be vigilant; we loved you

Personal tumblr. Most posts are reblogs. 20's/NB/Pan | Love video games, fantasy, drawings, space and art. Interested in History and social justice. Disco Elysium brainrot at the moment. --- My art blog = @baolinart

[zlily19]

You voice makes me want to turn into dust

[txttletale]

it is beyond cruel that venezuela is now a US colony for all intents and purposes and the US still continues to wield sanctions against it to the detriment of the nation's poorest and most desperate people even in the aftermath of an earthquake that's killed thousands

[thefaiao]

Updating his journal

[strawberry-crocodile]

for real tho it feels exhausting that ive seen this whole "woman should be allowed to abstain from X beauty standard" -> "i perform X beauty standard, am i evil? do you think im evil? please forgive me i came up with a dozen excuses 🥺" since like 2015 (and i know its been going on longer than that) like girl thats not the poiiiiint

[strawberry-crocodile]

look me in the eyes. repeat after me. "i face societal pressure to perform this beauty standard. i should not face that pressure. i conform to this standard. i am rewarded for performing to this standard. i need to respect women who do not perform this standard. this is not about whether or not i am a sinner for wearing makeup."

[innerchildabortionclinic]

i'm still working on explaining this the best I can, but I have a theory that environmental destruction under capitalism is a relatively common fetish--not as in I think actual environmental destruction is caused by it, but I think in media, there are people who are attracted to the power dynamic involved, combination of patriarchy and capitalism (see: phenomenon of "petromasculinity").

anyway I wrote this because I saw a fan edit of the anti-environment villain of some new kids movie and it had me thinking of a study I read recently on anti-environment politics as affirmation of masculinity lmao

[storyweavingspider]

I mean this makes perfect sense. In a lot of cultures nature/the environment is associated with femininity, which is why a lot of the early green movements struggled to get any foothold with men and men who participated were often seen as emasculated.

But also see: Tumblr and Onceler.

Shit, im convinced if tumblr had been around during Captain Planet days there would’ve been fandomites horny for Looten Plunder:

The conquering of the natural world is associated with power, which a lot of people find attractive 🤷🏽🫠

[monkeyartfiend]

this phenomenon comes from the Bible

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” - genesis

from White, Lynn. 1974. "The historical roots of our ecologic crisis" Ecology and religion in history, (New York :Harper and Row, 1974) >>

Man named all the animals, thus establishing his dominance over them. God planned all of this explicitly for man's benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man's purposes. And, although man's body is made of clay, he is not simply part of nature: he is made in God's image. Especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen. As early as the 2nd century both Tertullian and Saint Irenaeus of Lyons were insisting that when God shaped Adam he was foreshadowing the image of the incarnate Christ, the Second Adam. Man shares, in great measure, God's transcendence of nature. Christianity, in absolute contrast to ancient paganism and Asia's religions (except, perhaps, Zorastrianism), not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God's will that man exploit nature for his proper ends. At the level of the common people this worked out in an interesting way.

In Antiquity every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit. These spirits were accessible to men, but were very unlike men; centaurs, fauns, and mermaids show their ambivalence. Before one cut a tree, mined a mountain, or dammed a brook, it was important to placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation,and to keep it placated. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects.

so, yeah, youre correct - the fetishistic way mankind dominates the earth is very real, and, has a very specific cultural origin.

[what-even-is-thiss]

I still find it pretty funny that in fallout 3 you can get your karma down by just opening Moriarty’s terminal over and over again.

The slavers at paradise falls have heard of me. I’m the guy that opens people’s computers over and over again without asking first.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Butch won’t be my companion. He’s like you’re too intense. You must’ve turned on that computer like 50 times in a row last time.

[what-even-is-thiss]

My forbidden computer touching ways have caught up with me.

[what-even-is-thiss]

The reason I’m doing this in the first place is that a lot of evil karma options in fallout 3 are just inconvenient. Like I could go out of my way to blow up a city or I could not blow up a city and get a much more convenient free house and keep access to their merchants.

So in order to keep getting the full evil karma experience, every time I do something convenient or utilitarian that raises my karma I go back to Moriarty’s Saloon and just open his terminal over and over again.

Thus, my good boy points are eliminated through repeated computer touching and the regulators here are hunting me down for looking at Moriarty’s personal data a hundred times in a row.

[what-even-is-thiss]

What’s really funny about lowering your karma this way is that after you do a major good Karma action and listen to the radio, the radio DJ Three Dog will be like this horrible fucker from vault 101 we all hate him so much you know that guy? He did another fucking thing. He saved a thousand orphans.

[onthegreatsea]

the removal of physical media is not the inevitable progression of improving tech, its like the removal of the 3.5mm jack: purely a result of profit physical games still account for about 1/5th of all sales of video games

but by only selling digital games sony can be the ultimate arbiter of their price. they can stop you lending games and force another sale instead. they can stop the sale of second hand games and keep prices artificially high. they can set any price they want and that will be your only option.

[parakeet]

PlayStation putting out a legal notice saying they’re removing 500+ movies from user accounts days before announcing they’re getting rid of physical discs for games is an interesting choice

[postergirlfornothing]

[sandboxpyramid]

uuhh sofia + svetlana compilation. make them gay, noda

[showmink]

[ricomola]

Jokes aside, don’t let your kids drink.

[quasi-normalcy]

[shamebats]

The (European) sun is a deadly laser, stay safe everyone

[unfuckablebogtroll]

☝️🤓 it’s because the further you move toward the earth’s poles, the lower the angle of the sun is at the hottest parts of the day, meaning the radiation hits your whole body, causing it to feel 10-20 degrees warmer than the thermometer reading will tell you. People from tropical climes, aka close to the equator, are used to the sun’s radiation hitting a much smaller target- their head and shoulders.

Also the further you move toward the poles the more pronounced the difference between the length of day and night is. Worst part of a far-north (or south) heatwave is it doesn’t get dark long enough for meaningful cooling.

It’s not the heat. It very literally is the sun.

[txttletale]

regarding your comment that non-propaganda art is pretty low impact, my first reaction was to disregard it because I'm an artist, but I know that's not a good way to engage with stuff and I'm genuinely curious as to your reasoning. I haven't been able to form a coherent rebuttal but I'd like to think about it more.

By 'low-impact' do you mean impact on the material reality of people's lives, of politics, of marxism? Do you think that someone can make art that is effective propaganda without meaning to?

I agree that people especially on the 'art appreciation' website will have strong reactions to that statement as did I when reading it, I think it would be silly to expect otherwise, but I think it's something worth thinking about. I'm not super well-read even though I'm trying to fix that and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter if you have a moment.

i mean, like, any individual media object just has an extremely low impact on the world, materially and politically. when art or even specifically directed propaganda has influence on the world, it is in aggregate, as the manifestation of a cultural trend or the characteristics of mass media production--for instance, i don't think gears of war or top gun are individually very influential on the world in a vacuum, they are simply individual examples of the very influential billion-dollar mass culture imperialist propaganda industry.

and like, in case where a particular work or piece of propaganda can be singlehandedly influential, the properties of the work itself are secondary to the material factors propagating it and the political factions adopting and appropriating it. like, to take a very extreme example, the protocols of the elders of zion became a hugely important pillar of global antisemitism because of its usage by the black hundreds and later by white russian emigres, not because of some remarkably convincing element of its own rhetoric

and yknow, artists like to flatter themselves that they can change the world with their art, and it is a nice story, but it's just not true. it's a liberal conception of history, where it's driven by ideas, and if the right Ideas are simply released into the world they will drive history on the correct path. but history is not driven by ideas. at best, a piece of art or propaganda can contribute to a broader cultural context which shapes and is in turn shaped by the material basis of society. but if you are not attached to any actual material movement, if you are just throwing helium balloons up into the superstructure, i simply don't think it matters a lot at the end of the day. you can't heal the world with comedy

[furryprovocateur]

9/11

[furryprovocateur]

not even joking this is one of the worst possible changes that i could've reasonably conceived of to happen to video games.

[furryprovocateur]

having thought about it this is a generationally anti-consumer announcement that will have a profoundly detrimental impact on consumers and retail markets. this will price out new consumers even more than a $600 PS5 and $80 games will. this will make games less accessible and more nickel-and-dimed. this will make games impossible to share irl without giving your console up, and will stop institutions like libraries from being able to loan copies of modern games. and most importantly, it will be for a minimal profit, as most of the sales in video games are already digital.

this is such a staggeringly catastrophic piece of news that i'm shocked it wasn't said by nintendo. congrats to sony for one-upping them in anti-consumer practices.

[captain-price-returns]