#IE 2014

[spencer-is-someone]

Me: having a good time exploring other fandom stuff outside of my comfort zone of sxf fandom

some random bitch: this woman sucks and has no chemistry with her husband and yaoi is god sorry not sorry

[nabaath-areng]

the best time to hide potentially fucking up mechanics due to heart rate issues is when everyone else is new lets fucking go

[mamawaffle]

My main issue with certain terms finally making it to the tumblr ecosystem is that the tumblr justice warriors got to them first and then everyone took those definitions and explanations as gospel

[ryanthedemiboy]

If NASCAR can make stock cars (this means chassis and shape that are the same as yours) that can go 200mph and wreck head-on and do a dozen flips in the air, and the worst that happens is a concussion, with the car even still almost intact, then you can make a street legal car do the same at 40% of that speed.

Here's one of the wrecks btw. He was taken to a local hospital for observation, not even a concussion (NASCAR reports injuries to everyone for transparency), and he raced the next week. (Although he did have a couple bruised eyes iirc)

He climbed out of the car almost completely under his own power.

[reinemichele]

"Was [character A] maximizing her girlboss potential by jabbing her finger into [character B]'s eye after she was stabbed in the eye with a pencil by [character C] relatively recently, as revenge for separating [character A] and [character D] who is dying of a mysterious incurable clone disease? :////"

Man who gives a fuck, [character C] stabbed [character E] with a piece of rebar, and [character E] broke into someone's home to pull the rebar out in their bathroom, and then went to a nightclub and cut off a guy's tail

[chase-solidago]

Invasive Species and Xenophobia

Invasive species are complicated! People have a lot of feelings about them, positive and negative. Are plants that move "invaders" "colonizing", "immigrants", "citizens"? What does it mean to kill species that are from somewhere else? What if that species legitimately makes a poor neighbor and causes extinctions in other, native species? This complex, culturally-loaded issue is a foundational issue behind a lot of plant conservation and restoration.

This is a juicy and still actively disputed topic! The Guardian recently had a big article on colonialism in Botany, (tbh her views are dated and reductive, imo) and it’s come up again this week, to much hostility (cw: reddit). Yes, my region's native plant restoration came from literal nazis, but also, the impacts of some invasive species are real, not figments of a racist imagination. How do we balance these issues? What does ethical invasive management look like?

Since it’s such a juicy topic, I wanted to offer a few fun readings to share:

The Native Plant Enthusiasm: Ecological Panacea or Xenophobia?, Gert Gröning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, 2004, Arnoldia.

THE CLASSIC 20th century German nazis and native plants paper. Made a huge splash when it came out, and you will still encounter people who paint all native plant stuff with this brush. Summary: yeah the nazis loved their native plants and used them as part of their conquering process. Also, the first prairie plantings ever, located in Chicago, were done by a racist probable-nazi for racist reasons, full stop. I’ll let him speak for himself: “The gardens that I created myself shall… be in harmony with their landscape environment and the racial characteristics of its inhabitants. They shall express the spirit of America and therefore shall be free of foreign character as far as possible… the Latin and the Oriental crept and creeps more and more over our land, coming from the South, which is settled by Latin people, and also from other centers of mixed masses of immigrants. The Germanic character of our race, of our cities and settlements was overgrown by foreign character. The Latin spirit has spoiled a lot and still spoils things every day.” - Jens Jensen

Botanical decolonization: rethinking native plants, Tomaz Mastnak, 2014, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

Rather than viewing native plant plantings as an act of racially-pure occupation, Mastnak positions native plants in California as a decolonization of the sub/urban lawn. Uses a lot of quotations from 16th century English philosopher Francis Bacon, and is heavy on the philosophical musings.

From killing lists to healthy country: Aboriginal approaches to weed control in the Kimberley, Western Australia by Bach et al., 2019, Journal of Environmental Management.

This paper talks through some of the native vs invasive debate, and offers a different perspective on how to approach to plant invasive management based on cultural relations, rather than country of origin or behavior.

Beyond ‘Native V. Alien’: Critiques of the Native/alien Paradigm in the Anthropocene, and Their Implications, Charles R. Warren, 2021, Ethics, Policy, & Environment

DENSE but thorough, if you want to follow the entire history of the native/invasive debate, this has you covered. The most interesting stuff, in my opinion, is the discussion of invasive denialism, IE: the impasse of “You’re just being racist!” Vs “You know nothing about ecology!” I recommend the Discussion, which starts on page 13.

[taylortruther]

also re: the racial component of TS/fan base, if you haven't you should watch Alex Avila's video on Taylor Swift, I think it was really well done

this is SO good. thank you SO much for this recommendation.

i really liked how avila noted how masterfully taylor blends authenticity and social normativity - "the reason taylor swift seems so authentic to young girls is because she's conforming to an image [of white patriarchal girlhood] that young women internalized from a young age." similarly, the popular feminism of 2014 (when 1989 was released) was flimsy and did not challenge patriarchal norms, and we see how she made feminism part of 1989's branding.

and he asks a question i often pose: is there anything subversive in idolizing the most popular cultural object? does poptimism (the critique of pop music as a serious form of art) simply reinforce existing power structures??

taylor swift and whiteness

understanding how someone becomes a legend and icon means understanding how they challenge, but also reinforce, the biases in society, which includes race, class, gender, and so forth. and "there IS something deeply white about [taylor's] image" (1:18:33). her image is cultural whiteness! taylor swift's relatability (which is and has always been part of her brand), her social capital, her social normativity, is directly tied to the neoliberal racial philosophy that, instead of calling whiteness superior, establishes whiteness as the norm (1:21:23).

millennials want celebrities to be morally pure. this is a mistake.

also - LOVE that he points out that millennials don't judge female celebrities by their sexuality or modesty anymore, but instead they judge based on political awareness, which is just another way of continuing the "patriarchal history of regulating narratives around women's actions" (1:42:39). avila focuses specifically on millennials here, cautioning us not to consider this a a sign of true political engagement from millennials. as he points out, systems of oppression adapt to our ever-changing culture. when we try to 'cancel' or 'hold a celebrity accountable' for their ideologies or missteps, sometimes it's because they're truly terrible, and other times it's because we hold women to "unrealistic standards of purity." ie, this isn't necessarily real political engagement, it is just another example of judging women. often it's both (pointing out missteps, and also being sexist.)

whiteness again

avila goes on to discuss how white women have long been held up as virtuous, moral centers of american families - and while this is a racist and sexist practice, given that woc aren't seen as virtuous, it also lays the foundation for why white women in particular dominate conversations about politics in the public sphere. it is an Event every time a white celebrity frames their political awakening as a personal, spiritual journey of self-realization. yes, this act is important, because women must learn about their own oppression, and talk about it, in order to educate others.

but when taylor (or any other famous white woman) frames politics solely through the personal, it relieves her of the obligation to critique systemic issues. her own political awakening is all that matters - she must prove her own political purity (instead of sexual purity, as before.) there is a deep problem in society demanding this, rather than larger systemic change, but we'll get to that later.

this personal political purity awakening earns her a lot of goodwill, but her resistance ends with herself. and this is a pattern that we see happen all the time, in what robin james calls "neoliberal resistance discourses" in pop: someone is damaged by oppression (sexism), she overcomes it brilliantly with an awakening (miss americana/lover/denouncing trump era), and she absorbs this goodwill into her brand. these individual damages and awakenings supposedly symbolize society's own awakening and resilience(!). (1:52:48)

🚨 some readers might be getting tired/annoyed at this; i can hear y'all saying "well, what do you even WANT from her omg!!!" just stay with me here. 🚨

she holds a mirror up to society, tho

what avila so brilliantly points out is that... this cycle of damages and resilience isn't helpful. it goes nowhere! and we are all at the mercy of the same patterns as taylor. it's not about taylor, it's about us, and how capitalism commodifies everything, including social movements! including personal 'goodness'! a neoliberal system wants individuals to care about their individual choices and looking like good individuals; it encourages the use of "purity tests" and "commodified algorithmic social movements" to discourage challenges to systemic issues (reminds me of the celebrity blackout situation earlier this year, and conversations we have about politics, well, daily on here.) and the pattern of a person failing politically as an individual is part of this machine. if we're too busy policing individuals for their purity, we won't ever organize together for shared material goals. unfortunately, unlike taylor swift, most of us are not extremely powerful, wealthy, and influential as individuals. she does have more power than us in this regard.

taylor as cultural hegemony

anyway, avila goes on to talk about how taylor had this musical renaissance with folklore, and became more honest about her masterminding her own career in midnights. she has shown herself not just to be a musical chameleon, but a cultural one as well, positioning herself as white teenage purity when the culture called for it (circa 2008-2010), neoliberal pop feminism (1989 -> lover), pandemic escapism (folkmore) - and the culture has become part of her brand, part of her music. music that is already heavily wrapped up in her own life. she is the brand she is the culture. of course she put the work in, and not just anyone could do this. but imo, her whiteness (which, again, gives her this "default" "neutral" background to work with) is part of this success. "sure, she's challenged the institution but all in the effort to become the new face of musical hegemony" (2:06:25.) she challenges systems to assimilate into them, or create them in a way that requires assimilation.

of course, this is all based on her REAL experiences, her REAL life. she is living her own life, and also living it in this metacognitive way that mirrors culture.

but we don't have to hate taylor, actually!

and MOST interestingly, avila closes out by suggesting: it's not actually super healthy to always be suspicious and critical of art (2:17:24.) yes, there is a long political history of "paranoid reading," of critique based on marx, freud, and nietzsche's philosophies. it is the basis of A LOT of our frameworks for thinking about the world, including art.

as i've said before, it's interesting to discuss taylor or celebrities because they hold a mirror up to society. but we can't just relentlessly critique ourselves - after all, the critique is supposed to protect us from being bad! the critique is what keeps us good! and it's why we project so much onto them (the celebrities, or "bad" people.)

this video dove into a term that may be new to a lot of people (i only learned of it recently) - "reparative reading." rather than relentlessly critique art or what-have-you, engage with it in ways that is "affirmative, creative, and caring." this does not mean you toss out critical readings - reparative readings can coexist, and give us hope, optimism, feelings of beauty/appreciation, and affirmation.

for example, it's why -while i enjoy critiquing taylor (or what she Represents) - i am also here to just... have fun. i don't want to linger 24/7 on her emissions, or what she hasn't done, or who she's friends with. it's also why, as a fan of color, i hate that she is often dismissed and minimized to "white musician making music for white women." i find affirmation in a lot of her music, regardless of her race; i find optimism and hope in the way women so deeply relate to her, and how queer fans (also like myself) relate to her! (which avila points out too 2:21:00.) it's why i stopped debunking stuff, because queerness - like any other aspect of the fandom - is such a critical, significant part of why her music is beloved. it's so important for people to recognize that she is more than just 'music for straight white heterosexual cisgender women.'

[sayruq]

This is all due to Hezbollah's operations at the border which they've helpfully summarised for us

According to the group, they've barely used 5% of their capabilities but it's still proving to be too much for Israel. The northern settlements have evacuated. They have lost billions of dollars in military equipment, installations, and bases (Hezbollah even destroyed an entire base before the temporary truce). Every attempt to try and rebuild its security along the border always ends the same way for Israel, ie a precision guided missile.

If war does break out, it wouldn't be surprising at all to Hezbollah. According to Nasrallah, the general secretary, they're engaging in a strategy called escalation ladder where one end of the ladder is peace and the other end is open war. Every day, Hezbollah's operations increase in intensity. The same goes for Israel who recently destroyed an entire southern Lebanese village, killing countless of civilians. Netanyahu has been publicly threatening war for a while now but that was just him bluffing. His war cabinet, as well as his coalition, seem far more eager. To put it simply, each side will escalate until they're truly at war.

Most of Israel's Brigades are in Gaza right now, 22 of them to be exact. It will be very difficult and costly to bring some of them to the border for war. It might be possible that Israel intends to end the war on Gaza to focus on Hezbollah. They've been forced back to the negotiating table after storming off on the 2nd. Hamas has made it clear that they won't exchange any prisoners without a comprehensive ceasefire, aka no more temporary truces.

A war with Lebanon will be disastrous for Israel. They lost the 2000 and 2006 wars against a much weaker, less armed Hezbollah. Hell, they didn't even win against the Resistance in Gaza in 2014 and they're actively losing today. It's clear that the army of conscripts are under trained and not battle ready. Besides desertion, the Israeli army has to deal with soldiers that flee from the fighters instead of holding their positions and fighting back (Here's a Al Qassam Brigades video where the Palestinians ambush a tent full of Israel soldiers, only for 9 out of the 10 to flee).

If 500,000 Israelis fled the country because of Oct 7th and the war in Gaza, how many more would flee if war breaks out between Hezbollah and Israel? Not to mention, how many more would be internally displaced? This is a war that might end up lasting years. Even 6 months of war might prove too much for a country that is more fragile than we realised before Oct 7th.

Oh and this is Israel's FDI in the first quarter of 2023

It has definitely tanked even lower since then. That's just one aspect of the economy, imagine all the others especially with hundreds of thousands of workers conscripted, displaced, or have fled the country.

A war with Hezbollah will effectively bring about Israel's collapse. It will no longer be happening 'within our lifetime,' it will be happening within the next ten years.

[9w1ft]

Karlie = the guy on the Chiefs. Hear me out. Yes this is a stretch, but it’s Taylor and this is her MO.

Quote from a 2014 Daily Mail article on Karlie:

'I love football. I am obsessed,' she said. 'I have my own fantasy football team and love going to games. I love the strategy that goes into the plays. I’ve looked through playbooks before and it’s like playing chess.'

Karlie has also posted before that her fantasy football team is called Rollin with Mahomies. In reference to Chiefs quarterback Mahomes. So if her fantasy team is chiefs themed…can she be the ‘guy on the chiefs coming straight home to me’ in that wink wink way that only they know. I choose to think this because it’s so funny.

Most of the red herring lyrics seem like they are not complete lies…. Ie. you know how to ball, wear his initial on a chain round my neck, dark jeans and nikes. Like they can be tied loudly to said public boyfriend, but sneakily still fit Karlie.

yes i love this! while i do think taylor does make up some stuff out of whole cloth, there is a very clear connection between the chiefs and karlie, geographically, in print interviews, her fantasy football team as you mentioned, and of course, footage of her cheering for the chiefs at the superbowl. you can’t say they are entirely unrelated!

[unseemingowl]

A love letter to the war table in DAI

I really missed the war table mechanics in Veilguard, or whatever equivalent that they would have come up with.

I know some people find it to be a waste of time in Inquisition, because only few of the missions actually have impact in the main game narrative, but those people are wrong.

For a game that already feels massive, especially for one made int 2014, I think the war table missions are crucial in terms of making the inquisition itself feel like the sprawling organisation that you're building throughout the narrative and that things will be moving even when you're not looking. It gives you the opportunity to add the flavor of forming what kind of organisation it is, ie, do you mainly solve things with diplomacy, force or cunning?

And it even punishes you for your choices. Like, as an elven inquisitor you can end up getting your entire clan massacred off screen. The fact that you get so little pay off on that particular decision in the main game narrative is perhaps the worst failure of the war table mechanic, but imagine if you did!

I mean, I got so excited when I met the courier in the Crossroads in Veilguard, like, oh, our contacts are actually using the eluvian networks? And then they just didn't do anything with it? Oh it makes me so sad.

With the narrative tool of the eluvian network and the faction model, they could have made the war table mechanic so fucking cool. Especially for a game that is set up to be about a covert operation. Like, imagine being able to deploy agents between the factions and then being able to see Myrna and Vorgoth's people hang out in Arlathan? Fuck it would have been so cool.

The fact that you're actually able to bring the Shadow Dragons up to a strength level that is equivalent to the other factions even if you choose to help Treviso is perhaps one of the details that annoys me the most in Veilguard - but hey, suddenly that is not such an annoyance if you would have been able to send the Crows to help in solidarity.

I really don't want this to end up sounding like an excuse to slag off on Veilguard, which has received an absolutely undeserved level of vitriol (I get being disappointed, but come on, man). I am just so sad that the war table mechanic was one of the things that got axed in the extremely troubled development cycle.

[communistkenobi]

i’d love to get your take on the physical geography/human geography “divide”. we spent a lot of time debating the merits of having both in my first year phd course and in my opinion as a physical geographer the opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration far outweigh any of the issues with housing physical and social scientists together

my familiarity with this debate primarily comes from the academic discourse around the concept of the “Anthropocene” (ie the period in Earth’s history where human beings have made a measurable, global impact on the environment, almost always spoken about in the context of climate change). The way I’ve seen this term used is to argue that the period of the Anthropocene is collapsing the physical/human geography divide, that even if we could separate these disciplines in the past, we can no longer partition the environmental from the social.

I’m partial to critical interventions in this discourse (which is how I will answer your question) - that the ‘human impact’ we’re talking about is actually a function of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism, not some abstract universal ‘human impact’. Modern human beings have existed on Earth for nearly two hundred thousand years, and human-made climate change has only occurred in roughly the last two centuries - a microscopic timeframe when talking about Earth’s climate. People in the Global South, in imperialized countries, and indigenous and Black peoples in settler colonies are not the classes who produce industrial levels of carbon emissions or wreak industrial-scale environmental devastation - that is the ruling class & the imperial states of the world. Hoelle & Kawa (2021) argue in Placing the Anthropos in Anthropocene that we should call it the plantationocene or capitalocene, because human-made climate change is a function of specific historical and material processes, not some generalized, ahistorical "human impact." Likewise, "human impact" is an imprecise and colonial definition of human involvement with the environment, which dismisses Indigenous peoples' complex and highly sophisticated relationships with what are understood by the Western world to be "pristine environs" (arising from the doctrine of terra nullius, or empty land, which justified colonial expansion into the American continent because there was "no civilization there") such as the Amazon Rainforest, which should be understood as a human-made ecological system the same way we understand farmlands to be human-made (see Roosevelt's 2014 The Amazon and the Anthropocene: 13,000 Years of Human Influence in a Tropical Rainforest).

therefore I think it's productive to think of the divide between the physical and the human geographies as a colonial framework, or at least one that is deeply implicated in colonial thinking - it positions the environment as an ‘object’ terrain that ‘subjects’ are situated on top of, as opposed to understanding human beings as part of nature. This is part of the logic that relegates Indigenous people to the status of animals ("savages"), as "part of" nature, while human 'subjects', ie white bourgeois Europeans, are separated from nature (see Quijano's 2000 Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America). This type of thinking is attributed to climate change-denialism in fascist circles (see Acker's 2020 What Could Carbofascism Look Like?), whose denialism is premised on a settler colonial understanding of the environment as a resource to be dominated and extracted from - the environment has no agency in this framework, no ability to react to the violence of colonial extraction, it is a purely inert economic resource. Likewise, this psychical/human divide obfuscates the fact that historical processes like colonialism are also environmental processes. In North America, the genocides of indigenous peoples carried out by European settlers over the past five centuries have been so monumental that the resulting reduction in carbon dioxide output by human bodies is measurable in the geological record (see Hoelle & Kawa again). The environmental devastation of silver mining in South America led by Spanish colonizers, and the resulting misery inflicted on colonized peoples forced to conduct this mining (see Galeano's 1971 The Open Veins of Latin America) was foundational to the forming of the modern Spanish nation-state, who imported so much stolen silver into Europe that they crashed their own economy (see chapter 3 of Perry Anderson’s 1974 Lineages of the Absolutist State).

Likewise, efforts at environmental protections from Indigenous nations has resulted in unique advancements in the law, such as enshrining legal personhood on rivers, as was the case with the Whanganui River in Aotearoa (see Brierly et al's 2018 A geomorphic perspective on the rights of the river in Aotearoa New Zealand), or the forsaking of sovereign mining rights by the state in order to protect indigenous land claims for environmental protection, as was the case in Ecuador (see Gümplova's 2019 Yasuní ITT Initiative and the reinventing of sovereignty over natural resources). These are social, political, and legal efforts at environmental protection, done with an eye towards decolonization (or at the very least, decolonial policy regimes), and separating the environmental from the social in trying to understand this subject would be absurd.

And so the question of discipline specificity is obviously bound up in these debates, and the academic production of environmental scientists on the one hand and geographic social scientists on the other is part of the maintenance of that divide. Environmental protection policy requires specialised knowledge of the environments being protected, and that specialised knowledge likewise requires expertise in how state policy functions. And it has required decades and centuries of resistance and legal challenges for Indigenous people to be involved in these respective sites of knowledge production - all of this is bound up in debates about if we should keep the physical and human geographies separated. I think the example of medical doctors talking about “shit life syndrome” (ie the medical problems faced by people as a result of poverty and inequality) speaks to a consequence of the debates around disciplinary divides - most medical doctors are not social policy experts, it’s not their job to write legislation or policy programs, their job is to provide medical services to people, but they are nonetheless identifying in their supposedly separate discipline of medicine and human biology the harmful social outputs of capitalist societies, which is intense systemic poverty

[olderthannetfic]

I always see people who have never been antis, talking about/questioning how some antis even ARE antis when you look at their taste in media - ie the ever famous joke of "Hannigram is #problematique" "but it's a show where he eats people" or whatever.

I thought I'd weigh in as someone who could, hypothetically, be called an ex-anti (which, thankfully, nothing ever really came out of it - it was just very 2014 keyboardwarrior-esque behavior of me being a chronically online young adult who would share posts in a group chat making fun of certain shippers, or reblog posts about how 50shades is The Most Problematic Media Ever to exist -- basically I was an anti with anti-lines of thoughts, but i never, like, a ran a Shipping Discourse Blog or whatever)

For me, personally, it was a few different things. I can now see how it's incredibly hypocritical that teenaged me shipped Light/L, while still thinking that Dramione was Bad And Abusive. It ultimately boiled down to a) being pretentious, and b) just not understanding media or what proshippers REALLY believed, with a side of c) not realizing that nuance exists. like i was pretty late to join tumblr, I think I immigrated here during PEAK "yourfaveisproblematic" era which definitely did have an impact on my opinions and my tastes.

to elaborate, a.) being pretentious. i mean this one just kinda goes without saying. "I engage in media in a way more intellectual way than you do, don't you know that? You're a filthy and disgusting person who writes Snape/Hermione because you're an actually disgusting pedophile IRL who would probably date your own student that you're abusing if you could. Meanwhile, I'm a very smart, good, and pure person. When I read Uncle Vernon/Harry, I'm doing it in a G-d honoring whump way that clearly condemns abuse, incest, and rape. Unlike YOU who only writes harmful stuff as a way to get people off :/"

(as an aside, i think this line of thinking will ALWAYS be present in fandom and popculture in some way, sadly. ie the recent trend of people hating on booktok bc the books are 'trashy' and how these porn addicts should read real classic literature instead.)

as for b.), not understanding media - i cannot emphasize enough that i was GENUINELY stupid and disconnected enough to think that proshippers REALLY WERE pro-All Of The Degenerate Dead Doves That They Wrote.

why did i feel this way? why did i understand that Lolita clearly isnt pro-pedophilia, but for some reason i thought that someone shipping weecest was? well, first of all, i think that fanfiction is (generally) seen as Less Serious than classic literature, and fandom is a fun place, so i guess i somehow thought that every fanfic/fanartist who wrote Problematic Things, especially Problematic Things that they portrayed as Sexy, really DID enjoy the thought of that Actually Happening To Real People.

and i think THIS is the bulk of why antis ARE antis. i'm not calling them all stupid - i do think BEING an anti is stupid, but at the same time, there are people who are truly smart and good-intended people who just have some really off color opinions about, like, homestuck ships or whatever. Lawlight is okay because notebooks that kill people don't exist so it's IMPOSSIBLE for the Harmful Aspects of Light/L to be romanticized! but schoolyard prejudiced bullies DO exist and are a REAL problem so Drarry is BAD (*truly completely unaware of the fact that there's 'realistic' aspects of the Light/L dynamic and 'unrealistic' aspects of Drarry - such as, for example, Hogwarts arguably being even MORE of a fantasy setting than DN is.*) I know that media literacy is the hot buzzword of the year to throw around in 2024, but, like, i really did not have media literacy.

as for c.), not realizing nuance exists - ok "nuance" might not be the best word here, but i dont know how else to describe it. like, each time ive typed the word "problematic" out in this ask, i've done so in a very tongue in cheek/ironic/retroactive way, but, like, those posts about how Everything Is Problematic, Including Your Fave ARE true. and i didn't like the fact that my favorite media or favorite person might've Made A Mistake! i need to Talk About Its Issues Because I'm So Betrayed That My Dear Sweet Comfort Media Would Do This To Me. I Need To Prove I Clearly Condemn It.

like, i legit morally could not justify reblogging a twilight post without adding in the tags '#this is my guilty pleasure it sucks that the books were so racist though' or whatever. Most people were lucky enough to avoid that line of thinking, but there was an actual group of people who felt a genuine need to virtue signal all the time, partly bc, hey, they WERE passionate about talking abt #issues in media, but also bc of a subconscious fear of If You Reblog A Singular Piece Of Hetalia Fanart, You're Literally A Nazi And Will Get A Callout Post Written About You.

and during all of this i was at the tail end of my high school experience (yes i know im younger than most of your audience, ha). i was going through A Lot emotionally, going through a lot of life changes, and lived in a very . . . interesting household/place where i couldn't do ACTUAL good in the world that i was passionate about. so to make up for the fact that i was genuinely in no place to do legit activism, clearly i had to save the gay community by arguing about johnlock queerbaiting or whatever.

^ and honestly i do think that is the position of most antis. theyre isolated and cant seem to do Enough in the Real Scary World so they have to resort to talking about how bad of a person someone is for "shipping abuse", bc theyre not in a situation where they could, for example, ACTUALLY fight the good fight to end abuse or raise awareness for it.

There was way more to it and way more that I could say, if I wanted to, but this post is long enough as it is and probably doesn't make much sense.

I feel bad for antis, honestly, or at least the ones who are antis in the way I used to be.

--

Oh yes, passionate young fools who think they can at least fix the internet if not their lives make up most of the cannon fodder. Some of the ringleaders are just mini dictators and wannabe cult leaders, but most anti-leaning types are just traumatized or clueless, even a lot of the ones who do serious damage and don't just mock shit in private with their friends.

[myonlyangel28]

i’ve noticed some things and maybe i’m being too paranoid but i have gone down the rabbit hole. i feel inclined to share this.

kanye west tweeted those horrible things ab taylor swift, harry and justin bieber. i’ve connected the dots with some things. lmk if you agree or have noticed this as well.

harry is or was managed by jeff azoff. rumors are circulating that harry has parted ways w the azoff’s. justin bieber was managed by scooter braun for many years, and scooter was a father figure to justin. do you know who else was a client of scooter braun, KANYE WEST!!! kanye is also friends with DIDDY and has defended him several times. do you know who else scooter has targeted over the years? taylor swift. as most people knows taylor and harry were linked to each other and were in a “relationship”. i think it’s crazy how harry and justin are getting dragged into this kanye bs but i do think jeff azoff and scooter braun are behind this. i think kanye is doing their dirty work. listen kanye is very deranged and despicable. i do believe the higher ups are behind this. i think scooter and jeff are both bitter and enraged that harry and justin are taking their power back. they are not allowing anyone to manipulate them anymore and i couldn’t more proud of these boys.

justin and harry are two of the biggest male artists in the industry. they have been targeted since they both came into the business. they both went through very similar situations. they have been exploited and mistreated since they were teenagers. justin has since he was 14 and harry since he was 16. i’ll break this down for you guys.

let’s start with harry. harry has been labeled as a womanizer who was into older woman. they have done this to him ever since he was 16 years old. when he was 17, his first stunt relationship was with caroline flack. she was a 32 year old woman and he was a 17 boy. ik the legal age in the uk is 17 but it’s still extremely disgusting and predatory. idk if anything physical ever happened between them. but shame on his management for putting him in that situation. HE WAS 17!!

he has been sexually harassed on several occasions by interviewers and fans. they have made him visibly uncomfortable. no one from management ever stepped in or defended them. they have closeted harry since he was 16. he was a young boy who never had any real protection for anyone in this industry. the only people who looked out for him were the boys. louis, zayn, niall and liam always looked out for harry and tried to protect him. also harry has a very supportive family. he has people in his inner circle who rly care about him him.

that’s the difference between harry and justin. at least harry has a good family and he had the boys to lean on for support, as well as other real friends (ie alessandro and others). with all due respect, justin doesn’t have a supportive family and not a good group of people who support him. his parents have always exploited him and his father abandoned him. i’m gonna be very honest I’m not a hailey bieber fan and i think she has been exploiting him. that’s my personal feeling ab her. there is just something off w her.

now let’s talk about justin. the justin rabbit hole was a little deeper. in the beginning of justin’s career, he started getting mananged by scooter braun and he was signed to usher’s label. usher was justin’s mentor and do you know who usher’s mentor was?! DIDDY!! it’s been alleged that justin is one of diddy’s victim. justin spent 48 hours w diddy when he was around 14/15 years old. justin’s parents allegedly signed legal guardianship over to usher and usher allegedly gave him to diddy for 48 hours. justin was allegedly sexually abused by diddy. looking back on it, it makes a lot of sense why justin spiraled from 2012-2014. the way he was acting during that time was a trauma response. i was in middle school around that time and had no idea that justin had allegedly gone through this. i feel very sad that he was never afforded any grace during that time. he is a victim. i genuinely believe that scooter braun is behind all the negative press ab justin and that this is his way of hurting justin bc justin took his power back. recently, justin unfollowed and/or blocked his og management team. i think people need to give justin more grace. he is having to relive this traumatic event publicly and the way he’s behaving rn is in response to that. i don’t think it has anything to do w selena gomez. this all has to do w diddy and having relive this trauma all over again. i genuinely hope he can heal and seek therapy for the things he’s had to endure. this industry has failed him. he deserves so much better.

[waepenwifestre]

Cyperus Rotundus Report:

There's been some recent buzz about Cyperus Rotundus oil for long term hair removal and I've been doing some digging.

While Cyperus is a well established medicinal herb (and infamous agricultural weed) the only two academic studies that seem to exist on it's role in hair removal are a pair of 2012 and 2014 studies by GF Mohammed, an Egyptian dermatology/sexology/venereology professor. Both follow the same basic methods and show the same basic results:

Cis women with unwanted armpit hair massaged .25mls of distilled Cyperus Rotundus essential oil to the target area twice daily, during the study they plucked hairs from the area every 3 weeks (sugaring or threading) and applied oil immediately after hair removal.

They followed this protocol for 6 months. They were evaluated after 8 months, which was 2 months without the treatment and 1 month after their last hair removal.

Results were shockingly good! Showing a more than 90% hair reduction at that point, statistically equivalent to laser for dark hair and fully effective against white hair that laser isn't effective against. (This is the data for the 2014 study, the 2012 is basically identical just with a larger group and no laser comparison group).

This discussion of potential mechanisms boils down to "Cyperus rotundus is rich in potent components such as flavonoids, lignans, and polyphenols.30-33 Flavonoids and lignans have estrogenic activity that may inhibit 5α-reductase and 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase via differential transcription activity of an estrogen-response element reporter.34-36 Thus, hair follicles that are entirely androgen dependent can be minimized.1,21,35"

The discussion surrounding these results doesn't tell us much though. There's no discussion of whether or not the author thinks plucking the hair is significant (they just say participants removed hair via "their usual method (sugaring/threading). No discussion of how the dosage was determined or how long results might last/what a long term regiment to maintain results might look like.

Which is to say, maybe it's doing local hormone shit and maybe that's via 5α-reductase and 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase. Wikipedia tells me 5alpha is tied to steroid metabolism (with both estrogen and androgens) and that 17beta is involved with the " interconversion of DHEA and androstenediol, androstenedione and testosterone, and estrone and estradiol." This is largely beyond me so for now I'm sticking with, "maybe Cyperus Rotundus does some local hormone shit."

Initially I was dismissive of this explanation (after all, lower systemic androgen levels might lighten hair or make it thinner but androgen-activating hair follicles famously persists regardless of androgen levels. But I've seen some studies suggesting that local androgen levels can interact with hair follicles growth stages in some weird ways, including shortening the Anagen growing phase and maybe increasing the time duration of the rest period before a follicle resets to Anagen.

I wasn't able to find much anecdotal evidence and what I could find wasn't over large time periods, but some Reddit reports noted that even after just a week or so it seemed like hairs were coming out from the root when shaving (ie the length of hairs stuck to the raser was substantially longer than the length visible before shaving) and other noted a dramatically increased consistency of plucked hairs have a bulb (a sign that they were in the anagen growth phase before being plucked and that they actually pulled out from the root and didn't break midway).

Hair follicle growth phase and follicle damage is *weird,* I got midway into a deep dive and started losing focus so I'm posting this with less details than I'd like, but I think there's strong evidence that C Rotundus oil in some way affects the growth phases of follicles in a way that suppresses growth (at least short to mid term). It also seems vaguely possible that the oil somehow makes the follicles more susceptible to damage from the hair getting plucked. As I understand it damage to the follicle is far from guaranteed, but happens regularly with plucking. Tho generally it's only enough damage to push the follicle towards being inactive for a period of months and then coming back good as new, not much of a vector for permanent hair elimination.

The fact that results last months after treatment ends is sick. I figure this could suggest that the relevant medicinal compounds just hang around for a long time (if I circle back to this I'll see if there's halflife data on the potentially relevant compounds). If they do hang around on the scale of months than the twice daily application is probably major overkill.

I also think it's feasible (based off my v limited knowledge) that the C Rotundus effect pushes the follicles into an extended rest period, you stop applying the oil and the follicles stay in track to wait out that rest period before activating again.

And ofc there could be a vector for actual permanent hair removal that I just can't think of, but my slightly informed opinion is that that seems unlikely.

.

Side effects are supposed to be basically non-existent (the only object the studies cite is that some ppl don't like the smell of the oil).

I think the main question for me is figuring out what dosing looks like long term. (Do you cycle on and off, do you apply weekly, is daily application most of the time actually important? Etc)

It's also unclear if plucking vs shaving is important. I've been a big fan of epilating lately so that's what I'll be doing and it seems like it should pair nicely with what I expect from C Rotundus but more data from more ppl trying more different shit with this would be rly tight!!

if any of y'all try it out I'd love to hear how it goes <3 <3 <3

Also I probably have the citations for all of the shit I'm referencing around somewhere and can dig them up if anything is of interest.

[puzzlevision]

a goo for @woopersuper (well a gijinka goo actually)

honestly i dont want my gijinka design for him to be a full-on human or at least a humanoid with slimey features (i can imagine stuff happening in my brain and imagining him being human with these features—especially when it comes to modifying abilities such as enlargening—may come off as weird) so i took a logical route by making him less of a human and ended him up look like a pokemon/digimon lol (my gijinka goos height is around the same size as a chair)

2024 thoughts under cut

what do you mean 2024 is ending 🤣🤣🤣 2014 is almost ending today get over it

but seriously i didnt expect to get into another hyperfixation after i stopped watched smg4 due to glitch prod still not apologized to celeste yet + lack of interest and visiting an old favorite from 2017-early 2020 (inazuma eleven). thats how i got into the osc hellhole. i already knew the existence of it since 2019 through bfdi (specifically bfb; my very first osc episode ive watched is bfb episode 15) but never got into the fandom because i am more of an "i got into [insert animated tv show here] because our local tv station aired it in my native language" fan at that time.

speaking of object shows, inanimate insanity became my number 1 favorite object show. i watched the entirety of it to get caught up before s2e15, but before that i watched them through no context clips, and suddenly i grew attached to it. maybe because i found out that it progressively gets darker than bfdi (thank you yugioh gx/arc v and smg4 for making me a lore angst lover lol). i still dont have the desire to watch the entirety of bfdi though.

i have mixed feelings about the ii movie, especially the last act, but overall its good. i didnt expect the plot twist here, and the deaths of mepad and knife is not what i expected and at the same time… its unneccesary. the last act focuses a bit too much on shipping (payjay is fine though since it finally confirms it but my half side is iffy about it since it may cause problems for those who ships either oj or paper with others/dont like payjay) and BOX?? WHAT THE FUCK YOURE ALIVE??? AND YOU HAVE BOOBS????

joining the osc also increases the notes i got from my original posts than i expected. like what do you mean a post of a theory of melife ending its support got more notes than my "uke judai yuki" post. who even are you people.

i dont know if theres gonna be new hyperfixations next year, but who knows? will i lose interest in ii and ie next year? take a guess. since 2 people started watching ii because of me.