#it's so bizarre though like. i don't really feel as many weird attachment things with him? he just. puts me so at ease idk idk

[cozycreaturescorner]

bisexual men who I want to sink my teeth into and shake around like a chewtoy

[whetstonefires]

Hey you said something about the my hero academia creator being unhinged about sexism, do you mind explaining?

I tried to write like, a thorough explanation of this and it just got longer and longer and longer and I have not touched this series in actual years and yet I've still got all these receipts a;lkjk;lfasd.

So rather than trying to build the whole massive case, here's a pared-down version. It's normal to have sexism in media, and shounen manga especially. Everyone does it. The level and mode and intentionality and so forth all vary, but of course it's there.

What's not normal is to have lots of varied and interesting female characters with discernible inner lives, and on-page discussion of how sexism is systemic and unjust and holds them back in specific ways, and then also deliberately make consistent sexist writing decisions even where they don't arise naturally from the flow of the narrative.

Horikoshi is actively interested in gender and sexism, he's aware of them in a way you rarely see outside of the context of, you know, fighting sexism. He is hung up on the thorny issue of what women are worth and deserve and how power and respect ties into it. He genuinely wants, I think, to have Good Female Characters, and not be (seen as) A Sexist Guy!

But. He doesn't actually want to fight sexism. He displays a lot of woman-oriented anxieties, and one of the many churning paddlewheels in his head seems to be that he knows intellectually that morally sexism is bad, but emotionally he really feels like it ought to probably be at least partly correct.

There are so many things I could cite, and maybe I'll get into some of them later, but the crowning item that highlights how the pattern is 1) at least partly conscious and deliberate and 2) about Horikoshi's own weird hangups rather than simply cynical market play, is Mineta Minoru.

The writer has stated Mineta is his favorite character. Mineta is also designed to be hated--that is, he is a particularly elaborate instantiation of a character archetype normally deployed to soak up audience contempt and (by being gross and shameless and unattractive and 'unthreatening') make it possible to include a range of sexual gratification elements into the narrative that would compromise the main characters' reputations as heroic and deserving, if they were the actors.

Good Guys don't grope girls' tits and run away snickering in triumph, after all. Non-losers don't focus intense effort around successfully stealing someone's panties. Nice Girls don't let themselves be seen half-dressed. And so forth. You need an underwear gremlin for that. So, in anime and manga, longstanding though declining tradition of including such a gremlin, for authorial deniability.

Horikoshi definitely uses him straight for this purpose, looping in Kaminari as needed to make a bit work. And yet he has Feelings about the archetype itself.

The passages dedicated to the vindication of Mineta, then, and the author's statements about him, let us understand that Horikoshi identifies with the figure of the underwear gremlin. He understands the underwear gremlin as a defining exemplar of male sexuality, at least if you are not hot, and finds the attached contempt and hostility to be a dehumanizing attack on all uh.

Incels, basically.

It's not fair to write Mineta off just because he's unattractive and horny (and commits sexual harassment). Doesn't he have a mind? Doesn't he have dreams? Doesn't he have human potential?

So what's going on with Horikoshi and gender, as far as I can figure out, is that he knows damn well that women are people and are treated unjustly by sexist society, but however.

He also understands the institutions of sexism as something protecting him and people like him from life being nebulously yet definitively Worse, and therefore wants to see them upheld.

So you get this really bizarre handling of gender where obviously women's rights good and women cool, women can be Strong, and the compulsory sexualization imposed by the industry isn't them or the author, and so forth.

But also it's very important that in the world he controls, women never win anything important or Count too much, and that jokes at their expense that disrupt the internal logic of their characters are always fair game, that women asked about sexism on TV will promptly get into catfights amongst themselves, and they are understood always in terms of their sexual and romantic interests and value, and sexual assertiveness and failures to perform femininity well enough are used to code them as dangerous and irrational, and that the sexy costumes are requisite and will never be subverted or rebelled against--at most they might be circumnavigated via leaning into cute appeal.

And that Yaoyorozu Momo, who converts her body fat into physical objects, is being frivolous when she wants to use money to buy things instead (rather than as sensibly moderating her Quirk use) and is never encouraged to eat as much as possible at every opportunity to put on weight and even shown being embarrassed by hunger (even though Quirk overuse gives symptoms that suggest she's been stripping the lipids out of her cell walls or nervous system to keep fighting) and always, no matter how many Things she has made, has huge big round boobies.

[xenostalgic]

walking through a city park late at night, I come across an art installation: holographic figures glowing in the darkness, talking to and over one another. an avatar of @transgenderer appears in front of me and is trying to ask me some questions but I can't hear them; instead, @perdvivly's voice comes out, unsynced from the hologram's lips. how bizarre...

1. What virtue do you most often see in other people that you feel comparatively deficient in?

many things can be virtuous in some amount, I guess, and relatively few remain good regardless of how much of them you have (temperance being among the virtues). this feels maybe slightly against the spirit of the question but I guess I want to say something like prudence in the original sense, or judgment; I'm not sure my prudence is deficient so much as defective in that I'm over-cautious, prone to inaction, and people I know err on both sides of this but I do know some who strike a good balance

2. Show us an object in your daily life that you have an emotional attachment to - tell us a little bit about it if you want! (a favourite mug perhaps? socks with a cute pattern? dealers choice)

I keep a steel ring on my keychain that matches the one on my collar. very comforting object to hold, satisfyingly heavy

3. If you could choose, what level of fame would you want? How many people would you want to recognise you?

if I could I'd like to have a negative amount of fame, where people are unusually unlikely to hear about or remember me. I wish I had more people who knew me, but I really don't like being recognized by strangers; I always feel very THE WHOLE WORLD MONITORS AND MOCKS MY EVERY WAKING MOMENT about it. I guess that's downstream of the context of being recognized around my neighborhood, I probably would mind less if it was people who recognized my name from my research or something. still not actively desirable, though.

4. Where do you feel language is least adequate to capture, communicate, or express your experience?

I think language is probably up to most tasks in principle even if I'm not capable of using it to adequately capture/communicate/express something. maybe... probably lots of people will say this, but like, non-analogical, non-referential descriptions for granular sense-experiences like smells or the details of visual perception like visual snow.

5. If you had to come up with a question with the following criteria:

a) it should disuade knee-jerk reaction answers (i.e. it shouldn't be something people are likely to have spent a lot of time considering before)

b) it shouldn't be too specialised (the audience should be general, don't ask about people's top 3 byzantine spice merchants opperating between 754AD-816AD)

c) it shouldn't be needlessly emotionally charged or divisive

d) it should be a question you expect people to have lots of varied opinions about

What would your question be?

idk if this is a good question but I'm sleepy and it's what I've got: you see some pervasive graffiti/sticker campaign around your neighborhood and it inspires such strong feelings that you feel like you have to reply somehow. what might it be, would your feelings be negative or positive (artistic inspiration), how would you reply?

idk who to tag that would actually want to answer. @unknought, @nightpool, uhhh. @figment-wrangler I don't think I've ever seen you do an ask meme, time to reveal yourself

(original questions & my answers below the cut)

1. Favourite colour?

green! but ideally dark green, maybe even almost black. brighter colors are good too but in smaller doses, dark green is something I enjoy wearing or would like as the focus of a painting or something

2. Last song you listened to?

Golden Age but that's like, a regular evening doing-dishes listen. Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now is the most recent one that's not in regular rotation

3. Currently reading?

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Mishima, which is great so far. always kind of weird to praise the language of a book in translation but I think it makes sense here—I keep being surprised by the directions the characters' thoughts go in, enjoyably, and the specific word choices are part of that but not the central thing. also A Glastonbury Romance (slowly), SPQR, and theoretically The Allegory of Love, which I haven't given up on yet this read—but I might fail to get through the "case studies" part of the book yet again. I've enjoyed the first two, more analytical, chapters several times but the further one gets into the book the more difficult it is to read Lewis going "btw, this poem is not good, it's primarily of interest for how it affected other literature which I'm not going to talk about" and still maintain motivation to hear more

4. Currently craving?

I am so full of burgers it's impossible to crave any food. kinda want to get high but this is impossible due to excessive prudence

5. Coffee or tea?

Tea, but I haven't had either in I think months. I guess I mostly enjoy tea in the winter to warm up with, I always get mint or other non-caffeinated kinds

[runwayrunway]

Galley Gala No. 4 - Saudia

Okay, so Saudia's livery isn't fantastic. But their cabin crew uniforms? Top notch.

I feel like the first thing that pops into a Westerner's mind when considering what a Saudia stewardess might look like is "aren't women in Muslim-majority countries legally required to wear a hair covering?" And the answer for airline cabin crew is not only 'no', but actually a fairly emphatic one. Emirates and Qatar Airways actually both ban the hijab (the hair covering). This means that, if you're hijabi and hoping to be a flight attendant, British Airways or WestJet would be a better choice than the national airlines of countries where the majority of women are hijabi. That's bizarre to me, personally.

(It should be clarified that the majority of these countries actually employ primarily foreign cabin crew; while certainly many Saudia flight attendants would have always been Muslim, they only began hiring Saudi women in 2020. Before this, they were all foreigners. The majority were Filipino, Thai, or Eastern European. This is true of many fields in many countries in the Persian Gulf. The UAE and Qatar also have never required head coverings by law, and from what I've heard non-Muslim foreigners generally just don't wear them.)

Saudia's cabin crew, until 2020, dressed in a very smart blue pantsuit with gold hardware and a crisp white shirt underneath. From the neck down, it is literally just a very nice-looking flight attendant uniform which doesn't come with a skirt option in order to preserve hijab (the concept).

Underneath the jackets, there are these lovely light-looking shirts and matching blue vests. I would, in a heartbeat, wear exactly identical clothing to a pre-2020 Saudia flight attendant, except with different shoes. It's stylish! And it comes with these headpieces which have headscarves attached to them, in order to actually cover the wearer's hair. It's a pretty stylish and clever way to approach the task. The scarf blends really well into the vest without constricting the neck, so if it catches on something in an evacuation the wearer won't be horribly strangled. I fully approve.

In 2020, they released an updated version. In addition to incorporating cabin crew's feedback on comfort and practicality, it updates the appearance to something I think is very chic.

These coats, with the brown gloves and shoes, are gorgeous, and I just adore the new darker blue. These are just downright nice outfits. If you asked me what job these women have, I would not guess that they're flight attendants - I would think they're working in some glamorous, high-profile job. Being a flight attendant in Saudi Arabia is not considered glamorous in the least, but you wouldn't be able to tell it from this updated look.

In addition to the darker blue, the female cabin crew are now given the choice to wear skirts, and their suits are given a belted waist for a very 40s look. I like it a lot. I think these are some of the best looking 'traditional' flight attendant uniforms out there. This has all the features Saudia's livery should have, but doesn't.

Here's something a bit weird, though. I think Saudia may have just banned the hijab*?

*The literal headscarf. The rest of their uniform is still quite hijab-compliant as far as I, a non-Muslim man, can tell.

So, there's this drapey bit. It's pretty similar to Emirates's uniforms (which I will discuss some day). Emirates bans the hijab. Emirates flight attendants are all required to remove their hijab for work, if they wear one. Saudi Arabia, until 2018, required all women, including non-Muslims and foreigners, to wear abaya. Since 2018, there is no legal requirement to wear a hair covering, and now their flag carrier seems to have banned hijabs for flight attendants.

The absence of a hair covering inbuilt in the uniform isn't equivalent to it being banned, of course. The reason I think it might be is that it's been three years now and I haven't seen anything to indicate that it isn't, despite other people asking the same question. When this is partnered with the habits of other carriers it begins to feel like it implies something. I don't know. I can't find Saudia saying anything on the topic. This particular headgear really looks almost identical to Emirates's in particular. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a bit of active imitation going on, since Emirates is absolutely massive and Saudia is probably kicking themselves for not getting into imitating them earlier and buying A380s while they still could. Imagine the efficiency of all-economy A380 hajj flights. On the other hand, Saudia's low-cost subsidiary, Flyadeal, doesn't require head coverings but does allow them, so I ultimately just don't know what's happening and am sort of curious. If anyone reading this knows more than I do, I would love to hear from you.

Anyway, all that aside, Saudia cabin crew look absolutely fantastic. These uniforms are elegant in their wide strokes and immaculate in their details, and are up there as one of my favorite uniforms that could be described in structure and vibe as "a suit".

[beepofsleeplessdreams]

thinking out loud about some anime an illustrator i like worked on

so, one of my favorite illustrators (at least, I think that's the right term for him) is yoshitoshi ABe. recently i made the decision to look through a bunch of projects he had a hand in, mostly because i wanted to see what kind of stuff he'd attached himself to over the decades. prior to this i'd only seen Serial Experiments Lain, but i feel like basically everyone's seen that so that's not saying much lol. this was partially spurred on by a friend of mine telling me Texhnolyze was among their favorites. at time of writing, i've finished Texhnolyze and NieA_7, and i'm watching Haibane Renmei on-and-off and loving it. the world is bizarre and beautiful, and the character designs are lovely and have so much personality in my eyes. so that's where i started. so below is a series of rambles and thoughts i've had on this little journey of mine up to this point. i've still got a ways to go.

misc. spoilers for Texhnolyze in the next section

texhnolyze was a show i really enjoyed, but falls into the same pit as serial experiments lain in my brain. i struggle to understand what it's trying to say below the immediate surface and i end up primarily enjoying it as a surface-level product. not to say that i didn't make some connections in my head along the ride, i have so many questions about the world that i want answered, and some really fun observations I made. ichise's conversation with the voice in the chair was something that i had a lot of fun picking apart because it tickled that little goblin in my brain that loves social science. with the whole idea that height relates to authority, the pile of stones bringing images of gods on mountains in myth, but the chair tying all that powerful imagery up in this idea of boredom. apathy of the gods and all that. the entire trip to the surface is something that had me on the edge of the seat, and kinda tied into my greater sci-fi brainrot. that whole idea that one a society stagnates and rots people seek "better times", and this is how you end up with so many space prussians/germans being bad guys in older sci-fi anime like classic gundam and legend of the galactic heroes. it's people clinging to an idea of a """better time""" to larp that they're better than they are. this is what was going through my head during the arc of the story on the surface, whenever i saw that outdated technology that lives only in old b&w movies and period pieces. despite these obversations, i feel like i can't formulate a big picture, this is by no means bad, but i can't help but feel like i'm "missing something". though, this might be rectified in lain's case when i get around to it, it's been close to 10 years since i last watched it.

misc. spoilers for NieA_7

this is one that i don't think i ever heard someone talk about prior to me just plucking it off of ABe's wikipedia page. it's this weird slice-of-life comedy about living in poverty but there's also humanoid aliens that are kinda just around and comically failing to integrate into society. that whole second point, with the aliens, i feel it kinda detracts from a lot from the show's actually really simple and touching heart about just trying to escape being poor. the whole thing is kinda tainted with this mild xenophobia for the sake of "comedy" and the vast majority of the recurring aliens are these really mean-spirited racist stereotypes. eventually i came to ignore the vast majority of that aspect of the show, besides the titular NieA, and focus on the part of it that really spoke to me. the main character, Mayuko, is a young adult working 3 jobs on top of going to cram school in a desperate attempt to get into a good college and escape poverty by getting a """real job""" and a """future""". the reason why i use quotations is the same reason why her character really spoke to me. she was so focused on the mere act of survival and vaguely working towards the future that she never found the time to really think about the future. no plans, no dreams, inching towards a success she has no idea how to capitalize upon. something similar happened to me, personally. i spent the vast majority of highschool and college fighting for good grades and accolades with no other plan than to just get away from a very toxic family situation. and i succeeded. i gave up a social life for the sake of advancing and was rewarded by getting poached right out of college into a fairly comfortable. i moved out 6 months later and subsequently broke down. without that constant pressure of ESCAPE ESCAPE ESCAPE i had this sort of psychological explosive decompression and became incredibly depressed, and almost made some very poor and very permanent decisions. i saw a character that was flying towards the same mistakes i made and i was wondering all along if the show would propose some kind of "solution" that i'd failed to see. it didn't offer anything concrete, but something much simpler that i nontheless really appreciated. a loving promise that things will be okay somewhere, someday. the same sentiment helped me when i needed it. i get that that's corny as hell, but i'm a stupid mushy man-thing. it's a show i really recommend people look at, because while the lows are INCREDIBLY low and mean, the heart is there and beautiful.

[ytwokid]

hey uh might be a dumb question, but where did your "modern websites that emulate old internet" post go? I bookmarked it a while ago so i could come back to it, and did multiple times, but suddenly the link stopped working. i cant seem to find it anymore, was it deleted?

o shit-- in some state of delirium I must have purged it. I will remake it for u quickly here w/ a couple new additions:::

https://www.friendproject.net/ - a MySpace clone. reputation is a bit tarnished due to the creators committing some fucked up shit on one of their partner sites but overall functional website w/ a relatively active community. there are some rumors about the "safety" of this site but they're largely untrue, it's fine. don't use a password you use for other shit, don't send classified messages over the system, etc.

https://www.windows93.net/ - a very cool website w/ many nostalgic features, bizarre little thing w/ a myspace clone attached.

https://myspace.windows93.net/ - the myspace clone in question. active community, HOWEVER this site uses CSS and Markdown for customization, bit of a learning curve if ur new. DO NOT LOSE YOUR PASSWORD YOU CAN NOT REQUEST ANOTHER.

https://www.vidlii.com/ - old YouTube clone, bizarre community and right now not entirely functional, acct support is next to nonexistent tho I believe they are trying to fix this. still fun 2 browse.

https://neocities.org/ - geocities reborn. you can make ur own website here for free! my website is hosted here! awesome community and gr8 for learning html, and finding oldweb graphics.

https://www.geocities.ws/ - offers the same thing as neocities, though less of a community I believe.

https://www.dreamwidth.org/ - blogging website, looks n feels pretty old. customizable, really nice little place.

https://wiby.me/ - a search engine that only brings back oldweb results. type in a term and get a very old looking site or the occasional neocities page thrown in lol.

http://web.fc2.com/en/ - a bit like neocities/geocities.ws. if you google this domain you can pull back a lot of weird sites, some very old. you can also host a site here, tho I don't know much about it.

and for some graphics......

https://www.glitter-graphics.com/ - internet time capsule of old internet graphics.

http://www.jellymuffin.com/ - like glittergraphics, get a look in here before she's gone.............

http://smayliki.ru/ - a russian smiley website w/ lots of oldweb graphics. get em before they're gone, these sites go down by the day.....

https://gifcities.org/ - search engine for old internet graphics hosted by the web archive.

http://blingee.com/ - a relic, the editor no longer functions but you can still browse before she's killed.

honorable mentions

https://www.soemo.co.uk/ emo focused website. feels old. bit weird, never used it myself but knew some ppl who did.

[mistwraiths]

2 stars

Warning!!! This will be super spoilery

You know I didn't think there could be a bad gays in space book but WOW. Okay, maybe that's a little harsh but I hated this book for the majority of the time reading it because it was just... bad. The only reason I finished it was because I was stuck at work and didn't have anything else to do except read.

Let me get this right out of the way first. After like the first part and the second part, the book got better only because they were very short parts after that and it did focus more on the tension. Once you learn the big thing in part 1, it's not that hard to kind of guess where it is headed. It's not even particularly done well. There's also so many plot holes lmfao.

The BIGGEST problem was the characters themselves. Like I hated them. It doesn't make any sense that this TRAINED FOR THIS SOLO MISSION SON OF THE SPACE TECH/WAR TECH/REALLY SMART PROGRAMMER EMPIRE would be the absolute whiniest, mopeyest, I'm lonely, I just lay around and not do the work the OS asks me to crybaby. Like????? He's so fucking juvenile and literally doesn't act in the SLIGHTEST as a capable astronaut. All he does is eat, whine about how lonely he is, lust over Kodiak, and get horny. He accuses Kodiak of homophobia in his head despite no evidence, suddenly feels something is UP with OS/the mission despite nothing being very obvious to the readers??? He was just genuinely insufferable to be in the mind space of especially when things started getting repetitive.

Kodiak was only a smidge better only because I never had his POV. Other than being apparently the only capable astronaut and engineer, he didn't really seem to have a personality other than gruff, pseudo-cold war Russian dude. I didn't care for him, didn't get attached to him or cared about their relationship.

Even though part 1 was the WORST part of the book, which is hysterical because that's where most of the important shit is, the relationship between Kodiak and Ambrose at least had the longest to actually form and you could at least understand. But my god, the rest of the relationships that Ambrose and Kodiak have get phenomenally short in how quick they get together. Why? Because a voice recording says that they love each other basically. Y'ALL I'M ???? If I found a voice recording of myself telling me ALL THIS SHIT and included yes you love them, I'd be like okay maybe old you did but i don't have any real reason to??? I wouldn't immediately want to bang them?? It's just bizarre.

So yeah, this book features clones being sent to basically to go to a viable planet and eventually restart the population with zygotes left behind. This secret mission is hidden by playing off a sense of duty to rescue Minerva, Ambrose's sister on Titan, who went offline 2 years ago testing Titan and recently sent an emergency distress signal. But after they do all the tasks, OS kills them and travels thousands of years until the tasks pile up and opens a set of new clones. So there's a lot of repetitive moments as the clones find out and do tasks, etc.

I don't understand why the OS just didn't figure out that Ambrose started acting weird and figuring shit out after watching porn. Like it's supposed to be smart. Why was there a mention of the air leak multiple times to have NOTHING be done about it or anything happen?? Also, why the fuck were we given so much information about Fédération and Dimokratía, all this information about how different they were and everything for it to not even matter!!! Like could have cared LESS. Also the killing of the clones just felt pretty extreme. Like lol imagine you learn that you're the hope of humanity and the clones are going to make sure the journey goes well (and yes sad you died and you even as a clone don't really deserve that) so you ritualistically murder a clone that's not alive yet so you can live yourself for maybe 30ish years and hope that the ship survives the rest of its journey without needing those.

The ending was also very oh look you crash landed and survived. Grow a greenhouse and now you get to have a baby. It's just weird y'all.

I came here for a good time, I think it was kind of mentioned like a Stucky in space vibe. I didn't get that at ALL. I wouldn't recommend.