Product Placement
Jar Jar Binks Fan Club
Claire Keane
ellievsbear
đ
No title available
bliss lane
Doug Jones
tumblr dot com
â
Color Me Curious
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Interview Vampire Daily
Cosimo Galluzzi
almost home
PR's Tumblrdome
untitled
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
todays bird
Kiana Khansmith
seen from South Africa
seen from Thailand
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Tunisia
seen from Russia
seen from Azerbaijan
seen from Japan
seen from TĂźrkiye
seen from South Korea
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Bahamas
seen from Belgium
seen from Mexico
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Japan
@gabbaghoulfromstloui
People like to characterize human Spongebob as some waifish barely 20 years old looking twink but honestly I think he'd be more like Pat from the UK version of Ghosts.
The shorts, the passion for what he does and his craft, the dorky glasses, the positive and all forgiving attitude, the knee high socks, the love of nature and the outdoors, the tie, the love for his friends and family, the shoes, the love of pranks, the OVERALL WHOLESOMENESS AND GOOD NATURE
my wife and i like to torture each other when we lay down for bed at night by tickling or poking each other. as a deterrent weâve created an entity called âThe Birdâ which will attack you as a way to show weâre no longer comfortable with whatevers happening. weâll say âThe Bird is comingâ or âThe Bird is going to get youâ instead of âhey stop doing thatâ then we peck each other with our hands. hereâs a visual to help
Had to double take that this wasn't r/confessional
Jeffersonian architecture found in Tsinghua University, An auditorium still in use today. Xi Jinping the current leader of China attended.
Liang Qichao, Pre-emptive Chinese reformer.
Recently I've been reading this book by Liang Qichao, he's a interesting figure due to being among the first to call for active reforms to the Qing Dynasty. A lot of the stuff he talked about are now showing its age, but one can find fragments of it still in the structure of our society. I haven't gotten too far but in one chapter he discussed why it seemed that Anglo Saxons (British) were the superior race.
Instead of taking the biological stance one would find the west, he surprisingly took (in my view) a sociological stance to it. He saw that they collectively had certain traits that enabled them to spread across the globe and ensure their relative influence/power in each region.
I found it fascinating how he didn't say any of them were biologically inferior and he had this same view when it came to Africans. He pointed to the active warfare and continued focus on trying to expand and grow as a main reason for why the British succeeded. This active approach towards becoming a more industrious society.
Though ofc he saw it through the Lense of social Darwinism. But at the same time, he didn't speak of the total absorption of one "race" or "culture" over the other. Instead, he left room open to imply a nation can rise and overtake the current hegemon. Which admittedly he likely said to justify that China can change and rise to be the Hegemonic power it once had.
But in my readings one can easily see that he is accidentally referencing colonialism, the industrial revolution, and overall systemic change that focused more on giving personal freedoms to the general population over a completely centralized power that prefers stability over progress.
Which obviously, brings us to the dying years of the Qing empire, which has all the traits of a culture or race that is doomed to fall under the control of another, if they don't shake their own system in pursuit of staying proactive and trying to discover new things.
look at this wonderful gif of scallops getting scared and scattering like a flock pigeons
@firekitten830
almost looks like underwater leaves.
video games the next franchise? unlikely
I've read recently that there's the idea video games will be the next MCU. which as much as I love the idea of video games entering the mainstream more, that's just not going to happen. Unless these companies can find a way to justify bringing these in. I think Borderlands is proof alone that it won't. NOT because the source material is bad or because it's based on a video game.
But because the studios that will likely be producing them are more interested in having a new cash cow. Fallout thankfully was handled really well, so was Arcane. One could go into the series and not know anything about its past and still enjoy it, while someone who's a big fan could go in and find joy in the fact, they didn't just slap the title of a beloved franchise over a bad script.
I worry that Fallout, Arcane and edge runners will be the exception rather than the expectation. I don't need to see borderlands to know that I want that to be the exception. I only played the most recent one (I will play borderlands 2 don't worry). If Hollywood actually decides to handle the source material with care and want to appeal to the base and not just the mainstream I will be hopeful.
But I think from this year forward I will be watching with bated breath, Since I'd rather see video games stay as video games if it means avoiding bloated franchises and bad products.
Night of the Living Dead (1968) dir. George A. Romero Shaun of the Dead (2004) dir. Edgar Wright
I just finished night of the living dead, Idk if it was the first zombie movie or not but the common tropes are def present here. Found out itâs the first horror movie with a black guy, also pretty cool.
Also I really liked Shaun if the dead, but I watched it at least a month ago.
Legion secretly good? (No.)
I was reading a Reddit discussion that asked who the successor of the legion would be. Now if you saw my last NV post youâll see I have a bias. So it shouldnât be a surprise I think Caesar is a fucking idiot.
However, one comment had my attention, they said the only reason to work with Caesar is to prevent the rebuilding of civilization. Saying that reconstruction of civilization will only lead to the downfall of mankind once more through nuclear war.
Now if you agree with this idea then sure it makes sense. Itâs extremely nihilistic and rooted more in the idea that weâre inevitably going to kill ourselves. But as seen with tribes rising, towns building and republics forming. You canât stop humanity from rebuilding.
If your goal is to simply stop the March of progress, you will fail. One can only march for so long before their legs give out. Unless they have artificial legs (which requires the March of progress) they will die.
Caesarâs legion is but a stone on a sidewalk. Sure if youâre not looking it could trip you, wonât stop you from walking down the side walk. Just as it wonât stop you, it wonât stop the inevitable March of progress.
Empires, nations, kingdoms and the like have both collapsed and risen from the ashes. Time and time again, it simply proves that Caesarâs goal wonât stop civilization, only hinder it for a time.
At best Caesar could moderate it, but itâs obvious by the legionâs destructive behavior thatâs more akin to raiders than nation builders. That they donât have the ability to actually build, only to expand, convert and destroy. If Caesar ever truly took continental America, it will collapse. Itâs doomed to simply return to the same place itâs delusional creator is, 6 feet under the sands of the Mojave.
So Iâve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.
I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.
See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disneyâs attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people donât understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. Theyâve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.
Iâm not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.
Like â it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldnât do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.
In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just werenât married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.
They werenât the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream âfamily-friendlyâ company to do it.
Conservatives lost their damn minds.
Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I canât tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.
When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney â because historically speaking, itâs been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. Thatâs when I became aware of their unofficial âGay Daysâ and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.
Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends â itâs amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America.Â
Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from âa few bad things happened that werenât actually Disneyâs fault, but they did happenâ to âPocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.â
Like â please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disneyâs first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.
The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. Itâs not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. Itâs not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.
This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I donât like it any more than you do, and Iâm not about to defend most of Disneyâs business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people⌠thatâs genuinely scary.
Like⌠Iâll just ask you this. Where do you think weâd be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disneyâs prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.
The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.
I keep seeing people say âI need them both to lose!â and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.
Right now, this isnât just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. Itâs a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.
Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.
The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.
Thatâs what theyâre most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.
Theyâre afraid that they wonât be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.
So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and theyâre doing it with Disney.
We have! To keep! Pushing back!
Disney, not spawn of Satan?
The nazis that you see in movies are as much a historical fantasy as vikings with horned helmets and samurai cutting people in half.
The nazis were not some vague evil that wanted to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. They had specific goals which furthered a far right agenda, and they wanted to do harm to very specific groups, (largely slavs, jews, Romani, queer people, communists/leftists, and disabled people.)
The nazis didn't use soldiers in creepy gas masks as their main imagery that they sold to the german people, they used blond haired blue eyed families. Nor did they stand up on podiums saying that would wage an endless and brutal war, they gave speeches about protecting white Christian society from degenerates just like how conservatives do today.
Nazis weren't atheists or pagans. They were deeply Christian and Christianity was part of their ideology just like it is for modern conservatives. They spoke at lengths about defending their Christian nation from godless leftism. The ones who hated the catholic church hated it for protestant reasons. Nazi occultism was fringe within the party and never expected to become mainstream, and those occultists were still Christian, none of them ever claimed to be Satanists or Asatru.
Nazis were also not queer or disabled. They killed those groups, before they had a chance to kill almost anyone else actually. Despite the amount of disabled nazis or queer/queer coded nazis you'll see in movies and on TV, in reality they were very cishet and very able bodied. There was one high ranking nazi early on who was gay and the other nazis killed him for that. Saying the nazis were gay or disabled makes about as much sense as saying they were Jewish.
The nazis weren't mentally ill. As previously mentioned they hated disabled people, and this unquestionably included anyone neurodivergent. When the surviving nazi war criminals were given psychological tests after the war, they were shown to be some of the most neurotypical people out there.
The nazis weren't socialists. Full stop. They hated socialists. They got elected on hating socialists. They killed socialists. Hating all forms of lefitsm was a big part of their ideology, and especially a big part of how they sold themselves.
The nazis were not the supervillians you see on screen, not because they didn't do horrible things in real life, they most certainly did, but because they weren't that vague apolitical evil that exists for white American action heros to fight. They did horrible things because they had a right wing authoritarian political ideology, an ideology that is fundamentally the same as what most of the modern right wing believes.
Almost like really bad people can get into power if they just hate the same people you hate
It's that time of year when Tumblr celebrates Easter by posting pictures of crucified anime characters, and inevitably somebody in the notes will pop up to helpfully explain that crucifixion imagery has no cultural significance in Japanese media because Japan is only about 1% Christian, which bugs me because it's completely wrong.
It's true that in the majority of cases, crucifixion in Japanese cartoons isn't meant to be conveying any specific theological message, but something Western audiences are likely to miss is that a large portion of those random crucifixion scenes are referencing Ultraman.
Ultraman's creator was a devout Roman Catholic who explicitly intended the titular hero to read as a Christ figure, and consequently, various Ultramen have been crucified on multiple unconnected occasions throughout the franchise's history. Crucifixion scenes in Japanese cartoons are often directly name-checking particular crucifixion incidents from Ultraman, right down to emulating the compositions and camera angles of specific shots. It's like an especially morbid version of the Akira slide.
The upshot is that, while it's true that the inclusion of gratuitous crucifixion scenes in Japanese cartoons typically has no (intentional) theological message, stating that they have no cultural significance is incorrect. A large chunk of the Japanese viewing audience are going to see them and immediately go "hey, that's an Ultraman reference".
Anyway, as an image tax, have a shot of four crucified Ultramen miraculously resurrecting a fifth Ultraman by shooting laser beams out of their hearts:
You canât escape it
why are you so triangle
Because were married
I ainât marrying no triangles
Well boo fucking hoo, cause weâre already married.
why are you so triangle
Because were married
Wolfenstein is truly dystopian, yet beautiful.
I'll say beforehand, that I haven't gotten far in it. (I'm bad at most games) but the idea of a Jewish man who is the physical epitome of a "purebred Aryan" fighting against a Nazi regime that on every level despises his very existence. Is just beautiful, it shows the shallowness and baselessness in the Nazi ideology so perfectly.
On another note, it also portrays the depravity in such a world. I only finished the first three missions in "Wolfenstein The New Order" (2014). The way the weapons are made looks entirely industrial rather than something made by man. It's nothing but metal welded by other metal. No soul or anything in them. Hell, one could look at the armor the Nazis wear, and they're made to look robotic. unless it's a high-ranked officer they look and act as human as their dogs.
Just from that alone, it's easy to see Nazis not as this place of utopia but a dystopic regime that will cull the "other" until they must cull themselves. After all, in such a regime based on racial purity, they will have to exterminate first those who are visibly a different race. Once that's done, they will go after those who tested and found to not be "Aryan". But what will they do with no one left to oppress? well, it certainly won't be a utopia but auto cannibalism. Perhaps these "others" are hiding amongst the regime, and they must root them out.
Going back to the main character, I remember that he wakes up in a mental hospital. It doesn't take much to realize why the Nazis would want it to be shut down, after all, they're "Inferior". Yet the existence of a place filled with empathy towards fellow man still manages to persist. One could almost compare it to a flower sitting on the side of an erupting volcano.
This volcano of course is the Nazis, unlike actual volcanos they have the intention of destruction. They execute the mentally challenged and disabled like stomping on a newborn bird. except, of course, they find pleasure in destroying such a "plague". These little moments of humanity in such a cruel world in my eyes highlight hope, the fact that it exists in a dark cloud of fire is reason enough to have faith in humanity.
A lot can be said about Wolfenstein, but this is enough. After all, I can only write so much before it becomes mindless ramblings.
