#I hate gen z video essays | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

writerbuddha · 1 year

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Not just a Star Wars issue?

In 2020, a vibrant, colorful video essay appeared on YouTube, titled, “The Lion King Explained: Let the Darkness In.” To summarize its main conclusions: Mufasa was fundamentally flawed and his flaws resulted in his death and the fall of his kingdom. He refused to see and confront evil, ill intentions and darkness. He gave no means to Simba to deal with his severe trauma, or to address the unpleasant, apart from pushing it away. This resulted in Simba repressing his emotions and running away. His naive refusal to confront ugly truths left his kingdom weak and untested. What's more, he is an absolute and even god-like monarch, thus Scar's anger over not being king echoes valid critiques of his society’s injustice and inequality. However, his only solution is hate, anger and destruction. Only Simba, the young, conflicted, new king is able to confront the darkness that his father explicitly refused and denied to do so, becoming a better, stronger king, addressing the injustice and inequality in Mufasa's kingdom.

And what is one of the most popularized reading of Star Wars today? The Jedi lost their way, they turned a blind eye to the fact that the Republic is ruled by an oppressive elite, they gave no means to Anakin to deal with his severe trauma, they taught him to repress his emotions, they feared and ignored the dark side of the Force. Anakin turned to the dark side due to the Jedi neglecting and mistreating his traumas and teaching him to push away his emotions. He actually had a point, so does the Sith, but they offered only hatred, anger and destruction as an answer. Thus, the Jedi contributed to their own demise, which was sad and largely undeserved, but necessary. Luke, after proving the old Jedi Masters wrong in their black-and-white morality and thinking, by embracing his emotions, confronting the dark side, reforms the Jedi Order, which is stronger, better, more equal and healthy than the old one.

Can we point out a pattern here?

The old and their old ways created problems like inequality and injustice due to their black-and-white morality and thinking inherent to them, and now they're unable and unwilling to address and solve them, which ultimately causes their demise. Then, a young hero arrives: the old are trying to get him to suppress his emotions and continue their old, flawed ways. This young hero is traumatized or otherwise struggling with their mental health, that the old are systematically neglecting or even contributing to it and leading to severe consequences. Meet our villain: they actually have a point, however, the hero shouldn't follow their footsteps, because all they offer is rage, destruction, hate and so on. It's only the young one, who can surpass both emotional repression and anger, hate and destruction, who corrects and educates the system, the old ways and the old ones.

I start to think that what we witness is a "Gen Z narrative" starting to invade fandoms, drowning out all the original messages and lessons of these stories, replacing it with "Old = fanatic, bigoted, dogmatic, black-and-white and myopic, and Young = progressive, tolerant, spectrum-thinker, rationalist, updated" - people almost compulsively trying to locate this new trope in the movies and books they love, because they need this view validated, they need their ego boosted, even if this means ignoring the actual stories they allegedly "fans" of.

This narrative is often tangled with Western-centrism: what was unknown to the West, was unknown to the world as a whole, thus, the Gen Z Hero, equipped with Western psychology, philosophy, values and cultural and social costumes, is inherently superior, communicates new, never seen before, life-changing revelations to the previous generations, wherever they go. And this seem to attract certain millennials as well.

It started somewhere around the mid-2010s and now it peaks.

Where will this lead us?

#luke skywalker #star wars #fandom #yoda #the lion king #gen z problems #tw trauma #jedi order #disney #star wars fandom

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selkiemaidenfae · 3 months

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this is something i want to go deeper into in a video essay but it can't be understated how fucking weird it was as a deeply-oblivious-to-my-feelings-for-girls baby bi to be on tumblr during the time when every popular straight ship was healthy and sweet and every popular wlw ship was abusive and toxic.

i envy the gen z kids who grew up with avatrice and calliette and lumity. or even older gen z kids who grew up with korrasami and catadora. they got wlw ships that were not only canon but warm and sweet and based on genuine affection.

when i was a little baby bi on tumblr, the big sapphic ships were swan queen (regina was canonically a rapist and her most consistent character trait was torturing people who tried to help her) and emison (allison spent years bullying emily for her sexuality and only stopped when she decided she wanted to fuck her).

these are the ships that tumblr tried to sell me as high sapphic romance.

hetero couples were given grand love stories and confirmed soulmates. gay couples were rarely canon, but fanon told the story of star-crossed lovers, destined to be apart yet deeply embedded in each other's souls.

and the lesbian romances were... women yelling at each other and gaslighting each other as an audience of mainly grown women insisted one character's abuse would just go away if they were given the green light to fuck the other into submission.

as a teenager, i was just starting to understand that i liked girls. but i didn't want the kind of relationship that was being romanticized. i didn't want a girl to hate me but also want to sleep with me. i didn't want her to hurt me and then maybe feel a little sorry afterwards, but then do it again.

i wanted the grand love story i saw for straight couples. i wanted fairytales and friendship and devotion and affection. i wanted women who healed together, women who protected each other, women who built lives together.

that isn't what i saw in fandom, though. so i thought that maybe wlw relationships were just... like that. maybe they were mainly physical, always tumultuous, never soft. if i didn't want that, i probably didn't want to be with a girl. i buried the feelings deep.

also, the amount of swan queen shippers that called me an evil straight person for not liking the ship probably didn't help that particular journey of self-discovery.

i wish i could go back and tell baby me that the sapphic love stories i wanted exist and they are beautiful and canon and beloved. a couple of them are even written by me.

i guess i'm just feeling reflective. and i've never seen anyone share this kind of experience, so i figured... why not? someone will get it.

#this post will not go over well but i've been wanting to put some thoughts into words #sapphic #wlw #tumblr #tumblr culture #tumblr meta #fandom #warrior nun #first kill #the owl house #the legend of korra #she ra #anti swan queen #anti emison #using anti tags make me feel like i'm back on 2015 tumblr lol #also i'm making myself sound old i'm 23 #i'm not ancient yet #long post

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thisismynamenowxpoetry · 4 months

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ATTENTION GEN Z, I know we hate poetry, but please, if you've ever felt alone, or hated technology, or hated Gen Alpha, please read this, repost, do whatever, but please, this was written for all of you <3

The news this morning

Was talking about how we go to Chat GPT

For therapy

And advice

And my mother said it’s just because we don’t know how

To communicate face to face

When why should we?

You shoved an iPad into our faces

The second we were old enough to comprehend it

You put on the TV

And we believed the characters were speaking live

And they could see us

Through those pixels

Why shouldn’t we turn to a computer

To give us answers

When it’s that that gave us the issues to begin with?

Why shouldn’t we

Chat with a computer

About nothing and everything

When it is that

That made us feel so isolated?

People wonder

Why we’re so concerned about Gen Alpha

And it’s obvious

When we think about it

It’s not because they’re growing up too fast

It’s because we know what it’s like

To have wires shoved into our veins

And now

Now they were born with them

Already pulsing through their blood

We don’t want them to make the same mistakes we did

But I think it’s too late,

They’re already turning into what we don’t want

Anyone

To ever be

And it’s scary to watch,

We know what technology has done to us

And we don’t want to watch anyone else

Succumb to it like we did

We are the last generation

Who went outside to play

And know what birds sound like

And wish to break their phones

We are the last generation

That will ever

Ever

Have a normal childhood

Now we can just watch

As the depression rates get higher

And more young children know what suicide is

Too early

And learn how to self harm

And lose their innocence

And be scared of men

And not care for dolls

We are scared of them

But we’re scared for them

Of course we turn to AI to talk to

Our parents don’t get it,

They can barely find opening hours for a shop,

While we can find a 10-step guide on how to murder,

Or build a bomb,

And guides on how to manipulate your body

And everything is at our fingertips

This is generational trauma that they have created

We can watch someone shooting their brains out

And we can receive photos from anyone

And why do we know what everything we shouldn’t worry about is?

We had COVID

And we turned to screens

And went on TikTok

And created trends

And it felt like a community

Until everyone was there

And we couldn’t do anything

And we got addicted

And we can’t turn back

We started with chat rooms

And we found like minded-people

And it was always “sweetie, be careful of creeps on the internet”

And now it’s just

“Be in bed by 10”

But we’ll keep scrolling

And we all have friends who live half the world away

And if you mention that

Someone has to ask if you’ve called yet

And “have you seen their face?”

We can look at anything

There are guides for everything

We know where Kim K was two minutes ago

And why do I feel pressure to always have something on my story?

We talk to robots

Because no adults will ever know

How sick we feel

Before we go on our phones

No adults can know

How we’ve seen every scar

And depression become a trend

And we have to use the hashtag actuallyautistc

No adults will know

How there are video essays on anything

And we shouldn’t know about everyone that has been raped

Or murdered

And we shouldn’t have wikihow

On how to be attractive

It started as a joke,

How stupid is this thing I found?,

But we keep reading it

And we start to believe it

Why would we read books?

Technology is constantly advancing

Everything is irrelevant in months

And we must be careful not to be cancelled

And a dress can divide a nation

We don’t want to watch Gen Alpha

Leap so blindy into their screens

Trusting what they read,

We want to keep it for us,

We have to live with it,

And as much as they suck,

It is our fault for staying

And posting everything

We are a sad generation with happy pictures

And a face full of makeup

And we’re just perpetuating stereotypes

And you can’t like something unless you’re obsessed

We can know the cure for any medical condition

But there is no guide on how to destory our screens

And lives

And I know I’m fifteen

But this is ruining mine,

And so many others' lives.

We don’t want to see little kids

On their mums phones

And my mother defends it,

Saying mums just need a minute to breathe,

But please

Anything else

I don’t want to see a baby already addicted to CocoMelon

We don’t want to see

More people falling into a hole

And we know it’s why we’re sad

But nobody else should have to go through it,

That’s for us,

That’s an us problem

I saw a six year old

Using Drunk Elephant

And swearing in her GRWM

And none of that is fair,

How are we letting this slide?

But we can’t do anything

Because we don’t want to admit there’s a problem

We can learn anything about Hitler

And anything about Meryl Streep

And it can be within the same two fucking clicks

I remember

When my age on TikTok clocked over to 15

A few days before my actual birthday

And it was then

That all I saw was suicide notes,

And self harm scars

And how to hide things from your parents guides

And abuse stories

There was no going back,

Every other person whose a teenage girl on the app

Is probably met with the same things as me

The algorithm

Is designed to show you a positive video

Every few scrolls

Just to keep you hooked,

And it works,

It’s a science,

It works to a T

We can know where any friend is

And read receipts plague us

And anything will be screenshot

And used against you

School thought taking away our phones

Would fix this,

Like it’s a magical cure,

When all it’s teaching us

Is how addicted we are,

And how best to hide an earbud

And we need music to concentrate!

Or course we do,

We have constant stimulation

It is never quiet

There is always a voice talking

We are getting mad at kids for being on a phone

When we all know

We’re just mad that it is actually happening

And we can’t warn them

And no one will listen

Because how could it be that bad?

In ten years

People who grew up with technology

Are going to end up with something like PTSD

Because we can’t let go of it

We can’t put it down,

We can get an essay written for us in seconds,

And Dall-E can make anything for us

So of course we’ll talk to AI,

It’s better than talking to a real person

And acting like we’re okay,

We’d rather sit behind a screen

And control sims

And listen to music

So we can’t hear our minds

Every time I scroll through

I’m met with tales of girls who get killed by their fathers,

Every time I scroll through

I’m showen another 7 second video

With sad litte text

On sad little faces

We want to escape,

We want to tear our veins out,

Rip the wires,

Shove them back in to our body

After we re-wire our brains,

Of course,

Because we can diagnose ourselfs with any mental illness

That we see fit

Because there has to be something wrong with you

We will never go back,

It is impossible

We have Whispers from Pinterest

And sad purple quotes

Lining our camera roll

Which should highlight our happy moments

But is just videos of us crying

It has ruined relationships,

How dare we follow another guy,

How dare he like another girl's photo?

We have our music right there

We don’t have to learn lyrics,

We can play any instrument,

We must like Taylor Swift,

We must have Kanye West

Everything is a trend

And your clothes must match your aesthetic

And you have to be funny

Or smart

Or creative

And how dare we burn out?

How dare we burn out

When if we didn’t rot in our beds

Scrolling aimlessly

Would solve half our problems?

There is no fix now,

We have to watch them grow up

Knowing they’ll ask what this-big-word is

Before they’re even five

Because an ad came up on mummy’s phone

And “what’s a vape?”

And “am I fat?”

All we can do now

Is listen to our sad songs

And act like social media

Didn’t ruin our perceptions

On everything.

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saintfrancesworld · 6 months

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Video Essays I Appreciate:

• Influencers are a Plague

• MAKEUP & MISFORTUNE: Elizabeth Short | The Black Dahlia

• Candace Owens REACTS to Eugenia Cooney

• The Sickening Impact of Social Media

• The Islamic Roots of Hamas (w/ David Wood)

• The Real Life Blip

• GEN Z IS THE MOST MISERABLE GENERATION EVER. HERE’S WHY.

(Note: Even if you don’t agree with everything said in these videos, or perhaps the angle the essayist takes, I would just say that these are really fleshed out arguments. I also personally found these videos fascinating. If you disagree, that’s fine! That’s great! But if you you are going to be angry or hateful toward any point of view, perhaps you should first strengthen your position. Emotions aren’t intellectually superior: Don’t confuse your sensitivity for goodness! TRIGGER WARNING! YOU HAVE BEEN FOREWARNED!)

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bottlesforbeasts · 8 months

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I really really really love/hate the internet.

It never ceases to amaze me when I remember it was created by human beings. It seems like a bunch of images/concepts/shouts into the void, and yet behind every single element there's a person. And that's so terrifying and amazing because it's like nearly everything that we've created as a species ends up here in some form or another. And if it somehow hasn't yet, there are groups working hard to make sure it does.

I am unique from many in my generation (born 2003) because I spent a large portion of my formative years with very little internet access. As a kid I was all over those kids MMOs and virtual pet games, and as a teen I was really into tiktok, instagram, and youtube. But in between those times, after I had developed the curiosity to venture outside of neopets dot com, but before social media took over everyone's life and the internet was more than like 6 websites, I wasn't able to explore and really see what's out there. I never ran the gauntlet, stumbled upon bestgore, saw porn at age 10, was groomed on kik, or any of those experiences that so many of gen z seem to identify with. So when I gained access to the internet, all I really wanted to do was use social media and message my friends like every other kid my age was doing at the time.

Then I discovered something called elsagate. I was thrown into this rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, deleted youtube videos, and insane reddit posts about this bit of youtube that nobody except children knew about - until a few parents realized what the fuck their kids were watching and alerted the press about it.

Around the same time, I got into iceberg videos, I researched youtube drama, I talked to randos on omegle, I spent time lurking on the incel forums, I read about subreddits that had been banned, I listened to podcast episodes about real-life crime that got it's start on obscure fetish forums, I read wikipedia pages for fun, and I found some of the weirdest porn that the internet has to offer.

The truth is, I'm obsessed with the internet. And yet, there aren't a ton of books about the cultural aspect of things. Not much freely accessible research on the various fandoms, subcultures, fetish groups, micro-religions, and communities that are unique to the internet. That sucks for someone like me who wants to learn more without having to find everything from primary sources, but it's also great because that means I have a niche to fill and a hobby besides living vicariously through my sims.

I wanted this blog to be a neocities website but alas, I am a dumbass with no desire to learn basic HTML, or at least no drive to do it at the moment. I might figure it out and move everything over there but for now I'm just gonna keep things here where it's user-friendly and doesn't make me type these things <<<>>> all the time.

I'm going to write a bunch about a subject I think is interesting, do lots of research, and include my sources at the bottom. I will be using wikipedia and youtube as sources because A) aforementioned lack of secondary sources about shit like otherkins and femcels, and B) it's a tumblr account, not a college essay. I dropped out of college for a reason, I'm not about to subject myself to MLA APA format hell because I wanna write about the cultural impact of coolmathgames.

Posts will be coming whenever I am motivated to write, but hopefully I'll have something every other week or so. If you want to suggest a topic/nag me to post more/ask for more info my ask box is open. I'll also try to keep a masterlist of posts + links pinned for easy access ✭

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folkdances · 2 years

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things i read in june!! i cut out some things that were really misc or that i hated + videssays are also on here yeah they're not things u read but are you going to stop me from including them

articles, papers, etc:

the ecstasy of the agony: a quick guide to transcendental horror

who's there? every story is a ghost story

"succession" is really a tragedy about narcissistic parenting

the bodily horrors of succession

hanya's boys: the hanya yanagihara principle

big little trust funds

solarpunk is the future we should strive for

the success of mrbeast's squid game is its own dystopia

prison abolition: from naïve idealism to technological pragmatism

how culture impacts courtrooms: an empirical study of alienation and detachment in the cook county court system

video essays:

the feminist horrors of jennifer's body, teeth, and a girl walks home alone at night

mommy fearest: motherhood and horror

the romantic american "psycho": you's complex storytelling

the path: psychological horror in the woods

digital women: blade runner 2049, ex machina, and her

infatilization and the body horror debate

explaining the gen z maximalism trend

david lynch - how to do a jumpscare

books, etc:

a memory called empire

thirteen reasons why ☹

on a sunbeam

the poppy war

her body and other parties

pinky and pepper forever

#txt #forgor to post this at the actual end of june but i had fun making it also it's a nice little flipthrough i am going 2 keep doing these #i usually read more than this but. the problems

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darbycrashes · 2 years

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Long live a long-form rant. I won’t speak for you but this bb millennial I need a piece of my soul back,

All in a days work, kids. I wonder how old you think I am. If i remind you more of bugs or aliens. Heres a

hint: im younger than i look. Older than your mom though. (Thats likely a lie, but i cant speak to it.) Im definitely either too young or too old to behere. Spiritually, not legally.

Why am I writing all these inane thoughts down on a video based app

Anytime I say anything about TikTok or video please disregard. I am well aware this is Tumblr thanks]

Idk I did not prepare myself nor do i have a gameplan or specific content. I don’t know you, but I have a feeling you are already riveted jkkkkkk ugh

Here’s the thing though some people say that when you start at the bottom there’s nowhere to go but up. I actually don’t believe that but I do believe in making something out of nothing even when I have nothing to say. I’m a lifelong radical anticapitalist. I’m not quite sure how to say that without sounding like The biggest douche bag in the world and possibly like somebody who I don’t know, does anything about anything at any time.

Mostly though. What it means is that I stay in my house because thats where my cat is and also, the capitalistic, patriarchal madness in our culture is a lot more aggressively noticeable out there in good, old, civilized, terrifying society. If you found me somehow and you’re still reading this, maybe you understand. In a nutshell, My value system and political views lean so far left they fall off the spectrum, and I resent completely the ways that we are all forced to participate in a corrupt society that doesn’t value anything but money, power and money. I’m sure I am not the only one that feels stagnant in an unforgivable way. I hope I am not and maybe that’s y I’m here.

I want to create things but bc of my value system, the idea of coming in with an expectation of profit makes me feel sick. “Creating content” strategically in order to efficiently streamline X or Y demographic for profit grosses me out. There is a lot of great content on this app, and there is nothing wrong with being paid for that work as a creator. The problem is with capitalism, not the creator, but a level of manipulation exists that permeates every part of the relationship between the creator, their work, and their audience. That being said, I hate it when I observe it. Being strategic and formulaic with my content creation would afford me a higher likelihood of success. I know. It doesn’t make sense to submit a dozen pages of thoughts down in written form when you’re working with a primarily visual medium. I see the value because I think it is uniquely creative in a way that could be much powerful, even revolutionary, if more people made a conscious choice to publish what makes them truly joyful, what they truly find meaningful- rather than the content that best manipulates the algorithm. For me I don’t know what that looks like, personally. And I won’t subject you to much more essay, I promise. Except this-

I grew up in a community that had a strong counterculture, DIY punk community everywhere-and tons of ZINE CULTURE. This being the 90s up to the early 2010s. Maybe a Gen-Z buddy can inform me whether this still exists or not- I’m not old, but I AM 33. I don’t have my finger on the pulse of the counterculture anymore I guess.

There is something about the culture of zines that IMO will ALWAYS be an anticapitalist and revolutionary creative act, and that, in my sappy punk heart, I hope will never truly die out as a form of community and a mode of raw human creativity and expression without agenda.

The stuff that a life under capitalism can ALMOST strip from inside us, but never quite succeed. We need zines bitches!!!

Bitches we need zines.

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loneliestgirlinnewyork · 2 years

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some of my favorite video essays i’ve watched recently

the crown: an analysis of conservative feminism

everything wrong w/ “romanticize your life”: eurocentrism, hedonism, unrealistic, etc.

sofia coppola: the politics of pretty

what makes gen z humor so interesting

the lolita resurgence… when history repeats itself

kneel | the way fleabag criticizes hypersexualization in the era of the modern feminist

i hate feminist hollywood, and here’s why

mommy issues and the great gender expectation

gender performativity and the surveillance of womanhood

#video essay

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marvelousescapism · 3 years

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Yo i have a question, how do you feel steve and bucky are about social media. bc like i think steve doesnt like to use it and mostly just like, reads long articles about literally everything and watches video essays while bucky has a wildly popular instagram account that somehow hasnt gotten banned even tho all he posts is shitty blurry blair-witch-found-footage pics and half the captions are like, unashamedly explicitly talking abt how he got it Good™ last night and the like

like imo bucky was coming back to himself at such a time that hed have absolutely developed a gen z type sense of humor and idea of how to use social media so his pics are like, him floating facedown in a public fountain or a huge pyramid made out of pink monster energy cans or a super blurry shot of him and steve smoking weed in their kitchen that was taken While bucky's phone was falling out of his hand

omg 😂😂 yes I love this

Steve is definitely the type that loathes social media (samesies Stevie) and for a while he only had a twitter because the others bullied him into it. At first SHIELD was adamant that he let a PR manager take care of it, but he works out a little while later that they’re liking things and saying things in his name without telling him because they think he won’t understand how to use twitter so he won’t find out. He promptly demands the PR manager be fired and continues to use twitter himself without oversight to retweet and promo cool stuff (like up and coming artists and fundraisers and miscellaneous fun facts) and post passive-aggressive tweets about politics and modern things he doesn’t like like itchy nylon exercise clothes and no cocaine in coke anymore (he got a stern talking to from Fury after that one and sheepishly retweeted a cheesy Say No To Drugs campaign post afterwards).

After Bucky got back and they settled down though his twitter feed became mostly domestic tweets of him and his hubby and the besties being sappy together, along with silly ones like “my darling husband put an empty milk carton back in the fridge, gonna go commit a war crime brb <3”

(Also Steve’s page is like 60% Sam appreciation at this point, tons of pictures of Sam in his Captain America outfit with a bunch of 😍🥰🤩❤🤍💙 emojis and #ThatsMyCaptain)

As for Bucky! He was wary of social media at first (because 'who wants to hear from me, everyone hates me, i'm the winter soldier') until Steve showed him all the posts in the trending tag #JusticeForJBB (let's imagine this is in a post-catws universe where footage of what Hydra put the Winter Soldier through in between missions got leaked on the internet and everyone very quickly changed their tune about Bucky being the Winter Soldier), so he tentatively signed up for it.

At first he signs up for twitter and uses it to comment "🐙🐙🐙" in the comments of several politician’s posts. They all get investigated and found guilty of working with Hydra. But after a while he gets bored of Twitter and switches to Instagram.

Thing is, I imagine Bucky is quite quick with the basics of technology - he picks up how to use computers and phones fairly easily. But he is far from capable of any finesse when using them, and I don’t think he'd pick up online gen z culture/humour himself but he would absolutely completely accidentally radiate gen z humour energy. LIke, he has no idea why all these kids find his blurry posts and captions so funny, but he's just happy to be here.

Also he’s completely oblivious to his own levels of impropriety on public online spaces. Like, his first picture was a picture of Steve looking conked the fuck out with bed hair and a dopey smile on his face CLEARLY taken after they'd had sex with the caption "fuck america, if you know what i mean"

Steve makes an Instagram account originally just to like all of Bucky's posts, but he ends up making a secret account where he posts a few pictures of his artwork as well 🥰🥰🥰

#stucky #stevebucky #stucky headcanon #steve rogers #bucky barnes #ask #anonymous #drug mention

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smol-lydia · 4 years

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Subculture Appropriation: A conversation with my therapist fiancee about the Beetlejuice musical

Okay so, some context before go into this. I don’t normally like going into identity stuff but antis will come for you if you don’t so here we go:

My fiancee is a trans clinical psychologist, likely neurodivergent. However before going into clinical, they got their undergrad in social psychology and because I was a historian before I became too ill to work, I love to talk to them about culture, society, social movements, etc (my brand of historian was a sub-type called social historian, ie I studied the societies, and social movements and every day lives of ordinary people in the past rather than say, military bullshit. I fucking hate military history lol). As additional context for what I am about to talk about here, I was raised by two gay dads, one of whom was an OG 80s punk who lived in Philadelphia during the AIDS crisis.

Also, full disclosure: I love the Beetlejuice musical. I don’t love what it’s done to the fandom but I love the musical; not all Beetlebabes hate the musical.

Okay so:

The thing that gets my goat about the shitty hot takes a lot of gen z has around Beetlejuice comes from what my partner has termed “subculture appropriation.” Let me explain.

Goth and punk are subcultures. They were, in the 80s, revolutionary. They were radical, and they were not accepted in the mainstream. My dad, with his mohawk and tattoos designed himself (he was a horror comic artist) and multiple hand pierced ears and chains around his neck, was not well received in my small town in NJ. When we lived there, in the early 2000s, we were the only gay family in the neighborhood. Gay marriage wasn’t legal, and I was shunned in school for being the girl with two dads. Gay rep in media was pretty much limited to Queer Eye and the L Word. It was a different time.

Gothic subculture, even in the early 2000s, was not mainstream. My small group of friends in high school (we were all goth and emo) were shunned. A lot of us were some flavor of queer. Some of us were POC. Some, like me, autistic. A lot of us had eating disorders. We were bullied incessently, to a point where many of us had severe mental health problems and had spent time in and out of psych wards. This was also not seen as mainstream and labeled us even more as “freaks.”

Beetlejuice was the movie and cartoon for us, by us. It was a cult classic. It was not something most kids were watching, but I grew up strange and unusual. Beetlejuice spoke to an entire generartion of goth subculture.

Nowadays, things are different. Hot Topic doesn’t play Pierce the Veil at ear numbing volumes when you go into the store. You’re likely not gonna find those hideous punk pants we were all enamored of back in the day. Instead, you’ll find Disney. Fandom. Anime. Bob’s Burgers. In the last decade, goth has been watered down to appeal to the masses (much like other nerdy subcultures) because capitialism ruins everything. So, enter the Beetlejuice musical.

I love the musical because it spoke to me, the little girl I once was, who watched the cartoon with my dad on CN. But I noticed, once the show blew up on Tiktok, things changed. And the reason was a mainstream teen audience picked up on something very specific to a subculture. And then they made it there’s-- hence the term subculture appropriation.

Beetlejuice has its roots in gothic literature, dating back to the 19th century (my friend magicalmolly on tiktok has an excellent “understanding gothic literature” series that covers this). One of the main tropes of gothic lit is Death and the Maiden-- aka Beej and Lyds. It is not a mainstream romance, and it’s not supposed to be. If supernatural romance makes you uncomfy, then maybe this genre isn’t for you.

The problem is when something with tropes specific to a subculture enter the mainstream, they are going to be villainzed and misinterpreted because mainstream Beckys who think they’re goth because they paint their nails black have absolutely no sense of history, context, and nuance that the themes of the show give. As a result, suddenly the shitty hot takes pop up. And yes, age gaps are icky irl. But in this genre, they are bread and butter (Lindsay Ellis has a good video on this called My Monster Boyfriend). As a result, suddenly a bunch of kids come into a niche that isn’t theirs, demand we re-arrange the furniture for their comfort, and in general start trying to push the subculture out of its own space.

This isn’t, by the way, gatekeeping. This is appropriation. When you go into a niche subculture created by the marginalized and try to make it your apple pie bullshit, you are appropriating a space that doesn’t belong to you. As a result, you have two choices: you can either educated yourself on the culture, its history, context, nuance, and decide its for you and dive in. Or you can leave. But it’s frankly gross af for you to barge in, try to rewrite history that in the case of the subculture, goes back decades, and in the case of gothic literature, centuries. That is the playbook of colonization (and I know you little fake woke shits are gonna derail the entire argument because of this but I haven’t seen any of y’all write a fucking 60 page thesis on nationalism, colonialism and antisemitism in France so get fucked).

I’m bad at conclusions so if you made it this far, any OG babes feel free to add on with your thoughts bc we old ass goths gotta stick together. Thanks for coming to my historical context essay.

#Beetlejuice #beetlejuice musical #Beetlejuice and Lydia #BeetleBabes #beetlejuice bway #anti culture #anti beetlebabes

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smilesbag · 4 years

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not to get all 2014 tumblr, but it rly bums me out to see older generations talking abt how gen z and millennials are lazy, unfocused, or ask for everything to be handed to them. its like they're not even watching.

we don't hate learning, it's just that the school environment sucks, so when we go home we watch TED talks and video essays and DIY's, and still somehow manage to get schoolwork done. i've been working a part time job since i was 15 and on top of balancing sports n school n friends. when we are given absolutely nothing we still use resources like tiktok, youtube, and vsco to be creative and make people happy without really expecting anything in return.

idk im just always kind of endlessly proud of the good parts of our generation, and it rly feels like a failure of the system that we're all trying this hard and still have all of these negative stereotypes we have to drag around.

#tiktok #gen z #millenials #vsco #the generation of disorder

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elizas-writing · 6 years

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When Wish Fulfillment Fantasies Meet Reality: A Re-Examination of Twilight

**CW/TW: The following piece discusses dating violence with brief mentions to sexual assault and self-harm.**

This year, the last Fifty Shades movie finally came and went, and as its popularity slowly morphs into a bad memory for pop culture, I’m thinking again about the fiction’s effect on reality, particularly wish fulfillment fantasies, self-insert stories, etc etc.

This train of thought began with the Twilight series after watching Lindsay Ellis’s video essay, “Dear Stephenie Meyer,” where she revisits the hatred surrounding said franchise. While it’s definitely not without serious flaws, Twilight was not really as bad as people made it out to be. And most of the criticism was solely about millions of young girls and their moms liking a thing because, what a shock, our society tends to hate anything feminine. I was definitely one of those teenage girls who wanted nothing to do with Twilight, surprising no one probably. Even though I had enough plot summary from friends to pick up the actual problems of the story, I just had fun hating it for the sake of hating it and disassociating with anything feminine because I was neck-deep in my weeaboo phase.

Cut to about seven years later, I took a Vampires in Pop Culture class and Twilight (the first of the series) was on the reading list. With a more mature mind, I sat down, read it, and yeah, it really was not as bad as I thought. Yes, Bella’s too one-dimensional, Edward’s still pretty creepy, and the dialogue and prose is at best, ridiculous and at worst, stale. It knows its target audience is tweens and reads as such, which unfortunately doesn’t grip me as an adult. I gave up at the baseball scene cause I was ready to gouge my eyes out if I read one more description of the weather. And give credit where it’s due, the side characters have way more fascinating stories than Bella or Edward, and it’s a shame Meyer didn’t take a chance to further expand them instead. I couldn’t find much to be angry about with the first book, and I was honestly more bored than anything. But I also cannot deny the wish fulfillment fantasy driving the narrative which drew in a large audience all those years ago.

And wish fulfillment is fine. Self-insert is fine. Teenage girls are just figuring out what confidence is, and there is some reassurance in a fantasy where the totally out-of-league man of your dreams still finds you the most fascinating human being in the world and wants to give you all his undivided attention. Not every female lead needs to be a strong independent woman who don’t need no man. I still see people write self-insert fanfictions from time to time, and they’re very sweet and tender to imagine being loved by a favorite character. We actually consume these stories more than we like to admit.

Hell, one of my favorite guilty pleasure films is The Princess Diaries. In many ways, it hits the same notes as Twilight. It’s a pure wish fulfillment fantasy where the main girl is smart, but clumsy and awkward and just wants to be invisible. Yet she finds herself on a whirlwind journey of self-discovery where others find value in her, and she even falls in love with a boy who adores her regardless of how she perceives herself. Yet The Princess Diaries is such a popular chick flick among people my age. So why is something like The Princess Diaries fondly remembered as an integral part of a millenial/Gen Z childhood while Twilight is met with disdain and disgust?

The major differences boil down to the main female protagonists: Mia and Bella. While not an overly complex character, Mia has, well, a personality. Her journey is more personal of overcoming her social anxiety and realizing how much she can contribute to the world as a public figure if she just takes the leap of faith. Getting a romance in the end is just icing on the cake when she remembers who was there for her even when she was the awkward nerd and will love her regardless of appearance or social status. It’s cheesy and hokey as chick flicks do, but it’s a satisfying wish fulfillment fantasy where the protagonist is better off than where she started and what she was looking for was right there all along.

With Bella, I barely know who she is outside of her romantic interests. Sure, the books go into more detail of her intelligence and social anxiety, but it’s never seen in film. Her life completely revolves around her relationships to the point of obsession, but we never almost see what she’s like when not caught up in the supernatural love triangle. And unfortunately, it’s a problem which worsens with each sequel. The Twilight franchise frames romance as something Bella can’t live without to the point of shutting herself in for months when the Cullens leave in New Moon, refusing to talk to her friends and family, and getting night terrors. It’s intended to make you feel sorry for Bella, but her backwards priorities make her completely pathetic on how much of her life she misses because of some boy who didn’t hesitate to cut her from his life, and she was totally fine with him leaving if he didn’t turn her into a vampire.

Prioritizing unrequited love over your own well being is such an unhealthy idea to romanticize because there is far more to life than some dumb boy who won’t return your feelings. I saw my fair share of unsatisfying romances in young adulthood hanging on by a thread for some idealized love that’s never going to happen. Even though a break up is the simplest and most effective solution for both people to take care of themselves, they continue wasting their time being unhappy with each other and latching on to the rose-tinted view of how they first fell in love. I know some people don’t like the idea that you have to love yourself before someone else, but there’s still truth to the saying where you have to understand that being in a romantic relationship will not automatically fix all your problems and guarantee a happily ever after.

Aside from getting married and having a baby which almost kills her during pregnancy, Bella doesn’t grow as a character or develop any personality, and she just gets her happy ending anyway. The Volturi hint that Bella is special because she’s unaffected by vampire powers, but that detail is shuffled to the sidelines to get more of Jacob and Edward butting heads on who she’ll choose. Most of the story’s events are outside her control and she doesn’t explore further into what they mean about her being special, and even her turning into a vampire-- not even of her own volition, but as a last ditch attempt to save her while dying in childbirth-- doesn’t change that much about her except now she’s immortal and she can bang Edward without getting knocked unconscious again.

I know Twilight is commercial romantic fiction meant to go in one ear and out the other, but it’s still such a damn waste of great lore and build up with no pay off. And Bella is such a bore of a protagonist to follow the entire time even for a blank slate who is meant to be easily identifiable for teenage readers. Again, not every female character needs to wield a sword or be flawless at everything they do, but having an engaging arc is the simplest bare minimum when writing your story’s protagonist. But that got lost in drawn out weather descriptions and, of course, the unhealthiest romances in fiction.

In a 2013 interview with TIME about her book, The Host, Meyer says she never thinks much about if her protagonists are good role models because “it’s fiction... I don’t think you should be using fictional characters as role models.” To that, I strongly disagree and am rather surprised to hear from Meyer given the great battles of Team Edward vs Team Jacob as each of the films released in theaters. Granted, this is an old interview, and I don’t know how much her opinion changed, but it still irks me.

Whether you like to admit it or not-- especially on the wonderful world of Tumblr.com--, fiction affects our reality. It alters our perception on politics, race, gender, lifestyles, and yes, even romance. Especially as kids and teenagers, we can’t help but find role models to base our ever-changing identities on and look up to so we can be better people for ourselves and society. It’s the reason why so many people define themselves on what Hogwarts house they’re in, why Disney milks Star Wars as long as they can, and why black communities arranged trips for everyone to see Black Panther. And unfortunately, I can’t bring myself to say Twilight is completely harmless in how it portrays the romances.

Just type in any search engine about abusive relationships in Twilight, and you get millions upon millions of analyses on how Edward and Jacob check off as abusers. They’re controlling, aggressive, easy to become jealous, and lacking any notion of personal boundaries. However, one abuser often forgotten in this conversation is Bella, who is such a despicable, emotional manipulator.

Remember how ridiculously depressed she gets in New Moon when Edward leaves? Well, she starts seeing visions of Edward checking in on her whenever she seems to be in danger. And she gets the bright idea to keep purposefully doing so-- including hanging out with shady gang members, crashing a motorcycle and jumping off a cliff-- just to get his attention and hopefully coax him to return to Forks. I’m surprised she didn’t just straight up say “If you leave me, I’ll kill myself” because it’s such textbook gaslighting. And when Edward is led to believe Bella died, then he attempts suicide! And she’s seriously surprised he would given how much needless self-harm she did over the months? What else did you think was going to happen?! I can’t even laugh at some of the badness of New Moon because Bella’s toxic behavior leaves such a sour taste in my mouth. Her severe romantic dependency went from being a damsel-in-distress to an abusive, emotionally manipulative screwball. And that’s just scraping the tip of the iceberg, folks.

Upon actually watching all the films for the first time, Edward’s behavior isn’t nearly as bad as my first perceptions when I was in middle school, but his possessiveness and lack of personal space are still incredibly uncomfortable. I know we all wrote that fanfiction where person A gets saved by person B from attempted gang rape, but Edward is so overbearingly and exhaustively protective, and it just gets worse in the sequels up until Bella’s finally transformed into a vampire. It is to the point where he hardly trusts Bella to do anything by herself knowing how massive of a klutz she is, and will pop into her home without permission, warning or respect of her personal space. As such, she never grows independence, much less learn how to protect herself or be prepared when supernatural forces come for her while the Cullens leave.

Edward may have good intentions to think of Bella’s safety with the context of other vampires mercilessly killing humans in Washington state, but he’s also on a slippery slope of controlling nearly every aspect of her life, especially when she might start feeling romantic for someone else, because guess what dude? You left for over half a year. This continuing behavior throughout the series heavily contributes to Bella’s unhealthy dependency on a romantic partner to the point where she feels like she can’t live without them. Granted, that doesn’t excuse her emotional manipulation, but because she never learns self-defense on the off chance no one else is there to save her, it’s no wonder why she has severe issues with separation and loneliness. Like I said before, you can’t have a healthy romantic relationship if you think it’s going to automatically fix all your problems. Your romantic partner isn’t your therapist or coping mechanism, especially if you can’t handle a simple break up or if said partner wasn’t even that great to begin with.

You’d think Jacob would be off the hook since he at least doesn’t watch Bella while she’s sleeping, but he’s not escaping unscathed. Despite how the series tries to explain what imprinting is, it’s glanced over so quickly on the now creepy relationship between Jacob and Bella’s daughter, even all things considered for a rapidly growing vampire child. He also has a ton of aggressive tendencies as part of the werewolf gene to the point where he will inevitably hurt Bella-- as illustrated with another pack member’s live-in girlfriend who has scars across her face--, and has zero respect for consent as he forcibly kisses her on multiple occasions. Yeah, cause painting your Native American characters-- and only prominent characters of color-- as inevitable, aggressive predators sure is good representation and definitely not some awful racial stereotype. Jacob embodies the most basic descriptors of toxic masculinity between his sense of entitlement that Bella should choose him over Edward and the “boys will be boys” mentality as though Jacob is completely incapable of any self-control, werewolf or not. Given the recent news surrounding Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination and his defenders claiming “what boy hasn’t done this” and that he shouldn’t be punished for his actions as a young man, Jacob’s character is one of the most dangerous aspects of the series to be romanticized as a wish fulfillment fantasy. He’s not only based on gross racial stereotypes, but also on harmful patriarchal ideas of men thinking they’re entitled to women without any consideration to their autonomy. Normalizing this behavior as attractive qualities in a partner allows men to run from their actions without consequence.

And this toxic masculinity only heightened when Fifty Shades of Grey entered the spotlight for pop culture to bash, but had much more legitimate criticisms to garner hatred.

Fifty Shades of Grey changes up the wish fulfillment fantasy where instead of a vampire, the clumsy and awkward female lead, Anastasia Steele, is swept away by billionaire, Christian Grey, who’s happy to spoil her with grand luxuries but has a troubled past which makes it difficult for him to love. Oh, and he’s into BDSM and writes up a questionable contract for Anastasia on all the kinky shit he wants to do. And Anastasia is so sweet and innocent she doesn’t even know what an anal plug is (like, it’s right there in the name, sweetheart. You can’t be this dumb). As you do, things go wrong, they take a break, Christian dumps his tragic anime backstory on Anastasia as a pathetic excuse to apologize, people from his past show up because reasons, and they eventually live happily ever after, married with a baby on the way.

Not only does Christian hit the same abuser red flags as Edward, Jacob and Bella on top of being the worst dom in history, but the series passes off that anyone can be fixed with the power of love. Once again, your romantic partner isn’t your therapist. Trauma may explain his behavior, but that doesn’t excuse what he put Anastasia through, and neither is it suddenly her job to fix him. And abusers like Christian are never reformed so easily with love; more often than not, they use it as leverage to manipulate and keep the relationship going for the sake of control. Sure, it sounds hot to be in a BDSM relationship with a billionaire ready to spoil you, but do the ends really justify the means of that sweet wish fulfillment? Is it really that great of a fantasy to play your partner’s therapist and humor their extreme control and possessiveness to the point where you’re almost not allowed to be an individual?

It’s one thing to have guilty pleasures and wish fulfillment fantasies. But after a while, you wonder what it is about a certain piece of media which makes it a guilty pleasure. It’s one thing if Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey are guilty pleasures in some of the enjoyably bad writing, unnatural dialogue or squandered potential. But upholding these romances as ideal and disregarding all the blatant warning signs of abusive relationships? That’s where we really need to take a step back and wonder why this is remotely okay to normalize, especially for impressionable teenage girls. Even though I was mostly amused by the films’ bad writing and these poor actors pushing through for their paychecks, there was also a fair amount of content which was too uncomfortable to laugh at-- Bella’s emotional manipulation, the portrayal of werewolves, and the unsubtle anti-abortion message in Breaking Dawn: Part 1 just to name a few. It’s baffling how these properties became cultural phenomenons for their “romances of the century” when most of these character really need couples’ counseling.

Thankfully, these franchises didn’t made too lasting impressions and for the most part are forgotten. Stephenie Meyer quietly retired to continue taking care of her kids, and EL James just kinda disappeared from the media spotlight since the last film released. Maybe Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey aren’t the worst series to happen to mainstream media, but they still heavily reflect a society which to this day hesitates to call dating violence what it is. Where finding love in another takes priority over self-care. Where people still struggle to define abuse because “if that’s abuse, then everyone I know has been abused.” Where despite sexual assault survivors’ testimonies, polygraph tests, supporters, and grueling mental exhaustion to tell their stories, their abusers roam free without consequence and are still allowed power with their nasty holier-than-thou attitudes to silence anyone who dares question their character.

We’re slowly getting better in these kind of fantasies for teens with films like Love, Simon and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before with genuinely health romances where the characters have to confront their flaws and grow. We’re a lot more critical of relationship dynamics in film than we were over a decade ago, especially with #MeToo in the last year. But part of me is still worried if we’ll have another trend like Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey where it’s blindly defended because it’s fiction and disregard when people romanticize the severely problematic elements which don’t guarantee happily-ever-afters for couples’ in reality. As the possibility of reverting to pre-Roe vs. Wade days becomes more of a likelihood, at what point do we finally acknowledge that a simple fantasy isn’t automatically above criticism?

If you enjoyed this analysis and what I do here, consider buying me a ko-fi to show your support!

#twilight #new moon #eclipse #breaking dawn #fifty shades #fifty shades of grey #wish fulfillment #self insert #editorial #opinion #my writing #stephenie meyer #el james #fantasy #fiction #reality

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