"They brought honor to the Wilds."

background: BrianMoncus • she/her • ♤ an introverted ace ♤

[demonicvulcan]

person: but it’s canon

me: yes, but it’s very badly written, so we ignore it

[dragonsblowingoutbirthdaycandles]

your life is not an optimization problem

[dragonsblowingoutbirthdaycandles]

as in you'll never achieve the perfect daily routine, sleep schedule, coping mechanisms, mannerisms, fashion sense etc. even after years and years of healing and improvement and self-discovery. you will never be so good at life that you manage to utilize every waking moment. its great to be productive and all but sometimes you'll suck ass. sometimes you'll take eight hours to be done with a twenty minute job. you'll prioritize the wrong thing. you'll sleep for 12 hrs just to avoid being awake. you'll relapse. and you'll relapse again. you'll forget to turn in the assignment. you'll order too little food. life is far too large and complex for you to even experience it completely, much less try to make sense of and control it. you can't. please give up on that and be at peace with the hours you lose. they are not separate from your life.

[androdragynous]

being on tumblr for a long time but never reading homestuck like

[insomniac-arrest]

no offense, but what was the point of that cool older lady character in Spirited Away

except, you know, to make me question my sexuality at 12 during midnight rewatches as I looked at her weirdly pretty mouth and had Questions

[insomniac-arrest]

!!! 

me, falling in love with every woman I see whose purpose is to eat and be pretty:

[cannedviennasnausage]

#her and Ursula from Kiki’s Delivery Service#the archetype is ‘lesbian who accidentally adopted this child’

[bramblepatch]

I mean, I’m pretty sure Lin is supposed to represent what Chihiro’s future might be like if she accepted her role in the bath house and didn’t try to maintain her own identity and values. She’s not a bad person, but she’s hedonistic to exactly the extent that the bath house culture allows her to be as an employee and has no ambition beyond the system of favors, bribes, and petty intimidation between low-level workers. She’s traded her individuality and opportunity to better herself for the security of predictable exploitation and she doesn’t seem to regret it.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Lin is the only other major character who looks human throughout the movie - I’m not certain she started out human, but I suspect she may have, and may have fully traded away her humanity. I do think it’s significant that she, unlike Chihiro and Haku, doesn’t reclaim her name at the end of the story.

She doesn’t want her independence or identity back. Her purpose is to eat and look pretty.

[uovoc]

Alternate interpretation: I always thought Lin meant to be a comforting presence.

She’s the first bathhouse worker who is kind to Chihiro, helping her get her clothes and navigate her first work assignment and sneak food. One of the core themes of Spirited Away is finding your footing in a new and terrifying place, and Lin and Haku are key allies in Chihiro’s struggle to gain the skills and self-assurance she needs in order to thrive.

Lin’s human appearance helps us and Chihiro feel more sympathetic towards her . Her familiarity with the system of favors and bribes makes her appealing as a role model who can demystify Chihiro’s new environment for her. Unlike the more inhuman occupants of the bathhouse, Lin looks like someone Chihiro could become in the future, and that’s a good thing! She’s living proof that the bathhouse is not such a monstrous and scary place. Because Lin treats the bathhouse like home, Chihiro begins to see it as a home, too.

And once Chihiro starts to think of the bathhouse as her territory, she realizes that she has agency in this place as well. She uses its rules to her own advantage to free Haku and herself.

And that is the point of Chihiro’s journey in Spirited Away: it’s a metaphor for starting over in a new place and overcoming fear of the unfamiliar. After all, the frame story is Chihiro’s family moving to a new city. At the beginning of the movie, Chihiro is despondent, unhappy to be leaving her old friends behind. By the end, after making it through the spirit world, she’s taking a much more active role in helping her parents settle into their new home.

TLDR: Lin is there to be Chihiro’s friend.

[aethersea]

These theories coexist really well, I think. Lin has accepted her place within this system, and that’s given her the confidence and experience to be a mentor for Chihiro. Because she knows the system, she can make things a little better for Chihiro.

Because Chihiro has a mentor and friend, she learns how to survive and even do well in the Bathhouse. It’s because of Lin that Chihiro is able to not accept her place within this system and instead fight back, and in the end to make things a little better for everyone.

There’s something there about community, and easing the path for those who come after you. Lin doesn’t regret her choices because they were the best choices she could make, and that’s okay. It’s not a tragedy. She got as far as she could get, and because she did, she’s there to help Chihiro get farther. 

And isn’t that what we’re all here for, in the end? To go as far as we can, and then give a hand up to those coming after us? It’s never a tragedy when children can go farther than their mentors ever could. That’s a triumph.

[poikaboo]

{ID 1 - 3 - Three gifs of Lin from Spirited Away, being generally cool 4 - reply from @/get-cuboned, “Her purpose is to eat and be pretty” 5 - gif from Sailor Moon of a girl with shining eyes

END ID}

[counttwinkula]

hey did you know that uhh

i. the monster's body is a cultural body

ii. the monster always escapes

iii. the monster is the harbinger of category crisis

iv. the monster dwells at the gates of difference

v. the monster polices the borders of the possible

vi. fear of the monster is really a kind of desire

vii. the monster stands at the threshold… of becoming

[counttwinkula]

oh shit i didn't expect this to actually get notes lmao

these are all direct quotes from jeffrey jerome cohen's "monster culture (seven theses)" (full pdf linked) i highly encourage you to read it yourself!

that said, while i think cohen's writing is evocative, it can be a little dense, so while i'm here, here's my capsule summary (you can also hear me talk about this in the first episode of my podcast) (listen to @ghostswerepeopletoo)

i. the monster's body is a cultural body - The monster is a work of fiction to be analyzed through tools of literary and sociological theory.

ii. the monster always escapes - As long as the cultural fear from which the monster stems persists, the monster will reappear in retellings, reimaginings, and sequels.

iii. the monster is the harbinger of category crisis - Monsters defy binaries and challenge easy comprehension or categorization.

iv. the monster dwells at the gates of difference - The monster represents the Other.

v. the monster polices the borders of the possible - Tales of the monster exist to discourage unacceptable or taboo behaviors.

vi. fear of the monster is really a kind of desire - Subjects can vicariously participate in the disruption of the social order through the monster.

vii. the monster stands at the threshold… of becoming - Within the monster we find information about the self.

[cipheramnesia]

Zombies shouldn't growl or snarl, they should babble a mixture of incomplete word sounds and whole words or sentence fragments. Every zombie should sound almost but not quite like it's trying to tell you something.

[january-summers]

this may not be what you're saying, but what I'm hearing is that zombies should make everyone feel like they've developed sudden onset audio processing disorder.

Like if you could just hear it more clearly, you'd understand what they're saying, but in reality it's nonsense and there's nothing to understand.

And damn if it doesn't convince so many folks that their loved ones are still in there, they just need to keep them locked up safely in the barn until someone finds the cure, then everything can go back to the way they were.

[transpidergwen]

THIS is exactly what this particular zombie trope is missing. Like we all understand, conceptually, that this still looks like someone they love, but it would be 1000 times more effective if it still somewhat behaved like someone they love.

[transmalewife]

oooh muscle memory. i’m not into zombie media enough to tell if this has been done or not but. zombies that will automatically reach into their pocket for their phone when they hear a ring, even if it’s dead, broken or lost. zombies that reach up to play with their hair or necklace, the same way your loved one did. zombies that bite their nails. a zombie rolling up its sleeves with perfect practice while looking at you with the utterly blank eyes of a dead animal

[iwantsweetrevenge]

people see news of 200+ palestinians being killed in one attack and scroll or think about it for about a minute then move on. but if 200+ people died in an attack in the west it would be mainstream news and all people spoke about for weeks. i know the numbers of palestinians being killed are astronomical and its impossible to keep up (which is absolutely sickeningly horrifying, there are no words), but the lack of value placed in palestinians lives and disregard shown is insane

[youlovetoseeit]

[kbokbok]

IT’S BECAUSE OSHA REGULATIONS! A SINGLE PERSON IS NOT ALLOWED TO LIFT MORE THAN FIFTY POUNDS! BAGGAGE HANDLERS ARE PEOPLE! YOU PAY MORE FOR HEAVY BAGS BECAUSE THE HANDLERS ARE SUPPOSED TO USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM TO LIFT THOSE! IF THE TOTAL WEIGHT MATTERED SO MUCH, PASSENGERS WOULD GET WEIGHED, BUT WE DONT QUESTION THAT NOW DO WE?

[gehayi]

Ohhh. Thanks for the explanation, @kbokbok! I never knew that it was for the baggage handlers’ safety.

[a-method-in-it]

Kind of surprised that people don’t know this since that’s how the airport attendants have always explained it to me — and actually, the way they’ve explained it, it’s not that the baggage handlers aren’t allowed to lift more than 50 pounds but that they are entitled to extra pay if they are lifting heavy loads.

So charging you extra to have a heavy bag is essentially the airline passing that cost onto you.

Anyway, years ago, I had a bag checker weight my bag and it came up 49.5 pounds and she said “I’m not going to charge you, I’m just going to tag it because it’s so close,” and she put the neon HEAVY tag on it anyway, and she didn’t say it, but I knew she did it so that the baggage handlers would get extra pay, and that’s solidarity.

[chuwenjie]

the color of forgiveness

[prinz-myshkin]

Bothersome beast, comforting friend

[artsy-biggirl]

Mobility assistance

[kittensforbrowncoats]

Roll Mobility

Roll Mobility

[kiun]

“Can you hear me, Princess Mononoke? Here I am. You wish to avenge your tribe. There are some here who seek vengeance for husbands killed by your wolves.”

[kosmogrl]

something very nostalgic and peaceful about having your windows open on summer nights

[dsmsix]

OP face reveal

[juniperarts]

Apparently Miles is a JJK fan (in the comics)

If you put these two in a room together I think the result would be adorable 🥺

[clarasunflowers]

speechless. the pose. the expression. this should be a painting.

[c---crow]

i'm no good at painting sorry. i have excessive line work instead

[recoverr-deactivated20250621]

i don't know who needs to hear this, but guilt, self-hatred and shame are not sustainable sources of growth and healing. you can't hate yourself into feeling better, or being better. you can't repeatedly punish yourself for your flawed humanity and expect wholesome results.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

All the stuff you learn from your attempts at healthy coping doesn't get erased the moment you relapse. And you can use that knowledge to pick yourself back up and try again when you're ready. It's not a case of starting over from scratch, it's a case of stumbling and getting back up