One of my favorite genres of post
been listening to the knuckles raps from sa2 while pretending to not know the music is from a video game and i highly recommend the experience. really good from the perspective of a normal rapper who talks about ghosts trying to kill him and his ability to telepathically detect gemstones in the earth
i did this once while driving a classmate who knew nothing about sonic to college and she said in full seriousness ‘it’s so sad that he feels like he can’t depend on anyone but himself’
an ice cold beer topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. lying on top of the ice cream foam is a salted peanut. this is the angel. around him are sprinkles (his tears). this is "the angel's lament", my new cocktail
What a great thing automation is ....
Sloppy style robot hand job but it keeps fumbling the weiner
ALT
Come on Tumblr, don’t be fucking cowards
Alternatively - come on nameless intern #102, you have a chance to be the fucking funniest person on staff.
cowards
Time for manual blazing, tumblr can be a coward but they can't stop us.
- Ollie Schminkey, My Father.
ID: a poem that can be read three ways, the left side is labeled Alive, the right side is labeled Dead. Reading only Alive gives:
He walks through the trees, the sun sifting through his beard. Here I am, just a kid, a father with his favourite child. He looks so much like a dad. Here we are: birds flying; a pulsing river; a ravenous picnic; and that smile, a mouth wide open, his child, newly awakened, wrapped around his neck like rosary beads clinging to his body. I loved him long before I heard of his body failing, and I held him so. Trusting that my love is enough.
Reading only Dead gives:
My dreams every night turn to spiders that all have his face. There is a campfire burning out, and me, the white dust of only ash in my hands. In the real world, standing next to his bed again– he doesn’t look like a body about to burn to pieces. Dead silence– no voice, only an echo not quite gone yet. The pills are down his throath, the morphine into his stomach, his body only for the disease, the wound across his back becomes filled with blood, and me, standing next to the body. Grief has hands twisted, tightening in prayer: the last breath like a final amen. I could speak the prayer a thousand ways– still, God will answer for only God, never for the living.
And reading them both together gives:
He walks through my dreams every night. The trees turn to spiders that all have his face. There the sun is a campfire burning out, and me, sifting through the white dust of his beard, only ash in my hands. Here in the real world I am standing next to his bed, just a kid again– he doesn’t look like a father with a body about to burn his favourite child to pieces. He looks dead. So much silence– no voice, only an echo, like a dad not quite gone yet. Here we are: the pills are birds flying down his throat; the morphine a pulsing river into his stomach; his body a ravenous picnic only for the disease; and that smile, the wound across his back becomes a mouth wide open, filled with blood; and me, his child, standing next to the body. Newly awakened grief has hands wrapped around his neck, twisted like rosary beads tightening in prayer: clinging to the last breath, his body like a final amen. I loved him long before I could speak. I learned the prayer of his body failing a thousand ways– and I held him, so still, trusting that God will answer for my love. Only, God is never enough for the living.
End ID
escapist media in general is an ongoing fascination for me. media written with escapism as a main priority typically requires very little thought from the reader - the whole point is to kick back and live vicariously through a fun story, after all. they're narratives written to prioritize reader comfort.
but because they are written to be as unchallenging as possible, they often come with a set of underlying assumptions that can be just fucking fascinating to unpick. like yeah, why IS it assumed to be escapist and indulgent to enjoy colonial wealth without thinking about it in regency fiction. why IS the self inserty female protagonist, who is assumed to be as universally relatable as possible, written to be sweetly naive and sexually inexperienced. why does this "queernorm" contemporary world replicate patriarchial structures exactly but just with Gay People Allowed. why are these ideas assumed to be easy and comforting? can the writers not imagine anything better than the status quo but except maybe with more gay people and poc if you're lucky?
the fact of the matter is that "unchallenging" fiction tends to just simply replicate dominant cultural narratives as a point of comfort. we won't challenge the reader, so we won't think about the way we write certain things. everything we think of as comforting and safe are, of course, universal, and could not be founded on any harmful ideological assumptions. there is nobody who could be alienated by this.
and that's the sticking point to me, in terms of escapist fiction: it's always necessary to ask whose comfort is being prioritized. you've got to interrogate who gets to escape and the mechanisms by which that escape happens. escapism can be good and necessary to survive the current world, but it does not exist in a vacuum separate from the real world, even if it pretends it does!