It’s darkly amusing to me that some people thought my mom didn’t “discipline” me enough as a kid, were not shy about making sure both she AND I knew it, and now as an adult I’m one of the only people in my friend group who still wants anything to do with their parents. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.

When I was a kid, I broke a ceramic soap dispenser. I burst into tears and was terrified that I was going to be in trouble. My mom told me that it was okay, because accidents happen sometimes, and the important thing was that I didn’t do it on purpose and apologized.

When someone else I know was a kid, they broke a dish on accident and got screamed at and guilt tripped. To this day, they have to push down a panic attack at the sound of broken glass, and have had to actively work on healing from that trauma. They will always have to carry that.

I think maybe it’s not MY mom who fucked up in the “how to discipline your child” department. Quite frankly, I think the idea of “disciplining children” is fucked up and deeply harmful on a fundamental level.

When a kid does something wrong, you have to teach them how to fix it and do better. Humans are messy and complicated and we don’t know everything there is to know just by being born. Children are learning how to be human beings, and that’s a really hard thing to learn.

Kids question and fight back against authority that mistreats them, but someone treating them like a human being with human emotions is usually going to have a lot of success. Kids just want to be respected, and it’s our job as adults to give them that basic human dignity. The world is utterly terrifying, and made scarier when all the grown-ups seem to hate you and wish you would just shut up and go away, even the ones that claim they want you around.

Kids can be mean, because they’re still learning how to socialize and communicate and collaborate. Sometimes you have to give them time to cool off, and sometimes you have to redirect them. Sometimes you have to be firm. Sometimes you have to be an adult, and hone your conflict de-escalation and resolution skills. None of that requires punishment.

And if a child does something truly cruel and fucked up and shitty, and it hurts someone in a big way? My first question isn’t “what should their punishment be,” my first question is always, “who taught this kid that, and is this child in active danger from them?”

I think it's really weird that Marvel movies became the go-to poster for shady film industry practices when a lot of shit Marvel pulls is pretty industry standard. The entire industry is built on rotten foundations, which is why there's a big strike happening that you may have heard about.

Like, Marvel Studios are a horrific den of abuse, but they're not uniquely terrible, and the fixation on Marvel feels like a reaction against how popular The Avengers was with teenage girls on tumblr from like 2011-2018. It went from the fandom on tumblr, to being the go-to thing people fixated on when they make those annoying "watch another movie" posts. There are so many more studios making movies exactly like Marvel does.

Marvel Studios could go under tonight and there would still be an entire industry of shitheads who want full freedom to abuse entertainment workers. It's not a "Marvel movie" issue, it's an industry issue.

Stop judging older queer media on the standards of modern day.

Stop analyzing older queer media with no regard to the culture and time period it was produced in.

Stop condemning "problematic" older queer media if you weren't alive to remember how fucking important it was to queer people when it came out and what a victory it was at the time.

Stop acting as if it has ever, ever been easy for queer creators to tell their stories without systemic queerphobia tearing them down and twisting their intent.

Stop stripping queer artists and trailblazers out of their own narratives and work, and pretending that problematic older queer media was obviously just straight people being bigoted, and not queer people fighting tooth and nail for table scraps.

Learn your history.

From the article:

From the article:

The CDC said AIDS wasn't a problem, either. We should all know how that turned out.

I have a profoundly low tolerance for people in fandom who do the "omg the creators are taking too long!" shit with their favorite blorbo media. You are not entitled to the piece of art being created, and the artists will show it to you when they're good and goddamn done with it. They already have corporate offices breathing down their necks in many cases, and they do not need fandom pressure adding to it.

You don't deserve it if you can't treat the artists with respect and dignity. You don't deserve it if you're not going to respect the workers who made it.

Aritsts. Are. Workers.

[ID: A screenshot of a comment left on this post by tumblr user elegant-gypsophilia, which reads, "I agree for the most part but sometimes it is egregious. Like I think we have earned the right to rib George RR Martin for not finishing his book series but working on a thousand other projects." End ID.]

No, actually, you very much have not "earned the right" to harass an author because he isn't working fast enough for you. That's not how anything works.

George R. R. Martin has gone on the record to say that it makes him uncomfortable when fans joke about him dying before he finishes the series. Here's a link to an article about it. In the same article, it discusses how he won't give estimated completion dates anymore because "fans" keep getting mad at him when he can't meet them. I can't imagine working under that pressure without losing my temper, personally.

He is a human being, not your personal content-generating machine. The same goes for every other artist.

I will defend low-quality queer media if only because non-queer people get to make shitty low-quality media all the time and nobody gives a shit.

Queer people deserve to make shitty art as much as anyone else, god damn it. We've been censored for so goddamn long and I'm tired of every piece of queer media needing to be the height of representation and art and quality.

Queer media won't have achieved true equality with straight media until queer people can make garbage in peace.

My problem is that I developed a hyperfixation on historical diseases and their transmission when I was a kid, so I was basically primed to be the angriest cunt in the world about covid. I was always going to become furious and extra-insane.

The flu never went away, so you get your flu shot and cover your coughs and sneezes.

HIV/AIDS never went away, so you use protection with sex and always use clean needles for any kind of injections.

The bubonic plague, the granddaddy of plagues itself? Also never went away! You're supposed to be careful about any interactions with wildlife, and take flea outbreaks seriously.

Covid hasn't gone away, and it probably won't. So you know what you're supposed to fucking be doing? Limiting exposure, staying home from superspreaders, wearing your masks, getting your updated vaccines, and following the safety protocols from the People's CDC.

You damn sure aren't supposed to just throw up your hands, say, "fuck it, we'll all probably get it, so who cares?" and start licking rats, fucking without condoms, and running around without a face mask.

Activist Larry Kramer spoke about the AIDS Crisis in 1991. Watching his words today, they hit damn hard, because it describes about the same rage I'm feeling about covid these days.

"Until we get our acts together, all of us, and until we learn to plug in with each other, and fight, and make this president listen, we are as good as dead."

Tonight I lost my temper while participating virtually in a hybrid meeting. The topic of covid came up, and I finally fucking snapped and yelled at everyone on the other side of the webcam who wasn't wearing a covid mask, and told them that their refusal to keep masking was why I couldn't be there in person. I don't feel great about the situation, but what the fuck else am I supposed to do anymore? I don't want to die. God damn it, I'm human, and I don't want to die.

I'm angry. I'm tired. I'm isolated from any sense of community. Time to reblog Larry Kramer's AIDS speech again.

Wear your fucking masks.

One of my biggest frustrations in trying to discuss queer media is how many people seem incapable of separating “this is an important milestone in representation” from “I did or did not enjoy this piece of media.” Media analysis goes beyond just “fandom stuff,” and queer media in particular deserves analysis and discussion because of how hard it’s been stifled.

It doesn’t matter if you hate Steven Universe, it’s still important to talk about, because it showed the first queer wedding in American children’s television. It has been cited by the creators of subsequent queer family animation as a major milestone in allowing their shows to enter production. The Ruby/Sapphire wedding is a historical milestone, and that doesn’t stop being true just because you hate the show or think the ending was bad.

It doesn’t matter if you think Will & Grace is entertaining or if you have any real interest in watching it, it’s still a majorly important entry in televised queer representation. It kicked down the door to allow even more to come after, and deserves credit for what it did even if you don’t personally care about the story.

It doesn’t matter if you have any personal interest in Rocky Horror Picture Show, it’s still got a ton of important history in queer spaces. Understanding why Rocky Horror showings were and still are hubs of queer expression is important even if you despise the movie and the creator.

Giving credit for representation milestones doesn’t mean you can’t have criticisms of a piece of media, it doesn’t mean you have to like the media, and it doesn’t mean you can’t prefer other media. It doesn’t mean it’s free from problematic material, it doesn’t mean it’s god’s gift to television, it doesn’t mean it’s better or worse storytelling than other stories.

It just means it’s worth talking about and understanding the context in which it was made.

I've been pointedly refusing to use the term "content creators" to refer to artists anymore, because I want to make art for me and the people I care about, not the endless demands of the algorithm. I'm not trying to Produce Content, I want to make art.

So it is deeply, deeply irritating when I use the word "artist" in a post and it gets endlessly reblogged with people asking "but what about writers? but what about actors? but what about musicians? but what about [x]?"

All types of art are included in the term "artist," god damn it. "Artist" does not just mean "someone who draws pictures."

I don't know why so many people keep taking this post as "yeah, we should come up with a better word for content creators!"

THAT WORD ALREADY EXISTS.

THE WORD IS "ARTIST," Y'ALL.

THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS DAMN POST.

The word "artist" is all-encompassing! By! Definition! We don't need to keep reinventing the fucking wheel!

Do you make art? Any kind of art? Drawings, paintings, comics, novels, songs, dances, photographs, performances, anything creative?

THAT'S ART, BABE. YOU ARE AN ARTIST.

RESIST CAPITALIST COMMODIFICATION OF ART AND CLAIM THE DAMN TITLE.

People keep trying to "gotcha" me on this post by bringing up YouTube video essayists for some reason.

Babes, I have news for you. The YouTube video essays are also art.

Writing, editing, graphic design, sound design...there are actually multiple art forms involved in producing a video essay.

It's art.

Y'all's definitions of "art" are limited, and some of them are quite frankly pretentious. "Art" is not a hyper-specific term, nor is art limited to specific types of people. Art is human. Humans are artists by nature. We make shit. It's what we do.

No amount of "but what about--" is going to get me to change my mind on this. If you make shit, you are an artist. You are allowed to claim the term. It doesn't matter what kind of art, it doesn't matter how often you make the art, it doesn't matter if you're doing it for pay or for a hobby, you are an artist.

Stop going to cons during a fucking plague. Omicron has literally, factually, VERIFIABLY been helped along by people being careless and going to cons. Even the fully-vaccinated. No con is worth this shit. [Source]

Genuinely getting concerned at how often I'm starting to see legitimate media analysis get brushed aside as "fandom shit," and how often I see people act hostile toward media analysis in general.

Film history, critique, and analysis--specifically in regard to animation--are massive special interests of mine. I fucking love getting into the guts of something to see why it does or doesn't work. I do it at a hobby level, but all of it is part of genuine academic disciplines that people pay money to study.

Same goes for literary analysis. It's a field of study that people spend their careers on. But meanwhile here on tungl dot hell, I see people rip others to shreds for "posting cringe" and "wasting time on fandom shit" when they post any analysis at all of something deemed "stupid fandom garbage."

And then they make "lol blue curtains" jokes and wonder why it seems like folks' ability to critically analyze media is declining.

People bring up 9/11 to derail or shut down so many conversations, that whenever I’m talking to someone about modern history and politics that actually do relate to 9/11, I have to cringe and preface it with, “okay, not to make it all about 9/11, but it is definitely related to 9/11. I’m so sorry. I also do not want to talk about 9/11.”

This post brought to you by a recent conversation I had with someone about reactionary trends in American media and a backslide in many different kinds of representation post-2001.

The term “filler episode” is blatantly misused in fandom spaces and it's really goddamn annoying.

In the book "Manga and Anime Go to Hollywood: The Amazing Rapidly Evolving Relationship Between Hollywood and Japanese Animation, Manga, Television, and Film," by Northrop Davis, Davis explains the that concept of a “filler episode” in animation comes to us from anime adaptations of manga. Anime is frequently produced at a faster rate than manga, which means that anime adaptations of manga often have to come up with their own “filler” stories to slow down the pacing of the main narrative, because the manga isn’t finished yet.

"Filler" does not mean "low-stakes episode that doesn't progress the main plot." Filler does not mean "character moments that you did not like." "Filler" does not mean "anything that isn't breakneck-paced main plot."

It's a specific term and you are misusing it.

[ID: A screenshot from Futurama showing a scene where Morbo looks at the news camera and yells, "Windmills do not work that way! Good night!" The subtitle has been crudely edited to say, "Filler episodes do not work that way! Good night!" End ID.]

The thing that pisses me off the most is that even if covid WAS over, disabled people still fucking exist and deserve to participate in things. The brief period of time in which everyone was doing virtual and hybrid events, people could work from home, social events were actually accessible...all it did was show that we could be doing these things, and just don't fucking care.

Hybrid events should be the STANDARD. Including people who can't leave their houses should be the STANDARD. Some basic fucking consideration for the disabled should be the STANDARD.

And it's just. Not.