anmechokola

[anmechokola]

I still can’t believe Ivankov is a real character. Like, he’s queer. They’re an armed resistance fighter. She went to jail for crimes against the government. He started a secret drag club there. They’re canonically the queen of the queers. They survived the hunger games. He has blackmail on one of the former warlords and is the sister-in-law of another. They use all pronouns. She uses no pronouns. Their gender cannot be contained by a single pronoun so vhey made their own. They canonically go to war on high-heels, acrylic nails and fishnet stockings. He’s the human embodiment of HRT. They’re the trusted friend and ally of the most dangerous man in the world. She can literally command armies. There’s an entire island of queer people who’ve sworn loyalty to him. They fear no god they ARE their own god absolutely amazing character in a shonen manga 10/10 will never be replicated again HEEEEE HAW!!!

[anmechokola]

Me @ myself when I have to deal with real life problems: I am not engaged for this level of engagement.

[anmechokola]

Introducing the phrase "found family" to fandom spaces was a mistake. Now half of fandon wants to force their "found families" into neat little boxes like "this is the dad, this is the mum, this is the fun uncle, these ones are siblings", even though the entire POINT of found family as a concept was to reject traditional family structures as the norm and rigid ideas of what a family even is, and then they get big mad whenever even dares suggest something romantic or sexual could happen between two completely unrelated mature adult characters they've arbitrarily decided are "parent/child" or "siblings" based on basically NOTHING in canon and start accusing that potential relationship of being incestuous. That's not how that works! That's not how any of this works!!

[anmechokola]

glam metal modern but also your contractor is going to jail dawg

Sometimes a house is so ugly, disgust boomerangs back into a form of respect.

This is a rare phenomenon, one which should be treated seriously. I've been looking at ugly houses professionally for almost a decade now and I can say with confidence that there are only a handful of true goose eggs that meet the mark. This house -- this remarkable, revolting house -- located, of all places, in Randolph County, North Carolina, is perhaps the finest goose egg a rogue and most certainly confused contractor could possibly lay.

Yeehaw, man. For the curious, the house is on the market for over 500 grand despite being badly sited and measly 2600 square feet. Most of that is devoted to the lawyer foyer which is not the choice I would personally make, but hey, to each their own.

Most of the houses on McMansion Hell these days are submissions from members of the McMansion Hell Patreon, either in our discord server or on our livestreams. This one, however was a total fluke. I came across it by accident because my brother is looking to move to the area in order to be closer to my folks. (I doubt he'd be interested in something this, uh, unique.)

Now, in all these years, I've never devoted an entire post to the exterior of a house. As they say, there's a first time for everything. There is so much going on with this house, all of it in direct opposition to the concept of taste, it requires a deeper investigation than the initial exterior image usually allows. (Also the entire interior is, as one might expect, entirely dark gray, complete with that awful washed out laminate flooring.)

(here is a sneak peek inside. the rest is not really important nor interesting.)

Anyway, without further ado, let's hit it from the top.

First off, no, I don't know what is inside this house's giant, hammerhead-esque forehead. It's not supported by anything so my assumption is, well, nothing. They put this in there for the sheer aesthetic love of the game.

Second, we have to talk about the siding. It's vinyl, and $500 grand is firmly in Hardie®™© Board territory. You can already start to see it ripple against the cornice, which is probably fine. The cornices are painted black in a cartoony, Roy Lichtenstein fashion, that is, if Roy Lichtenstein was drunk. The can lights are a nice touch. They help highlight important parts of the facade, such as:

The vinyl siding and black trim will continue until morale improves. Also, I zoomed out here to include the forehead (fivehead?) just because the scale is INSANE -- that's like a 50-50 wall-to-fivehead ratio. Honestly, even though things in the world are pretty dire, I wouldn't trust that cantilever with my life.

The window layout on this thing makes me wonder if the people who put it together have eyes that can see and a brain that connects to them. Now, I'm not going to invoke the Greek orders or anything, but I am going to say that every single architectural rule is being brazenly broken here. Total impunity. The window and door don't line up at the top, which is the bare minimum of common decency. Then there's that little guy pulling a Leeroy Jenkins up in the corner. You go dude.

The trim on these masses is starting to look AI generated but it's probably just the HDR every realtor uses. The FaceTune of the field. Anyway, I think it's a bad idea to put what looks like builder grade wood flooring on the outside of a house. It's giving mold. It's giving sunbleaching. It's giving Etsy.

As we can see, another familiar McMansion Hell enemy has also made an appearance: the prairie mullion window. There is no reason to use this window unless it involves building a fake bungalow, but the worst possible place to use it is in this particular situation. It's the only window with white mullions, it looks weird with the siding, and it's not exactly """modern""" or whatever this house is supposed to be.

(Often I wonder if some people believe that modernism is just "doing some stuff with squares" and the more squares there are the more modernist it is. Probably not true, but then again, I'm not the one pulling massive profit on houses that look like doo doo so jokes on me.)

Zooming out again because context still matters even in the most nonsensical situations. The funny thing about this house is that the only normal part of it is the front door and even then... what?? Also, look at that siding-less patch of brick on the right. As though to say: haha! Finally, I love how the stairs lead down into a bunch of rocks. Serves you right!

Thanks to advanced screenshotting technology, we can see that there are also prairie mullions on these other windows, it's just that they're a more reasonable black. Don't worry though, the windows are still offensive. They're two windows stuck together in order to give the impression of a single continuous one. (Remember the inside shot?) Nice try, bucko. Second, why don't the two windows meet where that little band of siding is? Well, we all know the answer to this question. (We don't, in fact, know the answer to this question.)

This is my favorite part of the house. It's almost good, to me, which is why I saved it for last. I have no idea what the hell that glossy composition book siding is but I love it. I've never seen it before. I also like how they're doing a weird entablature-quoin combo thing with it, but only on the right side of the house. There's some great five-cornice action going on but, thanks to the precedents set by truly mid postmodernism, it works.

Unfortunately there are some downsides here. What's the deal with that tiny, skinny stone? brick? veneer? Second, why is the siding just hanging off the edge like that? That whole little section where the three (four?) cladding meet is precipitous. The cheapo off-white developer special garage door with the little trad elements is a nice gesture, one that tells you life has no meaning. Why bother?

Anyway, after all that, if we put it all together again, we get this:

If you like this (unusual) post and want more like it, support McMansion Hell on Patreon for as little as $1/month for access to great bonus content including a discord server, extra posts, and livestreams. (Don’t worry! This doesn’t adjust for inflation! Now’s the perfect time to join!) By the way: new subscribers can buy a year of McMansion Hell for just $12!

Not into recurring payments? Try the tip jar! McMansion Hell stocks, much like mortgage-backed securities only ever go up!

[anmechokola]

just found out in medieval france, having a lion on your coat of arms was so prevalent that there was literally a colloquial proverb to clown on knights for being basic and not having a real coat of arms. the hate game was so strong back then. imagine medieval hate anons

[anmechokola]

[anmechokola]

It is not enough to get into a comfy sleeping position- one must go through several and spin like a rotisserie chicken to arrive at the position you started with.

[anmechokola]

For all that "Criss Angel is a Douche Bag" is not the best episode of Supernatural, it is an interesting one. The bleak moral implications of the ending aside, the juxtaposition between Sam's and Dean's views is so worth digging into.

Because first you have Sam, who now that he's embraced he's a hunter now, doesn't necessarily want to do this forever. And he's got sort of a idealized version of it, that if he can get the worst of the evil taken out (Lilith) maybe he could go back to a more normal life. It's so John-coded. That they both only enter the life because of a tragedy and revenge, when they were perfectly happy living a regular life prior to that. And once their version of the mission is over, they have this dream they could just settle down and be normal. They're either intensely in the life (no friends, no settling anywhere too long like how John passed onto Sam and Sam onto Goul!Adam in 4x19), or intensely not in the life (Stanford!Sam) and there's literally no middle ground. No flexibility. For all that Sam has shades of gray when it comes to people/monsters, it shows how much he's like John with how how he structures his hunting life. And to a degree, how sheltered he is to think in way compared to Dean.

Because Dean isn't so idealized to think that hunting is something you can stop. He's watched revenge tear John and Sam apart. And while he wants revenge, he internalized that if there's evil to fight and people he could save, then they should be out there, more than John or Sam did. (Maybe because of the hurt he experienced as losing Mary and losing OG John, and he never wants anyone else to go through that.) That it's a fairy tale to think that taking out the big bad means that hunting is over. It's unclear if Sam thinks that taking Lilith down will be such a big blow that hunting won't be as necessary (because they'll be few enough monsters per remaining hunters that they could hunt little to not at all). Or if his personal responsibility to hunting will be over, and other hunters are out there to save people, but that's no longer his problem. But Dean is not so naïve to think that he could fully settle down knowing there's people dying that he could save. Or that he is he stays in the life he's not going to be hands on and reckless (or at least with low enough value of his own life over others) that it won't eventually get him killed (again). It's such disconnect between Sam's optimism and Dean's pessimism towards hunting. And it's interesting in the context of how the rest of the series goes with that mindset in mind, even chipping away at it slightly at times. That Dean tries to settle with a woman that knows about hunting so he can keep her safe openly. While Sam does settle down again with Amelia and treats hunting as an old part of his life he'll never address again, like Jess all over again, but goes back when Dean returns without a tragic revenge story. That Dean is willing to settle down in the bunker, because if you're going to hunt you take the joys in life where you can, nice kitchen, having a room full of creature comforts (also not surprising when Dean had to take his joys where he could get them when he never had the childhood Sam had). And Sam does settle in the bunker, but because his dial is stuck on either a hunting/not hunting setting, he never decorates his room, like he can't quite settle in and accept this is home and permanent.

Now a good ending to SPN would have fully contradicted Dean's statement in this episode about expecting to die young because there's no happy future growing old. And contradicted Sam's dread at ending up old and alone like Jay if he stayed in the life (because you can't tell me blurry wife and Dean jr is all the companionship Sam needs). But that's a whole different "tripping at the finish line" kind of conversation about the finale.

[anmechokola]

all politics about ai aside if you use it to create fanwork you're just a fucking dweeb

[anmechokola]

[anmechokola]

shorthands for dumbassery that i have grown to love deeply

"how dare you say we piss on the poor" in response to someone misinterpreting your post

"_ isnt gonna fuck you" for suck up behavior

"woah. should we tell everyone? should we throw a party?" for who the fuck cares

"and what if the world was made of pudding" for when would this ever matter.

"and sharks are smooth both ways" for a group of people heatedly arguing with 1 guy who is fucking with them all

".. but its about a witch in the alps finding her lost cat" for someone trying to sanitize something to the point of absurdity

[anmechokola]

i think i may have accidentally gotten my roommate into petplay

[anmechokola]

"READ MY DNI" no. use your block button like an adult. i'm not scrolling through the many-paragraphs-long pinned posts of every blog i reblog something from. if you insist certain types of people aren't welcome in the notes of your posts then it's your responsibility to curate that. or choose a closed social media platform like facebook or instagram. or go and live in a barn away from humanity if you really don't like sharing the world with people who are different from you

[anmechokola]

(SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 1152)

Alternate chapter title: Loki and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Like Saul, Gaban also says 不死身 (fujimi) in relation to the indestructible bodies (not immortality as in long life, more like invulnerability to damage, like Marco) of the God's Knights and yes, sadly, the counter to it seems to be Conqueror's Haki. So the fights against them are going to be limited to Luffy, Zoro and probably Loki and Sanji

So what does Loki mean when he says he wasn't able to put his power into words? Because Gaban was still pretty vague, he only said to keep in mind how to use Conqueror's. Does Loki know whatever Advanced Conqueror's is needed but has never been told about it before? I guess he could've unlocked it during that very bad day and hasn't had anyone to ask about it since. I'm assuming this is when he had the prior experiences fighting the God's Knights. When they show up in Elbaf now he's already chained up and basically just gets the shit kicked out of him

(chapters 678 and 1152)

How badly do you guys think Zoro is gonna take being scolded like that? I've seen people comment about how he's been spiraling a bit since almost dying in Wano, so I don't think getting told by the former left hand of the Pirate King that he isn't taking his job seriously is gonna go down well

About Sanji and the damn Conqueror's Haki. He's gonna have it too, it just wouldn't make sense for him not to have it. I personally do not like the idea, and I think it doesn't match his personality at all. However, the way Oda has been using haki in the story (basically as powerscaling) means that Sanji has to have it too. He's supposed to be on equal footing with Zoro, they're the wings of the future Pirate King after all

[The reason I really don't like how Conqueror's Haki is being used, aside from the fact that not every single strong person in the world needs to have "the qualities of a king", is that you have to be born with it, and to me that just goes against the whole premise in One Piece about not being defined by other people. I thought lineage wasn't supposed to be important, which is why the Celestial Dragons thinking they have an inate superiority that is granted to them from birth is framed as a bad thing. What does it say about training and dedication and will that the only way to defeat these villains is with something that is outside of your control?]

Regardless of my feelings about Conqueror's, though, the fact that Gaban doesn't specify how many have it (just that it's more than one) and that we don't actually see what he says to Sanji (that panel to the left with just his face is very specifically placed, it suggests to me that Gaban does say something, but Loki's shouting is getting in the way), plus how the only way to fight these guys seems to involve Conqueror's means that it's more a matter of when Sanji will unlock it, not if

When Hajrudin says Loki already did "that", does he just mean betraying Elbaf, or does he think Loki also sided with the government? Loki already seemed aware in the flashback that Harald was making deals with the WG, but what about the other giants? I'm wondering how this is all going to play out, because if everyone was aware that Harald was working with the WG, then why didn't they just try to keep it up after he died? Supposedly everyone thinks it's Loki's fault, so the WG could have just tried to keep doing what they were doing with Jarul. Maybe the giants couldn't decide on a representative, and Jarul really does seem more aware than the others about what actually happened that day, so maybe he wasn't all that willing

I wonder when was the last time anyone ever actively wanted Loki around. Everyone in Elbaf has hated him since before he was born, he was rejected both by his idol and the girl he fell in love with, and everyone blames him for the death of his own father, the only giant so far who has been shown actually liking him. Aside from Shaggy, Luffy's gotta be the first in more than a decade, right? Speaking of which

(chapters 1134 and 1152)

Seems like a similar reaction to me. I'm guessing he was some kind of embarrassed at being so openly regarded with positive feelings, like when Shaggy called him kind

This translation is different from the TCB ones, but I do think the official makes more sense. He's speaking directly to Loki in that first bubble

エルバフはお前の事いらなそうだし

It sounds like Elbaf doesn't want you

The し (shi) particle indicates he's listing off reasons, and he uses it in the other sentences too

おれにとっちゃ面白ェし

I think (you're) interesting/funny

何かあったらブッ飛ばすし

If anything happens, I'll send (someone) flying/kick ass

Since no other person or pronoun is used in the other two sentences, it's simpler to assume that he keeps talking to Loki, especially because this is a list of reasons, it's the same panel and he's looking in the same direction. If he was saying "If he (Loki) does anything, I'll beat him up", like in the TCB scans, then it would make more sense for it to happen in a different panel, or having him call out someone else's name

That's probably the same abnormal haki that Gaban was recognizing last chapter, then. Which would also explain why Jarul seemed more angry than surprised when he felt Imu's haki, since he was also in the castle that day. It's weird that Loki doesn't seem to recognize it, though, since he was also there that day. Last chapter he just says "whose preposterous haki is that" like he's never felt it before

Depending on how long this flashback takes, it's gonna be really funny that only three minutes will have passed in the present, and considering that it's the first chapter and there's already a flashback inception going on...

[Also, it's funny to tell a guy who calls himself the Sun God to swear by the name of god to speak the truth]

Ok but... where did Loki come from? Jarul is on the ship to the left, and Loki is falling from an arc coming from the right, so did he really just... fall out of the sky?

(chapters 1143 and 1152)

Did Oda change the design or does Loki not have Ragnir yet?

He's also going out of his way to show people disrespecting Loki to his face. Whether by nature or nurture, that boy never really stood a chance, yeah? His father was apparently an asshole in his own youth too, and people have treated him like trash his whole life. Also, by that 45 giant years = 15 human years logic, he's just 16 human years old in the flashback and 21 in the present, same age as Zoro and Sanji

(chapters 1151 and 1139)

I don't really subscribe to the idea that Harald was Domi Reversi'd here, since he doesn't seem to have horns or wings, nor is he that much taller than someone with Ancient Giant blood would already be, I think. For that same reason, none of the guards seem to be transformed either, not tall enough, no wings etc, but we don't know enough about that move yet to say definitively

The pentagram that the Romance Dawn trio and Road find in the throne room does seem to be in the exact same place as shadowy Harald is, though, so something involving Imu did happen there. It still begs the question of why this one specifically doesn't fade

Gaban thinking it's been only 3 or 4 years when it's actually been 10 seems to align with the theory that time passes slower in Elbaf, which would be the reason why there was that warning from Louis Arnot about not staying in Elbaf for too long. The theory would also be a nice reference to when we first met the giants in Little Garden, a prehistoric island, almost like time moved slower there and never caught up to the rest of the world. It would also explain why Imu showed up telling the God's Knights that they were taking too long when it hadn't even been a full day since they arrived. At least the Straw Hats don't have a habit of staying too long in any given island (I think Wano was the longest they've ever spent in one place, aside from the timeskip?), so if the theory is true then not much time will have passed before they leave

The arm retcon! "Help I made this character way too unreasonably powerful but I already wrote him getting his arm chewed off by a seaking that a fresh-faced Luffy could already defeat in a single punch, how do I fix this?" lol

The mark doesn't look anything like Sommers' one, and only slightly like the symbol on their armbands. I already wondered last chapter if there are different "tiers", of sorts, for the contracts that people make with Imu. So like the giants were involuntarilly signed on, so they get raw power and the indestructible body, but no common sense. The God's Knights have more... autonomy? Probably voluntarilly made the pact, get the indestructibility but keep their wits. Then the Elders get all of that, plus immortality. If I'm right, then maybe there's another tier just for the mark that lets people travel through the Abyss. We don't actually know if it has anything to do with Imu, but it would make more sense if it did, since it would explain why he let his arm be taken by the seaking after Luffy ate the Nika fruit, so Shanks could keep him (and the fruit) hidden and safe. It would either have to be a mark that doesn't grant a person the indestructible body (otherwise why didn't his arm just grow back) or there's something special about seakings

Shanks says that his life changed completely, and that his original plan was just to be a carefree pirate, and Gaban's response is to call him 運命の子 (unmei no ko), or child of fate, so like "fate" was never really gonna let him live the life he wanted

To me this also reads like being Pirate King isn't something he actually wants. And he suddenly decided to go after the One Piece as soon as he saw Gear5 Luffy, like he was just waiting for Luffy to get strong enough, like he's accepted being the halfway point between Roger and Luffy. I'm just saying, it would be a nice rounded ending to the story if Shanks got the metaphorical crown from Roger and then Luffy got it from him, like their straw hat

Then Shanks can finally peace off into the sunset with Buggy like he originally wanted

(chapters 1152 and 1130)

So the question here is: whose fruit is that? Is it Loki's, or Luffy's? If it's Loki's, then he probably steals it from whoever is silhouetted, which probably isn't Loki himself because no horns and also why would he be shouting it like that. We don't know yet if Loki had already eaten the fruit at this point in the timeline, but I'm guessing not, because the story the giants tell is that Loki killed Harald because he wanted the fruit

Granted, Elbaf as a whole has been very big on "not everything is what it seems at first glance" and the giants have been shown to be prone to their own lies and fearful gossip, so we should take that claim with a grain of salt. But if he had already eaten the fruit, wouldn't the others know about it? It's not like Loki is very discrete

(chapter 1054)

If it's Luffy's fruit, then how did it end up on a Cipher Pol ship where even the agents had no idea how important it was? If the God's Knights and/or Imu were that close to the Nika fruit, I can't see how they'd lose it. Though if it is, it would explain how Shanks knew to go looking for it, assuming he targeted the ship deliberately to get it. This flashback happened 14 years ago, and 13 years ago Shanks started using Foosha Village as his base (1 year from when they arrived + 10 years before Luffy sets out + 2 years from time skip). I can see it taking about a year to track down the fruit, get it, and travel all the way from the New World to the East Blue. If he did have that fruit for a year, though, what was he waiting for? Was he trying to keep it hidden from the WG? Did he think about eating it? (as a child of fate, or against his fate?) I don't think he would at the time, since he had the mark on his arm and would essentially be giving the WG the fruit they so badly wanted

"Before it's too late" is such a classic sentence said riiiight before we cross the threshold into "too late", so I'm assuming what Shanks had to say involves whatever is happening to Harald right now, especially because that line was immediately followed by the haki surge from the castle. This just brings up so many questions, though

If Shanks and Harald were there at the same time, then there's a 10 year window during which Shanks spent time in Marijoa (from 24 years ago after Roger's execution to this flashback from 14 years ago), and also for some reason got into a fight with Teach and got those scars. I wonder if those two things are related somehow

During the time he spent there, Shanks apparently managed not only to get a tattoo (possible transportation through the abyss and consequently possibly meeting Imu) and gather enough information to pass along in warning. I don't suppose either of those things is something easily obtained, so how did he even get them to trust him that much? Did he actually want to be a part of the Figarland family? Were they blinded by the fact that he has Celestial Dragon blood?

If he did in fact meet Imu in Marijoa, wouldn't he recognize their haki in Elbaf? Wouldn't he warn Gaban about it?

Why does every fact we learn about Shanks just raise more questions, the sneaky bastard

<- chapter 1151 analysis

[anmechokola]

pronouns d. ace ~ for an art trade with alam on twt :)

[anmechokola]

HAPPY PRIDE!!! I love them,,,