gwenpool X spidergwen should be called GwenGwen

|bi|they/them|A trainwreck| My art blog is @artofavarice. Bluesky: @EmperorGreed

[because-im-freaking-greed]

this suddenly appeared before my eyes and my hands were moved to make it

[w0nderland42]

i get that americans love their cultural imperialism, but it really does piss me off that june is “international” pride month just because something happened in the united states.

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

anyway, happy pride, americans. i’m truly sorry that most of you don’t see the negative impact your nation’s culture has on the rest of the world. and to the rest of the world reading this, try searching for your own country and culture’s queer history, don’t accept the american narratives as your own. we deserve our own histories divorced from the cultural hegemony of the USA.

[escuerzoresucitado]

[distantwave]

[aflo]

I'm imagining a world where RPGMaker somehow made it as the de facto codebase for software and you have to navigate your banking app by walking around in a huge room full of NPCs named "make deposit" and "make withdrawal" etc and there's loud as fuck stock music playing

[aflo]

[sartorialadventure]

From Ethnographic Materials ML:

Ainu culture, an indigenous group originating from Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands.

The intricate, geometric patterns on their robes are emblematic of Ainu heritage, often created through embroidery or appliqué.

Traditional Ritual: The individuals are captured performing a traditional gesture, possibly part of a ceremony like the iyomante, a ritual aimed at sending spirits back to the kamuy realm.

Historical Context: The Ainu are the indigenous people of northern Japan, traditionally living in harmony with nature as hunter-gatherers, though they faced significant assimilation policies in the 19th and 20th centuries.

[mothcrumbs]

[alldragonsaregood]

[kaban-bang]

[vicholas]

Why are people now saying "LARP" when they mean "poser". It's confusing.

[vicholas]

Everyone is always parroting The Buzzword Of The Month without actually knowing what it means or where it comes from, make it stop

[gunsandfireandshit]

Kinda like how "POV" went from "(implied first person) Point Of View" to "there is a video"

[footlongdingledong]

thing thats good: yay

thing thats bad: aww

thing that has both genuinely amazing pieces of storytelling and abysmal dogshit slop both happening like entirely interchangably:

[pirateprincessjess]

Friendly reminder as we get closer to the launch of the ModRetro M64. ModRetro is owned by Palmer Lucky, a self described “Radical Zionist” who fundraises for Donald Trump.

Palmer Lucky also has another company, called Anduril Industries, that manufactures and sells AI powered weapons and surveillance systems. ModRetro even sells Anduril branded gameboys that were made from the same metal that they use to manufacture attack drones.

Don’t buy this thing. A 200 dollar Nintendo 64 clone is not worth your soul.

[pirateprincessjess]

The reason I’m bringing this up now is because there seems to be a new marketing push happening for this device. It’s all over my feed on TT and IG right now.

They seem to be pushing the fact that there are new Nintendo64 games being made for the M64. This is very misleading because any game that runs on the M64 will run on a real Nintendo 64.

There’s also been new games coming out for the Nintendo 64 for years. ModRetro didn’t make this happen. They’re just publishing a few games. The Nintendo 64 Homebrew scene has been thriving on its own.

[mousidy]

insane how many of you will just assume that a trans woman has a penis, and that it wouldn't be something she might have any dysphoria about

[mousidy]

[victusinveritas]

[gentlewordsdaily]

There is a very specific kind of sadness in realizing your parents loved you, and still did not always know how to meet your emotional needs.

Because it is confusing. It would almost feel easier if there was no love there at all. But sometimes there was love. In the way they tried to protect you. In the sacrifices they made. In the ways they worried about you, cared for you, wanted a good life for you.

And at the same time, there were still things missing.

Maybe comfort did not come in the way you needed it to. Maybe your feelings were not always understood, or noticed, or handled gently. Maybe you learned to keep certain parts of yourself quiet because it felt easier than trying to explain them.

That kind of hurt is difficult because it does not always come from cruelty. Sometimes it comes from people who loved you deeply, but did not know how to emotionally connect in the ways you needed. People carrying their own wounds, limitations, fears, or ways of surviving.

And you are allowed to acknowledge both truths at once.

You are allowed to recognize their love and still grieve what you needed but did not receive. Those things do not cancel each other out.

Forgiveness, for a lot of people, is not pretending nothing hurt you. It is slowly accepting that someone can love you and still fall short of understanding you completely.

That does not make your pain dramatic. It does not make them monsters either. Sometimes it just means everyone was trying with the emotional tools they had, and some of those tools were not enough.

And I think many people quietly carry guilt for still feeling hurt by parents they know tried their best. But being loved imperfectly can still leave wounds. It makes sense that it affected you.

At the same time, you do not have to stay trapped only in anger forever either. Sometimes healing looks like understanding that your parents were human before they were parents. People shaped by their own experiences, their own upbringing, their own emotional gaps.

That understanding does not erase your feelings. It just softens the sharp edges around them a little.

You deserved emotional safety. You deserved gentleness. You deserved to feel understood, comforted, and emotionally close to the people raising you.

And if they could not fully give that to you, it is okay to mourn it.

But I hope you also know this: the love you needed is still something you can experience in your life. Through other people. Through chosen family. Through the way you learn to treat yourself now.

The story does not end at what you did or did not receive growing up.

You are still allowed softness after all of it 🤍

[phantomrose96]

Hiromu Arakawa’s genius is obvious throughout all of FMA but her first and biggest leap of genius was in how she crafted her protagonist. 

Arakawa realized the burgeoning youth of the early 2000s wasnt interested in another plucky spry optimistic young shonen protag. Instead she gave us a short ugly egotistical asshole smarter-than-you atheist with so much money and power that people could no longer best him in arguments by telling him “dude shut up ur literally like 12″ 

Five pages in we’re told Edward’s famous and rich and powerful. Five more pages and he’s calling some girl stupid for thinking God exists. Five more pages and he’s proven right. Five more and he’s kicked an evil priest’s teeth in. And no one can tell his mom on him.

Hiromu Arakawa figured out the dream of every edgy young weeb discovering internet arguments for the first time and she cast them an idol made of gold.

[phantomrose96]

[inkskinned]

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

[inkskinned]

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.

[hagiomoto]

Most popular Jack the Ripper theories from ripperologists just blame immigrants, but personally I think it was British empire soldiers...guys who'd just come back from committing massacres in Africa and Asia and figured, why stop now?

The British army committed tons of mutilations during the massacres they committed in colonial times. Removing breasts and mutilating uteruses has been recorded before. In India, in Kenya etcetera.

It's silly to think Jack the Ripper was just some random blue-collar worker from Poland instead of a soldier who probably just came back from the Xhosa Wars, for example.

And Xhosa Wars happened about a decade before the first Whitechapel murder.

[hagiomoto]

One of the theories posits a Malay ship cook as Jack the Ripper. It's so stupid. True crime people are so stupid. This is the era when the British, Dutch, and French etc were committing mass violence across half the world. No one bothers to think about the implications of such a culture of violence and how it would influence their own capital's culture. This is London during the height of colonial plunder.

Not one true crime enthusiast wants to suggest that maybe the serial killer used to be an annihilator of an Indigenous tribe.

Instead, we get a Malay cook. Or a Polish immigrant. Or a Jewish butcher. Always the outsider. Never the bloke who learned his trade in the Xhosa Wars, came back to Whitechapel, and just kept going.

[samreich]

four equally well-fitted suits

[drarry]

Imagine being the gays at a pride event in 2004 living their lives when someone grabs the microphone and announces to the room that Ronald Reagan was pronounced dead. Can you even imagine the hype, the celebration, the pure elation

[drarry]

This is the Pride Month that It will happen. I feel it in my gay bones

[broken-horn-of-equius]