oh sweet 70%, those are bedroom eyes

there’s this fascinating thing that happens where people (fans and ccs alike) don’t seem to understand how power dynamics function and what they mean. one of the most common manifestations of this misunderstanding is the belief that fan/cc interactions are an equal two-way street, that if fans want the ability to say whatever then they shouldn’t be able to complain if ccs respond to them however they want. this is of course incorrect; ccs hold the bulk of the power and influence in this dynamic, so they by nature have to be more careful with their behaviour.* you see similar manifestations with the idea that women saying they hate men is equally as harmful as men saying they hate women, or queer people saying they hate heterosexuals is equally as harmful as straight people saying they hate homosexuals, and so on and so forth. if you are a member of a privileged class, whatever that means for the context in which you operate, you will be expected to endure more in order to counteract that privilege. sometimes it sucks but it’s better than the alternative, which is weaponising your power and authority to hurt marginalised groups

#mystreamer:

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“Anxiously awaiting power snuggles,” FAO Schwarz’s huge grizzly bear is a slouching, seemingly invertebrate mammoth rippling with “serious spreads of soft spots” that are “just asking to be hauled and mauled,” while their elephant, as large as a St. Bernard, is described as “big, plump, and deliciously soft with soulful brown eyes that encourage big-time hugging and smooching.” Vacant and malleable, animals like these inhabit a world of soothing tactile immediacy in which there are no sharp corners or abrasive materials but in which everything has been conveniently soft-sculpturized to yield to our importunate squeezes and hugs. If such soulless insentience is any indication, cuteness is the most scrutable and externalized of aesthetics in that it creates a world of stationary objects and tempting exteriors that deliver themselves up to us, putting themselves at our disposal and allowing themselves to be apprehended entirely through the senses. In light of the intense physicality of our response to their helpless torpor, our compulsive gropings even constitute something one might call cute sex or, in point of fact, given that one of the partners lies there groggy and catatonic, a kind of necrophilia, a neutered coupling consummated in our smothering embrace of a serenely motionless object incapable of reciprocating. Far from being content with the helplessness of our young as we find them in their natural state, we take all kinds of artificial measures to dramatize this vulnerability even further by defacing them, embarrassing them, devitalizing them, depriving them of their selfhood, and converting them, with the help of all of the visual and sartorial tricks at our disposal, into disempowered objects, furry love balls quivering in soft fabrics as they lapse into withdrawal for their daily fix of TLC. - Casting melting glances from sad button eyes, today’s winsome “critters” have also been redesigned as more serviceable cute sex toys, much like the gaping-mouthed dolls available in adult book stores: Their arms are now permanently sewn in an outstretched position, rather than dangling at their sides as they once did, simulating an embrace as lifeless as the latex clasp of our “fantasy playmates.”

Something becomes cute not necessarily because of a quality it has but because of a quality it lacks, a certain neediness and inability to stand alone, as if it were an indigent starveling, lonely and rejected because of a hideousness we find more touching than unsightly. - Cuteness, in short, is not something we find in our children but something we do to them. Because it aestheticizes unhappiness, helplessness, and deformity, it almost always involves an act of sadism on the part of its creator, who makes an unconscious attempt to maim, hobble, and embarrass the thing he seeks to idolize - The process of conveying cuteness to the viewer disempowers its objects, forcing them into ridiculous situations and making them appear more ignorant and vulnerable than they really are. Adorable things are often most adorable in the middle of a pratfall or a blunder. - Although the gaze we turn on the cute thing seems maternal and solicitous, it is in actuality transformative and will stop at nothing to appease its hunger for expressing pity and big-heartedness, even at the cost of mutilating the object of its affections. - Turning its targets into statues and plush dolls, cuteness is ultimately dehumanizing, paralyzing its victims into comatose or semi-conscious things.

USA folks, that is a consistent temperature range hitting 113°. Death Valley temperatures. In Banda, it hovered between 116°-118° (47°-48° C) for a week straight.