Random Thought of the Day

[Nyctophilia]

Edit: I just want to say that the dream in my previous post happened after I was dancing around my room in the dark listening to trance and techno music. I've been thinking about buying like UV stuff too but I probably won't ever get around to that. I just want to turn my bedroom into a kind of psychedelic alien rave type space because that's cool but I'd have to move stuff around a lot because I don't want it there all the time necessarily. There are so many cool tapestries but I can't change them all the time as it suits me.

But there's an invasion of moths here right now loads and loads of moths. I'm constantly having to move them outside as I don't want to kill them. Trying lavender right now but doesn't seem to be working. A bunch of them also in the bath/shower yesterday. I had to move them, they were in the way while I wanted to shower but the water kills them and they're not intelligent enough to avoid it all the time - so annoying.

So I was thinking about that because I was listening to music on my phone and watching videos and such and they're drawn to the light. Sometimes if I'm just in the dark with my phone they will come near or even land on the phone that happened once.

Then, I sat in bed with the light on and fell asleep by accident before remembering to turn it off because I was reading Pride and Prejudice fanfiction while lying in bed at that point. The light was on to avoid moth attacks.

I just find this combination of things very narritively amusing in light of what I'm talking about in this post.

Ended up having a conversation with my friend about various gaming stuff and then when I was searching on YouTube for something else I found this:



The woman saying 'No fucking way this is such a violent nation' as they zoom in on all the cars driving in the air.

I love stuff like this. I try to find/create similar vibes for some of my YouTube stuff too. I'm not going to post that here though obviously lol but I've had some entertaining times.

This is a very weirdcore glitch lol. The sky being on the ceiling, the dark hospital, and the floating cars in the distance feel like a dream. Love it

brainrot

Millenials finding about this in 2009: cool I guess
Zoomers finding about this in 2024: omg weirdcore backrooms vibe

No I'm spiritually gen z when it comes to this stuff. I've always loved this stuff too like back in the day with Glitch City and misingno in Pokemon games. It was before YouTube so I don't even really remember where I learnt about that back then but I did.

It has the same vibes as this music:

This is the best song of PT, and I can find it only on Youtube...

It's on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape I think (yeah I mean it's in the video image lol,) which is a compilation album I don't own but as with many albums there are many versions of them so not sure if the track is on all of them but I haven't looked myself atm.

Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape is a compilation album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree (at that time a pseudonym for private solo projects by Steven Wilson but later a fully fledged band in its own right). It is a compilation of the band's initial three tapes, Tarquin's Seaweed Farm, Love, Death & Mussolini and The Nostalgia Factory. It consists of the rest of the music from the tapes that was not included in the band's first studio album On the Sunday of Life... and a previously unreleased track "An Empty Box".[1]

Yeah so I can see the dots connecting Throbbing Gristle and Porcupine Tree thinking about it lol. Coil was a spin off project by one of the members of Throbbing Gristle.

You know what's ironic about this post?



Steven's opinions about GTA. xD

My idea of computer games was like grand theft auto you know burning, raping, looting, shooting you know all that stuff. And I thought there's not a game here. But I was assured there was this new wave of much more sophisticated you know 'mature' for want of a better word and very beautiful role playing games so at that point I said sure if you want to go ahead and try and I gave them a bunch of instrumental music and the simple answer to your question is for the next 2 years I was not involved.

What were you expecting to see?

I don't really know because I don't know. I don't even think I had a preconception because I literally had no parameters or reference point at all. So I didn't know what I was going to see. So I went up there with Jess and we watched- I mean I didn't play the game but we watched somebody else play the game and I found it incredibly moving. I didn't- I mean it's my song, I knew the story already, I knew the characters. I mean the story's slightly changed obviously for the sake of the game it's slightly different. I was really moved and in a way that I would have been moved by a movie experience and to me it felt like I'd watched a movie.

Obviously there's - the person playing the game can influence the game but I was watching someone else play the game so in a sense I was watching them in the movie and it has an incredibly powerful emotional kick to the end of the story. Which is actually different they changed the end of the story. [...]
It's a really heartbreaking end in a good way you know people who are used to my music they're used to that 'heart breaking' they've created a new kind of twist to the ending. It's really powerful and the animation itself is stunning.

Yeah I've seen it. I mean it looks unlike any other game I've seen in terms of artstyle and general direction it has a kind of painterly approach to it. It just looks so beautiful.

Yes It reminds me more of some animated videos I've seen. You know some of the stuff that comes out of Japan for example Studio Ghibli stuff and The Red Turtle and those kind of things and it's got that very cinematic and like you say painterly quality to it.

It's almost like you are inside a painting the whole time. I don't know what kind of market there is for that kind of game I don't think they do either because they've never done anything quite like it either but it's getting amazing reviews as I understand and a lot of attention partly I think because it is so different.

But as we know from the music industry just because something is really different and fresh and good it doesn't necessarily mean it will find an audience. Sometimes quite the opposite in fact but fingers crossed.

I didn't know about this painting but there's lots of people (conservatives,) freaking out about it which is how I learnt about it:



I said before I liked it because butterflies have a lot of symbolic meaning well I actually said this (quote):

The Charles painting has a butterfly that resonates with symbolic patterns for me.

so that jumped out at me immediately without focussing on it too much (I still haven't really it was a sidenote for me in the video I was talking about before criticising 'modern art.')



But there's a lot of discussion and also this BBC article:

King Charles III's new official portrait: What the butterfly means

I mostly don't pay attention to the royal family at all and try to avoid news etc about them but in this case it interests me because of the art angle.

There's a more boring answer though from a 2006 post on a forum if you know about butterflies (which I don't.)

This is a picture of what I know from being a child as a King George Butterfly? Other people call it by the more common name of the Small Tortoishell Butterfly.

What I would like to know is, do any of you call it by it's species name or as I do King Goerge?

I was under the impression it was a local name given in the North West as most people who are not from round here call it by it's species name. It was only when i posted this question on Watercolour Home that I found out Steve also knew it by the name of King George as well, blowing my theory of the local name apart.

I do like their vampiric qualities.

It's also funny that the guy in that video googled King George before Charles.

I also just realised it sort of resembles that cover of Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape with the pink and the butterfly lol.



Hope this image stays because it's wikimedia...



More butterflies.

One of my favourite album covers (cuts off the top):



Butterflies are also really common obviously though just everywhere.

I've said this before but this was easily my favourite moment in a game ever. It was so unexpected and I was just in awe:

I think you have the portrait of a monarch sort of blending in with the background as if he was in the process of disappearing in a way his uniform, his medals, his sword, they're all fading away. The only thing remaining is the man, his face and his hands.

That could also be an element of propaganda a focussing on the Human behind the title.

Yeah that's interesting too.

Now I'm posting my bs haha (it's purely a coincidence though I based this on a photo where someone had a butterfly headband and decided to keep that element even though they don't look anything like the original and the colours are very different obviously):



I have multiple paintings/drawings where people are sort of fading into backgrounds actually (digital and hand painted stuff.)

I'll have you know that this painting is ugly because I cannot draw or paint people well at all (never could.) Lack of skill. It's mostly not deeper than that. Although I do love horror and stuff as well (well I like weird/surreal/creepy stuff more than horror. Like I don't really watch horror films very often at all. I also like the idea of horror as a genre though.)

There's a lot of bad on purpose stuff now too though because it's relatable? Surreal Entertainment's art style which is like creepy, amateur and so on all at the same time (but he has other stuff that's better quality so it's a choice or he was less skilled at the time hard to say he makes videos less often now I think but also I'm not checking regularly I thought this universe was really zany with Sheldon, Kanye, JK Rowling, Harry Potter characters, Ben Shaprio etc that he was building before):



And he reacted to this video! Which makes it so much better. 8:28 into this video:



He's completely confused and I love his reaction. What makes his reaction better is that initially he thinks he's seen that video before then realises he hasn't and is like 'actually I don't think I've seen this one...' And then he's just weirded out lol.

I love the sound effects in the video though it really adds a lot.

Most people who have attempted to create visual art at some point will be able to relate to this or it will remind them of something they've tried and failed to create and so on. Not like geniuses lol probably, but like average people in the 1-4 scale of creative ability (people who have never tried won't get it at all though presumably.)

At some point in their life they will have also probably experienced the sensation of being criticised or repressed in a sense for their amateur ability or because they were supposed to be focussed on something else in class etc. You know one time in a maths lesson I was just daydreaming about making something out of coloured pencil shavings instead of paying attention, which I couldn't do in the class, and so I did it later and made a kind of tortoise or turtle on paper out of coloured pencil shavings. Getting yelled at for drawing instead of writing at a young age, getting told to stop messing about with a piano because I didn't know how to play (by a music teacher at a school I didn't go to. Yeah I just broke in 'she doesn't even go here' no lol my mum worked there me and my brother would end up there after school before we started secondary school and just walked home with our own key.) Things like that.

Even skilled people get this though:

Definitely not a sell-out record (if you believe in that sort of thing), but the factory-based imagery shows them in the preparatory stage towards selling something. An interview with Aural Innovations (partially transcribed in Rich Wilson?s Time Flies: The Story of Porcupine Tree) had band leader Steven Wilson admitting that ?it?s completely at odds with the music?, but the manner at which they arrived at the cover came out of frustration he felt at times over the music industry and that many in the industry viewed what musicians created as product as opposed to art. Wilson had initially wanted a photo of an electricity pylon in the desert to be the cover, but management told him the idea was ?bland and cliched?.

"Your desert electricity pylon is too predictable."

They didn't think about me and my fixation on deserts and electricity pylons. Many years later I would have appreciated that cover.

Right now I want to create something with vending machines and cacti but I get hung up on the skill thing a lot and also my general lack of motivation/distractions. Maybe it also isn't that important to me dunno. The idea came into my head.

I think I realised some years ago that the ideas were more important to me then the end result. Especially if it wasn't going to look that great.

And art and music education is very bad (they don't really teach you techniques or necessary skills in most cases.) Perhaps there is also a steep learning curve though but I didn't feel like it was good in my school and I think that most people who learnt anything had outside lessons honestly or were self taught. Even at university level it wasn't good for that mostly, we even had a teacher come in later and comment on the lack of ability/weird teaching choices of our first year.

So for people who aren't geniuses you will find yourself especially in the education system kind of distracted constantly from anything creative. But that's old news. It all kind of feeds into that horror feeling though I think.



This is a forest dragon with butterfly wings I drew or fairy dragon. I tried to create it in 3D later and it looked terrible. (not that this is amazing either but really and sort of horrifying in that way bad 3D art looks which is why people are using this style now on purpose hahaha. Which I kind of love. It should get some use.) I used to write the word chaos in various places... It was very important to me symbolically I think before even Jordan came along. But I said that before.

I once also compared some guy's eye makeup in writing to butterfly wings (like his eyelids, and it's powdery in a similar way,) overly flowery language. Not a real person a fictional character in my writing. And there are probably a bunch of other examples I just can't think of right now.

"The flapping of the wings of a butterfly can be felt on the other side of the world." - some Chinese proverb I think.

I love how this painting genuinely holds a ton of symbolic meaning and purpose, but I can still look at it and predominately see a decaying man looming over me covered in and surrounded by blood. Probably the most honest portrait of the British monarchy we are ever likely to get with their approval.

Yeah it's interesting to me because of all these elements. Butterflies are kind of vampiric and you could view the background as being associated with blood though really it's a weirdly vibrant colour. I can see why conservatives and fans of tradition and the royal family wouldn't like it though. The aesthetics aren't necessarily... Something like this although they would have criticised that too at the time:



Lol I picked one of the most purposefully edgiest paintings of that era and the model got sick after they were unable to heat the water one day while he was painting.

The paintings of the PRB received quite the backlash for being "blasphemous" and too edgy, however, once the brotherhood was backed by the esteemed critic John Ruskin they began their climb to fame and acceptance

I would have assumed but wasn't 100% sure.

What do they like again? Cathedrals obviously.

I had some related plans in my early to mid 20s in 3D art. Like some kind of cybergothic, slightly creepy electronic cathedral type stuff. Merging computers with cathedrals and bones. Not super original (there is actually a bone church - Sedlec Ossuary) and in hindsight can even point to artists that probably influenced me but at the time I'd forgotton the names. Like HR Giger (one time while visiting the Tate Modern as I'd guess a teeenager - I know, of course they'd love this a modern art museum - I was looking in the book shop there and found a book about his work I think, think it was his work. It's a vague memory. I didn't buy it obviously I looked through it and it interested me for a moment.) In the end didn't really get that far with anything I was creating either. Skill issue mostly.

Hans Ruedi Giger (/ˈɡiːɡər/ GHEE-gər; German: [ˈɡiːɡər]; 5 February 1940 ? 12 May 2014) was a Swiss artist best known for his airbrushed images that blended human physiques with machines, an art style known as "biomechanical". Giger later abandoned airbrush for pastels, markers and ink. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for the visual design of Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien, and was responsible for creating the titular Alien itself.[1] His work is on permanent display at the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruy?res, Switzerland. His style has been adapted to many forms of media, including album covers, furniture, tattoos and video games.

But the reason this speaks to me in the first place is as I said recently I spent a lot of time in Camden Town and the shop I posted about before Cyberdog had like this sort of creepy horror sci-fi vibes as well (moreso the original one I think even the location being this creepy underground tunnel network. The newer shop is cleaner I think,) but it had mainstream appeal by that point in the 2000s - with The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell - and it's all sort of coming from 1980s cyberpunk and sci-fi:



https://www.timeout.com/london/oral-...chno-goth-rave

There was a very particular vibe there which was interesting to experience. But some related feelings I'd get just in other areas of Camden, merch stores selling alternative stuff or horror stuff. Hellraiser like anything associated with that film series and so on.

I'm very fixated on originality which I know is dumb because everything keeps getting repeated and most ideas have already been done but it's hard to shake that honestly.

Of course that idea's not what they have in mind or what appeals about cathedrals either lol. They want something transcendental in a way that appeals to them personally.

When it comes to what they want and this is partly why I'm fixated on this I get, once again, very mixed messages. I was looking for this one webpage by Bruce G Charlton where there are a bunch of people discussing related topics but I found this just now and it will do (Edward Dutton also writes about related topics and co-wrote a book with him) some of these people are also fixated on IQ in particular. I also know that this below is not the exact complaint that a lot of conservatives make 'art is ugly,' 'I don't like modern art.' But it's still a reactionary sentiment:

https://voegelinview.com/what-consti...individualism/

What constitutes genius? Who is a genius? The Genius Famine, by Bruce Charlton and Edward Dutton, answered many burning questions that have arisen for me over the course of several decades that have importance for the notion of genius and what constitutes a genius and why we still need geniuses:

The populations of Japan and China score higher than almost all Western countries on psychometric tests, so why have there been so few "geniuses" produced by these countries? Is "genius" a Eurocentric concept?

As a corollary of that, why do the Chinese just copy American technology through reverse engineering and industrial espionage instead of creating their own? Yes, it is easier, but also derivative and destines them for second rate status.

Why would someone who came top of his class in English, second to the top when transferred to an ?lite private school, find the vocabulary of Charles Dickens fairly challenging as an eighteen-year-old? (Names for Victorian ladies? hats and kinds of wallpaper did not help.)

Why are there no genius physicists at all anymore; the kind that make real, meaningful contributions to basic theoretical physics? Our 'genius' physicists are now individuals with a lot of knowledge about physics but make no meaningful contributions to physics. We are still waiting for a grand unifying theory to reconcile quantum physics and relativity and a solution is nowhere in sight. In the first half of the twentieth century, we had unmistakable geniuses like Rutherford, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Max Planck, and Einstein.

Where are the genius musicians, poets, philosophers, painters, and novelists? The 1990s saw the mishmash recycling of styles of post-modernism, with seemingly nowhere to go, as though music and literature had exhausted themselves. We had the nihilistic geniuses of Joyce, Picasso, and Schoenberg, in the early twentieth century, all of whom, Dutton suggests, were artistic dead ends. Academics could not have boosted atonal music anymore if they had tried, and it is effectively dead. Though it is true that the past can seem disconcertingly intimidating because there has been a lot of time to accumulate a list of worthy geniuses. But it has been seventy years from 1950 to 2021. Think of what the physicists did in a mere 40, from 1900 to 1940.

The late eighteenth and nineteenth century had Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Mahler, Liszt, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Berlioz, Puccini, and Verdi. The twentieth century produced Stravinsky, Richard Strauss, and Schoenberg, and that's about it. And most people do not even like the last one.

The answer to the first two questions is that the kind of genius that alters a culture and expands and enriches society and culture for evermore has been largely a product of Europe whether we like to admit it or not, though not in the way certain individuals and groups implicate and or in the manner that our so-called public intellectuals shriek in terror from when condemning the concept of the genius. The results of their genius, however, have created what we think of as the modern world, capable of supporting seven billion people, thanks to advances in roads, shipping, engines, planes, farming, medicine, fertilizers, and other technology. This generates a certain resentment from the beneficiaries, who it seems wish that it could have been they who produced these wonders. Geniuses need to have a high intelligence, of course, but they must also be endogenous - inner directed, creative, and intuitive. This is far more important and the defining characteristic of a genius and culture plays an undisputed role in shaping the inner directedness of individuals. Furthermore, they must have traits of psychopathy. They typically will ignore the usual quest for sex and social status - generally being celibate and almost never having children. They will instead dedicate themselves to a self-chosen obsession, approached using first principles, rather than reading other people extensively and applying the results of their research. They are antisocial, and do not care much about the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of others (low agreeableness). They are not conscientious and do not follow social norms and the expectations of others. The highly intelligent often lack common sense - so that popular trope of the absent-minded professor is true. In fact, they resemble idiot savants to a surprising degree.

Idiot savants have unusual abilities coupled with extreme deficiencies, though their talents are typically useless and they do not make major culture-altering contributions, unlike geniuses as they are defined here. They also need to be cared for by parental figures. It turns out that geniuses typically also need to be protected from the world and are frequently looked after by their families. Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Paul Dirac (almost never spoke), Wittgenstein (wouldn't eat with colleagues, socialize, or do administration, taught what he wanted and only the students he liked), Blaise Pascal, Gregor Mendel (the discoverer of genes), Thomas Aquinas, Alan Turing, Kurt Godel, Albert Einstein, Fyodor Dostoevsky (gambling addict and not very competent in life) in other words, half the authors of the books on an educated person's book shelf, were rather helpless and incapable and were looked after by their families, wives, for the very few that had one, and by monasteries that sheltered them. Einstein got lost near his home once and walked into a store and said "Hi. I'm Einstein. Could you help me find my way home please?" Godel depended on his wife and would only eat her cooking. He literally starved to death when she was hospitalized. Paul Erdos slept on the couches of mathematics professors and collaborated on articles with them. A book has been written about him called, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers. Theirs is not the fake creativity of originality as novelty. As Charlton/Dutton point out, Constable and Gainsborough are less original, but are better painters than Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon. (It is tempting to think that their famous last names helped their careers with the last two.)

Looked after by monasteries yeah. A lot of people have an interesting and complex relationship with that.

Probably the appeal of Ethel Cain for some people:

[Verse 1]
These crosses all over my body
Remind me of who I used to be
And Christ forgive these bones I'm hiding
From no one successfully

[Verse 2]
Jesus can always reject his father
But he cannot escape his mother's blood
He'll scream and try to wash it off of his fingers
But he'll never escape what he's made up of

[Chorus]
The fates already fucked me sideways
Swinging by my neck from the family tree
He'll laugh and say, "You know I raised you bеtter than this"
Then leavе me hanging so they all can laugh at me

https://hero-magazine.com/article/18...aptist-america

CH: I saw you recently hung yourself from a cross, can you tell me about the idea behind the shoot?

EC: You see Jesus up on the cross every morning, and then when you think about what?s going on behind the scenes ? how many [BEEP] children are you crucifying to save your faith? How many of us are you putting up on that cross so you don?t have to go up there? Aside from the sick-ass imagery of hanging in a field in a white dress, that?s how it felt. You?re crucifying children to feel as close to God as you can get. If you wanna crucify me I?ll do it, I?ll get up on that fucking cross and hang there. I wanted it to be a raw image ? no snakes, no blood. Here I am, this is what you wanted, this is what you get.

And I can sort of get this reading as well (it occured to me before I discovered her but it definitely didn't occur to me first.) I don't identify with Jesus it's easier for me to identify with Satanic figures (when it comes to that framework anyway,) but I get how people could and specifically for his outcast qualities I mean. The way he's portrayed too in art historically is interesting... I mean I make this joke too often but like. His fans not the biggest fan of his aesthetic in art in other people. Not a big fan of skinny white guys with long hair lol. He does have a beard though so there's some balance.

And to my mind this comes from this idea in many cultures of using people as a conduit to speak to God. You see it in numerous cultures globally certain people are treated as go betweens for some deity or other. Often with certain personality and sexual traits too. And I think in some cultures more than others they have to walk a tightrope. An impossible tightrope if you will xD



Damn this is so annoying of me. The least I could probably do is just create a 3 hour video essay instead. It's just easier doing this.

High intelligence seems to develop in populations where farming is possible. Difficult climates, but not too difficult. The environmental aspect of intelligence is important, something hereditarians often ignore. But more than environment is the cult of creative individualism in the genius. East Asians come from an environment agreeable to agriculture and, as mentioned, are highly intelligent but are often too agreeable and conscientious to generate many geniuses unless they immigrate to more individualist societies. Traditional East Asian culture and society is extremely group focused, or collectivist. The amount of time and effort they put into "saving face" for others is quite exhausting. In Japan, workers are assigned a pod of other workers. If one person messes up, the rest are held responsible. They will typically only take half their vacation out of a feeling of responsibility for letting the group down, since they have to do their own work and part of their vacationing colleague's work too. The genius is not concerned with the group, although his talents end up serving the group in all sorts of ways, including helping them compete with other groups. This is why East Asian immigrants seem to flourish and become geniuses when living in Western societies where they are freed from group consensus and embrace creative individualism.

The research here is mixed. I've seen research showing East Asians are less agreeable than Europeans actually. It's hard to argue that the art they're creating now is worse. Many would say it's better.

I know that idea doesn't fit the stereotype or the general collectivist/confucian sort of mindset people are familiar with but... That's what some personality research showed.

Well I mostly mean Japan when thinking about creative works people clearly rate Japanese works highly in the modern era. Studio Ghibli is definitely better than Disney as one example that's actually mainstream. Did it copy Disney? I dunno they started later and definitely collaborated over the years and had a complicated relationships lol... It's better I think, so who cares? (I mean some people will prefer Disney this is my opinion lol.)



I just really like this music track lol so posting it again.

There's a lot of interesting anime works in general, though I don't watch that much especially now. My understanding is that Miyazaki is not a fan lol or a fan of 'otaku.' Or antisocial nerds.

https://www.cbr.com/studio-ghibli-mi...ime-criticism/

The Miyazaki criticism that most fans are aware of is Hayao Miyazaki's issue with the creators of anime, which he says are essentially otakus. Miyazaki perceives otakus as people who don't observe real people. This is tied to the overall negative view that Japanese culture has of otakus.

To briefly step away from Miyazaki, the Japanese public does not shine a warm spotlight on those known as otakus. In 2014, a Japanese Corporation ran a survey revealing what a portion of Japanese citizens think about the word otaku the number one answer was "someone obsessed with his or her hobby." Reflecting this negative sentiment of the "Obsessed Nerd", Miyazaki's frustrations with anime stems from his viewpoint that anime and manga creators are obsessed not with creating depictions of people, but escaping from reality.

I saw a description of this video on a forum someone said:

Media is filled with derivative slop and people who fervently defend such. Fundamental change needs to involve the consumer and unfortunately it's far from just otaku, or nerds in the west, fuelling the continued production of these things. As long as this continues to be misunderstood we will not see anything but continued decline.

The image above is taken from a video where Miyazaki met with some animators who wanted to make something "creepy". Miyazaki proceeded to cook them for making something with no intended use or defined purpose behind it. But the viewer whether through cable or subscription model will uncritically accept what is in front of them just as it was uncritically made by the artist.

This is a very antisocial urge btw. Perhaps due to what they've noticed a good amount of our work is either commenting on this, or an example of it:



But that's not the whole story ever (or rarely ever.) People also bond over shared emotional experiences and identify with horror and ugly characters and experiences.

Some people also find creepy stuff comforting at least some kinds. I get these comments like that sometimes and that's also my interest in liminal work because it's creepy, nostalgic, comforting, horrific and so on. But I would say my YouTube stuff combines different themes obviously. It's a part of most things I do though. The creepyness.

I actually think he's quite conservative and judgemental based on some quotes I've read (like his way of thinking,) I don't say this critically as I have respect for the fact that he's actually making art. And so his work should appeal to these people technically (except nothing ever does, and perhaps the messages aren't what they want still anyway.) Moreover unlike studio Ghibli (let's pretend it's a conservative project,) what are they creating in the West?



Off the top of my head lol:



I also am aware that in the video I linked Miyazaki's judgement in that video will also be effected by the fact that that's using Artificial Intelligence which is very new and most artists dislike it. I prefer to keep an open mind on that topic. Like I can see multiple points of view. I understand why people dislike it but I don't have strong opinions really on the technology itself at this point in time.

Also he's very emotionally impacted by the subject of war which is something I can relate to. That does pop up as a theme in a lot of his films too. This is funny if true because he failed:

https://www.cbr.com/studio-ghibli-wa...deep-messages/

Howl's Moving Castle came out in 2004 and was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Pacifism is a central theme in the film, as the story is set during a time when kingdoms are at war. While the main character, Sophie Hatter, is attempting to break a curse that transformed her into a 90-year-old woman, she is also caught up in a powerful wizard named Howl's life as he tries to avoid getting recruited for one side of the war. Instead, he takes every opportunity to fight both sides even though he's against the war altogether. Miyazaki has shown strong opposition to the Iraq war, which was his reason for creating this film. It was important to him to create a movie that wouldn't be well-received in the United States. However, even though the film has a clear anti-war stance, it still became a hit for the studio in the U.S. Miyazaki's anti-war stance has been established since his youth as he grew up witnessing the harshness of war in Japan during the 1940s.

Globally when people think of South Korea on the other hand the first thing that comes to mind now is kpop and I can't say it's a great source of creativity in it's current form but it's still very popular (which I don't think is something to dismiss entirely unless you're misanthropic,) and it's not less or more creative than Western pop music atm. There are other interesting Korean works and music besides that too like outside mainstream stuff.

China has some interesting films I don't really watch films that often (in general)... In general China seems to have numerous issues at this point (like obviously the greater censorship of the internet though it's censored to some extent everywhere + locking people up for 10 years for selling danmei comics and persecuting feminine men and this is just stuff I'm aware of because it's related to my own interests,) but that's a very complex topic especially historically that I'm not an expert on that's beyond what I was even doing with this post before I edited it 343223432 times.

So, there are almost no geniuses due to active hostility to them, collectivist mentalities, indoctrination to conformity, and, of course, stagnating intelligence (by all empirical test measurements). Even very young people seem to realize that people are not as intelligent as other generations in the past. We have gone from farm laborers listening to five-hour complicated debates between politicians in the mid-nineteenth century America, to thirty second attack ads on TV in the recent past, to "students" with no interest in academic topics sitting in class fuming if they are not allowed to distract themselves online. Preliterate oral cultures were functional and focused on rote memorization and either learned what they needed to know, or died off. Literate cultures represented an enormous expansion of the human mind and liberated it from mere rote learning and permitted the possibility of critique. At certain points, it gave individuals access to the whole history of mostly Western thought to learn from. A post-literate "culture" may turn out to be an oxymoron. It has not gone through the trial by fire of oral cultures, and literate cultures. We blame functional illiteracy on "technology;" smartphone addiction and the like, but it might also be that dumb people are not as interested in abstract ideas.

No I don't think it's just that. Source: Me. It will take me a year or more to skimread a book out of order with ideas I find interesting. I'm just very slow, not very intelligent, and have trouble starting things often. Video essayists are obviously trying to bridge that gap somewhat.

The other factor is that modern culture actively selects against genius and is hostile to it. The antisocial Wittgenstein who refused to do administrative work, and would only teach what he wanted to, would simply be fired. In fact, he would never have been hired in the first place.

Oh they brought him up cool because going back to this:

They typically will ignore the usual quest for sex and social status - generally being celibate and almost never having children.

Yes and no. If you look at excerpts from his diary he discussed masturbating while thinking about mathematics problems (couldn't be me lol.) I really think the only major difference is the intelligence. Like most of these people seem to have a certain personality complex that most people hate but then they also happen to be intelligent and manage to find a way to be productive instead of what I'm doing now lmao.

Although Wittgenstein was involved in a relationship with Marguerite Respinger (a young Swiss woman he had met as a friend of the family), his plans to marry her were broken off in 1931, and he never married. Most of his romantic attachments were to young men.

Apparently he might have been attracted to men too. I don't know this man lol. I'm a degenerate and enjoy hearing about people's idiosyncratic fetishes (that's also why I stalk Aella's work/twitter page though there are so many she doesn't ask about or include in her research..) So I was intrigued by the idea that he might be sexually aroused by maths. Though of course in reality he was probably just doing both simultaneously which to me is less interesting.

Obviously the idea of someone else masturbating about maths could work for me because I'm into nerds as an archetype, but it wouldn't be my favourite theme of all time. It could fit in somewhere though.

It's not that I think people should be catering to reactionaries either I'm just confused lol. Like I'm confused about straight women who watch lesbian porn etc.

What do you want? What is going on?

So what appears to contradict for me is this. A lot of people with viewpoints like this admit that people have to be antisocial but then people like Jordan Peterson devote a lot of time to complaining about psychopathy and antisocial behaviour in their political opponents. They say the point is not to listen to other people and just focus on your obsession, but criticise the people doing this. Actually tbh everyone criticises obsession it's the number one thing people criticise.

It's particuarly bad with people who are obsessed with gender and sexuality as topics but the contempt for obsession is everywhere. That's why nerds/otaku etc are looked down on.

Yeah OK maybe these aren't all the same people criticising stuff but culturally, politically and ideologically and in other ways they seem to be mostly the same population.

Edit again: Regarding my reading of Miyazaki as conservative (because people describe him as anti-capitalist etc, may not be true though and this is not a typical understanding of conservative for some people,) progressives will often criticise stuff for ethical reasons in the manner he does in this video: 'this is an insult to life because of my disabled friend.' They interpret things in similar ways. A lot of conservatism is centred around Christianity - in theory - and a lot of progressivism seems to be drawing from Christian ideals such as defending the weak etc this has been talked about by many different thinkers mostly on the right. Bible quote supposedly:

Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

But it seems slightly different from the hierarchical based complaints that most of the 'right wing' in the West and modern conservatives have about art, music etc. You can see how the two could blur together though or even overlap. One is coming from a place of empathy, the other from this pursuit of perfection.

The common Western complaints I see (against modern art for example,) centre around the idea of beauty and some kind of transcendental ideal that's not being achieved. When it comes to art. Obviously this complaining gets broader in scope sometimes like 'where are the geniuses in physics?'

Some writers like Edward Dutton have had certain friends or aquaintances. He wrote about the weeks he spent in some witch house with lesbian witches while he was at uni, before he moved in with some Christians one who he thought was attractive before they later came out as a trans guy maybe? Wasn't clear. And his friend who he lost contact with and believes was autistic and came out as a trans woman (he was clear about this so it's not just vague because transphobia,) and was unfortunately killed. He expressed multiple times that he was attracted to his friend but kept forgetting who she was post transistion. Like he'd see her around, was attracted, then remembered. I was reading three (?) of his books at the same time. Maybe two. So these anecdotes were mentioned in different books I think. Also the trans woman friend had an interest in philosophy and was studying it I think, I won't go into all the details but I'm quite angry about what happened to her.

I find it again incredibly hard to follow (the complaints and such in his writing,) because there appear to be so many contradictions and he never posts about any art, music etc online. I've seen him mention a handful of like musicians and artists with very narrow focus all from centuries ago.

Many of these writers/thinkers dislike anything from recent centuries but some are more open than others.

So Edward Dutton puts it like this but usually this gets expressed in more basic terms like 'it's ugly/demonic':

Modern society has indeed become more and more 'evil' - which is to say (providing here a brief definition of evil) organized in pursuit of destruction of The Good in the traditional sense of the word - the Good being (roughly) the transcendental values of Truth, Beauty and Virtue, underpinned by a sense of unity and the eternal."

They also spend a lot of time complaining about how 'woke' people are antisocial and have various antisocial personality traits - all of these thinkers have taken to doing this. According to research. I think this research actually only describes some segments of the left btw but some will project that onto everyone, but I also think most people are antisocial to some degree especially creative personality types just cause I mean look around.

And so this is the big contradiction I just can't figure out. Maybe they all just changed their mind lol. I don't think they understand what antisocial means or psychopathy anyway or at least they don't seem to want that at all.

Again most people aren't just one thing. (Probably explains the contradictions I notice here as well lol...)

But antisocial personality traits have seemingly nothing to do with what they're hoping to achieve? They're not designed to give people hope, to encourage them towards procreation and other things I see people want art to do. It's stuff like sadism and the entertainment people get from these impulses.

There is a kind of sentiment that some people have about finding beauty in darkness, and relating to dark stuff and using that as a way to connect with others or to feel some sense of connection and not everyone finds that relatable. And this can also overlap with sadistic urges ime but probably is different:



"That made me so happy and I don't know why."

There's also you know a general interest in psychology that people have.

He's said he lies in interviews a bunch in his autobiography. I haven't finished that book yet though he did go into his family's dark background a bit (they're not killers or anything just it's a dark background.) He also said this in one interview:

https://www.loudersound.com/features...-steven-wilson

Look at the world, not at your phone. Make music for the love of it, not as a career. Serial killers are fascinating. The best is yet to come. These are among the things that shape Steven Wilson's world view

Nostalgia is comforting, especially as you get older

I've found as I've gotten older I've become very nostalgic for surrounding myself with the things from my childhood. So the other day I bought a Mary Mungo & Midge album. It was a BBC children's programme, probably from the late seventies [1969], and somebody posted a picture of the album on Instagram, and I decided I had to have it!

And the other day I bought myself a photo-print for the studio of The Avengers - Dianna Rigg and Patrick Macnee. It's comforting to buy things that remind you of your own childhood. So I buy a lot of crap.

Serial killers are fascinating because they're part of the human race

The first time I heard music that actually made me physically sick, in a good way, was Throbbing Gristle's Second Annual Report. I was about fifteen years old. The first song on that record is Slug Bait, and it's a really sick, lo-fi electronic noise piece, with Genesis P-Orridge intoning over the top a story about a [...] It was the beginning of serial killer chic. I grew up in a house where my mum had a lot of books about serial killers, so I was already a little bit influenced by her in my interest in that world.

[CR: Do you enjoy that feeling of being unsettled by art?]

I really do. Or at least I really did. I don't like the torture-porn films; that movie A Serbian Film, I can't say I enjoyed it. I like the idea of true horror, but only if it's in relation to a great idea, if it has something to say about the human condition. And of course the thing about serial killers, it is horrible but it's also part of our society. They are people that have malfunctioned for whatever reason. I find that fascinating because of what it says about the human race in general, what it says about childhood and upbringing.

Personally I have mixed feelings where I don't like true crime documentaries. My mum watches them all the time and I just can't. I find the broader topic interesting and sometimes read about them because I like psychology, but that can get bleak sometimes too. But I like surreal horror, creepy stuff, dark fantasy. One of my favourite films is American Psycho. Other stuff I've mentioned in this post. It's also sometimes nostalgic lol.

He sometimes seems to be trying to convince people he's safe, and that he's not a miserable and cynical person and so on (was doing that a bit in the book in the beginning.) I think this partly comes from an instinctive fear a lot of creative and/or neurodivergent people have that they will be eg: burnt alive or something if they come across as too antisocial or weird or dark etc.

And that band he mentioned were incredibly infamous in their own right especially the lead singer. Probably not a perfect person but I doubt all the accusations were true as there's no evidence and there very much was criminal evidence for several other famous British people.

Also it's just annoying to be pigeon hole'd especially into one emotion obviously.

But while reading his autobiography I thought about Edward Dutton's writing. It's ironic because Edward's... I mean if you've come across him you'll get what I'm saying (he's even owned cats,) but he's sort of in a sense written a series of things (books, tweets, other stuff,) about 'how to find witches.' He's very insistent on this term even to the point of alientating some people because a lot of people switched to using the term witch hunt for just cancel culture but he's insistent on keeping it to a set of phenotypic traits and he talks about dysgenics and so on, and various traits that cluster together genetically and in families. Of course anecdotally I can think of many examples (my own included,) and assuming he's not lying again (heh) Steven Wilson sort of fits the profile described too.

No witches aren't real. Just the idea of them persists.

So conservatives (or whoever I think I've made it clear by now that labels don't exactly work well,) will often argue:

"we need more classicial music and classic art. No stop focussing on this theme this is wrong.... Nothing good has been created for hundreds of years."

Anyway my take is, if we're not intelligent enough there's not much that can be done so whatever. I mean what are you even hoping to achieve here? You don't seem to know where to find the people you're looking for or really how to encourage them. You just complain they don't exist.

Also plenty of people are happy with things that have been created in the last couple of hundred years I know I am. I guess it's because I'm not a genius xD (of course I'm not, but like do they think they are? That's why they can't find anything they enjoy?)

Me:



Nevermind women what the [BEEP] do right wing mostly men want?

Imagine being this 'hypergamous' lol they have the highest standards of all.

World War I further culled the smart people. Officers led from the front and were from the upper classes, the best and brightest, leaving a generation of women who refused to marry down, in the usual hypergamous manner, to live out their lives as spinsters.

I guess this is more their issue with women not reproducing. I like how antisocial tendencies are just connected to everything besides being average lol (supposedly):

High intelligence and education are inversely correlated with having children, especially with women. So, the modern tendency to spend years in higher education well into the twenties, contributes to infertility among the smart. [..] And criminality is associated with low intelligence, and poor character (high impulsivity, antisocial tendencies, etc.) During Medieval Europe, the poor died in childhood in huge numbers, the rich and successful survived, and through this dynamic and learning intelligence slowly increased. We then became a victim of our own success, stopping this rather brutal natural selection in favor of the smart, and the poor and less mentally and physically healthy had more babies than the obverse. This ramps up the mutational load with dysgenic effect.

It's like this:



#yesallgamers

Well good news for you (if that's even true,) for several decades now they've been recruiting the working class and now gamers and people who use social media. (I'm not joking in the UK they have ad campaigns targeted at gamers and people who are addicted to social media etc.) I'm pretty stupid but not so stupid to have not noticed lol.

The Charles painting is quite monochromatic though. You feel almost assaulted I think. It's sort of merging high and low culture art in a sense and also ability. Like it's obvious they can paint in a hyper realistic way in the painting, but there's also that weird use of colour and everything. That's just my interpretation.

This seems related to the overarching discussion too:



Most people are both these characters at some point or other. But at the extremes some people lean more one way or another.

And if they picked apart the symbolism it could be interpreted critically. But seeing as this sort of thing is subjective they could come up with a different story if they wanted.

[Nyctophilia]

Lol not this again come on man...

Trans women have an unfair biological advantage at winning beauty pageants now

Regardless of your position on this discussion I feel like this is the most hilarious hill to die on personally lol.



I think she's just taking everyone down with her though.

Tbh reading comments about who people are OK with competing in drag competitions is fascinating because there are so many different answers and combinations of people lol where as with the above it's just black/white trans/cis (this is from a thread 3 years ago though for a specific TV show just first thing that came up when I googled. I mean I know 'afab' or 'bio queens' exist but I felt like reading some comments about where social media is at):

I think it's crazy to exclude women.

I think cis woman queens should absolutely apply, and keep applying

They absolutely should be given just as much a chance as cis men to be on the show

I got [BEEP] for saying this before (won't surprise me if it happens again) but I don't personally think cis women should be able to compete unless they're part of lgbtqia+ and not just the "I kiss girls when I'm drunk" like you're actually apart of it. Same goes for cis men too. Drag race was made by [BEEP] people for [BEEP] people and I personally feel they should keep it that way. I have no doubt there there will be other shows with a similar narrative to DR in the future that will be ruined by the straights, but at least keep DR what it is at its core.

I feel like if you exclude cis women you're putting them on a different level than trans women, and isn't the whole point that trans women are women? Not women*.

When I say cis I do not mean cishet- I think there's value in keeping the show a [BEEP] space.

I think it would be certain kinds of cis women that would fit the race. Performers that really play with the fluidity of gender and androgyny, art housey type stuff like a Sasha Velour. Otherwise I kinda think it?s for a different show 🤷*♂️ I?ve heard America?s got talent is a thing

I just confused in why Cis Straight women are allowed to sit and judge on drag race but are not allowed to compete. If it is by [BEEP] people for [BEEP] people, then why should we have straight people judging what we do? Isn?t that what happens every day anyways? By your logic, it should be all or nothing.

Yes. Anytime women are categorically excluded from something it is misogyny

Cis women can do camp, not femme drag. There is nothing outrageous about a cis woman doing femme drag. There is no gender norms being bent. It is not a political statement. Nothing provocative about it. It's just camp. A drag KINGS show? That's a WHOLE other kettle of fish. But this is a drag queens competition, with completely different standards.

I don't think I agree with that because everyone assumed Lady Gaga had a dick and there are better examples I don't really follow this but she's the most famous of course.

I feel like a season of pure female drag queens would be great to see, but i'm not really sure it'd be wise to put them on a "traditional season".It's tough to put it into works why, but I think it'd just be better.A pure drag king season would be great too.

Someone posted this article about Thailand:

'Drag Race Thailand' features first ever cisgender female contestant

While she wasn't selected as one of the show's final 14 contestants
some fans believe that having a bio queen appear on 'Drag Race' at all is a step in the right direction.

Speaking to Gay Star News the queen, who has only been performing for 12 months, said that she had previously performed as a Drag King.

"It just didn?t feel right, I didn't feel like myself," she said.

However, thanks to guidance of legendary Thai drag queen Pangina Heals - who happens to be one of Drag Race Thailand's hosts - she soon found the confidence to explore drag as a bio queen (a drag queen who was born biologically female).

?Next thing I know, Felicia Heals was born.?

Explaining her relationship with her drag mother, Felicia continued: ?We have always had a very good understanding and connection. It was a very natural thing. Pangina is a drag mother who lets you develop yourself. She asked me first to see if I was ready to perform before I did perform for the first time.

I like Violet Chachki's definition of drag as "queer gender expression". So I'm atm uncomfortable with cis heterosexual men or women, but i don't see why cis [BEEP] women shouldn't be on it

Agreed. Drag is just such a big part of [BEEP] culture in general and most of the women I know who are drag queens are also [BEEP] and often nonbinary. Like I identify as a nonbinary woman because I grew up in a strictly religious home with extremely rigid gender roles, and breaking down gender into a spectrum leaves me feeling femme but definitely not as a woman based on the definition of womanhood I was raised with. I still consider myself a woman based on my femme alignment and solidarity with other women, but absolutely not within the traditional binary. One of the beautiful things about drag is how it provides a way to express and present my vision of womanhood, not what society expects me to present.

Omg yesss I also identify as a nonbinary woman for basically the same reasons!! I don't mind presenting as a woman or being feminine, and as it stands I definitely "pass" for cis. But I have never really felt like my experience or presentation as a woman fit the neurotypical, cisheteronormative image I grew up understanding to be womanhood. I don't do drag myself, but it makes me feel seen in a way few other artforms have. I especially love Kylie this season because her drag shows that you can fully be a feminine woman while still falling outside societal expectations and ideas. It's quite freeing to see.

This assumes all trans women are [BEEP] and they're not and I don't just mean in the obvious sexual orientation sense I mean there are trans women who often transistion very young, have no attatchment to [BEEP] culture, and adopt none of the stereotypes.

Loved her in the video that wasn't Patrick Bateman for this song though:



Patrick Bateman is my favourite drag king though. The screenplay was written by a lesbian and Tumblr have adopted it. I'm counting it.

Taylor was OK but the message doesn't resonate:



Also Contrapoints- Oh no did she delete that tweet.... I swear it was her. Nooooo.

Wait it's OK I found it:



She always deletes her best tweets (I get why lol)

Lol it's difficult to come up with terminology:

"AFAB" stands for "assigned female at birth". While this is somewhat controversial, other terms still used both by performers and in the media are also considered offensive. The term "faux queen" is rejected and considered outdated by many drag artists for implying that female drag queens are not as "real" as male drag queens,[4][5][6] and the term "female queen" is considered by many performers to be transphobic as they imply that a transgender woman who performs as a drag queen is not female.[7][6] Other descriptions include "biologically challenged" drag queen, "female female impersonator",[8] or "female impersonator impersonator."[9] In recent years "AFAB queen" has been adopted to be inclusive of any performer who is discriminated against based on their assigned sex at birth, including non-binary and trans male performers.[10] However, this term is disliked by some trans male performers who believe there should not be any term to distinguish between drag artists on the basis of their gender identity, and who find that being called an AFAB queen means they are mistakenly believed to be women.[11]

This is my favourite non-binary drag performance:

"leg hair through the fishnets" new band name called it

Lol.

Also right wing men on twitter who are terrified about their own emasculation instantly blame testosterone when a trans guy who may or may not have been on testosterone (it was never confirmed,) commits a mass shooting.

Someone should go tell that I hate mondays then teen girl from the 70s whose name I can never remember. Somehow she managed it on estrogen and still at a time when it wasn't popular to do so.

Edit: Twitter is endless trash honestly most people hate each other no matter the topic really though of course the topic is usually some group against another group and the endless infighting in every group too. Lots of self hating people too. I feel like it somehow gets worse everytime I stumble around there.

[Nyctophilia]

A sobering conclusion from this new review of psychotherapy outcomes: "Although most psychotherapies lead to better outcomes compared to control conditions, response rates are modest"

Hi, yes at the bottom of table 1 they do give that data and it does look like it’s very brief therapy except for BPD which was 53 sessions. So the length of therapy may be one of the problems here.

CBT on the NHS was useless ime and yes it was 8 sessions that increased to a max of 12 so we used all 12 but just no any good.

Lol amazing yes:

We could ask what happened to the Therapeutic Communities that have all been destroyed on the back of very spurious 6 sessions of CBT

8-12 sessions also useless ime. I think if I was working in this career path (as the person who tweeted that is,) I'd feel quite powerless knowing it's useless. I don't know if that's the form of therapy they're forced to give though.

[Nyctophilia]

I enjoyed the long period where it was easier to ignore her but she's just been saying way too much stupid [BEEP] this year and getting more misogynistic while pretending she's not surrounded by men and most women left her behind.

Incredible that rowling is just like yeah we need the lesbians out of women's spaces too

No she doesn't like bisexuals, women who like making out with women probably especially if they're hot and young (sounds like envy really,) and women who don't think women are in need of protection. I'm sure she's OK with lesbian women unless they also don't agree with her.

But yes [BEEP] women are more supportive.

Lol I just realised he didn't ask her. Like her male friend asked some woman (not her.)

I knew bisexual women who did this at uni too at one point (making out at parties etc,) while in relationships or engaged (but her fiance wasn't there in one case during this time.) And I don't think even then it was for male attention. They just found it fun. You need to consider there's a lot of women who like making out with women or even in general and they feel more comfortable with the idea of it not having to escalate or mean much in a bunch of cases as well. As long as the other woman is on the same page. It is absolutely cheating though if their male partners didn't know and I have no idea if they had some agreement about that. I think one of them might have known she did this and he was at that party anyway but in many cases they don't. Of course a lot of guys don't care but a small minority do especially if they don't find the woman attractive or have had certain experiences.

Also another thing a guy I knew made out with a woman in a club once that's public too - is that just for attention. You know what I'm saying?

Trying my best not to say the wrong thing here but women like this, specifically like this? are typically the type that want to be my best friend and go shopping. 😐

Not sure who this guy is that she's responding to but he looks super masc with a beard so even on a stereotypical level I can't see anyone wanting to go shopping with him.

I on the other hand actually did have a straight guy who was disapointed once that I wasn't fun to shop with or interested in buying clothes etc when we were shopping.

He was a kind of metrosexual guy (hate that term but I wouldn't say he was androgynous per se and hard to find a descriptor,) and I was sort of a token female and feminine person in some ways except didn't really fit the role in numerous ways he was looking for.

In fact there's an entire sitcom episode about this:



I guess the straight guy I knew was like Brad, he wanted me to be Penny (probably not but close enough,) and I was I dunno Dave who's stuck in a relationship he was supposed to end after the first date that feels right. (I mean he had a one night stand and I never did that but I probably shouldn't have kept dating my first ex.)

No I will be that weird artist who is living in their ceiling. But really it's Dave in this episode and his complete inability to be assertive. That artist character was way too cool should have been a recurring gag character I think instead of a one episode thing.

Oh they're talking to Matt I'm subscribed to his channel I don't watch this podcast though it's like 25:40 minutes in:



Someone else's response to 'what sort of cis women support trans women':

In a different context, I once described them as the sort of girls at school who had tassels on the end of their pencils, & who'd make a big deal out of the act of writing while penning shit.

No idea what they're talking about.

I didn't. WAY too girly.

Ah I was wondering and assumed as much. These women always have an issue with femininity lol. Even most trans guys don't care as much as them it's funny.

We're basically describing the plastics from Mean Girls, aren't we?

I don't think you fully understood the point of that film.

These are some actual statistics from a YouGov survey:

Negativity towards transgender people is more apparent, with 25% of Britons admitting to holding such views, This is up from 16% in our previous study in 2021. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that a separate YouGov study last year found that Britons had become less likely to support trans rights.

There is more limited negativity towards transgender people among cisgender gay, lesbian and bisexual Britons. Only 8% of this group profess to having a negative view of trans people, compared to 75% who have a positive view and 17% a neutral view.

Most cisgender lesbian, gay and bisexual Britons have a very positive view of transgender people - particularly cisgender bisexual and lesbian women

I personally LOVE it when billionaire straight women are openly homophobic towards lesbians and bisexual women as part of their misogyny.

Classic stuff.

Pick me!
I?m a feminist.. unlike all those other sluts

Absolutely of course they'd go apeshit if they saw a guy talking about women who weren't their enemies like that but guys are joining in with them because they don't actually care about women she just wants control as the actual queen bee.

Like this comment:

Exactly that girl. The dumpy one and the gawky bean pole mate. Envious of the other girls but can't see that they are the solution to the problem. I know those girls.

So she's biphobic now as well. How not even remotely surprising

Lol of course. There has to be some kind of contract they sign.

Oh for fucks sake just call the rest of us "pickmes"and get over with it.

I prefered 'handmaiden' and 'you're a psychopath and should kill yourself' etc (personally directed at me lol,) there was less biphobia and hypocritical bs at least.

slut shaming and generalizing women, yikes, not everyone is in this discourse as deep as you are, Joanne, have you considered many women just lean more into supporting civil rights movements? you seemed so nuanced at the begining, now you don't sound so different from Matt Walsh

Yeah, that girl?.

immoral dirty sluts

you know the type

Yeah she's thinking that but can't say it so I guess you'll have to fill in for her.

This. That exact girl is who we're up against, and she's everywhere.

Women are making out with random women everywhere now? Interesting. I will have to investigate for science you understand. Seems like an anomaly.

Lol I forgot about this. You're right this is getting serious even JK Rowling is getting in on the action now:

Rowling you literally tweeted about how you were out with other GCs getting tipsy and how you might kiss each other...

Seems like she's projecting.

Also why a "school party"?????

Lol I just remembered this myself.

She's also married to a man so there really is very little difference between her and the women I mentioned.

[Heelsbythebridge]

Had a compulsion to read my emails from 2015-2020, and came across nudes from my ex I forgot I ever had. Whoa. Not deleting them. LOL.

[Heelsbythebridge]

All this time, I might have been using the wrong undertone in my foundations. I've been feeling like all my makeup makes me look SO damn yellow, which doesn't make sense because I'm East Asian. It should be a colour match. I should be a warm undertone.

I did the vein test thing under light and it looks like I have blue veins... I'm actually cool-toned!

[Nyctophilia]

Lol I'm doing this event thing (not really a quest as such I guess,) in Runescape that's pride month themed to hopefully get the pride gators (I was hoping they'd re-release them because I saw someone wearing them before I have the regular gators but not the rainbow ones and they look cool lol,) and there's this couple with two women. They've been in the game a few years now and were part of some valentines event I think one year.

So she's talking about how she didn't want to marry this guy her family wanted her to marry called Lord Clutterbuck (lol,) who she found boring so she ran off with the theif (that's the preexisting story from before.) But also lists reasons she finds him boring like 'he reads' and the player character is like 'that doesn't seem so bad' and then she's like 'NON FICTION' LOL. I like non fiction though. Actually I think men mostly read non fiction I wonder if they knew that since I assume that character is supposed to be a lesbian (not that it's explicitly said she just says that guy wasn't her type.)

This is technically a repeat of a previous years event, and there's also some new event going on for this year at the same time. They've been doing this since 2022 I think. Maybe some smaller stuff before then that I forgot.

I think the saddest thing about this is that so many people have a massive never ending fight about this that you can't just enjoy it without thinking about all the angry people. I do think Runescape old school have better events though overall in terms of creativity (compared to Runescape 3. There are two games now basically lol and have both been updated since they split off in different ways.) I wonder if they're doing anything for this and if it's better.

Runescape have also had Christmas events since the beginning (or close to the beginning anyway not sure if Runescape classic had any events in general.) Although you could say Christmas in general is commercialised and removed from it's origin well so is pride so it's about equal imo in terms of culture.

I also like when people argue against pride stuff by saying 'they don't have straight pride.' I know a lot of LGBT+ people wouldn't agree with me here because they think that the entire year is straight pride because they're the majority (and that's true,) but I honestly don't care if you do make a month for straight people. I mean a genuine attempt at a straight culture event.

I think it would be interesting to see what you come up with because straight people like to pretend they don't have a culture but they do have some. I don't entirely care for some of it (like the part where you all hate each other and pretend you come from different planets or gender reveal parties - not my thing or host pretend weddings for opposite sex kids while claiming we're groomers. I feel like some kids might be uncomfortable based on my own lack of desire to roleplay these things as a kid though plenty of kids did and it was their own idea to do so they'd get married in the playground etc, but that's different to taking two kids who are just playing together and then posting photos on the internet, it's also hypocritical to do that and complain where applicable.)

Unfortunately the straight cultures I find the most interesting are adj to trans culture (or [BEEP] culture in general.) Stuff like fujoshi, nisu culture. When women use other guys as a kind of sexual stand in because they like the idea of having a dick but don't have one, or pretend famous guys are their lesbian girlfriends and so on (also how straight women watch lesbian porn is interesting,) so they get disowned by most straight people and kind of act as an inbetween culture between straight and [BEEP] - demonised and seen as evil and fetishistic by both. I also see a lot of 'straight women stop fetishising lesbians' but the complaints about straight women fetishising gay men were around a lot longer of course. (Probably why I find stuff like that so fascinating now lol but also I read tons of slash fanfiction and homoerotic works by women as a teenager so I do consider it my culture but these days I don't read anywhere as much.) Of course most women who write slash fanfiction and stuff like that are also bisexual so it's definitely ambiguous anyway and more bisexual specifically culturally at least in the West. Which given all the gender bending stuff actually makes a lot of sense!



Lol.

Gradually compiling top 10 Contrapoint tweets (half or more of them get deleted lol):









This one was a collaboration:



It's only funny if you're familiar with weird academic shit, very online, and not threatened by LGBT+ people. A niche group.

This isn't Contrapoints below and I deleted this post before partly because some people involved in this discourse have been revealed to be unhinged psychopath types (who could have known that people who are freaked out by skeletons as dog whistles are mentally unwell?) But I do have to bring this back because it was just so funny to me the complaint being about LGBT+ and liberal culture I think(?):







Gatekeeping skeletons is the funniest part I think.

'You are pretending to like skeletons'

You what?

Gaslight. Gatekeep. Skeletons.

I'm not sure why the person who took a screenshot of that crossed out sportsball with red lol maybe an accident.

One of those guys started trying to build some kind of cultural aesthetic thing like Serial Experiments Lain, ps1 graphics and so on (the game that the OP was posting is not from a PS1 game.) I think I loosely can picture it. But they're just freaking out about very loose online subcultural groups and aesthetic interests. It's like there's some kind of tribal enemy detection thing that's going haywire?

I actually couldn't get into New Vegas for some reason I played a few minutes of it, stopped, and never went back for whatever reason. I played and enjoyed Fallout 3 a lot though it is very bleak. Very immersive game or was at the time.

I don't know what they think is happening in November but I suppose that is concerning. (Wait is that the election in the US? Oh it is. Lol I'm not keeping track. Maybe that's what they're talking about then but it might just be something else entirely.)

new insane person just dropped

the left accidently won 'sick [BEEP] skeletons' in the national divorce

"You were supposed to like girly things like Barbie. Now you like American Psycho, weird cyberpunk 90s anime and skeletons >:["

Since childhood yeah. I used to play the video game Medievil. So there's a lot of nostalgia built around this stuff now for people I think. That 'you're the enemy but you like similar stuff >:[' thing might be part of the problem but there's more to it or maybe multiple complaints.

I like doing the thing you're not supposed to do a lot:

"Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."

This but something involving madness instead of 'idiot'

but what is going on in their brains right now?

They were also complaining about people 'making everything ugly' etc. Which was interesting because I was posting about that recently but I mean I did say it's on a lot of minds right now. Right wing minds especially. They don't like a bunch of stuff because it's dark and/or ugly and demonic I think too (it's worth pointing out that these right wing people with their anime avatars are very dark people themselves and not going to go into the specifics of certain sexual interests some have.) There's an insane level of what appears to be paranoia and 'cooties' fear right now. Some of the conservatives disowned sports a while ago (someone else brought that up too like creating a list haha,) and one of them was also complaining about an increase in bisexual men saying 'that's supposed to be for women aged 18-24 who are sexually promiscuous.'

So to summarise my findings so far I think they are bothered about everything being made ugly which they believe liberals are doing but also they want to be dangerous and edgy and so long as women, LGBT+ people, liberals, or anyone they see as weak etc adopt aesthetics they like it bothers them because they become 'safe.' Two completely conflicting viewpoints and potentially even both existing in the same minds.

It's really weird and obviously these people sound and are mentally ill but there's an overarching ideology here that includes very influential people. It's fascinating though like what is happening? Social media is obviously making whatever this is worse but everyone sounds incoherent and are just constantly freaking out about signs.

Narcissism of small differences.

So anyway (the other topic I was talking about before,) before I start rambling about the research on bisexual women again and their sexual interests in research (they prefer looking at women but also enjoy male on male sexual stuff,) which is sort of besides the point.... I don't care if straight and cisgender people have a month it might even be informative as to how they view themselves. And I find sexuality interesting in general as a subject.

Jordan Peterson: >:[ no we must never be interested in or discuss this topic. Pride is a sin.

Yeah, OK. Lol someone pointed out that people say they're proud of various achivements and proud parents etc and people were like 'that's not the same.' This is the part that's fascinating and bizarre to me - the dislike of sexuality that most people have. It's not even pride after all it's the sexuality part that's making them uncomfortable. They need to unpack that. And I think if we have a month for every sexuality including straight it will be illuminating. They will continue to complain mark my words. Some of them even admit that's the problem for them.

The main problem with straight pride events is that for some bizarre reasons when they've turned up in America they've basically just been a protest against LGBT+ events (it's not OK to be gay why are they teaching our children,) and some kind of weird not Trump but still Trump rally!? What does Trump have to do with your sexuality? You know what I don't want to know.

Starts at 13:59



There's a smiley face and some weird robot thing with a hat. There was so much potential there and then it's just like some weird Republican rally.

You ruined it. Start over.

[Nyctophilia]

Thinking about this video again (I only recently discovered it lol):



I don't really think like this I more think (because this was a recent thought. I was so annoyed by a certain news story I came across yesterday):

If I was on testosterone and I was physically bigger than I am I could go around beating up all the stupid men who attack trans women and feminine men who don't want to play their game especially the ones who have double standards where they think they're noble because they don't beat up cis women but still go after androgynous genetic males who don't want to or can't play their game. But being a man is not relevant to that it's the hormones, and I also think people on estrogen could do something similar in gangs if they were more organised. I've seen what some female murderers are capabale of single handedly with weapons. Note this is purely fantasy I'm not defending the idea of vigilante justice because I don't want to go to prison but I do think it would make a fun video game.

Also Taylor is already one of the most succesful women and person globally so it's funny to hear her singing this.

The financial news outlet said she is the first artist to achieve billionaire status solely on the basis of her music, and estimated she has a $1.1 billion fortune.

The problem isn't really that she wasn't able to do it (as she did,) more that she gets certain criticism based on her gender that men don't. Even then succesful men get tons, and have to deal with fake sexual harassment accusations (I mean they're not all true obviously, like people will post anything on social media) but people change what they say to you based on what they think will get under your skin and that will of course vary by gender etc.

Both race and gender has an impact in buisness and leadership positions though according to research. Like white women and black men are penalised in certain ways regardless of competence but black women generally do better if they are more educated and competent (white men too.) This (or something like this) has shown up in several papers now:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10....56797611428079

Can an Agentic Black Woman Get Ahead? The Impact of Race and Interpersonal Dominance on Perceptions of Female Leaders

Prior research has demonstrated that the display of agentic behaviors, such as dominance, can produce backlash against female leaders because of the incongruence between these behaviors and prescribed gender roles. The current study was designed to fill a gap in existing research by investigating whether these well-established findings are moderated by race. Results revealed that dominant Black female leaders did not create the same backlash that dominant White female leaders did. Experimental evidence confirmed that White female (and Black male) leaders were conferred lower status when they expressed dominance rather than communality, whereas Black female (and White male) leaders were not. These findings highlight the importance, and complexity, of considering the intersection of gender and race when examining penalties for and proscriptions against dominant behavior of female leaders.

I'm too lazy to post the other study I found. Can I just be lazy? Whenever I post online (even somewhere where nobody's reading what I'm writing.) I'm always like especially if it's controversial I have to post all of the research so you don't shoot the messenger but please just endlessly google so I don't have to find it I don't remember the title of the other paper. This is one study anyway but as I say I was reading another one before that mentioned this but it wasn't the focus of the study it was about Asian women and black women and something I think?

Then I see the backlash specifically against white American liberal white women on social media (from right wing men, mostly white, they have an acronym haha AWFL - affluent white female liberal) even though they're more likely to vote republican than black women are and black women are more liberal in America. Wasn't it something like 60% of white women voted for Trump!? And I'm like damn. I'm glad they're destroying you guys hahahaha.



I like his comedy by the way this isn't me trying to drag him or Taylor lol. Oh there's a better version of this the one about the gucci shoes 'generals across the world should be analysing this.'



I did say one of my drag personas is liberal white woman (tm)

This but unironically:



I actually don't read it like this I think like basic liberal Taylor Swift fan girlboss type:

I've watched plenty of horror movies in my life, but straight christian fall girl Dorian is the most horrifying

This looks like an alien trying to be a human but their only source is a late-millennial girl named Kaleigh

I have seen Dorian as both a furry and The Joker, and yet THIS is the strangest they've ever looked.

Still a serve tho

I never thought that 'pumpkin spice white girl' could be a drag signature look, 2020 keeps surprising me <3

I know. Revolutionary.

Only dorian could serve normcore as a hardcore look

I can't believe that Dorian invented heterosexuality

Coming for you.

This is the straight culture I like too btw (regarding my last post.) It's funny that it took Dorian who is genderfluid to do this hahahah.

I like the evil [BEEP] coded characters - Patrick Bateman, Loki (MCU,) white straight liberal American women.

"Straight it's the new gay." - Steve Hughes.

And vice versa.

literally any upper middle class tiktok self-identified 'that girl' in a pastel workout set with a thirteen step skincare routine and a green juice is a million times closer to being patrick bateman irl than any self-identified sigma film bro

However maybe I'm taking this too literally (it's not perhaps about her,) but it's a little ironic for Taylor to be delivering this message because I think if she looked like she does in this video (masculine, bearded etc,) she would have never become a world wide pop music sensation. Even male pop stars look more androgynous (in a very specific way,) because that's what works in that field.



I mean this is hard actually (to find modern examples,) because no one is really that famous anymore lol not even Taylor Swift debatably:



And I struggle to think of many male pop artists now. There are a few and the boybands who are still vaguely androgynous. Most are just Korean now. It's very harsh but that's exactly what I mean when I say Taylor would not have become that succesful if she wasn't bejeweled:



She's in a bathtub filled with diamonds:



She would have to do this:



And he stole this idea from me no lol. But I did photoshop MCU Loki this way before he started messing around with glittery green stuff (that look existed before though obviously.)

And he's not as succesful/visible as Taylor.

People absolutely care about image and aesthetics.



Oh there are guys with beards I know. What's that guys name. Hozier:



He's not in this video lol.

It's not conventional pop music but I would say he's mainstream. It's just the beard isn't it though? Like if he shaved it he'd still fit into all the other physical traits. Slim, long hair, etc. He looks like how European people have always painted Jesus basically.

Something else that's definitely happened is this (it's worth noting that a lot of the music that male artists made in the past wasn't pop in the current genre sense as we know it but they were popular/mainstream musicians anyway):

I always think about how in the 70s/80s/90s there were so many "feminine" and/or androgynous male singers that were massive in popularity. Bowie, Prince, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, Elton John just to name a few. It's so interesting that they were so popular in a time that was way less accepting than today, where all we have for male singers is ed Sheeran in jeans and a T-shirt or every other male artist just wearing designer this or that (with the exception of a few artists yes, but they aren?t as popular as the "boring" artists.) I just kind of wanted to hear everybody else's opinions/thoughts on this. Why don't we have any more male artists like this?

Super theatrical and fun pop music is out of style now. Everything is getting more slow and darker. This means that pop with choreography and dramatics and looks is going down more. This is why so many pop fans attached themselves to Sweet But Psycho.

The last feminine male singer I can think of with world wide popularity was probably Adam Lambert? We also have Troye Sivan with the Bloom video being very gay, but the song itself was a lot slower and more lowkey than anything else from the peaks of Bowie or Elton or Freddie.

It does seem odd that gays are now accepted more than ever before, yet we don?t have a gay superstar or even really a feminine pop guy.

Sweet But Psycho was fun I liked this one mostly for her vocals and never mind just realised this came out in the before times (sometimes it's still 2004 in my mind anyway lol):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9LCHgpzfxQ

But I think there's still a bunch of stuff like this just from mostly female or non-binary artists and yeah it's all probably more niche. But yeah it's all dark and violence and mental illness are very popular themes now across all genres because we suppressed that so much in our culture imo that's why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePsqyPMIg6I

This again:

this girl is raising a whole new generation of gays as we speak

I don't know her maybe she's gay I don't know lol. But most of them (flamboyant pop idols,) are straight women and usually white. It creates this aesthetic in public consciousness. But it's a bit chicken/egg. Tbf women don't have to lean into it too much for this to happen.

Oh OK:

Roan currently lives in Los Angeles, California.[34] While she was raised Christian, she has said that she no longer identifies with the church and that her current relationship with religion is "evolving".[33] Roan has dated men in the past; however, she stated that she no longer dates men[63][64] and identifies as a lesbian.[58][65]

Roan was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder when she was 22 years old, a disorder which contributed to her difficult childhood.[8][66] She has described therapy and medication as being helpful for her.[8][67] She said that she came to her "tacky pop star" appearance after discussing her inner child with her therapist.[66]

While it began as a stage name,[68] Roan has called Chappell Roan her drag persona[33][9] and likened herself to Hannah Montana.[67][69] She describes Chappell Roan as more open and confident, especially regarding sex, than her real self.[6][9][64]

I swear this is why gaylors are a thing. 'No you don't get it she's edgy and famous and makes music. She has to be bisexual or sexually fluid!'

I mean there's also the fact that a lot of people find her attractive and so go looking for clues (wishful thinking,) obviously but aside from that.



Is it sad that that's what counts for edgy now? Yeah definitely lol.

Even Ed Sheeren is 'cute' (I'm not attracted to him and I've not listened to his music, I'm saying that's his appeal.) There's a lot of guys who just have a 'sort of nerdy average guy vibe' and there has been for a long while now in British popular music. I'm not saying they are like that always it just becomes their image and what people project onto them and the selling point. Like Blur, Oasis (not quite what they're selling a few members seem like infamous for being assholes or something? But lol they're still selling 'you've probably run into this guy somewhere irl but now he's famous and making music', literally the male equivalent of the girl next door.) Radiohead etc even The Beatles really if you want to go back further:



And American bands like Green Day lean into that too and also grunge bands like Nirvana but they still mess around with gender themes from time to time and the lead singer of Green Day is bisexual so.... Blur have songs about that too actually. Before American Idiot (which eventually became a musical and of course there's Tre crossdressing in the Holiday music video and things like that,) I wouldn't say they were overly theatrical in their image? They dyed their hair sometimes that's about it. They were very political in a cultural left wing way in their lyrics - songs about masturbating, domantrixes, feminism, crossdressing, etc but not in the image per se. I actually think some songs from their second album are the most nostalgic sounding for me now weirdly not American Idiot even though I discovered them just before that era and saw them live during that era and so on but I was listening to all of their music.



I do think from a technical perspective American Idiot was their best music up to that point (I haven't listened to anything after that.) But the timing with all the frustration politically etc fit well. It was more bouncy and aggressive than a lot of the 90s music and music now. Pop music kind of goes through phases you see, there was lots of pop rock back then too. Obviously tone and image difference from the Warning era (which didn't do well,) to American Idiot. So it absolutely matters. Compare these two videos and songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1OqtIqzScI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EL4njT8g98

I feel like there's probably better examples really but yeah. Of course Green Day's original 'they sold out' period was dated to the Dookie era lol. American Idiot was just their second peak.

And speaking of grunge it's not 'fun' but a lot of it is androgynous actually:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly1lWkRwm6g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLrfVAdYuTY

Kurt Cobain had an extreme problem with masculinity and hegemonic masculine men (came across in his art and writing too,) and while I don't agree with all his viewpoints they were especially at that point in time not especially in fashion for guys.

And I think that's where that vibe comes from in music now.



I still remember sometime when I was a teenager and I had this beanie hat I wore constantly inside the house too and eventually my dad was complaining about this and compared my image to 'grunge' or something. Note he listened to Nirvana. I can't remember his exact wording but something like 'I know this is probably a grunge thing' (it wasn't and it's not the 90s dad lol,) but *complaining I don't even remember now* I didn't wash my hair enough at a certain point either so I didn't notice until some girl pointed that out to me and so I started to do that more. But in general I'd rarely compromise. There was a subculture in the US someone made a video about that was just one school as far as they were concerned (of course the basic idea wasn't limited to that school) lol:



I think usually it's kind of a naive thing especially with neurodivergent people or people who just don't conform in some fundamental way so they're not picking up on the social queues for the norms of their gender. Or certain aesthetics just appeal to them from a young age. Some people in the video point out that they're 'dressing like guys' and being dirty these two things are associated in their minds. Then, they get push back for that when they enter puberty moreso than as children if you're female (if you're male it usually starts way younger the push back,) which makes some people more aggressive and identify with what they are doing more no matter what it is because they are disagreeable.

Actually there's a perfect episode about this called Sweetums involving Ron where he just does more and more stuff to protest and in the end Leslie confronts him (I don't remember the episode entirely but yeah):



"By the way, maybe it's none of my business, but if you eat three pounds of steak every day, you're gonna die, and although I've already written your eulogy, and it's incredibly touching, I would prefer not to give it for a while." - Leslie.





I also like it when people look completely understated but only if if they have long hair lol. I mean if music is good I will listen to anything but I mean the aesthetic. Like Steven Wilson obviously (who is underrated, and not really that famous but again nobody is now.) He looked like Daria in a sense for a long time. And so people projected the 'Daria persona' onto him too (I'll call it that but I'm sure the idea predated her character and April is the same,) actually which is something he's recently started addressing a lot because he obviously doesn't like being pigeon hole'd that way lol. So he argues that he's not actually a negative cynical person and he listens to Abba and is a vegetarian etc. The squirrels he feeds. Which tbf makes him more attractive to me because I like cute guys.

April's drag persona is the same thinking about it lmfao:

That smile that April gets as she realizes who Tynnyfer is - absolute magic.

Not so much a who as a what, but she does look like she's about to indulge in the dark arts.

But yeah I can appreciate a lot of different things myself.

The 'Gaylors' you see online don't look like Taylor though. I ended up on the subreddit while making this post lol (I do find them very interesting,) and there's a tiktok video from someone talking about her that was posted there a few hours ago (the thread was mostly about Wizard of Oz references in her work but someone included a tiktok by this woman.) She's wearing a plain baggy t-shirt, long brown hair, oversized glasses. I went onto her tiktok and she had one talking about how you can signal that you're a femme lesbian (to differentiate from straight women,) and she talked about how she layers all this jewlery and rings etc.

Femme Flagging.

Tbh I haven't heard that term before but she uses it in her tiktok. She didn't invent it though there are a bunch of results on Google. She also brings up Taylor again.

But I thought to be blunt... (If we're going there.) No it has nothing to do with your jewlery or whatever it's because you look like this but as a woman:



It's a good thing though he's hot.

What's with the obsession with oversized glasses?

I'm an optician and it's my entire job to know how glasses work and how to find the best fit. But it seems like all the young women and girls that come into my store put on the largest frames we have and decide it looks good. It never looks good! You actually don't want your frames to sit on your cheeks, and your eyes can't be peeking over the lenses because it completely defeats the point! Plus, you're setting yourself up for bad vision when the lab can't fit your tiny PD and elevated OC. We gotta drop the oversize trend, it's killing me. I'm sure other opticians can relate.

No he looks hot. I thought that before I even realised it was a thing. A bit of a weird order of things like 'this is hot' wait... Why is everyone wearing these glasses with long hair now? But tbf I always liked glasses anyway and I thought he was equally attractive without glasses too.

I guess part of it has to be Ethel Cain but who knows I am not gen z:



But it's great.

Don't ruin it with facts and logic lol.

Taylor is more of a femme lesbian in the way Abby Shapiro is a femme lesbian (they're not, you just meme'd yourself into attraction but I get it.) Jessica that one very femme YouTuber actually is a lesbian though and does have a aesthetic that seems like the 1940s. So there are (less often,) people like that out there.

I think some lesbian women go insane trying to make themselves stand out from straight women too. Straight men do the same thing.

Let's all be 'heterosexual' women together or something.

I think this is probably important though on a Human level like you have to be able to signal things to reproduce. But I do think there's something about modern society, social media and technology that's exacerbating this though like the skeleton tweet thing. It's a perfect example.

I mean I still haven't had penetrative sex with a man, some people irl were calling me a lesbian (but I'm not!) and asking me to wear dresses even during my most femme era back when I dyed my hair weird colours and such, and I cba wearing makeup and probably never will day to day.

But I will do the bear 🐻🧸 minimum and grow my hair out and then keep it in a pony tail most of the time. 😂

I'd look very feminine for a man but that's not really the point. Some people want to avoid that too but there are degrees.

And now that Taylor is a secret lesbian (allegedly,) and cottagecore is a thing there's no way to possibly pass as heterosexual hahaha.

I just slapped myself in the eye with my hair while putting my hoody hood up and it kind of hurt. This was very stupid but I've now realised I can use my hair as a weapon Bayonetta was right!

I'm just confused her hair can grow and shrink at will so I have no idea why she never pulls a sindel and start snatching people with her hair or making weapons out of it. I assume her hair has a lot of durability because she has it around her demons and it doesn't burn or break when they're in hot areas and so she could definitely use it to fight or idk suck the souls out of her enemies or something 😭😭😭. or even if it wasn't a weapon use it as a shield or something for all the explosions that happen in game.I just feels like it's a wasted opportunity.

Or not I haven't actually played that game I just know she does stuff with her hair.

Someone suggested this game:

Shantae can use her long purple ponytail hair as a weapon, cracking it like a whip by shaking her head. It was revealed in Shantae: Risky's Revenge that this skill is not a by-product of her genie half from her mother's side, as she is still able to use this ability after her powers are removed.

No it actually hurts! It's not just fiction. My eye.

The problem is at least as far as melee combat is concerned that people can pull on it and it's attached to your head. Long distance only.

Lol there's a reddit post about this:

Weapon of human hair?

Laying in bed with my wife and I said something that agitated her so she whipped her hair as she rolled over which slapped me in the arms and face like tiny razor blades. My questions are: 1. Is hair strong enough to actually hurt someone/thing? 2. Could a human neck manage enough torque to whip 2? of hair to actually cause damage? 3. What speed would the hair be traveling?

First, let's do some relevant data mining:

According to "Biomonitoring of Mercury Exposure with Single Human Hair Strand", here's some data about an average human hair Length: 4.5" (0.114m) Mass of 0.62mg or 0.00000062‬kg This gives an average linear density of a human hair as 5.438e-6kg/m

Another Quora post cites the Biodynamic Research Corp giving the maximum angular velocity of the human neck as 300 to >600∘/sec. Let's be conservative and go with 300?/s and convert this to 5.23 rad/s for convenience later on.

Lastly, another Quora post quotes Gray 2003 noting the average human has 100,000 hairs

With these data we can make a ballpark estimate of the amount of force a head of human hair can generate against a target.

First, to calculate the linear velocity at the tip of an average hair let's assume it's traveling in simple circular motion. Then, it would be given by v = ω(angular velocity) * r(radius) With our data this becomes v = 5.23rad/s * 0.114m = 0.596m/s

So, with this we can calculate the kinetic force of the hair tip by F = 1/2 mv2. Plugging in our numbers gives F = 1/2 * 0.00000062kg * (0.596m/s)2 = 0.00000011012 Newtons

Multiplying this by the average number of human hairs (assuming they all move uniformly together), this gives us only 0.011012 newtons, which is a very small amount of force. To give context, 1 newton is the weight of an average apple.

Just for fun, let's instead use the longest recorded human head of hair (that of Xie Qiuping) at 5.627m. This would give a velocity of 29.429m/s. Since the hair is longer, it will have a different mass of 5.438e-6kg/m * 5.627m = 0.0000306kg. This would cause a full head of hair tip force of 1.325 newtons, still very weak.

We've made some generous simplifying assumptions but still I think we can say that an average person's head of hair cannot be used as an effective weapon without modification.

Of course, if one whips their hair back and forth, they can create a lot more force via the bullwhip effect but I don't have the time or caffeine levels to get into that right now.

Hope this helps!

I appreciate the effort that was put into this.

What I think is left out in music is very masculine men especially in mainstream pop music that's always been the case as far I can see. Obviously it's not what most choose to do probably for personality based reasons (there are certain personality traits that correlate with androgyny and sexuality.) It's very hard for people who aren't part of that small group of very masculine men to relate and there's a mutal animosity there as well and not even from the masculine guys necessarily sometimes it's guys like Ben Shapiro who identify with that masculinity but don't embody it themselves. Ron Swanson was a pretty good attempt at a character though.

He also played keyboards in this Russian synth pop band from the 80s which is a look that every young 'post ironic neo redneck' as shoeonhead put it haha video essayist is trying to immitate:



And now just like the skeletons and Barbie it's ruined! Lol.

The gap for black men that started in the 90s is even more pronounced tbh. F.D Signifier talked about that regarding hip hop music in some videos and the changes in aesthetics within that subculture compared to the 80s and earlier. Like compare Prince, or this video (like I can make a list. Not a huge list but enough. A lot of guys back then also had long hair as well) and he's sparkling as well:



But then you know Nicki Minaj was like 'yeah I'm bored of this now' so hip hop changed again in the 2010s lol.



The lyrics people are writing now

'In the hood I'm like princess Diana'

I, I, I be eatin' my spinach (spinach)
They tried to clone my image (image)
They burned they London Bridges (Bridges)
None of them bitches British (no)
I know they know the difference, grr

And I just fell in love with a gangsta (grrah)
So I hold him down like an anchor (grrah)
He said if I keep it a hunnid (grrah)
That he'll keep me safe like a banker (grrah)
Nowadays, I be makin' 'em famous (grrah)
She the princess, so - who you lames is (grrah)
Of course, I be pushin' they buttons (grrah)
I hold the control like the gamers (whoo)

Live from London, straight from the palace
Man dem ah gyalis ah text us like Dallas
Keep it a bean, yo, he talk nice
'Cause the - game mean, ho (Hadouken)

The best thing was this (they mixed some Ice Spice song with Radiohead I don't care for it but I appreciate that someone made that anyway):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkv-9oWpV6s

And also this conversation isn't intersectional and being white Taylor wouldn't even be able to say 'white women are seen as evil queens.' (Which is a decent summary of why things are the way they are for white women or perhaps white femme people in general I think.) Because that wouldn't fit in with the narrative.

I think she said this was her most honest song or something anyway:

"This song really is a real guided tour throughout all the things I tend to hate about myself. We all hate things about ourselves," she said. "So yeah, I like 'Anti-Hero' a lot because I think it's really honest."

[Otherside]

So apparently we'll be offered ?75k to leave the UK on the condition that we do not return for six months, in an effort to make net migration look lower. And apparently this is on offer for citizens, so...

Failing to see the downside here. I take the ?75k. That's a lot of money. I go travelling, ?75k will last a while so long as I don't go to overboard. Thinking asia here. And in six months time, book myself on a flight back to the UK and continue on life as normal. There, I've kept my promise of "I will not return to the UK for six months."

Of course, I heard this on Tiktok so there's a big possibility its false news. Or maybe it's an odd Rishi Sunak "Please vote for me" policy. I don't know. Would have been nice were it true.

[Nyctophilia]

So apparently we'll be offered ?75k to leave the UK on the condition that we do not return for six months, in an effort to make net migration look lower. And apparently this is on offer for citizens, so...

Failing to see the downside here. I take the ?75k. That's a lot of money. I go travelling, ?75k will last a while so long as I don't go to overboard. Thinking asia here. And in six months time, book myself on a flight back to the UK and continue on life as normal. There, I've kept my promise of "I will not return to the UK for six months."

Of course, I heard this on Tiktok so there's a big possibility its false news. Or maybe it's an odd Rishi Sunak "Please vote for me" policy. I don't know. Would have been nice were it true.

I immediately had to look but yeah it's fake sadly. I would definitely consider that if true and I'm sure a lot of people would.

Even he can't be that full of it. The UK is a pretty decent country globally to live in but it's far from the best and it's only 6 months. Most people would enjoy living elsewhere especially if paid and it covers their travel expenses. 'Yay I can finally see Japan' lol.

There's this tweet poll from 2023 where someone asked this that comes up now if I google too:

https://x.com/__Unknown_D_/status/1668983866915266562

Slightly different but people seem to post stuff like that a lot.

If the UK government paid you ?75k to leave the UK with the condition being you can't stay in the UK for more than 180 days for the next 10 years. Would you take it ?

It sounds like some random poll concept but like people are spreading it as true for trolling purposes to see how many people would do it or something like that or maybe trying to wish it into reality something like that. But I can't find any evidence of anyone saying that and only a news article talking about the trend saying it's fake but the article itself is paywalled so I can't read it.

[Nyctophilia]

This is a former Welsh mayor I follow on twitter plus someone's response:



This is the mayor's bio:

PhD Researcher in Transgender Archaeology at the @UniOfYork. Former Mayor of Bangor, Author, Board Gamer, Welsh, Queer, Non-Binary (they/nhw)

Gender critical people on twitter have reached such a level of mask off anger so to speak that someone can have non-binary in their bio, post a photo looking stereotypically non-binary actually and still get this response:

Oh look another failed male in womanface

This is his bio:

Dad | LGB✂️TQ | Trump24 | Fighter to protect children/women equality | for the pronoun idiots mine are your/grace | My tweets my own

Because they mentioned hrt I assume? but honestly it's hard to say. I've been called a f*g before on that platform for saying I thought some trans person (maybe a trans woman not sure,) was attractive (the trans person in question was a part of the far right and then they were discussing about fifth columns in their movement. I said it was a shame about their politics haha. That's also why I say I'm not sure they are clueless and their info can't be trusted the right wing media is still trying to push the idea that the Nashville shooter was transfem and using images from Hunter Schafer - a famous actress' - instagram of something she posted and deleted ages ago to do that!? edit: I mean that's insane even a bunch of gender critical people were complaining about her post before she deleted it as she talked about her submissive sexuality so it's not exactly something obscure how did they think no one would notice? So yeah the person I was talking about might have even just been a cis man.)

Most of the comments are very insulting. A lot of this sort of thing:

You don't even look human let along a male or female

Which is very jreg:



'post Human abomination vibes.'

Either this is parody or you're mocking women by trying to replicate an offensive parody of what you think a woman looks like.

Your fathers must be thrilled

Several years ago there was a trend of non-binary people - usually afab - presenting this way and you all mocked the [BEEP] out of those people just like you continue to mock bisexual women, flamboyant femme people in general. Many other groups. You may all stfu:

Ugly as shit. Fucking psycho

Most music is like that now too because people. Are. Done:



They're never going to change for you.

I adopt aesthetics based on what I like though (which I think is important even when you enjoy fucking with people,) not what gets the most outrage on social media but sometimes these things overlap lol. But I completely understand the sentiment:



so someone posted a screenshot I think from fb of a woman saying... I'm not going to post the screenshot and everything but she basically posted a bunch of misogynistic things about women and said they talk about men too much, and famous men they crush on, and don't have any other interests and so on. All of these men were agreeing and it's very obvious that part of this was that women don't have masculine interests on average. One person even said they don't care about physics. This is why they make forced feminisation porn about nerds. No but it's funny. And they don't talk about their feminine interests with you. And if they do the interests annoy you. So that's what's going on there. Tbf she wasn't talking about all women she was essentially slut shaming when she said that. Obviously.

'We should make this woman president except she's a woman.' - a twitter man.

My thoughts were I don't think so... Cause I do all these things online (talk about famous men I find attractive a lot etc,) and have done for years and the only person who just wanted sex from me was offering to suck my non existent dick so that was an idiosyncratic case. But in a lot of ways I'm not offering anything that would make them think that sex was on the table either or be a desirable scenario.

'you're only redeeming quality is that you [...]'

No I don't do that. I'm offering even less. :D



In fairness these musicians I tend to talk about have done a lot, and are very talented. But I still sexualise them. And women doing that has always made certain men very uncomfortable. How dare you desecrate our holy sexless male characters/idols? Something like that. And this all bizarrely goes along online with repeated complaints about how women don't find men attractive.

A very weird mix of people all jumbled together online.

Also you're a woman. Statistically speaking Julia why-

According to Pornhub, lesbian porn is the most popular type of porn that women watch.

At least that's one interest that doesn't concern men at all.

Bisexual (including 'mostly straight') women are the ones who are into gay male porn in research but they find women more physically attractive and no but it's actually the title of something from the British psychological association now and it's still cracking me up....:

https://explore.bps.org.uk/content/bpssex/13/1/13

'I prefer to look at women,' but, 'watching? male on male relations? I enjoy that': The pornography, literary and film preferences of mostly straight and mostly lesbian women

This study is part of a wider research project into non-exclusive sexuality categories and identities of women. This project furthers our understanding of cisgender women who identify as 'mostly straight' or 'mostly lesbian' by exploring the pornography, literary and film preferences of 32 participants. A thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed that media preferences did not map onto sexual identity categories i.e. 'mostly straight' women enjoyed gay male porn. Thematic analysis indicated that sociocultural factors interact with or supersede sexuality and sexual identity in influencing media preferences. Themes emerging included the impact of feminism, the intersection of sexuality and faith, the overt politicisation of LGBT+ media, heteronormative socialisation, and the preferences of straight male partners.

Lol me hours ago:

So anyway (the other topic I was talking about before,) before I start rambling about the research on bisexual women again and their sexual interests in research

I'm doing it now anyway it's just at the crux of a bunch of issues.

Also it's 2 years old and still not on sci-hub. It's 2 pounds which isn't as bad as most which are typically around 60 pounds. Possibly because it's British and not American? But it's still not great that it's paywalled in the first place.

Younger girls taking the hits? Let's be fair, we all grow out of it. This is why it is best for young ones to date each other-similar interests? 🙃

I was sort of joking (when I thought she'd be better off with a woman,) but you know. You just unironically went there like Bronze Age Pervertian types.

Except those guys don't really view it as age limited.

Two tribes that come together once every six months to have sex and reproduce or something and then leave each other again.

Or like bears. The animals I mean not the slang term for hairy large men.

But no that's what I'm saying. Online at least straight culture is when you hate each other so much you ultimately become gay.

Edit: I had to edit this because I felt that statement was reductive though ftr it perfectly illustrates what I see on twitter. There's also this sort of thing which is sad:

[...] I'm a guy pushing 30 with next to no experience with the opposite sex (since I lost basically my whole teenage years to undiagnosed Asperger's) who, especially when an old friend of mine went full TERF, got bombarded every single day with content that painted people like me as incels at best and rapists at worst, and that depicted male sexuality as inherently predatory and unbelievably filthy.

[...] But even today, my lurking in r/gentlefemdom/ and r/RoleReversal/ might be due to a similar line of thought - if I have to have a sex drive, I might as well express in a way that'd minimize the risk of me accidentally becoming a monster, if moved from the internet to real life.

And I doubt it's a coincidence, if those subreddits are full of guys on the socially awkward side. Literally full, as in, there's a huge disparity in the male to female ratio of those subreddits. To such an extent, that I'm afraid I will have to give up any hope of ever finding love in this life, ever.

The fact that I know that this hope is rooted in a near complete lack of physical intimacy that I wouldn't be able to get anywhere else, something that's used as yet another bludgeon to beat socially awkward men with, doesn't exactly make me feel any better, either.

I am a [BEEP] trans woman, and this is something that continues to affect me. Being raised to believe that any feelings I had for women/femininity are inherently sexual and predatory has made it incredibly difficult for me to date or express interest in other women. I feel like I have to constantly monitor my own behavior and thoughts to try to prevent myself from being a creepy monster. It dovetails neatly with the view (also prominent in my childhood, woohoo 90's!) that trans women are lying predators and rapists.

I'm in therapy for it at the moment, and I'm coming to realize that the way out of this is just to get a better opinion of myself. I wouldnt be so worried about controlling being a latent predator if I didnt view myself as an inherently bad person. It's just taking a lot of work.

One thing I noticed while browsing r/rolereversal though I was never super active there was that the women there weren't super into it because they'd noticed a lot of guys who weren't into gender non-conformity would sort of post there because they were lonely or wanted to be cuddled and felt that was non-conformity in itself - which is depressing. Some people ended up finding they preferred posting on non-binary or trans subs. One person wrote an essay explaining that the subreddit wasn't a way to deal with heterofatalism and was supposed to be more [BEEP] (eg: addressing things like the complaining about pegging posts.) But nobody could agree on what the subreddit should be focussed on.

Then you feel guilty about it because you think most guys just go along with the fantasy out of coersion because of their own loneliness. Which is not good.

My experience with TERFs is they tend to go after feminine and submissive men the most for 'appropriating femininity' and/or womanhood which I always thought was weird. So since he brings that up it's hard to say what is bothering him specifically. But on the other hand some guys get the impression online that they have to be feminine to get love etc which isn't good or realistic either.

I also think there's a certain segment who were basically into femdom but including guys (like dominant femboys,) which clashed with people who were there and submissive but masculine. Like polar opposites. Also women who wanted masculine submissive guys instead of feminine and these two groups would debate. I can find stuff now from recent months if I look lol:

it seems like every other post is femboy related. and all the most popular. it wouldnt hurt to have some feminine women dominating some masculine guys once in a while. im a woman and femboys arent really my thing. but i enjoy the other aspects of role reversal. im probably gonna get downvoted for this but oh well i think this is becoming the femboy server lol

I wish I could see more literal role reversal instead of gender reversal

I want to see a butler getting charmed by his mistress so I can identify to him!

It's a big tent community which has developed overtime. This started as a sister sub to gentlefemdom, covering the sfw aspects of a role reversed relationship. The character of the community has changed with time and the d/s aspect is less emphasized now than gender presentation. There were a lot of complaints years ago about this sub being overrun by horny guys that wanted bangmaids, with the only RR aspect being that the woman is dominant and initiates. Mods addressed that issue which opened up the space for new types of content including femboy stuff. That got popular enough to where now new people come in thinking you have to be a femboy/into femboys to be RR.

I basically agree with you, although I like femboys. But the only thing to do is post more RR content with feminine women and masc guys.

I can't speak for everyone, but for me this is one of the only places I can reliably find art of femboys kissing women.

Because one relates to the other. It's like if you created a set of all rectangular shapes and asked why there were so many squares. Naturally, not everyone who is into role reversal is/likes femboys, however a large majority of femboys, and people who like them (note:not all of them, obviously [I mean hell I like dominant femboys as a part time girl] but again a large amount) are into role reversal. Ergo a good proportion of the total people into role reversal are also into femboys.

Personally though I think i see enough masc content but that could also just be what the algorithm throws at me so idk

Femboys have over run most of the reddit NSFW subreddit, what do you expect

I don't understand where you're getting this from, out of the 17 posts involving men in this week alone, only 2 of them are femboy, the rest are all gender-conforming men, I don't get it? Are you seeing something I'm not? That's a 2 to 15 ratio, that's over 80% non femboy.

It feels like every few weeks we get these posts lmao

We are everywhere. We are warriors equipped for combat.

...but like we're too scared of conflict and really we just need a hug :'(

^ This is the kind of thing I meant. It's kind of sad. Do women not hug men anymore? I don't get it.

Masculine guys are widely accepted by society with general dynamics and even in this kind of dynamic of role reversal what do you mean? Us femboys can't even be ourselves in public without the fear of getting physically assaulted

It's interesting the way people talk like they assume it will never be the other way around. They struggle to see masculine men as submissive. Even dominant women seem to have a tendency for enjoying softer men. Or at least celebrating them more.

I guess I have just accepted I'm not in the majority of this niche as a masculine guy that enjoys being submissive.

I'm a short masculine guy, and I would just love a tall tradtomboy to pick me up a little bit. Would love to see more posts like that.

Omg me too 😭😭😭 like I'm switching the roles not the genders

Well I'm not a femboy. Granted I'm not a buff guy either. Just a very tall very fluffy guy who loves cooking, doing house work, making people happy, and is unfortunatly too autistic to listen to a "manager" to keep a job :<

2 days ago:

To me, reverse roles means that she can be the protector and he can be the nurturer, she can be strong and loud and he can be gentle. To me, it's purely a mental thing. The roles that you two fill are the opposite of what is expected of your gender.

I say this because I see a lot of posts (mostly from the guys here) mentioning femboys and I really feel like this is not the place for that. I'm certainly not against it but I feel like it misunderstands the point of this unique place and that there are many other subs to explore that. To me, RR is about showing the submission in masculinity and the dominance in femininity. It's about showing aspects of the two genders that don't fit certain narratives we hear about what men and women should be doing. Femboys, to me, are boys who challenge gender and what it means to be masculine or feminine. I think it's important to separate the two for the sake of the men and women here who enjoy the ideals of our special kind of RR masculinity without anything else.

I love thinking about gender and all its weirdness and in that process I have gone through many different ways of thinking about things. I like many femboys and have tried to look cute in clothes not meant for my gender and found comfort in that but it's not something I want to pursue forever because while there's a lot I like about the movement, I really do want to be make and masculine and participating in groups where the goal is often something that goes against both of those is very dysphoric and also not something I want to be doing long-term. That's why I really like this place. It shows versions of relationships and masculinity that I can identify with and that work with my masculinity. I like masculinity and want to be masculine, but not in the way portrayed by certain very popular influencers today of a brutish aggressive sort of man and this community is one of the few that lets me feel masculine in a way I identify with.

TL;DR: this was longer than I thought, sorry. I like femboys. I like role reversal. I think they are different enough that I think of them as completely separate identities and as someone who is experimenting and growing would like to see versions of reversed masculinity not tied to femininity

I'm pasting this from a comment because I feel it's important: They are not exclusive. I think RR is very possible for GNC people and it attracts them. I also feel it is different and people are acting like it is not and that irks me. I want this to stay safe for femboys, just not to be a place for them specifically which it feels like sometimes

So really there's lots of different people who all deviate in some way or other who can't decide what the subreddit should focus on (or really what's common,) like most subreddits. Or even most of the internet lol.

I wouldn't say I'm into femboys specifically in fact since they borrow again from anime aesthetics a lot that often doesn't work for me maybe too young seeming in a particular way too. Some people who use the label are attractive. I do like guys who have long hair and aren't super masculine though physically. And I'm not super masc presenting (have long hair, no muscles.) So ultimately I wouldn't see that sub as being for me anyway. I do prefer pretty guys and guys with feminine interests but also some masculine interests and I like sexually submissive guys, but also femdom stuff the specific combination of femininity and dominance seems important. I also don't think topping/bottoming is the same as dom/sub definitely prefer topping in fantasy anyway. And there are other places or Tumblr that cater to some of these things better especially as I'm non-binary anyway.

Yeah, it's subversive at least partially because it maintains more conventional gender expression, but FRAMES it differently, which is the fun part, especially as there's a certain amount of baggage with gender and aesthetics. Femboys don't tend to look like mature men in any respect, even beyond grooming and clothing selections, and that's concerning on a level of exclusion and regressive framings of what femininity needs to look like.

I think I'll have to make a follow-up post to this because a lot of femboys here didn't have a positive reaction to it. I like femboys, I think the group has issues but in general it's a thing I like and think they should be welcome here. However you're exactly right in saying that they don't look like mature men and that's an issue.

I also want to protect the meaning of RR as being something about framing not the aesthetic

After all that he was like 'I identify as a femboy anyway.' ???

I see it as different but maybe I could ask others here how they see it.

I am a femboy.

For me OP comes across not as complaining about the fixation on a single approach, but flat out be throwing feminine guys out of the category of RR.

OP is essentially saying "a guy being feminine or a girl being masculine isn't RR, it's something completely seperate that just happens to have some overlapping people" and I think that's silly.

You want variety, I do too, but every comment I've read from OP seems to imply they think that guys being feminine is explicitly not part of RR and something seperate, and that RR only has to do with the relationships' framing and that's it.

That's why people are responding this way, because OP never implied anywhere that he agrees that men with feminine traits and women with masculine traits counts as a form of RR.

It doesn't read as OP saying "We need to see there are other attributes that are RR" it reads as him saying "these subversions don't count as RR. RR is only referring to the relationship's framing"

I would not give myself the title femboy, full disclosure.

That's how it comes across to me too in the OP honestly. But it's really hard to know what the OP or anyone is ever talking about without examples which is another issue.

What's with all the 'anti-femboy' posts recently?

i check out this subreddit pretty often, and i saw it as kind of like a rare safe place for a straight femboy. But ever since around january this year, i feel like a lot of posts and comments complaining about femboys started appearing. It's not even them saying they want more inclusive stuff, they literally just complain about femboys, and all the comments saying they dont like femboys, idk about anyone else but i cant help but take it really personally, like my only safe space is being taken away. am i over reacting or does anyone else feel like this?

It is true that I have seen cigar posts complaining

If this sub becomes pure masculine men, the truth is I'm going to leave.

lol yeah i feel you, i'm not a guy but ngl those posts lowkey make me feel bad for liking/making art of fem-adjacent boys for like 10 minutes but i try to ignore them

it's not even that i don't like masc guys but 😭 you know

As someone who's been here for years don't worry cause these posts pretty much pop up every couple of months. Nothing substantial changes and the sub just goes back to the regular to start the process over again. imo it's gotten a bit better when you consider how obnoxious the complaint posts were back then, they were pretty much just a manifestation of this

Lol.

But quite.

Worse than that though are guys like Andrew Tate who get that and is still here being a dickhead:



And even the women who like masculine men aren't into him besides the really dumb/naive ones. Yet 1 in 4 school boys see him as a role model in the UK. That's going to go well lol.

Basically just exists online to post paranoid stuff about his own emasculation and the matrix, and then get troll'd by femboys, trans people and various women.

[...] The way i see it this subreddit is essentially an expression of who you are at your core, your fundamental values if you will, and is therefore kind of a more vulnerable space.

Regardless of which of the above views or other that you have, in the end they all kind of apply to this sub and also don't. either way, there's not really anywhere else to go.

we gotta make do with it ig bc the world is just built a certain way that is hard to fit in with sometimes. waffle over

That's the really depressing part (though I know that sub's not the space for me,) because most people feel like this everywhere these days from what I've seen.

I'm not even trying to find relationships myself anymore.

Meanwhile on that other men's subreddit:

One thing that I can relate to is the feeling of heterosexuality being a prison. Even though I am straight, it feels as though there are things that I simply cannot do because it?s not normal for straight men to do. Much of the time you're restricted to the norms of a traditional heterosexual relationship even if you have no traditional views whatsoever. Eventually you hear that you?re just too feminine or not masculine enough for relationships, and that since you?re a straight man you just have to deal with it and play by the rules that were set for you. I never questioned whether or not I?m straight, but I realized that I dislike heterosexual dating quite a lot. People seem very stuck in old traditional ideals while also complaining about them, and because of that I find myself envying [BEEP] or LGBTQ+ relationships.

I'll be the first to admit it, honestly. I don?t know how anyone can look at their relationships and then don?t see how silly it is when straight people get hung up on the most trivial things that more or less end up ruining the relationship. And it's so tough to criticize straight relationships because you?re just met with ?well you should just date men then, you sound like you wish you were gay.? Funnily enough I?ve found myself more attracted to more ?masculine? women. I don?t like calling them that since I don?t believe in that, but that seems to always be meant as a shade towards them and men who are attracted to them, which is only just the tip of the iceberg of their resentment towards women like that, from straight men especially. The same tends to go for [BEEP] women as well, which reflects in my hesitancy as a cishet man to involve myself in their spaces despite knowing they'd probably be more understanding of this dilemma.

It definitely makes me feel like I?m stuck, unfortunately with other narrow minded straight men whose opinions I don?t agree with at all, some of whom even ridicule me for being the way that I am.

Hetersexuality definitely has hard ties to traditional gender roles more than [BEEP] relationships. Heterosexuality isn't the problem, its forced traditional gender roles that is the problem. It's interesting to finally hear a cishet man admit that he's envious of [BEEP] relationships because in my experience, cishet men would do anything and everything to not be associated with queerness since it's considered "emasculating" to them.

I do sense envy from cishet men about [BEEP] relationships, but they usually don't admit it. They usually express that envy by being homophobic/transphobic. There seems to be this subtle feeling that the homo/transphobic cis men are in competition with lesbians and trans men. Like, "they are taking all our women" kind of thinking. It's not explicit, but seeing how popular incel and redpill spaces are, I can sense that they fear losing women to not only chad alpha sigma men, but also to lesbians and trans men.

Interesting interpretation but I've never felt that lol. I mean I fucked about with the fantasy for fun sometimes but I don't think many cis men are worried about that at all in reality. That's part of the appeal of the fantasy in the first place really.

So after 3 posts today:

"So that's why I can't enjoy Runescape."

(quoting Simon Amstell saying that's why I can't enjoy Paris):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4mH6E0hMbI

Also listen to what he finds attractive in this stand up.

This is why this happens btw:

Or are they? Gay men certainly are, and gay women are just rhapsodic about women, but a lot of straight women are just kind of "meh" about male bodies and men in general. What is that about? 🧐I just... I just do not understand straight women. I don't think I ever will. And that's okay. I'm just gonna accept my bewilderment, and move on with my lesbian life.

Even straight men are joining in now:

"Name five things you like about men"

seriously tho, Justine's question can be difficult, what do you like about the gender you're attracted to ?

i'd say that what i like about girls is :

- the way they smell

- their hair

- their smiles, the wide variety of exprssions a smile can contain, oh my god

- their charming self-confidence

- the way they wear overalls, black flannel, jeans, and so on

the list is long lmao, i'd say also the feel of their skin, their bones too, because as our great lady foppington said, " is it so wrong to enjoy the sweet touch of cold bones ? "

(yes this is a thirsty post babes)

No that wasn't the question!

I describe myself as a straight man (there are some who would disagree), and I've thought about this before, but I simply ended up asking myself 'what is attractive about traditionally masculine men? What do straight women see in us?? Frankly, I just can't figure it out: in women I like curves, sharp but delicate facial features (think Natalie, Gigi Goode, Scarlett Johansson, etc.), and a dominant but caring attitude, whereas in men I'm only attracted to things that are the opposite of stereotypical masculinity: a hairless, slender body with soft skin, and a submissive but playful demeanor.

Idk, I guess I just want a dommy mommy or a submissive femboy 🤷*♂️

Oh dear.

There are lots of people who like masculine men though and masculinity but I think it's probably easier if you're also a masculine person. Eg: masc4masc gay men. In terms of relating in general. I also think obviously that a lot of women prefer not to talk about that due to shaming and also because they care about harming men. Eg:

Yeah, additionally I honestly think Natalie just doesn't get straight women. Another quote that I often think about is when she says straight women don't like male bodies the same way gay men do (I don't remember the video) and just don't obsess over bodies (and cocks).

When I (a cis straight woman) watched that Natalie video I was in a Smallville rewatch and 1) I knew I was straight since I saw Tom Welling with without a shirt when I was about 12 and 2) on a rewatch podcast that I listened to loads of straight women say about why they like this show "Well, Tom Welling" (often "Tom Welling took his shirt off". This isn't the only media like this. Twilight's appeal (the movies too, not just the books) wasn't just about wanting to be rich nor did only gay men like to look at Taylor Lautner. I just sat in Natalie's video and thought that this is the wrongest thing she ever said and also that she is just someone who isn't attracted to men (and let's face it, is masculine socialized and likely has some relics about women from that) so she doesn't get it. The contrast in my media consumption at the time was pretty poignant.

Just because as a general rule straight women don't rhapsodize about cocks doesn't mean they dislike the male form nor that there is less of a straight up phyiscal desire and even if there is less of it in the sort of immediate masculine "Oh boobies" way, it's definitely still there.

So I don't remember her bringing up dicks ever and I want to say that first because I know phallocentrism is something she's touched on a few times. She said they don't talk about men or male bodies in a sexual or positive way. I've def come across a few who do more often than the norm but tbh on this one forum one had similar preferences to me, and the other everyone thought was a gay man trolling because she liked masculine men and was also very judgemental about people who didn't fit her conventional type. It's that bad online lol.

Another thing is, there are reasons to not talk about penises above and beyond that women find them uninteresting. It's a sensitive subject for a lot of straight men (which is what straight women are after), of course I don't talk with my girlfriends about my boyfriend and ex's penis (unless there are serious issues that I need advice on), I am not an asshole.

I've had a lot of dysphoria/envy about this at times but I don't think it's a reason people shouldn't talk about dicks. And what really gets me are the people who... It's not one group doing it so I can't exactly even say who identity wise but multiple groups who often have the same sexuality where they fantasise about being a woman during sex (weirdly even when that's not clear I noticed an example recently and it turned out they still had those same fantasies they talked about in a different post,) but I've noticed it's not cis women saying that. They compare strap on sex with dicks. 'It's just not the same and I need a real dick.' Things like that. Depending on my mood that's terrible. But still I think they should talk about it if they want.

Also the last post that bothered me that guy had cheated on his wife and there was a lot going on there the graphic detail of how much better sex was with a 'real dick.' It was painful man. But even then like please stop cheating but he should be able to talk about his sexual preference.

I also wonder if maybe part of the reason it's not cis women I notice is as she says cis women just don't talk about it (as often,) but I don't think it's just that. It's very complicated though.

Just because as a general rule straight women don't rhapsodize about cocks doesn't mean they dislike the male form nor that there is less of a straight up phyiscal desire and even if there is less of it in the sort of immediate masculine "Oh boobies" way, it's definitely still there.

And yeah like [name] I (and other straight women) don't need to explain why they aren't gay men (I find that pretty offensive that men are - again - the standard), cis women just don't have to explain this at all, no sexual attraction needs to be logically justified nor is there some kind of gold standard, like if you as a woman can write this good of an essay about a penis, you are definitely straight.

Straight or gay, I hope she realizes that this is a weird thing to ask people to do

Agreed on this point. Although I am demisexual (like Natalie, a term I think describes me but I don't necessarily identify with very strongly) I am in fact physically attracted to men, albeit as secondary sexual attraction. I do think there's real stigma attached to women talking about the way they are attracted to men's bodies, which probably loops back to the whole Madonna/whore dynamic, but sometimes I think it often also ties to back to Heterofatalism. I read an article a dog's age ago about how men often long for women to comment on their physicality, and this ties into them not understanding why women hate cat-calling so much. But women are stigmatized for treating men's bodies as sex objects because it's seen as slutty, so it's hard to want to do that. (It can also attract the attention of creepy dudes...)

Another thing is, there are reasons to not talk about penises above and beyond that women find them uninteresting. It's a sensitive subject for a lot of straight men (which is what straight women are after), of course I don't talk with my girlfriends about my boyfriend and ex's penis (unless there are serious issues that I need advice on), I am not an asshole.

This this this! I feel like this is the ladies' version of "a gentleman never tells." This is such a sensitive topic for men that it is really gauche to mention it. I don't want to get into the weeds on this on my main, but I will also say that the things about a penis that are attractive to me do not have to do with it's size or shape anyway.

I know this must be a thing because I also feel bad about sexualising men in the way I do. 'They'd hate that.' It seems like you're kind of doomed either way though. Like if you talk about it or don't it's going to create issues for people and culture.

I can really relate to her on this because this used to be and I guess is again something that used to irk and confuse me, how everyone seemed to always be talking about how attractive women are physically and never men even often straight women (and I mean any men like even less masculine ones.) 'Well I'm attracted to men but still women are more attractive physically.' This was also treated like objective fact.

And I can also see it from multiple perspectives she brings up masculine socialisation but I'm not sure if that's another way of saying male socialisation (which a lot of trans women hate,) but being genetically female and non-binary I'm not opposed to the idea that I personally am like the reverse in many ways 'feminine socialised' but really people only bring it up with trans people like if someone is cis and breaks stereotypes they don't say they were 'male socialised' lol. They inisist that they're gay men trolling and pretending to be cis women. But anyway the 'penis envy' thing lol. Imagine not even having one in the first place. (I would say that's the thing I've historically been most insecure about but there have been other things occasionally. I mostly compare myself to men when I'm not just an alien living inside a dissociated meatsack probably in a 80/20 ratio over my entire life?)

Why is my brain even like this you know?

But also imagine a psychologist basing an entire psychological theory about women on dysphoric natal females (it's very obvious to me,) that ended up as his patients somehow. That's Freud lol.

And now explain the people who want female genitals. It didn't even cross his mind. He's so cisgender xD

'He is' yes he's dead but he's haunting us all.

Also. There's a bit of an argument on that subreddit about whether that guy labelling as straight matters. I guess it matters in the sense that bisexual people are demonised and nobody wants to label themselves bisexual for fear of either gatekeeping or being demonised.

There was a trans woman online who passed - and she may have been lying and I've certainly heard different things from others - who said that the people who approached her the most were straight women and straight men. She was like 'sexuality isn't symmetrical in both sexes.' Yeah... This is clearly a cultural language thing though at that point lol.

I could see how straight men could find femboys attractive but 'I like dominant women and submissive men.' Basically shows you don't view them the same way though so it's not like they're just women to him. Not that you can't have the same preferences for both but the fact that he doesn't is a sure sign in the first place.

I forgot what I was even talking about half way through this and got distracted by reddit threads.

[Nyctophilia]

Tbh I find the find the book cover with the very muscular guy with the glasses very entertaining but that's because I like glasses too but not that body type lol. So just entertaining myself with the idea that it's become some universal now regardless of other preferences. No matter what you have to have glasses/'nerd vibes'. Of course that's not true (even for me,) just lol.

I also get the feeling that isn't for women only somehow. And why is his face showing but like the woman one is just a body?

Yeah I didn't finish watching this video but she does actually bring that up lol.

Stumbled on this thread below while googling something about deodorant lol (I realised that mine is now technically 2 years out of date but still been using it. I mean it's not been open that long which I think makes a difference too but yeah.)

A place where transmen, whether transmasculine, nonbinary, or feminine people of color can come and talk about their experiences, transitioning or identifying as trans being a person of color

It's interesting to see how guys who pass or are stealth deal with this. I'm mostly closted about being non-binary and try to avoid the topic with parents. It never comes up with my mum but my dad has brought up related stuff a few times and honestly just felt panicky about it. Must be weird though to have this experience so often because I don't socialise anymore irl outside certain family members and connections related to family:

Anyone else struggling with not being visibly Queer

I feel like no one can tell I'm trans if you saw me on the street I feel like I look like a lesbian or cis guy but not trans I know that passing is a good thing but I don't like being mistaken for a cis guy

I hear ya, and have similar conflicting feelings. I went from being hyper visible as a gender conforming woman to nearly invisible as a pretty average looking guy. I appreciate passing when I'm around cis people for safely reasons, but it hurts my heart when trans folks I see out in the wild can't tell.

Ugh, I wish I saw this thread a few hours ago, but I relate to this so much lately. I'm about 10 years on T, and in this current political climate, I am beginning to think of ways to hint to cis people that I am trans.

It's extra strange for me because I am *pretty* sure I am read as gay to most people, and yet, I cannot even put a NUMBER on how many times I have had people just come up to me and tell me about how much this dislike trans people. It's been so intense that I've begun to ask the trans people around me if there is something about me, maybe even how I behave that seems to have people think I am transphobic or at the very least not a trans ally.

I feel like I don't go more than 2 weeks at any given time before I experience some level of verbal violence against trans people just casually told to me by friends/acquaintances, coworkers or other people in professional spaces. It's so sickening, and I am tired of it. I have even started to think about using he/they pronouns in Zoom calls just to make people aware that there is a trans person in the room, but so far I haven't become that desperate especially since I already know I genuinely get annoyed when people use they pronouns on me after I tell them I am trans.

But yeah, there's a whole lot of negatives that do come with not being visibly trans when I'm trans and interacting with trans people and it can be so freaking awkward to out myself as inopportune times.

It probably is just that they think he's gay. Because a lot of people like the idea that their transphobia is in defense of homosexual people.

But with other trans people I don't think you have to try to make yourself seem visibly queer, just visibly liberal or something. But admittedly these days it's hard. A bunch of liberals are still transphobic anyway. Also being read as a lesbian is passing as [BEEP] lol but yeah. I get that not everyone likes that word but seeing as some people do use it who are homosexual (especially lesbians,) I don't really think people should concede language that way.

edit: Lol I had no idea there was a game in the Red Dead Redemption series before Red Dead Redemption.

How do you write a character who wants to be king/lord/leader?

I'm a woman, a soft woman. Never had any urge/feeling to become powerful. So how do I know what men should feel when they want so called "power."?

Here I'm not mixing "power" and "money" everyone wants money that's for sure.

But what about the kind of power that makes other people respect you, fear you, worship you, what is it that gives certain men some power to do that?

The way this is written makes me assume it's trolling but if it is true that's fascinating and incredibly rare for a Human.

You've never listened to a Halsey song in your life?



So many examples too.

There's also all the songs that are basically expressing guilt about that lol.

This is assuming you've somehow missed all the power games most people encounter irl and then also on social media. Somehow.

No I know it's trolling lol. I think they want to get honest confessions from people who would otherwise deny it by presenting it as something women don't experience so they'll react in a contrarian way.

Also they switch from 'how does it feel to want power' to 'what is it gives men power?' Which are seperate questions.

[Nyctophilia]

As a trans woman I can confirm that they indeed found an ancient forest inside a 630ft deep sinkhole in China

cis people can reblog this but keep it on subject, please

Happy pride month everyone always remember that the sinkhole has an ecosystem large enough to house not only insects but likely several species of small birds or mammals

lol.

the toilets in this gamer cafe have this quote on the wall and a speaker absolutely blasting the tetris theme on repeat... cannot describe how hostile this atmosphere is

I want to go there.

Also lol:

Still internally screaming that Geddy shared my IG story about getting ready to read his autobiography

Ah man I made an instagram account to watch a live thing once ages ago and followed a few people but I just never use that site and cba.

Lol I still haven't finished reading Steven Wilson's autobiography.

Mindless Self Indulgence once retweeted something I posted way back in the early 2010s which was cool at the time. Tons of controversey involving this one allegation with the lead singer now.

Also Contrapoints liked one of my tweets once hah. That was cool because she actually doesn't like that many tweets.

Nick Land liked one of my tweets too but that's considerably more cursed.

I think that's it on general social media off the top of my head. Oh some famous journalist asked to interview me about something once as well I guess after I responded to one of their tweets.

I'm popular in a certain niche of YouTube content and so people have talked about my content in other videos a few times but that's a different dynamic especially since I don't watch other's videos that much in that niche so other creators feel more like peers for the most part. Some big channel outside that group once included a screenshot from one of my videos though lol.

I really have to continue that one YouTube series....

Hold on:

kelly performing shoes in 2024 might be the best moment of my life i fear

Why aren't I there what? I was watching those old videos again recently.



I've never been to a pride event but I would go to that.

did she also do text message breakup because I NEED it

no! just this one 😭😭

Damn i was hoping she performed "let me borrow that top" too 😭

Exactly! I was thinking the same. But her creepy goth friend whose name I forgot has to be there too for the [BEEP] me with something hard and sandpapery part of it's not the same.

Amanda Palmer cameo'd in a video too and vice versa so they should collab on stage at some point. I've seen Dresden Dolls live but not Amanda's solo stuff.

[Nyctophilia]

There is something in this discussion on role reversal I quoted a couple of days ago that I think has become a wider cultural issue/debate now but they're using really confusing language by conflating two things together. I've probably brought this up before but it's interesting. Like this conversation:

To me, reverse roles means that she can be the protector and he can be the nurturer, she can be strong and loud and he can be gentle. To me, it's purely a mental thing. The roles that you two fill are the opposite of what is expected of your gender.

I say this because I see a lot of posts (mostly from the guys here) mentioning femboys and I really feel like this is not the place for that. I'm certainly not against it but I feel like it misunderstands the point of this unique place and that there are many other subs to explore that. To me, RR is about showing the submission in masculinity and the dominance in femininity. It's about showing aspects of the two genders that don't fit certain narratives we hear about what men and women should be doing. Femboys, to me, are boys who challenge gender and what it means to be masculine or feminine. I think it's important to separate the two for the sake of the men and women here who enjoy the ideals of our special kind of RR masculinity without anything else.

I love thinking about gender and all its weirdness and in that process I have gone through many different ways of thinking about things. I like many femboys and have tried to look cute in clothes not meant for my gender and found comfort in that but it's not something I want to pursue forever because while there's a lot I like about the movement, I really do want to be make and masculine and participating in groups where the goal is often something that goes against both of those is very dysphoric and also not something I want to be doing long-term. That's why I really like this place. It shows versions of relationships and masculinity that I can identify with and that work with my masculinity. I like masculinity and want to be masculine, but not in the way portrayed by certain very popular influencers today of a brutish aggressive sort of man and this community is one of the few that lets me feel masculine in a way I identify with.

TL;DR: this was longer than I thought, sorry. I like femboys. I like role reversal. I think they are different enough that I think of them as completely separate identities and as someone who is experimenting and growing would like to see versions of reversed masculinity not tied to femininity

I'm pasting this from a comment because I feel it's important: They are not exclusive. I think RR is very possible for GNC people and it attracts them. I also feel it is different and people are acting like it is not and that irks me. I want this to stay safe for femboys, just not to be a place for them specifically which it feels like sometimes

Yeah, it's subversive at least partially because it maintains more conventional gender expression, but FRAMES it differently, which is the fun part, especially as there's a certain amount of baggage with gender and aesthetics. Femboys don't tend to look like mature men in any respect, even beyond grooming and clothing selections, and that's concerning on a level of exclusion and regressive framings of what femininity needs to look like.

I think I'll have to make a follow-up post to this because a lot of femboys here didn't have a positive reaction to it. I like femboys, I think the group has issues but in general it's a thing I like and think they should be welcome here. However you're exactly right in saying that they don't look like mature men and that's an issue.

I also want to protect the meaning of RR as being something about framing not the aesthetic

For me OP comes across not as complaining about the fixation on a single approach, but flat out be throwing feminine guys out of the category of RR.

OP is essentially saying "a guy being feminine or a girl being masculine isn't RR, it's something completely seperate that just happens to have some overlapping people" and I think that's silly.

You want variety, I do too, but every comment I've read from OP seems to imply they think that guys being feminine is explicitly not part of RR and something seperate, and that RR only has to do with the relationships' framing and that's it.

That's why people are responding this way, because OP never implied anywhere that he agrees that men with feminine traits and women with masculine traits counts as a form of RR.

It doesn't read as OP saying "We need to see there are other attributes that are RR" it reads as him saying "these subversions don't count as RR. RR is only referring to the relationship's framing"

I would not give myself the title femboy, full disclosure.

So one thing a lot of people hate is infantalisation and being seen as child like. Some people have the reverse issue or develop it with age but a lot of people hate seeming or being treated like they are young. A lot of ableism is like this too it's very close to the same treatment and many people hate it.

Now because a lot of heterosexual men are attracted specifically to youth and cuteness there is a degree where women are expected to act like as Tina Fey put it a 'sexy baby'


Lol Taylor quotes it in this song I discovered recently which is why I'm thinking about that again:

Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby
And I'm a monster on the hill
Too big to hang out, slowly lurching toward your favorite city
Pierced through the heart, but never killed

I like the vampire reference too. Well I'm reading it as a vampire reference either way lol.


Monsters are interesting to me. Women feel like monsters when they're powerful and/or androgynous (Lilith, witches, and so on, Loki is half giant and crossdresses more neutral because it's pre Christianity but still,) and a lot of monsters are portrayed in androgynous ways or play with gender in some way. They're giving birth to a demon oh no and so on. This really ramped up I think during the 20th century though with the crossdressing serial killer trope and so on.

But people also feel like monsters when they're attracted to women. This is because attraction to women is usually predatory in some sense. Attraction to men is also seen as predatory when it involves feminising men or sadism. That's why a lot of women are expected to grow out of their attraction for 'twinks.'


Something a lot less explicit than the 30 rock sitcom character can be sexually appealing to me or with some overlapping elements. That's why I'm into bimbo erotica. But I also like coercive elements like mind control where they're not just like that. I've enjoyed over the years (I go through phases,) straight guys being feminised or turned gay and straight women being turned into lesbians or being intelligent/buisness women etc and turned into a kind of bimbo or hypersexual feminine archetype.

I don't want a relationship with someone like that though. That's the blunt truth. I find intelligence and creativity attractive and I like witches.

I guess that's the madonna/whore thing but it's less mother and [BEEP] and more spooky witch hahahaha. Because I feel like built into that arcehtype and complex is the idea that most heterosexual men are looking for women with motherlike qualities and such which makes sense from an evolutionary pov. I'm not though I said that before though because it's kind of bisexualised. Men are more sexually appealing when they're feminised in some way, but most of my crushes are on men.

The anime girl stereotype plays on this aesthetic a lot and femboys often attempt to imitate that.
Or this advert that no one would make now lol:

"Innocence is sexier than you think": that line made me shudder...

So as I'm saying this is very annoying to people who essentially have trauma over this because they were treated that way or pushed into that role but hated it (which is obviously why on a subreddit like r/role reversal it's going to bother the kind of women who hang out there,) but also it's not necessarily sexy to everyone especially women. I would say sapphic women tend to be attracted to mature femininity if not masculinity in women. Like the 'muscle mummy' thing.

Oh god that word in a sexual context:



I guess I just-
I guess I just-
I guess I just wasn't made for these times
I guess I just wasn't made for these times

That's what the kids online call them.

Also this is totally the aesthetic that guy was complaining about haha. Half the stuff came from vaporwave in the early 2010s and related microgenres. Like hauntological 90s made into something darker (somewhat [BEEP] too there were trans women involved in that genre I think but the people he was yelling at on twitter were trans guys and bisexual cis guys):





I'm not American but I'm glad we won ps1 and old computer graphics for nostalgia purposes.

We get Skynd (clearly part of the same musical/cultural trajectory,) and you get 0. You get trump I guess?



Also is it stupid that people do this (when they do,) or is it instinctive?



Look how miserable he is. Plus you probably get more creativity when you're forced to build cultures like.

Vaporwave and hauntology inspired Liminal Spaces the visual art form:

Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music and a subgenre of hauntology, a visual art style, and an Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s,[31][32] and became well-known in 2015.[33] It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, 1970s elevator music,[33] R&B, and lounge music from the 1980s and 1990s. The surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism[34] and pop culture, and tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, technology and advertising of previous decades. Visually, it incorporates early Internet imagery, late 1990s web design, glitch art, anime, stylized Greek sculptures, 3D-rendered objects, and cyberpunk tropes in its cover artwork and music videos.

Vaporwave originated as an ironic variant of chillwave, evolving from hypnagogic pop as well as similar retro-revivalist and post-Internet motifs that had become fashionable in underground digital music and art scenes of the era, such as Tumblr's seapunk. The style was pioneered by producers such as James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin and Ramona Xavier, who each used various pseudonyms.[35] After Xavier's album Floral Shoppe (2011) established a blueprint for the genre, the movement built an audience on sites Last.fm, Reddit and 4chan while a flood of new acts, also operating under online pseudonyms, turned to Bandcamp for distribution.

Following the wider exposure of vaporwave in 2012, a wealth of subgenres and offshoots emerged, such as future funk, mallsoft and hardvapour, although most have waned in popularity.[36] The genre also intersected with fashion trends such as streetwear and various political movements. Since the mid-2010s, vaporwave has been frequently described as a "dead" genre.[37] The general public came to view vaporwave as a facetious Internet meme, a notion that frustrated some producers who wished to be recognized as serious artists. Many of the most influential artists and record labels associated with vaporwave have since drifted into other musical styles.[36] Later in the 2010s, the genre spurred a revival of interest in Japanese ambient music and city pop.[38]

Ramona Andra Langley is an American electronic musician from Portland, Oregon. She has released music under her primary Vektroid alias, as well as others, such as dstnt, Laserdisc Visions, New Dreams Ltd., Virtual Information Desk, and PrismCorp Virtual Enterprises.[1] Langley played a prominent role in the popularization of the vaporwave subgenre with the release of her ninth studio album, Floral Shoppe, under the alias Macintosh Plus. The album helped popularize the vaporwave genre throughout the Internet. Since then, she has continued to release music through Bandcamp and other online platforms.

Langley resides in Portland, Oregon.[12] She is a trans woman.[13] She was diagnosed with autism in February 2024.[14]

Cain came out as gay to her family at the age of 12, and on her 20th birthday, she publicly came out as a trans woman: "As I got older, I found out there were other options", she said.[2] Reflecting on this, she recalled: "It was made clear to everyone that I was not like other people. Whenever I started to develop, I started to come into my own as a trans woman. We were a house divided?it was me versus my whole town."[3] The singer identifies herself as a bisexual woman.[52]

She is autistic,[53] which she learned upon seeking a diagnosis in her adulthood.[54] Reflecting on how being autistic has impacted her artistry, she has stated:

I'm autistic, and so that definitely heightens sensory everything. [...] I think that's why I have so much crossover between media, because it's like, there's never just one sense. Music is not just something you listen to. Film is not just something you watch. You get all these senses from all these things. When I'm producing music, I literally feel sometimes I can see it. I have to close my eyes, and I imagine the bass is the earth. I imagine the synths are rising up next to you, and I imagine the vocals are high in the sky, right in the center. I close my eyes and picture the sound around me - that's how I mix.[53]

Same. I am a conservative 26yr old, and her music just speaks to me. Can't explain it.

You tend to like this. Many of the people involved are straight men and you ignore when they aren't. I mean Jordan ignores them - other conservatives are more conservative and melt down 24/7 over art and weird subcultural things or Harry Styles in a dress that creative people tend to like. They do this because they can't tell if they're weak and unmasculine or going to curse them and neither of those prospects are something conservatives enjoy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_house_(genre)

Witch house (sometimes referred to as drag)[1] is a microgenre of electronic music that is musically characterized by high-pitched keyboard effects, heavily layered basslines and trap-style drum loops, while it aesthetically employs occult and gothic-inspired themes.[2][3]

The witch house visual aesthetic includes occultism, witchcraft, shamanism, terror and horror-inspired artworks, collages and photographs as well as significant use of hidden messages and typographic elements such as Unicode symbols.[4][5] Artworks by witch house visual artists have incorporated imagery from horror films such as The Blair Witch Project,[6] the television series Twin Peaks,[7] and the fantasy show Charmed,[8] as well as mainstream pop culture celebrities of the 2000s. Common typographic elements in titles, such as by Salem and White Ring, include triangles, crosses and Unicode symbols, which are seen by some as a method of gatekeeping (in an effort to keep the scene underground and more difficult to search for on the Internet).[9]

Stop hunting witches.



I have a song I can post for everything.

The lead singer is a gay man.

In March 2010, Okereke came out as gay in a BUTT magazine article.[5] He then gave an interview and appeared on the June 2010 cover of Attitude magazine. He had previously been reluctant to discuss his sexuality, though he had compared himself to bisexual musicians Brian Molko and David Bowie. He has also compared himself to Morrissey, whose sexuality remains speculated.[26] Additionally, he has discussed the homoerotic story behind the Bloc Party song "I Still Remember" and its semi-autobiographical nature. In June 2010, he was named as the "Sexiest Out Gay Male Artist" by music website LP33 in its annual survey.[27]

One thing is you can get a lot of aesthetic enjoyment out of this kind of thing (the Drab Majesty video with the surreal motel stuff, actually makes me very happy,) but a lot of people don't. They see it as nihilistic, reflecting a nihilistic culture and they want something more 'beautiful' and 'transcendental' so the wider gothic genre (of which everything here is a subgenre,) has been bothering them for quite some time. I always liked it though, even as a child I was drawn to stuff like that. But most of my posts are about this fight and how different groups are roped into it in bizarre ways haha.



"All I feel is pain. You- why would they do this to me? You want me to feel the pain? Yes you want me to udnerstand it. So I may show others. Huzzah! Excelsior!" - Creepio.

It makes me think of The Shivering Isles too in The Elder Scrolls lore. It's the realm of madness but also home to a lot of creative types. It's divided between this very colourful bright and vibrant area called Mania and then a more dark (visually and personality wise,) area called Dementia.

Sheogorath is the Daedric Prince of Madness. His realm in Oblivion is known as the Shivering Isles,[1] otherwise known as the Madhouse or "The Asylums" [UL 1]. It is separated into two distinct communities: Mania, the fantastic, colorful side, where art enthusiasts and insane revelers reside, and Dementia, the horrific, dark and ominous side, inhabited by those with the darker side of Sheogorath's blessings.[1]

Mania is a region of the Shivering Isles located in the northern highlands of the main landmass. It reflects the lighthearted side of Lord Sheogorath's madness. It is similar to Vvardenfell's West Gash region in appearance, with expansive grasslands and huge mushroom trees. Overlook Road passes through the region. The Isle of Flame, the Laughing Coast, the peninsula of Saint's Watch, and the Jester's Spine Mountains are important geographical features in the region.

The villages of Highcross and Hale appear welcoming but are populated by harmless maniacs. The halls of Brellach contain the Wellspring of the Aureal. The lawbreakers of the region are imprisoned in the deadly ruins of Aichan. Cylarne, thought to have been the original capital of the Shivering Isles, is located on the Isle of Flame.[1]

Dementia is the darker side of the Shivering Isles and is home to paranoid and dangerous psychopaths.

It is located on the southern side of the Shivering Isles. In contrast with Mania, the landscape is drab and is a dark swamp. Its inhabitants are just as bad. Unlike the exuberant citizens of Mania, Dementia's citizens are miserable and eager to end their lives.

This is emphasised even more in the village of Split but in the quest you have to Spoiler: choose quest spoilers below obviously:

Split is a village located on the border between Dementia and Mania (quest-related).

The name of the settlement reflects its makeup; it is a settlement that is "split". There is a Manic and a Demented version of each person, each wearing the appropriate bright or dark clothing based on their alignment. This supposedly happened when a mage cast a spell on the town to test the theory that each person has a manic and demented side within each of them. This spot is located at the top of a mountain just south of Fetid Grove, and is the second largest settlement (after New Sheoth) in the Shivering Isles.

a mage believed that every person had both a Manic and Demented side, and decided to experiment by casting a spell that split the two personalities. The two sides have since been constantly at odds, and both are vying for control of the town. Due to the laws of the realm, however, nobody is willing to get rid of the other side themselves since killing one's self would result in spending an eternity on the Hill of Suicides. That's where you come in. The Manic Horkvir will then ask you to kill all the Demented, and the Demented Horkvir will ask you to kill all the Manics. Eventually, though, you'll need to pick a side - talk to the appropriate Horkvir and tell him that you'll help (once you do this, the side you didn't choose will no longer talk to you).

Sheogoroth himself is a cursed Daedric prince who used to be the Daedric prince of Spoiler: order Jyggalag before he was cursed. But the dementia and mania divide is a bit different.

Jyggalag! He is the Prince of Order. Or biscuits...no, order, Order! And not in a good way. Bleak. Colorless. Dead. Boring, boring, BORING!

Sheogorath is considered the god of the arts and the reason why with inspiration most artists also become somewhat unhinged from reality. But in addition to his status as patron god of the arts, Sheogorath is also god of madness and is very quick to remind anyone who denies creativity of what he is really capable of. As a result of his short temper and ever fleeting whims, his shrines are almost never outlawed or desecrated by concerned authorities in the mortal world of Nirn for fear such acts would earn them the Mad God's wrath.

For some reason I thought the quest A Brush With Death was related, it's been a long time since I played Oblivion. It isn't but that's still one of the best quests in a game. You enter a painting and play inside the painting:

If you ask around town in Cheydinhal, people will tell you that Rythe Lythandas, a famous painter, has gone missing, and his wife, Tivela, is very upset. Go to the Lythandas house on the south side of town, and talk to Tivela for more information. Tivela tells you that Rythe had locked himself in his study, as he often did. However, after not seeing him for several days, Tivela decided to investigate. Upon doing so, she discovers that Rythe has disappeared.

Tivela gives you the key to Rythe's study. Open the door and take a look around. You should notice fairly quickly that one of the paintings is actually a door. Enter the painting. You soon arrive in a painted semblance of the great forest, and Rythe is standing near you. He reveals that a thief stole his magical paintbrush, which allows him to enter paintings to make them look more realistic. The thief created some painted trolls to guard him, but instead they killed him. Rythe needs the paintbrush so that both of you can escape. If you ask him about the painted trolls, he gives you six bottles of turpentine, which do a level dependent amount of damage (see chart below) to painted trolls when applied to your weapon.

There's an Aedric goddess called Dibella who is the goddess of beauty, art, music etc (Aedra are different to daedra):

Dibella, called Dibe by the Kothringi,[UL 1] is the goddess of beauty, love, art and music, and is one of the Nine Divines. In Cyrodiil, she has nearly a dozen different cults, some devoted to women, some to artists and aesthetics, and some even to erotic instruction.[1]

Dibella is also known as the "Passion Dancer," "Our Blessed Lady."[2] She has also been referred to as the Queen of Heaven.[3]

Dibella seems to be the Elder Scrolls version of the Greek god Aphrodite - goddess of love and sexual desire, she also bears resemblance to her in depiction on statues.

Our current cultural fight is mostly between people who resemble Sheogoroth and people who resemble Jyggalag which I said before. Both daedric in Elder Scrolls lore. There's also a split between people who like chaotic creativity and people who just want to appreciate beauty. Which leads to incredibly strange discourse like this as everything gets mapped onto one tribe or another:



To be conservative is to be blond with large breasts or to appreciate that? OK lol.

Also at about 11:54 in this video when they're complaining about that video game character the female character on the left is still attractive. It's just that she's attractive in a [BEEP] coded way that most straight men don't find attractive. So that's not even the debate happening there. It's like when they're complaing about Kristen Stewart before and after she is attractive to the demographic of people she's mostly dating right now. She was in a relationship at one point with Stella Maxwell who is a very conventionally attractive blond woman. You morons don't even have a full understanding of aesthetics.

Now I don't really find Kristen Stewart attractive myself but I watched this video recently on Tumblr which I can't embed which had various different women and this woman in China was going around a sapphic bar asking people to do her makeup or something like that. There was a wide range of women in the video from soft butch, to feminine who would pass as straight actually that woman might have been straight I can't even remember and tbh the subtitles were a bit confusing like she wasn't in the bar maybe she was in some area with a lesbian bar that was famous? I don't know. My favourite aesthetic that was very striking to me and immediately drew me in was this blond woman (not natural of course,) not just because of her appearence but also her body language and the combination of both:



It's actually unusual for me since I usually find Asian people with black hair attractive (I'm also not generally attracted to blonds,) but I do really like that elf aesthetic that she sort of has here in general. She also has a kind of androgynous vibe I think.

The blonde in white... oh my GOD 💕

What I was thinking. I want to know if she has an instagram account or something.

And a bunch of the other comments were about other women in the video.

I can see it instantly though looking at the video game character. It's annoying that people want to deny that different aesthetic sensibilities exist. We don't all agree yes some looks are more popular than others but we don't all agree.

There's also this outrage at reasonably average looking people appearing as characters in general. I don't think the point needs to be that every character is attractive in the first place. That's weird. What if there's a story about someone ugly. Do ugly people not live?

I've said this many times but Kratos is not a symbol of beauty by any means - someone out there will disagree with me but I think it's fair to say that's a widely held belief and that his role in the game has nothing to do with beauty anyway for the people who enjoy the games with him in - and that that a discussion like that about him was not supposed to be created by his presence in the game and if someone argued that those games shouldn't exist because Kratos is not beautiful that would be insane.

Video games aren't even making that point in general - it's not a beauty pageant it's a video game. Sometimes you're a skeleton which is apparently now something you can be attacked for enjoying on social media. Obviously some people will create characters like this with the intent to try and encourage people to find characters like that attractive which may or may not work. I don't know why you'd care unless you think video games should be a beauty pageant. Is the game fun to play/story interesting? I know most of these dicks have trauma from Anita Sarkeesian or whoever shaming them for finding damsels in distress appealing or conventionally attractive characters appealing I was there at the time it was stupid I still think it's stupid. But this is also stupid.

Like Elder Scrolls games perfect example. Great games ugly characters and you can mod if you want. The end.

Oh my God. I talk about this way too much but they're so annoying to me. It's just like how don't they get that not everything is for them or about beauty?

Marilyn Monroe was a tragic figure, Britney Spears too seems to struggle a lot (and the two are biologically related curiously.) Sydney Sweeney I don't know much about. Doesn't that make you evil too then? Consuming her like this? Isn't that kind of ugly? And sadistic?



"There's always been a struggle between pain and beauty I think since the beginning of time."

Well they'd agree anyway. I think they are torn between wanting to own the libs and acknowleging that if you lean into this you're engaging in 'lust' which they view as a sin. Hence you get people like Abby Shapiro vriticising Sydney Sweeny and then I remember a right wing female influencer responding to her on twitter saying 'I agree that modesty is important (lust is bad,) but we have to fight against the urge to demonise male sexuality.'

I personally find Abby Shapiro more physically attractive anyway because she seems more fun to corrupt and clearly a lot of liberal people unfortunately agree to the disgust/distaste of many liberal people. Not really advocating for the creepy comments but I know where they come from.

Then if right wing men were more androgynous it would be the same. Like watching Curtis Yarvin on Fox News and everyone is like responding as though he's really unmasculine and he has long hair. He doesn't really seem it but they're playing into the game I like so it catches my attention. They're complaining about him being some kind of fifth column (aka he's going to infect them with cooties.) That's fun. Then he ends up dating a progressive woman (was engaged to her for a while,) who wrote BDSM books and has a photo wearing cat ears. Lots of people give him [BEEP] for that but tbf progressives also gave his progressive fiance [BEEP] (on both sides it was the implication that the other had power over the other along with their general ideological beliefs,) Curtis also always basically presented himself as some kind of ex-liberal condescending to the 'red tribe' folk of various Southern and conservative states. 'I'm trying to help you, but the progressives are my people.' Which is pretty gross. And then they broke up because of all the attention and she got pregnant. So they seem intelligent and I'm sure they'll sort of slink out of public eye (not that they were very famous in general anyway outside certain circles.) But imagine the mess.

The general idea seems to be you have to praise beauty but then at the same time appreciation is bad but you can't argue that something/someone else besides Sydney is beautiful we have to all agree on what is beautiful. Objectively.

What a mess.

And I saw this other twitter discussion (I guess this post is about several things now as usual.) I didn't post about this yesterday but it does fit in here because it's about class which all of this maps onto as well - not wealth class:

Americans are absolutely clueless as to European social signifiers and it's not even funny.

French upper class gf: wears tailored Chanel suits, dines at Michelin-starred restaurants, secretly votes for Marine Le Pen

This is something I've had great difficulty in communicating to Americans: if you ever want to spot a real (British) aristocrat, they?ll be the one with holes in their sweater, wearing muddy wellies and driving a 20 year old Land Rover Discovery that?s covered in dog hair.

Lol.

Yes I've come across this.

its crazy to me that americans are actually more similar to eastern europeans and middle easterners in that regard. to western europeans any type of flaunting or attempt at opulence means you are not actually rich just high on your first real money or compensating

I think some Americans are familiar with that. It was a point in one of Contrapoint's videos Opulence actually.

My impression as someone from the US is that while we do have classism we don't have it in the same way because we never had nobility, which is not the same thing as just being fabulously wealthy and that creates a glass ceiling that cannot be penetrated by wealth alone. I could become the richest person in the world and they would never accept me.

Obviously that?s just what it looks like to me as an outsider.

No America absolutely has a class system in the classic sense where it's not tied to money, but a lot of Americans aren't good at recognising it:

I grew up in public schools in big cities in Florida and North Carolina and went to a Northeastern Liberal Arts School for. college I have lived and interacted with a fair amount of people from both the coastal elite and middle American communities. I have noticed that when talking to these coastal elites, (many of whom are personal friends) they tend to exhibit an irrational hatred of middle America and its values/ culture; not because of any rational critique of these values but just because they happen to be the Other and it gives them a tribal sense of superiority. Examples include: accents, cartoonish understanding of religion, country music, traditional values. Maybe someone else can comment additional examples. Ask the nearest Swarthmore (et al) alumni what they think of people from West Virginia, Oklahoma, Idaho. Just the mention of those states evokes baseless hatred despite the fact the they have undoubtedly never been to or talked to anyone from those states. Someone convince me that this deep-seated pervasive hatred does not exist.

I don't think "hatred" is the right word for it, I think it's more condescension. It may veer towards hatred in specific instances when they perceive Middle American culture causing injury to people (e.g. lack of access to abortion, opposition to gay marriage, xenophobia, Mitch McConnell). On the whole though I think coastal elites view themselves as more knowledgeable and cosmopolitan while seeing Middle America as isolated, parochial and quaint, which leads to a feeling of intellectual and cultural superiority.

But as a wise puppet once said "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate" and I don't think coastal elites feel any fear or anger to lead them to hate.

That's class. This is also class (best example I've ever come across,) but this guy is also a narcissist so there's that:

God, the longer I live the more I feel I need to experience a world-class city. I research ways I might like to broaden my social horizons, and I find things like the Apollo Circle, which would be exactly the sort of thing I'd like to try?if I lived anywhere even remotely near New York, which I don't, so too bad for me. And so on and so forth, with all but the most limited of social or economic opportunities: a place like Los Angeles, New York, or London has a staggering abundance of them, along with the sort of attractive, intelligent, sophisticated, artsy, cosmopolitan people I like (and usually get along great with!); a place like Miami has some selection to choose from; but a lesser city, including the one nearest to me? One notch above a literal wasteland, really. It's not the sort of place for me, and having to spend my days in environs that all cater to those of more basic tastes makes me feel very lonely.

My deathly fear when I have a family is that the local yokels will rub off on my children and they'll turn out assimilated to their provincial ways, but spending most of the year traveling abroad and being in a cosmopolitan Beautiful Bubble of foreigners even at home basically eliminates that risk. The latter I've pretty much accomplished already, so bequeathing it to my children should be a cinch.

You can tell when Americans are higher in class because they often have this weird English vibe or something despite being American... It almost verges on seeming like they come from another time period entirely.

And the reason I was drawn once again - the AGP ramblings:

Am I a reincarnation of Lady Hamilton? Eh, maybe, [...]

Lol.

If I were a financially-independent Englishman of the late 18th century I could honestly picture myself copying everything she said, did, wore, et cetera, which is rare for me. [...] Just like an 18th century gentleman of rather limited means might have! It seems that's my default expectation for how life should be [...]

My "wow" reaction at her visage might also be informed by prior experience. Indeed, it?s possible lovely Emma made quite an impression on my soul, because I've never really had anyone in my life I could describe as a "role model", nobody I really admired or looked up to, nobody I went "I want to be them! I want to have their life!". Well?except for Billie Eilish; of all living people I'm aware of she's the only one who jumps out in my mind as "aww?I wish I could have been her!". Yes, I know she has her own problems, more than her fair share to be honest, but it probably means something that she's the only person who inspires that sort of reaction in me. What that something is I have only the foggiest idea.

I do.

Especially considering the rather weird aspect of admiring and looking up to a person who's a decade younger than I am!

And female? How has he not put it together yet?

I stumbled on this tweet again as well (written by someone else.) The presumptious entitlement is still hilarious:

Masculine men deserve feminine women?.

Why has this norm disappeared

He posts about classic paintings a lot, and about his appreciation for that kind of California blond aesthetic. He faceapp'd himself at one point. Looks a bit like Scarlett Johansson.

I'm a bit evil so I do enjoy the sense of being this like secret predator (in a categorial sense,) who no one's even aware of because the mere idea makes their head explode and fills them with denial - "surely this can't be real. All female people desire masculinity." Like if male sexuality is predatory this is a new form of horror greater even then that to many people's minds. I think Rachilde thought that too when she wrote her book Monsieur Venus. But at the end of the day all this demonisation and self hatred that Humans have can get a bit exhausting. Nobody wants to be the bad guy all the time.

I said this before but sometimes I wonder if that guy writes stuff like this online because he knows. His general personality is quite narcissistic and off putting though he absolutely looks down on other people. I think most people do at some point or other but with him it's off the charts.

But in our old school pantheons irl Aphrodite was never associated with creativity and she seemed to descend from Inanna/Ishtar the 'queen of heaven' (she was referred to that way too,) an androgynous goddess of war and beauty who later as Aphrodite lost the war association.

Even with Aedra there is an attempt to state that they came from both good and evil. But people's minds do not easily accept that:

According to the creation myth presented in the Anuad, Dibella and the aedra (gods) were born from the mingled blood of Anu and Padomay, the good and evil primal forces, respectively, and therefore have a capacity for both good and evil, in contrast to the daedra, who were born solely from the blood of Padomay.[7] The formation of Akatosh, the God of Time, from the mingled blood of the brothers Anu and Padomay facilitated the formation of Dibella and the gods as they learnt to structure themselves.[8] Shezarr's Song, a Cyrodiilic creation myth, acclaims the creation of Mundus to the sacrifice of Dibella and the gods whose sacrifices were embodied as eponymous planets.[9][10] Dibella and the gods were subsequently bound to the Earth Bones as a result.[9] Followers of the cult known as the Mythic Dawn deem Dibella and other gods as false gods and claim she and others betrayed Lorkhan.[11]

Curiously Daedra are said to come only from evil yet that's not really how the player often inreprets things subjectively or how the story seems to work. After all what's evil about Sheogorath's whimsical playful sense of humour? Or a room turning into butterflies? You could certainly make the case that butterflies are evil - some people have a butterfly phobia and they drink blood and feed on corpses etc on occasion, but you know they're not only evil in most people's minds.

Even Dagon has some redeeming qualities though he's seen as more evil and there's clearly a hierarchy intended or not. There are so many daedra that many are barely talked about or have minimal impact on Humans and also not equal impact and some are more obviously villains in the stories than others.

Mehrunes Dagon's spheres are destruction, change, revolution, energy, and ambition. Mehrunes Dagon is the foe of all mortal races, and has attempted to conquer the physical world Nirn many times. Some of Mehrunes Dagon's cultists claim that the reason behind his many plots to conquer Nirn is the belief that Tamriel is in fact a plane of Oblivion which is rightly his.[1] This statement however, was not made by Mehrunes Dagon himself, and is thought to be based off of the false assertion that Mundus and Oblivion are not distinct from one another.[2]. Regardless of the reason for his invasions, he invaded Tamriel relentlessly from the First Era onward.

I think warhammer 40k with the chaos gods does a slightly better job maybe because there are only 4. You might identify with one over the other but you can see they're at least intended to be equal on a moral landscape where as in Elder Scrolls there are tons of Daedra, some have very limited impact and Mehrunes Dagon is clearly a primary antagonist in a lot of the stories and a lot of people would argue that Dagon and Molag Bal are the worst. Off the top of my head as I say there are so many I might be forgetting someone worse.

So artists can use beauty as a muse, but don't necessarily.

So it's tempting to map Aedra onto god and angels (good) and Daedra onto demons (evil) because of our Christian mythology and the game plays into that a little as I've shown as the creators are just as effected by that as everyone else in our culture since it's a Western video game, but the way it works in The Elder Scrolls universe is a bit more interesting than just basic standard Christianity:

The designations of Gods, Demons, Aedra, and Daedra, are universally confusing to the layman. They are often used interchangeably due to the arrogance and ignorance of the said user.

"Aedra" and "Daedra" are not relative terms. They are Elvish and exact. Azura is a Daedra both in Skyrim and Morrowind. "Aedra" is usually translated as "ancestor," which is as close as Cyrodilic can come to this Elven concept. "Daedra" means, roughly, "not our ancestors." This distinction was crucial to the Dunmer, whose fundamental split in ideology is represented in their mythical genealogy.

Aedra are associated with stasis. Daedra represent change.

Aedra created the mortal world and are bound to the Earth Bones. Daedra, who cannot create, have the power to change.

As part of the divine contract of creation, the Aedra can be killed. Witness Lorkhan and the moons.

The protean Daedra, for whom the rules do not apply, can only be banished.

This is broadly how we have divided conservatives and liberals too. Liberals push for change in the culture, and conservatives conserve what already exists and push back against change. The Christian mythology which tends to get conflated with the political fight between conservatives and liberals suggests that God creates and Satan corrupts (and I do like corruption - sexually too hahaha.) Of course all Humans can create but in terms of art in our current culture it seems to be more liberal people who do create it so there's some irony there.

It's worth pointing out that a lot of classic art and paintings and such which to me at least appear quite classically beautiful was seen as demonic for one reason or another in it's time. Not all but a bunch of it.

This way of framing everything is particularly strong in the US, followed by other Anglo countries. Japanese video games which also often draw from mythology a lot tend to do other things but the Abrahamic relgions are so popular globally that I feel even then there's an impact. The Final Fantasy games have a lot of that and I haven't played Bayonetta but I know that plays with European and Christian mythology and symbols too. There's a divide between Lumen Sages and and Umbra Witches (this symbolic divide seems a little like all the others.) And there's a war.

Umbra Witches are a clan of European dark arts practitioners from ancient times and the darker counterpart of the Lumen Sages. Being one of the two clans recognized as "overseers of history", the clan was formed after Lord Aesir bestowed the clan one of the Eyes of the World. Unlike the Lumen, they form pacts with Infernal Demons/Gods.[1]

The Lumen Sages were a European clan of followers of light and the counterparts of the Umbra Witches. Both recognized as the "overseers of history", the clan was first formed after Aesir bestowed to both the Umbra and Lumen the Eyes of the World out of pity to better mankind.[1] Unlike the witches who used the demons from Inferno, the sages instead used the angels from Laguna.[2]

Anyway.

People tend to forget that femininity and baby-ishness aren't the same thing though. And a lot of mature femininity is seen as dark/evil etc in our culture. Like witches or queens. They also have power. Which people dislike. Some people go as far as to say it is masculine uh no.

I don't want to shame people who are attracted to youth besides I think most people have found 'cuteness' attractive to some degree at some point. And we are pretty neotenic as a species for a reason - people selected for those traits some groups more than others.

It helps with imagination and creativity possibly? Adult Humans continue playing which is something a lot of other species don't.

But personally I don't find it hot when people use the word mummy/daddy during sex or anything that approaches ageplay it throws me out. There might be subtle things I find attractive otherwise but I don't want you to explicitly do that. Some people probably find that hot because it's taboo or 'they're not allowed' I get that but I don't.

But yeah so much of the wider conversation about the emasculation or feminisation of men is really just talking about youthful traits. Or immaturity. Like men who don't grow up. It's not femininty and I will continue to bang on that point. It's somewhat insulting to equate the two and to erase the idea of adult femininity.

No surprises that it's often adult heterosexual men and conservatives doing it:

[Otherside]

Dear Green Party - The reason I book a flight to travel to see the family in Scotland, is because of cost. Not because I want to spend several hours sat in the overcrowded hell that is London Luton airport, nor because I want to be sat on a cramped Easyjet flight in front of a hen do who are on Gin bottle 12, but because it costs several hundreds to get myself up to Scotland on the train, as opposed to the ?50 it costs for a plane ticket. And if the Caledonian Express was a lot cheaper and not a luxury option, I'd probably take that option.

Also, it's nuts that you're opposing HS2, which would reduce demand and increase supply. Costs would likely go down, more people would take the train. The only downside is the NIMBYs don't like it. You really should just rename yourself the NIMBY party.