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mcmansionhell · 3 months

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we've found it folks: mcmansion heaven

Hello everyone. It is my pleasure to bring you the greatest house I have ever seen. The house of a true visionary. A real ad-hocist. A genuine pioneer of fenestration. This house is in Alabama. It was built in 1980 and costs around $5 million. It is worth every penny. Perhaps more.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Come on, Kate, that's a little kooky, but certainly it's not McMansion Heaven. This is very much a house in the earthly realm. Purgatory. McMansion Purgatory." Well, let me now play Beatrice to your Dante, young Pilgrim. Welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

It is rare to find a house that has everything. A house that wills itself into Postmodernism yet remains unable to let go of the kookiest moments of the prior zeitgeist, the Bruce Goffs and Earthships, the commune houses built from car windshields, the seventies moments of psychedelic hippie fracture. It is everything. It has everything. It is theme park, it is High Tech. It is Renaissance (in the San Antonio Riverwalk sense of the word.) It is medieval. It is maybe the greatest pastiche to sucker itself to the side of a mountain, perilously overlooking a large body of water. Look at it. Just look.

The inside is white. This makes it dreamlike, almost benevolent. It is bright because this is McMansion Heaven and Gray is for McMansion Hell. There is an overbearing sheen of 80s optimism. In this house, the credit default swap has not yet been invented, but could be.

It takes a lot for me to drop the cocaine word because I think it's a cheap joke. But there's something about this example that makes it plausible, not in a derogatory way, but in a liberatory one, a sensuous one. Someone created this house to have a particular experience, a particular feeling. It possesses an element of true fantasy, the thematic. Its rooms are not meant to be one cohesive composition, but rather a series of scenes, of vastly different spatial moments, compressed, expanded, bright, close.

And then there's this kitchen for some reason. Or so you think. Everything the interior design tries to hide, namely how unceasingly peculiar the house is, it is not entirely able to because the choices made here remain decadent, indulgent, albeit in a more familiar way.

Rare is it to discover an interior wherein one truly must wear sunglasses. The environment created in service to transparency has to somewhat prevent the elements from penetrating too deep while retaining their desirable qualities. I don't think an architect designed this house. An architect would have had access to specifically engineered products for this purpose. Whoever built this house had certain access to architectural catalogues but not those used in the highest end or most structurally complex projects. The customization here lies in the assemblage of materials and in doing so stretches them to the height of their imaginative capacity. To borrow from Charles Jencks, ad-hoc is a perfect description. It is an architecture of availability and of adventure.

A small interlude. We are outside. There is no rear exterior view of this house because it would be impossible to get one from the scrawny lawn that lies at its depths. This space is intended to serve the same purpose, which is to look upon the house itself as much as gaze from the house to the world beyond.

Living in a city, I often think about exhibitionism. Living in a city is inherently exhibitionist. A house is a permeable visible surface; it is entirely possible that someone will catch a glimpse of me they're not supposed to when I rush to the living room in only a t-shirt to turn out the light before bed. But this is a space that is only exhibitionist in the sense that it is an architecture of exposure, and yet this exposure would not be possible without the protection of the site, of the distance from every other pair of eyes. In this respect, a double freedom is secured. The window intimates the potential of seeing. But no one sees.

At the heart of this house lies a strange mix of concepts. Postmodern classicist columns of the Disney World set. The unpolished edge of the vernacular. There is also an organicist bent to the whole thing, something more Goff than Gaudí, and here we see some of the house's most organic forms, the monolith- or shell-like vanity mixed with the luminous artifice of mirrors and white. A backlit cave, primitive and performative at the same time, which is, in essence, the dialectic of the luxury bathroom.

And yet our McMansion Heaven is still a McMansion. It is still an accumulation of deliberate signifiers of wealth, very much a construction with the secondary purpose of invoking envy, a palatial residence designed without much cohesion. The presence of golf, of wood, of masculine and patriarchal symbolism with an undercurrent of luxury drives that point home. The McMansion can aspire to an art form, but there are still many levels to ascend before one gets to where God's sitting.

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#architecture #design #mcmansion #mcmansions #ugly houses #interior design #bad architecture

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my-favourite-ezra · 8 months

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#social capital #polarisation #He studied philosophy at Yale #where #he told me #“the zeitgeist was very much politically progressive #anti-Republican #anti-Reagan. And so I was very moralistic #very self-righteous. I think I was angry throughout the ’80s #or at least in a sort of a shallow #political way. And so I think I wasn’t a very interesting person intellectually or morally throughout the ’80s and throughout my young-adul #i feel this lol

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night-unfurls-its-splendour · 3 months

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I DEMAND THE RETURN OF BIG, FRIZZY HAIR CHRISTINE

*bangs fist on table*

I demand Frizzy Brunette Representation!

I reject smooth ringlets and loose waves!

(Samantha Hill || Holly Ann Hull)

I want that shit wild! UNTAMEABLE!!

I want to see seaweed-ass lookin tendrils that you know will turn into a ball of shapeless frizz if anyone so much as approaches it with a brush.

No but seriously I am deeply grateful that Phantom was made in the 80's when volume was the look du jour, hang smoothness and sheen and wound up having such longevity in the cultural zeitgeist.

If I had gotten into phantom as a kid, I think it would have done wonders for my self-esteem, as a frizzy brunette living in the 00's (when having smooth, shiny, flowing waves was everything) to see a Top Tier Romantic Heroine, torn between two men who worship the earth she stands on, who was a curly brunette; but even more so if that Curly Brunette looked like she understood that you Can't Brush That Shit When It's Dry.

Reblog with your frizziest Christines

#phantom of the opera #poto #poto musical #christine daae #sarah brightman #dale kristien #jill washington #joke de kruijf

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nico-esoterica · 2 months

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The Pluto in Aqua Survival Guide For Millennials and Gen Z 🚀

Part 1: Pluto through the Houses (Below) | Part 2: How The Generations Will Be Affected + Advice // Long Post Ahead++ If you’re reading this in February 2024, Pluto hasn’t officially transited into Aquarius yet but it WILL spend most of the year in it. This is giving the same vibes as 2008, the year of the US recession and subsequent global economic crash—but was, interestingly enough, when Pluto previewed Capricorn. It wasn’t exactly stable yet carried a smorgasbord of influence. In the 5 months and 2 and a half weeks it spent in the water goat’s sign, billions of charts were affected in ways we’re still studying to this day. So I consider this ‘preview’ worth studying as well because history can be cyclical.

But I think a doom and gloom perspective is redundant. We’re used to hearing how we can’t do something or how insurmountable the odds are because we typically associate Saturn with austerity. ‘The economy’s down’, ‘we can’t afford this,’ ‘climate change is worsening by the day,’ ‘10 tips to stop yourself from doom scrolling,’ including whatever well-meaning anxieties your parents reminded you of this week while you’re panicking over whether or not your Uber Eats tip is going to overdraft your account. Where Aquarius differs from Capricorn is that it prefers not to compromise its ideals over its survival. The latter are like the Millennials who project their neatly compartmentalized boomer inflicted trauma onto their subordinates because they’re from a generation where Uranus and Neptune’s dreams of job security on the horizon became lofty and farfetched by the recession. It hit when those born from the mid 80s to mid 90s would’ve been entering middle school or finishing university by that time (11-23yo). That means that those on the cusp of adolescence and at the beginning of our stages of realization in early adulthood weren’t catapulting into the abundance promised if they ‘worked hard enough’ but straight into an echoless void. But under Pluto in Aquarius, we can expect hopefuls to pick up the debris left strewn on the ground from the failed system and repurpose familiar ideas into more promising and sustainable fabric. If we think of the typical Aquarius, they’re usually a person who had to adapt to a negligent environment using a unique form of genius which subsequently separated them from the rest. They’re shrewd and strategic and have a sixth sense for building their world view around what makes sense to them—even if they’re the odd ones out yet again. Because what they don’t tell you about the water bearer is that no matter how embittered it becomes, somewhere under the weeds of the pain and disappointment its grown to expect, there’s an idealistic child selfishly clinging to hope—they’re lovers masking as misanthropes. That’s why Leo, ruled by the Sun, is its sibling. Through its opposition, we learn to always keep our standards for ourselves and the world around us sky high. If the system benefits from us underestimating ourselves, we must invest in shameless self belief.

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Dates are a rough estimate and will hypothesize what Pluto in Aqua (and other slow moving transits) have in store for those born between 1984-2007. Pluto in Aqua (themes): Recycle/Upcycle, Renew, Radicalize, Reject Key: • Saturn = Consolidation and attitudes towards structure and foundation (how they systemize/structure themselves esp when they need help or avoid it) • Uranus = Innovation and drastic sudden changes personally/circumstantially • Neptune = Personal zeitgeist and attitudes towards social trends and moods which deal with the topic of that house • Pluto = Aggrandizement of power, resources, and gains and losses of scale through the process of (slow and deeply sewn or festering) upheaval/uprooting, death, decay of the topics of the house it occupies, catalyst(s) for personal transformation Aries 1H: (Pluto in 11H) - friend groups, networks, the internet, and community service, (theory—ruler = social capital and clout) —Expansion (or) creation of friend groups and networks who share what matters most to you and finding community support amongst an unexpected group of people who’ll radically change your mindset. You may go through a period where everyone seems to ‘fall off’ right before you find the right people (they’ll probably be outliers or unique). Industry wise, this can mean being more tapped into what’s next tech and internet wise especially if you have placements here. Some of you may go off the grid entirely and live in a co-op in the woods/mountains to be honest.

But you and Gemini Risings need to watch Midsommar twice at the least. But this transit will also put many of you in places of leadership. You’re going to become the main protagonists in these tribes or circles of new ideas, especially with Uranus trining from your 3rd and Neptune creating a blazing soul fire in your 1st. Since Jupiter generally joys in the 11th, that Pluto/Neptune on your 11/1 feels like many of you may adopt a belief system or reject the notion of mainstream spirituality entirely for something more grounded and personal to you. Just be mindful of ideological rabbit holes and potentially isolating yourselves by accident. Taurus 1H: (Pluto in 10H) - social status/public image and career direction and its honors and great achievements, bosses and people in high positions of power, public recognition (and the pursuit of it) —Thought leader and People’s Champ—See what’s happening with Megan Thee Stallion where the entire internet shifted to support her after years of bullying and targeted harassment (she’s a Taurus Asc). The ambitious will benefit heavily from this transit while the unambitious (but who want to live well) will gain attention, credibility, and opportunity for surviving all this time, esp if you’re marginalized w/ a platform (if you don’t have one, get one NOW). People will uplift you for the more authentic you are.

But you’re going to have to learn to accept that others will see the greatness in you that you’ve been afraid of believing all along. With Uranus moving through your 2nd and Neptune in your 12th, you’re going to feel like you finally have autonomy with your finances and life path. But it’s going to call for you being comfortable with advocating for yourselves and setting clear boundaries because the former outers in Aqua hitting your 1st from your 10th can mean you spent a period being disrespected and feeling adrift by male or authority figures and it leading to you questioning yourself and your life potential. You’re used to people not believing in you—but the tables have turned. Stand on top of the business of yourself. Gemini 1H: (Pluto in 9H) - higher education, government, long distance travel and foreign culture, and organized religion and traditionally taught spirituality, politics, and publishing (large scale, corporate), teaching —Many of you may drop out of school (or find niched but polarizing niches within it), travel the world permanently, or may be radicalized by spirituality, politics, or education in a very BIG way that’ll be unique to this era. Please avoid Scientology and cults like the plague (or starting them) because there’ll be a strong ‘itch’ to find a sense of purpose w/ this transit. Because it’s so deep and aggrandizing, you’re going to feel like your entire life revolves around something larger than yourself and while this is a GOOD thing, you can get lost if you don’t have an internal compass.

The answers are within YOU, not something else. But this will be a very big ‘finding yourself’ transit to get to that conclusion. Similar to my advice to Aries Risings, these outers are hitting major identity shifting houses for you—The difference with you, Gemini, is that your ideals will be more solid but your concept of ‘yourself’ will undergo several transformations which will compliment your politics. Your framework for life will experience a new barrage of ‘what ifs’ and the current way you think will not be the same as it was a week, a year, ten years, 20 years into the future. You love change but with Uranus squaring a Pisces MC for some of you (or planets there), it’s important that you remember who you are versus what the world may want from you. Don’t get lost in the sauce. Cancer 1H: (Pluto in 8H) - shared resources and boundaries, inherited trauma and family karma [5th from the 8th] (and material inheritance) and trauma cycles, and coping mechanisms, shame and denial, loans/taxes, supernatural experiences, death, and the occult, sexual entanglement and taboo —You’ve already had three outer planets run amok in here and this will be the continuation of what Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune have prepped you for. Having terrible boundaries (too thick or thin) and other people’s baggage you feel like you have to shoulder or inherit is not gonna be it this time around. But the theme of this for some of you will be a HUGE taking-back-your-power-from-other-people era.

It’s taking ownership of something in your life that others thought they were entitled to. But it usually comes with a molting, shedding, and releasing process. This period can also be about transmuting grief, shame, or guilt into power. Others may fall down the rabbit hole of metaphysics (esp via NDE, astral travel, etc) and there’ll be a pocket who’ll (this sounds wacked but ima say it) experience alien contact and communication due to Uranus/Pluto being in air signs in psychic houses for you. But oof—The era of the people pleasing because people made you think being assertive is a ‘bad’ thing is over. Leo 1H: (Pluto in 7H) - contracts, serious relationships and marriages, relationship dynamics and what is projected onto you and from you, enemies you know —Similar to Cancer Risings, you’re used to having your boundaries compromised because conditioning taught you not to have them (or to make them steep). During this next cycle, your rebellion and rejection of what’s expected from you in your relationships will most likely send you down several rabbit holes where you experiment with different relationship styles and there’ll be a sense of ‘anarchy’ to everything.

Uranus transiting your 10H has been amplifying this already so you’re at the point now where you’re too far gone to appease and bow out like usual. But you’re also committed to radically setting boundaries now or letting them dissolve—if you’re ready for it. If not, Pluto transiting here can create spores of abandonment issues to infect relationships if the core causes aren’t uprooted—but having any natal Aqua placements will provide clues to learn what’s there. Being vulnerable and intimate means letting people know what hurts, where it hurts, and how they can care for you to accommodate it. Virgo 1H: (Pluto in 6H) - service industry, day jobs and short-term employment and trends with employment, overall job market and how you fit within it, work ethic, everyday health and routines (and health concerns), and pets (small domesticated animals) —You are so DONE with the way you’ve been treated or felt ‘afloat’ with your everyday life over the past several years (and longer). With Uranus about to transit your 10H for a while with Neptune in your 8H are going to push you (externally and internally) to take charge of your life in a way you can control. You’re very good at following orders because it’s sensible but suck at taking charge because honestly?

Neptune transiting your 7th for so long gives me the impression that you have a hard time saying ‘No’ when people need things from you. For the contrarians in the audience, relax—It just means your environment taught you to placate it. But life path wise, or just for right now, Pluto will force you to take your dreams and goals more seriously by thrusting you into situations where you’ll feel like you’re being called to act on your deep soul urges at last. Especially with the North Node transiting here in a few years—You’re going to know you’re doing what’s ‘right’ for you if it feels like you can finally be yourself. Libra 1H: (Pluto in 5H) - pleasure and recreation, the arts (esp those which feed the inner child), children, and more serious hobbies or deeply felt/consistent ones (passions), romanticism/addictions/vices which become necessary for recreation or to feel creative inspiration, what inspires you and how deeply it hits/affects —In a professional or creative sense, you’re about to tap into some serious inner child healing where you take those years you’ve neglected the more artistic part of yourself and devote yourself to nurturing it (at last). Relationship wise, many of you will be reconsidering having children later on than you originally planned because you value stability. Others will be abandoning it all together.

This will also be a period, calling it now, where a good portion of you will be more open to polyamory if you weren’t already. In a non-romantic sense, you’re going to be more interested in non-hierarchal and more communal relationship dynamics where your world has the robust support system you needed as a child. The focus overall will be finding sustainable ways to repair the damage/trauma you most likely experienced from having Pluto in Capricorn hit your angles for so long, especially for cardinal signs. But it’ll feel strange and even dizzying at first—You’re not used to shamelessly choosing yourself and your inner world and desires therein. Get comfortable by letting people be uncomfortable with this shift. Scorpio 1H: (Pluto in 4H) - family and origin, family secrets and history, bought and inherited real estate/material wealth, one’s sense of security and privacy and the private self, family legacy and drama, roots and family patterns and obligations and how we react to them —There’s some childhood wounds that need to properly scab over that you’ve been picking at for the last several years or more since Saturn entered its home signs and conjoined Pluto. Not all of you have family problems, but the other three outers transiting here lets me know that the concept of ‘safety’ will be a sensitive topic. Did you feel completely supported? Did you experience neglect? Were there issues with boundaries?

Gen Z/illennials with outer planets here will not be able to skirt around facing their core issue of fearing being vulnerable. Uranus in Gemini trining this house from your 8H will expedite this after it’s done squaring it from Taurus in your 7th—which just made things more awkward and chaotic than better. This house also dealing with family legacy with Pluto here may present…unexpected rewards for your suffering that were long overdue. Material rewards and those that can only be measured with the heart. You will be gaining this time instead of losing. Sagittarius 1H: (Pluto in 3H) - early childhood experiences, siblings, neighborhood and local community affairs, communication and publishing (written and digital—usually small scale), everyday rituals and hobbies, creature comforts which are ritualized, short distance travels, habits which are taught or gained/inspired, mundane everyday activity or obligation and how you feel about it/go about it —With Pluto leaving your 2H, you’re experiencing a titanic-level mindset shift. Depending on the rest of your chart, what you can anticipate is that your everyday life will carry a new level of intensity. Everything will have additional weight and purpose. But your well-being is moving out of a place of operating out of constant survival-mode to prioritizing what you think about what your life ought to look like.

Pluto transiting from your 12H to your 3H, depending on your age, means that the underpinning of your life has revolved around what your role is within a conglomerate of people where the focus isn’t on you but what you can contribute or you acting out in defiance of that or having an existential fear, that’s usually impressed on you by a parent, of losing control. With the outers beaming from your 5th and 7th, this is going to be about you going back to the beginning—what makes you genuinely happy? What makes you feel good? Who do you like having around you? Who’s important and why? It’ll feel like learning to walk again and rediscovering your core interests, passions, and love styles but without worrying about who you’re performing for. Because fuck them. Kindly and unkindly. Capricorn 1H: (Pluto in 2H) - personal resources and finance, attitudes about material security and said resources, the different ways in which material comfort can ground us and reflect in what makes us feel the most secure in our lives on a day to day basis, love of the material and/or fear of it, conditioned attitudes about money —You’re in a unique position where you’re going to begin valuing yourself outside of what you can tangibly provide—and for you this is a big deal because that’s how you’ve perceived yourself until now. Pluto settling in your 2nd means that for some of you, your ideas will become your black card (your perspective on the outside looking in or the inverse) and any community you tap into will provide you with its resources.

For others, you’ll be experiencing ego deaths where you’ll either want to detach from the system entirely and start growing your own food, sourcing your own materials, etc, anything to make you into the resource instead while the opposing camp will turn their corporate trauma into winning underdog success with new industries (and opportunities) that’ll open up. There’s going to be a death somewhere with all parties involved regarding how you see yourself. It won’t be about what you can do for the world but how it will pivot to work for you. But it requires a perspective shift—Are you ready to kill off the part of yourself who’s been taught wind, storm, and turmoil are required to live a comfortable life? Haven’t you suffered enough? Aquarius 1H: (Pluto in 1H) - vitality and life force, core identity, the lens you see your life through (esp w/ planets here), how others see us and how we present ourselves consciously and unconsciously, appearance/style, the circumstances life brought you into and themes which play out around it (has more to do w/ parents and family dynamics) —You’ve been a lone wolf for a hot minute now—With so many outers hitting your angles for decades, you’ve found a bit of schadenfreude in the world waking up and realizing how fucked up everything’s been. But in a strange turn of events, said world’s now standing awkwardly on your doorstep, especially for those w/ other placements in Aquarius. You’re being recognized and vindicated for what’s been denied to you.

But if you’ve been sabotaging all this time, you may take any life or behavior adjustments you’ve felt prompted to make as an invitation for more rejection and ridicule. Because Pluto’s going to energize any generational planets you have here (or have transited), all of your actions have radical potential—but it’ll be up to you to decide if they’ll aid or hinder you. If they’re moving you forward (w/ Neptune in Aries hitting your 3rd), you’ll be able to transmute your self-consciousness of feeling othered into self-actualized power. If not, you’ll truly be rebels without a cause—feeling more lost than ever before. Especially for those of you w/ Scorpio placements. Pisces 1H: (Pluto in 12H) - what’s hidden from us and the unseen (including enemies), the unconscious, hospitals/mental institutions/jails and hidden but very present structures of life, isolation and sanctuary, foreign lands, spirituality, sabbaticals, unconscious wounds, where we undo ourselves, large animals, circumstances before birth which affect the native in unseen ways or were present —You have the opportunity to set things right but it’s going to require you do a little forgive and forgetting, wiping the slate clean, or whatever necessary to heal the wounds of alienation and scrutiny many of you have experienced w/ the Aquarius outers transiting and/or occupying your 12th. Because this is the house of self-undoing and unearthed psychic trauma, there’s a lot you’ve been processing. Many of you have a bad habit of wearing your wounds without tending to them properly or detaching and letting them fester in private—And the first new and full moons in Aqua over the next several years will help you realize just how debilitating that’s been. You don’t know who you are unless you’re impaling yourself on something–because deep down, you may find suffering to be necessary or it gives you purpose.

But your 12H in Aqua being hit with transformative Pluto is going to make you aware of how much this cycle is the result of you being emotionally neglected in some way, shape, or form. Especially for those with personal or generational Aquarius planets, it means that you found refuge in alienation and being on the outside looking in. But Pluto here can operate as a catalyst for rich and profound spiritual and emotional growth. But this planet here is double edged—Either you’re going to learn that you have an identity outside of the outsider or you’ll let it push you further into the void of detaching and expecting the worst because the worst is what you’ve always had to endure. Don’t do this anymore.

#astrology #pluto in aquarius #pluto through the houses #astrology transits #millennials #gen z

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kit-williams · 1 month

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What I love about you saying that the satanic panic of the 90s was caused by the Word Bearers is that you didn't specify if they started the panic or if they caused the panic.

(Either they got really into religion, or they got really silly and tried to summon a daemon or two)

So the implication was more so that they caused it because of deamon summoning.

I'm using you as a Lore Dump

So I'm going to be honest I thought a bit more on it and besides the IP for 40k not existing (Or maybe it does but I figure Regicide/whatever the hell Iron Warriors play/BattleTech replace it... maybe Fantasy exists because that was the original IP before 40k) So like I wanna say that only recently maybe within the past 2-3 generations so... post 80s is when Astartes started influencing people more/are part of the cultural zeitgeist. It started with of course the more architecturally minded astartes influencing well architecture/to be far more Astartes friendly.

First it was the Loyalists/the far more approachable looking marines that everyone said was fine and the others were horrible creatures that would kill your family in the night to Satan/Obviously the Hyper Aggressiveness of World Eaters/the god damn chaos and pentagrams and just the very "evil" looking things.... Ya know Night Lords wearing HUMAN SKIN.

I wanna say everything stays the same otherwise but I know full well a lot of shit would actually change. (Like idk if the current hyper capitalism/late stage capitalism would look the same/be the same CUZ LETS BE HONEST...ALPHA LEGION but I digress) I don't know how much everything would change/all the little nuances of what WOULD change.

Like I idealize that this version is a lot more peaceful maybe the entire middle eastern conflict didn't happen... maybe it's all just more wholesome. I don't know it's a bit beyond my scope for this because I can't just say that suddenly a few thousand of hyper intelligent and powerful transhuman men in power armor wouldn't disrupt the world order (Outside of Alpha Legion doing just that also).

I kinda just needed to lore dump these thoughts on how different (or not) the husbandry reality is.

And again they showed up post WW2 and the setting is up to modern day so 2024 so they've been around 80 years... though I'm willing to round that out to also they've been around since the 1920s to make it a nice round 100 years

#space marine husbandry #space marine husbandry sentience #lore dump #warhammer 40k

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year

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“When E. Jean Carroll talks about the loss of her reputation, it's hard for Millennial, Gen Z, and frankly, even Gen Xers like me, to fully appreciate what she lost. Yes, she was an advice columnist for ELLE magazine. But she was also the stuff of journalistic legend. She made her bones in the often macho "gonzo journalist" movement, inserting herself into -- and often doing crazy things -- in the name of a story. Her big break came from taking Fran Lebowitz *camping*; her byline appeared in Rolling Stone and Playboy. She was sophisticated, witty, beautiful, and as one reviewer wrote, like the late Nora Ephron, but "wilder." She was Carrie Bradshaw if Sex and the City began in the mid-80s, not the late 90s, and everyone gathered at Elaine's, not Balthazar. In fact, Bradshaw's creator/alter ego, Candace Bushnell, wrote in 2019 that Carroll "was the coolest woman journalist around – daring, had a ton of guts, and was as funny as the guys. . . . There really wasn’t and isn’t anyone else like her.” If you were a trailblazing Emmy winner once known as the "coolest woman in journalism" by a woman who herself redefined the zeitgeist for a generation of New York women, ask yourself whether you'd risk that legacy all for a lie. Yeah, I didn't think so. Trust women.” ~Lisa Rubin

#believe women #trust women #E.Jean Carroll #Lisa Rubin #articles #women

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echofromtheabyss · 24 days

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It's wild to realize that a gigantic chunk of what happened to me and my self-awareness of things like... what do I even find hot, is because of having sexually awakened to older imagery on TV (40s people, 60s/70s people, to a lesser extent some 80s but largely because it carries on the same zeitgeist) and as of the 90s I stopped finding anything hot in contemporary media. I just stopped finding the styles and people keeping up with them, remotely hot. There are whole decades I don't find attractive and the 1950s, post-mid 80s, and all of the 1990s are that. There is very little after 2000 that I find attractive in a purely carnal way.

The flip side of the 90s though is that it became less and less important over time for me to be sexy.

I had no idea how much I would find my way back to finding stuff attractive again, and discovering that is still in me, by playing around in retro styles.

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angeltannis · 2 days

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anyways I have to finish this FS fic bc I’ve got the best [highly subjective] bit of fanlore to add to this franchise. I can’t rest until I’ve forced the entire fandom to read it and added it to the zeitgeist of the 80 FS fics that currently exist.

#I love leaving my insane little touches on every franchise I enjoy c’:#but not tonight. tonight I’m finally going to bed

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compacflt · 2 months

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When it comes to historical research, do you research for things that DON'T exist? For example, foods that are common now but didn't exist in the average American restaurant or grocery in the '80s or '90's? Words, phrases, and entire concepts that are commonly accepted today but unheard of to the average American when Mav and Ice were at Top Gun?

Your writing is so unbelievably good.

not really because I don't care about food, I care about the literary device that is "taking communion." i.e. it doesn't matter what they eat, it only matters that they're eating together, for the plot.

And, okay, showing my little-kid bias, but was there actually stuff in grocery stores in the 80s/90s that wouldn't be there today/vice versa? brands might change, like okay Pringles might not exist but you still have potato chips; and obviously specialty stuff like what you find in your average Asian market might not be commonplace, but, like, were the 90s all that different from today, American-food-wise? its my assumption that they weren't, but I also wasn't alive in the 90s, so. Um, ectocooler Hi-C, maybe? that's the one 90s food I know.

attitudes of course are what change. today's concept of being so QUICK to publicly label sexual identities would be extremely foreign, for instance. obviously people did label their sexualities in the 80s & 90s, people were definitely calling themselves bisexual and such, but probably not the people ice & mav would be hanging out with, in the Reagan-era navy. which is what my fics are about. that's the whole point.

and, also, COMMUNICATION changes. I have never used a payphone in my whole life so I actually have no idea how they work. but they were ubiquitous "back then," and lend themselves to amazingly interesting conflict (omg I don't have enough change to call my boyfriend maverick who's mad at me!!!) which is why I lean on payphones so much in my writing. honestly, im gonna be real, the invention of the cell phone makes telling stories about miscommunication so much harder. instant-speed communication would make certain stories less interesting, which is why a lot of horror movies default to the "no cell service" trope to isolate their characters, or why some teen dramas have the characters reject cell phones on principle (Alyssa or James having a phone in 2017's "The End of the F***ing World" would solve most of their problems, which is why Alyssa smashes hers in the first five minutes and James basically says he views them as a cancer to society--if they had phones the story would be boring, so the writers took away their phones).

I also feel like people used to treat society differently "back then," i.e. Going Out was much more of a thing when there were 10 channels on TV and no one had cell phones, so you Went Out and had drinks & met strangers & interacted with general society to an extent im not sure we do anymore. So that experience is way more fun to write about in the 80s than today. (u can't see me but im seething with jealousy over ppl who were born in ~1965)

idk. im not sure I did a great job reproducing the zeitgeist of the 80s/90s in my fics, bc I wasn't there to have knowledge of what they were like. I got most of my presupposed knowledge about that time period from reading Calvin & Hobbes anthologies as a kid. oh well.

#I actively avoid talking about the aids crisis as much as I can for instance #that is certainly A Can of Worms.#a massive omission in my fics to be sure. but... not one I want to touch.#these characters would be judgmental and homophobic about it I fear.#btw I stole a bunch of stuff from teotfw for my fics #Carole asking ice if he actually wants maverick or if he just goes along with things is directly ripped from s1e02 #favorite tv show of all time #top gun #edts notes #from Calvin and Hobbes I gather most people in the 80s were obsessed with hostess snacks like Twinkies etc.#and dieting consisted of chainsmoking cigs on the front porch #bloom county was also a truly informative comic strip re: my 1980s cultural education #just the way characters like opus/Steve/binkley talk for instance #people in the 80s just talk different from the way they do now #fun to try and replicate even if I can't put it into words #my god I love bloom county #my birthday is tmr I will finally be old enough to legally drink in the US 😋#thank u for the ask 🥺

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