Putting the term "Catholic guilt" on a high shelf where fandom can't reach it until everyone learns how to identify characters who are very very clearly coded as Protestant.
oh right i talked abt this on bsky when i finished the book but i read guards! guards! for the first time recently and my review of it is that every other page i got slapped with the most terrifyingly prescient paragraph I've ever read followed up immediately by jokes that made my face hurt from laughing
like. they accidentally crowned a dragon king, the dragon is now planning aggressive foreign policy moves to add to its hoard and demanding virgins as tribute, and one of the cops is like "well obviously it won't come to that, people wouldn't stand for it."
this book is from 1989
im not complaining btw but also i was sitting here as an american in 2026 reading it like tails_gets_trolled.png
media literacy includes understanding why a media product was made, to whom it's being sold, and the assumed preferences of its marketing demographic. narrative is not produced or sold in a vacuum.
you might be totally correct that your ship would be narratively satisfying. I don't know, I'm not watching your show. Whether your ship is likely to happen on the show is a whole different question to whether it's satisfying, because the show is being sold to Netflix or Amazon or the BBC, and they are purchasing a show they think they can market to a particular demographic and that demographic isn't you, the nightmarishly online tumblr user. The show is being made for marketability to a constructed average viewer. It is being funded with that audience in mind. This art is being made to commission, and commissioned art is art, but at some point you have to stop expecting the Church to commission a statue of Lucifer fucking St Michael. It might be narratively satisfying, but that's just not what they're paying for.
listen I love stede a lot - I think he's the bravest character in the show. he changes everyone he meets for the better. he embodies what I think of as the thesis of the show. if he wasn't the way that he is, the show would not be very good, imo.
but in ep one he gives his pirate crew notes on the raid they just did as though they were a community theater troupe and his notes were 1) complimenting his own opening speech as "very inspiring" and 2) complaining that that the crew wasn't sufficiently enthusiastic about robbing two poor fisherman of a single plant.
during the raid his narration went "some men are born to be pirate captains, others learn on the job. me? well I'm a pretty solid mix of both" as though he has any idea what he's doing.
and AFTER the raid Olu has to gently point out to him that piracy isn't a game to the rest of the crew.
There's a reason that Rhys Darby was the only person capable of playing Stede without making him seem like a total dick. And I think that's bc Rhys was able to convey the idea that Stede's behavior in the first few eps is coming out of this deep sense of insecurity - he's doing some Stede-y things (flag making! paying the crew! bedtime stories!) that are great but he's also pretending to be this macho pirate captain who totally knows what he's doing. And it's the pretending that makes people cringe with second hand embarrassment. While also, often, seeing themselves in it and feeling a great deal of sympathy for Stede about it.
The reason Stede is like this is because HE thinks there's something deeply wrong with him, a belief that has been solidified by everyone around him his entire life, and therefore he needs to do everything he can to hide that deeply wrong thing about him. When he unpacks that and embraces the things about himself he originally thought were embarrassing (being weak, pathetic, soft, etc), he can stop pretending. And that's when other characters grow to love him! And so people will sometimes call him cringe because they aspire to be cringe like him, to embrace the parts of themselves that they were punished for and live more authentically.
because he changes! that's the point! he moves from cringe (pretending to be someone he's not) to cringe (being true to himself, always a deeply vulnerable thing to be) and it takes a lot of hard work. that's what makes me LIKE him as a character. that's what I think makes him the bravest character on the show. because he doesn't start out perfect. he's a puppet who grows into a real boy and that means that for a period of time he was a puppet, and that's okay.
ok sorry to double reblog BUT I just looked him up and he does these fantastic videos where he breaks down HOW he actually mimics the other artists’ styles. Like for ed Sheeran, he explains how he brings his voice forward in the mouth, while Adam Levine sings in the back of the mouth, stuff like that. It’s SO COOL, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone actually break down how to do this sort of thing, as a skill, instead of just treating it like a neat trick they just happen to be good at.
https://www.tiktok.com/@justinjmooremusic
“This means… of Rocky, possessive. Of the speaker.”
“My.”
“Correct. But only for names.”
“So you’re calling me…?”
Rocky repeats the word: “My Grace. Yes.”
“Are there other Graces? Why do you need to specify?”
Rocky considers this, tapping his xenonite-encased claws idly against the floor.
“No other Grace,” Rocky says. “We just do this.”
“Like an honorific,” Grace guesses. “It goes before everyone’s name? Everyone you know?”
Rocky whirs in surprise. “No, no, no. Not at all.”
“Okay, then who? What makes me qualify?”
Rocky is silent for a moment.
“...Does this offend Grace?” he asks, voice lower.
Grace blinks. “No! I don’t think so. Is there a reason to be offended?”
“Good,” Rocky says, relieved. Grace is starting to recognize what Eridian relief sounds like. “No, no reason.”
“Who else do you call that?”
“You don’t have this on Earth?”
Grace considers. What for, friends? He couldn’t call Marissa “my Marissa.” That would be weird.
“I still don’t know what it means,” he settles on. “So I couldn’t tell you.”
Rocky groans in frustration. He’s a very impatient tutor. “We just say it.”
“Are you my Rocky?” Grace asks. He hits the two keys to make the my note.
“I don’t know!” Rocky says. “You decide this.”
“I decide? Who do you use it for?”
“You. Adrian. I will use it for my pebbles.”
Grace blinks. “So few?”
Rocky shifts. “I am… you do not have the word yet. Eridian who works alone often, not close to many other Eridians.”
“What, mechanical engineer?”
Rocky chitters with amusement. “Acceptable.”
“Is Adrian your only friend?”
Rocky draws back, like he’s taken offense. “I have friends. Coworkers. But different.”
So just Adrian. And him.
“This worries you,” Rocky says.
“Adrian is your mate,” Grace points out. “I’m not your mate.”
“Correct. You are not. You do not like to be a mate.”
Grace isn’t sure how to respond to that, so he ignores it.
“I’m your friend,” Grace says.
Rocky hesitates, for a second. “...Correct.”
“Like your coworkers.”
“No.”
Grace sighs, rubbing his hand across his face. Okay, maybe that’s fair. It’s not like he felt about any of his coworkers like he feels about Rocky.
“Best friend,” Grace amends. “You’re my best friend, too.”
Rocky hums. “Acceptable.”
“Just acceptable? Now you are offending me. Can you just explain?”
This makes Rocky fall silent for a minute longer than usual. Grace is half-ready to apologize and to say let’s move on and to retype his own name without the superfluous my.
“The Earth ‘best friend’ is not strong enough,” Rocky says finally. “It does not translate this way.”
Grace runs his fingers through his hair, a little nervous, for some reason. “Okay.”
“It is…” Rocky pauses. He has to pause more often, now that they’re not using the translator, to simplify his language. “It means that I am not Rocky without my Grace. You are part of… of the whole. When I wake up, I think of you. When I work. When I eat. When I think I am going to die.”
Rocky speaks slowly, but it’s still a lot of Eridian for Grace to grasp all at once. Even as he works out the sentences in his head, he can feel hot tears rising in his eyes.
“It means that when you are sick, I am sick,” Rocky continues. “And it means I will take care of you, because taking care of you is taking care of myself.”
Grace bunches up his sleeve, wiping it across his face, blinking furiously.
Rocky’s voice is soft. “So Grace is part of Rocky. Grace is like a cell. You see? My Grace.”
Grace is quiet, for a moment, trying to get himself together. When he speaks, his voice is shaky.
“...Oh.”
Rocky hums, pressing his carapace gently against Grace’s arm. “You are leaking. Does this make you sad?”
Grace shakes his head, sniffing, crossing his arms across his knees and resting his chin on his sleeves. “Not at all.”
“Good, good.”
“I feel like that,” Grace mumbles. “Just like that. Just exactly—exactly like that.”
“About your old mate?”
“Don’t act stupid. You know I’m talking about you.”
Rocky hums, burrowing closer. Grace curls one arm around his carapace. That’s not enough, so he leans over, dropping his head down so his forehead presses against the xenonite.
“My Rocky,” Grace whispers in English.
“My Grace,” Rocky echoes in Eridian. Grace can recognize the note at the start. He will add it when he plays Rocky’s name.
“How long have you called me that?” Grace asks. “Must’ve been a while. I didn’t notice it change.”
this tiktok screenshot ruined my life i need to see the serbian pigeon movie so so badly but it doesn't exist it's so foul to make this bad of a point with something so cool and then take it away from me.
Tiktok marvel fans really will be out here like "movie fan SHOCKED because i'd rather watch superhero movie #54 in blue and not a sensual 1987 french horror film about a man discovering his wife may not exist set in what is gradually revealed to be a space station" as if you're supposed to agree that superhero movie #54 is the clear winner in this comparison
Love the idea of a story about a complex issue that's told from the perspective of something that cannot comprehend or care about the issue. The way the story would be sliced up and moments that a human would consider pointless would be focused on because the pigeon happened to be there would be hype as fuck
Mališa, otherwise known as Little One, is a pet pigeon owned by a conservative butler of the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy. She is loved, and she is pampered— until her owner is murdered in cold blood, and she is left to fend for herself in Sarajevo.
In the wilds of the city, she feeds from the poor, working nationalist radicals, and the vieux riches alike.
To Mališa, there are no ethical concerns. No politics. No burgeoning nationalism.
There are only hands that feed her, and hands that do not.
So shook that I recognized them! That's Khadija Mbowe, a brilliant video essayist on youtube. Here's a link to their channel. They're brilliant and compassionate. Go check them out!
I think trans people are allowed to quietly joke amongst each other about a certain rock star looking like one of us or giving egg vibes or whatever but I think it's weird when you genuinely believe it, and I also think it's weird to do about normal people.
Like I've occasionally called Kellin Quinn a t boy. But I know he's not, or if he is he's put a lot of effort into being stealth and I shouldn't seriously pick him apart because it would probably be scary for someone who's been stealth like that to get clocked and I should keep those jokes to myself and away from places where he can see it. That joke is not for Instagram. And it is a joke about how I, too am a man who is a 5'7 Soprano, not my actual genuine assumptions about a rock star's private information.
I think some of you with some other rock stars, living or dead, have forgotten that it is a joke.
Like yeah this is low key vaguing the Kurt Cobain thing. Joke about Kurt being an egg all you like, hes a public figure I dont give a shit. Just like, keep it off the social media websites Courtney Love is on, but do whatever you want have fun with your t-girl!Kurt RPF. But when you write a big essay about how trans people should be allowed to claim their dead about it I start to think you're not joking???? Like why have you hung your "this guy would have been happier as a woman" shit on him and not like.. Sid Vicious or Avicii of Robin Williams? There's a million mental health issues that could have been going on with him that aren't gender dysphoria.
I don't know how to explain to you people that gender is private. It's weird when cis people insist we disclose when we talk to them. It's weird when cis people transvestigate us and each other.
Like yeah we can make little jokes to each other but let's not forget how scary it is when you get clocked by someone you don't know is gonna be cool about it. Let's not forget how scary it is as a not yet ready to be out trans person to have someone find out that you're considering transition.
Is he dead? yes. But like... Still. He killed himself after being in the spotlight for a while. Like Marylin Monroe didn't die for us to act like we don't know what fame does to people. And now you want to speculate about his private information after he blew his brains out to the extent that you've convinced yourself that he was a different gender?
If he was a trans woman, he sure as fuck didn't want you to know that about him. Assume your right. Assume he was. If it was true he blew his brains out before allowing the public to find that out about him. Even if it's true he didn't want you to know it, dawg.
Also there are instances of historical figures who were very clearly trans who Cis people often don't allow us to claim. There is a problem with us not being allowed to claim our dead. Whether it's Chevalier d'Éon or the doctor who lived his entire life as a man and was only found to be CAFAB when they examined his body after his death instead of burying him in what he died in, or one of the many many trans people who died and had their corpse detransitioned and were buried under their dead name by their family, there's plenty of instances of historical people who we would today consider transgender and contemporary trans people who are clear cut but whom cis people try to prevent us from claiming. Kurt Cobain is not one of them. He's a rock star who killed himself because he was depressed.
imagine being markiplier and you make a movie you spend three years on it and you cause a fake blood shortage and when the movie comes out people love it and rave about it but like with any other movie or media it fades from being the main talk of the town and it moves to something else. two months later a different movie comes out and is in theaters for a while and it’s trending. ah, here’s the new movie that everyone’s talking about. oh cool it’s ryan gosling’s film. looks good. one month into this new movie’s theater run iron lung begins trending again. huh. interesting wonder what’s up. maybe people are desperate for the dvd release? no. they’re drawing you making out scary with ryan gosling. your movie starts trending again and has gotten a new round of fans that never would’ve watched it otherwise. all because you and ryan gosling are both hot and both starred in movies released in close proximity that have parallel themes. and people decided to make yaoi of you. and your dick is definitely being drawn on patreon for $5 a month by someone who has never seen your dick
meanwhile. imagine being ryan gosling and finding out who markiplier is because you encountered art of yourself making out with him. and your dick is also being drawn on patreon
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