#datedness

[normalbrothers]

hiii do u think u could fuck with procedural shows dhnsndjdkd like sorry i’ve just been consumed by one and i fear no one else would get the vision the same as u would but also it’s very dated and i’m kinda reluctant to actually recommend it bc it’s. just so dated 😭

depends on the procedural show, what's it called?

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Every year that passes The Lizzie Bennet Diaries ages more and more poorly in my mind while most people seem to like it as much as when it came out, like some sort of very personal Portrait of Dorian Gray.

[number-one-toku-robot-lover]

everything I learn about Stronger convinces me that upon reaching it I will feel like a peasant being handed a some form of religious text in the 1890’s

Well, it will certainly make you feel some kind of way! I hope you have as much fun with it as I did :)

Do it for them!

[lastavenged]

KAREN + ADDICITION + SOBRIETY

I am probably gonna rewrite this post and go more specific with details for both 616 & mcu verses, but in general for both settings and Karens, and kind of wanna grab some panels and quotes from Karen about this topic.

Since one of things to kind of note first, is the like the wikis, the comics, and the show (and the show I even think s1 and s2 they didn't even plan or intend to cover her addiction which maybe wasn't necessary but has the effect of being like the comics) all act as though and treat this as something she was "cured" of which to be clear, is not a thing. There is no cure, there is recovering and battling and it's always something that she'd have been, and something that yes she could be sober and clean for years without any issue but that doesn't essentially equate to cured and.... that's a nuance that isn't really covered with Karen.

Anyways, as this stands experiences during the pit of her addiction include. Being suicidal, especially so in the comics, where she contemplates an attempt and walking out of a high story window. And it is something that she really felt amd said thar she lost her soul, sold it is specifically her words in the comics as she does sell daredevils identity for one fix. Karen's experienced homelessness as well doing the pit of addiction problems, this is another thing shown in the comics. Physical assault and implied sa as well. There's a lot of experiences from this time of her life that stick with her.

Now onto more the point of this post, and in the comics they do show, at least to some extent, her detoxing and becoming clean and sober. It's an uphill battle for her, and in general you can assume for her portrayal. That she does attend meetings some evenings, and we do at least in comics and in both novels, that her own addiction and associated demons, specifically lead her to wanting to be an advocate as well as specifically focus on helping people who are struggling with addiction themselves as well as those struggling with suicidal thoughts.

Now here is my own gripe with the show, is that none of this gets presented as part of Karen's character, until season 3 which kind of shoots karen a little in the foot, and it does kind of act as a bottle episode and gloss over that drinking was a larger issue for this karen; and kind of treats her addiction as cured, that's it.

Anyways, that is going go be more apparent here, as one of things she does is still attend meetings, she does work with support groups and volunteer opportunities, such as specifically like in the comics she opens a drug and suicide hotline that's paried with matt's free legal advice clinics.

In general, Karen is clean and mostly sober; as heroin was her specific fix. she only takes very specific medications and painkillers, if she were hospitalized she specifically requests not to be given morphine, and as for drinking, she keeps a social only two glass moderation with herself, so she can be tipsy and giggly, but mostly still has her wits, will remember the evening, and won't be hungover the next day. She additionally smoked cigarettes, nicotine, which in the comics there is an implied point in which she quits smoking as well, but picks it back up again (trial of karen in the comics; matt makes a note of that when he sees her again). It's to be noted that she does not originally quit cigarettes when first going sober/clean.

So all of that is being brought to both 616 and mcu, specifically bringing into mcu, is all of that. Specifically what sobriety/being clean looks like for Karen, and how it is quite important for her to help others of similar struggles to her own, and in general, relapse is a much trickier idea for how that applies to Karen given all of what factors into her "vices" for both 616 and mcu; I do not see a total relapse or relapse with specific drugs happening for her, but picking up smoking cigarettes again may be something that has evidently happened at least in 616, and maybe possibly mcu with smoking; since my mcu karen is in line of 616 on that, and mcu with drinking.

But in general, the point and idea, is that one of Karen's pillars is aa meetings or various support groups that she attends for herself, as well as working toward helping those of similar struggles and being an advocate on that, and having generally a sharper and kinder understanding on that. Being some volunteer work here and there and speaking out about these kinds of problems, more than what is present in the mcu and such considering that is a focus on her karen in 616 post born again (now some of that is somewhat dated in its treatment given the 80s war on drugs and porn; but you get the idea).

[humanoidtyphoons]

… wait nagisa naoki is trans? explicitly stated as such???

i mean. i guess??? certainly seemed more accepting of the dad’s desire to have a daughter, unlike ryunosuke.

i think in the introductory chapter i would have assumed okama tbh, but. yeah, okay, gender fuckery and spectrums, if that’s what the UY cast have decided, then sure.

[whyeverr]

Red Brick Ranch

This right here is my childhood Christmas: a wood paneling, artificial tree, opening presents on shaggy carpeted floors kind of Christmas. This particular simple ranch home isn't based on either of my grandparents' homes, but it might as well be. I've made divinity in that kitchen. I've watched the snow fall out that picture window.

Ranch homes get a lot of slack for their datedness and lack of character. But I'm here to defend them, especially at Christmas. In fact I almost called this one Rudolph the Red-Nosed Ranch, but that felt a little too on the nose. They might not be anyone's Pinterest-perfect dream home, but as home ownership becomes more and more unobtainable, a simple ranch starter home might just be your dream come true. That goes double for disabled folks, or older folks aging in place, as their single-story floor plan makes them one of the most accessible types of homes available!

This home might be perfect for: a single mom who works two jobs, grandparents (mine, specifically, but also maybe your sim's?), sims that use mobility aids, in your story or in actual gameplay, should we ever get such a thing, or developers looking to paint some brick, slap down millennial gray laminate floors, and flip this bad boy...

Lot details:

Lot Type: Residential (3 bed, 2 bath)

Price: §33,470

Size: 40x30

Location: Miner Mansion, Evergreen Harbor

I’ve used from all packs freely here. As always, no CC!

Download links and floor plans below the cut 🎄

Download via the Sims 4 Gallery or tray files via Sim File Share. You’re free to do whatever you want with the place but please don’t re-upload or share without credit. Thank you!

[wifegideonnav]

why did we stop writing group chat fics. they were poorly thought out, no plot just vibes, entirely ooc in ways previously thought unattainable, plagued with endless formatting issues on every level, stupid, often way longer than you could ever imagine them running, so reliant on current memes and slang that they were doomed to cringy datedness from the second they were posted, and a complete waste of time to both write and read. and. i miss them.

[literary-illuminati]

2025 Book Review #12 – Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez

I don’t read much in the way of non-historical nonfiction, but I am very much known as A Reader by friends and family – and so, I usually get at least one very buzzy bit of pop-nonfiction every Christmas or birthday. This was from my sister, and I opened it having never heard a word about the book or (I thought – I do in fact vaguely remember some of the campaigns she talks about organizing in the book) the author before. Having read it, the book is perfectly fine – though it feels more dated than the 2019 publication date really justifies. To a great extent it feels like a distillation of early 2010s feminist blogging and discourse, which is to say not much of it really felt new enough to be worth a whole book for me.

The book is polemic through and through, divided into sections that each advance and apply the central thesis to a different subject or area of life. That thesis is the severity – and severe impact – of what Criado Perez calls the ‘gender data gap’ – the lack of sex-disaggregated across a wide range of fields, and a general disinterest in analyzing what data there is to determine how women are impacted, or the degree to which their interests are taken into account, by any given policy of phenomenon. There’s no pretense of disinterested objectivity, and you can at points feel evidence being bent and angled just so to best suit an argument, but it barrages you with enough data points in any given chapter that I always found at least a few to be both new and compelling (something like a quarter of the book’s page count is taken up by its voluminous citations and end-notes).

The book’s main goal is convincing you that the data gap is a) real and b) bad. The former it manages to do pretty convincingly in most cases, the later it sometimes struggles to convincingly explain to the satisfaction of anyone but demographers and statisticians. Still, it does a better job than any other book or essay I can recall explaining actual specific and consequential concrete harms what it terms ‘male as default’ thinking actually causes in the world, both in terms of data gathering and in, e.g., manufacturing protective equipment or user interfaces to fit an ‘average’ user that are somewhere between inconvenient and entirely useless (if not actively dangerous) for a large fraction of women trying to use them.

Every section of the book is focused on that central thesis, but there are a lot of tangents as well – reading it really did feel like a ‘best of feminist blogging’ at points. Often in a good way, occasionally not (we can all hope and pray that some day the 2016 Democratic Primary will finally end). It all did leave it feeling oddly dated not even because it’s especially old or because the problems it discusses have all been solved (lol) but just because the particular style and aesthetic of discourse has so thoroughly fallen out of fashion.

In what could charitably be attributed to that datedness, or less charitably lead one to have dire suspicions about where the author’s politics have gone since publication, the complete absence of any mention of trans issues was striking. Like, literally complete absence – issues of race, nationality or (once or twice) sexuality were at least nodded at from time to time, even if this is not exactly a richly intersectional text, the concept of someone being transgender simply never comes up. Which is a bit disquieting as you read it, given how liberally the book uses essentializing language about sex and gender (the chapters on medicine especially often read like men and women are different species entirely). Hardly overtly hateful or anything but the book was published in 2019, it’s not like trans issues were unknown at the time – you’d think they would have been mentioned once or twice in terms of drug effects and how symptoms present if nothing else (but they do make broad and general statements about physical ability or height a bit more awkward, I suppose – maybe I should count my blessings there was no section on women’s sports).

Anyway yeah, interesting enough book. Would never have read it if I didn’t receive it as a gift, but hardly a waste of my time to. I’m not sure it’s going to convert anyone who isn’t at least a bit concept to the idea of gender-bases analysis on its own, but if you find yourself needing to do so it at least provides plenty of arguments and evidence to use.

[artbyblastweave]

On another note It’s interesting to think about the gray area of Bronze Age Marvel where "comic book time" was only barely starting to be necessary. Spider-Man aged in real time for a while, through high school and then out of college. When the All-New -All-Different X-Men debuted, the members of the original lineup who stuck around were mentioned to be.... about as old as they'd have been if they'd been aging in real time from their first debut, maybe with a little compression? Ten to twelve years or so, which roughly works- 1963 to 1975. In issue 97, set in what I think is supposed to be December of 1975, Jean Grey mentions last having fought the Sentinels in 1969- it would eventually become extremely rare for them to nail their own asses down with a specific date like that. This leads to an interesting thing early in Claremont's run, I'm talking really early, like Banshee is still a full-time member of the team early- there was one arc where the ANAD lineup, from an outside perspective, just drops off the face of the earth for a year. They get brainwashed and abducted and put in a carnival, then Magneto abducts them from there and drags them to a facility in Antarctica, and then they get stuck in the Savage Land for a few months, and then they get waylaid and stuck in Japan when their boat crashes and then they have to deal with a bunch of bullshit in Japan before they can finagle a way back to the States. By the time they get back they're all missing persons cases and the Professor thinks that they were killed.

This arc is fascinating to me because it was told more-or-less in real time, taking the better part of a year with the monthly releases, and apparently taking the same amount of time in-universe. Moreover it's a storyline that's incredibly dependent on the political and technological situation in the late 70s when it was being published. It's a conflict that vanishes the second they get to Japan if the internet exists, if cell-phones exist, if 24 hour news cycles exist. (To say nothing of the datedness of the now-rarely deployed supervillain Moses Magnum.) But it's still technically in continuity, unless someone's said something to the contrary that I missed. It's still the arc where Banshee got permanently benched from the A-list X-Men Roster due to blowing out his vocal cords countering a Japan-wrecking Earthquake machine. They still spent like a year dealing with all that bullshit. One year out of the supposed 15 or 20 that they've all been at this- and it has to be roughly in the middle, to accommodate the veteran hero status of the O5 team members that were involved. That was actually a reasonable time allocation when this came out, when the setting was still pushing forward from the outer edges of realtime. It's so much weirder now.

[gtunesmiff]

Vonnegut’s 8 rules for writing with style:

1. Find a subject you care about

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about.  It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style. I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way - although 1 would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

2. Do not ramble, though

I won't ramble on about that.

3. Keep it simple

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound.  ‘To be or not to be?’ asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story ‘Eveline’ is just this one: ‘She was tired.’ At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do. Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and earth.’

4. Have the guts to cut

It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

5. Sound like yourself

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child.  English was the novelist Joseph Conrad’s third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench. All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens not to be standard English, and it shows itself when you write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue. I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

6. Say what you mean to say

I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable — and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledly-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood. Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

7. Pity the readers

Readers have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school — twelve long years. So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists.  Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient teachers, ever willing to simplify and clarify, whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.

8. For really detailed advice… go read The Elements of Style

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, a more technical sense, I commend to your attention The Elements of Style, by Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White. E. B.

~ from How to write with style: 8 non-obvious insights from the master of personality || Nathan Baugh

[magicaldogtoto]

I see people try to read into why Shaft made Mitakihara City look so sleek and futuristic as if it somehow ties into how Kyubey and its ilk helped humanity advance in-universe, but tbh I think that might be reading a bit much into it.

Yes there's intent in the design--there's intent in art and set designing in general--but it's like how the DC Animated Universe's artists designed Gotham and Metropolis. Making the setting of your show an ambiguous present saves it from feeling dated in at least five years. It's also easy to pull off when the time period isn't really relevant to the plot.

Keep in mind how the Magia Record anime aired nine years after the original show did. Thanks to the ambiguity of the setting, you can't really tell. And that's a good thing when you're making shows so far apart from each other. (Contrast this with, say, Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card, which is set within a year of the first series but suddenly has a technology jump of a decade within it.)

That's not to say these setting don't feel dated eventually--It's hard to imagine DCAU Gotham and Metropolis as being in a year further than the 1990s--but it makes the datedness less obvious. Mitakihara and Kamihama just go slightly in the opposite direction by being more modern than the other two examples I mentioned.

[gradling]

End of fall semester = I finally finished the first of my 10 books for 2025! Really enjoyed this one, although there is still some datedness to its portrayal of certain kinds of women (sensible > silly/stern, for instance), and my Victorianist friends would probably be frustrated by its portrayal of the Victorian era. Still, I thought it was funny and found the ending to be very satisfying!

[angevinyaoiz]

Anyways I finished The Lute Player and I really loved it. It's not the most historically accurate novel, but the emotions of the characters and seeing both them and the setting around them shift and change, felt very real. Some aspects got a tiny bit tedious (such as the Acre part), but that may just be because of my own bias from having just read about it. Lofts is really good also at keeping the book entertaining on the event-to-event level, and filling in spaces between pot points with interesting characters coming in and out of the story constantly, that make the world feel full and realized even while liberties are taken with historicity.

The depiction of queerness, and of difference, being set "apart" from the scripts and rhythms of expected life, is really interesting in this. And in a way I feel like Richard himself is not the main depiction of it, but the theme feels extended to Anna and Blondel, and Berengaria in a way, in how they are in oddly situated social positions and must figure out how to live and cope with the divergence from their expected roles. Sometimes the coping is easier than others; Richard and Anna do their best make up for their perceived social deviancies by trying to focus on maxing out their Skills and accomplishments, Berengaria and Blondel struggle with self harm and self-soothing. The medieval world they live in is not the most forgiving, and no one quite manages to get what they desire most, but they still find their way to live within it.

I definitely recommend to people who are interested in medieval novels, or stories about complex women's perspectives that take place over a long period of time. If you enjoyed C.S. Lewis's Til We Have Faces, I think it's also a very interesting work to read written around the same time, with similar datedness and limitations but still providing interesting emotions and perspectives.

[strangestcase]

For all I moan and groan about Young Gothic’s deliberate datedness and casual racism I can’t recommend the series enough. It’s very fun.

[randomly--accessed--memories]

I talk a lot about how Alastor isn’t satisfied by what he made Vox into, but that’s actually more of a mid-/late-game development. For a while, he derives quite a bit of enjoyment from what he’s done to Vox, at least until the novelty starts to wear off. His favorite methods of torment include:

Purposely giving Vox incorrect or upsetting information, just to see what he’ll do.

Forcing interactions between Vox and Husk or Angel.

Dangling Vox over the Vees heads, reminding them of how helpless they are in this situation and how Vox has no desire to ever see them again.

Maneuvering Vox into semi-public situations and watching him “humiliate” himself.

Watching Vox happily eschew modern culture and embrace out-datedness, as well as commanding him to do menial labor that Vox used to see as beneath him.

Following Vox around, both openly and covertly, and watching him struggle with basic tasks.

Reveling in the total control he has over Vox and how he’ll instantly, eagerly agree to whatever Alastor says, even if it’s against his own best interest or personal preference.

[soelvfisk]

Jeg gjorde alt hvad hun ville have fordi jeg troede at det var løsningen og at så ville alt blive godt og at så når det var ordnet, så kunne jeg vende tilbage til mine egne planer og drømme og gøremål. Min egen hverdag igen. Mine rutiner. Mine behov. Se mine venner igen. Min familie. Tage til lægen og tandlægen. På den anden side. Det må være snart, tænkte jeg. Men det fortsatte. Koncentreret og systematisk. Og jeg boede midt i det. Hver dag en slags utilregnelighed som var 100% forventelig? Et paradoks?! Og hun sagde at hvis bare jeg var bedre så var der ikke problemer. Så jeg blev problemet. Så jeg skulle stoppe med at være et problem indtil hun var glad. Og det indebar at jeg gjorde ~alt~. Mens hun tog ud og drak kaffe og sås med sine og vores venner og fulgte sine drømme og datede. Og jeg skrubbede fucking gulvlister og byttede rundt på køkkenlåger, for ellers ville hun ikke tømme opvaskemaskine. Og bagefter sagde hun “det har jeg aldrig bedt dig om”. Og jeg stod dér. Alene om at huske vores samtaler og skænderier indtil hun fik mig overbevist om at jeg husker forkert. At jeg ikke ved noget og ikke kan stole på mig selv og at jeg misforstår hende. Til sidst kunne jeg ikke gøre noget i hjemmet medmindre det var en ordre jeg havde fået fra hende. Og hver gang jeg gjorde noget selvstændigt, fortale hun mig at det var psykisk vold jeg udødvede mod hende. Når jeg ikke inkluderede hende i mine planer. At så var jeg narcissist. At min virkelighed var utroværdig fordi jeg er et underræpræsenterer menneske med adhd og autisme. At jeg skal se tingene fra hendes perspektiv, før jeg ser tingene fra mit eget. Hun oplærte mig i at gennemskue hendes behov og ignorere mine egne. Og når jeg gjorde noget forkert sagde hun - jeg har aldrig bedt dig om at gøre det! Som om jeg kun må gøre ting hun har bedt mig om.

Jeg kunne ikke leve i det hjem. Jeg kunne ikke leve med hende i mit liv. Jeg er kun i live lige nu, fordi jeg flyttede. Der var ingen anden udvej end at flygte eller at dø. Sådan havde jeg det til sidst og mine forældre opdagede det da de så mig og min psykiater fortæller mig at det var overlevelse. Hun læste MENNESKERETTIGHEDERNE OP FOR MIG. Fordi Stenen fik mig til at tro, at den slags ikke var noget jeg kunne forvente. At den slags rettigheder var overflødige for mig!? I MIT EGET HJEM????? HOW EVEN????

Jeg er i live fordi jeg flygtede. Uanset hvad stenens historie er. Hun ved godt at hun gjorde noget forkert, for hun bad mig love aldrig at fortælle nogen om det og ALDRIG at nævne hendes navn, uden at hun var tilstede.

Jeg ville på en måde ønske at jeg var død. Så hun fattede hvor voldsom hendes adfærd var og så hun ikke kunne lade som om at hun var uskyldig og at jeg bare er et svagt og dårligt menneske. Og så jeg ikke behøvede at være stærk. Er træt af at overleve noget jeg føler har dræbt mig. Tabte mig 14kg på tre måneder da jeg boede med Stenen. Fordi hun spiste min mad og fordi jeg var bange for at gå ud i køkkenet mens hun var hjemme og fordi jeg til sidst bare fuldkomment mistede min appetit.

Turde ikke bevæge mig når hun var hjemme, for jeg ville helst have at hun troede at hun var alene. Fordi jeg frygtede hvad der ville ske hvis hun opdagede mig. Ville ønske jeg var død. Men nu lever jeg. Og jeg aner ikke hvad jeg skal med mit liv for jeg tør ingenting og jeg kan ikke det samme som før og mange af mine venner er i samme by som Stenen og dem der er her hvor jeg er nu, kender også Stenen og synes at hun er dygtig og sej og smuk. Det syntes jeg også engang.

Jeg føler at jeg har et liv som er 3% af det liv jeg havde før. Og de 3% er mit nye 100. Det er max for mig nu. Er slidt og ødelagt. Og for mig er det bevis på hvor brutal Stenen var. Og for Stenen er det bevis på at jeg var problemet all along…