ROUND TWO OF LIKES CHARGE REBLOGS CAST ✨

this post is not gonna be well put together but i am having feelings

mean girls is trending right now because the musical movie just came out and i feel insane. idk why i do, it was stupid of me to think that most people Got It, no one ever gets it, it was always about the memes and the aesthetic.

the first mean girls movie was based on a nonfiction book called queen bees and wannabes. it interviewed and discussed the social caste system in teen girl friendships. how they hold each other to these insane standards of heternormative femininity out of sheer terror that they won't meet those standards themselves. the way they leverage their relationships for some small degree of power in a world designed to strip them of it, even if it drags other girls down.

the "you can only wear your hair in a ponytail once a week and on wednesdays we wear pink" speech was not an original creation for the script. it's a QUOTE from a real teenage girl. those were REAL RULES.

then the musical came, and it was one step removed from the intended messaging of the film. OG mean girls was not perfect (and was extremely racist), but it said what needed said. the musical leaned on the comedy more, but still left a heartfelt undertone, and still critiqued the systems in place. of course no piece of media is going to be perfect, but it was about the conversation.

then this new movie comes out and it is washed over in the veneer of white hollywood feminism so thick you can't see anymore. the problematic aspects of the original movie are taken out to avoid "offending" when the offense was the point. it becomes toothless, it becomes some other thing entirely. they changed karen's line "i expect to run the world in shoes i cannot walk in" to "watch me as i run the world in shoes i cannot walk in." because choice feminism is in vogue, suddenly this character whose entire point is that she doesn't think deeply about WHY she does anything is suddenly hip to the fact that the world is against her.

i think of sokka losing his misogyny arc in the new atla. i think of the Heathers remake casting the bitchy, identical heathers as queer and hollywood-fat outcasts. as if the story, the meaning, the allegory is hidden in the sets and the jokes and the music. it's a whole new thing now, and it's a thing that means nothing in particular.

the plastics should not wear jeans. they should not have curves. their queerness should be suppressed, painful. their sexuality is not a slay, it's the only thing they think they have of value. the santa dance isn't sexy, it's shocking, it's mortifying - they are children.

they're not mean because "we are all mean." they are mean because they are girls in a world that brutalizes them and crushes them into a standardized shape. they are mean because the world is mean to them. they are mean because it gives them some power back. they are mean because it's the only weapon they have.

the landscape of femininity today has shifted to camera-ready makeup at the age of 10, stringent performative hygiene standards, and avoiding being caught on film while having a genuine emotion. the consumerism, the fatphobia, the racism, the classism, the homophobia remain. We could have had a conversation about that.

listen I ended up regretting saying anything about this on my old blog because people will interpret literally any and every statement maliciously on this hellsite but I want to start like. a helpline for people who are like “hey I pretty much only read YA but I’m like 22 now and don’t relate to teenagers as much, it’s such a shame that there are no fun books written for adults :(” because boy HOWDY are there some fun books for adults 

*yoda voice* ahsoka, know not how to connect with children do we. Do tiktok dance you must!

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

I backed like a month ago and ive been sitting on my email waiting to see if the stretch was met!!! So excited

We're well over 200 backers now so the foreword is guaranteed! Thanks for all the help with publicity, I'm extremely excited to see what you write!

- Gray

YAY! I read through the sample of the anthology and ngl I'm sad that I can't introduce every individual author because there's so many! It's ending up more like a short essay as to my experience of the relationship between transness and body horror as a genre. Fun stuff!

Coraline, but I did not process it as a horror at all

what, have you never seen a boy with a vagina before? i turn dramatically away from you, further aggravating the large stab wound in my abdomen

OK my thoughts on yr s3 because time passes inevitably. Will maybe update after ep 6

- I saw a post where someone said "Wilmon has to get together otherwise what was it all for?" And while I do respect this viewpoint, I am a suckered for tragedy, and the point of the story is that for some amount of time, whether it's forever or these tumultuous few months of their youth, it HAPPENED

- to wit, in cmbyn elio and Oliver do not get together, Oliver moves on and elio is still remembering and trying to move on and they both remember and even though it was just that summer they have both been changed by this and they are holding it in themselves. A love story does not have to be happy for it to be love

- if August and Sara have a happy ending I'll eat a shoe though

- August is such a fascinating character, I love how they brought in Erik being a traditionalist and an assailed in such stark contrast to who Wille is and how Wille sees his big brother

- I really hope the Erik thing gets a better conclusion in episode 6

- it almost feels like there are two many loose ends to tie up nicely so I am kinda worried about that

- the main thing I want is for Wille and Simon to have a conclusion though, no matter if it's good or bad. Also for Wille to be happy and not kronprins anymore bc happy and monarchy cannot coexist for this little ball of anxiety

Intertwined in soul and fate.