmatians have been bred for fire magic. A properly trained dalmatian will run into a burning building and all the fires around it will go out. Caution is necessary, of course, because they can also do the opposite. Their favourite toys are often a bit blackened, and puppies must be kept in fireproof surroundings, with extinguishers in easy reach.

[ironychan]

The Pekingese’ magic is camouflage - they can change colour to match whatever they touch, whether a blanket, a mossy rock, or even a reflective mirror. This ability originally enabled them to hide in a robe, so their owners could take them into places where dogs were technically not permitted. The classic image of a pekingese is of it sitting outside a building, appearing to be part of the stonework… until it reveals itself to growl at an intruder.

[ironychan]

Portuguese water dogs are canine silkies - in deep enough water they transform into curly-haired seals, and when they climb back out and shake off, they turn back into dogs.

[villainous-queer-deactivated202]

Cats are often thought to be selfish and troublesome, to only use their magic for themselves, and for random but odd favours.

This is not the entire truth.

Cat magic is largely Watch and Ward, which is only observable in what does not happen. Cats are known to protect sleeping humans from danger simply by being present, their lamp-like eyes acting as a sort of n’est pas possible upon all possible intruders, from pests to more deadly threats.

[itspenutbutterjellycrime]

Pitbulls over the ages were bred to emit magic to calm children and help them sleep

Collies can multiply themselves for a short time to corral animals

St Bernard’s turn into snow and can feel where an avalanche is going to happen hours before the event

Anatolian Shepherd can shapeshift into other animals around them to blend in

[specsthespectraldragon]

corgi magic is banned in most public areas, and one of the few dog magics not to be demonstrated in show- allowing your corgi to perform magic in public can be punished with up to $1000 in fines, even before the costs of damage to people and property

Golden Retriever magic is sometimes considered “disney” magic, as they typically attract waterfowl and game birds. this is not always the benefit one thinks it would be, as some lines have a penchant for attracting swans! some, however, attract vertebrates of a different sort. one remarkable individual was given an honorary degree in wildlife biology for her prodigious ability to attract frogs and toads, and is currently hard at work in Costa Rica.

[specsthespectraldragon]

#I would die for that fictional golden retriever scientists

no. you must live for her. she demands it of you. how else would you be able to appreciate all these great amphibians she’s finding?

[atreefullofstars]

A cat’s protective aura gets stronger in response to affection and respect. If you bond strongly enough with one, you can actually FEEL the magic working, soothing fear and anxiety. They also work in dreams, catching and killing nightmares. Some can do this from several rooms away, while others like to work more closely and will sit on their owners’ chests or heads while they sleep.

[marlynnofmany]

Yes please to all of this.

[kk-maker]

Rat magic: a mysterious multiplication of SOMETHING–food or other valuable resources generally–which can be pretty handy if you don’t mind the nibble marks.

[madmaudlingoes]

Beagle magic is mostly low-grade telepathy, which is very handy for coordinating a pack hunt, but also makes individual dogs prone to neurosis.

[sleepingreader]

Some cats, like their behaviour of presenting a prey, also sometimes present their owner with a small magical favour. Sometimes this involves a transmuted treat. Sometimes this involves a clumsy owner growing whiskers

[quadradaz]

What the hell do Corgis do that it is illegal for them to do their magic in public?

[everybidenjusthavegoodtime]

*releases pack of dads into home depot* go……be free

[hotcommunist-deactivated2019032]

invasive species encroach on lesbian territory

[dreaming-shark]

This is a common misconception because they’re such similar environments, but you should be aware that dads are native to Home Depot, while lesbians are actually native to Lowe’s. At this point, however, both dads and lesbians have made themselves at home in both Home Depot and Lowe’s to the point that trying to separate them back into their original ranges would probably do more harm than good to the delicate ecosystem of large chain hardware stores.

[ailithnight]

A properly raised and socialized Dad will be perfectly comfortable cohabiting with Lesbians. Its not really “encroaching on another’s territory”. You wouldn’t say that about foxes in a forest that also homes bobcats, would you? No. It’s just two different species that have both evolved to live in similar/the same environment. As long as they recognize each other as equals, Dads and Lesbians are more than capable of cohabitation.

Now, if you were to release a pack of Lumberjacks into a Lowes or Home Depot, that’s where chaos will reign. Being adapted to a far harsher and more demanding environment, the Lumberjacks would simply push Dads and Lesbians both out and also consume far more than a sustainable amount of resources. It would be like releasing bears at a country club.

[chequerootlurks]

As a former timber-harvester… I feel this is potentially accurate in theory. But highly improbable in actuality.

Lumberjacks, like most megafauna species generally require more space than the average hardware store, even a big box store could provide. The misconception is that Lumberjacks are a social species because of how they often work and live together.

This is a matter of necessity, not preference, and a survival technique for thriving under the LogBoss.

A “pack” of Lumberjacks, if not under the environmental pressure of a LogBoss will naturally disperse until they each have a wide territory.

Lumberjacks rarely fight for territory.

One on one, a Lumberjack could drive out a Dad or Lesbian, however the latter tend to travel in social packs.

Lumberjacks will passively retreat on the presence of large numbers of people. Kind of like Sasquatch.

Getting a “pack” of Lumberjacks assembled would be hard enough unless they were forced into a Hardware Store by a LogBoss. In that case, they would already be in a heightened and potentially agitated state far above their natural behavior. This artificial scenario can be likened to a circus animal running amok. If it had been in the wild, the incident would not have occurred.

Free-roaming Lumberjacks are the cryptids of the Hardware ecosystem. They are surprisingly quiet and unobtrusive.

Please stop labeling Lumberjacks as dangerous roving social predators. They are intermediate level omnivores and remarkably peaceful unless threatened.

[thatdisasterauthor]

As a hardware store worker I can say that this is all 100% accurate.

[swindle94]

now how in the FUCK am i supposed to leave tumblr when a god tier post like THIS is just is just waiting for me daily?!?!?!

[fromchaostocosmos]

question where does the “art student” or “DIYer” “crafter” or “soap maker” or “miniaturist“ etc. who has ventured into the store for supplies fall into the ecosystem/what is their impact of said ecosystem?

[terulakimban]

Most of the above are native to craft and hobby stores (art students, historically, are native to museums, but having been introduced to hobby stores, have found a niche for themselves and thrived), but all can be seen in hardware stores on occasion due to territorial overlap. They are generally low-impact, as they tend to stick to specific small areas and primarily utilize different resources. While a large group of any of them can be disruptive (art students, in particular, are known to travel in packs), in general, they are more likely to have territorial disputes with one another than with the local fauna. 

A point of clarity -“crafter” is a bit misleading; while it conjures a specific image, much like ‘fish’ or ‘reptile’ it actually covers a broad array of wildly disparate species, and in general, more descriptive nomenclature is preferred. Fiber artists in particular are a genus to watch out for, particularly in groups. Beware a roving pack of domesticated quilters. They fear nothing, will go anywhere, and due to their social nature, will often seek interaction from other species that thrive best in solitude. They are quite friendly, and will happily adopt members of other species; the concern is that their adoptees do not always wish to be adopted. 

[midrashic]

#in search of taxonomic precision and peaceful coexistence (via welkinalauda)

[kriladoodles]

I do wonder how lesbian/bisexual lumberjack-mimickry fits into this

[marablake]

I can say as a former craft store worker that if you wish to see true fear, look into the eyes of a Dad who must venture into a craft store. Despite the overlap of familiar beings known to him from his native hardware store habitat, Dads are instinctively aware that craft stores are not for them; they contain unfamiliar perils and even the seemingly familiar may have strange variances and unnerving secrets. (”Why is this airbrush so small? What do you mean nails, why would you… WUT!!”)

Only experienced silverbacks or the boldest young Dads dare venture into a craft store for long without his mate or offspring to keep roving Craft Ladies at bay and guide him in this strange ecosystem. If a Dad enters with his mate and is separated from her, he will often scuttle for the seeming familiarity of Woodcrafts, Models, or Paints (the latter not to be confused with Fine Arts, unquestioned territory of art students), but he eyes Scrapbooking and Jewelry with trepidation and will usually venture into those exotic areas only in the company of females of his pack.

Lumberjacks are rarely spotted entering craft stores of their own volition, for while they do not fear it as Dads do, they know it is an environment unsuited for megafauna such as themselves.

Hardware store Lesbians generally adapt more easily to craft stores, although they may enlist another Lesbian of a subspecies more adapted to that environment to guide them until they find their niche. Lesbians have even been known to seek the aid of a Craft Lady, a native fauna that share similarities with Lesbians but are usually smaller and nimbler to suit their chosen habitat. Dads who witness this are often awed by the Lesbians’ temerity, for although larger, Dads are generally wary of the cunning and dexterous Craft Ladies and may mistake their enthusiastic pack greetings as predatory swarming.

Craft Ladies, secure in their ecological niche, have no fear of interlopers and take the presence of non-native beings in stride, although they may become territorial about scarcer resources.

The only truly invasive species that threaten craft stores are Brides-to-Be, who are mere annoyances individually, but like locusts may descend in hordes and lay waste, leaving swathes of destruction in their wake. Fortunately for the Craft Ladies, Brides-to-Be are seasonal and usually only a threat in the spring and early summer.

[link-the-feral-anon]

It Got Better

[sheherazade-deactivated20210507]

quotes that help me survive:

“You are not lost. You are here. Stop abandoning yourself. Stop repeating this myth about love and success that will land in your lap or evade you forever. Build a humble, flawed life from the rubble, and cherish that. There is nothing more glorious on the face of the earth than someone who refuses to give up, who refuses to give in to their most self-hating, discouraged, disillusioned self, and instead learns, slowly and painfully, how to relish the feeling of building a hut in middle of the suffocating dust.” — Heather Havrilesky, Ask Polly

this tumblr text post:

“To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” — Mary Oliver

From an interview with Kazu Makino:

Instructions On Not Giving Up, Ada Limon:

And this poster by Yumi Sakugawa

“You have to believe, in your heart, that even if you don’t work hard and exercise and think positive thoughts and make new friends and march triumphantly into the future, you are still enough. You will always have bad days. Being broken doesn’t make you a loser. You can crumble, and you will still be enough. Make that your religion moving forward. You are here to feel this moment. You are not here to become someone better. You are not here to impress or compete. You are not here to prove yourself. You are here to savor this life. Let down your guard. You are already enough. Believe it.” — Heather Havrilesky

“The first feminist gesture is to say: “Ok. They’re looking at me. But I’m looking at them.” The act of deciding to look, of deciding that the world is not defined by how people see me, but by how I see them.” -Agnès Varda

lyrics from the song Grow by The Oh Hellos:

“The world’s otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness—the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.” — Mary Oliver

“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you,and that you will work with these stories from your life--not someone else's life--water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. That is the work. The only work.” — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

[systlin]

Anyway fall goldenrod + aster + sunflower honey is better than summer clover honey send tweet

[after-the-raven-deactivated2022]

Yes, but orange blossom honey? 😩

[systlin]

Very nice, but a product of the lands of ‘it doesn’t get to -40 here so we can grow oranges’ and thus will never be found in my own hives.

[wanderingchaos]

how do you feel about mint honey?

[systlin]

A+, particularly in a glaze or marinade for chicken or in tea for a sore throat.

[after-the-raven-deactivated2022]

Ooh, rosemary honey?

[systlin]

Even better as a glaze for chicken, and killer to add a touch of sweetness to a vinaigrette on summer salad.

[after-the-raven-deactivated2022]

Godsdamn it, now I’m craving all types of honey.

[systlin]

Find some thyme honey and thank me later. It’s my absolute favorite kind, above even my own fall honey, and that’s a tall order.

[systlin]

https://www.rawartisanhoney.com/products/greek-raw-thyme-honey

This shit right here is the nectar of the gods.

I have rarely found it for sale in the USA and always grab it when I do. The best thyme honey comes from Crete and Greece.

[aemiliajane]

I got to try thyme honey when I was in Crete, it's glorious. I'm still kicking myself for not bringing back more. My favourite local honey is redgum, from the flowers of a eucalyptus. So rich and fragrant.

[secondstartotheleftpodcast]

Second Star to the Left - Episode 8 - A Bad Deal

EPISODE 8 is out!!

In which we have a conference call, and Euphoria Station gets a new visitor.

Listen on:

Castos

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Audible

or read the transcript here!

Like the show? Consider recommending us to a friend, or rating us on Apple Podcasts/iTunes or Audible! Your support goes a long way for us!

[secondstartotheleftpodcast]

Oh and this one has guest stars!

Aysha Farah -- our amazing co-writer and co-creator

Matthew Zahnzinger (the Penumbra Podcast/Second Citadel)

Jonny Sims (The Magnus Archives)

[aemiliajane]

I have been loving this podcast so much - it's a great story and Belle and Gwen are wonderfully rich characters.

Check it out if you need some funny, thoughtful, queer science fiction in your ears.

[tomhardysteeth]

Anyway this Twitter thread by NK Jemisin is all I care about

[bitegore]

[id: a twitter thread by N. K. Jemisin @ nkjemisin.

“A late-afternoon revision-mode thought. People ask me sometimes why I’m so *blatant* re racism and other bigotries, in my fiction. Wouldn’t a more subtle approach work?

Answer: No. A more subtle approach wouldn’t work.

SFF does subtle coverage of bigotry all the time, actually. Allegories all over the place, especially in secondary worlds. And probably because of that, readers who are fluent in SFF are used to separating real-world bigotry from its fantastic (or futuristic) counterpart.

Which is precisely how we ended up with a genre that, for most of my life, thought of itself as anti-racist. Look at all the allegories! Meanwhile no black characters. Few writers, editors, etc, of color. Open bigots everywhere.

Allegory does not reinforce reality. It obscures it.

That is, allegory allows readers who are uncomfortable with a topic to engage with that topic in a more comfortable space – away from reality. Scared of black people? Maybe you’ll empathize with these green people on Mars. Freaked out by the mentally ill? Make ‘em psychic.

And as a first step in desensitization, for people who’ve developed a pathological level of discomfort – which our racist, classist, sexist etc society encourages – that’s great! Except… most people stop there. Pat themselves on the back for coming so far. Go no farther.

Like, it’s awesome that you also think Dragon Age 2, a game about a penniless refugee who beomces a heroine, is the best game writing out there! Me, too! But you voted Trump or Brexit because fuck refugees/immigrants?

[A photo of a cat staring at the camera intensely]

But because it was the Done Thing for so long, allegorical engagement became standard in the genre… obscuring the reality that SFF had become nearly as old, white and male as a GOP convention, and just as defensive re its privilege. Overt engagement was, is, treated as gauche.

This isn’t just a genre thing. American society *loves* to pull this shit. Cf. Our media’s endless list of words to use instead of racism – racial tension, race-based bias, etc. Can’t say racism! That’s too far. How uncivil.

Reminder: calls for civility reinforce the status quo. They are a way of saying “Mm yeah you can mention X, but don’t you dare press for actual change!” Which *is* what anyone who mentions (say) the existence of racism, in a racist society, is doing. Naming it helps shame it.

Writing prominent characters who are members of marginalized groups, describing realistic examples of bigotry, and *calling* it bigotry when it appears, all can serve the same purpose, in fiction. But it’s going to feel uncivilized to some readers.

(This is apart from the matter of how to do it *well*. When just mentioning a topic, or a group, feels like a slap in the face to some readers – which it will, bc civility – then how do you slap gracefully? A little backhand, just a twist of the wrist? Practice your swing.)

Sometimes you gotta be uncivilized, when you live and write within a civilization built on bigotry. If it helps, remember that *you* weren’t the one who created this civilization… but you can help fix it.

So include green people…but also include black people. Make your character a refugee, and give them an indigenous Mexican name. Flex pronouns for your NB characters. When your characters are bigots, have somebody or the narrative *call* them bigots.

You cannot trust your audience to just figure that ish out. Some of them will, because they’ve lived it or learned better. Many will not, because they have been trained, by life and by fiction, to see only the “polite” obscuration, and to regard realism as separate and vulgar.

Nothing can fix that except us writers. Only way to move the Overton Window on what feels normal in fiction is to set your feet and shove. Rudely, if you must.

end id]

[inkskinned]

i thought, for a long time, that i had to keep my passions private.

he didn't like the poetry. it would fly around in the bedroom with us. little words like gnats; all caught up in a smokescreen. i was used to this kind of thing - i would only enjoy my own writing with a flinch. i would apologize. i know, there's nothing real about an internet poet.

my friends didn't like to read anything i liked. they didn't like my music. they didn't like the way i sang or how i laughed or how i'd dress. i told myself this is normal - we all have different passions, after all. one thing is sweet to me, too-sour to another.

i didn't know. i thought friends were just mean sometimes, and you couldn't expect them to be excited. i thought love happened only half in the sunlight. shy about anything i liked. for a long time the people i met all loved the word "myopic". they refused to do anything without promising it was ironic.

i didn't know. it seemed easier, you know? to just hide all of it. it felt pathetic, begging people please just watch this. please read this. please try this. you'll like it, i know it.

my sister bought me house plants for the holiday. she doesn't keep them, she just knows i like them. my friend recently collected a list of 50 books with lgbt+ characters in them, ones where nobody dies in the end. she says she keeps an eye out for them, because i mentioned once i'd been looking to expand my list. the other day my roommate made me fish tacos even though he hates fish - he said i know you're having a hard day, and these are one of your favorites.

people don't have to "get it". but the good ones will try, anyway. the good ones will get excited with you. they buy you the concert tickets even though they don't know any of the music. they know all the actors of the show even though they don't have time to watch it. they ask you questions about the game even though they've never even seen the loading screen. they are happy that you are happy, and enjoying something harmlessly. they are just proud you are trying. particularly something creative - it is a dark world. to make something is powerful, and should be celebrated.

she holds my hand. she knows literally nothing about dnd, but lets me chatter about my new campaign for literally three hours, endlessly. in return, she and i discuss this anatomy book she's reading. i don't know half the words but i love that she finds it exciting. life in the sun like - oh, this is flying.

[nonasuch]

as you may know, reading tumblr posts about Dean Winchester is an experience surprisingly akin to auditing classes on gender performance and masculinity at a graduate level media studies program. at least if you read enough of them.

which unfortunately I have! and now I have some thoughts.

see, there are character archetypes that crop up over and over again, and particularly often in 90s and 00s genre TV shows. I am vastly oversimplifying, but let’s boil them down to the Three Main Kinds Of Dudes you are most likely to see in these shows.

Let’s start with the Guy Who’s Not Cool, And Knows It. he’s all over the place: he’s Xander on Buffy, and later Wesley. he’s Julian Bashir, Rodney McKay, Seth Cohen and (at least early on) Alec Hardison. he’s usually not the main character, but he’s up there in the main credits.

and he’s textually, overtly anxious about his masculinity. this is something that other characters comment on, and sometimes he admits to it himself. his long-term character arc is — at least in part — about resolving that anxiety, confronting it and growing past it over time.

(he’s also, often, a self-insert for the guys in the writer’s room. but we don’t have time to unpack all of that.)

our second category is a bit more of a grab bag, because in some ways it covers all the guys who don’t fit into categories 1 or 3. but, broadly, we can call him the Guy Who Doesn’t Need To Make A Big Deal Out Of It. he’s the guy who comes across as quietly secure in his masculinity, who has nothing to prove on that front and whose story doesn’t need to be about proving it. Sometimes he functions as a foil for the Anxious Guy, sometimes he’s just quietly ticking along in the parts of the story that aren’t about Proving anybody’s Manliness. He’s Giles and Oz and Gunn, Eliot Spencer, Ronon Dex, Benjamin Sisko.

and then there’s the Cool Guy.

the Cool Guy is a main character, or he has top billing in an ensemble cast. the Cool Guy is a walking, talking grab-bag of heroic mannerisms. He’s tough and strong and he doesn’t talk about his feelings. he’s a ladykiller. he’s a flirt. he has the popular imagination version of Captain Kirk’s personality, and the popular imagination version of Han Solo’s sex appeal. he kills bad guys and drops a witty one-liner afterwards. he can fly a plane, or a spaceship, or drive a cool car or ride a motorcycle. he walks away from explosions without flinching. he’s not doing this ironically. he’s not performing. he’s just Cool.

as written, he has the depth of a cardboard standee.

but he’s played by an actor who’s, you know, a real human person, and wants his character to have some kind of interiority. so this weird alchemy happens, over and over again.

here’s the thing about that grab-bag of Cool Guy traits and mannerisms: there are real men, in real life, who do most of those things. and most of them probably aren’t overcompensating for anything! but also? none of them have the whole grab-bag. They have, like, two at most.

no one does all of them unless they’re doing them on purpose — unless they’re putting on a performance. but the Cool Guy as written isn’t performing. and the actor playing him has to embody that impossible character while giving him some kind of depth.

So what happens? Dean Winchester. John Sheppard. All the Cool Guys who are meant, textually, to be Effortlessly Performing Masculinity... and subtextually read as desperately overcompensating for their queerness.

whoops!

and somehow tv writer’s rooms keep doing this! they think that if they just pile on more Cool Guy traits, they’ll make the performance convincing, when they’re actually just undermining him more and more.

(sometimes the Cool Guy isn’t even meant to be heroic! the writers of Smallville tried, as far as I can tell, to make Lex Luthor come across as a suave, worldly, sophisticated ladykiller. what they got was a man who makes way-too-intense eye contact with a buff farm boy while suggestively drinking fancy bottled water.)

(also I didn’t watch Teen Wolf but I am given to understand that Derek falls in this category? and Stiles is for sure an archetypical Anxious Guy.)

the thing about the Anxious Guy is that because his anxious masculinity is textual, it can be addressed and resolved in the text. Because the Cool Guy is not textually performing, not textually anxious, he just has to keep on being that guy without the text ever acknowledging that there’s anything weird about it. and all the while the subtext is screaming that this! man! is! trying! too! hard!

and we as viewers with eyes in our heads can see that tension, between what’s said and what’s shown, and tbh most of the time the simplest and most obvious way to resolve it is to say “ah. okay. that man is Not Straight.”

so that’s why Dean Winchesters keep happening. thank u for coming to my ted talk.

[cipheramnesia]

This makes me want to see how this kind of templating works out when atypical characters are dropped into roles like this, especially the Cool Guy roles. Like, if your cool guy is queer, is not a guy, isn't like standard western culture sort of character. Especially when the writer's room and much of the production may be either majority like your usual white cis straight etc etc guys who have all developed the Cool Guy, or people who at least grew up on it.

I mean, someone who started watching Supernatural from the start, at age 15 is now 30. And they've potentially grown up with the Dean Cool Guy who is also sub-textually Anxious About Queer perhaps firmly in their mind, and bringing this new mashup archetype into writers rooms of the future along with, we hope, some greatly shifted cultural norms and that is interesting as heck to me.

[nonasuch]

yeah!!!

the thing about the Cool Guy is that he is in some ways the product of a really specific time and place — he mostly only exists, can exist, in the context of a 90s/00s network TV genre show that’s kind of garbage at women characters.

the Anxious Guy has a slightly larger habitable zone — Xander is my archetypical Anxious Guy but there’s no room for a Cool Guy on Buffy. the only guys who could possibly fill the niche are Angel and Spike, but I feel like they don’t fit, because the Cool Guy is a) the protagonist or nearly so, b) the product of a late 20th century white cis dude upbringing, and c) completely un-self-aware.

someone in the notes pointed out that John Crichton has a lot of the Cool Guy hallmarks, which made me go !!!!! because yes, technically! but he’s a potential Cool Guy thrown into an environment where he’s always, always wrong-footed, where he’s never at home and never in command of the situation, where no one around him shares the socialization he grew up with, and where he’s almost never the most capable person in the room. Also he drinks his respect women juice, which the Cool Guy doesn’t. he’s not a traditional hero. he says it himself — he’s not kirk. he’s dorothy gale.

also like. i said earlier that the Anxious Guy is a writer’s room self-insert. which he super is. and in a lot of ways the Cool Guy is a writer’s room power fantasy. but the Cool Guy only ends up Like That when he’s the product of a writer’s room that is dominated by writers who have that power fantasy. so any writer’s room that’s more diverse than the ones that have historically produced Cool Guys are just… not going to fall into that trap, because theyll have different self-insert characters and power fantasy characters.

[nonasuch]

just had a galaxy brain realization: if Dean Winchester was not trapped in the toxic masculinity hellscape universe of a CW genre show, he would be Jake Peralta

yes I will elaborate but I’m about to leave for work so it’ll have to be later

[nonasuch]

okay okay so. Jake Peralta 🤝 Dean Winchester:

absent/neglectful dads

concept of masculinity formed by TV and movies

identity built around saving/protecting people

in early seasons considers himself a flirt/ladykiller

but also most of his closest friends are women

doesn’t know he’s bisexual

however! Jake is not a Cool Guy. In early B99 Jake is trying to be a Cool Guy, but the narrative knows this about him. If it’s textually a performance, it can be addressed and resolved in the narrative — which it is! that’s like his whole character arc!

because Jake lives in a universe where his performative masculinity is allowed to be acknowledged and interrogated, he gets to grow up and out of it. he gets to have a healthy, non-performative identity! and we the audience don’t have to keep asking ourselves what the fuck this man is trying to compensate for.

and also, because Jake is the product of a creative team that’s like. capable of being normal about queerness? they could absolutely just say “oh and also Jake is bi. that’s a facet of his identity! just fyi.” and we as viewers could take that information as the absolutely non-earth-shattering trait that it would be. It would explain some stuff about him, but not everything, because he was allowed to build an identity outside of Cool Guy performance.

whereas Dean’s writers were faced with the choice between ‘let him be bi so the show makes sense’ and ‘burn it all down.’ and, uh. well. they made a choice.

[hasufin]

The thing that bothers me about this take is that it jumps to a conclusion, and it then shoehorns any evidence to fit that conclusion.

Now, the Cool Guy definitely overperforms masculinity, yes. And while that’s meant in the Writer’s Room to just mean he’s Absolutely Definitely Very Masculine and Manly, it does indeed come across as overperforming. This, I agree with.

And it’s reasonable to from there conclude that this is an intentional overperformance - that it’s not a guy just being himself but rather that he’s actually thinking “Oh yeah, it’ll look badass as I walk away from that explosion without flinching”. This, I’m on board with.

The point where it makes a big leap, though, is to presume that the only possible reason for this performative masculinity is that the Cool Guy is queer. That he’s compensating for his gayness/bisexuality, etc., by showing off how Very Masculine he is. (And, like, that’s definitely one perfectly plausible reason, yes.). But that’s not the only possible reason. I would posit there are a host of reasons why someone might do this kind of thing. One that comes to mind is the self-insert aspect.

We’re talking about writers, and are assuming that Anxious Guy is a self-insert while the Cool Guy is the fantasy. But to some extent, any character someone writes is a self-insert; using your own knowledge of self to fill in gaps, etc.. And writing is not exactly seen as the manliest of vocations. I suspect what we’re seeing is a desperate desire to be acknowledged as manly. It’s saying “I fix my own car, isn’t that manly? No? How about if I lift weights? Manly enough for you? Right, lemme get myself a motorcycle. Manly? No? Well, let me pull out my .50 Desert Eagle....” Bear in mind, if it’s performative then the response is important. And what Cool Guy is seeking - but can’t talk about, both because he’d look desperate and because our cultural expectation of manliness includes not talking about this, is acknowledgement of his masculinity. While Anxious Guy struggles internally with the possibility that he’s not really manly, Cool Guy struggles externally with being acknowledged as manly. And while he may get some acknowledgement, it’s never enough, and so he just has to keep ramping it up, making himself seem more and more manly, and becoming a caricature of masculinity in the process.

Now, I’m not saying that desire can’t stem from Cool Guy trying to hide his queerness. That is certainly a valid explanation. But it could also be seeking approval from an abusive father, a response to bullying, or any of a host of other reasons. If we’re positing a richer internal life for Cool Guy, I think part of that should include acknowledging that his performative actions could stem from a variety of possibilities.

[nonasuch]

@hasufin extremely fair points!

I think the key, for me, is that a) the Cool Guy’s performance is never allowed to be performance textually, and b) when aspects of the performance are (rarely) acknowledged, the reasons given are always Anything But Queerness.

like, if a Cool Guy can admit to being fucked up about his dad, can admit to a savior complex, can admit to learning performative masculinity from TV, but doing so doesn’t allow him to drop any of the performance, then why is he still doing it? what’s left, if he’s still overcompensating?

if the text is willing to acknowledge some of the factors that make him Like That, but he never actually drops the act and the narrative keeps insisting that This Is Just What A Cool Guy Acts Like, there ends up being this black hole labeled ‘Gay Feelings’ that the whole persona orbits around.

[aemiliajane]

@phoenix-ascended this analysis is so much your jam.

[irtenyev]

when w. h. auden said “evil is unspectacular and always human” and ursula k. leguin said “this is the great treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain”

[treethymes]

when toni morrison said “i just think goodness is more interesting. evil is constant. you can think of different ways to murder people, but you can do that at age five. but you have to be an adult to consciously, deliberately be good – and that’s complicated.”

[azbukivedii]

when simone weil said “imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

[gorejock]

“They asked me to tell you what it was like to be twenty and pregnant in 1950 and when you tell your boyfriend you’re pregnant, he tells you about a friend of his in the army whose girl told him she was pregnant, so he got all his buddies to come and say, “We all fucked her, so who knows who the father is?” And he laughs at the good joke…. What was it like, if you were planning to go to graduate school and get a degree and earn a living so you could support yourself and do the work you loved—what it was like to be a senior at Radcliffe and pregnant and if you bore this child, this child which the law demanded you bear and would then call “unlawful,” “illegitimate,” this child whose father denied it … What was it like? […] It’s like this: if I had dropped out of college, thrown away my education, depended on my parents … if I had done all that, which is what the anti-abortion people want me to have done, I would have borne a child for them, … the authorities, the theorists, the fundamentalists; I would have born a child for them, their child. But I would not have born my own first child, or second child, or third child. My children. The life of that fetus would have prevented, would have aborted, three other fetuses … the three wanted children, the three I had with my husband—whom, if I had not aborted the unwanted one, I would never have met … I would have been an “unwed mother” of a three-year-old in California, without work, with half an education, living off her parents…. But it is the children I have to come back to, my children Elisabeth, Caroline, Theodore, my joy, my pride, my loves. If I had not broken the law and aborted that life nobody wanted, they would have been aborted by a cruel, bigoted, and senseless law. They would never have been born. This thought I cannot bear. What was it like, in the Dark Ages when abortion was a crime, for the girl whose dad couldn’t borrow cash, as my dad could? What was it like for the girl who couldn’t even tell her dad, because he would go crazy with shame and rage? Who couldn’t tell her mother? Who had to go alone to that filthy room and put herself body and soul into the hands of a professional criminal? – because that is what every doctor who did an abortion was, whether he was an extortionist or an idealist. You know what it was like for her. You know and I know; that is why we are here. We are not going back to the Dark Ages. We are not going to let anybody in this country have that kind of power over any girl or woman. There are great powers, outside the government and in it, trying to legislate the return of darkness. We are not great powers. But we are the light. Nobody can put us out. May all of you shine very bright and steady, today and always.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin (via nightkitchentarot)

[smallgodseries]

[image description: A golden-eyed figure wears a wide-brimmed white fedora with a wide gold hat band and a light golden scarf just below the nose and across the mouth and chin. They sport a white Inverness Cape with its collar turned up over a white double-breasted suit. It’s hard to see them clearly in the bright light. Text reads, “126, The Light, The Small God who knows what goodness lives in the hearts of men.”]

C’mere, kid.  I want to tell you a secret.

Whoa, whoa, not like that!  This isn’t one of those “strange man tells you something that you’re not supposed to share with your parents” situations.  I want you to share this with your parents.  I want you to share this with the whole world.  You wanna be my prophet, you go right ahead.  It’s not like most folks are gonna listen, but every so often, one of you people decides to try, and I’m always grateful, even if I don’t think there’s any point to it.

Okay.  You with me?  You listening?  You cleaned your ears out recently?  Because if you’re gonna be my prophet, I don’t want you to go around telling people I said something I didn’t.  That’s happened to so many of my friends.  They lay out one message, and folks pick it up and turn it into something terrible, into some sort of cudgel to beat people with.  And that’s not what I’m about.

Okay.  You’re good?  Then here you go.  This is the secret, this is the essential thing I wish you over-important primates would hammer through your heads, this is what matters:

People are essentially good, and essentially the same, everywhere you go.  Optimism isn’t shallow, and being a happy person doesn’t make you a fool.  You’re allowed to irrigate and plant flowers in your heart.  That won’t make you weak.  It won’t make you irresponsible, or petty.  Be joyous.  Find your light and nurture it, and once it’s strong and healthy enough to light up your room, open the windows and share it with the people around you.

There’s a lot of shadow in a lot of folks.  A little light can help to beat it back, and can bring us a better world.  All of us, not just the divine, and not just the damned.

Do your part, prophet or no.  Nurture and protect your joy.

………………….

Artist Lee Moyer (13th Age, Cursed Court) and author Seanan McGuire (Middlegame, Every Heart a Doorway) have joined forces to bring you icons and stories of the small deities who manage our modern world, from the God of Social Distancing to the God of Finding a Parking Space.

Join in each week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a guide to the many tiny divinities:

Tumblr: https://smallgodseries.tumblr.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/smallgodseries

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smallgodseries/

Homepage: http://www.smallgodseries.com/

[polyamorousmisanthrope]

@seananmcguire, I desperately needed this today. Thank you.

[cundtcake]

kookaburra refusing to budge

[splend-42]

Kookaburra sits IN THE GODDAMN WAY

[ruffboi-mags]

on the moving window he will play

[randomslasher]

Leave, Kookaburra leave, Kookaburra causing a delay

[aemiliajane]

Every Australian reading this: can't help but hear the song in their head

Literally every other nationality: there's a song?

[mapsontheweb]

Half of Australia lives here.

[worm]

this is so funny because the blue areas aren’t really distinct so it just looks like somebody has posted a picture of all of australia with the caption “half of australia lives here”

[ignescent]

The other half of Australia lives in Secret-Australia, which is dimensionally separate and only reachable by going through the Sidney OperaHouse

[jackironsides]

Ehhh, I’m pretty sure that’s an urban myth. I don’t think Sydney Opera House has a doorway to anywhere; they just tell you it does to sell postcards. And to guarantee its cameo in American movies.

I did, however, find a doorway in the Flinders Street Station underpass (the one that leads to Degraves), but I was running late to work that morning, and the next time I went back, it was gone.

[aemiliajane]

As a Melbournian, can confirm that the Flinders Street Station underpass is a liminal space with doorways to other realms.

[tkingfisher]

This Vote Is Legally Binding

In response to all those articles about talking to women with headphones…

Someone always says it, whenever it comes up: “I guess I’m just not allowed to talk to anyone any more!” Well. Yes. It is my duty to inform you that we took a vote all us women and determined that you are not allowed to talk to anyone ever again. This vote is legally binding. Yes, of course, all women know each other, the way you always suspected. (Incidentally, so do Canadians. I’m just throwing that out there.) We went into the women’s room at the Applebee’s at the corner of 54 and all the others streamed in through the doors into that endless liminal space, a chain of humans stretching backward heavy skulled Neanderthal women laughing with New York socialites, Lucille Ball hand in hand with the Taung child. We sat around in the couches in the women’s room (I know you’ve always been suspicious of those couches) and chatted with each other in the secret female language that you always knew existed. Somebody set up a console– the Empress Wu is ruthless at Mario Kart and Cleopatra never learned to lose and a woman who ruled an empire that fell when the Sea People came and left no trace can use the blue shell like a surgical instrument. Eventually we took the vote. You had three defenders: your grandmother and your first-grade teacher and an Albanian nun who believes the best of everybody. Your mom abstained. It was duly recorded in the secret notebooks that have been kept under the couch in the Applebee’s since the beginning of recorded time. And then we went back to playing Mario Kart and Hoelun took off her bra and we didn’t think about you again except that I had to carry this message. So anyway good luck with that it’s just as you always said it was. Hush now, no talking

hush.

[a-queer-seminarian]

A twitter thread by Caitlin J. Stout @CaitlinJStout from Feb 25 2021 reading,

A friend asked the other day what percentage of people I went to youth group with “deconstructed” and what percentage remained evangelical. As I thought about it, I realized that for the most part it was the kids who took their faith the most seriously who eventually walked away.

Those of us who tearfully promised that we would follow Jesus anywhere eventually followed him out the door. The Queer kids, more than anyone, learned exactly what it meant to work out our faith with fear and trembling.

They told us to read the Bible and take it seriously and then mocked us for becoming “social justice warriors.”

Now they’re warning us not to deconstruct to the point of meaninglessness.

But they took a chisel to God until he fit in a box. They “deconstructed” the concept of love until it allowed them to tolerate sexual abuse, celebrate white supremacy, and look away from kids in cages.

Some of us got to where we are because we took it all to heart. We took the most foundational elements of our faith to their natural conclusions. Folks who deconstruct evangelicalism aren’t drop-outs; they’re graduates.

[aemiliajane]

This is so true. The path that Jesus preached was for a radical social justice movement, no ifs or buts. How can you claim to follow your Christ if you hurt the people he loved?

[deepwaterfiction]

Text: They say Seamstresses begin sewing from birth. While it’s true that we sew from the first moment of consciousness, by definition we cannot be born.  

[dycefic]

My first memory is of the needle and the thread. It is the same for all of us, or at least, for all those who I have encountered.  

We are not born, the Seamstresses. We come into being. Far to the south, Seamstresses came into being holding threads made of linen. In the cold north, threads of twisted wool or hair. They came into being holding needles of wood, or bone, or silver, or iron, or bronze. We come into being as the craft becomes, as our people learn the craft that we embody.

I am the Seamstress for an ancient people, and my thread was made of silk.

We are not the only ones. There are human skills that become Embodied everywhere. In my land, there are five. The Seamstress, the Craftsman, the Historian, the Physician, and of course the One who Cooks.

Keep reading

[dearherondale]

I found this youtube comment and honestly,,,, true

[officialleehadan]

 Underworld Duet

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“She will follow you, if you remain true to your purpose,” Persephone said, icy and beautiful, with asphodel in her hair, and embroidered on her dress. She sat beside her husband, Hades, and looked down on Orpheus, her face utterly unreadable, “But if you cast a single gaze upon her before she leaves the Underworld, she will be lost to you until time ends.”

“Thank you,” Orpheus said, desperately grateful. His fingertips ached, blistered and bleeding as he played his plea to the gods who had no reason to give him what he requested of them. The return of his beloved wife, who had fled for her life, and lost it trying to escape. “Your Majesties, thank you. I will write a thousand songs in your honor.”

“You had best go,” Hades said, the first words he had spoken since Orpheus arrived. “The journey is long, and fraught with danger. It will not be easy.”

Orpheus took the dismissal for what it was, bowed again, and made his way out of the grand, dark, pillar-lined hall. Here and there, flowers sprouted up through cracks in the stone, the mark of the queen who was only here half the year, and must be dearly missed when she was gone.

Maybe his plea, and the mercy he received in return, made more sense than he thought. Surely there were none who understood the longing for a beloved spouse better than the king and queen of the underworld.

Hades’ warning struck him, and Orpheus fought with himself, with the urge to look back and make sure Eurydice was there, following behind him. The gods were fond of their tricks and traps, but they rarely lied outright.

Well, he hoped they didn’t, anyway.

On and on he went, out of the grand, black-stone palace, into the sprawling, twilight orchards beyond. It was beautiful and peaceful. Sprawling gardens filled the warm air with the scent of citrus flowers and herbs. Fireflies winked their green-gold lights everywhere, and danced in clouds around the hazy ghosts who walked and laughed together. Off in the distance, he heard music and longed to join.

But no. He was here with a goal, and everything here would tempt him, or frighten him, or try to distract him from his purpose.

And he had to have faith in Euridice. She was behind him. Persephone said she would be, and he could only trust, because to look back for her would be to lose her.

When they came to the River Lethe, Orpheus began to fear. After all, the River of Forgetfulness was no small challenge, and he wasn’t fool enough to think that it would not test him, although he would, at least, not have to ford it. There was a bridge, although it was not what Orpheus might call ideal. A rickety thing of woven branches and rough wood, it cracked under his feet, but it held.

It wasn’t until he made it across, that Orpheus heard a faint sound. The sound of a foot on the bridge, barely there, as if from far away, but only a step behind him.

That sound, that faint sound, gave him hope. Euridice was there. She was with him. The gods had not lied, or broken their bargain.

It also gave him an idea.

Music had gotten him this far. Perhaps it would take them just a few steps further.

His fingers ere too damaged to keep playing, but there was nothing wrong with his voice, and so, hopefully, he started on a song he wrote long ago, when he first fell in love with his wife, and heard her lovely voice.

It was a song for two, and he would be lying if he didn’t admit how frightened he was, how his heart caught, when he came to the end of his verse, and hers began.

For a heartbeat, a single heartbeat, he thought she would not, could not reply, but then her sweet, warm alto filled the air, a little tense, a little afraid, but as true as ever.

Orpheus would have wept at the sound.

The song wasn’t a long one, but he started another as soon as it ended, and another, and another. Together, they sang their way through Tartarus. Through the tortured, evil dead who howled around them and tried to drag him off the narrow path that sometimes faded to almost nothing under his feet. The gods had not told him what had happened if he left the path, but then, they didn’t have to. He knew the legends of those who left the path.

The path turn back to a road until the sky light with flame and they came to another river, this one deep, and angry, and blazing with fire.

The River Phlegethon. The river if fire, that bordered Tartarus, and imprisoned the lost souls within.

Orpheus was glad that Euridice had started them on battle songs of coming home almost an hour before, or his courage, shaken form hours of walking through the tortured dead, might have failed him. The bridge here was stone, but as fragile, as frail, and as frightening. Pebbles rolled off the sides when Orpheus stepped onto the thin stone, and his voice broke as he stumbled to his knees. In harmony with him, Euridice gasped, but she didn’t stop singing. Didn’t stop promising she was there.

Together, they made it across, into the slums of the undistinguished dead.

Here, they were followed, although not closely. The dead could not touch them. Not marked as they were by Cause under the authority of the queen herself, but they gathered near, listening to the songs, and whispering amongst themselves. Orpheus raised his voice louder, afraid to lose Euridice in the crowd. She answered him, strong and clear, and only a step behind him, always.

After what seems like hours more, Orpheus found his voice beginning to give out, but he sang on determinedly, unwilling to give up when victory was so close to hand.

At last, finally, they came to the last river in their journey.

So wide he could not see the other side, the Styx spread out like an ocean, and on the shore, the sandy shore, was a single boat.

“I wondered if you would make it back this way,” Chiron greeted Orpheus with a cackling laugh that was mostly hidden by his thick beard and hood. He had ferried Orpheus across only a day before, paid with one of the three gold coins Orpheus brought with him. “The ferry is not free, Bard.”

“I know,” Orpheus said hoarsely, his first spoken words since he left the palace. He dug in his purse and pulled out the coins he kept, carefully packed with the thinnest hope, and how proffered with more of the same. “A coin for each of us, to see us back to the land of the living.”

“Nice to see one of you heroes has the sense to pack for the trip,” Chiron said, begrudgingly impressed. He took the coins and nodded to the boat. “You’re not out, yet.”

“I know,” Orpheus agreed. It was a warning, he knew. They weren’t out, and until they were, he did not dare look back. Could not make sure that Eurydice made it into the boat as well. “Thank you, Ferryman.”

“Get in the boat, boy.”

He got in the boat.

On through the unmarked grey waters they sailed, with barely the lap of waves against the side of the narrow boat to show their passing.

With nothing to do but wait, Orpheus cast his mind over the many sailing songs he knew, chose Eurydice’s favorite, another duet, and started to sing.

Chiron’s laughter punctuated Eurydice’s voice when she joined. In, on time and on key as ever.

Hours passed, as they passed songs back and forth, flirting and joking as they sang silly songs, and bawdy ones, and ones of coming home after a long time at sea.

Through it all, the Ferryman behind him never stopped chuckling. It might have been frightening, but Orpheus thought that maybe it was a compliment too. That his laughter was in celebration of cleverness that rarely crossed his path.

When they came to the far shore, the boat nudged into the sand, and Orpheus caught himself, right before he looked back to thank Chiron for his service.

“You paid me, boy,” the Ferryman said from somewhere behind him. “don’t spoil it with thanks. Go on.”

Orpheus went.

The air was fresher, here. They were close, and now the songs shifted to those of love newly discovered. Not all were duets, but any song would be sung in harmony, and so they tangled their voices together and kept walking.

It wasn’t until Orpheus felt sunlight on his face that he realized, he was out. Out of the Underworld and back where he started this daring, foolish, hopeful journey.

He went to turn, but Euridice’s voice raised sharply, and she cut her loving song off for one of warning, a song for children, to teach them not to trust all they saw.

And Orpheus remembered.

The game was not done. Not until she took her final step into the weak, late winter sunshine.

So he kept walking. Kept singing. Kept hoping.

Until at last, the song faded, and a voice he mourned for, as hoarse as his own, spoke from just behind him.

“We’ll have to write a duet about this.”

And all Orpheus could do was laugh as he turned around, at last, to see his wife standing there, just a single step out of the Underworld, and smiling with tears of joy in her eyes.

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