Welcome to My Pinned Post, which is edited as needed.

My current hyperfixation, as of a year and change ago: the 2018 Netflix reboot of She-Ra (aka #spop)

My queue is ridiculously, ludicrously long despite posting twenty times a day, just a heads-up

My “about” page is here

My sideblog for religious stuff is @aprilsjesusblogging

The tag for my fic writing is #april writes

My ao3 account is here

You can read all the posts where I live-blogged rewatching all of She-Ra a year ago starting with the first episode here (if you’re on mobile that link won’t really work but you can read them starting from the end here)

And if you want to see me re-re watch random episodes (or just…specific scenes) after doing weed, I keep reblogging this post in order to do that, so uhhh look in the notes? Personally I think those posts are funny as hell sometimes

And you can see progress on my Catra cosplay (and photos of the whole thing once it’s done) here

If you screenshot one of my tumblr posts to put it anywhere else, please mark out my username

I really do not want to change my tumblr name because I’ve had it since 2012, but also I do not need people I know IRL finding my tumblr, yes I know it’s my own fault for having a name/icon/account that is painfully obviously me, but like, c'mon

That said, I know I have a few posts that have gone semi-viral and/or have tens of thousands of notes, and I talk more about them in the readmore:

Keep reading

token-spop:

Smug Adora faces.

Apologies to my followers who are gonna see my long-ass rayon post multiple times; a big account reblogged it and my notes have gone bonkers again

On a related note, it is in fact kind of irritating when people in the tags are like “this is why I only buy/wear cotton/linen” like One, those are not magically always sustainable lol, but Two, I live in a place with an average of 157 days per year of measurable precipitation, 99% of which is between October and May. Do you know what fucking sucks? Wearing cotton in the rain. It takes approximately forever to dry and in the meantime you are FREEZING. Wet plant fibers (cotton/linen/rayon) insulates worse than wearing nothing. Which wouldn’t be a big deal if I didn’t, y'know, walk two miles to work and back most days; and enjoy being outside just in general and that means dealing with rain.

“But wool–” it’s expensive, often wears out faster than synthetics, requires more careful handling, and have you ever had wool moths? I’m struggling with them right now. It’s not what I would call a fun time!! Don’t even get me started on how when I have an eczema flare-up even superwash merino blends can feel like it’s made of Stab Me With A Million Needles.

purple-hel:

prismatic-bell:

aprillikesthings:

somarysueme:

somarysueme:

aprillikesthings:

“Bamboo is antifungal”

Because it’s rayon

“Eucalyptus fabric is cooling!”

Yeah, because it’s rayon

“We make clothing called seacell out of seaweed!”

Yeah I looked on your website it’s made by the lyocell process, which means-

-wait for it-

It’s fucking rayon!!

Listen. There is a list of actual plant fibers that are directly made into fabric: cotton, linen, ramie, some hemp. I’m sure I’m missing a couple.

But if you’re wondering “huh how did they turn that plant material into fabric,” 99% of the time? It’s RAYON.

All rayon is made by putting plant material in chemical soup, dissolving out everything but the cellulose, and turning the cellulose into filaments/fibers.

The source of the cellulose has zero effect on the eventual fabric.

Rayon made from bamboo or eucalyptus or seaweed is not any better than rayon from any other sources.

Don’t let companies mislead you!

Hold on I need to DuckDuckGo something

Damn this was supposed to be a joke but turns out it’s hard to get scientifically rigorous comparisons of environmental impact across textile products from a casual search. “It’s all fucking rayon” appears mostly true but also I’m finding plenty of claims that it’s more sustainable than cotton anyway.

But that’s not what this post was actually about anyway so like

it’s all fucking rayon confirmed I guess 👍

So it’s worth separating out two things here:

1. the qualities of rayon as a fabric, outside of any other consideration
2. the environmental impacts

This post is mostly about the first thing. A lot of companies are giving rayon many many different names as a way of disguising that It’s Just Rayon, and claiming the fabric has special qualities.

But cellulose is cellulose. The process of extruding it into filaments and making those filaments into fibers/yarn/fabric is what gives it different qualities: some rayon is silky, some is fuzzy, etc.

It’s all great at absorbing sweat, and it all takes longer to dry, and it insulates okay until it gets damp at which point it’s worse than wearing nothing, which is why it’s often blended into other things. The really nice tops I have from Uniqlo’s Heattech line are a blend of a couple of synthetics and rayon. They’re warm for being so thin and stretchy, but don’t make me sweaty-feeling at all. (In a conversation among people with ADHD I found out I’m not the only one who wears them nearly daily for ¾ths of the year lol.)

The irony of how often it’s compared to polyester in the notes of this post is that polyester can also be made into a billion different textures. I have polyester that feels like wearing a plastic tarp, but I also own polyester that’s light and breezy and totally comfy in boiling heat. I also have some very soft polyester fleece, as many people do. It’s all a matter of how the filaments are extruded and how they’re made into fabric.

But to get into the environmental stuff:

People get really into which fabrics are more “sustainable.”

And rayon currently is made, 99% of the time, via one of two processes: viscose and lyocell (Tencel is a brand name for the lyocell process). Viscose is an older method and far more common, to the point that if a fabric doesn’t specify that it’s lyocell (or cuproammonium) you can probably assume it’s viscose. Viscose is, generally speaking, far more polluting and hazardous to the humans working in the factory as well. Lyocell uses what’s called a “closed-loop” method, so it puts out way fewer pollutants. It’s also more expensive, generally speaking. There is such a thing as “ecoviscose” but I haven’t looked into it.

(Modal just means rayon made from beech trees and afaict doesn’t differentiate which process. Cupro is made using a less-common process called “cuproammonium,” and I’m not sure how polluting it is, but apparently in China it’s sometimes called “ammonia silk” which is wild.)

Rayon does have two definite advantages, despite everything I said up there:

1. you can make it out of any cellulose source, and that includes things that would otherwise be considered garbage/waste
2. it biodegrades pretty fast. Like, faster than cotton.

BUT THAT ALL SAID: every fabric requires something shitty, quite frankly. Cotton takes a TON of water and usually pesticides. Silk requires a lot of farming of mulberry and then electricity to warm the places where the silkworms live and also you have to cook the silkworms alive so they don’t cut the fibers. Linen requires its own chemical soup to be turned into usable fibers unless you’re making it from flax the old fashioned way which requires a lot of time and a shit-ton of effort. (Like seriously there’s rippling, retting, breaking, scutching, and hackling. And THEN you can spin it into thread.) Wool requires a lot of land etc for sheep, but also any wool item you own that’s machine washable has had the barbs melted off the fibers with chemicals, and in many cases is also coated with a resin!

And that’s not getting into dying. But if you’ve ever dyed fabric at home you know that it usually requires careful handling and in many cases goggles. Those chemicals are often toxic as fuck.

If you’re trying to be sustainable in your clothing choices, the fact is that the absolute best thing you can do is:

1. BUY LESS CLOTHES. Period. End of story.
2. Buy secondhand when you can.
3. Make those clothes last: use cold water washes and don’t put them in the dryer and don’t use fabric softener. Repair them when you can, and use them for rags when they wear out.

“What fiber is it made of” just matters way fucking less than buying fewer items of clothing and using them until they wear out.

But most people don’t want to do those things. They want to know which brand of clothes is “sustainable.”

The sustainable thing is to buy and throw away less clothes. That’s it.

Also, LEARN TO MODIFY YOUR CLOTHES.

One reason women in the past could get away with wearing the same dress for years upon years upon years is they’d just. Move the closures. Or, in the case of laced dresses, lace them tighter or looser as their pregnancy/time of the month/weight gain/weight loss demanded. You could take the dress apart at the seams and add more fabric or remove fabric if you really gained/lost so much weight that it was necessary to make the dress fit.

If you learn the following ten skills, you’ll take a lot of the pain out of trying to keep a smaller but well-kept wardrobe:

1) replacing buttons

2) replacing zippers

3) restitching a seam

4) restitching a hem

5) taking in a seam

6) hemming something shorter

7) adding fabric to let out a seam*

8) darning

9) adding neck panels

10) the power of accessories to totally change an item

Also, if you’re one of those people who loves constantly cycling your wardrobe, I found a hack for this. Buy from a secondhand shop, wear the item until it no longer fits your fashion, and re-donate it for someone else to buy. You get the benefit of a refreshed wardrobe without having to add to the waste stream.

*older clothes had seam allowances for this, but modern ones usually don’t. Do what you gotta.

Ok, but as a source of cellulose, isn’t bamboo more sustainable than other plant options? Cos it grows so fast? I always hear that bamboo is better as a raw material for whatever because it’s more sustainable than most other options. Is that not true?

There are a ton of other sources of cellulose, some of which would otherwise be burned/dumped. Like, I saw a kickstarter for fancy-ass bras once, and they said the fiber used was “the waste products of organic cotton,” which is to say: rayon made from every part of the cotton plant that isn’t the cotton boll.

And monoculture bamboo farms aren’t exactly great?

The topic is nuanced–as I said, there’s no magically “good” sustainable fiber, even without going into how different climates/people have different needs; and there’s a LOT of reasons for people to exaggerate/lie/mislead about clothing sustainability, because nobody whose job is selling clothes wants to tell you that the best thing to do for sustainability is just buying less clothes.

heymerle:

bookshelfdreams:

aprillikesthings:

somarysueme:

somarysueme:

aprillikesthings:

“Bamboo is antifungal”

Because it’s rayon

“Eucalyptus fabric is cooling!”

Yeah, because it’s rayon

“We make clothing called seacell out of seaweed!”

Yeah I looked on your website it’s made by the lyocell process, which means-

-wait for it-

It’s fucking rayon!!

Listen. There is a list of actual plant fibers that are directly made into fabric: cotton, linen, ramie, some hemp. I’m sure I’m missing a couple.

But if you’re wondering “huh how did they turn that plant material into fabric,” 99% of the time? It’s RAYON.

All rayon is made by putting plant material in chemical soup, dissolving out everything but the cellulose, and turning the cellulose into filaments/fibers.

The source of the cellulose has zero effect on the eventual fabric.

Rayon made from bamboo or eucalyptus or seaweed is not any better than rayon from any other sources.

Don’t let companies mislead you!

Hold on I need to DuckDuckGo something

Damn this was supposed to be a joke but turns out it’s hard to get scientifically rigorous comparisons of environmental impact across textile products from a casual search. “It’s all fucking rayon” appears mostly true but also I’m finding plenty of claims that it’s more sustainable than cotton anyway.

But that’s not what this post was actually about anyway so like

it’s all fucking rayon confirmed I guess 👍

So it’s worth separating out two things here:

1. the qualities of rayon as a fabric, outside of any other consideration
2. the environmental impacts

This post is mostly about the first thing. A lot of companies are giving rayon many many different names as a way of disguising that It’s Just Rayon, and claiming the fabric has special qualities.

But cellulose is cellulose. The process of extruding it into filaments and making those filaments into fibers/yarn/fabric is what gives it different qualities: some rayon is silky, some is fuzzy, etc.

It’s all great at absorbing sweat, and it all takes longer to dry, and it insulates okay until it gets damp at which point it’s worse than wearing nothing, which is why it’s often blended into other things. The really nice tops I have from Uniqlo’s Heattech line are a blend of a couple of synthetics and rayon. They’re warm for being so thin and stretchy, but don’t make me sweaty-feeling at all. (In a conversation among people with ADHD I found out I’m not the only one who wears them nearly daily for ¾ths of the year lol.)

The irony of how often it’s compared to polyester in the notes of this post is that polyester can also be made into a billion different textures. I have polyester that feels like wearing a plastic tarp, but I also own polyester that’s light and breezy and totally comfy in boiling heat. I also have some very soft polyester fleece, as many people do. It’s all a matter of how the filaments are extruded and how they’re made into fabric.

But to get into the environmental stuff:

People get really into which fabrics are more “sustainable.”

And rayon currently is made, 99% of the time, via one of two processes: viscose and lyocell (Tencel is a brand name for the lyocell process). Viscose is an older method and far more common, to the point that if a fabric doesn’t specify that it’s lyocell (or cuproammonium) you can probably assume it’s viscose. Viscose is, generally speaking, far more polluting and hazardous to the humans working in the factory as well. Lyocell uses what’s called a “closed-loop” method, so it puts out way fewer pollutants. It’s also more expensive, generally speaking. There is such a thing as “ecoviscose” but I haven’t looked into it.

(Modal just means rayon made from beech trees and afaict doesn’t differentiate which process. Cupro is made using a less-common process called “cuproammonium,” and I’m not sure how polluting it is, but apparently in China it’s sometimes called “ammonia silk” which is wild.)

Rayon does have two definite advantages, despite everything I said up there:

1. you can make it out of any cellulose source, and that includes things that would otherwise be considered garbage/waste
2. it biodegrades pretty fast. Like, faster than cotton.

BUT THAT ALL SAID: every fabric requires something shitty, quite frankly. Cotton takes a TON of water and usually pesticides. Silk requires a lot of farming of mulberry and then electricity to warm the places where the silkworms live and also you have to cook the silkworms alive so they don’t cut the fibers. Linen requires its own chemical soup to be turned into usable fibers unless you’re making it from flax the old fashioned way which requires a lot of time and a shit-ton of effort. (Like seriously there’s rippling, retting, breaking, scutching, and hackling. And THEN you can spin it into thread.) Wool requires a lot of land etc for sheep, but also any wool item you own that’s machine washable has had the barbs melted off the fibers with chemicals, and in many cases is also coated with a resin!

And that’s not getting into dying. But if you’ve ever dyed fabric at home you know that it usually requires careful handling and in many cases goggles. Those chemicals are often toxic as fuck.

If you’re trying to be sustainable in your clothing choices, the fact is that the absolute best thing you can do is:

1. BUY LESS CLOTHES. Period. End of story.
2. Buy secondhand when you can.
3. Make those clothes last: use cold water washes and don’t put them in the dryer and don’t use fabric softener. Repair them when you can, and use them for rags when they wear out.

“What fiber is it made of” just matters way fucking less than buying fewer items of clothing and using them until they wear out.

But most people don’t want to do those things. They want to know which brand of clothes is “sustainable.”

The sustainable thing is to buy and throw away less clothes. That’s it.

Also: Environmental impact concerns more than just the fibre material.

The supply chains in the fashion industry are so convoluted and intransparent that it is virtually impossible to trace a single item back to its place of origin. Even the seller themselves often has no way of knowing where exactly their items come from. This is on purpose, because a lot of clothing is made under appalling circumstances. Clothes are still mostly handsewn. You can do the maths yourself as to how much the seamstress who put together your 20€ dress was paid - and that’s not to mention the workers involved in fabric production, dyeing, finishing the garment, and so on.

Ethically produced clothing exists, but it is generally safe to assume that any clothing you buy is the result of exploitation.

From fibre to garment, anything you buy will have traveled the globe several times over to get to you, no matter how eco-friendly the material itself is.

The fashion industry is one of the most harmful in the world, for the climate, the environment, and for people.

This is why we all need to buy less clothing. Low-impact, ethical, fair, and affordable clothing simply does not exist right now.

‘any wool item you own that’s machine washable has had the barbs melted off the fibers with chemicals, and in many cases is also coated with a resin"

THAT IS A LIE. Wool doesn’t have barbs, and coating it with resin makes it useless.

So first of all, I…..don’t see anything on the link that disproves what I said? Is it in the videos? Did I miss something?

But yes, I suppose “scales” is more accurate than barbs:

But the reason most wool felts in a washing machine is that the strands swell up slightly when damp (especially in warmer water), making the scales lift slightly. The scales catch on each other when rubbed together/agitated, and voila, you’ve shrunk your sweater.

This website describes the superwash process, which was trademarked until 2006, and makes it so you can safely machine-wash wool (instead of soaking and washing by hand, without agitating it at all):

Superwash was originally a product certification trademark owned by the Wool Bureau, but that trademark expired in 2006. Superwash is now a generic term applied to shrink-proofed wool that has been treated with the “chlorine-Hercosett” process.
The superwash treatment is the final step before wool is shipped off to the spinning mill, after it has been scoured, dried, carded, and combed into top. The wool is passed through a chlorine solution (similar to what you’d find in a swimming pool). The chlorine erodes the overlapping scales on the surface of the fiber.

The wool then passes through a neutralizing solution to stop the action of the chlorine. Then the wool is coated with a layer of a polymer resin called Hercosett to smooth and seal the eroded surface. Finally, a softener is applied, the wool is dried, and it’s packed up and shipped to spinning mills.

More info here

Or here, from wikipedia:

Superwash wool (or washable wool) technology first appeared in the early 1970s, producing wool that has been specially treated so it is machine washable and may be tumble-dried. This wool is produced using an acid bath that removes the “scales” from the fiber, or by coating the fiber with a polymer that prevents the scales from attaching to each other and causing shrinkage. This process results in a fiber that holds longevity and durability better than synthetic materials, while retaining garment shape.

Like, I didn’t pull that out of my ass lol I’m a knitter and I’ve done a little hand-spinning

transarsonist:

bookpillows:

all articles about tumblr’s “decline” boil down to 2 things: you can’t get famous on here and you can’t make money on here. And they don’t get that that’s why we like it here.

Au contraire! You can absolutely get famous here

It is however, explicitly a bad thing.

Time lapse video of the first day of the Camino (if you’re starting in St. Jean Pied-de-Port), when you literally cross the Pyrenees!

wahhhhh every time I watch shit like this I’m just like hgghhhhhhhwanna go back

7:05 is the fountain of Roland–you cross from France into Spain just before that:

I took a slightly different route on the downhill side that was longer but less steep!

@madigoround if you don’t mind “spoilers” they have videos all the way to Santiago de Compostela, here’s the one that starts in Sarria

(also here’s the twitter thread of my photos etc of the day I did that section starting in St. Jean Pied-de-Port, and here’s the thread-of-threads of my entire Camino, some days I posted way more than others)

homuraakemis:

Catra + her resentment and jealousy towards Adora’s friends

Bonus:

maandarinee:

andhumanslovedstories:

Back in 2013, I posted a Welcome to Night Vale fic and someone commented, “I’m autistic and I see myself a lot in the way you write Carlos. Did you intend for him to autistic?”

And I was like “I’m flattered you think so! No, he’s not intended to be autistic, but I’m glad you can see yourself in him.”

Now twelve years later I spent some time this evening trying to track down that comment to give a very belated clarification. Whoever you were stranger, hey. I only said no because I based Carlos heavily on me, and since I wasn’t autistic, Carlos wouldn’t be either. Well. I’ve learned some stuff in the intervening decade that strongly support your literary analysis.

So the first time I saw this video in ….early 2007? The only people I knew of who still liked/wore Gunne Sax were me, @seams-unusualbc, and Joanna Newsom

lol she wears a skirt in this video I also own (mine is beat to hell)

And between that and the fact that I love the harp, my falling in love with her music was nearly inevitable

This song is still so good!!

She doesn’t wear Gunne Sax anymore, and it’s wild to think that they were still kind of weird and unpopular when I first started wearing them! But women my mom’s age would stop me in the street to go “:O is that a Gunne Sax?!”

And after the cottagecore thing took off they all escalated wildly in price! Modcloth recently did a line of Gunne Sax dresses–they were kinda meh in my opinion but still. And meanwhile all but two of mine, I got at vintage stores for less than $30.

regulationhottie7905:

silvermagpie0:

Ok new favorite She-Ra episode: season 3 Episode 5: Remember

This takes place inside the portal, my favorite part specifically being when Catra and Adora are in the woods together. You see Adora doing her best to fix the world, and Catra denying that anything’s wrong. And then when she can’t deny it anymore, we get two flashbacks:

1. Child Catra and Adora, in that scene where they say they’ll always be there for each other
2. The scene from 1:2 where Adora tries to bring Catra out of the Horde

These are written so Adora’s words in the present line up with the flashbacks, and as it goes on (to some beautiful music, more on that later), you see Catra’s face as she seems to go through intense emotional anguish, not speaking, just teeth grit, arms wrapped tight around herself.

And then she breaks, snarling out “Don’t you get it? I am never going to go with you!” At that moment, she was likely the most conflicted she’s ever been or will be in the show. And, as all conflict can do, she goes down the wrong side, going as far to declare “I don’t care! I won’t let you win. I’d rather see the whole world end than let that happen” (this is not hyperbole, the planet is being torn apart). And from Adora’s perspective, with that, she falls back into the portal. The last expression on her face a stubborn glare.

And HOLY FUCK the music! As they go into the woods, traces of The Sword play, the music from their first skiff ride into the woods way back in 1:1. And, as happens in every important Catradora moment, Promise plays. The same soundtrack that plays when Catra drops Adora down a hole in 1:11. The same from when they watch Shadow Weaver incinerate the defense system and herself in 5:13. When they train together in the Horde in flashbacks. It plays here, after Catra pulled the lever and opened the portal, when Adora gave her a chance to come back, to do one good thing for once (to quote a later episode). When she is teetering between going to Adora and admitting she’s wrong? Or running, destroying, lashing out in spite.

God, I fucking love this show. Have a gif I made because I’m obsessed™ with this episode lol

What gets to me is the way it shows how self destructive Catra is and how intertwined Catra and Adora truly are. Every action either of them takes affects the other, and I feel like there’s some sort of intimacy in the fact that Catra would like to die with Adora. She’s okay with losing as long as Adora loses too, and by the end of s5, she’s okay with winning as long as Adora wins too, but I think at the end of the day, she’s just trying to close the gap between her and Adora. Adora leaving combined with Shadow Weaver leaving just pushed her to the end of her rope, and she’s just tired of people LEAVING, and at least her and Adora will be united in mutual loss.