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What You Should Be Watching: YouTube Edition: Jenny Nicholson
Aug. 27th, 2025 09:30 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
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The idea of watching hours upon hours of video essay content over media I’ve never even seen sounds absolutely wild, and yet I have done it, and I am here to recommend the same to you. Specifically, Jenny Nicholson has an amazing talent of making the most random topics extremely entertaining, to the point where I literally laugh out loud and come back to the same videos over and over again.
Jenny has exceptional delivery, completely valid critiques of the media she’s talking about, her editing skills really contribute to the humor of the video, and she really commits to the bit by dressing up as whatever she’s talking about. I appreciate her thorough examinations of the media, and the amount of time and energy she puts into the research of the media before she talks about it.
Beyond the critiques and humor, I honestly just really like how she speaks. There’s a lot of good content on YouTube that is unwatchable to me because of the creator’s voice grating me the wrong way. I like Jenny’s voice and her soft-spoken-ness, I like the speed at which she speaks, and her general cadence. She is pleasant to listen to and even when I’m not watching her I like to listen to her videos when I drive sometimes.
My most favorite of her videos, and the one I’ve seen over a dozen times at this point, is her video over The Vampire Diaries:
I watched four seasons (well, three and a half) of The Vampire Diaries when I was a young teen, but even if you haven’t seen any of it, I can’t recommend this video enough. Not only is absolutely hilarious, but she goes over everything so thoroughly that you’re sure to be an expert on the show and all of its many, many flaws by the end.
I think the most interesting part of the video is that she doesn’t just talk about the show itself, but the books it was based on, the author and the company that published her, and even the video game. Yes, there is a video game, and yes, it’s just as bad as you’re imagining.
I also always crack up at her video over this very strange church’s theatrical performances:
And even though I have absolutely zero interest in Dear Evan Hansen, I truly love her video over it:
I just recently watched her video over The Rise of Skywalker and it’s no joke the best analysis and critique over the movie I’ve ever heard:
She and I have so many of the same opinions, she says everything I think but says it better. She honestly just nails it, every time.
There are a lot of content creators that I feel like seem like really cool people and I’m sure are nice and all, but very few that I feel like I could genuinely be really good friends with. Jenny seriously feels like someone I’d really enjoy hanging out with, and seems super cool and nice. I love when a creator feels really personable and friendly, it just makes me enjoy their videos that much more!
I hope you’ll give her videos a try, and enjoy them as much as I do. They’re honestly comfort watches for me at this point.
Have you seen The Vampire Diaries? Or Dear Evan Hansen? Did you like The Rise of Skywalker? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
The Big Idea: Josh Rountree
Aug. 27th, 2025 06:35 pmscalziwhatever_feed
Most grandmas play bingo, but author Josh Rountree’s grandma had a more occult hobby. Come along in his Big Idea as he tells you about ghosts, Texas, and his grandma, and how it all led to the creation of his newest novel, Summer in the House of the Departed.
JOSH ROUNTREE:
I do my best to put my heart on the page with every book and story I write, but Summer in the House of the Departed is especially dear to me.
The Big Idea for this one was simple – I wanted to write a story about a boy and his grandmother, whiling away the last weeks of her life in a haunted house while she tries to solve the mystery of death. But there is more to it than that.
This little boy was me. And the grandmother was mine.
Sort of.
I grew up in a small West Texas town. Way out in the middle of nowhere would not be an inaccurate way to describe it. My grandmother was a high school teacher in that same town who never met a stranger, and was beloved by her students. She taught English and Spanish and Folklore. And, sometime in her middle age, she started hunting for ghosts.
That wasn’t really something that was done in that place, in those days. But soon enough, she became well known for collecting stories. People would write her, call her on the phone, come knocking on the door. She was the “ghost lady” and people knew she would listen if they reached out to her with their weirdest stories.
Soon enough she was going on ghost hunts of her own. I recall her telling me a story about her hanging out in the middle of the night by a lake, looking for La Llorona. She had tons of cassette tapes with subject interviews, people telling their stories, and in some cases, ghostly noises she’d captured. She shared all of this with me, apart from anything she thought too frightening for a kid my age.
The scary stuff was the good stuff, though.
She planned to collect a lot of these stories in a book, but she passed away when I was a teenager, and was never able to finish. For many years, I had the Big Idea that I’d pull all that together some day. Finish that book. But I’m not much of a non-fiction writer, and I wasn’t sure where to even start.
Still, the idea of doing something with her stories, and with those memories, hung on through the years. And eventually I decided to approach it through my fiction.
Let’s be clear – Summer in the House of the Departed is entirely a work of fiction. Nothing in this story really happened this way, or at least not much of it. But the book is alive with my memories of my grandmother, and the little boy in this book bears a pretty striking resemblance to me, way back in 1981.
The portal in the sky. The occult rituals. I added all that stuff.
But the ghosts? Those all belong to my grandmother.
Summer in the House of the Departed: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Author socials: Website|Instagram|Threads|Facebook
Read an excerpt.
The Foster Kittens Meet Charlie
Aug. 27th, 2025 11:36 amscalziwhatever_feed
We left the door open to the room in which the kittens are staying, and Charlie came up to the kiddie gate, wanting to see what was up. The kittens saw her and were understandably curious. It was all polite! No kittens were unduly freaked out, or eaten!
(Not that Charlie would do such a thing. She lives with cats already. She knows what they’re about.)
Big day for the foster kittens today, as they are off to the vet. I expect they will pass their examinations with flying colors.
— JS
What I was walling in or walling out
Aug. 27th, 2025 10:04 amslacktivist_feedSome old thoughts on new traditions, and a Mad King's increasing fears of his own death.
The Big Idea: Deva Fagan
Aug. 26th, 2025 04:45 pmscalziwhatever_feed
One wrong turn doesn’t mean you’re going the wrong way entirely, and in author Deva Fagan’s case, her wrong turns ended up steering her exactly where she needed to be. Follow along in the Big Idea for her newest novel, House of Dusk, as she takes you through the winding path that led to its creation.
DEVA FAGAN:
I’ve had a thing for labyrinths ever since I first saw and fell in love with Jim Henson’s movie Labyrinth (and not just because of the possibility that I might find David Bowie prancing around one of them).
Part of what I loved was the word itself. We often use labyrinth and maze interchangeably, but they can also have very different meanings. Mazes are composed of false turns meant to confuse, to lead you astray, to entrap you. Labyrinths are slow spirals leading you ever towards the center, often used as a meditative tool for self-reflection.
In other words, you lose yourself in a maze, but you find yourself in a labyrinth.
And that’s where my Big Idea came from: a vision of an underworld where the spirits of the dead must navigate a seemingly endless labyrinth where they face all the emotional baggage that they brought with them from life. If they can leave those hates and sorrows and regrets behind, they find the center and are set free. If not, they risk wandering forever or being devoured by soul-devouring demons.
I knew it would be the key ingredient in a bigger story, an epic fantasy with a rich, complicated world and flawed but loveable characters. I just needed to find the book it belonged in.
Today, over twenty years later, that book, House of Dusk, is finally out in the world.
Why did it take twenty years? Apparently I had to walk a creative labyrinth myself, in order to find the center of this story; to give up the baggage of bad ideas and refine the good. Though honestly it felt more like a maze, most of the time. I kept taking one wrong turn after another. And by wrong turn, I mean writing entire full-length book drafts that I ultimately had to throw away.
Here’s a summary:
Wrong Turn #1: The Blade of Atropos
The story of a warrior princess with daddy issues trying to rescue a tithe of young people being sent to an enemy nation (à la Theseus and the Minotaur, in keeping with the labyrinth theme). It wasn’t a terrible book, but the worldbuilding was more interesting than the characters, and I was drawing too directly from actual Greek mythology, rather than building my own cosmology.
Wrong Turn #2: The Obsidian Shield
The story of a warrior princess with daddy issues AND a bunch of emotional baggage and regrets. I honestly can’t remember what her goal was, which probably means it wasn’t nearly as exciting as I thought it was. But I’m glad I went down this wrong turn, because it’s where I found a pair of characters I loved: a brother forced to become a brutal assassin in order to safeguard his sister, a sibyl being controlled and manipulated by powerful men.
Wrong Turn #3: Poison Maid
The story of a poison-skinned nun who has to team up with an enemy prince to bring about the long-awaited rebirth of the Phoenix-god and the downfall of an ancient evil. In this version the sibyl is the prince’s sister, and is mostly comic relief. Also there’s an adorable sphinx! This is the first version where I finally realized I ought to have one of the characters actually go into the Labyrinth of Souls rather than just talking about this cool thing and never showing it on the page.
Wrong Turn #4: Tears of Blood and Ash
In this version, the sibyl is now the nun (and brotherless!), and she’s watched over by a maid who is secretly a spy with a lot of emotional baggage. The two women end up having to ally to thwart their enemies, and ultimately travel together into the Labyrinth of Souls, where they each must confront their demons (and I finally realized that they were secretly in love with each other).
Finally Finding the Center: House of Dusk
At last! I found my two protagonists: Sephre, the aging war hero who fled to a monastic life seeking redemption for her past misdeeds, and Yeneris, the spy posing as a bodyguard, slowly falling for an enemy princess whose prophetic visions are the key to her brutal father’s power.
So that’s how I finally found my way through the labyrinth. It was a long and often disheartening journey, but I know that House of Dusk would not be the book it is today without all those wrong turns. I worked hard to make this big idea into reality, and I’m so grateful and proud that it’s out in the world now.
House of Dusk: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s|PRINT
Author socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky|Patreon
Read an excerpt.
Parking Lot Kittens III: The Socializationing!
Aug. 26th, 2025 02:02 pmscalziwhatever_feed
Yes, yes, I know, you don’t care about anything I or Athena might have to say about anything else, you want to know how the kittens are. And the answer is: Pretty good! They are comfortable in their room, they are eating a ridiculous amount and pooping an equally ridiculous amount, and their socialization is coming along very well indeed. The black kitten and the calico kitten are absolute snugglebugs at this point, and the tortie, who was initially reluctant to let any human near her, has come around to liking being petted and snuggled, but wants to give the appearance that she is under duress as you do so. Your purring gives you away, Tortie! We’re on to you!
I know that many of you are wanting/hoping that these delightful kittens will be foster fails and that you will have three more official Scamperbeasts rocketing around the Scalzi Compound, but I’m happy to say it looks like we have found homes for them, so after their vet visit to make sure they’re as healthy as they appear to be, we’ll make arrangements for them to be off to their new and loving families. This is happy news for the kittens, who now will have better lives than just hanging around a parking lot.
— JS
As the Swallows Return to Capistrano, So Does the Pumpkin Spice Return to the Bradford Speedway
Aug. 26th, 2025 01:44 pmscalziwhatever_feed
This is the true harbinger of the change of the season. Not the cooler temperatures, not the kiddos returning to school, not the imminent arrival of Labor Day weekend; no, it’s when the Pumpkin Spice Cappuccino powder mix is added to the flavored coffee machine and the little sticker slapped over the usual “Skinny French Vanilla” sticker.
The Pumpkin Spice sticker will remain there until mid-November at least, when it will be replaced with the Candy Cane Cappuccino sticker, or whatever the hell they’re calling their holiday-themed coffee powder this year. But until then! Pumpkin Spice shall reign supreme!
— JS
The strange cartography of Superman’s ever-shifting hometown
Aug. 26th, 2025 01:45 pmstrange_maps_feed
Can you name three famous Delawareans? You probably get as far as Joe Biden and Aubrey Plaza. If you’re stuck for the last one, you can now confidently point to…Superman.
This year’s Superman reboot places Metropolis, the caped superhero’s hometown, firmly in the First State — if your eye is quick enough to catch a couple of hints.
New York, Chicago…Delaware?
A short close-up of Lois Lane’s car shows it sporting Delaware license plates. And at another point in the movie, Clark Kent walks past a Delaware flag, easily recognizable for its yellow diamond on a blue field.
James Gunn’s re-imagining of the Superman story is the first live-action movie to set Metropolis in Delaware. The 1978 Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve clearly identifies Metropolis with New York City, while the Metropolis in Man of Steel (2013) has a Chicago look and feel.
Why Delaware? It’s a return to tradition, of sorts. Over the decades, the DC Universe has dropped various hints that Metropolis is adjacent to Delaware Bay.
But the movie does even more to please the fans of fictional geography: It offers an updated look at the city’s grid — again, for a tantalizingly brief moment. The exact location of Metropolis doesn’t bear scrutiny. By definition, fictional places have a tenuous relationship to real geography: a general area is required, but a precise place is impossible.
Take 1990s horror soap Twin Peaks, obviously set in the lumber-rich Pacific Northwest. Yet when asked in which state exactly the eponymous town was located, David Lynch quipped: “a state of confusion”.
Metropolis, with its much longer history, has a surprisingly circuitous geography. The definition that fits most of the city’s manifestations throughout nearly a century of comic books, TV series, and movies is that it is a major city in the Northeastern U.S., close to that other fictional megacity, Gotham, the home of Batman. In that standard incarnation, both places are clearly inspired by, though not entirely synonymous with, New York City.
Clark Kent, reporter for the Cleveland Evening News
But New York was not the initial inspiration for Superman’s hometown. Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel created Superman in 1933 in Cleveland, and that’s where the very first stories were set. In Action Comics #2 (July 1938), Superman’s four-eyed alter ego, Clark Kent, sends a picture of the military situation in the fictional South American republic of San Monte to his employer, the Cleveland Evening News.
When the early Superman stories were more widely republished, Cleveland was retroactively renamed Metropolis, but the generic city retained a particularly personal flavor. Shuster, who was also the comic’s original artist, modeled its urban landscape on the skyline of Toronto, the city of his younger years. Before it was called the Daily Planet, the newspaper that employed Clark Kent was known as the Daily Star, after the Toronto Daily Star, where Shuster had worked as a newspaper boy.
Eventually, the pull of New York City proved too strong, even for the Man of Steel. In Superman #2 (September 1939), Clark Kent sends a telegram to the editor of the Daily Star in Metropolis, N.Y. In the 1940s Superman comics, the superhero lives in Manhattan, which is simply contiguous with Metropolis. In that spirit, Action Comics #143 (April 1950) shows the Statue of Liberty in Metropolis Harbor.
In the decades since, both Metropolis and Gotham have had a magnetic relationship with New York, forever attracted by the Big Apple, and repelled by it if they get too close. But if (and when) they’re not in NYC, where are they? The references are oblique at best, and don’t always match up.
At one time, DC Comics proclaimed that both fictional cities are adjacent to New York City and face each other across a harbor. Another keeps the harbor, but moves both cities away from New York: Gotham in southern New Jersey, Metropolis across Delaware Bay in northern Delaware — sometimes specified as Delaware’s (very real) Kent County.
Metropolis, a.k.a. “The Big Apricot”
This yes-no-maybe relationship between Metropolis and New York City gave rise to several tongue-in-cheek references. Nicknamed “The Big Apricot,” Superman’s hometown is connected to Gotham via the Metro-Narrows Bridge, a nod to the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge linking Staten Island with Brooklyn. The two intertwined, L-shaped towers of LexCorp refer to the former Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Centennial Park is a thinly disguised Central Park. And so on.
Comic book writer Frank Miller had a poetic view on the relationship between the three cities: “Metropolis is New York in the daytime, Gotham City is New York at night.” His colleague Dennis O’Neill put it like this: “Batman’s Gotham City is Manhattan below 14th Street at 11 minutes past midnight on the coldest night in November, and Metropolis is Manhattan between 14th and 110th Streets on the brightest, sunniest July day of the year.”
However, Metropolis has also been shown on maps used in various TV shows as located in Connecticut or on the West Coast. James Gunn’s reboot may help anchor the City of Tomorrow in Delaware.
Will the movie also establish the Metropolis city grid that is revealed in the movie as the commonly accepted look?
Visible for a brief moment in the movie, this map of downtown Metropolis clearly resembles downtown Manhattan, tilted 90 degrees counterclockwise. It shows the canonical Hob’s River and St Martin’s Island at the top of the map, as well as Delaware Bay.
There are plenty of green spaces scattered throughout the city, but it seems to lack the large, Central Park-like green area that is Centennial Park.
The streets are a goldmine for Superman superfans.
- Of course, the creators are honored, with Shuster Drive intersecting with South Siegel Street.
- South of Shuster Drive is Kubert Street, named after Larry Kubert, illustrator of Superman: Last Son of Krypton (2013).
- The Yu Express Highway, near the Metropolis Municipal Building on the lower part of the map, is a reference to Leinil Francis Yu, who illustrated Superman: Birthright (2003/04).
- Goyer Drive in the middle of the map honors David S. Goyer, who wrote the screenplay for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016).
- Not everyone is a writer or an illustrator. O’Heron Drive, parallel to South Siegel Street, most likely refers to Maureen O’Heron, costume buyer for Man of Steel (2013).
The map appears in a shot together with signage locating it in Public Square in the Museum District, with arrows pointing towards the Metropolis Museum of Modern Art, and the corporate offices of Metropolis Power and LuthorCorp.
That sign has the corporate branding of…the Greater Cleveland Partnership. Wait, what?
Terminal Tower, Progressive Park, and other Cleveland landmarks
Returning Metropolis to its very first location ticks a few boxes. Firstly, it is pleasingly circular. Secondly, it introduces an element of geographic obfuscation that fictional places need. And finally, it happens to be where much of the movie was shot in the summer of 2024.
Local Clevelanders who see the movie will recognize the Leader Building on Superior Avenue, standing in for the Daily Planet Building. Hawkgirl — played by Cleveland native Isabela Merced — swoops out of the sky with the Terminal Tower, a Cleveland landmark, in her background. The bad guys battle Superman at Progressive Field, home of the Cleveland Guardians baseball team. Superman lifts up Lois Lane for a romantic scene at The Cleveland Arcade, built in 1890 as one of America’s oldest shopping centers.
And Public Square is indeed a major feature of real-life Cleveland. From there, it’s just a few minutes’ walk to the Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster Tribute Plaza, in front of the Convention Center. Inaugurated on August 2 of this year, it has a statue of Superman in flight, on top of a tapering blue pylon, with the sculpted figures of Jerry Siegel and his wife Joanne, the original model for Lois Lane, admiring him from a distance, while Joe Shuster is busy drawing the very first Superman comic.
Face the likeness of the superhero, suspended 18 feet above the street. Similarly, suspend your disbelief, and you’re no longer in Cleveland. Instead of celebrating a fictional hero in a real city, this monument honors the real hero of a fictional city. For a fleeting moment, you’re in Metropolis — wherever that is.
Strange Maps #1277
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Mississippi legal challenge: beginning 1 September, we will need to geoblock Mississippi IPs
Aug. 26th, 2025 12:24 am![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
denise posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_newsI'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.
Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.
Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.
Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)
Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)
Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)
All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.
We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)
If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.
On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.
Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.
Shaving For Society
Aug. 25th, 2025 05:37 pmscalziwhatever_feedA few weeks ago, my friend invited me to come to an amusement park with her. If you are an Ohioan or even in the neighboring states, you know that we are top of the game in the rollercoaster world. We were heading to Kings Island, which we both have gold passes for, so it was no trouble to drive a little south and ride some coasters.
The night before going to the park, I looked at the weather forecast and saw that it was going to be a brisk 90 degrees outside. Obviously, I would need to wear shorts and a t-shirt. However, it had been like, two weeks since I last shaved my legs, so obviously I was going to have to do that beforehand. But truth be told, I really didn’t feel like it. I didn’t want to shave my legs, but I had to if I was going to wear shorts the next day.
This thought process made me uncomfortable. Why was I so convinced that it was something that I had to do, a qualifier to meet if I wanted to wear shorts? Why was I telling myself that it was unacceptable to wear shorts unless I did something that I really didn’t even feel like doing?
For as long as I have been shaving my legs, which has been about fifteen years, I have always felt that it was something that I wanted to do. I don’t like having body hair, and I’ve always said that it’s just a personal preference for myself. Not having hairy legs is what makes me more comfortable in my body, and that’s just how it’s always been. So shaving my legs always made sense to me because it was something that I wanted for myself and for my body.
This was the first time I had thought to myself that I didn’t want to do it. And it was immediately met with, “well, I have to.” I do not like how that sounds! I don’t like my brain telling me that, because it made me question if the decision to shave was less of a personal choice than I thought all along. I also started to fear that everyone at the park would see my two-week-unshaven-legs and think I was some disgusting beast, some radical hippie that didn’t shower, all sorts of negative things.
I had been convinced that I had been shaving for me, not for others, but I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think I was, in fact, shaving for society. I do still think that I was shaving for me, too, because I really meant it when I said I don’t like body hair on myself, but how much of that “personal preference” is bias from society in the first place? Would I dislike body hair on myself even if the societal views on women having hairy legs was completely different? How many of our choices are really just society’s choices that we’ve convinced ourselves are our own ideals? Who’s to say?
I didn’t like that I felt obligated to do something, so I decided the best course of action was to not do it. Off to Kings Island I went, in shorts, with unshaven legs.
It made me uncomfortable. It was genuinely difficult to move through the world in a way that I felt was going to cause me to be judged by others. All day, I kept looking down at my legs, thinking I should’ve just shaved and then I wouldn’t feel so bad. But that’s not right, and I knew it.
I had to keep telling myself that it’s not my problem if other people are bothered by my leg hair. It’s not my responsibility to shave to make strangers more comfortable. If someone doesn’t like looking at me, they can avert their gaze.
I do not have to make myself uncomfortable to make others more so.
Having leg hair is harmless. I’m not hurting anyone by having it. In fact, it comes naturally on just about everyone. And we would never expect a man to not have it, or to shave it to make others more comfortable, so why the fuck should I have to? If men can walk around in their too-many-pockets-cargo-shorts with leg hair longer than their head hair, so can I.
Even though I just said all that, I think the hardest part for me is that I don’t actually want to have long leg hair, I don’t want to dye my armpit hair, or anything “radical” like that, I just want to feel okay with myself if I haven’t shaved for a week or two. I just want the option to not have to, without the self-consciousness that comes with it. I want to wear shorts when it’s hot and have stubble and not feel like there’s something inherently wrong and disgusting about me. I want to shave for me. Actually for me.
It’s not easy to change over ten years of mindset, thinking, and habits, but now’s a good time to start. Won’t you join me?
-AMS
Smart people saying smart things (8.25.25)
Aug. 25th, 2025 11:30 amslacktivist_feedPlease listen to David M. Perry, Rebecca Solnit, Donna Ladd, Marissa Franks Burt, Albert Burneko, and Samantha Hancox-Li.
A Difficult Moment in Human – Pet Relations
Aug. 24th, 2025 06:44 pmscalziwhatever_feed
Me, trying to explain to Spice that the reason I’m spending so much time with the foster kittens is that they have to be socialized to human contact, not because I love them more than the other cats in the house. Spice is, shall we say, unconvinced. I just pray that somehow, we will get through this moment of relationship tension. Perhaps a Churu will help.
(The foster kittens are doing great, thanks for asking.)
— JS
New Cover: “Yellow”
Aug. 24th, 2025 05:21 amscalziwhatever_feedMany years ago, I had a dream and that I was singing “Yellow” by Coldplay while accompanying myself on guitar, and eventually a crowd surrounded me and sang along. When the song was done, I looked to the assembled crowd and said how wonderful it was that we were all singing along. And someone said, “we weren’t singing along with you. We were trying to drown you out.”
Anyway, here’s me singing “Yellow” by Coldplay. And yes, I played guitar on it. So there!
— JS
LBCF: Sunday Morning Coming Down
Aug. 23rd, 2025 01:08 pmslacktivist_feedThere's nothing short of dying half as lonesome as the sound of Jerry Jenkins forgetting that every character in his book just lost their children.
New Books and ARCs, 8/22/25
Aug. 22nd, 2025 08:49 pmscalziwhatever_feed
The weekend is here and that’s a fine time to catch up with a book! Here are this week’s new books and ARCs that have come to the Scalzi Compound. What’s calling to you? Share in the comments!
— JS
