i don't do bad sauce passes
Three Goblin Art
pixel skylines
blake kathryn
taylor price
AnasAbdin
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
ojovivo
YOU ARE THE REASON
Game of Thrones Daily
Keni
Cosimo Galluzzi
dirt enthusiast
wallacepolsom
One Nice Bug Per Day
Kaledo Art
roma★
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
⁂
Xuebing Du
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@solaris242
Society can and will crush you, and sometimes all you can do is find the right people to stand with you, and fight back. In a sprawling futu
Oh god another novel. This one is about three queers in a cyberpunk city trying to survive, and how they recover when everything goes wrong.
It's got a lesbian cyborg, a genetically modified enby, a trans hacker, and sweet cathartic violence against the system.
screenshots of despair
it keeps getting worse
it’s actually not misogynistic to say astrology is bogus, and it is indeed way way more misogynistic to believe that things that can’t be proven rationally through science are More Female.
Please go learn how time works.
personally I think if your first response to "have you considered transitioning" is to list the ways women are expected to perform in society that you don't want to be expected to comply with, what you need is estrogen plus feminism, not more experience with makeup
like girl let's be be so for real right now none of the dykes I know are shaving for anybody. that is not a mandatory task. you could be so free all you have to do is reach out and take it my friend
that bitch I cannot believe etc. though again this is a great use of classic Am I The Asshole passive aggressive speech, just need to make it I Calmly Shared A Harmless Observation
learning that 5 minute crafts is a russian mafia operation wasn't on my 2026 bingo card but also doesn't really surprise me
its what
russian mafia operation
Hey what
oh. i’m sure its fine and normal that a video investigating the massive bot farm/slop channel shell company connections to the russian mafia and youtube’s own implication by allowing it to continue for profit has mysteriously vanished with no word from op.
Original (now taken down) video of CHUPPL exposing SoulPublishing and 5 Min Crafts networkAn Exposé of the weirdest channel on the internetG
internet archive link
Laois feels like he is in some very specific porn-logic universe. It’s the culinary equivalent of “the only way to advance through this dungeon and saved your loved one is to have really specific weird sex you’ve always been curious about,” and he’s like “AWW TWIST MY ARM” with his dick fully out
Poor Marcille is in a JPRG while Laois is in a very targeted hentai
dungeon meshi heritage post
Could you expand on what you liked about Irredeemable? It's been years since I read it, but I recall finding it somewhat off-putting, and never attempted to finish it.
Off-putting is absolutely the correct way of describing it. While it never goes far into direct explicitness or gore as I recall, it is a crushingly dark book from start to just about finish; a psychologically vile, relentlessly cruel 37 issues in service of maybe the most comprehensive savaging of Superman as a concept ever put to paper.
It’s the book that made him my favorite character. It may be the book that’s the reason I write.
Now look: the first issue came out when I was a little shy of 14. Great a comic as I will maintain it sincerely is (though it does go a little slack in the last year or so, and the spinoff Incorruptible is pretty much entirely a write-off), I am unquestionably looking at it through rose-tinted lenses. I don’t even know why I got it; I was just collecting the Batman and I guess Green Lantern books at that point, and while Mark Waid was surely on my radar, Boom! comics most certainly were not. Maybe I saw the Grant Morrison quote on the cover, or maybe I just thought “oh sweet, Waid writing an evil Superman”. But while I don’t blame anyone in the slightest for not liking it - not in a “I can see how they just wouldn’t get it, man” kind of way, the tone and content here are going to completely justifiably rub some people entirely the wrong way - I will absolutely stick up for it as a great piece of superhero comics, and a fascinating examination by contrast of how Superman works, and indeed has to work, as a character.
So here’s the premise:
Or as the back of every trade puts it, how did he come to this? What became of the hope and promise once inside him? What happens to the world when its savior betrays it? What makes a hero irredeemable? The answer to the third question at least is that the world is shit out of luck: millions are dead before the first page of the series, and the rest of the superheroes can’t do much to help, because they fire energy blasts or talk to machines or have wings, while he can shatter diamond in his bare grip, liquefy titanium with a glance and hear every whisper on Earth that might dare to defy him. Most of the book is from the perspective of those heroes, on the run and desperate to find a way to survive and triumph, as their own dirty little secrets and failings start to come out under the pressure. In base concept, it’s a pretty standard Superman deconstruction.
But it’s a Superman deconstruction by the world’s biggest Superman fan. And that makes all the difference.
Whatever your opinion on Mark Waid, it’s pretty indisputable that that guy has spent a lot of time thinking about how Superman works; what makes him tick, what makes people respond to him, how his world has to be for him to function. I may not agree with him 100% on all of it, but he’s damn well put the hours in to go with his passion, and when you understand the story engine on that level, you’re going to know as anybody how to take it apart; what vital piece is most necessary to keep it running, and what’s going to happen if you take it away. For Irredeemable, the cog in the machine is idea that, even with all the good intentions in the world, a person may not necessarily be emotionally equipped for the job of being a superman. And that’s a very valid concern: after all Waid noted in an interview, in the classic Superman stories, his biggest fear come to life often wasn’t that he’d fail in his mission, or lose his adopted home, but that no one would love him anymore.
With Plutonian, the reason it works, aside from Waid’s enduring skills as a storyteller, is that there’s no cop-out. He wasn’t a hidden invader, he never planned to conquer the world, he didn’t privately despise humanity all along, he isn’t detached from mankind in the sense of being an inscrutable alien whose motives and emotions are beyond us, he isn’t doing this because he just wants to make the world a better place. While I don’t want to give up any of the reveals, it’s probably fair to say he grew up to be about the best person he could reasonably be expected to given his circumstances; a guy who feels he should do the right thing, a guy who wants to be himself and be loved in spite of his issues and insecurities. Not a saint, but hardly a monster. But the problem is, he’s not a probably-okay-enough-given-the-circumstances slightly neurotic guy who’s just holding a 9 to 5 job and seeing a therapist, he has to be Superman. And when that normal, well-meaning guy has to live with the hard realities of never being able to touch someone too hard or they’ll shatter, of having skin like diamond, of never getting to believe a little white lie because he can hear their heartbeat spike or avoid knowing what people really think about him because he can hear their private whispers, of never being able to stop because he can hear every cry for help and the world expects him to answer? And when he can’t even bring himself to just stop, because being a hero is the closest he’s ever come to being loved for who he is? It all comes crashing down, wrapped up in a set of high-concept superhero horror adventures by one of the best writers out there. It’s not a world built on ‘realism’ in the sense of abiding by the laws of physics or the political fallout of superheroes, but it’s grounded in an emotional reality of what it would take out of someone to have that job that makes it all painfully, inevitably believable that even most well-meaning individuals wouldn’t be able to handle it. And that got me thinking about Superman.
Superman had been my favorite character as a little kid. Between the 90s animated series, the Fleischer shorts my dad had on tape, the Superman Adventures comics and Byrne’s Man of Steel (even if I’d later change my tune on the latter), picture books (props to anyone else who remembers The True Story of Superman, Superman: Slippery When Bad, or I Hate Superman!), and all the lunchboxes and birthday paper plates and posters and whatnot that tend to accumulate around little kids, he was #1. Even when I started to get way more into Batman and Spider-Man, he was always holding up third; I never thought of him as boring, but I definitely started to think of him as not all that deep, even if he could hold down great stories like All-Star and Birthright.
But this book was the first of its kind to make me think “Wow, being Superman would be the hardest job in the entire world. Even given the obvious differences, why doesn’t he turn out something like this? How could anyone not turn out like this, under that kind of pressure, with that kind of basic physical and mental distance from humanity?” And as it turns out, questions like those make Superman really, really interesting. The implications of someone living with that kind of power and becoming not just a truly good man, but an outstandingly, impossibly good man go as deep as it gets. And suddenly I’m looking back at the old stories in a new light and with a new appreciation, and suddenly I’m reading a lot more about him and thinking a lot more about him and what works and what doesn’t, and suddenly, oh, dang, he’s my favorite character now. More than that even, I start thinking more about characters in general, and what works and what doesn’t, and what works and what doesn’t with comics in general, and I start getting Opinions, and oh I write a lot now, and oh shit I have a Tumblr and I want to break into comics.
So that’s why I liked Irredeemable.
Here's a history lesson on trans medicine btw: The guy who coined "gender identity", introduced the concept to psychology and did foundational research on it did so trying to find a way to prevent people from being trans.
Why am I bringing this up? Because the origin fallacy will kill your capacity for understanding literally any concept whatsoever. The guy who coined the term gender identity was anti-trans.
The modern scientific consensus on gender identity is so trans-affirming that anti-trans movements attack the concept constantly.
Theories evolve and change over time, and if you get stuck attacking modern theories by referring to shit that happened half a century ago you will disseminate anti-knowledge.
"don't use 'transsexual' it's offensive" every term we use today was designed to pathologise, malign, and destroy us.
oh you want a really controversial one here? because the exact opposite happened and I hate it – 'tranny' started out a term of solidarity and endearment used by trans women in Australia in the '60s and '70s. It got picked up by chasers and entered the common lexicon as a slur from there.
There is no term for us that isn't offensive, because even when we make our own secret words, words of love, they find them and turn them into words of hate.
People horrifically fucking up facts about evolution and genetics too support their stupid beliefs or to seem smart and “rational” is probably one of my big pet peeves
Yeah. An enormous number of racists, misogynists, homophobes and transphobes I’ve met eventually whip out something about evolutionary biology and they never, ever, ever, ever have the slightest shadow of even a half-right idea what any of it means or ever cite a claim ever actually made by a scientific study.
Here’s a quick handy reference list or anyone who isn’t sure:
Homosexuality does exist in almost all social species.
“Alpha males” are not a real phenomenon and in fact the most aggressive males tend to be the least reproductively successful.
“Survival of the fittest” simply means that the success of a species hinges on how well it “fits” its environment. It does not mean that stronger or smarter individuals are supposed to succeed. Those things can even be a detriment in nature by wasting too many resources.
“Race” is not a biological concept. Someone who looks different from you has the same human genes, just a different grab-bag of dominant traits.
Evolution is not a march towards higher complexity, more intelligence or even more adaptability. It’s just a fluctuation of characteristics dictated by environmental pressures and mutation. A slime mold isn’t “less evolved” than a hawk, just adapted for success under different parameters.
People didn’t evolve “from apes.” It’s more complicated than that. We are a category of ape, sharing a common ancestor with the other apes.
No human on Earth is “closer” to an evolutionary ancestor than any other. We all descended from the same one.
Neanderthals were also a “sibling” species of ours. We didn’t evolve from them.
Some of us did, however, cross-breed with Neandethal man. It is exclusively non-African races, such as white people, who still carry hybrid human/Neanderthal genes. Whoops, sorry “white purity” skinheads, you’re actually mixed with a whole other species.
Some more stuff!
Humans are actually more genetically homogeneous than most people suspect. This is possibly due to a population bottleneck at some point in our evolutionary past. Two chimpanzees from different sides of a jungle are likely more genetically different to each other than any two human beings in the world.
Our big brains may help us use tools, but what was really principal in their development was the need for empathy, communication, and cooperation.
Humans. Are. Social. So social it drove an incredibly energetically costly increase in our brain size. Don’t believe anyone who says its our nature to fight “every man for themself.” We’re humans, not bears. We fight for each other.
And we always have. Fossil remains are found of ancient humans who bore signs of crucial mobility impairments that lived to notable ages. Some even have sticks or other mobility aids – community care and support is our way. We don’t cast off those with impairments, we stand by them.
Human sexual dimorphism is on a decreasing trend. Our ancestors had greater difference in canine size and overall size. Our dimorphism gap has gotten smaller.
Occam’s razor is the principal that whatever is the simplest explanation is probably the most likely one. Don’t believe someone who says the reason we evolved bipedalism is so that males could carry gifts to females to woo them. Yes, this is a real ‘theory’ on how bipedalism evolved.
Skin tone is an adaptation of UV levels vs vitamin D levels. Both come from the sun. UV is harmful, so where sun is plentiful populations develop a darker skin tone for more protection. The skin needs sun to create vitamin D, so where sun is scarce, the skin tone lightens to allow more sun in. This is literally all it is.
Final thing: No one’s mind is really equipped to fully understand how long a billion years is, or a million, or even tens of thousands of years. Evolution takes place over a loooong time. Its very, very, slow, slower than we can really comprehend. We can’t “stand in the way” of natural selection by caring for our ill. We don’t need to “help” evolution in any way. It inevitably happens, but not on any sort of timescale we could possibly affect, so don’t fall for anyone that tells you not to “stand in the way” of natural selection. That’s fascism, and its utterly pseudo-scientific.
Not to mention natural selection doesn’t have a “will” that you can stand in the way of. Its not an entity with wants, its a millions-year long process. And its impossible for our decisions to “stand in its way.” Our decisions to care for one another are what brought our species where it is, plain and simple.
You read Wretched of the Earth and how the colonizer has PTSD from torturing the colonized and the former has a panic attack upon seeing a former victim while the latter desperately tries to kill himself to avoid recapture and I think it's right to ask: Am I really supposed to pity the former?
[Speaking slowly, gently, as though trying not to scare a startled horse] Now. Consider. The US military
To be clear I am not saying Fanon is attempting to elicit sympathy for the colonizer. I mean "Am I supposed to feel sorry for them" in an aghast way because the colonizer, who is suffering, feels he deserves sympathy. You see it again and again, all throughout history, and even now people complain about how traumatized they are from murdering civilians. How even in the end, in their eyes, the true victim is the perpetrator who lives rather than the dead person who is "at peace." As though any number of extenuating personal circumstances is supposed to make your guilt weigh more than the actual harms other people have experienced at your hands. As though people overseas wouldn't also like to go to college, would like to afford a house, would like to escape poverty. It's infuriating!
I still really like Pokopia, have more ditto sweetness
we simply do not give enough attention to the fact that the US is. Shooting itself in the foot at every turn. not in a individual incompetence way, not an an orange idiot in the White House Way, but in a “the US spent a century designing a world order where everyone was either reliant on the US or terrified of the US (often both) and now people at every level of federal government are destroying that system” way. While USAID very much did in fact contribute to like, food and medicine and whatever to people in need around the globe, this was not out of the kindness of American hearts, this is an arm of liberal empire. the carrot so to speak. and as for the stick, the point of having a military the size of the US military is not to use it. It’s to park on peoples lawns until they stand down. when you use it, and then lose, or deliver anything other than immediate and crushing defeat, you illustrate to the people whose lawn you’re parked on that spending billions of dollars isn’t enough to win a war necessarily. Iran could have closed the strait at any point, but they didnt bc the USA would bomb the shit out of them. When they get bombed first, there’s no reason not to close the strait. The US played its hand and it came up wanting. this is to say nothing of the damage to alliances with other liberal democratic countries. the people currently in power swallowed USA propaganda hook line and sinker, believed in it so completely, that theyre shaking the foundation of what lent that propaganda its believability. to say nothing of the fact that their aims are despicable, their methods are just. an embarrassment to empire building. they took a perfectly good empire and started lopping shit off. they’re trying to increase the output of a machine by ripping cogs out of its still-running engine.
Whenever people ask me "why don't you know xyz, it's so popular" well see it's because
The world doesn't revolve around one country. What is popular over there might not be the same in another country and it's totally normal but pop culture for example is a global thing like most people know Ariana Grande. This is just an example.
Yeah pop culture is universal and most societies like the same stuff, just like how everyone knows who Zhou Xuan, Dhanush, and Mia Guissé are and we all know and love the classic holiday season movie Al-Risâlah
Imo the best type of system for children to grow up in would be one that assumes the birth parents/primary guardians won't do shit and takes care of every aspect of childcare that's essential for their wellbeing and development, collectively.
But I'm just a guy who only learned how to brush his teeth properly and got glasses as a child because we had both a dentist and a doctor come to school on a regular basis. The dentist would have us all stand in a circle with our little toothbrushes and show us how to brush and correct our technique. The doctors would give us general health assessments and then have the teachers contact our patents and essentially peer pressure them into getting us any health intervention we needed. My parents only reluctantly got me glasses because they knew the teachers would judge them if they kept seeing me sit in the very front row and still squint to see the chalkboard. So I'm biased.
The only times I ever remember seeing a dentist or doctor as a child was at school. I'm quite healthy physically and I'm very grateful for all the care I got from the various professionals who cared about my well-being and development more than my actual parents did.
We had free healthcare including dental, mind you, my parents just couldn't be bothered. When my brother, as a teenager, asked our mother if she could take him to his orthodontist appointments (which he'd already arranged for on his own) she basically told him she didn't feel like it and he had to take the bus.
If I could improve anything about that system, I'd take it even further and make it so kids could see a doctor and get meds, treatments, therapy, tests, disability aids etc. without having to rely on their parents as well. I shouldn't have had to put up with being bullied and guilt-tripped about the family finances and the time investment needed to take me to the optometrist every time I needed new glasses.
Some parents would not take care of their children even if they were given all the time and the resources. Mine are a great example of that — my mother stopped working and became a homemaker when I was in kindergarten, my father worked from the garage and was also always home. They had a car and our village even had a bus that would come once or twice an hour that would take you to the next two bigger cities.
Did that, plus the free healthcare, translate into them actually parenting and caring for us properly? It did not. They only ever did any of that reluctantly when not doing it would make them look bad, and most of the time they did a shitty job because they could never resist the urge to boost their egos by means of bullying literal children.
So I have to wonder: what did they actually contribute to our upbringing? Like they didn't teach us shit and mostly they just endangered our mental and physical health — but hey, at least they gave me cPTSD! That took some work too.
see also family abolition, and youth liberation .
A knee-jerk response to neglectful parenting I see a lot is “people should have to get licenses and take rigorous tests to PROVE that they should be ALLOWED to have kids” which is eugenics. That’s just the starting line for eugenics.
We are at a point in humanity where there is no meaningful reason why we shouldn’t be structuring our societies around wellbeing for all instead of wellbeing for the “deserving”.
Assume some parents will fail. Build social infrastructure that is designed to support failed kids rather than punish would-be parents.
