And For The Darkness There Is A Thunderous Applause

Jenn = She/Her, Aaron = He/Him. Plural system, using this as a sort of anonymous dumping blog for anything we create that's a little creepier, a little more deeply unsettling. (Edit: Also, for apparently just any old dumb thought I/we (Jenn uses "I," and Aaron always uses "we") have too, but you'll still get bizarre and self-indulgent depressing weirdness in here to come. XD) For those who know me from elsewhere: Most of the characters who deserve it ultimately come to good ends, but they may take their time to get there. The road to joy can be filled with thorns and cancer.

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

Repeat after me, Tumblr:

A work being horny or using sexualization - *even if* it's sexualization of those most commonly sexualized (women) - does not automatically mean ANYTHING. It doesn't mean the work is automatically heresy because the author happens to like big boobs. It doesn't mean the work is inherently profound because the author is ranting about capitalism while the boobs are there. It just might mean "The author likes titty," okay?! It's not that complicated. You can't use "I don't like this thing because feminism" as a reason to hallucinate the work into being more profane or less relevant or more relevant than it is! It depends on the CONTEXT. *Takes several deep breaths* I need to get a non-alcoholic drink.

[prokopetz]

Imagine writing porn about something bizarre and horrible happening to your favourite character in full confidence that it's a crack scenario that would never happen in the source material, and then it happens exactly like that and you just have to live with the knowledge that your boner is better at media analysis than you are.

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

This is almost literally what happened to me for Knights of the Old Republic.

Me: Oh come on, I want that to happen, but they would NEVER do that Me Later: O__O

[enbaluka-tokyo-drift]

Thinking about this. So many people in the US are adult children

[enbaluka-tokyo-drift]

Yeah, I tried watching the old cartoon network HTTYD show the other day with my younger sisters and I could not make myself bear more than one episode

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

I shouldn't get involved with this shitshow but I might as well add why I think (since this is what it is for me) autistic people prefer kids' media to this list, and it has basically nothing to do with its simplicity. It has to do with the exaggerated emotions the characters have on their faces.

Most autistic people have a lot of trouble reading others' emotions from their faces. If you've never experienced this you won't understand but basically it's really hard to understand what the hell's going on in say, Breaking Bad if you have no idea what anyone is thinking unless it's obvious from their tone of voice. And if you don't understand the characters, it's impossible to empathize with them.

Other times, the characters' emotions are simply not within the range of things the average autistic person has ever thought about, even if they're understood. In my entire life I have never once thought about cheating on my wife because I don't find average humans attractive at all. In the Bluebeard story I wouldn't look in that door because he told me not to and I am fucking terrified of "doing the wrong thing," a fear a lot of autistic people have because it happens to us constantly. Not having these kinds of desires renders a lot of romantic stories written for women into complete nonsense to me. It becomes hard to understand why the characters are acting so idiotically and irresponsibly from my perspective.

You can start to see why this complicates matters. Adult dystopian stories like 1984 and Squid Game, diplomacy stories like Shogun, war stories…these become the only adult stories that DO still make sense, because they rely on plot threads that aren't dependent on you deciphering the characters' motives and finding them incoherent.

But that takes a lot of effort, and so when you want to relax, you turn to things where the characters' motives are obvious. This can even be adult anime. You get me?

[softieskywalker]

i think the key difference between george lucas’s star wars and disney’s star wars is that lucas is a man with an ideology. someone with a point of view, and all that entails. which comes with ideas of revolution, anti-imperialism, challenging the status quo, cultural appropriation and racist stereotypes. complex and contradictory ideas because that’s how artists are: complex and complicated people. disney is not. disney is a corporation. a corporation can’t have ideology, because ideology defeats the purpose of profit. and when the only thing you do is to turn on the movie manufacturing machine before you sit down and plan what ideas are you trying to convey to the audience, then your results are going to be washed out corporate garbage. and because when you’re a giant corporation who only cares about selling to the widest audience possible, you can’t take sides. you can’t decide on an idea. because you want to sell your product to people who are on the entire political spectrum. which results in movies without ideology, without purpose, without soul.

[david-talks-sw]

I have been looking for this post for years after I came across it and it’s finally here and I need to reblog this because it is absolutely and entirely accurate.

[comebackali]

#as I always say: lucas was making a samurai film and a ww2 flying ace film and a western film and adding laser swords#because he fundamentally LIKED samurai films and dambusters films and westerns and 40’s adventure serials#but disney are making a ‘star wars film’ and adding nothing because it already had laser swords and they have nothing else to say#xerox of a xerox baybeeeee (via harrietvane)

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

As my bad hot take of the century:

The third sequel was pretty bad. But damn was it a lot of fun. I've had fun with most of Disney's Star Wars stuff actually. Rollicking, entertaining, fun. I like fun.

I have no idea why you're expecting a series that bizarrely features the main characters being set up for a gladiatorial Roman execution inexplicably run by bugs that's gatecrashed by *Samuel L. Jackson* to be serious and important and philosophically weighty. It *is,* but it's a weird fucking expectation. Have you *seen* the prequels in the last ten years? XD They're *weird.* And *silly.* Lucas Star Wars is *profoundly silly,* whenever it has the opportunity. This is not Andor's tight thriller; the only quality they share is their universe.

Star Wars is inherently and always has been both completely, hilariously stupid AND occasionally filled with real insight and things to say, and the real insight and things to say are mostly contributed by non-main creators and not the franchise holder. See, I don't know, the entire Expanded Universe.

Disney Star Wars is, in my opinion...just...Star Wars.

[prokopetz]

Elaborate fantasy and sci-fi worldbuilding as necessary context and structure for porn is great, but what's really fantastic is when the worldbuilding is a product of the porn. It clearly didn't need to be there, but at some point the author took a closer look at the porn and started asking "okay, so what does this imply?"

[prokopetz]

Level 1: The worldbuilding needs to be there for the porn to make sense.

Level 2: The porn needs to be there for the worldbuilding to make sense.

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

I'm in this picture and I don't like it. Sometime I should tell you all about the misogynist hot gay alien space viruses. Well...calling them "misogynist" or even "gay" is a bit...wrong...but it's hard to explain why without first calling them that.

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

On Exordia and the Gameoverse Pilot

So I just watched the Gameoverse pilot and immediately began thinking about Exordia by Seth Dickinson, inexplicably. For the maybe five people who are fans of both, here's what the pilot made me think of: In the book Exordia (which I recommend to everybody), there are these aliens called like khai, who run an evil empire that has almost enslaved the entire known galaxy. But the reason the khai are doing this is because they are damned from birth. That is, no matter how good or evil they are, every last one of them is going to Hell after a brief life. And worse yet, whenever anyone sees them, they see the worst, most horrible creature they've ever met. Something that axiomatically needs to die. The way they reason it out, what's the life of their slaves? Some hard living for a while, in exchange for an eternity of paradise in all probability? They tried to be so good at one point that it would fix it, but it didn't change a goddamn thing. Unless they find a way to rewrite the rules entirely. Anyway, my point is that the position of the khai is actually functionally identical to that of a villain in a story, especially if they become self-aware of their own condition. Always-dying-never-dying. Trapped forever in a state of being unable to learn from their mistakes, hateful and angry and bitter and sad. To become aware that you were a character in a story under these conditions is… basically Hell. The heroes of Gameoverse are filled with profound guilt at what they'd done, horrified by the unfairness of the universe. To a Syntax, however, the universe is already unfair. It's just now everyone can see it.

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

Being autistic doesn't *just* feel like missing that one meeting on socialization everyone went to and nobody tells you about. It also kind of feels like you're in one of those Japanese dating sim games, only you're not trying to win a date, but instead trying to have a normal social interaction. Except instead of the normal three options, you have three options which sound *to you* like plausible responses to the query/statement/question. They could all work, and you're not sure which one to use, so you pick at random. Only whichever one you pick, you have apparently now said something that the game wasn't programmed to allow you to say, even though all you did was maybe put the words in a slightly different order. So every single other person is looking at you like you're either (a) A little stupid and kind of cute (b) Like you've said a brand new thought unsaid by everyone on Earth even though all you said was a slightly remixed version of "Let's get coffee" (c) Like whatever you said was smart but it's just different enough that they can't load the default response And so you're left with the weird sense of being some kind of space alien that everyone tolerates and maybe even likes, but doesn't know how to interact with. And sometimes the space alien's smart, and sometimes the space alien is apparently the dumbest motherfucker who's ever lived, but either way the space alien feels very lonely. "Maybe this quicktime event will be the one where I'm finally like everyone else," I say for the hundred thousandth time.

[quietwingsinthesky]

why so many "feminist" retellings of the persephone & hades myth and yet none where persephone kidnaps him instead. do we not believe in women's wrongs.

[quietwingsinthesky]

“how would that even work” easy. she’s spring, she’s renewal, she’s the flowers that grow out of gravedirt. she knows what death is, and she hungers for how it feeds her. innocently, in her way. not innocent of desire; that’s nature taking its course. innocent to the upset it causes, if she extends her reach. she inherits a very powerful mantle, mother to daughter.

so if she should lay a trap and lure the king of the underworld out of his realm and into hers? it might take a while to notice he’s gone. she has the world’s worth of beautiful sights and smells and sensations to dazzle a god whose subjects are dampened souls and cold metal. who could bring themselves to mind the dead when a goddess is brushing rich petals against your cheeks? when she’s as warm as the sunlight you rarely rise to see? when she appreciates you so much more than anyone else has ever feared you, and twines herself around you like a strangler fig?

and her mother loves her, of course, so she gets whatever she wants. if her daughter wants to throw the world into disarray for her satisfaction, that’s a fair trade to hear her singing with delight about her dear husband. you shouldn’t eat the food of the dead, but you shouldn’t let a god who has had corpse rot on his tongue for most of his existence taste the sweet spoils of the living, either. he won’t know how to give it up. (and if that wasn’t enough, there’s other fruits of temptation to offer him—a secret tasting amidst her body’s valleys, where the lush reeds part and the soil is ever fertile. really, even it he wanted to say no, do you really think he could?)

eternal spring is it’s own horror. not at first. it’s paradise in the beginning, but when the sun never stops shining and the birds get too tired to sing, then it starts to sink in. she’ll keep him forever, if she can. her mother will help her freeze time beautifully.

it’ll take more than a messenger to make her relinquish him. she’s reckless eternal youth, and worse still, she’s in love. that’s where winter comes from. if she can only have him for half of the year, then she’ll make her kingdom like his own until he’s returned to her. she will remove herself from the world, and let it suffer from her absence as she suffers from his.

[quietwingsinthesky]

and like if i wasn’t clear enough here, there is some sex pollen shit going on here so that she can fuck him whether he likes it or not. that part of the myth also gets to stay <3 for her <3

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

YES YES YES GO HARD OP

[brightsuzaku]

Hi, I play Videogames. (Pragmata)

Been playing a lot of Pragmata lately, and it's a very cute, fun game! I am enjoying the environmental storytelling scattered around, too. I am seriously enjoying Accidental Family Outing: The Game, except for how everything keeps trying to destroy my accidental family...

Admittedly, I am a little surprised there aren't more people being Totally Normal About IDUS. Like me. I am Very Normal.

IDUS is a condescendingly polite sound donut. and I am. gnawing. on it. I think this is partly because I really just like masculine computer voices that should automatically make you distrust them simply by existing, but I am also thinking about HAL 9000, again. Hm yes, interesting, interesting stuff.

And also, the implications of said environmental storytelling; not just the *obvious* horrible stuff that happened here, but then some. :) You can of course easily chalk that up to the game being, well, a videogame, and thus it needs rewards for challenges, and so on, to go with its linear progression, but.... I am thinking about how stuff, well, diagetically, is really itneresting just for being there. That's all.

Anyway, while I'm approaching the end of the game, closing in on Central Port, but I have mostly also just been backtracking into previous Sectors, lol.

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

#My FRIEND

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

My friend: "Jenn is Catholic 0.2% of the time. she can schedule it in then."

Me: "Hold on, actually how Catholic am I? If we assume that for the two hours at Saturday Mass I'm Catholic, how does that work out?"

If there are 24 hours in a day and I'm Catholic for about two out of the 16 hours I'm awake… well… 1/7 = 14%. I'm awake for 16 hours max….2/16 = 12%. 12% of 14% = 0.178%, so 1.8 percent round up but 2% for the bit.

I REALLY AM 2 PERCENT CATHOLIC.

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

Beginner Japanese is hilarious because it makes everything you say sound like a public service announcement. 私は日本語を征服します… そして、次は世界です。ありがとうございます。

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

Interesting accidental hypothetical I produced: "Suppose the Devil came up to Earth, and for some reason absolutely everyone, verifiably, could confirm that he was the Devil. Whatever they think "the Devil" is, whether that's more of a metaphor than a person, whether the most equivalent figure is a specific dude who most likely reincarnated or literal Evil Incarnate, everyone agrees that's what he is. He has a barrier, and the entire marshalled forces of Earth cannot break it down. He calls to the world's religious leaders and says he will answer only five questions before he leaves. He says:

I will answer them honestly, but I can't prove that

No trick questions or wishing for more wishes

No asking whether specific people are in Hell

I can only answer questions I know the answer to, but I've been around a long time and I know a lot of shit The ecumenical conference that results also concludes a fourth rule: 'We cannot afford to ask anything that confirms or denies any of the doctrine of a specific religion.' What, if anything at all, would you ask him?

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

I'm Learning Japanese. This Is The Result.

The final saga of the dog, the cat, and the fish, surrealist because it's mostly made (with four exceptions I had to look up) using only the words one can learn from a combination of beginner Genki, Busuu, Wagotabi, and Bunpo:

昔々、犬と猫と魚は公園に行きます。公園に店があります。犬は店を所有します。魚が買い物します。魚は「このかさはいくらですか」と言います。犬は「せん円です」と言います。猫は「肉はどこですか」と言います。犬が笑います。犬は「肉を食べました」と言います。 ??? 利益です。 犬と猫が結婚します。 ...I desperately need to learn how to do adjectives and more vocabulary. Somebody save me.

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

Rivet of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is such a decent person it occasionally hits me in the face and flabbergasts me. Because the entire premise of that game is "What if the win/lose ratios of Ratchet and Dr. Nefarious were reversed? What would happen?" But if you take a step back and consider what that literally *means* it's actually cruel and fascinating. Because if the incompetent machine supremacist villain wins at the rate Ratchet does over him he quickly becomes a tyrant who forces the entire galaxy to dance to his arbitrary whims. Prisons, administration, soldiers, technology, wealth, the entire apparatus of the state. It's all at the disposal of a petty little egomaniac. He might be able to make himself sound and look like a king, but that aspect of him hasn't changed at all. He comes out looking an awful lot like a *real* rich and powerful man. And he's a rich and powerful man who is now contextually using all that power to brutalize a random woman. Because if Rivet has never actually won more than small and hidden victories, the Emperor's behavior towards her suddenly becomes really, really disturbing, obsessive, and pointlessly sadistic. Rivet at one point basically implies with a throwaway line that she's been *tortured in prison.* A *lot.* And *despite all of that,* despite being the buttmonkey in a situation with a catastrophic, toxic power imbalance...Rivet is STILL a *fundamentally good person trying to do the right thing.* Ratchet looks by contrast almost pathetically selfish. Compared to a woman who has fought fruitlessly for probably a decade for a better world, who constantly tries her best to support the oppressed, raised by generous if weird adoptive parents. Offering the love they gave her where she can, in the amounts she can. Like damn. I want to be like that. I really do.

[depsidase]

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

Or Palestine matters because its historical location is the holy land of three major world religions. Or Palestine matters because human beings live there, have for thousands of years, and many of them are currently desperate and struggling. This callous, out of touch, nonsense moralizing does NOT help Palestinians. Just because something is true doesn't make it appropriate to say that a living culture made up of actual people needs a metaphor to matter.

[prokopetz]

I understand the video game conceit of still needing to pay for supplies when you're saving the world because the shopkeeper's gotta restock somehow, but sometimes imagining what the supply chain in question must look like can be very funny. Like, buddy, we're both trapped at the bottom of an active volcano; who the fuck is your wholesaler?

[jennmurrayisnotmyname]

Watching the Phantom Menace is so weird as an adult.

Like, I'm just staring at all these boring parts I didn't care about going "Oh my god Palpatine is like the best politician I've ever seen GODDAMMIT WHY DID YOU STUDY EVIL AT HARVARD"