lochnessie

[lochnessie]

"you should be at the club" I should be working on my fanfic

[lochnessie]

we are so back

[lochnessie]

This is a legitimate and damaging cultural shift for all involved parties and it needs to be addressed.

[lochnessie]

drinking water when I have a headache should give instant relief. it should go away. what's even the point of drinking water if it can't do that

[lochnessie]

[lochnessie]

why would you ever outsource fun to chatgpt? are you stupid? you can make mediocre shit by yourself too.

[lochnessie]

“I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it’s thrilling. We’re all enlivened by it. We don’t have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water.”

— Marie Howe, Boston University’s 2016 Theopoetics Conference  (via mothersofmyheart)

[lochnessie]

Kinda horrified at all the people talking about using scratched up non-stick pans and not realising that Teflon and other coatings are so very carcinogenic. PFAS (carcinogenic forever chemicals) build up in your body like lead or mercury.

^ Don't fucking use this ^

I need young people and the older ones too apparently, to invest in at least one good thick based stainless steel pan. It's better for cooking and it won't give you cancer.

Stainless steel pan? You can scrub that shit with a steel scourer... If stuff won't come off? You can soak it in a laundry active oxygen cleaner for an hour or two and it will come right off, then rinse with clean water and you're golden. You want to whisk your eggs in the pan? Literally no downside, but in a non-stick pan you get CANCER flakes.

[lochnessie]

FINALLY

[lochnessie]

If she was gone . . . really, really gone, then I could be a normal person again. I could be sad and then put it behind me. I could be free. If she was still alive, still trapped, then I was still trapped, too. I still had to try and save her. I would still be a prisoner of hope.

(through tears) I love 90s children's books.

[lochnessie]

in the hunger games audiobooks the narrator actually sings all the songs instead of just reading the lyrics out, something i find myself really appreciating and valuing a lot more as i'm forced to sit through whatever the hell this is

[lochnessie]

as a fat person who's always clamoring for more interesting fat characters in media, I honestly think one of my all-time favorite depictions of a fat character is Jumba from the original Lilo and Stitch - both visually and personality wise

from a design perspective, even though he's an alien, he has so many little anatomy quirks that make him a more believable fat character than many fat human designs in other media. I love the realistic sag and layering of the fat on his arms, the lack of neck definition, the rim of chub around his face and upper back, the way his back is rounded. his clothes pull taut and pinch in anatomically accurate places (e.g. shoulders are firmer = smoother outlines, the sides and back are squishier = bumpier outlines).

and he's stylized so well! all these great details boiled down to some simple shapes and pen strokes. IMO the Lilo and Stitch art style is extremely appealing - it's warm and clean and visually pleasing, but every character is super unique. Jumba isn't supposed to be pretty, but even though he's a very large, very fat, bald older guy who spends most of the movie in crop tops, the way he's stylized and staged makes it clear the audience is supposed to find him interesting to look at, and variably intimidating/cool/powerful/capable. he's often funny, but the physical aspect of his comedy is derived from being so hefty the other characters struggle to prevent him from barreling ahead and doing whatever he wants; being fat makes him come off more in control of the funny situations he gets into, not less. also, because the art style is what it is, a lot of his character acting also just makes him look kind of cute ... though that's universal across the cast

I also really like the fact that his size clearly gives him both realistic advantages and realistic disadvantages. along with having a stronger sense of agency in the comedic scenes, his size in combination with his impulsivity also makes him a more intimidating antagonist. you never know what he's going to do, and his size makes it difficult for other characters to stop him when he's made up his mind. at the same time, it seems to take him longer to catch his breath, he sometimes grunts when moving around a lot to imply it takes more effort, and he clearly struggled to find clothes that fit him when putting together his disguise. I think it's awesome that the character's size impacts how he interacts with the world so much, and again, in relatable ways

and personality wise, it is ALWAYS great to see fat characters portrayed as intelligent - not only is Jumba an accomplished scientist, he's also crafty and witty! a few quiet scenes imply a philosophical side, as he ponders on Stitch's existence and feelings as a living weapon. with Stitch explicitly being made in his own image to an extent, I'd argue there's even room to interpret some of the things he says about Stitch being hints to how he sees himself; we never learn much about Jumba's past, but it's clear he's a social misfit and strongly defiant. I don't think it's a stretch to assume some of what he said to Stitch about being a monster who can never belong anywhere was intended to read as projection (which makes it all the more heartwarming when both of them find a place to belong on Earth)

it's also a nice twist that toward the end, Jumba is the one who is unexpectedly compassionate toward Nani, while Pleakley tries to urge him to ignore her. again alluding to a level of emotional depth and intelligence that is often missing from even well-intentioned depictions of fat people. his character isn't even fully explored, and yet he's one of the most dynamic and interesting supporting characters in a movie full of fantastic characters. the audience is expected to find him fascinating and even sort of mysterious, and he is!

the sequels and spinoffs were more merchandise-driven franchise fluff for kids than the artsy direction of the original movie, but even so, I remember Jumba went on to become Lilo's lovable, amoral uncle figure, which I also thought was so fun as a kid. I love that they committed to the fact that he was more caring and compassionate than he seemed. not only was he a cool evil mad scientist character, but he was also eventually ... a friend ...

and he was even gay

[lochnessie]

This is one of those true, declassified government things that always sounds made up but one of the things Henry Kissinger did with his career was use the CIA to help turn small, prosperous socialist nations into fascist dictatorships just to keep those nations powerless and possibly to keep socialist systems *looking* doomed and futile to the American public, like maybe just to scare Americans out of demanding better infrastructure or universal income. Yes it sounds like an insane conspiracy theory a maniac would invent. It also happened multiple times and several generations of people around the world are still living in misery because of it.

[lochnessie]

I fuckin get it girl

[lochnessie]

i love the -with mama trend but sometimes i get sad because that is clearly papa and he aint getting any credit raising those darn kids...

[lochnessie]

As a society we have benefited so much from successful public health measures that we now have the privilege of declaring that we must not need them anymore

Bitch before enriched flour, neural tube defects like spina bifida were far more common. Even now, spina bifida clinicians and researchers are begging to have salt and maize fortified to reach groups that don’t use as much flour. Before iodized salt, the United States had a fucking GOITER BELT. Eleven years after the introduction of fluoridated water, a city in Michigan found the rate of dental caries among school children dropped a staggering 60%— in an era where tooth decay regularly fucking killed people

I’m literally not even going to start on vaccines, which are among the most successful and robustly studied public health measures in world history

You might say “oh well today we all have access to vitamins and toothpastes and dentists so we don’t need those things in our food supplies” and boy do white people on social media loooove to fucking say that. But here’s the thing: no, people don’t all have easy access to those things. That’s privilege talking yet again