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kaesaaurelia · 2 hours

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In Defense of Shitty Queer Art

Queer art has a long history of being censored and sidelined. In 1895, Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was used as evidence in the author’s sodomy trials. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the American Hays Code prohibited depictions of queerness in film, defining it as “sex perversion.” In 2020, the book Steven Universe: End of an Era by Chris McDonnell confirmed that Rebecca Sugar’s insistence on including a sapphic wedding in the show is what triggered its cancellation by Cartoon Network. According to the American Library Association, of the top ten most challenged books in 2023, seven were targeted for their queer content. Across time, place, and medium, queer art has been ruthlessly targeted by censors and protesters, and at times it seems there might be no end in sight.

So why, then, are queer spaces so viciously critical of queer art?

Name any piece of moderately-well-known queer media, and you can find immense, vitriolic discourse surrounding it. Audiences debate whether queer media is good representation, bad representation, or whether it’s otherwise too problematic to engage with. Artists are picked apart under a microscope to make sure their morals are pure enough and their identities queer enough. Every minor fault—real or perceived—is compiled in discourse dossiers and spread around online. Lines are drawn, and callout posts are made against those who get too close to “problematic art.”

Modern examples abound, such as the TV show Steven Universe, the video game Dream Daddy, or the webcomic Boyfriends, but it’s far from a new phenomenon. In his book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, queer pop culture analyst Matt Baume writes about an example from the 1970s, where the ABC sitcom titled Soap was protested by homophobes and queer audiences alike—before a single episode of the show ever aired. Audiences didn’t wait to actually watch the show before passing judgment and writing protest letters.

After so many years starved for positive representation, it’s understandable for queer audiences to crave depictions where we’re treated well. It’s exhausting to only ever see the same tired gay tropes and subtext, and queer audiences deserve more. Yet the way to more, better, varied representation is not to insist on perfection. The pursuit of perfection is poison in art, and it’s no different when that art happens to be queer.

When the pool of queer art is so limited, it feels horrible when a piece of queer art doesn’t live up to expectations. Even if the representation is technically good, it’s disappointing to get excited for a queer story only for that story to underwhelm and frustrate you.

But the world needs that disappointing art. It needs mediocre art. It even needs the bad art. The world needs to reach a point where queer artists can fearlessly make a mess, because if queer artists can only strive for perfection, the less art they can make. They may eventually produce a masterpiece, but a single masterpiece is still a drop in the bucket compared to the oceans of censorship. The only way to drown out bigotry and offensive stereotypes created by bigots is to allow queer artists the ability to experiment, learn through making mistakes, and represent their queer truth even if it clashes with someone else’s.

If queer artists aren’t allowed to make garbage, we can never make those masterpieces everyone craves. If queer artists are terrified at all times that their art will be targeted both by bigots and their own queer communities, queer art cannot thrive.

Let queer artists make shitty art. Let allies to queer people try their hand at representation, even if they miss the mark. Let queer art be messy, and let the artists screw up without fear of overblown retribution.

It’s the only way we’ll ever get more queer art.

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#text #meta #lgbtq+ pride #THIS THIS MOTHERFUCKING THISSSS #you can't build skills without failing #you can't make good art without having made bad art #so if you want more good [whatever] art you have got to come to terms with bad [whatever] art existing #especially where minority and marginalized creators are concerned #I'm not saying “never criticize anything” bc boy do i criticize shit #but the way queer creators get harassed in professional and amateur spaces is. something fucking else.#like also sometimes i like bad art! bad art can be fun! it can inspire good art! it has inherent value as expression and entertainment #but also. like. at the most basic level it's so much harder to succeed without the freedom to fail

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kaesaaurelia · 3 hours

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Person who really wants to be dominated by a strong-armed authoritarian in a snappy uniform, but also they want to keep their kinks ideologically pure, so they split the difference and fantasise about getting their ass beat by the inspector-general of the US Postal Service.

#i feel like this is one of nisroc's kinks in the roleswap AU where they stayed an angel #demon vehuel is like. torn between “at least it's not super dangerous like some of their kinks” and “uhhhhhhhhhh what.”#fallen principality nisroc #vehuel x nisroc #slightly spicy

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kaesaaurelia · 4 hours

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#polls #oh wow looked in the notes and apparently one of the higher-scoring very wrong answers is FREQUENTLY taught in Sunday schools #and comparative religion classes #like. that is offensively wrong. pls.#(as of my reblog it's at 18.3% wow no if you vote for that one I'm sorry but whoever said that lied to you)#(or. you are confusing Judaism and another religion.)

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kaesaaurelia · 4 hours

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America is absolutely disconnected to meat

I think I realized this when I had went to see my dad and stepmom one day and asked if I could place my hawk’s food. (A rabbit leg) in the freezer. My step mom was disgusted by the idea that a leg from an animal was in the freezer meanwhile an entire chicken was sitting in the fridge.

Your rotisserie chicken is an entire chicken.

Your pork chop is a hunk of pig.

Your rack of ribs are from a cow’s rib cage.

It’s like Americans view meat as colorful red and pink hued shapes that just exist and come into the world packaged.

You see so many people getting harassed or even having their content flagged for showing how to process or field dress meat when it’s at it’s freshest. Right after culling. For some reason this is considered “gore” by many folks when in reality it’s no more different from plucking a processed chicken after cull.

You also notice that Americans have an idea of what’s normal meat and what isn’t normal meat and there’s racist undertones that I’ve noticed in a lot of these comments left on foreign cooking videos

You have people that claim a video of a man in a different country preparing something like this is “eating a dog.” Meanwhile this is roasted goat.

You have people who’s only perception of an edible fish is in fillet or fish stick form and they call something like this nasty because “Eww there’s a head!” Yeah.. most animals have heads..

Some of ya’ll need to realize what your meat looks like prior to processing and that it’s prepared in different ways. We also need to erase the stigma behind non traditional meats.

#text #food #when i was in college i tried to make sure I didn't get hungry during a dissection lab because while i could suppress disgust while satiate #hunger flipped the switch in my brain back from 'deceased animal & object of learning' to 'BAD ROTTING MEAT'#but yeah. in general i think culturally we'd be in a better place if we learned to accept that grossness is a part of life sometimes #not necessarily a part of life you have to be in a LOT but a morally neutral and natural thing #also cw more vivid animal death discussion coming up here #but one of our 1st bio 101 labs required us to vivisect a pithed (braindead) frog #it did NOT require us to pith the frog ourselves and we were given the option of leaving the room which many people did #it's disturbing watching that happen (and there's a reason I'm not describing the process beyond “it makes the frog braindead”)#theoretically it's almost painless but also fuck #i really really didn't want to watch it but i felt i owed it to the frog to do so #and that if I was going to cause this animal to die I'd learn everything I could from it #and I do think that's better than the two extremes of “we never need to kill animals to learn biology” and “who cares it's just a frog.”#bc it's truly incredible how many people wanna be real human doctors but can't handle a pig dissection!#but also suffering (while sometimes necessary) is always bad and we should minimize it where we can

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kaesaaurelia · 5 hours

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#polls #party hat!

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kaesaaurelia · 5 hours

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#text #yeah that's my dad

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kaesaaurelia · 6 hours

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There’s that post that’s like ‘everyone should get into a tiny niche fandom at least once’ fully agree, that was really fun -- but I would like to add that everyone should get into a fandom where their opinions run counter to major fanon because it really teaches you about sticking to your guns and trusting your interpretation of the text without having to rely on peer validation

because WHAT are people talking about sometimes

#text #meta #fandom #also hopefully it teaches you not to be a weird dismissive asshole next time you're in the majority opinion #you hopefully won't be the person coming into someone's comments like EXCUSE ME YOU WROTE THIS FIC WRONG IT DOESN'T INCLUDE POPULAR FANON #or saying OBVIOUSLY WE ALL SHIP A/B IN THIS FANDOM WHAT ELSE COULD YOU BE HERE FOR

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kaesaaurelia · 9 hours

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All of my cursed bobas so far. I have one more series planned for sure. Maybe more depending on how I feel when the final three are completed. Who knows, maybe I'll make some blessed bobas to compliment these abominations.

#art #food #scrolling this on mobile with all the first few too small to see the details of was a CHEESEBALL BOBA JUMPSCARE #10/10 would be appalled again

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kaesaaurelia · 1 day

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If you live in Chicago, go to the townhall meeting being held next saturday at the Logan Square Public Library to demand improvement in CTA service.

#chicago #politics bs

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kaesaaurelia · 1 day

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When I'm in the office I feel capable of handling whatever will happen when the other shoe drops and Herb decides I'm as incompetent as everyone else -- in a way I'm looking forward to it because the people who he's always mad at seem pretty competent and I am worried he's using me as a cudgel against them because I have yet to seriously disappoint him. But when I get home I tend to feel The Dread Of Inevitable Failure and end up taking an anxiety nap instead of like. Cooking dinner. It's not a rational fear, like, I'm not worried my coworkers will hate me or even that I'll get fired. It's the small child in me that's terrified of ever fucking up or letting anyone down that's just Not Okay with Herb's inevitable betrayal.

Just. Like. Get mad at me already, you coward.

Can't I just have all the benefits of regular social interaction at my job and none of the energy drain, social anxiety, or office politics?

#kaesa op #venty post

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kaesaaurelia · 1 day

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Can't I just have all the benefits of regular social interaction at my job and none of the energy drain, social anxiety, or office politics?

#kaesa op #venty post

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kaesaaurelia · 2 days

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someone rbing a post from me: #oh my goddd this is just like my ocs zapa and trunky