[ SECRET POST #4972 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4972 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 39 secrets from Secret Submission Post #712.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

General comments:

(If the thread contains spoilery/triggery content please warn/post as 2nd comment so it collapses!
Please collapse images, too!)

How are you guys doing today?

[(Anonymous)]

Share what you're up to!

Re: How are you guys doing today?

[philstar22]

Still have a migraine. Watching Youtube vids (Good Mythical Morning channel which I discovered last night), reading fics and Listverse articles, and resting with an icepack.

Re: How are you guys doing today?

[(Anonymous)]

It is humid summer rainstormy thunderstormy here right now.

It is NEVER humid summer stormy here. So the novelty is appreciated at least.

Re: How are you guys doing today?

[(Anonymous)]

Talked to my mom for a couple hours this morning and made plans to have a (socially distanced!) visit with her and my dad later this week, and otherwise have just been hanging around the house. Had french toast for lunch (which I hadn't had for a really long time and was delicious) and have been watching YouTube videos, reading book descriptions, and looking at random stuff online. I need to do laundry and will probably do some reading later.

Re: How are you guys doing today?

[icecheetah]

Literally everyone in my numenera group was not feeling well today so we cancelled. Though by the time we would have started, my migraine was FINALLY over. It took my migraine medication AND ibuprofen AND sleep to kill it (I took the ibuprofen instead of a second migraine med dose because getting refills of my prescriptions is tricky at this time). Usually the migraine tablet alone is enough to kill it.

This migraine had nausea with it, which is unusual. The last time I had a migraine with nausea was also the literal worst migraine I ever had, and the one time I had ever hallucinated (my subconscious manifested as a character I liked to tell me that I should just go to sleep because otherwise it would REALLY fuck me over). I wonder if the meds were the only reason I didn't get the sequel to that migraine.

I used the time Numenera was supposed to be to do art for and post the penultimate chapter of my arsonist Cinderella fanfic.

Re: How are you guys doing today?

[(Anonymous)]

I went to bed later than I meant to and then woke up at 5:30. Took apart and cleaned the box fan and set it in front of the screen door.

I waited until it got light out, watered my potted plants (I may have lost a few to the heatwave, dammit) fed my chickens, moved a bunch of stuff around the yard (still working on getting raised beds in) put out the trash, changed the litterbox, showered, and conked out for an hour. Woke up and made veggie and tofu stirfry and ate my first green veggies in too many days.

Need to do laundry and get groceries, but I am super sore from yardwork and moving is a struggle.

Re: How are you guys doing today?

[(Anonymous)]

We had a very rare thunder and lightning storm in the wee hours this morning, that woke me up at 3 am and I couldn't get back to sleep so I just got up. It was one hell of a storm and we had TONS of lightning including a couple of really close strikes that also happened to set the mountains on fire in a few places. Then the power went out (PG&E said a power pole was destroyed by lightning) and fucking stayed out for over 10 hours. And it was 106° here today. So it was hot af and there's not much to do: can't go to the movies, restaurants are outdoor dining only here (and who wants to do that in 106° weather), bars and lounges are all closed. It got so hot in the house we finally went out and got boba tea. I had a silky mango tea with honey boba, and can I just pause here to recommend honey boba to you all? It's so good! We got home, still no power, still hot as balls inside, so I, a 53-year-old, put on my swim suit and played in the sprinkler in my back yard. I'd forgotten how fun that can be! I highly recommend that, as well. After dinner I took a nice cool shower and put on some light fresh clothes, and felt a lot less sticky and gross. My husband and I hung out on the patio as the sun went down, beautiful sunset tonight (but because of the fires). Finally the power came back on so we're blasting the fans trying to get the house un-stuffy and cooled off a little before bedtime.

What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

[(Anonymous)]

inspired by #1

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

[philstar22]

I grew up in a very conservative enviroment. I learned about sex from fandom. I first learned to accept LGBTQ people and started my own journey to discovering my bisexuality thanks to fics and fandom. And fandom in fics in general just exposed me to a lot as a kid that I wasn't being exposed to at school or at home and opened my mind to other perspectives and things that the bubble I was in wouldn't have prepared me for otherwise.

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

[(Anonymous)]

I learned how to behave when you're popular. I was never the cool kid in school or even in my early twenties, and then I moved and entered a new environment and I somehow suddenly found myself kinda popular. I hadn't really changed but in this new environment, people seemed to like me instead of thinking I was a bit strange. Luckily, a few years earlier, I had been a minor BNF in a very small corner of my fandom, and had learned how to be nice about and deal with it. That helped a lot.

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

[(Anonymous)]

Fiction in general but fanfiction particularly let me essentially study friendships and love and work out what kind of friend and lover I wanted to be.

The real downside was discovering that people rarely hold themselves to the kind of standards our fictional heroes do. And trying to maintain those standards for yourself can hurt because you're the only one putting as much effort in. If that makes sense?

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

[(Anonymous)]

Growing up and being raised catholic while being in the closet in the early 2000s - slash/femslash fiction was comforting to me knowing that my thoughts on having crushes on girls wasn't abnormal (even though at the time there were a few lgbt rep in media, it was next to impossible to find and I was pretty sheltered by family/school. Plus when it was even remotely brought up irl people would say that it was a 'lifestyle choice' and not something for kids to know about or just a unimportant teen phase).
Like, I managed to surpass feeling guilt like a lot of my other ex-catholic & queer friends - mostly thanks to finding about slash shipping when I was 13 years old and had fun reading/drawing/writing slash content. It felt freeing to create worlds where being gay was the norm or writing relatable angst or just having a laugh with over the top head canons.

Like it's maybe not the same thing as learning a lesson, but I feel like I was able to learn that there was nothing wrong with me growing up thanks to the online spaces that I had found back then.

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

[(Anonymous)]

Just yesterday I was in a situation where I was unhappy with my friends, and today, after the whole thing had time to marinade in my brain, I was able to put my finger on what exactly had caused my frustration and my friends' complete lack of understanding why I would feel that way. I'm sure I have years of story analysis and character studies as well as plenty of ContraPoints and assorted youtubers to thank for that. I'm very proud that I managed to pinpoint the issue in what I feel is a very concise way.

(If you're interested: the problem was different interpretations of how integration into a group works. Imo, it's the job of the group to help an outsider who wants to join them; the group has to be proactive and do their best to make sure that integration works. And I live by that. I always keep an eye out for people who look like they might feel left out or are new, and I go out of my way to make them feel welcome and included.
I feel like my friends generally place more burden on the outsider who wants to join. They're going to give the newbie any help they ask for, but the newbie has to ask for it, and has to demonstrate his willingness and desire to participate and assimilate. After all, the group was just fine without him, and if the stranger wants to join, it's his job to make it happen, not theirs.
Yesterday, a situation was created where I was the outsider and became frustrated when I felt they were leaving me hanging. When I brought it up, they didn't get why I was unhappy, I should have just put some effort in, after all I'm a grown woman and I could have just dealt with it.
It sounds so simple and clean now, but I took a while to work through my emotions and the event itself until it became clear where the root of the problem was. Still don't know how to deal with this going forth – like, it's nice to understand it like this, what action do I take now? Hoping for more inspiration tomorrow.)

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

[(Anonymous)]

That some people just aren't right in the head, but they're high functioning and the crazy doesn't always come out right away.

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know that there's anything specific, mostly just that because of it, I ended up being exposed to a lot of different people and ideas and feel like I'm more open-minded than I otherwise would've been (or at least wouldn't have been for many years; I was 13 when I first got into fandom).

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

[(Anonymous)]

Nothing comes to mind. English maybe? Ha to read fics with a dictionary at first.

I also got to know some gay fans which helped me to accept that I'm bi.

Re: What are some lessons fandom taught you that you applied in real life?

[(Anonymous)]

A lot about mental health and mental illnesses. How to do self-care, how to handle emotions both in myself and with others. Looking back, I learned very little about that from my parents, and while I've not been diagnosed, I've started to think I might be on spectrum. Very mild, but I've always had some trouble fitting in with groups, and over my life I've been described as a bit strange by several different friends. Tumblr has helped me a lot with recognizing it and making me feel less like a freak who tries to blend in but keeps slipping up.

To you, what is necessary for a same-sex relationship to be considered canon?

[(Anonymous)]

So, I just finished a book (The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley, minor spoilers below) and was looking for discussion online. I knew before reading it that there was some disagreement about whether the main (m/m) relationship is romantic or not, and because of that I expected it to be pretty ambiguous, but it just...really wasn't to me. There's one side that says "oh, they're just friends" because there's nothing explicit*, and then the other side (which I'm on) that thinks it's obviously romantic (there's a part where one character wakes up in the other's arms and muses about how he wishes it could be like that all the time, another where he acknowledges that the other is more important to him than his friends or his job or anything else in his life, not to mention that he rejects the possibility of marrying someone else and waits over 20 years to be able to be with the other guy again, plus just the way they interact in general).

I know there's a similar debate with The Untamed** (I haven't seen it, but I've seen plenty of discussion about it) so I'm just wondering about different opinions here...what has to happen in the text for you to consider a m/m or f/f relationship a canon romance and not just queerbaiting or whatever?

*I mean "explicitly stated that the relationship is romantic", not explicit/sex scenes, although I've seen plenty of people complain about a lack of those, too.

**To be fair, I know The Untamed had to deal with censorship laws and (at least as far as I understand) did what they could to portray the relationship as romantic within them, and TBS was written by a British author and didn't have those restrictions, so you could make the argument that for that reason, there should be a higher bar before it should count, but I feel like even without explicitly saying it, it was pretty obvious (and I don't necessarily think it has to be explicitly stated to count if it's made clear in other ways).


Anyway, I'm curious. Does the book/show/movie/etc. have to come out and actually say "they're in love/a couple/whatever", or can it be shown other ways? Do there have to be kissing/sex scenes like I've seen some people say? Does it depend on the culture/possible censorship laws, or are the standards the same regardless?

What do you guys think?

Re: To you, what is necessary for a same-sex relationship to be considered canon?

[philstar22]

Depends on the culture for me. Authorial intent does matter, but what is on the page is most important. But in a culture where they aren't allowed to put such things on a page, I will put more weight on the author's intent that the characters are a couple. In that case for me scenes like in Untamed along with the author's clear intent that those are meant to be taken as romantic would be enough.

But on the other hand, in a western country where it is perfectly okay to put in a LGBT couple, I'm going to want more. An author saying they are a couple will have some weight, but without more on the page or screen, I won't view that as particularly strong evidence. After all, an author could just say something else in another interview. They can change their mind. If it isn't on the page or screen, it isn't quite as official.

Re: To you, what is necessary for a same-sex relationship to be considered canon?

[(Anonymous)]

As far as i'm concerned, there is no basis for The Untamed to be considered not a canon relationship for one very clear reason which is the note from the producers at the very end.

'Thanks to (the author) for creating these characters. May their wishes come true ever after.'

The wishes of the characters were to get married and have sex every day. So pretty sure that's as clear as they could make it.

Re: To you, what is necessary for a same-sex relationship to be considered canon?

[(Anonymous)]

Publishing endgame, I want for same-sex relationships to be treated with the same level of honesty and depth as mixed-sex relationships. Now I recognize that due to varying forms of censorship, that frequently doesn't happen. Still though, The Count of Monte Cristo used lesbian coding and subtext in 1844, so I give the side-eye to people who call coding and subtext super-progressive in 2020.

For mass media, I think LGBTQ relationships should be worthy of the same level of production dollars as Thor3 gave to Tony Stark's Pants. That joke about Tony Stark's Pants (a character who doesn't appear in the movie) cost thousands of dollars and involved hundreds of labor-hours. So for TV and movie production, I don't count claimed LGBTQ content if food service wasn't on set to make it happen. Otherwise we're giving Disney, Warner, and Sony a free pass on self-censorship if their talent is contrite about it through channels that cost them very little.

Also I agree with the recent Stevenson/Sugar interview that LGBTQ perspectives go way beyond just "is this couple canon or not." And that shows when LGBTQ people are in the writer's room and editorial.

https://www.papermag.com/rebecca-sugar-noelle-stevenson-2646446747.html?rebelltitem=67#rebelltitem67

Advice or Recs

[(Anonymous)]

I am looking for something and figure other people are to. Ask whatever questions you need.

Sort of inspired by the mood board secret

[(Anonymous)]

Which trends or aesthetics do you love? Which do you hate?

I hate that 'cottagecore' and 'dark academia' are now things, even though I actually love the aesthetics of them. Fucks sake just call it country and academic style.

Names thread

[(Anonymous)]

What are your favourite names?