a little bit of quiet desperation

Sailor Moon x Chanel 

Always nice to see new Naoko illustrations ^^

i understand you guys now. like i get it

The silly shenanigans of a dog and his boy

Change my meme (a replacement 'Change my mind' template) - template post - Imgur

[ID: an edited Calvin and Hobbes panel where Calvin sits, smiling, at a lemonade stand with a sign taped to the front of the table. It reads: It's time to retire that other meme and replace it with this template. Change my mind. Next image is the same meme but the sign reads: Steven Crowder does not deserve a meme format. Change my mind. /end]

I see posts go by periodically about how modern audiences are impatient or unwilling to trust the creator. And I agree that that's true. What the posts almost never mention, though, is that this didn't happen in a vacuum. Audiences have had their patience and trust beaten out of them by the popular media of the past few decades.

J J Abrams is famous for making stories that raise questions he never figures out how to answer. He's also the guy with some weird story about a present he never opened and how that's better than presents you open--failing to see that there's a difference between choosing not to open a present and being forbidden from opening one.

You've got lengthy media franchises where installments undo character development or satisfying resolutions from previous installments. Worse, there are media franchises with "trilogies" that are weird slap fights between the makers of each installment.

You've got wildly popular TV shows that end so poorly and unsatisfyingly that no one speaks of them again.

On top of that, a lot of the media actively punishes people for engaging thoughtfully with it. Creators panic and change their stories if the audience properly reacts to foreshadowing. Emotional parts of storytelling are trampled by jokes. Shocking the audience has become the go to, rather than providing a solid story.

Of course audiences have gotten cynical and untrusting! Of course they're unwilling to form their own expectations of what's coming! Of course they make the worst assumptions based on what's in front of them! The media they've been consuming has trained them well.

Booby traps? Sure, I would easily fall into a trap if I saw boobs

despite being interviewed individually, all four gave the exact same response

wizards thinking of clerics as hacks cause we spent years of study learning the secrets of the universe they cheated and got a god to do their magic for them

clerics thinking of wizards as hacks cause we spent years serving and cultivating a deeply personal relationship with a god they copied down some cheat codes to make stuff blow up

And sorcerers are like "no wait, hold on. This is basically a curse. I've been *experiencing* magic against my will since I was born and it's hurt a lot of people."

... and then everyone glares at the warlock in the corner. Their response: "Yeah, no. That's fair. I blew Cthulhu in the parking lot behind the McDonald's and now I can do magic. Best deal ever. You all can (and should) suck it."

i hate u female rage i hate u divine feminine i hate u female gaze i hate u feminine energy i hate u gender essentialism poorly repackaged as progressive or revolutionary or in any way subversive....

@everyone defending female rage in the tags. u can stop now

😈 You are not bound by the Hays code.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who are not punished by the narrative by the end of the story.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who win.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who make evil look fun and cool.

😈 You are allowed to make your fun, cool evil character the protagonist.

😈 You are allowed to glorify, romanticize and eroticize evil characters and villainous acts.

😈 You are not obligated to teach your audience a moral lesson.

HALLOWEEN (1978) dir. by John Carpenter

right now it’s almost halfway through 2023, and 2024 is an election year in the US. I have started to see a growing proliferation of posts suggesting that there is no difference between the republican and democratic parties–the exact same kind of posts I saw an awful lot of before the last major election here. I am unfollowing folks who post or reblog these sort of posts, as I consider these posts to be fascist propaganda framed as leftist discourse, designed to suppress anti-fascist votes and voters. 

Prepare yourself to vote for Biden now, because the only other option is someone who will make 2016-2020 look like a picnic.

You work with what you’ve got, not what you wish you had.

I detest Biden more with every passing day (and he was not in my top 10 candidates in 2020). 2024 will be an election between:

No Labels is an op. It’s being funded by unknown parties to defeat Biden and the Democrats. Their election scenarios are fantasy football for political junkies.

No Third Party has a road anywhere outside statewide offices (Bernie is the exception that proves the rule, and he’s a Democrat for all intents and purposes).

Arguably the rosiest scenario is that TFG breaks with the Republicans to form his own party and tanks any chance the Republicans have, but that’s not looking as likely as it did two years ago.

If you’re pissed, get involved in your local elections. Ensure that no position is running unopposed (and that includes if you’ve got a conserva-Dem somewhere now–primary them).

Get the House back in the Democratic hands (unless you’re up for two more years of this only with MTG as Speaker this time). Increase the margin in the Senate (and send Selema to her post-senate career). Make sure your school board isn’t full of flat-earthers. Wake sure your county counsel isn’t going to shut down your libraries if they have a book someone doesn’t like.

As Stonekettle says, if you want a better country, but a better citizen.

There’s a reason we call it a civic DUTY, not a civic privilege.

Starting mid-April I’ll be posting to-do lists and action items for people who’ve never gotten involved before. One party wants you dead. FIGHT.

Speaking as a Michigan resident:  Look at the laws being passed in Michigan.  Now look at the laws being passed in Florida.  Spot the difference?  That’s because Michigan is being governed by the Democratic Party, and Florida is being governed by the Republican Party.  That’s the difference.  They’re different parties.  It is not the same.

You want what we’ve got?  Vote for it.

(And you want Michigan to stay the way it is and not slide backwards into the shit we had to deal with with Rick Snyder, or even just the way it was when the House and Senate were Republican-controlled?  Keep fucking voting.)

D are not our friends or even allies but R is a staunch enemy

look the main thing is that our first-past-the-poll voting style automatically and always devolves into a two party system where the majority of people dislike both parties. This is now a known phenomenon, a feature of our voting method as inevitable as water running downhill. 

But that isn’t going to change until we get some sweeping voting reform that revises our voting system into some kind of ranked or run-off voting

Meanwhile one of our destined-to-be-disliked parties is actually trying to do things we want (health care, living wages, social services, public transportation, civil rights, education, support for gay and trans people, religious tolerance, etc) and one of our parties is banning books and undoing women’s rights and supporting corrupt racist police and endangering gay and trans lives while paying people to make posts about how both parties are equally bad so that people don’t vote democrat.

Like, we are going to not like a lot of how the Democrats operate, that is a feature of the current design, but they are trying to protect women’s rights, they are trying to help the homeless, they are trying to raise minimum wage they have agendas that include important things. And republicans? are at this point a literal cult that want to create a religious fascist state.

Even my father, now 80 years old, a man whose politics i have often despised, a man who voted for Reagan for fucks sake! even he (unhappily) votes Democrat now, because he’s not an insane person, and the republican party has become SO BLATANTLY EVIL AND STUPID that he can’t ignore it.

Democrats pass legislation we want that republicans then find ways to block. Democrats have passed bills that:

close gender pay gaps raise federal minimum wage make becoming a US citizen easier for immigrants protect civil/public water sources from pollution cut greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change increase gun regulation lower and control prescription drug prices improve healthcare access for those with pre-existing conditions protect net neutrality protect gay marriage rights

these are all the subjects of specific real bills that democrats have either passed into law or tried hard to pass in the last few years. Meanwhile republicans act to block these bills while championing book bans and attacking trans folk and giving more power to corporations to ruin our planet and taking away women’s rights. 

when you see posts attacking Democrats from the left or whatever, the talking points and quotes can often be traced back to right wing sources

So all posts trying to keep non-republicans arguing amongst ourselves and calling for us to not vote democrat (or not vote at all) ? I will be assuming they are bad-faith posts and i won’t be spreading them or engaging with them or anything.

Honest critique of the party is necessary, but like it or not our system currently is a two party system, and i’ll be voting for the better of the two until we can change our voting style to make additional political parties viable.

I live in Pennsylvania.

Neither of my children is cisgender.

The last gubernatorial election was, literally, do we elect this guy who is overly fond of cops but is generally a normal human being, or do we elect this other guy who believes frightening conspiracy theories and wants my children removed from my care and forcibly detransitioned and honestly would prefer them to be dead?

That’s it. That’s the kind of choice we get in first-past-the-post voting. If that second guy won, we needed to move. There was no safe way to stay here. The votes of my fellow citizens were all that was standing between my kids and serious fucking danger.

And my fellow citizens DID turn out. Lots of them came out and voted to reject the scary death cultist. I am grateful to all those who went, ugh, I don’t really like this guy, but the other guy is worse, and hauled themselves down to the polling place to get it done.

You, too, can vote to reject scary death cultists, in your hometown and your home state and in the country as a whole.

Getting rid of the scary death cultists is a prequisite for getting political representation you actually want.

This has no right being this fucking funny

that feel

I’ve seen a lot of takes recently about the Vendetta bar scene where people say Chris isn’t mean at all but he’s just being a worried friend who wants to help Leon and that’s why he’s so aggressive in it.

and i’m so sorry for being an angry no-fun old lady, but

Chris IS being beyond mean. he’s an absolute asshole in that scene. he’s angry and he’s demanding and he comes to Leon with an attitude that of course Leon has to help him because why wouldn’t he. screw Leon’s emotions, screw Leon’s trauma, CHRIS NEEDS HELP SO LEON HAS TO GIVE IT RIGHT NOW THIS FUCKING SECOND. reframing it as “he’s just worried”? nah. no. if he was “just worried” he wouldn’t shut down Leon attempting to open up mere minutes later. Leon TRIES to talk about how bad he feels and Chris literally goes just “BUT ARIAS AND MY MISSION!" 

that is 100% not a concerned friend. that is a tunnel-visioned person who is on a mission and who needs to do anything and everything to complete that mission. he doesn’t entertain Leon’s feelings for even a split second in there, he just goes on and on about what HE needs.

I’m not saying that Chris is a bad person, he’s not. but he’s human and he makes mistakes like the rest of us. and he probably is worried for Leon somewhere deep down too. their later interactions are way better, and Chris actually treats Leon like he should. but in the bar scene he is absolutely a dick and he is absolutely in it for his own gain and not out of worry for a friend. (or if THAT is how he treats his friends out of pure concern?? I’d hate to be his friend)

(also Chris went full-on raging alcoholic after Edonia, he couldn’t and wouldn’t pull himself together, Leon is taking ONE MOMENT TO GRIEVE, those are not the same. not even close. this fandom and its takes on alcohol continue to drive me fucking nuts.)

TotK link brings wolf link on some adventures

If anyone wants to know where the UK is currently at, disability campaigners have lost a battle over making it a legal requirement for high-rise flats to have an evacuation plan for disabled residents.

Campaign group Claddag wanted it to be a legal requirement for escape plans to be in place for those who might not be able to get out safely in an emergency.

But a Home Office consultation found the Grenfell Tower Inquiry's recommendations would be too costly and impractical to implement.

...

In the Grenfell fire, which killed 72 people in June 2017, 41% of the tower block's disabled residents died. (X)

Oh okay so it's good then

Even going outside the context of the barbie movie, it is truly incredible that they could write that last part and try to frame it as a bad thing

I spent so much of my life romanticizing the Great and Powerful Enormity of the Sea, reading about the salt and the sweat of the sailors straining to haul the sails or anchor while dreading the monsters in the cold, icy deep fathoms below…and now you tell me that a fathom is only 6 feet deep -

Six feet is still more than enough for a grave.

Hi, that is the most metal addition you could have possibly made to this post

For every fathom you descend into the ocean the pressure around you increases. By five fathoms down you’re experiencing two atmospheres of pressure. At about ten fathoms, a human can no longer survive on their own, and must have supplemental oxygen to continue their descent. With specialized diving gear, we can go to perhaps 60 fathoms under our own power. By that depth, even the clearest waters are dark. Perhaps one percent of visible light remains, mostly in the blue range. The water is blues and greys around you, shadowy like the last minutes before nightfall. The water below is darker still, impenetrable. But life still lurks beneath you, in the untold fathoms of the darkest sea, in an environment so hostile even our machines struggle to reach them.

Video Source | Yurok Tribe | Save California Salmon | Redwoods Rising

I will also say the danger of having a woodland all planted at the same time, beyond the fire risk and the lack of sunlight meaning a habitat that just isn’t diverse, is that in a hundred two hundred years when those trees have lived their long lives, there just won’t be a woodland, they’re planted at the same time they die at the same time and suddenly your habitat doesn’t exist, this a big danger of the drives to plant lots of trees for climate change, it needs to be a managed process over a very long period of time they need to be cared for and sometimes the best thing for the environment is to cut a tree down that isn’t as productive so specific chosen trees can flourish for the benefit of the whole habitat

I haven't looked into the org yet but what he's saying is basically true from what I know

I'd like to add that the trees shown in the video are Baby. My guess would be that they're 30-something years old. This looks like basically a plantation, not a forest. You see a lot of these down in Georgia (USA Georgia) where it's just these dark, dense stands of pines with NO undergrowth no nothing. And they get cut down and turned into wood pulp every 25 years or so.

It is hard to explain what an old growth forest is like and looks like because so little of old growth is left and there's not very many pictures.

But here's what I know (not an expert, just autistic about trees): basically, you have fewer individual trees yes, but you have BIG trees—I mean trees that are bigger than just about any tree you've ever seen big trees—trees that make these little twigs look like toothpicks. And you have a wide range of sizes all the way down to tiny saplings.

And you usually have a variety of species too. What is always most jarring and striking about these terrible photos of tree plantations is that everything looks the same...there's no variety.

Trees all have different roles in the ecosystem and growth habits and shapes so to get the multi-layered canopy characteristic of old growth forests there needs to be variety, with understory species as well as tall species that form the upper canopy.

Here's a link to a FAQ

I'm so glad the world is starting to learn that we are part of nature and we have a responsibility to take care of it, instead of just "leaving nature to itself" to heal from past damage.

You are a caretaker! That is your role in the ecosystem