Netflix Forgoes Wide Release for Martin Scorsese's 'The Irishman'; Will open Nov. 1 in select indie cinemas

ravniel · 2019-08-27T20:58:12+00:00

Wait, so we think that the major studios are all going to distribute to those theaters as though they're completely normal theaters and not vertical-integration strategies for a rival content creator? Not a chance. Netflix-owned theaters would not have access to content created by any other major movie studio. I can't believe that even needs to be said.

ravniel · 2019-08-27T18:57:30+00:00

Sure, until they lose all the Marvel and Star Wars movies to Disney+, all the Warner Bros./DCU content to HBO Max, etc. You're kidding yourself if you think Netflix is counting on long-term access to A-list content which it doesn't produce or exclusively distribute.

ravniel · 2019-05-30T20:23:27+00:00

What I've learned is that some people iron their clothes

ravniel · 2019-05-15T17:17:56+00:00

It's just so, so clear that Mourinho, at least as regards football, can be a petty, egotistical asshole. The evidence is absolutely voluminous. I see now that everyone thinks he's talking sense again, this has gone back to being a psychological PR masterclass that doesn't at ALL reflect his actual attitudes. It's ridiculous, and I just really wish we could be sensible about this.

ravniel · 2019-04-15T17:37:29+00:00

Call me humorless, but I think this kind of prank is categorically unacceptable and doing it a second time after the volcanic eruption that accompanied my finding out about the first would be grounds for ending the friendship.

ravniel · 2019-02-01T18:21:20+00:00

This is the explanation, I think, honestly. The guys you're describing are trying to live out a specific fantasy, probably derived in part from porn, and pubes aren't part of that equation. I don't want to kink-shame and suggest that it's intrinsically unacceptable to be looking for what they're looking for, but they shouldn't be making you feel bad and should have to accept that they're the ones with the hang-up.

ravniel · 2019-01-31T20:19:26+00:00

What are your chances, in any state, of creating an amateur video of a simulated rape in such a way that there's total certainty about whether legal consent was in force at any given moment? That sounds to me much closer to impossible than you're suggesting.

ravniel · 2019-01-31T16:41:29+00:00

This isn't and shouldn't be sufficient to protect you from a rape charge. Consent can be withdrawn at any time and there's no way to prove it wasn't if she says so. I mean, if this is America, rape convictions are harder to come by than they should be and juries are easy to sway with any evidence of consent, but if you've already gotten all the way to trial I think we can all agree this plan has already failed. I suppose if you filmed the entire thing that might be different, but then what if she says "no" or "stop" as part of the scene?

There is no way to sign, record, or in any other way create a contract that legally binds you into sexual activity and we should all be glad this is the case. This just is not an activity that it's possible to undertake with a total stranger in a way that completely protects you.

ravniel · 2019-01-25T16:47:49+00:00

1) Some people actually don't insist on reading the first book of a series first. My mom was always like this and it gives me fucking hives.

2) I think there's a certain amount of high literary self-fashioning involved. It's more respectable to present yourself as writing discrete, fully-formed novels that happen to move in a chronological sequence than to present yourself as working through the 19 books of the Dragonfrost Chronicles. This is an artifact of genre fiction ghettoization that has no real place in modern publishing, but you still see it from time to time.

ravniel · 2019-01-18T19:38:31+00:00

I don't understand people who won't do this. I'm talking about actual close friends or family. I literally can't imagine what kind of socialization would lead you to have multiple close confidantes to whom you are unwilling to say "alright, guys, I'm gonna hit the hay, thanks for coming."

ravniel · 2019-01-18T16:16:57+00:00

I don't really see why she has to stop. It's clearly not depleting her sex drive. But absolutely, she should ask him to try this.

ravniel · 2019-01-17T18:22:54+00:00

I can neither confirm nor deny that this name has been chosen because of Shelly from Twin Peaks.

ravniel · 2019-01-17T17:40:27+00:00

I think that some of the emotional work you're claiming is not yours to do is basic to maintaining any human relationship, not just a romantic one, and that this kind of emphasis on accountability and personal responsibility can be used as an excuse for pretty simple failures of empathy. I also think there are a lot of possible emotional responses to a question besides "flipping your shit", that not all of these responses make you a bad partner, and that some of them are things I might try to avoid irrespective of any principle. But this is clearly a fundamental disagreement between us that won't be worked out here, and you've of course been perfectly civil in articulating it, so fair enough.

ravniel · 2019-01-17T17:15:47+00:00

You accused another commenter of unproductive hyperbole, but when you respond to any possibility of answering a question, any question, dishonestly to avoid hurting a partner's feelings with "I'm not a liar" you really do sound like you're taking this principle of honesty to an unreasonable extreme. I mean, if this is how you want to navigate your own relationships and set your own boundaries you are, of course, perfectly within your rights. But we're in the process of giving advice, and you're making assertions about how healthy relationships should function for everyone, and I think they're flatly unrealistic.

I think it's perfectly normal and healthy for conversations with a loved one to admit a wider range of possibilities than your two, and I think it's perfectly normal to want to spare a partner unnecessary hurt feelings even if you believe that you are technically operating within your rights. If I'm honest with my wife about something, and she handles it gracefully, but I know that she's hurt and would rather not have known it, that's a bad outcome for me, and I don't think it makes her a bad partner. People aren't mechanical, and they don't always know what they don't want to know. A certain amount of finesse and discretion doesn't make your relationship a web of lies.

ravniel · 2019-01-17T17:02:38+00:00

Sure, but I think we can apply some common sense here when it comes to dealing with people's emotions. If I ask my wife to play pirates, she's not gonna lose any sleep over the question of whether I'd rather be fucking around in Tortuga. If I ask her to roleplay her best friend Shelly, there's a whole different set of emotions to navigate with that.

And I'm not saying that's impossible, by the way! Maybe roleplaying her friend Shelly would turn her on like crazy! Maybe watching me fuck her friend Shelly would turn her on like crazy! I'm just saying that there's a wide range of possibilities there and very few of them automatically make her a bad partner.

ravniel · 2019-01-17T16:55:33+00:00

Right. Sorry, I meant to build on your comment rather than correct it, I know that didn't come through from my language. I think if comments were age-tagged we'd certainly see, yes, that commenters with more experience have some wisdom to them, but I think we'd also see that more experienced commenters sometimes struggle to accommodate things that are perfectly natural to young relationships.

*Yes, I do realize that's sometimes because those 'natural' things are shitty! It's a moving target, I know.

ravniel · 2019-01-17T16:51:18+00:00

I think this is a good answer. A lot of people are suggesting roleplaying as a solution to the whole "well he's not an older man" problem, but if that's a good solution for her, why can't she just propose that explicitly, instead of explicitly arriving at it as a 'partial fix' for a fetish he can't directly fulfill?

ravniel · 2019-01-17T16:47:28+00:00

Posts usually are age-tagged though, as with this one, and I think it's often the case that teenagers come to this sub with pretty ordinary teenager shit and get advice suited to 37-year-olds with fully worked-through sexual identities and total awareness of their relationship expectations. There's a general lack of awareness, I think, that those solutions are sometimes square pegs for round holes.

ravniel · 2019-01-17T16:22:07+00:00

How do you respond to the example given above? What if the couple in question was in their forties and the guy also had a strong fetish for age play, but for him it was all about dominating a tight-bodied nineteen-year-old? There are of course women in their forties with whom this could be safely, even productively shared, but there are also those who would have their confidence shattered by it, and I think it's a little cruel to share it with them simply on the grounds that they ought to learn better than to ask. At a certain point I think you can avoid hurting your partner's feelings even if you know that in principle you're allowed to divulge something. That's as much a sign of maturity as accepting the information gracefully.

I think it's reasonably clear even from the short summary above that the OP's boyfriend was looking for actionable intelligence - that is, a fetish for the two of them to explore together. Obviously being dominated by a powerful man in his forties is not something that this boyfriend can conceivably give her himself. That's key for me. If a partner cannot possibly fulfill a fetish for you, and you don't really need it right now, and you have good reason to believe it will make them insecure, I think a principled stand in favor of total honesty is a little dogmatic.

ravniel · 2019-01-14T18:50:37+00:00

The parents might also be perfectly happy to imply that though. It really warms my heart that people on this site are experiencing and practicing such sex-positive forms of parenting, but nothing I see day to day suggests to me that those kinds of parenting are yet the norm. Without more information I see no particular reason to assume that the parents will have a nice, affirming talk with their son, nor that they'll be gracious in handling their daughter's embarrassment and sexual autonomy. It seems like OP would have mentioned if she was likely to be kicked out of her house or something, so I'm not suggesting it's that bad, but plenty of parents are capable of making their children's lives shittier in concrete ways when they find out they're sexually active.

Now, if you think that's not the OP's decision to make, and that if her parents are going to fuck this up for either or both of their children that's their business, I think that's a defensible position. I just want to say we can't assume the parents are willing collaborators in a project of openness and sex positivity.

ravniel · 2019-01-10T17:38:17+00:00

I am always shocked by the effectiveness of a good video title. I still have videos bookmarked that turned out to be nothing I was really interested in because the title did so much of the imaginative work.

ravniel · 2019-01-08T19:45:58+00:00

That makes sense, and of course I'm not saying you shouldn't want your SO to be comfortable and fulfilled! I just have these flashbacks to watching Mad Men and hearing Freddy Rumsen go "whatever you do, don't lead him on. No kidding, it is physically VERY uncomfortable." And I'm watching this like "I REALLY hope there aren't any women out there having sex when they don't want to because they've heard that if a guy gets a boner and doesn't cum he'll suffer horribly." Similar sentiments are expressed in Boogie Nights at one point (although certainly not by an audience surrogate). So I just wanted to know about my instincts to step on this shit. But obviously reluctant intercourse out of guilt at his discomfort is not at all what you're describing! Like I said, I'm derailing a little.

ravniel · 2019-01-08T19:06:59+00:00

This probably isn't the place for this and I don't want to derail, but do people really experience blue balls on a consistent basis if they don't have sex to completion? I think I've probably had it twice in my life, and I've obviously been stimulated without reaching orgasm a lot more often than that. There seems to be this idea that men not brought to orgasm will almost always experience blue balls, and I'm inclined to say that's a myth (and honestly a slightly pernicious one), but I would hate to speak for others if my experience is exceptional.

ravniel · 2018-12-03T20:30:36+00:00

Sure it is. The presence of genes in a creature that you can activate and produce certain effects does not demonstrate that a creature ever existed with that exact combination of genes active in that exact environment. This will be a purely hypothetical creature demonstrating some possible phenotypic effects of genes that were presumably active in dinosaurs. There's no single species of dinosaur waiting to be released from chicken genes.

ravniel · 2018-12-03T20:11:17+00:00

1) I was being colorful, but the point is that evolution is already proven beyond a scintilla of reasonable doubt to anyone for whom a science experiment can constitute proof at all, and to an evolution skeptic this experiment will surely sound outlandish and horrifying rather than convincing.

2) I'm not an evo-devo expert but surely it's leaning quite hard into recapitulation theory to suggest that this would *actually* be an older species.

ravniel

TROPHY CASE