Has This Been Done Before

🔥 The Impaler 🔥

obsessed w these two queens who are like. same energy but parallel to those gyaru girls who make drinks in public

I'll fully respect anyone who wants to take canon material and run off into their own little fanon corner where they flesh out paltry characters and relationships into something they want to play with. I will NOT respect the person who does this and absolutely insists the author meant it that way from the start and everyone else just doesn't get it.

i'll always be there to bring you back

Stoker (2013) Directed by Park Chan-wook

Disco Elysium

pull our red string of fate harder i'm trying to jerk off

UNDERDOG (feat. WORTHIKIDS)

(youtube)(spotify)

lyrics below the cut:

The runt with the brunt I'm packed with a punch

Put me on the hunt I'm the beef of the bunch

On the attack, they're holding me back

One of these days I'll be leading the pack

I'm picking my bones

Licking my wounds

Caught in the shadow of all I can lose

All eyes on me, I'm taking the lead

Biting the bricks until they bleed

Make bends in the chain link fence

A big bite is the best defense

I'm chasing prevailing scents

I'm making my difference

Make bends in the chain link fence

A big bite is the best defense

I'm chasing prevailing scents

I'm making my difference

Six steps, six steps to the top

Then a sheer drop

It's the fate of the underdog

Six steps, six steps to the top

Then a sheer drop

It's the fate of the underdog

So I heard good things about the movie Conclave, so as a dutiful little post-Catholic weirdo with lingering baggage, I gave it a watch and was thoroughly entertained. I highly recommend it.

But one of the reasons why it's been getting so much discussion is that people keep comparing it to Drag Race and making it out to be this campy drama full of gossip and machinations. And while those elements are there, and I certainly endorse taking that approach to analysis, I also can't help but wonder. I wonder if the reason why people are clocking it as a glam gossip drama is because they don't have enough lived experience with Catholicism, and its most vociferous adherents that they can't clock the sincerity when they witness it.

There is a mundane hierarchical jockeying aspect to it, and that cannot be denied, but the true fascination in the experience, the creeping horror of it, is to see dudes who have completely convinced themselves of their own self righteousness that they believe Performative Humility is Genuine Submission to God's Will. There's a bit that carries through the film that says "nobody who acts like they WANT to be pope SHOULD be pope", but that unto itself is a form of performance. It's the most insidious kind of grandstanding because it's the kind that can convince the performer themself that it's genuine. It can make them think: "I've eaten enough humble pie to prove I'm a good person, so I don't have to continue the work of self examination."

In my opinion, that sort of performance has less in common with high glam ego-driven drag competition, and more in common, say, with online political posturing, the contest to appear most sociopolitically aware and self-flagellatory. To prove how good one is by being loudest about confessing how bad one is. And maybe some people aren't ready to make that connection because they don't want to believe that old dudes in church are capable of the same kinds of mental gymnastics to pursue their own self-interests as the most liberated, educated, and media savvy online commentator.