[thestuffedalligator]

All the weird misinterpretations and revisions of Russian history aside, Anastasia is one of my favourite movies because its plot structure is so fucking weird

It’s a period piece romance. That’s cool, that’s all well and good, except that on the sidelines there’s an undead warlock who’s trying so hard to kill the protagonist, but all in ways that the protagonist either doesn’t notice or doesn’t accept as supernatural

And it isn’t a twist! The audience knows about the warlock! The warlock has a villain song! The warlock is one of the principal characters! But the protagonist spends 95% of the movie completely unaware of the warlock, and just spends the entirety of the movie doing period piece romance things while being repeatedly inconvenienced by the warlock until the climax, when the protagonist has to very suddenly

Acknowledge the existence of the warlock

Acknowledge the existence of the supernatural

See some real-ass goddamn magic

Kill the warlock

I have never seen a movie with a plot structure like this before, and I don’t think I’ll see one like it ever again. It’s like an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that turns Lady Catherine into a vampire who’s just repeatedly trying to drink Lizzy’s blood, but Lizzy doesn’t even notice until the climax whereupon she stuffs Lady Catherine’s mouth with garlic and cuts off her head (an adaptation I would kill to see, by the way). There are two completely different genres playing out at the same time, and one of them is trying to kill the other

Anyways that’s why the stage musical is bad, thank you and good night

[13thsongbird]

The only thing I’m adding to this is that Disney’s Hercules has almost the same hero-villain dynamic in that the protagonist and antagonist think they are the heroes of two wildly different stories, and the protagonist doesn’t really know the antagonist exists until the endgame starts. It’s so fucking bizarre. They also both came out in 1997, and feature a red-headed protagonist who starts the story trying to find out who their parents are and falls in love with a shady brunette with dubious intentions who winds up trying to sacrifice themselves so the protagonist can live/be happy. I dunno what this means, but coincidence? I think NOT!

[deathcomes4u]

Listen that was just the vibe of 97 alright some shit went down that year

[fuckyeahasexual]

Okay so I don't know why people say sex or love is what makes us human. Lots of organisms in nature have sex or mate for life. You know what makes us human? Cooking. Nothing else in nature cooks except humans. Checkmate aphobes. Sincerely, an ace cook.

….

…

is that true??

Holy shit!!

[singing-sorrowless]

Not only that, some anthropologists think that cooking is what MADE us human- as in the ability to consume large amounts of EASIER-to-digest calories (with all the pathogens killed off and the tough cell walls broken down) is the thing that allowed us to devote evolutionary energy to growing larger brains, and solidified the beginnings of communal human civilization. Have you seen how many hours a day pandas spend chewing on raw bamboo? Cooking let us take a shortcut so we could evolve in other ways. Especially bread, bc it’s a lot of caloric energy packed into a portable chunk you could take with you for days and days. Also in order to have bread you have to have grain farms, so bread (and beer, also made from grains) sort of catalyzed humans settling down into centralized permanent settlements. So cooking (and eventually farming) didn’t just help us physiologically evolve into our current form, but also shaped our social structures from the beginning. You should watch the Michael Pollan documentary “Cooked,” on Netflix! It’ll rock your world.

Source: “What makes us human? Cooking, new study says,” National Geographic

[synapselost]

Evolutionarily evolved to love Bread

[jenniferrpovey]

There’s a strong theory that we didn’t invent farming to make bread.

We invented it to make beer.

[gaslightgallows]

#and unlike modern beer ancient beer was really great #it was full of calories and usually a lot safer to drink than local water #the ancients had their priorities in order

[fuckingrecipes]

Cooking specifically in reference to applying heat to a food: yes! Humans are the only ones!

But in a broader sense, other animals do craft specialized foods :)

Bees dehydrate a mixture of spit and nectar to make honey.

Damselfish farm specific species of algae - defending their plots vigorously, since they can only digest a few kinds.

A species of Yeti crab farms bacteria, raising colonies on its long claws and helpfully holding them near nutrient-rich undersea vents.

Leaf cutter ants chew up food, fertilize it with their own excrement, and then innoculate the mixture with a special fungus! The fungus then grows fruiting bodies, which the ants eat. Little farmers :)

Fungus farming emerged only once in ants. In wood-boring beetles, it evolved independently eleven times. Today there are roughly 3,200 species of ambrosia beetles, none larger than a grain of rice, that raise fungi in chambers tunnelled out of dead trees. The beetles have evolved specialised pockets on their bodies to carry the big sticky spores of fungi when they move on after exhausting their host tree. (Pockets!) Each group of ambrosia beetles has one or several species of fungi it prefers to raise, but all of them produce nourishing globules not found in fungi that are not associated with beetles.

The black garden ant raises aphids as a form of animal husbandry- feeding and protecting them, herding them from one branch to another like little green sheep, and harvesting the tasty sap they produce when well-fed. When the herd grows too large, the ants will eat the aphids!

There’s a species of (I think it was a vole or shrew?) that harvests tough grass and leaves it in its den for days to decompose a bit so it’s easier to digest - habitual fermentation :D

(Unfortunately, rumors of elephants leaving fruit to ferment and get drunk is only rumors. There’s no evidence that they actually do that - they prefer fresh fruit right off the branches)

So yeah!

While many other animals have sex, farm, ferment food and even raise livestock for meat and drink…. (some even keep pets!) humans are the only one to cook with heat.

Cheers, you beautiful motherfuckers

[aqualinux]

@chaotic-archaeologist @kyidyl @kaijutegu

[chaotic-archaeologist]

Oh yes I have a lot of feelings about this. I would also add our very sophisticated tool use as another defining characteristic. While other species do use tools, we have the most extensive range, and those tools, coupled with heat/cooking, have allowed us to spread all over the planet and adapt to almost every single environment on Earth.

Humans are so, so much more than just sex and love. This is specifically to all of my ace/aro followers: you are a part of us and your intrinsic value is in no way negated by the fact that you do not experience love or attraction. The next time you scramble some eggs or zip up a winter coat or write your name or take transportation or play a sport do a craft please remember that those things are infinitely more important to your innate humanness than your romantic or sexual orientation.

-Reid

[starryevermore]

that’s why he’s like 😳

[someonewillcare-deactivated2016]

[farracuda]

was that a horcrux

[thelilnan]

my favorite part about this is that Trixie still wore her make up when cross dressing and no one gave a shit

[official-lucifers-child]

why do so many animated hugs look like the coldest, most uncomfortable embraces ever?

[official-lucifers-child]

two people in a cartoon: *hug*

me:

[noodles-07]

Meanwhile, Stuido Ghibli:

[official-lucifers-child]

now THATS a hug!!! look at the movement!! look at the the arms and the closeness!!!!!

[justdecadentcollectiondestiny]

Can we make this a Studio Ghibli hugs appreciation post?

Like this one! The joy!! The pure happiness and delight!!!

[official-lucifers-child]

yes yes yes

[elendraug]

[cryinonthebusdyinlittlewuss]

[guerrillatech]

[girderednerve]

If you're curious about these aggressively erased urban geographies, Mapping Inequality is an online project that makes the digitized maps compiled by the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s readily available and searchable; they're powerful primary sources for understanding redlining and where people lived before Ike rolled out the interstate highway system in the 50s.

[fandomsandfeminism]

You know what the most frustrating thing about the vegans throwing a fit over my “Humans aren’t Parasites” post is?  I really wasn’t trying to make a point about animal agriculture. Honestly, the example about subsistence hunting isn’t the main point. That post was actually inspired by thoughts I’ve been having about the National Park system and environmentalist groups.

See, I LOVE the National Parks. I always have a pass. I got to multiple parks a year. I LOVE them, and always viewed them as this unambiguously GOOD thing. Like, the best thing America has done. 

BUT, I just finished reading this book called “I am the Grand Canyon” all about the native Havasupai people and their fight to gain back their rights to the lands above the canyon rim. Historically, they spent the summer months farming in the canyon, and then the winter months hunter-gathering up above the rim. When their reservation was made though, they lost basically all rights to the rim land (They had limited grazing rights to some of it, but it was renewed year to year and always threatened, and it was a whole thing), leading to a century long fight to get it back. 

And in that book there are a couple of really poignant anecdotes- one man talks about how park rangers would come harass them if they tried to collect pinon nuts too close to park land- worried that they would take too many pinon nuts that the squirrels wanted. Despite the fact that the Havasupai had harvested pinon nuts for thousands and thousands of years without ever…like…starving the squirrels. 

There’s another anecdote of them seeing the park rangers hauling away the bodies of dozens of deer- killed in the park because of overpopulation- while the Havasupai had been banned from hunting. (Making them more and more reliant on government aid just to survive the winter months.) 

They talk about how they would traditionally carve out these natural cisterns above the rim to catch rainwater, and how all the animals benefitted from this, but it was difficult to maintain those cisterns when their “ownership” of the land was so disputed. 

So here you have examples of when people are forcibly separated from their ecosystem and how it hurts both those people and the ecosystem. 

And then when the Havasupai finally got legislation before Congress to give them ownership of the rim land back- their biggest opponent was the Parks system and the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club (a big conservation group here in the US) ran a huge smear campaign against these people on the belief that any humans owning this land other than the park system (which aims at conservation, even while developing for recreation) was unacceptable. 

And it all got me thinking about how, as much as I love the National Parks, there are times when its insistence that nature be left “untouched” (except, ya know, for recreation) can actually harm both the native people who have traditionally been part of those ecosystems AND potentially the ecosystems themselves. And I just think there’s a lot of nuance there about recognizing that there are ways for us to be in balance with nature, and that our environmentalism should respect that and push for sustainability over preserving “pristine” human-less landscapes. Removing ourselves from nature isn’t the answer. 

But apparently the idea that subsistence hunting might actually not be a moral catastrophe really set the vegans off.  Woopie. 

[wondermumbles]

#love seeing discussions about this#because everyone wants to see western conservation as infallible#without realizing that it’s still built on white supremacist and colonialist beliefs

- @finding-my-culture

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 14 March 2018, Marielle Franco, a bisexual Afro-Brazilian socialist and feminist was assassinated in Rio de Janeiro. Raised in a favela (shanty town) in the city, she began work at the age of eleven and later raised a daughter as a single mother working for the minimum wage, before being elected to the city council in 2016. The day before her murder, she had spoken out against extrajudicial killings by police and paramilitaries. The bullets that killed her had been purchased by the federal police. The minister of public security claimed that the bullets were stolen from a post office, but this lie was retracted when the post office publicly stated it was untrue. At the time of writing, four suspects have been arrested for the murder, all with ties to state security forces, and two of them with links to the family of right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro. Another suspect, a former police officer, was shot and killed by police in February 2020, as they were attempting to arrest him. * We have too many important anniversaries today to post them here. For all of them each day, follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wrkclasshistory https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1671974649654345/?type=3

[sapphiresoftarth-blog]

[cilly-murphy]

“One thing I’ve learned since being here is that Arthur values your opinion above almost all others.“ —Princess Mithian, 4x11 “The Hunter’s Heart”

[duke605]

[sethlord]

The content I’m here for

[jawncharles]

who is he

[quintusbenedictus]

[freyfall]

a lesson on nonbinary individuals and why we feel the way we do about numerous basic things, such as the mere fact of our existence and our pronouns.

[smolanxiouscatvoids]

At first I thought this was about bisexuality whoops

[rainbowsnowflake]

I thought it was abt asexuality 🙈

[casmick-consequences]

[genzfanfix]

when you’re bi and enby 👾

[fiachdubh]

Some solidarity for bi/ace/nb

[sabertoothwalrus]

I’m not going to explain myself

[sabertoothwalrus]

this image feels appropriate to put here

[xiaq]

Small Town Grocery Store Stories: LGBTQ+ friendly edition

Me: minding my own damn business in the grocery store

One of my students and a few of his teammates enter the dairy aisle. 

My student is holding hands with one of his teammates. 

My student: Oh hey, Professor X!

Me, who has both my student and his girlfriend in my class: …Hello

My student, looking at his hand-holding partner: Oh! Don’t worry. My girlfriend knows. Not that I’m cheating! I’m not cheating. I’m not gay.

Hand Holding boy: Not that being gay is a bad thing! It’s a good thing!

My student: Right! But no, listen. We aren’t together, we just hold hands in public sometimes.

Hand Holding Boy: Especially on Friday nights. And weekends. And at away games.

My student: Because sometimes people will say shit and then we can punch them! And if the fight started because someone was being homophobic, coach won’t get mad at us.

Hand Holding Boy: Always nice to punch a homophobe. And [gesturing to another boy in the group] maybe they’ll think twice about saying something to [other boy’s name] if he ever gets a boyfriend and wants to hold his hand for real. The Gay One, resigned but smiling: I’ve decided it’s sweet and not really fucking weird.

[the-long-gone-souls]

This is what “boys will be boys” is meant to be

[chaoticevilbean]

This is the best thing I’ve seen in a while.

[garbage-empress]

before i had gotten close with ex-catholics i was under the assumption that "catholic guilt" was mostly about sex, or serious topics.

but i was naïve. it's apparently about every positive experience. enjoying a meal? you're so lucky, children are starving. spending your day off cosy in bed? wow, so selfish, homeless people are freezing to death.

every former or present catholic i've met has a very obvious anxiety disorder and it's so painfully not a coincidence.

[lesbian-toddhoward]

[tikkety-tok]

This is so important. From Daniel Sloss HBO standup special 'X'.

[bibliophile1887]

[yaggol-deactivated20150816]

FUCK YES

[saiyanheretic]

There’s ‘black comedy’ and then there’s M*A*S*H.

[randomgifgirl]

always reblog MASH, it deserves more on tumblr

[poni1kenobi-deactivated20250915]

Always reblog War is war and hell is hell

[keeper-of-the-flames]

Fun fact, the DVD box sets have an option turn off the laugh track and it makes it a much more somber and enlightening social commentary. Cause it may be set in the Korean War, but it’s really about the Vietnam War.

[elthara]

I feel like M*A*S*H is one of those series that never actually goes out of date. Everyone should see it.

[mischief-and-tea-by-the-sea]

No, M*A*S*H never does go out of date, and unlike a lot of shows from the 60s up, you don’t sit there cringing because “How did I like that?  How was that funny?” like with so many other TV shows that are embarrassingly dated.  You watch it, and the humor, the comments, everything is still, sadly, relevant.  I still watch the reruns.  I was born and bred on this show, and I’ve always watched the reruns, and it always remains a good punch and a good punchline.  

[nothingeverlost]

The best TV show ever made, and this is one of the best scenes.