i wish i could see this picture for the first time again
Every time I see some gamerbro edit of a female video game character to make her ‘prettier’, I always see something I have mentally dubbed Cockroach Wife Syndrome (in honor of the guy who accidentally conditioned himself to only be aroused by a fantasy of his cockroach wife Ogtha).
That is to say, there is a certain subset of gamerbro who interacts so rarely with real women, that his primary touchstone for how women look is fiction: often video games and anime. So when a video game woman looks too realistic–too close to having traits that one might find in real flesh and blood women–this is foreign to them. This is unattractive. They have been jacking it to hentai and blender animation porn for too many years, and have inadvertently conditioned themselves to only be sexually aroused by the exaggerated cartoonish traits of animated women.
So now every time I see one such edit, I can’t help but think. My. What a coincidence you’ve made her look more like an anime waifu. Truly dedicated to your cockroach wife.
You can’t just breeze over something like “the guy who accidentally conditioned himself to only be aroused by a fantasy of his cockroach wife Ogtha” without at least linking a 20 minute video breakdown of this man’s descent into madness.
Oh is Ogtha not common knowledge? Eight years ago this was posted on reddit:
Two years ago, we got this update on the life of this roachfucker:
TLDR it’s a guy who became obsessed with human-sized roaches with human intelligence after reading Kafka in high school, an obsession which eventually came to monopolize his romantic interests (and has sporadically had catastrophic impacts on his life ever since).
I see posts go by periodically about how modern audiences are impatient or unwilling to trust the creator. And I agree that that’s true. What the posts almost never mention, though, is that this didn’t happen in a vacuum. Audiences have had their patience and trust beaten out of them by the popular media of the past few decades.
J J Abrams is famous for making stories that raise questions he never figures out how to answer. He’s also the guy with some weird story about a present he never opened and how that’s better than presents you open–failing to see that there’s a difference between choosing not to open a present and being forbidden from opening one.
You’ve got lengthy media franchises where installments undo character development or satisfying resolutions from previous installments. Worse, there are media franchises with “trilogies” that are weird slap fights between the makers of each installment.
You’ve got wildly popular TV shows that end so poorly and unsatisfyingly that no one speaks of them again.
On top of that, a lot of the media actively punishes people for engaging thoughtfully with it. Creators panic and change their stories if the audience properly reacts to foreshadowing. Emotional parts of storytelling are trampled by jokes. Shocking the audience has become the go to, rather than providing a solid story.
Of course audiences have gotten cynical and untrusting! Of course they’re unwilling to form their own expectations of what’s coming! Of course they make the worst assumptions based on what’s in front of them! The media they’ve been consuming has trained them well.
If you are taking the car to Chicago, can you even call yourself a feminist. There are Women on that train who want to have gay sex with you but can’t because you are taking a fucking car to Chicago
Right now there is a very buff Butch woman all alone in the Cafe car and she could be having steamy gay sex with you and be moving into your apartment if you were just willing to take the train to Chicago
I’m busy trying to get more lesbians to ride the train instead of taking their Subarus to Chicago
I’ve seen some people confused about this so let me just say that it takes YEARS for movies to be made and be produced. This means you can watch the Barbie movie and Oppenheimer (and basically any other movie that comes out this year) while supporting the WGA strike.
Also since companies have said they’re just going to wait out the strike as a way to let the strikers starve, please watch these movies. The people striking can still make money off of these movies and help to keep them housed and fed.
between tumblr being found guilty of moderating lgbtq content unequally during the 2018 ban in court and @ sorryforpartyrocking being nuked for suggesting one of tumblr staff may have investment in defending terfs to now many different trans women having their text posts and selfies being flagged as mature without the opportunity to appeal in any meaningful way (one of which was nuked herself)… it’s very. hmmmm. it’s a bad look. as if staff wasn’t already on thin ice for refusing to engage in any effective way with hate speech. “queerest space on the internet” my ass
EDIT: If you derail this for the purposes of intracommunity discourse, (yes that includes “q slur discourse”) you deserve whatever consequences you receive. This post isn’t about you. It’s about trans women.
you may notice i use the phrase “my beloved” frequently. this is because i am in love with the world and everything in it. hope this clears things up <3
girl help the pessimists found me
“girl help i am staunchly refusing to realise my own naivete in a world almost completely made up of things that couldnt care less about me or are actively exploiting me”
Girl help the pessimists are mistaking an inherently meaningless universe for an inhumane and joyless one rather than recognizing the opportunity to make one’s own meaning and joy and to spread those things to others