The Cat Tree @your-third-cat - Tumblr Blog

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girlnephew

doctorbluesmanreturns

moodymuu

{Part 4}

Love how all of these came out tbh

@toxictoxicities

@marukfe

@consume6810

deepfrieddeltarunememes

alright but we can at least bring the Floradinns back with us right

asgore doesn't need his weed stash that badly right now does he

doubleca5t

Supermassive Black Hole lends itself to soundtracking one thing and one thing alone and that is a strip club. Supermassive Black Hole is the most perfect strip club rock song I've ever heard. I've heard rock songs *about* strip clubs that feel less suited to a strip club than Supermassive Black Hole. I have heard songs where sex is explicitly described in the lyrics that feel less sexy than Supermassive Black Hole. Supermassive Black Hole is a song so disgustingly, flagrantly, enticingly slutty that I sometimes feel legitimately shocked that it was made by a band that most people make fun of for sounding like if Radiohead sold out after their first album. It is a crowning achievement in stripper music that may never be topped in our lifetime. It is best known for soundtracking the scene in the first Twilight movie where they play baseball.

hellokittydirtblock

i love my mutuals because we never talk but we still… like… follow each other……….. and i admire that we stick together even tho there is no communication in the slightest………u kno what i mean… hello…

x-v4mp3y3lin3r-x

I view reading fantasy/sci-fi stuff as "this work of fiction is being translated into english so that I can understand it, meaning some phrases should not be taken literally" lord of the rings style, and then I meet people who nitpick every word or phrase that "shouldn't exist in this story" and I'm like wow you guys are truly miserable and unimaginative. and also you tend to assume that english words all popped up in the 19th century and you never bother to check the etymology of the words you're claiming "shouldn't exist in this universe"

like sorry but in an apocalyptic alternate-universe earth, the phrase "train of thought" is plausible even in a world without locomotives, because the word "train" comes from the 14th century, and it meant "to drag"

that's why we call dress trains "trains". because they drag. the word wasn't invented for locomotives.

y'all say shit so definitively like idk man I think it depends. the english language is OLD AS FUCK. a lot of words you believe are modern just aren't

creatingblackcharacters

Hi! I want to share something pretty cool: Magic the Gathering (the trading card game) has historically been very white- and eurocentric (which is still reflected in its predominantly white fanbase, even though the representation in the game got marginally better with time), but today they announced that one of the three original MtG sets coming out next year, Zhalfir, will be an Afrocentric set inspired by different African cultures and their mythologies. The design team for the set is led by designers of color (predominantly Black designers), and they've worked with cultural consultants, African history professors, and Afrofuturist authors to represent the cultures respectfully.

I'm white so I'm definitely missing nuance here, but to me it seems like a genuine effort to improve representation and show how stunning and cool Afrofantasy can be, which has been a long time coming for the franchise.

Here's the announcement trailer: https://youtu.be/ZaUhdKIc-yQ

And here are screenshots of the haircut concepts from it (they also have concepts of textiles and fantasy creatures and other stuff)

P.S. thank you for all the educational work you do and for your resources!

Someone announced it earlier, yes! Thanks for the link!

infimace-blog

Oh hey, my special interest.

I've always found Zhalfir (and the continent it was previously a part of, Jamuraa) to be a fascinating construction. It started off as the pet project of art director Sue Ann Harkey, who decided to push for an African theme for the 1996 block Mirage. Writers were asked to come up with a setting to match that, so the continent of Jamuraa was born on the plane of Dominaria.

Now, to be clear, Zhalfir and Jamuraa were still fantasy Africa as depicted by an all-white team of artists and writers in the 90s with no background knowledge on African cultures or history. There's a good amount of Orientalism, the writers often design Black characters in ways that exaggerate their features in exactly the wrong way, and there's an infamous card that makes light of the idea of reparations. But it was fantasy Africa with actual characters and actual countries and an actual history, a fantasy Africa that wasn't treated as a superfluous addition to the fantasy European regions already in the game. For the first two sets of the block, there are no important white characters. It's Black wizards and Black prophets and Black warriors pursuing their own matters. By the standards of Western fantasy in 1996, it's kind of remarkable.

And some of the art was even good.

The last set of the block, Weatherlight, would eventually fuck it up by introducing Gerrard, a white boy created by magic eugenics to be a chosen one who had to be raised in Jamuraa to avoid assassins and proceeded to become so athletic and magnanimous that his rival and adoptive brother, Vuel, goes mad with jealousy and becomes one of the major villains of the next few sets. I hate that white boy, he's the worst part of the multi-year Weatherlight Saga arc, and MTG keeps trying to avoid the literal eugenics in his backstory whenever he becomes relevant.

In better news, Mirage would also produce one of Magic's most iconic Black characters: the planeswalker, time mage and Zhalfiran native Teferi Akosa

Teferi was a key figure in the history of Zhalfir and most of the plot of the Mirage block. Much of Zhalfir's magical culture was shaped by him, in part of an attempt to keep the country stable while he was out exploring other planes. When he finished exploring, he served as a court mage and advisor in Zhalfir for several decades, only to eventually abandon his post and spend years doing experimental time magic on an isolated island, eventually phasing the island out of the timeline for two hundred years and inadvertently attracting wizards to Zhalfir who'd embroil it in a war. Like many wizards in Magic around that time, he was well-meaning but also too focused on discovery and knowledge to avoid causing problems. This would culminate in him phasing all of Zhalfir out of existence to protect it from an invading force of evil cyborgs called Phyrexians - and from his former teacher and ally, Urza, who had a tendency to use people and cultures he saw as unnecessary as fuel in his fight against said Phyrexians.

Objectively, good decision to protect Zhalfir, and Teferi would keep it phased out for a few additional centuries because Dominaria attracted every kind of war, incursion, and magical fuckery you could imagine and bigger civilizations than Zhalfir had been wiped out by such events. This would eventually backfire when, due to metaphysical bullshit that we will not be getting into, Teferi lost the ability to phase Zhalfir back into existence, leaving him weakened and isolated in a world where his culture no longer exists.

That's where the game left him around 2006-2007 during Time Spiral, after which the game decided to move away from Dominaria as the main setting of the game. In 2018, they revisited Dominaria for the first time and Teferi got rebranded as light-skinned an immortal hero of an ancient, legendary age, kept alive by time magic and leftover power from his stronger days. I have feelings about this rebrand, and not just because of the skin-lightening, but the game does proceed to give him a good amount of focus, even dedicating Core Set 2021 to showing off bits of his history and giving new cards to characters from Mirage.

Teferi would eventually use a magical time-machine to travel several thousand years back in time to try and get some information from a younger version of Urza (as the Phyrexians had returned and, for all his faults, Urza's good at killing them), and a malfunction in the time-machine caused him to phase out and end up back in Zhalfir, where it turns out that time had slowed significantly and everybody was still mid-preparation to fight the old Phyrexians. Later, as part of a last-ditch attempt to stop the new Phyrexians, Zhalfir was dragged back into the multiverse and the Zhalfirans had the Phyrexian fight they'd been waiting centuries for, phasing the Phyrexian base plane out of existence in the process.

That was 2023. We've known that we'd be getting a set on Zhalfir eventually because otherwise there's no point to giving it a proper place in the Multiverse again. It is entirely possible that Wizards of the Coast might fuck this up - we're two years out from Magic using terra nullius to justify its Western set and deciding that the evil colonist vampires in Ixalan were secretly being manipulated by the pagan bat god and that the normal, pseudo-Catholic vampires are the nice and reasonable ones. But if they're putting this much work into highlighting that they did their research, I'm allowing myself to be hopeful.

puncertainty

a leap of faith !

uninterestedemby

They make me physically ill

drangel76

love or hate flowery you cannot deny his impact on the vocal stimming community. his jarona

drangel76

everyone has replied to this with a completely different voice clip

penny-anna

okay, for those interested, here is a full timeline of how we got to Count Binface:

1977: Star Wars is released, featuring, of course, Darth Vader

(Pictured: Darth Vader)

1984: Director Todd Durham releases his Star Wars parody movie, Hyperspace, featuring Darth Vader inspired villain Lord Buckethead.

(Pictured: Hyperspace poster featuring two Jawa-esque aliens flying through space in a shopping trolley.)

1987: Hyperspace is released on video in the UK, under the new title Gremloids.

(Pictured: Gremloids cover in the style of the original Star Wars poster, featuring Lord Buckethead.)

To promote the film, Mike Lee, the owner of the distributing company, ran for parliament as Lord Buckethead. He ran in Margaret Thatcher's constituency, Finchley, in order to get on TV. Lord Buckethead was representing the Gremloids party.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead on TV with Margaret Thatcher.)

1992: Gremloids is re-released. Lord Buckethead rides again, this time against prime minister John Major in Huntingdon. (Here's a fun fact about Huntingdon: I was born there! :D) 87/92 Buckethead seems to have leaned pretty hard into the space supervillain thing, with campaign promises including 'demolish Birmingham to build a spaceport'.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead on TV with John Major. Other notable candidates include Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party.)

2017: comedian Jon Harvey, having recently watched Gremloids and learned of Lord Buckethead's candidacy for parliament, decides it's a great bit. He runs against Theresa May in Maidenhead. 2017 Buckethead seems to have a wackier and also more political approach, with campaign promises ranging from nonsense like 'nationalise Adele' to gesturing at actually sensible policies with stuff like 'lower the voting age to 16 and restrict voting after age 80'.

He also made an appearance on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. As with his previous incarnation, he was a member of the Gremloids party.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead dabbing on stage with Theresa May.)

2018: Director Todd Durham asserts his legal ownership of Lord Buckethead. Jon Harvey opted not to go to court over Buckethead and handed over the reins. Todd Durham extended an invitation to anyone who wanted to be the 'authorised' Lord Buckethead.

(Pictured: the new Lord Buckethead.)

2019: Lord Buckethead, now played by journalist David Hughes, stood against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. He ran for the Monster Raving Loony Party, the UK's pre-existing gag candidate party. He ran with a similarly silly manifesto as the 2017 incarnation, but with a bit less of a political edge. His promises included 'All doorways to be increased by 1 foot (30 cm) in height' and 'Nigel Farage to be sold for parts'.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead and Count Binface square up.)

Meanwhile, Jon Harvey in his new persona Count Binface, also ran against Boris Johnson. Buckethead and Binface face off! Binface ran as an independent with a manifesto once again blending silly and semi-serious promises such as 'nationalising model railways' and 'giving £1 trillion a week to the NHS'. This was also I believe the debut of his promise to 'move the hand dryer in the men's toilet at Uxbridge's Crown and Treaty pub to a more sensible position'.

(Pictured: Count Binface presenting the offending hand dryer, inconveniently close to both the sink and the urinals.)

He has a point.

2021: Count Binface runs for the position of Mayor of London for the first time, with promises such as 'London to join the European Union'. He notably finished ahead of far right party UKIP.

2023: Count Binface runs in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election following Boris Johnson's resignation. He once again gets more votes than UKIP.

May 2024: Count Binface once again runs to be Mayor of London, debuting his now iconic 'build at least one affordable house' promise. Notably, he finished ahead of far right party Britain First.

(Pictured: Count Binface with Rishi Sunak. Also pictured: Monster Raving Loony Party candidate Sir Archibald Stanton with a ventriloquist's dummy.)

July 2024: Count Binface stands in the general election, running in Richmond and Northallerton against prime minister Rishi Sunak. He debuts his promise to cap the price of 99p flakes at 99p. This is his most successful election to date with 308 votes.

(Pictured: Count Binface with Andy Burnham. Also pictured: independent candidate Robert Pownell, dressed as a fox for his own reasons.)

June 2026: Count Binface stands in the Makerfield by-election against Andy Burnham, (recently) former Mayor of Manchester running for parliament with the intention of standing in the Labour Party leadership contest.

(Pictured: Count Binface on BBC's Newsnight.)

July 2026 (this week): Count Binface announces his intention to run against Nigel Farage in the upcoming Clacton by-election. He is briefly the only other candidate in the race and by the time other candidates announce themselves the narrative of 'Nigel Farage vs Count Binface' has already bedded in. And then it was now, and then I don't know what happened.

doogie2k

TIL the Brits have their own version of Spaceballs and now I need Dark Helmet to run for President with Mel Brooks's blessing.

prokopetz

Finally watching the latest Project Voltage video, and while I'm sure Game Freak hasn't officially made it a rule that all trans-coded trainers get Eevee starters now, we're currently sitting two for two.