#the reason they want to limit young people on social media. the reason they want tiktok gone. all of it. they're fucking terrified

[risingsunresistance]

im only saying it here bc i have a wider audience and the dash is really active rn but seriously. if you can vote, go vote. no "i dont like him" or "he isnt good enough" we cannot afford to be picky. there isn't enough time left to be picky. look at trump and think about how much you dont want him in office and how much you would rather have mediocre democratic appointees instead of hard-working extremist far-right ones. think about how much we have lost because of them. everything will be red if he wins

vote, not to put biden in office, but to keep trump out of it

[hailmaryfullofgrace55675]

This is a tempting parallel to draw, but it doesn’t tell a whole or accurate story.

The idea of autogynephilia isn’t just the idea that lesbian trans women transition because they think lesbianism is sexy so they want to be lesbians for sex reasons.

Autogynephilia is part of a larger sexological theory, dreamed up by a specific individual named Ray Blanchard, that there are two types of trans woman: the “homosexual transsexual”, who is male-attracted, and the “non-homosexual transsexual”, who exhibits autogynephilia - a sexual fetish for being a woman that’s also a romantic orientation toward oneself-as-a-woman that’s also a type of fantasy about female embodiment or crossdressing or doing traditionally feminine activities like having sex with men.

The theory of autogynephilia comes loaded with a bunch of other particular and nonsensical ideas, including but not limited to the idea of the “erotic target location error” and “erotic target identity inversion”, the idea that all erotic crossdressing fantasies are fantasies of being the gender one dresses as, and the idea that bisexuality in trans women is attributable to “meta-attraction” in which the women are not actually attracted to men but only to the sense of femininity that sex with men can grant them.

Blanchard and his associates J. Michael Bailey and Anne Lawrence have been responsible for propagating this concept of autogynephilia across numerous academic journals articles and multiple books over the past 34 years, including Lambda Award nominee The Man Who Would Be Queen.

The idea of gay trans men transitioning because they like BL

mostly manifests as the idea that young people who were assigned female at birth are experiencing a form of social contagion or susceptibility to media influence rather than a deep-set paraphilia (the way autogynephilia has traditionally been theorized),

has mostly emerged in a vernacular way inside of trans communities and as an explanation for offspring’s transgenderism by transphobic parents, rather than as a formal sexological concept (Blanchard didn’t pick up the torch on “autohomoeroticism” until something like 2018, well after trans people had been commenting on the idea for years), and

has not had the reach or impact the theory of autogynephilia has had.

It’s not the worst comparison in the world, but assuming 1:1 mirroring between the situation with autogynephilia and the situation with gay-tboys-are-just-doing-it-because-they-read-too-much-yaoi would produce a lot of incorrect assumptions about whichever the thinker is less familiar with.

[utilitycaster]

How can Molly's death be considered a major mistake? It's the crux of the entire campaign.

so I think about this a lot, because you're right, and it really comes down to like...a lot of factors in how people interact with fiction, and some stuff I feel about fandom.

The short answer is that Molly is some people's favorite character, and they really wanted to watch him for 141 episodes and not just 26, and they didn't get to, and so it's valid to feel sad about that. But I think what personally grinds my gears is the idea that it's a mistake and because this is a Fan Favorite character he SHOULD have come back. Setting aside the fact that he had both his fans and his detractors from the start and a lot of people (myself included) who found him irritating didn't say much for a good chunk of C2 because, well, he was dead, this isn't a fucking competitive reality show. You don't get to vote on your phones to decide who wins a resurrection.

I think the longer answer is that there is a certain type of person in fandom, born of a certain type of person in social media communities, who just...is not willing or interested in considering not just that their experiences, preferences, and philosophy are not universal, but also that they are not objectively best and correct and that everyone who disagrees is wrong. It's often really common in, though not exclusive to, people who have particularly limited experiences - young (like, teenager/early 20s), people who haven't lived in a diverse area or in multiple different areas, people who for whatever reason do not get out much - which both makes sense (haven't been exposed to a ton of different perspectives irl) but also means that you get people who, for all they may talk about global politics, kind of unconsciously seem to act as though everyone they interact with online is a variant of someone from the same 3000 person town in the United States in which they've spent all 21 years of their life. ANYWAY getting back to the main point I feel like Molly attracted a lot of that kind of person, who just...doesn't get that while Molly is, to them, a deeply validating expression of gender identity, for many people he is "guy you meet at your friend's birthday party in a two-bedroom 6 floor walk up and within 5 seconds he has pissed you off so profoundly with his overfamiliarity that you go into the kitchen and mainline as much vanilla vodka as possible to not stab this guy with a secondhand knife that says "CHEESE!" on it even though you hate vanilla vodka and it's summer in NYC and you're on the 6th floor in a small apartment with too many people so it's approximately 117 degrees Fahrenheit in this kitchen and the vodka isn't much cooler, and you succeed in this goal, and then after sending your friend who couldn't make it because they were at a family thing that weekend a picture of a rat on the tracks of the 3 train with a caption "this u?" at 1:54 in the morning you're like "so this guy Molly was there" and they're like "oh my god I met him at Cameron's last party, he SUCKS" and you're like "I KNOW". Like a lot of people just do not get that Molly was very popular with their circle, and also a lot of people either were neutral-to-not-feeling-it. This is before we get into the post-death idealization of who he was that takes him from "irritating but I think he'd have grown on me in some ways eventually had he lived" to "horrible and insufferable fake-ass bitch."

And then we get to the true impasse: the idea that something that does not fulfill every single one of your personal wishes might still be a great story.

I'm certainly not perfect, and there's things I thought I wanted for the end of C2 that I didn't get, and there's some things I do wish we'd have gotten to see (or that we'd have done in C3), but I like to think that I try to remain at least partially open to the possibilities. I like to think that my enjoyment of a story isn't contingent on whether one single character survives, even if they are my favorite (and I say this as someone whose favorite ASOIAF character was immediately Ned Stark, a statement that should surprise no one who follows me) nor that the story precisely reaffirms my existing worldview. I want stories to tell me something new and interesting that wouldn't come from my own head, and I want them to sell me on it. I think that a lot of people lost the thread of the importance of representation, namely, they forgot that while it's great to see people like you in a story, you should also be trying to see people not like you and perspectives that aren't yours. I am extremely defensive of my and other people's right to say "I didn't like this story and here is why" without someone being like "Give it a chance! Here's why I think it's good" but at the same time, there is a difference between "I really wish Molly had stayed alive and I don't like that he died," and "everything that happened after he died was A Mistake because it wasn't what I Wanted, and someone should fix this." Like that's what toddlers do. That's not an adult way of interacting with narrative.

So those people don't even get to the point of "the entire campaign is deeply influenced by the loss of Molly; that is what binds the rest of the Nein together and makes them what they are; the fact that Lucien wears the face of a departed friend is crucial to the entire final arc comprising about 20% of the campaign; and the fact that he does not come back, but someone new, with new chances and new choices to make does is emblematic of a campaign about people who find that they cannot undo their pasts, but neither are they trapped or damned by them." They're stuck at "guy I liked died and I'm throwing a tantrum 6 years later."

[midnightbears]

✿ tell 'em how the crowds went wild! tell 'em how i hope they shine!

⎯ in which you look back on how grateful you are for the opportunity bestowed upon you. aka: you joined the opla's cast!

#STARRING. iñaki godoy, mackenyu, jacob romero, taz skylar, emily rudd ft. fem!reader [elle fanning 4 faceclaim but u can imagine y/n anyway u wish!].

#TAGS. sfw, kind of context, a bit of smau but its tiny. mentions of covid just in case it's triggering?

#NOTE. pardon my rusty writing but i really wanted to get this out!!! i added an oc from one piece for the sake of the story but she's barely mentioned so uuuh yuh! timeline may be wrong but i work with what i'm given please bear with me. let me know if you would like more fics of this y/n??? ALSO IGNORE THE WATERMARKS ON THE PHOTOS I NEEDED TO MAKE THEM NEATER

© midnightbears on tumblr, apr 2024. please do not repost to another platform, plagiarize, translate, use for AI-related purposes or claim as your own.

In the past, if someone were to come up to you and tell you that you’d be a part of the One Piece Live Action main cast in the future, you would’ve probably laughed in their faces despite your wishful thinking.

At that time, you were content with your work, doing short theatre plays with companies or gaining minor roles in musicals. Everything changed when you landed the role for the one-woman show Fleabag for a limited time on London’s West End after the leading actress underwent emergency surgery for an appendectomy. You only acted as the sex-obsessed mess of a woman for about three weeks, but it was enough time for people to notice you, to really see you.

You believed your career had reached its pinnacle when you were cast as Katherine Howard in Six: The Musical in London. Your name had become somehow well-known in the musical theatre world, and you had a small but dedicated fan base who liked uploading edits of you being a dork during the Megasix on YouTube and TikTok. 

Months later, you were bound to play as Fantine for Les Miserables when COVID abruptly struck, and you were dismayed that your job was ripped from you so abruptly. Your best friend, the sweetest person on earth, insisted on you moving in with her in fear that you’d be evicted from your apartment.

Months passed, and you eventually found a small way to help your friend pay rent by offering singing and acting lessons online to musical-aspiring teenagers. Since you had gained many followers from your earlier work on social media, it didn’t surprise you when the classes became sold out.

Your friend also convinced you to create a YouTube channel for you to upload videos of yourself (sometimes joined by her) where you watched and commented shitty movies, followed DIY tutorials just for the fun of it, performed covers of your favorite songs, and just generally vlogged your life (along with reactions to Taylor Swift’s (From The Vault) songs).

At first, you thought it was pretty stupid, but you were delightfully proved wrong when your videos harbored over 200k-300k views on a bad day, so you found no reason to stop as COVID-19 continued, growing to gain a little over five hundred thousand followers. Your reactions were often used for TikTok audios or clips, so you found your popularity growing and evolving during that year.

You believed yourself to be a general, simple woman. People liked you because you were elegant and levelheaded, although you could sometimes be chaotic. You also had a subtle sense of humor that many found charming. But mostly, you grew a steady fan base because your videos and presence comforted countless young adults and teenagers.

You were an optimist and a reassuring one, so during the times when COVID was so prominent, people sought refuge from the monstrosities of the world in your videos, where you seemed to connect with them even though you were on the other side of the screen.

However, everything changed somewhere in 2020-2021. That evening, your best friend got home from work with excitement practically oozing out of her every pore. You and your best friend were avid anime watchers and manga readers, so you couldn’t help the face you made when she told you that One Piece was getting a live-action.

Although you were skeptical, your friend practically insisted you send an audition tape. You grimaced at that. It was well-known that live anime actions were almost always corny and cringeworthy compared to the original work, and people never liked them. You had learned that much from Death Note and a couple of others. However, your best friend convinced you with this argument:

“If it’s that bad, then at least you’ll gain more followers out of the memes that people will make, and if it’s good, you’ll still get famous anyway!”

Eventually, you sent a video of you performing one of the lengthy monologues from Fleabag to your agency and simply hoped for the best. Your friend was practically rooting for you to get the role of Anastasia, one of the first integrants of the Straw Hat crew, joining before Sanji and after Usopp. You adored her as she greatly reminded you of your late mother, although you would be happy with any role.

Somewhere in November 2021, you remember a lot of screaming and crying. When you try to look back on it, all you remember is the happiness you felt when you received confirmation of the role of Anastasia. You were practically over the moon, and you and your friend celebrated inside your small apartment. You were entirely alone, just two drunk girls dancing and cheering, until one of the neighbors knocked on the ceiling with a broom.

liked by inakigo, emilyrudd and 574,949 others

yourusername actually lost for words and filled to the brim with gratitude...... i cannot express how excited i am to play my girl anastasia and bring her to life. from the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who has supported me. your faith in me means everything. congrats to iñaki, emily, jacob, mackenyu and taz, thank you to onepiecenetflix, thank you to my best friend for convincing me to audition for the role, and thank you, oda sensei, for putting anastasia's heart in my hands. love u all <3

view all comments

November 10, 2021

y/nsfanclub.02, AAAAAAAA SO EXCITED FOR THIS I ACTUALLY CANT BELIEVE IT

⤷ starl6ighwnb, LIKE FR IM GNAWING AT THE BARS OF MY ENCLOSURE THIS IS INSANE

user8392y3r927y, HELLO YOUR GRACE ANASTASIA

inakigo, Congrats!!!!!!!!

taz_skylar, 🔥🔥🔥

The One Piece fan base dearly loved the character of Anastasia, a well-mannered, bubbly, upbeat, fashion-loving duchess who always spoke in a Transatlantic accent but also had a quick wit and a bit of a sweet tooth. Anastasia’s dream was to become the most dangerous pirate to ever grace the seas and prove everyone who doubted her wrong.

Of course, with a big character came a big responsibility.

Sometimes, insecurity nearly got the better of you. You had to fill huge shoes, and there were many people to convince and impress. However, your love for this project was bigger than the gnawing uncertainty on the back of your neck, so you continued strongly until the end of Season One, finding comfort in your cast mates and the countless people who counted on you and, most importantly, believed in you.

Oda handpicked you, and that argument alone was enough to shoot any insecurities away.

Well, needless to say, people loved you!

Critics acclaimed your portrayal of the character, as well as the commendable chemistry you shared with the rest of the cast. The fans found it incredibly funny that your character was the complete opposite of how you actually acted in real life, and you often found yourself blissfully immersed in the fan base's love and praise.

Your channel and social media suddenly grew tenfold. Although you had stopped uploading videos every week due to the recording of season one, your followers were more than happy to wait for your return, and as one would expect, they were thrilled to have you back once you did upload a vlog explaining everything.

Over the course of the six months, you had been recording from time to time for a YouTube video in the set. Previously, you had asked the producers for permission to record some behind-the-scenes for your channel and your usual interactions with the rest of the cast with your personal Sony camera, as you felt it would be a nice way to bring the fans and the cast closer.

The producers gave the okay on the condition that you would wait until the first season aired on Netflix. You happily agreed and carefully began recording some scenes of your dressers and hairdressers as they prepared you, a few shots of your instructor showing you how you were supposed to use the guns that Anastasia employed... simple things.

Back in the day, you were still getting acquainted with the other cast members, and you didn't want to seem rude by forcibly making them appear on your videos, so you waited for a few weeks until you could properly call yourself companions. Then, you invited them to appear in the videos.

Iñaki, Taz, and Jacob liked to take advantage of the little free time they had between scenes they didn't appear in to innocently steal your camera and use it to their heart's content. One day, you got home only to find the memory card was completely full. It was an extensive video of them walking around the set, with Taz recording while Kiki and Jacob pointed out random stuff to the people who lived inside your camera, as Jacob liked to call them.

Mackenyu, being more reserved and introverted, mostly liked to act as a cameraman for you as you showed the props you used and other things, often making comments or turning the camera around whenever you referred to something.

Meanwhile, Emily had a natural knack for being in front of the camera. Whenever you asked her to join in, she effortlessly slipped into the co-host role, bantering with you and adding her own insights into the behind-the-scenes world of the show.

With the first season out of the way, you took the time to carefully pick what videos you wanted to use in the final tape, and it took you a little over a month and a half to properly edit it and turn it into a wonderful thirty-minute-long behind-the-scenes. You even sent it to the producers and your co-stars in case there was a scene they wanted deleted. Fortunately, they all gave you the okay.

You teased the video a bit on your Instagram before uploading it a few days later, and the support it received was out of this world. It gained over two million views and hundreds of thousands of likes.

You were kind of expecting this. While some BTS had already been uploaded on YouTube, yours was different because you were showing it from your perspective. The fans loved every second of it, and even started asking for a second or third part. You even saw new videos on YouTube of recompilations from your video with the titles being silly things like The One Piece Cast Being Chaotic for Seven Minutes.

At that moment, your life felt so full. You were getting contacted by industries who wanted you to appear on their videos and their stages, thousands of fans who loved you, and a feeling so peculiar that this would be eternal.

liked by taz_skylar, morganlogoff and 1,523,199 others

yourusername missing my wig and my gang hours ☹️

view all comments

November 10, 2023

morganlogoff, love love love you💗💗💗

curlikaqy, NO ONE KNOWS I'M YOUR BIGGEST FAN

emilyrudd, GIRL I WANT TO SEE YOU COME BACK TO AMERICA

bookofjacob, missing your camera hours💔

[proshippers-against-censorship]

Regarding DNI’s and cards and whatnot, what the people who make these want is not unreasonable per se.

Rather, what they are asking for is unreasonable, because what they want is to not be using social media. They want to be using forums, or group chats, or instant messenger, or blogs; they want online communication spaces that are moderated, that are topic-specific, that are limited to existing/vetted members. And these desires are not unreasonable, but it does not match modern social media. And because so many of the people who make these seem so very young, I wonder how many of them even realize that spaces that do what they want can (and used to, and still somewhat do) exist, realize that social media can't do what they want it to, but that social media is not the only way for the internet to be.

This.

It is reasonable to want to not want to interact with people. And on the surface, DNIs make logical sense. But folks just don't tend to think about the fact that most of that interaction nowadays on these popular medias is coming from off of their blog/account, and the odds of somebody clicking onto their account to look for a DNI before liking/reblogging/etc is so, so, so slim. And that if they want to curate with a DNI, they do indeed need to find a forum. Or, hell, even discord. Or literally anything else that requires you to be 'vetted' before gaining access.

Good post, anon. Nailed it.

[darkmaga-returns]

And, yes, this is pertinent to today's election results … there's a reason Donald Trump won that no one's talking about

Jennifer Margulis Nov 06, 2024

Childhood vaccines were originally developed to protect young children from virulent, sometimes lethal, diseases.

According to mainstream medicine, “Vaccines have played a crucial role in reducing the burden of infectious diseases.”

“A May study in the Lancet estimated that vaccines against 14 common pathogens have saved 154 million lives over the past five decades—at a rate of six lives every minute,” asserts Tara Haelle in a Scientific American article published this week called “The Staggering Success of Vaccines.”

At the same time, even the most diehard vaccine supporters found themselves ill at ease during COVID when they learned that unvaccinated children were being barred from public life and vaccine-hesitant people had to be bribed to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

People Were Bribed to Take COVID-19 Vaccines Jennifer Margulis · May 16 People Were Bribed to Take COVID-19 Vaccines Anyone remember this Oregon ad, paid for by our tax dollars?

Read full story At a rally I attended in support of healthcare workers who wanted vaccine choice, I stood with a group of doctors. I was holding a sign that read “Doctors AGAINST Forced Vaccination.”

An older man came up to me with angry tears in his eyes.

He pulled down his shirt to show me the massive scar on his chest from open-heart surgery.

“My cardiologist said I had to get it or he’d kick me out of his practice,” he cried. “I wish I hadn’t. I’ve been sick as a dog ever since.”

Forced vaccination a red flag The worldwide push to vaccinate every human on the planet with a highly experimental new vaccine technology connected to an array of poor health outcomes (including but not limited to life-devastating tinnitus, myocarditis, turbo cancer, vulvar aphthous ulcers, and Antiphospholipid syndrome) gave many thinking people pause.

These newcomers to the vaccine safety conversation started to wonder—sometimes aloud to their friends and family, sometimes to the public via social media, and sometimes, even, in the peer-reviewed scientific literature—if the COVID-19 vaccines were as safe, effective, and necessary as they had been programmed to believe.

Michelle Mamby’s husband, a medical doctor, died four days after getting a COVID-19 booster.

“I did everything I could to try and talk him out of it,” Michelle wrote on Facebook.

“Watched him decline with each injection. Once he realized what was happening, it was too late. Now, myself and our children have to live without him. We’re in hell.”

[neptunescore]

zak brown hater anon here, I gotchu 🫶. This isn’t very controversial (maybe) but I think no matter what we should have an age limit.

People turn to Max and say he was able to do but don’t understand it’s because he’s the only one we could ever turn to- and happens to be successful. No hate to Kimi, honestly, he could be amazing in F1 even if he’s not in F2, but it’s a risk. Max is the exemption because he’s the pinnacle everyone wants.

Max was a risk his first few years in f1 because f1 was his rookie season, and all the drivers took note and steered clear of him because if you were close to him there was a high chance you would crash- because he was still learning. (Nico 2016 nightmares 💔) Yes, he’s considered one of the best, even when he was young and now regarded by multiple wdc’s but they all knew he had to change his driving style because of how dangerous it was. We look at Logan and while he isn’t 17, he was bumped up to F1 way too soon. He crashes, a lot. Logan isn’t a bad driver per se, his f2 season was pretty good but if he were to stay another year in f2 I feel like it would’ve been a whole different story from today.

But the crashes is just one thing why I worry for kids in f1 (yes they’re 17 but hey, they’re still young) is that it’s a lot for mental health. FIA themselves had the age limit because of the backlash on the sport and so there wouldn’t be another Max verstappen. But lo and behold, they have a very talented and upcoming driver and they want to let him in- at 17- same reason why they wanted Max not to drive. I think it’s kinda hypocritical of FIA, but I understand that rules can change over time. But it’s the fact that their exception for younger than 18 yr old drivers is that they must be promising? promising? What a load of crap. Other well established drivers who could’ve debuted at 17 or maybe older but didn’t have enough points (because the points system is bs..) isn’t the same thing? Why weren’t they granted an exemption?

Though, I would like to point out I’m not saying I think max should’ve raced at 17 too. As much as I love his first few seasons and how development, he was not just a risk to other drivers but for himself. He’s a talented driver, but that could’ve gone wrong if he didn’t have the mentality that he had. Few were on his side and rumors were spreading that he would’ve been without a seat until he changed his style. Yes, he won a few gp’s and got podiums, all-in-all a skilled driver that deserved a seat but everyone focused on how aggressive his style is. He finally did change, after years of being in F1. This could never happen now in F1 because they would be kicked out before they could even try. People would react to like how they did with Logan or Nyck. Barely had a chance at F1 yet let’s kick them out and let other talent show. F1 is a tough sport, yes, but it’s also very hypocritical.

so yes, it would be tough for young drivers like Kimi. I don’t know much about his personality but the media is ruthless.

The same thing could happen to Kimi or any other young driver. Sometimes the real pressure isn’t the race itself but the media. A lot of drivers who weren’t even that young already felt this pressure. Albon is a great example. One reason why Red Bull wasn’t cut out for him is that all eyes were on him and always criticized him and it was so bad that he stopped social media for a while.

Kimi is a talented driver, but there is no rush in f1. New young talent is good for the sport but it should also not mean “let’s serve the plate raw” I guess this also shows how bs the super-license is but even then I believe the 18+ rule should stay. Though, the points system should be reworked… and the fact people can get exemption…

thank you for coming to my ted talk (I am a max fan guys not a hater 💔)

Oh my god, I was literally gonna make a post abt this (especially with the new allowance of 17 yr old that the fia has announced), and this is timed so perfectly. Anyway, u are literally never wrong ZB❌️ anon <3

Overall, you've covered literally every point I wanted to talk about, so I'm just gonna add a little bit on to the mental aspect to what uve said, but other than that, this summarises my thoughts PERFECTLY.

I feel like fans also forget how MUCH of a mental strain it puts on a driver to be promoted to f1 THAT young. when max got that torro rosso seat, it was like he was fresh meat and they were all starved predators, ESPECIALLY when they realised he was too young to properly control/ limit his answers to the media. There were SO MANY articles just absolutely CRUSHING him, like it's genuinely insane how bad it was. That kind of thing is not healthy for ANYONE, much less a CHILD. And atleast max was occasionally podiuming and doing really well, like look at logan (the poor boy) this man is getting absolutely VIOLATED by both the media and his team, and it's not even really his fault. It's the team's fault for bringing him up this quick and then leaving him to fend for himself the SECOND he's not doing as well as they wanted and needs emotional support.

The same goes for kimi, I get that he's a talented driver, but ppl need to chill. This boy still isn't properly used to f2 cars, uve made him COMPLETELY skip f3, and now ur talking abt promoting him to f1 next season??? He's sixth in the f2 standings rn, by the way. And I'm sorry, but giving him a seat in MERCEDES next year is both going to be so unfair to him (the media are gonna rip him from limb to limb if he makes even a little mistake) and to the other drivers who are much higher than him in the standings.

Anyway, I love u ZB❌️ anon, and thank u for letting me rant abt this😭 (I was gonna respond to this much quicker, but since I couldn't sleep last night, I thought 'oh might as well go to the park and just chill for a bit, reconnect with nature and all that shit' and then I ended up falling off one of those small hills so bad that I got a hairline fracture😭. So... never doing that again!)

Edit: LMFAOOO I SAW THIS RIGHT AFTER PSTING AND I JUST HAD TO PUT IT IN

Source

(I love Nora, she's so real)

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

hello readers. AITA for visiting a friend in another country before visiting a different friend in a different (neighboring, but still a good 7-10hr trip) country?

some context: friend 1 and i have been online friends for over a decade. by reasons of circumstance- they're a few years older than me so they could travel easier, their family is more affluent whereas mine couldn't shell out ~1k for an overseas flight until i was able to make that money myself as an adult, they had already graduated college and could travel easier than when i was still in college and could not (summer was technically an option but friend 1 hates hot weather and getting sweaty, so they always wanted to meet up in colder months, which limited my schedule)- the four times we've been able to hang out in person, they came to visit me instead of vice versa. the 4th time was a couple years ago, and they purchased tickets at the start of that year (2022). however, at the same start of that year, i got involved in a new community and met a lot of amazing people, especially friend 2, who quickly became one of my best friends in a short amount of time. it was just one of those instant connections, y'know?

anyway. fast forward about six months. since friend 1 was already coming here towards the end of 2022, and there was no refunding those tickets, friend 2 and i wound up making plans to see each other. but they couldn't easily afford the plane fare, so i decided to go visit them in their home country instead. part of the reason i never had done so with friend 1 before was bc i just wasn't mentally ready to be so far from family, in a different country, by myself - i had a lot of anxiety about such a long trip. i still had some now, but after going through covid and such, i changed a decent amount as a person, and wasn't quite as anxious anymore. i had also moved out, so i was more used to being away from family by then.

the trip with friend 2 wasn't going to happen until 2023. when friend 1 came to visit, however, they found out about the trip (by apparently looking through my likes on twitter, where friend 2 had made a post about it) and completely broke down. i had been trying to figure out a way to tell them, but had a feeling that any method would result in this exact reaction, so i had put it off, until i was unfortunately proven correct.

further context: friend 1 and i have never been great at honest communication. this is a fault of both of ours, but i feel like i am able to admit it more honestly, apologize/own up to it, and try and make changes. we met young and immature, and the majority of our talk over the years has been superficial, solely about fantasy characters. when i got too busy in college, and my time/interest in characters declined, i felt more and more like our relationship wasn't as fulfilling. i was afraid to bring this up because on two separate occasions in the past, when i mentioned hanging out with other friends (and in one if the situations, which was an online game, i invited friend 1 to join us) i was immediately ghosted by friend 1 for a few days. so i stopped feeling able to bring up any plans with friends going forward, for fear they wouldn't take it well. i made up excuses and lies when i DID hang out with other people to explain away my absence (we were used to talking daily, but it felt like an obligation after a time, as they'd always ask why i wasn't online for a day). obvs, none of this is healthy, but it led to how i (mis)handled the current situation.

friend 1 found out, we had a lot of difficult talks on a trip that was supposed to be fun, and throughout the remainder of the trip i basically felt watched for whenever i was on my phone - lots of passive aggressive comments dropped about how "they wouldn't use social media on a trip like this, bc they could just do that at home". i was accused of being in love with friend 2, bc why else would i wanna go visit them so soon into a friendship, of not wanting friend 1 to even be here, of "holding something that happened years ago" over them (the ghosting) when i tried to explain why i didn't tell them. (i don't hold the situations themselves against them anymore, but it's had a profound interaction on how i conduct myself in relationships now). they said that they wanted to be my first international experience, which i get, but in my mind, it's two completely different countries, and they were already coming to visit before these plans were even made. they also made it clear they didn't care about the circumstances, friend 1 just wanted to be "my first" no matter what i said. i felt/still feel like that's too controlling, basically asking me not to go hang out with friend 2 bc i didn't adhere to their timetable for it first.

i had an amazing time with friend 2, and it was just an overall more comfortable experience. i still feel like i owe friend 1 a visit, even though i don't see a long future for our dying friendship (and even, if i'm being very honest with myself, i don't want to go visit them). personally, i'm fine with this - we've just grown into different people imo. but they don't have many friends, and had a couple rough ghostings from previous friends of their own, so i feel guilty about wanting to call it quits on ours, which again i know they won't take well. i just don't think we're compatible anymore, but even so, this whole situation has continued to eat at me even though it's been nearly a year now. i keep wondering if i really am in the wrong here, if i wasn't as considerate as i should have been, if i shouldn't be so blase about ending a decade+ friendship.

so, AITA for visiting friend 2 in their country before friend 1?

[fraisefille33]

My realistic goals for 2025

Because I refuse to spend another year doing nothing because I set goals that couldn’t be achieved in only a year.

1. Start attending Sunday mass — I haven’t attended church since I was a baby because my family stopped and now that I’m not in school anymore I don’t even have holiday masses (I went to a Catholic high school).

2. Join the young adult group at my church once I turn 19 — They don’t have anything for ages 15-18 for some reason but I think it would help me make friends offline. It would also definitely get me out of bed and out of the house more often.

3. Finish my volunteer hours and officially graduate high school — I never officially got my diploma because in Ontario you’re required to do 40 hours of community service in order to graduate. I did these hours but the organization I did them with never sent me confirmation like they said they would.

4. Start taking an online German course — This one feels pretty self explanatory.

5. Start writing a book — My dream is to be an author so I want to start working towards that sooner rather than later.

6. Get back over 100lbs — I’m finally taking recovery seriously for once and going back over 100lbs has been a huge fear of mine for a long time. So, I want to at least get back to 100lbs. I know I can’t fully recover in a year but that’s one thing that would be a huge step towards it for me.

7. Start exercising daily even if it’s something small like a short workout video — Since my ED taking away basically all of my energy and strength I’ve become weaker than I was as a child. I get tired going up and down the 5 stairs in my house. Most days are spent just laying in my bed the entire day because I get tired super easily doing anything else. I really need to work on that.

8. Find a way to make money from home — My health does exactly allow me to have a job that requires too much physical effort at the moment, hence #7 but I need money so I’m probably going to start an Etsy shop or find some other way to make money from home.

9. Spend more time on things that genuinely make me happy/feel good — Talk to people I actually enjoy’s company more often, start journaling again, take the time to make sure I look and therefore feel my best before going out, keep a consistent skincare routine, give dedicated time to my hobbies.

10. Post on social media more, scroll social media less — Posting about my life and progress online has always been really good motivation for me. Knowing other people will see what I’m doing motivates me to do better at it or stick to it. Scrolling social media, however, leads to a lot of negative feelings. So, I want to try and limit the time I scroll while also posting more.

[trolagygirl2022]

Cha Eunwoo Future Spouse

His future spouse is someone that will be envied a lot. Lots of people are jealous of them and they can be disliked for many reason. They have a lot of charm and charisma, they can effortlessly pull people towards them. Their visuals and visual aesthetic is something that people also envy. They have lots of supporters and are well known.

This person has strong opinions and they are quite straight forward. They are free spirited in their way of thinking and speaking. This can lead people to thinking that they're arrogant. They could even pick up languages quickly. Plus, they're smart and educated. Topics like philosophy interest them. They could have a higher education.

They come from a traditional home and had lots of expectations and pressure put on them when they were young. They could have had issues with their parents as they were limited a lot on what they could do. I'm picking up a lot on 'tradition" so they're most likely Korean and grew up there. Aside from their persona, this person is quite reserved and keeps to themselves. Really classy too.

Their beauty is highly idealized. Like to the point of people wanting to look like them and get surgery and all that. This person is quite a trendsetter! Massive "it girl" vibes too. They have a big following, so they're most likely popular on social media. People are obsessed with not only their looks, but their charm.

They like to do their own thing and have achieved many things. This person is quite logical and unique. "You'll never see anyone like me". "Bunch of wannabes that wanna be me". Type of vibes. Really creative and have a sharp eye for the arts.

They keep themselves grounded emotionally and hide their emotions and how they're truly feeling. You'll rarely know how their feeling because this person is very guarded and doesn't let people access them easily. They have a hard time trusting people with their emotional side.

This person is well known in their country and for their passion. People (I'm getting females so they could have a big female fanbase) idolize them and look up to them.

Their vibes: (I kept getting SO MUCH of Wonyoung like I'm not even joking)

[tgammsideblog]

Andrea's Identity Crisis in ¨Davenports In Demise¨

One character i haven't talked much about in Season 2's run is Andrea Davenport. She has a some episodes that continue her character arc established in season 1 and develop her further.

The episode i want to discuss in this post is ¨Davenports In Demise¨ that has the Davenport family having their business store getting closed down since they aren't able to compete with Bizmart and this has an overal impact on Andrea's character.

Leaving that clear, lets start:

As i mentioned, the episode starts with the megacorpt that is Bizmart building a giant store near the limits of Brighton city. Because it is a corporation that has a lot of influence in business, other Brighton stores are negatively impacted by Bizmart, one of them being Davenport's store.

The issue for Andrea in this episode is that a lot of her identity and channel brand is shaped around the Davenport's store, without it she feels like she doesn't who to be and the future that she had planned ahead for her is very unclear.

From what it has been hinted in past Andrea's appearances is that her channel being shaped around her family store comes from her trying to get attention from her parents, mainly her father Maxwell. She uses her social media to promote Davenport products, as it was shown in ¨Hooray for Mollywood¨ when she kept interrumpting the film scenes with her trying to advertise things.

Molly suggests her to try a new type of brand so that way she doesn't lose her followers. At first Andrea tries to take this slowly, doing things like make up tutorials and opening food packages. She sees that for some reason this doesn't seem to be working and begins to panic about losing more followers.

In the sequence ¨Identity Crisis¨ we see Andrea trying many ways to get attention from her followers by following popular trends. She tries out a lot of weird things that doesn't seem to be the type of content that she would usually make if her parents's store wasn't in jeopardy. From what it shown, she is trying too hard to pretend to be someone she isn't just to keep her popularity the same and this makes her followers to not pay attention to her because it doesn't feel like the ¨real¨ Andrea they are used to.

Near the end of the episode the Davenports store ends up closing and Andrea feels emotionally devastated for losing something that was very important for her. Molly reminds her that she is still pretty young and she has still a lot of time to figure herself out. Andrea talks about how she feels very confused now that her future is a ¨hot mess¨ and without the store she doesn't know what to do.

Suddenly Molly notices that she didn't turn off the livestream off and what they were talking about got uploaded in Andrea's channel. Andrea checks out the comments and sees that people like how honest and authentic feels. Molly then tells to Andrea that what she should try to be is herself and not follow popular trends to get attention, as what her followers want is the ¨real¨ Andrea.

The episode ends with Andrea agreeing with Molly's idea and takes her suggestion of taking a break from social media, saying that she is going to take a week off from it.

The conclusion for her character in this story is that while there were sudden drastic changes in her life, it is okay if she doesn't have everything figured out at once and still has time to see what she can make out of this situation. That what she can do best is try to be herself since that's what her following wants from her and things could work out for her over time.

[mitigatedchaos]

[ tumblr user ]

"Afab trans woman" why do you view trans womanhood as a Vibe you wanna adopt and not a collection of a wide range of experiences based on the material circumstance of being assigned male at birth and transitioning to become a woman. We've always had afab people who call themselves trans women (it's why so many of us are so militant about tme vs tma, because these people would try to pass themselves off as us and speak over us) and it's cause people want the culture and coolness that we have cultivated for ourselves without having our struggle. They want the cultural view of being the epitome of queerness that's thrust upon us without having to deal with the transmisogyny that that same culture throws at us

We've gotten a few isolated and largely unconfirmed reports of AFAB people identifying as MtF trans.

It's difficult to tell if this is a real thing, or if it's a one-in-a-million thing that's just being noticed and amplified by the internet, or if it's some people making these stories up for internet clout or for other reasons.

I've been considering the increase in identification as "non-binary" compared to 2008 levels, and I have a theory.

Back in the 2000-2008 era, the Internet was still a separate place you would go. You would physically sit down at your computer, log on, and then go on websites or use messenger services, etc. Corporate and government use of the Internet was more limited. There was more socially acceptable use of alternate channels such as phones, physical meetups, etc.

Cyberspace was real, but it wasn't ubiquitous. It didn't follow you around when you logged off.

Now, thanks to smartphones and increasing dependence on the internet, cyberspace is almost everywhere. Data is light, it doesn't weigh much, and it can smoothly glide at a moment's touch. Privacy in physical space can disappear with only a few seconds of notice.

The cyberspace layer is a new layer on the stack of what has to be considered in social interactions.

The social contagion theory is about the idea of male-identifying gender non-conformity spreading to girls and young women from outside as a meme (in terms of a self-replicating idea) resulting in local social pressure. However, we can invert it:

What if it's a hiding place?

Our current system of ordinary laws is not designed for constant, thorough enforcement. If we were constantly monitored by AI to enforce our current laws, it would be intolerable.

The ubiquity of smartphones and social media may have lead to a radical increase in internally felt social pressure for gender conformity, and a narrowing of what's considered acceptable gender behavior.

While from the outside, most of us would say, "Yeah, there can be masculine women, so what?" for people who have a high internalization of social pressure, that might not be good enough.

Identifying as "non-binary" provides social permission (including internal social permission) not to be layered with 3mm of makeup, even though the influencers are presumably off presenting their unrealistically flashy lives on internet video platforms doing just that.

As for MtF specifically, in terms of what's visible it tends to be a pretty intense band of humanity, culturally, and especially online.

There are a number of reasons for this, but to emphasize one of them, if you have people that are uncomfortable in real life, they may spend a lot of time online, and if they're not mindlessly devoting that to social warfare, they may devote that to cultural development. As more culture development shifts online, they'll have a disproportionate influence. The current cohort of MtFs also hit a bit earlier, so they're a bit further along, career-wise, and a bit more knowledgeable.

So it wouldn't be surprising for a number of young AFAB people, who are evaluating 'who they want to be', to look out there, and decide to try on 'trans woman' as a label and see how it fits, see if it changes them, or helps them fit in.

But is that actually happening? I dunno.

[f0point5]

Toto is in a pretty hard situation. Next year is way to early for Kimi to go to merc. He is fast and talented that is not a question but he is young and he makes mistakes. And thats fine. Thats what feeder series are for, to develop drivers. But he is not given enough time. Making mistakes in f2 is one thing, making them in merc very different. The social media reception after he finished p14 in his first race were quite brutal. That would be way worse in an f1 team. The drivers are also using social media, Im sure he saw the people making fun of him. That cant be helpful long term.

Toto finally noticed that overhypeing an 18yrs old before his f2 debut wasnt really a good idea.

Announcing him while he is p9 in the f2 championship would be a pretty wild move…

https://www.fiaformula2.com/Latest/5oAWBWT5LJNkTvQFdlQBw5/antonelli-on-his-fast-start-to-f2-working-with-oliver-bearman-and-his-title

All he is talking about in this interview is how much he is learning. Which is good. But putting him on f1 testing while he is still learning f2 is an interesting choise. Its great that he is getting testing opportunities but they are really rushing him. And sure it worked out with max but he was one in a million.

Yes Toto doesnt want to lose an other Max level driver, but he could easily be the one to destroy Kimis carrier by rushing him so much.

Sorry rereading this ask I realised that its quite a mess🫣

Tbh, I half agree on Kimi but i think Toto is the biggest problem facing kimi.

While yes, Kimi is p9 in the championship, he is beating his teammate. Yes Ollie missed Saudi so you could argue he could have won or whatever but realistically, there hasn’t been a chasm between their results that would suggest Ollie would be ahead. Kimi is learning very fast for someone who didn’t have the experience of being in f3 at all. I don’t think it’s that crazy to consider giving him a seat.

BUT. Is Toto the TP he needs as a young driver with next to no experience? In my opinion, no. Apart from the fact that Toto doesn’t develop drivers, and is used to dropping them off at the Williams day care and picking them up when they’re ready, or just picking an already finished driver off the market, Toto makes no allowances for the antics that young drivers come with. Even in 2016 he made no allowances for Max, who wasn’t even HIS driver, to be “getting in the way”. He doesn’t like his drivers complaining or inventing. He doesn’t seem like a team principal who would have the understanding that yeah, a kid is going to end up in a first lap incident sometimes, he is going to fuck up qualifying. He is going to impede someone, and you are going to have to go to the stewards with him and fight for him, and not hang him out to dry when he does something a bit unorthodox. And I don’t think Toto is that guy.

Max was one in a million but he didn’t get there in his own, he had a Christian, Helmut, GP, and Jos, but largely Christian in a professional sense, fighting for him, letting him make his mistakes, and swallowing those fuck ups as part of the cost of putting a kid in a car. I don’t think Max would be the driver he is if he’d gone through Williams and Merc, I think he would have been encouraged to be more conservative and ultimately not developed in the same way. You would rather go over the limit and then come back, than never reach the limit.

I don’t see Kimi reaching his potential if he is under Toto from the beginning. And for that reason I don’t see Merc in 2025 being the best idea for him.

That being said, if Merc weren’t who Merc are, taking 2025 as basically live testing for him before the new regs come in is not a bad idea. If watching F2 this year has taught me one thing, it’s that those races will not adequately prepare you for driving in F1 in terms of speed, strategy, awareness, or a long calendar. A burner year to experience that where no one is expecting much from you in a midfield car is the best gift that could be given to Kimi. But coming from Merc, I don’t know how it will go for him.

As for the social media aspect, all you can hope is that Kimi has a good team around him and that he is consuming as little of it as possible. The way he always focuses on the learning says he is taking the right approach to it so far, but only time will tell. I do think there is a twisted positive in the amount of eyes on him, because most of these guys have no clue the amount of scrutiny they will get once they get to f1 and it’s a baptism of fire. As harsh as it sounds, Kimi being eased into it might not be the worst thing. Especially considering he is already associated with such a high profile team.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 2/27/2024

this is the longest ive ever been unemployed and media is only doing so much to beat back the horrors. so let’s talk about the media instead of the horrors

listening

Come Up For Air by We The Commas, off i think one of the autogenerated spotify indie mixes?

sort of a rollicking modern little surf rock thing, they describe themselves as "surf and alternate rhythm and blue" which is pretty bang on imo. they're all brothers (their last name genuinely is Comma, which i salute as a fellow weird last name haver), and cite john mayer (i don't really hear it) and the beach boys (yes i hear this very much) as some of their influences. a song i had on loop for an entire forty minute drive and did not get tired of. spotify

-

reading

three books that MUST go back to the library tomorrow bc their autorenew is up and i was emotionally unable to get a library card without tooling around and getting a stack of books a month ago.

thank you philip.

i really only liked the Carmilla adaptation by Amy Chu, bc it really gets at what i didn't realize was the heart of the original 1872 lesbian vampire novella: a toxic gay housing situation you have fallen into and can't get out of bc your area is so so so expensive and housing is so so so tenuous. i have read the original but not in a while, this is an excellent modern adaptation centering around a nyc social worker in the late seventies that presupposes no knowledge and intertwines the original novella in the form of a stolen rare book. (nonconsecutive pages)

i don't have much to say about the DC young adult comic about the circus career of one of the Robins (Dick Grayson). i didn't love the loose artstyle and am not in its intended age range plus it had a bit too much therapyspeak, but it did have a clever use of a very limited color palette.

let's yank the amazon description for the detective novel, which i grabbed bc it vaguely pinged something in my brain about one of the fallout 4 sidequests and i've picked books up for worse reasons (SPOILERS):

Jacob Rigolet, a soon-to-be former assistant to a wealthy art collector, looks up from his seat at an auction—his mother, former head librarian at the Halifax Free Library, is walking almost casually up the aisle. Before a stunned audience, she flings an open jar of black ink at master photographer Robert Capa’s “Death on a Leipzig Balcony.” Jacob’s police detective fiancée, Martha Crauchet, is assigned to the ensuing interrogation. 

i simply fucking hated this authorial style and tone and ditched it two chapters in. i don’t currently have the patience for reading about a clinically insane mother and hate crimes against Jewish people. despite the fairly dark premise, the first two chapters veer into cozy mystery with very short sentences, which do not a noir make. now, it does not advertise itself as noir or neo-noir, but as an homage to noir. it is for me unbearably smug. in my most unkind heart of hearts i want to say it's like if wes anderson tried to make a noir. this is a book that wants you to know it has read other noirs. yes thank you ive read several others, that’s why im reading this one, stop reminding me of better books i could be reading.

there's some weird descriptions of womens' bodies in here. chandler (my beloved) is certainly guilty of this as well, but he lavishes a sort of equal opportunity eye on the men in his mysteries. cf the infamous daniel lavery description.

when i read a chandler description of someone’s physical appearance there’s a fruity bisexual aftertaste in my mouth. Howard Norman, below, saying a woman takes great care of herself puts my hackles up. i understand the difference between an author and a character believing something and i don’t want to read a book where either the author or the character have this sort of pitying condescension towards a woman’s body. im feeling extremely terrible about my own body right now due to the various maladies, and another sort of breaking point for me is when an author repeatedly describes "naked breasts" (exact wording) pressing against someone's torso. it feels so juvenile. that's the sexiest thing you can possibly think of??? that's the sexiest way you can think of to describe an early mornign moment of intimacy???? augh i read the NYT review and it gets worse.

shut the FUCK up. i left my apartment at 1130 PM to go put this book in my CAR. i don't want it in my HOUSE.

-

watching

Bullitt (1968, dir. Yates, free on Tubi). the baddie in this is Robert Vaughn (who i know from cowboys), a guy i fucking love to see. i can take or leave Steve McQueen but he does such a killer job parallel parking in this movie and i wish all driving movies made their leads parallel park. shockingly realistic hospital, morgue, and police work scenes, apparently was one of the big films to popularize blood squibs. also love to see a haunted man splash water on his face and stare into a mirror.

if you asked me how long the famous car chase was i would have said like 2:30? substantial but snappy. no!!! eleven minutes!! (video a bit trimmed). also a rare movie that makes a foot chase through an airport as exciting as that eleven minute car chase!!!

the mob dodging plot was a little hard to follow, but i was operating on like four hours of sleep and a rum and coke. this has got to be a tremendous movie to watch when you’re home and sick on the couch huddled under a blanket. i mean this as a compliment, as someone who watches Escape from New York whenever i feel very sick

-

playing

really wanted to get to 69 shrines before writing this post and finally did it. all the little divine beasts walking along the loading screen are SO cute i've never gotten all four before

all the divine beasts are unlocked and the champions laid to rest! im feeling some type of way emotionally speaking about all of them telling link IMMEDIATELY that it wasn't his or zelda's fault they died

rudania has the worst boarding mission (in order of ones i most enjoyed it's camel [SO fast and SO fun], bird [lots of time to think and plan and aim], elephant [did not make me do a tedious stealth mission but i am bad at locking on to rapidly moving things behind me, much like in real life], and lizard. the lizard stealth mission is simply unpleasant). however, my brain really clicked with the puzzles in rudania: i had to consult a walkthrough once for an optional chest. in order of interior beast puzzle enjoyment for me it's lizard, bird, elephant, and camel. really got stuck for a long time on the waterwheels with the elephant before consulting a walkthrough.

the yiga clan stealth mission was not as hard as i thought it would be. i don't know why i put that off for two real life weeks but i will not learn my lesson and i will never improve. this boss battle was just silly.

the vah naboris interior puzzles were not fun. idk what it was about them or my brain that made me have such a bad time, but i spammed revali's gale and skipped a lot of chests bc i was not having fun. this is why god invented the walkthrough but sometimes. shit is just too fiddly.

i did succeed on the thunder ganon boss battle first try, but i came in with extra hearts from mipha's grace, used another mipha's grace in the fight, went through five fairies and seven hearty simmered fruits that were 5x durians (which gives you 20 extra hearts or some shit). fucking nightmare. i was stuck on one hit left on ganon for like five minutes bc he got stuck in the very fast flurry attack cycle. unpleasant. deeply grateful it only made me smack him with the magnesis pillar once bc that was also really fiddly with my poor reaction time + poor fine motor skills + previously mentioned ancient controller with some drift. in order of boss battle enjoyment i think it's lizard (made me think and kept me on my toes a little but i did have to look up how to break the shield), elephant (you can just kind of tank it), bird (same), and camel (extremely not fun).

this was WITH a fully upgraded gimp suit btw. that shit (ganon) just hits hard.

shrine shenanigans:

crowned beast very fun, i have one or two of kass' songs left and then i hope i get to see him back in rito village with his family??? a little nervous bc i went right to the jungle spring without hearing his song first so idk if that will. count??? or softlock me.

the MOUNDS of failed cooking attempts around this shrine on the grasslands side of the gerudo barrier mountains were SO funny.

unlocked all the spring shrines. what a fun mission. what a fun climb.

went to my FAVORITE shrine!!! going into what you think will be a normal cave and discovering it is DEEP with a BIG WHALE INSIDE is top three video game whale moments (the other two are diving with the whales in ABZU and meeting the last whale in the first dishonored).

other bits and bobs:

eggman rocks???

this quest was really cute and i wish there was a corresponding quest for the guy hanging around the broken heart pond, but it always makes me laugh whenever a dragon shows up in the background of a screenshot. a really great touching moment but watch out for the elemental orbs rapidly approaching us

also made me chortle. get it together barta.

i wish the helm was upgradable but i think making me kill a molduga in order to borrow it is a pretty fair trade actually.

-

making

i originally had a really long thing here about litterbox trials and tribulations but i have decided to spare you all. you're welcome.

many balcony improvements, including putting up trellises and installing bird spikes to hopefully keep a very persistent orange tom off my balcony and away from my girls.

there are a goofy number of obstacles in the way of me making a proper planting diagram (sketchbooks buried deep in closet. flung the seeds in a box on a shelf i need to find my stepstool for. can't find pencil sharpener) so for the second week in a row that's not happening. however, sprouts.

baby italian lettuce blend

bush beans in the front and cucumbers + sweet peas in the back.

[thelongestway]

watching B5 for the first time since very early childhood, in honor of its 30th anniversary. back then, it didn't grab me the way DS9 did, so I never went to revisit it before, the way I did with Star Trek. 2,5 episodes in, and I'm willing to bet that the reason B5 didn't grab me is the female characters - their relative dearth, and how those present are coded. there's a reason my three "top" childhood series are DS9, Xena and the X Files. the women there were a lot closer to what I wanted to steer towards. it's an interesting thought about gender - I never had one that's particularly strong, but when I was very young and absorbing information about the world, I had a very strong heuristic that translated to "take notes - these people look like you; this is how you can expect to be treated". that decided a lot about my favorite media, even though I didn't limit myself to whom I took notes from. I cribbed a good few social strategies from Zelazny's panoply of beings, starting with Corwin. i did have my weights, though, and gender was an important one. still, B5 is neat and there's a few iconic things already, a few episodes in. I didn't know that the "X or Y?" "yes." formula was from there - maybe around earlier? but this is the earliest popular culture instance I've seen. so far my favorites are Garibaldi and Londo. Garibaldi because he's the type of person that I'd see myself as - can't stand still, works hard, but also more than a little goofy - and Londo because I have the feeling he'd be be good friends with Nie Huaisang.

[earthstellar]

Image Comics has dropped their solicits for December 2023, and it looks like Duke #1 is where the Transformers/GI Joe crossover is gonna start really kicking off for the Energon Universe.

I know the general reception to the crossover at the end of ROTB was pretty rough, so it's interesting that they're getting the ball rolling in a GI Joe mini-series.

Personally, my dad was drafted into two wars against his will and suffered greatly for it, so I never had any interest in GI Joe because my dad vehemently hated that shit, as he felt it glorified war to children and that this is morally unacceptable. (He preferred the depiction of Army life of that era in MASH, which he said was at least more honest and aimed at adults.)

I also had classmates who ended up joining the military who had been big fans of GI Joe, two of whom were killed in Afghanistan. I know GI Joe wasn't the only factor involved in their decisions, but it certainly does not make me inclined to like the franchise.

My mother lost her first husband in Vietnam. He had also been drafted against his will. (I strongly dislike the GI Joe Vietnam era material in particular, for perhaps obvious reasons.)

So, I admit my general dislike of the concept of GI Joe as a franchise is at least partly based in my own trauma (and that of my family) relating to the US Army.

I've never been a GI Joe person and never will be (on moral and trauma based grounds), so I fully admit I am not well versed on the lore of that universe, and as such, it's hard for me to make any guesses at what Duke #1 might bring.

But what interests me is that on certain forums and other social media, I've seen very limited audience hype about this crossover in general, especially from the Transformers crowd.

After the extremely progressive writing and fresh visual style and designs of the IDW Transformers storylines which appealed to a lot of people across several age ranges and generations of fans, it feels weird (to me at least) to suddenly have a more old school style crossover with what is essentially a US military propaganda franchise-- At a time when the sociopolitical zeitgeist is that "going traditional" is often associated with "going backwards".

All art is political, and so on.

But I do wonder if what seems to be a lack of audience hype is partially due to the fact that not a lot of Transformers fans (at least, not many under the age of 40 based on what I'm seeing around the internet at the moment) seem to be all that into GI Joe.

A lot of young people are not exactly in love with US military fantasies, and the last Transformers comic series with IDW was a big hit with younger/teen readers-- A lot of that audience might be lost, here.

(And vice-versa from what I can tell, although I'm not in any GI Joe fan spaces so I'm not sure what the mood might be in that community in regards to the Transformers element of this crossover.)

All that having been said, the Energon Universe is only just getting started, and who knows what the comics will actually contain!

I do like G1, so I like the designs for the Transformers as drawn in this run this far.

And who knows, maybe they'll do something new with GI Joe for this. I'm aware that in at least one of the cartoons, they were essentially on the run from the military instead of working for it, which is an interesting twist. Perhaps something similar might happen here, with some Joes siding with the Autobots instead?

It's not fair to judge before a comic is even released, so I'm just thinking out loud here in regards to the crossover concept in general.

I'd be interested to hear what anyone else thinks:

Will you be checking out Duke #1 as a Transformers fan interested in the crossover?

Have any of you been interested in GI Joe previously?

If you're an IDW Transformers fan, are you interested in the Energon Universe?

Any other thoughts on the crossover, any conjecture or hopes for the direction of this run?

I want to give the Energon Universe a chance, but as I mentioned, I do have some difficulty attempting to get into GI Joe in general.

That having been said, I guess we'll have to wait and see what they do with this crossover.