#i think i'm forgetting a sociologist...

[seoulciology]

some of my fav video essays + comments

although i don't take in 4 hour thesis papers through youtube, i do enjoy the occasional deep dive especially when it comes to something korea or sociology related, so i'm here again. this post includes some youtube videos i personally enjoyed and any extra information i feel is important to add.

chapter 1: behind asia's forceful plastic surgery obsession

this video is incredible. i really enjoyed how the creator focused it towards collectivism, and i feel like this theory is pretty well proven. i appreciate the empathetic approach and how the video doesn't demonise western or east asian culture, simply explains the motivation for surgery within the 2. i've never seen research delve into appearance and culture so deeply, even though i'm sure all beauty standards have a cultural explanation. (if you have please share, i would love to read it.)

i have nothing to add, just that i reccommend you watch it.

chapter 2: squid game: ideology and the new soviet man

i promise this blog focuses on korea + sociology in general and not just squid game, but in my defense, it is a pretty good show and has a lottt to unpack.

moving on, another blogger ( @queercodedangel ) recommended this video and after watching it i can confirm i really enjoyed it! i like that the youtuber brought out marxist sociologists to cite theories and i feel like the analysis was really neat.

nothing to add. i would not recommend this to someone that hasn't watched squid game or who doesn't care about marxist theory though, cuz it is a little niche.

chapter 3: squid game's trans character

after watching squid game s2, i saw a youtuber that i've followed for a while (jammidodger) had released a video about it. personally, i thought the trans character (hyun-ju) had been represented pretty well, despite the actor being cis. however, i am not trans, so seeing jamie release a video talking about it intrigued me.

the video is honestly pretty well researched. i know in most marginalised communities a character represented by someone who does not identify with said labels is very tricky territory, as it can become a caricature and potentially hurt the reputation of these already oppressed individuals. jamie recognises this, but also agrees that it was not offensive in a range of ways and researched into exactly why park sunghoon was chosen for the role.

his opinion is pretty simple, it is always better for a trans character to be played by a trans actor for authenticity, but! korea is extremely unaccepting of trans people.

having a trans actor in such a popular show could have put the actor herself in danger. it is also very hard to find an openly trans korean actress. jamie delves deeper into the subject, but overall i enjoyed seeing his genuine opinion and as someone who is really interested in korean culture, i appreciated how he took time to look into cultural factors and was respectful.

there is one thing! and only one! that i found wrong with this video (it is really minor, but this is a blog where i yap after all). in minute 5:38, jamie doubts wether the six-legged pentathlon was truly realistic because of the small amount of time.

i would argue it is! i think something people tend to forget, especially with this game in particular, is that these are children's games that the participants probably spent their whole childhood playing. if you've ever picked up gonggi (korean jacks / the colourful pebble throwing game) you'll see it is hard. if you spent every day practicing it with your friends for your childhood years, you'll see it is not unrealistic to win on your second or even first try.

in terms of hyun-ju's character, i would also like to recognise that it does not feel forced at all. since s1, squid game had been showing marginalised groups in korea and just how horrible life can be for them. (in the same way capitalism is worse for marginalised groups irl) this is consistent in s2. also i agree with the general public that saying "squid game went woke" is crazy. i invite anyone who believes this to take a step back and consider how a miniseries about capitalist dystopia could never not be woke in the first place.

overall, i would recommend this video if you've watched s2 because it's always important to get a trans person's opinion on a trans character. i like how understanding jamie is of all topics he covers, so if you're interested, check his channel out!

chapter 4: how south korea saved autism representation

this video is similar to the last in the sense that an autistic person gives their opinion on a k-drama with an autistic character that is played by a non-austistic actress. once again, as a non-autistic person, i watched this to gain some valuable perspective.

when i watched extraordinary attorney woo, i loved it. the representation felt authentic, un-caricature-like and woo young woo was very likeable. i felt identified with her perceived 'clumsiness' and her love for something niche (hello,, this blog??)

by the fourth episode, i had seen online that the consensus was that this show was pretty good representation. i was quite bummed when i found out park eun-bin was in fact not autistic.

meg puts the rest of my thoughts into words, and i like that she does not hold back from giving criticisms for things she found were lacking or incorrect in the miniseries.

i have no other comments other than i recommend this video for anyone who likes video essays in general and i would definitely recommend extraordinary attorney woo if you need a show to wind down and relax with at the end of the day (it's my comfort show, i loved it)

chapter 5: south korea is over

this video is honest with its statistics and also has a touch of humour. definitely more depressing than the last two ones i commented on, especially if the country you're from also has a declining birth rate. (...)

its quick, straight to the point and nice if you're curious about censuses (basically only i am but either way) or the situation of the world.

conclusion:

i love video essays! sociology is so interesting! enjoy my reccommendations and opinions!

[tuulikki]

A while back you reblogged my post (pisses me off when sci-fi writes religion out of their stories) and I've been turning what you said over in my head since then. Specifically in the past few days, as the version with your addition has been passed around.

What, specifically, DO these authors think they’re writing out of their story?

Ive been trying to find a charitable way to answer this question for myself, but it's hard to. I'm jewish, after all. To me, a story without religion is one where my people have been wiped out. That was the original point of my post, but... i think that what you said, about religion being tied to culture and tradition and the context of its time, makes the image in my head a little sadder.

It becomes one where jews haven't just been wiped out, but completely forgotten. Rendered obsolete.

I don't know what point I'm trying to make, really. I just wanted to share, and to thank you for the interaction. I've gone through your blog a bit, and you seem pretty cool. :)

Hey, I'm answering after a long delay, because what you asked was something I needed to mull over.

I think a fair few things are happening. And I thought this over long enough that it even came out in a semi-coherent list.

First, I think people forget that secularism is an ideology, not a "default" neutral state of how human societies organise themselves. Because there's no such thing as a "default" human society. It's a specific idea that a lot of people decided to believe in.

Second, I think they forget that secularism is a culturally-bound idea that emerged out of the religious history of Western Christendom (i.e., Reformation and Counter-Reformation punching each other in the face). The idea that the political and the religious could or should be separate spheres, with religion being private rather than public, did not show up anywhere else in a way we'd recognise unless Europeans barged in.

Third, people think secular = modern. People already will comfortably imagine that someone living in the modern age could be doing so without being modern: "modern" means looking, thinking, and behaving a very specific way. The old (broke-ass) narratives that projected that humanity would one day abandon all belief in religion, spirituality, the supernatural, superstition, or even plain-old clinging to ideologies in favour of ascending to pure enlightened reason have demonstrably turned out to be bullshit. But if you're raised with a cultural belief that progress to modernity looks like progress to secularity, then it's an article of faith that the scifi future will be secular.

Fourth, I think there's some wicked bad history involved in what people are writing out when they write out religion:

They tend to assume that no one was oppressed, enslaved, marginalised, or stressed before Big Monotheism.

They tend to have the very specifically Protestant definition of "religion" as individually-held cosmic convictions—and to project both that definition of religion and the cultural primacy of the individual into the past and the future as universal values so that, the less a religion reflects the core positions of Protestantism, the less it will be understood or presented favourably (unless its a Noble Savage'd indigenous tradition).

They tend to associate religion with "violence" and "intolerance," even though (to quote the sociologist José Casanova), "none of the horrible massacres [of the 20th century]—not the senseless slaughter of millions of young Europeans in the trenches of World War I; or the countless millions of victims of Bolshevik and Communist terror through revolution, civil war, collectivization campaigns, the great famine in Ukraine, the repeated cycles of Stalinist terror, and the gulag; or the most unfathomable of all, the Nazi Holocaust and the global conflagration of World War II, culminating in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—can be said to have been caused by religious fanaticism and intolerance. All of them were, rather, products of modern secular ideologies."

So that's what I think is going on :/

[edwad]

i'm responding to something from a month ago: are there any examples of -isms that you do think account for themselves? i kinda get what you mean but am having trouble imagining what it would look like

well, to be clear, the point isn't that there are tons of successful examples out there and marx's project simply fails to meet them, it's just that this is the weird aspiration which he contracted as a hegelian. personally, i find it to be really powerful as a mode of argument, and i think that the epistemological concerns are very pursusaive.

we can also all think of examples where a failure to do this kind of grounding leads to absurd outcomes, with historians treating themselves as outside of history, sociologists forgetting that they are the people they study, etc. there are countless instances where a failure to theoretically account for one's position isn't just a product of narrow concerns but specifically an expression of significant theoretical failure for being unable to connect the observer with the object under observation (quiet often including the observer themself). it calls into question the adequacy of a theory if it is somehow capable of explaining everything except the existence of the person offering it.

i think it's a very serious criticism, and a necessary corrective for various marxisms which talk about the all-totalizing movement of capital, as if nothing can resist its remaking of the world in its own singular image. these marxisms often use this language in an alarmist way to talk about the necessity of overthrowing the system which is constantly homogenizing everything, but it can't actually explain how such absolute domination is able to accidentally produce so many anti-capitalists. there are clever-ish ways out of this ("well the domination isn't quite complete so we still have freedom to rebel for now") but this suggests a mythical limit and, i think, erroneously treats anti-capitalism as somehow the product of non-capitalist elements of society which haven't been destroyed yet but can be held up against the system as a standard through which we can measure it against outside possibilities.

the problem though, in my view, is that this epistemological mode of accounting isn't really possible. as wonderful as it sounds and as damning as it is, there's no reason why marx or anyone else would actually have any meaningful success in pulling it off. it's one thing to accuse a social thinker of imagining they're some objective observer without any contaminating biases (never the case, to be sure). it's another thing altogether to then ask that person -- maybe even after they've admitted they're wrong and have faithfully converted to your particular brand of hegel -- to carefully reconstruct their perspective by tracing all of the invisible and unknowable determinations of society until they have a full picture of all the things that make them who they are consciously and unconsciously.

of course we are unable to do something like this successfully, and it's not necessarily any easier by dealing with aggregations of people just because they start to move in coherent groups. you have to account not just for the broad movements but also the outliers and the dynamism between them, just like how marxists have to be able to account for anti-capitalism. if the success of your project depends on being able to do these kinds of things, as marx's undoubtedly was (this is the point of his commitment to materialism), then failing to do this entails the failure of the whole project. the reason why it becomes a total failure which can't be reconstructed or reformed is because the internal architecture of the argument depends on this form of epistemological critique as load-bearing crossbeams. you can't fall short without falling apart, which is exactly my argument about marx's critique of political economy.

[hoppipolla]

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Thank you for thinking of me, Nine @nineninepetals <3 I've merged the two tag games together. Hope you don't mind :)

Get to Know Your Tumblr Mutuals

What's the origin of your username?

It’s the name of a Korean band whose music I adore. The band is no longer active but each singer/musician has a solo career.

OTP(s) + shipname:

I’m not a huge shipper and I don’t think I have any OTPs right now but I can share with you my first OTP and the one that lasted the most:

Emma Swan and Captain Hook (Captain Swan) from Once Upon a Time. OUAT was my first TV show ever.

Keith and Lance (Klance) from Voltron. (No, I was not an annoying Voltron fan please don’t make this revelation change the way you see me >< I’ve heard the fandom was pretty toxic that’s why I’m saying this. I was on a Tumblr break when I watched the show so I didn’t interact with the fandom much.)

Favourite colour: Blue

Song stuck in my head: None

Weirdest habit/trait: Too embarrassed to say it here haha. It’s a habit I kept which dates back to when I was a kid.

Hobbies: Right now, it’d be reading graphic novels.

If you work, what's your profession? I'm an office worker (*sighs*).

If you could have any job you wish, what would you have? Either be a sociologist or a librarian.

Something you're good at: Appreciating the little things.  

Something you hate: People who cannot comprehend what physical space is.

Something you forget: Most things I don’t reactivate after some time. Things I spent hours studying now gone with the wind… It’s kind of frustrating but that’s how memory works.  

Your love language: Quality time

Favourite movies/shows:

I’m not good at having favourite things but here are one film and one series I really like:

“The Summit of the Gods” directed by Patrick Imbert

“Beyond Evil” directed by Shim Nayeon 

Favourite food: that one vegetarian dish at my favourite Thai place (khao pad thai + smoked tofu with spices and basilic)

Favourite animal: Horses

What were you like as a child? Way too honest. Loved racing people and reading.

Favourite subject in school: Literature and English.

Least favourite subject: Physics.  

What's your best character trait? Empathy.

What's your worst character trait? My lack of patience ><

If you could change any detail of your life right now, what would it be? My low self-esteem.

If you could travel in time, who would you like to meet? Jiro Taniguchi. I wouldn’t be travelling too far back.

Current Read: “Présentes” by Lauren Bastide and Volume 1 of “The Ogre Gods”. Really like Bastide’s essay. “The Ogre Gods” is very dark and I don’t like how it portrays women.

Last song: Seance by Talos

Last movie: “Black Dog” directed by Guan Hu.

Last series: Last finished drama was the Thai drama “Your Sky”. Last episode watched was from the cdrama “Filter” which I’ll most likely drop.

Sweet, Savory or Salty: I have a terrible sweet tooth.

Craving: A hug

Tea or coffee: Tea. I don’t like coffee. I don’t drink tea that often though. I just drink water.

Current WIP: Sadly nothing :( I’d like to write a little one-shot with Donghee and Hotae from “The Time of Fever” and “Unintentional Love Story” but I haven’t started anything yet.

[irrevocablecondition]

I think your trademark is snupin but also regupete

the impact my one regupete mention had on our society (us and like four other friends) needs to be studied by sociologists.

also i'm sensing a lot of snupin and YK WHAT. i'll take it as my trademark. 2025 is the year 2000s snupin comes back. poa movie i love you but let's not forget our roots. let's not forget snupin was top 4 😖✊🏻

[berrypass-de-murdler]

2 - 34 Statistically Speaking, You're Probably Dead

LOOK

MINE!!!! (and my aureolin cosplay is here too)

Of course... I can't actually read it until I finish both MOTLE and Murdle We Wrote. But you better believe I still got plans for some adorable mini murdlers and little Tino's painful existence.

coffee shop chalkers???? i'm gonna die <3

ALSO!

How to Get Away With Murdle (the cartoon version of SoM) will feature 1-3 bonus episodes, for the starter cases and one for cartoon-only lore!! I can't wait!!!!

DON'T READ THE EPISODES WITHOUT READING THE BOOKS!!

LOGICO: That’s it. Too much murder! IRRATINO: Hello? Is Deductive Logico around? LOGICO: I’m serious! I’m going to the Deduction College. The endless murders started there, they’ll have the answer!

Logico is pretending to be angry, but in reality, he’d much rather be doing this than getting caught up in a war.

Marble, with her new job as a mathematician, seems to have been hired as a teacher, and the Duchess of Vermillion is also there for some reason. Wow, look!

UMBER: My name is Sociologist Umbah. I am going to become a deductive just like Logico!

The cutest thing to have ever lived? Or does that honor belong to Irratino?

Goat Lord is not super happy to be here, but he pretends like he’s okay. Logico sees that they’ve installed some new rooms - a coin-flipping room, for some reason… and a room that’s just a bunch of monkeys at typewriters… for some reason.

LOGICO: I REALLY… don’t like what you’ve done with the place.

He’s talking to a body.

LOGICO: …

A creepy monkey gives Logico a white hair as evidence, as belonging to the Duchess. Logico does not like monkeys. Marble does, though. She thinks they’ll make a lovely appetizer. Forget that though - a little suspect looks sad!!

LOGICO: Oh no! My baby-

He cringes. Did he just say that out loud?

LOGICO: What’s wrong? UMBER: Ohhh, Logicooo… I try really hard to not hate peopwe. But it’s getting so hard for me… wha is Marble doin’? She wants to eat a monkey! That’s just wrong!!

Logico gives her a soft hug. He understands greatly. 

Irratino, meanwhile, is quiet. He’s weakly trying to amuse himself by typing dirty words on a calculator. But he can’t crack a smile.

UMBER: Irratino IRRATINO: Oh! Umber! H-Hello my little Umber. [pet!] You wanna be more like Logico than your old man? UMBER: Wha! Actuwy, I needed to tell you, that Marble is trying to eat a monkey. IRRATINO: WHAT?!

He whips out a deadly weapon - a pendulum!

LOGICO: What… are you even planning on-

Irratino jumps in front of Marble and aggressively waves the thing in front of her face. She falls into a deep hypnosis! Logico is done trying to understand what’s happening. He has to solve the murder at hand. And he’s absolutely devastated when he realizes the truth!

UMBER: Ohhh… it was the only way they let me into the college! LOGICO: WHAT?! MUUUUUM!!!

He runs upstairs in fury. Irratino hugs the one he is speaking to.

IRRATINO: It’s alright, Umber. I know this place has weird policies. UMBER: You look so sad. IRRATINO: No, I’m alright. UMBER: Am I still the cutest thing to have ever lived? IRRATINO: Hehe. Yes you are. UMBER: [happy giggle] And if you disagree then I think you need to do more of the readings.

They comfortably unite while Logico goes to tattle on the school to his mom… like the REAL adult he is.

The end!

It's gonna be a while before HTGAWM but I can't wait forever so I'm gonna be posting some babytino lore really soon. please don't kill me!

The power of Goat Lord compels you!

See you next time murdlers!

[in2theaether]

04/24/25

At what age do you stop feeling like you're falling behind?

Last year in September, I turned 30. If you're good at math, then you know that means it's been 7 months since then. At the start of turning 30, I felt euphoric. I felt like "Damn, I really did it" -- I made it to 30 years old, that's huge for someone who didn't think they would even make it to 18, now I'm 30! Wow! It felt like a new beginning, a real start to adulthood.

Flash forward to present day and excitement for the future is the last thing I feel. I'm now in the "What the fuck" stage of being 30. The part where you start to freak out and feel like time is slipping away from you at every passing moment. That feeling of dread that your life and everyone in it is moving forward without you. Now don't get me wrong, I've had existential thoughts for as long as I can remember. I think trauma does that to a person.. or maybe it's just growing up as a girl in this society. I don't know, I'm not a sociologist or psychologist or any kind of -ist. I'm just some guy. Well. I'm non-binary. But you get the idea.

My point is, at this current point in time, I'm struggling to feel like a person. Maybe it's because it feels like the world is my oyster and that the options on what I can do, who I can be, etc. are limitless. Maybe it's because it feels like I'm going through adult puberty... and not in the physical sense, more in the "next stage of life" sense. For example, my very good friends are moving to a different state in a month. They're married and bought a house in a different state, because our current state is very right leaning and doesn't offer anything beneficial for their lives at this point in time. My partner and I have been living with roommates since we got together in 2018. Our lease at our current house, that we share with 5 other people, ends in January. We have decided that its the right time for us to finally try and find a place for just us two. We're starting our life together as a unit.

My good friends are leaving and starting a life of their own. I'm moving on with my life and moving into an apartment where it will just be me and my partner. It feels like our real adult lives are starting. This is it. We're all going off on our own now. My friends could start a family. I could get married. The options of what directions our lives will take from this point forward are limitless. That is exciting but also scary. Will we keep in touch? Will we have yearly visits where we go vacation somewhere together and catch up? Will they forget us when they start their new life? Before this, it was like we were preparing each other for this moment. Offering friendship, love, advice, support, so that we could go off on our own someday. Sort of like growing up with your family; they raise you so you can go out into the world. Then, when you get out in the world, you find your new family. One that will help you navigate this new chapter of life and adulthood. At this moment in time, it feels like that chapter is coming to an end and a new chapter is beginning. I don't know if any of this makes sense, but I guess it doesn't have to make sense to anyone but me, since that's what this is for.

I'm not trying to make this sound like some deep, profound thought.. I think I'm hoping someone will read this and understand how I'm feeling. It's hard to put into words though. I guess I just wanted to scream into the void and connect with someone so that everything doesn't feel so scary.

Why does getting older feel so scary?

[rgr-pop]

Regarding the McMansion critique, some of the environmental impacts are very, very valid. But I think we tend to overlook that there are residents living in these structures. We tend to put a lot of stereotypes that we hold about the houses, and about the suburbs themselves, on these residents. The thought is that because they have a big house, the residents are anti-environmental, they don't value community, and they only care about themselves and about their privacy. These houses are assumed to be one, universal; and two, universally bad. 

I spoke to the residents that are actually living in these homes and asked them what these homes meant to them. And in doing so, a lot of the stereotypes fell apart. That’s because a lot of those stereotypes were constructed in a post-war white middle-class framework, and don’t necessarily hold up in the face of new immigrants that are moving to suburbs. [...] The McMansion becomes that symbol of a lot of things that Asian Americans aren’t doing right to assimilate. Even the design critiques of these homes are about how they’re too outlandish. They’re trying to do this faux-Mediterranean look, but they're not even doing it right. It’s too tacky, you know? That, to me, is a broader critique of immigrants never really being American enough. I challenge the notion that Asian Americans should fit into a suburban neighborhood exactly the same way a white middle class family does.

This interview with Willow Lung-Amam is the first thing I recommend reading to start unraveling the mcmansion critique and its racial tones. Her book, Trespassers: Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia, about Fremont, CA, is one of many studies on American ethnoburbs, but one of a handful that deals directly with the specter of the mcmansion--Lung-Amam is a professor of architecture.

I feel a few ways about what she’s saying above, that a critique of mcmansions might emerge from a well-meaning assumption of the whiteness of suburbia, (and the contents of that suburban whiteness), an assumption that no longer maps onto how (and where) people are living in America. I basically agree, and I think it’s diplomatic. But her work (and the work of others, which I’ll get to) shows that in many cases, planners, critics and neighbors actually develop this critique of the mcmansion after the act of racialization, and wield that critique politically. In some cases, even, the same problematic houses don’t become a problem until they become inhabited by problem residents. 

But take this a little blurb on Fremont: mcmansions are built in suburbs that look like a different kind of suburb, and that difference is made political through zoning, design review, etc. Those quotes in there are really something. In this case, it would be hard to convincingly argue that neighbors imposed an existing critique of the white mcmansion onto their neighbors. In their case--and this is my first major stake in this argument--the “white suburb” is imagined to be single-story, a modernist suburb. The whiteness of, say, the modernist ranch, is just as fantastical as the whiteness of the mcmansion, but it’s become unfashionable to make such a critique of those postwar suburbs, and I really don’t think it’s because your average Curbed content creator has read Andrew Wiese’s Places of Their Own, Bruce Haynes’s Red Lines, Black Spaces or Becky Nicolaides’ My Blue Heaven, or any of the other new suburban histories that complicate a history of white spaces (and white architecture). In fact, I think a rise in critique of the excessive mcmansion* has bolstered a new and growing mythologizing of modernist architecture, one that is intimately connected to what’s happening to modernist real estate right now. Remember that Curbed is a real estate website.

*to be clear, there have been critiques of the mcmansion since the mcmansion has existed, and these critiques have come from a lot of different perspectives. but it is true that these critiques have been multiplying, as have their platforms.

But I really agree with Lung-Amam’s implication that as architecture critics, we (yes we, I can be whatever I want to be) can’t know anything by looking, certainly not (ffs) by looking at staged real estate listings. Or, let me rephrase: what can we know about a space, just by looking? That’s my second major stake in this game, and it is my biggest fucking stake. Eight years ago Alexandra Lange wrote that Nicolai Ouroussoff's criticism "shrinks the critic’s role to commenting only on the appearance of the architecture. He might have been the perfect critic for the boom years, when looks were the selling point, but this formal, global approach seems incongruous in a downturn,” and, not to lowkey call out someone I look up to in the field, but what do we have now? We have 1000 words on how the style of houses that were made after the fifties is Bad.

Let me take a few steps backward, because what I just said is not actually my stake. It’s not that I’m unconcerned with image in architecture, and it’s absolutely not that I’m concerned only with program and function (god, function) in architecture. It’s also not even that I care that much that architecture critics can’t think themselves out of a paper bag with Style written on it. It’s that I outright reject an architecture criticism that mistakes a taste objection for a political position. It’s hollow and it is, wholesale, in every case, racist. I’ve been listening to a lot of Vincent Scully lectures lately and I find it hard to believe that this great defender of play and eclecticism, a man who told students that Venturi reclaimed wallpaper as a feminist statement and that anti-ornament manifestos of the turn of the century were homophobic, was really paving the way for us to write about how disgusted we are by an Armenian doctor’s Greek fountain, or that Muslim-Americans should plan the spaces of their home more economically if they want into the polity. Ohhkay! I feel I’ve digressed again.

As you know, my main fight is about interiors. And I’ve learned a lot by watching a meme critique of staged interior decoration launch itself to the top of so-called architecture criticism. Just as you can’t look at the elevation of house and learn (as much as people want to believe) about the sociopolitical content of that home, I believe it’s either dangerous or useless to stake social claims based on a photograph of an interior. I mean: looking at interior space, represented, instead of asking (not rhetorically asking), why might the people who live in this space have configured it as such? what is this space used for? where did these items come from?, the mcmansion critique says: this is wrong, it’s repulsive, it’s amoral. And worse: my revulsion is not only a critical position, but an ethical one. Questions become accusations: Why would anyone need an extra set of bedrooms? Why would anyone need an empty room with a stupid persian rug on the floor? Why would people want to have Mediterranean or Chinese things in their home? Why would an Australian have a corrugated metal roof? Moralistic judgments about lifeways based on the scopic only. I use “scopic” here because I think of this action as fundamentally an action upon, and I want to frame dumbass ethocentric judgment (cast as “criticism”) as a mode of cultural domination.

And okay, so many of these judgments are just funny mistakes that we can laugh at (why would someone in the county with the largest amount of house fires caused by lightning strikes have metal rods on their roof?). But my point is that it is a fundamentally ethnocentric (racist, is the word I like to use) (we’re just going to set “disabled people exist” aside entirely for now) project to advance a critique of bad taste (style) from a position of practicality, one centered on what you understand to be the right way to inhabit a space. Really a lot of words for something very simple! Really impossible to convince anyone of this! And, I conclude, the mcmansion critique is not a political critique, and (you’re gonna hate to hear this, tough love) a politics can’t emerge from a taste claim. The mcmansion critique is nothing more than a taste claim, one very hastily staked. 

I actually came here to offer you a short bibliography and nothing else, whoops! I mention Lung-Amam’s work as the one that I’ve found really takes the category of the mcmansion to task, looking at what was just as often called the “monster house” in Fremont. Denise Lawrence-Zuniga, an anthropologist, wrote a book about Southern California historical preservation (Protecting Suburban America) with a chapter on San Gabriel Valley’s Alhambra. That chapter looks at the conflicts between the preservation board, design review board, planning commission etc. and residents, specifically immigrants. She notes how different understandings of governmentality (as in, the need to get certain kinds of permits, etc.), and different ways of living created conflict between local government and immigrants. There are bits about planners’ paranoia about remodels that promote density, like adding too many extra rooms to a historic house, or remodeling interiors in a way that might encourage subletting, that I find pretty disturbing. But the author only mentions the major point: these forms of intensive governmentality in the name of historical preservation were put into place as Alhambra witnessed the transition of nearby suburbs into ethnoburbs. Preservationist policy emerged as a governmental response to a perceived loss of white control. (Much has been said about Arcadia, Chinese investor development, “mansionization.” h/t @prettylittlecrier for this article!) I can’t say that I recommend this book entirely, unless you’re involved in preservation planning.

I’m not sure we can accurately call all of these homes in the SGV “mcmansions,” but people sure love to. In Lawrence-Zuniga’s chapter, Alhambra’s bungalow landscape “needed” to be defended from Arcadia’s mansionization--larger scale teardown and redevelopment, but also from any kinds of additions and modifications to existing bungalows that would alter their scale in relation to the lot and the neighbors, as well as (importantly) their inhabited density. I think it’s worth thinking through the differences between all of these things: subdivided land developed for large houses on small lots, redevelopment for the former, large houses built for large families on small surbuban lots where more “modest” houses might have once stood, or just... big houses on big lots. 

I must have mentioned Becky Nicolaides and James Zarsadiaz’s “Design Assimilation in Suburbia: Asian Americans, Built Landscapes, and Suburban Advantage in Los Angeles’s San Gabriel Valley since 1970,” I was so excited when they published this article. They look at San Marino, and consider what they term “design assimilation” to describe the ways (and reasons) Chinese suburbanites chose to consent to preservationist codes and design review, and why they lived in a community that imposed these kinds of racialized codes:

For some, these suburban landscapes seemed to materialize positive images of America they harbored as children back in Asian home countries. Some openly appreciated the classic European inflected architecture, others the open spaces and aesthetic styles of country living. Asian suburbanites also grasped that support of American landscape aesthetics offered certain social and fiscal benefits. To their neighbors, it conveyed a willingness to assimilate through aesthetic behaviors, which helped maintain community peace and ensure social acceptance. Embracing American design styles also conferred a status distinction that positioned these Asian homeowners above those around them—including those in the ethnoburbs. In design-assimilated suburbs, property values were higher and schools were better, signaling a racialized valuing of space not lost on Asians themselves. Design assimilation, thus, was a facet of the production of affluent suburban space, in which white and ethnic Asian suburbanites played complicit roles.

They don’t pick up the McMansion explicitly, but they are marking its absence in a landscape. This is a really constructive piece, chiefly, here, as a concrete example of the ways that some suburbs were understood to be aesthetically Chinese by the eighties, that the mcmansion criticism can be seen to have been racialized by then. 

I want to close with an excerpt from anthropologist Aihwa Ong’s 1996 article, “Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making,” which picks up the problem of taste but also the figure of international wealth, and the Chinese developer rather than the middle class Chinese immigrant:

In wealthier San Franciscan neighborhoods, residents pride themselves on their conservation consciousness, and they jealously guard the hybrid European ambiance and character of particular neighborhoods. In their role as custodians of appropriate cultural taste governing buildings, architecture, parks, and other public spaces, civic groups routinely badger City Hall, scrutinize urban zoning laws, and patrol the boundaries between what is aesthetically permissible and what is intolerable in their districts. By linking race with habitus, taste, and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984), such civic groups set limits to the whitening of Asians, who, metaphorically speaking still give off the whiff of sweat despite arriving with starter symbolic capital.

Public battles over race/taste have revolved around the transformation of middle-class neighborhoods by rich Asian newcomers. At issue are boxy houses with bland facades--”monster houses”--erected by Asian buyers to accommodate extended families in low-density, single-family residential districts known for their Victorian or Mediterranean charm. Protests have often taken on a racialist tone, registering both dismay at the changing cultural landscape and efforts to educate the new arrivals to white upper-class norms appropriate for the city. While the activists focus on the cultural elements--aesthetic norms, democratic process, and civic duty--that underpin the urban imagined community, they encode the strong class resentment against large-scale Asian investment in residential and commercial properties throughout the city. A conflict over one of these monster houses illustrates the ways in which the state is caught between soothing indignant urbanites seeking to impose their notion of cultural citizenship on Asian nouveaux riches while attempting to keep the door open for Pacific Rim capital. 

 In 1989 a Hong Kong multimillionaire, a Mrs. Chan, bought a house in the affluent Marina district. Chan lived in Hong Kong and rented out her Marina property. A few years later, she obtained the approval of the city to add a third story to her house but failed to notify her neighbors. When they learned of her plans, they complained that the third story would block views of the Palace of Fine Arts as well as cut off sunlight in an adjoining garden. The neighbors linked up with a citywide group to pressure City Hall. The mayor stepped in and called for a city zoning study, thus delaying the proposed renovation. At a neighborhood meeting, someone declared, “We don’t want to see a second Chinatown here.” Indeed, there is already a new “Chinatown” outside the old Chinatown, based in the middle-class Richmond district. This charge thus raised the specter of a spreading Chinese urbanscape encroaching on the heterogeneous European flavor of the city. The remark, with its implied racism, compelled the mayor to apologize to Chan, and the planning commission subsequently approved a smaller addition to her house.

However, stung by the racism and the loss on her investment and bewildered that neighbors could infringe upon her property rights, Chan, a transnational developer, used her wealth to mock the city’s self-image as a bastion of liberalism. She pulled out all her investments in the United States and decided to donate her million-dollar house to the homeless. To add insult to injury, she stipulated that her house was not to be used by any homeless of Chinese descent. Her architect, an American Chinese, told the press, “You can hardly find a homeless Chinese anyway,” Secure in her overseas location, Chan fought the Chinese stereotype by stereotyping American homeless as non-Chinese, while challenging her civic-minded neighbors to demonstrate the moral liberalism they professed. Mutual class and racial discrimination thus broke through the surface of what initially appeared to be a negotiation over normative cultural taste in the urban milieu. A representative of the mayor’s office, appropriately contrite, remarked that Chan could still do whatever she wanted with her property; “We just would like for her not to be so angry.” The need to keep overseas investments flowing into the city had to be balanced against neighborhood groups’ demands for cultural standards. The power of the international real estate market, as represented by Mrs. Chan, thus disciplined both City Hall and the Marina neighbors, who may have to rethink local notions of what being enlightened urbanites may entail in the “era of Pacific Rim capital.”

[timur-pannonicus]

News from my mind, episode 1

So, since it's the name of my blog anyway I've decided to try to clump my most recent random musings together and just list them in somewhat random, somewhat planned order. I'll quote a statement and comment about it. Here it goes:

"Why are Azula fans so closed off from the greater fandom?"

Dunno, it could possibly, maybe have something to do with the inexplicable phenomenon that if people are treated like outcasts they will gravitate towards other outcasts and view the people hurling insults at them with wariness, perhaps even resentment. Question for the sociologists.

"Why do you hate Zuko and Iroh!?"

I personally don't hate them, I actually LIKE Zuko and nothing will ever change my enjoyment of reading reconciliation fics between him and his sister. I'm not too fond of Iroh since compared to actual Eastern wisdom his words feel like fortune cookies. Still, this isn't my main point. I know fellow fans who really do hate them but... if you feel ok with hating Azula for hurting and mistreating your favorites I don't see why it's such a mystery to you that someone who has her as their favorite could feel the same towards the people who treated her harshly, whether it was fair or not.

"Why are you so obsessed with the mirror scene and the beach?"

Because antis pretend these moments don't exist, are ooc, should be ignored or somehow confirm how purely evil she is even more.

"You are forgetting she did X and Y and also Z?"

Yet when it's an attack on her her good or human moments can be completely ignored and not acknowledged at all. As another favorite character of mine once said: The good doesn't wash out the bad, nor the bad the good. I'd be really happy if more people adopted this view since apparently in our modern age you can only be either a saint or a monster, ignoring human nature altogether.

"The comics prove that she's irredeemable!"

The comics DO prove something in abundance and it's that her biggest obstacle towards redemption is that SHE doesn't believe she's capable or deserving of it. She views herself as monster but has no idea how to be anything else. Yet even after everything Zuko's and "Ursa's" words of love in The Search were enough to deter her from attacking and she even dropped the letter that could discredit Zuko.

"Azula fans are Nazi apologists!"

I may need to make a poll but every other fan I ever talked to is either left leaning or a full on leftist. But since offense is better than defense I will say that advocating for someone to be put to death or imprisoned and tortured for life because their mental illness makes them too dangerous, now THAT'S a Nazi talking point.

"Redeeming her would be consistent with the themes and messages of the show and make most sense narratively."

True. But I give the antis this, it's perfectly possible to enjoy a piece of media while also disagreeing with its message. I love House M.D. and the message of the show is that people cannot change, ever, no matter how hard they try or how much they want it, something I obviously disagree with. Saying a show would be better if it contradicted the very theme it tries to promote is another thing though. Perhaps it's just my preference for consistency though.

"You cannot woobiefy Azula because she's such a jerk!"

Good thing that tv tropes has an entry called Jerkass Woobie and the description fits her to a T. Look, at least I personally have no problem whatsoever with people gushing over turtle duck Zuko. It's a perfectly normal reaction for someone you both feel for and think is hot. I just happen to have this feeling for his sister and I refuse to feel guilty about it.

"Azula fans are such hypocrites!"

Everyone is blind to their own faults to a degree or doesn't bring their train of thought to it's logical conclusion. Everyone should try to be better though. But you know what, no group is perfect, you just have to admit to yourself that you feel more comfortable with one over the other.

"Azula fans don't love the real her, only the image they have of her in their head."

This is true to some extent but it's also a loaded question which clearly implies that the real Azula is only a crazed monster and nothing else. We love her in large part because we see the POTENTIAL in her but we try to base our speculations and headcanons on what can be seen or deducted from the show itself. If you can't follow the logic or disagree with the conclusions or just refuse to give the benefit of the doubt, that's your right. Also I'm fully aware and ok with admitting to myself that I sometimes believe things because I WANT to, like that Zuko does care about her at least deep down and that she's capable of being happy in a heterosexual relationship. This brings me to my last Azula related entry:

I like shipping her with Zirin from the comics due to mathematical reasons.

It's a known thing that adding minus and minus together results in plus. They are both mentally disturbed and immoral young women so adding them together can only result in positive things.

Also one plus one equals two. They are both hot and cute on their own so together is even better.

Anyway, thank you so much for getting to this point. I hope it was a ride. I will however NOT comment if this post turns into a heated discussion.

Also for all those concerned about my mental health, I DO think about things other than Azula but since most people are interested primarily in my comments about her I've decided to list my other brain spills in a separate post.

[tired-fandom-ndn]

I agree completely that the "born evil trope" is harmful and not realistic, but I have seen people defend it by saying that there are real cases of people in their view were "evil from birth", for example they mention serial killers like Ted Bundy and Dahmer who had what appear to be "normal" childhoods. In their opinion the fact that Bundy and Dahmer became serial killers is evidence for them being "born evil". I disagree but I dont know how to counter the argument, so I want to ask if you can help me with that.

I'm not a psychologist or sociologist, so take what I say with a grain of salt. There's a few different aspects to this that I want to tackle though.

The assumption here is that having a bad childhood makes someone bad and having a good childhood makes someone good and everyone who doesn't fit that mold is an outlier. That's. . . not at all true though and has been proven time and time again. Many adults who were abused as children especially would not be happy at the dismissal of their work to make themselves better than the adults who hurt them. It's also a very cruel thing to claim in general, the insistence that someone can't be traumatized because their childhood was "good" by the measures of someone else AND that trauma inevitably makes someone bad.

Even if someone's childhood WAS good, there's a question of whether all their needs were actually met by their standards. This is complicated to think about because there's really no way to measure or test this sort of thing currently, whether certain coping skills or venting methods or other controlled outlooks can keep someone from turning to hurting and even killing others, but it is still something we need to think about when trying to reduce violence in our communities. Can these tragedies be avoided if measures are taken to redirect people with violent thoughts? What can we do to help people, especially children and teens, who experience violent impulses and desires instead of brushing them off as monsters who are born evil?

Like I've said before, this idea still takes away the power we as people have over own choices. Serial killers don't kill people because they had bad childhoods or because there's something about them that's just inherently bad and impossible to resist, they kill people because they WANT to. There's a lot of reasons serial killers use or claim, but at the end of the day, it is always THEIR choice to hurt someone else. Brushing their actions off as some sort of inherent evil excuses them from their choices.

It also gives other people a way to separate ourselves from those we deem evil. People like the idea of serial killers and other perpetuators of violence being "inherently evil" because that means we can dehumanize them, see them as vague monsters instead of our neighbors, coworkers, friends, family. They're a distant monster, not something we ever really need to think about but that we always fear. That, in turn, makes it easier for those who commit violence to get away with it! How many serial killers go years, even decades, without being caught because they're nice? Because they're pleasant? Because they have senses of humor or they love animals or they have a great family? That shit happens because we see killers as monsters, like we can look at a killer and just know that there's something inherently rotten about them, and we forget that they're still just people who have feelings and families and hobbies.

And those are my thoughts on this particular matter.

[heyharoldsboo]

I hope this doesn’t come off offensive but why do you think it seems like Brazilian fans are more susceptible to lies and are easily led online? Is it a language barrier thing? I’ve been part of many fandoms and this particular fandom is not the only one that I’ve noticed this about. It’s something I’ve always wondered but didn’t want to broach cos it could come across as xenophobic or prejudiced in a way. I would like your perspective as someone who lives there.

Oh, I have thoughts about this. Like, a lot of them, as I am both a marketing person and a Sociologist. And don't worry about it, I understand where this curiosity comes from. I actually am born in Brazil, so I think I can discuss this without anyone crying xenophobic.

So first of all - Brazilian people are huge fans. Passionate, loving, crazy on the support. The main word is passionate. It's something that can be exploited both ways - the same way that some performers love to come to Brazil because the public will sing along to all their songs even without actually speaking their native language, some people hate with the same passion that makes fans screams their throats raw.

You can see this a lot in the football level - there are football cheer groups that are banned from frequenting the stadiums because they WILL fight and destroy if the team loses. These are the same people that are their team's superfans.

In the last... 10 years, Brazil has been through a lot politically. A lot of extremisms, and the general thoughts have also concentrated in binarisms. So it's good or bad, black and white, criminal or saint. The shades of grey that are normal to undertanding society are not being widely accepted. It's really a "you're with me, or you're my enemy" kind of thought in most of the population.

Above all of this, there's of course the language barrier. Because brazilians are huge fans, there are the brazilian fandoms, where only people who speak and write in portuguese gather. It's not unusual for the people inside the brazilian fandoms to simply forget that there's more to the fandom than their little portuguese-speaking bubble. Because it's actually a huge bubble. But as things aren't as widely translated or available in a language the brazilian fandom will understand, there's a huge delay on information actually arriving, specially if it's information only available in English-speaking Twitter. There are so many slangs, and dialects and abbreviations that even for people that learned English as a second language and have native-level speaking/writing/reading skills, it's extremely difficult if they don't participate in internet life and fandom in English everyday.

So we have these three factors - passion, binarism, language barrier. In my opinion, this explains the echo chamber that usually happens in Brazilian Fandom world. There's only one truth being spoken, because it's the news that have been translated, and because of the passion, people will be loud about it. Obnoxiously loud.

And brazilian "influencers" will exploit these factors, creating content to get more views, more money, and making the lies have a validity that creates even more echo, and even more noise.

I'm not comfortable at all in the pockets of brazilian fandom, because of these characteristics. I've been only in English-speaking pockets of fandom since I was 11, and the socialization is extremely different. The rules and the ettiquete are drastically different. It's honestly a little frightening and not something I am comfortable at all in interacting. I was honestly tempted to translate some master posts, but the level of noise and the way things turn into another thing in brazilian fandom honestly creep me out.

Hope I could shed some light on this! As I said, it's my opinion, based on what I experienced and my world knowledge, so it may not be everyone's truth!

[smoothestjazz]

It's not a wargame but me and a friend recently noticed that there are way more lesbian NPC relationships in Elder Scrolls Online than there are gay men NPC relationships. We are both bi but he's a cis man so he noticed it a lot more than I did and it makes think because ESO won a GLAAD award. I was trying to find if anyone ever did an accounting of the LGBT NPCs in ESO. There have been some of other Elder Scrolls games but I'd really like to see some kind of comparison because it's fucked up.

this makes a lot of sense, a lot of games, particularly late 2000s/ early 2010s games, would allow same sex relationships between women but not men... mass effect 1 and 2 are particularly glaring examples of this. Perhaps it's because people were cooler with lesbians than gay men because gay men make straight men feel much more uncomfortable... straight men can also find lesbians hot, so we can't forget that *that* is likely a factor as well. I'm not a gaming sociologist but I would say that wlw relationships are "safer" for game companies to include.

[cheshire-castle-library]

I posted 2,157 times in 2022

That's 627 more posts than 2021!

127 posts created (6%)

2,030 posts reblogged (94%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@innamorat4

@sleepanon

@wine-stained-dawn

@literallyheretorotaway

@whynought

I tagged 2,144 of my posts in 2022

Only 1% of my posts had no tags

#aes - 503 posts

#relatable - 418 posts

#queue mean the world to me - 352 posts

#vibes - 296 posts

#insp - 212 posts

#art - 174 posts

#study - 165 posts

#health - 147 posts

#my big mouth - 138 posts

#studyblr - 123 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#inverted this is neglect by or of a community thats important to you forgetting your real goals or something standing in way of what you rea

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

April 5, 2022

I think I finally found my groove with Obsidian/Zettelkasten. It's definitely something I had to work out for myself, though I still took a lot of inspiration from the YouTuber I posted the video of a while back! I'm glad it helped some people, I think 100 level classes should include a survey of note-taking and study styles, I would have been unstoppable in undergrad if we were taught to learn. Also, its kind of impressive how calm and content I can be in a dim room with classical playing in my headphones and a big comfortable sweater. I like this feeling. Finally I'm just studying, I'm caught up on assignments so I can just study. I like this feeling, and I don't want to forget it again in the stress. Wishing you warm, comfortable, and peaceful vibes too~

[Cheshire Castle Library Playlist]

22 notes - Posted April 7, 2022

#4

Jan 3, 2021

It’s nearly 11pm here so I’ll make this brief haha.  I’m fallen behind due to just life stuff that I can’t help.  It’s sad how fast it feels like drowning in academia.  Hopefully I’ll get caught up and not have issues, but for now the stress is here.

32 notes - Posted January 4, 2022

#3

Take Control of Your Study Habits

Take Control of Your Study Habits

My Obsidian.md for studying When I started university, more years ago than I’d care to admit, I was one of the many students with a difficult transition period. I’d been one of those “gifted kids” – though “gifted” to who I wonder, because it certainly wasn’t to myself. But my grades were always exceptional and I caught on quickly enough that just figuring out the homework was enough for me to…

51 notes - Posted June 21, 2022

#2

October 12, 2022

Procrastinating as an engineer is an interesting thing. I got tired of having a haphazard pile of postit notes on my desk so I fixed the problem! I also discovered that my student license for Fusion 360 expired, so I had to find something else. I was expecting to find something "good enough" but for mechanical parts (which is my use case) I actually really like Solve Space a lot better than any Autodesk product I've tried, and its Open Source!

Listening to: [8 Track Collection] [Ambient Mix Soundscape]

Watching: [Artist Livestream]

Drinking: Too much coffee and creamer

67 notes - Posted October 12, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Figured I’d post this for anyone else needing a different note system!

74 notes - Posted March 28, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

why are you liking shipping posts made by proshippers? do you agree with their mindset or something? because that actually makes me lose respect for you ngl. although maybe i shouldn’t be surprised if you do seeing how you tolerate in*es*, and shown you like problematic ships such beatrice/mc or at the very least tolerate that kind of thing too seeing how you’ve told ppl who ship bea with mc and their classmates that “it’s cool” and you’re not judging. not to mention the fact that you’ve said stuff about how it being fiction “makes all the difference” to you or whatever. so yeah it really sounds like you’re a proshipper in the making unfortunately. idk how you can be “neutral” in something like this, you either agree with those freaks or you don’t, it’s not that hard.

...

*Deep sigh*

Okay, let's talk about this some more.

Friend, I understand your concerns, but I think you're kind of veering off and going in a completely different direction than me. You may be forgetting what I've explicitly said about this subject in the past (it's also possible that you never saw these posts, I realize that.) but I've never been a Pro-shipper and I'm not really one "in the making" either. I'm sad to have lost your respect (I got several anons who said something similar, so...ouch, but, it is what it is.) But I don't think you've got the right estimate of my feelings on this subject, nor of how invested I actually am. More than anything, I'd rather just stop talking about it. I can't remember, which post was it that I liked? I need to go back through my liked posts as I mostly just "like" posts to anchor them so I can return to them later, usually to reblog them but sometimes just because I don't have time to read them. Either way, I sort of doubt it was a 100% Pro-shipping post? Even if it was, I may have just had an idea to reblog it with my own take in the tags?

Regarding Neutrality

How can I be neutral? Easily. Being neutral is the easiest damn thing in the world, especially if you have no stake in the conflict (and are otherwise terrified of conflict as I am) and if you don't think it's a conflict that particularly matters. Which, yeah, I don't, sue me. I don't think there's anything immoral about remaining neutral either. I have heard it said before that neutrality in the face of oppression is, itself, siding with the oppressor. But first of all, no. Choosing neutrality may be cowardly in certain situations, and it's definitely not compatible with being an ally. But it is not "siding with the oppressor" because by definition, you are not choosing a side. That's what neutrality means, and people might have various reasons for doing it. Trying to erase that choice isn't helpful. "You either agree with these freaks or you don't." I am always wary of ultimatums like that, because a lot of situations aren't that simple for everyone.

Now all that said, that doesn't mean that I think people should choose neutrality in the face of oppression or injustice. They shouldn't. But onto my second point. This isn't one of those debates where staying out of the fight could reasonably be considered cowardly. At the end of the day, it's just shipping, and no, I truly don't care who people want to ship. Is fiction affected by reality? Are these ships truly no concern because they're fictional characters, or does this set a dangerous precedent? Dude, I don't know. I'm not a psychologist or sociologist or anything like that. I'm just a random cat on the internet who likes to analyze the storytelling and characters of the fiction I consume. I am a dork, not a professional. But because I don't know, I'm not going to take up arms for the stance that fiction affects reality, nor will I for the side that it doesn't.

Do some of these ships disgust me? Yes, they do. But the people who ship the problematic pairings aren't going to stop just because Antis on the internet tell them to. They're just going to block you and move on. (Which is...probably what you should do with them, really.) Several anons took issue with my addressing the people who ship Beatrice x Anyone in MC's year (for simplicity I'll just refer to them as Pro-shippers from here on out.) without judgement...but I think some of these anons forgot or didn't notice what I was saying to the shippers, which was asking them to tag properly. I was asking them to keep their content separate from everyone else's. Yes, I was polite about it, so? Approaching them politely is, most likely, the only way they would hear what I have to say. At least, I'd say it's more likely they'd listen to that over another person calling them pedophiles.

Ah yes, that reminds me. No less than three anons called me a pedophile for "supporting" the pro-shippers. Which uh...yeah, thanks for that. Look, I know your hearts are in the right place, and in a way, I really do respect that. But pedophilia is a real and serious danger. It's one of the lowest evils that the human race has ever spawned. In my opinion, it's the lowest, surpassing racism, misogyny, and all the rest. So, yeah, it's not just some all-purpose word that I would slap onto any ship that makes me uncomfortable. Not unless I felt like said ship actually was a depiction of adults preying on minors. Beatrice and MC are both teenagers. Is it creepy to ship them at their current ages? Of course it is. (I'm not sure anyone actually does that but either way.) But is it pedophilia? No...it's really not. In general, I think the reaction to some of these ships is overblown, and I don't think that's unreasonable, nor does it mean I'm "siding" with the pro-shippers.

In general, a lot of people took also took issue with my saying that "Shippers gonna ship" and called it a rather poor excuse. But I wouldn't say it was an excuse...it was more of an observation? My stating a fact about the way of fandoms? I wasn't saying that it was a good thing. As far as fandom communities go, shipping is a force of nature at this point. Nothing will ever stop it. This includes the people who favor the problematic ships. That doesn't mean I don't wish that these ships were never conceived. For a lot of them, I could truthfully say that the fandom would be better off without them. (...side-eyes sn*rry..) but I'm not looking to tell anyone else how to enjoy their favorite stories, because I'm a stranger on the internet. They're not going to listen to me, why should they? It's just not a fight that I'm interested in even having.

I have no doubt that you're a good person, anon. But I'm still not sure what I've done to offend you. I don't even want to get involved in this debate, and yet somehow, everyone wants me to have an opinion and they all want it to be the same as theirs.

[signedaiko]

Heyyo! I’d like to request a mtmte matchup, if possible?

This got pretty long so if you decide not to do it i totally understand!

For sides, i don’t really have a preference, i tend to stay out of most conflicts. Pretty sure i’d be a neutral.

I’m afab and use she/her pronouns. I’m 169 cm and get teased for it a lot. But i’m pretty massive for someone my size, and i’m strong as hell. Don’t rly get messed with other than a few friendlly jabs.

I dress in a way i like to call „whatever Brainstorm would wear” :

oversized hoodies

graphic tees, either fandom stuff or just puns

jeans(ripped, high waisted)

funky shirts to go over the hoodies and sometimes jumpers

colorful socks

ankle boots and leather jackets

But really, anything colorful and kind of extra with a little black thrown in.

Hobbies:

doing random research til 3 am and forgetting to eat/sleep/drink

sending the same meme to 3 groupchats and friends bc i need more reactions to that

witchy stuff

writing poems to vent

blasting music while i bake/cook/or study, sometimes singing along

starting new hobbies and abandoning them after a few days

same with art projects

taking naps anywhere and anytime

collecting rather useless things(i have at least 500 topjoy caps and like 5 porcelain clowns)

but rly, my room is full of stuff i don’t need but i think they’re neat

Personality:

do no harm take no shit attitude(i never start fights but i will finish them)

i put others before myself, but it gets me in trouble a lot

flirty for fun but if someone flirts back i get so flustered i can't even reply

i like making fun of people and make it look unintentional

like, i say something rly rude and uncalled for, and i know it hurts them but it’s so good seeing ppl forgive me bc they thought i was joking(i wasn’t)

people come to me for advice a lot bc i look at the problem in most perspectives, not just theirs

i also don’t often sugarcoat things

my humor is what you get when you mix puns, dark, and dry humor with sarcasm

i’m a big sucker for headpats (and peanut butter)if you let me fall asleep in your lap AND pet my hair, i’ll probs fall in love

i rly like caring for others? i think i’d be a good wife/mom

platonic/romantic cuddling is my everything, though my love language is giving/recieving gifts

i like to make ppl doubt their beliefs for funsies, i just have a way with words

Other:

when poked, if i’m suprised enough i let out a little squeal, some say it’s cute

i get crushes very easily, from all genders, i always notice if someone likes me but i wait for their first move

i have adhd, so coffeine makes me tired, but sugar hypes me up

i like pshysics, psychology and biology, i wanna be a sociologist when i'm done with art school

headcanon or oneshot, it's up to you, hope you have a nice time :3c

You got…Nautica!

Okay, hear me out- You have your whole sciences figured out, precisely what you enjoy most- and you are confident with it. That alone has me thinking that Nautica would start off as a bit of a...fan? She really admires you; you seem like you have everything together and know what you want from life. Nautica starts picking up pieces you are putting down, which naturally starts having a positive effect on her own mood and day-to-day chores. Naturally, she can only do that so long before actually becoming your friend. It would make sense that her lack of togetherness is also something you need more of. That sweet, sweet chaos... She is also a fantastic liar, great at convincing people things that might seem way out of the realm of possibilities, and you are great at spinning the story. You just mess with people a lot, maybe it's a bit mean, but heyyyy- Having been through a lot, she could really use that mom/wife side of you. Someone there can provide genuine care beyond just listening or comfort but in experiences. In return, she gives you the grandmother who's seen some shit and was probably gay at some point vibes. She knows everything technical; the woman will build you a castle if you ask her in a single night. Your motto is 'wives for lives.' I also think your theme song would be Sugar by Robin Schulz!

———-

Authors Note - Do not worry about length! Honestly, the ones with barely any info are the ones that kiiiiill me; the more, the better :) Sometimes when I read matchups, I have the big 'why aren't they my friend?!' moment, and it just happened.

[hamsahands]

Prison Abolition 101

The iconic activist Angela Davis tells us that prison reforms will always fall short because the prison itself is a reform, a reform from the heavy reliance on bodily and capital punishments. The history of prisons is prison reform. What if I told you that the prison system is not broken, but works exactly as it was intended to.

There is a quasi religious belief that we need prisons. We seem to forget the autonomous Black towns that would have thrived during Reconstruction had it not been for deeply ingrained white supremacy (see Black codes). We think prisons are integral to the structure of our society when they don't have to be, which is when we arrive at prison abolition.

While prison abolition seeks to end mass criminalization, incarceration, and policing in all of its forms, it's also unlearning the mentalities of fear, racism, and punishment that gave rise to the construction of prisons in the first place.

To live in the United States is to live in a state of perpetual, collective fear. Social media and news outlets pumping paranoia into our consciousness in 24 hour news cycles. We live in a united state of anxiety. Fear feeds into implicit bias, which inherently impairs policing, leading to criminalization, deportation, and mass incarceration.

We are afraid we're not safe, and we should contend with the notion of safety. Does our safety rely on the presence of police and prisons, or can our communities cultivate that safety on their own, if socioeconomic needs are addressed.

Prison abolition is a collective imagining of a world in which all of our physical (health), mental, social and economic needs are met. Famed abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore describes this as a world where interpersonal harm, economic need, and social and health vulnerability are things of the past.

Prison abolition is understanding the symbiotic relationship between institutional violence, state violence, and intimate violence, as well as recognizing the tensions that allow them to fester. It's being mindful of racism, sexism, and toxic masculinity when raising our kids. Political theorist Cedric Robinson tells us that experience is important, but consciousness is what matters. Prison abolition is not just a new socioeconomic order, but a consistent, ubiquitous practice of mindfulness.

Abolition means not using prisons to solve social issues. It means dismantling white supremacy on an institutional, political, economic and social level. It means not criminalizing queerness and targeting trans and gendernonconforming persons. While also addressing job discrimination, transphobia, and toxic masculinity which exacerbate the rates of incarceration, suicide, and murder of trans people.

It means not criminalizing drug addiction, homelessness and immigration. Immigrants and migrants generate huge profits for privatized detention centers, which are often unsanitary, overpacked, and rife with abuse. It's not using prisons to address poverty in what sociologist Loïc Wacquant calls the carceral management of the poor.

It means addressing violence with restorative justice practices, and understanding that violence harms both the perpetrator and the victim. It's thinking of 'crime' differently, for instance, vagrancy as a symptom of economic inequality instead of criminality. Prisons simply isolate the symptoms of social ailments, but abolition aims to cure the ailment itself.

While abolition inherently involves compassion, there are people with violent intentions who try (and succeed) to inflict irreparable harm, and they're not going away any time soon. However, prison abolition is not an immediate solution, but a gradually practiced methodology. It is not simply a new solution, but a new order to how we organize and maintain our relationships, communities, and societies.

'But what about murderers and rapists?' As if politicians, police, priests, and presidents have never fit into that demographic yet never see the inside of a cell. The carceral system cannot be redeemed because its main source of profit is disproportionately black and brown, while eating the poor of all colors and ethnicities for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Abolition is the solution because the criminal law system can be bought. It let's men with $500 million fortunes like Jeffrey Epstein serve 13 months work release for soliciting a 17 year old girl for prostitution, only 3 years after a parent of a 14 year old girl complained to the police that Epstein molested her child. But poor black men like Eric Garner take their last unassisted breaths on the pavement with a cop's arm around their neck for selling cigarettes. The disparity is disgusting, and it is intrinsic to an inherently racist prison industrial complex.

Abolition also means imagining what kind of an economy we should have as the richest country in the history of the world. Abolition undoubtedly means destroying the plutocratic capitalist class that owns 95% of this country's wealth, and redistributing that wealth amongst the people.

Abolition is a lot to process for people who have never imagined a world without prisons and police, and by no means do I think any of this will happen overnight or even in my lifetime (I'm 25). I also realize that most of this is broad, but abolitionists have developed specific tactics to address immediate needs that work toward education, divestment, decarceration, and harm reduction. While I will celebrate (most) prison reforms in the meantime, for me and other likeminded individuals, abolition will always remain the goal.

https://www.blackandpink.org/