u/tesseracts

I bought the shampoo and conditioner in Wood Barrel Bourbon. I liked this smell a lot in the bar and body wash, but in the shampoo and conditioner I could not stand the smell. It was also extremely difficult to squeeze the conditioner out of the bottle and I had to remove the cap to get a decent amount out.

I'm a woman and I have never bought men's shampoo before so maybe they all smell really strong, I don't know, but the smell was so strong it kind of made me sick. I actually went back in the shower to wash it out with another shampoo. I've never had this negative of a reaction to a hair product before. The smell wasn't just stronger, it was also different and the body wash smells better.

I like all the other Dr. Squatch products I've tried so I was surprised how intolerable this was to me. I've gotten obsessed with woody smells lately so if anyone has any brands of shampoo they would recommend with this smell let me know.

I'm currently staying near Universal and want to rent a car to go paddleboarding. I'm from the Northeast so I want to see landscapes that look different than what I'm used to. Wekiwa Springs and Rock Springs Run look nice. I didn't bring a board so I will have to rent one. Let me know if anyone has recommendations and what's the best place to rent good boards.

I don't know how studios don't understand this. A strong female character doesn't need to be a total badass with no flaws. She doesn't need to be a relatable girlfailure. She doesn't need to prove she's as good as a man or have the most witty dialogue or have the ideal appearance. She needs to have cool powers.

It's the same thing with male characters. They need to have cool powers, but if they are too powerful it's boring. They have to get close to losing and then find a way to win anyway.

I like characters with emotional depth, good character development, and interesting personalities, but I'm writing this post because in these discussions nobody ever seems to consider the merit of cool powers. It's very common for women characters to be granted these powers and then never getting a chance to actually use them. It's so common I think it should have a trope name but I don't think it does. So I don't think studios have gotten the memo that these characters should both have these powers and also fucking use them.

Steven Universe was one of the first cartoons to make studios realize boys will buy action figures of women characters. On the internet, Steven Universe usually comes up when Tumblr adults want to discuss the themes, but Steven Universe was also a very successful cartoon among children who want to see magical gem battles. The secret of their success among the boy demographic is pretty simple: the women were badass and had cool powers. They weren't sidekicks for male characters or the token pink female of the group, they were the ones running the show.

I have seen a meme going around claiming Maomao from The Apothecary Diaries or Frieren don't have to be a girlboss to be successful or something. However Maomao is a very successful detective and some kind of genius. Frieren has extremely powerful magic powers. I asked AI for examples of successful female characters who do not need cool powers to be successful and it gave terrible examples such as Black Widow, Raven, Katara, and Polaris.

I'm not saying no female character has ever been successful with lame powers, and for some genres powers and abilities are irrelevant. I'm just saying most of the time the character needs cool powers.

Chainsaw Man is known for having more interesting female characters than most shonen media. The characters have personalities and they also have some of the strongest powers in the series. However even in Chainsaw Man, many of the women never really get to use their powers. Many die a premature death. The worst example of this is Asa Mitaka, who was set up as duertagonist until she had a training arc off screen, started a world war off screen and her role was relegated to love interest only. Makima regarded as a great villain, nobody disputes this even Chainsaw Man haters. Makima is also one of the only characters who really got to use her powers to the fullest extent possible. Reze is another fan favorite character, and she has probably the best action scenes in the series. On the other hand, there are female characters such as Death and Famine, who should logically be very cool and powerful, but barely do anything so fans hate them.

In Rick and Morty, Morty's mother Beth to be cloned and go on adventures in outer space while her other self remains home as a mother. Earlier in the series Beth was just a mother and a horse surgeon, but the writers decided Beth was also a super genius and also a psychopath who committed acts of violence and abuse as a child. None of this was foreshadowed at all. I assume the writers decided the female characters need a personality but have zero idea how to give women a personality. So Space Beth goes on adventures but we never really see them and her most notable plot point is beginning an incestuous relationship with her clone, which makes her husband upset. This isn't the first time incest was featured on Rick and Morty, nor will it be the last. Is incest a cool power? No.

So this post is kind of all over the place and I'm sorry about that but the point is really simple, women need to have cool powers and also use them. In these discussions I feel like people often focus on the personality of the character, is she too much of a girlboss or not enough of a girlboss, whatever, but a lot of the characters success is going to be related to her powers or abilities and how she uses them.

Early in the Rick and Morty series, there was more mystery to Rick's character. Initially you were not sure if Rick even cared about Morty because his behavior was so sociopathic. In season 3 his dead wife Diane is introduced to the story and it's not until season 5 that we begin to learn more about her. It's not until season 7 that Rick took revenge against Diane's murderer, Rick Prime.

So with the Diane plot apparently finished, the series has begun to explore Rick's psychological issues that are not directly related to Diane, but I feel like we aren't getting as much insight as I would like. Rick and Morty is trying to be a dramedy, but the drama part of the dramedy could use some more work.

In "Ricks Days, Seven Nights" (Season 9, Episode 2) Rick goes on a vacation to a planet which is exactly like Earth except it's occupied by rural people with 90s level technology. Before going to this planet he temporarily erases his memories so he can trick himself into thinking he is just a regular dude with fishing buddies and a girlfriend who runs a bowling alley. Gradually, memory erased Rick discovers he is actually a genius and tries to disable getting his memories back because he does not want to return to his old life. However, even without his memories of his murdered wife or alcoholism or horrible space wars or whatever other traumas he has, Rick's awareness of his own intelligence makes him miserable. He stops caring about his buddies and feels disconnected from humanity as a whole. He gets his memories back and feels just as unhappy with his memories as he did without.

Yesterday, the final episode of this season was released, "Field of Dreams." In this episode, Morty gets his own portal gun and uses it to find a dimension with a family who initially seems more loving than his own, but his new Jerry turns out to be a nut and destroys his portal gun. In this dimension, Rick quit portal research after Diane was murdered and has a happy life as a college professor with a big house and loving girlfriend. Morty approaches Rick and convinces him to complete the portal gun. Rick becomes absolutely obsessed with the portal gun, and the research turns him into an alcoholic, makes him miserable and drives away his girlfriend.

So, it seems like there is a common theme here. The smarter Rick gets, or the more aware of his intelligence he gets, the more miserable he gets. This isn't an inherently bad plot, and based on my descriptions in this post, maybe it does not sound bad to you. However, I just feel like something is missing. What exactly is it about being intelligent that makes him so miserable? I actually think it could be really interesting to explore how being intelligent makes life difficult for Rick. Life can be isolating for intelligent people, and this is a problem which is often seen as humblebragging and not taken seriously. However in Rick and Morty it honestly just comes off as a little pretentious because it never goes any deeper. We don't get Rick's internal monologue or see much insight into his thought process, and I think we need more. It just comes off as whining that he's better than everyone. Rick is canonically the smartest guy in the universe and could definitely invent a cure for alcoholism, and he also has access to every Rick in the multiverse if he wants smart people to talk to. So what's his excuse exactly?

The basic ethos of Rick and Morty is, since there is a multiverse, nothing matters and life is meaningless. This was kind of funny and edgy when the series first began over 10 years ago, but after being repeated for years without any deeper insight it just seems childish. Nothing about the multiverse really inherently means life is meaningless. We have also established Rick is capable of being happy. He was happy as a college professor, he wasn't drinking, and he was capable of building a healthy romantic relationship. He even told his students the multiverse means nothing means anything or everything means everything, or something like that. I get that inventing a new technology is probably stressful, but being a college professor isn't necessarily easy either. Perhaps it is over-ambition that makes him unhappy, but when he was on the 90s planet, being smart alone was enough to make him miserable without any particular ambitions.

The much maligned Pickle Rick episode is actually the closest we get to actual psychological insight into Rick, because this is the episode which introduces the therapist Dr. Wong, who has some intelligent criticisms of Rick's behavior. Unfortunately the Dr. Wong plot doesn't really go anywhere, because any time Rick progresses he quickly regresses again.

We also don't get a lot of insight into what makes Evil Morty different. Evil Morty is probably the best character the series has right now, but all we know of his back story is he got sick of Rick's shit and also ended up a genius somehow. What makes him more sick of Rick's shit than the other Mortys? Who knows. We don't know how Rick Prime ended up such an asshole. Diane, the woman in refrigerator of the series has no personality beyond being "the wife."

The lesson of Rick and Morty is, if you're a scientist don't invent anything cool because you will definitely become an alcoholic for some reason.

I want to get one for camping, but also as a guest bed for my apartment in case friends come over. Based on reviews it seems like this is the most comfortable air mattress you can get. I already have a smaller size and it's quite comfortable but I want a larger one.

I was interested in getting the queen or LW but they are a bit too wide for the narrow portion of my van, and I want to sleep in the back of my van. My question is, would getting one too large for my van and squishing it into my van work? Or is that a dumb idea? The LW is the right size for the wide portion of the van but not the narrow portion. The Queen size would be ideal if my friend and his girlfriend visit but it's obviously going to be too big for the van.

In series with both comedy and drama I feel like the drama always overshadows the comedy in discussions. Nobody even talks about the comedy of Goodnight Punpun but I think it's part of what makes the story work.

Generally I don't see a lot of anime or manga trying to do irony or dark comedy, and Goodnight Punpun is more like a Western dark comedy than any other animanga I've seen. Especially earlier in the series. It begins as a parody/subversion of coming of age and romance tropes. It involves plotlines around ridiculous situations like elementary school students looking for fat fetish porn. Punpun and his family are drawn as goofy birds. The background characters act weirdly cartoonish at times. It creates a surreal atmosphere and isn't just a straightforward drama.

Like in the first chapter, Punpun asks God how to get his parents to stop fighting and "God" responds "You know, pal, God's getting kind of tired of this topic. Anything else you want to ask?" That's funny. It's tragic he is trapped in a toxic family dynamic, but that line is still funny. It's masterful dark comedy.

I think combining drama with comedy often allows creators to explore darker themes than they would with just drama alone. The creator of BoJack Horseman said he would be more reluctant to go to dark places if he wasn't making a cartoon starring animal characters. I've spent a lot of time in the BoJack Horseman fan space and often they will deny it is a comedy at all and even get mad if people find it funny, but the comedy is an essential part of the story and I feel it's similar for Goodnight Punpun. It doesn't detract from the serious and dark nature of the overall plot.

This post involves a minor King of the Hill new season spoiler which I'm not going to black out, might have a minor Rick and Morty spoiler also.

In any autistic headcanon discussion Hank Hill is very likely to come up as one of the most popular headcanons. He's highly fixated on propane and his job as a propane salesman, he is reluctant to change his routine and obsessive about his hobbies such as lawn care, he is slow to accept new ideas. However Hank is willing to accept new ideas eventually and is ultimately a good father and positive role model.

I was surprised when a recent episode implied this theory was correct. Hank went to a marijuana dispensary and began speaking to the salesman about what he learned about the neuroscience of drugs, and the salesman said "A lot of our customers are on the spectrum like you, including me. Do not get me started talking about abandoned railway lines in North America." Of course this isn't a confirmation but it's definitely throwing a bone at this headcanon.

As an autistic person I personally never really liked the autistic Hank theory. Struggling with change is an autism symptom but it's also a personality trait typical of the conservative American archetype Hank is meant to represent. Hank's obsession with propane goes far beyond his duties as a salesman of propane and propane accessories, but not everyone with a strong interest is autistic.

More importantly I have not seen Hank depicted as having persistent difficulties with understanding other people. In a standard King of the Hill episode, he will initially be closed minded to some new idea but then come around by the end of the episode. He is emotionally repressed and rigid yet is still often the most socially perceptive member of his friend group. He's maintained a solid friend group since adolescence and unlike the average modern sitcom couple he has a healthy marriage with Peggy.

As a teenager, Hank Hill was a jock, football player and bully. I'm not saying its 100% impossible for someone like this to be autistic, but it would be the exception not the rule.

Now here is the part where people get mad at me and ask me why I think autistic people can't have successful romantic relationships and friends. It's entirely possible for autistic people to have these things, but autism is at it's core a social disorder. In the past I made a post expressing dislike for Rick of Rick and Morty being canonically autistic, citing Rick's strong social skills and lack of social dysfunction as my reasoning, and I got a lot of angry responses. People were especially angry I said Jerry might have a stronger case for being autistic than Rick does. Jerry is lonely, struggles in his career and marriage, and has solitary hobbies that are considered dorky.

Rick's social issues stem from feeling superior to others and being a jerk intentionally, he makes friends and romantic connections pretty easily, and he has a drugs and partying lifestyle. He can read social situations when he wants to and is adept at manipulating people. If Rick is autistic I would like to see some evidence he struggled socially at some point in his life, and even though we were introduced to Rick's 35 year old self we don't really see that. Rick definitely has social problems, but they are not the type of problems that stem from misreading social situations.

Back to King of the Hill, I was thinking about Hank's friends and similar to the Rick/Jerry situation, I think you can make a stronger case for Dale Gribble or Bill having a social disorder. Dale actually seems to struggle with social situations, most obviously failing to notice his wife's affair which everyone else already knows about. He's very obsessive, has strange ideas and doesn't seem to notice of care if he is perceived as crazy. Bill is highly isolated, suffers from extreme learned helplessness and often shows socially inappropriate behavior.

The point of this post isn't to say that Hank Hill definitely 100% is not autistic or that successful people with happy families cannot be autistic. I just think it's interesting to point out that headcanoning a character percieved as competent such as Hank is way more popular than headcanoning a character like Dale Gribble who far more obviously diverges from social norms. (I'm not saying any of this to insult Dale by the way, I like Dale better than Hank because I enjoy weird characters.) I think it's worth pointing out there is discomfort in labeling a character as autistic when they are struggling in life.

I also find it somewhat frustrating that headcanons for people with a disorder are so often characters which don't really have the symptoms of that disorder, and I think this legitimately creates confusion about what autism or other disorders are really like. These characters are harmlessly eccentric but don't deal with social difficulty in any meaningful sense. I'm not saying autistic characters have to be lonely or totally dysfunctional NEETs but maybe give them a trait slightly edgier than having dedicated hobbies.

I would like to see more "autistic" characters actually struggling with social situations in a believable way and overcoming them. I think this is why autistic people often latch on to characters who are robots like Data or aliens/non-humans as representation. The experience of a non-human trying to be a human is closer to the autistic experience than a character who's autistic trait is knowing about trains. Funnily enough I think that's also why many have latched on to the serial killer Dexter as autism representation. The character probably isn't deliberately written to be autistic but through his inner monologue you constantly see him struggle to act normal in everyday social situations, which is one of the only clear examples of masking and social performance from a non-robot we get in popular media.

P.S. I think the absolute worst example of headcanoning a cool and competent character with no real autism traits as autistic was Netflix's Wednesday.

BoJack has drugs

Breaking Bad has drugs

Todd = Jesse

Walter failed to call the ambulance for some druggie girl

New Mexico

BoJack Horseman was in a sitcom, Walter White was the dad in Malcolm in the Middle

Both are starring dumb narcissists

BOJACK HORSEMAN STOLE THE IDEA AND HE SHOULD BE SUED

This is a response to a couple things. 1) Someone made a post saying Steven Universe's fusion is a confusing allegory and The Amazing Digital Circus'rs abstraction should be more like real suicide if it's a suicide allegory. I don't agree. 2) I made a post criticizing Pearl's behavior, which includes an episode where she coerced Garnet into fusion, an act the episode takes very seriously and treats as a serious betrayal of trust equivalent to rape. I made sure to phrase this as a metaphor and not literally rape, but people responded saying "this wasn't literally rape" as if that disproves my point, when that wasn't my point to begin with.

Generally I think people need to get used to the idea that an allegory is not literally the thing it’s depicting. Zootopia’s carnivore and herbivore conflict isn’t literally the same as racism and it can be an allegory for racism and sexism at the same time. Abstraction is a suicide allegory but characters who abstract don’t have the exact same experience as a suicide victim because abstraction isn’t literally suicide. There’s nothing wrong with any of this and it doesn’t make it a bad allegory. 

When fusion in Steven Universe comes up it seems like black and white lines are very quickly drawn with many people insisting it can’t be sexual and others insisting it has to be. I have good news for both of you guys: you’re both correct. Some fusion scenes are preceded by very clearly sexual dances such as when Amethyst dove head first into Garnet’s crotch while Pearl blushed and covered Steven’s eyes. Some fusion relationships are treated as sexual and romantic in nature. Forced fusion like the gem clusters is regarded as horrific and a violation of the spirit of fusion.

At the same time we have fusion scenes between children and fusion between Steven and his own father. These scenes are not treated the same as the sexual fusion scenes because they are about platonic intimacy.

In real life the same acts can be platonic or not depending on the context. Like a kiss can occur between a mother and child or between husband and wife. 

I don’t know why people are so touchy about the idea of fusion in Steven Universe representing sex or even rape in some contexts. Yeah it’s a cartoon but aren’t you all adults now? Fusion is used to represent multiple different kinds of relationships and that’s fine. 

I’m going to talk to the surgeon soon. My gastroenterologist and weight doctor think I should get it removed.

I’ve never had any pain. I have experienced vomiting but I don’t feel nauseous. I just feel like my stomach can’t hold the food or digest it so I force myself to vomit. When I tell people I vomit they assume I’m nauseous but I’m not. I just can’t eat normal amounts of food especially with fat.

I can’t eat pizza any more. I’ve gotten really bad episodes of heartburn. I have gallstones.

The thing is I only get these symptoms when I take GLP1 medication. When I stop the medication I’m fine. But since I have a serious weight problem I might be on GLP1 the rest of my life.

So I’m not really sure if this surgery is worth the risk. My doctor thinks I’ll digest fatty food better in the long term without the gallbladder but I can digest food just fine without this medication.

I’ve never seen this trope subverted or questioned in any way, ever. For example in BoJack Horseman there’s a frog character named Charley Witherspoon who only exists to be buffoonish and incompetent. He‘s a nepo baby who isn’t good at his job, which is fine as a character concept, but the primary way this is portrayed on screen is through clumsiness. He’s constantly knocking things over and dropping thing. Other characters don‘t respect him and his clumsiness is evidence of his stupidity.

In media aimed at girls it’s become a cliche for a girl protagonist to be described as “clumsy“ as a “character flaw” yet she is also a top fighter or something.

I have autism and I had to go to physical therapy as a kid to become less clumsy. I have continued to deliberately train my balance and clumsiness as an adult through activities like yoga and stand up paddleboarding. I have never seen any fictional character take clumsiness seriously as a flaw that has to be overcome. It‘s just a shorthand for being born competent or incompetent.

You might disagree with people's theories, but I am finding it frustrating how often those theories are dismissed as "cope" and "wishful thinking." This makes no sense because the theory is often not any more preferable and not a cope in any way. I get the impression more people are taking an anti-intellectual attitude and opposed to theorizing at all in spite of the rise of theorybait media. I feel like I've seen this attitude in multiple franchises but I can only think of two clear examples so I'm posting them now.

Recently I watched Bugonia, a film on Netflix about two conspiracy theories who kidnap a CEO, believing she is an alien who will kill all the bees and destroy humanity. The CEO Michelle runs a pharmaceutical company which made conspiracy theorist Teddy's mother seriously ill, so Teddy locks her in his basement.

This film has a really interesting twist ending I did not see coming which I will discuss under spoiler tags. I suggest you go to Netflix and just watch the movie rather than reading the spoilers, it's a good movie and it's a remake of a classic South Korean film.

Bugonia major spoiler: >!At the end of the movie it is revealed Michelle actually is an alien empress. After Teddy accidentally blows himself up and his decapitated head hits her, she suffers a head injury on top of numerous other injuries and is loaded onto an ambulance, which she escapes from to run to her office closet. Michelle inputs a code on her calculator which teleports to her mother ship. She discusses the fate of humanity with her alien council and concludes humanity must end. She approaches a model of planet Earth, which is flat, and uses a brain shaped sharp implement to poke the atmosphere, instantly killing all humans but not impacting other life on Earth.!<

>!Most viewers seem to have taken this ending at face value and concluded, whoa, the conspiracy theorist was right, the evil CEO was an alien all along. However, I think there are many clues she is not an alien and this is a hallucination taking place in her dying, bleeding out brain. I won't list every clue here, but I'll list a few of them. First of all, I refuse to believe the Earth is flat. It's a fictional universe, but the Earth being literally flat still makes no sense. The entire movie seems entirely real right until Michelle is loaded onto an ambulance, there is no hint of anything science fiction or fantasy going on. Conspiracy theorist Teddy is a deranged serial killer who isn't good at figuring things out, and he never had any real evidence Michelle was an Andromedan, so him being correct would amount to a massive coincidence. Like, his evidence was using thermal imaging on her Instagram photos, which makes zero sense scientifically since a photo on a monitor does not convey this information.!<

>!Michelle's version of the alien conspiracy theory aligns with her own self image as a savior of humanity and does not align with Teddy's theories. The alien mothership invokes brain imagery, and the conclusion of the story aligns with Michelle's guilt and her contempt for humanity. She clearly did not expect Teddy to explode, and if the teleporter was real her body would have gotten mixed in with Teddy's corpse during the teleportation.!<

I looked up Reddit posts discussing this ending and found an endless sea of people dismissing this theory with "nah" and "this is cope" and "you're reaching." I find this very annoying. You can have a different interpretation, but it's like people are refusing to consider any ending beyond the most literal.

>!I also saw people expressing frustration with an "it was all a dream" ending, but it wasn't all a dream, only the last scene was.!<

All of this reminded me of the ending of the Chainsaw Man manga. >!The last chapter shows Pochita saying he will erase himself and create a new world where he doesn't exist. Many fans have taken this at face value as a world reset, but a lot of things about this chapter do not add up to me, and I have come to believe the last chapter is a dream. In this chapter, in spite of what Pochita said, he still exists and chainsaws still exist. There are many details which don't make sense, which I won't get into here but I'll link to my other post on this subject. The biggest evidence for me is all of Pochia's previous scenes: every single dog form Pochita scene is strongly dream themed, and he even warns Denji about the future through dreams. I don't think this can be a coincidence.!<

My Chainsaw Man theory isn't unheard of but also isn't very popular, but again, it's the dismissal of these theories that gets to me. I feel the ending is deliberately ambiguous and open to interpretation. I also feel Bugonia is deliberately ambiguous and meant to be debated. When American Psycho came out I don't remember people saying, yeah he literally killed all those people and you're dumb and coming to say otherwise. When 2001: A Space Odyssey came out did people insist the end of the movie must have literally happened as the only correct interpretation? What about Mulholland Drive? You can interpret any of these movies in multiple ways.

Slight Bugonia spoiler. >!Worst of all are the posts insisting Bugonia is a terrible movie because if you take everything at face value a lot of things don't make sense. Okay, maybe DON'T take everything at face value? The protagonist is a paranoid nutjob so maybe consider he might not be correct.!<

>!One last thing I want to say about Bugonia. I think it's interesting to see many people saying Michelle must literally be an alien because she acts inhuman, meaning she is ruthless and manipulative rather than emotional. It shows how quick the audience is to dehumanize her just as Teddy did, they cannot imagine a normal human being would behave this way. Michelle argues human culture has influenced her to become this way and she hates what she has become, and although I think she's wrong to look down on humanity I think she has a point, you don't have to literally not be a human to behave in "inhuman" ways.!<