I mean the whole damn point of the Nativity story is that the supposed son of God (interpret Jesus how you fucking want, of course) was born to a couple of poor, exhausted peasants in the stable for the inn, and his first bed was a feeding trough for animals. That would nowadays be like a poor couple where the mother gives birth in a parking garage behind the motel because they couldn’t find a better place and nobody else would take them in. It’s a pretty gritty setting, and the idea is that God was reborn in some of the rock-bottom lowest circumstances. The only thing majestic was all the angels and shit, and of course motherly love

I get that a lot of the art portraying Madonna and Child as fabulously wealthy europeans in splendid robes and golden light was meant to glorify God + whichever nobility was sponsoring the artist, and while of course it’s genuinely beautiful art, it just always struck me as horribly missing the point, which is that the supposed son of God started in incredibly humble circumstances, among the kind of people that everyone else looks down on

‘Massacre des Innocents’ by Leon Cogniét, 1824. Although the Feast of the Holy Innocents is in a couple of days time, this painting is still really relevant in that it portrays Mary as how She really was: a scared refugee mum, so fearful that Her son was going to be one of the Innocents killed by King Herod.

My new favorite mordern interpretation is this work, José y Maria by Everett Patterson (http://www.everettpatterson.com)

I had to look at this like FIVE TIMES to register all the layers of symbolism going into the piece by Patterson. 

The hoodie as a veil. 

Weisman cigarettes

Each of them is haloed by an advertisement sticker. 

No Vacancy sign on the motel. 

Dove sticker over Maria’s head. 

Neon sign with a star symbol also over Maria’s head. 

The crown over the ‘Dave’s City Motel’ sign. “New Manger.”

The sign behind Jose’s elbow likely says ‘Herod.’

The wee little plant growing through the cracks at their feet. 

It’s like a New Testament ‘I Spy.’ I love it!

Ugh.

New favorite interpretation of the nativity. 

The paper at José’s feet has an advert for Shepard Watches Maria’s hoodie says Nazareth High School The sign above José’s head proclaims ‘Good News!’

This is incredible and lovely.

Tumblrmobile.jpeg

the whole “companies searching their own names on twitter” thing is funny tbh

everyone’s gathered around to watch Kira drink Quark’s decaf concoction….. how sweet, team bonding.

you know it’s a slow day when they open the little plastic gate that usually keeps quark out of ops

tiny comics are fun

challenge: color these but incorrectly

I mean, he’s named after a font. Grammar jokes. *shrug* Semantics.

Oh for fuck’s sake

Bonus:

Alright so major spoilers for steven universe future, episode 1 Volleyball

Youve been warned

Giving you a chance to scroll away

...

....

Still here? Okay good

This is gonna be a liiil long so bear with me

When Pink Pearl (aka volleyball lmao) said Pink Diamond was the one that caused the crack on her face, i was kinda shocked. Yea we've seen PD act like a child before (jungle moon flashback) but Volleyball said that PD was angry and *yelled*, which we've seen Steven do (at least Pink Steven, in change your mind when he yells "shes gone") with a similar effect. Lion and presumably Lars can do that too but to a lesser effect.

Now, Pearl said that PD was really reserved with her, keeping secrets and forcibly keeping her emotions in check at all times, likely to prevent this happening again.

PD wanted a colony. She asked White directly. White said no. Pink gets angry, viciously screams and her pearl at the time was too close to her, causing her face to be damaged.

White reacts to this very childish display and reckless behavior by taking away the damaged pearl, and due to the MASSIVE unfixable flaw, just bleachs her and keeps this pearl as her own. Possibly to constantly rub Pinks nose in it and remind her of what she did.

Pink is horrified. For possibly the first time in her existence, she sees how much raw power and sheer damage she can do. She realizes her bad outburst behavior has consequences. Shes still somewhat impulsive, but she realizes how damaging she can be, so she curbs it. She controls herself.

She makes a difference. She makes a change, to herself. Which many people who've gone through major emotional and behavioral changes can attest to, thats not easy. It takes severe self reflection, self hatred, coping, and evolving. Its not something that happens overnight.

White, Yellow, and Blue see this change happening and think "Wow shes finally like growing up and learning" and give her another pearl. Our pearl we know and love. Pink continues to behave, but she's not herself.

Yellow, Blue, and White then give her Spinel, to help bring back the joy Pink is supposed to show. It works, somewhat, and because of her now "balanced" emotions, she receives her colony.

Now she has responsibilities, and she can't be seen acting like a child again with Spinel. But she forgets, emotional pain exists like physical pain, and can be dished out in the same manner. Spinel is abandoned. She's hurt now too. Its slower, but Pink breaks another gem.

Its not that Pink is just selfish or entirely abusive, shes careless too. Pink does what Pink wants to do. Pink wants what Pink wants, whether that comes at a cost or not.

She wanted a colony. Then wanted to be more involved with it. She then wanted to preserve life. Then to stop colonizing. Then she wanted to save the Earth. Then she just wanted freedom.

But all of those were costly choices. She didnt care, she wanted them then and there, even if it meant more death and destruction.

Her first pearl, her first colony, her fellow diamonds, several dozen generations of humans, countless gems, her own friends even!

And then, she decided she wanted a child. She couldnt have known in the beginning she'd die in the process, theres never been anything like Steven before to go off of. She realized it after she was already going through with it, like with her colony, but by then it was too late to stop. She hurt everyone again but this time, for the last time.

Poof. There she goes, free from the effects of her actions for eternity. Now its on her son, who never wanted any of this and who didnt get a choice.

Pink Diamond wasn't entirely abusive or self centered, she just didn't think things through nor did she fully consider others in her choices. Yes she made monumental mistakes, but she didn't do them with intent to harm. That was just horrible consequences. She's not evil, but shes impulsive. Shes reckless. Thoughtless.

Shes not evil, she was toxic.

Ok, so I don't personally like how with pink diamond in both the movie and now they seem to be making pink diamond a "bad guy" instead of what they use to do in the first 5 seasons of making her a complicated character who did a lot, tried to help people and tried to learn and improve, but I thought about it and now I have a bit of a theory

so it seems like Steven is going through pink's story, it said in season 5 that he was similar to pink in how immature and naive they were in the beginning and how they wanted to feel more like a part of their group

And now we see that the side of her that would scream in anger and throw tantrums accidentally hurting those around her Steven is now doing,

Along with throwing acts of rage after being taunted in the same way white taunted pink (jasper and white saying their hanging around inferior gems to feel better about themselves) and how she reacted badly to those as well

I got pretty annoyed at this scene because the Steven we saw for 5 seasons and around 2 years of his life, would never have offered to fight her, he only fought when someone else threw the first punch, otherwise he would talk to them, no matter how mad or frustrated he was, but if it's meant to show him now becoming so frustrated he does things without thinking, accidently hurting people, like pink did then I can see it

and both pink and Steven trying to just blindly help without realizing that there are more consequences to those acts of kindness then what they originally thought, and not think things all the way through when trying to help people

So my theory is that he'll go through a similar arc that his mom went through and by the end of the show he'll realize more about her and understand her side more and we'll go back to "it's complicated" instead of just the "she's evil" thing they're doing right now, which lines up more with what we had in the first 5 seasons, and that would give Steven a lot more character growth and would bring the show full circle of the first part was Steven learning about rose through other people but slowly realizing that she was not the perfect person people believed her to be, far from it, and now the second part is him going through her story himself and slowly realizing she wasn't as bad of a person that he believed her to be. Don't get me wrong pink/rose did a lot of bad things and I'm not justifying that but the show shouldn't treat it as a black and white issue when it was completely grey, rose/pink is a good complex, morally grey character that was nicely explored in the first 5 seasons and I would like them to continue to explore it instead of just calling her a bad person and that's it

After all Steven and pink are very similar

zuko is trans.

is momo also trans?

Why do they always write their articles like this??

i think they did confirm it by naming it this

and drawing it like this

also guess what its japanese name literally translates to

Im losing it at this tag

I think we as a generation need to stop being impressed by basic shit in relationships.