Crow’s story is like… you are not your mother’s son. you will never live up to the ideal of yourself but you will do anything for the sake of the smoke and mirrors. anything, so that nobody will look directly at you. any cruelty, any humiliation, either to you or from you, so long as you don’t have to feel like you’re inhabiting your own skin. you are nothing more than a tool to keep up this charade. this eye-catching performance that obscures the reality of what you are. but, god, sometimes you want to be seen more than anything
oooh have you ever done a post about the ridiculous mandatory twist endings in old sci-fi and horror comics? Like when the guy at the end would be like "I saved the Earth from Martians because I am in fact a Vensuvian who has sworn to protect our sister planet!" with no build up whatsoever.
Yeah, that is a good question - why do some scifi twist endings fail?
As a teenager obsessed with Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone, I bought every single one of Rod Serling’s guides to writing. I wanted to know what he knew.
The reason that Rod Serling’s twist endings work is because they “answer the question” that the story raised in the first place. They are connected to the very clear reason to even tell the story at all. Rod’s story structures were all about starting off with a question, the way he did in his script for Planet of the Apes (yes, Rod Serling wrote the script for Planet of the Apes, which makes sense, since it feels like a Twilight Zone episode): “is mankind inherently violent and self-destructive?” The plot of Planet of the Apes argues the point back and forth, and finally, we get an answer to the question: the Planet of the Apes was earth, after we destroyed ourselves. The reason the ending has “oomph” is because it answers the question that the story asked.
According to Rod Serling, every story has three parts: proposal, argument, and conclusion. Proposal is where you express the idea the story will go over, like, “are humans violent and self destructive?” Argument is where the characters go back and forth on this, and conclusion is where you answer the question the story raised in a definitive and clear fashion.
The reason that a lot of twist endings like those of M. Night Shyamalan’s and a lot of the 1950s horror comics fail is that they’re just a thing that happens instead of being connected to the theme of the story.
One of the most effective and memorable “final panels” in old scifi comics is EC Comics’ “Judgment Day,” where an astronaut from an enlightened earth visits a backward planet divided between orange and blue robots, where one group has more rights than the other. The point of the story is “is prejudice permanent, and will things ever get better?” And in the final panel, the astronaut from earth takes his helmet off and reveals he is a black man, answering the question the story raised.
airyairyquitecontrary
IIRC “Judgment Day” was part of the inspiration for the excellent Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Far Beyond the Stars.”
You ever hear that old chestnut about how most people neglect the part of the story of Icarus where he also had to avoid flying too low, lest the spray of the sea soak his feathers and cause him to fall and drown?
You ever think about how different the world would be if Icarus died that way instead? If the idiom was to Fly To Close To The Sea? A warning against playing it far too safe, about not stretching your wings and soaring properly?
You ever think about how Icarus died because he was happy?
If I told you I wrote this while thinking about the dangers of being visibly trans vs never trying to transition at all, happiness followed by a bright, burning end, smacking hard against a concrete ocean vs playing it too safe and never flying high, dooming you to a cold, crushing end from drowning, You'd believe me, right?
Several crewmates have witnessed Human Carter thanking the automatic doors and food replicators, as well as apologizing to a table after running into it. When asked why they did such a thing, Human Carter said it was because they’re ‘Canadian’. Human Rielly informed me that Canadians are part of a religious sect that worship inanimate objects. The offerings made to the silicon fern now make much more sense.
Carter’s Journal: entry 89
I accidentally apologized to the table again after running into it. I don’t know why I keep running into it but it’s driving me crazy. Next time I might just kick it out of spite. Several crewmates have started thanking the replicator, which I think is actually very sweet of them. I’m still feeding the plant in the Galley. Jonson thinks it’s weird but I swear that thing is actually an alien. The food disappears every time and I’m not about to be eaten by a carnivorous fern several hundred lightyears away from home. If I wanted that I would have stayed stationed on Galzabab.
Rielly's Journal: Entry 92.
So I have about half the crew converted to Canadianism and the other half mimicking Carter out of respect for his beliefs. I can’t wait to see what happens when Carter finally loses it and breaks the table. I’ve been moving it a little every day. They still think the plastic fern is alive too. I’ve been eating all the offerings and today Jonson tried to explain that it was plastic and not an alien and half the Galley started yelling at them for challenging Carter’s beliefs. Jonson just sat there gobsmacked for a good ten minutes. Another great day in space.
mostly this pisses me off so much because these are the people always going “omg butches are so hot i want a butch girlfriend etc” but then turn around and go “trans men lesbians? ewwwwwwwwwwww no that’s not a thing and has never been a thing” like oh my god how are you attracted to a historical identity without knowing absolutely any of the history behind it.
like haha omg butch women so hot muscular mommy step on me . sure . whatever . but if you are not willing to meaningfully engage with the actual butch community, even the parts you don’t understand and the parts that make you uncomfortable and the parts that go outside of your understanding of gender and sexuality then there is literally nothing left to say.
honestly it kinda reminds me of how people react to tomboys. Tomboys hot and cute until they're too masculine or until they have a personality that's too aggressive. People like the aesthetic of androgyny but actual visceral experience of it beyond anything that is more than surface level.
I also find a lot of people only like butches in theory. They want an androgynous knight in shining armour, not a masc person with a complicated relationship to gender and sexuality who is more vulnerable to sexual assault and abuse due to their visible gender non-conformity. People treat butches like toys, or like they exist to protect femmes, like they're Big Strong Women who don't need comfort or protection.
i could never be hannibal lecter because i hate lying theyd be like and whats for dinner hannibal and id be like it's beef SORRRYYYYY its actually a guy who i killed and cooked up 😬 are you mad at meee and theyd say no hannibal you told the truth and thats what matters and then we'd all hug
ok so i think that my favourite fantasy subgenre is The Inherent Tragedy Of Being Born Into Royalty. which mostly means that i like to read about gay princes but with some nuance
the fact that so many ppl view slurs and oppression as cool exclusive clubs to claim access to, tells me a lot of ppl have never genuinely experienced violence before.
we threw a party the other month, and this straight girl showed up and started using the word dyke, and all the gay women at the party immediately went on edge. my gf had to leave the room.
when she was called out, she started claiming she was using it in a “fun empowering way”. upon explaining that a lot of the gay women there had actual trauma from straight women using that word, including physical violence, she started crying because WE were making HER feel uncomfortable.
it’s really hard to talk to ppl in and around the queer community whose worst experience with hate is “online community infighting”. meanwhile my trans friends are getting beat up in bars for laughing too loud.
like, sorry ppl online talking about misogyny and racism in the gay community makes you feel “invalid”, but it’s really hard not to see you as a fucking idiot when my gf and i almost got ran over the other day.
coquette tumblr girls love to compare themselves to prey animals. uhm no. deer will literally shred you with their kicking hooves and they are beautiful and strong. you are something else that rolls over and dies.
why did you people come up with russian names for what is supposed to be a movie set in italy. what was the thought process here. why does she sound like she walked out of a tolstoy novel
So within two days of each other, Fox News writes an article comparing aromanticism and asexuality to pedophilia, and then Matt Walsh releases a video saying asexuality is a mental illness and asexuals are tricking teenagers into having depression.
Not sure what’s going on right now over in Conservative World, but it’s a hell of wild U-turn for them to suddenly switch from “Oh no! The left is sexualizing our children!” to “Oh no! The left is asexualizing our children!”
It’s a reminder, I guess, that they’re coming for all of us. The fash and the white supremacists will not make nice distinctions between the queers when they put us up against the wall. There is no gatekeeping, no label-policing, no purity-purging and no assimilation that any of us can do that will save us. They want us dead, and while they’ll start with whoever is most vulnerable at any given time, they’ll get around to all of us eventually.
Queer solidarity means all of us because the fash are coming for all of us.
karmiccollector
All Dividers are Feds. Stand united or die separately.
ANYONE who is trying to divide our community is a fucking Fed. That includes other queers who like to argue about who is and isn’t “allowed” in our community.
Reminder with Joanne sniping at asexuals a week or two ago.
You are using an unsupported browser and things might not work as intended. Please make sure you're using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.
