Choking Safety
I've been seeing some kind of scare-mongering type posts going around about choking during sex, so I wanted to address how to approach choking in a safe way.
Choking is not a 0 risk activity, but it is also not so dangerous that you will just randomly die either. Anyone who does martial arts will confirm that thousands of teenagers are being successfully trained to choke each other safely (for self defense) every day! There's no reason you can't learn to do it too.
First you should be familiar with some basic anatomy of the neck and throat:
The carotid veins on both sides of the neck and the trachea/windpipe in the center are the most important things to be aware of.
If you want to enjoy the psychological element of having someone's hands around your neck with relatively little risk, you can do "choking" play that avoids putting any pressure on those arteries or the trachea. As with all choking play, safety is highest when both parties are fully sober.
I'm not actually sure if there are people out there who are into having the windpipe or trachea blocked. This tends to hurt like fuck and cause an autonomic choking response. You'll know if you went too far center because generally the bottom will be like "WTH". I don't know if there is a way to do this play safely or not as I don't have experience with it. It probably carries some risk of the trachea collapsing which would be a hospital trip for sure.
Most choking play is done with the intention of cutting off the blood supply to the brain by applying pressure to both the left and right carotid arteries. This type of choking is not really "breath play" because of the way it works (though many people refer to it that way.) This creates a pleasant light headed feeling, but is also where the higher risk comes in. It often doesn't take long for a person to lose consciousness once these arteries are blocked, often less than 10 seconds.
Sometimes getting completely choked out is the goal, sometimes not. Either way, the top has to pay very very careful attention to every aspect of their bottom's body language. Once you realize that a person has lost consciousness, the choking must stop immediately. Because of this: the most dangerous way to do this kind of play is alone. (hence all the auto-erotic asphyxiation deaths you hear about)
It goes without saying that intoxication also dramatically increases the risks. It's not recommended to lose consciousness this way on a regular basis. It's just not good for your brain to repeatedly go through, especially in rapid succession. Generally, the more time spaced out between this type of play: the better.
Though some people may have medical conditions that make the risk higher, as long as you stop choking when you reach the desired headspace, this play is approachable. Anyone who's REALLY into the idea but feels unsure or scared, I highly recommend taking a few martial arts classes. MMA guys do this to each other all the time! For sports! The key is just stopping at the right time.
There are two main ways to go about blocking the carotid arteries. The main one used in martial arts and self defense is the rear naked choke.
This type of choke is incredible effective at choking someone out quickly and easily. The forearm and the bicep are squeezing each artery until the desired effect is achieved. The risk here is how quickly it works in combination with not being able to have a visual on your bottom's facial response.
When someone loses consciousness they will go limp and begin twitching somewhat. This is normal, and you should stop immediately if you notice those signs.
The more common method of choking play during sex is what looks more like typical choking. Facing your partner, using both hands.
You want to find the arteries with both hands, and use the meat at the base of your thumbs to apply gradually increasing pressure upwards towards your partner's head. You can keep the thumbs tucked to avoid accidental pressure on the windpipe. (Though this is not required so long as you remember not to apply pressure to the windpipe.)
This type of play has a few safety benefits. First, you can see your partner's face so it's more obvious when you can see they've hit a headspace that is desirable.
Additionally, it's just a little more difficult to find the arteries and push up on them correctly. If your goal is to get a little light headed without losing consciousness, this is more easily accomplished with this type of choke. However, losing consciousness is still a risk and both partners being fully alert will ensure the lowest risk environment.
I know choking play is incredibly popular, even 'vanilla' people participate in this type of play on a regular basis without really knowing the technical details. Most of them don't get seriously hurt...but knowing what you're actually doing with risky play is a base component of risk aware consensual kink.
Anyway I hope people find this helpful! Happy choking!!
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can i request the Obey me brothers and/or the datables reaction to you being jealous ☺️
mc gets jealous
obey me x gn!reader
🍉 from the river to the sea, palestine will be free 🇵🇸. this account stands with palestine, and so— i require everyone who interacts to educate themselves, and/or support/donate. READ THESE; 1 and 2, HELP HERE, BOYCOTT. | credit 🍉
a/n: the intro is so long in comparison to what i wrote for the characters lmao
cw: the gender of the person flirting with the characters is not mentioned. they don’t leave even after he’s told them to [belphie’s part]
.
The two of you have been spending less time together lately, your personal responsibilities keeping you apart longer than they usually would. But when you realised the both of you hadn’t gone on a date in weeks, you decided to surprise them with one at a popular cafe in the human world.
Once seated at a comfortable corner, you kiss them on the cheek and tell them you’ll be right back with your orders. The trip from the counter to your seats couldn’t have taken more than 4 minutes but when you walk back, there’s a stranger at your spot next to them. By their body language, it’s clear they’re trying to snatch up your obviously irritated significant other.
Maybe it’s because today was finally a free day for the two of you, combined with not seeing them as much as you would’ve liked– but when you finally arrived at your table, you set down your orders with a little more force than necessary.
With eyes as cold as a storm as you possessively inserted yourself by your lover’s side, you asked the stranger in your seat, “Do you need something from us?”
lucifer
A smug little smirk makes its way to his handsome face when the stranger decides not to start anything and walks away.
And while a part of him doesn’t even want to wait until they’re out of earshot– the same part of him that wants to kiss you senseless in front of the many suitors you have– he refrains from doing anything too rash in public.
If he was in his demon form, his wings would ruffle from how you pridefully claimed him to be your lover in front of this “threat”. Not that anyone has the potential to be one when you’re all he ever thinks about in the late hours of the night.
When you sit down next to him once more, still obviously slightly angry after the ordeal, he gently holds your hand and presses it to his lips.
Just in case it wasn’t clear to anyone else in the cafe that the two of you are together.
“There’s no need to be jealous, my dear. I’m all yours.”
mammon
He gets a little flustered when you’re at his side but he soon gets over it and pulls you closer.
“In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m taken. Now, scram.”
Unlike Lucifer, he doesn’t even wait until the person leaves before he gets up to kiss you (on the cheek, he can only handle so much PDA).
“Took ya long enough! Seemed like you were takin’ forever.” “I was gone 5 minutes, Mams.” “Same thing.”
He’s sweet. And needy– but that’s why you love him. Another kiss on the cheek and it seems like he’s already forgotten what happened.
He hasn’t obviously. He’s going to daydream about this for the next 4 months every night before he goes to sleep because it proves you’re just as greedy for him as he is for you.
He’ll tease you about it, of course. “You must really love me if that got ya jealous.” He’ll stop if you ask him too but he’s still going to be giddy about it.
leviathan
He’s so relieved once you’re here because he had no idea what to do. He doesn’t even realise that he’s leaning towards you.
It isn’t until the stranger leaves that he realises that he’s still extremely close to you while in a public cafe.
He instantly gets so embarrassed and wants to leave.
It doesn’t take you long to put the pieces together– so you take your orders to go and pull him outside the cafe and into a nearby park.
“S-Sorry… I know you really like that place.” Now he’s worried that you might hate him for getting embarrassed and potentially ruining the date for the two of you.
When you reassure him that it’s fine and that you can always go to some other place, he calms down enough and the situation completely dawns on him– you got jealous because you thought someone else wanted his affections (which he still isn’t completely sure of btw).
His face is flushed pink when he thinks about it. You love him enough to fight for him.
“What? Oh- uhm.. it’s nothing– just thinking about how cool you looked back in the cafe when you got jealous, hehe.” < is imagining scenarios in his head and totally planning on telling Henry 2.0 about this exciting development in your relationship.
satan
He was about to commit a crime right before you came along.
Usually, he would be better at keeping his anger in check but this is your first date in a while and he’s not about to have some rando ruin it for the two of you.
“Leave.” is all he says to them with a glare sharper than Asmo’s heels.
He calms down as soon as he sees you seated next to him once more.
“They’re lucky you came when you did. The absolute nerve of some people–” he shuts up once you kiss him on the cheek.
While the two of you eat your food, he realises that your actions may have been caused by a spur of jealousy. He’s quick to tease you about it.
“Was somebody jealous? Well, now you know how I feel whenever one of my brothers take you away.”
He thinks you’re so cute when you’re jealous, but he refrains from teasing too much lest you lightly make fun of him when he’s green with envy.
asmodeus
Don’t get him wrong, he absolutely loves attention– but not at the expense of the two of you spending time together.
As soon as you’re next to him, he stands up and pulls you even closer than you already were.
“Ugh, MC~ where were you? I was so bored.”
He’s acting all whiny and needy, pressing his face into the crook of your neck and completely ignoring the other person.
It’s not long before they turn red in the face and storm out of the cafe.
“Finally, they’re gone,” he complains, checking underneath his nails like he was afraid some of their filth might have latched itself to him.
“You’re adorable when you’re jealous, have I told you that?”
He’s so quick to tease, even though he’s 100x worse when he’s jealous.
Somehow, he’s even more clingy the rest of the date. He's holding your hand, kissing your cheek, pulling you close to him the entire time– his own way of telling you and everyone else that he’s yours and you’re his.
beelzebub
He’s pretty clueless as to what’s happening and what the stranger’s intentions are– but when you come along, his passive face instantly lights up with a smile.
He is so in love with you, that you’d have to be blind to not see the way he looks at you, like your presence alone makes his heart full.
The stranger realises that they didn’t have a chance from the beginning, and Beel doesn’t even notice them leaving.
He notices that you seem angry at something, so he gently takes your hand and seats you beside him again– handing the slightly ruined food to you.
“You look angry. You should eat, it’ll make you feel better.”
He was right, it did make you feel better. Along with him happily eating all the orders you got him.
He won’t bring up the stranger unless you bring it up, but if you do, he’ll just shrug.
“Them? I don’t know, they just came up to me and sat on our table. I don’t mind when people do that but they were interrupting our date. I didn’t want to get angry and make a scene.”
belphegor
Belphie is spoiled. And he is tired.
When someone comes and sits on your seat, trying to flirt when the two of you came in together– he is instantly pissed off.
He wants nothing more than to “make” them leave, but he can’t (at least not in the way he wants to). So he just decides to be upfront instead.
“Do you mind? That seat is taken by my s/o– the one who walked in with me, in case I need to remind you.”
When they still don’t leave, he’s very seriously considering putting a curse on them.
But before he starts the incantation, you arrive in an equally bad mood.
Recognising that it’s two against one, they roll their eyes and leave, muttering something under their breath all the way.
“That was so tiring…” < (he spoke three sentences)
If you offer to go home, he refuses, saying that you both planned this already.
“I’ll try my best to stay awake but I can’t guarantee it. When we get back home, you owe me a nap.”
The sly little bitch managed to turn the whole thing in his favour.
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Ways to piss off an Italian
Alternatively three ways to cartoonishly piss off an Italian
Hazbin hotel x reader [Platonic]
Warnings:
Italian stereotypes, just jokin' around this is all in good fun! I put an Imp OC of mine in as the reader assistant! She just pops in and out to stir things up! Reader's learning to cook other types of food because they've hadn't had to cook for themselves in ages they just had others do it. Ending is a little off but we don't talk about that I finished this at 6 am I need sleep, Angel isn't that pissed mostly dismayed
Good evening folks! This is a side story with Eldritch horror reader and Angel dust because he's Italian, this is somewhat inspired by my own bit of how my younger self made it her mission to piss off Italians because of that Italian TikTok duo back in 2020-2021 [???] She did not succeed as she did not know any Italians and all she did was eat spaghetti noodles with anything but a fork.
this is also the 100 followers special! Now at the time of posting we are FAR past that at 207! but better late then never! Thank you so much for the support, I genuinely did not think this many folks would like my silly little writings, I adore getting y'all's requests, comments, and just appearing in my inbox genuinely it makes my day thank you! And I hope you enjoy!
Angel Dust took great pride in his Italian heritage and culture, as he was truly Italian.
Unfortunately he lived with a centuries old Eldritch horror who may or may not have lived in Europe during the bubonic plague and didn't understand the more "modern'' Italian or Italy at all, and others that didn't understand the "sacredness" of the Italians.
🍝The spaghetti.🍝
You took over cooking in the hotel, you and Alastor had begun fighting over the kitchen, whoever got there first got to cook and today, you were victorious.
You were exploring new recipes you had thus far made spicy tteokbokki and Korean corn dogs, some type of curry that was sonic blue, teriyaki chicken, hummus and other things! You experimented with different flavors, seasonings,
These tasty things would've ended you if you ate it back when you were alive and not dying of the bubonic plague.
Anyways, you decided to give making spaghetti a try because you were in the mood for something fairly easy to make.
As you perused the recipe book while humming along to the songs playing from Alastor's radio show, you nodded noting down the ingredients before pulling out the phone that the little Imp that worked for you had bought you insisting you should have one to contact her instead of hunting her down at random and dragging her away.
You squinted as you scrolled through the few contacts you had until you reached said imp's phone number and slowly texted her a barrage of ingredients to buy.
Cece carefully opened the hotel doors and skittered over to the kitchen, having memorized the route since she delivered ingredients to you almost daily at this point.
You grinned as you took the ingredients from Cece's hands turning around to place them on the counter while she pulled up a chair and sat down waiting for the inevitable "Dear Cece can you cut this" or "Dear Cece can you stir this"
You washed off the tomatoes before slicing in an x and blanching them, you peeled the tomatoes after and diced them up before putting them aside to cut up yellow onions, you gathered them up and placed them into a pan, sprinkling in salt to unleashed the onion liquids and sweetness.
You added in some prechopped garlic and let it saute.
While that was happening you took the tomatoes and crushed them, once done you combined the tomatoes with the rest letting it simmer.
You added other components like herbs, basil and a little olive old at the end just for fun.
You filled up another pot with water to boil, sprinkling a twinge of salt and stirring it in.
You brushed your hands on your apron, as you scooted around to find the box of spaghetti noodles, grinning you opened it and take out the pasta.
It was at this unfortunate moment Angel dust decided to waltz on into the kitchen, intending to see what was for dinner and maybe snag something to munch on, you held the dry pasta over the pot, both hands gripping the ends
"Hey tentacles, what's for- WHAT THE FUCK!''
"Good evening Dearest Angel! I'm making spaghetti!"
You said unfazed as the pasta snapped in half and dropped into the pot as Angel dust watched in pure horror.
"Why would you do that?!" Angel asked, his voice pitched as he asked arms gesturing to the pot of sad broken pasta boiling away.
"Make spaghetti? I didn't think it was such a controversial meal"
"No! You broke the pasta! That's like the biggest sin ya can do! What is wrong with ya?"
"We're already in hell, I don't think sins matter much here," Cece popped in, you jumped slightly forgetting the imp was there.
"They do when it comes to' fuckin' pasta toots!"
Angel dust shouted before promptly turning around and leaving the kitchen, leaving you completely confused and Cece amused, unfortunately her amusement turned into irritation as you asked her to grab the ground beef and roll it into balls so you could cook them because meatballs.
During dinner time your spaghetti was a hit!
Charlie complimented your cooking saying you outdid yourself while Vaggie was grabbing a second serving, Sir Pentious enjoyed slurping up the noodles, Niffty kept stabbing the meatballs foe whatever reason, Husk seemed to enjoy the meal however Angel dust had one pair of arms crossed while he reluctantly ate, it was good he could admit but he knew the sin that you had committed while cooking, he knew that innocent pasta had been broken.
Angel dust almost died a second time when he walked into the kitchen later that night for a midnight snack and witnessed a probably drunk Husk eating leftover spaghetti pasta with ketchup because the sauce you had made was on a higher shelf in the refrigerator and he didn't feel like climbing.
🍕 pineapple pizza time.🍕
You and Alastor had... For lack of better words got into a little fight over the kitchen, tentacles, shadows, mild mind control and other things were used until Vaggie stepped in and separated the two of you,
It was decided that pizza would be ordered for the hotel, much to Alastor's disapproval.
Cheese, pepperoni, pineapple and ham, and supreme were the pizzas ordered unbeknownst to Angel dust since he was coming back to the hotel from a hangout with Cherri.
"Angel! Welcome back we ordered pizza!" Charlie said waving the spider over as Vaggie placed the pizza boxes onto the table.
"Great! I'm starvin'!" Angel walked over just in time to see the box containing pineapple pizza opened up.
"Nevermind I'll starve."
"We have other pizzas Angel."
Vaggie did not get paid enough to deal with this, she didn't even get paid!
Angel dust was extremely disappointed in you, you were the one to suggest getting pineapple pizza because you quote, "Never had it before and wanted to try it",
You were well over a few centuries old, you weren't a child, you had gone to hell and become an overlord that rained terror for a couple of years and therefore you should've been able to tell that pineapple on pizza was a crime against humanity, so what if pizza wasn't a thing during your time, it was a thing that came to be while you were down here!
He had later lectured you about it, it was amusing to you! You were a feared overlord and yet this little Italian guy had the gull to lecture you, this was normal in families right? To not be afraid of each other? How wonderful!
The lecture eventually switched over to Husk who was eating pizzas folded which was just weird because he was just tasting the crust! What about the cheese? The sauce? THE SAUCE HUSK? DO YOU NOT TASTE IT?
Husk was too sober for the lecture, Alastor found it amusing though.
🇮🇹Italian PowerPoint presentation 🇮🇹
"Alright tentacles, we're havin' a intervention!" Angel dust said throwing his hands down on the coffee table as you sipped something from a teacup, probably tea.
"Is what you dragged us here for? This shit?"
Husk was here, how did he always get dragged into these things? Niffty was beside him trying to stab a roach, Charlie and Vaggie were out of the hotel, Alastor was hell knew where, probably doing radio stuff and Angel dust had somehow tracked down your assistant and dragged her there.
"Oh! Whatever for dearie?" You asked head tilted as you placed your cup on the table,
"You've committed so many fuckin' crimes in the past week! Ya' broke the pasta before puttin' it in the pot! Ya' put cream in the carbonara! Ya ate pineapple on pizza, I get we're in hell but are ya fuckin' kiddin' me?-" Angel moved his arms around to empathize his point "Not to mention that little fusion stunt, ya' deranged octopus!"
You hummed thinking about the meals you've made recently before responding, "I don't think I made anything bad?"
"You decided to put tomato sauce, cheese and pepperoni on cooked ramen and stuck it in da' oven and ate it."
"It wasn't as good as the little people on the interwebs said."
"OF COURSE IT WASN'T GOOD IT WAS A CRIME! IT CAME OUT OF THE DEEPS OF HELL."
"Eh, it wasn't that bad" Cece popped in to stir the pot, Angel slowly turned around becoming slightly more spidery
"The fuck did ya just say?"
Cece shrugged, "Food's expensive and I need to eat."
Cece was picked up and thrown on the couch with you as Angel dust set up a PowerPoint presentation about the history of Italian food and whatever else, You did not want to be here you'd rather be drinking your drink in peace, Husk didn't want to be here he'd rather be drinking, your hellborn imp assistant didn't want to be here, she's never going to Italy she didn't need to know this and Niffty, well she's still stabbing things on the floor.
By the time Charlie and Vaggie returned you had zoned out completely and your mind was elsewhere, Niffty was napping on your shoulder, Cece had escaped by asking Angel if garlic bread was Italian and while he went on that tangent she ran out abandoning everyone.
Husk was more dead inside then per usual, he wasn't paid enough for this, the first hour was fine but this had been going on for five hours at this point, how did Angel dust manage to drag this PowerPoint presentation out so long?
Vaggie shut it down after it was realized that you weren't responding and they thought you had somehow died,
You did not die and you eventually snapped out of it when a white cloth was put over you in order to hide the body.
Good evening folks! Thank you for turning on in! I hope you enjoyed, my apologies for taking forever to get this out, if your wondering why it feels like there's a missing gap that's because I wrote a whole lil' thing of reader and Alastor combining forces to annoy Angel and I accidentally deleted it.
I'm gonna rewrite it eventually and add it to a different fic with Eldritch horror reader, also If your wondering why I have an imp OC in here there is a reason with Eldritch horror and their family complex you'll see eventually
I'll be getting the readers backstory which will be the 200 follower special out [hopefully] soon so tune on in for that! Thank you again have a wonderful day!
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Why we wanna transition to Mad Scientist (or, revulsion and queerness in horror)
(Hi, @ash-eats-film! This is the thing I mentioned!)
Horror has a few baseline emotions it tries to inflict on the audience. This has been written about for decades, most famously by Stephen King, but the baseline elements most writers agree on are as follows.
Dread: Anxiety over what is about to happen
Terror: The fear of what is occurring right this second
Revulsion: Being forced to interact directly with what's happening right now
Black comedy: Being tricked into laughing at either the terror or the revulsion
Horror: The trauma response to what just happened
A great example of this can be seen in The Evil Dead II (YT link that doesn't include the full context, but does have the, uh, money shot). There's the dread of realizing there's something in the root cellar; the terror of when the Deadite pops up in the trapdoor; the combined revulsion and black comedy of Ash jumping on the Deadite's skull/the door, popping out its eyeball which shoots into Bobby Joe's mouth, and then the horror of what just went down rolling over Ash and his current companions.
Often, revulsion and black comedy go hand in hand. That's because they're tension relievers. The revolting thing becomes ridiculous, and you laugh at how ridiculous it is. This lets you settle down in the midst of the gore and death, just slightly, just enough to get through it... so the horror can fully set in for you, too, once it's over.
You also, often, question your own stability if you laugh in the middle of a gross-out horror scene: "Am I sick? Is there something wrong with me for laughing at X?" This is even worse if the villain starts laughing--now you're questioning whether you're IDing with the monster. Are you okay? Is something wrong with you?
Revulsion is often framed as the slutty member of the good, proper, morally-upright brigade of horror. We have a name for folks who seek out gross-out horror--they're gore-hounds, a term that is virtually always pejorative when applied to other people. We call certain types of horror "torture porn" or "gore porn", as though it is inherently sleazy and sexual to rely on this specific emotional reaction. (Note that we don't have "black comedy-porn", or "dread hounds", even though a dread hound sounds really fucking cool.)
Not to go off on a huge tangent, but I think the issue with media that overly relies on revulsion is that it's unbalanced, not that it's bad. A movie that's nothing but dread never has any emotional payoff. A movie that's nothing but terror never lets the audience relax back into their seats and, paradoxically, will become boring (imagine two hours of jumpscares).
So forth and so on: all aspects of horror rely on each other to survive. That includes scenes that make you go "Awww, sick" while nervously cackling.
Here's the thing: in previous generations, revulsion was similarly understood to be an essential part of horror, but what led to a revolted reaction was very different.
Lovecraft (boo this man! BOOOOO) understood the power of revulsion, which was the source of a lot of his strangest and most vivid descriptions. It was also the source of some of his most bigoted ideas working into his stories. The undercurrent of "non-WASPs are evil because they are repulsive" is as pervasive in his work as "the universe is incomprehensibly vast". You kind of can't get around that.
But there's another thing Lovecraft did to generate revulsion. He wrote a number of stories where an unhealthy focus on corpses, graveyards, graverobbing, and the like is, indirectly or directly, associated with sexual perversion.
How many, you may ask? Off the top of my head, there's "The Loved Dead", "In the Vault", "The Disinterment", "Pickman's Model", The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, "The Hound" and "Herbert West: Re-Animator". All of these tales share certain themes, which don't repeat beat-for-beat in each tale but do overlap:
Male character becomes obsessed with dead bodies--whether that's stealing them, having sex with them, desecrating them, or resurrecting them.
He is comfortable around death and the dead to a degree that is unusual, sometimes explicitly stating that he prefers the smells/sights of death to those of life.
Terms like "fiendish", "hellish", "abnormal" and "perverse" are used to describe him; his gaze towards dead bodies or to experiments may be framed as "leering" or "speculative".
He is frequently a twink; often described as being frail, if not noticeably beautiful; he may recall being mocked for being "bookish" or "weak" as a child.
He is superficially charming in a way that gets him by in polite society, but not long-term nor in-depth.
He often ensnares an otherwise "normal" man to share his obsessions, effectively recruiting him as an assistant... until the "normal" guy realizes he's about to go on the chopping block (or, in at least one story, already was on the chopping block).
Their crimes involve a lot of sneaking around late at night, locked doors, whispering so they don't get caught (or they'll be killed), secretiveness, glee at getting away with it, and frequently, sharing the same living space.
The Unrepentant Evil Dude is often killed at the end of his tale in a way that implies vigilante/mob justice is at hand.
The other may be allowed to live if he's very sorry and frames the whole story as being the fault of the other guy, or he may die too while affirming his horrible demise as just, even if it terrifies him.
(One could make an argument that Wilbur Whateley fits into some of these tropes. It's me I'm one)
If this all sounds very gay, Lovecraft probably would have agreed. He had as dim a view of homosexuality as he did on most other things that were Outside The Norm. In other words, we were supposed to see Richard Upton Pickman with his ghouls and think, "Ah, yes, this is a metaphor for queerness", only we were supposed to be revolted by that revelation.
This same attempt at revulsion can be easily read into Victor Frankenstein, and probably more Mad Scientists than I can name offhand (but feel free to in reblogs). Frankenstein's "crimes against nature" were connected to dead bodies as well, and likewise involved a lot of sneaking around, locked doors, and worry about what would happen were he caught with this naked man-thing he's keeping in his dorm. His crime, as with his parody character Herbert West, is creating life outside the bounds of heterosexual cisgender sex. This was meant to revolt readers' sensibilities as much as the whole cutting-up-corpses-and-stitching-them-back-together thing would.
This is why, if we're being honest, "Re-Animator" and "Bride of Re-Animator" are not necessarily gay… they're homophobic. This might be controversial, but stick with me.
I feel like Gordon and Yuzna were tapping into that old-fashioned Revulsion Handbook, including from the source material, which thematically linked Herbert West with queerness. (I'm using "queer" a lot here, but I would personally include trans-friendly readings under that rubric; I'm using "queer" in the analytical sense and not solely in the identity sense.) This means that, ironically, a lot of what we could point to as queer subtext is actually homophobic text.
This is reinforced by the novelization of the first film, written by a homophobe who got Trumpist brainworms later in life. He wanted to make West repulsive to the reader, and therefore, he tried to make West more gay. And IT WORKED.
To be clear, I'm not accusing anybody, other than the novelist, of being a homophobe. There's a difference between possessing internalized bigoted beliefs which express themselves in writing, versus utilizing tropes originating in bigotry because That's What's Done Around Here. (I can understand why others might not perceive a meaningful difference.) Like the Cuzco lizards, this queerness-as-villainy is definitely a stupid thing ported in from the source material.
I do think that this is why everybody but Our Queen Barbara Crampton seems embarrassed or nonplussed by all the transfags pestering them about fellatio tapes. It's because they don't get why this thing appeals so much to us. It shouldn't. If anything, they should be canceled for having yet another queer-coded villain, along with a number of other plot choices of questionable taste (I'm looking at you, The Head Scene, and I don't like what I see).
Only, uh, it didn't work out that way long-term, did it?
I thank Cronenberg and venereal horror for this, in part. Brutally queer despite not being explicitly gay, venereal horror is what happens when the characters should be revolted, but aren't.
This kind of thing is horrifying for crossing the line twice: first by being disgusting, then by having characters respond as though it is exciting, or sexually stimulating, or if nothing else, normal. They are perverse. They leer at the dead and the subjects of their experiments. And the disgusting monsters at the center of these narratives are celebrated. Their twisted sexualities are explored with the same brave frankness other filmmakers give to milquetoast cishet missionary nonsense. Their political views are given life and air, and usually, they're right. Their deaths, if they come at all, are framed as tragedies brought on by society's sick rejection of the flesh their brave experimentation.
Cronenberg's the dude who unironically thinks that Shivers (trigger warning for literally everything) has a happy ending. My man David's got subscriptions where others have issues.
Venereal horror has given us a new metaframework for looking at the repulsive, the monstrous, and the problematic and responding to it… differently.
Now here's another thing: Lovecraft likewise provided a structure for embracing the grotesque and the queer.
Pickman, the Decadent artist, paints photorealistic, enormous portraits of ghouls. Literal flesh-eaters. He is fascinated by them, comfortable with them. "Model" heavily implies that Pickman is a ghoul changeling--switched at birth with a human child. This leans into Lovecraft's ideas about heritability being a major source of horror, of course, and seems run of the mill until you get to The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
In there, Pickman appears again, but this time as a ghoul. He has cast off his human social shackles and joined the beings he loves, beings who understand him and support him. Kadath is notable in that the ghouls are actually... like... reliable, loyal, and morally good? Carter's opinion pretty much is, "They do eat human corpses and they smell awful, but they're all very nice and want to help me on my quest, so maybe they're not so bad (if not as good as the cat army)".
This feels like Lovecraft acknowledging that his entire approach of linking queerness, death, and revulsion is fundamentally flawed. Once you become familiar with the repulsive, it becomes not-really-that-repulsive-at-all. You can find beauty in it, and amusement, and love. Pickman embracing his ghoulish nature isn't all that different from Seth Brundle's overall lack of revulsion at his body's transformation. And it's not that different from what a lot of transmasculine folks go through, either.
It's not that transmascs, trans men, and/or transfags don't see what West does as crimes against nature. It's that we're all very fucking tired of being accused of crimes against nature. We're tired of not being able to look at socmed without finding accusations that we're disgusting perverts who sneak around behind closed doors to corrupt innocent, promising people to be our lackeys and partners in crime.
Hell, I refer to my wife as "my partner in crime" not because it's a cute way of acknowledging how well and how much we work together both in life and creativity. It's also because we could have been arrested for our relationship when we got together.
We were illegal.
There was a lot of sneaking around and whispering and trying not to get caught and "what if they call the cops on us if we're clocked". Can I tell my friends about this? Will they reject me or rat me out? Where am I safe? Nowhere. Best to lock the door and then check it again to be sure. Best to be very quiet.
Best to act like a graverobber trying to get their grisly wares back home before good, decent, Christian folk see them.
So when I hear "Blasphemy? Before what God?!", I read it as (whether he's ace or aro, gay or achillean, trans man or transmasc or genderfucked) a queer slogan of defiance, instead of a defense of graverobbing, corpse desecration, and non-consensual resurrection.
We're told we and our bodies are repulsive, so being told that Herbert is also repulsive makes him more relatable. Instead of wondering what the hell's wrong with him for shooting up reagent, we all theorize that it's actually T or has similar effects--because we're all told that T is a toxin that will horribly change and disfigure our bodies. He dresses in a three-piece suit for school, and instead of reading him as a stiff and overly-formal little freak, we assume he's layering up because he hasn't found a hoodie he likes yet.
He cackles at his horrific creations, and instead of saying "What a fucking freak (anguished)", we say "What a fucking freak (affectionate)" and laugh along with him. Who among us hasn't taken apart our Barbies and tried to combine their parts with the Kens? What is a doll, or a human, but a collection of parts to be rearranged? Haven't we also been told we're freaks for rearranging our own parts?
We've already been told by society at large that we are Herbert West. We're just embracing it, in the proud tradition of venereal horror fans who are not revolted when they ought to be, and I think that's delightful.
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Discourse knows, there have been too many articles in the UMC publications about polyamory, and I apologize for adding to the bonfire of think pieces. At least this one linked above is less obnoxious than most of them.
(The most obnoxious one is referenced in this article, the Atlantic piece saying that polyamory is bourgeois identity politics distracting from material change.)
And what gets me is that for a bunch of supposed Marxists decrying how polyamory is just cultural superficiality irrelevant to the superstructure of material conditions.... none of them can bother to write a Marxist analysis of polyamory! It's just throwing different names at each other, no discussion of material incentives.
And it's so fucking easy to write one, isn't it. Here's our starting points:
Marriage (and the relationship models that lead to it) is an economic institution.
The change in modern polyamory fads is, like most fashion, coming from the upper-class.[1]
I think we can all agree on these basic premises, and they provide a great deal of grist for economic analysis.
For instance, the middle class in America is falling apart. Especially if you are a recent college graduate. It's easy to get an internship that might be on track to a very lucrative career, especially in a big city. It's a lot harder to start a stable middle-class job somewhere between the coasts. So you can't really start planning for baby until you're 30 and after 5 different careers you maybe have one that will last more than a year, and can put a down payment on a home at maybe 35. (Housing costs rising, especially in cities, has really exacerbated that.
Does this apply to everyone? No. Does it apply to more people that in the past? Big yeah. So, what does a young educated something do in their twenties and early thirties?
But the upper class - I suppose we are supposed to say upper middle class, but c'mon programmer earning $250k you're fooling no one - is booming. It's easier to enter it, especially if you're smart, than ever (note that increasing from 1% mobility to 10% mobility is a big change, even if on the absolute scale it's still unfair.)
Polyamory - or extramarital sex - has always been popular among the rich. Because marriage isn't really an economic necessity for them. If a couple splits, well there's enough money to go around for all the kids to live in nice houses. Mormon bigamy flourishes when a male breadwinner is so ultra-successful they can support for 5 wives, and geek group poly houses flourish when one systems engineer can pay for the whole house on their own too (maybe there's one kid everyone chips in babycare for in the house, but no one is even thinking about enough children in the group house for a fertility rate close to 1:1.)
So if you cut out the ladder from the middle-class-monogamy path, and widen the highway for upper-class-laissez-faire-culture, then cultural norms are gonna flow from the former to the latter.
The thing about relationship norms that makes the change really noticeable is their NETWORK EFFECTS. Being the only polyamorous person in a monogamous community is basically irrelevant, right? Who you gonna date? Similarly if you are in an entirely polyamorous community, my sympathies if you happen to be monogamous and so everyone you want to date has incompatible norms.
But once you start getting away from the edges, they S-curve up real fast because there's finally the option to try the minority relationship style, and for the agnostics who are okay poly or mono, they start seeing people they think are cute in the other camp, and hey, why not try it out.
So combine the collapse of the middle class, the proliferation of upper class hedonism, and network effects and a poly-explosion seems almost inevitable, doesn't it?
...
Of course, I haven't presented any hard evidence, this marginal change at most applies to less than double digits percentage of the populace, and this isn't even how the story feels from inside my head (as a poly converted person.)
But it was. At least. An attempt. To do. Materialistic analysis!
Why are all published Marxists so bad at this.
--
[1] Polyamory, or extreme family/relationship/household flexibility has always flourished in the underclass. But the NYT isn't going around interviewing trailer parks in Appalachia to ask them about their exciting new lifestyle.
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Shout-out to everyone who survived a "fun" easter with the family
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princezam in trad goth makeup. roshambogames with corpsepaint. there is corn starch all over the team awesome base and mapicc keeps having coughing fits
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SUSPICIOUS
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? Olive has the same meow for "please come pet me while i eat" and "please come here and play with me" now, which only developed after i bought her a new toy (quickly became her new favorite) which is interesting. maybe this is a general meow for "pay attention to me" now .. she no longer really meows for being pet while she eats anymore after buying this toy for them both, for some reason, which is good (that was a REALLY bad habit of hers ive been trying to wean her off of)
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Magfest was fun!
Walked around as Cammy, made a lot of “merch,” talked to a bunch of cool dudes, traded wares, met new friends and finally met old ones, got a jello shot from a Raccacoonie cosplayer, ate so much awful food, learned of new games, and got inspired.
I made so many buttons of cammypus and other funny creatures, folded 50+ origami boxes for the perler bead crafters, and drew on any paper I can find. It was nice and now I have no money.
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my brain is leaking out of my ears fam, these last two and a half weeks of school are going to be ROUGH
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Anyone else feel like they’re repeating their life over and over again but just in different settings or is that just me
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i think i might genuinely be a genius for using "gordon" "freeman" to refer to different aspects of gordon and using "gordon freeman" to refer when the two aspects are functioning in tandem i feel so smart for it, i hope it comes across as impactful and clear for readers as i hope lol
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tag dump
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I've had a hard time articulating to people just how fundamental spinning used to be in people's lives, and how eerie it is that it's vanished so entirely. It occurred to me today that it's a bit like if in the future all food was made by machine, and people forgot what farming and cooking were. Not just that they forgot how to do it; they had never heard of it.
When they use phrases like "spinning yarns" for telling stories or "heckling a performer" without understanding where they come from, I imagine a scene in the future where someone uses the phrase "stir the pot" to mean "cause a disagreement" and I say, did you know a pot used to be a container for heating food, and stirring was a way of combining different components of food together? "Wow, you're full of weird facts! How do you even know that?"
When I say I spin and people say "What, like you do exercise bikes? Is that a kind of dancing? What's drafting? What's a hackle?" it's like if I started talking about my cooking hobby and my friend asked "What's salt? Also, what's cooking?" Well, you see, there are a lot of stages to food preparation, starting with planting crops, and cooking is one of the later stages. Salt is a chemical used in cooking which mostly alters the flavor of the food but can also be used for other things, like drawing out moisture...
"Wow, that sounds so complicated. You must have done a lot of research. You're so good at cooking!" I'm really not. In the past, children started learning about cooking as early as age five ("Isn't that child labor?"), and many people cooked every day their whole lives ("Man, people worked so hard back then."). And that's just an average person, not to mention people called "chefs" who did it professionally. I go to the historic preservation center to use their stove once or twice a week, and I started learning a couple years ago. So what I know is less sophisticated than what some children could do back in the day.
"Can you make me a snickers bar?" No, that would be pretty hard. I just make sandwiches mostly. Sometimes I do scrambled eggs. "Oh, I would've thought a snickers bar would be way more basic than eggs. They seem so simple!"
Haven't you ever wondered where food comes from? I ask them. When you were a kid, did you ever pick apart the different colored bits in your food and wonder what it was made of? "No, I never really thought about it." Did you know rice balls are called that because they're made from part of a plant called rice? "Oh haha, that's so weird. I thought 'rice' was just an adjective for anything that was soft and white."
People always ask me why I took up spinning. Isn't it weird that there are things we take so much for granted that we don't even notice when they're gone? Isn't it strange that something which has been part of humanity all across the planet since the Neanderthals is being forgotten in our generation? Isn't it funny that when knowledge dies, it leaves behind a ghost, just like a person? Don't you want to commune with it?
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