Elle

18. She/her. October baby. Welcome to my blog full of wonderful things! I write fanfic and my ask box is always open so let me know what you're thinking! Masterlist Promps

[lipslikethegardensofbabylon]

okay sisters now what taylor album are you?

[latinotiktok]

[stephanemiroux]

I like that you don't even need to translate to understand.

[beysexuality]

Shut the fuck up

[funny-tik-toks]

[negromameswey]

two important additions

[stufflikethathere]

some examples of wabi-sabi 

[notmanthelessbutnaturemore]

this reminds me of the time I visited Canterbury Cathedral and a nice old volunteer told me all about the grooves worn in the floor from pilgrims kneeling there

[angremlin-deactivated20250312]

Things like this don’t just reflect the past, they also shape the future. When Rome was building its network of roads, it was also using war chariots with wheels a standard size and distance apart. The chariots wore deep grooves into the roads that were essentially the same everywhere. Because of these ruts, everyone pretty much always made wagons and other wheeled vehicles with wheels that fit into them so they didn’t have one wheel slip into one and crack the axle. This just sort of became The Size Vehicles Are, so train tracks have their rails match these dimensions too. A lot of train lines pass through tunnels, and these tunnels are of course built just large enough to accomodate the trains. These train lines, with the tunnels, are pretty much the only reasonable way to move very very large cargo overland. When we build space ships, we didn’t build everything at the launch pad. Parts had to be constructed all over the place. These parts then had to be moved for assembly. That means that had to be put on trains. That means they had to fit in the tunnels, which were sized based on trains, which were sized based on their rails, which were sized based on the exact dimensions of war chariots of the Roman Empire. And that’s how the grooves worn into roads by Roman soldiers two thousand years ago determined real physical properties of space craft.

[systlin]

🔥 on american culture

There isn’t any.

America stripped the cultures away from all who came here in order to hammer them into the good little uniform consumers that were wanted.

The culture of America is one of endless consumption and breathtaking arrogance.

[kyidyl]

That’s....not really true. Because it’s literally impossible to have a group of humans and not have a culture. But is hard to see your culture from the inside. And, yes, there are negative things about American culture. I mean obviously. But after spending >year outside the US, here are some things I noticed about our culture:

We are casually generous. “I’m going to the store, you need anything?” Does not carry a requirement of paying us back. The other Americans in my program thought nothing of buying one of our British friends a soda or something, whereas when our British friends got each other a drink or something they paid each other back. And if you’re in trouble, Americans will literally offer you the shirt off their back. Or - in the case of one Brit I had a conversation with - a job to a stranger who needed it.

America is brightly colored. I don’t know how else to phrase it. Europe isn’t drab but like the US like brightness, light, and color. It’s the first thing I noticed when I got home - everything was more saturated.

We are genuinely curious. We aren’t always as polite about it as we should be, but usually if we’re asking about your culture, it comes from a good place.

We genuinely love cars. I’m not saying this is a good or bad trait, just that it’s part of our culture. We like to drive a lot more than people in Europe.

We are diverse. I was walking home with one of the other Americans and we were chatting like idk...a couple weeks after we’d met and she was like “ok I don’t want to be weird or anything but like....is it just me or is it SO WHITE here??”. We agreed that, yeah, it was but that y’know...White people came from somewhere and the uk is one of those places. But when I was gone I really missed seeing faces that looked nothing like mine. There are, of course, other ethnicities in the UK but compared to the us where literally half the population isn’t white, it’s definitely a striking difference. And as a consequence of this, our food is way more diverse. We didn’t strip these things from their cultures. The vast majority of restaurants that have, say, Chinese, or Thai, or sushi, or Indian, are run by people who immigrated here, brought their culture here, and adapted to the goods available to them in their new country. That is a natural, normal process and a long-existing part of human migration. And because we have so many more cultures here, we are lucky to be able to take part in what they share with us. It isn’t always a benign process but it’s just wrong to say that it’s always about “us” stealing from “them”.

We talk about our problems. IE, we’re very self-critical. We aren’t always good but we spend a lot of time looking at our culture and our country, breaking it down into pieces, and examining those pieces. We argue about how to make them better. A lot of times we suck at it but at least we’re having the conversation and the argument.

We hate authority. It doesn’t matter what your politics are, chances are you dislike and distrust the govt. we’re rebellious and few things make us more pleased than giving the man the finger or seeing someone else do it. British people protest - I literally saw an anti-Brexit protest march by my window - but they plan a time, politely show up and politely voice their displeasure, and then go home after cleaning up behind themselves. Americans? We fucking RIOT. Part of the entire point of the mall in DC is to yell at the govt every time we don’t like what they’re doing. We hate that we need a permit to do it. We’re always looking for new and creative ways to question authority. I think this is why it bothers a lot of us when people from other countries are like “why don’t you do something about _______”. Like, we’re trying. Trust me, we’re trying.

Idk that’s just some random stuff I noticed after living somewhere else for awhile.

[physticuffs]

yes!!! other things: 

- Americans smile a lot. Europeans can tell the American in the room just because the American will auto-smile at random passerby. smiling is a greeting as much as “hello” is, and it’s a way of talking. when i talk to American friends, i’m nearly always smiling slightly and my tone rises and falls constantly. my European colleagues do not smile nearly as much, and have much flatter speaking tones. 

- Americans are ultra-casual. after you graduate from school, everyone is going to introduce themselves by their first names. actually, sometimes even in college, professors will do that. Euro and Asian colleagues tell me that in their home countries, professors act like gods and it’s very difficult to disagree with them. one side effect of the casualness also plays into friendliness; Americans are what Europeans consider friendly on a very frivolous surface level, and colleagues of mine have been confused by strangers who they thought spoke to them like friends, but it’s just the American attitude of being casual toward everyone. a German colleague told me that even the notoriously “rude” parts of this country, like the Northeast, are still “friendlier” toward strangers than most of Europe. 

- building on what @kyidil​ said about “Americans love cars”--ROAD TRIPS. road trips are such a staple of American culture. Americans are much chiller about driving long distances than typical for Europeans, and cross-country road trips are a staple of American media, often considered almost a rite of passage.

- and yes, Americans often have a much deeper-seated distrust of authority than Europeans. it often doesn’t look like it, especially due to the Trump phenomenon, but even that’s a type of backlash against authority. it also doesn’t express itself well; our government has eroded a lot of freedoms that Americans are relatively unaware of, but mostly in the realm of privacy. for both good and for bad, the particular form of the American obsession with freedom comes very much in a “don’t tell me how to live MY life” way--regardless of enforcement. ie, i have a strong sense from growing up in this country that if everyone knew they were spied on all the time, but the government actually did nothing with that information, that would be fine. on the flip side, if the government set “how to live your life” laws in place but didn’t check up on anyone or enforce it, Americans would be rioting in the streets. basically, it’s a libertarian streak that runs through the entire political spectrum.

ADDITIONALLY, it’s difficult to talk about a monolithic American culture because our entire nation is nearly as big as the entire continent of Europe, so it might be more fair to talk about regional cultures. (for example, the note about diversity being part of American culture strikes me as a very regional thing, and very urban.) but it’s ridiculous to say that America has no culture when each regional culture is, definitionally, an American culture. as the person above me said, it can be hard to notice your own culture until you move elsewhere, but then you notice it hard. i moved from the Northeastern megalopolis to Colorado--different areas, different cultures, but both are American cultures. i guarantee any American that if they left the country entirely and went to live in another country for a while, they would start to realize what pieces of culture they no longer encountered, both in quintessentially “American” things and in quintessentially “my region of America” things.

[whetstonefires]

Mostly via Hollywood, America has also followed Britain in the tradition of casually exporting its culture so extensively that pieces of it become...internationally cosmopolitan, as it were, which further complicates the process of identifying 'American culture' as such but still doesn't actually unmake it.

Oh also, complement to the casual generosity thing: while the details of this practice vary a lot regionally, a great way to communicate to an American that you don't like them and are refusing to be their friend/friendly is to politely decline whenever they offer to do you a small favor, like grabbing you a drink or giving you a ride on their way to somewhere.

It doesn't matter how nice you are about it or how cordially you act in general, if you say 'no' to all offers over time without at least coming up with an equally easily fulfilled counter-offer to one of them, you are cutting your American acquaintance dead. Depending on how sensitive they are and why they were trying to bond with you, a grudge may even result, and you may be labeled 'fake' or 'cold' or 'a snob' or some similar thing.

It's permissible and even welcome to later reciprocate such offers in kind, but settling them in money or even being too anxious to balance the scales exactly communicates the desire to keep things impersonal. Unpaid debts that are never called in is how you know your friends.

[fantastic-nonsense]

Also, in terms of more tangibly visible aspects of American culture that you don't normally think about but are definitely American:

Music: Jazz, Hip-Hop, Rap, Country, and Blues are all inherently American music styles that have spread worldwide

Religion: many of the various major Protestant Christian denominations that exist were founded in the United States. Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Quakers, the AME and other African American churches....you just do not get the same Vibe™ anywhere else. The history of Christian evangelism/evangelical churches is embedded in our culture. The American South is called "The Bible Belt" for a reason, and that reason is the existence of a particular unique culture that gets exported elsewhere.

Also...Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. Both are "fringe" but largely inescapable parts of American culture.

Architecture: Art Deco, skyscrapers, the concept of American suburbia

Technology: the pervasiveness of Apple/Apple products as a cultural signifier of wealth and status

Clothing: wearing a baseball cap abroad is literally the easiest way to get identified as an American. Also, our 'casual clothes' culture compared to most other countries

Holidays and Traditions: Thanksgiving and Memorial Day are the two most notable holidays with unique cultural characteristics and traditions

Sports: American football and baseball, but also "regional" sports like ice hockey, rodeos, and lacrosse....also, frankly, the way that sports and sports teams are integrated into the school system. That's largely unique to United States culture. The concept of Homecoming straight-up doesn't exist in most other countries. Related: the Kentucky Derby and horse racing as social events, golfing as a part of American business culture

Literature and Media: Disney, caped/masked superheroes, the Transcendentalist movement, Slavery narratives, the Beat Generation, late-night talk shows

Other general pieces of American culture: driving at 16, high school prom, car and driving culture, volunteerism, gun and hunting culture, and our weird cultural relationship with alcohol and drugs due to the history of the Prohibition movement and the War on Drugs

It's important to realize that it's often difficult to see a culture when you grow up in it and doubly difficult when your country is a culture exporter (sometimes in the name of cultural imperialism, sometimes in the name of making money, and sometimes by complete coincidence). But the United States definitely has a (or a series of) culture(s), and it is in many ways a sign of American exceptionalism to pretend we don't.

[cavernario-galindo]

“you’re just racist”

[bitegore]

Transcript: a tiktok of a white person with brown hair speaking to the camera. They are in what looks to be a basement and are walking around while they speak.

“My grandfather immigrated to America with his wife and four kids looking for a better future. And nobody has ever told us to go back to our country, or adapt to the culture, or start speaking like everybody else. My mom had two kids here and nobody has ever accused her of using us to stay in the States, get citizenship, accused us of stealing resources, or taking jobs. Which all of us have! In fact, when I tell people I’m a first generation American, they think it’s really cool. My uncle was deported for running a drug ring! Yet none of us have gotten any shit about it. We’ve never been called criminals. Or dangerous. In fact, the only thing people say when they notice my mom’s accent is ‘oh that’s so cool, where are you from?’”

A picture of the speaker’s mother, a white woman with long blonde hair, is shown in the background.

The speaker puts on a British accent, and says, “And that’s because she looks like that, and she sounds like this. You’ve got nothing against immigrants. You’re just racist.”

[a-captions-blog]

[ID of reaction image: An art gif of Oprah looking from side to side and then at the camera while making a “and there you have it” motion with her hands. \End ID]

[indigenousfawn]

I just want to remind everyone how affordable buying food from indigenous tribes is. I live in a major city and I was able to purchase and ship (15) pounds of fish from back home to myself for cheaper than I could buy it from a grocery store here in the city. Yeah, shipping has its own environmental factors but I was able to support an indigenous owned business while also getting my groceries at a lesser cost. (Buying in bulk is always a good idea if you’re planning on having something shipped to you)

Some tribal owned grocers that ship:

Bow and Arrow (Ute Mountain)

Native Harvest (White Earth)

Red Lake Fishery (Red Lake)

Wozupi (Mdewakanton Dakota)

Ramona Farms (Gila River)

Tanka Bars (Oglala)

Indian Pueblo Store (Pueblos)

Twisted Cedar Wine (Cedar Paiutes)

Ute Bison (Ute)

Seka Hills Olive Oil and Vinegars (Yocha Dehe Wintun)

She Nah Nam Seafood (Nisqually)

Sakari Botanicals (Inupiaq)

Honor the Earth (? Anishinaabe)

Nett Lake Wild Rice (Boise Forte Anishinaabe)

Passamaquoddy maple (Passamaquoddy)

BONUS: coffee :)

Yeego Coffee (Navajo)

Spirit Mountain Roasting (Yuma Quechan)

Birchbark Coffee (Anishinaabe)

Thunder Island Coffee (Shinnecock)

[amy-santiagos]

I say we hang out, have a drink, and enjoy all of us being together one last time.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013-2021)

[combusting]

I’ve been thinking about Jennifer’s Body for like 24 hours straight and a lot of people have said that if it came out today it would be received way better but honestly I’m not sure. Like obviously better marketing that made it clear that it’s not a sexy evil woman movie for men would help but I think a lot of people would still complain about the fact that Jennifer isn’t a very sympathetic victim. She was not a good friend to Needy or a particularly nice person before possession, and after possession, it’s not your typical revenge movie because she goes after nice guys who don’t show any indication of meaning her any harm and continues to be cruel and manipulative to Needy. But like I think that’s part of the point. The scene where she gets sacrificed is truly horrifying. It’s gut-wrenching to hear her begging and screaming for her life while these men laugh and joke. What happened to her is still a tragedy. It’s an atrocity. A victim is a victim. A woman can be hateful and cruel as can be but it is still horrifying when she is made the victim of male cruelty and violence and we should still give a shit about it. Bigots will target minorities regardless of the moral integrity of the individual in question and it’s tragic when it happens

[myhyperfixationisiforgot]

jennifer's body is good horror because it's about needy.

jennifer isn't a bogeyman, she's isn't something that goes bump in the night. she is never supposed to be the anonymous evil in the dark.

no, jennifer is set up as needy's personal monster, in a number of ways. she's needy's very best friend, her abuser, her worst tragedy, her responsibility. needy's nightmare isn't what jennifer does to people, it's what's happening to jennifer.

the movie follows a teenage girl, who watches as her drunk best friend is taken away and can't do anything about it. needy has to watch her friend self destruct directly in response to her assault. she does all of this research and finds the right term and tells other people only to be...

dismissed. not believed. told to calm down and not jump to conclusions because nothing is wrong with jennifer.

jennifer's body hits different for teenage girls because it's their worst nightmare, one that actually happens all the fucking time.

[vital-information]

Okay, but Jennifer’s Body did not have to go that hard. It did not have to ground it’s central toxic female friendship in the objectification of the “hot girl.” It did not have to show how Jennifer’s acceptance of her hypersexualization both saved her (from dying as the virginal sacrifice of an indie rock band/read: from being completely manipulated and destroyed by a patriarchal culture) and condemned her to an unsustainable life of violent uncontrollable anger toward boys and simultaneous dependence on them. Megan Fox did not have to play her role with the subtext that she was jealous of Needy’s heathy attachments to her boyfriend and family. It did not have to recognize that despite some meaningful history and connection (including the possibility of romance), the relationship between Jen and Needy was really unhealthy for Needy, so she had to discontinue the relationship. And it did not need to end with Needy having sympathy for Jennifer’s plight despite the pain she had caused her. Jennifer might be the monster, director Karyn Kusama pointed out in one interview, but she’s not the villain. It didn’t need to do all that. But it did. Happy 10 years Jennifer’s Body 🎉

[vympr]

people wanna be contrary so bad that they'll circle back to ice cold takes like "actually Jennifer and Needy didn't love each other they actually hated and were jealous of one another" as if toxic adolescent friendships aren't a staple for every woman who's ever fell in love with another woman. as if you don't know that a teen girl's love for her best friend is saccharine sweet as peach flesh and poisonous as the pit

[iowiymiw]

i feel like a really underlooked part of jennifer’s body are these people i see talking about jennifer and needy’s relationship as “soft horror gfs” and while a lot of the content for that is cute and everything whenever i sit down and watch that movie i am reminded of how not that it is lol. like there is an underlying current that needy and jennifer are in love with each other and aren’t really aware of it but they can’t have a fulfilling relationship of any kind mostly because jennifer is secretly threatened by needy. all of her quips in the movie are funny and iconic but are simultaneously catty deflections of a teenage girl trying to act cooler than she feels. and needy’s character arc is her slowly seeing through it and really, TRULY realizing how insecure and selfish jennifer is and standing up to her. even jennifer’s and needy’s FINAL exchange “ouch, my tit.” “no, your heart.” when jennifer gets stabbed is showing that even when her best friend is killing her she doesn’t know how to express her emotions. and needy escaping jail to take revenge on the rock band for taking advantage of her friend who for all her flaws deep down started out as a kid in over her head. wild

[plotsjotsandespressoshots-deact]

Remember in 1993 when Jurassic Park was like…the end all, be all of special effects?

[suicunesrider]

not gonna lie that still looks intimately real

[drtanner-dickery]

I’m still somewhat convinced that someone sold their soul to create the special effects in Jurassic Park because that shit is over 20 years old and it still really, really holds up, better than the stuff in a lot of current movies, even.

Fucking witchcraft, man. 

[fanboyingoverdemigods]

fucking look at this shit though

[mauridianhallow]

Literally see this post flying around with a few different responses added to the bottom each time so I’ll say it for this one myself:

THEY ACTUALLY BUILT A GIANT MASSIVELY DETAILED FUCKING ANIMATRONIC T-REX FOR ALL OF THIS THAT’S WHY THE EFFECTS ARE SO GOOD. CAUSE IT AIN’T CGI. AND IT AIN’T GUY IN A COSTUME. IT’S A BIG FUCKING ROBOT DINOSAUR. AND EVERY PART IS DESIGNED TO MOVE. IT COST LIKE HALF THE BUDGET OF THE FILM.

[mizushimo]

amazing

[shadowthorne]

And they had the film it in small increments, especially in the outdoor scenes, because the rain fall kept soaking into the ‘skin’ of the rex and would slow down and mess up its movements. So they would stop filming and have a crew out there drying off this massive, fake dinosaur, and then they’d start filming again until it was too wet. Repeat until the end of the scene.

[mad-dyspunktional]

They used animatronics and detailed costumes for most if not all of the dinosaurs in the first movie.

The triceratops for instance, was also animatronic.

And the raptors were dudes in suits. I shit you not.

[datneeks]

One of my favorite anecdotes I’ve read on tumblr is how the t-rex robot from Jurassic park would malfunction while it was drying out. How did it malfunction, you might wonder?

Motherfucker randomly started moving.

So apparently if you were on the jp set you would sometimes hear people screaming bloody murder even though they were all well aware that it was a giant animatronic puppet and wouldn’t actually, you know, eat them.

[muck-raker-deactivated20181222]

(link to said post about malfunctioning t-rex)

[alessariel]

Did not know this, had to reblog for awesome movie history insights.

[brainsforbabyjesus]

So, I knew about the animatronics bit but I did not know the raptors were guys in suits and the malfunctioning t-rex sounds terrifying.

And i just googled malfunctioning t-rex and was not disappointed. Apparently in order to put the skin on over the steel frame a guy had to crawl inside the t-rex while it was turned on and glue the skin down. And if somebody turned the t-rex off or the power went out the guy in the t-rex stood a very real chance of getting mangled and killed by the hydraulics.

So of course, the power goes out.

And this guy is still in there gluing the skin down.

Apparently the way to survive getting sheered to death by huge sheets of metal while you’re inside a giant t-rex robot is to curl into a ball and hope for the best.

And this guy hoped for the best and got it.

Some other people on stage pried open the t-rex jaws and glue guy crawled out of its mouth and was totally okay.

[alessariel]

This is getting better and better.

[red-dirt-roads-deactivated20161]

I think they only had like 6 minutes of CGI

[teslasturtle-deactivated2023011]

I’m just waiting for the T-Rex to come to life and leave its stand.

[perspectivemax-deactivated20181]

@spinosaurus-the-fisher is this the kind of content you love?

[myloverhammurabi]

Realism comes at a cost, it seems.

[gorsime]

i mean ok but why has nobody posted this:

[myloverhammurabi]

It’s a three piece raptor suit.

[flamingbluepanda]

Old movies had the best special effects

[skafuller-deactivated20180122]

The thing about this that gets my special effects nerd going is the fact that EVERY single dinosaur was sculpted by artists based on the current existent archeological evidence of the time.

[witwitch-deactivated20160508]

@jurassicparkandrecreation

[senkirowolf]

@shepfax

[prettyarb]

Even better than that, this movie ADVANCED our best understanding of dinosaurs at the time.  They were blowing out a budget bigger than anything Hollywood had ever seen, and along with employing almost the last hurrah of incredible physical FX, they had a bank of those newfangled digital SFX computers.  Nobody’d ever really created convincing dinosaurs in a movie before.  It’d all been stop-motion animation, and even when the models were exquisitely crafted, you could just tell there was something OFF about them.  Spielberg wanted THE BEST DINOSAURS EVER, and he figured on using the cutting edge of digital modeling and animation technology to build them for him.

So they got hold of some of the best paleontologists they could find and said, “We want you guys to take this tech that your labs could pretty much never afford and use it to build us the most realistic, accurate dinosaur models the world has ever seen.”

The paleontologists knew an opportunity when it bit them in the ass.  They plugged in everything they knew about dinosaurs, all the skeletons and their best guesses about soft tissue and all that.  And when they’d created those dinosaur models, they had the computer start moving them as they realistically would with anatomy like that.  One guy took a look at those walking t-rexes and velociraptors (really utahraptors, but whatevs, fam), and he said, “Wait a minute, I’ve seen movement like that before.”

He called up film of a chicken walking.  Everyone in the room said, “Holy shit.”

Prior to 1989, the idea that birds were descended from dinosaurs existed–we knew about archaeopteryx, we knew there was some minor connection there–but the idea that DINOSAURS LIVE IN THE MODERN WORLD AND THEY ARE CALLED BIRDS was not pre-eminent.  Jurassic Park changed our scientific understanding of dinosaurs.

[bastlynn]

That paleontologists’d be Kevin Padian. Who is awesome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Padian

[thistherapylife]

This post just gets better and better with time

[raptorofwar]

That being said, Jurassic Park was still a landmark film for CGI. Previously, Universal had used CGI for Terminator, specifically that one that was all liquid metally and could shapeshift, so we knew CGI could make these really smooth surfaces like plastic, but we had no idea if we could use it on anything else. Jurassic Park was one of the first times CGI was really used for something else, and it marked the start of a fantastic new development for making films like this.

This scene was the big one. All these Gallimimus were implemented in through CGI. In reality, Alan, Lex, and Tim were just running through an empty field. And this seems ho-hum now, but you have to remember that this was one of the first times CGI was ever used.

Still, the giant animatronic T. rex was really cool.

[nuevayor]

x

[nuevayor]

Everything about this is a masterpiece: the girl that says “wow” and the girl that says “hi” shyly and bill awkwardly lifting his hand to say hi to them I’m cracking THE FUCK UP

[therestlessforest]

The way they all immediately straightened up their postures like the fuckin pope walked in 😂 the sheer power this cool science man has over the american people is palpable

[madeline-kahn]

Yesterday (2019) dir. Danny Boyle

[beaky-peartree]

no beatles or harry potter hell yeah

[postmarxed]

[thestuffedalligator]

“Vampires change humans, but humans change vampires,” said the vampire.

The human frowned. “Like - into humans?”

“No, no, it’s like - it’s like the sunlight thing. One day we’re fine with sunlight, and then the next day you go, ‘You know what, we’re changing the rules, now sunlight makes you burst into flames and die.’ Half of us were wiped out because we didn’t get the memo, and the other half had to go underground.”

“We never-”

“You did,” said the vampire. “Ever since Nosferatu came out, humans have known that sunlight kills vampires. It never did before, but it always has ever since.”

“Because of a movie?”

“Because of stories. That’s your part of the power. Humans tell stories to change the world around them. You don’t know you’re doing it most of the time, but whenever we get too big, you change the rules and make us start from scratch.”

“So you get super-strength, shapeshifting, flight, mind-control, and an unending bloodlust-”

“And you get to be the kid on the playground who says he has an ‘everything-proof-shield.’”

“I still think you have the better end of the deal here.”

“We really don’t. Now let me in.”

“No.”