#by default beneficiaries?

[cagandante-communistoide]

Obligatory Why is aphobia A Thing ask

-💜

Get ready, this is my manifesto.

Content warnings for mentions of sexual violence and intimate partner abuse.

Before I can answer why aphobia is a thing, I have to answer what aro and ace phobia are, and for that I have to define amatonormativity and allonormativity. And for that, we need to define romance and sexuality as social constructs.

WHAT IS LOVE (baby don't hurt me):

THINGS I WILL NOT BE ATTEMPTING TO DEFINE FOR MY OWN SANITY:

the emotion of romantic or sexual attraction. the question of what these emotions are like is highly individual, partially socially constructed and entirely irrelevant to asking about the effect of certain positionalities in society related to these concepts.

THINGS I WILL BE DEFINING:

the social construct of romance and sexuality and how the dominant relationship model operates in society. Basically, what is considered romantic and sexual and what romance and sex is "supposed" to be, not what romance and sex actually feel like.

So: what is love? Romance is the whole motley of expectations that come with a romantic relationship- monogamy, priority over platonic relationships such as friendship, cohabitation and sharing of all assets and life decisions, and among most people on earth today, heterosexuality and the bearing of children. Sex in society is a social currency, something that is required to secure romantic relationships and for normal human psychology, but that must only be present in certain amounts in the context of a normative romantic relationship (or normal amount of hookups, in some cases) to be considered moral. It is the automatic placement of these models of romance and sex as universal goods, goals to be strived for as well as the “natural” order of things and lack of adherence as significant of some form of problem a la “maybe you have hangups, maybe you have a medical issue, maybe you’re single because you’re a bad person”.

Too much romance and sex (polyamory) or too little (aspec) both fall outside this norm. To not be asexual in any way is to be ALLOSEXUAL, and to not be aromantic in any way is to be ALLOROMANTIC. The status of being somewhere on the asexuality or aromanticism spectrum will be referred to as ASPEC. ACESPEC is for asexual-spectrum and AROSPEC is for aromantic-spectrum. The social construct of romance + its mandatory nature will henceforth be referred to as AMATONORMATIVITY. The social construct of sexual attraction + its mandatory nature and rules will henceforth be referred to as ALLONORMATIVITY. When a statement applies to both amato and allonormativity, I will simply write allonormativity. When it applies only to aromanticism and amatonormativity, I will write amatonormativity. WAIT, BUT IS ALLONORMATIVITY REAL? (yes):

here's some things people who are in romantic and sexual relationships and experience normative attraction on both counts, especially ones that progress into legal marriage, get most everywhere in the world that people who are not don't - regardless of whether they'd want to or not!

Tax benefits. The government literally gives you free money just for being married.

Lower prices for a lot of things: "family rates" for all forms of insurance, tuition discounts for education you have to pay for. additionally:

Greater financial benefits. It's easier to be approved for rent if you have a partner. it's easier to get bank loans and finance expensive things if you're married. If your spouse dies you automatically get insurance payouts and inheritance by default, without probate or even being taxed. A lot of the time your cohabitating partner or spouse is the automatic beneficiary of your financial services. Informally, everything is priced for couples. When there's economic downturn, the default bourgeois media excuse is "if you don't want to struggle financially, get married". Poor economic conditions are used as a lever with which to push people into amatonormativity. Additionally, the only relationship you are financially punished for for legally leaving is marriage through an expensive court proceeding. If your romantic relationship has been reified enough, the incentive to remain in it is literally that you have to hire a lawyer to leave.

Legal recognition. Your next of kin is automatically your spouse. If you are not a minor child and you want someone to inherit your things, make decisions for you when you can't, or receive say, jubilation or insurance payments on your behalf, the only way you can do that without filing power of attorney documents is marriage. The only relationship you cannot leave without going to court is marriage, and the only other people who are so difficult to leave because of societal and legal pressure to cohabitate and share assets with them is your nuclear family. Want to make sure cutting contact with you is so expensive, exhausting, and difficult for another person that they would never even try it? Be in a relationship. Then get married. Also, if you're asexual but in a marriage, your marriage only counts if you have sex with your partner in a lot of places. Allonormativity is a requirement for amatonormativity- the normal definition of romance makes normative sexuality obligatory.

Social currency. Romance and marriage are considered "essential life stages". People in relationships are automatically seen as more functional, more trustworthy, more mature. if you don't express interest in relationships you are labelled mentally ill or antisocial and if you can't get one by a certain point you're labeled a failure of a human being. There is much invested in the social narrative that "everyone's purpose is to find love", and not finding it results in a perception of having failed said purpose. Leaving a romantic relationship, especially for reasons of incompatibility instead of some kind of wrongdoing, is frowned upon. Most benignly, it's seen as an inherent tragedy to leave a partner you didn't want to begin with or don't want anymore. Often, it marks you as a bad person. Romance carries immense social currency as a universal good that washes any situation or person of their horror. See:

In many parts of the world, marital rape and physical abuse is legal to some extent. If you're partners but not married, or it's illegal, then even so partners are the people least likely to be suspected of abuse right after parents, even with proof. Many an abuser has gotten away with obvious abuse just by saying "it's a lover's spat". many forces like misogyny, homophobia, and racism compound this effect, but ultimately what they reify is a system where romance and family are considered automatic goods that negate or permit abuse. "It's okay because he's your boyfriend" is just as common as "it's okay because he's your father". Again: want to have an unhealthy amount of control over another person with complete social acceptability and cover? Be in a relationship. Then get married.

Psychiatric legitimacy. Again, romance and sex are considered automatic goods. Allonormativity asserts that regular romantic and sexual activity within a monogamous heterosexual relationship especially (but not exclusively, this expectation exists regardless of whether any individual subject is accepting of queerness or nonmonogamy) is universal healthy human behavior and should be strived for. Romance and sex are frequently said to be human "needs" and denial of either to another person is almost always treated as an aggression by the person saying "no". If you fall in love and have sex, you are automatically the "healthy" person next to someone who does not. Your reality is the default life goal for everyone, in both casual and clinical settings - whether they want it or not.

AND NOW FOR THE BENEFITS OF SEXUALITY SPECIFICALLY:

Medical legitimacy. Again, you are the "default" healthy option for human behavior. Development of sexual attraction labels you a normal, untraumatized, healthy person by default and doctors will never use your sexuality to question you about your hormone levels or whether you have an intersex condition to be "fixed". Your sexuality is not a currently diagnosable "condition" internationally and people will not suggest physical therapy, medication, or surgical intervention to "fix" you into having sex. (Of course, people who actually DO have medical or trauma related reasons why they don’t have sex who may or may not want to reduce them have a lot of pressure on them to resume “normalcy” as soon as possible - this is an example of the social asexualization of the otherwise allo subject.)

Legal legitimacy: again, marriages are only valid in several places when sex is involved.

Social legitimacy: same applies as for the latter iteration of this but slightly differently- you can lose sexuality based social currency by being polyamorous or otherwise too promiscuous. However, if you have the "correct" amount of sex with the "right" people, you are by default considered a more mature, correct person. You command more trust and inspire more respect than someone who clearly has not had the "right" amount of sex just by being someone who is presumed to do things "correctly", because you've cleared an "essential life stage". You are natural, you are normal, and those are both very powerful social positions to wield over someone who isn't. Just look at how much social currency cis people have over trans people for an example of the same thing. Your relationship is also not at risk because of "withholding sex" in the vast majority of cases (because you are compliant with your partner's "need", of course).

WHAT ABOUT APHOBIA?: WHAT YOU HAVE TO LOOK FORWARD TO AS THE POOR BASTARD WHO IS ARO/ACE

On the flip side is arophobia and acephobia, the bigotry and structural injustice that enforces amatonormativity and allonormativity onto those who do not fit. Here's a trying-to-be-comprehensive list of the smorgasbord of indignities, injustices and inhumanities aro/ace people can be and often are subject to on the basis of their orientation:

Pathologization- asexuality. "Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder" is an internationally diagnosable condition in which doctors attempt to "fix" that you don't want sex and are unhappy about it by trying to "fix" the "disordered" sex drive. Because being unhappy about asexuality is something that would only happen because it's wrong, and not because normal sexuality holds immense social, medical, and legal capital, amirite? If you need to be explained why taking a natural harmless variance in sexual orientation and making it a "disease" to be cured is wrong, ask yourself if you think homosexuality should still be a disorder to be "treated" with medications and conversion therapies.

Pathologization- aromanticism. Romance is considered a "need", a universal part of life and achieving a romantic partnership is considered a universal good even in clinical settings. Not desiring romance is considered a sign of antisocial behaviors associated with a range of pathologies, including depression, social anxiety, avoidant personality disorder and conduct disorder/antisocial personality disorder. Every single aromantic person I have ever met, whether personally or in passing, who has set foot in a psychiatric setting has experienced some form of conversion therapy through continued harassment to date or through abuse of medication. ALL OF THEM. It is legitimately unavoidable.

Legal disadvantage: all of the above privileges reserved for romantic partnerships, especially marriages,  are barred from aromantic people either entirely or functionally through the creation of a long, difficult process to achieve the same thing marriage gets by default. If you are alloromantic but asexual, all of the above privileges reserved for marriage can be revoked if your marriage is declared invalid due to lack of sexual activity or your partnership is dissolved because of your asexuality. In addition, while aro/ace people are subject to almost all the same indignities of homophobia + aphobia, we are functionally not considered a protected class anywhere where homosexuals are because allonormativity obscures and denies our very existence. This is the third of many examples of how being aspec is its own positionality which intersects with and worsens other queerphobia, and how allo queer people benefit from specifically not being aspec. I will elaborate on this later.

Financial disadvantage: as opposed to the legal category where if you waste enough time in court you might be able to appoint someone with the same rights and benefits to confer upon you (given that they are not prioritizing their own romantic + sexual relationship), aro/ace people will NEVER benefit financially from the structure of the economy being designed to reward couples. I hope the above list has explained sufficiently why this is significant and that the preference for romantic relationships monetarily is not at all a victimless or neutral happenstance.

Social neglect + abuse due to allonormativity: Do you perhaps enjoy everyone you know and love leaving you behind because they have significant social and financial incentive to prioritize their romantic relationships over you? How about being considered automatically less valuable to your partner because you won't have sex with them, or less valuable to the people you love because your relationship is purely platonic compared to a partner that literally waltzed in a few months ago? Do you salivate at the thought of being bullied everywhere from school to your home to your doctor's office for being a virgin? How about for being single and never dating? Do you derive enjoyment from being called homophobic slurs without, contrary to popular belief, being able to "opt out" of it by saying you're not gay? Do you like seeing every person who is like you treated as a joke, a crazy, presented as an unnatural perversion of human behavior and mocked resoundingly in every public sphere as a human who has failed to mature? Who has failed to develop humanity? Do you enjoy the thought of the definition of what makes people "human" excluding you? No? Too bad. You can look forward to this anyway.

Corrective violence, including sexual harassment, molestation, assault, all forms of abuse and murder, especially for rejecting an allo’s advances and/or in the context of intimate partner violence.

Homophobia from straight people, and aphobia from allosexual queer people as well. Remember, the other marginalized groups still benefit from being more "normal" than you! But you're not oppressed, because you're not gay.

HEY, NONE OF THIS IS EXCLUSIVE TO APHOBIA! IT'S ACTUALLY HOMOPHOBIA/MISOGYNY! (deep sigh) :

You're right, it isn't. But no analysis of bigotry is about having a "unique experience". It's about identifying the ways in which society is designed to hurt you, in which other people have power over you, and who benefits from your suffering.

A gay person and an asexual have the same experience having a slur hurled at them for denying a straight person's advances. But a gay person and an asexual person do not have the same experience going to the doctor and mentioning their sexuality, because it is entirely likely and extremely common that a gay person gets to walk away free and an asexual person is diagnosed with "hypoactive sexuality". An asexual person does not have increased social license by established norms about sexuality and romance to rape their partner for denying them garlic bread, but a gay person wields the power to do so to their asexual partner and have it justified by "they were denying me sex. They’re being cruel to me by denying me this when it means so much to me". A gay person can sexually harass an asexual on the basis of their virginity with "why haven't you had sex? you should really do it. stop being frigid. go to the doctor, that's not normal. maybe it's a hormonal imbalance", or say things like “All these people are virgins now because they’re afraid of sex. All these people are single now because they have bad personalities." without having it questioned. A gay person, in many countries, can reap the benefits of marriage, and aromantic people famously do not often wish to marry. The aspec experience is to have this denied - asexuals and aromantics cannot be victims of the homosexual or heterosexual in the allo imagination because the aro or ace is not real to them. They are always a perpetually shifting list of character defects but never a real class of people. Just a disease to be eradicated. Something wrong with an otherwise allo person - a failed allosexual, but also someone who has deliberately reneged on their humanity and thus forfeited dignity or even existence in the public consciousness. Invisibility for us is not safety. It is our guillotine.

You can be oppressed for your sexuality and still be privileged for NOT being aspec. Being aspec is its own positionality, and our oppression is specifically targeting US. We are not caught in your crossfire, or anyone else’s. You, reader, whether you be a woman or homosexual or transgender or nonwhite, may have similar experiences as described. But if you are allosexual, you will never experience it for BEING aspec. You can opt out of aphobia, you are privileged on the basis of your allosexuality and alloromanticism. I can not "opt out". I will always experience meaningfully different and more social scrutiny on basis of sexuality than you, allosexual reader, ever will, because every single allosexual and alloromantic can wield aphobia towards aros/aces. Yes, even if you're gay. THAT is aphobia. AND NOW ONTO THE HORRORS OF CAPITALISM:

Now it's time to answer the original question: WHY does aphobia exist? Well, let's think about what else romance and sexuality are. They're extremely useful tools. Ever since there has been a class of people who lived off the labor of others and a class who had nothing to sell but their labor, there has been financial incentive for the former to make sure there is a steady supply of the latter. The next generation of serfs, peasants, and later proletariat needed to be secure for an economic model in which a select few live entirely off a many laboring on their private property to survive. And what better way to do that than to enshrine the two emotions most associated with reproduction as mandatory parts of life? To then construct a model of romance and sexuality that rewards those who create an easily traceable geneaology as property for the patriarch and continue producing children to become laborers without creating children that would complicate this process, and punish those who do not?

Tie sex to marriage and that’s more incentive for people to marry just to have sex. Make the process of reproduction a mandatory aspect of life. Make it so that it’s only acceptable with your spouse, who has control over your finances and legal processes to some degree (it was very common in feudalism for the wife to outright be a husband’s property), to tie you to that person forever, and then make it a very socially elevated role to fill and a very hard bond to break to make sure the maximum amount of people keep reproducing with one family patriarch for as long as possible. What’s the end result? A socially engineered values system which serves to ensure that there will always be new laborers in the working class, because every person MUST marry and MUST have sex with their partner and therefore must reproduce. This is the same reason homophobia exists economically, except allo gay people wield additional social capital over aspecs by subverting the direction allonormativity expects you take in terms of partnerships instead of eschewing it. Why? Capitalism can still sell allonormativity back to allo queers with some slight tweaks. That’s not to say that the gains of allo queers are not significant liberation from homophobia, but it’s just that - it creates holes in homophobia. Holes in homophobia for gays that are “close enough” to how things are “supposed” to be done, at that. It does nothing to address the allonormative cisheteropatriarchal superstructure that creates both homophobia and aphobia. For example, it is extremely important for gay people to earn the right to marry, but then the institution of marriage which creates a single standard for a “correct”, respectable relationship and then rewards compliance for it is not questioned at all by that step. It just expands the box you are allowed to be in slightly, and ultimately reifies the same institution from which homophobia stems - allocisheteropatriarchal capitalism and its legal code. Detractors then argue that gay marriage isn’t “real” marriage or isn’t moral, and the purely gay positionality oriented argument against this (that being that attaching morality to gender of partner is a construction of heteronormativity and is artificial), while correct, fails to destroy the angle from which this bigotry continues to emerge repeatedly - that being that ALL the trappings of the “normal, moral, natural” relationship are artificially constructed and oppressive in nature. Including the institution of marriage itself. Aphobia is a thing for the same reason racism, homophobia, and misogyny are a thing: it has made the bourgeoisie money for generations. It is a social invention inherited from feudalism that serves the same purpose as it ever did- population control for the army of laborers.

[vaporize-employers]

U.S.americans will by default assume that all Palestinians being mass-arrested, tortured, and held indefinitely are "criminals", even if Israel says nothing to defend these actions, because it's the same racist talking points used to defend the U.S. carceral system.

The fact that both "guilt" and "crime" are determined by race in Israel only proves it IS a just system in the eyes of the beneficiaries of U.S. colonialism, who already believe that some races are "predisposed" to violence, and therefore can never ever be innocent. The U.S. wrote this script centuries before Israel existed.

[runthepockets]

White trans men are so interesting because they get locked in this headspace as white women that "perpetual victimhood and the ability to wield that victimhood whenever necessary" is the only marker of identity. They spend all their free time as white women dunking on white men for not being as "docile" and "well adjusted" as them even though they're not much better and their tears and waifishness are very much agents of white supremacy just as much as the brutish standoffishness of their white male counterparts.

Then they transition. They start freaking out because the more they pass, the more they lose access to that victimhood and the more they're seen as prime beneficiaries of white supremacist patriatchy, like those white cis guys they spent their lives looking down on. They try to cling to that perceived innocence and victimhood by constantly deferring to their "afab socializing", instead of just realizing that the way white women are socialized and primed to uphold white supremacist patriarchy is just as harmful and dangerous as the way white men are. And other white trans people just fall for it. They take it as default for all trans men's experiences cus all men are a monolith. These dudes who can't handle criticism in any capacity are like, the arbiters of maleness suddenly, the face of gender queerness and gender transcendence, when they're just doing the same shit they've always done. It's really crazy stuff.

[vendettasfanfictioning]

"ENGAGEMENT RING" WAS NOT SOME WAYWARD TRANSLATION BUT AN ACTUAL LINE IN THE JP MANGA?????? I always thought the reason some translations said, "engagement (ring)," where others used, "prenup," for Illumi and Hisoka's contract was because it was one translator's whim to cause chaos???? Like. It could be read as either of those, but was not necessarily the whole definition.

(x)

But no, I've input the kanji into every translator I could find and they all said roughly the same thing—prenuptial contract. Meanwhile, the furigana (AKA the reading aid consisting of smaller kana printed either above or next to kanji or other characters to indicate their pronunciation), spelled out engagement ring.

I know this might be old news to some but I was today years old when I found out it was so literal????? Togashi really spelled it out in a way ensures we can't misunderstand yet somehow the implications still fly over a few people's heads???????

Idk about y'all but if I was an assassin born and raised on the ideology that an assassin does not need friends and some powerful magician mf just dallies around, telling every person he fights that he's my friend—I'd have killed him by now. I wouldn't trust him with my family secrets. I wouldn't do him any favors.

Or if I was a power-hungry fighter always striving to grow stronger, who grew up in the literal slums and betrays people left and right, I wouldn't put my trust on this pretty assassin either. Even if it's all just manipulations in the end, I wouldn't have any reason to call him, and only him, a friend. I wouldn't give him many, if not all, of my earthly possessions if I were to pass away—even if he isn't the one to kill me.

That's the thing about the contract too, Illumi gets his, "engagement ring," regardless of who kills Hisoka. Illumi's insured, whatever the outcome of this fight may be, so long as Hisoka dies. The funny thing about prenups is it could also be treated as a will of sorts—should one person die, I think it's more commonplace for prenups to include that all valuable assets be given to the widow by default??

Hisoka really did not need to do that, in order to hire Illumi???? Does this mean Hisoka knows and accepts the inevitability of his death on the Black Whale??? Or did his touch with death after fighting Chrollo open his eyes to the fact that he still needed a beneficiary, someone to take his belongings when he dies???? Either way, it's telling that he chose Illumi, of all people, to uphold this extremely important contract...

Anyways. Whether you wanna acknowledge it or not, Hisoka and Illumi have grown to become a pair in the Hunter X Hunter universe, have become the most unlikely, if not terrifying, friends and while the, "engagement ring," or the, "prenup," may not be explicitly romantic, the connotations and the possibilities are still there.

In conclusion, these insane mfs are gay and married, good for them!! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

"Feminine people" don't oppress "masculine people" any more than "masculine people" oppress "feminine people". Those are not coherent categories!!

What's even "masculine" or "feminine" is based on cultural expectations for men and women (themselves culturally defined categories). The categories of "masculine and feminine" do not exist without these cultural expectations.

The whole gender system in this culture is based on a foundational misogyny (and heavily influenced by other forms of oppression as well). "Femininity" isn't treated negatively because of the individual (changeable, culturally produced) expectations that make it up, but because it's the role assigned to the subservient position.

"Masculinity" is treated positively only when someone who is "supposed" to be in that more powerful position (of "man") meets those expectations. A masculine woman is seen as "out of her place", just as a feminine man is seen as below how he "should" be as a man.

Men seen as masculine and women seen as feminine are considered to be better and purer than their nonconforming counterparts, and are the beneficiaries and often the perpetrators of discrimination against their peers who are seen to not conform.

None of this can be collapsed into either masculine people or feminine people having structural power over each other. They are not coherent classes!

Also we can talk about the stereotype of feminine women as purer than any man, but that's not a "misandrist" stereotype, it's a misogynistic one!! Rooted in Christianity's gender roles of the woman (supposed to not have any sexual urges or agency unless she's Evil, supposed to be a pure virginal shining mother by default) as moral guide to her man (whose role is to be the one with agency and sexual urges). This is literally just the madonna/whore thing, feminism is NOT the source of this deeply misogynistic concept!!

[ohrudi]

Store Tropical Aquarium Edit

TL;DR

It's a default replacemant. Only the first preset hasn't the wood carvings (look at the images).

You need to have the Store Content Tropical Aquarium from Sunlit Tides Gold installed to make it work

Download

ModTheSims | Simblr | SimFileShare

Hey Simmers, it's a BIG day for Rudi. After years of CC- and Mod-Consuming, it's time for my first upload. (this post is originally from January 2022)

Recently I placed this aquarium in my living room and my Sims got offended by this abomination of a pattern on the bottom of my new favorite fish tank. So had to get rid of it. It took three small photoshop edits and a very small learning curve, voila my first mod/edit was born. Since I'm a beneficiary of so many mods from this awesome community, the time was right to give something back.

To make this edit work, you need to have the Store Content Tropical Aquarium from Sunlit Tides Gold installed. It's a default replacemant of the of the original version. I only edited the first preset. The other presets still have the wood carvings from the original. This way you can have both in game.

I dearly hope you enjoy it and your digitial fishy friends as well. :luff:

Additional Credits: S3PE, S3OC

[psychopersonified]

All too heartbreakingly human Louis (and Claudia… and even Lestat)

If we look at it on a ground level, we understand why Claudia would chafe at Lestat’s controlling behaviour and plot his demise. Don’t get me wrong, he deserves it - I say it affectionately.

But telescope out and we see a whole wider context. A world of ruthless vampires are waiting on the edges. Despite having experienced firsthand, Claudia still hopes there are better -vampires- (she doesn’t see the irony here) out there because her only other reference points are her fathers, flawed as they are.

Despite repeated warnings (…granted by someone who she no longer trusts), Claudia is so insistent on taking Louis with her to Europe without any concern for his state of preparedness it almost seems reckless. Louis is by no means an innocent, but in vampire context… they are both babies.

Louis is a vegetarian 🥑 vampire just recently returned to feeding on humans as a compromise. He clings to the hope of having a functional family unit based on human familial structures. Unlike other predators (vampire or animal) he isn’t wired to look for weaknesses in others, and even if he notices it, he doesn’t take advantage of it. As a default, he is without guile, unconditionally loving, and self sacrificing. He functions for the most part within human rules and parameters. (Side note, I believe these are the reasons Lestat loves him. Lestat can let his guard down around him, and just be. Also I think Lestat knows his fledglings are unprepared for the big bad world out there and has kept it that way because he feared teaching them would harden them and wear away the very reasons why he loves them - irresponsible parenting but post for another day 😃).

BUT can you imagine what would happen to him when he meets the Others in the midst of WW2 at a time when not even humans seem to value the lives of other humans? When humanity was breaking apart at the seams? This would be a time an old world vampire would be thriving, their convictions as Children of Satan affirmed. The true beneficiaries of a chaotic world that believed some lives mattered more than others because of arbitrary circumstances. If you were a vampire with REAL superhuman powers, you’d believe you were the Chosen ones.

In walks these two curious beings, more human than vampire. Human raised puppies released among a pack of wild wolves. A girl/woman vampire raised in a pink satin lined coffin and chiffon skirts. Her vegetarian leaning bookworm of a father/brother philosophising about the greater purpose of life, who gets watery eyed over operas and cuddles lovingly in pyjamas with his maker in a shared coffin….

Their Maker, a soft handed art fanatic who spent SIX years kicked out of his own home/coven, all the while grovelling to his fledglings begging be taken back after an inadvertent show of godlike power/aggression. And then to be set upon, conditions by the same fledglings for his return, to which he then accepts! 🤯

It’s enough to make an old world Coven Master retch in disgust! As Lestat said, the sheep herding the beauceron. And the beauceron obliges out of LOVE??

Old Coven Masters would want them dead before they can spread their liberal vampire agenda! 😅

[cityof2morrow]

Bella Brand: Beauties 002

Published: 11-7-2023 | Updated: 6-25-2024 (fixed typos) SUMMARY “Inspired by the wealth of Bella Goth lore from the Sims/SimCity franchises (aka the “simsverse”), the Bella Brand Series includes more than a dozen sets and 230+ new business-themed items. Lore suggests that the wealth/influence of the Gilman, Crumplebottom, Bachelor, and Goth families increases considerably under Mortimer and Bella Goth, especially the latter. So, this series imagines what a prestigious Bella-based brand might look like…” This updated take on cosmetics from the original Bella’s Secret set (HChangeri/WR/Retail Sims, 2006 via LiquidSims Archive) includes hand & body cream, quickshower gel, and potion. From health and beauty products to novelty items, Bella’s Beauties (SimCity Social, Playfish/Maxis, 2012) caters to SimCity’s social and creative sims – who also happen to love the Bella Brand. A percentage of proceeds go to the Bella Beneficiary Fund. DETAILS Requires ALL EPs/SPs. You need Mesh Set 001 (Simmons, 2023) and the Display Counter (BellasSecret_Counter_Somedaythesun)from the TS2 Maxis Match Lingerie Store Set (SomedayTheSun, 2023) – these items are required for all textures to display in-game. The counter uses recolors from the Bosenklavier Model B grand piano (Bon Voyage EP). Find recolors for the counter interior in the Bella Brand: Retail Floor Set (Simmons, 2023). Recolors may include swatches for items in other Bella Brand sets such as signs, packages, cosmetics, etc. Objects in Sims 2 are limited to two recolorable parts, so not all items are recolorable in the same way. Find additional recolors for Bella Brand sets on this site under #ts2recolors, #co2recolors, and #co2bellabrand.

ITEMS Bella’s Beauties: Skin Silkening Lotion (210 poly) Bella’s Beauties: Silk Hand & Body Cream (288 poly) Bella’s Beauties: Silk QuickShower Gel (210 poly) Bella’s Beauties: Neon Flowers (643 poly) Bella’s Beauties: Neon Flower Vase (584 poly) DOWNLOAD (choose one) from SFS | from MEGA

Functional Cosmetic/Hygiene Products Items can be used from any surface or a sim’s inventory and will boost hygiene/comfort. After several uses (12 by default), the product will need to be replaced. When using cosmetics from a sim’s inventory, wait until the sims finishes using the first item BEFORE selecting the second one. Otherwise, the second object will be removed from the inventory. Both the object and plug-in files are needed for each item to work properly in-game. Number of uses and motive gain are tuneable in simPE (BCONS: 0x00 = number of uses, 0x002 = hygiene, 0x03 = comfort). CREDITS No copyright infringement intended. All trademarks belong to their respective owners. CCA = Creative Commons Attribution. Thanks: @catherinetcjd, @gayars, @gummilutt, @haziewhims, @kashmiresims (Rach’), @somedaythesun, whoward, Easy Shine Removal Kit (PF Forest, 2023), Reducing GUIDs/OBJs Tutorial (HugeLunatic, 2022), Sketchfab and Blender Communities. Sources: SEE CREDITS (ALT).

[wild-wombytch]

So. I'm still new to radical feminism and still in the middle of my peak trans, so I'm trying to be careful with my critical thinking and tonight I genuinely wondered about that injunction that feminism must by default ve trans inclusive. Because does it, really? What do trans people actually bring on the table for feminism? Or are they only beneficiary/exploitative of feminism without bringing on anything in return but misogynistic anon hate? I wondered "hey, if "trans women are women" is a true statement, then what is statistically the involvement of trans women in women's rights? In abortion's rights? In thing that allegedly concern womanhood even if it doesn't concern them personally?"

Because I'm a lesbian and chances are I'll never need an abortion in my whole life. Hell, due to personal reasons, I'd have more chances to want to keep my pregnancy going if I had to have one because I might not be able handle abortion psychologically. Yet, I'm fighting for every woman to be able to have an abortion, to have that choice. Even if more likely than not it doesn't effect me as an individual as much as it effects me as a woman. Because women always have to bear the weight of all the women's rights anyway, we get little privileges in terms of individuation in comparison to men. So I wondered -genuinely, in good faith- if trans women were feeling the weight of this as well or if it was going to be full male "not my problem, don't care" entitlement. And ladies. Let me offer some more exhibit (I swear these are all the first results I had for TWO different wordings on Google):

So let's do the midnight/mushbrain quick unpacking of this :

- No stats

- No arguments, we're supposed to accept trans women benefit feminism because They Said So™

- Lots of vitriolic takes on anyone questioning it ("cruel" "appropriative of the rhetoric of women's rights" that "inflict life-threatening harm on trans people"-lol-, "narrowly interpreting a statement", "bigoted", "anti feminist", weakening feminism)

- Many of those are made by trans women and also denying biological reality [not surprising, BUT an argument of TRAs is that most trans people believe in bio sex...despite hating radfems, somehow]

- It's so focused on pushing the trans activism, trying to prove that trans women don't have male privileges (an idea in these examples often defended by...other males) and that uwu but transwomen experience misogyny too uwu + trying so hard to prove us that there's no threat to women's rights here whatsoever. Nope. None. Please, look elsewhere. That it doesn't answer my question directly.

And by that lack of answer I ironically found it. It's male centered. It's gaslighting us in believing women's rights are ok and NEED trans activism (cause women need saviors and haven't been handling feminism themselves on their own and under hatred all of these centuries, y'know /s?). Nobody cares about women's rights here. It's not based on facts, it's all based on the fact we should blindly believe what TiM say. That including them will benefit us somehow and that it's not male violence because they identify as women so they allegedly can't reproduce male violence. All that while packaging disagreement from female feminists in diverse degrees of insults and misogyny and misinformation...say again how there's no trans agenda here and how it's not like, oh, I don't know, literal male entitlement and narcissism?

Anyway, I'm too sleepy to dig further but by all means, please do if you want to add something.

Just, I'm new to this and this is already pretty exhausting. To think a lot of you have been radfems for years...istg y'all are braver than honeybadgers (complimentary). Literally all the online communities now cater to them and throw us under the bus when we raise questions. It's male privileges benefiting males over females.

Exhibit 4852 about why radfems/gender criticals are right.

[fancyfade]

I know I see people blame robin being viewed as the default leader of teen titans on tim being treated as in charge in tt2003 comic, but I think we all need to accept that the trend started in tt1966, when dick was in charge because the writers wanted to act like he was way smarter than everyone else to compensate for having no super powers. Like dick was the first beneficiary of the "robin is the default leader" thing and other characters were written as having less problem solving skills to prop him up

[bemusedlybespectacled]

hey, i saw you post about the benefits of getting married. is there a way one could get those sorts of benefits, like who makes decisions for you when you're incapable and all, without actually getting legally married? it's just (i'm not kidding) i recently made a pact with Satan to never get married, a la a nun.

Yes and no.

Basically, you can get some benefits from marriage as a default but not marriage as a status.

By "marriage as a default," I mean that most laws assume that, if you're married, your spouse gets specific rights if there's no proof of anything otherwise. So like, if you die without a will, your money goes to your spouse if you're married, and to your children/parents/other relatives in order if you aren't. If you die with a will, your money goes to whomever you want, regardless of whether you're married or not (with exceptions: you can't disinherit your spouse, and the beneficiaries of your will might have to pay taxes on the income that a spouse would not).

Basically, if there's a thing that by default goes to a family member, like "person who gets your stuff when you die," marriage just changes who that default is. Changing the default requires effort, but it can generally be done.

By "marriage as a status," I'm talking about laws where being married is required because there is no default option. Like, if someone commits a murder, there's no default "person who doesn't have to testify against you if they don't want to" option that just moves from family member to family member. It's just that married people don't have to testify against their spouses... and that's it. Not siblings, not parents, not boyfriends/girlfriends/etc. Just married people.

Same thing with immigration: your specific status matters because there are different procedures depending on exactly what your relationship is, not only if you're married but if you're someone's parent or fiancé or sibling. There's no default "person who automatically gets a green card by being in your family."

So: yes if it's just that there is the default option for something, because you can say "I don't want the default option, I want to do this instead."

No for things where being married specifically is required and there is no default option.

[adamsvanrhijn]

Ok, sorry for very random question, but i didnt find any satisfying answer when i tried to look it up. Do you know or have any ideas why after mr van rhijn death it is Agnes who seems to be in charge of running things instead of Oscar who will inherit and "is expected to run the house infinietly" only after her death? (Sorry for bad english, but i tried to be clear haha)

this is a very good question (and is perfectly clear!!) and there are a few things that could be happening!

@ anyone reading this i welcome corrections about inheritance law in 1870s new york

legally, one of the following is probably true:

upon mr. arnold van rhijn's death, control of assets (funds, investments, property/real estate, etc) was transferred from him to agnes, as his wife, for her use but with a clause that it would be transferred to oscar, his only son, once a certain condition had been met — most likely, that condition would be either her death, or, the earlier of either her death or oscar's marriage, or some upon oscar's marriage and the rest upon her death, etc

upon his death, control of assets was transferred from him to oscar, as his only son, with agnes, as his wife, given a monetary income for running her household in perpetuity until her death as the beneficiary of some kind of trust, with oscar (or an appointed overseer) as the trustee/person who legally oversees those funds

the reverse of #2, where upon his death, control of assets was transferred to agnes, who was expected to transfer them to oscar at any point in the future but also given the legal right not to as sole decisionmaker, with oscar as the beneficiary of a fund agnes (or an appointed overseer) controls

upon his death, some assets were transferred to oscar (e.g. investments and some property and whatever else) and some to agnes (e.g. money and the block of houses she lives in and whatever else), with the expectation that agnes would eventually (or upon her death) transfer her assets to oscar (but potentially legally could do whatever she wanted)

i BELIEVE, based on 1960s law reviews that talk about The Before Times but obviously that's 90 years after what we're looking at, that agnes would only have had the right to inherit if mr. van rhijn died without a will. if he wrote a will (no reality where he didn't imo) then he legally could have excluded her. there would have been major social ramifications for doing that, though.

there also was nothing Barring agnes from inheriting, and she had the right to own her own property (in both Pennsylvania and New York) as a married woman as of 1845. as a widow she has no property restrictions at all by default.

in real life with any given matriarch and only son in 1870s new york, any of those could be possible — it depends on the will & testament & any clauses associated with those assets, and that's pretty much up to the person who dies.

unless specified in family legal documents, patrilineal inheritance was NOT legally the default in the USA at this time, and it wasn't necessarily socially the default either — not the same situation as say downton abbey, where there's an entail that specifies only male heirs can inherit, and those entails were both common and were legally the default in England prior to i think the 1880s (but i don't remember the year off the top of my head i might be confusing that with another law). if you Are familiar with Downton Abbey, this is where the whole American heiress thing comes in. (in TGA we see it with Oscar, obviously, & i expect we're going to see a lot more of it in TGA S2.)

and to get back to your actual question, i think REGARDLESS of what the legal situation is, it seems to me that oscar and agnes have an understanding of who is in control of what until agnes dies— like it's theoretically possible that oscar controls all of it already or was given all of it and then was like "congrats mama you get to deal with everything i don't want to deal with [yet]", whether or not as an actual legal change in rights

but i don't think that's likely to be the scenario, based on both canonical dialogue and like. vibes

in the 2nd episode we get the exchange between ada and agnes where agnes says that she can't leave marian the van rhijn money, which Should and Will go to oscar, and also tells ada basically not to worry about being provided for because agnes will outlive her

and from that among other things we can gather that agnes is making monetary decisions, at least where her own household is concerned, until she dies, and is not concerned about others infringing on those decisions. it also implies that (at least some of) the money and house aren't actually oscar's legally yet, and depending on how you look at it, that agnes could if she so chose leave it to someone else

it isn't 100% clear because she could be saying to ada that it legally must/will and that she thinks it should, or she could be saying that she thinks it should [and/or that is an expectation placed upon it, socially] and so it will even if she had the ability not to

even if she is using the money for her own household, she doesn't see the money as hers, she sees it as family money that rightfully belongs to oscar

oscar, meanwhile, doesn't appear to see the money as belonging to him! he sees it as a family obligation, money that has conditions and expectations for use, and that he doesn't have true control over... he wants More, Other money (and heiress money frequently is socially earmarked for the family of the man she has when she marries... not money she is obligated to use for her father's family) for himself. the van rhijn money is for his mother's household and probably like, upkeep of family real estate, etc, & he is not going the prodigal son route here and using it for things other than its socially intended purpose

i don't think any of this actually answers your question because the canonical answer is "we don't know" and the rest of it is viewer discretion... my personal interpretation has been that #1 is the legal situation and agnes is basically just looking after the money but it isn't really hers because it needs to go to oscar at some point

[talenlee]

Lovecraft's Organism

HP Lovecraft was a racist, and I think this is important to bring up because his racism is really fundamental to how he conceived of horror; a large number of his fears are things that we actually live with every day and get by with just fine. Turns out that a lot of people are at least partially aware that they have a forebear who is a bastard or a total freak. While it’s easy to point to other writers of the time and talk about their problems —

Like Arthuer Machen? Probably had problem with women

— they aren’t nearly as directly related to the type of horror that author made. But Lovecraft’s horror, across almost all his stories are about encounters with an other, with inscrutable motivations that do not align with his. They are not about monsters that are cruel on purpose but about things that behave in a way so utterly indifferent to you that they regard nothing about you as having meaning but your potential digestion.

I have opinions on what traits a work has that make it Lovecraftian. It doesn’t need ornate or elaborate prose, it doesn’t need tentacles, it doesn’t need space or bugs or even the infinite scope of the cosmic. Lots of his stories weren’t and didn’t. What drives the heart of all Lovecraftian narratives was indifference.

Cthulhu does not hate you, Chthulu does not care about you. What hate exists in him is for the reality itself that works the way it does, frustration at his political position as high priest of a mad god that again, does not know or care about you. It is the scope of the antipathy that forms the foundation of Lovecraftian horror.

How do you explain colonialism?

I mean I know how I explain colonialism. I do so from the position of a person inside colonialism, beneficiary of colonialism, able to dispassionately describe the movements of ships and the political exchanges between countries. I can — and by default do! — think of colonialism as a thing that England did to the world. I know it’s not just England – almost all of the nations in Europe were colonial powers, and pretty much just Germany sat that one out because they didn’t exist during most of the era of colonialism. But it still is something where I can look at Australia, around me, and think of it in terms of ‘England put this here,’ and even if there are a series of injustices that put us here, it is still ultimately, the work of empires.

I am not in a position of power in the Empire. I am not a dominant power, but I am privileged, and part of how is that the world that colonialism shaped shaped itself, generally for the benefit of people who share my signifiers. In this regard, it is easy for me – easiest! – to treat colonialism as a thing that happened and it was this organisation of systems and it’s inhuman and terrible but I can just refer to it that way. You know, it’s a thing.

It was a thing.

I mean it’s kinda still a thing…

… but the way it’s described, as if the bulk of what it involved is a movement of blocks of a system. It is an anodyne and impersonal system, even though it is immensely cruel.

I don’t have a Colonised Person perspective. I mean I literally do – I exist in this place as I do because of sequential waves of colonised people being pushed around by the colonising system, but the people in my situation are the ones who were being exported from the heart of the empire. But I don’t live on a reservation. I don’t live in a housing comission. I don’t live in a space where the lineage of my history is a way of life that I have never known was destroyed and taken away from my forebears who would have given it to me, who would have raised me. I am pretty much exactly where Industrial England would have wanted me to be – I’m not quite as good a worker as they want, I’m not as Christian as they want, but I’m pretty much where that system wanted me to be.

Sadly, the thing I think of as the best example I can give of this mindset, of pivoting from this place where I’m sitting, is the movie Pocahontas. It was a conversation I had with Fox, on a podcast, about how the arrival of the colonists in New England was.

They were there to unravel themselves upon the land. They were there to convert what they saw into what they knew. They didn’t care about how things were here, they weren’t interested in that. They wanted to dig up the ground, strip the trees, push the people out, and turn what they found into what they left.

Their people would make claims about the way the world works, but not explain them. They would proffer things to you in exchange for things, and then those exchanges resulted in more of this unfurling, this transformation. Some – I mean functionally all – of the people were needlessly violent. They would say nice things, they would make deals, they would promise concessions and then they would ignore those deals and more, more, more of this cloud of what they were rolls out across reality.

In Shagghai, a story in the Lovecraft mythos by Lin Carter, the story describes the people of a world that Lovecraft called Chag-Hai. They were called the Shan, and they summoned a creature, a dreadful worm, for a reason that doesn’t matter – it was a giant worm, and when they couldn’t control it, and banish it, they just erected a pyramid over it, decorated with runes, a massive monument that they hoped would be enough for it. But down, down, down the worm went, and it started to eat the world, from the inside out.

Where they couldn’t see.

And didn’t have to look.

Lovecraft didn’t know what the colonialism of his life was doing. He didn’t realise it, because of course, he couldn’t. He was too close, he couldn’t see the shape of earth because he was standing on it, so small and insignificant. His work, his racism, his opinions, were all contrbutors to it – he was literally encouraging the rightness, the normacy of violent and terrible ongoing operations of colonialism. Lovecraft was afraid of a vast, indifferent engine that consumed people thoughtlessly in the name of an ongoing inscrutable benefit that no human mind could ever accept beyond a cultish worship.

The Doom of Shagghai eats, and nobody is okay with that, unless they have convinced themselves that its eating is an inherent good. The wealth bestowed by the ongoing action of colonialism, the harm of colonialism, was beyond anyone’s need. You can tell, because the people doing the impoverishing and maximally benefitting from it keep doing it and have gotten to the point of just stockpiling giant piles of money that don’t do anything, just in case they get a good idea.

The eating is the point.

The eating is good, actually.

The engine of colonialism, in which Lovecraft was a processing, straining, sanitising, exulting agent, was not a dispassionate sliding block or flowing dotted line of transferring information.

It was a digestion.

It is a digestion.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[danny4xb]

A cult-like worship of the 18th Century grandees who became the Founding Fathers of the United States has acted as a cultural barrier to reform of a constitutional order that invests enormous foreign policy power in a president, entrenches paralysis in its legislatures and provides huge judicial power to unaccountable Supreme Court justices.

This ossified constitutional order continues to be a substantial system risk for American democracy. A dynamic in which efforts to reform the constitutional order would immediately be blocked or sabotaged by a Republican Party that is the main beneficiary of institutional stagnation risks generating further phases of instability that could undo economic or foreign policy successes achieved during periods of competent governance. As long as deeper reform of an outdated U.S. political system is avoided, the U.S. and the wider Western alliance it helps lead will remain vulnerable to surges of popular frustration among U.S. voters that undo economic or social gains made under individual presidents.

...

For all their fundamental differences over the U.K.’s relationship with the rest of Europe, in 2016 many prominent pro-EU Remainers and anti-EU Brexiters shared underlying assumptions about the stability and power of the U.K. state that were no longer accurate even in 1996.

While such complacency ensured that Remainers campaign lost the Brexit referendum in 2016, it was also a key factor that led to the disastrously incompetent implementation of the process of leaving the EU under Conservative governments led by Theresa May and Boris Johnson. Their successors in Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have failed to generate any of the positive Brexit outcomes for U.K. society that Brexiters had promised in 2016. And now Keir Starmer and other Labour leaders that are likely to take power after elections in 2024 seem paralyzed by the scale of the challenges they face in the wake of decades of institutional experimentation, economic underperformance and the rupture of established relationships with European partners.

Faced with the same unrealistic expectations of the office of prime minister that destroyed the careers of Boris Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron, there is a strong possibility that Keir Starmer may also be brought down by a voter backlash if he does not engage in a more hard-nosed and honest discussion with voters over the amount of work needed to stabilize the U.K. state and its constitutional order after decades of turmoil. Engaging with the public in a way that acknowledges how long some reforms and investment decisions might take to generate results while clearly signaling how a Labour government would represent lasting change would be a more mature approach than the crabbed defensiveness and lack of strategic imagination that is the current default setting of Labour’s leadership.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

President Joe Biden will press House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for a detailed list of spending proposals when the two meet at the White House on Wednesday, officials said ahead of the meeting.

Biden advisers Brian Deese and Shalanda Young said in a memo to reporters Tuesday that the White House would release its own budget in early March.

“It is essential that Speaker McCarthy likewise commit to releasing a budget, so that the American people can see how House Republicans plan to reduce the deficit,” Deese and Young wrote.

A Republican budget proposal, the advisers said, should specify whether Republicans would pursue savings through cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, health insurance subsidies, research or public safety spending.

Republicans should also specify “how much their budget will add to the deficit with tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and large corporations, as in their first bill this year.” House Republicans approved a symbolic bill cutting IRS funding for tax enforcement, which the Congressional Budget Office said would boost deficits by more than $100 billion.

Republicans have signaled they want a major spending showdown with Biden, and that they would use the so-called “debt ceiling” as leverage. The federal government is already butting up against a legal limit on how much it can borrow in order to cover expenses, and if Congress fails to raise the limit, the government would default — potentially triggering a financial crisis and a recession.

Biden has said he would refuse to negotiate over the debt limit, but has nevertheless engaged in a back-and-forth with Republicans, skewering them for suggesting they’d cut spending on popular retirement programs and demanding they be specific about what they want.

Republicans have struggled to define what they’d like to see cut from the federal budget. Some have proposed vague across-the-board cuts to discretionary spending, while others have suggested that it is Biden and the White House who should identify spending restrictions. A top House Republican on Monday said the GOP would seek to cut the “woke agenda” in negotiations with Biden.

Since last week, McCarthy has claimed that Republicans would not propose changes to Social Security or Medicare as part of their spending demands. GOP lawmakers typically sidestep political blowback over such proposals by promising to “strengthen” or “save” those programs instead — with changes for future beneficiaries.

Deese and Young noted Tuesday that the Republican Study Committee, a policy-focused group of House lawmakers, last year proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare through higher eligibility ages and reduced benefits for some recipients.

McCarthy insisted Sunday those programs should be “off the table” for now and that it was a shame congressional Democrats had refused to produce a budget.

“They won’t even negotiate,” McCarthy said on CBS. “I want to make sure we have something responsible, something that we can move forward on and something that we can balance our debt with. So I’m looking [forward to] sitting down. That’s exactly what I’ve been asking for.”

The White House is expected to submit a budget proposal to Congress in the coming weeks, as mandated by federal law. But such plans are often ignored on Capitol Hill. It’s unclear whether the divided and narrow House GOP majority will also produce a budget of its own.

Asked Monday what his message was for McCarthy ahead of their sit-down this week, Biden told reporters: “Show me your budget, I’ll show you mine.”

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

This source seems to think that social security payments, specifically, WILL get paid in June regardless of a debt default.