The Forest

!!! 

me, falling in love with every woman I see whose purpose is to eat and be pretty:

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Lin is the only other major character who looks human throughout the movie - I’m not certain she started out human, but I suspect she may have, and may have fully traded away her humanity. I do think it’s significant that she, unlike Chihiro and Haku, doesn’t reclaim her name at the end of the story.

She’s the first bathhouse worker who is kind to Chihiro, helping her get her clothes and navigate her first work assignment and sneak food. One of the core themes of Spirited Away is finding your footing in a new and terrifying place, and Lin and Haku are key allies in Chihiro’s struggle to gain the skills and self-assurance she needs in order to thrive.

Lin’s human appearance helps us and Chihiro feel more sympathetic towards her . Her familiarity with the system of favors and bribes makes her appealing as a role model who can demystify Chihiro’s new environment for her. Unlike the more inhuman occupants of the bathhouse, Lin looks like someone Chihiro could become in the future, and that’s a good thing! She’s living proof that the bathhouse is not such a monstrous and scary place. Because Lin treats the bathhouse like home, Chihiro begins to see it as a home, too.

And once Chihiro starts to think of the bathhouse as her territory, she realizes that she has agency in this place as well. She uses its rules to her own advantage to free Haku and herself.

And that is the point of Chihiro’s journey in Spirited Away: it’s a metaphor for starting over in a new place and overcoming fear of the unfamiliar. After all, the frame story is Chihiro’s family moving to a new city. At the beginning of the movie, Chihiro is despondent, unhappy to be leaving her old friends behind. By the end, after making it through the spirit world, she’s taking a much more active role in helping her parents settle into their new home.

Because Chihiro has a mentor and friend, she learns how to survive and even do well in the Bathhouse. It’s because of Lin that Chihiro is able to not accept her place within this system and instead fight back, and in the end to make things a little better for everyone.

There’s something there about community, and easing the path for those who come after you. Lin doesn’t regret her choices because they were the best choices she could make, and that’s okay. It’s not a tragedy. She got as far as she could get, and because she did, she’s there to help Chihiro get farther. 

i am scouring the internet like the victorians scoured and destroyed all trace of joy and color from stolen relics for the LOST NAME OF THE ANCIENT PROCESS of textile-creation akin to knitting/crocheting/nålebinding that at least one academic/crafter used to recreate the leggings on this Glorious Motherfucker:

Archer statue from the Temple of Aphaia (ca. 480 BC) next to a reconstruction of its original paint job:

The leggings and sleeves would have created using a method called SPRANG which predates knitting and is over 3,000 years old. What's even sexier is modern artisans managed to recreate the entire outfit using the original method!

Mmm-HMM, love me a shapely thigh in harlequin hosiery. Put👏men👏in👏clingy-ass👏clothing👏again👏👏👏

Unfortunately english sources are hard to find, partly because Google's a shithole, but also because this textile project comes from a German museum, in Germany, where people tend to speak (and publish) in German. That said, the original link is to a short-but-sweet article I would have had no problem finding in 30 seconds a mere few years ago. fortunately i have clever beautiful insane people following me, but alas not everyone has such luxury. thanks to everyone in the notes who shoved themselves down this rabbithole with me!

needed to peer review these tags because what you said is so based and real. "people are nonbinary because they just are & i don't feel the need to interrogate it further" is EXACTLY how i feel.

Wishing you all a get more hairy and naked summer <3

If you are a socially anxious person, you have to socialize. Your panic/anxiety attacks will only get worse and trigger more frequently if you constantly avoid contact with The Public. Not saying that you need to be a social butterfly- but there is a genuine problem with not being able to order your own meal at a restaurant. And it cannot be solved by always having someone else do it for you.