The Pop Culture Anthropologist

She+her // xxxiii // ENFP // Fashionista, fanfic author/connoisseur, and EXO-L. Send me an ask, or let’s chat on Discord @halfbakedbrideas#6176! instagram.com/@everyday.aphrodite

[cultureaddictconfessions]

Read Me - Chanyeol x Reader

(I’ve never done a fic about a real person, so it feels a lil’ weird, but this very cute tree baby has absorbed all of my attention, so I wrote this little scene with him. I swear his laughing alone could cure my depression lol Anyhoo~ as always, Y/N=your name. I would love love love it if you enjoy the oneshot to let me know! Hopefully I’ve portrayed PCY in as realistic a way as possible [without knowing him personally and only watching videos, obvs.] I’m thinking of doing a long fic, maybe a CYO with all the members, like I usually do haha EXOXO, Bri)

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“Aishh! Wae wae wae…?”

You slanted your eyes up at the other side of the couch, your attention drawn away from the tablet resting in one hand. You placed your mug of tea down on the glass coffee table nearby, plush blanket slipping a little down your thighs. You leaned forward, elbows pressing against your knees, tablet discarded against the cushions. You spider-walked your fingers up your companion’s arm to get his attention, fingers catching on the bumpy texture of his big, cozy sweater. He turned his head in your direction, eyes wide and pillow lips shaped into a pout that would outdo a child’s. You had to stifle a laugh.

 “Did something bad happen to Yumi?” You sucked in your lips to hide a grin. He nodded vigorously, one hand clenched around his mobile while his fingernails lazily tickled across your legs—they were draped across his lap, after all. You reached forward to stop him, and his eyes popped again like he’d been caught with a hand in the cookie jar. His sheepish, apologetic smile melted you instantly. You scooted closer to him, running a hand up the back of his neck into his hair. His eyes closed at your touch.

“Babi is being frustrating again. I wish he could have courage to act on his interest in her. They are great for each other!” The pout returned, more petulant than ever. Giggles finally poured out of your mouth and you leaned against his shoulder as you felt the pang hit your stomach. When you were finally able to look at him again, you were still grinning.

 “But Yeolie, think about how much trouble you had asking me out! You’re the idol king of charm! Imagine how hard it must be for an awkward co-worker like him!”

“Aishh, don’t start with me, mean princess! Totally different situations!” He stuck out his tongue in protest. Your head fell back as more laughter bounced you in your seat. Even though he was clearly trying to feign offense, there was a starry twinkle of fondness in your boyfriend’s eyes as he watched your expression of amusement. He reached out and grabbed you by the chin, which halted your giggle fit. You looked at him sternly.

 “You know I don’t like when you call me that. I’m only teasing.” A blush sprinkled across your cheeks. He tugged you forward and pressed his soft mouth against your forehead, which only made you grow redder. His face drifted down until your foreheads were resting against each other. His warm breath fanned out over your face, rustling your eyelashes and your pulse. You opened your eyes and found his looking deep into your soul. It was kind of intense, like he was reading your thoughts that way. A smile tugged at the corner of your lips, and he returned it more brightly than the sun. He leaned back a little, still within breathing distance, forefinger tracing your collarbone tenderly. The smile faded back into the childish expression from before.

“I know. It’s just your nature to poke fun at me. You’re not mean princess anymore,” he closed his eyes again for a moment, nose wrinkling slightly at old thoughts, “Just my princess. I’m lucky. Mianhae.” He took your hand that was resting against him and kissed the inside of your wrist in sincere apology. Your heart thumped so loudly you could’ve sworn he’d hear it. You leaned forward and nuzzled your face into his neck; even sitting down he was taller than you, with a perfect long trunk to snuggle into. His arm slid from the top of the couch around your back, rubbing in a soothing rhythm.

 “Well, this princess is lucky to have a prince like you, and don’t you forget it. We roast each other all the time anyway. That’s our thing. What did you promise me?” A beat.

“We should always laugh together as much as possible. I remember, baby.” His fingers tangled in your hair and you smiled wide against his skin. He really was something else.

 “I hope I can always make you laugh, Chanyeol…the way you do for me. This probably sounds cheesy, but when I see you laughing, I feel like you’re not just some perfect being, from EXO planet, of course. You’re a real guy with real emotions and you find joy in things just like the rest of us regular folk. And your laughter is boundless! It seems like you could laugh for days without stopping and not be tired. I love it.” You chuckled through your nose, the image of Chanyeol rocking back and forth overtaken with laughter filling your headspace.

You felt your head tilt back again as he gently pulled on your hair to reorient your face to him. You blinked owlishly, lids sliding down halfway. His pout sank against yours, erasing anything from your thoughts and rooting you firmly in the moment. Your chest pressed against his side and his firm grip around your waist dragged you fully into his lap. His lips worked over yours at every angle while you wound your arms around his neck. After a few moments, his lips trailed down your jaw to your neck before his chin came to rest on your shoulder. You glanced down at him, a little disappointed that he’d stopped.

A little smirk curled up his lips, portending a quip or something similar.

“Y/N, you shouldn’t be distracting me on Webtoon Wednesday, neh?”

 “Me?! You’re the one who interrupted Amy’s dramatic exchange with her mom with your whining! Listen… I’ll show you a distraction, Park Seongnim!” You grumbled before rotating slightly in his lap and tackling him down against the sofa in one swift movement. You reached for the hands clasping you and drew them up, pinning them above his head. The surprise in his eyes dissolved into a look of lust. Noticing your tablet was slipping into the crack of the couch, you snatched it up with one hand and put it next to your forgotten mug. Turning back to Chanyeol, you slowly lowered your face to meet his. Spirit Fingers could wait. You were going to enjoy your real-life webtoon for a bit.

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(That’s the end! I was having so much trouble thinking of what nickname for the reader to call PCY. I watched this BTS of Chanyeol’s fragrance photoshoot for W Magazine where he’s obsessively reading Yumi’s Cells the whole time and, since I am also an avid purveyor of webtoons, I wanted to make up a scenario where he and his reader S.O. spend afternoons off from their busy schedule catching up on their reading together. Sometimes I like cute little fluffy moments that are more mundane haha Have you read any Webtoons? Sound off with your faves in the comments so I can add them to my queue!

[torstherapy]

[a-mel0n]

reblog if you’ve had an online friendship that’s lasted more than 2 years

[jadagul]

Found myself wanting to say that "consuming text is easy and passive, unlike video which requires active effort to watch" and then realized this is the opposite of what basically every other human being would say.

[the-unflappablewolf]

[thememedaddy]

[thememedaddy]

[sugar-petals]

so i've compared kibbe type, color analysis, japanese skeletal analysis (the one with only three body types: wave/straight/natural) and the fruit system (apple, pear etc) in their order of importance while shopping and thrifting for summer clothes recently across several weeks and i kid you not:

...color smokes everything else 😬

seasonal palette dominates. going cool or warm makes or breaks how the fabric connects to one's complexion, the face being the center of ourselves after all. the clothing has to be bright or soft enough for you, light or deep enough to match your hair, it has to be as close to your season as possible. a well-fitting piece of clothing that matches your proportions can be ruined if it is aggressively warm-toned while you are cool in undertone and vice versa. if your palette is allergic to black, and that color swallows details anyway, even a perfect kibbe type match jacket still switches off the face. it's almost infuriating how much i had to pay attention to color. neutral toned people have more leeway here, and winters hit the jackpot because black and white clothing is everywhere. bonus, seasonal color also has the most gender-neutral background in styling, it is easily accessible (even if it is the hardest to learn and discern later, but that's because it works down to the nuance). bc color matters so much there is no room for error. i always regret picking the wrong undertone. makeup and tops/jackets that are too warm for me will collect dust later, i wind up giving it away again.

silhouette is second: kibbe type ranks after color and before any other clothing system because it combines proportions, contrast level, pattern, and unlike the other body systems, your height. it really did show me that cut and curve matter, and the length of the garment especially. i immediately see a difference picking floor length pieces with statement contrast for my vertical D characteristic. kibbe really does make you look amazing, it's the real deal and very consistent. if a store does not cater to your type you will leave empty-handed. david really knew what he was talking about, seriously. if a garment does not mirror your lines, it flops, something is always off. clothing needs to match your body's signature, e.g. through waist emphasis (yin types), shoulder padding (yang types), line break (gamine), fabric density...

skeletal analysis is not as famous or known - looking it up is recommended - but perceptive imo, but if it clashes with your kibbe type it will not work (e.g. i am a wave type which means i should add ruffles, puffed sleeves, volume on the torso, small floral patterns etc but that's the opposite what suits me as a dramatic). i know in japan and korea, stylists do add a face type to further narrow down how the style comes across + one's visual weight is factored in for makeup and i find it accurate too. skeletal analysis can expertly teach you where to place line breaks like belts and necklaces, that was my main takeaway.

the fruit system is incomplete and eclectic, i guess experimenting with it can be nice but color and kibbe have advanced more. you can tell it fell of by how people aren't really fascinated with it anymore while kibbe keeps you hooked -> it encompasses a lot more factors and gives you styling goals. the understanding of the silhouette and drape it more complete not to mention presented at length and more poetically even. what the fruits do tell us is where the proportion falls by numbers, but skeletal analysis also does this and with more extras.

TL;DR - a styling system that is difficult to master is usually the real deal. training the eye to differentiate color palettes overpowers anything else in terms of results, even the worst garment for your silhouette can be a banger if it reflects your undertone.

[catastrophic-writer-deactivated]

Story Time:

Working in retail is really fun, and the times when major fuck-ups happen, they can be either anxiety-attack inducing, or make it possible to get through the rest of your god-awful shift with a smile depending on the customer. My all-time favorite absolute fuck-up is as follows:

This kind woman is just doing her thing. She scans her membership card from her keychain. The register beeps to acknowledge the scan. We continue as usual. Neither of us notice right away, but after I’ve scanned a few more items, I hear a very quiet, “Um,” from the lady, very polite. I look at her. She is looking at the screen of my register, blinking. I, too, look.

And lo and behold. There is a charge of over four-thousand dollars ($4,000) worth of garlic bread staring us in the face. There are no words for a minute. We’re just… in awe. How did this happen? How the hell did this happen?

She didn’t even have garlic bread in her cart.

I sputter a partial apology - I was incapable of forming actual sentences in the moment - and try to void the garlic bread. Since there was no garlic bread to scan, I try to manually remove $4,000-some from this transaction.

Well, the registers don’t like it when you try to void off more than five dollars ($5) from a transaction, so naturally it pings my manager for confirmation, but she’s not by her pager.

At this point, both myself and the lady are just… dumbfounded. She’s not even mad. I’m not even all that embarrassed. Both of us are just looking at the screen. There’s a bit of laughter, but it’s mostly just… confusion.

I have to call through the whole store for my manager on the intercom because she’s not answering. She shows up, ready to override and void it, when she too, sees what exactly is being voided.

“What… did you do?”

“I genuinely. Have literally. No. Idea.”

She voids it, and I go to finish the transaction and tell the woman her total (minus the garlic bread). My register pings. It tells me that she hasn’t scanned her membership card. Odd. I distinctly remember her doing that. The woman goes to scan her card again, and I notice that her library card is stuck to her membership card. I tell her gently, and she separates the two and scans her card.

My manager, hovering nearby still, sees this and says, “I think it mistook the barcode of her other card for garlic bread, and the remaining digits were read as the price.”

And that’s when the laughter really came over us. There were no hard feelings at all. In fact, the woman was incredibly glad that the receipt still showed the garlic bread and the voiding of. I will remember it until the end of time, my only regret in the entire situation being that I didn’t take a damn picture, because she has proof and I don’t. But I swear to God it happened.

TDLR; Library Card Charged $4,000 of Garlic Bread.

[anais-ninja-bitch]

that’s just how valuable library cards are. each one is worth at least $4000 of garlic bread

[nudityandnerdery]

A picture is worth a thousand words, a library card is worth $4000 worth of garlic bread, if we can figure out how many words the average library card can check out at once, we can probably work out a picture-to-garlic bread conversion here, too.

[desolationlesbian]

I don't want to buy mass-produced garbage from a big box store so I go to etsy but half of etsy is now dropshipped mass-produced garbage or AI slop so I go to the local arts and crafts street market but a ton of those booths are also selling the same generic plastic objects or identical stickers or 3D printed dragons so WHERE do I buy real trinkets and art from sincere freaks

[omegaversereloaded]

i cant believe that there's still gamergate STANK on games that women enjoy. NASTY misogyny residue. stardew valley is in fact a video game. animal crossing is also a video game. so are otome games and dating sims and twee little cozy games. sometimes a bitch doesnt wanna play bloodborne that shit's hard

[omegaversereloaded]

guys who mainly play 2k and fortnite will still be like oh youre not a real gamer for having 1000 hours in stardew. mother fucker you're larping as a basketball player

[fluorescentnova]

[depsidase]

[haunted-hideaway]

I’m glad that OP:

1) Figured this out.

2) Shared so others can learn from their mistake.

[hotvampireadjacent]

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[helenvaughans]

[zitasaurusrex]

[corvidcall]

to anyone in the areas impacted by the wildfire smoke, my #1 biggest piece of advice as someone whos been dealing with wildfire smoke in the NW united states for years, is build yourself a Corsi-Rosenthal Cube

they perform as well as expensive HEPA air cleaners, and are comparatively VERY inexpensive. all you need is a box fan, 4 air filters, a piece of cardboard, and some duct tape!!!!

i think it took us maybe a half hour to put ours together, if that, and we replace the filters every 3 months. it's really made a HUGE difference, both when the air quality is bad, but also with our allergies

[o0fyuu0o]

Saw these easy to read instructions on Twitter. Stay safe 💚

[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

Great time to start pricing this out by the way, fire season starts… on the summer solstice this year, that’s fun. Signs point to it being a doozy.

[sun-cheyne]

As someone that has had to go through this while being very poor, I can say this is VERY effective. While this is a fantastic build, you can even do just a single filter against the fan, or a fan on one side of a cardboard box and a filter on the opposite side.

[auressea]

Can confirm - works GREAT! BUT!!! equally important - keep your windows CLOSED.. if you've got leaky seals around your doors, consider stuffing them with wet towels. keep that toxic crud out of your living space as best as you can.

WEAR A MASK outside your home.

[quinloki]

It was a Tuesday in 1981 when the San Francisco police kicked in the door.

Inside the small apartment, they expected to find a hardened criminal. They expected a drug kingpin. They expected resistance.

Instead, they found a 57-year-old waitress in an apron.

The air in the apartment smelled sweet, thick with chocolate and something earthier. On the kitchen counter, cooling on wire racks, were 54 dozen brownies.

The police officers began bagging the evidence. They confiscated nearly 18 pounds of marijuana. They handcuffed the woman, whose name was Mary Jane Rathbun.

She didn't look scared. She didn't look guilty.

She looked at the officers, smoothed her apron, and reportedly said, "I thought you guys were coming."

She was booked into the county jail. The headlines wrote themselves. A grandmother running a pot bakery. It seemed like a joke to the legal system, a quirky local news story about an older woman behaving badly.

But Mary wasn't baking for fun. And she certainly wasn't baking for profit.

To understand why Mary risked her freedom, you have to understand the silence of the early 1980s.

San Francisco was gripping the edge of a cliff. A mysterious illness was sweeping through the city, specifically targeting young men. Later, the world would know it as AIDS. But in those early days, it was just a death sentence that no one wanted to talk about.

Families were disowning their sons. Landlords were evicting tenants. Even doctors and nurses, paralyzed by the fear of the unknown, would sometimes leave food trays outside hospital doors, afraid to breathe the same air as their patients.

Men in their twenties were wasting away in sterile rooms, dying alone.

Mary knew what it felt like to lose a child.

Years earlier, in 1974, her daughter Peggy had been killed in a car accident. Peggy was only 22. The loss had hollowed Mary out, leaving a space in her heart that nothing seemed to fill.

When the judge sentenced Mary for that first arrest, he ordered her to perform 500 hours of community service. He likely thought the manual labor would teach her a lesson.

He sent her to the Shanti Project and San Francisco General Hospital.

It was a mistake that would change American history.

Mary walked into the AIDS wards when others were walking out. She didn't wear a hazmat suit. She didn't hold her breath. She saw rows of young men who looked like ghosts—skeletal, in pain, and terrified.

She saw "her kids."

She began mopping floors and changing sheets. But soon, she noticed something the doctors were missing. The harsh medications the men were taking caused violent nausea. They couldn't eat. They were starving to death as much as they were dying of the virus.

Mary knew a secret about the brownies she had been arrested for.

She knew they settled the stomach. She knew they brought back the appetite. She knew they could help a dying man sleep for a few hours without pain.

So, she made a choice.

She went back to her kitchen. She fired up the oven. She started mixing batter, not to sell, but to save.

Every morning, Mary would bake. She lived on a fixed income, surviving on Social Security checks that barely covered her rent. Yet, she spent nearly every dime on flour, sugar, and butter.

The most expensive ingredient—the cannabis—was donated. Local growers heard what she was doing. They began dropping off pounds of product at her door, free of charge.

She packed the brownies into a basket and took the bus to the hospital.

She walked room to room. She sat by the bedsides of men who hadn't seen their own mothers in years. She held their hands. She told them jokes. And she gave them brownies.

"Here, baby," she would say. "Eat this. It'll help."

And it did.

Nurses watched in amazement as patients who hadn't eaten in days began to ask for food. The constant retching stopped. The mood on the ward shifted from despair to a quiet sort of comfort.

Mary Jane Rathbun became "Brownie Mary."

For over a decade, this was her life. She baked roughly 600 brownies a day. She went through 50 pounds of flour a week. She became the mother to a generation of lost boys.

She washed their pajamas. She attended their funerals. She held them while they took their last breaths.

She did this while the government declared a "War on Drugs."

By the early 1990s, the political climate was hostile. Politicians were competing to see who could be "tougher" on crime. Mandatory minimum sentences were locking people away for decades.

In 1992, at the age of 70, Mary was arrested again.

This time, the stakes were lethal. She was charged with felonies. The district attorney looked at her rap sheet and saw a repeat offender. He threatened to send her to prison.

One prosecutor famously whispered to a colleague that he was going to "kick this old lady's ass."

They underestimated who they were dealing with.

They thought they were prosecuting a drug dealer. In reality, they were attacking the most beloved woman in San Francisco.

When the news broke that Brownie Mary was facing prison, the city erupted.

It wasn't just the activists who were angry. It was the doctors. It was the nurses. It was the parents who had watched Mary care for their dying sons when the government did nothing.

Mary turned her trial into a pulpit.

She arrived at court not as a defendant, but as a grandmother standing her ground. The media swarmed her. Reporters asked if she was afraid of prison. They asked if she would stop baking if they let her go.

Mary looked into the cameras, her voice gravelly and firm.

"If the narcs think I'm gonna stop baking brownies for my kids with AIDS," she said, "they can go fuck themselves in Macy's window."

The quote ran in newspapers across the country.

The court didn't stand a chance.

Testimony poured in. Doctors from San Francisco General Hospital wrote letters explaining that Mary’s brownies were medically necessary. Patients testified that she was an angel of mercy.

The charges were dropped.

Mary walked out of the courthouse a free woman. But she didn't go home to rest. She realized that her personal victory wasn't enough. As long as the law was broken, her "kids" were still in danger.

She needed to change the law.

August 25 was declared "Brownie Mary Day" by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It was a nice gesture, but Mary wanted policy, not plaques.

She teamed up with fellow activist Dennis Peron. Together, they opened the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club—the first public dispensary in the United States. It was a safe haven where patients could get their medicine without fear of arrest.

But Mary wanted more. She wanted the state of California to acknowledge the truth.

She campaigned for Proposition 215. She traveled the state, despite her failing health. She spoke in her simple, direct way. She didn't talk about liberties or economics. She talked about compassion. She talked about pain.

She forced voters to look at the issue through the eyes of a grandmother.

In 1996, Proposition 215 passed. California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana.

It was a domino effect. Because one woman refused to let her "kids" suffer, the public perception of cannabis shifted. The Economist later noted that Mary was single-handedly responsible for changing the national conversation.

She never got rich.

She had always joked that if legalization ever happened, she would sell her recipe to Betty Crocker and buy a Victorian house for her patients to live in.

She never sold the recipe. She never bought the house.

Mary Jane Rathbun died in 1999, at the age of 77. She passed away in a nursing home, poor in money but rich in legacy.

Today, over 30 states have legalized medical marijuana. Millions of people use it to manage pain, seizures, and nausea.

Most of them have never heard of Mary.

They don't know that their legal prescription exists because a waitress in San Francisco decided that the law was wrong and her heart was right.

They don't know about the 600 brownies a day.

They don't know about the thousands of hospital visits.

Mary didn't set out to be a hero. She told the Chicago Tribune years before she died, "I didn't go into this thinking I would be a hero."

She was just a mother who had lost her daughter, trying to help boys who had lost their way.

She proved that authority doesn't always equal morality.

She proved that sometimes, the most patriotic thing a citizen can do is break a bad law.

Every August, a few people in San Francisco still celebrate Brownie Mary Day. But her true memorial isn't a date on a calendar.

It is found in every oncology ward where a patient finds relief. It is found in every dispensary door that opens without fear.

It is found in the simple, quiet courage of anyone who sees suffering and refuses to look away.

Mary taught us that you don't need a law degree to change the world. You don't need millions of dollars. You don't need political office.

Sometimes, all you need is a mixing bowl, an oven, and enough love to tell the world to get out of your way.

Sources: New York Times Obituary (1999), "Brownie Mary" Rathbun. San Francisco Chronicle Archives (1992, 1996). History.com, "The History of Medical Marijuana." Weird Everything, FB december 12, 2025