K B

Ah, fanart. Also known as the art that girls make.

Sad, immature girls no one takes seriously. Girls who are taught that it’s shameful to be excited or passionate about anything, that it’s pathetic to gush about what attracts them, that it’s wrong to be a geek, that they should feel embarrassed about having a crush, that they’re not allowed to gaze or stare or wish or desire. Girls who need to grow out of it.

That’s the art you mean, right?

Sports is a fandom. It requires zealous attention to “seasons,” knowledge of details considered obscure to those not involved in that fandom, unbelievable amounts of merchandise, and even “fanfic” in the form of fantasy teams. But this is a masculine-coded fandom. And as such, it’s encouraged - built into our economy! Have you *seen* Dish network’s “ultimate fan” advertisements, which literally base selling of a product around the normalization of all consuming (male) obsession? Or the very existence of sports bars, built around the link between fans and community enjoyment and analysis. Sport fandom is so ingrained in our culture that major events are treated like holidays (my gym closes for the Super Bowl) — and can you imagine being laughed at for admitting you didn’t know the difference between Supernatural and The X Files the way you might if you admit you don’t know the rules of football vs baseball, or basketball?

“Fandom” is not childish but we live in a culture that commodified women’s time in such away that their hobbies have to be “frivolous,” because “mature” women’s interests are supposed to be marriage, family, and overall care taking: things that allow others to continue their own special interests, while leaving women without a space of their own.

The concept of fanfiction formed and forged the earliest stages of literature in Europe. Because the majority of authors in France, Germany and Great Britain looked at that funky little Celtic dude Arthur and thought “hey, he’s neat. I wanna write about him”.

The entire concept of a book outside of religious purposes was born out of fanfiction in my country.

There is no “first canon” for Arthur where he came as the prince of Camelot, with his sidekicks Lancelot and Merlin and his endgame love interest Gwen.

Arthur was some random hunter when he started out.

Someone’s fanfiction made him a prince.

Someone else’s fanfiction gave him a round table.

Someone else’s fanfiction gave him Merlin at his side.

Someone else’s fanfiction gave him Morgana, gave him Gwen, gave him his swords.

And, to this day, we still write Arthurian fanfiction. Literally last year there was a movie adaptation that is, by all intends and purposes, fanfiction, because it wasn’t even close to a literal adaptation of the source material (The Kid Who Would Be King). Heck, BBC’s Merlin, itself an Arthurian fanfiction, remains one of the biggest fandoms that people today write for on AO3.

You were a joke in the middle ages if you tried to write your own stuff. Who’s interested in your stuff? You were only a respected author if you wrote fanfiction. The most famous medieval German authors are famous because they wrote fanfiction about some knightly OCs they created who served on Arthur’s court. That is the literary legacy of the middle ages. Arthurian fanfiction.

Yet somewhere along the way, this concept of “I find x story/element cool and want to elaborate on it more, shift the focus onto an aspect of this original source material” has gotten this “eh, it’s fanfiction” connotation and lost respect.

Even though this very concept is still being used - even outside of the actual medium of fanfiction - and it is still being used for the very same purpose it was used for in medieval times. Original movies often don’t get as much recognition as adaptations of existing source material that the audience is familiar with. People see a movie about a character they’re familiar with and seem more inclined to buy a ticket to see the 10th new interpretation of Batman or Superman or Snow White. How are these new interpretations of familiar source material that usually add to the lore, reinterpret characterizations and dynamics, any different from fanfiction?

It’s the age old “If thing not make you money, why you care about thing?” that’s so prevalent in the system. Of course some people do make money with their fanart, but I think that is still part of the scorn. 

Funnily enough, my Mum sent me this just today. It was in the front of the Doctor Who book she’d just purchased. (My Mum’s in her 70btw… tell her she’s too old for fandom, I dare you…)

Most of the guns being used by the main characters are modified Taurus PT99 pistols, the different types of which are often named after specific types of knives and swords, thus enabling them to not have to change the Shakespearean dialogue, but to also manage that specific visual pun. 

So Shakespeare would have absolutely been 100% all over that shit.

For example, Tybalt’s gun is a modified 9mm “Rapier” (from the Taurus PT99 Series ‘R’) and is actually one of my favorite visual aesthetics of quite probably any weapon in movie history to date. 

While everyone else seems to be using a much more heavier and “powerful” version of pistol, his is sleek and light in frame, making it much easier for him to fight the way that he does. Which is undoubtedly Extra™ in comparison to everyone else, but also intended to mimic the dueling stance of actual rapier swordsmen of the time who relied on speed rather than brute force. They were Gentlemen after all. If you were going to cut someone down you ought to do it with some finesse.

If you look closely at his hand you’ll notice that with the exception of his middle finger on the trigger, he’s actually holding it the way one would a sword hilt. He’s also got the poise of a honed duelist. 

This is someone who has been brought up with a very strong sense of Family Honor, and is expected to fight to defend it, but not as a common foot soldier (who carry “longswords” which are modified shotguns in the film), but as a Gentleman. 

A gentleman who suddenly finds himself having to fight in the streets with people carrying “daggers”.

Like Mercutio’s modified pistol, which while beautiful and (importantly thematic) transparent in its function, is also heavy and cumbersome in comparison to Tybalt’s rapier, which also has a much further range, something he also makes better use of with the addition of a quick release mount for a c-scope, which allows him to either be slow and accurate, or to forgo accuracy for speed during say, a one on one duel vs a street brawl.

Which means even if he can’t make as many quickfire short range movements as Mercutio can, he’s still going to fucking obliterate him with the practiced ease of someone who has been training for duels their entire life.

“Recently, a friend of mine told me that she felt guilty that she hadn’t accomplished more during the last year of the pandemic. Now, I’ve heard that a few times. And I have a feeling we’re gonna be hearing that more and more.”

My roommate has a queen size Nectar mattress. Friday night, she spilled some water on the bed and took the cover off to air dry. She unzipped the cover, and a flame retardant sleeve (that we hadn’t known was there to begin with) made of woven fiberglass began shedding small fiberglass particles. They were airborne. The whole room and everything in it is contaminated, and there are few surfaces elsewhere in the apartment that don’t have at least a little. Nowhere on the mattress’ tags or on the Nectar website does it say there is a fiberglass sleeve. In fact, it makes a big deal of how there are five components: top of cover, three layers of foam, bottom of cover. Nothing about the flame retardant sleeve there. The label on the cover doesn’t say you can’t take it off, just that they suggest you don’t. It does not mention fiberglass as a material found in the mattress at all. The website even has a page explaining that you CAN take off the cover and wash it, if you must, just that they suggest you don’t. No real reasons given. No mention of fiberglass.

Our apartment is sparkly with fiberglass. We have had to drop money on a HEPA filter vacuum that could safely remove some of it, and on new non-permeable mattress covers to contain the worst of the source. We have had to garbage-bag up almost everything in her room. No amount of runs through the laundry seems to get it all out of clothes, and we have to thoroughly wipe out the washer and dryer drums every load. All her pillows were ruined, the chair in her room, her clothing, some expensive bras, a nice area rug, and I’m sure there will be trouble on the horizon with our landlord regarding the carpet, even if we do vacuum it as well as we can.

Lilly has been having nosebleeds, before the mattress was unzipped, but the worst one I’ve seen yet was the one that evening. She’s been sleeping on it almost a year, and it could have begun coming through the fabric cover. Nosebleeds are a sign of fiberglass inhalation.

We have contacted the company, and their response was honestly insulting. We were told that we shouldn’t have taken the mattress cover off to begin with, and that it can no longer be covered by the 365 night guarantee, despite us having had it for under the full year. I have just now, after three days trying, finally spoken to someone willing to look into our case, so here’s hoping we’ll get even a fraction of what we are, frankly, owed.

It really feels like there could be some sort of lawsuit here.

In fact, there is one, with a situation nearly identical to ours but with a different company. This was the first hit when I searched our problem online.

https://topclassactions.com/…/zinus-class-action-says…/

Anyway, if you have a Nectar mattress, don’t ever open the easily accessible warning-label-free zipper! If you have had it under a year, and it’s in its original condition, it can still be returned. If you were planning to get one, maybe don’t! A lot of the foam-mattress-in-a box types have the fiberglass, though most of them disclose the presence of the fiberglass rather than hiding it like a dirty secret. Make sure you do a search for mattresses WITHOUT fiberglass as a flame retardant.

My partner had changed the sheets, and then later while outside we saw that he was covered in shiny fiberglass (like the video above). I remembered this post and immediately knew we had to check the mattress. Sure enough there were glittery fibers EVERYWHERE in the bedroom, all over the floor, sheets & laundry, etc.

We are still trying to figure out just how bad the damage is & how much we need to throw away vs. what can maybe be salvaged.

Again, we NEVER removed the cover. And there is no evidence of the cover having been damaged anywhere.

It just was 3-4 years of regular use and then suddenly, one day while changing the sheets, there was glass everywhere. It’s probably been leaking into our laundry, and likely our bodies, for who knows how long.

Lots of people saying these mattresses are safe as long as you don’t remove the cover - it’s NOT true. Maybe it’s fine for a year or two, but at some point the fibers break down and start to come out THROUGH the cover.

I found this huge blog post by a guy who mostly does tech stuff. in it, he talks about his attempts to get several mattress companies to tell the truth about their products, and has compiled his results into a nice table. on the subject of nectar, he recommends avoiding the company entirely. they’re shady as shit

this mile long page is set up as a ranking of The Best Mattresses To Buy In 2021 uwu but it does go in depth about the fiberglass content of each product, and near the bottom it mentioned this interaction with a customer service rep from nectar:

this nectar representative admits to there being fiberglass in the mattress, but don’t worry, it’s the good kind! this author points to nectar specifically for being duplicitous

there was one other interesting thing I found during my search. I’m not going to link it here, and I have no screenshots because I was using an incognito tab (I don’t particularly feel like being peddled nectar mattresses for the next year).

the very first links that come up on google with the prompt “nectar mattress fiberglass” lead to a site called victorianhomesmag. on my first quick scroll through the page, it looked like there was only one mention of fiberglass, which was in the title of the page. “Does Nectar Mattress Have Fiberglass”. that’s a pretty straightforward title, no? but the rest of the page doesn’t answer the question; it just reads like a page that would be titled “Why You Should Buy Our This Mattress”. I did notice that some of the headers for the different sections had odd spaces in them, though. weird, right?

then I used the find in page function to search for the word “fiberglass” and suddenly, when there was only one before, there were five instances of the word! each of them was in those weird empty spaces. I can only assume this is to manipulate search algorithms. again, shady as shit.

one last thing about this page- when I hit the back button, instead of going back to the google results, I got redirected to nectarsleep dot com. there’s a sale going on right now! don’t miss out :3

My Northern California botanical series.

“English Lavender”, “Eucalyptus”, and “California Poppy”.

Hes wearing a whole dress with BANGLES if yall cant tell

Things he did?That 

Just look

Amazing