#fabled feminists

[fairiepunk]

I’m working on covering my favorite overalls in patches and such!

[TERFs, Anti-MOGAI, and Minors DNI]

#fable speaks #queer #trans #genderfluid #punk #fagdyke #queer punk #genderfuck #cripple punk #folk punk #diy #feminist #anarchist #anarchy #actually audhd #actually autistic #autistic adult #stim

[saturdaynightspecialpresentation]

Poor Things

First of all, Emma Stone’s performance is as good as everybody is saying. Stone takes a very difficult role that easily could have gone very, very wrong and makes it look like the most effortless thing in the world.

I have been looking at the reviews, good and bad, and I think that the minority of people who didn’t vibe with this movie had slightly skewed expectations.

Poor Things starts out at Tetsuo The Iron Man levels of fucked up, but by the end it has dropped to Edward Scissor hands levels of fucked up. This is probably plenty of weirdness for the average movie-goer, but true connoisseurs of mondo cinema should calibrate their expectations.

Second, apparently this is being talked up as a sort of feminist coming of age fable chronicling an everywoman’s sexual awakening and liberation, and it really isn’t that, and I think if you are hoping for that you’ll come away disappointed.

Better, I think, to look at it as an autistic coming of age fable and power fantasy, which I think it does a tremendous job at.

Very minor spoilers under the cut; really, this is more an essay about what I thought the film was about than a review, my review would be that it's somehow simultaneously a feel-good crowd-pleaser AND a movie where an adult woman with the brain of a toddler stabs the eyes out of a corpse with a scalpel and then plays with its penis (I wasn't kidding with the Tetsuo comparison)

Honestly now that I've actually written that out I have maybe underestimated how impressive it is that Yorgos Lanthimos made a movie where that happens on screen but somehow basically everybody loves the movie.

In terms of sex, we do watch Bella discover sex, but she very quickly comes to a conclusion about her relationship with it which never once changes throughout the rest of the movie:

She likes it, she likes it more with an attractive partner, she is utterly lacking in any kind of sexual jealousy, and she doesn't attach too much more to it than that.

This is an odd comparison, but Bella treats sex the way Joey did on Friends. A man acting this way is a sitcom cliche, but a woman acting the same way…

This is a film that is really, really not interested in the real-world consequences of this kind of sex; in fact, given that a pregnancy is the inciting incident of the film, it came off a little weird to me that the possibility of a pregnancy or STD was never really addressed (unless there was a line or two that I missed while I was in the bathroom).

For the most part, though, I was able to get past it by just thinking of it as a heightened world. The sets and settings are extremely artificial, and ultimately I figured, “Hey, if I can buy this kind of thing as harmless and fun in a sitcom, I can buy it in this other kind of heightened reality.

I will say, I don't think Bella is meant to be an every-woman, and that there's textual support for this in the film itself.

All of the women Bella deals with in some way question her approach to sex, making it clear, sometimes through explicit dialog, other times more reading between the lines, that her approach to sex is not for them.

If there’s any particularly feminist message in the film, it’s that when confronted with Bella’s bizarre approach to the world, none of the women get angry at her, and most of the men she meets do.

But Bella’s relationships with other women aren’t really the meat of the film, that’s more about her relationship with men, and particularly the way that they feel, deep in their bones, that they should have control over any woman that they have sex with.

Duncan Wedderburn, when he first discovers Bella and convinces her to go away with him, thinks he is tricking and seducing a beautiful naif who he can use and then discard when he tires of her. Their relationship disintegrates as it becomes clear that Bella hasn’t been tricked at all; she wanted exactly what he was able to give, a chance to sow her wild oats by having some no strings attached sex with an attractive, likable person in an exciting foreign city.

This makes Wedderburn increasingly unhappy and unhinged (He says at one point that he has become what he hates, a “grasping succubus”) much to Bella’s growing consternation. She has no idea why he can’t simply be happy having sex with her and otherwise letting her do what she wants, and he is so committed to a certain vision of gender roles that he can’t even begin to explain it, he can only lash out in frustration.

And that I think is the meatier part of the film; Bella doesn’t so much flout social expectations as she is simply totally unaware that they exist. 

Honestly I think the character isn’t so much coded as autistic as she just is autistic. Bella is a woman who is basically totally unaware of social expectations and constantly taken aback to discover that they exist.

More than that, she has to figure out a way to work around the fact that many of the people who become most enraged by her are also so totally lacking in self-reflection, and view their social situation as so normal, so self-evidently obvious that they cannot explain to her why it is she has made them angry. They suddenly fly into rages that clearly perplex Bella and which they themselves don’t even bother to explain, because they regard their own ideas as self-evident.

Bella is an idealized autistic hero; personally as outlandish as she is I don’t really think the film expects us to take the side of anybody else, and I think there are some fairly subtle and accurate bits of autistic behavior on her part.

She responds to life as a kind of social experiment, attempting to parse out a set of logical rules and, especially in the latter parts of the movie, she often justifies her actions with a perfectly sensible internal logic that the emotional men in her life can’t parse out. Late in the film, when she and Wedderburn are destitute, she prostitutes herself for 30 francs, and with implacable logic, explains the two reasons that Wedderburn ought to be quite happy she has done so: First, her john was much worse at sex than Wedderburn, which ought to satisfy his ego, and second, they now have 30 francs and the potential to earn more.

Wedderburn does not appreciate her logical approach.

Another thing that strikes me as very true is that Bella has a very odd theory of mind for other people. There’s a scene where, traumatized by the unspeakable poverty and suffering she sees in Alexandria, she puts all of Wedderburn’s money in a box and rushes out to give it to the poor. Unfortunately the ship is leaving, but two port attendants tell her that they will be staying on the island, and would be happy to deliver a package. She tells them that she has a big box filled with money and they should give it to the island’s poor, and they agree to do so. Now, the film never tells us one way or another whether they keep their word; but Bella herself retains an iron certainty that they did exactly what she asked them to. Now, we know Bella understands what lying and deceit are, because we’ve seen her trick people before, like when she chloroforms McCandles to run away with Wedderburn. But it never once occurs to her that these sailors might do something similar. Call it paradoxical, but that kind of thinking is common in autistic people.

There’s also the scene where the self-professed cynic Harry Astley shows her the suffering in Alexandria; he admits, when he sees how terribly it has affected her, that he didn’t tell her simply because he thought it was the truth of the world, but that her attitude made him angry, and he wanted to hurt her. A very common part of the autistic coming of age is the slow realization that not everything people tell you is part of a dispassionate, scientific search for the truth.

There’s also a scene in a whorehouse in which Bella argues that it would make more sense to have the women decide who is to sleep with the johns, so that then the john could be more confident that the girl was attracted to him, which he must doubt if he chooses. You can tell I’m autistic because I immediately had the thought, “Well, but the johns would probably be worried that nobody would choose them.”

One of Bella’s fellow working girls instead tells her, “Some of them like the fact that we don’t have a choice”.

#poor things #movie review #autism #cw violence #I'm actually not sure what kind of content warning I should put for the corpse stabbing

[whencyclopedia]

Marie de France

Marie de France (wrote c. 1160-1215 CE) was a multilingual poet and translator, the first female poet of France, and a highly influential literary voice of 12th-century CE Europe. She is credited with establishing the literary genre of chivalric literature (though this is contested), contributing to the development of the Arthurian Legend, and developing the Breton lais (a short poem) as an art form. Marie's published works include:

Lais (including the Arthurian works Chevrefueil and Lanval)

Aesop's Fables (a translation from Middle English to French) and other fables

St. Patrick's Purgatory (also known as The Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick)

She was trilingual, writing in the Francien (Parisian) dialect with a command of Latin and Middle English. Her lais were developed from the earlier Breton lais poetic form and so she must have also known Celtic Breton and been acquainted with Brittany. Her works influenced later poets, notably Geoffrey Chaucer, and her imagery in St. Patrick's Purgatory would be used by later writers in depictions of the Christian afterlife.

Marie's works were popular in aristocratic circles but frequently featured lower-class characters as more worthy and noble than their supposed social superiors and always cast women as strong central characters. Her vision of female equality has led to her designation as a proto-feminist in the modern day, and her works remain as popular as they were in her lifetime.

Identity

Her actual name is unknown – `Marie de France' is a pen name given her only in the 16th century CE. All that is known of her comes from her work in which she identifies herself as Marie from France. Based on details in her work including knowledge of place names and geography, and the sources she drew from, scholars have determined that Marie spent a significant amount of time in England at the court of Henry II (r. 1154-1189 CE) and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine (l. c. 1122-1204 CE).

Scholars suggest Marie may have been Henry's half-sister who perhaps followed him from Normandy to England when he was crowned king in 1154 CE. The Lais of Marie de France are dedicated to “a noble king” who is most likely Henry II but precisely how Marie meant this dedication is unclear. Marie's poetry often features women imprisoned or otherwise poorly treated by men and this theme mirrors Henry's relationship with Eleanor.

Throughout their marriage, Henry was unfaithful to his wife numerous times and carried on an open affair with the noblewoman Rosamund Clifford. When Henry's sons rebelled in 1173-1174 CE with Eleanor's support, the king had her imprisoned for the next 16 years. This same sort of relationship, often with similar details, appears in a number of Marie's works. Further, Henry does not seem to have been as fond of poetry and poets as his wife was and so an interpretation of Marie's dedication as sarcastic is probable.

In modern-day scholarship, Marie is almost always credited with establishing the genre of chivalric literature, but this seems unlikely as her works clearly draw on a pre-existing tradition of courtly love literature whose central motifs she inverts. In courtly love poetry, the knight is seen rescuing the damsel in distress; in Marie's works, the knight is often the one who has imprisoned her in the first place or, sometimes, the one in need of rescue.

Continue reading...

#History #CourtlyLove #EleanorofAquitaine #Guinevere #WHE #[ #]

[animefeminist]

Fushigi Yugi: Adolescence Apotheosis

SPOILERS for the entirety of the Fushigi Yugi TV series. 

CONTENT WARNING for discussions of sexual assault and emotional abuse.

Editor's Note: Yuu Watase is x-gender and, per the US publisher of her work, continues to use she/her pronouns in translation.

Yuu Watase was only 22 when she started writing Fushigi Yugi, and it shows. For better and worse, it’s obviously the work of a young, inexperienced writer. It’s a raw, emotional, often frustrating narrative driven more by feelings than logic.

On the other hand, Watase’s youth gives her an insight into the teenage psyche that many more polished narratives lack. Fushigi Yugi uses isekai trappings and the relationship between Miaka and Yui to explore common sources of desire and anxiety for teenage girls along with their potential consequences, both positive and negative. By tapping into the mentality of its audience and providing reassurance in its conclusion, Fushigi Yugi serves the function of a fable or fairy tale.

Escaping Anxiety in Another World

At fifteen, protagonist Miaka and her best friend Yui face a major transitional period in their lives. Japanese students prepare for high school entrance exams in the equivalent of ninth grade, and the school they get into can play a major role in determining the rest of their lives. Despite an increased interest in sex, romantic relationships are considered a waste of precious studying time. Friendships are on the cusp of breaking apart because people may get into different schools.

Read it at Anime Feminist!

#fushigi yugi #fushigi yuugi #yuu watase #miaka yuuki #shoujo #shoujo anime #shoujo manga #articles

[yourchemicallyimbalancedromance]

Introduction!! 💜🌙

(Because I keep forgetting to post it lol)

First and foremost, the owner of this blog stands with PALESTINE. #FREEPALESTINE🇵🇸

Hi! I’m Fable, but you can call me fae if we’re close :] I’m fifteen and I’ve been a fander since 2017-2018, so about…6-7 years? I’m glad to be here :))

Artists I love:

-Lana Del Rey

-Ethel Cain

-Taylor Swift

-The Weeknd

-NF

-MCR (My Chemical Romance)

-I Prevail

-Fall Out Boy

-P!ATD (Panic! At The Disco) (read: I do not support Brendon Urie)

-Paramore

{You’ll probably see me reblogging Taylor and Ethel Cain related posts most often :D}

Fandoms/Fanbases I am in:

-Sanders Sides

-Swifties

-Daughters Of Cain

-MRIH (My Roommate Is Hades)

Things I’m fine with being tagged in:

-Sanders sides x Reader (angst or fluff either is fine :D)

-Prinxiety/Analogical fanfic and/or one shots, etc.

-art

-Remy and/or Emile fanfic/art/oneshots/etc.!! I love finding these kinds of posts considering they aren’t core sides

-basically anything sanders sides related EXCEPT for ANYTHING NSFW and/or RemRom

DNI

-Transphobes

-homophobes

-TERFs

-people that ship/interact with RemRom content (ew)

-misogynists

-basically if you’re just a bad person who supports horrible things/causes, DNI.

Please interact list:

-Fanders

-Inclusionary Feminists

-people who love music

-VIRGIL KINNIES JDKDOXOWOFJWOJFKS

-orange side theorists!!

I’ll usually post/reblog:

-sanders sides theories/opinions

-funny incorrect quotes

-art (sometimes sanders sides related sometimes not)

-fanfic

-quotes (again, sometimes sanders sides related, sometimes not.)

Boundaries:

-totally fine with DMs as long as you’re fine with my response being few and far between, I’m not good with small talk or starting conversations and I need tone tags sooo

-totally fine with spam liking/reblogging! I love seeing that people like what I post :DD

-please please do not criticize my writing! I haven’t written in a very long time and I’m just now starting back up again, please bare with me!

Writing masterlist<3

#intro post #introduction #sanders sides #introductory post #pinned intro #introducing myself #blog intro

[perpetual-ash]

quick message for those who love to vaguepost about me: you are correct, my entire schtick is that i bounced off actual feminist literature and turned my focus to analysing tlt as a feminist work because it's the only thing at my reading level. i want to force you to read tlt as a moral fable of sorts because i am a sick and twisted individual whose understanding of morality is dependent on narratives spoonfeeding me ethics. i am unapologetic about this due to my aforementioned lack of moral understanding :|

#asterism

[itsagrimm]

Research Special

I have been asked to share my notes and references to 'He Who Comes from under the Water'. So here is my ongoing list of myths, fables, tales, practices or customs i have referenced so far.

People from central & eastern Europe are explicitly invited to add, argue or disagree with stuff they are familiar with.

Disclaimer: While I enjoy many traditional stories & practices, this is not a trad life safe space. Regressive misanthropes, fascists, right wingers, racists, anti-feminists and science deniers be gone. Romanticism may be my personal escapism and access to some of my heritage, which I am willing to share with you. But this is not a white supremacists playground in fairy tale costume. You guys are always the evil in my stories. Stay away.

König is a Vodyanoy or водяно́й. It's a re-occurring character and entity in many eastern European and slavic stories. There is not one version of Vodyanoy. Depending on the region and story they are all slightly different with Western Slavs leaning to a more elegant (?) Vodník who might even pass as human, likes tobacco offerings and tea pots to keep souls in, while the eastern Slavs tend to have more stories of a wild king who fears nothing and "enslaves" aka drowns anyone who crosses his kingdom. What most of these stories share is that this very powerful entity, is playful and open to bargains or games. It's possible that many fairy tales and characters stem from old pagan gods and traditions which explain the amount of power and connection to the land. The name Vodyanoy is literally translatable as 'he who comes from under the water'.

The heron & the fox is a fable written by Aesop. I would also like to add that the fox is a re-occuring fable animal in may central & eastern European stories in which it is considered a clever animal. Also in at least Russian the fox often is considered female while the german stories tend to name the fox as male.

Curses and being cursed here in this context is a more central European witch hunt reference. The villager Ivar wants readers property and goes after her, claiming she is cursed and due to being a woman not allowed to own the land of her family. During Medieval times in central Europe many peasant women owned the land in the same way as men did, being bound to the same expectations of service and work. Not saying that peasant women in the central European Middle Ages had many personal liberties bc simply the concept of personal liberties and governance was a different one, but since they were expected to work the land in the same way as men did, it is odd to not allow the reader to work the land of her dead family. Claiming something as unprovable as being cursed, is at least in the historic context more a post medieval attempt to strategically disenfranchise the vulnerable female coded reader by playing up religious, mostly christian fears, to get her land. Witch hunts were not a massive phenomenon in Eastern Europe, but rather common Modern Times occurrences until the 18th century especially in german speaking regions where they noticeably affected disenfranchised groups like women*, the poor, the sick, jewish communities, migrants, ... This is in basically in any german history class book for school. But I can also recommend this or this.

The idea of marriages between human women and male animal/magical beings/gods/spirits/etc is very common theme appearing nearly everywhere on the globe. I concentrated on german tales about animal-human-marriages, especially tales from the Gebrüder Grimm Collection. The Gebrüder Grimm fairy tale collection is a collection of german tales from 1812. Unlike the Disney retellings of fairy tales this german collection is brütäl, meaning it never really got reworded much since the 18th century, mirroring what the brothers considered a fine and acceptable story to tell to kids. In the 18th century. As you can imagine that was very different to what we consider appropriate for kids now. Anyway, I did a closer reading on the german "Froschkönig", "Schneeweißchen & Rosenrot" and the "Eisenhans" tales. They include cursed swamp being, cursed bear and cursed frog. Especially in Froschkönig the princess is the vocal point of the story while being forced into a marriage with a frog. Also, the story has many sexual undertones and especially the early male psychologist carl jung had a blast writing about a young woman's sexuality, ignoring her lack of agency in the whole scenario (wtf carl.). Eisenhans is different for it is about a prince and is essentially the male, more action including version but it includes a dangerous but also somewhat helpful underwater being which drowns whoever comes to it. Finally "Schneeweißchen & Rosenrot" shows a bear as a protector for the then later brides. As you can guess I draw a lot of the psychological impacts especially from Froschkönig for the Reader perspective. Also, lot's of food references.

Female owlets cry ‘Kowitt!” which sounds like the german ‘komm mit’ / ‘come with me’. Therefore, it is said in German folklore that the owlets are birds of death wanting to take a soul with them or warning of the impending death of those who listen to it because it was heard so much around the dead and dying. Owlets and many other nightly birds of prey were hunted because of that in German speaking regions. The real reason for owlets crying around the dead is a different one: the lights of the wake for the dead drew the birds in at night.

Herbs might be something we consider magical now during an honestly odd revival of new age mysticism. But it likely wasn't magical per se in the same way for European central & eastern people in the undefined past. Of course there are stories and legend about magical herbs like the herb 'Moly' in the Odyssee. But the use of herbs just to flavour food can be found in the Edda the same way teas and foods are used to help with flavouring food, keeping healthy and curing sickness till this day without being magical. It's just practical to use what is at hand. Reader drinking a sage tea, which is a wild plant widely available basically everywhere is exactly that. If you want to try it, i recommend adding some honey. But please don't buy white sage just to make tea from it. That's wasteful considering the importance white sage has in other practices I am not familiar with when one can use Common Sage.

Because hair in whatever length or form is beautiful but requires work, many traditional hair styles for longer hair from the especially the eastern European region include ‘косы’ or braids/plaits. It's a very practical way of keeping your hair tidy and out of the way during a days work. Head coverings for female presenting people from the region also play an important role. The most known ones are head scarfs known as 'платки', they are beautiful scarfs with often flowery motives. Depending on the region of origin the patterns will be different. Платки used to be associated with being married and being older but not so much anymore as it can also be just worn as protection against the elements or as an accessory. Платки also play a role in various religious practices for both christian and muslims as well as cultural pride so I recommend doing serious research before just wearing this type of head covering just because you find it beautiful. I remember being called names for wearing this traditional dress so for someone just to take it and 'play' with it without learning more first, feels off to me. Another important head wear I plan on referencing is the 'кокошник' which is something like a crown or tiara worn by mostly married female presenting people. I remember seeing the кокошник drawn on basically all queens and princesses in my fairy tale books as a kid so you bet I will give reader one.

The swamp light's are another staple in many parts of the world where swamps exist. The German folklore know them as 'Irrlicht' or 'Sumpflicht' and consider them evil doers trying to lure wanderers into the dangerous swamps or just off the road. Slavic tales also associate the lights in the swamp with something bad. There is the entity of the 'боло́тник' who lives in the swamp and likes to lure people in by lighting up those fires, making animal noises and confusing wanderers by intoxicating them with gas from dangerous herbs. The боло́тник is not as common and I only read up on this creature as research for HWCFUTW since he does very similar things as the водяно́й and more stories are about him as the generally associated being ruling all types of waters.

At last:

Generally speaking I noticed a leaning in especially english speaking media to see everything slavic as culturally Russian, and everything German-speaking as from the whole of Germany. That is a dangerous simplification. If you want to learn and research more on your own about those regions and their traditions & stories i have to stress the importance of local culture and complex diversity in those regions.

Also, if you liked this I can do a follow up post about my references in my writing once I have introduced a bit more.

@thesinsoflust @kdkj122920 @die-prophetin @lillianastuff @1234ilikecowsthanyoumore

#he who comes from under the water #hwcfutw #grimmwriting #monster!könig #könig

[fairiepunk]

The patriarchy told me

At 11 years old

That the hair growing under my arms was

“disgusting”

was

“ugly”

was

“not ladylike”

So I became a man,

Not necessarily for that reason,

But because it showed me that manhood was something I’d perform better than womanhood.

And after a while, I found there were still remnants of womanhood inside of me.

Still pieces of me that felt like the girl I grew up as.

I wondered if I should push her away,

For fear of doing womanhood wrong again.

However, the older I get

The queerer I become,

The more I realize

There is no wrong way to be myself,

And that means being both man and woman.

And that means never shaving when I don’t want to.

At 22, I love my pits.

I love the way hair grows from my chest and belly and face.

I love being soft, and I love being chivalrous.

I love being man and woman and everything in between.

And the patriarchy can’t tell me shit, anymore.

-I Love My Pits, 5/20/24

#fable speaks #poetry #queer #trans #genderfluid #fagdyke #genderfuck #mental health #body posititivity #body hair #feminist poetry #anti patriarchy

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this week (#172):

"May I watch you eat?"

The taste of things is the latest French 'Food-porn' movie, following the recipe of so many before it, and paying homage especially to 'Babette's Feast', with Juliette Binoche playing the simple cook Stéphane Audran in a similar style. They knew what they were doing, romanticizing the 'olde thyme' vision of culinary bliss, making it like a summertime Renoir tableaux [but without any of the dozens of assistants needed to chop the wood, peel the potatoes, pluck the geese, and do the dishes]. Food as love.

I saw it on the same day I read this article about 'The Hottest Restaurant in France', which got me in the mood.

🍿

"I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Please forgive me..."

Samsara is not Ron Flicke's film of the same name (him of the The Qatsi Trilogy). But this 2023 film too is a meditative, spiritual essay about life, death and change. It specifically tells about the Buddhist idea of re-incarnation.

Like the Italian poem 'Le quattro volte' it transforms the philosophical concept of 'Bardo' into a visual story about a bed-ridden old Laotian woman who turns into a new-born goat in Africa after her death. And like Philip Gröning's patient 'Into Great Silence', it follows the simple life in a monastery, quietly and poetically. (Photo Above).

It tells two separate stories: A young boy reads from 'The Tibetan book of the Dead' to a dying woman in a village in Laos. And exactly at midpoint, there's an unexplained, abstract 2001 "Star Gate" light show, where the (Spanish) director asks the audience to close their eyes, and get lost in the vortex with her for about 15 minutes. Long stretch of strobe lights and strange dead sounds, as her soul travels though the afterlife into new birth. Then her spirit transmutes into an another form, as a pet goat for a young Muslim girl in Zanzibar. It's a fragile, silent and unfocused vision about the circle of life.

🍿

Thoroughbreds, my second unsettling thriller by Cory Finley (after 'Bad Education'), his accomplished debut feature. It tells of two rich, psychopathic Connecticut girls who scheme to murder, a-la Raskolnikov, the mean father of the richer one. Terrific direction choices and well-made execution, but I can't stand the young, unlikable actresses (and actors!), and their emotionally-stunted upper-class coldness left me cold too.

I loved JunePictures's lovely animated logo at the beginning!

🍿

Invention for Destruction, a Jules Verne steampunk'ish adventure fable. It was made by Karel Zeman, the "Czech Méliès", in 1958, and is considered "the most successful film in the history of Czech cinema". It's a fantasy sci-fi story that includes rollerskating camels, underwater biking pirates, a giant man-eating octopus, submarines with duck-foot paddles, Etc. It mixes real-life acting with special effect Victorian engravings and animation, including traditional, cut-out, and stop-motion, along with miniature effects and matte paintings. 4/10.

🍿

2 by French feminist Germaine Dulac:

🍿 Dulac was a radical, impressionist, avant-garde film-maker who had made ground-breaking surrealist silent films even before Bu��uel and Dalí made 'The Andalusian Dog'.

The Smiling Madame Beudet (1923) is a strong feminist story of an intelligent woman unhappily married who's dreaming of killing her boorish husband. It includes a literal Chekhov's gun. [*Female Director*].

🍿 The Seashell and the Clergyman is based on an experimental story by avant-garde artist Antonin Artaud. A year before 'Un Chien Andalou', it's just as opaque & untamed. Anybody interested in early Buñuel, should visit her films. It's about the "erotic hallucinations of a priest lusting after the wife of a general." Distorted images, bizarre fantasies, impolite subversions... [*Female Director*].

🍿

Another silent era classic, made by a towering pioneer, Alice Guy Blaché's 1906 The Life of Christ. [On IMDb, Alice Guy is credited with directing 464 (!) films, producing 32 and writing 18!]. Composed of 25 individual tableaux, telling of mostly his last days, and noted for her focus on his mostly women followers. The poor baby who had to play Jesus in the manger!... [*Female Director*].

🍿

Crack-up, a confusing 1946 Film Noir, made by a second-rated director, with a terrible script and bad acting all around, including the miscast Pat O'Brien. A stolen art piece, not up to 'The Maltese Falcon' levels. 2/10.

🍿

"I was drugged and left for dead in Mexico, and all I got was this stupid T shirt."

A single re-watch this week: the sophisticated mystery The Game, again♻️. Still my favorite David Fincher film, even more than 'The social Network'. With the magnificent Memory montage opening, which was also copied successfully by the show 'Succession'. Chasing a "White Rabbit", a birthday present to remember...

🍿

2 more selections from the US National Film Registry:

🍿 I am somebody is a 1970 documentary about a strike by 400 black hospital employees (all but 12 women) for better pay in Charleston, South Carolina. Racist discrimination against poor blacks in Amerika is so appalling and so deep, it's hard to watch. The fight for equality and civil rights never ended. 9/10. [*Female Director*].

🍿 Jammin' the Blues is a 1944 Warner Bros. jazz short featuring Lester Young and (new to me) singer Marie Bryant. Oscar nominated in 1944. 'Smokin'!

🍿

I used to really like British magician Darren Brown, and saw many of his shows. Pushed to the edge (2016) is a disturbing experiment in social compliance, a-la Stanley Milgram, taken to the extreme. With dubious morality, he manipulates an unsuspecting guy to push another man from the roof of a building. But the more elaborate the set up, the more uncomfortable it is to watch it.

🍿

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, a lame, loud, shallow music mockumentary by The Lonely Island. It had only one good number, "Fucked Bin Ladin" (which came at 46:00, exactly one hour before the end, so they did follow some script writing rules after all..) and about one million celebrity cameos, including Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney. 2/10.

🍿  

In They're Made Out Of Meat (2005) two aliens meet in a night Diner. One of them tell the other, dressed in St. Pepper-type uniform that he discovers that all people on this planet are "made out of meat". It's a cute concept, but that's the whole thing, and there's not more to it.

RIP, Terry Bisson!

🍿  

Semiotics of the Kitchen was an angry installation piece by artist Martha Rosler, at the heights of the second wave feminism years (1975). A parody of a cooking show, where the host gets more and more agitated. [*Female Director*].

🍿

(My complete movie list is here)

#movies #samsara

[zizekianrevolution]

One of Lacan's most important formulations concerns the "nonexistence" of the sexual relation. First mentioned in Seminar XIV and expanded in Seminar XX, this claim amplifies Freud's famous remark: "We must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavorable to the realization of complete satisfaction." Lacan did not mean that love doesn't exist or that people don't revel in sexual pleasure. What does not exist is a romantic love that allows individuals to complete each other, making one of two, like the fabled creatures in Plato's Symposium. It would seem that Lacan shared with feminist social critics a sense of the overvaluation of "true love" in the contemporary West. But whereas feminists have seen the problem as socially constructed, Lacan saw the impossibility of the sexual relation as largely structural - our fate as subjects divided by the unconscious. - Deborah Luepnitz

[thespiralstaircasewriter]

I wonder what that feeling is that you get when you had an idea, an idea for writing, I mean. More than an idea, a project.

A good one, that somehow involves you and what you found touching all of your life, and which calls so much inspiration to your writer hand, and that you know could work.

You have the whole story in front of your eyes like a film: you know how it begins, how it will unfold and how it ends. And you even know why it should be written. But you can’t sit down and write it.

Because your life simply doesn’t allow for it.

It’s probably useless to explain… However: breadwinner woman, always on the forefront, meaningless work hours and meaningful duties which dog you into your day, until there’s nothing left of you as a person, let alone as a writer.

But a thought still bugs you: about writers who wrote anyway, although being very poor, and troubled in many ways. Writers who put writing first, and made themselves scarce with family, no matter what. Writers who were writers, fullstop.

So you go: A-ha…. That’s it. If YOU were a writer, then you would write. You would put writing first.

But you’re an ant, or better, a cog, let’s not discuss the importance of the mechanism you serve in.

And so this thought brings a crumb of clarity, if not closure (just lately disturbed by a doubt: you’re probably not a very good cog, or ant, because frankly you look like you’re dying).

However, this idea I had, this project, was called “The Christmas Soldier”, about two privates from WW1, a British and a German one, meeting on the occasion of the fabled football game which was improvised for the exceptional and illusory truce of Christmas 1914.

For the two adversary soldiers it was instant love, as crazy and illogical as could be, but then of course they lost sight of each other, and the war went on.

My story developed into the 70’s, when one of the soldiers, the British one, who had become a medical officer in WW2, then a doctor for life, would write a book on his experience, and a young feminist journalist would be struck with interest and begin researching the matter. The book is received with niche approval, which spreads to wide fame when, some years later, thanks also to the young woman who chose to intertwine her destiny with those of the two boys lost in time, a film is made of the story. I keep the conclusion to myself.

Also because, in the meantime, not one, but two WRITERS have put out TWO books, mastering a recipe with my main ingredients: gay romance starting in WW1 and love confronting time and history. Although none of the two books are about one British and one German soldier, and my story IS different. But as they would say, the shot has been fired.

So, what’s that feeling called, when THIS happens?

#my writing #writers #inner monologue should probably remain inner I know #once upon a time there was The Christmas Soldier

[animefeminist]

#the fable #review

[duckprintspress]

Duck Prints Press Celebrates Folktales and Fables Week with Our Favorite Folktale-Inspired (often Queer) Fiction

This week, March 19th to 25th, is World Folktales and Fables Week! Duck Prints Press is celebrating with two blog posts: yesterday’s, which focused on the folktales, fables, and myths that influenced us as creators, and today’s, about our favorite folktale-inspired fiction (queer and otherwise).

Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold by S.B. Divya (suggested by Dei)

This past year I read this story in Uncanny Magazine Issue 46, and it’s really stuck with me. It’s a retelling of a folktale very familiar to many Westerners, and the changes made turn it into a very compelling new story all on its own. No spoilers on what story it is, but suffice to say it takes a new perspective and I love this piece to bits.

Once & Future by Cory McCarthy and A. R. Capetta (suggested by Tris Lawrence)

I’m currently really enjoying the duology by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy which is an Arthurian retelling in space with a female Arthur and multiple queer rep. It’s YA, and it’s just… fun? I love how it played with the the known pieces, and plays with Merlin’s aging backwards, and works to both fit within the expected and turn things around at the same time.

I’ve finished Once & Future (in Space) and just received Sword in the Stars (confronting the past) and can’t wait to get to read it after I finish what I’m already reading.

One For the Morning Glory by John Barnes (suggested by Nina Waters)

My favorite folktale-inspired book is John Barnes’s One for the Morning Glory. It’s just beautiful.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (suggested by Owlish)

Unfortunately, it does have a major character death because…well… Achilles. It is so beautifully written, though.

Burning Roses by S. L. Huang (suggested by Shadaras)

This novella takes inspiration from the fairytale Red Riding Hood and the legend of Hou Yi (as well as other classic Germanic fairy tales and Chinese legends!), and imagines both of those characters as middle-aged women uncertain of their place in the world. They travel together, fighting monsters, and tell each other about their youths and families (both of them have wives and children). The ending is happy, but the path there takes time and reflection from everyone involved. I love it because of how it blends two wholly separate mythologies together into one cohesive world, as well as for showing what might happen after the stories we know end.

The Book of Gothel by Mary McMyne (suggested by Owlish)

It’s a feminist retelling of Repunzel from the point of view of Mother Gothel setting her story straight.

Robin McKinley’s Fairy Tale Novels (suggested by E C)

Robin McKinley’s fairy tale novels are beautifully written (but sometimes brutal) retellings of some classic stories.

Guardian/Zhen Hun/镇魂 by Priest (suggested by boneturtle)

A danmei featuring humans, ghosts, demons, zombie kings, and all sorts of otherworldly creatures all wrapped up in an apocalyptic chinese folktale mashup from the master herself. taught me that 1) you are allowed to play with your own mythology, 2) fairytales are gay, 3) the apocalypse isn’t the end, just another spin of the wheel.

October Daye Series by Seanan McGuire (suggested by Sebastian Marie)

I love this series, there’s like eleven books, the first being Rosemary and Rue. They’re inspired by Irish folklore concerning the Faerie people.

Ash by Malinda Lo (suggested by E C)

“Ash” by Malinda Lo is a very queer Cinderella retelling.

Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed (suggested by Adrian Harley)

A gorgeous graphic novel of the modern world, but where wishes are a commodity, bought, sold, and processed. The graphic novel follows three people who come into possession of a “first-class” wish and their intertwining tales. It’s a beautiful exploration on a global and personal scale (what does colonialism look like in this world? How does law enforcement treat those who are seen as unworthy of having wishes? But also, if you’re a queer college student with major depression, what do you wish for to fix the mountain you feel crushing you? Are you even worthy of a wish?)—and it’s also really funny! I cannot say enough good things about this book, because I discovered it by chance on my library shelf last month and want everyone to know about it.

The Lunar Chronicles Series by Marissa Meyer (suggested by E C)

It’s sci-fi that brings Cinderella, Snow White, Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel characters into the same universe.

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente (suggested by Anonymous)

[[[A retelling of a Russian folk tale about Koschei the Deathless.]]]

Saiyuki by Kazuya Minekura (suggested by Anonymous)

It’s a manga with a distinctly retro anime-style retelling of the Journey to the West that bluntly confronts themes of loss, grief, redemption, and the long, long road to admitting you care about other people. It’s been on and off hiatus for years due to the author’s poor health, but I still adore it. This series taught me that it’s the journey that matters, not the destination.

Bonus!

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (an inspiration to multiple people, suggested by multiple people)

When we asked our contributors to suggest the folktales and fables that inspired them, and their favorite folktale-inspired stories, The Mists of Avalon ended up getting nominated in both categories!

boneturtle said: retelling of Arthurian legend from Morgana’s POV. Not explicitly queer but features the women of the story with the men as sort of incidental, and given to me by my bi friend who said it helped her understand her own sexuality. and it’s beautifully, beautifully written.

-

There’s a wonderful number of fiction stories, novellas, novels, and series inspired by folktales and fables, and a growing number of those are queer. Have you got a favorite we didn’t mention? We’d love to hear about it!!

Who we are: Duck Prints Press LLC is an independent publisher based in New York State. Our founding vision is to help fanfiction authors navigate the complex process of bringing their original works from first draft to print, culminating in publishing their work under our imprint. We are particularly dedicated to working with queer authors and publishing stories featuring characters from across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Love what we do? Want to make sure you don’t miss the announcement for future giveaways? Sign up for our monthly newsletter and get previews, behind-the-scenes information, coupons, and more!

Want to support the Press, read about us behind-the-scenes, learn about what’s coming down the pipeline, get exclusive teasers, and claim free stories? Back us on Patreon or ko-fi monthly!

#duck prints press #world folktales and fables week #rec list #book recs #queer books

[susansontag]

With each progressive retelling, the hundreds became thousands, the thousands tended towards infinity, and the lice multiplied, becoming settlements and then townships and then cities and then nations. In my mother’s version of the story, these lice caused traffic disturbances on my hair, they took evening walks on my slender neck, they had civil war over territory, they recruited an enormous number of overenthusiastic child soldiers and then they engaged in out-and-out war with my mother. They mounted organized resistance, set up base camps in the soft area of the scalp above the ears and in the nape of the neck where it was always harder to reach, but they were being decimated slowly and surely by my mother’s indefatigable efforts. Every war strategy was deployed, Sun Tzu was invoked: appear weak when you are strong and appear strong when you are weak; when your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him with more chlorinated washes than he can handle; attack him when he is unprepared; force your enemy to reveal himself; be as rapid as the wind when you are wielding the paenseeppu (the merciless narrow-toothed lice comb that removed as many hairs as it removed lice and lice eggs and baby lice); make use of the sun and the strongest shampoo; above all, do not spend time bothering about lice rights and genocide tribunals when you are defending a liberated zone.

This is how my story of Young Woman as a Runaway Daughter became, in effect, the great battle of My Mother versus the Head Lice. And because my mother won this battle, the story was told endlessly, and it soon entered the canon of literature on domestic violence. The Americans had trigger warnings and graphic-content cautions attached to the course material, but otherwise it picked up a lot of traction elsewhere. It was taught in gender studies programmes, and women of colour discussed it in their reading groups (it was still a little too dirty and disorienting for white feminists, and it was perhaps considered a touch too environmentally unfriendly for the ecofeminists, and the postmodernists disregarded it because my mother’s telling ignored the crucial concept of my husband’s agency to beat me), and even those who forgot the original context of the story or the bad-marriage setting always remembered it as a fable about one mother’s unending, unconditional, over-conditioned love.

— Meena Kandasamy, When I Hit You

#what I'm reading #meena kandasamy #quote #moth.txt

[can1s-lupus-lupus]

hello hello!! welcome to my intro post!

human/general identity:

name: Vos or Rook, I like both

pronouns: kit/kits

area: Scotland! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

gender: transmasc/genderfaun and I present masculine and adrodynous

sexuality/romantic attraction: grey-aroace/queerplatonic (more on that later), generally just sometimes call myself queer

alterhuman identity:

confirmed kintypes: grey wolf with a black coat, golden retriever, c!Quackity (dream smp)

questioning kintypes: corvids, some kind of horse, domesticated cat, stag/deer

questioning hearttypes: corvidd, ash fox, fantastic mr fox

awakening: summer 2022

tag system:

https://www.tumblr.com/vlps-lps/723121866586357760/rooks-tag-system?source=share

byf:

this blog may use all caps and swears at times!

this blog may include the occasional post about taxidermy/vulture culture but will always be tagged as #taxidermy and #vulture culture so you can stay away

generally I am pro- trans/queer/feminist/BLM/equality movements

more below! (DNI, disabilities/neurodivergence, + a little about my trans and queer identities)

dni:

basic dni applies (homo/trans/aphobic, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic) along with:

anyone who will take this blog or my identity in a sexual/nsfw way

reality checkers

transrace/rcta/ecta

my trans identity:

anti-mcyt (in a general sense, just fed up of people generalising them into something that is 100% negative, please bear in mind i have a c!Quackity kintype (although I don't support cc!Wilbur or cc!Dream at all), so if you dont like this stuff you dont need to follow me)

for now I really identify with saying I'm transmasc, nonbinary and genderfaun (like the transmasc version of genderfluid)

i like to joke that I'm a dogboy but honestly it's kind of true, my golden retriever kin seems to be pretty prevelant and mental shifts often come across as just having an aloof or silly personality

my queer identity:

I consider myself to be asexual and greyromantic

I am in a very fun and good queerplatonic relationship and I love my partner to bits <3 he's been so supportive and kind no matter what :D

disabilities/neurodivergence:

im autistic and have adhd

i have a chronic skin condition (eczema) which, if you don't know, it makes your skin dry and itchy especially during flare ups

also possibly i have some kind of connective tissue disorder or joint issue like hypermobile ehlers-danlos syndrom (hEDS)

special interests:

alterhumananity/therianthropy and associated communities

fantastic mr fox

OSDDID

i also have what i like to call recurrent hyperfixations (i.e: hyperfixations that never fully go away my interest in them sorta fluctuates but keeps coming back) on fable smp amd dream smp

#rook speaks #rook chatters

[denimbex1986]

'Pre-release expectations were already “stratospheric”, but the unlikely pairing of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” around the world has “helped fuel the biggest collective weekend at the box office since the pandemic”, said Rebecca Rubin in Variety – music to the ears of their respective film studios, Warner Bros. Discovery and Universal, and a potential lifeline for beleaguered cinema chains.

The “Barbenheimer” cultural craze, which began as a meme on the internet, stoked US sales of $82.4m for the biopic about “the father of the atomic bomb”, while Barbie pulled in $162m. Warner Bros. reckons that’s just the start, observing: “This doll will indeed have long long legs.” Shares in AMC Entertainment soared, said Anita Ramaswamy on Reuters Breakingviews as record-breaking sales suggested that the US cinema chain would survive.

On this side of the Atlantic, both Vue and Odeon reported a “booking frenzy”, said Dominic Walsh in The Times. A remarkable 23% of Vue’s customers bought tickets for both movies at the same time. The two films took £30m at the box office in their opening weekend in Britain, making it the most successful weekend for British cinemas since 2019.

With the verdicts now in, here’s what the film critics said about the blockbuster double act…

Barbie review **** “Anthropologists believe there may be tribes living in the farthest reaches of the Amazon” who missed the marketing campaign for Greta Gerwig’s $145m, Mattel-sponsored Barbie movie, but the rest of us had our eyeballs melted by it for weeks, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph. So it’s an “unexpected pleasure” to report that it’s not the “blunt-force cash grab many of us feared. In fact, it’s deeply bizarre, conceptually slippery and often roar-out-loud hilarious.”

Margot Robbie is perfectly cast as “Stereotypical Barbie”, a “habitually smiley creature” whose life in Barbieland (a fantasy world in which multiple different Barbies hold sway) is disrupted when she finds herself “haunted by thoughts of sadness, anxiety and death”, said Mark Kermode in The Observer. “Worse still, she develops flat feet and (whisper it!) cellulite – two horsemen of the Barbie apocalypse.” A visit to Kate McKinnon’s “Weird Barbie” (“She was played with too hard”) reveals that a wormhole has opened between Barbieland and the real world. So our heroine must venture there, accompanied by Ken (Ryan Gosling), who learns that the real world is dominated by something called “The Patriarchy”, which, having always been in thrall to Barbie, he rather likes. It all adds up to a “riotously entertaining candy-coloured feminist fable”.

I saw the film with my 20-year-old daughter who loved it, said Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail. Me, not so much. “My main criticism, actually, has nothing to do with the subject matter.” Barbie or no Barbie, it’s just not a very good film. It is uneven and disjointed, and “deeply anti-man”. Every male character is “an idiot, a bigot or a sad, rather pathetic loser”, and women’s liberation is framed “not as a movement based on achieving equality between the sexes, but as a cultural revenge vehicle”.

Seeking to both satirise and celebrate Barbie, the film falls into what one critic has called the “reflexivity trap”, said Adrian Horton in The Guardian: the idea that acknowledging a fault absolves you of that fault. So it sends up Mattel, but Mattel will profit very nicely from it. The result is a film that, for all its buoyancy and fun, “feels stuck in a loop of intense self-awareness”.

Oppenheimer review **** “Oppenheimer” is billed “as a biopic of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer”, said Wendy Ide in The Observer. “But ‘biopic’ seems too small a word to contain the ambition and scope of Christopher Nolan’s formidable if occasionally unwieldy” film about the so-called “father of the atomic bomb”. Although this “dense and intricate period piece” weaves together “courtroom drama, romantic liaisons, laboratory epiphanies and lecture hall personality cults”, it is perhaps most of all a “monster movie”. Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer is “an atomic-age Frankenstein, a man captivated by the boundless possibilities of science” who realises too late that his creation has a limitless capacity for destruction. “Murphy’s far-seeing ice-chip eyes have never been put to better use.”

Jumping between several timelines, the film follows “Oppie” from the 1920s and into old age, said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. And though its all-star cast is distracting (Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr, Gary Oldman, Kenneth Branagh and others pop up), it builds into a “brilliant” drama about “genius, hubris and error”.

It wasn’t the “instant masterpiece” I was hoping for, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. The script feels “overpolished”; and the “coda that follows the Trinity test explosion and the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a definite slog”. It’s also a shame that female characters are so peripheral, said Radhika Seth in Vogue. Oppenheimer’s wife (Emily Blunt) is a “lipsticked blur”; and we learn virtually nothing about his lover Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) other than that she’s “emotionally turbulent” and hates flowers. The women are a bit “one-dimensional”, said Christina Newland in The i Paper. There’s also a lot of “clanging” historical name-dropping (“What’s this place called? Los Alamos”, etc.). But the film survives its flaws, which “is testament to the fascinating material and the might of its performances”.'

#Barbie #Oppenheimer #Christopher Nolan #Greta Gerwig #Mail on Sunday #Vogue #Robert Downey Jr. #Gary Oldman #Kenneth Branagh #The i Paper #The New York Times #Emily Blunt #The Observer #The Guardian #Ryan Gosling #Kate McKinnon #The Times #Barbenheimer #Variety