I don't go here but I feel like "It's a metaphor. Don't force it to do the work of a fact." is a great statement about literature and fan-content in general.
(for people who donât know kathleen stock is an infamous British terf who triggered a whole âfree speechâ university row over her views)
this is what people mean when they say that transphobia and ableism are interlinked. because *of course* the same person who refuses to believe people when they assert their gender also refuses to believe them when they assert a disability. because who knows their bodies better than a random british upper-class white woman!
and at the end of the day it really boils down to this vindictive need to police and bully strangers because 1. why do you care about someone saying theyâre a woman, dressing like a woman etc. and 2. why do you care about someone using a walking stick if they donât 100% need it? the answer is, neither of those things affect your life, and you shouldnât.
golly its almost like there was some kind of virus going around recently that gave a bunch of people lifelong disabilities. does anyone remember anything like that?
COVID has definitely played a role and worsened these diseases for many people. But the specific illnesses they mention are POTS, hypermobility, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue.
Those are a collection of illnesses that have been understudied for at least the last 75 years because they disproportionately affect women/estrogen dominant people. They are finally receiving research, understanding, diagnosis. People who were gaslit into not even believing their experience of their own bodies are finally receiving information; being able to even access support, pain relief, mobility aids.
Women's bodies suddenly matter and they can't stand it
there seems to be a fundamental disagreement between microwave oven manufacturers and the producers of microwave meals over whether the customer should know the wattage of their microwave or if such details should be abstracted away from them
the microwave rice demands 800 watts of power for 2 minutes, but all the microwave can offer me three settings: one low, one high, and one somewhere in the middle. I turn it to the one in the middle as I happen to know 800W is the average power of most microwaves. the light comes on and the bag of rice starts slowly turning, but rather than hearing the usual rumble of the microwave, I instead start hearing short snippets of conversation - words snatched from the ether. the lights flicker and a chill runs up my spine. the voices remind me of those "spirit boxes" ghost hunters use. I double check the setting on the microwave. "ah," I say, remembering that I had set it to medium,
so I puzzled a lot, tracking Char's character arc throughout 0079.
because there had to be a turning point between Locked In Zabi Revenge Machine Char and the guy babbling utter nonsense about "newtypes" to his estranged sister on slowly-deoxygenating Texas Colony but it wasn't immediately apparent when.
Then I remembered the moment post-Jaburo battle where he runs into Sayla for the first time. This is KEY.
In this short conversation it is all but confirmed that Artesia is aboard the Trojan Horse and fighting for the EFF. And she on no uncertain terms disapproves of his actions.
Suddenly it all becomes so much harder for him to Compartmentalize. The All Encompassing Revenge Mission starts to fall apart in the face of his Only Living Family looking straight at him and going "What the FUCK are you DOING, MAN?" It makes everything so much harder.
Char is someone who has found his Secondary Purpose in fighting The Gundam and The Trojan Horse. He even says as much in Ireland. and you see it play out over and over again. Never is Char Aznable So Alive as when he's engaging Amuro in the Gundam.
and Artesia has gone and thrown a WRENCH in all that because now every shot he takes could connect with HER. He so desperately wants her to leave the military. But It Has To Be Her. Char Aznable can't make these kinds of sacrifices HIMSELF, of course.
We see him SO desperate over the idea of Artesia fighting for the EFF but he doesn't consider how she must feel about this. About seeing Him this way. About WHY Artesia would choose to fight like this. he can't! he's incapable! Someone who has THOUGHT about Artesia's situation doesn't fucking send a SUITCASE FULL OF GOLD BARS ABOUT IT.
She thinks about how Casval must be thinking! She risks her life to find out where he went! But he cannot return her this grace. How could he possibly?
And so he searches desperately for Something Else because he can't compartmentalize this all any longer. And maybe he's thinking about their time together as kids. He remembers what their dad and Jimba Ral said about Newtypes. Doesn't fully understand the Bigger Picture but NEWTYPES, RIGHT? That's something!
So when he comes across Lalah there's this twofold draw of "This will prove things about Newtypes, the new Thing I'm Pursuing" but also. This Girl Is The Same Age As Artesia. The sister who will never approve of what he's doing.
Surely she can fill the Void. Surely if he gets a Little Sister Shaped Do-Over, it will make it easier to deal with how Wrong he's done by Artesia. SURELY.
it's bad for Little Sister to be a soldier and do war! she should stop that!!! Except this time i get to make The New One a Soldier From The Ground Up, and this one Does What He says.
and all of this Is Just And Right, Because We're Finding Things Out About Newtypes.
On some level that he cares for Lalah but in this UTTERLY warped fashion. underneath the Foremost Weapon And Experiment shit, she is an Artesia Replacement. And thats soooo fucked. Like Fascinating but Goddamn. I have a hard time seeing Char's side of the Whole Lalah thing as particularly Romantic.
I think he's actually pretty Uncomfortable with the idea but goes along with it. a combination of what he thinks is "for her sake" in the Warped Way he cares for her, but also because her ability to do well in the Elmeth seems pretty damn tied to her Mental State and so Going Along With Things benefits The Mission
Adding on my own thoughts this made me think a lot about an unintentional theme of lalahs lack of agency throughout gundam
I cannot fucking find the photo Iâm thinking of and Iâm having a temper tantrum.
^i did find this in ms eras art book while looking for a different photo of her. It conveys the same message (in so mad I could t find the one I was thinking of. Itâs the one where sheâs sitting when she meets Amuro. Same art book)
Gattai Girls 12: âIdolmaster Xenoglossiaâ and Amami Haruka
Gattai Girls 12: âIdolmaster Xenoglossiaâ and Amami Haruka
Introduction: âGattai Girlsâ is a series of posts dedicated to looking at giant robot anime featuring prominent female characters due to their relative rarity within that genre.
Here, âprominentâ is primarily defined by two traits. First, the female character has to be either a main character (as opposed to a sidekick or support character), or she has to be in a role which distinguishes her.âŠ
Indigenous lands are crucial for climate mitigation and resilience. Research shows their health is a direct result of Indigenous stewardship
While this isn't news to anyone who works in this space, it is useful to have this water-is-wet research to affirm that Indigenous knowledge and land management are extremely effective at storing carbon and protecting biodiversity.
I want to draw special attention to this part of the article:
New research shows that approach overlooks the key role that Indigenous knowledge and culture can play in mitigating climate change. It also reveals a dangerous misconception that has taken hold in global climate discussions: the idea that Indigenous lands are so rich because they are remote or sparsely populated.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The health of Indigenous lands and their ability to store vast quantities of carbon stem from the stewardship of the people who inhabit them.
I'm actually bringing this back around to say another important thing.
I get a fair number of asks and comments on my posts expressing sentiments like "human beings are a plague on this Earth", "humans ruin everything, we deserve to be wiped out", "humanity is inherently selfish, evil, and irredeemable".
I don't think the folks saying these things have bad intentions, I know their words come from a place of very understandable pain, fear, and anger. But to act as though humanity's impact on nature is inherently damaging and extractive is to erase thousands of years of Indigenous stewardship of nature. These ecosystems are thriving because there are humans living there.
This is your regular reminder that you don't need to feel guilty for being a human. You are part of nature--viewing humans as inherently separate from the rest of nature is actually part of the problem. You will be so much better served redirecting that guilt into supporting the humans who are helping nature or resisting those who are hurting it.
Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail thatâs stuck with me this time is the set design.
The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but itâs all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Trumanâs life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic theyâve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesnât the modern day suck? Letâs go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.
And itâs a lie. Trumanâs life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia theyâve presented is a lie. Itâs an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory thatâs comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but itâs also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. Itâs a lie. It doesnât exist.
I donât know. Iâm spitballing. Iâm biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but itâs very gratifying to see a movie kind of agree with me.
Earlier in the summer, I went to Florida with my friend. We decided to visit a town nearish to where we were staying called Seaside, as we had heard it was a cute place. What I did not know at the time was that Seaside is the place where they filmed The Truman Show. It was a "master-planned community," constructed in the 80s to be the perfect beach town.
Seaside, FL
Seahaven
And yes, it really does look Like That. Not just in their tourist-agency photos, in real life it looks like that. Arguably the irl Seaside is even prettier than movie Seahaven, because the the office buildings where Truman works don't exist; the town is 100% cutesy homes and little shops.
Every single house is pastel with white trim and a white picket fence with the family's name on it in a handwritten font. The streets are paved with red bricks and lined with palmettos, and families bicycle past. The streets are clean, the lawns manicured, the sidewalks pristine.
Soon after we arrive my friend says as we walk, "God I wish I could live in a place like this. Imagine having the money to live in a place like this." I reply, "I don't actually know for me...it's gorgeous don't get me wrong, but there's no grime, you know? Where's the grime? I'd feel uncomfortable. It feels like there's not a dive bar for a hundred miles."
We reach the town center, which is a wide square lined with shops on one side, food trucks on the other. We have a lovely time looking through the shops, though I start feeling kinda weird, and I'm not sure why. Probably the extreme cleanliness of the area is making me feel off-kilter. And the surreal feeling of walking through areas I recognize from The Truman Show only adds to the weirdness.
We go into a clothing store, and it's crowded with people who appear to have stepped out of a Land's End catalog. It sells boring tshirts, shorts, and sundresses in whites and blues, all needlessly expensive. Employees walk through, refolding already-pristine shirts. So perfect. "Anyone buying from here is so rich they can probably smell the poor on us," my friend jokes, "that's why they have so many employees refolding things, it's to fix anything we brush against." "Or even breathe on!" I add.
We continue on to the grocery store where, in the movie, Truman finds Marlon stocking the vending machine and first tells him he suspects his world is wrong. I buy some pasta salad there to eat for lunch (all the cafes are quite expensive), and we find a place to sit and eat. As my friend finishes up her food, I write a postcard to my sister, telling her about my trip overall and my day in Seaside, describing the town as 'vomit-inducingly picturesque.' (It has been weeks since my visit and she still has not received that postcard)
Lunch done, we decide to walk down to the beach and have a swim. And I realize something about the surreal feeling. "Weird question," I say to my friend, "have you seen any non-white people here? Am I imagining that?"
She pauses. "The lady cleaning the bathrooms?" she asks.
"No I mean vacationers. Guests, customers. Other than you, I haven't seen a single one who wasn't white."
"...No. I haven't either."
And now that we see it, we can't unsee it. It's a wealthy area, so I had been expecting it to be pretty white, but the fact that there is not a single nonwhite person who isn't working a service job feels so gross. It's as though the place is somehow still segregated, like we have stepped back in time, but not to the fun, fake, rock-n-roll-and-soda-parlor-nostalgia version of the fifties, but to the real racism-and-repression fifties.
It is so fucking weird and sinister. I feel I have stumbled into another realm. All these people giving us sideeye, riding around on their golf carts in their pristine $45 seaside-branded tshirts, taking pictures of the perfect houses all lined up in perfect rows. A whole town of Meryls wearing lulu lemon.
We walk on. It's hot, and a swim is exactly what we need. Surely they can't ruin the ocean. I myself am extremely excited to swim, because now that we've spent a few hours among the pompous populace, I want to piss in their perfect ocean more than anything in the world.
We walk along behind the beachfront bar patios that line the beach toward the access point, and the ocean looks so blue and inviting. Although the hedge growing between us and the dunes is strangely tall. "Huh," I think. "It's weird that they'd grow it like this, it blocks the view for everyone sitting on the patios."
We arrive at the boardwalk, and there is a man standing there. He says "Hold on! Do you two have a beach access pass?" I look at him in disbelief. It's a public beach, but the sign behind the man says you have to rent a beach chair to use the beach, and it's $35 per person. We glance at each other, turn wordlessly, and head back to town.
I seriously consider trying to sneak onto the beach somehow, because at this point I am very invested in the idea of pissing in their ocean, but I realize that with the tall hedge it would be nigh-impossible.
We went home after that.
So many reviews for Seaside on travel websites mention how they love to visit Seaside because they feel transported, they feel it reflects a "simpler time" or a "peaceful life." It's been weeks and I can't stop thinking about my experience. It really drove home how...complicit people can be in their own ignorance. A lot of people want to live in that perfect bubble, and especially if they have the money, they can maintain that barrier. It reminds me that part of the reason I often have trouble persuading these types of people is because they simply do not want to be persuaded. They're so proud to be the place where The Truman Show was filmed, but I rather doubt they really think about what it means that they live on a movie set, in a surreal dream.
Honestly visiting Seaside was a 10/10 unique experience. I would highly recommend it as a place to go for a couple hours if you're gonna be nearby and want to feel like you've been kidnapped into The Truman Show and/or your brain has been put in an easy bake oven. It's like a zoo for superrich WASPS. We had a really good time loudly making fun of how insane it all was, invading their little paradise with our riffraff energy. Treat it like an excursion into the jungle; you're gonna have to park a half mile away minimum, and bring all your food and water with you so you don't have to buy anything. You don't want to give them any money. They have enough.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, next time I go to the panhandle, I will be going to the nearest free public beach access to Seaside, and I will walk to the Seaside area of the beach, and I will piss in their ocean.
sometimes i feel like a failure for not knowing how to drive but then i remind myself that like 90% of all humans who have ever lived also never learnt to drive. if william shakespeare can not drive then so can i
So many unnecessary sequels in the world and none of them are for Mazinkaiser SKL. I need my fix of unhinged anime men, competent anime women, and the most metal mecha action imaginable. I'd even settle for a remake at this point.
Come on, people. This is the only sequel we really need.
playing a SRW game for the first time really makes you appreciate a bunch of weird things in the mecha genre. Like you got this wide and deep swathe of robots from various generations of mecha both Real and Super, with a large selection of both by the end game, and the act of comparing and contrasting is very interesting both for the characters involved and how each series treats its robots.
But for me the thing that keeps jumping out at me is the thought of how varied the spectrum is of how âdifficultâ or âcomplexâ it is to field any given robot. Like its kinda like a line with one end labeled âLike launching an actual spacecraft or taking off in a jet planeâ and the other end labeled âabout as complex as getting on a bikeâ
Like on the complex end you have for example everything from a Gundam series (barring G); this is the series that codified what people think about when they say âReal Robotâ mecha and it shows. To pilot a Gundam you need exceptional skill and talent obviously, but you also have to put on an actual space suit, need an entire team monitoring your status remotely and to help you even launch the damn thing, and while youâre out there getting shot at you need to keep in mind a million different things like fuel and ammo and every bit of damage youâve taken because one bad hit means half your huge robot can only move half as fast, if that. Any other Real Robot series that takes its cues from Gundam follows suit to varying degrees.
Towards the middle you have stuff like the Combattler V crew or any of the Mazinger group. Sure it still takes a team and an actual suit and coordination, but the robot youâre piloting was more or less built with you in mind so so long as you keep your head on straight youâll be fine. The power of friendship wonât help you with a busted fuel tank but itâll sure help you make the most of it.
Past that you have guys like Vann with Dann and the Rayearth girls. Basically just straight up Magic Robots. You have to take care of yourself and the robot responds to your emotional state, but you literally just need to summon the damn thing and off you go. You donât even need to dock it somewhere sometimes, it just waits in the magic dimension till you need it so even repairing it might not even be a factor once a fight is done with.
And on the far other end of that line you get to shit like GaoGaiGar, Getter Robo, and Gurren Lagann. This is were the uncut, unfiltered Super Robot bullshit magic happens. Machines that explicitly run on the Power of Love, Friendship, Courage, and Anger Sometimes if youâre in a pinch. If you want to beat up the person in front of you enough you can and will no matter if youâve been eating missiles for the past two episodes. Just jump in the cockpit wearing whatever because safety equipment is for people who donât have Their Friends As Their Real Power. I bet the most pre fight prep the Shin Getter Team ever does is shotgunning a few cans of beer before hopping into their huge ass scary robot.
(Amuro, who has to go through upwards of ten minutes of preparation to get into his robot, is torn between admiration towards how resourceful Ryouma can be in a pinch, and wanting to strangle this big dumb ox he calls a friend. Hayato and Benkei assure him thatâs a perfectly reasonable reaction to have towards Ryouma Nagare.) Â
Hey this is sick! Iâve never played a SRW game, so itâs always fun to hear about how different mecha protagonists interact in it. However, youâve mistaken some things about Shin Getter, if youâll indulge me for a moment.
Up front, pilots of the getter robo are given goofy suits that protect them from g forces, because the machines can break the sound barrier basically at will. Itâs a plot point that those other than the few chosen by the getter will either screw up and crash, or start internally hemorrhaging from the stress of piloting such a terrifying vehicle (yes, even while wearing the suits). Combination is extremely difficult, and usually takes a ton of practice. This is all offset by the fact that the members of the getter team, ESPECIALLY Ryouma, are literally superhuman. They are destinyâs chosen children to pilot the metal shell humanity made to hold godâs essence.
All of the magic aside, this is still a surprisingly grounded machine with joysticks and pedals. Ryouma isnât shotgunning beers and hopping into Shin Getter-1 because itâs any less complex or difficult to pilot than a Gundam. Itâs almost certainly more difficult to pilot! He can do that because he is the strongest man alive and god loves him.
"I'm just a girlâșïžđ„°đđđ đșđ·đŠ" when you were eight and the teacher said she needed some strong boys to carry something you used to be furious, and when you convinced them to let you help, you carried twice as many chairs as the boys with the righteous anger of a girl who knew she was just as capable as them. Where did that go?
Genuinely evil and dark-sided to put the periods between the letters in "milf" and "dilf." Like what is M.I.L.F. that is a supervillain organization composed entirely of cougars. Whoa that's a great idea actually post canceled hold on
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