Café Leningrad

Put in the tags the completely finished (whether cancelled or wrapped up on its own terms) TV series that has YOUR perfect ending, however you define that

look at the cute cow angel i saw when i tried to link to the correct page of that manuscript.

there’s this term i coined in my friendgroup i call “the charizard effect” and it can apply to anything and everything, but it was born from me explaining my feelings about the pokemon charizard. the term is basically about how overexposure to something be it by corporate shilling or fandom prominence drives me away from really enjoying something bc i’m exposed to it so much against my will i become tired of it. it came to me bc i was ranting about how tpci does not, and cannot stop reinventing charizard, and how it is popular and obtusely included in almost every region, merch, etc in every way possible and it’s highly commodified.

A key differentiator: Introverts aren't naturally awkward or uncomfortable in social situations.

I think there’s also a lot of self fulfilling prophecy in the “draining.” Doing new things in new situations can be very stressful and draining. But the more you do it, the less draining it gets. The less you do it, the more new social situations freak you out. It’s a muscle you build. Just like the first day at the gym leaves you a wreck, but not the 100th.

the ukraine war is showing us in real time as warfare evolves into swarms of autonomous drones that can operate over dozens of miles and make the final decision on who to kill. moreover it increasingly looks like traditional militaries have no good response to these weapons -- the stable solution is that everyone (with a military they take seriously) is forced not only to adopt them, but go all-in on developing them, and the ai race turns into a more literal arms race.

thinking about the w.i.t.c.h. elements and what personality goes with what element. Taranee is not the typical hothead character often associated with fire. Canon says explicitly she is calm, careful and sensible and that means she is responsible enough for the gift of Fire; she calls on fire when it is necessary (Cornelia is somewhat sensible but not careful and calm enough to use Fire responsibly, Hay Lin would be too afraid of its potential destructive powers I think, and Irma would not have enough control for it.)

Monsters, as Rosi Braidotti has pointed out, are inherently “epistemophilic.” In other words, they arouse our curiosity about origins and causes. “How could this happen?” we ask, when a talking muskrat comes courting or when a crane starts talking and decides to abandon her aquatic home to marry a mortal. Ruptures in the natural order of things are always charged with significance. But they do more than fascinate, for, despite the fact that they are physically other, they challenge us to explore the moral transgression from which the monstrous—a breaching of the laws of nature—seems to emerge. Teratology—the study of monsters—helps us understand who we are and how we define ourselves, by distancing ourselves from the pathologies we project onto difference. Monsters unsettle boundaries, reminding us that the distinctions we make between nature and culture, the human and the nonhuman, or reason and instinct are both fragile and fraught. Monstrosity arouses curiosity, invites speculation, and has helped us shape moral landscapes, even as it remains a general placeholder for alterity, any and all deviations from dominant social norms. Representing more than otherness, monsters come to embody threats and dangers, tapping into our fears about invasion, contamination, and wholesale consumption. As one theologian points out, the Greek word for monster, teras, captures a paradox, designating something both repulsive and attractive. Monsters may be awful, but they also inspire awe, making us stare with enraptured attentiveness. “Monsters are our children,” Jeffrey Cohen tells us in a study about how the monsters we create invite us to meditate on the fragile and indeterminate boundaries we set up when it comes to race, gender, and sexuality. We make the mistake of locating the origins of monsters in exotic regions and terrain, but they cohabit the world with us, as alter egos that capture all the anxieties we disown, disavow, and project onto creatures who are different from us. They challenge us to ask how we created them, as Cohen observes, and by following their cues, we can begin to discover in our projections exactly who we are and what makes us as ferocious, predatory, and cruel as the monsters out there.