Author: R. Taylor

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Things We’re All Too Young to Know

I read a lot of fanfiction. (Like, a lot.) I even write some. For those who aren’t familiar with the phenomenon, it can seem a strange and alien landscape. Some authors and actors welcome it, others revile it, but most would rather not know what their characters get up to in their readers’ and viewers’ heads. There’s even fanfiction written about real people—even if they’re in an alternate universe where magic works and the boys in that one band are firefighters or werewolves instead.

One fanfic trope that fascinates me and is particularly relevant to this class is that of mpreg, or male pregnancy. Continue reading →

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Now I’m an Amputee G*d D*mn You

Our class discussion from the other day has me thinking. How do we talk about the US’s responsibility in producing disabilities through wars abroad (both in our own veterans and in residents of the countries that serve as the battlegrounds) without implying that disabled people are undesirable or useless?

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Dodging Glances on the Train

So today we’re going to talk about my fun times with mental illness, since it’s the reason this blog post is late. Yay.

I didn’t plan on getting too personal for this blog; my list of topic ideas is mostly cultural critique. I’m sure I’ll come back to that list for later posts and even save some of them to put up on my own blog(s) eventually. Right now I need to process some meta before I can get back to doing the thing.

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Illusion Never Changed Into Something Real

My first thought on reading this article from xojane about digitally retouching magazine photos was, “No wonder I’m so bad at spotting celebrities out and about!”

But if you want to go all the way down the rabbit hole, talk to a digital retoucher at a fashion and celebrity glossy, which is what I did. The retoucher I spoke with — who preferred to remain anonymous — is a 20 year veteran of the trade. He came up when digital retouching was in its infancy, when edits were still being painted on with an actual airbrush (like, with real paint). His mentor was the exclusive retoucher for one of the most famous supermodels of the 1990s.

I think in some ways we’re holding magazine photo shoots to an unreasonable standard of “reality.”

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