semi-stable 100 year old man

A problem with the whole Important Queer Media™ discourse is that a lot of folks don't seem to be able to parse "Important" as anything other than a moral judgment, and it's really not. Art is a dialogue. All works are in conversation with other works, and sometimes, works that have merit are deeply in conversation with works that suck. Acting like we can't talk about the latter at all is essentially demanding that we imagine an alternative universe in which those works weren't part of the conversation, yet somehow we ended up in the place – and while alt-history may be a fun intellectual exercise, it's not a great critical lens.

the elves in aramán are profoundly fucking sad. they're decaying. their people are completely unable to reproduce and they were created by the goddess of life. that feels like sylandri's real barrowdell. the elves as a dying people without her to sustain them.

Reblogging in honor of Marjane Satrapi, one of THE great graphic novelists. Her comic Persepolis was a crucial text for shaping my belief that comics can deeply explore identity, culture, politics, and history.

Happy pride month to him

it is my experience that people with dermal implants and eyeball tattoos and 34 visible piercings are the sweetest people you'll ever meet and will cry if they see a pigeon with a broken wing. it is also my experience that clean-cut people in polo shirts with perfect smiles will vote against your rights and say the most disgusting things imaginable once they think you're out of earshot.

yeah yeah rainbow capitalism is bad and whatever but like. when I was a child, being pro gay was not the popular or lucrative choice. I'm happy that times have changed.

I miss rainbow capitalism. I do. I miss when it felt like public opinion was still pro gay. I understand it was always an empty gesture, but it mattered in a sense of knowing how socially acceptable being queer is. If that makes sense.

It was always a thermometer, not a thermostat, and I’m begging people to understand that.

A lot of us are old enough to remember when a company risked mass boycotts and organized campaigns for daring to sponsor a Pride or LGBT+ event. A lot of us are old enough to remember when you could not find Pride flags or other rainbow items for sale in mainstream stores anywhere. What changed was that companies felt the LGBT+ community was worth selling to, worth publicly standing behind and worth acknowledging. And now that's changed again for many companies, which is a canary in the coal mine that should concern all of us.

i think one of the worst things the left wing internet ever did was push the idea that oppression is basically a virtue, and being oppressed is a sign of your morality. it has made it like…impossible for some of you to hold the idea that most people are privileged in some ways and oppressed in others. AND a lot of you seem to have it in your mind that terrible people cannot be oppressed, and that oppressed people cannot do terrible things, which is a dangerous rhetoric to hold imo.

Not only is it important so you don't get taken advantage of by terrible people wielding their oppressions as weapons, but also your convictions against oppression should not be contingent on the morality of the people suffering. Shitty people don't deserve to be oppressed either. Human rights are one of those things you only really understand and believe in if you see them as universal, not conditional.

like obviously ive been on the 'you can portray whatever you want in fiction, its all a pretend game' train forever. but i think the important thing to me here is that, you can also defend bad things in fiction. not just 'they did everything wrong and i love that,' but even 'they were 100% justified when they did [thing that would be extremely bad irl].' cause its like, ok, they did do that, but like it was the only way to tell the story well. dont worry about it.