#ITS LIKE 35 DEGREES OUT THERE | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

theoutcastrogue · 11 months

Text

Cartoon depictions of the homeless increasingly reflect the hostility of today’s political leaders toward people on the streets. We’ve gone from images of charming hobos with bindles to zombies taking over cities. If you consume any news at all, you’ve probably noticed that the United States is pathologically cruel to its homeless citizens. This May, the brutal killing of Jordan Neely—who was strangled to death, at the age of 30, simply because he was unhoused and shouting on the Manhattan subway—captured the national spotlight, but it was just one of many such cases of unprovoked violence. In January, two cops reportedly kidnapped a homeless man in Hialeah, Florida, drove him to an “isolated and dark location,” and beat him unconscious. That same month, art dealer Shannon Collier Gwin faced battery charges after he sprayed a homeless woman with a hose outside his San Francisco gallery, barking “Move! Move!” at her. (Predictably, Gwin got a lenient plea deal of just 35 hours of community service.) Elsewhere in the city, homeless San Franciscans have been attacked with chemical bear spray on at least eight occasions. Other assaults have been more impersonal but no less vicious. On July 14, the city of Houston abruptly closed its only public cooling center in the downtown area, potentially condemning anyone without shelter to suffer heatstroke in 90-degree weather. Among the property-owning class, the phenomenon of hostile architecture—sidewalks with spikes that stab anyone who tries to sleep, benches with iron bars, and the like—has become de rigueur. The widespread callousness and lack of compassion are both infuriating and hard to comprehend. How on Earth, we might ask, did things get this bad? [...]

Looking back at older cartoons, one of the things that stands out immediately is the absence of negative attitudes toward the homeless. In fact, during the Golden Age of animation, creators seemed to have had a real affinity for the poor and unhoused, often placing their most iconic characters in that role. There’s a wonderful 1948 Warner Bros. short called “Riff Raffy Daffy,” in which Daffy Duck is looking for a place to sleep—first on a park bench, then a trash can, and finally a furniture display in a shop window—and has to dodge the harassment of the police, as represented by Porky Pig in a little blue uniform. (Literally, the cop is a pig!) Or, in the 1950 cartoon “Homeless Hare,” Bugs Bunny’s rabbit hole is destroyed by a new construction project, leading him to unleash his usual slapstick mayhem against the developers until they put it back. In these cartoons, homelessness is something inflicted on people by outside forces—gentrification and the real estate business, in Bugs’ case—and something which can be successfully resisted. Even Disney cast a homeless dog as a romantic lead in 1955’s Lady and the Tramp, contrasting Lady’s sheltered naivety with Tramp’s superior knowledge of the world. The title invokes the memory of Charlie Chaplin’s “Tramp” films, which similarly brought dignity and humanity to the role of a homeless man. (Bugs Bunny, too, takes inspiration from Chaplin, and multiple Warner animators have drawn him as the Tramp.) In 1961, Hanna-Barbera’s profoundly underrated Top Cat followed the adventures of a gang of wisecracking Manhattan alley cats, who, like Daffy, are always outwitting a meddling policeman. At worst, classic cartoons may trivialize the suffering and danger associated with homelessness—there’s a certain recurring image of the carefree hobo carrying a bindle, which paints the whole subject in a romanticized light—but the homeless themselves are rarely disparaged or made the butt of the joke. Quite the opposite.

It took a few years, but cartoons caught up to the Reaganite turn. In episodes from the ’90s and early 2000s, there’s a palpable shift in the way homeless characters appear compared to earlier decades. The perspective is different: we’re now seeing them through the eyes of comfortably housed characters, rather than their own. Often they don’t even get proper names. [...] This trajectory leads us, perhaps inevitably, to SpongeBob SquarePants. [..] Squidward gets accused of stealing a dime by his comically greedy boss, Mr. Krabs, and quits his job in a fit of outrage. We then flash forward to see Squidward, now bedraggled and unshaven, living in a cardboard box on the street and begging for change. [...] Mercifully, the ever-cheerful SpongeBob gives Squidward a place to stay—but the moment he’s safely off the street, Squidward turns from a sympathetic victim of circumstance into a lazy, entitled freeloader, straight out of a Reagan speech. He makes no effort to find work and loafs around SpongeBob’s house for ages. [...] Eventually, an exasperated SpongeBob writes “GET A JOB” in his alphabet soup, before shoving him (bed and all) back to work at the Krusty Krab. [...] Worst of all, though, the episode suggests that homelessness can be solved on an individual basis if the people in question simply stop being lazy and “GET A JOB.” This is the biggest myth of all. In 2021, a statistical analysis by the University of Chicago found that 53 percent of people in homeless shelters, and 40.4 percent of unsheltered people, do have jobs. The problem is that their wages are too low, and rents are too high. According to statistics from the same year, it’s impossible for someone working a full-time, minimum-wage job to afford a single-bedroom apartment in 93 percent of U.S. counties, and there are no states in which someone can rent a two-bedroom space on the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. In other words, homelessness has little or nothing to do with personal responsibility, or lack thereof. It’s a consequence of large-scale economic decisions made by landlords and bosses. [...]

— Alex Skopic

#Alex Skopic #theory #the ramblin' rover

843 notes · View notes

ohgaylor · 9 months

Text

In 2006, the year Taylor Swift released her first single, a closeted country singer named Chely Wright, then 35, held a 9-millimeter pistol to her mouth. Queer identity was still taboo enough in mainstream America that speaking about her love for another woman would have spelled the end of a country music career. But in suppressing her identity, Ms. Wright had risked her life.

In 2010, she came out to the public, releasing a confessional memoir, “Like Me,” in which she wrote that country music was characterized by culturally enforced closeting, where queer stars would be seen as unworthy of investment unless they lied about their lives. “Country music,” she wrote, “is like the military — don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The culture in which Ms. Wright picked up that gun — the same one in which Ms. Swift first became a star — was stunningly different from today’s. It’s dizzying to think about the strides that have been made in Americans’ acceptance of the L.G.B.T.Q. community over the past decade: marriage equality, queer themes dominating teen entertainment, anti-discrimination laws in housing and, for now, in the workplace. But in recent years, a steady drip of now-out stars — Cara Delevingne, Colton Haynes, Elliot Page, Kristen Stewart, Raven-Symoné and Sam Smith among them — have disclosed that they had been encouraged to suppress their queerness in order to market projects or remain bankable.

The culture of country music hasn’t changed so much that homophobia is gone. Just this past summer, Adam Mac, an openly gay country artist, was shamed out of playing at a festival in his hometown because of his sexual orientation. In September, the singer Maren Morris stepped away from country music; she said she did so in part because of the industry’s lingering anti-queerness. If country music hasn’t changed enough, what’s to say that the larger entertainment industry — and, by extension, our broader culture — has?

Periodically, I return to a video, recorded by a shaky hand more than a decade ago, of Ms. Wright answering questions at a Borders bookstore about her coming out. She likens closeted stardom to a blender, an “insane” and “inhumane” heteronormative machine in which queer artists are chewed to bits.

“It’s going to keep going,” Ms. Wright says, “until someone who has something to lose stands up and just says ‘I’m gay.’ Somebody big.” She continues: “We need our heroes.”

What if someone had already tried, at least once, to change the culture by becoming such a hero? What if, because our culture had yet to come to terms with homophobia, it wasn’t ready for her?

What if that hero’s name was Taylor Alison Swift?

In the world of Taylor Swift, the start of a new “era” means the release of new art (an album and the paratexts — music videos, promotional ephemera, narratives — that supplement it) and a wholesale remaking of the aesthetics that will accompany its promotion, release and memorializing. In recent years, Ms. Swift has dominated pop culture to such a degree that these transformations often end up altering American culture in the process.

In 2019, she was set to release a new album, “Lover,” the first since she left Big Machine Records, her old Nashville-based label, which she has since said limited her creative freedom. The aesthetic of what would be known as the “Lover Era” emerged as rainbows, butterflies and pastel shades of blue, purple and pink, colors that subtly evoke the bisexual pride flag.

On April 26, Lesbian Visibility Day, Ms. Swift released the album’s lead single, “ME!,” in which she sings about self-love and self-acceptance. She co-directed a campy music video to accompany it, which she would later describe as depicting “everything that makes me, me.” It features Ms. Swift dancing at a pride parade, dripping in rainbow paint and turning down a man’s marriage proposal in exchange for a … pussy cat.

At the end of June, the L.G.B.T.Q. community would celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. On June 14, Ms. Swift released the video for her attempt at a pride anthem, “You Need to Calm Down,” in which she and an army of queer celebrities from across generations — the “Queer Eye” hosts, Ellen DeGeneres, Billy Porter, Hayley Kiyoko, to name a few — resist homophobia by living openly. Ms. Swift sings that outrage against queer visibility is a waste of time and energy: “Why are you mad, when you could be GLAAD?”

The video ends with a plea: “Let’s show our pride by demanding that, on a national level, our laws truly treat all of our citizens equally.” Many, in the press and otherwise, saw the video as, at best, a misguided attempt at allyship and, at worst, a straight woman co-opting queer aesthetics and narratives to promote a commercial product.

Then, Ms. Swift performed “Shake It Off” as a surprise for patrons at the Stonewall Inn. Rumors — that were, perhaps, little more than fantasies — swirled in the queerer corners of her fandom, stoked by a suggestive post by the fashion designer Christian Siriano. Would Ms. Swift attend New York City’s WorldPride march on June 30? Would she wear a dress spun from a rainbow? Would she give a speech? If she did, what would she declare about herself?

The Sunday of the march, those fantasies stopped. She announced that the music executive Scooter Braun, who she described as an “incessant, manipulative” bully, had purchased her masters, the lucrative original recordings of her work.

Ms. Swift’s “Lover” was the first record that she created with nearly unchecked creative freedom. Lacking her old label’s constraints, she specifically chose to feature activism for and the aesthetics of the L.G.B.T.Q. community in her confessional, self-expressive art. Even before the sale of her masters, she appeared to be stepping into a new identity — not just an aesthetic — that was distinct from that associated with her past six albums.

When looking back on the artifacts of the months before that album’s release, any close reader of Ms. Swift has a choice. We can consider the album’s aesthetics and activism as performative allyship, as they were largely considered to be at the time. Or we can ask a question, knowing full well that we may never learn the answer: What if the “Lover Era” was merely Ms. Swift’s attempt to douse her work — and herself — in rainbows, as so many baby queers feel compelled to do as they come out to the world?

There’s no way of knowing what could have happened if Ms. Swift’s masters hadn’t been sold. All we know is what happened next. In early August, Ms. Swift posted a rainbow-glazed photo of a series of friendship bracelets, one of which says “PROUD” with beads in the color of the bisexual pride flag. Queer people recognize that this word, deployed this way, typically means that someone is proud of their own identity. But the public did not widely view this as Ms. Swift’s coming out.

Then, Vogue released an interview with Ms. Swift that had been conducted in early June. When discussing her motivations for releasing “You Need to Calm Down,” Ms. Swift said, “Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male.” She continued: “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of.” That statement suggests that Ms. Swift did not, in early June, consider herself part of the L.G.B.T.Q. community; it does not illuminate whether that is because she was a straight, cis ally or because she was stuck in the shadowy, solitary recesses of the closet.

On Aug. 22, Ms. Swift publicly committed herself to the as-of-then-unproven project of rerecording and rereleasing her first six albums. The next day, she finally released “Lover,” which raises more questions than it answers. Why does she have to keep secrets just to keep her muse, as all her fans still sing-scream on “Cruel Summer”? About what are the “hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you,” in her chronicle of self-doubt, “The Archer,” if not her identity? And what could the album’s closing words, which come at the conclusion of “Daylight,” a song about stepping out of a 20-year darkness and choosing to “let it go,” possibly signal?

I want to be defined by the things that I love,

Not the things I hate,

Not the things that I’m afraid of, I’m afraid of,

Not the things that haunt me in the middle of the night,

I just think that,

You are what you love.

The first time I viewed “Lover” through the prism of queerness, I felt delirious, almost insane. I kept wondering whether what I was perceiving in her work was truly there or if it was merely a mirage, born of earnest projection.

My longtime reading of Ms. Swift’s celebrity — like that of a majority of her fan base — had been stuck in the lingering assumptions left by a period that began more than a decade and a half ago, when a girl with an overexaggerated twang, Shirley Temple curls and Georgia stars in her eyes became famous. Then, she presented as all that was to be expected of a young starlet: attractive yet virginal, knowing yet naïve, not talented enough to be formidable, not commanding enough to be threatening, confessional, eager to please. Her songs earnestly depicted the fantasies of a girl raised in a traditional culture: high school crushes and backwoods drives, princelings and wedding rings, declarations of love that climax only in a kiss — ideally in the pouring rain.

When Ms. Swift was trying to sell albums in that late-2000s media environment, her songwriting didn’t match the image of a sex object, the usual role reserved for female celebrities in our culture. Instead, the story the public told about her was that she laundered her affection to a litter of promising grown men, in exchange for songwriting inspiration. A young Ms. Swift contributed to this narrative by hiding easy-to-decode clues in liner notes that suggested a certain someone was her songs’ inspiration (“SAM SAM SAM SAM SAM SAM,” “ADAM,” “TAY”) or calling out an ex-boyfriend on the “Ellen” show and “Saturday Night Live.” Despite the expansive storytelling in Ms. Swift’s early records, her public image often cast a man’s interest as her greatest ambition.

As Ms. Swift’s career progressed, she began to remake that image: changing her style and presentation, leaving country music for pop and moving from Nashville to New York. By 2019, her celebrity no longer reflected traditional culture; it had instead become a girlboss-y mirror for another dominant culture — that of white, cosmopolitan, neoliberal America.

But in every incarnation, the public has largely seen those songs — especially those for which she doesn’t directly state her inspiration — as cantos about her most recent heterosexual love, whether that idea is substantiated by evidence or not. A large portion of her base still relishes debating what might have happened with the gentleman caller who supposedly inspired her latest album. Feverish discussions of her escapades with the latest yassified London Boy or mustachioed Mr. Americana fuel the tabloid press — and, embarrassingly, much of traditional media — that courts fan engagement by relentlessly, unquestioningly chronicling Ms. Swift’s love life.

Even in 2023, public discussion about the romantic entanglements of Ms. Swift, 34, presumes that the right man will “finally” mean the end of her persistent husbandlessness and childlessness. Whatever you make of Ms. Swift’s extracurricular activities involving a certain football star (romance for the ages? strategic brand partnership? performance art for entertainment’s sake?), the public’s obsession with the relationship has been attention-grabbing, if not lucrative, for all parties, while reinforcing a story that America has long loved to tell about Ms. Swift, and by extension, itself.

Because Ms. Swift hasn’t undeniably subverted our culture’s traditional expectations, she has managed, in an increasingly fractured cultural environment, to simultaneously capture two dominant cultures — traditional and cosmopolitan. To maintain the stranglehold she has on pop culture, Ms. Swift must continue to tell a story that those audiences expect to consume; she falls in love with a man or she gets revenge. As a result, her confessional songs languish in a place of presumed stasis; even as their meaning has grown deeper and their craft more intricate, a substantial portion of her audience’s understanding of them remains wedded to the same old narratives.

But if interpretations of Ms. Swift’s art often languish in stasis, so do the millions upon millions of people who love to play with the dollhouse she has constructed for them. Her dominance in pop culture and the success of her business have given her the rare ability to influence not only her industry but also the worldview of a substantial portion of America. How might her industry, our culture and we, ourselves, change if we made space for Ms. Swift to burn that dollhouse to the ground?

Anyone considering the whole of Ms. Swift’s artistry — the way that her brilliantly calculated celebrity mixes with her soul-baring art — can find discrepancies between the story that underpins her celebrity and the one captured by her songs. One such gap can be found in her “Lover” era. Others appear alongside “dropped hairpins,” or the covert ways someone can signal queer identity to those in the know while leaving others comfortable in their ignorance. Ms. Swift dropped hairpins before “Lover” and has continued to do so since.

Sometimes, Ms. Swift communicates through explicit sartorial choices — hair the colors of the bisexual pride flag or a recurring motif of rainbow dresses. She frequently depicts herself as trapped in glass closets or, well, in regular closets. She drops hairpins on tour as well, paying tribute to the Serpentine Dance of the lesbian artist Loie Fuller during the Reputation Tour or referencing “The Ladder,” one of the earliest lesbian publications in the United States, in her Eras Tour visuals.

During the Eras Tour, Ms. Swift traps her past selves — including those from her “Lover” era — in glass closets.

Dropped hairpins also appear in Ms. Swift’s songwriting. Sometimes, the description of a muse — the subject of her song, or to whom she sings — seems to fit only a woman, as it does in “It’s Nice to Have a Friend,” “Maroon” or “Hits Different.” Sometimes she suggests a female muse through unfulfilled rhyme schemes, as she does in “The Very First Night,” when she sings “didn’t read the note on the Polaroid picture / they don’t know how much I miss you” (“her,” instead of that pesky little “you,” would rhyme). Her songwriting also noticeably alludes to poets whose muses the historical record incorrectly cast as men — Emily Dickinson chief among them — as if to suggest the same fate awaits her art. Stunningly, she even explicitly refers to dropping hairpins, not once, but twice, on two separate albums.

In isolation, a single dropped hairpin is perhaps meaningless or accidental, but considered together, they’re the unfurling of a ballerina bun after a long performance. Those dropped hairpins began to appear in Ms. Swift’s artistry long before queer identity was undeniably marketable to mainstream America. They suggest to queer people that she is one of us. They also suggest that her art may be far more complex than the eclipsing nature of her celebrity may allow, even now.

Since at least her “Lover” era, Ms. Swift has explicitly encouraged her fans to read into the coded messages (which she calls “Easter eggs”) she leaves in music videos, social media posts and interviews with traditional media outlets, but a majority of those fans largely ignore or discount the dropped hairpins that might hint at queer identity. For them, acknowledging even the possibility that Ms. Swift could be queer would irrevocably alter the way they connect with her celebrity, the true product they’re consuming.

There is such public devotion to the traditional narrative Ms. Swift embodies because American culture enshrines male power. In her sweeping essay, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” the lesbian feminist poet Adrienne Rich identified the way that male power cramps, hinders or devalues women’s creativity. All of the sexist undertones with which Ms. Swift’s work can be discussed (often, even, by fans) flow from compulsory heterosexuality, or the way patriarchy draws power from the presumption that women naturally desire men. She must write about men she surely loves or be unbankable; she must marry and bear children or remain a child herself; she must look like, in her words, a “sexy baby” or be undesirable, “a monster on the hill.”

A woman who loves women is most certainly a monster to a society that prizes male power. She can fulfill none of the functions that a traditional culture imagines — wife, mother, maid, mistress, whore — so she has few places in the historical record. The Sapphic possibility of her work is ignored, censored or lost to time. If there is queerness earnestly implied in Ms. Swift’s work, then it’s no wonder that it, like that of so many other artists before her, is so often rendered invisible in the public imagination.

While Ms. Swift’s songs, largely written from her own perspective, cannot always conform to the idea of a woman our culture expects, her celebrity can. That separation, between Swift the songwriter and Swift the star, allows Ms. Swift to press against the golden birdcage in which she has found herself. She can write about women’s complexity in her confessional songs, but if ever she chooses not to publicly comply with the dominant culture’s fantasy, she will remain uncategorizable, and therefore, unsellable.

Her star — as bright as it is now — would surely dim.

Whether she is conscious of it or not, Ms. Swift signals to queer people — in the language we use to communicate with one another — that she has some affinity for queer identity. There are some queer people who would say that through this sort of signaling, she has already come out, at least to us. But what about coming out in a language the rest of the public will understand?

The difference between any person coming out and a celebrity doing so is the difference between a toy mallet and a sledgehammer. It’s reasonable for celebrities to be reticent; by coming out, they potentially invite death threats, a dogged tabloid press that will track their lovers instead of their beards, the excavation of their past lives, a torrent of public criticism and the implosion of their careers. In a culture of compulsory heterosexuality, to stop lying — by omission or otherwise — is to risk everything.

American culture still expects that stars are cis and straight until they confess themselves guilty. So, when our culture imagines a celebrity’s coming out, it expects an Ellen-style announcement that will submerge the past life in phoenix fire and rebirth the celebrity in a new image. In an ideal culture, wearing a bracelet that says “PROUD,” waving a pride flag onstage, placing a rainbow in album artwork or suggestively answering fan questions on Instagram would be enough. But our current reality expects a supernova.

Because of that expectation, stars end up trapped behind glass, which is reinforced by the tabloid press’s subtle social control. That press shapes the public’s expectations of others’ identities, even when those identities are chasms away from reality. Celebrities who master this press environment — Ms. Swift included — can bolster their business, but in doing so, they reinforce a heteronormative culture that obsesses over pregnancy, women’s bodies and their relationships with men.

That environment is at odds with the American movement for L.G.B.T.Q. equality, which still has fights to win — most pressingly, enshrining trans rights and squashing nonsensical culture wars. But lately I’ve heard many of my young queer contemporaries — and the occasional star — wonder whether the movement has come far enough to dispense with the often messy, often uncomfortable process of coming out, over and over again.

That questioning speaks to an earnest conundrum that queer people confront regularly: Do we live in this world, or the world to which we ought to aspire?

Living in aspiration means ignoring the convention of coming out in favor of just … existing. This is easier for those who can pass as cis and straight if need be, those who are so wealthy or white that the burden of hiding falls to others and those who live in accepting urban enclaves. This is a queer life without friction; coming out in a way straight people can see is no longer a prerequisite for acceptance, fulfillment and equality.

This aspiration is tremendous, but in our current culture, it is available only to a privileged few. Should such an inequality of access to aspiration become the accepted state of affairs, it would leave those who can’t hide to face society’s cruelest actors without the backing of a vocal, activated community. So every queer person who takes issue with the idea that we must come out ought to ask a simple question — what do we owe one another?

If coming out is primarily supposed to be an act of self-actualization, to form our own identities, then we owe one another nothing. This posture recognizes that the act of coming out implicitly reinforces straight and cis identities as default, which is not worth the rewards of outness.

But if coming out is supposed to be a radical act of resistance that seeks to change the way our society imagines people to be, then undeniable visibility is essential to make space for those without power. In this posture, queer people who can live in aspiration owe those who cannot a real world in which our expansive views of love and gender aren’t merely tolerated but celebrated. We have no choice but to actively, vocally press against the world we’re in, until no one is stuck in it.

And so just for a little while longer, we need our heroes.

But if queer people spend all of our time holding out for a guiding light, we might forgo a more pressing question that if answered, just might inch all of us a bit closer to aspiration. The next time heroes appear, are we ready to receive them?

It takes neither a genius nor a radical to see queerness implied by Ms. Swift’s work. But figuring out how to talk about it before the star labels herself is another matter. Right now, those who do so must inject our perceptions with caveats and doubt or pretend we cannot see it (a lie!) — implicitly acquiescing to convention’s constraints in the name of solidarity.

Lying is familiar to queer people; we teach ourselves to do it from an early age, shrouding our identities from others, and ourselves. It’s not without good reason. To maintain the safety (and sometimes the comfort) of the closet, we lie to others, and, most crucially, we allow others to believe lies about us, seeing us as something other than ourselves. Lying is doubly familiar to those of us who are women. To reduce friction, so many of us still shrink life to its barest version in the name of honor or safety, rendering our lives incomplete, our minds lobotomized and our identities unexplored.

By maintaining a culture of lying about what we, uniquely, have the knowledge and experience to see, we commit ourselves to a vow of silence. That vow may protect someone’s safety, but when it is applied to works of culture, it stymies our ability to receive art that has the potential to change or disrupt us. As those with queer identity amass the power of commonplaceness, it’s worth questioning whether the purpose of one of the last great taboos that constrains us befits its cost.

In every case, is the best form of solidarity still silence?

I know that discussing the potential of a star’s queerness before a formal declaration of identity feels, to some, too salacious and gossip-fueled to be worthy of discussion. They might point to the viciousness of the discourse around “queerbaiting” (in which I have participated); to the harm caused by the tabloid press’s dalliances with outing; and, most crucially, to the real material sacrifices that queer stars make to come out, again and again, as reasons to stay silent.

I share many of these reservations. But the stories that dominate our collective imagination shape what our culture permits artists and their audiences to say and be. Every time an artist signals queerness and that transmission falls on deaf ears, that signal dies. Recognizing the possibility of queerness — while being conscious of the difference between possibility and certainty — keeps that signal alive.

So, whatever you make of Ms. Swift’s sexual orientation or gender identity (something that is knowable, perhaps, only to her) or the exact identity of her muses (something better left a mystery), choosing to acknowledge the Sapphic possibility of her work has the potential to cut an audience that is too often constrained by history, expectation and capital loose from the burdens of our culture.

To start, consider what Ms. Swift wrote in the liner notes of her 2017 album, “reputation”: “When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test.”

Listen to her. At the very least, resist the urge to assume that when Ms. Swift calls the object of her affection “you” in a song, she’s talking about a man with whom she’s been photographed. Just that simple choice opens up a world of Swiftian wordplay. She often plays with pronouns, trading “you” and “him” so that only someone looking for a distinction between two characters might find one. Turns of phrase often contain double or even triple meanings. Her work is a feast laid specifically for the close listener.

Choosing to read closely can also train the mind to resist the image of an unmarried woman that compulsory heterosexuality expects. And even if it is only her audience who points at rainbows, reading Ms. Swift’s work as queer is still worthwhile, for it undermines the assumption that queer identity impedes pop superstardom, paving the way for an out artist to have the success Ms. Swift has.

After all, would it truly be better to wait to talk about any of this for 50, 60, 70 years, until Ms. Swift whispers her life story to a biographer? Or for a century or more, when Ms. Swift’s grandniece donates her diaries to some academic library, for scholars to pore over? To ensure that mea culpas come only when Ms. Swift’s bones have turned to dust and fragments of her songs float away on memory’s summer breeze?

I think not. And so, I must say, as loudly as I can, “I can see you,” even if I risk foolishness for doing so.

I remember the first time I knew I had seen Taylor Alison Swift break free from the trap of stardom. I wasn’t sitting in a crowded stadium in the pouring rain or cuddled up in a movie theater with a bag of popcorn. I was watching a grainy, crackling livestream of the Eras Tour, captured on a fan’s phone.

It’s late at night, the beginning of her acoustic set of surprise songs, this time performed in a yellow dress. She begins playing “Hits Different.” It’s a new song, full of puns, double entendres and wordplay, that toys with the glittering identities in which Ms. Swift indulges.

She’s rushing, as if stopping, even for a second, will cause her to lose her nerve. She stumbles at the bridge, pauses and starts again; the queen of bridges will not mess this up, not tonight.

There it is, at the bridge’s end: “Bet I could still melt your world; argumentative, antithetical dream girl.” An undeniable declaration of love to a woman. As soon as those words leave her lips, she lets out a whoop, pacing around the stage with a grin that cannot be contained.

For a moment, Ms. Swift was out of the woods she had created for herself as a teenager, floating above the trees. The future was within reach; she would, and will, soon take back the rest of her words, her reputation, her name. Maybe the world would see her, maybe it wouldn’t.

But on that stage, she found herself. I was there. Through a fuzzy fancam, I saw it.

And somehow, that was everything.

#ooooh my word this was BREATHTAKING and so well-said #because coming out is in fact a very delicate thing #full article here for the tumblr crowd!#taylor swift #articles #new york times #gaylor swift #gaylor #lover #chely wright

239 notes · View notes

aquaquadrant · 1 year

Note

Why do I feel like Etho and Patho would actually really get along well. Like there'd be a minute of "oh shit" then they'd be making some weird machine together.

Also any chance you would be willing to share the story about Patho's clock and maybe info on Hels Bdubs?

(honestly? true. patho isn’t bothered enough w the concept of being a doppelgänger so he’d be chill w etho if etho was chill with him. and etho’s like. always chill. anyway idk if this’ll answer ur questions but here’s uhhhh something)

~*~

patho pauses at the top of the netherrack hill, boots hissing briefly as he shifts off a magma block.

xyz: -12,485.167 / 67.09835 / 253,295.942

the coordinates ever-present within his field of view tell him he should be another hundred or so blocks away in the z axis, but he can already see the jungle’s grown since his last visit. it’s been slowly overtaking the neighboring nether waste biome for a couple decades, now. rate of growth has held constant, unchanging. that's something, at least.

patho slowly scans the horizon. words and numbers flash across the left half of his vision as his cybernetic eye rapidly processes new information based on visual input: netherrack, netherrack, crimson nylium, grass, jungle wood, jungle wood, jungle leaves, weeping vine. light level 3, 3, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4. there's a lava pool eleven blocks over in the x axis; light level 15.

he starts walking again.

153 fps t: inf fancy-clouds b: 15x15 3 tx 3 rx c: 695/41672 (s) d: 16, pc: 000, pu: 00, ab: 42 e: 23/109, b: 0, sd: 9 p: 18 t: 109 error fc:0 xyz: -12,487.331 / 65.21091 / 253,375.987 block: -12,487 65 253,375 chunk: -780 15 7,835 facing: south (towards positive z)(1.5/5) client light: 5 (0 sky, 5 block) biome: error:nether waste local difficulty: 6.75//0.00 (day error404 not found) sounds: 5/247 + 0/8

the data shifts with every step. he's learned to tune most of it out by now, only paying attention to the biome indicator as he crosses the chunk threshold.

biome: error:crimson jungle

particles and sounds immediately jump up a couple degrees. glowing red specks dance slowly in the air, mingling with the ambient noises; hoglins rooting around in the brush, parrots calling unseen from the canopy above, lava bubbling in a pool nearby.

p: 35 sounds: 23/247

the temperature is warmer here. patho shrugs off his jacket, letting it hang at his elbows as he picks his way through the jungle. he doesn't even need to think about where he's going, coordinates left ignored at the edge of his vision. he's taken this path many times before, and he never has to wander very long.

his boots crunch softly on the nylium and grass terrain. jungle leaves and crimson fungus alike brush at his shoulders as he ducks underneath branches, taking care not to get tangled in weeping vines.

this is his favorite jungle. it's not the only crimson jungle he's ever come across- not to mention the warped jungles- but out of all the biomes he's seen, it's the one with the greenest leaves. something about this jungle sustains the normal trees just as well as it does the fungi, allowing the grass and leaves to stay bright and full instead growing in wilted and brown. it makes a lovely contrast with the blood red fungi.

not for the first time, he's thankful that the jungle is far enough away from spawn to be left alone. if other players knew about this place, with its well-sustained passive mob spawning and greenery, they'd destroy it for resources for sure. but he never worries too much about that possibility, because no mob or player sets foot in this jungle without permission from-

a weeping vine suddenly sprouts from the ground and lashes around patho's leg.

it's quickly joined by several more, snaking out from the undergrowth to wrap around his other limbs. before he can blink, he's lifted off the ground and pulled up into the trees. he doesn't struggle, doesn't panic- this is nothing new to him. the vines string him up among the highest branches, where a familiar figure is crouched in front of him, nothing but a pair of glowing red eyes beneath a heap of moss.

<player>dat -7063fdce-39ac-4a12-d836-a990c45b2bb0

"hey, dbubs," patho says casually.

the figure straightens up, hood falling back to reveal his face. his huge red eyes are sparkling with excitement, despite the dark circles lining them, and his mouth falls open in a wide, sharp-toothed grin. vines of varying shapes and sizes curl lazily around his body, small tendrils sprouting from the mossy cloak he wears. a couple veins of red discolor his skin, crawling up his neck and across his face. his messy hair is a bit whiter than the last time patho saw him, tinged red at the roots. a clock hangs around his neck, to match the one hanging from patho's hip.

"patho!" dbubs practically shouts, throwing his arms out.

sounds: 24/247

before dbubs can say anything else, patho asks his usual question. “what’s your name?”

“what’s my-” dbubs blinks, works his jaw for a second. “GODSLAYER666,” he proclaims loudly, puffing his chest out. then he pauses, frowns. “wait, no, i- i don’t know why i just said that. uh…”

it’s somewhere in the middle, then. not as bad as his worst days- at least he’s aware he’s lying, even if he has no control over it. and patho has to admit, that's one of the most entertaining responses dbubs has ever given to his little test.

"uh huh." patho shifts in the web of vines. they're holding a bit tighter than normal. of course, he could still easily break out of them. if he wanted to. "did you miss me, dbubs?" he asks instead, his voice teasing.

dbubs throws his head back to let out a sharp laugh, sending a shower of red particles fluttering through the air. "what?" he demands incredulously, his eyes blown wide. "miss you? i d- eugh, n'you stupid- i- i didn't even notice you were gone!"

patho hums with amusement. "then you don't wanna, like, kiss me or anything?"

"no," dbubs insists stubbornly, even as he comes closer. he steps boldly into patho's space, hands coming up to grab his face. "no, no of course not, i don't..." his long eyelashes flutter as he looks patho up and down. he smells like moss; like old vegetation and decay. there's soil and dried blood caked under his fingernails. "why would i- you ha- you have a lotta nerve..." dbubs tugs at the left strap of patho's mask, tilting his head. "do i- uh, do i get to see ya?" he asks, expression suddenly eager.

"yeah," patho chuckles.

dbubs grins widely, pulling patho's mask down. for a moment, he just looks at him. his calloused hand scuffs along the metal parts of patho's face- the entire ramus of his left mandible and most of his cheekbone, lost in the explosion that took his eye. the remaining skin is rough with scar tissue. dbubs strokes his thumb along that, too.

"i lo- um, i- i hate your stupid face," dbubs mumbles before he finally kisses patho. he seems to process his words a second later, breaking away with a small gasp of "oh! i d-", but patho simply leans in again, reclaiming his lips.

he knows what dbubs meant.

~*~

dbubs spares patho the trouble of walking, simply having the vines carry him to the hideaway. it's a difficult base to categorize: part tree house, part nest, part garden. in some places the floor is made of wood- in others, just a thick layer of leaves. there are potted plants and hanging vines everywhere, interspersed among stacks of barrels and moldy bookcases. little red mushrooms sprout from walls made of thatch and tree trunks. a couple of shroomlights provide gentle lighting as glittery particles drift through the open air; red, from the biome itself, and green from the spore blossom that patho brought him last year.

the vines unceremoniously drop patho onto the makeshift bed- a mat of moss and old, shredded banners. he's barely gotten settled, pulling his mask up and pulling his jacket off, before dbubs flops onto him with a heavy wuff.

"so!" dbubs starts loudly, propping his elbows up on patho's stomach. "what brings ya to see ol' dbubs today, huh?"

patho huffs a laugh. "what, i can't just stop by to say hi?"

"oh sure, okay." dbubs rolls his eyes, one of his vines flicking through the air dismissively. "you j- yeah, okay, be all secretive, then! see if i care." his haughty demeanor doesn't last long, though, as he shimmies up a little further, arms folded on patho's chest. "d'you- uh, do you wanna hear what i've been doin'?"

patho sighs good-naturedly, shifting so he can tuck his arms behind his head and lean back against the wall. "alright, go ahead."

dbubs beams at him and immediately starts telling lies. he tells patho about all the amazing things he's built (the jungle looks the same), all the incredible battles he's fought (no one's entered the jungle in years), all the wonderful places he's gone (he can't leave the jungle).

but patho doesn't mind that it's all lies. he's content to listen anyways.

they carry on like this until dbubs suddenly pauses, scrambling for his clock. "uh oh! gotta schreep."

patho glances at his own clock; dbubs is right on time, as always. that's one thing he never lies about. "okay, okay," he says, pushing dbubs off- he hits the moss with a soft thump. "lemme get my anchor."

"well, hurry up already!" dbubs shouts impatiently, vines swatting at patho's arm as he pops down his ender chest.

after placing the anchor and setting his spawn, patho reaches up and presses his finger directly into the center of his left eye, shutting it off.

he doesn’t regret putting a data processor into his cybernetic eye; the information it’s given him is invaluable. but every now and then, he needs a break from it. even when his eyes are closed, the display is still active, showing blank values on the back of his eyelid. turning the eye off is the only way to make it go away- of course, at the price of half his vision. so he only does it if he’s sleeping somewhere fully secure, and if he’s alone.

the jungle is an exception. dbubs has full domain out here- no mob or player can come close to his home without him allowing it.

"finally," dbubs huffs as patho settles back down. he's quick to cling with both his arms and assorted vines.

patho can't help but chuckle. "what's that you said about not missing me?"

"oh, shut up!"

~*~

patho abruptly reenters consciousness, emerging from a deep, dreamless sleep. with a soft groan, he fumbles to turn on his cybernetic eye, wincing at the sudden influx of data.

149 fps t: inf fancy-clouds b: 15x15 3 tx 3 rx c: 695/41672 (s) d: 16, pc: 000, pu: 00, ab: 42 e: 1/109, b: 0, sd: 9 p: 52 t: 109 error fc:0 xyz: -12,587.412 / 96.77253 / 253,401.623 block: -12,587 96 253,401 chunk: -783 15 7,845 facing: north (towards negative z)(1.5/5) client light: 7 (0 sky, 7 block) biome: error:crimson jungle local difficulty: 6.75//0.00 (day error404 not found) sounds: 27/247 + 0/8

"goooood morning!" dbubs calls, over on the other side of the little nook. he's busy rummaging through barrels, perhaps trying to find some breakfast. it’s unlikely he has any food stored; when he’s hungry, he hunts, and the jungle always provides.

"mornin'," patho says, rubbing his face. he sits up- and then pauses. there are weeping vines wrapped tightly around his legs. he sighs. “dbubs, you’re doing it again.”

“what?" dbubs manages to sound surprised. "no! no, i’m not, i’m- i’m just over here, minding my own business, crafting a loom.”

“a loom,” patho repeats flatly.

“yes! for um, for banners.”

“do you even have any wool?”

“do i ha- uh, of course! yes, of course i do.”

“can i see it?”

“no. no, i- i just ate it, actually. um-”

“you ate it?”

“yeah. sorry.”

patho sighs again. he kicks the weeping vines away. "i uh, i didn't mean to be gone for so long," he says, rising to his feet. "but, you know, i- i got held up with a job."

"a job?" dbubs glances over his shoulder at patho, squinting. "what kinda job?"

patho stretches his arms above his head, hearing both his natural and mechanical shoulder joints pop. "some guys out west are tryin' to make a portal out of hels."

"a portal?" dbubs's mouth falls open. "oh, for goodness sakes- and you call me a liar!"

patho knows better than to take offense. "it's true. they've got a player who came here from another world."

"uh huh." dbubs scoffs, but he can't quite hide the anxious shimmer in his eyes. "yeah, yeah, sure... so- i mean, did you do it, then? make them a portal?"

"basically." patho shrugs. "i uh, i told them everything they needed to know, to make one."

"right. you told th- okay." dbubs nods, bites his lip. "um- you didn't stay? to see the portal? or, uh…”

patho chuckles, crossing the distance to put his arms around dbubs's waist. "nah. i mean, come on, you know me, dbubs. i'm a- i'm a hels player, through and through. what's the rest of the universe got that's better than this place, right?"

dbubs grins at that, slotting his arms through patho's. "oh, you- you're such an idiot! y'know, i uh, i've been outside'a hels before and i- um, let me tell ya, you're missing out!"

"mhmm." patho smiles even though his mask is on. he knows dbubs can tell.

"yeah! "dbubs nods vigorously. "and, uh, there's- i got a whole world that's just mine!"

"is that right?" patho rests his chin on the top of dbubs's head. "tell me about it."

"it's a beautiful world, of course. my perfect builds, i ha-"

"of course."

"- uh, hey! quit interruptin'!"

"sorry, sorry."

"i di- thank you. so i um, i built a big ol' crastle, with a- hyeugh, a sorta um, horse course... y'know, with th- with the fastest horses anyone ever saw, one-stick horses, and- and uh, everyone was really impressed…”

this won’t last forever. it’ll only be a matter of weeks, months if they’re lucky, before patho won’t be able to ignore the itch to wander again. before the comfort and familiarity of the jungle becomes unbearable. before dbubs grows so used to his presence that the jungle itself tries to overtake him, the way it has dbubs- vines and veins of red.

he’ll leave without warning in the middle of the night, while dbubs is sleeping, because trying to leave while dbubs is awake never ends well. he’ll leave without a word and try not to think about the frantic whispers he knows dbubs sends him on lonely nights, despite knowing patho will never receive them (it’s the only time he regrets fusing his communicator with his arm- but how was he supposed to know he’d hear it in his mind? how was he supposed to know that disabling the chat was the only way not to lose himself completely to the endless flood of data?)

he’ll stay away long enough for dbubs to shatter apart, losing himself to the wildness of the jungle, and come back together. he’ll wait until dbubs has recovered from his grief, so that the next time dbubs sees him there will only be joy. because no matter how many times patho hurts him, dbubs always forgets it eventually.

“… so, you see, ol’ dbubs been workin' on a new technique, using the uh. grade- uh, gradient? block palettes... to create depth. ah hah! so- so listen, now, to teacher! it all starts with the color scheme..."

this won’t last forever. so for now, patho closes his eyes and listens.

error fps t: b: tx rx c: (s) d: , pc: , pu: , ab: e: , b: , sd: p: t: error fc: xyz: / / block: chunk: facing: ( )( / ) client light: ( sky, block) biome: error: local difficulty: // (day error404 not found) sounds: 1/247 + 0/8

~*~

#hels to pay au #HTP fic #hels hermits #hermitshipping #ethubs #<- i mean SORTA #pathbubs #in case it’s not clear patho’s mech eye basically acts like a debug screen #like when you press F3 in mc to see a bunch of data and stats #he can always see that info. prob less cluttered tho bc there aren’t any computer specs for him to look at LOL #anyway don’t look too much into the data values i was pulling them out of my ass #except for dbubs player data. DO look into that :3 #ALSO ty everyone for the asks i’ll get to em soon #my writing

443 notes · View notes

kelseytheballerina · 1 year

Note

Heyy so Starting by being straight up and admitting that envy is an ugly habit I have. I see people who grew up with money living their best life and I get hurt and mad because I'm working my ass off just trying to get by, or I see an attractive woman and feel like crap. Its something I'm recognizing as a problem and I want to stop. I saw a post where you said something about being inspired and motivated by women who are better off/more successful/prettier/etc instead of comparing and getting jealous. How do you actually put that into practice and acheive that mindset?

totally, so basically I would just look at it as inspiration and proof of an outcome. a lot of our desires can be based on theory. the possibility of having this or going there or excelling in this way. but we don’t technically know if we could pull it off or if it’s ever been done before with a specific set of conditions, so our goals and desires are just a theory. for example, maybe you desire to be a mom-model-actress-ceo under 25 and you see a woman literally become just that. I wouldn’t be like “grrrr how dare she have what I want” I would be happy that I now have proof that what I want is in the realm of possibility and there is a path that has been laid out should I choose to use hers as a blueprint. people will likely be more accepting of me doing the same thing since there’s already been someone who has come before me and been successful. plus, now you could have a potential peer who becomes a potential friend when you are in the same circle. when it comes to beauty, there’s so many girls out there being unapologetically into beauty care so now people won’t be weirded out when I start showing up with nails and hair and cute clothes because they have helped break down the taboo. so it’s more of an appreciation for them trailblazing a path or showing time and time again that something is possible and here’s what it looks like for a 35 year old and a 60 year old and a 19 year old and a white American and a black American and a Nigerian Brit and so on and so forth. it’s inspirational data.

it’s like, I now know I’m not crazy and my aspirations are attainable at least to a degree (factoring in variables like where you’re born and parents you’re born to, etc) so all I have to do is stay on track and I’ll be there too some day. when I’m studying over and over and wondering if this is even real and then I see a classmate got an A, I feel better knowing that I’m not screaming into the void and that the outcome I seek is actually a reality. I no longer feel like I’m rowing in open water of uncharted territory. this land has been conquered before and that’s great! so maybe I won’t get skin exactly like hers but I’ll get close. maybe I won’t get her salary at the same age she did but even if I have to work an extra 5 years I’ll be glad I was inspired by her to keep going. maybe you didn’t consider the possibility of having certain things until you saw that woman with it and now your mindset has been expanded to have more out of life.

I feel like when you’re envious, there’s a part of you deep down that will secretly wish for someone’s downfall, even if you’re friends with them because it’s a “me vs you and there can only be one” mentality. which means you’ll be likely to think everyone else is secretly out to get you too or the world is conspiring against you when it’s nothing of the sort. but when you have an “I’m happy for you and patiently waiting my turn” mentality, you’re more likely to see the blessings happening to you in action, you’re more likely to be a positive person around such women and they’d more likely want to be around you and help you come up with them rather than feeling some sort of repressed hater energy.

I always just remember that none of us are on the same timeline and not everyone peaks at the same age. some are late bloomers, some have more barriers in the way, but that just means you will end up being someone else’s inspiration one day when they find interest in your variables and outcome. let your journey be what it will be and keep your mind open to the wisdom you’re collecting along the way. if it took you 3 years to clear your skin up, you’ll have waaaay more insight on the topic than someone who’s only ever experienced the occasional breakout and let’s say you wanted to turn that into a skincare YouTube channel or something, you’d have more success than someone with nothing to say. what I mean by that is, sometimes the ones with the long journeys that feel unfavorable in the moment end up blooming into an unforeseen opportunity in the future.

envy is never worth it. it just makes the journey more miserable than it needs to be and pushes people away.

#ask

272 notes · View notes

luna-rainbow · 1 year

Note

Do you think Bucky ever got any sleep during all his years of Hydra captivity? Or was it just wipe/kill/back in the freezer? I don't think cryostasis would be anything like normal restorative REM sleep.

Hello nonnie!! I have finally had a light-bulb moment for this ask (I'm sorry it's taken me like 7 months)

I've been going about it the wrong way, trying to research on sleep, when in actuality what I should have been researching is the brain under hypothermia. This is an observational study conducted in the 1980s looking at children undergoing induced hypothermia (lowering of body temperature) during cardiopulmonary bypass (sometimes required during major surgery). In summary, by the time the body temperature cooled to 18 degrees, all brain activity ceased. Sleep - consisting of non-REM and particularly REM - are associated with far more active brain waves. So nonnie, you are very correct in saying that Bucky, even with his super soldier abilities, unlikely ever got any "sleep" during cryostasis. (I'm sorry to all the ficcers that wrote Bucky dreaming during cryo but I think most people are happy to ignore this piece of science)

In terms of whether Bucky ever got "sleep", I think that is hard to say. Even normal soldiers might drive themselves to go without sleep for 36+ hours if required for a mission (heck, even hospital shifts go for 36 hours in some places). As a super soldier, Bucky might tolerate sleep deprivation for longer. This means missions like taking out the Starks - travelling from Russian and back - he might achieve in one sitting without sleeping in between (although I guess no one can stop him from dozing off on the plane).

I think one implied part of your question is "is it likely that Bucky was allowed out of the freezer for long enough periods at a time to need (and get) sleep"? I feel like that is unlikely, judging from the "he's been out of cryo for too long" line from CATWS. The timeline goes: day 1 Bucky makes assassination attempts daytime + night time against Fury / day 2 Steve makes a run down to Jersey arriving there at night / day 3 Bucky attacks Steve on the causeway and then we get the nighttime vault scene where Bucky is "unstable". Even if we add a day or two prior to allow for prepping, that still means Bucky becomes "unstable" and questions his identity within a bare week of being out of cryo.

Credit @lost-shoe (this post)

Now onto the angst...we know anaesthetics is not like restful sleep, so theoretically neither is cryostasis. While the science of cryostasis doesn't exist at the moment, we know from artificial hypothermia in surgical situations that it puts incredible stress on the body and all its organs. Looking at the laboratory derangements during hypothermia it looks like it pushes the body over to anaerobic metabolism and causes lactate to go up. You know when you go for a run and your muscles cramp up because you haven't warmed up enough? That's because your muscles have produced too much lactate from anaerobic metabolism. So...no wonder Bucky can't stand when he comes out of the cryo chamber. It also increases one's bleeding risk and reduces one's healing speed, so take of that what you will for your Whumptober prompts 😂

I also wonder whether, because the brain is not receiving any REM sleep during cryo, it means Bucky has been in a constant state of sleep deprivation for the last 70 years. The theory of "prefrontal vulnerability" in sleep deprivation proposes that functions like language, executive functions, divergent thinking, and creativity are particularly affected, so that can contribute to Bucky's inability to process/produce complex language and his slowness when it comes to working through complex problems. It also has significant effect on memory and attention: it's interesting to note that during sleep deprivation of more than 35 hours, they found that while free recall was affected, recognition was not. (Disclaimer for science: small sample size, opposite result for subjects with sleep deprivation ~24 h).

So yeah, I think there are practical reasons why Hydra would not allow Bucky to have restorative sleep between missions. Consolidation of long term memory (i.e. transferring them from short term storage into long term storage) usually happens during sleep which means it is quite likely Bucky remembers only broken bits of his time (if at all) in the last 7 decades.

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes meta #medical meta #bucky barnes: where the angst that keeps on angsting #asks #i hope you get to see this nonnie! i'm so sorry for the long wait

227 notes · View notes

am-i-the-asshole-official · 7 months

Note

AITA for asking my mom to stop using scented bath salts?

For background, I am 35 and live with my mom and stepdad in an apartment. We split rent and utilities equitably. I am disabled and spend most of my time in my room. I have the bedroom that has its own bathroom and the rest of the apartment is functionally theirs. I have the use of the kitchen and can go hang out in the living room etc. but they control the space and it contains their belongings almost exclusively. In other words, my room is the only place that's really "mine." My mom has always enjoyed heavy fragrance products (perfumes, plug-ins, etc.) and knows I hate them. I do NOT have an allergy or any medical issue pertaining to them, I just find the smells very unpleasant and in strong enough concentrations a bit nauseating. I mostly accept her doing scent stuff in the main apartment as it doesn't affect my room, but lately she has been taking baths with a scented bath salt (in their bathroom, not mine) that has an intense, overpowering "clean" scent. I have compared it to Lysol, not sure what it's actually supposed to smell like. For reasons I cannot identify, it invades and permeates my room (even with door closed) like no other smell, at an intensity that wakes me up if I'm sleeping, makes it hard to even think straight, hurts my sinuses, and stays like that for hours. I can mitigate this somewhat by opening my window and running the fan but of course it's the middle of winter and 20 degrees outside. So I asked her to stop using this product, and suggested the same brand's fragrance-free variety. After a bit of back-and-forth she agreed to stop but said "I hope you appreciate the sacrifice I'm making, because I really like the way that bath salt makes me smell. So I'm basically giving up my happiness for yours." I said "There are lots of other ways you could make yourself smell nice, right? Maybe a body wash or lotion?" (Note: she has, for my entire life, loved and used lotions, body washes and similar products freely.) She said "No, I don't want to use those. I wanted to use the scented bath salts. But I'll stop so you can have things your way." I keep thinking about her framing this as an equation by which either I could get what I want (room not reek of chemical fragrance) or she could get what she wants (smell how she wants) and she gave up hers so I could get mine. I let the argument go because she'd agreed to what I wanted, but now I'm back and forth between thinking I'm being selfish and thinking she's being melodramatic and manipulative. It seemed more to me like asking a neighbor to turn down their very loud music (are they sacrificing their enjoyment for yours if they comply? or were they just doing something annoying and stopped when asked? is there a difference?) but maybe that's a false equivalence. AITA for getting my mom to stop using the bath salts to get her desired smell because it makes my room miserable?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

92 notes · View notes

bethanythebogwitch · 1 year

Text

I haven't talked reptiles in Wet Beast Wednesday in a while (and the first time I did it got like 9 notes) so I'll do it again with marine iguanas. Admittedly they're more amphibious than aquatic, but there's no Moist Beast Monday and I think they're cool so it'll have to do.

(Image: Doug Jones in The Shape of Water a marine iguana basking on a rock)

Marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) are large lizards native to the Galapagos Islands. They are unique for being the only extant lizards that spend time in the ocean. As of 2017, there are 11 distinct subspecies that are isolated from each other by the islands they live on. Occasionally a member of one subspecies will end up on the wrong island and produce hybrid offspring. Marine iguanas also can but very rarely do hybridize with the land iguanas of the Galapagos, with whom they are believed to share a common ancestor.

(Image: an iguana perched on a rock

Marine iguanas vary in size based on subspecies, with those from smaller islands reaching a smaller adult size. In general, they race from 12 to 56 cm (4.7 - 22 in) from snout to rear, with a tail ranging from 17 to 84 cm (6.7 - 33.1 in). Males are significantly larger than females, up to twice the weight and noticeably longer. Marine iguanas are robust, with relatively short limbs. Their leg bones are heavy, to provide ballast while swimming. Their tails are laterally flattened and provide propulsion for swimming. They have a row of spines down their backs that provide stability while swimming, similar to a fish's dorsal fin. Their feet have powerful claws and can be used to cling onto and push off of undersea rocks. Marine iguanas were noted by many explorers for their dark color, including Charles Darwin (who referred to them as "clumsy" and "disgusting"). This dark color helps them warm up quickly after diving in the sea.

(image: an iguana going for a swim)

A major feature of the marine iguana is its diet, which is a huge factor in their semiaquatic lifestyle. They feed almost exclusively on green and red algae that grown underwater. To reach the algae, females and smaller males browse the intertidal zone during low tide, while larger males and abnormally large females can swim out to the deeper subtidal zone to forage. They can spend an hour underwater one one breath and dive to 30 m (98 ft), but most dives are much shallower and shorter. Only the largest males swim offshore and dive to significant depths for their food. Because they are positively buoyant, divers must actively swim or cling onto rocks to stay underwater. Most individuals will return to the same spot for feeding and competition over feeding spots have been known to happen. Larger males that swim out for their food have the advantage of less competition for their feeding spots. The species has adapted to be able to fast or subsist on reduced for long periods. During El Nińo, where food supplies can be reduced for years, they will actually shrink, with even their bones getting shorter, then return to full size once the food supply is restored. Because they consume excess salt with their food, marine iguanas have developed the ability to filter the salt out of their blood and expel it through glands in their nostrils. The secreted salt can then be sneezed away. Juveliles spend the first few months of their life feeding on (WARNING: GROSS) the feces of older iguanas. This helps them develop the culture of symbiotic gut bacteria that helps them digest algae. In fact, their digestive systems are so specialized to algae that they can't switch diets.

(image: a marine iguana grazing on algae underwater)

As ectotherms (cold-blooded animals), marine iguanas need to keep themselves warm to survive. The water around the Galapagos is typically around 11-23 degrees C (52-75 F) while their preferred body temp is 35-39 C (95-102 F). This high preferred temperature helps with their digestion. To keep themselves warm, the iguanas spend a lot of their time basking in the sun, especially after swimming. They can also reduce their heart beats while cold to help prevent heat loss. Basking iguanas can cover large beaches. They live in colonies that usually range between 20 and 500 individuals but can sometimes get up to 1000 members. Their biomass to area ratio can be the highest of any reptile. While they are considered gregarious, they display no social behavior such a grooming. The closest they get to a group activity is sleeping next to each other to conserve heat at night. They also get along with other species, such as Darwin's finches, mockingbirds, and crabs who will pick parasites off their skin. Divers may allow cleaner fish to pick off bits of dead skin. Another lizard, the lava lizard, likes to visit colonies to hunt flies attracted to the iguanas. The iguanas allow the much smaller lizards to climb all over them. Marine iguanas often share beaches with Galapagos sea lions, who will occasionally allow the iguanas to climb over them.

(image: a group of iguanas basking together)

(image: a male marine iguana, identifiable by the rough scales on his head, with a lava lizard climbing on him)

During mating season, male iguanas stop being as chill with their neighbors, attempting to establish a territory and push other males out. They also change from their normal dark appearance to a much brighter coloration. Territories are usually bordered by rocks or crevasses and can be found next to each other in groups. Males will attempt to attract females to their territories while fighting other males to get access to their females. This behavior is called lekking. Females show a distinct preference for larger males and it is the largest males that are most successful at maintaining territories. Medium males are forced to patrol the edges of territories to try to pick up mates while small males often pretend to be female to sneak into another's territory and attempt to mate. Males with territories defend them with special displays where they will raise their dorsal spines and open their mouths while bobbing their heads around. If another male challenges the dominant, they will display at each other. If neither submits, a fight will start. Males fight by headbutting and trying to push each other around. These fights can last for hours and the participants will occasionally take breaks. In most cases, one will eventually display a submissive posture and retreat, though in a few cases the fight has escalated to biting and scratching. When courting a female, a male will nod at her and approach in a sideways walk. Smaller males without territories may also try mating forcibly. Females only mate once per year and will signal rejection to additional suitors by nodding at them.

(image: a male performing a territorial display)

(image: two males headbutting each other in a territorial battle)

Mating season usually lasts between December and March. Females will lay eggs about a month after mating. The eggs (usually 2 to 3 but sometimes up to 6) can collectively weigh up to a quarter of the mother's weight, which is very large for an iguana. They are laid well above the tide line and buried in sand or soil. In places with few good nesting sites, mothers will guard their eggs after hatching to make sure other females don't dig therm up to steal the spot. When females fight over nesting spots they are less disciplined than males and will quickly resort to biting. The eggs hatch after 3-4 months. Females reach sexual maturity after 3-5 years while males do so after 6-8 years. They live an average lifespan of 12 years, but can live up to 60.

(image: a female iguana digging her nest)

(image: a group of juveniles climbing on each other)

Marine iguanas are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN, while a few populations are instead considered endangered. A major threat to them is warming seas, which can reduce the red and green algae populations and replace them with inedible brown algae, leading to starvation. Marine iguanas only have a few predators and most of them target juveniles or small adults. As a result, the adults demonstrate island tameness, a lack of wariness to potential predators. This has left them vulnerable to predators introduced by humans, such as dogs, cats, rats, and pigs. Despite these invasive predators being present for ver 100 years, they have not developed any anti-predator defenses against them, a phenomenon called ecological naïveté. They also do not fear humans and will allow tourists to approach them, which has led to injuries and the spread of human-introduced diseases. They are protected by laws of Ecuador and most of their range is in protected areas. Efforts to remove invasive predators have seen some benefit. They are difficult to keep in captivity due to their specialized diets, and they have never been bred in captivity.

(image: a male with his bright mating season coloration)

#wet beast wednesday #marine iguana #biology #zoology #ecology #marine biology #galapagos #animal facts #iguana #lizard #reptile #long post

181 notes · View notes