matter out of place

Black Menswear modelled by Black Men

I fell for it. You probably fell for it.

Fell for what?

Okay, this will be pretty disorganized, but I just want to say this: seeing yourself as, or wanting to be seen by others as, a reader or as a "smart" or well-read person, comes with some super value-laden frameworks for viewing the world which are based on insecurity.

I was talking to my best friend about fanfiction. He hates intellectual property laws and a bunch of our conversations seem to converge on that point from unrelated starting points.

I used to argue with people online about fiction. A lot of people who are "readers" have a category of writing that they look down on as meaningless slop. BookTok. Romance. YA fiction. Fanfiction. Everybody needs to feel like they're better than other people and that the world of literature is going downhill like a snowball headed for hell.

So I interacted with some people who claimed things, like, fanfiction is inherently an extension of consumerism and just using stock tropes to fulfill shallow entertainment. And I argued with them, I acknowledged that fanfiction was mostly frivolous and not addressing themes and ideas with the same depth as works in the established canon of literature, but it could still have merit as art.

But I was embarrassingly wrong. I now believe that fanfiction is literally just a subcategory of literature and it can be just as good and have equal artistic merit to any other category.

Why did I assume fanfiction was lesser when I had never really read any back then? That's the embarrassing part. I cared about how I was perceived by judgmental and insecure people. I wanted to hang onto my identity as someone who was smart and read books, REAL books, classic books with deep themes and ideas in them. I didn't want to be one of THOSE people that everybody mocked.

Throughout 2025, I have been exploring new kinds of art and realizing, one by one, that artforms that are considered less worthy or intellectual, or even not considered art forms at all, are actually some of the most powerful.

I watched letsplays of video games.

I looked at Backrooms videos and galleries of "dreamcore" edits on Pinterest.

I learned about pro wrestling.

I read books that were merely "entertaining."

I read a LOT of Bucky Barnes fanfiction.

You cringed at some of the things I just listed, didn't you? Or maybe you didn't. I don't know anything about you. But that's how we're taught to think: that some art forms are worthy and intellectual, and some art forms could NEVER be deep or meaningful or "real art" on the same level.

But it's not true. I'm not going to pretend it's true. And I'm not going to mention classic literature or "literary" writing I happen to like to make sure you still think I'm smart and intellectual, because I have nothing to prove to anyone.

I had a very ugly realization about how much of reading is driven by the identity we want to have rather than what we actually like. I burned out really hard on reading because I was reading books i didn't even like. I realized that there were many categories of books I hadn't been open to reading, because...why? Because they didn't seem like real books. So I got over myself and read some psychological thrillers and some other books with the purpose of fun and entertainment. And loved them. And I kept going. I went on an adventure of experiencing art.

I felt kind of anti-intellectual for saying it, but genuinely good contemporary poetry seemed exceedingly, vanishingly rare, and i hated the stuff the more I read of it. But surely good poetry had to be somewhere?

Ive been puzzling over "where did the good poetry go" for a few years and just within the last month probably i figured it out: it went into rap music.

I finally started actually getting into rap as a genre in the past couple of months. (not because of the superbowl thing--it actually started because of my youtube recommendations after i was listening to sir mix a lot's "baby got back" while absolutely delirious with covid. Don't ask cause I don't know.) And yeah yeah a lot of it talks about "deep" topics but I'm not actually talking about the subject material itself, I'm talking about how technically complex it is.

Like poetry classes did teach me to identify a lot of poetic techniques and forms of wordplay and rappers use basically every poetic technique and wordplay in the English language extravagantly, including many that "actual" poets hardly use anymore. I think I would argue that rappers are the people that are carrying poetry as an artform forward at this point in history.

But there is still this very negative connotation that rap music is just a bunch of meaningless crap about sex and drugs.

I actually feel like less recognition as "highbrow" art might create an environment for BETTER art to grow. In other words, the less a medium or form of art is considered be "real art," the more likely it is to actually be GOOD art.

Unfortunately, that experience isn't always available. If you're in a country at war, or an undocumented migrant in the current US, for example, feeling genuinely safe is not going to be on the table and the cause of that unsafety is beyond your control.

In such situations, you can trick your nervous system a bit to give it some of those experiences anyway.

For experiences of safety: try to cover your basic physical needs if possible (food, drink, warmth, rest, caring for physical injuries) and try to build routine, rhythm and familiarity into your life if possible. That could be making tea every morning, or praying at set times, or playing your favorite song every evening before bed. Whatever fits your situation: routines are gonna help your nervous system feel stable and less constantly unsafe.

For experiences of control and capableness: try to regularly do little things that affirm your sense of accomplishment. Fixing your bike, doing a crossword puzzle, learning to play a new song on your guitar, putting on make-up in a way that makes you feel stunning, finish a level of a video game. Again: whatever is available to you. Little moments of 'fuck yeah i did this' help your nervous system feel like you are capable of things and less constantly powerless.

a "degenerate" is someone who caused/causes society to fall from that ideal past.

even applying the term "degenerate" to people who have actually sexually abused children, specifically, is still implying that there was once a world in which CSA did not exist, which society must return to, and which Certain Types Of People have caused society to stray from in the first place.