THIS SONG IS ENDING BUT THE STORY NEVER ENDS.

me in bed, thinking about everything my mental illness has taken from me

If you’re one of those people who thinks executive dysfunction only happens for things we don’t like (school, cleaning,) then please consider the fact that I’ve been meaning to plug my phone in for 20 minutes and I’m now at 2% and still putting it off to write this post ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo

honestly a good partner isn’t necessarily someone who loves the exact same things you love but rather someone who is willing to listen to you ramble on and on about a particular subject that you’re passionate about even if they have little to no interest in it

Avatar + tumblr

Cinderella transformation dress for the cosplay contest at G6!

THIS IS AMAZING AND BEAUTIFUL!!!

I’ve been trying to think of a good term for the “weepy movies about tragic queer people aimed at straight audiences” subgenre, and I think I’ve got it:

dead gays for the straight gaze

eh? eh??

queers die for the straight eye

SO YOOOO who wants to learn why this is a thing because the history is actually really fascinating and ties into some of my favorite shit ever?

Okay, so like, back in the mid-twentieth century, when being queer was still totally a crime everywhere in the United States, queer writers started working in pulp fiction–starting with Vin Packer (she is awesome)–and writing pulps to tell our stories.

So one day over lunch, her editor asks her, “Hey, Vin, what’s the story you most want to write?”

And she goes, “Well, I’d like to write a love story about lesbians because I’m, you know, gay.”

He says, “Hey, that’s awesome, I will publish it. One thing, though, the homosexuality has to end badly and the main character has to realize she was never gay in the first place. We can’t seem to support homosexuality. I don’t actually think that’s cool, but the government will literally seize our book shipments and destroy them on the basis of the books being ‘obscene’ if you don’t, so if we want this story actually out there, and not burning in a bonfire somewhere, it’s what you gotta do.”

So Vin goes home and writes Spring Fire, the book that launched the entire lesbian pulp genre. And while one character ends up in an insane asylum and the other ends up realizing she never loved her at all, it’s massively successful, and queer women everywhere snap it up and celebrate quietly in their closets across the nation because HOLY SHIT THERE’S A BOOK ABOUT ME? I’M NOT ALONE and it starts a huge new genre.

But: every publisher is subject to those same government censorship rules, so every story has to end unhappily for the queer characters, or else the book will never see the light of day. So, even though lesbian pulp helps solidify the queer civil rights movement, it’s having to do so subversively or else it’ll end up on the chopping block.

So blah blah blah, this goes on for about twenty years, until finally in the seventies the censorship laws get relaxed, and people can actually start queer publishing houses! Yay! But the lesbian pulps, in the form they’d been known previously, basically start dying out.

MEANWHILE, OVER IN JAPAN! Yuri, or the “girls love” genre in manga, starts to emerge in the 1970s, and even starts dealing with trans characters in the stories. But, because of the same social mores that helped limit American lesbian pulp, the stories in Japan similarly must end in tragedy or else bad shit will go down for the authors and their books. Once more: tragic ends are the only way to see these stories published rather than destroyed.

The very first really successful yuri story has a younger, naive girl falling into a relationship with an older, more sophisticated girl, but the older girl ends up dying in the end, and subsequent artists/writers repeated the formula until it started getting subverted in the 1990s–again, twenty years later.

And to begin with cinema followed basically the same path as both lesbian pulps and yuri: when homosexuality is completely unacceptable in society, characters die or their stories otherwise end in tragedy, just to get the movies made, and a few come along to subvert that as things evolve.

But unlike the books and manga before them, even though queer people have become sightly more openly accepted, movies are stuck in a loop. See, pulps and yuri are considered pretty disposable, so they were allowed to evolve basically unfettered by concerns of being artistic or important enough to justify their existence, but film is considered art, and especially in snooty film critic circles, tragedy=art.

Since we, in the Western world, put films given Oscar nods on a pedestal, and Oscar nods go to critical darlings rather than boisterous blockbusters (the film equivalent of pulps, basically), and critics loooove their tragedy porn, filmmakers create queer stories that are tragic and ~beautiful~ that win awards that then inspire more queer stories that are tragic and ~beautiful~ until the market is oversaturated with this bullshit.

The Crying Game? Critical darling, tragic trans character.

Philadelphia? Critical darling, tragic gay character.

Brokeback Mountain? Critical darling, tragic queer (? not totally sure if they’d consider themselves gay or bi, tbh?) characters.

And so on and so on VOILA, we now have a whole genre of tragedy porn for straight people, that started out as validation for us and sometimes even manages to slip some more through the cracks occasionally, but got co-opted by pretentious ~literary~ types. While tragic ends made these stories more acceptable to begin with, and in the mid-to-late nineties that started getting subverted a little bit (Chasing Amy, But I’m a Cheerleader), eventually that became the point, as more straight audiences started consuming these narratives and got all attached to the feels they got from the ~beauty of our pain~.

Autocorrect Tragedy

I can’t believe in the year of our lord 2k16 and today I stood in an actual Blockbuster in the state of Alaska

officially a museum

Concept: I finish school. The job I work isn’t my dream job but I enjoy doing it greatly still. It pays enough to cover everything I might need. My bills are never overdue. Money is not a thought in my head. I have a place to live. So do my dogs. It is nice and warm, I have some plants, my bookshelves are full, my sheets are always clean. There is time to read at the end of a day. I read a lot. Thinking is a good thing. I meet up with friends regularly, old and new. They love me. We make memories. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I travel a few times a year, always different places. The places I see steal my breath away. The people I meet teach me of life. They are good. There is no war. The sea calls to me and pay visit. I am independent. I am content.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

oh.

GUYS BUT THIS HURTS SO MUCH LET ME TELL YOU OF MY PAIN Let’s say that John had to leave really abruptly on a hunting trip (because let’s face it, that probably happened more than a few times). He probably just dropped the boys off at a half-assed motel, leaving Dean with some cash, a bit of food, and a warning to shoot first, ask questions later, and always look out for Sammy, no matter what. Then let’s say that John was gone longer than anticipated. The food and money would be slowly running out. Dean would be too young to work. Maybe he’d resort to shoplifting in order to get food. But what little he could scrounge up, there is no doubt in my mind that he would always give it to Sammy, leaving the barest amount for himself. AND THAT’S HOW HE KNOWS WHAT BEING THIS HUNGRY IS LIKE.

maybe that’s also why Dean would later on grow up and just eat as much as he could manage in one meal because he wouldn’t know when his next meal might be. I’m convinced that that’s why we always see him eating more than Sammy.

And maybe that’s why he gets so much pleasure in the food he eats. He’s not just gluttonous, but he genuinely is like “THIS IS THE MOST DELICIOUS THING EVER” and means it.

And he loves pie, not just because Mary would make pie with him, but because it harkens back to a time when he didn’t have to worry about going hungry.  When everything was warm and happy and safe, and pie is his most vivid sensory connection to that time.

It’s okay, I didn’t need my feels you guys, they’re perfectly fine shattered into tiny little pieces.

And maybe, that’s why Sammy, the little brother, is the tallest.

Because he had a better nourishment than Dean.

Thanks guys

oh this is a life saver

COOLIN

Marilyn ain’t got shit on this man

#i tell you the character design of the henley under a rolled-up shirt under a waistcoat: fox animation was NOT messing around  #they knew what they were doing in the ‘let’s make him hot though’ department

platonic “i love you”s are pure and need to be protected reblog if you agree