Everything and Anything

Julia, 23 years old, Biromantic Asexual. Welcome to my blog where i talk about...anything and everything that interests me. Fandoms: Dracula, Six of Crows, My Chemical Romance, and Black Veil Brides

[heartsaidnoibat]

I like what Joel said here, about sexism. Like. What’s wrong with being liked by teenage girls?

[everythinandanything]

Okay, I have something of a theory about why a lot of rock bands now have large female fanbases. It's a little rough, but here goes nothing-

So, a lot of older rock fans will tell female rock fans that they only like these bands because they think the members are hot. I call bullshit for two reasons:

1. Oh yes, THAT's why fans listen to their music. To listen to the singer's eyebrows.

2. If that was the case, then why didn't the hair metal bands of the 80's have large female fanbases (I know that rock didn't start in the 80's, but that's when the rockstar archetype was brought into public perception, so I'm going with it)? They also had male artists in them, that many people found attractive.

Rock has been a male dominated genre basically since its inception, but the fandom demographics have changed in the last 25ish years to having large female fandoms. Because of that, I think it's major BS to say that female fans only like certain bands because they think the members are attractive. If that was the case, then rock bands having female fans wouldn't be a new development.

What HAS changed, though, is the material that these bands write about.

Compare Motley Crue's Girls, Girls, Girls to Blind Channel's Die Another Day:

"Girls, girls, girls Long legs and burgundy lips Girls, girls, girls Dancin' down on Sunset Strip Girls, girls, girls Red lips, fingertips"

vs.

"This world is gonna fuck you up It's gonna get dark and it seems too tough You don't wanna carry on I know all about giving up 'Cause lately I've been looking hard Where is my love? Where is my luck? Where is my faith? My reason to die another day"

Or let's look at Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard and Savior 2 by Black Veil Brides:

"Pour some sugar on me Ooh, in the name of love Pour some sugar on me C'mon, fire me up Pour your sugar on me I can't get enough"

and

"So I'm trying my hardest to be what you made Like a court jester, my smile won't fade Giving it all, rising to fall to my grave Answer the call, living in thrall, you're the one born to save"

Finally, examine the lyrics between Nothin' but A Good Time by Poison and The Light Behind Your Eyes by My Chemical Romance:

"Don't need nothin' but a good time How can I resist? Ain't lookin' for nothin' but a good time And it don't get better than this"

vs.

"If I could be with you tonight I would sing you to sleep Never let them take the light behind your eyes One day I’ll lose this fight As we fade in the dark Just remember you will always burn as bright"

I think you can get the picture. While a lot of older bands were singing about things that guys could relate to more easily, a LOT of modern rock artists are using the medium to work through their own mental health issues, fears, insecurities, and more "emotional" subjects that women and girls can relate to more easily. PLEASE NOTE that not for a second am I trying to say that men and boys don't also struggle with these emotional issues. The fact that the modern songs I'm pointing to are all sung by AMAB artists should prove otherwise. But in a world where toxic masculinity prevents men and boys from working through or even acknowledging their own mental health and emotional struggles, it's women and girls that are going to try and work through their mental health and relate to material that discusses these things.

Female fans aren't getting more into rock music because they think the artists are hot. What they are responding to is the material in the songs. Since therapy is expensive but Spotify is free, listening to music is a common way to try and work through their emotional turmoil. And rock bands just happen to be, more and more, writing about these themes of insecurity, fear, and mental illness.

[marzipanandminutiae]

"there were major systemic problems in that era of the past!"

"yes!"

"so nobody in an oppressed group was ever happy!"

"no, some of them were sometimes"

"oh so the oppression wasn't real then!"

"no, it very much was and needed to change"

"but...if they were happy..."

"humans find ways to be happy in even bleak circumstances. it's kind of a defining trait of humanity. they had to live their lives in the world as it was, even while fighting to change it, so. yeah. they made happiness for themselves the way everyone does, even now with the problems we have today. there were good things in their world, too, alongside the bad. even some things we could learn from now, though definitely not their macro-level social attitudes!"

"...ohhh you're a shill for conservative values and you wish you lived back then! got it!"

"let's go over this again"

[everythinandanything]

"People in oppressed groups still managed to have fun and make happy lives for themselves even though society was determined to fuck them over every chance they got" really SHOULDN'T be a hot take, but here we are.

As I said in my last post, part of me thinks that this black and white view of history regarding minority groups was pushed by those in the dominant class, to convince people that, "yes the system is fucking these groups over, but it's nowhere near as bad as they would have been treated in the past, so we don't have to do any work to change the system or hold the people at the top accountable!"

[marzipanandminutiae]

May i ask why you dislike the greatest showman? I like the music but the Story irks me and i would like to hear anothers opinion

1. WHY WOULD YOU MAKE P.T. FREAKING BARNUM YOUR LOVEABLE ROGUE? THE MAN WAS A DUMPSTER FIRE IN REAL LIFE, FOR A MYRIAD REASONS.

2. Jenny Lind character assassination, which- why? She was literally so benign that she'd be almost boring if she hadn't been an international superstar who rose from extremely humble beginnings to massive fame.

3. The costumes were abysmal. Certainly not accurate and barely even visually interesting.

4. The story was clearly just a vehicle to get from one song to the next, and incredibly dull.

If it had been a vaguely Victorian-flavored concept album about a fictional character, I'd probably have the whole soundtrack downloaded to my phone already. But they just had to Go There, on multiple levels. So I hate it.

[everythinandanything]

I avoided this film mostly because of how I had a suspicion that the disabled characters were not going to be anything other than inspiration porn, but also that there were nuances to how disabled people were treated at the time that I had a feeling wouldn't make it through to the film, in favor of what I felt like the story was going for.

Listen: being disabled in this time period wasn't fun. Being disabled today sucks. A lot. But things are not as black and white in regards to disability issues (and a lot of issues regarding minority groups, actually) in the Victorian era as people want to think.

For just one example, Charles Stratton (aka. General Tom Thumb, the little person shown in the film) was well respected among society. He lived in an upscale and fashionable part of New York, and had a house specifically adapted for his needs as a disabled person. Yes, he was treated as an oddity by Victorian society, but he was not outcasted in the way that some people might think (or what the movie seemed to believe). His genuine skills in the performing arts were so well regarded that critics ignored the fact that he was in the freakshow circuit, and focused on his own merits as an entertainer. His marriage to Lavinia Warren, another little person, was front page news, for fucks sake. His life was not a fucking sob story defined by how badly society screwed him over (although I can bet you so much fucking money that that was a part of it).

If anyone is interested, I can compile a list of acomplished disabled people throughout history, but I'll end this here: Disabled people still managed to have fun and experience full lives at this time. Do NOT fall into this line of revisionist history, which I'm convinced was developed to make those in power feel better as the fuck over disabled people by saying, "I'm not treating them as badly as people in the past!!!!!"

[highwaytovengeance]

Samy on Instagram

[everythinandanything]

HEY DIPSHIT-

SAMY ELBANA HAS BEEN SCREWING AROUND WITH GENDER PRESENTATION SINCE THE EARLY DAYS OF THE BAND.

FUCK OFF AND TOUCH GRASS.

[popsicle-stick]

hey, don't cry. night of the 26th may, ok?

[immediatebreakfast]

Absolutely love the contrast between Jack and Quincey's entries.

Jack "Hospital boy" Seward: *dehydrated, with insomnia, has not eaten in 24 hours* "Hell itself perceives me, yesterday left me in shambles, I think the walls talk to me, maybe if I study work with one of my patients I will feel better".

Quincey P. "Say howdy" Morris: *sensually posing in front of a campfire, alone* "Heeeeeey dear Arthur ;) it's your pal Quincey. Remember all of those times when we three were traveling together? I heard that a certain lady is engaged to you, let's get drunk by the fire, and talk about it ;)."

[rudavoidish]

Y'all if you're American please email your politicians and senators against the parents decide act. I'm fucking begging because we're reaching a tipping point.

[hetrosjistin]

Call or Write Congress About H.R. 8250: Parents Decide Act - GovTrack.us

Quick and easy link to both find your congressmen/women and giving you a quick and easy way to copy / paste the message into it. You want to oppose. It's an act that will demand that all major OS makers integrate a direct forced age verification control into all OS.

[rudavoidish]

I received a comment on this that I figured would be very helpful- it's a template for communicating with your representatives. Be sure to use it for reference

Dear Representative [Name],

I am writing to express my strong opposition to H.R. 8250 (The "Parents Decide Act"). As your constituent and a concerned citizen, I believe this bill introduces unprecedented risks to digital privacy and security.

Specifically, I am alarmed by:

SEC. 2(a)(1)(B): Requiring age verification to even use an operating system creates a mandatory "hardware lockout" that ends anonymous computing and forces users to hand over sensitive identification data to major corporations just to power on their devices.

SEC. 2(a)(3): Mandating that OS providers create a system for all app developers to access verification data is a massive security vulnerability. This effectively creates a centralized API of user identities accessible to thousands of third-party developers, many of whom may lack adequate data protection.

This bill does not protect children; it creates a centralized surveillance infrastructure at the OS level. I urge you to protect the privacy of your constituents and vote NO on H.R. 8250.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

[Your Zip Code]

[willowtree1527]

This is a hell that us down under in Australia are already living in, and it’s not even effective at what it claims to do in protecting children.

Given that, in the wake of this mandatory identification policy, my country seems to be moving to hand over its citizens biometric data, like fingerprints, Face ID files, and identification documents, over to the USA and to ICE to maintain the visa free travel (ESTA) we have, I strongly urge any US resident to send these emails, or make calls.

But if you can’t do that, the most powerful thing you can do is spread the word. Tell your friends, family, coworkers, anyone who can help.

My reach will likely be small, and so I don’t know if this will mean very much in the grand scheme of things, but I cannot stand to see this tracking happen to another population as it did to mine.

And if you think it won’t affect you, it will. All anonymity goes out the window when your accounts can be linked via your personal ID

I wish you all luck in preventing this act from going through.

[mossdftba]

I called my representative and left a voice message!

[humming-fly]

Here’s the 5calls script to make it easy! https://5calls.org/issue/age-verification-internet-privacy/

[lilithsaintcrow]

"This week I discovered the same pattern, executed by Google. Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking."

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. — Th

Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise t

[jenroses]

pretty sure I did the chrome//flags thing a while ago, but also i switched to firefox, which is not without the occasional bullshit, but is vastly less bullshitty than chrome. This is why I treat genai "features" like the invasive blackberry bushes they are: cut, root, burn, and vigilantly watch for new shoots to uproot. I'm 54 years old and the world got by fine without genai for most of my lifetime.

[sniperct]

tags via@KKglinka #psa#having read the article#it's not clickbait#chrome is reaching#across all chromium browsers#to link a prepatory structure#this malware packet#will therefore occur#with all chromium browsers#it has nothing to do#with the actual ai interface#instead chrome is either#using your personal computer#as part of a cloud server#the way bitcoin malware works#or it's recording your own#actions on the computer#with a continuously active#background module#either way#that's malware#a 4gig trojan virus

[immediatebreakfast]

Jonathan May 8th: "The castle is a veritable prison and I am a prisoner."

Mina May 9th: "Lucy my love hiiii hello tell me ALL the hot goss you are not hiding from me a secret boyfriend are you? I learned he's curly ;) My other darling is still on his work trip. I just received his telegram that he's arrived in Transylvania. I'd love to go there one day hehe. Anyway cannot wait to see you and kiss you by the sea! xoxo"

"We interrupt this gothic novel filled with dread to bring you two beautiful girls gossiping, and you will love it" - Bram Stoker probably.

[everythinandanything]

"We interrupt this horror novel to bring you a goth girl and her preppy BFF as they prepare for their Bridgerton summer vacay"

[akasanata]

Managed to finish on time!

[tomoleary]

Mike Mignola “Dracula” Hell, Ink & Water The Art of Mike Mignola (2024) Source

[starlitartworks]

8th of May- "When I found that I was a prisoner a sort of wild feeling came over me"

Looping the Rooms feat. Jonathan and some hungry vampires!

[everythinandanything]

CONGRATS TO THE NEW PARENTS!!!!!!

From Minna's Instagram account

[tomorrows-unknown]

Just Mirko being a goddamn Disney Princess yet again!

(Taken from his Instagram story)

He's mastered the art of making wild animals spawn wherever he goes, befriending them is just the next step of his training.

[immediatebreakfast]

The humanity displayed today to Jonathan in the face of the sheer terror that the Count inflicts on the country side was amazing. It's not only the coach who tries to save (or at least delay the arrival to Dracula's pickup point) Jonathan by arriving earlier, it's everyone in the travel. An entire group of people decided to risk their lives for a young english stranger who, in their eyes, is going towards his doom.

One by one several of the passengers offered me gifts, which they pressed upon me with an earnestness which would take no denial; these were certainly of an odd and varied kind, but each was given in simple good faith, with a kindly word, and a blessing, and that strange mixture of fear-meaning movements...

All of the passengers gave Jonathan something that was probably supposed to work against Dracula. Although he doesn't have the context of any of it, and everything was written by Stoker to amplify the very well played dread of what was going to happen if Jonathan made it to the pickup point, it's a detail that shines through the text. The people are both tired and scared of Dracula eating the young, so if they can do the impossible and save this stranger for a day or two then they will try it.

[everythinandanything]

Despite all of the horrifically problematic things in the book, this is a story where friendship and love are shown to be powerful forces in the main characters' life.

[whosherefor-thechaos]

in honour of dracula restarting and jonathan once again having paprika hendl, i have decided to translate and post this recipe for it that was included in a special deluxe illustrated edition of dracula i bought a few years ago:

the recipe is as follows:

mina's paprika hendl

original transylvanian recipe

note: the garlic in this dish may perhaps provide defence against possible vampire attacks, therefore it is advisable to use more rather than less.

6 chicken thighs (or 1 roast chicken) | 3 onions | 4 cloves of garlic | 3 colourful bell peppers | 2 tablespoons of tomato paste | 800 g of peeled tomatoes | chili powder (spicyness as wanted) | 100 ml cream | 3 teaspoons of sweet paprika | 3 teaspoons of hot paprika | 2 teaspoons of starch | a pinch of sugar | salt | pepper

preheat the oven until it has reached circa 150°c. in the meantime, peel and finely dice onions and garlic. wash the bell peppers, remove seeds and dice finely.

wash the chicken and pat dry. sear in a cast iron pot. add onions and bell peppers and fry together briefly. then add the garlic and fry together for circa two minutes.

add tomato paste and peeled tomatoes. add paprika powder, salt, pepper and sugar. mix in chili powder for desired spice level.

put in oven with closed lid and braise for circa two hours. put on stove again after and add cream. while stirring bring to a boil and thicken with starch. add salt, pepper and chili to taste.

this dish goes well with rice, potatoes and salad.

[ryah-wolfe]

I don’t start my day by reading the newspaper, I start my day by reading a letter from my good friend Jonathan Harker. Sounds like he’s having a blast