sorry to be a broken record every month but christ menstruation is a stupid concept. oooooh excuse me for not getting pregnant, why the fuck is there goo falling out of me about it? grow the fuck up and reabsorb that shit for nutrients.
I think when a sub says "you can do whatever you want to me" what they're actually wanting is to not make decisions anymore, and they think by saying this they can foist the decision making off on the dom without having to do any of the work beforehand. But unfortunately to get to the Not Making Choices part of kink you do in fact have to make a Lot Of Choices beforehand and communicate those choices to your partner. This is an essential part of the process and skipping it is both unsafe and unfair for whoever you're playing with.
Not Making Choices is the reward for communicating clearly, not the default
so women are supposed to grin and bear the books, the comics, the movies, the plays, the tv shows, the stories, the sci-fi, the translated ancient poems, the fucking millennia of men writing about their self inserts torturing women and it being declared as High Art by other men, we’re supposed to read it in our free time, study it in classrooms, include their styles in our own writing, accept their cultural influence as natural, watch it in the cinema, write about it, talk about it, accept it, aspire it, but men can’t tolerate three seconds of female wish fulfilment of a woman snapping the wrist of a creep without feeling personally kicked in the balls.
This reminds me of something I observed in college while I was doing my honors thesis on women in modern horror films. I watched a LOT of horror during that time as part of my research, and sometimes that was done with my family around.
And my dad and brothers? Were deeply disturbed by the movie Jennifer’s Body. I was flabbergasted. It’s not scary! It’s not even that gory. But they were horrified by it. These men who grew up on 70s slashers were legitimately shook by 90 minutes of Megan Fox eating a few teenage boys, mostly off-screen.
Similarly, my all-male reading panel for my thesis? Were so disturbed by my synopsis of the film Teeth that they couldn’t even talk about it. One of them said he couldn’t look at his wife for a week after reading it.
Again, grown-ass men who study and teach media for a living. Who definitely watch and enjoy horror movies. One of whom was a huge Tarantino buff. We watched and read worse in his intro to mass media class! But one movie about a girl whose vag could bite was enough to haunt him.
Then of course you have things like the Gone Girl backlash–men yelling that Amy Dunne is evil and women clamoring to assure everyone that they know she is not someone to emulate–the backlash against Carol Danvers, and, more recently, the griping from MRAs against the upcoming film Hustlers, which is about strippers scamming their Wall Street clients.
My conclusion? Most men–at least most straight, cisgender men, who are both my sample population and most of the ones whining that Carol is a “villain”–are perfectly fine with, and desensitized to, media where men do violence to women (horror movies), or men do violence to men (horror and action movies). They’re even sort of fine when women do violence to women (“ooooo cat fight!”).
But they get intensely uncomfortable when women are depicted doing any kind of violence to men, especially in films that tilt the balance of power to the other side of the m/f gender binary beyond a single moment or scene.
So woman as flesh-eating monster with men as her preferred cuisine? Woman who responds to unwanted sexual contact by biting it off? Woman who frames her cheating husband for murder? Woman whose response to harassment–behavior that many of the loudest whiners know is both creepy and reflective of their own thoughts/actions–is to break something?
Too scary. Unacceptable. Disturbing. These men hate being presented with the idea, even in fiction, that their position of power is socially constructed, that it could easily be flipped the other way. It terrifies them.
In feeling that terror, they experience a tiny modicum of what living, existing, moving, being perceived as a woman in the world is like.
[ID: A cartoon of a man reading the paper on his commute. Monday through Thursday the headline reads “Stalker Kills Woman” and he doesn’t raise an eyebrow, but on Friday it reads “Woman Kills Stalker” and he (and the men behind him) flips out in fear. /End ID]
I need to stop replying to “how do you make friends in your 30s?” threads because all my answers boil down to “you have to want to know people instead of have friends” and I don’t think people wanna hear that
It’s like. People can tell if you don’t really like or connect with them. If you aren’t truly enamored with someone you will have a hard time coming up with activities to do together to deepen the friendship. Because you don’t really like that person that much.
It's both kind of funny and pretty sad that Konstantin has thought about four different people during this masturbation session while trying to keep focus on one.
look you can't say [shakespeare character] HAS TO BE [thing] without exception in every single production, otherwise you're kind of misunderstanding why we put on these 400-year plays over and over again with different twists and modern adaptational choices each time. because theatre isn't stagnant. every actor & director chooses to focus on a different aspect of the play to highlight and draw out different messages and meanings from the same text. you can't be saying [shakespeare play] HAS TO include [this scene] or have [this interpretation] or portray something [this way] or whatever every single time without exception because WHYYYY would we be still putting them on!!! if every production of hamlet made hamlet the same age and put it in the same era and had gertrude know or not know claudius' murder and so on and so forth we would've stopped putting it on ages ago!!!! shakespeare's modern day appeal is its versatility !!!
it literally ultimately depends on what version of this story the director wants to tell this time. want to show a man lashing out and hurting others and crumbling as the catastrophic consequences of his own actions spiral his life out of control? make hamlet 30.
want to show a teenager helpless in a world of adults, powerless under his guardians but with unimaginable burden on him, trying and failing to cope with his grief as the ground spins out from under his feet? make hamlet 19.
want to show the complexity of gertrude's relationship with her son, and have her quiet complicity finally catch up to her in the last guilt-ridden effort to save her son? have her drink the poison knowingly.
want to emphasize the tragedy of the story and show the consequences of the depths claudius sank to? have her drink the poison by accident.
want to portray elsinore with an insular, suffocating atmosphere in which the rot and madness festers? cut fortinbras out.
want to emphasize the collateral damage of elsinore's deterioration on a national and international level, and leave a current of militaristic tension beneath? leave fortinbras in!
hamlet is too much of a complex and multi-layered play for ANYTHING in this show to be definitive!!! hamlet doesn't HAVE to be any age! fortinbras doesn't HAVE to be present or not present!! it's fair game as long as it makes for a good story in this iteration of it! nothing in hamlet HAS to be anything universally and i'm sick of posts claiming that it does
Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:
SHRIMP COCKTAIL:
banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol
generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is
#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro
And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!
POMEGRANATES:
zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple
thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute
sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.
FRUIT TREES:
zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''
salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE
baander: #cranberry trees
DOUGH/BATTER:
maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre
livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles
lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY
Some other topics:
ANIMALS:
catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear
piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave
pluto-lichen: horses
misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like
pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially
SEX:
dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.
dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like “I mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it works”
SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:
thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad
shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze
sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon
alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices
dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.
the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes
typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy
draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices
11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note
fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is
emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#🤣🤣🤣
NON-FOOD STUFF:
red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.
bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket
nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English
sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp
danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author
meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does
vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'
leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake
fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?
dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic
msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate
shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September
baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird
twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)
waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up
violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours
purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.
not every mutual fits neatly into an archetypal medievalism but there are some mutuals that im like yeah addressing you as “my liege” would come strangely naturally
not every mutual fits neatly into an archetypal medievalism but there are some mutuals that im like yeah addressing you as “my liege” would come strangely naturally
"I'm lying to you but this sentence is technically the truth without context" is such a good trope. Like yes the way that I am spinning these words forms a lie but if you squint I'm actually not lying.
I absolutely LOVE that the Pactverse penalizes saying things that are incorrect more than it penalizes saying things with the intention to mislead.
This results in people working harder to be sarcastic without actually using sarcasm (because sarcasm often involves saying a thing which is incorrect on the face of it), actually using rhetorician type statements of “I don’t know if this is true but—“ or “I think this is true” instead of being loudly and confidently objectively wrong, and doing a lot of crafty wording to manipulate others.
It’s so so fun.
(I wouldn’t actually recommend Pact to anyone outside of a very specific group, but for context, it’s a long web serial that ran around 2015-2017 where supernatural horror and folklore and superstitions are true but don’t affect those who aren’t aware of it. Content warning for the supernatural worldbuilding being really heavy on binary genders, which some characters do point out actively shuts out genderqueer folks from supernatural practices*. Like all rhe author’s serials, the world itself sucks and the characters suffer a lot. The occult rules involve karmic penalties for ‘lying’, which is stating literal untruths rather than intending to mislead. They also reward villainous monologues and Bond-esque death traps. These are my two favorite things about the web serial. The actual plot and characters are side notes 😆 )
*though the fun possibility I raised of [spoiler] having been a trans guy until [spoiler] is not actually contradicted by canon!
“I would eat his heart in the marketplace” is legit the most savage line I have ever heard, I’d like to personally thank Shakespeare for putting into words that feeling of rage and protectiveness women get when some fuckboy hurts another woman
Okay first off, I will always reblog this post, but secondly, I went to Shakespeare in the Park tonight to see this and all the women cheered *so loudly* when Beatrice said this line, and the guy in front of me looked around all shocked and a little scared and said “… oh wow” and it was ICONIQUE
Website idea: Writers of all nationalities give each other advice on how to name OCs from their native culture/language.
For example, a native English speaker can tell you that "Henry Edward" is kinda weird and evokes Tudor kings, and a native Chinese speaker can tell you that, I don't know, "mīmī" sounds cute but means titties.
Re: Chinese names, there is something cool people should know about, (maybe you already know):
Using this database, you can access the names and biographical information of real people across Chinese historical periods and dynasties. You can go on here and find the names (not just given names but courtesy names and other sorts of honorary aliases, depending on the period) of thousands of real individuals, though it's almost entirely men in the older dynasties. Very few women.
Need a character name for your Tang Dynasty official? Check out the CBDB and find a *literal Tang Dynasty official* to grab a name from!
This is interesting because I did actually know someone named 咪咪. Like yeah people use it as slang for tatas but there still exist people with that 小名. Ig it’s different for fictional characters, though, because that’s got intentionality behind it.
