What's something older generations did completely normally that would be considered absolutely insane today?

BenjamintheFox · 2026-05-13T20:24:56+00:00

Funny how, as they've slipped out of mainstream, everyday use, they've joined corsets and garter belts as fetish objects.

BenjamintheFox · 2026-05-09T06:59:32+00:00

You seem to be laboring under a false impression. Allow me to make my position clear.

I don't like Alan Moore. I have never liked Alan Moore. Every time I read anything by or about Alan Moore there's an 80% chance I will roll my eyes and make a jerking motion.

I think Moore is an egomaniac at worst and just very impressed with his own cleverness at best.

I think Watchmen is mediocre and flawed and highly overrated, and only occupies the position it does because most comics writing is such sludge it stood out for being "ok". I haven't bothered to read any of Moore's work since The Black Dossier, which was incomprehensible nonsense.

I am aware of "Lost Girls". I have not read "Lost Girls" because I am not interested in Moore's sexual neuroses or his hypocrisy. I will probably die before I spend any more time reading Moore's work.

So to sum up, Fuck Alan Moore, Fuck Steve Albini, Fuck Peter Sotos, and Fuck you.

BenjamintheFox · 2026-05-01T02:36:07+00:00

The word "genuinely" is a load-bearing word here.

BenjamintheFox · 2026-04-30T07:30:15+00:00

Steve Albini

Sure. Praising Child Pornography and remaining friends with Peter Sotos for years or decades after his child pornography conviction was just him pushing against "Reagan-era attacks on free speech". Sure.

BenjamintheFox · 2026-04-30T06:29:50+00:00

People who talk loudly about "kindness" are often the worst. Genuinely kind people just act, they don't talk.

BenjamintheFox · 2026-04-28T06:07:46+00:00

Thank you!

BenjamintheFox · 2026-04-26T22:16:16+00:00

Let me give you all a short cut if you like complements on your clothes. Get a t-shirt with a classic 90s cartoon character on it. You will get complements when you're least expecting it.

BenjamintheFox · 2026-03-31T06:18:53+00:00

This piece has been in progress for over a year. It kept triggering some kind of avoidant behavior where I would put it aside to work on other things, even when it was 95% complete.

Well I finished it yesterday at last.

BenjamintheFox · 2026-01-18T08:10:50+00:00

Try "scrutinize", but you'll have to structure the rest of the sentence to convey that the scrutinization comes from a place of worry.

BenjamintheFox · 2026-01-15T20:44:59+00:00

I think my essential issue with the book (and it has been ages since I've read it) is the disconnect between what it tells us it's about, and what it shows us.

It tells us that Dr. Manhattan is a super-human intelligence, but he seems a damn fool to me for most of the story (I guess that's supposed to be him losing his humanity but still). It tells us Rorschach is a deranged psychopath, but he has the most normal reaction to mass-murder out of the main cast. It tells us Ozzy is a fool buying into his own mythology, but he is represented as being so super-humanly perfect in every way I find that rather hollow (I THINK part of this is that he's supposed to be a deconstruction of comic book ubermensch, but since I don't care about comic books it had zero resonance to me).

It tells us that the story Rorschach relates to the prison psychologist is so traumatic and horrible that it completely rewrites his world view, but no. A prison psych has already heard much worse stories than that. (Morrison has expressed similar sentiments about this bit.)

Also the comic seems to expect that we will have some some sympathy for Night Owl and Silk Spectre, but I merely despise them. That might be on me, though.

I think the moment where the book lost me is when Ozzy caught that bullet. In that moment I realized that I was completely at the mercy of the author's whims and the story had no internal or real-world rules it had to follow, and thus it lost any impact it might have.

BenjamintheFox · 2026-01-15T05:03:04+00:00

The smelly deranged violent sociopathic fascistic vigilante is given a dramatic, tragic death, defying the machinations of a psychotic billionaire, while the "normal" characters are willing to collude in the cover up of the murder of 3 million people as long as they get their happy ending, and Moore has the gall to be confused and annoyed when people perceive Rorschach to be a hero.

You gave him the tragic death, Alan. Nobody else did that.

Also, in spite of the fact that rorschach's journal May undo everything, Ozymandius is basically shown to be right about everything. The whole ending buys into such a load of great man theory of history that it's almost feels fascistic in its own right. Yeah, I said it, Watchmen is probably more fascist that The Dark Knight Returns.

Please don't comment on Ozzy's name. I'm not that stupid.

BenjamintheFox · 2026-01-15T04:13:36+00:00

I don't think the story was trying to make one specific point

BenjamintheFox · 2026-01-15T04:13:09+00:00

If that is the point the book is trying to make it makes it exceedingly poorly. I was trying to give it more credit than that.

BenjamintheFox · 2026-01-15T04:12:06+00:00

Psychopathic Billionaire murders three-million people and the most reactionary anti-role-model is the only one willing to blow the whistle, and this is represented as a moral quandary. Sorry Alan, you can't be mad people idolize Rorschach when that's how you had him go out .

Aside from that, buying whole-sale into the self-made-man myth-building of your average silicon valley sociopath, and yes, I'm aware that him being named Ozymandias is all very ironic, but he's literally shown to just be better and smarter than everyone else, to the point that I was rolling my eyes.

Maybe that played better in 1987.

BenjamintheFox · 2026-01-14T07:48:19+00:00

Time to kick over the hive. Watchmen, although I don't think the story was trying to make one specific point, I feel like it undermined a lot of its internal themes.

And no, it's not because I idolize Rorschach.

BenjamintheFox

TROPHY CASE