lil miss bimbus & bumble

notorious marmite enjoyer (she/her, millennial) — icon by @kristybluebird

[onionstar123]

It must be insanaly exhausting to be Anthy during the Black Rose arc. Anthy certainly had it tough all the time, but that especially. Be nice school-girl, act like an obedient rose bride, manipulate the twink by playing his dead boyfrienc, manipulate all the other duelists, yet be there for Utena, keep "visiting" Akio, day and night, again and again. She must play three roles simultaneously: for Mikage, for Utena, for Akio. Not only 24/7 work but also, all of them worsening each other.

She is not only forced to act in the different stages of the cycle of abuse, but also, she is fully aware of that. She is abused by Akio. She must keep driving Mikage further into insanity and fooling him, just exploiting him AS WELL AS simultaneously being nice "bride" to Utena, very much aware of how Mikage is what Utena is on her way to become. She switches from "Mamiya" to "Anthy" and back, but never can escape the role where she is forced to be the one who must eventually break the other one.

I have said it earlier and I further emphasize it: one of the most tragic aspects in Anthy's character is not only how much she is abused but how on the top of that, she must be the enabling force of the abuse herself. She is only allowed to live with different masks and never in the show is it more concrete than in the BR arc, where she has the widest variety of those. Endless work shift of nightmare.

Only afterwards can one see the meaning of the small scene (in the episode 22?) where completely exhausted Anthy takes Utena's hand in her sleep. It is a little, temporary moment of peace for her.

[yeahiwasintheshit]

[booksandchainmail]

I've been seeing bits of discourse float by about western magical girl works having an overly narrow reference pool (mostly just pmmm and sailor moon), and how that leads to over-fitted derivative works that ignore the breadth and depth of the genre (with the counterpoint being that those works are influential and well regarded for a reason).

But leaving aside all the actual discussion there, I'm now amusing myself by picturing the conclusions about What Magical Girl Shows Are Like one could get to by drawing exclusively from a reference pool of a couple random shows with absolutely no broader knowledge of the cultural imprint of magical girls. Like,

person who's only seen Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Mai-Otome, and Symphogear voice: magical girls are a sort of paramilitary special forces group attached to various governments, rulers, or international organizations. They may or may not hold formal military rank, but generally operate as a detached unit separate from more conventional troops.

[booksandchainmail]

person who's only seen My-HiME and Magical Girl Raising Project: I mean, magical girl shows are just Battle Royale knockoffs

[booksandchainmail]

person who's only seen Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Ilya: kinda weird how magical girls shows are just spinoffs of explicit visual novels

[booksandchainmail]

person who's only seen Precure Full Bloom and Magilumiere: the average magical girl protagonist is a career woman in her twenties

[ace-and-the-rpg-horrors]

panel that makes me sooo emotional. how affectionate Wolhye is being. her offer is framed (literally) so beautifully. the way Sayeon is reaching out to Samin. maybe they'd have been closer in this alternate universe. the way Wolhye's dress is almost princess-like. combined with the pretty gold frame it's giving this whole thing a fairytale vibe. which is fitting because it was too good to be true

[tazzerz]

(TW blood) Yeah I decided to draw Sayeon again. I tried a SLIGHTLY different style this time :D

[skopostheorie]

[honeypancakehuuuh]

[kedreeva]

I think that part of what irks me about AI being used even for "small" stuff like meme graphics (aside from all the larger problems obviously) is like.... the time spent on it was part of the humor. "this is a silly inconsequential joke but I had to stop everything and spend 5 minutes making it" was, at least for me, part of the joke. Someone really took time out of their day to make me look at something silly they took time out of their day to make. Now it's like someone took time out of my day to make me look at something no one even made. Stop wasting my time if you aren't wasting yours too.

[heatherwitch]

Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” that was written in 1950 is set on the day of August 4th, 2026 (tomorrow)!! Now’s your chance to read it around the time it’s based in!

Audio: A recording of Leonard Nimoy reading it on Internet Archive.

Text: A PDF version.

Graphic Novel: On Internet Archive.

[klapollo]

almost seven years deep into the 2020s this feels less like a retrospective evaluation and more like a prophetic vision

[dearpercocet]

All k9 dogs are abused hands down if you post any pro k9 stuff on my dash you’re unfollowed I don’t care if we’ve been mutuals for years, you can claim to be anti-cop or a leftist or whatever but if you post k9 dogs with like “a good doggo! A good boy!” fuck off, if I lose followers over this then good riddance

[dearpercocet]

[cappucino-commie]

It’s ALSO worth saying that police dogs serve a significant role in worsening police brutality. A dog trained to attack a human will maim them. A cop looses a police dog on someone, and that person is expected to peacefully cooperate while a dog is trying to tear their limbs off. It is very easy for those massive wounds to get infected. It is an absurd amount of violence. And beyond the initial attack, the fact that a “poor sweet innocent doggo” did this is used to excuse that brutality in court. Especially if the victim, panicking in the moment, lashed out at the dog. As this website has demonstrated many times, majority-white juries have more sympathies for injured dogs than the people of color who are most often victims of police brutality. So they’re not just systemic animal abuse, they’re also a tool for increased police brutality and to excuse

[gothicprep]

the late senator graham and i disagreed on pretty much everything, but credit where it’s due. this quote of his is an all-timer:

it’s arguably the most honest thing that anyone has said in politics.

[fallout-lou-begas]

I have said before that revolutionary girl utena is the show where subtext goes to die but it is still no less jarring, shocking, and horrifying that when ruka pins jury against the wall in episode 29, while mocking her for her unreciprocated love for shiori (who he has in the palm of his hand), and for the first time in the show sexual assault is explicitly depicted instead of being hauntingly implied (or, rather, simply not directly observed)

[fallout-lou-begas]

christ alive.

[knownqueerbaiter]

idk who needs to hear this but it’s healthier for you to just accept that you’re gonna be kinda fat than it is to live the rest of your life miserably trying to monitor yourself to maintain a skinny weight your body doesn’t want to hold onto

[knownqueerbaiter]

“nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” what feels even better is living a life where your self-worth isn’t entirely dependent on your thinness and you don’t constantly monitor and shame yourself. attaching the tweet that was worth at least five hours of therapy for me

[telumendils]

[balo-badartist]

wolf cub

[janmisali]

Legalizing copyright infringement would be dismantling one of the few limitations on the white urge to steal from Black Art and Black Artists. The practical application of it would be anti-Black as fuck

this argument makes so many assumptions that I disagree with that I don't know where to start

[gnommunist-organizer]

damn asker, that's crazy and would suck. good thing we have robust IP law in the United States to prevent theft from Black artists

now to take a big sip of coffee and look up who owns Tupac Shakur's likeness

[mlembug]

The Bizarre Reason You Rarely Hear Martin Luther King Quotes in Movies

Steven Spielberg has received criticism for buying the film rights to MLK's speeches, and further controversy stems from King's estate.

In 2009, Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks company paid the estate for film rights to King's words, along with his life rights, which allow a person or company to make content based on an individual's story. DreamWorks has yet to produce or direct Spielberg's planned King biopic, but the rights have caused complications for numerous filmmakers. (Neither Spielberg's literary agent nor King's estate returned Broadly's request for comment.)

King has received only one major biopic, 2014's Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay […] Instead of using King's speeches, DuVernay wrote original monologues that sounded like soliloquies the civil rights leader could have given. […] When asked about the changes in 2014, DuVernay told the Washington Post, "We knew those rights are already gone. They're with Spielberg."