Twilight | ContraPoints - video essay mostly on dichotomy of dynamics in love and lust
I know Twilight but, hear me out - if you are into thinking about human nature, philosophy, love, sex, sm and more I highly recommend that video essay. I don't really like to give an outline, since the essay is journey of itself.
It was really good, many great points, many funny moments, solid work.
one point I liked was the point that many fantasies from women involve being strongly desired, and that incels are, in part, very frustrated that they've never felt desireable at all.
The observation that incels crave to be desired, made me empathize more with them - great observation.
Couple that with the expectation that you will be the one initiating every encounter and escalation.
Like, women have fantasies of being strongly desired, but imagine you've never felt desired in your entire life and you also are expected to always be the one to make the first move, to have to take positive action to even move from socially invisible to desired or rejected (and most often the latter).
Never read the books and not a huge fan of the movies (I guess I watch anything with vampires in). But somehow that essay connected Twilight with thoughts and concepts I was thinking a lot about lately. And I'm not sure how to feel about it, maybe I need to read more romance novels.
I enjoyed them in my teen years when I was head deep in my own agnst. As a guy, in fucking Russia. With how questionable these books are, there's that period when it just works. It was also a weirdly welcome change from sci-fi I usually read, there was some novelty in a genre I've never touched.