linking rot for me

natural-born widderslainte ; worm, bird, triangle ; de la de la de la mort ; astaxanthan like a rising sun

[astaxanthakalpacall]

She's Jharan: a psychotic, an adult.

The tags are variably-legible: #bodyby holds people in many states (drawn, disassembled, flushed), #microthedas has textposts, #caustic's where slurs are, #spectocular goes on aesthetic posts, #selfsaid's for originals, #piping's for brain noise, #flashinglights is for epileptic-fit-inducing media, and #putpaces is about fighting, for example. This post's tagged with the regularly-used. The theme and such are all broken, and will be fixed at some point (though the intended viewing experience is via the app). Most posts are queued.

Some of the tags contain things you would not like to see, probably. I'm opposed to this in principle, but the tags are there to be blocked.

Ideally it'd go without saying, but I don't endorse everything said by anyone I reblog.

[oxidi]

barbican wishes my camera was here

[miamaimania]

Ulyana Sergeenko Couture Fall-Winter 2014-2015 — 'Tverskaya' clutch bag with hand-cut stone mosaic.

[fucca02]

[dawatcher]

[astaxanthakalpacall]

Watching with this is what started me smoking again, with the emotional engagement subsidized by the audience being heavy enough to bring me back to it. I had a pack in my standard bag, which'd been there for maybe 2 years. As I had that first cigarette, the sensation was concentrated in my hands and fingertips: nowadays, a cigarette produces sensation concentrated around the lower back, the face and the neck. I figure the acetylcholinergic demand of managing the incompatible faces demanded by the culture and the actual situations people discover themselves in is part of why nicotine-consumption's come back into popularity. I should look into the ritual use of tobacco to firm this up, really.

[astaxanthakalpacall]

[kontextmaschine]

How Yusuf and Hassan Saved 9/11

Yeah, you know what, why not post this. Even at the time it was goofy and kumbaya, but that was necessary to make the form work, and matching modern ritualized forms to incongruous content is my speciality.

*  *  *

Keep reading

[argumate]

you can visualise ye olde homophobic masculinity as a linear spectrum ranging from “men” to “fags”, with Arnold Schwarzenegger types at one extreme and lisping limp wristed queers at the other, but even then it wasn’t that simple was it, you didn’t have to be gay to be a fag and you certainly didn’t need to be straight to be a bodybuilder!

the official acceptance of homosexuality in modern times both complicates and simplifies this masculine spectrum, bending it into a horseshoe where the two ends are now alpha straight and alpha gay, two muscular bros clasping hands and offering respectful brojobs in jocular solidarity, while the slumped middle of the horseshoe collects the beta cucks, the simps, the soyboys, the incels, the gender nonconformists who don’t quite make it work and the gays who aren’t hot enough for grindr.

the whole thing is still fake as hell of course, where does Bill Gates fit on this horseshoe? who separates the based from the autists? does it really make sense to describe a financially secure man with a wife and two kids as a sexually unsuccessful soyboy simply because he owns a Nintendo Switch? would it be better or worse if he owned a PS4? and is irony more manly than sincerity, or merely a pathetic attempt at compensating for low testosterone? the sages still ruminate upon these mysteries.

[argumate]

back in the day where you could put an oiled up bodybuilder in a leather bikini and say this is what a straight man should look like!

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

Currently trying to spin a thesis about the elevation of Freddie Mercury above Justin Bieber among (heavily male) nostalgia geeks and memebros in the early 2010s, and what that says about men preferring homosocial masculine signaling and hating men who appeal to female audiences

Like. Ten to fifteen years ago, back when I was a teenager, my first association with Queen (beyond “shit they play at sporting events at pep rallies”) was NOT “campy dad rock icons beloved by gay people” but rather “sophisticated dad rock icons beloved by nostalgic chauvinists who like to dunk on Justin Bieber by insisting Freddie was so much more talented and manly”

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

Additional thoughts:

What did dudebros back in the ‘70s and ‘80s think of Queen? Okay, I know Freddie came in for a bit of homophobic ribbing in pop culture (I would say “biphobic” but I doubt people making these jokes had even heard of bisexuality), and there was a sense in the ‘80s that Queen was past their prime (even though Freddie’s stache in the ‘80s turned out to be one of his most enduring looks, in retrospect). But did guys like to dunk on Queen the way they would later dunk on Justin Bieber and One Direction?

I wonder how much of the laser-focused hate for Justin Bieber and One Direction in particular came from a place of jealousy among straight men? Same reason they bashed the Twilight Saga so hard.

[argumate]

I feel like the ‘80s equivalent of dunking on One Direction would be dunking on Wham!

[failure-artist]

actually “bodybuilders are gay” is as old as the 1960s

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

Also the difference with Wham! is that I’m pretty sure George Michael was gay, whereas when I mentioned the Biebs and 1D (and the guys from Twilight), I was talking about how men will often view straight male celebrities beloved by female audiences as “gayer” than, like, Freddie Mercury, or a bodybuilder who fucks dudes

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

Though wait, have Bieber or any of the 1D guys come out as queer? I don’t keep up with the celebrity gossip, at least not about those guys in particular.

For that matter, did any of the Twilight guys come out? I mean, come on, starring in The Lighthouse has gotta come for SOMETHING.

[argumate]

George Michael wasn’t out in the Wham! days, ironically Harry Styles of One Direction “has been repeatedly asked about his sexual orientation in interviews since he was 19 years old”, damn.

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

Another interesting case to consider here is David Bowie, who

was famous for his androgynous aesthetic and bicuriosity (not sure whether I should say “bisexuality”; he repeatedly flipflopped on the matter)

definitely leaned more toward women (and, infamously, the occasional underage girl—as has unfortunately been the case for a lot of famous guys, especially back in the ‘70s at the peak of Bowie’s career)

was considered a heartthrob among straight female audiences AND considered cool among male audiences

It’s also interesting to compare Twilight to Labyrinth; the latter is at least as much of a Toxic Supernatural Romantic Fantasy for straight women as Twilight is (complete with the whole “immortal prettyboy stalks teen protagonist whose actress can’t emote when given such hokey dialogue to work with” setup), but if you were a(n ostensibly) straight guy in the late ‘00s or early ‘10s and you mentioned liking Labyrinth, I doubt the other guys would laugh you out of the room like they would if you mentioned liking Twilight.

I figure the saving grace with Labyrinth would be that it a) was associated with other cool things like Henson’s impressive practical effects and the aforementioned Bowie, and b) had acquired a nostalgic quality by the time the Twilight Saga got big. Apparently the reception was a lot more mixed when Labyrinth first came out, though I have no idea whether het dudebros in particular wrote it off as girly fluff the way they did with Twilight.

Disclaimer: I had barely heard of Labyrinth when Twilightmania was at its height, so my impression of Labyrinth’s reputation in the late ‘00s and early ‘10s could easily be mistaken!

[argumate]

perhaps young straight guys could watch Labyrinth because Jennifer Connelly was hot and vivacious and Bowie was (tamely) predatory, while I feel that in Twilight (which I still haven’t actually seen in entirety yet it seems incredibly familiar) they were attempting to frame Kristen Stewart as a blank canvas for hot guys to pose against.

[centrally-unplanned]

I feel like you can’t have this discourse without some level of the “reality” coming in a bit - David Bowie didn’t get bashed as much as Justin Bieber because he is way cooler and more talented than Justin Bieber is (or was at the teeny-bop phase we are discussing here, I have no clue what he is doing today). Bowie certainly did get bashed, but between that bashing was an at-minimum grudging respect for man of obvious musical talent & stylistic creativity. Meanwhile, unless you are the target demo for Beiber or OD - they suck. Their music is derivative and basic, their ~vibe is cookie-cutter, etc. I am not making some grand claim to objectivity here btw, you can totally like them - the point is just that most people don’t.

Twilight has a similar dynamic going on - the books are not that bad, they are not the sin-against-literature that they were portrayed as in the years when The Harry Potter Fandom thought they were Way Cooler than the Twilight dorks (yikes on that one guys). But they are still quite bad! They are not even good for their genre; Bella is boring and difficult to relate to, Edward’s drama is cardboard-levels of uncompelling, there are like grammar errors and weird sentence structures all over the place like what were these books even edited? All of this just made it very easy to make fun of. You can’t make fun of the Hunger Games like this! Those are competent books, there just isn’t a lot of jokes to be found.

None of this is contradicting any of the above; I would be writing the above posts if y'all didn’t already! It is also true that people weaponized the “soft” aesthetic of boybands to make gay jokes out of kneejerk hostility to deviant masculinity, or that the jokes about Twilight came in part out of a generalized disdain for the desires of feminine teen girls. But you know what? People also disdain the desires of teen guys! And alt girls! And middle-aged men! I could list a million tv shows or whatever taking the piss out of every single one of those demos. In the 2000’s people did not need an excuse to call you a little gayboy. They called everything that.

But Twilight or w/e was compelling to make fun of in a way David Bowie was not because its popularity was completely out of whack from its quality. This is why, when boys started bashing Twilight or One Direction as simp nonsense, the alt nerd girls joined in. Yeah yeah internalized misogyny nerd culture dynamics etc etc; but those girls would never bash Sylvia Plath just to be Part Of The Guys in the same way. They just authentically did not like these pieces of media, and definitely did not like the “implications” of this media being “for them”. Because it was bad.

(Also Labyrinth was a box office bomb, I don’t think we need to explain why watching it was okay? No one did! And ofc watching it as a campy, retro cult classic just is not the same thing as watching something as the brand new hotness.

But I do agree that the way it is a film “for girls” plays very second fiddle to the way it is a silly adventure movie with good-looking muppets, so it isn’t going to invoke the same issue)

[argumate]

*nodding* because it was bad (although now I feel remiss for not bringing up the way young men wanted to fight Elvis at every town he played at, kontextmaschine would have mentioned that, peace be upon him).

[centrally-unplanned]

The English language needs a way to express “rough boys in leather jackets want to fight you in every town (complimentary)” and “"rough boys in leather jackets want to fight you in every town (derogatory)” in a single word-pair - they are related but still distinct phenomenon!

[argumate]

fellas why do you, a man, want to give another pretty man a sweaty pounding, etc.

[argumate]

I'm looking for a post of yours: it was about the construction of masculinity as separate from gynephilia, and had a section going something like 'hetero- & homochads can high-five over their superiority to incels'. Do you recall which it was? I have searched, but had no luck there.

that doesn't sound like one of mine, maybe a reblog? 🤔

actually I might have said something like that but not in those words... there's the thing where extreme masculinity can read as equally gay or straight, like horseshoe theory for gender.

[astaxanthakalpacall]

It may have been that one? I am pretty sure it was yours, in any case: I recall comments under it saying "I don't understand how I can understand this", I'd that narrows it any.

[argumate]

fellas why do you, a man, want to give another pretty man a sweaty pounding, etc.

oh this might be the one!

[astaxanthakalpacall]

That was the one: my thanks.

[astaxanthakalpacall]

My laptop's died: it was a backup in case the earlier one died that I bought in 2022 for $400, so I've had my money's worth, but it's still inconvenient. A friend should be giving me an old desktop of theirs in a couple of days, so I'm not totally bereft of non-phone technology. Even so, I'm not looking forward to the recovery and transfer process: I'll need to extract my files and such, which may take a while.

[kontextmaschine]

Just saw something like "Jessica Alba is an American actress and businesswoman" and it's like, you wouldn't describe a guy who fixes pipes and took the money from that to buy a house as "a plumber and real estate investor", would you?

[poipoipoi-2016]

I mean, that description might be where I'd put Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, and possibly Eva Longoria. The business interests are what they very much do now ever since they were extremely relevant when I was a child.

[kontextmaschine]

Paris Hilton absolutely. She came from a clan of capitalwielders (weird parallel of the day: just like Osama bin Laden) and I'd argue her course as a celebrity was something she was doing as a businesswoman.

[hagiomoto]

[hagiomoto]

[hagiomoto]

[chaintobethan]

[astaxanthakalpacall]

child death, cancer, 'bravery', extreme cynicism, sexual assault analogy

I do not like the way children with cancer are described as brave. I usually understand it to be a form of pressure on the children involved, to make it less difficult for the parents to manage their own distress, and to be able to blame the child for their death, should they react to the situation with regular-style distress. You see that last one a lot in adults with cancer, as well: 'they didn't keep a positive attitude to their treatment! Really, they were just asking for it: didn't they know the cheerful have better outcomes?'

Relevant:

"

She was being poisoned by people with smiles on their faces.

She hated those smiles. Fake. Pretending to be happy, pretending to be cheerful. But she’d spent enough time here to know that her friends and family would be crying the second they thought they were out of earshot. The strangers had a weariness that spoke to the inevitable. The older they were, the more reality seemed to weigh on them.

Somewhere along the line, they had stopped telling her that the chemotherapy would make her better. The smiles had become even more strained. There was more emphasis on making her comfortable. Less explanation of what was going on.

So when her mother came in to check on her, bringing the mug of heated chicken broth, she pretended to be asleep. She hated herself for it, but she couldn’t stand the lies, the fakeness.

If it wouldn’t have given her away, she would have winced as her mother sat down by her bedside. It meant she might be staying a while.

“Becca,” her mother murmured from behind her. “You awake?”

She didn’t respond, keeping her breathing steady. She tried to breathe through her nose, so the sores that filled her mouth wouldn’t sing with pain at the contact with the air.

Her mother ran one hand over her head. Her hair was mostly gone, and the contact was uncomfortable to the point that it was almost painful.

“You’ve been so brave,” her mom whispered, so quiet she was barely audible.

I’m not brave. Not at all. I’m terrified. I’m so frustrated I could scream. But she couldn’t. Everyone had painted her as being so courageous, so noble and peaceful in the face of the months of treatment. But it was a facade, and she’d passed the point of no return. It was too late to break composure, too late to stop making bad jokes, faking smiles of her own. She couldn’t complain or use her mother’s shoulder to cry on because everyone would fall apart if she did.

She was their support.

"

[magicfriend1000000000000000]

i obviously do not play with toys. i only like formal dinners, and foreign films.

[asofteredge]

hey everyone, just curious:

what is everyone's criteria for blocking people?

[astaxanthakalpacall]

If they're dismissive and superior in a particular way (I would spend all my time fighting them, and have other things to do), if they're a scammer or particular kind of bot, or if they actively engage in harassment campaigns. I don't block for even extreme political disagreement, as I figure this is just a way of reducing my ability to convince people who don't agree, and as I want my politics to win I'm happy to pay the costs of whatever negative emotions I experience when consuming such: almost being negligently-homicided by staff during an involuntary mental hospital stay sucked in a lot of ways, but it has genuinely been a psychologically healing experience. The root of the trauma response that produced so much of my anxiety being brought out and heavily engaged by other people (and the hospital apologizing for it and letting me be as nasty as I felt like [describing the staff who sent me into ketoacidosis after I begged them to give me more insulin with "I hope they 'find themselves' & their children smile to hear' without pushback was enjoyable][though not totally free to speak, given that they did the interview before telling me whether I would be allowed to leave that day, which was coercion]) recalibrated the anxiety-intensity and localised it to medicine a fair amount.

The post-traumatic growth actually posed some financial problems, in that if my mental health worsened afterwards suing them would have been much easier.

(relatedly, the way downstream mental effects of trauma are evaluated by the legal system functionally discriminate against the disabled, as the costs inflicted are usually wage-loss or function-loss, so the already disabled and/or nonworking are much cheaper to harm from a position of authority even if the legal system is equally accessible to the wealthy and not [as basically never eventuates, systems of rights being initially developed to protect baronial privileges and only later extended to proles])