#procedural naturalism

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

A good procedure is one that has the capacity to reliably answer the questions we put to it.

from Theory and Reality by Peter Godfrey-Smith 

[wizzard890]

Listen I know "iPhone face" is in common parlance now, but I think it's worth returning to what the phrase actually means, outside of TikTok trends. It's not that some people have faces that look like they "belong" in the 14th century, it's about how cosmetic procedures often recognizably alter actors' faces to such an extent that their looks are anachronistic.

(Strikingly beautiful people existed in all eras. The Ottoman court of Selim II had its own Zendaya; somewhere within the Aztec empire lived a man as gorgeous as Jacob Anderson, this isn't really about the hotness factor of celebrity.)

As cosmetic procedures become more common, we've gotten good at knowing when someone has had work done. Not because it's obvious, but because the result is a certain Look, particularly among people who live their lives in the public eye. And let's be real, particularly among older women. There's a ton to unpack in that as it touches pay equity and job opportunity and the freedom to do whatever you want with your own body, but that's not really what this post is about either.

I guess this post is about the first images we've gotten of Gladiator II, a movie I'm very excited about.

Has Denzel Washington had work done? Almost certainly. But he's a man, so he hasn't had to have nearly as much done, plus we're not as used to looking for cosmetic procedures in men; as a result, at age sixty-nine, he looks credibly historical in a sword-and-sandals setting.

Women actors, particularly actors of a certain age, aren't always so fortunate. And I'm not talking about botched procedures, or even visible procedures. I'm talking about the sameness of the result, the plumpness and smoothness demanded of older women.

I don't want to include the Vanity Fair photo of the lovely fifty year old Connie Nielsen, also in Gladiator II, because this shouldn't be a conversation about the appearance of a particular woman. But we all know what good filler looks like! And we also know that no women in ancient Rome or Georgian England or medieval France had that look.

There's no real conclusion here, it just bums me out how often I'm watching a historical drama and a sixty year old woman, an actor of presence and skill and experience, has a face that just pushes me right out of the scene. This is no actor's fault, and it doesn't undercut their talent or that of the filmmakers, but it's a damn shame.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[sesamenom]

Quick hand sketch that turned into elrond with athelas water

I always forget to draw him with it but I headcanon him having pretty bad burn scars on his right arm/side from the kinslaying

[texasbama]

The showrunner himself said he had different plans for the character. It’s okay to acknowledge that this wasn’t the plan and still enjoy it and appreciate what we did get.

Two things can be true at the same time yall.

[dykrophone]

every time someone tells me I’m emotionally intelligent or good at reading people I’m internally like HA. good guess but I’m just a woefully inept person who’s convinced myself to behave like an advanced algorithm that obsessively studies people as data sets and reproduces said data through fine tuned pattern recognition. but like. thanks I guess

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Month 9, day 7

I'M NOT EVEN DONE YET, BITCHEEEEEEESSSSSS

Gonna add grass and trees and I think a chair to the balcony before we're done :D

[masquenoire]

Apart from upper body surgery, Roman didn't require much else to maintain such a masculine figure. When he was dropped as a baby, the resulting fall damaged the pituitary gland in his brain, causing his growth (and aggression levels) to go haywire the day he hit puberty. Before then he remained a very small child, one easily pushed around by his parents but remembering every strike, every insult and slap he suffered at their hands until he was old enough to fight back. It came as a nasty shock to Mr. and Mrs. Sionis when the child they resented for years as being slow, ugly and unfeminine seemingly transformed overnight into an uncontrollable monster hellbent on tormenting them at every opportunity.

[tjerra14]

cw pet injury, pet death

nothing more unnecessary than losing your 3 month old kitten to a tilted window (or your 14yo diabetic cat to hypoglycemia because for some reason you waited another three hours after finding her comatose, cold, and barely breathing in your garage, and merely covered her with a blanket. When she came in, our thermometer refused to give us a reading, she had a heartrate of 40, and a blood glucose of 0.7mmol/l.)

[milkweedman]

Would you mind making a text tutorial for dyeing with onion skin? I want to use up all the skin i collected but i don't trust the tutorials i found so fahr. 😅

Sure ! I don't know how helpful it'll be (I am not the best note taker of all time) but I'll give it a shot.

I don't tend to measure things, so I usually just do all my onion skins (4 or 5 big handfuls) with however much yarn I want to dye (usually around 100 grams, iirc) and end up with saturated colors and lots of extra dye bath. However, a 3 to 1 ratio of wool to onion skin (by weight) should work well.

Put your onion skins in your dyepot with water (I always use yellow, if you use another kind of onion you will get different colors of course). I haven't found the ratio of water to onion skin to matter very much, just make sure you have a lot so that it doesn't all boil off. Bring to a low simmer and let it cook until the skins are almost colorless and the dyebath is richly colored. If the skins are translucent before the dyebath has good color, just keep cooking the dyebath down until it looks good. Typically I end up with a deep red at this point.

Remove the onion skins--I like to strain the dyebath into a large dedicated bowl to remove the skins, but you can also pick them out with tongs.

Mordant your wool. Usually I give mine a copper bath, but the type of mordant you choose should depend on what color you want.

Once the wool is mordanted, return it and the dye bath to your dyepot and gently simmer with a lid until your wool is a good color. This should take several hours, and possibly overnight. For overnight dyeing, it's safest to turn the stove down until it is no longer simmering, and keep a lid on. My way of testing this is to use tongs to lift some wool up, pull off a lock, gently rinse it, and let it dry near the stove for a few minutes. If you've reached the color you want and still have lots of color left in the dyebath, just reserve the dyebath and once it's cool it can be stored in water bottles in a pantry for at least a year (that's how long I've left some dye bottles sitting around, and they worked very well).

Modify your color if you want. Then rinse in water the same temperature as your dyebath until it runs clear. Let dry.

Some colors you can get, depending on mordant (this is all for yellow onion skins specifically, as that is the only type of onion I buy).

With no mordant, or with vinegar: wheat-colored

With baking soda mordant: gold

With iron mordant: greyish green

With copper mordant: olive green

With alum mordant: bright yellow

If overdyeing a light color (in my case it was light brown), you can get a rich brown if mordanted with copper and iron.

Can't wait to see what colors you get :D

[disembowel-me]

Do you think Derek has a Patrick Bateman-esque skincare routine? Do you think he gets cosmetic treatments or procedures regularly?

Imagine him having a nail tech visit him in his dad's house to give him a manicure and pedicure every 2 weeks because he's too ashamed of the fact he does it and wouldn't be caught dead getting one in public. And then if you point out that he's got such soft smooth hands he gets all defensive

[pitxardo]

More procedural plants and trees!

[thefortysecondolive]

It is weird that it’s happened twice, right?

[ganitsoni]

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[luxurybrownbarbie]

Did you know that every time you think about getting buccal fat removal, an angel dies? Consider that, before making any rash decisions. 😔💛

[andromerot]

well i do find it curious that when criticizing cosmetic surgery everyone discusses the implications of altering your body irreversibly but i hear very little about the misogyny that guides these types of trends