i just had the funniest experience in vr chat, i joined a random server and the one i joined had Japanese people so i waddled around in my goofy club penguin avatar that i have saved, after a while a guy walks up to me and clones my avatar so were both penguins then another guy shows up and clone my avatar
now keep in mind there only speaking Japanese i don’t know what they are saying, then another guy joins in, so i got a group of three penguin friends
we just waddle around and goof about, the one of them tries to talk to me, but not only do i not have a mic i also don’t speak Japanese, they figure out i don’t speak Japanese and start listing various places, they get the part of being European right, and after listing a lot of places they ask if im from the UK and when i nod they all just start cheering. after hanging out for a while one of them gets real close to me and whispers…
I feel torn about tumblr’s love of southern gothic. There’s a lot of cool stuff in that genre to be admired, but I feel like sometimes those posts (especially when made by people who don’t live in the south- and hey, neither do I) come across as “aren’t poor people spooooky?”
As a born-and-raised southerner, I was surprised to discover this literary convention because a lot of modern southern gothic fantasy written by southerners focuses on old-money families who turn out to be [witches/werewolves/vampires/etc]. I didn’t encounter the “scary redneck mountain people” variant in non-fantastical media until later, and it baffles me because the modern southern elite are TERRIFYING.
Endlessly smiling hypocritical senators in tacky palatial houses with wives who espouse “traditional values” while being poisonously sweet and cutthroat? Those make much more frightening antagonists for gothic heroes/heroines to fight. If you live in the south you will probably never meet backwoods demon sibling-spouses but you’ve definitely seen the void staring out of a “Live, Laugh, Love” picture frame.
ACCURATE
“bless yer little heart” can have a special twist in scare tactics if you use it wisely in southern gothic
I PROMISE you the old rich white “respectable” people in any given Southern town are the most terrifying things in it. I guarantee you. I don’t care who you are. I am white and originally from the South and I tell you the world of the genteel Southern white is the realm of nightmares. On that topic, real and semi-universal things to incorporate into your Southern Gothic re: rich old white “respectable” people:
- a large china cabinet. Made of nice wood, large glass windows, full of porcelain or crystal with gilding and has a lot of flower or fruit motifs. May have a mirrored back, to make it look twice as big and show off the contents from multiple angles
-mirrors in general, I don’t know why
-everything is varying shades of pastel or brown, with sudden transitions between brown rooms and pastel rooms. The brown rooms are full of leather furniture and smell faintly of leather and pipe smoke. The pastel ones smell like powder and potpourri. The smells also abruptly transition between each other
-alternatively everything is cream and color is prohibited
-old white Southerners rival the Fair Folk for gatherings where not knowing all the rules and obeying every one will have seemingly unrelated but dire consequences
-gilt and flowers on everything
-including weaponry
-painting of a landscape, hunting dogs, or ducks, relatively skilfully executed but something’s not right about it. You can’t put your finger on what. When you ask about the painting, someone says their cousin/aunt/mother painted it and aren’t they such a talented artist?
-painting of a battle from the Civil War in which someone is heroically raising a Confederate flag. It is not even remotely historically accurate but it’s painted like it was meant for a history book.
-perfectly arranged quilts on perfect beds you’re pretty sure nobody has ever slept in. The sterility of the arrangement somehow deprives the quilt of its essential quilt-ness, rendering it a kind of uneasy anti-quilt.
-family photos posed around a large dead animal
-family photos where everyone looks like they came off a fashion shoot but they’re all holding guns, even the small girl whose gun is pink
-walls of family photos in which these two are the only ones taken with a modern camera, and everything else is in blobby old-school color, sepia tone, or black and white
-framed obituaries
-THOSE SMILES. SOUTHERNERS KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. THOSE LITTLE SMILES AND THE LITTLE LAUGHS LIKE THEY’RE GRANDMOTHERLY/GRANDFATHERLY IF YOUR GRANDPARENTS WERE PERPETUALLY DEBATING THE PROPRIETY OF TEARING YOUR THROAT OUT WITH SUDDENLY TOO-LONG TEETH
-framed illustrated bible verses
-framed cutesy inspirational quotes
-personalized stationery
-Too Many Rooms For One House
-Too Many Rooms combine with the mirrors everywhere to make the house’s layout uncertain and confusing
watching spiderverse makes me never wanna see another live action movie ever again like. why did we ever start making comic books into live action movies?? make it animated to explore the art form instead of trying to make it hyper realistic you fucking cowards
my femme girlfriend: [hour and a half later] ok I’m ready to leave the house
me: [throwing on shorts and a tank top] okay baby i love you and you look so pretty
My overdressed butch ass: [hour and a half later] ok I’m ready to leave the house
My femme girlfriend: [throwing on a sundress and head scarf] okay baby I love you and you look so handsome
Me: [after spending 6 hours on my hair and makeup] Babe I’m ready to head out now
My femme wife: [who has also taken 6 hours] Okay babe I love you I’m ready and your highlight is poppin severely but you need to blend that contour in a little bit
Me: [fixing her eyebrows] I love you
my overdressed butch ass: [hour and a half later] ok love im ready to leave the house
my equally overdressed femme girlfriend: [also hour and a half later] okay baby i love you we’re both so pretty
Me: [10 minutes and a tank top later] ok babe let’s go
My equally lazy butch girlfriend: [also 10 minutes and a tank top later] I love you honey but we gotta stop taking each other’s tank tops
