@lifeattomsdiner / lifeattomsdiner.tumblr.com
When you read a novel, you might think you know who the villain might be. But in Dwain Worrell’s new novel Androne, whoever and whatever you think that villain is, it’s not that. Probably. DWAIN WORRELL: ANDRONE | ən-drōn | Noun a remote piloted bipedal machine made to mimic the functionality of the human body. Imagine we were at war, millions of casualties, protesters on the White House…
"come on man" i say to an inanimate object that is personally inconveniencing me by obeying the laws of physics
it is actually very common for people to say “there are no innocents on the side of my enemy.” against such an opponent you can theoretically justify anything
a lot of people are very enthusiastic about violence towards “acceptable” targets, and will expand the list of acceptable targets in order to satisfy this desire.
distrust those in whom the urge to punish is strong.
Back in the day, Thanatos was actually a better swordsman than Zagreus By Hikari Toriumi, a story artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios
So I was made to feel old today...
Two decades today
Oh my fucking gods one of my favorite memes of all time is now twenty years old.
Oh my fucking gods I am 44.
I do wish that "oppositional sexism" was a more commonly known term. It was coined as part of transmisogyny theory, and is defined as the belief that men and women, are distinct, non-overlapping categories that do not share any traits. If gender was a venn diagram, people who believe in oppositional sexism think that "men" and "women" are separate circles that never touch.
The reason I think that it's a useful term is that it helps a lot with articulating exactly why a lot of transphobic people will call a cis man a girl for wearing nail polish, then turn around and call a trans woman a man. Both of those are enforcement of man and woman as non-overlapping social categories. It's also a huge part of homophobia, with many homophobes considering gay people to no longer really belong to their gender because they aren't performing it to their satisfaction.
It's a large part of the reason behind arguments that men and women can't understand each other or be friends, and/or that either men or women are monoliths. If men and women have nothing in common at all, it would be difficult for them to understand each other, and if all men are alike or all women are alike, then it makes sense to treat them all the same. Enforcing this rift is particularly miserable for women and men in close relationships with each other, but is often continued on the basis that "If I'm not a real man/woman, they won't love me anymore."
One common "progressive" form of oppositional sexism is an idea often put as the "divine feminine", that women are special in a way that men will never understand. It's meant to uplift women, but does so in ways that reinforce the idea that men and women are fundamentally different in ways that can never be reconciled or transcended. There's a reason this rhetoric is hugely popular among both tradwifes and radical feminists. It argues that there is something about women that men will never have or know, which is appealing when you are trying to define womanhood in a way that means no man is or ever has been a part of it.
You'll notice that nonbinary people are sharply excluded from the definition. This doesn't mean it doesn't apply to them, it means that oppositional sexism doesn't believe nonbinary people of any kind exist. It's especially rough on multigender people who are both men and women, because the whole idea of it is that men and women are two circles that don't overlap. The idea of them overlapping in one person is fundamentally rejected.
I think it's a very useful term for talking about a lot of the problems that a lot of queer people face when it comes to trying to carve out a place for ourselves in a society that views any deviation from rigid, binary categories as a failure to perform them correctly.
If I can add, oppositional sexism is a cornerstone of evangelicalism and honestly a whole bunch of other forms of Christianity. The idea women and men exist for different tasks is deeply religious but specifically in the US and I assume for the majority of tradwives evangelical/conservative christian dogma. So even when ppl who proport to be somewhere feminist start up divine feminine shit they're regurgitating the same talking points the religious right started doing.
Yep. I believe they refer to it as "Complimentarianism".
Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail that’s stuck with me this time is the set design.
The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but it’s all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Truman’s life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic they’ve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesn’t the modern day suck? Let’s go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.
And it’s a lie. Truman’s life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia they’ve presented is a lie. It’s an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory that’s comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but it’s also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. It’s a lie. It doesn’t exist.
I don’t know. I’m spitballing. I’m biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but it’s very gratifying to see a movie kind of agree with me.
Let me tell you a story.
Earlier in the summer, I went to Florida with my friend. We decided to visit a town nearish to where we were staying called Seaside, as we had heard it was a cute place. What I did not know at the time was that Seaside is the place where they filmed The Truman Show. It was a "master-planned community," constructed in the 80s to be the perfect beach town.
Seaside, FL
Seahaven
And yes, it really does look Like That. Not just in their tourist-agency photos, in real life it looks like that. Arguably the irl Seaside is even prettier than movie Seahaven, because the the office buildings where Truman works don't exist; the town is 100% cutesy homes and little shops.
There's little towns like this all over Long Island, NY.
A friend came from a tiny place in Connecticut that was extremely white, and felt like the planet Camazotz from A Wrinkle In Time.
The obvious lesson Warner Brothers needs to learn from the success of “Barbie” is “give Greta Gerwig $200 million with no strings attached,” but the lesson they’ve chosen to learn is “the world is craving a movie about the Uno card game”
All y'all are choosing BORINGLY. Disappointed ngl. If y'all were in charge we'd never have gotten hamburger menus.
hi everyone! i've recently been left without housing & while i'm lucky to have friends willing to let me sleep on their couches & i won't bore you all with the sob story it's not an ideal situation and i need funds pretty badly to get through this season in exile. as such, i've released the exile collection, a pay-what-you-want collection of three one-spread tabletop games.
each of the three games is short and to-the-point, with a light-hearted tone. two of them are GMless. they're perfect little oddities to play on a free night with your friends. you can get them for free but any donations will be helping me survive the next couple months and so would be super appreciated
if any of those appeal to you (or you just want to help me out) you can get the exile collection here.
I Really Wish I Was Playing Baldur's Gate 3 Right Now
Morgoth learned a new skill: Turn the Roomba On
I keep forgetting about your cat’s name.
the best part of failed checks is when they're so bad kim pulls you aside and says something along these lines
"it's not queer fiction unless the queerness is explicitly declared in the text according to currently accepted terminology and in a way that meets the approval of the entire audience" I mean follow your heart I guess but I trust myself as a queer person to recognise queer themes
"but doesn't this risk giving the author undue credit for queer representation" I do not care about the author
Unnatural History is so meta, it's meta in ways that wouldn't have been meta when it came out
In more ways than one
what they dont tell you about growing up as a very lonely little girl is that you grow up and still a part of you remains that very lonely little girl
