heart eyes

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[mutantmagic]

From the Vault: Halloween

(Yes, SMMA is old enough to have a Vault, decreed by me)

[1dietcokeinacan]

IF WE WANT THE REWARDS OF BEING LOVED WE MUST SUBMIT TO THE MORTIFYING ORDEAL OF BEING KNOWN!!!!

[loveislack]

Originally posted by kehlso

[shittowatch]

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

[loveislack]

On loneliness

Thinking back to our discussion today about what it is that we get out of relationships, there were a lot of comments along the lines that we define our roles and sense of self in relation to others and experience growth through relationships that we couldn't in isolation. I think this line is related. Looking through Lars related posts to reblog on here, it seems to be a pretty popular line since I saw it a lot of times. It's quotable, and who's living in the 21st century that doesn't relate to the feeling of loneliness; but why loneliness framed in this way? Obviously Dagmar's comment is hyperbolic, but it also doesn't feel sarcastic or joking. Her delivery is sincere and I think we can assume it speaks to a real depth of feeling, even if we see that loneliness in Lars' life more than hers.

Dagmar says her loneliness makes her forget two things: the day, and how to spell her name. Forgetting what day it is, I feel, goes beyond a failure in one's perception of time and gives a more general sense of losing grounding and structure, losing track of reality. Our names represent us, they're the smallest unit that can signify us, so clearly forgetting how to spell your name indicates the loss of a very basic sense of self. Interestingly, names mean a lot to our sense of self but they actually only serve to distinguish us in a group setting, and if we all were alone there would be no use for names.

Related side note, a while ago I watched Into the Wild with my roommate and I reblogged a quote that always makes me really sad when I think about it, something Christopher McCandless wrote at some point when he was dying, "happiness is only meaningful when shared." I feel like that movie has an unpleasant hipster-y association (isn't running away from the evils of being rich to live in the wilderness and read Whitman and be all enlightened such a privileged white person thing?) but that aside, oh my God is it devastating, and that quote really sums up the sadness. He touches a lot of lives while he's traveling, but he ultimately dies alone.

So anyway, why are those two things Dagmar's examples of the effects of extreme loneliness? It's a striking quote because it's highly paradoxical to say that spending too much time with yourself can make your identity start to dissolve, yet I think this is perfectly accurate. Whoever said today that you can't experience growth sitting in a room by yourself, that's exactly it. I think that relationships (with others) and more broadly, the idea of relationship (one thing in relation to something else) is so fundamental to how we operate in the world that we wouldn't really 'exist' without it, or there would be no purpose to existing. Relating one idea to another is very basic to how we think and advance arguments. It's hard to imagine being able to form thoughts if you never came into contact with anything outside of yourself, let alone the process of self-formation. Relationships structure reality.

[amoreeel-blog]

A Brief List of Interactive Love Stories

I’ve been doing some poking around the internet for my creative project, and some remembering from my Experimental Narratives class, and found a couple cool stories that I enjoyed. (All titles are links to the stories and their websites.)

Keep reading

[freshmoviequotes]

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

[julienotlookingforlove]

When watching the film, I wondered whether Lars was referring to more than just the longevity of the flowers in this comment. 

(I’m assuming he was!)

[loveislack]

It's an understated moment but I definitely think this gets to the heart of everything the other characters think Lars is struggling with, which is essentially fear of death and abandonment: fear for Karin and her pregnancy, which is related to his mother's death giving birth to him, feeling abandoned by his brother, etc.

[cracked]

6 Bizarrely Specific Scenes Hollywood Won’t Quit Using

[soitisandgoes-blog]

Yesterday, we spoke about Maura coming out serving as the inciting incident, and I came across this. While a little blatant in its function (which inciting incidents aren’t) and still vaguely familiar territory, this post helps me realize how much I appreciate any media that do not start with walking in on an affair, particularly love-oriented media. It teaches everyone to have trust issues, and because it’s usually women, it breeds misogyny. End it.

[loveislack]

Aside from frequently being the inciting incident in movies, people say affairs are often motivated not by lack of love for someone's long term partner but bc the person is working out problems with their own sense of self, which is kind of like a reversal of the "man finds himself after wife cheats on him" trope. When you see it in mainstream movies though cheating's often portrayed as a move towards self fulfilment that's also morally justifiable because the person's long term partner is mean or something. I think it's helpful to keep that idea of self discovery as motivation in mind when thinking about how to address desires to stray from relationships or how to deal with the aftermath of cheating, but wanting to find yourself obviously doesn't excuse hurting others in the process and it doesn't make sense to assume there's a causal link between experiencing the effects of romantic betrayal and experiencing a positive life change. Movies definitely use affairs as a plot forwarding device that relates to characters' self discovery in weird and concerning ways. To me it's the same sort of flawed logic that so many romantic movies use where there's not much holding the relationship together beyond this abstract idea of Love, yet the storyline depicts the characters' personal happiness/fulfilment/self discovery as somehow hinging on making the relationship work, which gives people in the real world the idea that they need to hold onto things that aren't working or they'll never find happiness. Partners are either treated as totally disposable (which as you say is troubling if it's women who invariably fill the cheating role) or as totally indispensable in the quest for personal fulfilment, and both of these views are harmful if you apply them to real life. My reaction to this post also makes me realize I just don't respond well to stories that use falling in or out of love as a kind of half hearted shorthand for finding or losing the meaning of life.

[loveislack]

The Moment I Threw Your Toothbrush Away

when did you accept that it was really over? The Moment I Threw Your Toothbrush Away Confession: I’ve accidentally used your toothbrush a few times I can nev...

[gael-garcia]

♫ Pink like the inside of your, baby / Pink like the walls and the doors, maybe / Pink like your fingers in my, maybe / Pink is the truth you can’t hide / Pink like your tongue going round, baby / Pink like the sun going down, maybe / Pink like the holes in your heart, baby / Pink is my favourite part ♫

Janelle Monáe & Tessa Thompson in the official video for PYNK

[loveislack]

She did that

[jbcannatelli]

[loveislack]

あたしだけをみて / “Look at Me Only”, graduation short film by Tomoki Misato

I don’t know what I was expecting from stop-motion felt people romance, but it was not this? Since the camera and the male character are synonymous for much of the film it’s definitely a good straightforward example of the male gaze and how it partitions off the female body like we were talking about in class today (even looking at the magazine, the camera registers small pauses where he’s distracted by images of other women). Like a lot of the texts we’ve discussed, the element of a one-sided narrative recalls Barthes and the idea of the lover’s discourse as a discourse in isolation with the self where the beloved does not speak. That has turned out to be a pretty consistently useful text for thinking about how we come to relationships. As I think a few people said during our conversation on Happy Together, not getting Po-Wing’s point of view through narration was frustrating but important to how we as viewers experienced the uncertainty, the lack of communication, and the characters’ emotional isolation. I was even more strongly reminded of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There’s some unexpected similarity to the story progression and we only had Joel’s subjective memories of Clementine to use in constructing her character, though this film ultimately casts doubt on the protagonist’s point of view in a way that Eternal Sunshine maybe doesn’t do on an active level. Overall this short film just has a cool use of symbolic imagery to talk about how our perspective of the beloved and our interactions with them can warp as a relationship loses its initial feelings of excitement and newness, and we forget what it felt like to be in love.

[solanospetra]

Behind The Magnificent Queering Of Petra Solano On “Jane The Virgin”

Part of a larger bisexual boom on TV, one of Jane the Virgin’s central characters is coming into her sexuality via an electric romance with a character played by Rosario Dawson.

“She’s really met someone as smart as her, and as layered as her, and as complicated as her,” Urman said.

[loveislack]

I watch Jane the Virgin with my roommates but since we rarely all have time to watch it together I’m not even caught up to the current season. Even so I did recently hear about Petra being bi and I was really excited.  It’s cool to see in general that more bisexual (main) characters are finding their way into TV. Jane the Virgin has always had gay characters but a lot of that representation, for me, felt sort of troubling or inadequate (too close of an association with ‘evil gay’/‘ditzy gay’ stereotypes), which was disappointing because the relatively diverse cast of characters is a big part of what makes it different from a lot of other mainstream media, so I’m pleasantly surprised they made this decision for the character. This show really has a lot to offer. It’s consistently cheesy, dramatic, and romantic as per its telenovela roots, and it pulls off that tone and style partly with creative editing techniques (lots of externalizations of Jane’s fantasies and inner monologue). But watching the characters try and figure out how to make their increasingly unusual family dynamics work is a more rewarding aspect than the style. There’s serious attention given to relationships of all kinds, not just romance. Possibly the most important thing to me is that it takes mothering and parenting seriously and expects the audience to do so as well, but it also doesn’t reduce any of the characters who are mothers to that role. Anyway it’s a good show and you should watch it

[evilduckling]

30 days of pmatww: day 10

[loveislack]

Asking for clarification of consent -> better BDSM practices

[mikeymagee]

Moonlight and Racism

So, I decided to read some comments on different articles for Moonlight, which I instantly regretted because people are shitty. 

But there were comments that caught my attention. There were lot of people (who identified as gay, or black or POC, or whatever) who simply couldn’t understand, or relate to the story at all, and believed that it detracted from the overall film. 

But, that’s kind of the point of Moonlight. 

One of the things I loved about Moonlight was how it handled race as well as sexuality. If you’ve seen it, you know it has an all black cast. So, there isn’t a white (or nonblack) character around for audiences to project onto. And because all of these people are of the same race and live in the same conditions, they don’t need to translate any part of their experience for one another. The characters are black people living in an impoverished neighborhood in the American south (Miami Florida). Drugs are a natural part of the environment, and for many people it’s the only way they can make a living, because business in America don’t want to invest or place high end jobs in black neighborhoods. The people use AAVE without stopping to translate it for anyone. There are after school activities for kids to go to so they don’t get into trouble. Many kids spend time at home while their parents are away working. Hell, I remember taking a bubble bath with dish detergent.   There is the rough language that black boys constantly use (even when they’re with their friends) to make themselves to seem bigger, tougher and stronger. There is a run down feel to everyone in this movie (from Juan to Chiron to Teresa) and this comes from over work, constantly worrying about dangers in your neighborhood, and looking over your shoulder for cops or gangsters. The same run down feeling is shown in the setting as well. It’s obvious this town is in a constant state of construction (take the old house Lil’ hid in at the beginning of the film).  

And then add this with the main character’s sexuality, and how he (and the movie) navigate that. Despite Chiron’s sexuality, his experiences are strictly structured through an African-American lens. He doesn’t stop being black just because he’s learning about his sexuality. He doesn’t stop using AAVE just because he’s attracted to a man. He doesn’t stop going through the world as a black man, conditioned to be hyper masculine in a poor town just because he falls in love with Kevin. This film makes no apologies for its blackness. And the racism it deals with? It’s subtle and systematic.. 

When people think of racism in the movie, they think of something that’s easily recognizable (think slave movies, white people with whips, or segregation signs). But what’s interesting about Moonlight is that the racism these people deal with (the town that’s in constant construction, the drugs on the streets,) are all real aspects of systematic racism that black people have to live under. It’s not an easily identifiable constant that can be punched out, or reasoned with. It’s in the fabric of Black American life, and most people miss it unless you’ve lived under it.  And let’s be real, many white people (white gays included) wouldn’t pick up on it. 

And it’s so funny that people in the black community believe that once you come out as gay, suddenly you’re no longer black. It’s like…no. Our skin color’s still the same. We still lived under the same racial conditions that ya’ll lived under. We still dealt with the same white washed history, and have the same distrust of the American legal system. And with white gays, a lot of them expect us to stop being Black when we come out. We’re supposed to somehow shun our Black heritage (or at least downplay it) when we enter LGBT spaces. We’re not supposed to talk about race in the LGBT community because “We’re all gay!!!! Race doesn’t matter!!!!!!” Or we’re not supposed to question why so many white gays have no problem saying “I’m not into black guys.” And when we do interrogate them further on it, all they can say is “It’s just a preference” and expect that to be the end of it.

So yeah. This movie is beautifully authentic, and I love it for that reason. 

[loveislack]

Throwback to when we talked about intersectional identity

[sophiafosterdimino]

TCAF’s over, here’s Sex Fantasy 6.

I picked up a lot of great books (and pins & things) and met new people, spent time with friends, it was a wonderful fest, thanks to everyone who was warm and welcoming. Shortly before the weekend I participated in a reading for the launch of Lovers Only #1, in which I have a short comic about teen romance – along with Cathy G. Johnson and Mickey Zacchilli.

You can read all the Sex Fantasies here. If you’re new to the series and want to read through the issues in chronological order (they are not sequential issue-to-issue but if you read them in chronological order they get better instead of worse) use this link.

By the way, this series is now more than halfway over. After 10 Sex Fantasies there will be no more.

[karolinqdean]

“But there were things that we wanted and thought would be really important – like the word itself: bisexual. To me, that’s an important word to my coming out. For Rosa, there was a point where she heard that word somewhere along the line and she saw herself in that word, so for her, it was important for her to identify in that way. I suggested that that word was really important to Rosa and that it also would be really important for the bi community to have that word said aloud on TV. Not just a suggestion that she dates girls now, but a clarity on this character. This is who I am, and I’d like you to know it – and accept it.”

– Stephanie Beatriz

[trr3rr]

Just saw an interview with Guillermo del Toro in which he said “Emotion is the new Punk” and tbh that’s the mood for 2018

[lovefiguratively-blog]

Shameless self-promotion. Come see my creative project/thesis in the upcoming weeks! Here is the link to the first show, as well as to the second show. Hope to see some of you there. 

[indiewire]

11 Great Movies That Prove Indie Film Saved the Romantic Comedy

[loveislack]

I haven’t seen or heard of most of these movies but I do remember thinking the movie Beginners was a bit different for a romantic comedy. It focuses partly on Ewan McGregor’s love life struggles and partly on his relationship with his father, who comes out as gay at age 75 after his wife’s death and finally starts to explore that part of himself around the same time as he’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. Also there’s a cute dog.