Looking at the Moon

Dumpster for the random thoughts of an exhausted mind. I care for beauty, nature, and learning to improve the world (and myself). Some eventual shipping.

[sinattea]

That shade of blue on the ribbons and sashes in XIX century paintings... <3

[sinattea]

Finally finished the cat furniture projects!!

I collected cardboard from my neighbours like a month ago and from it produced:

1) A two-story cat condo with extra tall scratcher.

2) A cat bed with a smaller scratcher.

This one is still drying. Might add extra windows later. For now is more like a cat cave. Already in use. I swear there is a cat in there.

3) Another tall scratcher that I have yet to figure out how to make stand vertically on its own with only more cardboard.

Yay for me for finishing something!!!

[wonderstruck]

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

[sinattea]

"Servant of the bones" by Anne Rice.

[sinattea]

Am I the bad friend or am I just bad at choosing people??

[sinattea]

I am very pissed and very lonely and I know she's now trying to reach out, but

She didn't invite me to her wedding.

She didn't tell me she was getting married. She didn't even tell me she had a boyfriend!!

She small-talked and monosyllabled for years and only called me when she urgently needed an old teacher's phone number for her thesis.

Like.

The friendship clearly ain't friending if you chose not to share with me any detail about the biggest changes in your life. For YEARS.

I got the message loud and clear.

Should I reply or just leave her on read?

I'm really pissed.

[sinattea]

Came across that poll pitting P&P 1995 vs 2005 (refused to vote), and now I wanna share a thought on them.

1995 has more Pride.

2005 has more Prejudice.

Firth's Darcy IS rude, conceited, posh and thinks himself better than anyone, and Ehle's Lizzy has every right to despise him at the beginning.

But Macfadyen's Darcy is so evidently just shy and socially awkward that Knightley's Lizzy looks unreasonable for hating his guts on sight.

So the only question I have is... can we get Firth's Darcy to interact with Knightley's Lizzy???

Pride VS Prejudice??

[lamorchemoveilsoleelaltrestelle]

Mia Wasikowska in Crimson Peak (2015)

[sinattea]

I love that this shot looks like a painting.

[dailyflicks]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (1994) dir. Neil Jordan

[sinattea]

Best Lestat. Period.

[centuriespast]

CRANACH, Wilhelm Lucas von Brooch pendant 1900-10 Gold Private collection

[mimicofmodes]

In honor of a few lines in the trailer for the new Sense and Sensibility adaptation that made me roll my eyes fiercely, I want to reshare a post I wrote on Medium several years ago.

What’s in an Entail?

Thanks to Jane Austen, the idea of an entail that forces an estate to go to the next male heir, no matter how distantly related or unliked…

The most relevant bit excerpted here:

Another illustrative situation is in Sense and Sensibility. At the very beginning, it’s laid out:

Old Mr. Dashwood invited Henry Dashwood, his wife, and their three daughters (Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret) to live with him

The first Mrs. Henry Dashwood brought a large portion, and in their settlement it was agreed that their son John would have half of it when he was twenty-one; the other half would go to him when his father died (presumably there were jointure provisions, but as she predeceased her husband they didn’t kick in)

The second Mrs. Henry Dashwood brought no portion, which apparently resulted in no jointure in their settlement

Old Mr. Dashwood left his estate to John’s son, with successive life interests for Henry and John, as well as £1,000 for each of the daughters

Henry Dashwood had £7,000 of his own, either inherited or saved from the income he’d had a life interest in, all of which he gave to his wife and daughters in his will

This is much more complicated than the way it’s presented in both the 1995 movie adaptation and the 2008 miniseries, which make it seem like Henry Dashwood had been forced to leave his estate to his son because of male-preference primogeniture. But for the wealthy, inheritance was as much about what had been agreed upon by one’s father and father-in-law as it was about the law or customs. Most of Henry Dashwood’s estate wasn’t really his — it was his son’s or his grandson’s, and he was holding it in trust. What was his, he gave entirely to his wife and daughters.

[marzipanandminutiae]

And it's fascinating that people do try to oversimplify it because like. It's not necessarily LESS illustrative of misogynistic ideas! Because there's a reason that so many inheritance situations involved (hypothetical) sons only or primarily, even if it wasn't mandated by law! Or at least, enough of them for it to be believable for the reader!

But it feels like some people need the situation to have been "women were not legally allowed to do or have XYZ, and men never cared about or considered the needs of their dependent female relatives" in order for it to count. Which is just not how it has often worked in history

[sinattea]

I guess this means my idea of Mr Bennet selling Longbourn to Mr Bingley is probably a no-go.

Welp. Time for plan B.

Burn the entire state to the ground rather than let Mr Collins set a single foot in it as its owner.

[voltaspistol]

[kaelor0409]

Just gonna leave these right here...

The Boss Designs of Bloodborne

[aura1817]

the grotesque femininity of Bloodborne

how Bloodborne represents womanhood and the female experience

[voltaspistol]

Ok, because this is the "how dare you piss on the poor" site, this must be said: No matter your gender, your experience playing Bloodborne is valid. Yes even if you disregarded the story entirely and just hunted things. This post isn't an attack on you. Your experience playing Bloodborne? Totally Valid. Whatever you got from it? Valid. Whatever you chose to not engage with? Valid. Just.... I imagine it must feel a tiny bit different if you've never stared down the double-barrelled shotgun of pregnancy yourself. Not the threat of child support. The actual terror of childbirth. Because yes, Bloodborne was written by a man, but it was written by a man wracked with guilt and anxiety over his wife's difficult pregnancy and childbirth. It is ultimately a story about childbirth. Anyone can engage with this concept, it's not exactly alien to anyone on earth of breeding age. If it hasn't happened to you then surely it's ALMOST happened to you (pregnancy scares). It's a love letter to how terrifying pregnancy is and how helpless we still are regarding what feels like the whims of a higher power of who gets to live and who has to die. Unless you have personally experienced pregnancy or the threat of pregnancy happening TO YOU PERSONALLY, I think you need to sit down for a hot second and actually listen to the voices of people for whom it was a transformative experience. You don't need to EXCLUSIVELY listen to female voices on this topic, but you are kneecapping your potential insight when you insist that female voices are in the minority and thus unimportant. There is still plenty of room in the fandom for male voices, for transfemme voices, for many different voices of many different backgrounds. In fact, the vast majority of the fandom will have no interest in these themes.... And that's ok! It's a big game with lots of facets! Go engage with them!! Cosmic horror! Lycanthropy! Vampires! Early surgical methods!! There's so much meat on this bone to gnaw!!! Just.... Don't tell women who have struggled with the threat of being reduced to a walking womb their entire lives , and women who have experienced the reality of being treated like a wrapper for the candy, that their experience is "bioessentialist" just because they have experienced something you haven't, and identify with parts of the game you didn't feel drawn to, or maybe don't quite understand but feel compelled by. It's ok to not have a uterus and feel compelled by the themes of motherhood-- Again, your experience playing the game? It's valid! But we need to acknowledge that the theme of motherhood's ultimate sacrifice is going to be more deeply felt by, well.... The people with the parts that give birth. Nevermind that a large portion of trans men probably have some VERY interesting opinions on the whole situation but we'll never hear those opinions if you're all too terrified to even engage with how 1/2 the human population would feel about a game where the most difficult boss is literally a fetus beating the protagonist to death with it's own placenta over the corpse of its mother. It's not exactly subtle.

[sinattea]

Wow. Some people in these notes don't seem to realize that "made by men" doesn't mean all men automatically understand something.

If the themes in the story are viscerally feminine, as one might say, of course women are more likely going to click with it on a more visceral level.

It's almost like lived experience informs our interpretations of art and the world...!!!

Sure, men can get it, through empathizing with and analyzing the feminine experience. No one's saying they can't do that, only that it takes conscious effort to put yourself in someone else's shoes, an effort plenty of people might choose not to do for a game.

I haven't had the chance to play Bloodborne myself, but boy am I drawn to every single video essay about it precisely because of the way it deals with femininity and its terrors.

[sinattea]

Lol. Lmao.

Watching a plant video and someone just showed Central América as including México????????

Literally Noooooo????

México is literally in North América????

What more proof do you want that the gringos' subdivision of the continent is just an excuse for racism!!!

Very convenient that their definition of "North América" only includes the english speaking culturally white countries.

[redstonedust]

unfortunately i dont think its queerbaiting if the creator is just so terminally heterosexual that they never remotely considered the same gender relationship their show is centered around could be read as romantic. it is deeply painful however.

[melanqueerly]

Maybe accidental queer baiting? The way someone may not mean to say something rude, but it may come off rude, so it's rude. Frustrating either way.

[phinarei]

Not being a dick, just a friendly clarification.

By definition you can't accidentally queerbait. Queerbaiting is specifically using a same sex pair from the show to market the show to queer audiences with no intention of ever following through on a romantic relationship.

There is officially licensed Destiel merch signed off on by Kripke. Teen Wolf had a commercial with the actors for Derek and Stiles draped over each other talking about being "on a ship." Both shows actively used scenes between them as marketing while actively mocking fans for wanting them together. Sherlock has multiple characters refer to Johnlock as a couple, including characters we're supposed to believe are never wrong about human behavior and pushed those scenes in marketing. Then they acted insulted when fans saw them as a couple.

That's queerbaiting.

Done on accident it would just be queer subtext. Done because they had no other choice due to censorship is queer coding.

The specific meaning of the word is really starting to get lost and it's a pretty important one to keep accurate. It describes a very specific phenomenon that was done repeatedly and maliciously for decades and is meant to examine that specifically.

Doing it on accident sucks, but it isn't a tactic of capitalism intentionally intended to suppress queer representation while making money from queer fans.

[turn-it-around-turn-it-around]

The purpose of queerbaiting, was to profit very specifically off audiences. That’s why it can’t be an accident, because it’s intentionally sought out, because they feel entitled to queer money, and queer viewership without meaningfully engaging with the queer community.

Basically, they just want to make money off of us.

A good way to tell the difference between baiting and accidental heterosexual ignorance is in how they respond.

If they egg it on (in marketing), and then turn around and mock it, like the examples given above, its baiting.

On the other hand, if when presented with the queerness they respond kindly, and if the marketing isn’t overtly about that, its probably accidental heterosexual ignorance.

An example of unintentional heterosexual ignorance is Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street.

The creators didnt consider they would come off as a gay couple.

When presented with this, they denied it, but they did not start marketing Bert and Ernie to gay audiences.

Eventually, they came around and explained that although theyre touched that gays see themselves in the characters, they dont feel they could authentically write a gay couple, as two straight men.

This is why you dont often see Bert and Ernie coming up in (older) discussions of queerbaiting-because it wasnt marketed directly at us, its more obvious that this was just accidental heterosexuality.

The difference is important, because queerbaiting is cruel, but accidental hetero ignorance is simply that: an accident (and sometimes kinda hilarious, I mean, cmon).

While we’re here: lets also please remember that this term applies to art, not living people.

Pop stars marketing to queer audiences without ever coming out or confirming rumors, are not “queerbaiting” as much as they are marketing to a queer audience.

You can have feelings about that (there is a conversation to be had about how the queer community is viewed in terms of a financial market), but the term is in reference to art, not living individuals publicly disclosing their identities. With real life people theres more at stake, things become complicated in ways they simply dont with fiction.

[rosieandthemoon]

In the Garden of Monsters, Italy

[sinattea]

[sinattea]

Things that are NOT normal in the first month of a relationship:

You also met him for the first time within the same month.

You spent half of that month out of town on a work trip.

You became an official couple on the second date (he probably already told you he loves you).

He's already taking you to see HIS dietitian because he noticed you don't eat well. He's footing the medical and grocery bills.

He's already cooking your meals.

He bought you a new laptop because your old one is slow.

You already met all his friends and family.

You're already ghosting friends after months of talking to them almost daily because you were emotionally devastated after your last breakup and kept jumping into situationships that hurt you even more.

You're basically one toothbrush away from officially moving in with him.

I repeat: you haven't known this man for a full month yet.

How do I tell my friend she's being love-bombed to hell and back and that even though it's been less than a week since I learned about this man's existence I already have the WORST feeling about him??? I don't even know his name and can already tell he's more than likely an abuser!!!

Girl, wake up!!!

[sinattea]

Haven't slept properly in two weeks. Now I'm kneading air-dry clay.

I hate everything.

[dubiousdisco]

the united states are doing levels of anti brazilian racism previously unknown to man

[sinattea]

This is why we have to reclaim the term "american" from the gringos, and take the term "latino" away from everyone who doesn't include Spain, France, Italy and Portugal in the definition.

Words. Have. Meaning!!!

América is a continent and "latino" just means "derived from Latin".