No, no, you have no idea. It actually IS the beginning of the whole so-called “kawaii culture”. And it started because girls started using mechanical pencils, which provided fine handwriting. After being banished (more precisely, during the 80s), this kind of writing started being used in products like magazines and make-up. And, during this time, icons we usually associate with the whole kawaii industry (like the characters from Sanrio) came to life too.
And what many people don’t realize is that this subculture was born as a way for young girls to express themselves in their own way. And it was also used as something against the adult life and the traditional culture, often seen as dull and boring and oppressive. By embracing cuteness, these young girls (and adult women, after a while) were showing non-conformation with the current standards.
So yep. Kawaii is important, and it all started with cute, simple handwritting a few hearts and cat faces in some girls’ school notebooks <3
!!!!!
NO OK THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!
This is also how the kawaii fashions started! Girls began dressing in cute and off beat styles for themsleves, they were criticized by adult figures telling them “you’ll never find a husband if you dress that way!” to which they began to reply “Good!”
All the Japanese subcultures and fashions that evolved out of this became a rebellion to tradition and the starch gender roles and expectations the adults were forcing on the younger generations. As early as the 70s and still to this day you’ll see an emphasis on child-like fashion and themes in more kawaii styles and the dismissal of the male gaze with styles like lolita (a lot of western people assume lolita is somehow sexual due to the name of the fashion, but ask any Japanese lolita and they will tell you that men hate the style and find it unattractive which is sometimes a large reason they gravitate towards the style - they can express their femininity and individuality while remaining independent and without the pressure to appeal to men)
Its so so so important to understand the hyper cute and ‘odd’ fashions of Japanese girls carry such a huge message of feminism and reclaiming of their own lives.
so are you telling me that Japan’s punk phase was really the kawaii phase
Kawaii is so goth
Metal heads Stan for our sisters in lace
I did not know this but I love this form of feminism!
-FemaleWarrior, She/They
Which is why you get bands like BABYMETAL, which toured with Judas Priest for a while, looking like this:
Metal heads Stan for our sisters in lace
The funniest part about this is that the pictured “illegible” handwriting is some of the most legible hiragana I’ve seen.
I like to imagine that the reason you can whip around those floors at warp speed and so smoothly is that you’re running through the museum with a pair of wool socks on.
i thought the eyewitness vhs museum was a real place when i was a kid. i wasn’t a total idiot, i knew there were a few vfx things going on, but i thought it was filmed in an actual museum
That rabbit/hare post is messing me up. I’d thought they were synonyms. Their development and social behavior are all different. They can’t even interbreed. They don’t have the same number of chromosomes. Dogs, wolves, jackals, and coyotes can mate with each other and have fertile offspring but rabbits and hares cant even make infertile ones bc they just die in the womb. Wack.
These
are more genetically compatible than These
and that’s why morphology-based phylogeny has Issues
The problem is perspective. People always think dogs are the ‘standard’ animal, the metric to use for whether or not two organisms “look like” they’re related. When in fact they’re a massive outlier due to the fact that we fucked up this lineage of wolf beyond recognition with selective breeding. It’s why people always say “breed” when they mean “species”, especially when talking about groups like lizards which can’t even be defined cladistically since some of them are closer to snakes than each other. To say nothing of fish.
I once read an article that emphasized there is no such thing as a fish. Sharks and rays, lamprey, lobe-finned fish like lungfish and coelacanth, bichir and sturgeon, and of course the multiple infraclasses of more “modern” fish groups are all only very distantly related to one another. They’ve maintained semi-similar body structures only because there are limited ways to efficiently move through water as a vertebrate.
This
And this
Are more distantly related from one another than you and I are from a lungfish
Which is absolutely fuckin wild.
Not only that, but all of us air-breathing land vertebrates, all the lizards and chickens and people and frogs, are closer to one another than those three “fish” are to one another as well.
these
are genetically closer than these
and…
these
are genetically closer than these
and my personal favorite, it really fucks with people…
these
are more genetically similar than these
COOL.
just the other day, one of my friends mentioned this book, “Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History,” which apparently has a (tongue in cheek) chapter that argues that Cows are actually Fish.
Isn’t it time we subvert the tragedy of the selkie and swan maiden tropes of having their coats and their agency stolen and instead have a story of a swan maiden and a leopard seal selkie terrorising their respective towns until they’re both exiled on the same island together and at first they hate each other
But I think you can all guess where this is going
Featuring:
Swan maiden: How the fuck do they expect us to build a shelter???? NEITHER OF US HAVE HANDS
Selkie: *already shimmying out of her seal skin* Not dressed like that you don’t
Swan maiden: You gonna put anything else on? No? Ok. She’s building a house. Naked. In the snow.
Swan maiden: Sure hope this doesn’t awaken anything in me
imagine if the selkie managed to teach the magic of turning human to the swan princess leaving the princess with a swan coat
“Slytherins didn’t participate in the battle of Hogwarts bc they’d be fighting family” Do you have ANY idea of how much I’d fucking LOVE to fight some ppl in my own goddamn fucking family forget the goddamn wand I’m gonna punch my homophobic racist uncles in the throat à la muggle
also there’s no way that each and every slytherin has a death eater family member that’s just dumb
