A SWIMMER IN THE OCEAN @jaysonscottmusson - Tumblr Blog

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evilrashida

military worship in this country is out of fucking control

daneedelion

excuse me?

evilrashida

military worship in this country is out of fucking control

high-shawty-deactivated20180326

Yea you’re right, we shouldn’t honor the people willing to risk their life to save ours and defend our country … oh

evilrashida

Military worship in this country is out of fucking control

cadimonsignal

I’m in the military and yes it’s out of fucking control. Most of the people I know in the military feel the same way. You civilians need to calm the fuck down. Most of us joined in our teens or early twenties. For a lot of us it was because we needed a job, and we didn’t see any other options, and this job has good benefits, especially for an uneducated young person in America. We get healthcare and education!! That’s some tempting fucking fruit. But this is a JOB. Some people in the military become heroes, that’s true. Jumping on grenades, defusing bombs, dragging a wounded person from the middle of a firefight. They usually end up dead in the process. Those people deserve respect, in my opinion. They give their lives for their friends, no matter whether or not you agree with the policies that put them there in the first place. But a lot of people in America reflexively claim that everyone in the military is a hero, full stop. This isn’t true and it lets people look the other way when something is actually wrong in the military, because it’s the military, they’re heroes, they can do no wrong.

We’re doing a job, and a lot of us are never really put in harm’s way. I work in a climate controlled lab for 8 hours a day, for instance. Really grueling. Such a hero. This fawning lip service of an infallible military doesn’t do us any good. I know people who have bought into it, who have heard so many people tell them that they’re heroes that they actually believe it, and they are the stupid and dangerous ones. Joining the military does not make you a hero, and calling us heroes might make you feel all warm and fluffy and red white and blue but it doesn’t do anything for the people that end up on the streets with PTSD or come home with life-changing injuries or in a box. We’re human beings, not some concept that you can just mindlessly adulate and then feel better about yourself.

im-a-deceptikhan

☝️🏽☝️🏽☝️🏽☝️🏽

wolfgangreborn

Coming from a military family, I know there is so much truth to this.

pillowswithboners-deactivated20

Roger Dean art appreciation post part 1

70sscifiart

Best. Tagline. Ever.

I cobbled together a “game” where all you do is dunk on Donald Trump. That’s it. Nothing else happens. It doesn’t end. It’s “playable” on desktop browsers and downloadable at jayson-musson.itch.io/dunkontrump

#gamedev #trump #jayson musson #retrogaming #nes

vintagegeekculture

Thor, public domain character, showed up in DC Comics in 1959, 3 years before the Marvel version.

vintagegeekculture

Like everyone else, I’m enjoying the heck out of your ‘Dead Fandoms’ post. Please keep them coming. I was fascinated to read about the declining interest in Star Wars between 1986 and 1991. With that in mind, why do you think interest in Star Wars started to re-emerge in the early 90s (given that the Special Editions weren’t released until 1997)?

Thank you for reading! Although I’m a bit concerned you’re asking…I sincerely hope the Star Wars supplemental materials and novel-sequels aren’t starting to be forgotten, now that we have true film sequels. For a long time, the books were where you had to go if you wanted continuing Star Wars adventures.

1991 was the year Heir to the Empire was published by Timothy Zahn. This was an absolute game changer that was a New York Times bestseller and created a flood of Star Wars novels that 90s kids spent their childhood/teen years reading. It basically brought Star Wars back from the dead. There was never a time, after this, a Star Wars novel wasn’t in the New York Times bestseller list.

There were always Star Wars novels, and most of them were very good, like the amazing Brian Daley’s Han Solo at Star’s End, or the under-read and also very good Lando Calrissian novels, which were basically Lando as a travelling card player like Maverick, only he ran into a starfish robot from outside the galaxy and fought an actual sorcerer.

These books were good, but Heir to the Empire had several things that took it to another level, that changed everything.

1) it was an official sequel, and since it looked like there weren’t going to be any more Star Wars movies ever, this was where you would have to go if you wanted to read about the further adventures of Han Solo, Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, and the rest.

2) Heir to the Empire totally, absolutely, and perfectly captured something as elusive as “voice.” This is hard to define and subjective, but if you read the book, you can practically hear Harrison Ford’s voice delivering the dialogue. It never felt off, it never felt that “this wouldn’t happen” or “Han wouldn’t do that.” It had an authenticity that transcended the charge many people give to tie in novels, that they are glorified fanfic.

I always heard that the reason Timothy Zahn was so good at voice was that, to amuse his kids on long car rides, he tape recorded the audio of the Star Wars movies for the kid to listen to, so he just listened to Star Wars on audio for dozens of hours on family car rides.

3) It’s so hard walking a thin line between things that are familiar and things that are new, but the new characters and concepts were wonderful additions. The novels were both authentically Star Wars but also had their own identity. If I have a critique of the very good Marvel Star Wars comics, it’s that it sticks so close to the “original formula” that it’s easy to be bored. Zahn, though, gave us a totally new kind of villain and a totally new situation - Grand Admiral Thrawn, who in looks and brains was just like Helmuth, Speaker for Boskone, the blue-skinned genius strategist villain in the Lensman novels, but in personality, was like an evil Sherlock Holmes, who could figure everything out based on one clue that was out of place. People are still crying over the movies leaving out Thrawn, Talon Carrde, blue haired, spacy computer hacker Ghent, and so on.

Now, if you asked us scifi novel guys about Zahn’s work, none of us would be surprised the Zahn books were as good as they were. He’s a top tier writer long before he was tapped to do Star Wars, and it’s somewhat unfortunate that his Star Wars work has overshadowed his other output. I personally love his Blackcollar books, which is set in a future where earth is conquered by aliens, and a young man wants to join the Blackcollars, special forces agents who use low-tech weapons like nunchaku (since advanced ones can instantly be detected) and a drug that slows down time to give them superb reflexes. Good stuff and definitely worth reading too.