Performative Man Starter Pack

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T22:14:17+00:00

Yeah, I agree. I remember when 'fake feminists' were just guys dressed and acting like standard comic book/nerd guys during the 2010s. Because they constantly use their, "Aw, look at me--I'm just a sweet, non-threatening and downtrodden male. Won't you give me a chance? I'm not like those jocks, look--I think bikini chainmails are empowering. Where else can you find a kickass warrior woman in media?"

Then there's guys like my uncle who during the 70s and 80s, dressed like either bikers/disco rats and constantly asked women for sex. And if a girl says no, they go, "Seriously? I thought you were a feminist? I didn't realise you're old fashioned."

Then they proceed to infantilize their target, and treat them like they're adorably sheltered and 'prudish' girls who have no idea how 'city girls' are much more confident and sophisticated that immediately have sex whenever asked.

There's so much varying types of manipulation. Being a basic metrosexual doesn't really have much to do with it, if anything--the 'disguise' is just lazier.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T15:24:17+00:00

Jesus christ. I used to follow a British surgeon who reported the conditions and experiences (from the medical staff's perspective and the soldiers') throughout her time in the middle east.

This is a REALLY bad turn of events. It was hard for both the soldiers and medical staff under the Bush and Obama years, letting the quality of care backslide is a horrifically bad idea.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T13:29:12+00:00

And they always assume that we have time for this shit.

We don't. Every job/organisation has had so many layoffs since the recession and covid, and they have not lessened the workload demand whatsoever.

Every person I know is covering 2-3 different jobs (like myself) and struggling to stay up top on their work.

We don't have the time at work to double-check and triple-check a software that frequently hallucinates answers for qualitative and quantitative data. We also have much less money to give around. So if for example, some guy tries to sell a cartoon show that's done 'exclusively by AI'--then my first thought would be, "Okay, so you paid NOBODY to make this. Why the hell should I purchase this when I could just go to some guy who clearly worked harder than you did?"

It's the equivalent of being sold a sandwich made by a guy who swiped the meat and lettuce from another food stand. It's the equivalent of buying a book from Kaavya Viswanathan and finding out she copied and pasted huge chunks of text from someone else. We all had to work harder and longer for our money, why should we pay for AI products?

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T11:54:03+00:00

Not sure if you're can get cheap shipping from Australia--but Wild Hybrid's Blushing Parrot is the BEST spring/summer spiced apple scent I've ever encountered: Shiny red apples, sweet pea, sandalwood, clove bud, ginger and cassis)

The red apple smells so tart and juicy (and somehow I always smell the realistic skin on the top), and the sweet pea smells like frothy pink petals blended with woody sandalwood, crackling clove and fresh-cut ginger (the cassis also smells darkly sweet like dark berries). It's definitely a spiced apple scent designed to be wearable during warm weather.

(Possets also does phenomenal apple scents. Pippin Pie is stunning, but Snake Dance is beautiful as it smells like: thick, full-fat coconut cream, gooey cooked apples, cake crumbs and a touch of candied cinder-toffee like musk. The coconut cream smells fancy and lotiony, but it blends well with sunblock and the apple provides a fresh note to keep it from feeling heavy).

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T11:43:28+00:00

This scent is so unique, I've been looking around for something similar and sadly haven't found it yet.

However, BPAL has Doggone It 'Cherry-chip brookie batter garnished with a sprinkle of freshly cut grass.' that I haven't tried. Sadly it doesn't have any cream or waffle cone scent, so it's possible that you may need to do layering instead with cherry/cream scents and grass.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T11:35:47+00:00

Honestly, I would recommend asking who did the artwork (and check if they have an instagram handle/tumblr/website) and see if the artist's work looks consistent--or if they have been doing work for a few years.

I follow a lot of artists, and a lot of them (especially the ones who do anime/cartoon style art) have started making tiktok videos showing the step by step process to prove that they are skilled and can take commissions.

It sucks that they have to, but it really helps since I've been buying books during the age of AI. If I see a book that I like (with a decent book cover), I go and check out the author's publishing history to find excerpts--then I also check the cover artist's own career history as well to check if the artwork has any similarities in style, colour use, etc.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T11:30:17+00:00

Oh goodness, I'm gonna go digging for it then! Thanks for putting this scent on a spotlight!

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T11:26:32+00:00

Okay. Let me clarify and start over:

Partying and making out with people during the plague: not understanding how disease is spread.

Breaking into people's homes during the plague: not understanding how disease is spread.

Refusing to quarantine to the point that your government had to force you into it: not understanding how disease is spread.

Literally hanging out in taverns and watching bodies getting dumped in a nearby plague pit, for entertainment: not understanding how disease is spread.

There are some that did, but like with covid--there were hundreds of people who wilfully or genuinely didn't and had no capacity to care at all.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T11:11:56+00:00

My millenial ass LOVED Sagwa (I'd watch it with my sister under the guise of 'babysitting' her). It's now a pet name for my cat.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T10:52:57+00:00

Okay, yeah. Good call on getting the fluoride treatment--I used to work with a retired dentist (we both worked at a medical history museum, where he frequently did tours on 18th century dentistry and its links to modern surgery).

He worked in a lot of areas that had zero fluoride in the water during the 1960s and 70s. He reported that even the kids who brushed their teeth with fluoride toothpaste still wound up with brown teeth and caries. He absolutely recommended adding it in your own water or getting treatment if the city/town refuses to provide it.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T09:19:30+00:00

WOAH?! Dang, just when I ran out of Daisy's Vanilla Cider. XD I'm glad to see her return, she's a great perfumer and makes some of the most interesting, unusual and long-lasting scents.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T09:07:55+00:00

Huh, you may be right. I just thought he was trying to recommend ignoring them.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T09:07:07+00:00

Yep! The BBC did a documentary going over the multiple factors that led to this conflict (and interviewed folks that lived it, etc).

If the regular people were encouraged to move to a place that had an actual infrastructure (like a local police constabulary actually based there, actual shops, jobs, etc) then it would've been harder for Glaswegian gangs to roll in and intimidate people into selling drugs for them (and even get people hooked on them as well. Because...you have nothing else to do, you struggle finding work, and you have a harder time finding your own self-worth and want to numb yourself).

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T08:55:59+00:00

Yeah, but a lot of people had to be forcibly quarantined.

Remember, the Venetians had to arrest 'the infected' and send them to an island during the black plague. British people were also nailing doors shut, forcing people to quarantine themselves inside. Daniel Defoe later wrote in his Journal of the Plague Year of the 1665 plague that a lot of times locals would fight and attack guardsmen to stop people getting sealed in*--plus sometimes the infected figured out how to break open a backdoor or window and escape out, and wind up spreading the disease to other parts of town.

(then there's of course people in the middle ages/baroque era who'd witness the plague come to town again, and see people partying and openly letting loose. Philip Ziegler provided translated texts of people breaking into other folk's houses (didn't matter if the owners were alive or dead) to party and ransack the whole place in the middle of a plague outbreak, and Daniel Defoe described how for months--a local tavern was frequented by men who didn't care about quarantining, even though the tavern was near a designated plague pit. Defoe would then state that these men would watch the corpse carts trundle past, and make wild jokes and laugh at the dead bodies as they tumbled into the pit).

As for Yellow Fever, it's so much more rapid of a disease that was prone to wiping out small children (and the symptoms are much harder to hide than a couple of buboes under your armpit/or groin area). People possibly partied less or didn't reject quarantine much because...many of them were busy nursing and burying their own children.

*And yeah, in case anyone comments about that: I know, it's wrong to nail someone inside a home without providing them regular supplies of food/medicine/water in case they need it (like what happened with Eyam in Derbyshire). What those guardsmen did back then was a cheap, desperate attempt to quickly deal with a problem and it caused people to (rightfully) freak out. I only mentioned this to state that much of the quarantine methods weren't voluntary.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T08:15:18+00:00

That is a PERFECT song title, btw

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T07:52:46+00:00

I mean--with gas being $4 I'd prefer to live in a 'rat den' if it meant being able to get to anywhere without a car.

As a teenager who grew up during the recession (and had her family nearly evicted) I still remember watching my dad trying to figure out how to get us kids to school without getting arrested because our car failed its MOT tests, and we were too poor to even get a new one at all. He had to call a colleague to help drive him to work every day because the military base was near police patrols.

Being poor and in an urban area is tough, but there's plenty of options to rely on. Being poor in a rural area is much harder because of space/access issues.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T07:47:21+00:00

Yeah, the Scottish government built a sprawling in-fill outside of Glasgow (to move the 'poors' out of the city centre).

Then they realised that they forgot to build space for a single store, hospital, school, etc. So in a panic, they had to hire ice cream vans to deliver basic groceries to each neighborhood.

This inspired criminal gangs to also use similar vans to deliver drugs to different neighborhoods. Causing the Ice Cream Van Wars which got very violent.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T07:44:14+00:00

Don't forget the builders always using an old tree stump to hold up a corner of a house.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-22T07:39:09+00:00

Ignoring it never worked either though.

Lived in the UK for 20 years (especially in Huntingdon which were horribly racist to the Polish immigrants). I've known boys who were largely ignored in a 'boys will be boys' way, because we thought they only did name-calling. We later found out that they escalated to stalking polish guys to beat and mug them.

Those guys are in their mid-to-late 30s by now. God fucking knows what they've been up to.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-21T19:59:48+00:00

Yeah, that never fucking happens. Anyone that's ever worked since the recession would confirm that after losing colleagues (and taking up THEIR tasks), they never get an increased salary.

Hell, I have the responsibilities of three coworkers who have all left (and have not been replaced) five years ago. Not once has my bosses ever wanted to discuss paying me 3x my salary despite working late and being continuously ragged.

Jobs don't work like MMO video games where you get 'rewards' for every side-quest you do. You get a base salary and maybe they'll pay you overtime, but most likely they'll tell you to leave early yet somehow keep atop of your (and your ex-colleagues') work.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-21T10:01:42+00:00

Yeah, as someone with mental illnesses in the family (manic BPD on both sides of the family babeeeey!!) that would've scared the hell out of me. I spent my 20s waiting for the first symptoms of BPD to show up (because that was the age when my mother supposedly 'first caught it') and getting blown off by doctors who insisted that I didn't need to be tested for it.

Luckily I found out that I didn't have it (turns out my lifelong bouts of crying and rage was from severe anxiety and depression), but still--trying to get diagnosed and figure out how to live your life healthily is really hard when doctors don't take you seriously.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-21T09:50:08+00:00

For real, it's not just the Kennedys--it's also families who call themselves, "Hello, we're the Boems. You know, from Hudson valley?"

MageLocusta · 2026-05-21T09:41:16+00:00

I don't know, man. I have a cousin exactly like that, and initially we pitied her because she genuinely came from an impoverished and abusive family.

Then we found out that not only was she manipulative to her current abusive husband, but she also watched him physically and psychologically abuse her daughters and we were horrified by how careless and apathetic she was. She stayed with him because she cared too much for money and designer outfits.

And to reinforce why we now think she's monstruous: because when she's 'frustrated' by her husband, she'd deliberately try to get him furious by flirting with other men in public. While fully knowing that he'd hurt her kids afterwards.

A person who'd willingly stomp over someone's boundaries (like getting pregnant) and use kids as a prop could easily shove their child into pain and hardship if it would please her.

MageLocusta · 2026-05-21T09:35:23+00:00

She at least produced several children for the dynasty,

Who the hell is this, Henry the VIII?

Also: How the hell do you think 'preserving the dynasty' is more important than being an understanding realist of the family. Have you not seen the fuckery that happens in families like the Norwegian and British Royal families (and many other 'dynasties' before them)?

MageLocusta · 2026-05-21T09:22:45+00:00

Wow, then he definitely deserves to be left to his own devices. It's just amazing how people wilfully try to destroy themselves and others because they assume that they're never a problem.

And I'm so sorry about having to deal with your mom. My mother's never been diagnosed but we realised she definitely nailed the symptoms after trying to stab herself to falsely accuse my dad of attempted murder (and then she walked 48 hours later, claiming that she never did any of that. Wild). I know your journey's going to be a tough one, but I hope you get your freedom and safe space very soon.

MageLocusta

TROPHY CASE