Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

I know that because the story takes place after wwx comes back jiang cheng's whole "i don't believe wei wuxian is actually dead i'm gonn keep obsessively looking for him" shtick got retroactively legitimized, but it is prety important to remember that wei wuxian was in fact super dead the entire time and if it hadn't been for a depressed 20-something doing a suicide ritual, influenced to an unknown degree by a revenge plot that wasn't in play yet at the time off wwx's death, he would never have come back at all. And jiang cheng would've kept going "No! He's still out there I know it" for eternity with absolutely no proof or results.

Jiang Cheng, my man, what the fuck

breaking news: area man unlocks rare skill to occupy both the denial and anger stage of grief at the same time! Also posesses innate ability to never move on from this stage at all ever.

jiang cheng has to keep looking for wei wuxian, because if wei wuxian is dead, then jiang cheng killed him, and if jiang cheng killed his brother, then he undid the life that jiang yanli died to save, which would mean she died for nothing, which is as good as jiang cheng having killed her himself, which means that wei wuxian has to be alive to take responsibility for all of it, and if he's alive to take responsibility, then it's jiang cheng's responsibility to make him take responsibility, because that's what he's had to do their whole lives anyway, and now that task is all he has left of what they once were, and anyway, wei wuxian can't be dead because if jiang cheng already killed him then he should feel like justice has been served, he should feel avenged and complete and nothing should hurt anymore, but he doesn't and it does, and so wei wuxian can't be dead, come back and let me kill you properly this time, come back and take my grief as your grave goods, come back and admit it was all your fault so it know it wasn't mine, of course you're hiding, you're always hiding when you get in trouble, my mother isn't here anymore to whip you but I can, I will, and in the moment I lift my hand she'll be alive, too, come back, just come b-

the untamed + text posts

This video is important.

We all watched the hbomb vid (or at least got a summary of it) explaining how Somerton stole much of his "research" word-for-word from other queer creators and writers.

Okay, so, we unsubscribe from his channel; we've done our part; everything is cool now, right?

Unfortunately, no. The biggest damage Somerton did may not have been to those he stole from. Rather, it was inventing large swathes of LGBTQ+ history out of whole cloth, tinged with his own incel-adjacent brand of misogyny and weird anti-establishment centrism.

Worse, many of the "facts" Somerton invented are freely circulating on the internet, even on this website, and they are coloring how queers - and especially young queers - understand our own history.

So it's not enough that Somerton's empire burns and he flees with his tail between his legs. We need to actively purge all of the nonsense he injected into the discourse - out of his own personal agendas and resentments - in the years he was posing as an intellectual authority (perhaps the intellectual authority) on our history and experiences.

So give it a watch. It's not nearly as long as the hbomb video and it's neatly organized as well. Save it as a reference for the next time someone pulls out a "Somerton fact" you need to debunk.

Let's work to preserve our history from liars and charlatans.

Watched this video. It didn't independently fact check everything in it, but for any of the queer history stuff I lived through (particularly Somerton's claims about the '80s and '90s) or have academic expertise in, I can confirm James Somerton was wrong and Todd in the Shadows was right.

And it was just wild to see how much anti-gay and anti-lgbtq rhetoric he managed to spew in the name of educating people about queer history. Besides it being untrue, it was just fucking offensive.

via trailcams

girls' night!

The state of affairs in Palestine, 10/23/23

@stvksn on ig

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

I'm like one hour from going to bed so my take is not going to be extensive but my guess is that the social anxiety this is reflecting is the surveillance state. And the fact that private companies (i.e. not just the state) are also doing a ton of surveillance. And even the fact that the way we often use social media -- less so Tumblr, which has some anonymity still -- is basically internalising that surveillance and performing for it at all times.

It seems like there are two modes going on here: "avoid being perceived by the horror" (Bird Box, A Quiet Place etc) and "perform correctly so that the horror can't get you" (your trashy nun example). Both of them arise from surveillance logics; one is "avoid being surveilled or it will Get you", the other is "you are being surveilled, perform correctly or it will Get you".

And with regard to the social elements it's all reflecting, I mean -- have you seen the state of things? It's extremely difficult to avoid being surveilled! A monster where you have to not look at it is fucking easy mode by comparison!

(Pretend I cited Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman; they're relevant but also it's bedtime.)

Ooh yes, and breaking it down like this made me think:

- fear of observation (surveillance state)

- fear of not performing correctly (purity culture and evangelical backlashes)

- fear of confronting existential threat (climate change)

my contribution to this extremely salient and clever discussion is to say: I think we should call this subgenre panopticonsequence horror

"ai is making it so everyone can make art" Everyone can make art dipshit it came free with your fucking humanity

AI art exists because people who couldn't be bothered making art for pleasure feel entitled to use art for profit

op disabled reblogs so here

It's so hard to come to that conclusion though, like at this point unalive is a part of gen Z culture. It's just using a word, they're not even thinking about talking on TikTok or YouTube anymore, they're just talking. It's a lot like people getting mad over AAVE because it's not grammatically correct and yes it's not, but AAVE is a cultural usage of English, a dialect if you will. They use it because their friends and family use it, everyone talks that way. Nobody thinks about grammar when speaking AAVE. It's actually kind of offensive if you try to correct someone. It's like that with unalive too. It's a clashing of culture, we don't understand it because we see it as it was formed, a response to a shitty half ass language filter, not as it is used, which is just another word for kill, death, or died. I really think this one is just not a big deal enough to fight. I think that teacher in the first part, while I agree with the sentiment and find the story funny, it's also in my opinion not about maturity but just a culture thing.

From working with children, the way kids who use unalive react when they hear someone say kill or suicide, it's not just slang or comparable to minoritised dialects, it's self-censorship, active and deliberate with fear of consequences built into it.

Also not to derail but AAVE does in fact have grammar.

#this is really good but AFAIK in the US libraries DON’T pay authors#except in the sense that if their books are popular we buy more of

Except they do. Not so much for paperbacks -- that tends to be a one-and-done (elevated to cover the lending license) price of the book. But with digital? We absolutely get paid. Trad-pub authors likely never hear about it, but as a self-pubber, I get royalty checks from US Overdrive/Libby every quarter. Sometimes it's pennies. Sometimes it's the price of several digital lending licenses. But we are getting paid.

Hello, hybrid author here (i do both traditional publishing and self-publishing) and @thebibliosphere is absolutely correct in this post, including the fact that traditionally published authors do indeed get paid for library books. Libraries generally don't accept donated books these days, so they have to buy them new, and my understanding is that library hardbacks are often printed with a different type of paper and binding which are more durable and stand up better to repeated heavy use. The libraries have to buy those books from somewhere -- that is, the publisher -- and so authors get royalties for that sale. As for ebooks, my understanding is that it's much the same as it is for self-publishing -- either the library buys one copy for a higher-than-usual price and it can be checked out multiple times before it has to be purchased again, or they pay a small fee for every checkout (comparable to the less-than-a-dollar you get with selfpub books). If I may be permitted to add a little of extra information, one thing that I just want to make very clear and explicit for anyone who is unfamiliar with traditional publishing: There is a difference between what the CORPORATION wants and what individual editors want. There are many editors who do want writers to get paid, and who have fought to be able to publish more diverse and inclusive books; however, Joy is entirely correct that the CORPORATE ENTITY only wants Product that it can Sell for Profit. I'm drawing this distinction so explicitly only because there is often a tendency (especially among less experienced or unpublished writers) to see editors and the other people who work at publishing houses as Big Mean Scary Gatekeepers, who are then framed as "the bad guy" when we're talking about issues like these: They become the avatar of the bad thing that's happening, the scapegoat, the person you can point to, because it's a lot harder to point to a corporation and feels less satisfying. Employees at publishing houses (editors, assistants, publicists, the good folks in marketing, interns for all of the above) are not the bad guy -- those are our allies, and most of them are, like writers, not getting paid as much as they deserve for their labor, and they too get told bullshit like, "But aren't books your passion? You shouldn't need to be paid when it's your PASSION."

The folks Joy's actually talking about are the owners and CEOs of the publishing house's parent company's parent company -- the editor's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss. (At least, that's my view based on my own experience in the publishing industry, having had the privilege of working with several really lovely and wonderful editors.)

One small point I would quibble with in Joy's post (and again, overall she's right and she should say it) is "the publishing industry is shitting itself over [selfpub]. They don't like the success some of us are having. It's why they keep upping prices while slashing corners on their own production (while never affecting the man at the top) to try and stay competitive within the rat race they've created."

This is SUCH a fascinating thing to deconstruct, because it requires a little bit of inside baseball knowledge that you are pretty much only in a position to see clearly when you're a hybrid author. Let me explain. (Sorry to @thebibliosphere for this very long addition to the post, SORRY BABE I LOVE U I PROMISE)

Important caveat: Having touched base with Joy in DMs, I think it is worth noting that I am speaking from my experiences in the scifi/fantasy industry, and she's speaking from experiences with Romance.

Different genres have different standards and expectations and practices, so it's actually two totally different ballgames. I am much more willing to believe that execs in the Romance side of the publishing industry are getting alarmed about selfpublishing, much moreso than I currently perceive from their counterparts in SF/F. I'd estimate that Romance is about, hmmm, 10 years ahead of SF/F on this one, maybe -- we've still got a ways to go! :D

Indie-romance hulk-smashing the industry, my beloved.

But yeah, everything Alex said, too. The problem with the industry isn't any of the people working on the books.

It's not the editors who can barely afford to make rent (See the Harper Collins strike earlier this year). It's not anyone doing any of the actual labor. It's the people at the absolute very top doing their utmost to make the monopoly even more of a monopoly while holding authors and editors and everyone else in between to razor-thin margins while they gut the creative industry for profit.

hope is a skill

hope is a weapon you are trained to wield

favourite additions

You cannot hide this in the tags, bestie. This is too lovely to keep a secret.