mothshrub

I'm dusting off my dreamwidth skills for the first time in a dramatically long time! I've been mostly on tumblr, and that's the mode my brain is in atm, so I apologize in advance for any culture clash. :)

Anyway, I'm Zal, I like indie games and fandom and environmental topics, among others. I'm glad to be here, and I hope everyone has a great time!

My latest hobby is 'watching video essays by trans authors particularly but not exclusively if they have an essay on masculinity or gender and society'.

• Contrapoints
• Jesse Gender
• Lily Alexandre
• Lady Emily
• RickiHirsch
• Alexander Avila
• Oakwyrm

What I really want is so many essays about masculinity that someone writes a meta-analysis comparing and contrasting how the different authors approach the topic.

We can already compare Contrapoints, Jesse Gender, and Alexander Avila, where there's a fascinating sense of looking at it from both the inside and outside in all of them, but with Contrapoints and Jesse Gender, it's also a sense of 'I was there, now I'm not, and I'm so glad I'm not.' With Alexander Avila, his sense is more an energetic 'I'm there now and it sucks'. And like--these seem obvious and straightforward when stating it out loud, but the framing couldn't be more different, and speaks by itself: Alexander speaks to the viewer the whole way like they're a man that he's coaching through all the steps of manhood, taking them in for a look 'from the inside'. Other trans men might not take the same approach when writing about something like this, but I haven't seen others (yet, still looking), and it's just really interesting to see how everyone's extremely personal journies affect how they write about it.

Even when their conclusions are different (Contrapoints refrains from making recommendations to solve issues with Masculinity, feeling that it's not her place as someone who's not in that category, but Jesse Gender does), they all have experienced trauma in society's conceptualization of manhood and womanhood, and in the way they experienced society pressing both of these at them.  All of them have huge empathy for the issue, even as they show the stark cruelties of the system as it is. All of them are extremely clear on the harms of it all, and all of them agree on the part where the system Must Change.

I need more!! If anyone has recs for more authors, then please, more!!!

I keep wishing there were active communities for the fandoms and topics that I like.

The solution to this interest is to make one myself.

From there my worry is that I'll still be attached to the community even long after I lose interest in it, much like I'm currently still attached to various wikis and etc.

From there I point out 'look, this obviously wasn't an issue for the people who made all these sleeping/dead communities still out there'

I want a place to go talk about Murderbot. And harvestella. And also things like that Control game, though I guess at some point that's just me on the prowl for indie games?

Hey if anyone reading this has a fav active community, lmk and I'll check it out!