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I think the sapphics I know can be classified more or less cleanly into those who are attracted to women's bodies, and those who are attracted to women more generally.

The one type feels lust for the female form, in the sense that the secondary sexual characteristics typical of estrogen (curves, thighs, soft skin, breasts, girlsmell etc.) will trigger something in their own body that causes attraction and longing. By contrast, the other type isn't really attracted to bodies at all, but rather to, like, entire human beings with regards to conversation, shared interests, sexual compatibility, trust in bed, mutual kinks etc. They just happen to prefer the company of women for doing those things.

This is different from being ace (in the sense of experiencing no or reduced sexual attraction) because women of the second type can very much define their attraction to other women as sexual in nature. Some I know identify as hypersexual, even. It's just that what they crave in sex isn't the materiality or shape of your body but like, what you can do with them. Maybe there’s already an ace-spec label for this somewhere, I don't know if people have a name for it.

Say, imagine I'm on a tram sitting next to a lover, and some thicc lady waltz by in a minidress exhibiting long, squishy, gloriously bare round thighs. I can immediately think of which of my partners would be drooling alongside with me, and which would be indifferent to the sights—why would anyone be affected in any way by the body of some random stranger who they know nothing about and might not be their type of person at all?, and so on.

Lesbians of the “drooly” variety often have had to struggle with a guilt and doubt stage, like, do I really like boobs or am I just being brainwashed by the overload of male-gazey imagery of a patriarchal society, am I objectifying women and being as bad as men, etc. This reluctance is usually cured when you figure out that a lot of other girls are desperately yearning for some feminine eyes to please ogle their breasts, and for certain other fem-on-fem interactions involving their breasts.

Within the second type of woman, many (but not all!) have described themselves to me as being “functionally lesbians” – like, since she doesn’t care for the body of her partner either way, she would potentially be open to dating men, too. If she ever finds a chill, kind, emotionally mature man who neither pedestalises her nor treats her as therapy-maid etc. Ooor she can just go and date women. So, in practice, lesbian. (Protip: if you want to explore bisexuality but struggle to find men who are cool, there's a lot of them from this country → 🏳️‍⚧️ )

Speaking as a serial top, many bottoms enjoy being aware of my attraction to their bodies but aren't particularly attracted to my body, or to women's bodies generally, at all. Their thing is to lie temptingly and be taken, or to follow orders, or to fail to follow orders and get punished, or whatever it is that does it for that particular woman. This isn't a bad thing for me, it makes me feel like I'm reliving a traditional butch/femme dynamic (with the classic butch top preferring not being touched) and even though I'm not like, a butch, I get good feelings when exploring that dynamic. I'm a sucker for tradition after all x3

And like, it's not that the “conceptual” type of lesbian doesn't make me feel desired too. It's just that they desire other stuff than my body: my company, my conversation, my devotion, my skills in bed, my overly syrupy affectiveness and/or sadism, and so on. But it's still special for me when my physical, carnal, sweaty type of lust can be reciprocated, too; when I put on a slutty dress and can feel her flush and getting distracted from conversation in public, or when greedy soft hands grab my thighs on the way home, or when I'm doing her from behind, and I draw closer and press my breasts against her back and it provokes that little shudder in her hips, that sharp intake of air… Yes I am yearning for her and for her again, yes I'm like that every day, why do you ask…?

Its always emotional to leave, be it township or any other ship But this time it felt particularly difficult to do so Plan of Saturday morning postponed to Sunday morning and eventually to evening And even though brain understands the importance of moving out but sometimes it refuses to comply

Dear Mind, Why do you want to stay When this town has told to move away It did wish us all the best Yet you want to be at rest It does say that we are great But within the boundaries, shall not wait It hopes the city is waiting to embrace With the glamour and grandeur Not caring if you want to choose that blunder It fears being unable to provide for work But 'The Good Place' shouldn't give a fork The city will never feel like home It only provides transactions and dome The town has chosen to act as deaf and mute So do not fight and don't be brute Do not expect a call of return We must have hurt it, to be so stubborn Get ready for the long long journey After the rains, let's hope for the greenary

han taesan x myung jaehyun cw : gay (boys love boys), male pregnant, morning sickness, out of character, etc.

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Dulu, saat masih duduk di bangku sekolah, Jaehyun kira kata-kata seperti i love you, aku cinta kamu, aku sayang banget sama kamu, adalah bentuk cinta yang paling manis. Dulu, Jaehyun kira kebahagiaan saat ditanya sudah makan belum? Mau pulang bareng? Atau jangan kehujanan ya nanti sakit adalah perhatian yang paling indah. Jaehyun kira saling bertukar kabar dan telfonan dari pagi hingga petang adalah bentuk romantis yang paling menggelitik. Tapi ternyata, saat dewasa Jaehyun sadari bahwa bentuk cinta itu beragam.

Hoekkk

Pagi ini, Jaehyun yang perutnya sudah membesar tidak sengaja muntah diatas kasurnya saat sedang tidur. Memang sejak beberapa jam lalu, tidurnya tidak nyaman dan perasaan tidak enak mulai mengganggu. Jaehyun paksakan tidurnya lebih lama karena ia membutuhkannya, tapi, satu jam kemudian dia malah memuntahkan isi perutnya diatas kasur. Dengan buru-buru, ia berlari menuju kamar mandi dan kembali memuntahkan isi perutnya.

Hoekk

Perutnya tidak enak, rasanya mual sekali, keringat dingin juga mulai membanjiri. Kepalanya berputar tiap kali ia mencoba menatap cermin guna mengecek kondisinya sendiri. Jaehyun terbatuk beberapa kali sebelum kembali memuntahkan cairan dari perutnya.

Jaehyun menangis. Rasanya capek sekali merasakan morning sickness seperti ini. Tak lama, Jaehyun rasakan usapan pelan pada punggung dan tengkuknya dan suara pelan dari suaminya yang sepertinya terbangun karena pergerakannya yang tiba-tiba tadi.

Hoekkk

Jaehyun kembali muntah, Taesan dengan pelan mengusap perut besarnya, sedang tangan kanannya masih setia menepuk punggung suaminya. Jaehyun terisak dan merengek, maka Taesan mengusap air mata yang sudah menganak sungai.

“Sudah?”

“sudah....”

Taesan mengusap dahi dan pipi Jaehyun yang basah lalu menyodorkan segelas air putih untuk berkumur. Setelah selesai berkumur, Taesan membantu Jaehyun melepas piyamanya dan menggantinya dengan yang baru meski si suami kecil itu sempat menolak karena katanya belum mandi.

“Kakak duduk dulu di sofa, biar aku ganti spreinya dulu ya”

Taesan mengusap pipi gembul suaminya lalu mengantarnya ke ruang tamu. Setelah suaminya duduk, Taesan menyalakan televisi dan pergi ke dapur untuk membuatkan minum hangat. Lalu ada segelas teh jahe madu dan cemilan dari buah kering yang sengaja Taesan siapkan untuk Jaehyun.

“Maaf ya, aku juga gak sangka bakalan muntah di kasur...” Jaehyun manyun, hal itu sukses membuat Taesan terkekeh gemas.

“Its ok kak, namanya juga morning sickness. Aku pergi dulu ya, tunggu disini saja ok?” Jaehyun mengangguk setelah Taesan mengecup puncak kepalanya dan pergi untuk mengganti sprei.

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Lima belas menit berlalu dan hanya ada Jaehyun dengan film kartun yang ditontonnya. Jahe madu ini benar-benar membantu, Jaehyun merasakan nyaman di perutnya yang tadi bergejolak, dan pusingnya perlahan hilang. Ia usap perutnya yang sudah besar itu. Harusnya, katanya sih sudah tidak akan kena morning sickness di usia kandungan segini, tapi mungkin lain untuk kehamilanya. Atau mungkin karena diawal kehamilan, morning sickness menyerang suaminya, jadi di kesempatan kali ini, giliran Jaehyun yang tersiksa.

Jaehyun kira, setiap pagi mendapat pesan hangat disisipkan kata cinta adalah hal romantis yang membuatnya merasa gembira. Tapi ternyata, pemandangan Taesan memisahkan kacang dari bubur ayamnya juga membuat hatinya berdebar. Jaehyun kira, ditanya sudah makan atau belum sudah cukup baginya. Tapi ternyata, menerima daging kepiting dari cangkang yang telah dibuka oleh suaminya juga membuatnya tersipu. Taesan dan jutaan aksi penuh cintanya selalu sukses membuat Jaehyun jatuh cinta lagi dan lagi.

Taesan yang membuatkannya susu dan teh jahe, Taesan yang memisahkan kacang dari bubur ayamnya, Taesan yang memisahkan daging kepiting atau lobster dari cangkangnya, memisahkan daging ikan dari durinya, Taesan yang memotong steaknya hingga menjadi ukuran yang mudah ditelan, Taesan yang selalu tahu apa yang Jaehyun suka dan tidak suka. Di meja makan saja, Jaehyun kenali berbagai cara menyalurkan cinta.

Belum lagi saat makan seperti ini, Jaehyun dan Taesan makan pasta untuk sarapannya, tentu setelah Taesan selesai mengganti sprei. Jaehyun bilang dia ingin makan pasta yang kejunya kuat, maka Taesan segera membuatnya. Tapi namanya orang hamil, moodnya gampang berubah. Sesaat setelah pasta itu masuk mulut, Jaehyun mengernyit tidak suka, bukan karena masakan suaminya tidak enak, namun tiba-tiba ia tidak bisa menelan rasa keju yang terlalu pekat.

Melihat Jaehyun begitu, Taesan segera menadahkan tangannya, dan Jaehyun melepeh disana.

“Gak enak, ya? Maaf ya... Aku gak jago masaknya ya” katanya sambil mengambil tisu untuk mengusap sisian mulut Jaehyun yang belepotan.

Jaehyun menggeleng meski masih merengek kecil, “adek bayinya gak mau makan pasta keju lagi... Maaf yaaa”

Taesan tertawa kecil lalu mengangguk, “gapapa, aku masak yang lain juga kok. Mau ayam kukus jahe? Masih diangetin tapi”

“Mau...”

“Ditunggu sebentar, ya, kakak cantik”

Lalu menu sarapannya tiba-tiba berubah dan nafsu makan Jaehyun meningkat.

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Taesan punya banyak cara menyalurkan cintanya. Tidak hanya lewat kata-kata namun lewat gerak tubuhnya. Ini hari Minggu, Taesan tidak bekerja, begitu juga Jaehyun. Namun, siang ini ia harus memeriksa powerpoint yang akan disampaikan teamnya di rapat bulanan esok hari. Taesan duduk lesehan diatas karpet bulu di ruang tengah, sedangkan Jaehyun duduk di sofa sebelah kirinya. Tangan kanan Taesan stand by diatas laptopnya sedangkan tangan kirinya memijat halus kaki Jaehyun yang katanya pegal dan terlihat membengkak, ya, namanya juga orang hamil.

Taesan juga senantiasa menggandeng tangan Jaehyun saat berjalan, mengangkat sedikit perutnya saat Jaehyun pegal, melindungi kepala Jaehyun agar tidak terbentur benda apapun, dan masih banyak gestur lain yang membuat Jaehyun merasa aman dalam dekapannya.

Setiap Jaehyun ingin bermanja, Taesan dengan senang hati membuka tangannya. Membiarkannya duduk diatas pangkuannya, mengusap punggungnya dan mengecup keningnya hingga Jaehyun terlelap.

Selama hamil, Jaehyun tidak diikut sertakan dalam hal mengurus rumah. Semuanya Taesan yang kerjakan. Taesan juga suami yang siap dan sigap. Ia banyak belajar tentang kehamilan, ia belajar menjadi orang tua, mendaftarkan Jaehyun berbagai kegiatan orang hamil, dan tidak pernah absen jika sudah saatnya mengontrol kandungan.

Jaehyun kadang merasa kecil. Ia merasa cintanya tidak cukup besar untuk Taesan, tapi Taesan selalu bilang semuanya cukup, ia merasa dicintai oleh suaminya. Maka, Jaehyun berusaha semaksimal mungkin untuk menjadi pasangan yang baik untuk Taesan.

Dulu, orang di sekitar Jaehyun akan sebal jika anaknya lahir mirip si ayah ketimbang ibunya yang mengandungnya selama sembilan bulan.

Tapi bagi Jaehyun, rasanya sebuah kado besar yang paling menakjubkan jika anaknya mirip Taesan seratus persen. Karena siapa yang tidak bangga jika ia berhasil melahirkan duplikat cintanya? Bayangkan bangun tidur, kamu melihat wajah orang yang paling kamu cintai di dunia ini dalam versi kecil yang masih polos tanpa dosa berada di sebelahmu? Masa sih hatimu tidak menghangat saat melihatnya? Bayangkan memiliki dua Taesan dalam hidupmu? Bayangkan memiliki buah cinta dari orang yang cintanya tidak pernah lekang oleh waktu? Ah... Jaehyun siap menukar nyawa untuk keluarganya. Keluarga hangat yang dibangun susah payah oleh keduanya. Keluarga kecil yang siap mengenalkan pada dunia bahwa cinta banyak jenisnya.

It's generally hard for a Japanese porn performer to be allowed to transition into mainstream TV, but there seems to be a bit of a tradition of AV actresses being cast as femme fatales in tokusatsu, of all things:

– Nanase Rika (Beauty Zonnette, Gekisō Sentai Carranger) – Jō Asami (Shibolena in Denji Sentai Megaranger; Hizumina in Megaranger vs. Seiju Sentai Gingaman) – Nishida Momoko (NeziSophia in Denji Sentai Megaranger) – Oikawa Nao (Wasp Woman in several Kamen Riders; Water Pollution Minister Kegalesia in Engine Sentai Go-Onger; Alisa in UltraSeven X) – Hara Saori/Matsunoi Miyabi (Amily from GARO) – Yume Nikaido / Ai Hongo (Ichigo Daifuku in Yodonna) (yes, the yuri one) – Moe Amatsuka (Macaron in Yodonna)

Also Natsukawa Misuzu has done two songs for the soundtrack of Mirai Sentai Timeranger.

Joey Batey's first novel is a front row seat to the creation of legend.

Al is part of a band with no name. They've never needed one, never been popular enough to want one. But seemingly overnight, they attract a devoted following that rapidly spirals out of control. As their fans attribute unintended meaning to their lyrics and fictional mythology, parasocial relationships blur and distort into violence.

Batey writes with a keen sense of how social media and popular movements work, and impressive work for a debut novel.

#books #horror

Odette stands on the cusp of an arranged marriage and, with it, an inescapable coming of age. Then she finds a strange cottage in the woods which might reveal something unexpected, yet unsurprising, about herself...

Erotic and lyrical, this brief story presents a transmasculine dark fairy tale about transformation and escape. And really, it's about self-love – in multiple senses of the word.

#books #marsadler #trans

106 min, dir. Craig Gillespie

Extremely shy, anxious Lars surprises his brother and sister-in-law with news of Bianca, his new girlfriend... only for them to find out it's a blow-up doll. On the town doctor's advice, they – and the rest of the town – decide to go along with the delusion.

The doctor states up front that Bianca is a crutch, a sort of displacement for his anxiety around his sister in law's pregnancy. Not only are his family and the wider town explicitly supportive of Lars, they actively do things to make Bianca 'involved'.

For something released in 2007, I wasn't expecting this to as affirming as it was.

#films

I still plan to write more on my series about early videogame lesbians, but today I want to highlight this enemy character from the Castlevania series who, like many early trans characters, started her existence as an unfunny bigoted joke, but then transcended the meanness by the sheer presence and glory of her gender. I'm talking about the Icy Chick, the Evil Ghost who Transitioned, the Snow Fairy herself: Frozen Half, from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

The description reads: “An evil New Half spirit who wields power over ice. A minion of Galamoth.”

I don't have a series on early videogame trans women because there's not a lot of them, and they have been discussed elsewhere. The oldest I know of is Catherine/Birdetta/Birdo (1987~1988), the pink dinosaur from Super Mario, followed by drag queen Tessy LaFemme, the damsel-in-distress that you rescue as lesbian butch detective Tracy McDyke in the seminal Caper in the Castro (1988)—it's lovely how the very first cis lesbian and human transfem characters were in a relationship of deep companionship while fighting capitalists. Then we get sex-worker-coded and beloved sex icon Poison from Final Fight (1989), and Yasmin, the trans girlfriend of the cis guy protagonist in cyberpunk RPG Circuit's Edge (1990).

But I haven't seen much discussion of Castlevania's Frozen Half (1997, but with roots in 1990). As a Brazilian I had the privilege of playing Akumajō Dracula-kun (today fan translated as “Kid Dracula”) on the Famicom, and I did catch the reference to the boss Galamoth in Symphony of the Night, but somehow this absolutely amazing girl and her implied development went right over my head. I only found out about her recently, and only because the wikis explicitly pointed it out.

Dracula-kun was Konami's own parody of the Castlevania series, back when it had barely even become a “series”. You play as young boy Dracula saving Earth from evil galactic conqueror Galamoth, because it's your Earth and you are going to be its evil conqueror. There's lots of fun jokes and cute references in this fun little game, but one of the jokes is grossly queerphobic. You might have heard of the Japanese folkloric creature Snow Woman (“yuki-onna”), a beautiful, snow-white ethereal lady who appears in winter promising a bit of warmth only to lure men (and, presumably, lesbians) into a deathly icy embrace. Well Dracula-kun has yuki-okama enemies, instead of yuki-onna. “Okama” is a gender identity somewhat close to the Latina travesti or, a bit more distantly, to crossdressers or drag queens: someone assigned male who dresses with fem clothes and performs an exaggerated femininity. The intended joke being that instead of an alluring snow-woman you're getting some funny snow-transvestite. The low resolution of the Famicom spared us from a mean caricature with a beard shadow or something, but the manual illustration made the joke clear.

Then many years later, in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the Playstation 1, there's a beautiful ice witch enemy called Frozen Half, and the in-game lore describes her as a servant of Galamoth—that is, she's working for the alien endboss from Dracula-kun, rather than under Dracula like all other enemies—and still I failed to connect the dots.

Frozen Half's ultimate power, “Saidai Power” (“Ultimate Power”), rains huge chunks of ice on the head of protagonist Alucard. In retrospect, we can see that her voice is intended as a perceptibly transfem voice. Video from completezukan.jp.

The word “half”, or more precisely “new half” (in English in the original), is an outdated Japanese term for trans women, in the sense of someone who has gone through medical feminisation procedures to transition from their assigned gender. This blue-haired lady is none other than the yuki-okama from Dracula-kun! Despite being an intangible spirit she got (ectoplasmatic?) HRT in the time between the two games, and I’m happy for her and I love her.

My last post was concerned with a regex crate I was writing, which does perform quite well. Now I have revived a side project of mine, namely creating a custom operating system. This is a long-term project that I'll come back to every now and then.

Before this week-long coding spree, I had only written a few primitives like a lock-free queue and object pool, a basic interface to interact with the Limine bootloader, as well as a bare-bones bootable image that prints some text on serial post and displays a yellow line on the screen.

During the week, I have made a lot of progress, specifically: – A lot of designing is now done. Heaps of notes regarding general process and task architecture, the syscall interface, memory subsystem... – A build and macro system that splits the system into components that can be configured in many different ways. – A basic memory management system for the pre-kernel stage, which is tested upon boot. – The larger part of a small message-passing dynamic memory manager. – More primitives, like interface and process-safety traits, thread-local storage, physical addresses, page tables...

I don't intend to move fast with this one yet. An operating system is a big piece of software but the first stages of creating one are especially delicate, since one has to make a lot of decisions that will later impact how the project will unfurl. Right now I have about 4500 lines of Rust code and a general idea of what I want to do with them.

My first goal is to make a kernel that can be booted and do some serious memory management. I would like it to be configurable as either a microkernel or monolithic kernel, which may sound like a bizarre design decision but it's something I had wanted to explore. I'll keep posting about this project in the future.

Remember this old Dolly Parton song?

Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin' Barely gettin' by, it's all takin' and no givin' They just use your mind and you never get the credit It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it 9 to 5, yeah, they got you where they want you There's a better life and you think about it, don't you?

Of course we do, Dolly.

Written in 1980, the song captures how the work life affected women. Today, it appears that women are not just thinking about a better life but are actually doing something about it—well, at least those who have the option. Enough of the fast lane. Why endure the stressful life of the girlboss when there is a better life—the blissful life of the tradwife?

The Tradwife

The King’s College London (2025) defines a tradwife as a modern-day housewife who embraces traditional gender roles—typically focusing on homemaking, childcare, and supporting her husband—while often sharing her idealized lifestyle on social media.

Housework tends to be seen as drudgery, yet tradwives on social platforms certainly know how to make us forget this by curating an image of homemaking that is inspiring, effortless, and desirable. While many share useful tips and knowledge, how some tradwife influencers make food from scratch in floral or skimpy dresses, with full make up, when they have babies or young children to care for, raises the question—Is it parody? Is it fantasy? What it is—as have been discussed by many commentators—is a business. It’s a way for stay-at-home moms to earn income, so it’s essentially working from home. For the successful ones, with over 500k followers on Instagram, this is substantial earnings, certainly enough for them to pay someone to take care of their children or to do the household chores while they film.

The tradwife trend continues to spark controversy.

Tradwives on social media have surged in popularity over the past few years, attracting both praise and criticism. In the US, their rise has been framed as a cultural resistance to the girlboss culture, and for some, as a political resistance to liberalism—the cultural and ideological framework that conservatives perceive value working women over women who are homemakers. Check out, if you haven’t, the social platforms of Classically Abby and Nara Smith.

In the UK, tradwife culture is not directly tied to party politics, nonetheless it is shaped by the rise of conservatism in recent years. The ideal of domestic life as something that British women should aspire to is reflected in the success of UK tradwife influencers, such as Emily (@maverickmother) and Thuy Improta (@ministryfromhome). While this aspiration can be linked to nostalgia and faith, according to the British Social Attitudes Survey (1984 to 2022) conducted by King’s College London, the trend is more of a reflection of widespread burn out and frustration with a labor market that fails to provide work-life balance or adequate accommodation of family life.

The tradwife trend continues to spark controversy. Some view it as women’s natural gender role, often justified by religious beliefs, while some see it as regressive and antifeminist. In contrast, others argue that women who choose to be homemakers (but what about men, though?—more on that later) can still be aligning themselves with feminism as feminism is about choice for women. Yes, but some choices in life come with privilege, and so does the choice of being a traditional wife in the real sense of being a stay-at-home mom or wife who does not work to earn income. Certainly, in today’s economic climate, only a minority of families can survive on a single income. This adds to the controversy surrounding the idealization of the tradwife life on social media—it is sometimes despised as it sparks class antagonism. For some others, however, it’s simply a fantasy being sold—something to enjoy, nothing more than social media entertainment.

Idealization of Domestic Life Through the Times

Why has the idealization of women’s traditional role re-emerged as a trend in recent years in the US and UK, and across other Western countries? Looking back, we see a recurring pattern: domestic life for women tends to be idealized during periods of economic crisis, instability, war, and geopolitical conflict. For example, with the collapse of the German economy following World War I, the country looked to the Nazi regime to rebuild the country. The Weimar era of women’s emancipation was quickly replaced by the idealization of women’s domesticity and motherhood was institutionalized as civic duty. During the Great Depression of 1929, in Western Europe and the US, traditional wife ideals were reinforced and women were pressured to leave the labor market, countering the gains of the suffragette movement.

In contrast, the postwar economic boom following World War II saw the rise of the suburban housewife ideal in Western Europe and the US. Prewar nostalgia and anxieties about instability made traditional values feel safe. However, this reality was further intensified by Cold War cultural politics, where governments promoted the nuclear family—with husband as breadwinner and wife as homemaker—as the model household that is essential for maintaining the stability of the capitalist economy and the moral strength of Western democracy.

The 1970s and 1980s were marked with economic stagflation and social upheaval in both the US and the UK under the Reagan and Thatcher era. Dissatisfaction with liberal policies, economic struggles, and perceived moral decline following the cultural changes achieved in the 1960s gave rise to an era of conservatism that tied the revival of traditional family values with national politics.

... domestic life for women tends to be idealized during periods of economic crisis, instability, war and geopolitical conflict.

The 1990s was a decade of multiculturalism, globalization, and advances in women’s rights, yet these developments coexisted uneasily with conservative backlash and cultural anxieties. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, security concerns took precedence, sidelining globalization and fueling a shift toward nationalism and cultural conservatism. At the same time, rising inequality had already begun to erode middle‑class stability, setting the foundation for the 2008 economic collapse. Inevitably, the 2008 financial crisis was met with a populist revival. As in earlier periods of instability, the surge of conservative populism in Europe and the US drew on family and tradition as anchors of stability.

Similarly, the uncertainty brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic—combined with the current economic downturn, perceived failure of liberal policies, and ongoing geopolitical conflicts—has fueled political polarization and a cultural revival of conservatism and traditional domestic ideals. Amid these instabilities, support for the idealization of women's domesticity grew stronger, as reflected in today’s tradwife trend.

It’s interesting to note that surveys conducted in the past years reveal that heterosexual couples are happier when they are able to fulfill their livelihood within traditional gender norms and that men experience adverse mental health issues when they cannot meet societal expectation of being the primary earner. This has been discussed in a previous blog post here. Amid the economic downturn of recent years, these findings are in line with the pattern of economic instability and a resurgence of traditional norms.

Labor Disguised as Love

What is striking is that women’s traditionally ascribed work is viewed as having no economic value, while in reality, domestic work plays a crucial role in providing the labor market with ready workers, thus sustaining the wider economy. The freshly ironed shirt prepared for a husband to wear to work, the hard-boiled eggs made before he faces the day, and the children raised for the next generation of workers are all examples of how household labor underpins the capitalist system. Economically devalued, household work and caregiving are unpaid labor disguised as love—essential, invisible work that allows the system to perpetuate itself.

What is also striking is that tradwives on social media have commodified the imagery of the traditional wife and her unpaid labor through big tech platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. In addition, they have become mouthpieces for conservative ideology. Yet, ironically, these successful tradwife influencers—who monetize the alternate lifestyle of domestic bliss—are, in another form, girlbosses themselves.

Economically devalued, household work and caregiving are unpaid labor disguised as love ...

Tradwives on social media may—for a few minutes or hours—divert other women from the exhaustion of nine-to-five work into a nostalgic vision of blissful family life; nonetheless, it is a path only accessible to a minority of people. To improve the lives of the majority, the real focus should be on structural changes in policies and the labor market. Such changes should promote genuine work-life balance that would enable both husbands and wives to participate in the labor force and in managing the household and child-rearing, such as through the provision of paid maternity and paternity leave. This means that the role of full-time homemaker should not solely be a choice for women—but equally as an option for men.

We must advocate for changes that support equal and flexible roles within the household, rather than reforms that reinforce gender-segregated family structures, which only perpetuate discrimination in the labor market. This would save men and women from adverse mental health outcomes and could help prevent families from facing severe economic hardship. These changes would strengthen society’s resilience and help break the recurring cycle of retreating into the comfort of traditional domestic ideals that perpetuate inequality.

-Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl- (2026)

#history #politics #women #gender #feminism #labor

You might be interested to read: Political Resistance and Propaganda: From Dadaism to Slopaganda (Part 1)

Image: Pinterest

Sources

Boylan, A. M. (1989) Containment on the Home Front: American Families During the Cold War [Review of Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, by E. T. May]. Reviews in American History, 17(2), 301–305. https://doi.org/10.2307/2702934.

Brechenmacher, Saskia (2025) 'The New Global Struggle Over Gender, Rights, and Family Values.' Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Paper. https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/06/the-new-global-struggle-over-gender-rights-and-family-values [Accessed 29 June 2026].

Chance, Maia (2026) What Tradwife “Influencers” of Centuries Past Share with Their Social Media Contemporaries. Literary Hub. https://lithub.com/what-tradwife-influencers-of-centuries-past-share-with-their-social-media-contemporaries [Accessed 29 June 2026].

Kibwana, Thomas Joel (2024) 'The Death of Liberalism and the Rise of Conservatism: A Global Shift and Its Implications for the Global South' The Chanzo. https://thechanzo.com/2024/11/10/the-death-of-liberalism-and-the-rise-of-conservatism-a-global-shift-and-its-implications-for-the-global-south [Accessed 29 June 2026].

King's College London (2025) The Tradwife Phenomenon Isn't a Return to Tradition, It's a Plea for Balance. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/the-tradwife-phenomenon-isnt-a-return-to-tradition-its-a-plea-for-balance [20 June 2026].

Sonno, Tommaso, Helios Herrera, Massimo Morelli, and Luigi Guiso (2022) Financial Crises as Drivers of Populism: A New Channel (2022) CEPR. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/financial-crises-drivers-populism-new-channel [Accessed 29 June 2026].

Sykes, Sophia and Veronica Hopner (2023) Tradwives: The Housewives Commodifying Right-Wing Ideology. Global Network on Extremism and Technology. https://gnet-research.org/2023/07/07/tradwives-the-housewives-commodifying-right-wing-ideology [Accessed 29 June 2026].

Das alte Spiel

Britische Ambitionen, deutsche Revanche und die ukrainische Tragödie

Geboren etwa ein Vierteljahrhundert nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, wuchs ich in eine Welt hinein, die durch den „Eisernen Vorhang“ strikt geteilt war: im Westen die liberalen Demokratien, im Osten die sozialistischen Volksrepubliken. Auf beiden Seiten wurde rückblickend die politische Entwicklung Deutschlands in den 1930er- und frühen 1940er-Jahren als epochale und einzigartige zivilisatorische Entgleisung bewertet. Der Umgang mit dieser Bewertung fiel jedoch sehr unterschiedlich aus.

Bei der Beschäftigung mit den Ursachen jener Katastrophe herrschte im Westen Deutschlands ein seltsames Kontext-Tabu. Die Erforschung komplexer gesellschaftlicher und geopolitischer Ursachen wurde gescheut, als könnte die Anerkennung solcher Zusammenhänge jene entlasten, die man allein verantwortlich machen wollte: die deutsche Nation. Zugleich wurden im Westen tatsächliche Täter und aktive Kollaborateure des NS-Regimes oft geschont – ihnen wurde Flucht oder Auswanderung ermöglicht, oder sie wurden bald wieder an wichtigen Schaltstellen der Nachkriegsordnung eingebunden. Im Osten Deutschlands war die Bereitschaft hingegen größer, auch über den spezifisch deutschen Nationalismus hinausgehende Ursachen zu untersuchen („Der Schoß ist fruchtbar noch, aus dem das kroch“). Mit den konkret für das NS-Desaster Verantwortlichen wurde dort restriktiver umgegangen: Verfolgung, Entnazifizierung, gegebenenfalls Verurteilung und berufliche Einschränkungen.

Vor den Katastrophen der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts stand eine Welt, in der einige wenige Mächte sich mit äußerster Brutalität und Skrupellosigkeit große Teile der Welt als Kolonien angeeignet hatten. Hervorzuheben ist das Britische Empire, das sich gesellschaftlich als Vorreiter und besonders fortschrittlich wähnte (Glorious Revolution), zugleich aber durch den globalen Sklavenhandel und später die koloniale Unterwerfung riesiger Gebiete zu gigantischem Reichtum gelangt war – eine nationale Überlegenheitserfahrung, die in Großbritannien bis heute mit rituellem Stolz gefeiert wird. Beginnend mit Nordamerika und später Ländern wie China, Indien, Australien, Neuseeland und vielen weiteren wurden den dort lebenden Menschen durch militärische Gewalt und Unterwanderung Gebiete entrissen und der Wohlstandsmaschine der britischen Upperclass nutzbar gemacht. Ein zentraler Landstrich jedoch blieb für die Briten als maritime Räuber uneinnehmbar: die kontinentale, ressourcenreiche Weite Russlands.

Spätere gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen ermöglichten es, Länder auch ohne militärische Besetzung auszubeuten – ein effizienteres Kosten-Nutzen-Verhältnis für die Besatzer. Man verließ die geschundenen Kolonien, stürzte viele dieser Länder ins Chaos und stellte den Rückzug als fortschrittlichen Akt der Humanität und als Überwindung des Kolonialismus dar. Doch Russlands Ressourcen blieben dem Zugriff der eigenen Marktakteure (City of London etc.) im Wesentlichen entzogen. Russland bewahrte stets die Kontrolle über seine natürlichen Reichtümer. Es war seit langem ein Ziel des Britischen Empire und seiner Verbündeten, dies zu ändern.

Zur Verfolgung dieses Zieles wurden viele Wege versucht und viele Gelegenheiten wahrgenommen, darunter die breite antikommunistische Allianz, die sich in den kapitalistischen Machtzentren zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts herauszubilden begann. In den 1920er- und frühen 1930er-Jahren waren sich die imperialistischen Mächte einig, dass die russische Revolution von 1917 eine Katastrophe gewesen sei. Die Beseitigung des sowjetischen Kommunismus aus Angst vor Arbeiterrevolutionen im eigenen Land überwog die üblichen Spannungen zwischen den kapitalistischen Mächten. Deutschland war Teil dieser Frontstellung und blieb es auch nach der Machtergreifung der Nationalsozialisten 1933 – nicht im Sinne eines formellen Bündnisses oder eines festgeschriebenen Masterplans, wohl aber als Ausdruck überlappender Interessenlagen, die sich bei passender Gelegenheit bündeln ließen. Hitlers “besonderer Weg” wurde trotz zunehmend beunruhigender Nachrichten aus Deutschland still geduldet, passiv ermutigt und durch informelle wirtschaftliche Kooperation gestärkt.

Hitlers Plan, ein fanatisch antisowjetisches, stark zentralisiertes Deutschland zu errichten, passte zu den antikommunistischen Zielen der westlichen Wirtschaftsmächte ebenso wie zu den alten interventionistischen Ambitionen, und fand deshalb bei relevanten Akteuren in Großbritannien und den USA Unterstützung. Das Münchner Abkommen von 1938 – die Teilung der Tschechoslowakei und die Abtretung des industriell wichtigen Sudetenlandes an Deutschland – wird traditionell als Chamberlains Fehlentscheidung gesehen. Man kann es aber auch als Befreiung der deutschen Wehrmacht von einem Hindernis auf dem Weg nach Russland betrachten. An Gewicht gewinnt diese Sichtweise durch den Bündnisvertrag, den die Tschechoslowakei 1935 mit der Sowjetunion geschlossen hatte.

Hitler wich jedoch schon in den ersten Monaten des Krieges von dieser Interessenkonvergenz ab, indem er das Westfront-Problem im Blitzkrieg löste. Nach der Bildung der Achse Berlin-Rom-Tokio entwickelte sich der Zweite Weltkrieg mehr und mehr zu einem Krieg um die Weltmacht, statt zum ursprünglich erhofften Vorgehen, das kommunistische Problem zu lösen und die russischen Weiten der postkolonialistischen Ausbeutung zugänglich zu machen. Obwohl solche Absichten weiterhin existierten und Unterstützung fanden, erzwangen die veränderten Umstände Anpassungen. Vor diesem Hintergrund erscheinen Churchills Ausspruch von 1945 „Wir haben das falsche Schwein geschlachtet“ und seine „Operation Unthinkable“ nachvollziehbar – er verfolgte damit eine Fortsetzung von strategischen Zielsetzungen, die jedoch in der Nachkriegswelt zunächst nicht mehr umsetzbar waren.

Stellvertretend wurde die NATO gegründet. So wird auch verständlich, warum bei der Untersuchung des deutschen Nationalsozialismus im Westen ein Kontext-Tabu durchgesetzt wurde: Die Westmächte hatten den Verlauf der letzten Kriegsjahre genutzt, um sich als entschiedene Gegner Nazi-Deutschlands zu inszenieren. Diese Inszenierung sollte nicht auffliegen, sondern verstetigt werden. Heute gilt im Westen, dass vor allem die USA und Großbritannien Deutschland vom Nationalsozialismus befreit hätten – eine perfekte Fortsetzung dieser Inszenierung. Die westalliierte Beteiligung an der Befreiung soll hier nicht geleugnet werden, doch die Behauptung, es sei vor allem ihre historische Leistung gewesen, macht ihre eigene Verstrickung in die unheilvollen Entwicklungen Nazi-Deutschlands ebenso unsichtbar wie den mit großem Abstand schwersten Beitrag zur Befreiung, den die sowjetische Führung leistete und den die Völker der Sowjetunion zu tragen hatten.

Heute erleben wir ein Revival der alten imperialistischen Ambitionen, die von Großbritannien und den mit ihm verbündeten Mächten, darunter Deutschland, nie wirklich aufgegeben worden sind. Die nationalistische Ukraine – nicht gleichzusetzen mit dem nationalsozialistischen Deutschland in Bezug auf das singuläre Verbrechensausmaß, aber in mancher inneren politischen Formierung und geopolitischen Funktion durchaus vergleichbar – darf heute die „Drecksarbeit“ für die „Freiheit“ erledigen. Der neokoloniale Versuch, Russlands Ressourcen endlich der eigenen Machtpolitik zu unterwerfen, wird dabei zynisch als „Entkolonialisierung Russlands“ bezeichnet, und Russlands Maßnahmen, sich dagegen abzusichern, werden “imperiale” Intentionen unterstellt. Aus dieser Perspektive wird die fanatische und bedingungslose Unterstützung der Ukraine in ihrem Kampf um die Schwächung Russlands nachvollziehbar.

Hinzu treten handfeste ökonomische Motive: westliche Vermögensverwalter haben sich seit der ukrainischen Bodenmarktreform von 2020 großflächig ukrainisches Agrarland gesichert, und die Ausbeutung ukrainischer Naturressourcen wurde dem Westen im Austausch für deren militärische Unterstützung bereits versprochen. Einen nicht geringen Teil ihres Landes haben die Ukrainer so schon heute verloren – an westliche Magnaten. Diese wollen natürlich verhindern, dass ihre Investitionen unter russischem Einfluss in heimische Hände zurückgelangen, was einem Totalverlust gleichkäme. Darüber hinaus hindert die Logik der versunkenen Kosten den Westen, angesichts der aussichtslosen Lage Vernunft walten zu lassen; panisch wird nach einer Rechtfertigung für die immensen Ausgaben und ökonomischen Schäden gesucht, die der Kampf gegen Russland im Westen verursacht hat, um einer Rechenschaftspflicht gegenüber den eigenen Bevölkerungen zu entgehen.

Für Großbritannien bedeutet der Kampf gegen Russland eine weitere Runde in der Verfolgung einer uralten, nie aufgegebenen Agenda. Und für die deutschen Eliten bietet der ukrainische Hass auf alles Russische und seine Materialisierung im Krieg gegen Russland die Gelegenheit, ein altes Spiel wieder aufzunehmen und seinen damaligen Ausgang zu revidieren – ein revanchistisches Motiv, das als politische Revision der Niederlage des Zweiten Weltkriegs im Osten verstanden werden muss. Die überbordende Kriegsrhetorik und die intensive Kriegstüchtigkeit, die heute in Deutschland so auffällig sind, lassen sich anders kaum erklären.

It's finally happened. Enough time has passed, enough other scenes have come and gone in the meantime, that I can be legitimately nostalgic for vaporwave. Not like, ａｅｓｕｔｈｅｔｉｋｋｕ ironic nostalgic, but just baseline regular nostalgic for the (sunset) golden days of the nostalgia-est of nostalgia genres.

Todo ser aprenderá / a ter as estrelas como guia…

Though I'm sure somewhere out there there's young folk born too late to have caught anything to do with vaporwave, and who now feel nostalgia for the early vapor scene while having never been there. This thought makes me happy.

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Music that was too online

This is a good video for Internet history, randy gives an informed account of the music genre behind the memes and just how quietly influential and trend-setting it was. She missed discussing also that it was born streaming-native, and how new that was at the time. During the vaporwave era the concept of “album” had already been fatally wounded by large playlists, shuffle listening, and incipient algorithmic picks based on listening habits—we would religiously endeavour to connect every mp3 player software we had to last.fm, lest our precious play statistics not get logged, “wasting” a listen—but everyone was still downloading MP3s and listening from their on-device collections. Vaporwave seemed born youtubeing the way that horses are born walking. It was tailor-made for “Late Night Tokyo Summer 2h” compilations that you would put randomly and leave playing in the background. This is so normal now that I struggle to convey how much of a new thing it was; vaporwave felt fake and like a meme because it was an online thing. When lofi hip-hop exploded into the world a few years later, right when the world needed it the most, the reason I kept thinking of lo-fi as “vaporwave but she's happy after transition” wasn't anything to do with the musical similarities between the genres, but because of how much both were online-native, streaming-oriented, Internet-scene genres.

One might think it's ironic that two genres obsessed with analog artefacts and physical media distortion were actually such hypermodern digital cloudborn scenes, but of course that was the entire point.

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Madeleines at the edge of your vision

Also missing was that for us natives (millenials) how many layers of liminality that nostalgia had. Much of the nostalgia-play in vaporwave was direct, it was lampshading emotional icons of our teens (mario tunes, windows 95 sound effects etc.) by adding a heavy goo of ostranenie on top, the resulting alienation reflecting the social alienation everyone felt after the End of History ended. And much of it was the anemoia, the nostalgia for something you never experienced—I'm far from the only girl who's heavily anemoic for being a plastic-love sparkly dress urban chic easy woman dancing the nightlife in Bubble Era Japan, despite the fact that at the time I was a child in a rural mountain town the exact opposite side of the world wearing the wrong gender.

But most of it was about the tension that was right on the edge between having experienced and not experienced. It was getting little details that were at the fringes of our lived experiences, that we touched upon indirectly, but never gave a thought about, and putting that on a (faux Greek plastic) pedestal for observation. Vaporwave queered the binary between nostalgia and anemoia: cultural spaces briefly brushed by your consumption habits years ago were rewritten as landmarks to your particular life-story, while the most familiar parts of your history were rendered alien and creepy and estranged.

For example: I had never listened to citypop before future funk brought it to everyone's attention, except it was also what I grew up thinking of as “the type of j-pop they use in anime and tokusatsu songs”, which means it had been a seminal part of my childhood all along, but only like, specific versions of it. The “UFO” song that that one pair of aidoru-impersonating sisters would sing every Imin Matsuri, that kind of thing. I still distinctly remember my shock when the wave of what I thought of as “new style” anime came along—that was Naruto, One Piece and Bleach—because suddenly the musical style of anisong had changed overnight, leaving me bereft of that particular high I'd get from the songs in Sekai Ninja Sen Jiraiya, Tenkū Senki Shurato, obviously Sailor Moon etc. I had never experienced citypop; at the same time I was intimately familiar with citypop, I could sing several citypop songs before I even knew Japanese.

Similarly, like most people who live in Most Of The World, I had never been to an USA-style shopping mall. The equivalent in my country and social class hit us as “fancy”—curated, full of cops, above all financially inaccessible—in a way completely alien to the USA teens hanging out at the mall, who would never begin to dream a context where “McDonalds at the mall” was a fancy rich people thing you might experience once on vacations with your rich aunt and you'd talk about to your schoolmates with the reverence one talks about an once-in-a-lifetime trip to Disneyland. So the “empty mall” melancholic ostranenie shouldn't have hit me.

Except of course I knew the USA mall intimately, from dubbed sitcoms playing on the background during lunch, from low-budget Saturday Morning USA cartoons that were a precursor of Tiktok feeds and AI slop with their recycled animation loops and reused plots and unchanging status quo, from the strange funhouse mirror of real-life Brazilian high-school dynamics that was fictional USA high-school dynamics, as filtered with a 10-years delay by theatre kids turned into television writers with a grudge against “jocks” (a category we didn't have).

Most of all I knew the “mall as third-place to hang out” from suggestion, from connecting the dots through its inversions and parodies and distortions: the way it appears in Japanese-produced americana like Earthbound, for example, or in the original zombie movie by Romero, and a thousand other B horrors I watched religiously with my cool madrinha on Coffin Joe's Cine Trash. The USA mall was defined by implication, by its absence.

🏬 👩‍🚀 🔫 👩‍🚀 “Wait a minute, the shopping mall is empty?” “Always has been.”

As a genre defined by its interest in cultural artefacts only ever experienced indirectly, vaporwave is weirdly meaningful music for everyone in the Global South; its referents were already estranged for all of us in the periphery of the world, living stuck halfway between the material reality surrounding our bodies and the conceptual reality we got from Imperial media, both of which felt both native and foreign at once. When you exist in two places at the same time you're a kind of ghost, and ghosts are attracted to haunting music.

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A soundtrack of personal mythology

Finally, the throw-everything-at-a-wall nature of the overload of samples and reused fetishistic symbols meant that vaporwave often felt targeted for you in particular. It's like cold reading in fortune-telling.

My brief time at the USA was defined much more by the extinct Google Phoenix than Mountain View itself, whatever bond I made to the land was between me and the desert hills of Arizona, surrounded on all sides by sprawl of what is probably the worst city in the world. I was left with an unexplainable affection for Arizona, and the biggest symbol of it for me was the Arizona Green Tea, which was so cheap at the time and fit that era of my life so perfectly. I can't even drink it anymore cos I'm vegan now, and I certainly will never be able to step in the USA safely again, so Arizona Green Tea is the ultimate symbol of unattainable nostalgia. How did vaporwave know?? :surprised_pikachu:

(or was it the idolatry of Arizona Green Tea in vapor aesthetics that rewrote my memories, giving it a larger space in my recollections of the Google Phoenix era than it actually had in reality? It's impossible to know, which means it adds up to the same.)

Nostalgia has since became the normal modus operandi of consumerism, in a kind of desperate, child-like denial of the return of fascism. But back when vaporwave did nostalgia, the subculture had noticed this tendency when it was still an incipient little whisper, and immediately pushed it up to 11, on purpose. Not so much as a political project of “criticism” per se but mostly to see what happened; to see what it would feel like; to indulge. The connection to accelerationism isn't unmotivated: vaporwave criticised consumerism by surrendering to it all the way. Wouldn't it be nice to somehow live in the palm-tree beaches of those old TV commercials? No; upon a moment's reflection, it would be depressing as fuck; but what if we went there anyway. The next 15 years would be defined by entertainment megacorps slowly milking that idea bit by bit, when vapor had already explored every conceptual nook and corner of the nostalgia-space within 6 months of its arrival. Punk has struggled with being dead since at least half of its existence, but vaporwave was born dead; it's an undead genre from the start, zombies drifting blankly at the bankrupt mall they had only ever seen on TV.

Feel free to spray-paint these on cop cars, embroider them on the backs of tokkōtai uniforms of your all-girl biker gangs, etc.

Notice that reading 法 as “fa” and interpreting it as “fascism” is non-standard, and a borrowing from Mandarin. I think it works well with the meaning of 法 too, but if you're using those slogans you'll need furigana. If you want clarity you might want to just replace the kanji by katakana ファ (反ファ = hanfa is already established, or maybe gloss the entire 反法 as アンティファ). I'm not very satisfied with any of these solutions, but most of the others I think work well. 也 in a yojijukugo is nonstandard, as is the go'on reading “e”, but I couldn't resist the direct parallel with Kurmancî.

• 反法警報 hanfa-keihō, Alerta antifascista
• 全警凶人 zenkei-kyōjin, All cops are bastards
• 全警標的 zenkei-mokuhyō, All cops are targets
• 恋同行罪 rendō-kōzai, Be gay do crimes
• 抗戦命也 kōsen-mei'e, Berwxedan jîyan e
• 夜友暗抱 yayū-anpō, Die Nacht ist unsere Freundin und ihre Finsternis umarmt uns
• 民合無敵 mingō-muteki, El pueblo unido jamás será vencido
• 反法雁行 hanfa-gankō, Faşizme karşı omuz omuza
• 放火全獄 hōka-zengoku, Feuer und Flamme allen Knästen
• 戦女生女 senjo-seijo, Frauen, die kämpfen, sind Frauen, die leben
• 妄動必覚 bōdō-hikkaku, Fuck around and find out
• 女命自由 jo-mei-jiyū, Jin jiyan azadî
• 無境無国 mukyō-mukoku, No border no nation
• 不義不平 fugi-fuhei, No justice, no peace
• 突破絶不 toppa-zeppu, No pasarán
• 無君無臣 mukun-mushin, No servants no masters (*actually present in Chinese anarchist Bào Jìngyán in the 3rd century!)
• 単答革命 tantō-kakumei, One solution: revolution
• 衆全我無 shūzen-gamu, Para todos todo, para nosotros nada
• 和舎争堂 washa-sōdō, Peace to the huts, war to the palaces
• 我全反法 gazen-hanfa, Siamo tutti antifascisti
• 不舞不革 fubu-fukaku, Without dance no revolution

サムライスピリッツ・『自然の宴』篠笛の楽譜

Adapted as closely as possible from the booklet of the first OST CD: https://musescore.com/user/119935283/scores/34682984

To circumvent the various restrictions of musescore dot com (e.g. transpose without logging in), you can also download the Musescore file here . (If I forget to update this version in the future, ping me on mirrorwitch (at) transmom (dot) love .)

2h7min, dir David Leitch

I came into this just for Ryan Gosling, but this quickly has become one of my favourites.

Ryan Gosling plays Colt Seavers, a stuntman who makes his return from an accident that nearly killed him – to a movie directed by his Jody Moreno, his once-girlfriend, where he's tasked with finding a missing movie star and uncovering a terrible conspiracy.

Almost nothing is said of the physical impact of his injuries, just the emotional impact. Well – unless you count his “it all hurts” monologue. Thematically, it fits the gung ho “thumbs up” stunt man image – instead it uses the romantic moments between Colt and Jody to change up the pace.

Still – it is a tremendously fun film with a lovely emotional heart and some great stunt work.