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[bajoop-sheeb]

PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin or that Babel was too heavy-handed just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here

Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn

[spid3rgrrrl]

If anyone has any recommendations give them to me please!

[bajoop-sheeb]

Gladly! The pieces on this list aren’t limited to specifically anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy, but they do center related and relevant topics, themes, etc.

Anything by NK Jemisin. She is the best speculative fiction writer of her generation and probably the best speculative fiction writer alive. She is easily one of the best writers working right now, across all genres. That’s not hyperbole. She deserves all the hype.

Anything by Octavia Butler. She needs no introduction. Her short fiction is incredible; “Bloodchild” is one of the pieces that inspired me to write.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. Excellent. Just read it.

The Radiant Emperor duology by Shelley P. Chan. It broke my heart and it'll break yours.

Babel by RF Kuang. You’ve probably already heard of this book because Harper Voyager marketed the shit out of it and was right to do so. It’s very, very good. Kuang writes a compulsively readable story, that’s for sure.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo.

So Long Been Dreaming: Post-Colonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.

Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.

Severely underhyped books of assorted speculative genres:

The Blood Trials by NE Davenport. Given the current chokehold romantasy has on the public it’s insane to me that this book hasn’t sold a billion copies.

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez. It’ll change you.

The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera.

The Lesson by Caldwell Turnbull.

Read widely. Read diversely. People of the Caucasian persuasion need to stop getting pissy when the story doesn’t immediately center them and they don’t automatically relate to everything the character says and does and is. Just let yourself get swept in the story—even if it touches on (gasp!) racism—and maybe, just maybe, it’ll reveal something to you.

Or maybe not! Marginalized sff authors do not have to and should not have to educate their readers. But if I see one more white person complain about how Black characters are fundamentally annoying because they complain too much I’m going to fling myself into the sun

Thanks for coming to my ted talk I didn’t want to do it but here I am

[teeth-and-spackle]

Don't forget Aliette de Bodard! Especially her Xuya and Dominion of the Fallen series.

Zen Cho is my other favorite - Sorcerer to the Crown and The True Queen, and also Black Water Sister.

[coffin-flop]

Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements is a fantastic collection of short scifi stories written by a variety of social justice activists

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson is so intricately plotted, I really enjoyed the world building in it, the back of book blurb says "The rich and privileged have fled the city, barricaded it behind roadblocks, and left it to crumble. The inner city has had to rediscover old ways — farming, barter, herb lore. But now the monied need a harvest of bodies, and so they prey upon the helpless of the streets. With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, and the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother. She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends."

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland is a YA alternative historical fiction zombie novel in which the American Civil War is interrupted by a zombie apocalypse, and a young Black woman must find her way in a world where the living may be more dangerous than the undead. (it's the first of a duology)

Everfair by Nisi Shawl is a steampunk alternative history, which explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had adopted steam technology as their own. (also part of a series)

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline is a great ya dystopian book about a world where people have lost the ability to dream and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors.

The Getaway by Lamar Giles is a very intense YA dystopian horror that takes place in the future, in which a teen boy and his family work and live at a Disney-esque resort, which provides safety from the upheaval in the outside world.... until the trouble in the outside world gets worse and the most rich members of the board and up moving in and locking the resort down, leaving the families who live & work on the resort at the mercy of the wealthy board owners who control it.

Not a book and not exactly scifi (although some of the stories are scifi) and not always anti-colonial (but a lot of the stories have anti-colonial themes) , I really love the Nightlight Podcast hosted by Tonia Ransom, which is a podcast of horror stories by Black writers and performed by Black actors

not fiction, but semi-related nonfiction I'd rec is Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women's Speculative Fiction by Sami Schalk

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Throwing in The Kingston Cycle by CL Polk, basically everything I've ever wanted in a fantasy novel. Like if the author had my checklist.

[muffinlance]

Adding in Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger for some absolutely delightful world building just casually tossed in on every page. YA and very approachable to those with limited free time while still being immensely enjoyable to an adult reader. Just a girl and her ghost dog out to prove a murder.

Absolutely seconding NK Jemisin with a pounding gavel just finished the series starting at The Fifth Season and am downloading everything my library has from them. NOT light but so good I am chewing at the rocks over this.

I will also say the author of Babel is an amazing writer, but I threw that book at the wall because VAGUE SPOILERS AHEAD I cannot STAND a poorly covered up murder. YOUR ENTIRE CAST OF CHARACTERS HAD AN ENTIRE LONG SEA VOYAGE TO COME UP WITH A COVER STORY AND ALL THEY COULD MANAGE WAS "dunno what happened drrrr"????? I WILL INCARCERATE THEM MYSELF. They stopped being sympathetic for me when they started actively shoving the idiot ball up their collective noses.

[daylightsavingcrime]

Levar Burton has a podcast (it's not active rn but the backlog is huge) where he reads short stories. Many are scifi, most are by authors of colour! It's called "Levar Burton Reads".

[cloudabserk]

dean is shoveling the patio like a good husband

[weirdmageddon]

glad to know people will still be experiencing this video for the first time this daylight savings

[inkdot-deactivated20200219]

This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.

A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.

Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic?  She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing.  But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great.  She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success.  So - what gives?

His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear.  Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles.  He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses.  You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on.  Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered.  He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit.  That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.

I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way.  I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did. 

It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this.  But no one ever told me.  I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes.  No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.

I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed.  I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to.  No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to.  I guess I just didn’t know.  I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.

I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.

I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.

So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while.  But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not.  Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.

[hungrylikethewolfie]

This post is one of those things that I will reblog every time it appears on my dash.  This is so important, and no one ever tells you about it.

[skeletree-blog]

I almost didn’t read this but then I did and I’m really glad that I did.

[theopinionatedartist]

Super important

[deafinatlyme]

Tldr: The reason clothes never “looked right on you” is because models and celebrities always had their clothes tailored to fit them perfectly.

[plucky-passerine]

I love this post but it always frustrated me just a little because I can’t even afford to buy new clothes let alone get the clothes I have tailored. But then I remembered that a lot of things are easier to do than you think they will be, so here’s some resources on how to alter your own clothes!

[cats-eye-galaxy]

Please read this, it’s an opportunity to learn about yourself, possibly a new skill and why it isn’t you, it’s the industry.

[gothiccharmschool]

Do I reblog this every time? Yes. Part of the reason I became kinda-sorta-vaguely proficient at sewing was because NOTHING off-the-rack fits me, no matter what size I’m at.

[skiagraphe0-deactivated20250401]

If you’re thinking “oh this doesn’t apply to me, my body is bad because of X, Y or X” please know it DOES apply to you and your body is not bad. Your proportions are not bad. The cheapest way to produce clothes to fit a maximum number of people is to make them fit a high number of people badly rather than a small number of people well.

It’s not you. It’s the industry.

[thegreatyin]

every piece of ""autistic representation"" in hollywood sucks not just because of the infantalization and inspiration porn but because movie executives always fail to realize the real universal autistic experience: spending your childhood slowly and unfalteringly realizing all of your friends not so secretly hated and/or merely tolerated you at best and you've missed every social signal about it ever

[thegreatyin]

there is nothing quite as damaging as realizing you were the only one not invited to a classmate's birthday party. the only one left out of yearbook photos. the only one not told about an in-joke or groupchat or anything of the sort. once you experience it even once it fucks with your head for the rest of your days

[thegreatyin]

the variation on this is being treated like you're everyone's weird and vaguely amusing autistic pet rather than a human person with independent agency and autonomy, which. is equally psychologically damaging but like in a different genre of way

[thegreatyin]

everyone leaving personal anecdotes on this post is making me so sad. do you guys need, like, a hug? therapy? warm milk and cookies and a big stuffed animal, maybe??

[skiagraphe0-deactivated20250401]

My eighth grade homeroom teacher once did something that permanently altered how I saw not just her, but all women whose personality was 'I'm well-meaning and nurturing and love kids uwu'. She knew an autistic boy in our class fixated on spoken word poetry and poetry jams and loved writing. She knew damn well everyone thought he was a loser. She found his attempts at sincerely conveying his emotions via poetry incredibly funny. He thought she supported his poetry writing and his aspirations of being a poet.

She had him perform in front of the entire homeroom, who burst into laughter and cackled at him like he was a comedian and not someone performing a piece about his ongoing struggles with depression. I sat there, too stunned to even process what was happening, as he performed at the request of a neurotypical adult he trusted and that adult as well as 19 of his peers laughed their asses off at him. Myself and 3 others at least didn't laugh, but I don't think that lessened the damage any.

Because, to be clear, it did hit him that people were laughing at him. Not 'laughing with him', as the teacher claimed later, no, people were laughing at the funny loser talking about serious things and trying to project his voice and do inflections and lmao lol what a loser what a freak lololol. He tried to tell himself the teacher didn't know that would happen. When I confronted her after class about that being messed up and bullying, however, she had said - with him in earshot - that it was funny and I needed to lighten up.

He spent the rest of the semester visibly depressed, withdrawn, not talking to anyone, angrily asserting that poetry was stupid, which expanded to literature being stupid. Our English Literature teacher was also our homeroom teacher, and she spent the next three months confused on why he was doing the absolute bare minimum to pass or alternately not doing anything at all. She could not wrap her mind around how having 20 people laugh at him to his face might be related to this. To this day, over a decade later, she will deny that she had any part in his unhappiness. Kids around school who weren't in our homeroom knew about what happened and quoted lines from his poem at him as a funny meme. Kids in the lunchroom would put on reenactments of it for their friends, to cackles and laughs. Bits of it ended up written in pen and pencil on a variety of surfaces.

I saw one line, which people meme'd to death, written on the wall in the bathroom at the local theater. (We were the rare small town with an old theater at all, an ancient family-owned one that inexplicably continues on to this day.) I tried scrubbing it off, but it didn't work. I took long enough trying to get to it that the theater manager came in. He asked me what was going on. The autistic kid's other major interest, I knew, was film. He came to this theater all the time. He was going to see this if it didn't get covered and he was already being heckled on a daily basis. So I told the theater manager about the whole thing. The performance, the mockery, all of it.

"Mrs. Johnson knew he was going to do it? And she didn't stop him?" he asked at one point, to which I replied, "Mrs. Johnson came up with the idea in the first place."

He stared at me, absolutely horrified. "That woman is a monster."

I think about that a lot. Mrs. Johnson was nice, blonde, blue-eyed, thin, white, had a normal marriage to her high school sweetheart, taught Sunday school at her church, allegedly became a teacher because she cared about kids so much, showed genuine empathy for other kids when they were going through something, dressed nicely, and was the ideal small town woman who hadn't left her small town she grew up in but instead accepted a teaching job there even when the pay was low. She was anti-bullying and anti-racism and stood up for me when another kid got mad one of my stories in English class mentioned gay people. I'm sure she thinks of herself as a very good person. She certainly does not fit the model of what most people think of when they imagine a bully.

She also deliberately orchestrated an autistic 13 year old being mocked by a group for her own entertainment and then let the mockery continue unabated without a word of objection for four months.

The theater manager, Ronnie, is not conventionally attractive, he's aroace and therefore single by choice, he's not extroverted, he moved to this small town from out of state - something people here hold against him as if he'd committed a crime as an unspoken 'you will never be one of us', and he is outwardly unexpressive a lot of the time, with a flat affect and lack of expressions.

He outright banned the next kid he caught writing that stupid meme'd line onto the bathroom stall. He drove across town to get paint and painted over the writing I'd been trying to get rid of that very night.

I'm not autistic, but I have ADHD. I have a lot of similar problems. I think, a lot, about Mrs. Johnson wanting my permission to show my writing to people. I'd told her beforehand not to and that if she did, I would be getting my parents involved. I think about how that could have gone down for me, how she said I was a good writer and she just wanted to help me. I think about how many other neurodivergent kids probably felt safe with her and the amount of damage she might've caused over her 43 years of teaching. To this day she denies she ever did anything wrong. It was a joke. Kids these days are so sensitive.

When the autistic kid she'd used like an animal performing a fun trick for her amusement became so depressed that he first stopped going to school, then tried to kill himself, that was the response: "He's too sensitive."

Not "maybe I was wrong", not "and from now on I promise to come down hard on bullying", nothing else. He was too sensitive.

Nothing gets me on guard now like very nice, sweet, loving neurotypical women who assure you that they're anti-bullying and they love kids and they're here to help. Having completely convinced themselves that they're always in the right and always good people, they are capable of astonishing cruelty, whose consequences they will not stop and whose victim they will never see as human. When I corrected her spelling once, she got visibly upset for a moment. When kids quoted lines at this kid to make fun of him, for months, she could not see why this might be upsetting, why having your poetry about your depression turned into a meme by kids you spent 8 hours a day with might hurt in any way.

He was 13. She was in her late 50's. Or, as my mom put it, she was old enough to know better. Many neurotypicals assured me at the time it wasn't bullying, it was just a joke. Ronnie, undiagnosed but likely neurodivergent, inarguably hit upon the actual problem here: "That woman is a monster."

It's just that when the monster looks 'normal', we call the monster's actions something else. Bullying is such an ugly word. Let's reframe it as comedy instead.

You'd think an English Literature teacher would know changing what something is called doesn't change what it is.

[wolfythewitch]

the magnus archives is a workplace comedy

[chickenstab]

somebody could literally make the funniest joke in the universe, expertly crafted and hand made like a fine artisan cheese, but it’ll never make me laugh as much as that one fucking comic where goofy steals a hat from himself in a different panel and defies all logic and starts crying

[chickenstab]

[testosteronetwunk]

[testosteronetwunk]

[onmywayoutokay-deactivated20240]

this is what i mean when i say "sniles so sneetly" btw

[onmywayoutokay-deactivated20240]

i appear to have infected 14k people with the phrase "sniling so sneetly". it makes me grin. snile, even. perhaps sneetly

[notgreengardens]

My pretentious, overanalyzing ass right before starting The Magnus Archives: So, I don't know anything about this show, but apparently it's a cosmic horror podcast and the protagonist is an archivist called Jonathan Sims. Since "Sims" is a very distinctive last name, this leads to the assumption that the author whose name I do not know yet wants it to carry a special meaning. Now, "Jonathan" is a fairly normal name, so maybe the author wants to establish him as a kind of Eveyday Joe, someone like you and me. Sims, however, might stand for two concepts: It could allude to the concept of "simulation" but I hope it doesn't as "it was all just a dream and we are all living in a simulation" type of stories are rarely well done. It could, however, be a literal allusion to the video game "The Sims" meaning that Jonathan Sims might be an Everyday Joe whose life is controlled by outside forces and who is not aware of the powers that influence his choices. In combination with the concept of cosmic horror, this could be an interesting concept of a show.

Me, exactly 16 minutes and a few google searches later:

[notgreengardens]

Me @ johnny sims after bingeing the whole show and finally listening to MAG160:

[nebulations]

[ID: Image one shows a clown sitting at a computer desk and looking over its shoulder at the viewer. A picture of Jonny Sims, creator of The Magnus Archives, who gave the protagonist his own name, is edited onto the computer screen in front of it. Image two is a meme of Hannibal Buress with he caption edited to say "why am I right???!" End ID]

[buk-kakyoin]

If the two guys Darrien describes this episode really ARE alt universe Martin and Jon, it's funny how consistently Martin gets described as generally normal and kinda nervous from outsider povs meanwhile with Jon it's always like "imagine the most fucked up guy you ever saw. Just a real thousand-yard-stare type motherfucker. He's having war flashbacks in his head. Olympic levels of Wants to Go Home. He also kinda looks like a loser nerd? Oh and he probably wants to fuck orchids. Orchid fucker." Like damn, can't a guy have witnessed The Horrors™️ in peace??????

[centaurianthropology]

Little Magnus Details I Love

There are so many little things about ‘The Magnus Archives’ that I love that aren’t really fully-formed meta so much as they are things that are cool.  I’ve never really had anywhere to put them, so here they are: a list of random shit I just fucking love about this series.  Please feel free to add your own.

-The TMA Team.  I don’t often get into the people behind the series, as they have their own Q&As, and I don’t know them personally.  So it feels weird to gush about them too much.  But goddamn do I love the team making this show, particularly Jonny and Alex.  They put in probably more time than we can imagine making this thing work, and they somehow manage to put out serious quality every single week for 40 weeks.  That’s insane.  Even more insane is how passionate they seem to remain about this project.  I love the end-of-season Q&As purely to hear their thoughts and enthusiasm (and also Jonny’s violent dislike of conflating horror fiction and sexual violence.  Every time he goes off on that subject I like him more).

-Dancing the Unknowing.  How awesome is it that the end of the world as we know it is not brought about by a ceremony, or a chant, or any tired old cliche?  Instead, you usher in a new and uncanny reality through dance.  There is something so viscerally cool about a dance that ends the world.  Every time I think about dancing the Unknowing I start grinning.  It’s one of those tiny details, but it’s one of the single coolest things they’ve done with this show.

-Character in the Margins.  Almost like an illuminated manuscript, the characters of this show come alive in the margins and the periphery of the horror stories.  I love that this show has held true to the ideal of telling a stand-alone horror story every week, even when they’re short, and that the character moments still revolve around the stories.  Both on a meta level and an in-universe level, that makes so much sense and I love it.

-Jon Being Shit at Emotions.  Jon’s backstory, particularly his isolation from a very early age, speaks to a psychology of isolation.  He was never good at interacting with people the way others did, and it bleeds over into every aspect of his character.  It’s frustrating, because we want him to square things with his assistants, and to finally know what to say and when.  But he doesn’t.  His powers don’t help his personality.  If anything, they push it further.  This is one small detail of how characters never have easy outs from either the situation or themselves, but it’s something that I’ve loved and love even more when I hear how deeply Jon’s difficulties with simple human connection are rooted in his psyche.  Contrast that with the notion that the Archivist has a natural connection with literally everyone, and that the powers are entirely based on convincing people to talk to you, and there’s a delicious irony that is always understated but omnipresent.

-People Handling Things the Way Real People Would, as Messy as That Is.  Seriously, as frustrating as the Archival staff are more often than not, there is an uncompromising dedication to painfully human responses to the extraordinary situations the characters find themselves in that is phenomenal.  Tim digging in his heels, being generally useless, bitter, and lashing out at inappropriate people because he feels trapped by the Institute?  100% what most people would do.  Martin lying about his past not because Jon would care about it, but because that lie had become an intrinsic part of his identity?  That happens to people every day.  They think so hard about a lie that they start to believe it themselves.  Jon fumbling through a job he wasn’t trained to do, hoping that simple arrogance will carry him where professional training sure as hell isn’t?  Everyone who’s had a job has probably done that.  These are embarrassing and secret responses almost everyone has to the world around them, and to see them portrayed so well, to see every character flawed and broken and continuing to make decisions that might well hurt them?  There’s something painfully real about that.  Jon worries that he’s no longer human, but the way he and the others are written, they’re more human than half the characters in fiction.

-The Voiceacting.  I mean, guys.  Most of the cast are literally people who played D&D with Alex, were in a band with Jonny, or are just Jonny’s parents.  But somehow this voice cast is better than the vast majority of podcasts, and plenty of non-podcast entertainment.  Jonny Sims has a ridiculous vocal range, and performs the various characters he embodies so believably they had to invent meta of why he was so good at it!  And the others have proved just as impressive.  Alex Newall has always been able to be the relatable character, the one the audience instinctively wants to protect, so hearing him lose his goddamned mind in ‘Dig’ was arresting.  It’s such a departure from Martin, and so interesting to hear.  Lydia Nichols has come on strong this season, and her character was so memorable in her first appearance that I kept banging on about how I hoped she wouldn’t be a one-off.  Frank Voss managed to give late-addition Basira a huge amount of humanity and relatability, making her a fan favorite, and someone we consistently worry about.  Mike LeBeau has gone from a throw-away good-humored character to someone tormented and bitter and angry, and it was done seamlessly.  You want to smack Tim half the time, even while you totally understand where he’s coming from.  And then there’s Ben Meredith, who’s definitely been season 3′s MVP so far.  Elias was always a fascinating character, even back when he was a slightly dithering bureaucrat, but this season has had him come out as a vicious, powerful force, and Ben’s hypnotic, arrogant delivery of his lines sold the character.  This cast is just so good.

-The Inclusion of Real History.  You may have noticed I’m a bit of a history nerd.  So things like the inclusion of Robert Smirke, or ‘The Tale of a Field Hospital’ or Wilfred Owen all lend an authenticity to the stories.  They also give me interesting people and events to research, to figure out what is real in our reality, and what was added by Jonny to enhance his own.  Seriously, the research that’s gone into this show is ridiculous, and I appreciate every minute of it.

-Michael’s Horrific Laugh.  I think that one speaks for itself.  Just … such a phenomenal piece of acting and audio engineering.

[flammenkobold]

-The background sounds, soundscaping. It’s so subtle and very effective. Every time something supernatural happens you get this additional audio cue. The music is there in the background but never disturbs the listening experience. Even at their worst RQ does such an amazing job with their audio it’s incredible (worst as in recording under a blanket and ‘oops only one microphone worked’ situations).

- Not conflating real life terrors with horror. As you already noted there is no instance where sexual violence is used as a horror trope or a horror trope used as a thinly veiled metaphor for sexual violence. When things that are horrifying in real life get picked up, they get handled with such care and are not just thrown in for shock value. For a horror podcast I feel save enough to not worry about getting triggered by certain subjects and now this is increased by the warning system they employ.

- Cliffhanger resolutions. Where other shows go for bigger and more explosive confrontations, TMA defuses tense situations without making them seem meaningless. It’s just so refreshing? And it always leads to plot twists that none of the fandom could have predicted (see Leitner reveal), which makes it beautiful.

- Character development. it might not be what we hoped for or wanted but it always makes sense for the character.

- Unreliable Narrator. Which is based on Jonathan’s perception of the world and it becomes clear very early on that he is really bad at that and his view of the world should not be trusted.

- Queer people exist. From early episodes on the Magnus Archives includes queer people, but in a very organic way. Queer characters happen to be there and their storylines never revolve around or are defined by their sexuality. What happens to them, doesn’t happen to them because of their sexuality. Which is so refreshing to see. It’s just such a matter of fact approach and given the format of the show it would’ve been so easy to just go the way a lot of other shows go and say ‘oh but our show isn’t about romance or sexuality’, and this is not what happens here (and I thank Jonny and the RQ team for that so much). And it starts as early as Episode 3. Also Tim being bisexual and liking to flirt and having a lot of sex is never used as a cheap joke and he isn’t shamed for it narrative wise or by other characters and that’s just so refreshing to see.

- Fleshed out Female Characters. Specifically female characters who are allowed to be flawed, who have their edges, who can both be vicious and caring, who are allowed their weak moments and their strong ones, who can be funny and tragic, and who are all just so different? It’s beautiful to be honest. Just the sheer range of them and complexity.

- The amount of content. I’m constantly amazed at the amount of content we get. It’s 40 episodes put out on a weekly basis around 3000 words each. This is just so much effort to write, to record, to edit, etc. and they do it while also working on other podcasts, one of them also long running on a weekly basis.

- Character recognition/details. For a non-visual medium it’s hard to make characters recognizable that never had a spoken line and TMA just does it flawlessly. Gerard Keay is a prime example, angry goth indeed even when dressed in a bright shirt. But also Breekon&Hope, ‘Michael’ and others. We don’t need names to recognize them when they turn up in a story, the visual and narrative cues are enough.

- The humour. A lot of horror podcasts/shows/movies often rely too heavily on wanting to be spooky and mysterious and trying their hardest to be serious, and it just becomes tiring after a while. In TMA things get very serious and dark but there is also the subtle humor in it. Sure they get attacked by worms and are hopelessly trapped, but then you get ‘Martin, are you a ghost?’, you have the reveal that they are all tied to the insitute and will die horribly and then you have ‘sounds about right’ as a response. Even in the statements there are just so many things that lighten up the narrative structure. The responses are just so human in a way? And there is the kind of fatalistic humor that just rings true. And then there is also situational humor that gets pointed out. And I enjoy this so much? Yeah things get dark and bleak, but never to a point where I just had to stop to listen because it was unbearable or because they tried to make something that has an inherent ridiculousness to it appear far too serious.

- The horror. Obviously. But what I mostly enjoy is how subtle it is and how little it relies on shock effects for shock effects sake. The horror unfolds itself in every story and it’s unsettling.

- Subversion of known horror tropes. For example the mummy trope, it’s a staple horror story  element and TMA makes it not about the mummy being the monster but what happened to the mummy to be the true horror of the episode. There are ghosts, except that they might not be ghosts as we understand and for a horror series it’s surprisingly low on ghost content. There are stories told from the monster’s perspective, except not all of them have always been monsters and not all of them might be evil as we recently learned.

- The entire RQ team. Just, they all seem to be very open minded people who respond to feedback they get in a respectful way and work on making the show accessible (see for example the dialogue about the ‘do not archive’ tag or transcripts or content warnings). And just, all around good eggs.

[gaydva-deactivated20180104]

ive been reading a book that basically explains how so-called “brain differences” between the genders is the result of gendered socialization and not the cause of it. i honestly expected the book to be very cis-centric but its actually the opposite, the author stresses that testimony from trans ppl is actually indispensable because we’ve, in a sense, “lived both experiences”

more cis feminists should have this mindset

[gaydva-deactivated20180104]

one of the first examples that she uses to introduce her point about how perception by others can shape a person’s performance actually uses a trans woman. it explains that as a certain trans woman became to be seen as a woman more and more frequently, the ppl arond her eventually started viewing her as being ill equipped for tasks that they did not bother her about pre-transition. eventually she even found herself underperforming in these tasks herself.

[liminalwoman]

whats the name of the book

[gaydva-deactivated20180104]

Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine

[moon-boob-deactivated20191204]

Here’s a pdf, babes <3

[insufficient-earth-skills]

I knew it was this book before I’d finished reading the first two lines. Honestly this book is indispensible if you want to debunk any gender determinism people claim is science. I can’t recommend it enough.

[dodgylogic]

She’s written a new one! It won the Royal Society prize for science book of the year, and it’s called Testosterone Rex, and it is excellent.

(Bonus: it’s making old white men really really mad.)

(Bonus bonus: I am myself a neuroscientist, and the old white men mentioned above – who are not – could not have missed the point harder if they’d actively tried. Which. Maybe?)

[repost-this-image]

Thanks to moon-boob for providing a PDF, but please, buy the book if you have the disposable income. SUPPORT THIS AUTHOR!!

[wolfythewitch]

Statement begins

[raynesshitposts]

The truth...

[avemarts]

Visit Original Link

idea for a theme for the stranger that i wrote real quick. instrument samples are from a real calliope organ!

[momokarp]

More eye halo plus give him a friend!!!