costumer and designer

not to be a joyless hag but I've started seeing genderbent "yuri" shipping Markiplier and Ryan Gosling and I can't help but think of someone I recently I unfollowed for posting that they have an easier time caring about genderbent versions of boy characters than regular fictional women

and I'm also building some connections to that post I made about reading books by Black women (you know the one) and the people who would respond by saying something akin to "joke's on you, I only read fanfic 😜" as if that were some kind of clever loophole and not a demonstration of the exact thing I was talking about

like yes fandom is about fun or whatever but idk man at what point has your desire for no thoughts head empty uncritical consumption left you splashing around in something that's been blended down to an indistinguishable goo for the sake of avoiding anything remotely challenging. with the thing that's "challenging" here being. you know. giving a shit about women and Black people and like frankly anyone but your shippable white men (and honorary Markiplier).

I just finished reading the article. If I didn’t already know the article was several years old, I’d swear it was written today. Racism in fandom spaces and the privilege, by some, to ignore it, is still a very relevant issue. In our current state of media censorship brought on by the current administration, and the fear of it by networks, makes the topic of the article hit home even harder. Shows/projects get cancelled all the time, sure. But it does not escape notice that the vast majority of those projects are ones that featured queer and BIPOC actors/characters. And yes, while in production, these actors were subjected to horrible treatment online by racists fans and anti fans. I feel like this all reached its peak in 2024 when Disney+ cancelled the Acolyte. This was followed a few years later by Netflix removing She-Ra and the Princesses of Power from the platform. How can fandom claim to be a place where all can ‘escape’ to when fandom doesn’t even have a place for ‘everyone’?

why your sewing machine is acting up: - tension is wrong - wrong needle size - thread bit stuck somewhere - tension again - needs a deep clean and oiling - you said something and now its offended and refusing to cooperate until you realize your error and beg forgiveness

Probably the last one.

I remember when I went to see Hotel Transylvania for the first time and, though I did find it to be an enjoyable film, the characterization of Johnny, gave me thoughts. First off, he is the first guy who is not a family member, hotel guest or family friend, Mavis has ever met. Mavis has only just come of age and has never really left the hotel-due to her father’s control/rules/manipulation. So of course Johnny, a guy as average as you can possibly be, is going to look like a superstar to Mavis. This dynamic is common and I know full well it is intended to appeal to the boys and men of the audience. Like this message of ‘see guys, if your girl is naive enough, even you, who has no hobbies or worldly experience, can be amazing.” I know the intended message is that anyone has the potential to be a hero. But when male characters are viewed as the default while women/girls and BIPOC people are seen as different, or other, is that not already saying that the male hero is the special one? I know that’s a bit off topic. But this is what comes to mind when I come across the male as default in story telling discourse.

so women are supposed to grin and bear the books, the comics, the movies, the plays, the tv shows, the stories, the sci-fi, the translated ancient poems, the fucking millennia of men writing about their self inserts torturing women and it being declared as High Art by other men, we’re supposed to read it in our free time, study it in classrooms, include their styles in our own writing, accept their cultural influence as natural, watch it in the cinema, write about it, talk about it, accept it, aspire it, but men can’t tolerate three seconds of female wish fulfilment of a woman snapping the wrist of a creep without feeling personally kicked in the balls.

In college, I got to see a stage production of Misery for my creative writing class. This was followed by a class discussion of the play. My professor commented on how, at one point, the male protagonist was so under the control of Annie (the woman holding the protagonist captive) that he seemed honoestly upset when she was upset. All I remeber thinking was that this was the first time I'd ever seen the power dynamic flipped. Movies where women had their freedom or power taken, for whatever reason were very common and were accepted as such. So, watching people be mortified by seeing a play about a man being subjugated by a woman, will never not be fascinating to me.

Still reading Wanna be Loved, Wanna be Afraid. But I will get to this one.

Manny going to the green baby premiere after what they did to the acolyte makes me a little sick

It makes me wonder if any of the other cast members were even invited at all. It's totally like Disney to keep what will make the company money and throwing everyone else under the bus. Still, I want to look on the positive side. Him showing up at these events keelp the Acolyte in the conversation. I met the man at an event a year ago and he seemed optomistic. He encouraged me to 'put it out there. You never know what might happen." So, maybe continuing to make public appearances at SW events is his way of showing support for the Acolyte.

A few weeks after The Acolyte was cancelled, I went to Disneyland with my best friend. She had stepped off the Star Wars train long before I had but she promised that she would watch at least one episode of The Acolyte with me. I picked episode 8 since it was the climatic epidode. I did my best to bring her up to speed on what was going on before hand. Still, as she and I watched Sol pursue Mae, my friend turned to me and asked"Is Mae even real?" I asked her what she meant and she proceeded to tell me that she wondered if Sol was just crazy and Mae was an illusion conjured up by his deranged mind. Now, I knew that wasn't the case but I was still wowed by the possibility. I mean, seriously, that take doesn't sound too far off. Like, the show easily could have gone that way. Osha being the real person but Mae being an avatar for Sol's guilt.

happy the acolyte is seeing a resurgence, but with it come people's opinionss and i am noticing so many bad takes made in good faith that boil down to low emotional intellegence

I made a post a few weeks about how I believed that certain amount of emotional intellegence needed to be exercised if one was to truly enjoy that Acolyte. Juding by this post, I am not the only one who noticed.