I saw some weird ass conspiracy video thing today of like 'we were never meant to have access to yeast, that was cultivated in a lab and it harms us' bullshit and I was like well first off there's no such thing as 'meant to' and second of all um? the long history of acquiring yeast from beer foam stretching so far back ??????
If you want to make sourdough started from scratch, the process is 'mix water, flour, and maybe sugar if you've got it, then WHIP IN AS MUCH AIR AS YOU CAN' and let it sit. And this works. Because there's yeast there. In the air.
Not only is there yeast in the air, it's on a bunch of fruits, too. Ever rubbed a blueberry, plum, or grape, and it was slightly darker underneath? That thin film is wild yeasts. There is also yeasts that live on human skin (and not just pathogenic ones!). We are never without yeasts.
Met an old teacher today and we got talking about ‘the good old times’ and ten minutes into the conversation I jokingly said the one regret I have from middle school is that I never won anything at her magnificent tombolas? Because, like, she used to hold this game about once a month so we’d learn the numbers in French and it was never big prizes, but as a 12-yo I desperately craved them - a cactus-shaped eraser, a bright blue notebook with slightly larger-than-usual squares, a set of coloured pens - and never ever got a single one of them.
(Actually spent a good few months thinking I was genetically unlucky and researching ancient family curses with my grandma.)
So today I don’t know what I was hoping for - nothing, really?
(I mean, that part of me that’s still twelve was probably expecting this sweet old woman to have a set of glitter stickers in her purse and just go ‘You know what, you’re right - I’ve been saving this one for you all these years, here you go’ but I’m a solidly rational person and I know that’s stupid.)
No, I thought we’d just laugh and it would be a good shared memory and that would be it. Instead, my teacher got flustered and a bit embarrassed and explained the game was rigged. It was never about learning French at all. She’d just noticed some kids couldn’t afford even basic stationery, so she’d buy a few half-fancy items every month with her own money just for them. She didn’t want them to feel different or left out. And obviously the way she used to walk around in the classroom, looking over our shoulders - it wasn’t to prevent cheating. It was because she was cheating herself, wanting to see which number a particular child needed to get a Minnie Mouse pencil case.
Guys - the world is fucked up, but so many people out there are just good and kind and humbly heroic it honestly gives me hope.
I was wondering whether the constellations would look any different on Mars, so I looked it up, and apparently not; galactically speaking Mars is so close to us that the difference is imperceptible. However, I did find this neat additional bit:
“Sex-negative messages don’t keep people from having sex. They keep people from having good sex. They keep people from having pride in their sexuality, from sexual self-awareness. They keep people from asking questions about sex, and communicating with their partners. They discourage experimentation. They blur the lines between consensual sex and rape by framing all sex as an undifferentiated mass of “bad.””
— Sex-Negative Education and the Spectre of Rape « Sex Positive Activism
im a bit of a pointless hater about certain usages of the term “monsterfucker” bc i think it’s often one of those things people say but don’t believe with their whole chest. like if all the “monsters” you like are vampires and similar mopey human-looking folks it’s possible you are actually just into goths. Let’s not dilute the beautiful world of teratophilia for our bloodborne sex soldiers out there fucking and sucking in yharnam or whatever. Anyone on earth would fuck a vampire. that’s vanilla
Don't you DARE gatekeep monsterfucking OP, all fuckers of all monsters are valid. If one person mostly prefers the twink bodytype and another prefers the bear bodytype, they're both still attracted to men. Some people fuck monsters because of the taboo of finding something dangerous or other than "human" attractive and some people fuck monsters because they want to feel a tentacle force their butthole open like an anteater snout into a termite mound. All of us are nasty freaks and there's no need to create unneeded barriers between us.
if we’re considering essentially cannibalistic human people with bad teeth to be monsters we must include those who are attracted to British people under the banner of monsterfucking lest someone feel invalidated
The "attraction to vampires and other mostly-human monsters" end of the spectrum gets debated like this because it is both monsterfucking AND normie at the same time. It also has its equal and opposite twin in wanting to fuck a person so idealized they no longer resemble a human.
Hear me out. (Long post under the cut)
I think that at least some degree of interest/attraction to the monstrous is an extremely commonplace human condition. See how insanely popular monster movies and tales are. See how we keep mixing sex into our horror movies. I think the vast majority of people WOULD or already do find Dracula Castlevania or Pyramidhead or Beast Disneyfranchise hot. It's monsterfucking because it is an attraction to the monstrousness, it's also vanilla because most of us experience some degree of that.
What it clarifies for me is that it attraction to the mildly monstrous is the middle of the normie/spectrum, the far ends are not the total absence or total inhumanity, but two very different extremes of monstrousness: broad-spectrum hyperpersonalization and narrow-spectrum depersonalization.
We freaks on Tumblr are more familiar with the hyperpersonalization end of the spectrum: attraction to beings that in no way resemble humans in form or consciousness, but who are still find mentally *people*. Wanting union with sapient mycelial networks. Thinking The House from House of Leaves is kind of a milf. The monstrousness here is the horror of personhood in a formnot recognized as a person. You can see the appeal to all the ND and disabled people here. It's broad spectrum because not only has the definition of person been widely expanded, people on this far end are attracted to multiple very differently shaped monsters. This is important because it helps explain what's happening on the other end.
The far opposite end involves attraction to extremely specifically shaped beings that have been completely stripped of any personhood. Really putting the objectification in the Object of Affection. It begins with being into people with very specific features, like being into perisex cisgender Caucasian women with blue eyes and blonde hair under the age of 25 and ONLY them. Having a preference for certain features is normal, but it begins to loop back when the presence of these features eclipses the actual personality of the subject when it comes to attraction- both in the sense of "would not even consider looking a 26-year old" and "the specific entities they're looking at? They are not listening to" . As you continue down that end of the spectrum, not only does personhood become less important, the desired body becomes more and more specific until you have an entity of such outrageous proportions and inorganic perfection that it no longer resembles a human. The monstrousness is in the total absence of personhood, even in something that (sort of) looks like a conventional person.
This isn't a value judgement on either end. You can have whatever bizarre fantasies you want so long as you are kind to your fellow beings.
This is only one of the two snakes in this double oroborous of monsterfucking because of course the kink is shaped like that.
So far, we have only been discussing someone being attracted to a variably monstrous subject. The other snake is when the monster they want to be fucked is themselves. Again, the hyperpersonalization/depersonalization axis is in play: people who would want to BE the parasitic goo monster and have their personhood recognized in a grand romance, and people who wish to shed their personhood entirely and become a sexy, sexy table lamp.
These two orobori- attraction to the monstrousness of the other and monstrousness of the self- cycle through each other in many ways through many intersections, but the thing that both the hyperpersonalists and the depersonalists have in common is the creative exploration of the form that could be, whereas the normies have only begun to consider "huh. That guy is kinda fucked up, and that sorta makes him hot?"
Re: the middle of the spectrum: monsterfucking exists as extremes of what could be, and normcore is the absolute lack of creativity, but I think humanity in general sits in a bimodal distribution centered on the first deviations away from that very boring middle. Wanting to be or fuck a vampire is not the most vanilla, but it is very common.Likewise, wanting to be or fuck Barbie is also not totally vanilla, but more common than actual vanilla is.
TL; DR: wanting to fuck a vampire is both normie and monsterfucking, as is wanting to fuck Jessica Rabbit, to about the same degree in the other direction.
Actually I'd like to revise my opinion a bit because I'm hydrated now and my friend in chat pointed out that my "inhumanity of form" and "recognition of personhood" are just two of the MANY axes upon which the monsterfuckerness of anything can be judged, so I propose this:
Kink in general, but ESPECIALLY monsterfucking, is the exploration of what could be. Playing Imagination, if you will. Therefore, it's opposite is a total lack of imagination.
Since it's extremely weird for a human to be totally without creativity, what you get is a bimodal distribution on either side with a sharp dip in the middle, where the vast majority of people are into something A Little Weird, tapering out the Spiders Georgs out there who want to be actually jacked off by the invisible hand of the marketplace or suchlike esoteric and unachievable fantasies.
Hence, wanting to fuck a vampire is both monsterfucking and normie at the same time.
I love it when modern adaptations of old books opt to be loyal to the book's cultural context instead of the specific details of the characters/settings. Like if one character written in a specific era is depicted as being annoyingly obsessed with pocket watches, specifically as a way of illustrating that this man is a fashion-obsessed airheaded fop, it wouldn't make sense in the same way in the 21st century, pocket watches would be an extremely odd and interesting hobby for a modern young man, so it doesn't have the same context. Make that mf a sneakerhead.
Or a specific scene that's constantly used as an example for arguments of "I don't like [the book heroine] because she hates horses", when originally the point of the scene was that all this talk about horse breeds and some specific stud's ankle angles is also going over her head, and it's more of a "send help, car guys won't stop talking about cars" situation.
In a modern adaptation of Agatha Christie's Poirot, Arthur Hastings is a man who bought a cybertruck and Miss Lemon is an unhinged Wikipedia editor and Ao3 tag wrangler.
Okay but do you understand the TREASURE TROVE of reading a fic you enjoy and then looking at the author's page and discovering they have written multiple just like it?! That is the ultimate score!
A manatee rescue that I follow responded to a call about a female manatee with two calves because one of her babies had been injured by a boat strike. The entire family was temporarily relocated from the wild into a wildlife rehab facility for the injured male calf to undergo treatment. While there, vets noted the female calf was significantly larger than the little injured male. They did genetic testing and determined that big sister calf actually wasn’t related to the other two manatees at all! She was in fact an orphan calf that the adult manatee had found and taken in to care for right alongside her own little one.
Wild to think this manatee calf was literally adopted and nobody would have ever known if it weren’t for random coincidence and human curiosity. Every animal that you cross paths with in life has a fascinating personal story that you’ll only ever catch a glimpse of (if you’re lucky).
coming out of the tags to say that some of us have been saying this for years and have been called all manner of degenerates, perverts, and pedophiles over it, and we really deserve an apology we will never receive
We DO deserve a fucking apology we'll never get, and not to soapbox, but lemme just throw out another fucking explanation of exactly why this shit keeps happening in the slim chance that it helps at least one person not fall for it:
Fascism in ANY form will ALWAYS present itself as reasonable to YOUR sensibilities. It preys on a lot of things, your disgust reaction, your fear reaction, your own shame, your need for a tribe, your need to feel like you're part of something bigger than yourself, your need to protect your resources, your need to boost your own ego, your need to feel better than others, and in my opinion, the worst thing of all that it can prey on is your WANT TO DO GOOD.
It turns that Want To Do Good against you, gives you "acceptable targets" and sets you loose, thinking that you're being a fucking super hero. Fascism will ALWAYS feel okay when you're doing it because you understand why you're doing it because you've been told why you should be doing it by someone who's fucked the narrative to make you feel good about hurting other people because they've convinced you that you are protecting people by doing it!!
Fascism tells you: "The sort of people who value a sex scene in a movie are perverts, and perverts are dangerous, right? Oh god... What if they're a rapist and that's why they like that sort of stuff? Yeah, that trans girl that made that post about movies needing sex scenes... She pisses in a diaper, that's fucking disgusting right? And she likes weird fiction... And diapers are meant for kids... So... Yeah... Exactly, you got it! See you figured out what she was too! So you should trust your gut with these people, you're really good at spotting them! You know when someone is evil! And you DEFINITELY should not listen to a pervert explain themselves, because... Right, exactly, what's the point? They're just going to lie about it and probably say gross shit to you."
Did you catch how that worked? It let YOU make the conclusion. It let YOU answer the questions and start setting shit in stone in your own mind. And the next thing you know, you're using fiction as proof, anything outside of your own comfort levels as evidence, you've become an emotionally reactionary fascist who genuinely believes you are making the world better, and safer, for the people you love, and who love you in return.
Fascism doesn't begin with violence, it begins with a kind hand held out in your direction from someone else who believes they're helping. You might not even realize you've fucked up. Ever. That's how it works. That's how it thrives.
Proship has never meant anything except a combination of three ideas:
Ship and let ship (your ships don't harm me and vice-versa) and YKINMK (your kink is not my kink, and that's okay; my kink stories don't harm you and vice-versa)
Harassment over fiction is not acceptable
Censorship of fiction is not acceptable either
Any other definitions are made by antis, not proshippers, and are an attempt at revisionism to justify harassment based on false claims.
Because you keep policing people's headcanons, making fun of them and calling them horrible things, and on top of that, you're somehow claiming to be a safe space for people to express their creativity, yet turning around and harassing them anyways because you've made a billion exceptions to the "don't police people" rule and you think, like everyone else who's made their own exceptions, that your exceptions justify harassment.
So you're making fandom into a field of rat traps where nobody even dares interact with anyone, or shares art anymore, because you still might just attack them for it because they did something as simple as writing a canonically soft character as... a softie.
Let people do their "cringe" y/a romances, let people do their "gross" ships, let people write those characters as jerks or softies. Let them, and mean it when you say you'll let them, instead of soapboxing about it in a patronizing post but not really meaning what you're soapboxing about.
Whenever people try to tell me to ship "moral ships" I like to think about how inherently immoral it is to flirt with service workers at coffee shops where they're obliged to be nice to you so... many coffee shop AUs are like. Immoral. But given that they are a fantasy where this is instant romance without the fear of trapping a service worker in an uncomfortable situation that's tantamount to workplace sexual harassment, I enjoy the cutesy coffee shop AUs immensely.
And that's basically my attitude towards all fantasy. There's lots of things I enjoy in fantasy that wouldn't work IRL. Enemies to lovers. Sudden kisses. Miscommunications in relationships. Codependency. Fight sluts who physically assault each other while emotionally connecting.
Once you start ascribing your morals to the fiction you consume, you tend to miss the issues in even the most innocuous, innocent seeming scenarios. It's easy to judge other people's fictional enjoyment until someone points out your innocent coffee shop AU is romanticised workplace harassment.
But it's all fiction. It's a fantasy. That's why it's fine.
A lack of education around things like consent, healthy relationships, self respect and respect of others, bodily autonomy, etc, has made people think they can rely only on fiction to tell them what right - but that's dangerous. And unsustainable.
Hey, so this actually is a form of fake news. The tweet specifically ignores the context of the conversation - Nato. Here are some other quotes from President Biden during this interview:
"I asked the — our NATO Allies that we bring on the group from the South Pacific: Australia, New Zealand, Japan-"
"And, by the way, I was able to get 50 other nations — 50 — five-zero — to support Ukraine. Fifty. And we were able to bring about a coalition between — in — of Europe and Asia — Japan and South Korea."
"I just met with — we’ve talked about AUKUS and we talked about the relationship between Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, the United States. We’re making the world safer and stronger, because we have to deal with a new arrangement that exists in the world"
Listen, I don't give a shit about Biden, but I hate fake news. South Korea and Japan have had 80 years of history now post WW2, and it is bizarre to claim that Biden is out of his mind for saying "I brought them both to the table to help support ukraine". Context matters, and your goddamn bad faith interpretation of literally goddamn everything is annoying as hell. Shame on y'all
everyone in the notes is taking the original tweet at face value and I'm terrified for the country as a result
but also like. WHY would you assume that's something he would just Say? why wouldn't you look it up and see what the context was?
guys. he's not actually doddering and losing it. he remains a standard politician, with all that implies, but still mentally together. that's media spin and you should know better than to trust it at this point
