part of the reason i like tumblr and i think part of the reason it has the unhinged je nai se quois that it does, is that unlike pretty much every other public social media platform these days, it allows for the "unpalatable weird" without any chance of it making it back to a professional regular adult or the creator of media in any capacity. on twitter, even if you're using an alt account, the guy who writes the book is there and might see your post (here, neil gaiman is here, but hes like, cool about it - the tumblr etiquette has always been that they are in our house, and not vice versa), and the only person who can be deranged under their own name is ppl who dont worry about professional consequences.

i had more to say about this but im getting tired but tldr: im a corporate lawyer and tumblr is the only place im not worried about my employer finding out how much i post about wizards, and i think that mindset is why tumblr is Like This - because its a social space where ppl who have something to lose (professional dignity) can be weird about wizards.

reminder that safewords arent just for when things are going too far. they can be used for any time you need to stop or take a break.

For example:

🦴 needing to pee

🦴 gagging too much

🦴 getting thirsty

🦴 over or under stimulated

🦴 someones hungry

🦴too cold or hot

male gaze is not 'when person look sexy' or 'when misogynist make film'

death of the author is not 'miku wrote this'

I don't think you have to read either essay to grasp the basic concepts

death of the author means that once a work is complete, what the author believes it to mean is irrelevant to critical analysis of what's in the text. it means when analysing the meaning of a text you prioritise reader interpretation above author intention, and that an interpretation can hold valid meaning even if it's utterly unintentional on the part of the person who created the thing. it doesn't mean 'i can ignore that the person who made this is a bigot' - it may in fact often mean 'this piece of art holds a lot of bigoted meanings that the author probably wasn't intentionally trying to convey but did anyway, and it's worth addressing that on its own terms regardless of whether the author recognises it's there.' it's important to understand because most artists are not consciously and vocally aware of all the possible meanings of their art, and because art is communal and interpretive. and because what somebody thinks they mean, what you think somebody means, and what a text is saying to you are three entirely different things and it's important to be able to tell the difference.

male gaze is a cinematographic theory on how films construct subjectivity (ie who you identify with and who you look at). it argues that film language assumes that the watcher is a (cis straight white hegemonically normative) man, and treats men as relatable subjects and women as unknowable objects - men as people with interior lives and women as things to be looked at or interacted with but not related to. this includes sexual objectification and voyeurism, but it doesn't mean 'finding a lady sexy' or 'looking with a sexual lens', it means the ways in which visual languages strip women of interiority and encourage us to understand only men as relatable people. it's important to understand this because not all related gaze theories are sexual in nature and if you can't get a grip on male gaze beyond 'sexual imagery', you're really going to struggle with concepts of white or abled or cis subjectivities.

learning to cheerfully dislike other people is I think a critical component of getting along with people who don't like you. Like as soon as I got a solid grasp on the fact that there is a wide swath of humanity that gets on my nerves and that it's my problem, not theirs, it got easier to be around people I find annoying. Once that's settled, it's easy to flip the reasoning around and conclude that if someone doesn't like me, that's a quirk of their own strange and arbitrary tastes, not a judgment upon either of us as a person. You can't like everyone. Not everyone will like you. It's fine. It's not a personal attack in either direction. We can exchange cordial nods across the room and then go on with our lives

let me clarify that this blog wholly supports bi lesbians and genderless boys and any other potentially confusing or contradicting mix of labels

it's identity! it's weird!! it's complicated and messy and oftentimes fluid! I'm not here to tell people what words they're allowed to identify with, folks can have any reason to resonate with any label. trying to put rigid lines around identity and gatekeeping people from the things they identify with is counterintuitive and also just plain shitty! if someone's identity confuses you just ask for elaboration, don't shun them, what the hell, they ain't hurting anyone

being queer isn't about fitting neatly into a different box

Greg used apple cash back rewards to buy the blue checkmark on twitter for the podcast account because he had a bit he was going to do where he wanted to impersonate the official Neuralink twitter account from the perspective of one of the test monkeys but while he was changing stuff around to figure out the bit he was going to do Elon locked all verified accounts from editing their profiles in retaliation against people impersonating him as a bit so now our account is locked with a Bored Ape NFT as our profile picture with the Challenger explosion as the header image for the foreseeable future. i just needed to get this off of my chest.

I don’t even know how to explain how much this post means to me I straight up cried laughing the first time I saw it and it still makes me laugh every time I see it. it’s been months

no because im sick of this ngl

Ppl dont seem to realise that "only perceivably queer people should have access to queer spaces and support" and "nobody is obligated to out themselves to you and nobody needs to provide proof of their sexuality/identity" CANNOT coexist.

People are very quick to say "nobody should ever be forced out of the closet, there is no one way to be queer" but then throw a fit when someone who isnt visibly gay plays a gay character or when someone who isnt officially out acts in a ~queer way~.