[severedsoliloquy]

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Ivy. Same name on Pillowfort and Pixelfed. DM for Discord

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Art tags: #photography, #art #fashion

Reading List

◻ Annihilation

◻ Gormenghast

◻ Visual Intelligence

Media Recommendations and Guides

Alien Stage

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Word Salad

[tarragonthedragon]

idk i just feel like "it is more acceptable and in fact encouraged to mock anything enjoyed primarily by women" and "being enjoyed primarily by women does not make thing feminist and righteous" are thoughts that can and should coexist

[tarragonthedragon]

oh and also "even if the thing is bad your criticism of it can come from a place of patronising misogyny"

[deathlonging]

what are some of your favorite writings on romance? i read the tsitp one you'd linked in one sitting and was absolutely hooked

yayyy i'm so glad you liked it. sincerity & melodrama forever. my recs below hope you enjoy !!!

ok first of all i would like to recommend my mutual sexcromancy's AHU (ali hazelwood universe) tag that explores romance conventions and the sociopolitical implications of their execution across. well. the ali hazelwood universe ! & also the publishing industry . & classics . and the mainstream reception of & views on romance . really fun & comprehensive a cornerstone of my enjoyment in hetromance so far

i really liked this essay on how white fear killed the romantic comedy bc it talks abt how racism is kind of foundational to popular romance in a way that's (as edward said has called it) "productive" to its reactionary sentiments & of course purposefully limiting from a feminist & antiracist perspective. discussions of race in romance are so interesting to me it's why i enjoy rgu & heated rivalry so much -- even if the text itself only hints at the race relations driving the frictions between the characters, the way they are baked into the very premise of the story allows for enriching readings for the reader/viewer

speaking of racialization in romance i have to recommend edward said's essay on mansfield park which may not be directly abt romance but given austen's position in the landscape is an essential read nonetheless, imo.

also this essay on the racist overtones of the bodice ripper felt like a breath of fresh air for how it charts the implications of such a popular & problematic romance trope (all romance tropes are problematic in the sense that there are problems posed & problems solved.......racialization is foundational to the way these problems are posed and solved. helen from pluribus voice make raban the love interest sexy & alluring ! give him dreads ! like. it's inescapable)

of course you can't talk abt western hetromance without talking about sex & the city. i forgot how funny andrea long chu is but this essay reminded me

It's a strength of the show, then, that it never wastes any of its runtime trying to persuade us that men are desirable, either individually or as a class. The men on this show are not expected to talk, and certainly not to make conversation. They are whisked through montages, like politicians into SUVs, the music and narration huddling around them protectively. Mercifully, we are never put through the agony of having to go on a fully realized date with any of them. They are not people; they are examples. Their job is simply to be there.

like lol.....exactly

this essay is kind of just propaganda for the book games, yes. (which i have not read (yet?)) but it also crystallizes a specific approach to hetromance (dialectics.......) that i love to ponder

i know you asked for readings but i love bazazilio's video essays on the romance genre particularly this one abt dark romance & this one abt passivity in romance protagonists. recommending these bc not only are they rlly interesting they also serve as a jumping off point--nearly everything she cites warrants further exploration. my kind of media rabbit hole

romance is predictable. we love romance for being predictable

i have not talked abt gay romance yet & that is bc my reading is lacking in that regard.......but this article abt lesbianism in shoujo i really loved

book recs:

the promise of happiness. yes i keep proselytizing bc it's that good & also has a chapter on romance if you wld just like to stick to that

sexuality beyond consent: risk, race & traumatophilia. i've been meaning to read this foreverrr the excerpts so far have blown me away

territory of desire: representing the valley of kashmir. for the relationship between romance fiction & colonialism (watch haider)

playing in the dark for the way it talks abt the role Blackness plays in conceptualization of the Other in the american literary imagination -- very relevant to a literary tool as widespread as the romantic framework used often as a microcosm of larger social/political dynamics

i could go on but that's enough for now i think. happy reading ^_^

[bookshelf-in-progress]

I hesitate to make this a sweeping statement, but I do think that to be a writer, you have to on some level love words as an artistic medium. Words can't just be the annoying limitation that make it more difficult to share your beautiful daydream. They can't just be the storytelling method you choose because you don't have the skills or resources to make any other kind of media.

You have to love the art of words for its own sake. Love the sound of words--how you can make music of a million different rhythms and moods, how the words and sentences you choose can make a million different atmospheres. Love what you can do with words--paint an image, share an emotion, put a person into a scene that only exists in the world of imagination. Love the different ways you can use words--different points of view and tenses, different formats and styles that can each provide a different experience of the story for the reader. You have to love words as your artistic tool and delight in learning new ways to wield them and new effects that you can create with them.

If you don't love words, there are other ways to tell a story. Writing is an artistic medium with it own strengths and weaknesses, and using it as your artistic medium should be a deliberate choice made out of love for this artform.

[kamiiiii]

“For sale”

[aphel1on]

top tier character when "what is wrong with them" requires an answer that begins with "How much time do you have"

[finitoland]

revolutionary girl utena: adolescence of utena (1999) - art direction by shichiro kobayashi

[dykeselfcest]

Pluribus 1x02 // Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) on Wikipedia // "Are You One of Us, or Are You One of Them?: Five Decades of Invasion of the Body Snatchers," Mark Kiyak

[severedsoliloquy]

I do believe Roman wanted to break the cycle. Shame it involved locking a girl away in a tower (it didn't save her).

[severedsoliloquy]

I'm finding myself much more sympathetic to Olivia in my rewatch of Hemlock Grove and I wonder how much is me unlearning misogynistic bias and how much is about me putting off the last episode of season one.

I'm really quite understanding of women who abandon or even kill they're children but what Olivia did truly takes the cake. She really is a boy mom taken to the extreme. She really only cares about her son and believes she has the moral license to use him as she pleases. "Happy birthday, son! Look at what I made you do. I'm so proud of you. Welcome to adulthood."

[shiveringsoldier]

The person who tweeted “y’all can’t even boycott Chick-fil-A” was right then and continues to be proven right now

[severedsoliloquy]

Olivia Godfrey is every boy mom.

[severedsoliloquy]

*love* akio's death in adolescence of utena

Will you forgive me if I admit I forgot how he died.

[deathlonging]

The initial response of the state and international agencies to the HIV needs of sex workers in Sonagachi harnessed the kind of governmental technologies described by Chatterjee. Sex workers were designated a statistically risky population, and the multiple needs of women living in Sonagachi were whittled down to their HIV-related health needs, mostly because as promiscuous carriers of disease, they represented the kind of "dangerous class" that had the potential to arrest the modernizing initiatives of civil society. HIV scholars based in Western institutions were complicit in this campaign. Trained in tropical medicine and epidemiological perspectives, we arrived in India to arrest the movement of pathogens and educate the object of our research in the use of safe-sex practices. But a strange thing happened on the way to Sonagachi: we became part of a process of collective identity formation that preempted our initial initiative. On the first day that I met Bharati De, the sex worker who heads Durbar, she turned to me in front of my English-speaking research colleagues from the United States and said in Bengali, "HIV is a boon for us. Without it, you people would never be interested in the lives of sex workers like us." Durbar has strategically utilized single-issue governmentality initiatives to introduce into the conversation the complex circumstances of life as a sex worker, profoundly transforming the discourse of HIV intervention in the process.

toorjo ghose, politicizing political society: mobilization among sex workers in sonagachi, india

[nohoperadio]

just saw a pigeon doing the puffed up courtship dance thing to another pigeon, and as he was strutting around he suddenly stopped for a split second to do a very brief preen-peck at his own side, then returned to the strutting around. and i surprised myself by instantly losing respect for the male pigeon in that moment, like come on man i appreciate you had an itch or whatever but how is she supposed to feel special when you're getting distracted by bullshit like that? which on reflection i don't endorse, i mean those are pretty harsh dating norms i'm imposing on these pigeons, from a total outsider perspective, for no reason. probably not all girl pigeons are as uptight about that sort of thing as i would apparently be if i was a girl pigeon, maybe she even found it endearing who knows, i don't know her. it's none of my business really. sorry pigeons.

[caspercryptid]

I would actually go as far as to say that MOST abuse is unintentional. I think most people will go through their lives without ever experiencing intentional abuse. People are abusive because they're selfish, because they're stressed, because they care more about what society thinks they should do than the impacts of their actions on their children and partners, because they think what they're doing is correct, because they've made it make sense in their own heads, because they think they can fix their victims, they think they can fix their relationships, they think they can stop you from leaving, they think they can make you a better partner to them, they think that means you need to do what they want. We've sort of constructed mental illness in a way that doing this shit to other people counts as a form of mental illness because it is anti social behavior in the literal sense— it is behavior that causes social harm.

I don't say any of this to excuse it. I think everyone needs to be more aware of this because if you think abuse has to be intentional you will never realize you are capable of abusive behavior. You will never realize you are being shitty to the people you love, because YOU know what you mean, YOU know you don't mean any harm. But you're doing harm. You need to pay attention to the impact you have on other people, and you need to do it all the time, Especially when you feel least capable of doing so. Sorry! You live in a society. Get your head out of your ass.

[caspercryptid]

I would actually go as far as to say that MOST abuse is unintentional. I think most people will go through their lives without ever experiencing intentional abuse. People are abusive because they're selfish, because they're stressed, because they care more about what society thinks they should do than the impacts of their actions on their children and partners, because they think what they're doing is correct, because they've made it make sense in their own heads, because they think they can fix their victims, they think they can fix their relationships, they think they can stop you from leaving, they think they can make you a better partner to them, they think that means you need to do what they want. We've sort of constructed mental illness in a way that doing this shit to other people counts as a form of mental illness because it is anti social behavior in the literal sense— it is behavior that causes social harm.

I don't say any of this to excuse it. I think everyone needs to be more aware of this because if you think abuse has to be intentional you will never realize you are capable of abusive behavior. You will never realize you are being shitty to the people you love, because YOU know what you mean, YOU know you don't mean any harm. But you're doing harm. You need to pay attention to the impact you have on other people, and you need to do it all the time, Especially when you feel least capable of doing so. Sorry! You live in a society. Get your head out of your ass.