Feels and Funnies

Own Voices was coined by author Corinne Duyvis in the 2010s to describe autistic representation by autistic people, in a time when the bulk of fiction about autism was by Autism Mom types. I’m pretty sure she was riffing on the slogan Nothing About Us Without Us, which is best known in disability rights circles in English.

Because it was a twitter hashtag it VERY quickly took off in the midst of (extremely necessary!) discussions by members of groups like We Need Diverse Books, who were advocating for the inclusion of marginalized authors in publishing, particularly publishing of children’s literature.

HOWEVER. The problem with hashtaggable slogans is that they are just. Not very nuanced! Even Duyvis herself has expressed frustration with some of the directions the hashtag ended up taking, eg publishers wanting work by marginalized authors ONLY as OwnVoices, which is to say, ONLY if they were Dealing With Their Marginalization. Black author but the book is just a fun romp and it isn’t about Black Issues? No thanks. Queer author doesn’t want to come out of the closet? Well then it isn’t OwnVoices is it? Better harass them out of the closet to make sure we are doing Rep correctly.

And as this thread calls out, the trend did not take into account that having an identity may not equal being knowledgeable about that identity (of course also because Identity Categories are not monolithic!).

Why. Why are we doing this. Why is the bar for "gender nonconformity" on the floor.

Like.

Caracalla.

Whose portraiture and presentation is aggressively masculine and soldierly. Who is one of the most recognizable emperors in sculpture because of the grumpy-ass scowl that he always has making an X clear across his face.

Like there's NO reason to make this fucking guy

look fucking femmed up unless you want to use effeminancy as a visual shorthand (and excuse? I haven't seen the movie) for his tyrannical cruelty. But he was extremely masculine, it was his whole THING. If anything, they should have gone in the opposite direction, a commentary on the excesses of masculinity, if they were going to bring gender presentation into at all.

Back to the Original Point, I too am exhausted with the dead horse of "Being Effeminate or engaging in Femininity is destroying our Very Manly Values™"

Like... It's frustrating to watch every show lean super hard into Grimdark "Strong" "Gritty" Realness™ as though taking a shower would somehow make characters too Decadent & therefore Evil

mutual 1: [shane hollander image]

mutual 2: [shane hollander image]

mutual 3: [gifset of every hollanov kiss]

mutual 4: dick n balls. you agree.

mutual 5: [ilya rozanov image]

mutual 6: what if shane was a leprechaun what then

mutual 7: (manifesto on why leprechaun shane is thematically sound)

AI to write your novel is wrong

Tartini was a composer and violin teacher and no one respected him, he was generally broke, and he started having weird dreams in which the devil asked him to teach him violin

despite being catholic tartini agreed - although everything told him this was a bad idea

so he taught the devil violin in his dreams and when he had taught him everything he knew the devil offered him payment, he played an original composition in his dream

Tartini woke up weeping and struggled to write it down

we have a historical version of "couldn't remember the greatest song in the world, this is just its tribute", and the song he wrote down made him "Sonata in G Minor, aka the devil's trill" it's usually played by 2 violinists because it's evil difficult,

now imagine you make a deal with the devil to write your novel, he writes it but only lets you read it in a dream and you have to transcribe it from memory the next day.... 150k of the best prose and plot you've ever seen in your life and you have to remember it

So, uh

Sam Neill passed away.

A lot of people know him as Dr. Grant from Jurassic Park, but Sam Neill has an incredible catalogue of film and television, stretching back to 1975 on the big screen, but he cut his teeth in university productions of Shakespearean dramas.

All this to say, Sam Neill never let himself get pigeonholed as an actor. He was an incredibly versatile actor with a plethora of roles and genres to his name.

And that's not even touching upon his interests outside of acting. He was a passionate vintner (of the Two Paddocks winery) and an outspoken environmentalist who frequently spoke out against political policy that negatively affected indigenous peoples in Australia and New Zealand.

Jurassic Park is an incredible film, and I know many people have fond memories of the original trilogy.