Sunday Samplers are a “lightning round” of different subjects, none of which really warrant a full post, that have popped into my head over the course of the past week. They may or may not be regular weekly posts.
—
I’ve realized that it’s pretty much impossible in the modern world to have a past time that doesn’t become a magnet for ridiculous drama. You’d think having spent many decades in such horrid hot messes as “comics fandom” or “animation fandom” that I’d be inured to it now, but nope, somehow yarnwork - and knitting in particular - has managed to surpass them for sheer pettiness.
Here’s a brief list of things that I have gotten grief from strangers for in my time knitting (I recommend playing the first minute or so of “Tijuana Taxi” under this while reading, starting the list right when the horns begin):
Knitting English style & being unable to learn Continental style without completely borking my tension;
Initially doing the YO increase backwards;
Using acrylic yarns;
Not immediately mastering intarsia/colorwork and instead relying on color blocking;
Using big-name-brand yarns instead of solely buying from small weavers (who are usually out of my price range & put a burden of extra care on the recipient);
Doing multiple projects at once;
Using free patterns from yarn companies;
Using Ravelry, even if just in passing;
Putting crocheted borders on knitted projects or just mixing the two techniques in the same piece; and
Preferring larger flat projects like blankets to garments.
(Feel free to pause/close the Herb Alpert music at this point. Or not. You do you.)
There’s snobbery about yarn type. Snobbery about where it’s bought. Casual racism masked as snobbery. Snobbery about technique or craft. Snobbery about time spent on any given project. A very weird snobbery towards anyone masculine so much as breathing on a knitting needle, let alone making things. People who like to twist discussions of knitting into their preferred newly discovered political philosophy, even historical ones where it doesn’t apply. And not even God can save you if you’re a non-yarnworker who gets something wrong about a niche use of a niche tool in a niche subject, as a vintage cat photo account learned for not recognizing a knitting belt (come to think of it, they eventually spent more online time arguing about veganism than posting cat pics after this incident, so maybe that’s why they purpose-drifted like they did).
I get some of the kneejerk reactions, to a point. There’s a tendency to assume that all yarnworkers, but especially knitters, are docile old grannies who just kinda… wiggle the sticks & make the things. There have been “smart” people who take that assumption and run with it, be it the failed tech startup run by 2 bros who just saw yarnwork as something to “disrupt” or Sci Show’s trademark “quirky” condescension. But this results in two very obnoxious tendencies in defense of knitting: the “knitting is coding & thus STEM & thus has ~real~ value” argument (which carries that STEM-push hatred of anything creative) and the blanket hatred of men in the scene at all. That last one has, unfortunately, led more than a few people down into some TERFy pits.
So when I began seeing reaction videos about a British knitting competition show, I KNEW that it’d be bad. Not just the show, the reactions to it. First off, the show feels like cramming a square peg into a round hole; knitting takes time and doesn’t really lend itself to the same TV-friendly presentation as something like baking or runway couture. There’s been British shows about other slow & meticulous crafts (notably quilting), so maybe they have a formula that works better than I’d expect, but since none of these ever reach the States without a VPN, I wouldn’t know. Second, the host is the Olympic athlete for the UK that did yarnwork between his events, and lemme tell you, knitters online DO NOT like this guy. He doesn’t seem to be a terrible person in any regard, at least from interviews, but they HATE that this MAN is praised for knitting & horning in on WOMEN’S SPACES & stealing from WOMEN’S HISTORY & you’re probably starting to see why some people wind up stumbling into TERFdom if they step wrong. So you’ve got a craft that’s being twisted into a reality show format that probably doesn’t serve it, hosted by a guy who’s anathema to vocal online knitters just for his guy-ness. You can see where this is gonna get messy.
Judging from the reactions, the first episode earned the ire of a society of Scottish fair isle knitters that were upset about discussions about “correct” technique by the designated “nasty & picky” judge. This has resulted in different fair isle societies in different areas taking sides, either agreeing with the show or agreeing with the Scottish group. But the whole thing, if you’re someone with a passing interest in knitting that may have been sparked by the show, looks RIDICULOUS. It’s the most nit-picky, humorless thing I’ve seen since the inevitable return of “Batman should spend more money on social services & stop beating up the mentally ill” discourse in comics circles. They’re calling for protests, boycotts, canceling the show, etc… after one episode. Cuz of standard reality show stuff.
There’s a key difference between the reaction to this & the reaction to Sci-Show. First off, Sci-Show had a history of being dismissive of anything not really in the station runners’ “quirky nerdbro” wheelhouse, and they also had a history of being casually… shitty. From mansplaining to female experts who tried to correct their misinformation to refusing to retract a video full of bad research about HRT, they’re just not receptive to the notion that they got very basic things wrong and aren’t experts in all things. And they got stuff WRONG, from showing crocheted/woven works as examples of knitting to making sure to use only stock footage that fits the “sweet old granny slowly pokes sticks & makes things” image of knitting to never once mentioning that the two scientists who ~finally~ found a ~useful~ scientific application for knitting were women & knitters themselves. The backlash makes sense because the work itself was obviously coming from a place of arrogance & bad faith.
But the British show? Again, I haven’t seen it, but the reactions are somehow more heated than the ones to Sci-Show. I don’t know if it’s because the official clubs lodging complaints aren’t “online” enough to know about that mess or if they’re just some of the more tradwife-y Green Brothers fangirls (and those are sadly plentiful), but they’ve been so over-the-top in their anger that they’ve been giving me second-hand embarrassment. And it seems to come less from a place of “let’s get people to appreciate the traditions & intricacy of knitting” and more from “let’s protect our holy & sacred craft from outsiders”. Maybe THAT’S what is bothering me, that clubhouse mentality. I’ve seen it for decades with other interests that I have (especially comics), so it naturally raises my hackles. But.. there’s more here. There’s that weird hatred of the host, there’s that whole “women’s craft” aspect that keeps skirting uncomfortably close to TERFdom. There’s snobbery about which hand holds the yarn, about other forms of yarn craft, about pretty much everything that’s involved with knitting. It’s a concentrated ball of the stuff that just sucks any sense of joy or relaxation or accomplishment out of doing yarn work at all.
I don’t know if it’s just how things work in the age of the internet, but just once I’d like one of my hobbies to not be saddled with this kind of nonsense. Sadly, I’d be more successful asking Santa to bring me a pet unicorn than seeing that happen.
—
Whew… that’s a lot of unexpected talk about TERFs, huh? Here, enjoy one of several entries in my Happy Days crochet blanket kit that I like to call “accidental trans pride squares”.
This is also how I learned of the existence of the “triple treble” stitch, not to be confused with that card game thing in Final Fantasy 8.
—
This week’s video recommendation is from Izzzyzzz, looking at why abandoned & putrefying supermarkets (like Mexia) have garnered an online following, complete with gijinkas of the real world sites, and how it reflects a trend towards re-embracing the darker & messier parts of nostalgia.
I feel like there are two things at play that have led to the very specific phenomenon getting an actual fandom (complete with shipping because of course). First, someone in the video comments pointed out that this feels like a logical next step after the fascination with liminal spaces; instead of uncomfortably sterile & still, we have its opposite, filled with rancid clutter & swarms of vermin. Both are distressing, only in extremely different ways. The second is related to what I was saying in my dead mall fascination piece: that strange feeling when something that was treated like an immutable & innate part of life (in this case, the local supermarket) suddenly ceases to exist. Only in this case, you get a visceral element that takes the decay of Dixie Square and adds an entirely new, revolting dimension to it. You don’t expect the local market to just close abruptly one day, and you DEFINITELY don’t expect them to leave everything to rot, yet it’s happening… maybe not as frequently as mall closures but still.
I fully welcome the return of “grimier” nostalgia that Izzzyzzz addresses as well. We’ve had decades of glossy, bright 80s nostalgia that feels inauthentic to anyone who lived through it (for starters, there’s never any cigarette smoke or discoloration, which was omnipresent in the actual time), and the more it appears, the emptier it feels. It’s as corporate and (for lack of a better word) phony as flattened designs or the all-neutrals “clean” look in decor or fashion, and people have gradually grown sick of it. Frankly, it’s about time.
(Also, I can’t stop thinking about that “abandoned for six months” fish market they mentioned. I worked at a supermarket seafood counter, and if stuff went bad overnight, that smell was absolutely sickening. We’d have to check everything & clean the whole case, and even then, I swear the scent hung in your nostrils for hours. Imagining that stretched out for half a year… stomach churning. Just send it all to Hell with fire.)
—
Lightning-squared round! Cuz my brain is a pressure cooker that needs constant adjustment vents.
Saw some horrid fandom kid arguing that it's perfectly fine to erase one of the rare canon asexual characters’ orientation cuz “they're not real & thus can't be oppressed”, and now I want to apply that attitude to every other canonically queer character to see if that argument still holds water or if people will recognize it for the passive-aggressive ace hate it actually is. ADDENDUM: Now former moots are doing the whole “it’s not erasure if it’s fictional characters” thing, and MAAAAN, is it any wonder I am both deeply cynical about just how much they actually respect ace people as a whole AND have too many trust issues to consider online friendships “real” anymore?
It sucks when you wanna tell someone that you’re glad they enjoyed a series that you really loved that flew under the radar (or was actively shoved under it by [as]holes, in this case), but the only place online they’re active is Bluesky & you really don’t wanna get involved in that mess again.
This year just HAD to get in another therapist departure on me, didn’t it?
I swear, every time I look in on Fizz-Chan, he's either (a) gloating about one of his bazillion boycotts resulting in job cuts or (b) trying to pretend that the rest of the world shares his irrational hatred of CM Punk. Cuz apparently the wild, shocked, joyous cheering at Punk’s return was supposed to be a negative reaction. Well, maybe if you’re a hashtag-autistic Has*noid, it is, cuz it’s a subconscious reminder of just how detached from the wider world he willingly is. Dude’s lucky he's not on camera, cuz then I wouldn't be the only person comparing him to the internet’s favorite horrorshow.
Then again, farmers seem to be sleeping on his buddy Ant, who IS on camera and has an obvious urge to be seen as an Important Queer Voice™ (while rehashing repetitive/tired topics again & again), right down to constantly vanity searching for people “insulting” him. That's the biggest “let them fight” thing I wanna see.
Pretty sure 30th Street Station won't be able to put up their big tree this year cuz of all the construction, but they could at least string some lights on the scaffolding to perk up the place.
Pretty sure they could replicate the Wanamakers Christmas light show on all this.
More 30th Street Station depressing status updates: the evening lighting is so dim that I half thought there was a power outage, and one of the art pieces in the side hall is covered for repairs after “recent vandalism”. It’s like they’re in a competition with modern Penn Station as to which can make you feel worse about your traveling experience. At least Penn Station has more than 2 places to eat…
The birds seem cool with the pastry-centric food, though.
Every train needs a large man with a spiky cudgel whose sole job is to enforce the quiet car rules, especially from “has loud phone calls on speaker in public” folks.
MFSB had it off, the sound of Philly isn't a cool groove. It's constant relentless car horns.
Every time I see someone who had been established in WWE leaving AEW, my main assumption is usually that they finally got sick of the ridiculous fanbase and went to one that won't compare them to N*zis or dox them/anyone who likes them for not kissing the ass of their comfort company's owner hard enough. And the fact that one of the biggest stars there, one who doesn't incur the wrath of the sickos, has the exact same attitude towards his colleagues who aren't as brand loyal as him only enforces my distaste. Anyway, good for Jericho, cuz now his retirement won't include any creepy youth pastors.
Honestly, as much as I would like to detail WHY so many of the attitudes held by AEW & its fanbase rankle me, I know that would mean sharing my lowest moment with an audience that would not only not care but also think it's fun to set off reminders of it, all cuz they value their comfort brand more than actual human beings.
Today in “Stuff Secret Galaxy Will Cover Before He Even Mentions Jonny Quest”, we have Bionic Six. No shade to the show, but the fact that all my turbo-nerd self knows about it is the title should be a sign. C'MON, man…
I don't know who decided that the art museum needs to advertise with the trappings of a brand trying to channel 90s alt-rock indie band flyers, but I really wanna pick their brain. I don’t DISLIKE it, but I also thought that the OK Soda ads were good, so you really can't go by me.
Saw someone online suggesting that Taika Waititi could make a good JQ movie that would update it without mocking it, and that's probably one of the smarter ideas I've heard on how to do it. Shame most of the animation scene defaults to “lol just watch VB” when you so much as say something that sounds like JQ.
Katelyn, honey, I can’t say it to you directly for a bunch of reasons, but I guarantee you that the complete chromatic estrangement of the aroace flag is 100% intentional & designed to further remove us from either bigger community.
Why is every single mockup flag infinitely better than the one we got? Besides the pick-mes’ influence against our presence, that is.
Also, I just learned that whoever designed the aroace flag couldn't even bullshit a “meaning” for the blue stripes. The yellow & white ones have the usual “community” or “wholeness” & such, but the blues are just “yeah, we ran out of nebulous feel-good terms for these, oh well”.
Nothing sums up how much AI has rotted executives’ collective brains quite like the whole “Disney+ will allow users to make their own AI-generated content” initiative. It’s like they looked at the unceasing fountain of exploitative slop animation on YouTube and instead of hitting the big “summon attorneys” button like in the past, they decided that they’d rather do it themselves. Or in this case, have their customers do it for them. This is gonna go SO poorly for them. Part of me can’t wait to see the train wreck, while another part of me - the part that values & respects art & all who make it - just wants this bullshit bubble to burst already.
Wanna go halfsies on rebuilding a waterpark with a dino-themed children's park?
I do sorta feel that stuff like Gillian’s Wonderland closing and now this water park is an indicator that the shore has effectively priced itself out of a lot of people’s range, like so many other leisure activities have done. It’s definitely something playing a role in the problems affecting Six Flags (along with the management being doofuses). When people can’t afford to do fun stuff, guess what, they stop doing the fun stuff. And despite what some people think, fun stuff shouldn’t exist solely for upper income brackets.
I don’t really care one way or the other about FNAF, but damn, does that Popeyes tie-in meal look good. I’m sorry, I can’t help it, I’m a sucker for cheese curds.
Horse-girl game update: Nope, I can’t let myself try the new scenario until I finally beat the first one. It won’t feel right till I do it.
Another day, another ex-moot launching themselves full speed head first down the weird gooner slide… Sorry, but I don’t find weight gain fetishes to be about body positivity, cuz the people doing it don’t really see or treat fat people IRL with the same kindness that they do their spank bank entries. Anyway, just gonna mentally bet on how long till they inevitably escalate to gross diaper stuff.
Made the mistake of popping onto the sky site, and seeing a former moot post an extremely mocking & insulting variation of my complaints about one of his most sacred & holy Adult Swim shows is a reminder of why THIS is in my reactions:
In your case, Filbi, I hope you get so wasted that you swallow a slug that has a brain-eating worm in it. Oh, wait, you worship an Adult Swim show & use Reddit fanboys who’d forgive the showrunners for strangling their moms as “proof” that the show & its audience aren’t the scumfucks that they’ve been for the past decade judging from their conduct literally everywhere else. You already HAVE at least a dozen up there.
Man, between the backstabbing shit like THAT and the multiple steady slides into gooner-brain/terrorist apologia/exclusionism/outright insanity, I am starting to feel that pretty much everyone I used to think was decent saw Bluesky as their chance to become their absolute worst selves. I’d rather continue to be lonely & ignored than be associated with a bunch of people who are increasingly disturbing & insulting.
“Write like no one will be reading it!” But… that’s already happening… that’s what I’ve been doing…
Was watching an indie show where Moné was challenging a woman in the promotion (Noor “Phoenix” Diana, who was pretty dang cool) as part of her current story, and I hit on something that would make her whole “belt collector” pay off in a fun way. Imagine if, during a big AEW PPV, Moné not only tries & fails to win their women’s championship, she then turns around towards the ramp, and there are ALL the women from ALL the other promotions whose belts she won, ready to take them all back… it’d be the one time a run-in ending would be okay to me. But it’d probably never happen for a bunch of actually logical reasons.
If you thought that the online animation community was obnoxious about C*yote Versus Acme before (to the point I have to censor to thwart any searching just in case), now that previews/reviews are starting to come in & it’s proving to be just a perfectly cromulent movie instead of the orgasmic cure-all & studio-saver that they believed it was destined to be, they’re gonna be even worse. We’re talking Sn*derverse levels of unhealthy here. Brace yourselves.
Y’know… maybe it’s a good thing Secret Galaxy just kinda ignores the whole H-B Action stable like he’s done (outside of licensed entries). He’s the right age & type to turn them into “yeah, the original sure existed… but then Ad*lt Swim came along and made them into something actually good” like I’ve gotten SO very sick of seeing.
I definitely don't donate blood just for the thank-you gifts, but stuff like cute & warm Pac-Man socks is definitely a nice bonus.
—
That about wraps it up for this week. Next week will be a skip week, to allow me some recovery time from Thanksgiving. If you celebrate, I hope you have a good one, and if you don’t I hope you have a nice week.
In parting, please accept this cat picture, one with Parker doing something extremely rare & tolerating his brother sitting on him.
This situation is made worse because his little brother isn’t so little.
See you again soon and thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment