#this might be the most capitalist thing I have ever written

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Why increasing public sector wages won’t cause inflation.

One of the current Tory arguments about wages is that if they increase public sector wages, inflation will go up. Even by their own logic, this is clear nonsense, and there’s a reasonably strong argument that increasing public sector wages could actually stimulate the economy too.

So, where does this idea come from? Well, it comes from business, where the idea is that if you increase wages, some or all of that price rise gets passed on to the consumer, and prices go up. Of course, even this is false, because in many cases the consumer will say “fuck that” and not buy the product, or choose a cheaper alternative. Thus, the company must instead reduce profits to retain consumers (and let’s not be fooled, a lot of companies are still making huge, untaxed profits right now). Or they cut hours and provide a less good service.

But this doesn’t apply in the public sector. Increasing wages of people in education, or in healthcare or in the civil service etc has no direct impact on the price of anything, because the public don’t directly buy our services.

However, it may actually stimulate the economy more widely.

In general, when you give rich people more money, they save it, or possibly “invest it”- meaning it basically goes out of circulation and doesn’t further benefit anyone.

If you give people right at the bottom more money, then they almost inevitably spend it right away, usually on essentials- which benefits the economy because more money is being spent, so companies have more money to pay wages, etc etc. But this doesn’t work soooo well, because people always need essentials, and will find some way of getting them, generally, if they possibly can. Of course, we want a world where everyone has access to these essentials easily, but we’re trying to think like an economist right now.

Most public sector workers are somewhere between these two extremes although some are definitely in the second category.

Right now, however a lot of people like teachers, nurses, junior doctors, junior civil servants etc etc are “feeling the squeeze”- caught between high housing prices, rising bills and stagnating wages, there’s less and less money to spend on “luxuries”. People might cut back on eating out, on take aways, on buying new clothes, on buying presents, on “treats”, on non-essential travel, on buying things like books and nice stationery, on make up and toiletries, on haircuts and getting their nails done- the list goes on.

These things aren’t essential to survival, you can do without them. So if you can’t afford to buy them, you don’t. But of course, if a lot of people stop buying these things at once, it hurts the economy. Companies that make or sell these things see profits go down, perhaps reduce hours or lay off staff, which in turn gives them less money to spend, and it all becomes a vicious cycle which shrinks your economy- i.e. the worst possible thing if you’re a Tory, supposedly.

(Investing in education and health also has long term pay off, but anyway).

If the people at the bottom and the people a bit above the bottom had a bit more spare cash, there would be more spending, and more businesses would see a proportion of that spending. And so they can offer staff more hours, pay higher wages, employ more staff. There’s more money going around and it’s a virtuous circle. The economy grows.

Would some companies then put their prices up? Maybe. Companies will often raise prices whenever they can. But the pressure to increase prices tends to come from increased costs, not increased custom. And it would matter less because everyone or nearly everyone would be earning more.

Cutting and cutting just leaves everyone poorer. We know this.

So why do the Tories keep going on TV and spouting bollocks? It might be because they don’t actually understand the economics of the situation (scarily likely) but it’s also likely to be ideological. They’d rather “win” the fight with the unions than do something that could actually help everyone.

#uk politics #cost of living crisis #economics #tories #public sector pay #wage stagnation #squeezed middle #capitalism #like #this might be the most capitalist thing I have ever written #but #I feel we have to counter the narrative at every point

[nonbinarygerard]

this is a rant about AI generated art because I am enraged.

if you want to hear a professional artist speak on AI art more elegantly than me then I highly recommend Steven Zapata’s video. he said everything better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjSxFAGP9Ss&t=5s

the more i learn about AI art the more i literally believe in like 10 years or so we will somehow live in a worst capitalist dystopia where most artistic professional jobs don't exist. You pay a subscription fee to some AI company that just spits out art, movies, comics, novels etc whatever you want on mass, so fast, that art will be personalised to you as in you know how google and other companies track you everywhere on the internet well so will AI companies. they’ll know you more than you know yourself. their algorithms will be fine-tuned just to ur tastes. you won't even need to type in prompts, it will do it for you and show you hundreds, thousands, of art in your feed. You can scroll forever and the algorithm will just make more art. the AI will be so trained to keep ur retention, making ur session time longer and longer and you’ll lose more hours.

Like how many tiktoks do you actually remember? vs how many hours do you stay on the app? do you think the time you spend on tiktok is worthwhile? i use tiktok as an example bc that's only the start of how good AI algorithms can get. give them a few more years with more silicon valley companies competing to be the next big app and they’ll get smart and better in ways you can never imagine.

in the eyes of companies, humans make flaws and humans take too long to make art. it's ripe for automation. companies don't give a fuck about real art and human expression. they only care about profit, profit, profit. what all tech companies want is ur time, your attention, they want to fill all ur waking moments with their products. literally billions of dollars have already been put into AI and though some of the AI art right now might be cringe or just funny, it wont be at some point. In a few months, years, decades, who knows, it will a lot more indistinguishable from human art. that's going to be a problem. you're not going to be able to avoid it because you're not going to be able to what was made by a human and what was made by an AI.

you may think that humans will stop watching or consuming AI art that is bland and seems well AI generated but thats the thing, it will always evolve. In fact companies might just make up fake people to say it was made by and you will never know how much of it was made by humans and how much was made by AI algorithms. if you dont think at some point a bunch of big budget movies, video games, tv shows etc wont be written by AI when it's possible to create a script that doesn't seem like it's written by an AI then you’re crazy.

its going to be a lot harder to make living if you’re not one of the top artists because how the fuck do you compete again AI. you can’t and that’s the point.

its so fitting for evil capitalists that they would rather fund billions of dollars into AI that was designed to replace artists than ever pay artists fair wages.

i dont think people will stop creating art but i do think that a lot of professionals are going to find a hard time keeping their careers without serious changes. you really cant become a master of ur craft without being a professional artist, it just takes that long to gain the experience, knowledge and insight to walk in the footsteps of the masters before. thats what art is. hard work, dedication and discipline. its not something that only a divine few who have the gifts of the gods can do. anyone can become a master artist it just takes devoting ur life to pursue your craft and what a fucking insult it is for billionaires to just fund their extreme amount of money into some goddam shaddy af AI companies to replace professional artists' job, well thats their hope anyway.

this isnt the same like photography was to painting or digital was to traditional. its true that those technological innovations did destroy a lot of jobs but also created new artistic jobs, and they did have massive effects on the industry and i dont want to minimize the number of people who’s careers were destroyed bc of it. But those were massive changes in tools. They didn't actually replace the concept of artists themselves. AI is meant to do as much, if not all, of the artists work for them, so artists don't need to exist in a professional sense.

why would a games company hire concept artists if an AI can come up with hundreds of different concepts in a matter of seconds? maybe human artists might be better but when the AI is good enough a company won't give a shit.

I dont know when this change will happen or how it will occur and how people will react to it but mark my words these AI companies are going to try to make it happen while maintaining the face of just their just simply pushing human progress and this was somehow just a natural evolution of technology.

none of this was natural it was funded by billionaires.

this is not even to mention how these AI’s train on copyrighted artworks with no permission from the artists. and this process is not like how humans learning from other artists, AI’s dont think, they just copy, steal, combine artworks very fast and on mass scale in away no human could ever do. You cant compare how AI’s and how humans learn. there are not the same no matter how big shot programmers try to make them more similar, AI is a machine we could never do what it does. and it is stealing from artists every time it generates art.

I study programming and literally you dont even know the number of jobs there are in AI. its a field that's expanding every day. it's not just a few companies but every big tech company putting massive resources into it. for them, algorithms are the future of humanity.

I am not saying there isn't some actually usefulness in AI created images for example i think getting insane highly specific poses and references at the click of a button is extremely useful but that's just a by-product of what these AI companies want out of their product. they are meant to replace artists' jobs by the click of a button. that's their dream.

AI companies dont care about integrity or intention or the artistic cannon or mastering one’s craft. Companies don’t pour billions of dollars into a technology just for it to be used for meme culture or quirky images. Every time you type in a prompt you are training the AI, its how neural networks work, by releasing them for free to the public you are training the AI for them. and they will train faster than you ever thought. i cant even imagine what the AI images will look like this time next year and they will improve drastically. mark my words.

You are a fool if you dont think AI won’t have a massive and very dystopian effect on society. Capitalism is somehow killing art even more.

maybe you think I’m being dramatic and I hope I am wrong but there is no doubt that AI generated art will change commercial and professional art as we know it.

#txt #AI Art #i cant stop thinking about it #fuck AI art #lets see how i right i am in the next decade #AI Art is anti worker

[justastrugglinghotchocolate]

This is a long post!!

Okay, so I’m spitballing here because I just had this idea hit me like a truck so things might be a little incoherent. Anyways, what if Dorian and Basil switch roles? Not personality mind you, just the portrait was never enchanted/cursed/etc, and somehow Basil becomes more susceptible to an amoral attitude?

Here’s the thing, I don’t think Basil would abandon all morals in the same way Dorian did. He’s older and wiser than Dorian, it seems unlikely that he’d change because of the fear of getting older/uglier. For the most part we don’t have a whole lot to work with since all of Basil after the first chapter is only seen with reference to Dorian, so there isn’t (as far as I know) a lot to work with there. So I propose desperation being what leads to Basil’s accidental soul selling.

So the rough idea that came with goes as follows: Somehow, Basil becomes destitute/generally disliked in the public (perhaps believable rumors regarding “unseemly behavior” or something along the lines). Regardless, Basil is struggling.

I like to think that Dorian and Henry would try to help him, but Basil being Basil would probably decline, not wanting to damage their reputations.

In this AU, Dorian becomes a composer and full-time pianist, at the beginning, he probably leaves for a tour in France or something. Before he leaves he makes a song for Basil and has it put into a music box as a gift. This would be the portrait equivalent for Basil.

After being gifted the box, he probably makes some wish along similar lines to Dorian’s in the original, albeit without the being young and beautiful forever part.

I don’t think Henry would be the one to lead Basil astray. Despite my personal hatred of the man, I can recognize that he either a) cares enough (which isn’t very much) not to actively terrorize Basil or b) finds Basil to be too boring.

Additionally with the switch from Dorian to Basil being corrupted, I think the story would move away from more carnal sins and emphasize more capitalist ones. (Maybe Basil’s paintings suck the life out of their sitters and when he finds out he choose monetary security over them, maybe he begins painting the aristocracy more embarrassing/hedonistic and because of his wish the paintings look so lifelike people mistake them for photos and he just never clears that up) The main sin of Basil’s is his profit over the suffering of others. So there would be a villainous capitalist leading Basil down the same road.

Anyways I think this all culminates to Dorian returning from France and finding a very different Basil. He’d probably confront him and then Basil would accidentally kill him. His capitalist bud would get rid of the body maybe frame Henry for it, or something equally nefarious, effectively killing off the last remnants of the Basil Hallward from the beginning/book. If I ever write a fic for this, I think I’ll leave the ending ambiguous, mainly because I don’t know what would be a fitting end, lol. Maybe Basil just dies like Dorian does.

If you took your time to read this, thank you so much and I hope you enjoyed. Please let me know what you think and if you have any ideas for this, please share I’d love to hear them!

EDIT: i have now written a fic

#the picture of dorian gray #tpodg #fanfic #i think #alternate universe #basil hallward #lord henry wotton #dorian gray #role swap au #long post #the real villain is capitalism lol #this is very basil centric #and mostly written because my boy was done dirty in the original novel

[thesinglesjukebox]

REMI WOLF - "PRESCRIPTION"

Ask your doctor if Remi Wolf is right for you. Aaron, who brought "Prescription" to our attention, did...

[6.40]

Aaron Bergstrom: Boots Riley starts big. His new show I'm A Virgo comes with the contradictions pre-heightened, a masterful Afro-surrealist fun house with every absurdity stretched to its breaking point, amplifying a message that has never been more timely: real change doesn't come from painstakingly crafted anti-capitalist rhetoric or even aspiring revolutionaries with questionable superpowers, as convenient as that might be. It comes from community. It comes from solidarity. It comes from other people. Remi Wolf starts small. "Prescription," written at Riley's request for a very specific plot point in I'm A Virgo (I won't spoil it, but the episode is called "Balance Beam"), opens on spare drums and descending synths, Gen Z Prince working through some social anxiety issues. Wolf said that the song is about "being in love and being really, really scared about it," and it's that underlying fear that underpins the subsequent ascent into ecstasy, the horns and the key change and the climax that probably only works if you're just a little bit nostalgic for Macy Gray. It all hinges on giving up control. This isn't the kind of joy you can find on your own. It comes from connection. It comes from other people. Riley and Wolf arrive at the same place: whether your revolution is personal or political, you're going to have to let yourself be vulnerable. You're going to have to reach out. [9]

David Moore: Remi Wolf, the little pop engine that couldn't -- thanks to the peculiar vagaries of Spotify's algorithms and curated playlists, I think I've heard almost everything Remi Wolf has ever released, and every time I hear a song, I'm really into it for about 15 seconds before the pleasure slowly ebbs. (My favorite Remi Wolf song is this Little Dragon remix of "Disco Man," which must employ some kind of Energy Star plugin to keep things humming along consistently.) At the same time, I don't know that there's a single bad Remi Wolf song either -- there's something sort of captivating about Remi Wolf's oeuvre, all these little candles emitting a few dazzling flickers before inevitably snuffing themselves out. [6]

Peter Ryan: A smidge more narratively straight-ahead than the gnarly, motormouthed Juno or its predecessor EPs; here Wolf's sonic freak-out puts a point on the exhilaration of the lyric -- you couldn't really call it mellowed, but it's less wickedly hedonistic in sound than a lot of her work, more a snowballing sugar overload. In three-minute form it's a bit of a band showcase, a rich thicket of soul-pop horns punctuated by Wolf's increasingly enraptured vocal breaks and ad-libbing. I'll take the seven-minute version, of course, indulgent and luxuriating in the thrall of yearning while affording the arrangement more time to unfold and Wolf more space to settle into it, goofy jam-interlude and all. At any length it might sound like a stopover for one of pop's most chaotic, inventive voices, but that restless energy at the core of her work would enliven even the most dependable of tropes. [8]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: A sex jam with more than cursory shout outs to depression, "Prescription" pulls off one of my favorite tricks, layering instruments progressively with each chorus. Wolf's squeaky half shouts play nicely off a rich round bass guitar, which in turn plays off the bouncy, just buzzy enough acoustic. The layered vocals in the bridge feel earned, breaking through into a lush horn and piano-scape. [9]

Nortey Dowuona: The way this song opens up with flat demo synths and drums, with Remi's high voice catapulting over thin guitar, made me feel like we were not going to go anywhere. Then the bass slid in, the horns started stabbing and punctuating certain lyrics and sidewinding during the chorus and the piano riff appears at the tail end of the second verse, and I was hooked. The lush and muscular bass rumbles below the mix and girds an otherwise very thin song with a strength it needs. But the extended version, which has an extra verse and refrain and chorus, feels both less abrupt and more vivid, allowing the song space to become bigger and bigger and delightful, while Remi -- even in all the lushness -- is still visible at the roots, her thin keening voice which was allowed no space on the standard version spreading far and wide, at ease, excited, delighted to refill. [8]

Ian Mathers: "Effortful" is not necessarily a synonym for "bad." [7]

Leah Isobel: Surprised to not hate a Tones & I-style vocal affection in 2023, but I think it's because the production's vaporwave synth textures and aggressively contained snare hits aim at an equally unreal emotional tone. It's not soulful, but "soulful": aware of its own absurdity and desperation. [7]

Katherine St Asaph: An absolute vocal ordeal. [1]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: She's singing her damn heart out, maybe even literally. [3]

Alfred Soto: No way I'd listen to this indie playroom "Purple Rain" meets "Brownsville Girl" again, but the soupy mix in which a brass section and pattern bob and turn complements the deliberately unhinged vocal performance. If I'd watched it on a busy street corner I'd look over my shoulder once. [6]

Brad Shoup: On the one hand, isn't pumping your devotional funk ballad with enough vocal fuckery to induce hypoxia a perfect Prince tribute? Some of those hoots in the post-chorus made me rip my headphones off, not because they were bad (they were), but because I thought one of my kids woke up. In places it sounds like she's trying to triangulate the Troutman talkbox through sheer vocal layering. Still, as insistent as she is, the arrangement of oozy synth/banjo pluck/brass hits is easy as hell, even if it's hard to pick out. Like she says, it makes my skin crawl in the best way (Adderall). [7]

Will Adams: All those vocal pyrotechnics only for them to be shoved way down in the mix. Why? It's not like the instrumental's ~chill vibes~ are particularly attention-grabbing. [5]

Hannah Jocelyn: I love that Remi Wolf stretches her voice as far as it can go and she's never actively grating for most of the song. Maybe it's because Nathan Phillips places Wolf (and the choir of Remi Wolves) far back in the mix; I can't explain why, but the effect is less someone screaming in your face and more witnessing Ken barely step out of frame to yell "SUBLIME!" The outro goes too over-the-top and bright -- the situation calls for Brittany Howard, someone who Remi Wolf is decidedly not -- but until then, there's a lot to love.. [7]

Vikram Joseph: Turns out the difference between "classic-sounding" and "derivative" is largely just charm, which Remi Wolf has in buckets and which turns a song that could have been a rote gospel-pop exercise into a full-hearted, grin-inducing joy of a song. It has shades of "I Try", and while it's not quite as beautifully constructed it more than matches it in endearing vocal acrobatics and in exuberant dorkiness -- "Prescription" is a love song that's totally sincere but which doesn't take itself remotely seriously. It feels like walking through your city in the sun and being weightless; it feels like "climbing over the walls I made"; it feels like giving yourself completely to someone and it not hurting at all. [8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I do not believe that one's background inherently determines one's future but as a Californian I must call it as I see it: this is exactly the kind of song you make when you go to Palo Alto High School and then USC Thornton. [5]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

#remi wolf #music #music writing #pop music #music criticism #music reviews #the singles jukebox #Youtube

[mollybecameanengineer]

✨🌻💝 for the fic writer ask :)

Thanks for the ask, @lilolilyr! Here is the orignal post.

✨What's a fic you've posted you wish you could breathe life into again and have people talking about it? (or simply a fic you wish got more credit)

I have two answers for this. (As you all probably noticed) I've recently become fixated on the X-Files, but before that it was Star Trek: Voyager, so most of my fic is for that show. But I'll give one from each, because it's hard for me to consolidate the two. I was in a very different mental space writing Voyager (circa 2015-2017) than I am today.

For The X-Files: Keys,Wallet, Phone. It's the first one I wrote for this fandom, and it's very different than anything I'd written before. One of the asks on here was 'which fic would you like to be a podfic?' and this one would be my answer as well. It has a lyrical quality that I really like and I think would be great read aloud.

For Voyager: My baby, The Lament of a Daughter. This is all B'Elanna backstory... the culminations of years and years of thinking about this character. This, and The Sea of Gatan are probably some of the best things I ever wrote.

🌻what makes you want to give up on writing? what makes you keep going?

What makes me give up? Two things: anxiety and lack of head space.

For the anxiety bit, this is why I stopped writing in 2017. Trying to improve and what not was just driving me insane. This is also why, despite the fact I want to, I'll likely not participate in exchanges. When the prompt is right, it's magic. But man, it can really get to me if I can't think of anything. So this time around I've been posting things unbetaed (which likely leads to way more typos, sorry) but this has really been a path back to joy for me. Just write and release.

On lack of head space: I have a job that could consume every moment of my life if I let it. I have an idea for an original novel, which I started writing, but I found my mind was always preoccupied with it, and I wasn't thinking about my research (and therefore not making progress.) So, I don't really know what to do about that. The problem is less one of time, and more about have to pick and choose what I think about. (Which might be a weird problem to have.) It seems to work better for me to write short things to get the idea out of my head, and then move on. I am looking forward to a stage in my life where this won’t be an issue anymore.

Moving on to what makes me keep going: it’s fun (if I'm not busy being my own worse enemy). I like getting my thoughts out of my head and I like the reaction others have to those thoughts. Most of my stories are about something that is going on in my life, so it’s cathartic (or amusing, depending on what it is) to put OTP of the week in those situations. Sometimes I wonder if I could write professionally, but I do that would remove the fun and the joy. I do like my job, but there are for sure times that are NOT joyful.

💝what is a fic that got a different response than you were expecting?

Well, I didn't expect people to like Qualifying Life Events this much! I wrote it in like an hour on Monday when the internet went out, so I couldn't do work. (Well, really, I should have been reviewing papers, which were saved on my computer, but see above comment on not concentrating on work so well these days.) In general, all the pieces I’ve quickly written and posted have been way more enjoyed than I expected. They tend to be silly little things (ex: The Case of the Nip Slip, The Joy of Cooking, and the above-mentioned Qualifying Life Events). I have other pieces that took way more effort, but they are just as enjoyed as the short silly ones. So, I think it’s been freeing to break the association of my effort to other people’s enjoyment (which is probably a capitalistic way of looking at things, anyway).

(Aside: for some reason, the tumblr editor isn’t spell checking, which is a huge issue for me. So I had to write this elsewhere and paste it in and Tumblr was being a dick… Why is this editor so bad?)

[rollercoasterwords]

I love the new chapter! Your writing is amazing:)

Do you have any writing tips you use that you’d be willing to pass on?

hi this response is v delayed so the ch is no longer new but thank you!! 💕

i wish i had more/better writing tips but i feel like a lot of my writing process is largely intuitive and isn't coming so much from me like...thinking through "oh x works really well and y doesn't work well" yknow? that being said, there are 2 things i can think of that have sort of been helpful realizations for me over the past year or two (these will probably sound very generic and are most likely things that thousands of other people have already said, but for me personally they were both just driven home recently so bear with me lol)

1 - no writing is bad writing!!

i know this is so cliché but like...i personally am a big perfectionist and sometimes i'll give up on a project if i feel like i can't get it just right, so i think it took me a while to accept the fact that literally everything i've written (including the embarrassing fanfiction from high school and the god-awful self-insert oc stories from middle school) has contributed to getting to the point i'm at now, where i'm pretty confident in my ability as a writer :) writing is a skill just like playing an instrument or learning a language; you have to practice to get better, and any time spent writing is practice and is helping like...build creative muscle or whatever. i have years and years of bad writing squirrelled away on flash drives and old word docs and dusty corners of the internet, and most of it makes me cringe to look back on, but none of the time spent writing shitty stories was time wasted because i had fun doing it and it ultimately helped me improve! so rather than focusing on perfection in writing or worrying about making sure it's good, i think it's honestly more important to just focus on enjoying the process :) which leads me to my second point...

2 - write stories that you want to read!!

again, this might seem obvious and self explanatory, but i feel like especially with social media and influencer culture and the late capitalist hellscape we're all descending into there's this mentality that you need an audience to validate the things you're creating, like art and literature should only exist to be consumed. and i think this mentality is damaging for a lot of reasons, but the one i'll focus on right now is that i think it's incredibly easy to get burnt out when you're creating for other people.

like, ok. i feel like i've had the greatest personal growth with my own writing over the past year and a half, and it started because i was just like "fuck it i want to read the captive prince series from laurent's perspective," and so i wrote it. and part of me was like - oh, this isn't real writing because i'm just rewriting a book series, i'm not coming up with a plot or making up my own characters, etc etc. but the thing is i had tried to write original novels in the past and had always just hit a plateau partway through, so even though part of me was like oh there's no purpose to this, it's not like it's something i'll ever be able to publish--it was just fun! like i was just genuinely having a good time! and it ended up being really good writing practice, because i got to just focus on this in-depth character study + also prove to myself that i could sit down and churn out a book-length work of fiction, even if i was following someone else's plot.

and so then i sort of got out of my own head about like...only ever writing with the ultimate goal of publication in mind, and started focusing more on just writing for fun. and that led to atyd - sirius's pov, which sort of exploded, and then i found myself starting to get bogged down again in focusing on like -- oh, how many people have read this chapter, how many people have commented, what good things are people saying, what bad things are people saying, etc etc. and i started to get in my own head again about the fact that i was rewriting a story, the kind of impostor syndrome mentality of like "well this isn't real writing because it's not 100% original" etc etc etc. and so any time i started worrying about how my writing was being ~consumed by an audience~ i had to like check myself and take a step back and remind myself that at the end of the day, i was writing for me, because it was a story that i wanted to have and to read and while it was amazing and so so special to have so many people invested in the project, it was never really about providing a story for an audience--that was just a happy side effect and not something that i could sustainably centre my writing process around.

and again, even though i was following someone else's plot and building on an already-existing world and characters, sirius's pov helped me grow so much as a writer and also gave me the confidence to feel like i could actually, feasibly write a novel on my own, which is genuinely something that i never knew whether i'd be capable of because i struggled so much in the past. but now i'm essentially writing my own book with this dorlene fic, and i don't think that's something i'd have been capable of a year ago!

anyway, all that is to say -- don't worry about whether your writing is "serious" or publishable or something that will appeal to a broad audience, and try not to measure the worth of your writing based on other people. write a story that you want to read, because the best way to avoid burnout is to make sure that you're having fun writing! like even when i need a break from actually writing my current fic, i'll still find myself thinking about future scenes i want to write + daydreaming + planning it out in my head because it's a story i want to read, and that's what gets me excited to continue writing it! it's really fun to share your writing with an audience and it's so so so amazing to hear that your work resonates with people (seriously, cannot emphasize enough how much i appreciate those of u who send messages like this + leave comments + kudos + all that 💕), but for me the biggest breakthrough i had with my writing was realizing that my most important reader is myself (as cheesy as that is) 🕺 💞

#this got soooo long #basically just turned into me reflecting on my own writing ~journey~ lol #but at this point if ur still following me i feel like essays are expected #ask #thtf #writing tips

[trans-advice]

Hey :)

I need some advice on how to talk to my stepmom. I’m not out to any of my family yet, and I know they’d be supportive, but I’m not sure if I’m ready.

Where I really need the advice is with Harry Potter. My stepmom grew up with the books and my little brother got REALLY into them too. He’s seen a couple of the movies and read all the books and everything, and has some HP merch. I talked to my stepmom on the phone the other day and asked if she was aware of JKR and her transphobia and what she thought of it. She said she was aware but didn’t know specifics or the severity, and that she’d do some more thinking and researching, but that when it comes to things like that it’s hard because my brother is so into it. She’s keeping him from reading any of her opinion pieces, which I appreciate, but I can’t help but be a little upset by their continued support of her work. I know that they would never intentionally upset me, and I do get how it’s a difficult decision (I suspect my brother is autistic, as am I, so I don’t want to take a special interest away from him) but should I try talking to my stepmom about it again? Is it worth coming out to her so she can see how it’s affecting me emotionally on a personal level? Should I just get over it? I can’t help but feel like I’m overreacting. Thanks in advance :)

There are at least a couple things to say, the JKR gets so focused on is because she's a billionaire collecting royalties from Harry Potter via intellectual property. Her royalties then fund promotion of transphobia, antisemitism, etc. Unfortunately, her antisemitism, her pro-slavery, her transphobia, her pro-imperialism, has many different clones, as bell hooks critiqued in December 2003 in chapter 3 of "The Will To Change".

Ever since masses of American boys began, in the wake of the civil rights struggle, sexual liberation, and feminist movement, to demand their right to be psychologically whole and expressed those demands most visibly by refusing to fight in the Vietnam War, mass media as a propaganda tool for imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy have targeted young males and engaged in heavy-handed brainwashing to reinforce psychological patriarchy. [...]

In the wake of feminist, antiracist, and postcolonial critiques of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the backlash that aims to reinscribe patriarchy is fierce. While feminism may ignore boys and young males, capitalist patriarchal men do not. It was adult, white, wealthy males in this country who first read and fell in love with the Harry Potter books. Though written by a British female, initally described by the rich white American men who "discovered" her as a working-class single mom, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books are clever modern reworkings of the English schoolboy novel. Harry as our modern-day hero is the supersmart, gifted, blessed, white boy genius (a mini patriarch) who "rules" over the equally smart kids, including an occasional girl and an occasional male of color. But these books also glorify war, depictedas killing on behalf of the "good."

The Harry Potter movies glorify the use of violence to maintain control over others. In Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets violence when used by the acceptable groups is deemed positive. Sexism and racist thinking in the Harry Potter books are rarely critiqued. Had the author been a ruling-class white male, feminist thinkers might have been more active in challenging the imperialism, racism and sexism of Rowling's books.

Again and again I hear parents, particularly antipatriarchal parents, express concern about the contents of these books while praising them for drawing more boys to reading. Of course American children were bombarded with an advertising blitz telling them that they should read these books. Harry Potter began as national news sanctioned by mass media. Books that do not reinscribe patriarchal masculinity do not get the approval the Harry Potter books have received. And children rarely have an opportunity to know that any books exist which offer an alternative to patriarchal masculinist visions. The phenomenal financial success of Harry Potter means that boys will henceforth have an array of literary clones to choose from.

The reason I mention this is that it means that the goal should also be to prevent merch acquistions from being ones that pay JKR royalties. For example, no streaming & no on-demand. Pirating would be more ethical in this case. I also mention this because there's at least 2 other problems: the media overall still supports white bourgeois patriarchy & your brother is likely getting targeted by the school to prison pipeline, which assimilation basically says on average you either have to step on other demographics (such as students of color, poor students, & or tgnciq students, etc) & break solidarity in order to avoid getting targeted, or you get more policing sicced on you.

To summarize there’s 3 goals regarding your brother:

1. do not give JKR money,

2. make sure he starts to become anti-sexist, anti-racist, etc.

3. protect him from the school-to-prison pipeline.

She said she was aware but didn’t know specifics or the severity, and that she’d do some more thinking and researching, but that when it comes to things like that it’s hard because my brother is so into it. She’s keeping him from reading any of her opinion pieces,

The mind can only handle what the butt can stand. She hasn't said which sources she's going to research. Further just because she changes her mind about JKR doesn't mean she'll be able to teach your brother. For example, parents can't censor everything, especially as kids learn to evade censorship, or teachers, students, adults at school & in other social settings expose them to various works including hate speech. What parents can do is control their own wallets.

For example of people at school & other social settings promoting hate speech, some special needs establishments use neurosexism to promote myths such as “only males can have autism”. I literally had teachers use neurosexist myths on entire mainstream classrooms in order to promote other neuromyths like the visual-audio-kinesthetic (VAK) model of learning models. (Like seriously, these teachers would tailor their lesson planning to accommodate these 3 styles. Neurosexism got used to sometimes segregate people by gender marker.) If you need more insight, I recommend Cordelia Fine’s “Testosterone Rex” & “Delusions of Gender”, along with reading up on the school-to-prison pipeline. Schools tend to attack/thwart student solidarity/activism & they are legally allowed to on the basis of preventing “disruptions to education”. This means that on average faculty will reward students who suck up by attacking other students who are either: disabled students, students of color, tgnciq+ students, and or poor students, because this helps break up solidarity. Seriously, I don’t know how your brother’s school’s faculty acts, but consider that your stepmom also has to deal with them & will need support dealing with them.

So no, I don’t know if you coming out will actually do anything. You family is maybe supportive, and even consent to back you up, but are they able to back it up? I don't know your family's situation. I think y’all need help dealing with sexism, dealing with the school-to-prison pipeline, etc. To raise a child, it takes a village, so to combat the racist capitalist anti-TGNCIQ+ patriarchy also takes a village. Make sure your stepmom & family & brother has the support to help your brother learn that sexism, racism, etc, are bad.

Good Luck, Peace & Love,

Eve

[ioannemos]

13, 24, 28?

What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

difficult: loss really gets to me rn, esp the little ways life changes... tragedies are hit and miss. e. g. i did okay with the separation at the end of the mandalorian season two bc i knew in my greedy capitalistic heart that too much money was being made for gisney to keep them apart, but i have less faith in the writers of stranger things so let it be known that If Steve Harrington Dies We Riot

easy: lower stakes problems for characters who are usually in high stakes circumstances. they might still be Going Through It, but the potential outcomes are less life-changing. several of my actually published works are in that vein

How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

what's prep work?

seriously tho most of it's mental. inspiration usually comes in a rush and i go over it in my head a few times before committing it to a document. and that's it

Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?

"delightful" is not a descriptor i'd use for... most of my favorite characters, tbh. i assume this means ocs, which narrows it down a lot

i'm gonna say q free. he's fun bc he's a wild card when it comes to like. everything. this is a man who can differentiate between different kinds of caviar and also has a rating system for which restaurants are best for dumpster diving. he has silver that's been in his family since at least the elizabethan era and sleeps on an air mattress. he could hide a few million dollars in art and land acquisition by calling one or two contacts in his two-generations-ago smartphone with a cracked screen. he has eaten live bugs for pocket change and knows how to use a sword. he speaks a handful of languages fluently and is terrified of maternal women. he has nightmares about his cousin dying bc if that happened he'd become heir to one of the richest couples on the planet and he'd rather go on delivering packages in the rain and staying in just listening to music on the weekends, thanks. i never know what he's gonna reveal to me next

#thank you #dangerously human #let's talk #ask #asked and answered #personal #abbie needs a twitter #writing is hard #my muse is a monster #q free #of: heaven and earth

[selormohene]

day 145 (saturday, november 25th 2023)

As the record will no doubt show I haven't actually made any progress on the backlog in ages. At this point I will most probably have to abandon or at any rate sharply revise my original plans for this, concerning tailoring my reflections to the day for which they're made. Of course at this point most of them, even those which are mostly written on the day of, end up being substantially changed once I start to put them up, but we'll see if this ever gets properly back on track.

Not too long ago I started watching Suits, which is one of those many shows I’d heard of but hadn’t really had the chance to watch. It’s a fascinating show — not necessarily the highest-stakes drama, but entertaining enough to keep you watching and with a fair amount of levity. Of course the most compelling character is Harvey Specter. He’s fascinating as a moral archetype. He’s obviously selfish, thinks about himself first, etc., but not in a way where he’s devious or underhanded. He seems to be serious about his loyalties when he has them, or finds them useful, but he’s also pretty self-sufficient, etc. Perhaps what one wants to say is that stronger than anything else is his drive to win, and his ability to actualise that drive, and so that allows him to maintain his loyalties to other people in situations where someone otherwise as selfish as he is would have instead to turn his back on those obligations, or cut the people in question loose. He’s a very charismatic character with none of the insecurity that would otherwise characterise someone as self-important as he is. He essentially strikes me as a megalopsuchos but with fewer of the contemporary connotations of the word “magnanimity” (which seem to be somewhere in the original Aristotelian notion as well).

One theme of the show of course is the role of money in the good life. It takes place at an elite law firm and as I saw in college part of the reason why one would work at such a punishing place is presumably so you can make a lot of money and live well. This brings me in mind of the question of money as a means versus as an end. Although it's true that all sorts of people seek money as an end in itself (misers, capitalists), it seems to me that most people really seek money as a means to their ends. And this would sound like a somewhat trivial point but the idea is that extensionally speaking it yields a lot of the same behaviour, but it's being driven by different things. There are some people whose tastes or lifestyle doesn't change, but they still want to see the number go up, whereas there are other people whose lifestyle goes up as they acquire more income. Such people will either be driven towards just ever-more-lavish pursuits, and thus continue to be driven to acquire more money, or else their need to acquire more money will taper off as time goes on. I suspect that a lot of comfortable high earners actually display this pattern, although I couldn't tell you for sure. But you might also think that someone who falls into the second category wouldn't be driven to acquire as much as they think they'd like unless they also had a bit of the first in them. Who knows, anyway.

Something else, which is introversion as lack of social context. Or perhaps introversion isn't the right word, but rather something that manifests similarly. It strikes me that what one might call introverted behaviour could be construed as a lack of context in social situations. I've never really liked the idea of "reading the room," as it seems to index the bounds of one's own acceptable behaviour to the dispositions of others, which are taken for granted in precisely the way that one's dispositions are not so taken if their suitability for the given situation is being placed at issue, but it's a useful metaphor here I think; the idea is that a social situation calls for a certain sort of interpretive engagement and response — knowing what to say, knowing what the other person wants to talk about, knowing how to respond to certain signals, etc. Knowing how to read the vibes, and how not to bring them down as well. And to someone who doesn't have that interpretive ability a room full of people will seem like a page with letters on it which you can't make out into meaningful words. Phenomenologically anyway that's how it often seems to me, although I haven't been able to place this feeling so concretely until now.

I’ve been thinking about investing volume early on to build capacity for later; these are lessons I've learned from philosophy and running (and probably other stuff, like reading and writing), with applications to things like math and lifting, or music, and so on. There’s a way in which if you work really hard when you’re young, or try to study a lot, or make a lot of money, or build connections or whatever, even if later on you’re not at the same point in life, there’s still a difference between you and someone who just never did all that (or, if you want a less morally fraught comparison, between you and the version of yourself who didn’t do all that). The difference is that you’ve built capacity. So for instance having done sprint training means that even if you’re out of shape you have a higher peak to return to; it’s known for instance that in something like lifting or playing sports, there’s this “muscle memory” which can be reactivated even after it’s lain dormant for years, etc. And this is something I want to focus on right now. Of course I don’t know if I’m in the “early” stages of my life anymore, I think I’m transitioning into the middle stages. Which is terrifying to think of, because for whatever reason I still don’t feel like an adult, and this isn’t a matter of “well no one does” because I can point to very central things which would make me feel like an adult and which people I know actually have but I don’t, and a lot of it has had to do with not having had a peer group or just a support system of other humans within which I feel like I would have had the support to grow. So I’ve basically lived the same life so far, in my late twenties, that I was living five years ago, which is a profoundly sad thought. But there you have it, I guess.

[qu-film-history-to-1968]

Murders in the Rue Morgue: Unexpected, Yet Expected.

Upon viewing Murders in the Rue Morgue and Maniac, I can now say, without a doubt, that Murders in the Rue Morgue is the superior film. For one thing, Murders in the Rue Morgue was produced by an actual studio, Universal. That already sets it ahead of Maniac, as being produced by a major studio such as Universal automatically means that there is a good budget. While it might not have had as much money as say MGM or Paramount, it still had a great deal more than an independent film. 

Universal’s Dracula sets up a structural template that the other Universal horror films would follow: the monster as outside of normative culture, seen as a threat to social/patriarchy/gender roles, and needing to be destroyed in order to disavow chaos and restore order to ‘bourgeois/capitalist ideology’ (Wood, 2002: 226). This quote is taken from the novel, Gothic Film, in the chapter, ‘So why shouldn’t I write of monsters?’: Defining Monstrosity in Universal’s Horror Films, written by Andy W. Smith. This quote is definitely accurate to the following films that Universal produced over the years after Frankenstein(1931). Murders in the Rue Morgue, released in 1932, also follows this pattern. The ape, along with a mad doctor who is crazy about evolution,  serve as the monster. The ape is the physical form, while the doctor represents the mental and emotional aspects behind it. There are other tropes as well. Main characters Pierre and Camille can be seen as star-crossed lovers. And Erik the ape kidnapping Camille to be rescued by Pierre is the classic  damsel in distress due to evil or monsters. What switches it up is the slight science fiction aspect and well as the true absurdity of it all when you think about it. Unless you had read the Edgar Allan Poe short story, upon which this film is based, most audiences watching the films for the first time would assume they are watching a regular mystery horror film. The fact that the monster is an an ape, in a film that takes place in Paris, seems quite out of place. But, it does work. In fact, the ape isn’t even the scariest part. In fact, he isn’t even completely at fault. Much like Frankenstein, it all started with the creator. The mad doctor in this film was responsible for the gorilla, as well as the kidnapping, experimenting on, and murder of multiple women. Between the doctor’s treatment of him, which includes underestimating his intelligence, it is no surprise that Erik turned on him.  While the scientist claimed he was doing the experiments to find the ape, Erik, a mate, it was really all for his greed and ego, to see what he could accomplish and how far he could go. 

The quality of Murders is ten times better than Maniac, in my opinion. The cast, compared to Maniac, is much more well known, with names such as Bela Lugosi and Sidney Fox. Bela Lugosi, who played the mad doctor, also played famous characters such as Count Dracula and Igor. Sidney Fox  made her debut in the film Bad Sister, which was also the film debut of famous actress Bette Davis. The editing, score, production design, camera,  etc. Not to mention, the plot is much more concrete and entertaining. It almost reminded me a bit of Godzilla. While I do realize that the differences in quality and story may be the point in Maniac, that does not mean it comes across the way they wanted it to.  I will always view Maniac as one of the strangest films I have ever seen.  

By: Callahan Coffey

Resources: https://quinnipiac.blackboard.com/bbcswebdav/pid-5740967-dt-content-rid-69967182_1/xid-69967182_1 

#submission

[undinegeist]

The bible is the worst sort of dumpster fire, written like shit…no wonder, how else are the masses supposed to read it? And here, ladiex & gentx, comes the elitist cunt…but it could be true, for real.

That’s the only reason I can think of that it’d be written that way, so fucking simple (which is not my kinda dive, I’d rather read something I don’t get than something so easy there’s no need to think about it) so that people who aren’t in the habit of reading can consume that shit, and internalize it.

And it’s sick, dude, it’s so sick…even me, being agnostic at most, like…there’s some trick there, idk what it is but there were bits I was reading where I went like…oh fuck, I’m doomed, I’m gonna go to hell, and I started getting legit scared. Not of going to hell, I don’t think, just that I was doing something wrong…by just being the way I am…I can’t quite tell wtf that was. But it’s something in there, in the way it was written maybe…something that hooks you, and what creeps me the fuck out is how if you have nothing else you’re holding on to while you’re reading it - in my case a deep hatred for monotheistic bitches and their bitch gods, plus a general mistrust of human-written bs claiming to come from gods - you’ll probably fucking drown in it. And personally? I don’t think that’s cool.

It’s like all the shit in there is teaching you to be a slave, bend down before your master…your master in this instance being god (ick), though it strikes me that it also preps people to obey their capitalistic bosses, gives them a slavery mindset.

This is tenuous ground, I know - mentioning slavery in connection to religion, but like…read it and you’ll see.

It’s like one big let’s-tame-the-masses take…that’s what I fucking hate, that it makes people stop thinking critically to follow blindly, which is exactly what the people who wrote it want (nevermind their god, whether he exists or not - I’m ever more convinced this book has nothing to do with him one way or the other).

Also, excuse moi if you didn’t want to read this. If you did, thanks. I just had some thoughts I was writing down in a journal type thing and thought they might make interesting food for thought for somebody else?

I’d not recommend anybody reading this read the bible though…I’m doing it sort of as a dare - what won’t we do as a dare, amiright? - and also so I can criticise it properly, ‘cause how can you criticise something you haven’t read? Same reason I tried to read After - though I couldn’t, that was too shit even for me, ugh. Anyway.

Please don’t read After or the bible - you’d be better off surfing Booktube. Or…let me think of the last good book I read…yeah, can’t. But I’ve got a lil something for you, that I can’t say what it is to protect us from the copyright gods overlords.

click hell over here - you won’t be sorry, I hope.

#biblical thoughts #hotel diablo

[jomatto]

More Than Machine

I spent most of yesterday playing around with ChatGPT since its impact has been making rounds in the headlines. I can’t deny that it does amazing in some specialized tasks like writing SEO copy, and I wanted to know how it would fare in more creative endeavors. 

The assault of machine learning on once thought unassailable institutions of human ingenuity such as writing, art, and music, has presented cracks in some long held beliefs in the uniqueness of humanity. We might scoff and point to one too many fingers as evidence of a machine’s inability to address things that only a human can, but given the exponential development of machine learning, the day in which we can readily identify the “soul” in a work may soon be ending much more quickly than we realize. It is both an exciting and exceedingly frightening time to be in.

I’ve never been one to shy away from technology. Back when I was kid, I used a typewriter, literal imprinting of ink on paper, to write my stories. Today? I use a mix of voice dictation and typing on my iPad with my documents stored on the cloud, so things have changed quite a bit when it comes to my process. AI seemingly looms as the next frontier. While it’s no secret that our capitalist overlords are salivating at the thought of rendering large swaths of the working population obsolete, perhaps we can reclaim some of our autonomy through those very same tools. 

I’ve always dreamed of creating my own anime, and it may not be a pipedream that a single individual can produce the art, design, animation, voice, and music all on their own through machine-learning. Putting aside, of course, the ethical breach of how these datasets are acquired and the deprecation of art, reduced to a mere data point in an array of many.

With all these things in mind, just how sophisticated is ChatGPT today and how worried should I be as a writer that my ass would soon be replaced by a bot? 

I started out my experiments with some simple prompts. I asked it to write me a love story with elements A, B, and C. To my surprise, it was able to write out a self-contained and complete narrative from start to finish. In mere seconds, it managed to accomplish more than 50% of the dreck that adorns the pages of FanFiction.net. 

But that thing we call “soul” was distinctly missing. Now, not to say that anything written by a person is imbued with this nebulous quality, but to put it simply, what ChatGPT wrote was boring, cookie-cutter, and generic. Now detractors will immediately point to this as an abject failure of machine learning, but I decided to change up my approach. The age old adage of how much you get very much applies here. The results are only as good as your prompts. One of the things I wanted to test was its memory.

I established characters, assigning them traits and idiosyncrasies, and then put the characters in situations where these elements would collide. The bot spit out perfectly coherent scenarios with all the variables provided. I was very impressed by the results.

I would ask for dialogue, conversations, monologues, and descriptive passages. On its own, these small snippets wouldn’t be very valuable, but it can serve as building blocks to something greater. I was able to bounce ideas off the bot and it would occasionally provide me with inspiration.

So I continued changing my prompts, keying in on small details, while zooming out and asking for possible overarching themes and ideas. To sum up my conclusion: ChatGPT can be an amazing writing tool. It almost feels like having your very own personal editor. 

Don’t expect it to surprise you, but therein lies its value, because it is a treasure trove of tropes and clichés, and half of being a good writer is knowing what those are and how to use them well. I can easily see myself resorting to this bot if I’m ever stuck on a writer’s block. 

Perhaps its greatest value is in research, figuring details about locations, cultures, and other fields. Say, for instance, you’ve set a story in a different country and you have no idea about its customs, or perhaps one of the characters is in an occupation and you don’t have much clue in what their day-to-day entails. ChatGPT can fill in those gaps. 

While I’m sure that some of the details won’t stand up to scrutiny from true professionals, it would very much pass the smell test for the majority. For the purposes of writing fiction, it is more than enough.  

In regards to FanFiction, ChatGPT is like the ultimate lore master and wiki guide. If there’s something you need to know, you can just ask it and it may reply with startling accuracy. For funsies, I asked it to proofread some badly written stories and it managed to make it readable. This stuff is crazy, yo.

There is one caveat though, ChatGPT is prohibited from giving you anything sexually suggestive, so don’t expect it to be your instant lemon/lime generator. Y’all gonna have to do that the good ol’ fashioned way.

To answer the question, ChatGPT is not creative enough to stand on its own, but can be a huge boon to writers who know how to use it well. Should my ass be worried? It’s hard to tell at the rate machine learning is developing, but I believe my writer’s ass should be good for at least a couple more years. 

Famous last words.

Maybe?

[fatehbaz]

hi maybe you’ve written about this before but i’m working for someone who is part of the ecological landscape alliance and we’ve been having big talks about the concept of “invasive” species vs “native” plants and how the concept is rooted in xenophobia, and also talking about how maybe invasive plants aren’t that bad?? this goes against everything i’ve ever heard anyone talk about invasive species but i really don’t know all that much about it. sounds silly maybe coming from a farmer but i really don’t have a super firm ecological understanding, most of my plant knowledge is agricultural based and im really curious to learn more and was hoping you could point me in the right direction?

Yes, I definitely run into this disk horse all the time. Especially the “maybe invasive plants aren’t that bad” discussion. It seems the native/alien stuff is most often mentioned in disk horse about the Anthropocene. Basically, you’ll sometimes see statements like: “Is anything really natural in the Anthropocene?” I have also seen, and spent a lot of time contemplating, how belief in the categories of “natural” and “alien/invasive” in discussion of ecology might be rooted in or at least inadvertently support racism/xenophobia.

But I am still wary of the “native vs alien” and “no creature or landscape is really natural, not any more” disk horse, at least as explored by some white/settler-colonial academics, for exactly the same reasons: because it might be rooted in or support racism/xenophobia. Because the proposal that “nothing is native, nothing is invasive” itself can actually engage in a sort of “settler absolution” that obscures how there really is a contrast between imperial and Indigenous peoples, and the “nothing is natural, nothing is invasive” proposal could excuse the colonial/imperial introduction and expansion of monoculture by accepting the spread of industry/agriculture/non-native species as an inevitability. And these concepts can actually work to generalize conditions of ecological degradation and apocalypse, as if to say that “all humans now live in such a damaged world, we’re all victims” (even though many non-white, especially Indigenous, people actually bear most of the violence and burden of living in “post-apocalyptic” ecologies.)

But actually, I don’t think I can be too helpful here.

I still have a lot of contemplating to do, about how categories of natural/invasive in ecology might support the violence of categorizing people as natural/invasive. Don’t really know where I stand yet, y’know? So I don’t want to be too quick to come to a conclusion. I don’t even really want to offer opinions here. That said, I am very sensitive to language, and the language that I use. So I do appreciate that there is an effort to interrogate the negative consequences of describing things with words like “alien”. Also, the categorizing of lifeforms is and always has been a mess.

I don’t have many reading recommendations. The “native vs alien” and “nothing is really native, actually” proposals are concepts that I brush up against but don’t read too deeply into, even though this disk horse has been popular-ish in dark ecology and academic ecology/environmental studies circles for at least 10 years or more by now.

I guess, for my thoughts on native vs alien, what counts as “natural”, invasive species, and how the disk horse can excuse settler-colonial/imperial racism, I would point to this post I made about Pablo Escobar’s feral hippopotamuses in Colombia.

One introduction to the concept, which I think is an enjoyable read (though I don’t necessarily agree with all of his implications), is this essay by Hugo Reinert about the category of “natural” and the “purity” of a species: “Requiem for a Junk-Bird: Violence, Purity and the Wild.” Cultural Studies Review. 2019.

Anna Boswell’s very famous article about stoats and non-native species in Aotearoa kind of dances around this same issue of naturalness: “Settler Sanctuaries and the Stoat-Free State.” Animal Studies Journal. 2017.

-------

Generally, I agree with the implication that there is no “remote” or untouched corner of the planet where ecology has escaped human influence.

On that aspect, here’s a post I made about “planetary urbanization”.

But the native/alien disk horse can be extended to problematique degrees, with proposals that sometimes remind me of sci-fi goofiness, like fans of dark ecology or weird fiction or Mieville/Van der Meer got a little too excited about “the boundary between human and other-than-human has become so blurred that there may as well no longer be distinctions between native species and invasive species”, like they got a little too drunk on theory and just decided that “everything is in flux!”. Criticisms, then, of the “nothing is native” disk horse include how this oversimiplifies ecology and might enable/excuse settler-colonial invasion.

A lot of the “invasive plants are good, actually!” disk horse I’ve seen shows up in Australian literature written by settler scholars, which might be pretty telling.

Basically, it seems some scholars will take Alfred Crosby’s “neo-Europe” and “ecological imperialism” concepts, and then say something like “look, the damage is done, so much of Earth’s soils/landscapes are altered by introduced plants that we may as well accept it as the new baseline/normal ecology, and work from there.” As if to point at how North America has been entirely overrun by non-native earthworms and then to say “well, the worms are going to inevitably destroy hardwoods forests, soils of the Great Lakes region, the boreal-temperate transition zone, and maple trees which supply place-based maple syrup foodsheds, so we may as well accept that we live in a damaged world.”

I don’t know if I’m entirely satisfied with this.

-------

Other related concepts brought up in the same  discussion of “nothing is really native” might include “invasion biology” and “assisted migration.” I see these concepts brought up in academic writing from the University of California system, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and “environmental humanities” generally. Basically, these writers/scholars will point to the past ten thousand-ish years of the Holocene, and how humans have had such profound influence on global ecology that “introduction of non-native species” and “mass-scale anthropogenic climate/ecological change” are not just recent developments since Industrial Revolution or Indus/Yellow/Mesopotamian statecraft, but even older. For example, I’ve talked a lot about how, in the Late Pleistocene or early Holocene, the Asiatic steppes and parts of the Great Plains could have apparently been more like intermittent woodlands before humans engaged in deliberate fire-setting to better target megafauna herds, meaning that the human role in creation of vast “naturally-occurring” grassland regions may be underestimated. This dove-tails with the better-established fact that the forests of Central America and eastern North America in the early Holocene were/are actually more like cultivated food forests managed by Indigenous people.

The argument, then, may also point to yams, sweet potato, and coconut as examples of creatures with what now appear to be “old” and “established” widespread transoceanic distribution ranges which actually may have been introduced via assisted migration by humans.

The argument, basically, says: Well, let’s say hypothetically that humans didn’t play a role in spreading sweet potato or coconut. By chance, if ocean currents “naturally” introduced these species, if these plants “naturally” colonized whatever lands they were swept off towards, doesn’t this mean they could essentially be “natural” to anywhere they might arrive and successfully establish themselves? Therefore, does it really matter if humans helped them get there?

This seems to be related to the “no plants are actually invasive” proposal. As if to say: “If English pasture grasses have successfully reproduced themselves in Patagonia, Aotearoa, South Africa, the Canadian prairies, etc., what does it mean that their migration was assisted by humans?”

But this is where I have reservations: It wasn’t just any humans that “assisted the migration” of monoculture grasses from Europe to the prairies of Turtle Island. It was specific humans, with deliberate intent, upholding specific institutions, protecting their own well-being at the expense of other humans and lifeforms, enacting specific violence against specific victims.

-------

Another aspect of this which I see mentioned often is how early human/Polynesian settlement in Oceania and the South Pacific is an example of how mass anthropogenic ecological change doesn’t always involve statecraft, mass mono/agriculture, and imperialism. Aside from the famous decline of creatures like the moa, Polynesian islands were also home to relict species of large land turtles and ancient terrestrial/semi-arboreal crocodiles until human arrival in recent millennia. Writers will also point to human settlement in the Caribbean, where human arrival coincided with extinction of remnant populations of endemic Pleistocene ground sloths. (This also happened on Mediterranean islands, which hosted endemic species of hippopotamus and goats until recent millennia.)

Again, though, this is where white/settler-colonial academics advocating “nothing is natural” can kind of obscure settler-colonial violence, by pointing to history of anthropogenic environmental change and saying “see, all humans provoke extinction.”

Thus, you’ll see these scholars invoke Anna Tsing or Donna Harraway, referencing the “arts of living on a damaged planet” or “living in post-capitalist ruins.” Essentially, advocates of “nothing is native, any more” might say “we all live in a post-apocalyptic world now, so we should get used to it.”

This, coming from white/settler-colonial academics, sometimes rubs me the wrong way, as if it’s sort of like wish-fulfillment, or “an adventure” for comfortable white academics to engage in low-stakes thought experiments about extinction, naturalness, and apocalypse from which they’re actually largely insulated, at least compared to the poor, non-white, non-academic people who cope with the worst of environmental racism and ecological collapse.

This, again coming from white/settler-colonial academics, is also of course more than a little grating, since it kind of co-opts or culturally appropriates the “Indigenous/Native people actually live in a post-apocalyptic world” concept proposed by Indigenous scholars. It kind of takes from Indigenous/non-white people, and then generalizes the apocalypse as something that all humans now live with in seemingly equal measure, obscuring the fact that many people are actually forced to cope and/or live with more-serious-of-an-apocalypse than others.

-------

At the end of the day: Sure, kudzu or English pasture grasses or coconuts or European earthworms or domesticated cattle might be generalist species which can successfully inhabit landscapes across the planet. So whether humans introduce them via agriculture, or whether they "naturally" expand by some accident or by drifting across ocean currents, they might exist in this strange ontological space between "native" and "alien" which confounds human conceptions of what "belongs"? And this is worth considering! This is good to think about! But there are still, and always have been, those "small" landscapes, those isolated pockets, those relicts and remnants in shaded stream corridors, where small populations of endemic species teeter on the verge, with highly-specialized adaptations to highly-specific microhabitats. You're not going to "assist the migration" of or "accidentally introduce" a cave-obligate salamander from a limestone cavern or a temperate rainforest-dwelling land-slug to a desert biome.

But, again, I still think it is good to stop and ask ourselves whether categories of “natural” and “alien/invasive” in ecology make sense, are outdated, or if they reinforce racism/xenophobia. And, again, I haven’t read enough -- I haven’t grappled with these questions enough -- to have an opinion which I’m comfortable sharing, so I don’t want to discourage this disk horse too much.

Anyway, hope some of this is interesting. Sorry. Again, I don’t really have any good recommendations.

[googledocsdyke]

Do you have any thoughts/recommended texts for Cas analysis? I genuinely love the dean gender studies and I just wanna know what people might apply to Cas.

yes absolutely!! while dean studies is my first love i also deeply love cas analysis (casnalysis?) and wanna strive to do more of it. here’s some stuff off the top of my head:

1. gender, sexuality, heavenly embodiment

this is much more theological and less psychological than dean’s whole Deal because there’s so much fascinating stuff around how the angels in general experience express and conceptualise gender (@autisticandroids has a good post about angel gender & lily sunder has some regrets) but for cas in particular there’s this fascinating kind of collective fandom agreement (which i DO also agree with) that cas’ own gender kind of is gay man, that he actively chose gay manhood, but also that he’s kind of..... lacking the Insane Genderishness that dean exhibits at all times, even though he actively chose to engage in male gendering and became so comfortable housed Within Jimmy that he, as some post i saw the other day that i can’t find anymore said, “became his own body” when jimmy died. 

like on the one hand there’s an almost-canonical transness to the whole process but it also never feels fully written-into because 1) the supernatural writers for all their insanity are sometimes very boring and *most* of the time only feel interested in narratively expressing angels As Their Vessels anyways and just like leaving convenient spaces around these questions (boldest thing they ever did was hot girl cas which i WISH i had the range to unpack) 2) there’s a vague inevitabilist shrug to the whole thing since they obviously weren’t gonna recast misha collins (though they HAVE tried to get rid of him) and 3) something amorphous about cas’ entire..... personhood? makes him Empty Of Gender as a contrast to dean’s Full Of Gender (i believe it was @deanwinchestergender who said this) and like is it just the juxtaposition to dean/jensen’s whole insane Deal? or something else? 

like he actively chooses the terms of his own embodiment and yet narratively it feels like a shrug. and we’re all like “well obviously even though he’s a celestial being he was always a gay man” and like WHY. i love it idk idk much to think about! and yeah just in general the theological questions of possession and cas genuinely Becoming a man as he iterates himself consciously towards humanity it almost feels like. by doing the most boring things possible with his gender they made it interesting? idk if that makes sense.

2. discipline, free will, metanarratives

cas is like a tool (“i am not a hammer, as you say”) held in constant discipline and surveillance by the system that enmeshes him and it’s really, really fascinating to watch the way the angels hold each other to conformity. especially pre-god they kind of produce each other as foucauldian disciplinary subjects (which i posted about here) in perpetual visibility through angel radio, generating their own and each other’s conformity rather than being directly ruled through like a single centralised source of power. only the spectre of a god. and obviously cas’ whole thing is that he has ALWAYS disobeyed and the narrative affords him this psychological interiority never given to the foucauldian subject, an internal will and desire for freedom in a way that fits more with the liberal subject (super roughly and not with the same pro-capitalist implications but he has this internal drive for self-liberation. 

and that’s also where the metanarrative comes in ofc! i think it was @dykecas who said that cas is a real person written by people who hate him, and there’s this crack in the narrative (mirroring the crack in his chassis) where cas gets in, over and over, despite all the order imposed by the show’s authorfathergod. like we’ve all seen the analysis about how it was Never supposed to be this way they DID try to fire misha collins in 2012 and yet this gay man literally cannot be stopped! i think actually his appearance in scoobynatural is a neat little distillation of this — he drops into this animated world originally with a singular purpose (Save Sam And Dean) the same way he dropped into lazarus rising with a single 3-episode arc (Save Dean). huge hammer behaviour. his “utility” diminishes within the narrative (he finds that he can’t fly in the scooby doo universe) and so he is no longer a tool/means to an end that salvation moves Through. and in the process (and huge creds to @lesbianyuugi for this) he does something ENTIRELY unrelated to his original cas-as-tool aim, and learns, like, the meaning of laughter from shaggy and scooby. WHICH brings me onto the third point

3. love, queer kinship, family-making

HE’S GAY AND HE’S A DAD! i feel like a lot of tumblr throws around the term “found family” in a very flat and tropey way (which is fine it’s cute and fun no matter what!) but like . GOD there’s so much specific stuff going on here. like the way that cas (unintentionally) obliterates the midwestern white christian nuclear family (made incarnate in the novaks) which like could be uniformly portrayed as an act of deep malice and villainy but instead grows to serve as a surrogate (if imperfect/complex, but DEEPLY loving) father figure for the gay daughter who has now escaped that nuclear family/seen it destroyed depending on how you read it? like he remasters the entire concept of fatherhood and it’s a very interesting (if DEEPLY) unintentional subversion of the homewrecking non-nuclear gay trope. cas is so good because his character arc doesn’t say “look, gay people can be normal and have perfect settled families just like you” it says “gay people DON’T have normal settled families actually and they are full of love anyways! or Because of the abnormalcy itself!) 

to cite ziz lesbianyuugi again he DOES queer fatherhood in his parenting of jack particularly because it really is one of the ONLY parent-child relationships in the show that breaks the incessant cycle of abuse and control and cold indifference perpetuated by the authorfathergod (a cycle reified in 15x20 lol). like god’s treatment of cas and his siblings mirrors john’s treatment of sam and dean (particularly dean) mirrors victor’s treatment of krissy and her crew mirrors dean’s later treatment of jack. there is a CONSTANT reiteration of the story of authorfathergod (often a father tightly entwined in biological kinship) treating a child as a mechanism or a tool or a means to an end. and cas looks at ALL that he has suffered and all that he is ever known and chooses constantly to reject it with every piece of love he expresses for his child. and not to sound like the kind of academic people make fun of on twitter but there is an INHERENT queerness to that. gay love will pierce through [the veil of death/the thick silence of abuse/the mechanism of godly control/hegemonic american masculinity] and save the day

anyways here are some very haphazard recs on everything above for further reading:

angels in america (tony kushner)

histrionics of the pulpit: trans tonalities of religious enthusiasm

the public universal friend: religious enthusiasm in revolutionary america

discipline and punish (michel foucault)

friendship as a way of life (michel foucault)

the genesis of blame (recommended by @pietacastiel who has GREAT theology content in general

all about love (bell hooks)

the chapter “when hated characters talk back” in anti-fandom: dislike and hate in the digital age (is actually explicitly about cas)

also cannot recommend enough following the ppl i tagged above!! most of the unlinked stuff is available through http://libgen.li/ and bookshop is a good alternative to amazon if ur american and want physical copies

#thank you so much for this ask it was a delight to answer #spn #casnalysis #making a tag officially #gendernatural #long post

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

Hi! I hope you’ll answer this question bc it bothers me quite a lot.. https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-mean-now-that-BTS-are-partial-owners-of-Big-Hit-Entertainment do you think it is true what the second person (Christine Herman) said? After reading this, i started to wonder…what if BTS does really have only profit in mind while doing new projects these days? Maybe they don’t really care anymore about creative and meaningful lyrics and sound? With Butter and PTD…all this generic music sung in English. Of course they say “we wanted to make fans feel good”, “butter and ptd represent who we are” and all these things fans want to hear but.. do you really think it’s true? moreover, don’t get me wrong, i don’t find product placement in their reality shows as something terrible, i believe this is a normal thing, however, nowadays the members really film ads and do marketing a lot. so yeah, for some reason i began to question their integrity dhsjjss i hope you will understand from where my concerns come from and won’t find this ask stupid sjdjjdjd

After reading that persons answer I can immediately tell you that I basically don't agree with an overwhelming majority of what she said (even more so since a lot of it just makes her sound like a manti that hates the company and basically would want them to make music for free or something). Generally I don’t agree with most of the opinions this person holds, and also Quora really isn’t a good source for info or good opinions, most of it is written by mantis, haters, and toxic shippers with an agenda so most ARMY will tell you to stay as far away from that website as possible.

Anyway, her focus in that answer was on money, since BTS are shareholders (and how that’s a conflict of interest despite other artists doing the exact thing but no one really cares or ever thinks about it), but what she failed to consider and note was that Big Hit Music, so BTS' label, isn't part of HYBE in the sense that shareholding has no baring on it since BHM is private. So while BTS profit off of HYBE doing well, and have a small percentage of a voice as shareholders, that has nothing to do with BHM in the classical sense, even if BHM's earnings reflect well on HYBE numbers and the shareholder money. 

BHM was made private to ensure their artistry would remain untouched, that was the whole point of that.

Even if they weren't HYBE shareholders, take Namjoon as example. He has more than 170 KOMCA credits, is among the top 3 Korean artists with the most credits and is also the youngest of them all. It is said that his earnings from that alone can sustain his family for 3 generations over. Look at Hobi and Chicken Noodle Soup, that song was a hit and he paid the original creator of that song 2 million dollars upfront and earned a lot back due to how successful it was. Same goes for Hope World which, again, was and is still immensely successful. Look at Yoongi and his work both as prod. SUGA, featuring artist SUGA, and as Agust D, as well as the credits he holds for his work on BTS songs (giving him as well a total of over 100 KOMCA credits, just like Hobi). Bangtan have worked and continue to work extremely hard for their music, put their heart and souls into it, and it shows even if their style changed as they grew older and more mature.

Yes, money is a major motivator, but looking at the above paragraph, do you really peg the members as these corrupt money hungry sellouts with no music related integrity? Who would need to sign major deals and would throw away their passion to just release empty shells of music for the sole reason of money? Am I naive enough to believe that they don't care about money? Of course not, we live in a capitalist society and even if BTS wouldn't care about money anymore at this point, HYBE very much does, and yet still I can't find it in me to agree with any of what was said in that answer that person wrote.

More below the cut:

And that point about how Hyundai cars were sold out because of BTS, isn't that the point why literally any company ever hires celebrities to advertise and endorse their product? And sure, again, I'm certain they earned a lot on these deals, they aren't the first or last or only ones in the history of ever to do so. Besides, look at JK and what he's done for small companies, or Tae who wore a brooch made my a small creator at the airport which catapulted that creator into the eyes of millions of ARMYs enough so that they could move to a proper studio and earn money with their work. Or the modern hanboks JK wore which led to the brand being able to move into actual stores in malls because of their sudden new popularity and demand. Or him wearing a bracelet that helps whales with a percentage of the money from the sales of said bracelet. And for all of that JK and Tae didn't earn any money at all. JK himself said that he's more conscious of the brand he wears now because he wants to help smaller businesses in these trying times, not because they pay him to do so (especially since they would never be able to afford that), but because he's aware of the influence he has and how he can use it to help others. Sound very much like a capitalistic villain, right?

As for the product placement bit, have you been on YouTube recently? Have you noticed that many, if not most, YouTube videos by “bigger” creators (and by that I mean even people who are around the 100k subscriber mark) begin with them thanking whoever sponsored that particular video and give you a scripted minute to two minute long ad before getting into the actual topic of the video? And In The SOOP featuring Chilsung Cider, FILA clothes and the random mention of how good Samsung phones are isn’t much different from it, though really, if you’re not someone interested in fashion much, would you really notice or care that they wore FILA? It’s just...clothes? If it weren’t a BTS related show, would you even notice it much? And it’s not even like they mentioned those brands every five minutes or anything, just a few times, which sure sounded a bit out of place at times, but personally I thought it was easy to look past. That’s just how things work nowadays and it’s odd for people to behave like somehow BTS are the first and only ones to use product placements despite literally every movie and show doing it in subtle and less so manners.

The answer by that person you sent also mentioned the Hyundai song for their car IONIQ and, unsurprisingly, that person wrote it off as just some commercial jingle but I’d actually disagree with that. Not to sound like a Hyundai and Samsung stan, which I am neither of, but I actually think those two knew best how to utilize the artist they have spent millions on signing a deal with. Hyundai didn’t just write them off as pretty faces with a millions strong fan army behind them and that’s it, they remembered that they are musicians so they gave them a song and made a whole music video for it as well. And say what you will, it is a good song. Then, just a few days ago, Samsung stepped up their game and we were given Over The Horizon Prod by SUGA of BTS. For those who aren’t Samsung users, Over The Horizon is their signature ringtone and basically their company sound, and over the years different artists were asked to make their own version of it. And this time they reached out to Yoongi and asked if he’d like to do it as well. It’s kind of a big deal. Sure, Butter is used in one of their commercials much the way Dynamite was last year, but that’s beside the point. Would that person make the same claim about Imagine Dragons whose song Believer is also part of the ads for the new Samsung phones? I have my doubts.

Furthermore, and I don't want this to come across as mean toward you but, I think it is uncalled for to question their artistic integrity based on a total of 3 (three) English songs when last year alone we received 50+ songs, most of which were in Korean, among them the entirety of BE which was, according to the members, the album they were most involved in ever when it comes to both music and everything around it.

You can dislike their English songs, that’s more than fine, they have a very extensive discography you can listen to instead, but questioning their integrity based on them doing something that most, if not every, artist on their level does (as in sign ad deals with brands etc) is a bit much if you ask me. Does that mean indie artists whose songs get picked up for commercials (or for Netflix shows or movies) and thus it catapults them into the mainstream are also just money hungry people with no integrity and ones who don’t care about their music? Or is that, again, just a standard Bangtan is held to (as in that their integrity is questioned based on everything, even the most trivial/normal things) that only applies to them and no one else?

In the recent Weverse Magazine article about how Permission to Dance came to be there is a lot of talk about not only that song but also Butter and Dynamite, among the things being discussed and talked about they mentioned how the original lyrics for Butter were much more materialistic but that the members didn't like that so they asked for that to be changed. Likewise the original lyrics for Permission to Dance, as you'd expect from the penmanship of Ed Sheeran, were much more romantic, almost proposal like, which wasn't what the members wanted either so it was, again, adjusted in a way that would fit what they, as well as the A&R team, wanted. While you may not like these songs, they still had a say in them to a certain degree, could say yes or no and ask for adjustments. Why else would PTD take eight months?

While they might outsource their English songs, their main focus, so their Korean (as well as Japanese) discography is still centered around them, their lyrics, their songs, their sound. Of course you’ll also find outside producers and some lyricists on those as well, because that’s how music works these days, as in collaboratively, that doesn’t change anything at large. Their integrity is still very much there, their hearts are still in it, what other reason would any of them have to say that they want to continue for a long time, for Yoongi to say they want to figure out how to make their career last as long as possible, for JK to say that he wants to sing forever?

Admin 2 also wanted me to add that in their opinion, to a certain degree (though not fully of course), their English songs are like a way to laugh at and expose how shallow the English-centric music industry is. As in, while they made music in Korean with deep and meaningful lyrics, the US industry didn’t care but once they switched to easy to listen to sound with easy to understand English lyrics, they suddenly paid attention, are played on the radio, and even received a Grammy nomination which they wouldn’t have gotten for a Korean song ( A1: regardless how much Black Swan or Spring Day really would’ve deserved it...). 

#answered ask #BTS #hybe entertainment

[nightswithkookmin]

Hi Goldy, JK was bold in the past, around 2017-2019 (to me, gcf & rosebowl can be considered as ‘coming out’). But it seems he now prefers to stay closeted? E.g. he snatched JM’s hand in the Xylitol x BTS shoot, then looked at the camera. Holding hands is normal among members… a lot of his interactions with Jin, V and other members are more intimate than holding hands… his reaction makes me feel like he wants me to pretend I didn’t know…?

Sorry I've been a bit AWOL lately...

I'm busy being the man of my woman's dreams in a cis het anti black capitalist world

Fun times.

I saw that bit, uWu-ed and kept it pushing.

It's nothing new really. I think a few months back when I was out here screaming Jikook are toning down, acting super professional around the cameras yadda yadda people out here were looking at me like I'd lost my two delulu heads- but this segues into that theme for me and since I've exhausted the topic I don't know what else to add.

I've said before they've both been very conscious of the cameras within certain periods post October- again nothing new, they be like that every now and then every season every phase and the whys will always be up for debate in these ship streets- on that subject, I've read a lot of opinions yet I think like mine better and will stick to it. Thanks Kimberly of Delulu precinct. Walk along now. Lol.

Jimin was like that during the Coway behind the scene shoot too when he noticed the cameras and quickly elbowed Jk to draw him away from the gaze of the cameras.

I don't think it's because they stopped being 'bold' or want to pretend. It takes a lot of courage to even pretend or even perform the gay in front of the world and your peers. I think they are just awfully aware and conscious of the people they work with as well as corporation's growing awareness, intentions and interests in them. You just never know which saessang is moonlighting as a brand PA or marketing director for a company they are working with. You just never know who is watching especially whenever they have to work with these 'outsiders.'

Think of Dispatch. Were they not allies or business partners, they'd be careful around them too if they worked with them. Know what I mean?

Toning down and exercising caution is necessary sometimes. I don't know why some people think that's absurd or Tuktukkerish when I say stuff like that. Especially with the kind of reputation they have as a ship and just how commercially attractive that image is. It's common sense at this point if you ask me.

Jikook sells. Argue with the analytics. I don't know who thinks they don't. Must be the clowns and penguins. They sell period. BigHit knows this, BTS knows this, companies know this. We don't scream Jikook is a brand within a brand for no reason.

And a lot of the toning down in recent times has perhaps inadvertently mitigated that growing power and demand of them as a marketing resource- who knows, that could have as well been by design, intentionally instigated for obvious reasons which I argue is the case but don't mind me. I'm delusional, gay and apparently the man of my woman's dreams uWu. Gotta wear that pants in my relationship. Ayaya Hwaiting.

When you say he prefers to stay closested- I thought they are both closested already?? They both have never been fully out in our opinion. Yes our opinion because I feel we are like minded. Let's be delulu mates.

On the topic of closets, I want to save that for a separate post. What I can say though is they are both growing and maturing and learning and unlearning. Jungkook's desire to 'come out' or act reckless with his glass closet in my opinion stemmed from him placing more value on his personal happiness over other values perhaps because he was young and hadn't fully grasped the full and complex nature of happiness or understand the privilege he has as part of BTS.

We make decisions based on our values most times. It's how I make sense of their actions really. I'm more likely to assume things that are consistent with the values they each have expressed openly and tend to reject any theory that contradicts or is inconsistent with those values. A guy who values his career is less likely to act in a way that puts that career at risk. And I'm well aware their values evolve over time.

These days he has never quit as one of his mottos next to rather dead than cool- do you see the contradictions in those values? Rather dead means quitting life. Yet now he says never quit. Don't mind me. I'm in a grumpy mood.

But what I'm saying is, the desire to want to show the world who this person means to him is not fixed or a priority all the time. Now i think he values his career a lot more than before which means he is more likely to compromise and less likely to do things that may put that career in jeopardy.

Transferring that to his relationship, I don't expect him to be breaching the glass closet anytime soon. And if he do, it might be incidental and may carry with it consequences which I believe he is well aware and concious of now. Will that change? You bet. Again it depends a lot on what his values in a given moment are and which ones he prioritizes.

It's their relationship. They chose which aspects of it they want to share with the cameras. Some of it get written off as fanservice. Fair enough. But the nonfanservice passing moments has always been questionable- although I must say, I find all Jikook moments and interactions questionable lol.

It's just skinship. Holding hands I mean. Why would he be conscious of that right? II'vetalked about consequences and repercussions of their actions. Sometimes I think it's the off screen scolding that gets to him. The ones silently whispered at his back. I mean we saw his reaction when Jimin was getting scolded by the hyungs for sleeping late. He's talked about skipping sleep too if I recall correctly. Jimin is hyung and I know the hyungs expect him to know better and do better. I'd Imagine Jimin would equally scold JK if his actions reflected poorly on him too.

So why the hell would he not say anything to Jungkook for posting on his birthday when he hadn't posted at all for any hyung's??? Sigh.

It's sad his guards are back up- but it's for good reason I believe given the context of the situation.

I don't think dramatizing his dynamic with Jimin makes him bold. Nor does Jimin's propensity to over express himself with Jungkook mean he loves Jungkook more than. Both are extreme takes for me.

Nevertheless, I contrast that moment with a Tae Kook moment which is one of my favorite tuktukk moments. In this moment, JK is staring at Jimin, his whole body turned towards him. Tae notices the cameras and draws JK's attention to it. I think there are two such moments like that from the recent contents? I don't know I have to cross check.

Tae in that moment reminded me a lot of Jimin. Jimin does this too- play out their relationship infront of the cameras to the point one might say he likes to show off their bond- which is such a BTS thing to do too so no big deal. I mean they like to show off their bond and chemistry as Tae said a while back.

It's one thing for JK to hesitate to act with a member because of the cameras, it's another for him to act self conscious only after the fact.

And JK has always been him like this with Jimin as Jimin used to say- JK acts different with me off cameras than he is on camera. He had a history of suppressing himself around Jimin owing in part to his personality

He's talked about putting on a mask around people and in a recent interview Jimin have talked about pretending and acting one way when he's not- I mean I've ever talked about the boy being in love with the Maknae being a facade- one of many.

They have public personas which, from what BTS themselves say, looks slightly different or similar to what we see on screens- or that they've grown to be more like what we see on screens.

I guess what I'm getting at is that 'pretending' isn't exactly a new thing or out of the ordinary. Personally I'd say he's being conscious of his surroundings like Jimin was and not that he is 'pretending.' If you know what I mean.

If he's pretending he has good reason to I believe and we can only speculate on that- we can't know for sure why.

If Jikook is fanservice then there's no need for either of them to worry about the cameras picking up on their interactions or who's watching them.

What goes on in Tae's head? I wanna know.

I don't know where to direct this post because you didn't really ask a question.

I'm fine thanks for asking. I'm really fine. I'm thinking of joining Jimin in the gym at 3am to bench press and build some biceps to match my role in my relationship😒

And no I don't need any advice. Keep it.

This is going to be my attitude until we switch back😐

I'm gonna be a boyfriend from hell and a blogger from satan's ass.

Also I think I overshare💀

GOLDY