#yavien rambles

[otto-von-stirlitz]

I guess it's bc my Tumblr has always been technically speaking public and one could osint it from my Twitter+fedi presence but it's been enough time and I realized by queueing two posts where I reference it (and rbing a post abt transmisogyny) that my beloved Tumblr moots (if there are any still standing) have no idea that from July 2023 to march/April 2024 I lived through an absolutely bizarre wringer of A Flatmate Saga which included way too much weed, cancellations, garbage stench that wasn't weed and coping by jokes about having Portland, Oregon at home, in short:

[otto-von-stirlitz]

for me this was a good starting point in contextualizing japanese history (and recent history+socioeconomic conditions) and how it can affect even speculative fiction of fantasy/sf JRPGs (let alone realistic fiction)

I do sort of wish western anime fans would analyze anime and manga from a framework of japanese historical and cultural context. Specifically a lot of works from the 90s being influenced by the general aimlessness and ennui that a lot of people were experiencing due to the burst in the bubble economy and the national trauma caused by the sarin terrorist attack. I think in interacting with media that’s not local to our sociocultural/sociopolitical sphere it’s easy to forget that it’s influenced and shaped by the same kinds of factors that influence media within our own cultural dome and there ends up being this baseline misalignment of perception between the causative elements of a narrative and viewer interpretation of those elements. It’s a form of death of the author that i think, in some measure, hinders our ability to fully understand/come to terms with creator intent and the full scope of a work’s merits

[otto-von-stirlitz]

this picrew and this quiz, tagged by @svantetic, tagging @scalematey, @goblin-woman, @otemporaetmores, @tresq, @deadblanket, @alexrrr, @chirpchirpmuahaha and whoever wants to do this meme.

[otto-von-stirlitz]

I really enjoyed this week's Shogun episode, especially its focus on female characters, their backstory, familial ties, ambitions and role in the political game of the series. Big fan of Ochiba-no-Kata (historical Yodo-Dono/Chacha) as a character and her childhood friends-to-political rival camps dynamic with Mariko (historical Hosokawa Gracia). Speaking of whom, i'm always a sucker for The Yearning and here that one hand graze...

Also between that series and Blue Eye Samurai and their diff sex and sex-work coverage I actually want to read some solid academic work on actual norms and attitudes towards sex and sex work in 17th cent Japan (if anyone on here happens to know then please rec)

[otto-von-stirlitz]

we need a new “everyone is beautiful and no one is horny” but specifically for tv shows about teens, like how do br*tish shows like derry girls or my mad fat diary cast adults and make them look awkwardly teen and act believably, including being obviously horny but in such an awkward teen way vs how american shows treat “high school” as a background for fashionably styled adults making out and having sex in such a bland hollywood way of filming and writing it you know

[otto-von-stirlitz]

subscribing to the dracula daily newsletter to experience the book like a fancy victorian lady being handled press with the newest chapter of her favorite serialized novel by her faithful servant

[otto-von-stirlitz]

girls, gays and goths: i cooked the paprikahendl that gave Jonathan ‘queer dreams’ (with polish dumplings instead of hungarian ones bc the store didnt have those in stock), bless dracula daily for diversifying my diet and cooking skills.

[otto-von-stirlitz]

thinking about how it seems to be generally picked up on that Wu Zetian is disabled rep in Iron Widow but not talked that much abt the /kind/ of disability? I mean it as a chronic pain of feet that makes walking hard if not impossible and if you havent gone through it you have no idea how much feet, especially toes can hurt. also thinking abt how various foot issues seem to be pretty common based on the medical descriptions/stats and how our society tends to hide those p well and coat them in shame (while iron widow society actively celebrates womens broken feet), so seeing a foot disability talked openly about in a YA novel surprised me positively a lot? or maybe am i overthinking bc my own chronic condition (it has a different origin, but it still is a painful and often bloody infected mess) has been flaring up recently while i await treatment. still, feeling represented in painful feet gang i guess.

[otto-von-stirlitz]

two of my favorite "We were really into investigating the potential of plants to be useful before plastic happened" stories/rabbit holes are:

a) i was inspired by this video of making a medieval kirtle from latex and asked myself "could a medieval european person theoretically obtain a sort of latex that didnt rely on new world plants?" and ended up learning about ww2 ussr cultivations of two dandelion species and a scorzonera to not rely on foreign import. those plants additionally dont contain allergens that hevea latex has!

b) only recently i learned that hemp, besides textile use, was a perfect bioplastic plant, because it both grows fast and contains a lot of cellulose, and that fords soybean car used hemp in its bioplastic body. once again, part of the reason for soybean car was ww2 rationing, and part of the reason hemp as a crop fell out of popularity was of course war on drugs.

im fascinated because both cases make me think of branches in a "technology tree" that civilization abandoned (in favor of cheaper hevea and synthetic latex and of petroleum plastics and war on drgs) that could have resulted in a totally different future. those cases also show how many plants have useful-for-humans properties that we could sustainably use even tho they didnt "make it" into modern industrial hyper-obsessed with "optimization" and monocultures mode of production!

also I ended up looking at stuff about soviet agricultural experiments and apparently dogbane (Apocyonum cannabinum) was introduced to the USSR as a fiber crop plant? ???

[otto-von-stirlitz]

if anyone told 2014 me that in 2022 i would use tumblr to daily go insane over mcr concert tour liveblogs and photos, especially photos of gway being bizarre and queer in their little costumes such as a catgirl and a cheerleader, and also that they are all so happy to be there performing, i would NOT believe believe them on so many levels

[otto-von-stirlitz]

this hell by rina sawayama is an objecttively great song too bad i just happen to be a freshly-broken-up-with queer so im just weary_wojak.jpg going to hell alone and not “going to hell to have gay fun with my s.o.“

[otto-von-stirlitz]

i am NOT apologizing for the upcoming mcr spam yes i did just see them live yes i did have the time of my life

[otto-von-stirlitz]

thinking about how ublock origin is an anticapitalist godsend and it def protects my brain from propaganda but still watching a lot of youtube i cant escape the sponsored fragments, you know, people who do a fun thing suddenly turning into bleak-eyed salespeople reciting same formulas and trying to add the corporate approved “personal touch” of “the flavor that i enjoy” and shit. and how those awful fragments are the only way they can devote time to doing the other 95% of the video in question and how all economy is all about ads for those biggest fucking corpos i cant there is no escape

[otto-von-stirlitz]

hey rmr when discworld canonically had a plural system rep and of course it was in the witches series. with agnes+perdita a) being able to harmonize with themself and sing in a duet b) resisting vampire charms because there are two of them and not one charmed one

[otto-von-stirlitz]

j. posting abt the little mermaid (the animated film) reminds me smth abt my opinions abt various adaptations of the little mermaid. it partially stems from my childhood Original Variant Purist act and is abt that - strongly preferring the og andersen ending (the mermaid refuses to kill the prince and dies, but earns a sort of magical-purgatory chance of earning the soul and going to heaven). ommiting the obviously christian element was too sad, with “death in vain”, but giving a happy ending felt fake to child me, like talking down to a child who is into andersen because of the tragedies and sad endings and drama! a child who incidentally, will one day realize theyre queer and will have to work their issues with religious upbringing and associated guilt.

and so there is something to be said about andersen, a christian queer man in 19th century, who could only pine unreciprocably for another man and hope for and give significance to afterlife, howard ashman, a 20th century openly gay screenwriter consciously subverting very andersen ending of a queer tale into an act of queer joy in the middle of the aids epidemic that would kill him, and about me, who in retrospect must have been unconsciously refusing a possibility of queer joy in a homophobic country, let alone in the roman catholic church. and obviously gravitating towards Emotional Drama, but one that acknowledges the “moral dessert” of afterlife. and i still havent seen entire animated little mermaid from start to finish, but it took me a lot of growth and uprooting my entire worldview and moral system to appreciate the context of ashman’s movies and with that the underlying queer joy message. (but still having a soft spot for the dramatic repressed artistic queers of the past and their Dramatic Artwork, because despite being the 21st century person ive been there for too long. but finally i had chance to get out, which andersen and many others didnt have that readily waiting outside of their initial circumstances)

[otto-von-stirlitz]

thank you @shinystickers​ for saying that. ideologically i agree on destigmatization of drugs and harm and risk reduction, practically: foraging psylocibe shrooms IS a harm/risk, especially that they can grow close to gallerina shrooms that are also little brown mushrooms and toxic. there are reasons why psylocibe are so commonly cultivated by users and not foraged.

There are two different types of mushroom ID groups:

Groups that ban any mention, allusion, or euphemism for any variety of mushroom that will give you any druglike effects at all, ever, because That's Illegal.

Groups that are like, hey, good job finding that psilocybe cubensis, dude, enjoy your trip!

And to be perfectly honest, I prefer the second kind of group, not because I'm out hunting for shrooms, but because the people in the first kind of group will flat-out refuse to identify a mushroom if they think it's an Unethical Mushroom, which feels like a great way to encourage someone to just eat something and find out what it does the hard way.

Anyway destigmatize drug use and promote safe consumption sites.