All these things...

30 + Tired. Poor. Academic. I like stuff. South of Narrm, on Bunurong land. Always was, always will be.

[comradekatara]

atla just so happened to write one of the most insane and complex brother sister relationships in all of television, and yet for some reason everyone focused on zuko and azula instead, even though they are basically just normal siblings, and as such not even that interesting ..

[comradekatara]

their dynamic is more fraught and tragic than you could ever comprehend……

this☝️ is just a typical sibling interaction

[adrenaline-revolver]

katara and sokka are what happens when you are your brother’s mother and your brother also tries to be your father. you love them, you hate them, you’re half of them, you can’t stand them, you look after them, they keep you safe.

azula and zuko are both just gifted kid burnouts with a dad that only loves the winner.

[tanoraqui]

#yeah when they're not trying to kill each other azula and Zuko are p normal. #katara and sokka on the other hand spent the majority of their childhood trying to raise each other #and were also the ONLY kids in their age group that they ever interacted with. #they are so. they're so. #''i don't remember what my mom looks like I just picture katara'' WHEN HE HAS HIS MOTHER'S FACE. kills me. (@professorsparklepants)

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Came across this art installation, Liza Lou's Kitchen, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC. It's a kitchen made of tiny glass beads, that artist Liza Lou did, taking 5 yrs. to complete, from 1991 - 1996.

My favorite part is the sink.

Details of a recipe book.

All the details in tiny glass beads.

Love the pie in the oven.

Love this so much.

No wonder it took 5 yrs.

https://whitney.org/collection/works/34855?

[barbiehelmet]

the zendaya thing isnt even a new phenomenon by any means!! the article mentions margot robbie wearing the taj mahal diamond as well, and in addition to that i also want to remind people that diljit dosanjh's request to wear the patiala necklace for the 2025 met gala was denied by cartier because they said it was in a museum and could not be loaned. however they had no issues at all loaning it to emma chamberlain, a white woman, for the 2022 met gala, while they turned down the request of a punjabi man who wanted it to honor his heritage.

this behavior is nothing new. the global south and everything in it - the people, the culture, our heritage - is seen as nothing more than a decoration or commodity to colonizers. i don't even need to bring up the koh i noor or the entire british museum; these examples are recent and egregious enough on their own.

of course this is not to imply that any of the people involved here - zendaya, margot robbie, or emma chamberlain - had any sort of malicious intentions. but the ignorance is just as bad in my opinion. the ignorance is just as harmful, if not more. because it means we are not even an afterthought. it means that the real people and histories and heritages of the global south do not even register when these people are putting together looks for their movie premiers and met gala appearances. everything is just reduced down to a shiny piece of jewelry whose history they need not bother with. it's just a continued reminder of the way colonization affects us all even long after independence, of how barely-healed wounds keep being reopened even decades later. even now, we are being denied connections to our histories and heritages while they are freely being given out to those that have nothing to do with it and don't care for it. and i'm sick of it.

[belzebubsofficial]

Hey, everyone. Here’s a simple little guide to your basic mosh pits. Enjoy!

[heyfruitcake]

Reasons to boycott Nolan's The Odyssey (that I know of so far):

They shot in the illegally occupied Western Sahara as reported by Middle East Eye (thanks to @fuckyeahdavidandyonatan for bringing that up)

They dumped their props into a protected area of the Italian sea after shooting (thanks to @godslop for finding the article in English)

Zendaya wearing looted 3000 years old Iranian earrings for the premiere of the movie + having her stylist fly on a private jet just to get her a dress for the premiere in London

No Greek actors in a movie about Greek heritage

While people mentioned that Anne Hathaway was flown in to the set every day, apparently it was not on a private jet but on a helicopter that was being used anyway to fly in equipment.

None of these things are new in Hollywood or exclusive to the Odyssey, its director or its actors, but I do think we as audience should start holding Hollywood accountable when it disrespects our culture, heritage, environment, especially when it's movies that are this big and have a huge budged that would allow for more conscious choices.

Please do add anything else I missed.

[nivialku7]

Some very good and reasonable points, but for as much as I recognize the Iliad and Odyssey as extremely important works of literature for Greece I think it not having an all Greek cast is forgivable. No Greek actors, not even one? Yeah, that shows they probably didn’t care about including any in the first place. Is that a serious problem? Probably in the same League as giving the characters pants and filming in Iceland.

Still, if they were filming Beowulf and the cast was a bunch of Australians? I think the nords could survive such a wound.

So unless Greece is really starved for a win right now, which it very could be since my only reference for Modern Greece is 20th century civil wars and an apparently plummeting GDP, I think a swing and a miss for the Greeks on Nolan’s behalf is just going to have to be a bummer.

I don’t want to be a dick and tell Greek people their awesome folklore isn’t theirs to tell, but up against one of the biggest names in filming ignoring modern colonialism on multiple fronts and committing large scale pollution I think we can forgive a Shakespeare adaptation that isn’t an all English cast.

[anghraine]

This isn't really about the specific take I'm reblogging (offensive as it is), but I'm morbidly fascinated by how virtually every conversation about how there are zero Greek people in the cast—even counting the five million-odd members of the Greek diaspora that a number of very bankable US actors belong to as "Greek people", which the very careful, mildly-worded Guardian article linked does—seems to get conflated with the cast not being entirely Greek as if these are the same argument.

Yes, there are racists making a big deal about how the characters and text are Greek, but a) they don't want an all-Greek cast either, they want an all-white cast, they're fine with all-Anglo representations of Greek people, and b) the complaint isn't about what the entire cast should be anyway. Nolan et al. didn't have to choose between Lupita Nyong'o and Any Greek People At All. That's a pure derailing tactic to trivialize the actual criticism and conflate it with something much easier to dismiss.

It's about the defense that it's representing the entire modern world while managing to exclude Greek people from their image of the modern world in a specifically Greek context— something that goes way, way back, because the ongoing existence of actual living Greek people rather than a long-lost fallen civilization whose works and artifacts are a common property of the world has frequently been deeply inconvenient to broad Western narratives and politics around it.

It's not unrelated to the other incredibly egregious instances of careless US-centric imperialism the OP was correctly highlighting, it's another form of it.

[thecheatinghomunculus]

#yeah there's a reason that ancient greek mythology hobbyists are usually ignorant about anything to do w/ greek people for centuries#millennia if we're being real#and talk about 'the greeks believed' 'the greeks had a term' 'greeks had a culture' pretty much exclusively as a long-concluded past#as if 10 million people in greece and the 5 million of us in the diaspora never existed & the romans genocided us all.#i just think: sometimes if you listen very hard under a full moon... you can pretend you worship artemis and almost hear our voices...#fun fact: 'well really at this point greek culture belongs to the WORLD' is one of the arguments the british museum has given#for refusing repatriation :)#like 'we are also part of the world esp when it involves greek things!' = 'the rest of the world shouldn't get to be involved w/ it'#are not the same position at all but it's really convenient for a lot of people to dissolve them into one and the same (via @anghraine)

[herpsandbirds]

Azure Tit (Cyanistes cyanus), family Paridae, order Passeriformes, Russia

photograph by Anna Golubeva 

[heyfruitcake]

Reasons to boycott Nolan's The Odyssey (that I know of so far):

They shot in the illegally occupied Western Sahara as reported by Middle East Eye (thanks to @fuckyeahdavidandyonatan for bringing that up)

They dumped their props into a protected area of the Italian sea after shooting (thanks to @godslop for finding the article in English)

Zendaya wearing looted 3000 years old Iranian earrings for the premiere of the movie + having her stylist fly on a private jet just to get her a dress for the premiere in London

No Greek actors in a movie about Greek heritage

While people mentioned that Anne Hathaway was flown in to the set every day, apparently it was not on a private jet but on a helicopter that was being used anyway to fly in equipment.

None of these things are new in Hollywood or exclusive to the Odyssey, its director or its actors, but I do think we as audience should start holding Hollywood accountable when it disrespects our culture, heritage, environment, especially when it's movies that are this big and have a huge budged that would allow for more conscious choices.

Please do add anything else I missed.

[psychic-waffles]

We're at the "JK Rowling is personally funding litigation to try and destroy AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL" stage of rabid UK terf brain.

Screenshot via Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net on bluesky

Tldr Amnesty International, global human rights organisation, published a report called 'A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK'. In it is detailed, amongst others, a whole bunch of transphobic groups and organisations, including Beira's Place, JK Rowling's trans exclusionary sexual violence support service. JK Rowling threw a shit fit and got Amnesty to take the report down by threatening libel. This was obviously not enough, because you can't appease a fascist, so now she's going to bankroll a bunch of lawsuits anyway through the JK Rowling Women's Fund.*

You can read an archived version of the report here, please save it and share it.

*Not so friendly reminder there is no way to engage in the wizard books without enabling this shit.

[wiles-art-blog]

Miss you guys. Creatures of all time

[herpsandbirds]

Lace Monitor (Varanus varius), "Bell's Phase", family Varanidae, found in eastern Australia

photograph by Axel Kwet

[ot3]

looking for animal references on image searches has always kind of sucked but it's much worse after AI image generation technology has begun to actually past muster, which is why i always just go straight to inaturalist. can't recommend this highly enough. you get to both find out about niche species you've never even heard of and also see some really good photographs like this one

x

[birdsy-purplefishes]

I KNEW I had seen this exact same image before! Good old "Organisms On or Near Appropriate Signs" project.

[ot3]

oh that's a fun project. haven't seen this before. some good ones in here.

[strokeofserenity]

Fernando Pessoa, “The Book of Disquiet.”

[titkoks]

[toomuchtaylor]

This man nearly died to create this for us. The least we can do is watch it from start to finish and then share it immediately.

[cosmonautroger]

[terkaterr]

ah doing ma thing just like god int- (remembers im atheist) just like the universe intend- (remembers i don't believe in determinism) just like noone and nothing intended ever. doin ma thang fucking unpredictable style

[aropride]

i think when actors need to leave a show for whatever reason but the character is important and doesnt need to be written off / writing them off would make the story worse i think they should just hire a new actor for the character but, and this is the crucial bit, hire a similar-looking actor of a different gender. Yeppp they look different bc they transitioned between seasons. Obviously

[ruffboi-mags]

My wife thinks she's very funny.