Homemaking, gardening, and self-sufficiency resources that won't radicalize you into a hate group
It seems like self-sufficiency and homemaking skills are blowing up right now. With the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, a lot of folks, especially young people, are looking to develop skills that will help them be a little bit less dependent on our consumerist economy. And I think that's generally a good thing. I think more of us should know how to cook a meal from scratch, grow our own vegetables, and mend our own clothes. Those are good skills to have.
Unfortunately, these "self-sufficiency" skills are often used as a recruiting tactic by white supremacists, TERFs, and other hate groups. They become a way to reconnect to or relive the "good old days," a romanticized (false) past before modern society and civil rights. And for a lot of people, these skills are inseparably connected to their politics and may even be used as a tool to indoctrinate new people.
In the spirit of building safe communities, here's a complete list of the safe resources I've found for learning homemaking, gardening, and related skills. Safe for me means queer- and trans-friendly, inclusive of different races and cultures, does not contain Christian preaching, and does not contain white supremacist or TERF dog whistles.
Homemaking/Housekeeping/Caring for your home:
Making It by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen [book] (The big crunchy household DIY book; includes every level of self-sufficiency from making your own toothpaste and laundry soap to setting up raised beds to butchering a chicken. Authors are explicitly left-leaning.)
Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair by Mercury Stardust [book] (A guide to simple home repair tasks, written with rentals in mind; very compassionate and accessible language.)
How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis [book] (The book about cleaning and housework for people who get overwhelmed by cleaning and housework, based on the premise that messiness is not a moral failing; disability and neurodivergence friendly; genuinely changed how I approach cleaning tasks.)
Gardening
Rebel Gardening by Alessandro Vitale [book] (Really great introduction to urban gardening; explicitly discusses renter-friendly garden designs in small spaces; lots of DIY solutions using recycled materials; note that the author lives in England, so check if plants are invasive in your area before putting them in the ground.)
Country/Rural Living:
Woodsqueer by Gretchen Legler [book] (Memoir of a lesbian who lives and works on a rural farm in Maine with her wife; does a good job of showing what it's like to be queer in a rural space; CW for mentions of domestic violence, infidelity/cheating, and internalized homophobia)
"Debunking the Off-Grid Fantasy" by Maggie Mae Fish [video essay] (Deconstructs the off-grid lifestyle and the myth of self-reliance)
Sewing/Mending:
Annika Victoria [YouTube channel] (No longer active, but their videos are still a great resource for anyone learning to sew; check out the beginner project playlist to start. This is where I learned a lot of what I know about sewing.)
Make, Sew, and Mend by Bernadette Banner [book] (A very thorough written introduction to hand-sewing, written by a clothing historian; lots of fun garment history facts; explicitly inclusive of BIPOC, queer, and trans sewists.)
Sustainability/Land Stewardship
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer [book] (Most of you have probably already read this one or had it recommended to you, but it really is that good; excellent example of how traditional animist beliefs -- in this case, indigenous American beliefs -- can exist in healthy symbiosis with science; more philosophy than how-to, but a great foundational resource.)
Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer [book] (This one is for my fellow witches; one of my favorite witchcraft books, and an excellent example of a place-based practice deeply rooted in the land.)
Avoiding the "Crunchy to Alt Right Pipeline"
Note: the "crunchy to alt-right pipeline" is a term used to describe how white supremacists and other far right groups use "crunchy" spaces (i.e., spaces dedicated to farming, homemaking, alternative medicine, simple living/slow living, etc.) to recruit and indoctrinate people into their movements. Knowing how this recruitment works can help you recognize it when you do encounter it and avoid being influenced by it.
"The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline" by Kathleen Belew [magazine article] (Good, short introduction to this issue and its history.)
Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby (I feel like I need to give a content warning: this book contains explicit descriptions of racism, white supremacy, and Neo Nazis, and it's a very difficult read, but it really is a great, in-depth breakdown of the role women play in the alt-right; also explicitly addresses the crunchy to alt-right pipeline.)
These are just the resources I've personally found helpful, so if anyone else has any they want to add, please, please do!
Your relationships will be richer if you also allow people to love you the way that they love, and not only in the way that you're used to perceiving love. You'll miss out on a lot if you're only looking for it in the same places you're used to giving it.
I love by problem solving, remembering small things that people like and make them happy--like little notes in the margins of our relationships, a silent squeeze on the arm to reach out and connect.
I have a friend who loves by asking if she can send me a recipe for Japanese egg and rice when she knows I'm having a bad time. I have a (cishet) friend who loves by messaging to tell me he's just finished reading He/She/They by Schuyler Bailar. I have a friend who loves by telling me "I love you" openly and as often as possible. Some love by telling you things they won't tell to another living person, some love by going six months without talking but answer in five minutes when you message them at work, and some love by not knowing how to show their love, but never leave you out in the cold when you ask for somewhere to go and a warm fire.
"Love languages" are largely bunk and were made up by a misogynist, but I can tell you that people do love differently and that it matters to learn how.
You can now watch some of the most well-known anime shows, including the original Sailor Moon, for free on YouTube..
News - If you live in the US, you can now watch all 200 episodes of the original 90s Sailor Moon anime on Viz Mediaās Youtube channel for free! Viz also added all of the Inuyasha TV series and movies, as well as more recent shows like Death Note and Hunter x Hunter.Ā
it also includes short films, animated movies, documentaries of every genre, full recordings of live performances. all spanning different decades from different countries. YOU DONT EVEN FUCKING KNOW
there are also websites like worldscinema, solidaritycinema, and rarefilmm hosting incredible obscure world cinema for free! and if you're more inclined towards the esoteric, there's also evilbjork's avant-garde canon playlist on youtube! also important to mention Maya S. Cade's incredible black film archive and the otherness archive, an obscure queer cinema archive! You could always be watching more films !
Hey so it's come to my attention that the Creators of Disco Elysium want you to share the game and not give the company who took over and fired them (illegally)?) any profits off of their ideas and work, and I originally joined tumblr 2 weeks ago when that post was going around about the Steam sale and how you should [Skull and Crossbones flag] it instead.
So.
in light of that.
Check the replies/notes of this post :)
I was informed that posts containing links in them aren't findable in the search so i'll just.... drop a link in a seperate reboot :)
i know we're all sick of self-care being a marketing tactic now, but i don't think a lot of us have any other concept of self-care beyond what companies have tried to sell us, so i thought i'd share my favorite self-care hand out
brought to you by how mad i just got at a Target ad
Now THATāS a self care resource! If youāve gotten distracted by capitalismās appropriation of āself-careā and watering the meaning down to nothing this is a super helpful guide to cut through the bullshit.
You guys rlly don't realise how much knowledge is still not committed to the internet. I find books all the time with stuff that is impossible to find through a search engine- most people do not put their magnum opus research online for free and the more niche a skill is the less likely you are to have people who will leak those books online. (Nevermind all the books written prior to the internet that have knowledge that is not considered "relevant" enough to digitise).
Whenever people say that we r growing up with all the world's knowledge at our fingertips...it's not necessarily true. Is the amount of knowledge online potentially infinite? Yes. Is it all knowledge? No. You will be surprised at the niche things you can discover at a local archive or library.
I found the reflection to be quite poignant and forces me to reflect on the kind of internet person I was 10, 15, 18 years ago. About how much of my heavy 4chan diving was just intricate self-harm, lashing out due to lack of control over my own life.
It's important to remember I guess, if only to have a baseline I can look back on and realize how much the small, steady improvements have piled up.
There was a person twenty years ago who said some things I wouldn't say, did some things I wouldn't do, and frequent found themself in some bad places I wouldn't want to go.
They also managed to get me to where I am today, and I'm thankful and proud of them for that.
I'm just gonna slide this on in here for anyone that is interested in preserving old games. They take it very seriously too, they want an archive of every single game. Like, they have lists of every game ever released for a system, and once that system gets old enough, they add it to their archive and start collecting. Their latest addition was the Xbox 360, they opened that vault up in September 2022, and proudly announced they'd finished their collection of games for it back in April.
Also, while their game archives are almost entirely complete, they've got another project of archiving the manuals that came with those games, and that is... considerably less well filled out. Their collection of Xbox 360 manuals is especially rough, they've only gotten manuals for three games. So if you've got some Xbox 360 games kicking around, and the manual's still with them, please consider scanning them and submitting them to the site!
Game preservation is important, but people rarely consider preserving the manuals as well; I really respect Vimm's Lair for being so thorough in their archival work.
I've been using Vimm's Lair for years, I have yet to see a single bad link or virus on the entire site. It's arguably the safest and most comprehensive archive of video games in existence. Preserved history
Fyi Vimm's lair just recently got hit and had to take down quite a bit, but there's still a lot available atm, so if you're hemming and hawing now's the time
Hey, so, the first short film that I wrote and produced became available for the public to watch today! Itās a goofy, queer, sex-joke-filled dark romcom with an extremely low budget and only one day of shooting that somehow managed to win more than 25 international awards and premiere at the Chinese Theatres in Hollywood. If you all could check it out and/or like, reblog, and share the link around, it would mean a lot to me and the other wacky L.A. creatives who helped to put this all together.
Monster smut is the big new thing in publishing. Itās not just about the extra-long tongues.
I saw this shared around on Threads (why do I go there, I hate it) and commented on as 'this article is so good' and 'must read' including by a few people whose opinion I normally respect, and seeing as monsterfucking and monster everything is like a special little interest for me, I of course instantly clicked through to read it
and I have to say
what the everloving heterosexual fuck is this
two fat paragraphs about omegaverse that don't even mention its origins - I mean - I just - gaze upon this phrase, and despair:
During estrous, Omegasā vaginas ooze with āslick,ā responding to the Alphaās intoxicating pheromonal perfume.
IT'S CALLED "SLICK" BECAUSE IT'S FROM SELF-LUBRICATING ANUSES. THE REASON THE OMEGAS NEED SELF-LUBRICATING ANUSES TO BEGIN WITH IS BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE VAGINAS.
I. have been rendered figuratively speechless. the straights don't know what slick is. the. i. how. how did we end up like this
their dicks swell at the base, creating a āknot,ā which lodges them inextricably in the Omegaās slick-soaked (I am so sorry) vagina.
"(I am so sorry)" girl you're writing an article about monster smut and then you have the gall to be embarrassed by the this tame ass (or should i say vagina?) heterosexual omegaverse?
okay, okay. deep breaths. we've only just got started. we started by covering Morning Glory Milking Farm, a minotaur/human erotic romance novel, which well - I've read it, and it's not a bad book by any means, it was actually very very good, a solid story with a great cast and perfectly paced and satisfying romance and loads of sex - is very straight. it's just a minotaur. it's a big guy with a big dick. it's your standard gentle giant/normal sized girl romance. it's not very freaky, but you know, I don't blame the average reader for coming into this thinking this is some out there stuff. gotta start somewhere, right? we didn't all come up through draco/the giant squid crackfic in 2005, you know? and now we've covered Sarah J Maas and we're entering omegaverse territory, this is getting knottier now, right, freakier? this article is going somewhere, right?
you can imagine the intrigue, enemies-to-lovers, and other story lines involved as each captured female eventually finds the member of the barbarian tribe who is destined to worship and fuck the living daylights out of her for the rest of their lives. Oh, and their dicks have a sensitive spur on top designed for clitoral stimulation. Itās just as blue and velvety as the rest of their big alien bodies.
okay so the minotaurs aliens are blue now, i guess.
It seems, also, like the romance genre as a whole is being pushed by monster romance to make things in human-human books as freaky as possible.
ohh?? are we finally getting a proper freak on now??
This genre, āwhy choose?ā or āMMFā (or sometimes even MMMF or MMFM), and also known as āreverse harem,ā always features a heroine who is showered with sexual attention by men who are also sexually involved with each other.
having a thousand yard stare moment over here
this author seriously thinks that all these heterofied monster romance tropes are paving the way for the real freaky stuff that is, checks notes, "two hockey players fucking each other while the heroine calls the shots"
this author is positing that human queer erotica/romance are freakier than monster erotica/romance. like. she said that. with her whole chest. black on white.
on one hand a monster, an inhuman being, and on the other, a queer person, a human being. and apparently the real freak is not the minotaur or the blue alien. it is the queer human.
is this satire? it has to be, right?
because if it's not satire, this article is an entire case study in itself on the monstering* of queer people. stunning.
I do not intend to write an entire dissertation in this tumblr post, but I am dropping a bunch of links and sources for further reading about monsterfucking and monsters and I really feel like I need to contextualise some of this reading material instead of just dumping it all on you. This is the piss on the poor website and very few of you are going to go and read all of these sources, because frankly, most of them are academic and this isnāt university. (if I were to teach a course on monsterfucking, howeverā¦)
tumblr has 10 links per post limit, so at the bottom there is a link to the googledoc with this exact same text AND ALL THE LINKS. yes you do have to scroll to the bottom sorry not sorry.
For starters, everything that follows is wholly my own opinion. Iām going to be making statements here, and I will be basing those statements on informed research and experience, and also just, you know, my opinion. These statements are subjective to me and everyone can feel free to disagree. I canāt be arsed softening every statement with āin my experienceā etc. because I am tired and I want to go to bed. Fewer words will make that happen faster. Though I do cite direct quotes, this isnāt an academic paper, donāt treat it as such.
There are two strands of monsterfucking: cishet female gaze monsterfucking and queer monsterfucking.Ā
The article I linked in my original post and criticised above falls into the first camp. My issue with the article is not that it is a cishet perspective on monsterfucking, my issue with it is that the author, Emily Gould, completely ignores any queer facets (and indeed, origins, as in the case of omegaverse) of monsterfucking and that she wrote this sentence: āIt seems, also, like the romance genre as a whole is being pushed by monster romance to make things in human-human books as freaky as possible.ā seemingly without pausing to consider that harem, reverse harem, and moresome erotica and romance fiction have existed for decades. The fact that these are now being called āWhy Choose?ā stories doesnāt change that, and is, I would argue, merely a symptom of marketing. (The fact that this bookriot article treats it as new, is frankly also disappointing: https://bookriot.com/what-is-a-why-choose-romance/ .) Romantasy isnāt new either, the term is. This term is far more marketable than the more longwinded āhigh stakes fantasy romanceā. I would also argue that as soon as the term took off, the genre evolved and that it is now a legitimate subgenre of its own within the wider fantasy romance umbrella. Perhaps āWhy Choose?ā romance/erotica fiction has as well, Iām not nearly as familiar with it. The way traditional publishing is going, particularly since TikTok really took off, punchy buzzwords that are hashtaggeable, shareable, nay, spreadable, are what sells books these days, so the book industry, with financial stakes in everything bookrelated, absolutely encourage this.Ā
And yet, Emily Gould didnāt stop to consider why in omegaverse āslickā is a thing? Vaginas famously do get wet and slippery when aroused, so male omegas (for a given definition of male, considering omegaverseās gender and sex defying worldbuilding) who do not have vaginas, instead have anuses that produce āslickā. Iām tempted to wonder how on earth the cishets function in the real world if they canāt make up their own shit. Am I shocked and surprised that they took omegaverse and ironed out all the queer wrinkles until it turned into a kinky version of cishet alphahole erotica, reinforcing the exact same patriarchal structures that omegaverse broke to begin with? No. but here we are.
Itās established academically speaking, and Iād say generally speaking - this isnāt niche anymore, monsters and queers are mainstream now - that monsters in literature are representations of the Other. The monster is intricately tied with race, gender, sexuality, religious, and other marginalised identities. Queer people are Other. We are monsters. I donāt mean this in a bad way - I very much subscribe to the Hopeful Monster (McCormack, 2015) ideology in this regard, which is to say in simple terms that monstrous difference is a positive thing that drives change and progress. So, not to fall victim to the xkcd 2501 (https://xkcd.com/2501/) effect, here we go.
Monsters for beginners:
Monster Theory: Reading Culture 1996., edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. University of Minnesota Press:.Ā
The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous 2013., edited by Asa Simon Mittman, Peter J. Dendle Routledge.
(Examples) Monster as Other - look, in other languages too:
Izaola, Amaia and Imanol Zubero. 2015. "La CuestiĆ³n Del Otro: Forasteros, Extranjeros, ExtraƱos y Monstruos [Otherness: Outsiders, Foreigners, Strangers and Monsters]." Revista De Sociologia 100 (1): 105-129.
Khabibulina, Liliya F. 2017. "ŠŠŠŠ”Š¢Š ŠŠŠ ŠŠ Š£ŠŠŠ (ŠŠ Š£ŠŠŠÆ) Š Š”ŠŠŠ ŠŠŠŠŠŠŠ ŠŠŠŠŠŠÆŠŠ«Š§ŠŠŠ ŠŠŠ¢ŠŠ ŠŠ¢Š£Š Š [Monster as the Other in Modern Literature in English]." ŠŠµŃŃŠ½ŠøŠŗ ŠŠµŃŠ¼ŃŠŗŠ¾Š³Š¾ ŃŠ½ŠøŠ²ŠµŃŃŠøŃŠµŃŠ°. Š Š¾ŃŃŠøŠ¹ŃŠŗŠ°Ń Šø Š·Š°ŃŃŠ±ŠµŠ¶Š½Š°Ń ŃŠøŠ»Š¾Š»Š¾Š³ŠøŃ 9 (2).
Now to the (monster)fucking point!
At a very basic level of an embodied monster in fiction (i.e. a werewolf, zombie, vampyre, minotaur, tentacle monster, blue alien, etc.), the embodied monster communicates something about the culture it belongs to (Mittman 2013, 7) and is, for marginalised groups and cultures, empowering as a means to understand and describe the processes which abject, reject, and exclude them (ibid., 8). What does that mean in simple English?Ā
Well, when you write a romance novel about a woman taking a job at a minotaur milking facility and falling in love and lust with a client, then the story represents something. People have actually written papers about Morning Glory Milking Farm, hereās one:
Vivanco, Laura. 2024. āFeeling Judged: Reflections on Pornography and Romance from a Minotaur Milking Farm.ā Journal of Popular Romance Studies 13.
Vivanco discusses the world-building in the novel and how it makes subtle feminist points about patriarchal society structures and the dominance of the penis. She also makes the point that this novel is ādesigned to appeal to readersā desires while not provoking their fearsā, by which she means that the monster here represents a comforting Other. The minotaur isnāt a human man, so the power difference of the real world is erased and replaced with a fantasy power difference. Minotaurs donāt really exist, in the same way a big hulking man with a big dick does, no matter how gentle he may be - so a female reader can give into that fantasy without being triggered. Gouldās article also gives this as the very reason for why monsterfucking narratives are so appealing.
A multitude of pop articles about monsterfucking follow the same train of thought, consider all of these hosted on bookriot, all by different writers:
Monstrous Affections: Exploring Romance and Monsters
Lyndsie Manusos, Oct 23, 2019
If your only mention of queer monster romances is to bring in Chuck Tingle specifically as a joke, then, uh, I donāt have much respect for your history of sexy monsters actually.
A Brief History of Sexy Monsters
Julia Rittenberg, Oct 4, 2021
This one actually treats monster romance novels as a joke:
Quiz: Which Monster Romance Should You Read this Halloween?
Alison Doherty, Oct 10, 2023
Despite listing only het novels, Jessica gets my respect for this:
āThere is just so much to love about these monster romance stories, but in the end, it comes down to this: if the protagonist doesnāt have to go through a makeover or extreme change to be loved just as they are, then neither should their monster love interest. Their transformations can be extensive on the inside if they need to become better people, but they donāt have to change a thing about their appearance. In fact, itās their monstrous appearance that makes them who they are.ā
Where To Get Started With Monster Romance
Jessica Pryde, Oct 31, 2023
I suppose Alison is trying to keep an open mind in this one:
The Strangest Romance Novels
Alison Doherty, Apr 15, 2024
To go on about Morning Glory Milking Farm for a bit more before getting into queer monsterfucking: Vivanco quotes Sananja Basker in her paper, who makes the point that Morning Glory Milking Farm presents a deeply fetishistic view of interracial, rather interspecies, relationships between white women and black men. Basker makes the connection that monsters in these contexts, while representing a racial Other, do so relying on racist steretypes. Or in other words, find-replace āminotaurā with āblack manā and there is no perceptible change.Ā
This very brief chapter in a book about tumblr (yes I am referencing this chapter ONLY so I can make you all aware this book exists), mentions these points in discussing the type of posts tumblr users were making about The Shape of Water (2017). One observation made clear that tumblr users were making a distinction between the cishet female gaze and the queer gaze: āCommentary often articulated that despite the primary relationship being between a woman and a āman,ā del Toroās film was exciting because it was about a woman and a monster and thus deviated from the typical heterosexual romance film.ā
Another observation highlighted the queer audienceās* viewpoints of the monster as reparative to the stereotype of the monster as a black man stand-in: āOne example (...) directly broached issues of race and racism in The Shape of Water, as previous movie āmonstersā often functioned as alarmist stand-ins for the sexuality of Black men. Del Toro, however, as a Mexican immigrant, was also seen by Tumblr users as adopting the monster-as- man-of-color metaphor to achieve a strikingly different end.ā
*letās be real here, tumblr is the queer website, Iām not even going to bother digging up a source for this.
Hoch, Indira Neill. 2020. Reblogs, Monsters, and Erotic Amphibians: The Process of Critical Analysis on Tumblr,Ā 69-74 (6 pages) a tumblr book: platform and cultures, University of Michigan Press
Iām not saying that cishet monsterfucking is all bad, and that queer monsterfucking is all good, but I have to admit that I have yet to read a cishet monsterfucking romance novel that doesnāt leave me with a bad aftertaste - no matter how solidly written and how good it was otherwise. Iāve liked the ones Iāve read, theyāre not bad novels! But let me give you another example instead of continuing to harp on about minotaurs: The current trend of witch romance novels that read a bit āharry potter but for grown upsā, many of which are set in the USA but relying on European magic systems and lineages with no thought given to native Americans who were, well, already there. Thereās something deeply disturbing to me about writing a fantasy escapist romance with white heterosexual heroines where the world-building supports diversity only through monsters (few black and no indigenous people present) and upholds what I can only describe as white supremacist values - even if unintentionally. Sarah Hawleyās Glimmer Falls books fall under both monsterfucking and witch romance umbrellas as in these the love interests are demons, and other creatures exist, and like Morning Glory Milking Farm there are even political subplots - book two has a democratic rebellion on the demon plane by marginalised demon hybrids against a tyrannical demon oligarchy! But uh, there are very few non-white characters in these books, and the eurocentric magic system gave me heebie jeebies. The only difference between C. M. Nascosta and Sarah Hawley is that Nascosta selfpublished and Hawley is published by Berkley in the US and Gollancz in the UK.
Whereās that tumblr post chain about HP Lovecraft and fears and bipoc writers when you need it. You know the one. Pretend I havenāt lost the link for a minute and make the connection yourself please.
ETA several hours later: found it: https://schafpudel.tumblr.com/post/702663840742195200/hi-would-you-ever-consider-doing-that-spirited
Iāll spell it out: HP Lovecraft stories represent fears (and racism) but yet can resonate and give meaning to experiences by the very same people Lovecraft feared and hated. The connection I want you to make is that these cishet white monsterfucking books can play into existing power structures and -isms, and yet can resonate and give meaning to experiences by marginalised people. Queer monsterfucking however? Bypasses the -isms. (can they still be racist? Absolutely - Iām writing this post with a queer focus. I canāt possibly cover all viewpoints.)
Actually, while weāre here, lets segue into queer monsterfucking with another tumblr source, which I will quote here in its entirety just in case it disappears tomorrow.
Tumblr user largishcat, March 3, 2020:
i genuinely donāt get cishet monsterfuckers. for context, in the wake of shape of water i participated in this loving-the-monstrous type discussion event slash publishing party wherein i debuted a short story about a woman who ābefriendsā a cave monsterābut that isnt the point. the point is i had to hear straight women talk for hours about how the appeal of monsters is some kind of weird ātaming the beastā fantasyāloving a monster until it loves you back, sounding like every bad beauty and the beast take ever.
And thereās my queer ass being like literally none of you get it. this isnāt about power, this is about love and alienation and acceptance. you dumbasses, Iām the monster. this isnāt a metaphor for your shitty boyfriend, this is a metaphor for my own alienation from a society that tells me a the way i am and the way I love are grotesque. this is a fantasy of love free of judgement, separate from societal standards that Iāll never live up to anyway. that ghoul doesnāt care if Iām fat, they think itās hot that I eat well. that immortal fae creature doesnāt care if the gender on my birth certificate matches the one I use now, they barely have a concept of gender in the first place. that tentacle monster doesnāt care if I shave, they donāt have eyes
monsterfucking is queer culture, everyone else go home
With me so far? Have some pop posts about Venom (my beloved):
Venom is an LGBTQA Icon by Anthony Gramuglia
10 Reasons Venom Is Becoming An LGBTQA Cult Film by Anthony Gramuglia
Anthony mate, I hope you have discovered there is a multitude of Venom/Eddie fics on ao3 where they fuck nasty. I think youād enjoy them.
Very disappointed that this article is now gone and wayback machine didnāt manage to save it, please shed a tear with me: https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/yes-venom-is-a-sex-symbol-and-heres-why
How aboutā¦..
The Inevitable "Why People Think King Shark Is Hot" ThinkpieceĀ
by Kayleigh Donaldson (Aug. 3, 2021) ?
I donāt know why Kayleigh thinks sharks are difficult to sexualise. Sheās clearly never met a single furry in her life. People fucking love drawing antropomorphised sharks with two penises (anatomically accurate to sharks) dicking down other people. (And thatās not even getting into Sidon/Link from Breath of the Wild. Guillermo del Toro himself, monsterfucker extraordinaire, retweeted sidlink fanart in the bygone days of twitter once upon a time.)
I feel Iāve been a bit unfair to bookriot, because they have also published this piece:
The Claws That Catch Feelings: 12 Queer Monster Romances
Isabelle Popp, Jun 23, 2022
āQueer monster romances are often between a human and a monster, where by the end the human has embraced the so-called monstrosity within themselves. That monstrosity may in truth be individuality, or the ability to prioritize oneself, oneās own values, and oneās own desires over what the wider world is offering. That kind of character growth facilitates the humanās ability to love and be loved in return, and it gets me every single time.ā (Popp, 2022)
Look, itās getting late, and Iām starting to feel like Iām telling banalities - have we not as a website been participating in the Dracula Daily bookclub for two years running, and making all sorts of queer readings about it - we know this. We know the monster is queer. Water is wet. Hereās a bunch more academic articles and pop pieces on the topic of monsters and queerness and whatnot, maybe Iāll have something smart to say once Iāve finished compiling them.
Teratophilia: Transmedial Representations of Hybrid Sexualities (call for papers - the link leads to academia.edu collection related to the teratophilia conference + the initial call for papers)
"Hybrid, "abnormal", in short monstrous desires and relationships abound everywhere. How to interpret these various valorizations of monstrous sexual configurations, in all the semantic richness and ambiguity of this term, and which include non-human, inhuman, "almost human" entities (Hoquet, 2021)? What do they say about our relationship to the body, to sexuality, to the norm?"
Iām dropping this one purely because itās a good example of the intersectionality of monster studies and because it provides an example of the positive forces of the monster:
Cosimi, Seth. 2017. āāIām a Motherfuckinā Monster!ā: Play, Perversity, and Performance of Nicki Minajā. Feminist Formations, Vol. 29,Ā 2. 47-68 (22 pages)
Elliott, Jaquelin. 2016. āBecoming The Monster: Queer Monstrosity and the Reclamation of the Werewolf in Slash Fandomā Reventant Journal 2.
Ferati, Melissa. 2021. āHistory and Homoeroticism: Taking a Look at Queer Coding in Horror Mediaā. Cooper Point Journal (online)
Jones, Stacy Holman & Harris, Anne. 2016. āMonsters, desire and the creative queer body.ā Continuum, 30:5, 518-530,
Martins, David Klein. āThe Gothic Tradition and the Origins of Queer Monstrosityā Atmostfear Entertainment accessed 28 june 2024
McCormack, Donna. 2015. "Hopeful Monsters: A Queer Hope of Evolutionary Difference." Somatechnics 5 (2): 154-173.
Preciado, Paul B. 2020. Can the Monster Speak? Fitzcarraldo Editions. Translated from French by Frank Wynne.
This one is for the murrricans who canāt go five minutes without injecting themselves and their specific culture into the conversation. I didnāt forget you (how could I). An entire book about queer villains in American media:Ā
Schildcrout, Jordan. 2014. Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater. University of Michigan Press
Sellberg, Karin. 2015.Ā āQueer (Mis)Representations of Early Modern Sexual Monstersā 11: 375-407.. Sex, Knowledge, and Receptions of the Past, Oxford University Press
That was a big maybe and Iām just going to go ahead and go to bed. Happy reading.
tumblr has a 10 links per post limits, so here is one link directly to the googledoc with this exact same text in it AND ALL THE SOURCE LINKS.
On the wave of Velma sucking, I want to bring attention to another project that takes the same concept (adult mystery gang show) and does it lovingly and really well: Mystery Incorporated.
This is an independent project that has been given the grace of the IP holders, and it's so obviously crafted by folks who genuinely love the franchise. Yes, it's a little gritty and dark and "adult," but in like... A cheesy, campy first-season-supernatural kind of wayā it's not played to be "shocking," and it obviously cares about the people watching it. (There's so many little clever nods to obscure Scooby shit it's insane)
The first 50 minute pilot episode was released a little under a year ago, and I strongly encourage you to check it out and support the team to produce more episodes. Channel whatever effort you were going to put into hate-watching Velma into supporting good things, instead.
Hey everyone. With this horrible Etsy news, a lot of dildo makers are going to be losing business because even if they already have a separate website, I know most of their sales are through Etsy since that is the easiest way for new customers to find them.
Therefore, we need to do our part to promote the websites of these businesses.
Please reblog this and share your favorite dildo makerās website.
Mine is Neotori. Iāve ordered several from them and theyāre extremely high quality. They have a wide selection to choose from. Also despite being in Europe while Iām in the USA, shipping has always been quite fast. They also have seemed to be very easy to work with when there are problems. I first purchased from them through Etsy but Iāve made many purchases through their own website and it has always gone smoothly.
Another shop I like is Strange Bed Fellas. Iāve only purchased once from them but it went smoothly and was very high quality.
