hales

(it's funny how this sort of thing is aesthetically exciting to me without me actually thinking the individual fabrics or the use of them in this shot are/is good, per se. it's like the principle of contrast/variety itself is interesting.)

3 different patterns and 5 different textures all in one photo, man

need a word for the neutral concept of losing an identity. not depersonalization or deidentification. not rejecting an identity. just the concept of self-framework ceasing to apply.

(if you *don't* let people be human they'll choose villainy. which is what vampires are in the show, metaphorically. nihilistic parasitism.)

the goal of the show is to make a more human hero myth. & telling people they can be heroes will never last if you also tell them that heroism is incompatible with being a human in the world. so penance/forgiveness is the way to have your imperfection cake & eat your morality too

this seems like one of the reasons that souls are so important in the show's mystical universe. they're the thing that can choose and repent and etc.

characters do bad things, but then they make genuine, hard-earned amends and the other characters genuinely recognize it. it's a surprisingly rare and humane way to handle the fact that people do immoral things.

something i really appreciated about buffy this time through: the way penance and forgiveness are a huge part of the show's morality. if not the main part.

surf towns give good dive bar

eg: - acting 'nice' so other people think of you as nice - acting 'nice' because you want to get better at being nice - elaborate niceness to some demographic your beliefs dictate niceness towards

'performative' better disambiguated into: - cynical social strategy - sincere identity modification - speaking in tongues

posting (a) because it's a great picture, and (b) because man...life was hard in the not-distant past

he'd nicked his hand on a fence while hauling crops and died from blood poisoning a week later.

story about a really incompetent shopkeeper who keeps getting investigated for money laundering because the police assume the only reason a place could be that bad is if it's a front

PR/media understands this, probably. the only way to make people ignore something you want them to ignore is to make it boring, irrelevant. and vice versa.

it is, in part, why people pursue pointless hobbies or cling to old grievances. or why boredom and anhedonia feel so bad.

cults, teams, fandoms, politics. these things aren’t compelling just because they give you “purpose” or because they seem “important.” but also because being interested in something in a sustained way feels fuckin great. addictive.