the situation's a lot more nuanced than that

These guys but 2026 edition

(sound on 🔉)

in ep. 6 of ONLY FRIENDS (2023)

You can always tell when there's a Jewish holiday in a month because there's an uptick in the number of books I read (though in fairness some of these were short). Featuring some good horror, some less good horror, a couple memoirs, and another disappointing Greek mythology retelling featuring Medea. (How many can one blogger read before she gives up? The answer may surprise you.)

from Dangerous Fictions: The Fear of Fantasy and the Invention of Reality by Lyta Gold

Full painting process is here

Contender to be one of the best anecdote ever said

precious adams photographed backstage during balanchine's theme and variations by isabella turolla

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please don't lose the plot of this. if you're a trans person on HRT you're a living miracle, the dream of hundreds of millions of your ancestors. your lives are all deeply meaningful no matter what anyone says.

I think I'm gonna go lay down for a little while.

no no this is an excellent addition thank you

to quote brintnall: In his essay, "Masculinity as Spectacle", Steve Neale seeks to extend Laura Mulvey's work on the male gaze and to challenge her assertion that the male or male-identified spectator can never look upon the male body as an erotic object. To challenge Mulvey's assertion, Neale identifies the mechanisms mainstream Hollywood cinema uses to represent the male body as erotic. One way of doing this, Neale argues, is by making the male body the target of violence. In the war film, a soldier can hold his buddy – as long as his buddy is dying on the battlefield. In the western, Butch Cassidy can wash the Sundance Kid's naked flesh – as long as it is wounded. In the boxing film, a trainer can rub the well-developed torso and sinewy back of his protege – as long as it is bruised. In the crime film, a mob lieutenant can embrace his boss like a lover – as long as he is riddled with bullets. Violence makes the homoeroticism of many "male" genres invisible; it is a structural mechanism of plausible deniability. and that may be a leftover ripple of the hays code that we might never fully lose, but it is still a very real aspect of homoerotic relations in fictional depictions of male bonding. i also get at what they're getting at but i do not fully agree with "#because that would require a personal authentic relationship to their sexuality that they do not have" either. because, like, plenty of these men do have personal authentic relationships to their sexuality. or do have a genuine and sincere attraction to women. and that doesn't necessarily change that they also hate women. because in this society, misogyny is inherently baked into Straightness because the societal function of Straightness is to legitimise and launder misogyny and homophobia. it is why compulsory heterosexuality, in the feminist actual meaning from rich's essay and not the one it's taken on lately that basically just means internalised homophobia, is a thing that affects all women in the first place. and i am here obviously not talking about straightness as in the experience of being attracted to only the "opposite gender" in a neutral sense (though how neutral can that ever really be when so much about that is socially constructed too) but explicitly capital S Straightness as a social hegemony which functions as an extension of patriarchy. like, yes, these men can hate women and be legitimately and genuinely and authentically attracted to them at the same time because we live in a society in which male attraction to women is supposed to look like violence and dominance and ownership, and so men who engage in sexuality through that lens are fully engaging authentically. and that isn't to say that there isn't a healthy way for men to experience attraction to women, obviously not. but the idea that experiencing authentic attraction and and wanting to dehumanise or hurt them are two discongruent states is something that can very quickly turn into the very dangerous idea that sexuality and attraction are all inherently morally neutral or affirmative.

as far as Baldur's Gate 3 minor characters go I feel like Popper the Kobold is a solid nominee for one of my favorites