much like the articles bookmark section on my website:
i like to read articles and share them, and while i’m still going to do that on my website, i wanna post them here first, both the link and some thoughts on them, as well as encouraging others to talk about them with me and others. :3 first two articles will be up in a moment, and from now on, ny’all will get it a lil ahead of my website.
fascinating and honestly kinda heartbreaking article about the life and legacy (or lack thereof) of poet Rod McKuen, who was beloved nationwide in the 60s and 70s.
short but good article pointing out something i hadn’t considered before: that branding on prosthetic limbs + associated pieces is REALLY fucked up.
i’m sure everynyan and their partner has read this article by now, but,
jesus CHRIST. really i don’t have much to say because i’m not affected by this really and the people cited in the article say things much better than i could but. like i know it’s a time-honored tradition on the internet to make up sockpuppets and pretend to be a minority in ways you’re not (i could name like 3 from tumblr alone), but good god.
cws for homophobia
bit of an Inflammatory byline, but like. after reading it? i get it. “[…]it’s an interesting example how the management and control of already existing intellectual property, and the right to exploit its rewards, continues to misshape our cultural landscape. Holding the rights to the music gives the band, and especially its two remaining original members, Brian May and Roger Taylor, the key to shaping the historical memory of Freddie[…]” really good article that asks good questions and brings up good points!
there’s already an article on my articles page (this one, specifically) about four thieves vinegar collective, an anarchist group making homemade medication for pennies of what it costs “legally”, but what the hell, what’s one more? especially when this is a topic near and dear to my heart as a retail pharmacy tech. “right to repair for your body" is a FANTASTIC turn of phrase, and that’s kind of exactly what it is.
ok so this one is kind of cheating because it’s a research paper, but oh i love this!!! researchers (3/4 of whom were neurodivergent themselves!) led several autistic adults through a d&d campaign and interviewed them all after and it talks about bleed (which i link another article about here) and just. i feel really seen as an autistic person who spent its late teens/early 20s roleplaying a lot (text mostly, but some ttrpg). real good paper imo!!
ignore the preview, this is a blog by the queen of ace attorney localization, janet hsu, about localization in general but also Specifically about, at last, the localization of ace attorney investigations 2: prosecutor’s gambit! some real neat stuff here, lots of ‘now vs then’ compared to how she worked on localizing the first aai game. the phrasing of “economy of words” wrt translating is going to stick with me, i think.
originally a chost, now on the author’s website! contains star trek: deep space 9 spoilers, but. MAN. i am not to this part in ds9 yet so all of this was spoilers for me (but it’s Fine). i knew about some of the stuff about Bashir but not all of it. the fact that this show aired in the 90s is INSANE for some of the choices (positive and negative) it made. you gotta take the good with the bad, esp with star trek.
This looks extremely interesting from the abstract. I also did a ton of roleplay when I was younger that I think really affected the way I socialize and perceive of myself, for better and worse (but mostly better). Will have to take a deeper look after work.
read this and forgot to reply bc i suck but. GOD SAME THO? not really ttrpg bc i didn’t get into that until Later but i Definitely learned a LOT about myself through roleplay and was able to come to terms with a lot of things about myself through it as well? as well as affecting how i socialize For Sure
this mf named cockburn i don’t really have a lot to say on this article that isn’t already said, in the article, because i’m white and from west virginia, a state that last i checked was like 95% white so even though i now live in a much bigger, much more diverse city, i’m still woefully undereducated on a lot of things. that being said, from what i can tell the comparison of pro-hindutva politicians/people/funds/etc to pro-israel things of the same nature are apt.
cws for nsfw (obvs) (putting review under a spoiler bc nsfw, lmk if i need to do/change anything else!)
honestly, cruising is something i’d never considered for myself before BECAUSE i’m trans and autistic, but this makes me feel like i could join in the scene fairly easily! and even beyond that, it’s a good read imo. also that aside, Sniffies is an INSANE name for an app. i get it bc like poppers and shit but. also, price talks about cruising as an asexual kinkster, which i find interesting!
cws for racism, ableism, grisly medical shit (the third paragraph is hard for me to read), disrespect of dead bodies
heartbreaking and genuinely horrifying article detailing how the university of north texas was (and only no longer IS due to reporting by nbc) using and selling “unclaimed” bodies (despite little to no effort to find the next of kin/living relatives) for use in medical training. fucking harrowing article to read quite honestly.
this is hard for me like. i know i said ‘hey i (probably) have ocd’ in my intro post but. it’s taken me YEARS to come to terms with that and i still don’t have a formal diagnosis (but i think i’m going to work toward getting one). it’s been painful and i’m not nearly as bad as i used to be, but this shows some of the stuff i’ve went through myself esp with scrupulosity ocd, and what a lot of people with ocd experience for years on a day to day basis. i thought this quote was especially harrowing: “Though OCD usually emerges in childhood, it can take an average of 14 to 17 years for people to find treatment.” that’s heartbreaking. that’s the AVERAGE. just. man.
this article made me tear up ngl. fantastic piece about the university of washington gender identity clinic, which operated from 1968 to 1972. it brings up a real good point about how history is often written by doctors instead of the people it’s about, esp when it comes to minorities such as trans people.
nice little article detailing the lives of some queer/lgbtq Japanese people! including pro wrestler VENY!
cws for racism, genocide, among others related to the Palestinian occupation
american author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates spent 10 days in Palestine and, as he puts it, it changed his life. the third and final essay in his recent book of essays, The Message, is about Palestine, and this specific article is about the research he did and how he came to the correct conclusion that zionism is just colonialism and apartheid, and how that relates back to his own experiences as a black man. has a LOT of resources for looking into the aforementioned concepts!
this was posted here already (not in this thread but the forum itself), so maybe that’s cheating, but i thought this was a fascinating read!! some very good points that are obvious when you think about them but you have to Think About Them First, if that makes sense? something that will not occur to a lot of people, but it should!
cw rpf lol
i think this was also posted here lol but. if you can get over the cutesy little tidbits from h*rry potter characters for some reason in the first chapter, it’s a neat overlook of fanfiction on ao3 for the last 11 years wrt Shipping and how the vast majority of shipfic is mxm. a lot of it is kiiiinda surface level, but the infographics and stuff are definitely neat! that being Said… i got issues with this. the reduction of why there’s so little femslash to "It’s still quite rare to see multiple female characters who are complex and interact within a shared narrative (as contemporaries, partners, or rivals), and even when they do, it’s easy to pass off intimate interactions between women as platonic rather than romantic. " like Fucking What? i do like how it mentions how fandom can be alienating to fans of color due to (gestures at shipping and how fucking racist fandom-brained ppl can be). not a bad article by any means but again a lil surface level and overstating how Transgressive~ fanfic is.
I’m always supportive of fanfic, fanworks, and independent creators but ALSO the dissertations on these things tend to be either “its all slop and the death of culture” or “its perfect, revolutionary and the only thing holding humanity up” instead of just like. Analyzing fanfics as if they were what they are: written media. Print it out and bind like a book if it helps you get in the head space.
For better or worse HP fandom was such a bedrock of the shipping and fanfic space that I’m not surprised by those characters’ inclusion in this way.
I do think that while people can create good queer lit in a fanfic space, and some of my favorite kink/poly/aro stories have come from good authors in that space, there is also a trap that can form around getting all your queer rep from ao3 instead of like. Looking at what independent literature people are making. I am reminded of an account on tumblr whose whole deal is making polls for whether people have seen xyz queer film, and then giving a description of said film. I think they’re doing great curational work, in terms of what they’ve been digging up (and especially in terms of how many international films they’ve included). But I look at the “haven’t watched this” answers and think about how often people are complaining about the dearth of representation and like. The dearth is still real in terms of sheer numbers and mainstream availability, but there’s a statement being made here about like. There is stuff out there. It’s out there and if you really wanna do something about the lack in your current life, you can.
There is also a different blogger I follow who reads a lot of historical lesbian stuff (as in stuff from the 70s and 80s), in addition to a lot of good nonfiction. And there is that additional avenue here of like, hey don’t forget other people have also written about these things already. Don’t forget the historical work done already. The majority of what you’ll read here is also not immune to its own blindspots and own kind of homogeneity, even if you did find stuff that kind of changed your life and expanded your possibility space.
YES THIS THIS THIS i had this thought (and then it was gone of course LMAO the adhd experience), like, there’s SO much queer shit out there if you turn your eyes from the mainstream, like on itch.io for example, but not JUST that of course like. fuck man. it feels like a prison of their own making, they want scraps from disney and marvel instead of actually taking their entertainment into their own hands and seeking things out and it sucks
youre so right!!! cosigned bc that was some real shit u said right there
Now, I know we’re all online and such, but I’ve though for a while on why people keep expecting Disney and other megacompanies to deliver on the queer content they need so badly, and there’s an answer that might not be definite, but it does clarifies a lot of things: They just don’t know about any of the other options.
If you know about AO3, or Webcomics, Dynasty Scans, or any other highly specific creative space, you’re part of a very, very selective minority of people that browse away from social media websites. Think about the absurd reach that any Disney, Netflix, et. all company has, not only in how many services they have available but also the translation efforts, adapting efforts, widespread and well known brand, ease of access. Even if you’re going to pirate, it’ll be far easier to do it from them than from lesser known sources.
I don’t disagree that there is a vast amount of queer art available online, as well as a lot more non-white art than you’d think, but they are nowhere as well known than we’d like to believe. People aren’t ignoring that and waiting for Disney or Nintendo to deliver, they simply don’t know that there is anything beyond that.
There is a degree to which this is law-of-numbers and broader societal shit, yeah. I do frequently forget that not everyone knows \itch.io exists, and that there will only be so many indie sickos to tell ordinary people about these places and pieces of media. Part of the value of the Transfeminine Review and other collation and critique work is that it helps centralize and spotlight things that would be much harder to search for on your own. And like, I happen to be lucky in terms of the people and communities I have digital access to.
There’s just a degree also to which it feels so much like the same lack of volition and incuriosity that fuels USAmericans not knowing that there are cities in Mexico, so to speak. Both can be true but it gets so frustrating watching people frog-well themselves, convinced that a puddle is the ocean.
(By frog-well I am referring to a proverb about a frog who lives in a well, and can only see the sliver of sky at the mouth of the well. A bird visits one day and tries to tell him about the rest of the sky but he refuses to believe that it extends beyond the well mouth.)