Too Cute Too Poot (*´♡`*)

Housing Speculation is when rich folk, corporations, and wannabe landlords buy up property and sit on it like dragons hoarding gold. The Dutch have a dragon-adjacent term for this because speculation devastated their housing market in the 70s-80s leading to some gnarly Dutch squatting culture. They let homes sit empty, good as money in the bank and watch the value increase as everyone else competes for the remaining houses. That's value they can borrow against, that's a few hundred-thousand dollars if you need some quick cash, that's a property you can rent out for regular income while charging tenants for repairs or maintenance and fining them for wear and tear. If property values go up and laws prohibit raising the rent by a certain degree, in many places they can find shady ways to evict that tenant, make no changes and charge the next renter more. It's probably illegal but if you rent to people below a certain income, you can be assured most can't afford to take you to court.

I live in Chicago. Many of the properties that used to house students, small families, single parents, older people, low-income folks have been gobbled up by little airbnb barons who colonize previously well-established neighborhoods and price out families who've lived there for generations because they can't keep up with the artificially inflated property values. The airbnbs spread like cancer until a handful of people can dominate the "affordable" housing for an entire neighborhood. It's gentrification on meth, but without the kind of localized money circulation or community improvements you get when people live and work and spend within their neighborhoods. It pushes residents further and further from services and resources until all that's left is the locked-in commodififation of an exploitable renting class.

If that wasn't bad enough, it also means that when large areas of habitable property are being hoarded by investors with portfolios of empty houses and airbnbs, that reduces the number of actual residents, which can spoil legislation on a community level. When all the storefront space in a neighborhood like mine is controlled by 4 people, you find the number of businesses and services that catered to lower income families start to become whiskey bars, boutiques, vintage shops, and upscale chain retail, businesses that bring money into the property owners at the expense of community accessibility, turning a once largely Hispanic neighborhood community into a posh little destination for travelers, tourists, and other aspiring business speculators who see every empty building as their next revinue stream. Gut a block of apartments with attached commercial space and build half as many luxury condos above a combination tapas bar and day spa and you've instantly got half as many tenants on that block to vote against your expansion schemes. Replacing low-income residents with higher-rent folks also bakes in support for future "improvements" that further contribute to the commodification of communities.

Property ownership has always been a tool of the most privileged class to extract value from the working class because the only options become rent, move, or live on the street for all they care. At which point, the police will sweep you further and further into the gutter until they have an excuse to send you to prison. This kind of speculation and consolidation allows people with excess resources to buy up the things the rest of us require to function and sell it back to us forever.

These are the same people that invented the fairy tale about how if we work hard enough and save and spend like smart people, then we can be landlords too! We can own businesses, raise families, chase dreams and be happy if we are smart like they are. But if we can't it's because we're lazy little parasites who need to have our lives portioned out to us lest we waste time that could be earning money for the landlord.

Even his line at the end, when Nani thanks him for helping her find a job (”That’s okay. You can just date me and we’ll call it even.”), is delivered with a certain amount of humor, and his behavior throughout the rest of the film shows that he would still accept it if she turned him down. Because more than just liking Nani, he RESPECTS her.

Sal

u

Led through the mist, by the milk-light of moon, all that was lost, is revealed. Our long bygone burdens, mere echoes of the spring, but where have we come, and where shall we end? If dreams can’t come true, then why not pretend? How the gentle wind, beckons through the leaves, as autumn colors fall. 

Somewhere lost in the clouded annals of history, lies a place that few have seen. A mysterious place, called The Unknown.

Saw ppl reblogging this old drawing of mine and suddenly remembered I actually went back and cleaned the lines up a bit quite a while ago…

For example, check out Jasmine and Mulan. Both of them have black hair, but we get subtle differences between them. 

Mulan, for example, has hair made with dark brown lines. We get the idea that her hair is probably a very deep, deep shade of brown, or that as light filters through her hair, we’re seeing that brown subsurface scattering.

Jasmine, meanwhile, has hair that is so deep black we sometimes see it as blue. This is black hair with cool undertones, as opposed to Mulan’s hair with warm undertones. Which in pure color speak is impossible, but is something that happens with hair, since hair is mildly translucent and reflective. 

You can even compare that further with Esmeralda, who has grey lines that give the illusion of neutral undertones.

They can also use color to give characters that fantasy feel or the feel of completely unnatural hair. Princess Aurora, for example, has technically darker hair than Charlotte LaBouff. But, with the lighter outlines? Aurora’s hair looks absolutely fairytale golden, while Lottie’s looks like a more natural flaxen blonde.