#gil talks

[gilbirda]

maybe i've been reading fics for 20 years, maybe im too cynical

but when i see a "rating is for dark themes!!! dead dove do not eat!!!" is the blandest, morally beige fic i've ever read

BUT

When there's nothing.... just a vague summary and some tags like "canon violence" and "gore" and/or "x character death but they got better"

THEN is when you know is going to get pretty dark real fast

[solarsphiinx]

normalize trans men who

don’t bind

don’t want to bind

haven’t had top surgery

don’t want top surgery

aren’t on HRT

don’t want HRT

don’t “pass”

don’t want to “pass”

don’t conform to cis standards

are non-binary

are non-binary and don’t want to be on the trans spectrum

don’t have gender dysphoria

don’t care about any of these things

[heyangels]

@ hshq here are some honest opinions on merch:

first of all, i can honestly say that a majority of the merch is meh. it’s very subpar and the designs can be recreated in photoshop within 5 minutes. if you’re going to create meaningful and sellout worthy merch, have a fan create it! there are fan creators who work long hours and create such AMAZING content. i can say that i personally scroll through my socials and see a fan’s design and think “wow that would be such great merch”. fans know what fans want. it’s that simple.

i know that promoting music and getting songs up in the charts is good for earning one’s team money. merch is a way of making that income in addition to selling songs. i get all of that. you have to make money somehow. BUT there comes a point where too much merch is too much. we are in the midst of a global pandemic where a lot of us are struggling for money. i can’t tell you there number of times i saw one decent thing and thought “that would be nice to buy” but then remembering that i have rent to pay, food to buy, etc. i’m sure there are some who buy from every single launch. and good for them. but there is part of me and some others who feel almost guilty (??) in a way for not being able to contribute to certain launches.

[gilbirda]

genuine question:

can someone tell me the appeal of a Yandere love interest?

some of my favorite characters who have some "bad boy" traits have INSANE amount of fanwork where they are a yandere/obsessive love interest.

non-judgmental here, im very curious what's so sexy about it

[gilbirda]

"nobody is talking about -"

yeah im not reading that, rebloging that or watching that, actually i may just block you

shame and humiliation is not how you educate people

maybe it's just my opinion but the internet loves shaming people for getting excited about something and confuses ignorance of a million layers of complexity underneath with endorsement of a million terrible things.

it feels very much like "how can you enjoy woodworking while JonBenet Ramsay's murder is still unsolved" meme

there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, and there's no single public (good) thing that doesn't have a history behind

everyone calm the fuck down

[gilbirda]

Im making a post about bad m/f ships and maybe it's because its almost 3 am but im drawing a blank here

what are y'alls "this ship could be good if only it was good"?¿???

including all the girlboss x malewife dynamics that have nothing going on except being "in love"

[gilbirda]

nobody is talking about the heavy lifting in good representation that horror and procedural shows do.

just watching a crime show and there was a plot twist where a woman's affair was with another woman, and like, it was relevant for the case and the detectives moved on and the murder mystery continued. Like yeah, sometimes people are queer, sure, but there's a murder we are investigating.

I don't know man, people are so focused on Steven Universe being "bad" rep and whitewashed cutesy sterile representation that they are sleeping on the good stuff.

[gilbirda]

hot take but we as a society need to be more comfortable about discussing "icky" parts of history, and even telling the side of the "bad guys"

hear me out

history is written by the victors, and will be heavily biased. The defeated will be painted as evil, deviants and/or like they have always been "the bad guys".

Reducing people to "the bad guys" does a huge disservice to the opportunity of learning from the past, because it creates a distance between the modern reader and the actual events, it creates the comfortable position of "I'm not like the bad guys, so i will never make their mistakes"

I think is important we understand how and why people believed in something, and where did things turn a certain way. Yes. Even "the wrong side". Even the nazis. Even those people you are thinking about, whoever they are.

Because you are not immune to propaganda and it's so so so so important to understand what happened and how did we get to those points before we fall to the same techniques again and again.

"Learning from the past" isn't deleting the ugly parts or cringing when someone brings up war. Thinking otherwise is a huge mistake and precisely what someone who wants to make the same mistakes wants you to think.