escapist media in general is an ongoing fascination for me. media written with escapism as a main priority typically requires very little thought from the reader - the whole point is to kick back and live vicariously through a fun story, after all. they're narratives written to prioritize reader comfort.
but because they are written to be as unchallenging as possible, they often come with a set of underlying assumptions that can be just fucking fascinating to unpick. like yeah, why IS it assumed to be escapist and indulgent to enjoy colonial wealth without thinking about it in regency fiction. why IS the self inserty female protagonist, who is assumed to be as universally relatable as possible, written to be sweetly naive and sexually inexperienced. why does this "queernorm" contemporary world replicate patriarchial structures exactly but just with Gay People Allowed. why are these ideas assumed to be easy and comforting? can the writers not imagine anything better than the status quo but except maybe with more gay people and poc if you're lucky?
the fact of the matter is that "unchallenging" fiction tends to just simply replicate dominant cultural narratives as a point of comfort. we won't challenge the reader, so we won't think about the way we write certain things. everything we think of as comforting and safe are, of course, universal, and could not be founded on any harmful ideological assumptions. there is nobody who could be alienated by this.
and that's the sticking point to me, in terms of escapist fiction: it's always necessary to ask whose comfort is being prioritized. you've got to interrogate who gets to escape and the mechanisms by which that escape happens. escapism can be good and necessary to survive the current world, but it does not exist in a vacuum separate from the real world, even if it pretends it does!
when trans women say it’s transphobic to claim “I would never sleep with a trans woman,” they aren’t saying you actively have to want sex with them, literally no one means that. what they mean is that when you immediately label all trans women unattractive by virtue of being trans, regardless of any and every other factor that could go into liking someone, and then further feel like it’s your place to voice your “opinion” on the subject when no one asked and your “opinion” is a fetishistic insult at absolute best, that is absolutely transphobic and you need to shut your mouth and keep your junk trash opinions to yourself
just so you know i know this dynamic is toxic and i'm not romanticizing it :/ i'm actually sexualizing it
if you draw a baphomet with a fat pair of tittes but no nine incher to match then u are immediately sent to jail. this is true the other way around too btw
the basic emotional condition of capitalism is anxiety, fueled by insecurity. one of the most common, yet most effective, rhetorical moves used by the apologists of capital is to present this motive force as aspiration, rather than terror - that is, to disingenuously figure the motion of the system as a running-to, instead of a running-from. it is like if the camera were only ever positioned behind indiana jones, following him as he “aspires” to reach the exit of the cave, not once turning around to reveal the colossal stone sphere just inches from crushing him
Having thinky thoughts about horror and monsters and the brain's initial lizard reactions VS what comes immediately after, and I've come to the realization that I would absolutely get eaten in these sorts of stories, I always wanna know if the upside-down head lady is okay
Like, yes, body horror is terrifying and that OH GOD THAT SHOULDN'T BE MOVING WHY IS IT MOVING reaction is fun and everything, but after that the monster always lunges at the person and tries to maul them or whatever--
I keep wondering if there was ever some incident where the bone crunchy body horror happens and the monster is just as surprised as you are, it panics like "WHY IS MY JAW ON MY CHEST/WHY IS MY HEAD UPSIDE-DOWN/WHERE DID ALL THESE NEW LIMBS COME FROM"
Even hauntingly sad/frightened looking cryptids just sitting there making the OnO face in some sewer or whatever, I always wonder how their face *got like that*, are they okay, what *happened*?
so yeah, no happy ending for me, I'd totally get eaten
See also:
first horror startles and scares me, and then it just makes me sad for weeks. i think the monsters are like drowning victims: they're already under, and they're pulling in anyone they can reach to drown too. they can't help it. they're in a situation that neither a rational or compassionate mind can function in. they just know to grab anything they can to get back to the light, but this is a horror story and they're already too far under, they're never going to reach the surface. they don't get any more breaths, they don't get to think again, they're already gone.
it just makes me really sad. the haunted house that's endlessly choking and spasming around the horror of what happened to her, the backrooms that are an untransversible broken mirror of reality, the villagers in late stage radiation poisoning from an interdimensional attention no primate was actually built to withstand. the monsters are dying, the monsters are dead. they're going to pull you under. they were the first victims, and they were lost before the movie even started.
horror stories are about grief, i guess, and all the monsters are already lost. you can't save them. no one can save them. you can only watch them and hurt.
Oh hey! Horror about grief is my whole thing!
I was reading an essay about trans identity earlier and the author forwarded an interesting argument, which was that cis-heterosexuality is deeply unnatural. it can’t be anything but unnatural, because if it wasn’t it wouldn’t need to be so violently imposed on everyone and reinforced to you your entire life. which means humanity existed prior to that imposition - that there is a state of existential transsexuality, or rather pre-sexuality (used in this instance to refer both to gender and sexuality), where human beings are fully capable of existing in the world without the imposition of cis-heterosexuality. trans people are just sitting up and taking note of this imposition. so the real question is not “why are you transgender?”, the question is “why are so many of you not transgender?”
"Rather, transsexuals likewise initially attempt to prevent their own falling away from cissexuality. We do this not thanks to cissexuality being truly ‘natural’, but primarily because we face so much social antagonism. In my experience, the realisation of my transsexuality was not merely the original joy of self-understanding, but also the original horror and anxiety at the upcoming difficulty I would face: ‘Oh shit… I’m trans’. Cissexuality should be regarded in this instance as the true social pathogen, whereas transsexuality is ontologically primary. We could say the ‘trans’ signifies ‘transcendental’, a condition for the possibility of (cis)genderism.
Insofar as trans culture accumulates across time, it is through us each teaching one another how not to lose a grip on ourselves. How to revert to our original inversion."
It is morally correct to be horny on main.
If we really want to fight against this puritanical culture that seems to be hell-bent on running sex workers off the internet and banning pornography wherever they can find it, you have a moral duty to post hole on main. Doesn't have to be your own hole but you got to post it.
New copypasta just dropped
Same guy
Reblog hole to destroy bloodlines and oppress Christians
she’s a 10 but she has deer antlers growing out of her head
so an 11?
themycomancer
So much tumblr discourse is just “you should be against this because it makes me kind of uncomfortable, so you should be morally against it. It doesn’t matter at all but you should still rally against it”
narc-babe
This is The Best tumblr post in fucking history
The thing is, it’s a serious issue not just in Tumblr but on other social media platforms. People seem to think disgust/discomfort automatically equates to morality and I don’t know how often I need to say it before it gets into people’s skull that: just because something is gross, doesn’t mean it’s immoral.
Morality is a social construct. It varies depending on the country, culture, environment, etc. Stop forcing everybody to follow your specific set of morals. Especially if those “morals” are led by disgust. As soon as your argument for something is “Oh, well, it’s gross.” I immediately roll my eyes and move on. Stop telling a group of people to rage against something that isn’t even a moral issue, but a personal issue. If you find it gross, fucking move on. Block. Look away. Don’t drag other people into it.
Anonymous asked:
can i bite you
only if it's gay and you promise to be weird about it
It is morally correct to be horny on main.
If we really want to fight against this puritanical culture that seems to be hell-bent on running sex workers off the internet and banning pornography wherever they can find it, you have a moral duty to post hole on main. Doesn't have to be your own hole but you got to post it.
New copypasta just dropped
Anyone wants their spirit destroyed hmu 🖤
there are more of us than there are of them. they are asking us to be peaceful because they know this. they have assumed our peace was the same as respect.
they will tell you - being peaceful is the right thing, the honorable thing. they will not be honorable. they will continue to enact violence on you while reminding you of your morals - the same ones they have taught you.
i've said it before: there is no magical barrier stopping them from going "too far", there is no place where they "just stop". this only gets worse. they want to see how far they can push. in the coming days, they'll smile around their champagne and shush you if you post their addresses. they'll shame you for being so unfair, cruel, unkind. they'll go to ground for a little while, hoping it blows over.
they will say - we cannot listen if you raise your voice too loudly. there will always be a hoop to jump through, an image to upkeep. they want you to be pleasant, charming - easily ignored. they want to print out posters of your face they can mock up with devil horns. they do not want you to actually say - okay. so now i'm the devil.
bring it to their door.
“homophobes and transphobes think lgbtq identities are exclusively about sex, so kinky or sexual lgbtq people shouldn’t be allowed to be visible because that reinforces that association in peoples’ minds” is no different from “lets shame feminine, flamboyant queens because they’re playing into harmful stereotypes”
if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: oppression does not run on logic. whatever justification someone has in their brain for oppressing someone is a lie. we know this because the excuse can change at any time to suit the oppressor’s needs, but the oppression stays the same. misogyny is misogyny regardless of whether you think women cursed the world by eating the apple in the garden of eden or that their hormones make it harder for them to understand math. it is an excuse, not an actual reason, because there is no actual reason. it’s illogic all the way down.
oppressors don’t oppress you for something you do, they oppress you for something you are. trying to alter your behavior to appease them is always going to be pointless. it is a game where the goalposts are made up and the points don’t matter because at the end of the day, homophobes don’t hate you because you’re too queer or the wrong kind of queer, they hate you if you’re queer at all.
the horrors may be beyond my comprehension but they are not beyond my insatiable lust. come here and kiss me you terrifying abomination.