#it is the book form of that graffiti that's like 'there are women with dicks men with vaginas and transphobes without teeth' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

katiewattsart · 5 years

Text

29/10/19 : TEDDY BOYS. HAUL GIRLS. #1

What are they?

Teddy Boy: (in the 1950s) a young man of a subculture characterised by a style of dress based on Edwardian fashion (typically with drainpipe trousers, bootlace tie, and hair slicked up in a quiff) and a liking for rock-and-roll music.

Haul Girl: A girl or women who makes a haul video.

The revolution will not be televised.

youtube

The tv shows you what it wants to show you.

Television tells us what the people who run the TV stations want us to know. But social media today sometimes provides an alternative.

Subculture - Under/Beneath

We are looking today at youth and subcultures… their historicity and their contexts, and where we are with what might be called subcultures and youth cultures today.

GUIDE TO THE CULTS

A genuine piece from the mirror in the 1980s.

youtube

Sex Pistols : This is one of the most infamous moments on television. Today it seems tame, but in 1976 this was enough to get the presenter fired.

Like Duchamp's 'ready mades' - manufactured objects which qualified as art because he chose to call them such, the most unremarkable and inappropriate items - a pin, a plastic clothes peg, a television component, a razor blade, a tampon - could be brought within the province of punk (un)fashion...

Dick Hebdige - Subculture: The Meaning of Style

Hebdige’s book has long been consider the authorative text on subculture.

In the book he discusses the ready made aesthetics of punk. Punk was the first reaction to the developing politics of Thatcher and Reagan… here a refusal to take part in business as normal led to music that sounded amateur and fresh… the opposite of the progressive rock that had dominated the mid 1970s and early 80′s.

Vivienne Westwood

Objects borrowed from the most sordid of contexts found a place in punks' ensembles; lavatory chains were draped in graceful arcs across chests in plastic bin liners. Safety pins were taken out of their domestic 'utility' context and worn as gruesome ornaments through the cheek, ear or lip...fragments of school uniform (white bri-nylon shirts, school ties) were symbolically defiled (the shirts covered in graffiti, or fake blood; the ties left undone) and juxtaposed against leather drains or shocking pink mohair tops.

Jamie Red and others made zines that could be assembled in this same way, collaging and making work that felt it could have been made in the house, and often was.

Subcultures

Subcultures are tribal, bringing people together to form loose relations outside of the mainstream.

Different subcultures:

Even subcultures have subcultures… specific types of goth (steampunk, lolita) rude boys, K Pop sub genres, grunge punk rock etc

Once about a specific youth culture movement based around the disco music of the 1970s, clubbing subculture developed into rave culture in the late 80s and 90s, and has become a mainstream movement in the last few years.

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, Mark Leckey, 1999

youtube

“Something as trite and throwaway and exploitative as a jeans manufacturer can be taken by a group of people and made into something totemic, and powerful, and life-affirming.”

Subcultures are about a sense of belonging, often to people who feel excluded or disenfranchised from the mainstream.

youtube

Cosplay - form of subculture

The Joker and Harlequin are both characters who live for misrule, and both of them come from characters in the commedia dell’arte.

Harlequin relates directly to Harley Quinn… the Lord of Misrule was the peasant who was given the task of making sure that Xmas revellers got very drunk and very naughty.

The World Turned Upside Down

These characters link back to the ideas of the carnival, a time when the world was turned upside down. Christmas was initialy this kind of festival. People didn’t know if they would make it through the winter, so they made merry whilst they could. In the carnival Kings become Jokers, Jokers became kings.

Carnival extracts all individuals from non-carnival life, non-carnival states and because there are no hierarchical positions during carnival, ideologies which manifest the mind of individuals cannot exist.

...And finally in a few relatively rare instances, we find an extreme form of revelry in which the participants play-act at being precisely the opposite of what they really are; men act as women, women as men, kings as beggars, servants as masters, acolytes as bishops. In such situations of true orgy, normal life is played in all manners of sins such as incest, adultery, transvestitism, sacri- lege, and lese-majeste treated as the order of the day...

Edmund R. Leach, Rethinking Anthropology

In Rabelais and His World (1965), Mikhail Bakhtin likens the carnivalesque to the type of activity that often takes place in the carnivals of popular culture. In the carnival, according to Bakhtin, social hierarchies of everyday life—their etiquettes, and normal structures—are turned on their head.

Court jesters become kings, kings become beggars; opposites are mingled (fact and fantasy, heaven and hell).

Drag Cultures

Much in the same way that Madonna, undeniable icon though she is, in no way invented voguing, neither did the queens on RuPaul’s Drag Race invent the concept of "shade", "realness" or any of the other essential sayings liberally adopted wholesale by the internet. But what the show has done is continually provide a potted queer history. Whether it’s through highlighting ball culture, trans activism, gender fluidity, or queens like the legendary Lady Bunny; or simply by allowing the contestants to talk about their lived experience, the show has put an all too rare slice of gay and trans history in American (and the world’s) living rooms and laptops.

Drag Race has brought a subculture into the mainstream. It has brought secret languages into modern parlay.

From RuPaul raising a pair of opera glasses to say archly, “I can’t wait to see how this pans out”, to season four queen Latrice Royale’s “the shaaaaade of it all”, social media’s gif game has been vastly bolstered by nine seasons of this show. A gif reaction needs to encapsulate maximum emotion, drama, and appearance – and the queens on Drag Race have all three in spades. Tumblr couldn’t create gifs fast enough in the early seasons, and the joy of so many strong characters, and sound-bites, means that there is a reaction for absolutely every occasion. Season 6 winner Bianca Del Rio named one of her world tours after her own much-gif’d catchphrase, “Not today Satan”.

Memes and online culture have helped the show become part of the everyday.

Historically, "sissy" has been used as an insult against feminine-seeming men. Ru-Paul’s Drag Race not only reclaims the word – “now sissy that walk” is the phrase said at the top of each catwalk, usually preceding a demonstration of almost gob-smacking creativity – but shows that adopting a truly feminine character requires massive amounts of charisma and self-confidence. The show is wildly popular with women, not simply because of the incredible looks and transformations served by each queen, but because it is a celebration of feminine mystique in all its forms.

It has helped reclaim a sense of agency in an era of toxic masculinity.

The little show that could has turned into a global behemoth, with tours around the world each year, and an annual convention in Los Angeles. Last year, a second US convention launched in New York, while London hosted the first European edition, DragWorld UK, which saw a number of the show’s queens and RuPaul’s right-hand judge, Michelle Visage, holding court. And as fabulous, glamorous and downright funny as the queens are, the real joy came from seeing the response of teenagers to meeting their idols. RuPaul and Visage are giving hope to lost kids around the world, whatever their gender, ethnic background or sexuality. By sharing their stories, the Drag Race contestants are giving comfort and inspiration to viewers, as well as swathes of entertainment.

The show has brought disenfranchised, often hidden cultures into the open. And given people something that not only entertains, but also empowers.

The difference between Drag Race US and Drag Race UK summed up in one perfect tweet…

With RuPaul’s Drag Race UK finally airing on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, it’s got fans realising just how different the two editions of the show are… International fans were subjected to the colourful world of British slang and swear words, leaving dozens bemused about what exactly the UK queens are actually saying…. But in a viral tweet shared by one of the British queens, it’s managed to capture the crucial difference between the US and UK versions of Drag Race.

Sum Ting Wong shared a screenshot of a Facebook post that so beautifully sums up the two shows:

Pink News JOSH MILTON OCTOBER 8, 2019

Drag is culturally derived, and finds its forms based on local customs. In the UK drag has a relationship to Vaudeville and play, which means it does something different to the american show. It is less about the act of putting on a show, and more about the comedic, slightly catty relations that we have come to associate with saturday evening tv here in the UK.

But that doesn’t mean it is mean in itself… it still brings a subculture to a mainstream audience. Remember, if I talked about this with you in the 1990s, I would face prosecution under Section 28

"shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".

New Subcultures

‘It's hard not to be struck by the sensation that, emos and metalheads aside, what you might call the 20th-century idea of a youth subculture is now just outmoded. The internet doesn't spawn mass movements, bonded together by a shared taste in music, fashion and ownership of subcultural capital: it spawns brief, microcosmic ones.

In fact, the closest thing to the old model of a subculture I've come across is Helena and the haul girls. Their videos are about conspicuous consumption: a public display of their good taste, carefully assembled with precise attention to detail. When you put it like that they sound remarkably like mods.’

Alexis Petridis

Marie Antoinette, 2006 (Sofia Copolla)

youtube

#gcop200

3 notes · View notes

regrettablewritings · 7 years

Text

All the Write Words, Pt.III (Library AU!Vladimir Ranskahov x Reader)

A/N: I’m gonna be real, this is just total juvenile cheesecake because even at my age, I have the sense of humor of a baby. And let’s be real, this was bound to happen at some point. This is a Vladimir fic after all . . .

Prologue Part I Part II Part IV Part V

For the first time in a long while, Vladimir Ranskahov’s life had a schedule: Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and every other Saturday, he was to be dropped off at the S. Lee Public Library from 10:45 AM to 1:30 PM. After every shift and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he typically would resume his previous work at his and Anatoly’s taxi garage. On Sundays and nearly every single night when he figured he could manage, time was put aside for downing copious amounts of vodka and drunkenly praying to God that this bullshit would end soon.

If not for his upbringing by a God-fearing born-again woman, Vladimir’s belief in a higher power would have died completely the moment he realized the ordeal wasn’t disappearing any faster than it could have been. However, it made no sense to disbelieve in a god when every other day he had to face the Devil.

The Bible had it all wrong. The Devil was not called Lucifer or Satan, and he wasn’t red with horns or anything of that nature. Instead, he was much less predictable: He was a she. And her name was (Y/N). And she was not red and with horns, but brown and small (thought she might have horns lying beneath that bushel of curls, Vladimir suspected). And her domain wasn’t an infernal pit of whips and organ-pecking birds so much as it was a homey little den of a library (still, there was much suffering, it was just relative). And there weren’t any torture devices like spears and daggers and racks so much as there were plenty of books and ridiculous words and references that could make a man feel insignificant all the same.

Or the damn alphabet chart she kept using during their little lessons in the faculty lounge. It was definitely plucked from the children’s learning corner, and it was definitely humiliating that he was being taught pronunciation association with it. C’s cat and F’s fox mocked him with their cartoonish faces. He swore he could hear D’s toothy donkey wheeze with laughter.

Maybe they were (Y/N)’s little demon accomplices? Maybe he himself was so weak that they needn’t resume an actual three-dimensional form to torture and berate him? The thought would make Vladimir shake his head furiously and toss the shot glass to the side, going full-on swig with whatever remained in the vodka bottle he’d nicked from Anatoly’s wine rack. Christianity had gotten one thing right about her, though: She had soul-sucking eyes that could make you feel quiet and nude. Especially when she was certain she could gain an upper-hand. Which, with Vladimir, almost always seemed to be the case somehow.

Vladimir stared blankly at the book in the center of the table, part-because its original cover had been so mangled that at some point it’d been given a new “jacket” made out of folded paper and marker, and part-because with what little English he could read, there was oneword on that book cover that stood out to him the most. He’d seen it graffitied on the cell walls, heard it uttered a million times more, even said it himself plenty of times if the situation suited it. Enough to identify it by sound and connect it to the letters.

Fun with Dick and Jane.

Was he going to read/look at a porno? Vladimir fought to keep from smirking. Maybe today wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Sip. Oh. Wait.

“Well, I see that childish humor transcends all languages.” And already, today was back it being normal. Vladimir flashed (Y/N) a reproachful look. She sat on the other side of the round lounge table per unspoken request, wearing yet another baggy sweatshirt that ended practically midway down her thighs and was altogether swallowing her short form up. She should’ve been more than warm in that suffocating getup, but she still insisted upon helping herself to a Styrofoam cup of hot Swiss Miss. She also insisted that she coyly sip from said cup for what seemed like every ten seconds of silence.

“You can try to hide that smirk all you want but the proof is in the pudding, puddin’: you’re all giddy about that Dick.” Proud of her little joke, (Y/N) smiled into her cup. The roundness of her cheeks were still visible. Vladimir quickly tried to change the subject before he slapped that cup out of her hands in a childish revenge fashion.

“What sense does it make that I read this when I can barely write?” he questioned. It was a fair point: how could be possibly read when he didn’t understand what composed the words before him?!

(Y/N) pursed her lips in thought. “Weelll . . .” she dragged, tapping her fingers against the side of the cup. “To tell you the truth, I’ve actually never really taught before . . .” Her cheeks turned rosy slightly, and Vladimir knew instantly that was it wasn’t because of the Swiss Miss. Her tone indicated a sudden realization of the gravity of this task. Maybe it’d prove to be too heavy for her and she’d just give up, sign the papers, and set him loose? Vladimir hoped so.

But all at the same time, there was a small part of him, one he didn’t want to acknowledge too greatly, that wanted her to remain persistent. Just to see where and how far this all would go.

“B-but I have younger siblings, and I read to them occasionally. So . . . so I figured that if I tried reading some basic words to you, you’d begin to connect words to writing. Or at least get more enthusiastic . . .” She shyly played with one of her many curls, suddenly gaining an interest in the image of her Styrofoam cup. She bit at her lip slightly, repressing only a fragment of the smile that was beginning to grow on her face. “I guess I could be on the right track, though.” She glanced up at the rugged Russian. “After all, you could read ‘Dick.’”

A hiss of irritability escaped from Vladimir’s flared nostrils but nothing else. She had a point, as pissed as he was to find himself understanding and agreeing. He glanced back down at Fun with Dick and Jane with its printer paper makeshift cover. What the hell, his mind finally gave in. Jane was having fun with a dick, so maybe this wouldn’t be so bad . . .

“’See Jack laugh?’” A painted illustration of some nancy boy laughing at a clown on a clunky old TV set. “’See Jane play? Jane plays with the doll.’” A little blonde girl swearing a frilly blue dress, playing with a raggedy old doll that his mother probably wouldn’t want. “’Dick is running. Run, Dick, run!’”

Yeah, you dick: Run away for fooling me, Vladimir wanted to say. This was pure torture: Having the poofy-haired Devil read to him – and at such a slow-ass pace! (Y/N), at the very least, seemed to be enjoying herself in some way. Well, that’s what the tight smile plastered across her face had initially said. But about midway through, Vladimir began to suspect that it was because she, too, might be embarrassed by the childish display.

. . . Or maybe because there was something rather odd about having to constantly utter the word “Dick” in front of a guy with whom she was not involved with nor even on friendly terms. Either way, it managed to create a small sense of victory for Vladimir; the torturer suffering alongside the tortured. Beautiful.

Why should he care about the daily activities of Jane? Or that Spot the dog and Puff the cat liked to play? Or – aw, hell, who the hell is Pam and why is she being brought into the cast seventeen pages into this travesty?!

When (Y/N) began to talk about how Sally was “funny Sally, funny, funny Sally”, a knock came from the threshold. Vladimir’s relief was almost immediately run over by embarrassment as a certain pudgy young man appeared to have walked in on their little lesson.

“Uh, hope I’m not interrupting anything major,” Foggy said from the doorway. “But that one guy? Mr. Wesley? Yeah, he’s here for those language books but we’re having trouble locating the one on Mandarin.”

“Oh, really? Okay, hold on, I’ll be right out,” (Y/N) offered. The slight eagerness in her voice indicated that she was just as excited to stop reading the bore-fest. As she followed Foggy out to the front desk, she called back, “Few-minute break, my little big pupil! Hang tight, I’ll be right back.” Vladimir nearly broke his phone with how fast and frustratingly he whipped it out of his pocket. Immediately, he set to dialing one of the very few numbers he had.

“You should not be calling,” Anatoly greeted after the third ring. Before he could say anything more, Vladimir interrupted, his Russian becoming more like gibberish. “Brother, you have signed me up for sick torture. This -- this witch has me sitting here listening to her read about Jane and Dick and –”

“Zaderzhat, zaderzhat– khuy?! You are reading porn?!” Anatoly demanded. Judging by the harsh whisper he’d delivered the sentence in, it was safe for Vladimir to assume that he was in the garage surrounded by the employees. Vladimir opened his mouth to clarify but the elder Ranskahov went on. “What the hell are you reading porn in a goddamn library, you mudak?! I send you to make you better person, not to be like some horny teenage boy!”

“No, you idiot, listen! I – ”

“Volodya, I understand if last two years in jail were rough on you – urges is -- is normal. But just because it is so long, does not mean you go about letting your dick lead you like a dog on a leash. You are its owner, you control it. So stop hiding in back room and get to work!”

“Shut the fuck up and listen to me, you goddamn mudak!” Vladimir hissed. His pride had been severely wounded. How dare Anatoly assume he was stooping so low. Hell, how dare he assume he couldn’t just walk right out this library and get any! “Women is not problem for me! And to correct you, you idiot, is not porn, is a . . . a fucking book for children!”

“Ooohhh,” Anatoly muttered with slight relief. A beat occurred between them, with Vladimir too furious and embarrassed to say anything and Anatoly suddenly in thought.

“Why are you reading children’s book?” His voice broke the crisp silence. A flurry of emotions and thoughts banged against the walls of Vladimir’s skull. Like hell Anatoly was going to find it out now!

“Okay, I’m back,” (Y/N) said as she returned into the room. At that moment, Vladimir considered the little devil an angel. But just for a second. He quickly hung up on his brother without offering him an explanation and shoved the phone back into his pocket, his usual glare holding in place. “Sorry for the holdup,” the young woman said as she grabbed another cup from the counter. She was making yet another cup of Swiss Miss.

“Mr. Wesley is a man with some rather . . . high . . . expectations. He’s a bit of a butt if you don’t put things a certain way, though . . . Oh, well,” she sighed. But her words fell on deaf ears for Vladimir. As did her continued narration of yet another Dick and Jane segment. To be perfectly honest, Vladimir had bigger, better things going on in his mind. Like how his own flesh and blood had the audacity to accuse him of being like a hormonal plebian.

He was a grown-ass man, he was more than capable of controlling his hormones! So what if he hadn’t gotten any kind of anything in a while? . . . A rather long while . . . Vladimir unconsciously furrowed his brows in thought. How long had it been precisely?

“Ow! Dammit!” The little curse yanked Vladimir back into the world of reality. In reality, (Y/N) had spilled a majority of the hot Swiss Miss on to her baggy sweater. The large brown stain coupled with a hiss of minor pain caused (Y/N) to click her teeth with dismay. “Sorry ‘bout that, Vladimir, I was just – gimme a sec.” She said it as if Vladimir had actually made any attempts to help out with the situation. Mentally, the Russian scoffed as he took his seat once again. . . . Wait. When did he even get out of it?

(Y/N) sighed after further inspecting the damage the spill had caused. “It’s all damp and gross now . . .” she muttered, her shoulders slumping in defeat. It made Vladimir roll his eyes. Why did she care about it like a normal woman cares about actually fitting clothes? It was just a baggy, old sweater. Hell, it was probably just a burlap sack dyed a different color to hide just how rough it was. Silly peasants and their attachments to their trash. These thoughts rattled in Vladimir’s head, completely drowning out his previous mental documentation and the insults that had called for them.

Then he noticed (Y/N)’s arms disappearing from the sleeves of her sullied sweater. She began to do that all too familiar wriggle a person does when they were getting a shirt off. What the – ?

“Hope you don’t mind . . .” (Y/N)’s voice sounded bashful from behind the cloth as it covered her mouth. He could see her cheeks reddening as her face descended into the neck hole, the sweater completely swallowing her. “I – I just can’t wear something so damp. It’ll get chilly, I’m sorry if this comes off as unprofessional but – ” The rambling continued on as it normally did with (Y/N), muffled until the little woman emerged from the bottom of the jumper but the embarrassed blush of her face continued. Her brown eyes scurried to look anywhere but at her overgrown pupil. Had she looked up, she would’ve noticed a change in his demeanor.

Well. The Bible might have gotten one more thing right about the Devil: She could completely transform her impression by someone in the blink of an eye because damn was that sweater like a ragged snakeskin hiding a form like that. Maybe it was the way the black fitted t-shirt embraced the slopes of her curves. Maybe it was because without the low-hanging sweater, Vladimir could see that she had soft-looking thick thighs being hugged by comfortable jeans. Maybe he just liked how after the ordeal with removing the top, her hair had become a mess he had only ever seen after becoming very . . . “playful” with a woman. … Or maybe he just liked the fact that now he could confirm that she had a nice perky-looking set of –

Konechno net! Vladimir scolded himself. You are not some simpleton brat who gets a hard-on at the mere sight of a shoulder!

It was irritating to say the least and it rang in his head even as (Y/N) carried on like normal, clearing her throat as she resumed her place in the book. It was distressing how much Vladimir was actually forcing himself to pay attention to the words she read, especially after being so insistent that he do otherwise not too long ago. But then ago, not too long ago, he wasn’t trying to not think about the last time he’d been with a woman. And not too long ago, (Y/N) the Devil had been wearing an unflattering sweater that made Vladimir certain she probably had the body of a deflated potato. And not too long ago, he was certain the book was mostly focusing on the antics of Pam or Sally . . .

“Dick is lonely. Poor, lonely Dick,” he heard his teacher utter. He was almost certain he heard a wave in her voice as she said it (almost like a laugh attempting to flutter out) but decided against that possibility. But he did notice that among other things, he sat up straighter and his eyes searched frantically for other stimuli. Something, anything to dull out the ridiculous and rather suggestive sentences he had to hear her utter, even the minor add-ins she made to soothe the laughter he swore wasn’t there.

“Dick wants to play. Dick goes to play with Jane.”

This is absurd. This is ridiculous –

“Jane wants to play with Dick as well. Hurray!”

Surely these damn Americans knew how filthy this all sounded!

“Dick j-umps with happiness (Oh, God . . .).”

Focus! On that poster – shit, it’s in English. The fridge? How many dots are in the ceiling tiles?!

“‘Jump, Dick!’ says Sally (pfft!). Dick jumps high.”

Hell no, nothing down below was jumping, right? Nothing to get all jumpy down there about when you’re looking at – a toaster? Magnets? Napkins?! Hair? Her hair? All messy and curled against cheeks red from being flustered –

“Dick is b-big . . .”

Those curves that didn’t exist until now, that perfect handful set on her chest –

“Dick is bigger than Ja – I can’t do this!” Immediately, (Y/N) burst into what might have been the most juvenile laughter Vladimir had heard in a long time. Like a series of bubbles overflowing from her mouth, rampant and without any of the control or demure nature she’d appeared to have before. It was unsettling. “I – I’m zsorry, V-vladimir,” (Y/N) wheezed as she tried to pat the laughter back with gentle taps to her chest. “I dknow it’z childish but – but come on, it’z zso ridiculous!” Vladimir could only stare and fight off the feeling of gobbsmacked that he actually felt.

He had been brought back to reality by a thunderous laugh and yet he wasn’t sure how much of it was actually real.

“Shoot, man,” gasped (Y/N) when she’d finally managed to calm down. “I think I laughed myself a set of abs almost. Geez, I’m a child . . .” She shook her head. Vladimir was used to only her curls bouncing when she did this but with the sweater gone and her body still making minor heaves after such a laughing spell, he couldn’t help but notice some other things moving in a bouncy fashion as well. And he fucking hated that he noticed this. He also hated how when she laughed in that gross fashion, his face burned. What witchcraft was this freaking suka pulling?!

Knock-knock.

The two looked up to see Claire in the faculty lounge doorway. “Hey, (Y/N)? Yeah, a young man at the desk is asking about Arachnemania? That one book on spiders? I swear we have it somewhere but we can’t find it in our system, is there any way you could . . .?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it. Thanks Claire,” (Y/N) turned to Vladimir. “Hang tight for a sec. When I come back, we can start on some workbook crap, a’ight?”

Vladimir nodded slowly. He had to remind himself to make his perpetual scowl at last minute. It didn’t last long, however, as when (Y/N) turned to leave, Vladimir’s eyes could help but slink downward on her body. Well. Apparently there were now two things Vladimir didn’t hate about his teacher from Hell. It took the end of his shift and his distance from them for him to realize in pure frustration that the little cheeky devil had turned the things he liked against him to get into a false sense of enjoyment.

#what was i thinking when i wrote this??#vladimir ranskahov x reader #vladimir ranskahov imagine #vladimir ranskahov imagines #daredevil imagine #daredevil imagines #all the write words #Regrettablewritings

24 notes · View notes