#Scale House Discourse

[scale-house-discourse]

What... Why? What do you do?

I'm here because I want to educate people about one of the lesser known tasks of a farmer- processing and logging crops on a large scale.

Also I'm exhausted and waiting for trucks of wheat can be boring/ I have office tasks that can be pretty tedious although important.

I'm in FFA, and do a lot of work with my local chapter and my extended family that runs the farm. But I like memes too much not to make my job one.

[imawriternotamagican]

Opinions on farming?

@scale-house-discourse

Yuhhh

It's pretty awesome and honestly that blog up there is like cool cuz it's abt farming but chill.

[prototypesteve]

Valid. With or without validation. (A before there was an A.)

Asexuals, aromantics, and everyone else on the aspec are valid, and were valid even before we had a name for what we were.

In May of 1971, I was born different. There wasn’t a name for it. (The committee who wrote the Asexual Manifesto wouldn’t even form for another year and four months.) I was valid, but there wasn’t even a way to say what about me was valid.

In June of 1989, I graduated from High School. I was barely 18. I was still different. But in all those years, I’d never encountered the words aromantic or asexual. (Instead, I heard words like frigid, weird, secret f-g, psycho, virgin, and sheltered). In Career And Life Management class, where sex education was a brief module, they didn’t even mention X on the Kinsey Scale. We were told it was 1 to 6. Period. (I didn’t check, because I was X on the Kinsey Scale, which meant I didn’t care about things like the Kinsey Scale.) They managed to find a way to invalidate me without even naming the things they were invalidating!

By April of 1993, I graduated from college, still different. Now I was hearing kinder guess-names for what I was: Busy, focused, fussy, pure, a late-bloomer, and undecided. But I still hadn’t heard words like aromantic or asexual. I was at an art school. I heard all the other words. I saw people living all the other words. I saw bi couples, I had gay and lesbian friends and instructors, I had a pansexual classmate, and knew someone who was almost certainly pre-transition trans. I was aromantic and asexual but I had no way of finding those words, or being rescued from my confusion by those words. By this point, I didn’t even need validation, anymore. I just wanted understanding.

But I got sent out into the world, to go start my career, and figure out apartments, cars, taxes, utilities, setting up a business, and a million other adult things that took “housed-or-homeless” priority over “figuring out what was ‘wrong’ with me”. So, even though there were murmurs on the right talk shows, or screeds in the right ink-and-paper offline zines about asexuality and aromanticism, they weren’t in mainstream or sidestream discourse. I had to settle for “different, busy, and single-minded about his career”.

It would take until late 2022—over 29 years after I left college and 51 years after I was born—before I started noticing social media posts about “aroace” characters who didn’t feel love.

Now I had a name for my difference.

I knew exactly what I was, because everything I read about asexuality and aromanticism perfectly matched and explained the experiences I’d had, and the feelings I’d felt, since I first noticed I was different at age 12!

I’d been valid all that time. I saw the other posts saying we didn’t belong in this or that community, and the names should be broken up into more categories, and we were taking up space at pride festivals, and this was a made up thing that didn’t exist prior to… oh, fuck it, it didn’t matter. I was aromantic and asexual on the day I was born in 1971; before those two words were available to ordinary people. I was real, I was who I was, and I was valid, and even though I wasn’t allowed to know what I was for another five decades full of trauma and loss and hurt, I always was who I was, and so I always was valid, regardless of whether or not anyone else agreed.

And so are you.

[centrally-unplanned]

The Swing Won't Save You

The "mainstream" account of the election results is one I generally endorse. Elections are thermostatic in the sense that they bounce around an equilibrium - these days the incumbent has a disadvantage, being blamed for the problems but not credited for the successes. Democrats lost because of things like the 2021-2023 inflation spike, or the immigration surge, and the next administration will be blamed for whatever problems the cycle of history throws upon us on top of the consequences of their own actions. That is just How It Be, and it isn't something internal reform can change.

This account is probably true, but this does not lead to some of the conclusions one is hoping it will. I see many taking this as a sort of dismal c'est la vie, assuming that you can just ride it out and win next time, then do good when you do. That therefore there really isn't any need to change all that much in the Dem party structure.

The miss here is that there are fundamental inequalities in the two parties. We just went through, quite handily, the most progressive democratic administration in decades. One that was maximally committed to the idea of "FDR reborn". And it did some good stuff! But I don't really think it lived up to the name, not even close. The democratic "win" - which occurred at the peak of the Covid Crisis in an era of nigh-unprecedented discontent against an incumbent president who was deeply unpopular - delivered a razor thin margin in the House and a literal tiebreaker Senate, itself only after a series of special elections.

The Biden administration spent its political capital on macroeconomic stabilization, one authentic Dem priority in the IRA bill, and then otherwise spent much of its time on a series of rearguard actions and failed attempts to appease coalition partners like unions (who broke away from Dems in record numbers in 2024). Bad policy ideas like student debt relief were themselves undone by the courts. They had four years to prosecute Trump for a blatantly obvious mountain of crimes, and could not get a single one of them across the finish line. And meanwhile, due to awful polling numbers, they felt forced to pursue a number of policies they didn't even really agree with to stave off future defeat. Which they, of course, did somewhat badly, for many reasons but "not really believing in them" is certainly a factor.

Meanwhile surveying the Republican Party's incoming administration, I of course cannot say what they will do with their probable quadfecta, so this is speculative. But through the dice of death they handily control the courts. More importantly, they play the dice to control the courts - we already have discourse on getting the two oldest Republican jurors in the SC to retire. Republican plans include debates around say abolishing the NLRB as unconstitutional, or mass scale deportations, and more you have certainly heard of. They will not do all of them, of course not. But "winning a court case to dismantle a regulatory capacity" is far, far easier than passing a congressional bill to reinstate it. You are not "un-deporting" anybody. The entire Republican agenda is structurally easier to pursue - tearing down is just easier than building up.

And meanwhile, the levers of power are themselves biased. The Supreme Court, of course, but more importantly the Senate, which has an awful map for the Dems. Even when you give Dems their best case scenarios where they win every competitive upcoming election, you are talking 52-48 seats up through ~2032. Meanwhile, the Republican ceiling is 60-40, and is not likely to dip out of the majority.

No one can predict the future of course - I just don't think this scenario and reality is getting the proper attention. A "swing" model where Dems win in 2028 at the same margins they won in say 2020, and then it swings back and so on, is a defeat for Democrats. Republicans will likely achieve X% of their agenda over the next two years, solidify court control, and then Dems will achieve X/2% or worse and otherwise play defense on their turn. It almost certainly isn't the apocalypse, it most likely is not the end of democracy - if you don't wanna care about politics, you don't have to, go live your life. But if you are trying to win at politics, if that is your goal - which for a political party it should be - this just ain't it.

The debate I see is over whether or not this election should be a "wake-up call" for Dems. Which is the wrong question, to me - the Biden administration should be a wake up call for Dems. Even if Harris squeaked out a win, it is a defeat to the party that they found themselves running a decaying man with sub-40 approval ratings for President, or found themselves taking a former senator in the top 1% of the leftwing voting record and running her as a centrist. It should be shameful that they took literally years to act on a "border crisis" that once they did act they found themselves perfectly capable of addressing, not because they authentically believed in increasing immigration and wanted to spend capital on that agenda (which they did not do), but because they were scared of the blowback that happened anyway. It is beyond the pale that Trump is not in jail because they think "politicizing the judicial branch" is somehow not their literal jobs as political actors. It is embarrassing that solidly blue Democratic cities are hemorrhaging population to purple and red states because the Democratic party is failing to govern them.

And I know, I am in the grand, august, tiresome tradition of using an election to repeat the same shit I always say. I have been on this beat since at least 2019. But it being tiresome doesn't mean it's wrong. It might not be right! Maybe Republicans will truly collapse into squabbling infighting and get nothing much done beyond tax cuts, their truest love. I don't know. But I think the odds matrix here is pretty ruthless - the opportunities to be a better party barely have downsides. They implement bad policy half the time even when they win! There is a fundamental disconnect between "what do we want to achieve as a party" and "how are we going to achieve that", a strategy void that infighting, paralysis, and special interest spoils-grabbing fills.

I am less confident on the solution for all this - at minimum we don't even have all the post-election data, that will take time. But the problem such solutions should be solving is that the Dems have been losing for 8 years. "Thermostatic swing in 2028" is not going to change that.

[thunderfrommyheart]

breaking down the misinformation in @afronerdism post about me.

Debunked by Stuart Semple himself. 

I’ve taken the time to do this because nobody wants mis-information bouncing around the internet. 

The key thing to know - in the artworld rich people have access to processes and companies that most artists don’t. That’s how they get to create giant beans which cost $20million. At the top the rich get richer, and at the bottom artists struggle to make their mark with what they’ve got. 

Vantablack is an example of a group of rich, entitled people getting together to pat themselves on the back, whilst the rest of the world watched horrified at the tone-deafness of the whole thing.

it's also worth noting whilst OP is clearly educated and understands politics they are not in any way an expert in the artworld, art discourse. I however have been in the artworld for 25 years, have written for the guardian, art of england and vogue. I have presented art programs for the BBC and have a properly published book on art history - it's out in June called 'Make Art or Die Trying'. I have studied art and art history and spoken at Oxford University, The ICA, Denver Art Msueum, Dublin Art Museum and at Frieze. I have lectured at the Royal College of Art in London. I have curated over 20 contemporary art exhibitions internationally, I have directed two galleries. I am by definition an expert.

MY BREAKDOWN: OP is @afronerdism - I've gone below them point by point

A: What Vantablack is not: a pigment. A paint. Vantablack is not something that you were supposed to use to paint with. 

SS: CORRECT - However nor is glass, chrome, powder coating, sandblasting, booze casting, tar, concrete or steel yet they are used by artists everyday. 

Whether the material/process is a paint or pigment or not doesn’t matter. 

A: Who creates and distributes Vantablack: an engineering company named Surrey NanoSystems.

SS: True. And many artists work with engineering companies every day, notable examples are Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst. Lots of artists collaborate with industry to get their work made, that is what fabrication is.  You go to Surrey NanoSystems - not to buy paint but for them to coat your work in Vantablack. 

A: Who does not do those things: an art house. A distribution company. Any kind of company that creates and distributes pigments on a massive, artistic scale. 

SS: Which is totally true and fine. However they do coat things in Vantablack for a series of clients in many different industries including fashion designers, jewelers, brands, car companies, and watch companies. They will coat anything for anyone who has the money unless they are an artist. They only accept work from Anish Kapoor as he has an exclusive license with them for art. 

A: Who was Vantablack made for: Vanta Black was made by aerospace engineers for aerospace engineers, looking for something to coat the insides of massive NASA telescopes. 

SS: Initially, but quickly was used by a lot of other industries including architects, fashion designers, bands, brands, car companies and even a deodorant. 

They are able to make it in quantities large enough to coat whole buildings as we saw when architect Asif Khan used it to coat a whole pavilion during the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games. 

(If had told Surrey nanoSytems he was an artist - not an architect, this would never have happened)

A: Who it was not made for: artists.

SS: Except the one with the license. (Anish Kapoor)

———————————-——————————————

A: Hopefully already just by understanding what Vantablack is, what it was made for, and who it’s made by you and other people are beginning to see what the problem is with Stuart simples narrative around Vanta black. 

SS: It’s Semple not simple. 

SS: The narrative was not created by Semple as for a few months before he shared his pink the world media was criticizing Kapoor for his Monopoly with major articles in the Guardian, Daily Mail, and BBC news. Each featured reactions from a broad spectrum of artists who spoke about the unnecessary license and the elitism in the artworld. 

A:  But you may be wondering if Vanta black is a highly toxic unstable substance made out of carbon nano tubes by aerospace engineers for aerospace engineers, working in space, then how did we get here? well, Vanta, black 2.0, if you will was created in such a way that it could be sprayed onto substances in a certain way meaning that theoretically it could be used artistically.

SS: Yes VBX2 can be sprayed, and Surrey Nanosystems have training days where they teach in-house teams how to do that. The VBX2, however, arrived quite late in the story and Kapoor’s rights started with the first version. 

A: Surround nanosystems held an exhibition where they displayed Vanta black and when artist saw this, they were inundated with calls from artist, wanting to use it in their work. 

SS:

Surrey nano systems (not surround)

They actually debut it at an airshow in England, it was all over the world media, many artists saw it. They then went on a massive PR mission and the material was seen on CNN etc. 

Kapoor became aware of it and approached them to see if he could use it in his work. 

Together they struck up an exclusive deal which would mean if any artist asked them to coat a piece of work with the stuff they would be turned away. 

That deal was something Surrey and Kapoor were initially proud of. They couldn’t see the inherent elitism in the exclusivity so they went on another PR pr to tell he world Kapoor was signed up to use it. 

It was then the artists of the world really became aware of it, and sure enough, when any of them wrote to Surrey - even really huge ones with plenty of money, they were turned away. These artists including Christian Furr and Ron Arad, amongst others were all featured across the media. =

A: But as we’ve already established surrey nanosystems is not a distribution company. They’re an engineering company. And they made the decision that they could only work with one artist, because they simply did not have the physical ability to produce Vantablack at a scale that allowed them to work with more than one person. 

SS: They did say that, but a lot later. They were always a fabrication / engineering place and there was never an idea that they would distribute the material. That’s not the problem any artists ever had with it, they all fully understood what the material was. The issue was that even if the artist had the money and could ship their work to Surrey, they would not coat the object with it, but they would serve other industries. This is seen as deeply prejudicial towards artists. 

A: (To this day, vanta Black has to be distributed by a specialized robotic arm that creates it in painfully small amounts in an enclosed box that can then be given to someone in a lab. ) 

SS: This is untrue - the arm is used to spray the objects that Surrey have agreed to coat. 

It does not make the material. The material is made by growing carbon nano tubes on a surface. 

And the spray version contains nano particles. The robot arm is used for precision when coating. 

You often see a robot arm spray cars for example. The arm is used like this. 

A: Enter Anish Kapoor: Anish Kapoor, at this time was already a world, renowned artist, and the creator of many public facing pieces, such as cloud gate, a.k.a. the Chicago Bean. His entire life‘s work was dedicated to how light is refracted and interplays with the void, making him not only the perfect person to be chosen because of prestige but also because his life‘s work spoke to the engineers who created Vanta black.

SS: Whist as an artist he has dealt with reflection and the void at length, it’s a stretch to claim his entire life’s work is dedicated to it. 

SS: It is true that as a figurehead for Vantablack he is a good choice, he’s very rich, extremely famous, he’s a Sir (i.e knighted by the queen and a turner prize winner). Plus he makes work that would look good in Vantablack. 

SS: None of this means that he needed exclusivity to do it, the company could simply have collaborated with him and if any other artist asked to have something coated, they could have easily said they were too busy or didn’t have enough of the material. 

SS: The issue is the way they couldn’t see the prejudice, elitism and lack of access in the exclusivity. 

A: Now this should’ve been seen as an incredible accomplishment and honor for this Indian artist to be chosen as the soul licensor of Vantablack as this company was only able to choose one person and people were really excited about this for him and that’s where the story ends, right? Right? Right? 

SS: It’s unclear why his race matters. He is one of the richest, most well known, most famous artists in the world. The fact he has exclusive access to a material/process like this is not a reason for people to be excited for him, people are free to be excited or not. This is purely your opinion not a fact. 

A: Enter Stuart Semple: Stuart simple was a 25-year-old man in the UK living with his mother when she came into his room and told him about Vantablack. 

SS: Stuart was born in 1980, which would make him 36 at the time. 

SS: He was not living with his mother, in fact he was living in London with his own family. 

SS: His mother did not come into his room however on a phone call she spoke to him about an article she had read in the guardian about how artists were upset by Kapoor having Vantablack. 

SS: Stuart was (and is) a well-known contemporary artist, very embedded int hat world. He has had over 20 solo exhibitions dedicated to his work all over the world and his pieces are in major collections and museums. He’s not in the league of Kapoor but in the artworld is well known as an artist. 

A: As an artist himself, Stewart simple wanted to try Vanta Black, and was told by the company that he could not.

SS: This is untrue - Stuart did not want to use the colour, nor did he approach the company. 

A:  It was then that he discovered the only person on earth licensed to use Vantablack was Anish Kapoor. 

SS: This is untrue, he was aware of this when his mother told him what she had read in the newspaper. 

A: Please keep in mind that Vantablack is not a paint, and it is so difficult to work with that Anish Kapoor has only ever produced one singular piece of art with Vantablack. 

SS: This is untrue. Tens of thousands of items have now been coated in VantaBlack, from soda cans to watches. Initially, Kapoor used his rights to create a series of limited edition wrist watches that sold for $100,000 each, and then went on to create a whole series of large sculptures that were initially shown at a huge palazzo in Venice that Kapoor bought, during the Venice Biennale, and then at an exhibition at the Lisson in NYC where there works were for sale with an average price of $500,000USD.

A: So like a child who has just been told by their mom that they can’t use something, Stewart simple decided to throw a hissy fit. 

SS: It’s Stuart Semple (not stewart simple) - and there is no evidence of any kind of Hissy Fit. However he did create a piece of internet performance art, where he put a jar of pinkest pink paint on the internet, humorously, and asked anyone who bought the paint to sign an agreement that they ‘weren’t Anish Kapoor and Associate of Kapoor and that to the best of their knowledge information and belief, the material would not make its way into the hands of Anish Kapoor’. Semple has always explained it was a tongue-in-cheek piece of performance art, and that he was never expecting anyone would actually buy any pink. The best source for this is an article in Wired in which the journalist concludes with the piece being a powerful piece of online performance art. Bearing in mind Semple is an artist who works with performance, that is extremely likely. 

A: He created a pink pigment that he conditionally said everyone could use except Anish Kapoor and then launch this pigment with the hashtag #ShareTheBlack. 

SS: He created the pink pigment in 2010 - and has made his own paints to use in his own work since he was a child. It was not made in response to Kapoor. However he did not make them public they were for his own use, and the Kapoor situation made him question his own exclusivity in keeping the materials he was making for himself. He decided to share his pink as a gesture and a piece of art in it's own right.

A: This caught the attention of the news media, and when asked about this situation, that was previously relatively unheard of, Stuart simple,

SS: Neither Stuart nor the Vantablack situation were unheard of. The media was already reporting on the controversy around vantablack long before Stuart put the pink up. Stuart was also well known which is why the media wanted to talk to him about it. 

When GQ came to do a 5 page feature on him they were clear it was because he was an established and well-known artist in his own right. 

He had already been hosting art shows for the BBC, had written for the guardian and Huffington post and had collaborated with major musicians. 

A: went onto describe Anish Kapoor as this tyrannical elitist who “banned“ the use of Vantablack to keep other artists from using it. 

SS: There’s no evidence that Semple said that, however, he was critical of the exclusive license and did feel the story opened up a well-needed discussion about access to art and the trend in which those with the money could afford to have works fabricated when others couldn’t. He is at heart an egalitarian and has made free art studios, his Designs for humanity charity, his creative therapies fund at Mind (a mental health charity) etc.. and a major free art gallery in his hometown that shows some of the biggest living artists. So Semple’s opinion is allowed, to him Kapoor epitomizes an elitism that is dominated by the super-rich, after all, Kapoor is getting close to being a billionaire. 

A: But hopefully you can already see how that is Literally not true. Anish Kapoor does not make Vanta black. Anish Kapoor cannot sell Vanta black. Anish Kapoor cannot give you permission to use Vanta black. And Vanta black is not even a paint. 

SS: He does not make it, but he does hold the exclusive right to use it in art. 

SS: No other material or process has been exclusively licensed by one artist in the history of the world. 

SS: Jeff Koons does not make his own giant steel sculptures, a factory does. Jeff can’t book your work into the factory, and steel is not a paint either. He doesn't have an exclusive agreement with the steel fabricators. If they aren't too busy with Jeff, and you've got the cash, they'll make something for you too. This is standard with art fabrication.

SS: I didn't physically make the giant steel and foam smiley sculpture of mine for the city of Denver, fabricators helped with that, and engineers. They work with several artists.

SS: This makes no sense given it is understood vantablack is a material and a process of application. 

SS: However Kapoor could surrender his exclusive right and Surrey would then be able to take bookings from artists. 

A: meanwhile Stuart has launched an entire very lucrative career around slandering and smearing Anish Kapoor 

SS: Untrue, Semple had a very successful career and his day job is as a contemporary artist. Actually speaking up about elitism in the artworld is a risky move for someone who relies on that artworld to pay his bills. 

A: when Anish Kapoor literally never did anything but be qualified enough to be the one person chosen by a company that is literally only able to work with one person at a time. 

SS: He did do something, he signed an exclusive agreement and he felt he was entirely justified in doing so. He also went out in the media and with surrey nono systems and gloated about it.

SS: They can’t only work with one person at a time, we have seen whole buildings covered in vantback, jewellery, cars and soda cans and many sculptures by Kapoor. Surrey have collaborated with thousands of brands, designers, architects and companies. 

A: The fact remains Stewart simple, very intentionally allows this narrative to continue because it makes him money. 

SS: It is unclear how it makes him money as the pink was sold for $3 which was what it cost to make, and his website which researches and distributes cutting edge materials is a non profit that collaborates with artists. They even did a crowd funder to make Black 3.0 - a super black acrylic that any artist can use. It's also unclear how he is perpetuating this narrative, when he's clearly moved on to other projects many years ago and rarely mentions it. In Semple's world it's a very small thing.

A: He has made a ton of money off of slandering Anish Kapoor as if Anish Kapoor is the reason he can’t use Vanta black when the reason he can’t use Vanta black is because no one can use Vanta black, and the only person who might be able to use it is Anish Kapoor and that is not Anish Kapoor‘s fault. 

SS: There’s no evidence at all that he’s slandered Kapoor. Kapoor being extremely wealthy, and the level of media that covered the story back in 2016 would never have allowed it. It would have been a legal nightmare. All the publications who write about the story GQ, BBC, The Guardian, Wired, have journalistic laws and it would not have happened. 

SS: There’s no evidence that Semple has made a ton of money. 

A: It is not lost on me that there are racial connotations to the story as well. There are actual companies and artists in the world who have trademarks around certain colors that they do not allow other people to use in public showcases. 

SS: There are colour marks or if you like 'trademarked colours'. The public showcases point doesn't make sense in this context - colours are protected in classes i.e certain uses on Serbian products are prohibited. EG - Tiffany blue cannot be used on jewellery boxes. 

A: But we really as a community allowed this white man to smear and slander an Indian artist,

SS: Again it’s unclear what the ethnicity of the artists has to do with the core issue. 

SS: It’s a little bit of a leap given Semple has also liberated Klein Blue (made by a white French man), Barbie Pink (owned by Mattel a corporation), and created the Brightest White. 

 A: based entirely off of misinformation, and to this day people jump on the Internet, saying fuck Anish Kapoor because of it. 

SS: Kapoor secured the rights to the blackest material ever made. Everyone else who can afford to, can use it, unless they identify as an artist. 

SS: Many people feel like that is wrong. 

A: Now, Anish Kapoor is not some struggling person. He is probably a multibajillionaire 

SS: He’s worth about 800 million according to Forbes, he’s within the top 5 most wealthy living artists.

A: And doesn’t necessarily need our sympathy. But I think the story of Vantablack is a really good case study of how misinformation spreads, and how people never bother to question the framework of a story. 

SS: In my opinion, your post is misinformation, that has been spread unquestioningly. 

[communistkenobi]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[germanpostwarmodern]

Already for centuries the book is a primary means for architects to present their work and ideas about architecture. Accordingly there literally are thousands and thousands of architecture books spanning centuries and styles. In 2016 architect and researcher André Tavares published his fabled book „The Anatomy of the Architectural Book“ with Lars Müller Publishers who have recently published the second edition of the long out of print book.

In line with the book’s title it isn’t a history of the architecture book but an exploration of its anatomy as a reflection of architecture. Beginning with two case studies, namely the 1851 Chrystal Palace exhibition in London and Sigfried Giedion’s „Befreites Wohnen“ from 1929, Tavares showcases how in the first example chromolithography allowed color illustrations and involved the publication in the contemporary discourse about the appropriate use of color in architecture. The second example in turn represents an object in its own right with which Giedion supported his arguments for modern housing.

In part two of the book Tavares dives deeper into the anatomy of the architectural book by analyzing a wealth of books. On basis of the five characteristics texture, surface, rhythm, structure and scale he examines books by the likes of Giovanni Battista da Sangallo, Gottfried Semper, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius and Erich Mendelsohn. The latter’s book „Amerika“ from 1926 is one of the examples in the rhythm section: as Tavares explains, Mendelsohn translated his experience of the perceptual dynamism in the USA to the book by organizing the its pages cinematically. This means that he immerses the reader in the American city and its architecture by gradually moving from piercing contrasts to sequences of street views to make the reader aware of its physical qualities.

Although the previous example represents just one of the three methods of organization showcased by the author it demonstrates his in-depth analyses of the architecture book’s development over time. This amalgam of book, architectural and media history makes Tavares’ publication a fantastic read that is highly recommended!

[teojira]

[ᴍᴏɴꜱᴛᴇʀ ᴡʜᴏ ᴀᴛᴇ ᴀ ꜱᴛᴀʀ]

ᴛᴇᴏᴊɪʀᴀ (ᴇꜱᴛ 2ᴋ24)

《Introduction》 +

《! Please read me !》

¤ Hi! My name is Teddy and this blog as it says on the tin, is a multifandom blog! I'm into a wide range of characters and interests, so I'm sure I have something that'll strike your fancy!

¤ This is an 18+ blog. This is to keep me and you safe should you be a minor. Please stay away! I can't police you, but use common sense.

¤ I will not deal with discourse here, don't like what I write or who I write for? Block me and move on, I don't care.

¤ I am a woman person of color, no hatred towards ANY group is tolerated here. It will end in an IP address block.

¤ My interests fluctuates alot, I have severe adhd and some characters will get special treatment depending on which mood I am in!

¤ I'm always down to chat and make conversation but please remember I'm human and I have a job outside of tumblr, this is just a hobby for me! Please be kind and understanding.

《RULES/GUIDELINES》

¤ Every character I will write romantic ideas for must be of age. Any minor will ONLY be platonic. (Exception being the tmnt brothers, they are aged up accordingly.)

¤I write comfort, fluff, angst, pretty much anything tbh.

¤ My own rule of thumb is that if a furry character is sentient, can consent and is of age, and speaks/thinks/acts like a human, it is akin to monster loving. (Harkness scale pretty much). I don't care for your take on it, block me if you disagree!

¤ I will not write nsfw if you are on anon, your age must be somewhere on your blog. I will delete it from my askbox.

¤ A please and a thank you go a long way!

¤ I usually write with she/her pronouns or gender neutral pronouns.

¤ I am not looking for critique, this is all for fun. This is a heavy boundary, I will block if you do this.

¤ NSFW will be tagged accordingly so you can black list, if I forget to tag something, kindly let me know. I am not responsible for your experience beyond that, act accordingly if I write something you don't like.

¤ Please include some details with your requests, such as character and a general idea on what you'd like me to write! Please don't write an essay in my ask box.

¤ Things I will not write: Pregnancy, Underage, harder kinks (Scat/Noncon/vore/piss), Character harming reader physically, Parenthood, character x character.

Not sure if I write something? Just shoot me a text!

¤ Do NOT share my writing anywhere else (Quotev, Ao3, wattpad, Tiktok). A Simple reblog is appreciated here and only on tumblr.

¤ Comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated! It's nice to know something I wrote was loved!

And finally what we've all been waiting for, put your hands together for the :

《 Fandoms I write for》

Genshin impact

Honkai Star rail

Transformers

Tmnt

Monsterverse (platonic only for the Kaijus)

Planet of the apes (remake) (NO nsfw)

My hero academia (Dabi and Tomura only)

Demon slayer

Overwatch

Twisted wonderland

Devil may cry

Apex legends (Revenant only)

Fire emblem three houses

Puss in boots: the last wish (Death only)

Stranger things (Eddie Munson only)

Red dead redemption 2

The Wolf among us (Bigby only)

Five nights at freddys: Security Breach

Sonic (platonic for everyone except Shadow)

DC comics/ DCEU

Horror icons/slashers

Countless other video game characters probably lmao.

Though I write for many fandoms, I'm more comfortable with specific characters so I'll let you know if I'm comfortable enough to write for them!

Don't see a character you're sweet on? No worries, shoot me a text and I'll see if I know anything about them to whip something up for ya!

ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ᴠᴇʀʏ ᴍᴜᴄʜ ꜰᴏʀ ʀᴇᴀᴅɪɴɢ ᴀɴᴅ ɪ ʜᴏᴘᴇ ᴛᴏ ʜᴇᴀʀ ꜰʀᴏᴍ ʏᴏᴜ ꜱᴏᴏɴ!

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

[matt0044]

Why does Indie Animation lend itself to such intense discourse?

If I had to speculate from my own observations (feel free to call me out on an overgeneralizations), it would be that the harsh turn against any given indie project would be akin to a mother scolding a child with, "I expected this from your sibling but you?!"

See also the "We were rooting for you" gif often tossed around.

Indie Animation be it from a small studio or crowdfunded is seen as bypassing the hoops and hurdles of getting your foot in the door of the highly corporatized entertainment industry. With the likes of Disney or Nick or any given streaming service, creator driven projects are subject to the whims of the company who holds the IP.

And those whims are often to said IP's detriment. It'll more often than not be willfully neglected at best or treated as just something to fill a time slot or shove onto a streaming platform as "content." Enough may be allowed to flourish but their either uncerimoniously cut short at best or being dragged out as a franchise at worst.

To keep from going on about the whole Legend of Korra vs. Spongebob thing (I was there people, there was an LoK fandom believe it or not), indie animation has often been seen as small scale but also within the creator's general control since they control how long it goes or how it's written.

Many cartoons like Gravity Falls, Owl House and Amphibia have talked about trying to get their vision across while contending with a lot of Standards and Practices. Their story which had a "kids and adults alike" target audience would have the top brass insist on something more just for the former category.

While they find work arounds, often to stick their tongue out at the FCC, this can be a hard reminder of who has the final say despite it being what you want. Indie animation is seen as an answer to "What if Alex Hirsch didn't have to comprimise elements of Gravity Falls for the FCC?" or "What if Dana Terrence could just blaze her own trail with The Owl House with little to no notes?"

Especially when it comes to animation with queer characters. Animation made to be "fit for kids" have it tough enough even today but adult animation has to "play it for laughs" since comedies have been the defacto standard for that type of cartoon.

However... a show being creator driven or creative team driven comes as a double edged sword for the fandoms they form. Not all stories that play out across multiple episodes of varying lengths are going in the direction YOU might want to.

Creators might tire of a certain direction or formula and mix things up with things that come to mind almost on the spot. Even with a solid plan, the status quo will get a shake up that can and will alienate those who fell in love from episode one.

Indie Pilots spark the imagination something fierce. There's theories as to what any little detail could mean going forward and speculation on what a character's arc could be. These go wild because Fandom is all about the hypothetical, the unknown, the what could've/should've/would've been. Whole phenomenon would be dead in the water otherwise.

Thing is that not all theories will be proven right if any at all. The creators aren't mind readers and even if it isn't a legality like in corporate, they don't read fanfics if only because they don't want their vision to be totally compromised. Any good creator knows not to just give fans what they want. However... trampling over all these fanfics and theories makes it feel like any given fan had their "child" dragged into the streets to be shot.

A harsh phrasing but that's how a lot of fans act when continuing episode bump up against initial impression of this character or that storyline. It was their creation but new lore, new backstory or what have you is liable to override them. It's been an occupational hazard of being a member of fandom for ages yet it's become the center of a lot of discourse now more than ever. Say thank you to social media for creating such a combative environment everybody.

It's this... feeling of ownership that has existed in fandoms of other shows owned by corporations but amplied by the smaller scale of it, how creators seem more... approachable. And THIS is how the YouTube "critic" scene comes in to capitalize.

So... yeah.

[palomahasenteredthechat]

I've seen the rant post by Luna, I read some of it to get the gist of what she was saying here but I am lost..was she referring to JQ? If so, why?

WHIP AROUND THE SEA BEING PULLED IN WHATEVER DIRECTION THEIR AGENTS WANT THEM TOO INSTEAD OF HAVING AN OPINION THEMSELVES, ITS THE ARE YOU A PERFORMER OR A STAR OR BOTH DILEMMA THAT THE TRUTH IS MOST OF THE NOW WOULD RATHER BE THE LATER HAVE PERFUME DEALS, BECOME FIRST SEAT FACES OF FASHION HOUSES AND HAVE THESE CLEAN POLISHED NON-OPINIONATED 2D GREY SCALED BOREDOMS OF THEMSELVES MOLDED BY THEIR COLLAR PULLING AGENTS THAT GET THEM TO THE HEIGHT THEY FEEL THEY DESERVE THAT ALL OF YOUR FAVES THE PEOPLE YOU STAN, IDOLISE ADORE WON'T EVEN DARE SPEAK OF ON GOING GENOCIDES OR OBSCENITIES IN THE INDUSTRY IF IT MEANS THEY WILL HAVE A BRAND DEAL DEATH 2 CELEBRITY N' WEAK UNCUNTY RUNTS, THEY BECOME UTTER CARICATURES OF THEMSELVES ANYWAY IT GIRLS THEY WISH HUNKS WITH BOOKS IN BACK POCKETS I CHUNDER, VOMITING US THEIR 30 SECOND TIKTOKS OF HOW UNFUNNY THEY ARE IN THEIR CLANS OF POPULARITY FILLED WITH DESIGNER SCHMOOZE AREN'T WE BORED? AREN'T WE BORED OF THE SAME 5 FACES RECYCLED? ARENT WE BORED OF EVERYONE TRYING TO BE THESE AUTOMATED OVERTLY WHOLESOME OR TIN CAN LAUGHING VERSIONS OF THEMSELVES WITH LASER SKIN TREATMENTS TO MATCH, VENEERED FADS FACE OF SKIN CREAMS? OR PERHAPS THEY AREN'T INTERESTING OR WELL VERSED IN THE FIRST PLACE OF WHO THEY ARE OR COME FROM REAL VERSIONS OF LIFE THAT THE MOST OF US KNOW IN FACT THEY PROBABLY STUDIED SANSKRIT OR SOME ANCIENT LANGUAGE IN THEIR FEE PAYING SCHOOL THAT ALLOWED THEM TO FEEL EVER SO SPECIAL LIKE IT'S ALL FOR THE TAKING IN THE FIRST PLACE FROM THE MOMENT THEY STARTED SAYING GOO GOO GAGA IN SOME ANCIENT SYNTAX WHICH IS WHY THEY ARE SO EASILY MARIONETTED INTO ADVERTISEMENTS YAWN THEN WE ARE FORCED TO SEE THEM EVERYWHERE

The stuff in bold seems pretty specific, especially if you have been following the fandom discourse around him for the past two months.

The book in back pocket: spot on.

The perfume ad, private schooling, laser treatments (so that's why he looked so young at the Oscars!), etc. It's about UK talent as a whole but she's using very specific examples because she knows about them specifically in relation to him.

'they become utter caricatures of themselves'. She names what many have seen.

The why is the question, Nonny. Looking at this again I wonder if she reached out for him to do more about Gaza, since she was involved in the first charity event.

Also noting 'obscenities' - is this a dig at DC?

LUNA COME HAVE TEA WITH US

[runesp00r]

I’m a massive fan of carving out stories that make sure nobody is good and nobody is bad. The discourse around the Marauders v. Snape is a new favorite of mine because everyone gets so heated on the idea of who is right and wrong.

In the real world and here… everyone believes they’re right as they spew hate. When Snape insulted Lily, it came from the bottom of his heart, the worst thing he could say to her in that moment to hurt her like she was hurting him… and for that moment he believed he deserved to say it. She deserved to hurt.

James (and the Marauders) are much the same, albeit over a longer scale. And it’s not to say Snape never retaliated over the years, right? From the get-go, they’d been at each other’s throats. It makes no sense that Snape would just become a perpetual sniveling victim all of a sudden. He tries to out Remus — who is apparently the nicest of the Marauders, though I’m not sure how much that’s saying — as a werewolf, mistreats Lily, the only person who tolerates him, and is so determined to vent his rage that he takes it out on generations of Gryffindors.

Their hatred of one another and how it was executed is indicative of how the Wizarding World works, as well as common lines of thought for House rivalries (the alleged core of the issue between Snape and Potter). It’s also a demonstration of the cruelty of teenage boys, the consequences of tribalism, and the pervasiveness of racism, when regarding Snape and Lily.

They don’t believe they’re doing wrong! The Marauders think they’re trolling this whiny, racist brat of a kid who thinks it’s cool to be in the Hogwarts House that produces more whiny, racist brats. Maybe they bash him because he wears women’s clothes (handed down from his mother) in a time where cross-dressing is commonly seen as disgraceful. [This is what I mean when I say writers and fans have to acknowledge the impressions of the time. And even then, classism was high, if you’re at a prestigious school like Hogwarts.] Their animosity is only exacerbated because they surround themselves with people who share their beliefs. Are they wrong to do this? Yeah. Is this a reflection of every identity conflict in the course of human history? Yeah.

I’ve seen posts saying how they bullied Snape was a form of abuse. How Snape treated Harry, who holds zero sins from his father because he doesn’t even remember him, was a form of abuse as well. Snape justified it because of what James did, an opportunity for retribution that he never got because James took the love of his life and then died with her. He thinks he deserved to do this, too. The claim is the Marauders got to mature because that’s the privilege of the abuser; but Snape also got the chance to mature because that’s the privilege of someone who stayed alive and ended up better off than everyone who spited him. He chose not to. He chose to hold onto his desire for revenge, and while it’s not totally ridiculous, it does make him just as bad.

The Marauders attacked Snape based on their prejudices as impressionable teenagers. Snape attacked Harry based on his prejudices as a full-grown, well-educated adult. You see where I’m going here? They were both problems. The Marauders’ actions spurred Snape into a state of permanent bitterness and resentment, but Snape had time to get himself out and he didn’t. Nobody was forcing him to carry out generational revenge other than Snape himself. He was a victim who became a perpetrator. This is also incredibly prevalent in our modern world.

They’re both right. They’re both wrong. They’re quite cyclical and quite mean and still… quite human.

[scale-house-discourse]

Me, in near tears as the protein tester from 1982 malfunctions and stops scanning samples: Please. Please just work. Please. I sold part of my soul to the old gods just to get you to turn on. I'll sell the rest if you just let me finish this one sample I've got so many trucks to do-

The grain truck driver I've known for about two days: Haha um r u ok

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

Something I don't usually see talked about in political discourse around major societal problems is that you can have more than one position on a given topic because you think there's an ideal solution, a position that is morally the most correct, and a practical position based on the hard reality of the facts on the ground. In a perfect world, these positions would line up: the end-goal ideal would be accomplishable using the most morally correct methods. We don't live in that world, obviously.

A lot of this is the result of my legal background helping people navigate extremely non-optimal systems to get to a liveable solution. (Also probably being Jewish, let's be honest.)

Let's take a scaled-down example; a classic legal problem: Person A sells a house to Person B and pays off their mortgage. Person A then also sells the house to Person C as an investment property, pockets the profits, and disappears into that goodly night. Person B moves into the house unaware that Person C has a functionally equal claim to the property. Person C discovers this problem when they go to record the deed and sue Person B to clear the title.

Obviously Person A is the bad actor here, and if they can be caught, they will owe a house to one party and the value of the house to the other (which that person will have to extract from them slowly over time, because lbr, Person A already blew that cash and likely doesn't have an equal amount just lying around to give to that person.) At the end of the day, either Person B or Person C are going to get hosed for something that wasn't their fault.

Personally, my ideal solution is that actually private property as we currently understand it wouldn't exist, and we would all each have rights and responsibilities to the land and the environment that were proportional, in which case this scenario wouldn't have happened in the first place. My morally correct answer is that the state should have a fund for innocent third party buyers out of which Person C would get paid, and leave Person B alone with good title while the state goes after Person A. My practical answer is that Person B was the first purchaser who is actually living on the property and so their need is greater than Person C's need. That should give Person B the stronger claim to the actual property and give Person C (essentially) a property right in the lawsuit and potential recovery against Person A. That answer gets much more complicated and fact-specific if there are other factors in favor of Person C, such as they have lost their housing and will be homeless if they can't move into what was originally intended to be an investment property.

I think most people have this sort of variable response to large, complex societal issues, but our discourse on the subject suffers a lot when people refuse to acknowledge what sort of place they're speaking from or that different discussions have different purposes (thus requiring different answers.)

[bambamramfan]

Discourse knows, there have been too many articles in the UMC publications about polyamory, and I apologize for adding to the bonfire of think pieces. At least this one linked above is less obnoxious than most of them.

(The most obnoxious one is referenced in this article, the Atlantic piece saying that polyamory is bourgeois identity politics distracting from material change.)

And what gets me is that for a bunch of supposed Marxists decrying how polyamory is just cultural superficiality irrelevant to the superstructure of material conditions.... none of them can bother to write a Marxist analysis of polyamory! It's just throwing different names at each other, no discussion of material incentives.

And it's so fucking easy to write one, isn't it. Here's our starting points:

Marriage (and the relationship models that lead to it) is an economic institution.

The change in modern polyamory fads is, like most fashion, coming from the upper-class.[1]

I think we can all agree on these basic premises, and they provide a great deal of grist for economic analysis.

For instance, the middle class in America is falling apart. Especially if you are a recent college graduate. It's easy to get an internship that might be on track to a very lucrative career, especially in a big city. It's a lot harder to start a stable middle-class job somewhere between the coasts. So you can't really start planning for baby until you're 30 and after 5 different careers you maybe have one that will last more than a year, and can put a down payment on a home at maybe 35. (Housing costs rising, especially in cities, has really exacerbated that.

Does this apply to everyone? No. Does it apply to more people that in the past? Big yeah. So, what does a young educated something do in their twenties and early thirties?

But the upper class - I suppose we are supposed to say upper middle class, but c'mon programmer earning $250k you're fooling no one - is booming. It's easier to enter it, especially if you're smart, than ever (note that increasing from 1% mobility to 10% mobility is a big change, even if on the absolute scale it's still unfair.)

Polyamory - or extramarital sex - has always been popular among the rich. Because marriage isn't really an economic necessity for them. If a couple splits, well there's enough money to go around for all the kids to live in nice houses. Mormon bigamy flourishes when a male breadwinner is so ultra-successful they can support for 5 wives, and geek group poly houses flourish when one systems engineer can pay for the whole house on their own too (maybe there's one kid everyone chips in babycare for in the house, but no one is even thinking about enough children in the group house for a fertility rate close to 1:1.)

So if you cut out the ladder from the middle-class-monogamy path, and widen the highway for upper-class-laissez-faire-culture, then cultural norms are gonna flow from the former to the latter.

The thing about relationship norms that makes the change really noticeable is their NETWORK EFFECTS. Being the only polyamorous person in a monogamous community is basically irrelevant, right? Who you gonna date? Similarly if you are in an entirely polyamorous community, my sympathies if you happen to be monogamous and so everyone you want to date has incompatible norms.

But once you start getting away from the edges, they S-curve up real fast because there's finally the option to try the minority relationship style, and for the agnostics who are okay poly or mono, they start seeing people they think are cute in the other camp, and hey, why not try it out.

So combine the collapse of the middle class, the proliferation of upper class hedonism, and network effects and a poly-explosion seems almost inevitable, doesn't it?

...

Of course, I haven't presented any hard evidence, this marginal change at most applies to less than double digits percentage of the populace, and this isn't even how the story feels from inside my head (as a poly converted person.)

But it was. At least. An attempt. To do. Materialistic analysis!

Why are all published Marxists so bad at this.

--

[1] Polyamory, or extreme family/relationship/household flexibility has always flourished in the underclass. But the NYT isn't going around interviewing trailer parks in Appalachia to ask them about their exciting new lifestyle.

[perfectfangirl]

i'm not new to the fallout fandom but

and i also haven't made a written post in years but yet i'm sure there's already discourse on the tv show about it on here with me not finding it right away but i'd like to talk about how cooper [the ghoul man] decided to unalive and butcher another [going feral friend] ghoul, roger. though terrifying and universally morally reviled... i think it's a genuinely interesting choice of him to me with having his companion hostage [vault dweller] lucy around. morally, on the scale, it was oddly compassionate, for lack of a better phrasing. stay with me now! [ghouls just do not perish under usual circumstances in this universe and that guy would've been doomed to a "life" to fallout's equivalent of zombism] and though obviously i do not like that he did that [lmao like i'm repulsed despite very much knowing how the "fallout" games can go down, i mean there's a cannibalism perk 😭] i still think it was choice. and i think he was thinking about lucy when he made, despite how um how disturbing that entire scene was fldgld listen. when he went to the lead farmer's house, they thought so lowly of ghouls, that man and his son genuinely thought he was eating the farmer's daughter 😭 and until further episodes, i'm basically of the mind he'd probably only consume either bad guys or ghouls or both who are about to turn but anyways. back to the main point. cooper already has to face the prospect that he could be one of "them" any moment too, since he was no vials himself in that episode. so it was duly hard for him to watch--- knowing that person like that and then seeing them slowly turn. i think he knew even with any vials, that man was finished. compassionate might be a very odd word for me to use here but i say this for a couple reasons. it's "compassionate" for this universe, at least. the wasteland is cruel and unforgiving. if cooper was just after meat, why... he could've just had lucy. but i think it was an interesting choice to consume a friend type person and a [going feral] ghoul. he's not even consuming a regular ghoul. he put down one who quite literally was already turning into a feral one. it's giving "lost cause" [this show hurt just like the games, swear] looking back on the scene, he kind of tries to have a [last] warm conversation with him. about food. human food. rewatching the scene now, i actually barely caught the fact that cooper shot roger as he was looking away from him. like, my goodness, he didn't hate this man at all. this was mercy k ill if there was one. in the back of my mind, i keep thinking "was this his call to make?". in a lot of ways, i'm still on lucy's side about everything. but lucy isn't a ghoul. and i don't live in the fallout universe. there's always some type of alternative yet this is what cooper thought he should do. a few episodes later, lucy can't reason with a ghoul anymore and has to do the same thing [minus consuming them]. i guess it was his call. she is gobsmacked that he's really about to butcher and eat that man and it's kinda funny he asks her name. some insane foreshadowing that's intriguing on subsequent watches no less. i want to keep this a little short for sanity's sake--- but like. when lucy asks cooper how does he live like this. why keep going. briefly. for a short moment. while he's turned away from her. he remembers. he wishes. he misses. who he was. before all this. then, feeling contempt for who she thinks she is, he makes her butcher roger. and it was in that moment i realized cooper was for sure playing a character to cope. but that's a post for another time, wastelanders ⚡

[tanoraqui]

I’m trying not to make the whole Silmarillion superhero au about Fingon and Maedhros, but really, who is doing it like them.

They’re punchclock super-nemeses but they’re both chronic workaholics, and also genuinely Like This (Fingon reflexively rescues cats from trees in passing; Maedhros’s civilian hobby, aside from sometimes sketching, is engaging in vengeful internecine politics in first their apartment building’s Residents Association [despite owning the building], then their HOA and PTA).

Maedhros is arguably an antihero more than a villain, but the scale of his willingness to steal, kill, conquer, mind control, etc. in order to achieve his roughly benevolent goals puts him squarely in Supervillain.

They’re married in their secret civilian identities.

They flirt so much as public nemeses that they accidentally developed a shared kink about it.

Maedhros Phoenix has a team of scientists dedicated to figuring out how to defeat Valiant; he marks these meetings as “Date Night Ideas.” Some of the scientists have figured it out and are cool about it; sometimes one will get frustrated, go Villain independently and try to kill Valiant on their own, which is kind of like extra enrichment in Fingon’s enclosure.

Once, the scientists stole some of Fingon’s DNA and combined it with Maedhros’s to make a test tube baby to defeat the hero once and for all; Maedhros took him out as a baby and they raised him as a normal child. Ironically, Ereinion DOES have the power of negating other people’s powers and notable abilities, very conducive to defeating a Hero, but that’s his Light-given power so the scientists had no influence on it whatsoever.

Fingon thinks the way to unite the world behind against Morgoth (who WILL return one day; the whole headless House of Finwë agrees on this) is to prove themselves reliable allies and leaders, and to generally inoculate Earth against the Enemy by spreading unity, compassion, etc; Maedhros thinks the world will unite behind them against Morgoth when he fucking rules it.

Their neighbors’ understanding is that Maedhros runs a stationary business with some unclear number of his eternally misbehaving younger brothers and Fingon is a private sports coach/martial arts instructor who also offers free classes for underserved youth at an inner-city community center (which he does).

There is in-universe shipping discourse about them (as Valiant and Phoenix, common shipname bravebird) like you wouldn’t BELIEVE.

Like the rest of the House of Finwë, they wear glasses in their secret identities enchanted to hide their glowing eyes. Fingon’s are gold-rimmed.