I guess the thing about Godzilla is that it represents a massive national trauma which eviscerated nature and the human soul, but the USA versions fall somewhere on the spectrum between “vaguely about 9/11 or recent natural disaster” and “giant monster smashy smash.” I think that stems from trying to conceptualize Godzilla as representing a particular and isolated instance of disaster and translate that into something of a similar nature in the USA.
But the real deep down soul death and national trauma in the USA isn’t anything recent, you can’t point out something uniquely bad like an atomic bomb. Really the kaiju for the USA needs to be symbolic of how this whole place is an infinite recursive system of devouring its population, starting from colonization and going right up through to the present day. The crucial difference is that if a kaiju was to represent the deep, unhealed, and still bleeding scar at the heart of the nation, it has to by definition be some ancient dead thing which rises on the anguish of everyone consumed in the name of this country and burns it into the ground. There’s not an easy way to make a USAmerican kaiju because the only way to do so accurately means the kaiju has to be the protagonist, and ultimately has to show how much the people in the USA are unified when the hyperwealthy and our government are destroyed.
Who is gonna make that?
who else?
You get it.
I’ll let Mr. del Toro make the movie. I’ve already got something monstrous cooking in one of the labs so I can make it real; you know, so it’ll really drive home the metaphor after it starts eating folks.
what america needs right now is an even older candidate, and though i have forgotten my name and age i am excited to throw my twisted, spirally hat into the ring
vote Evil Wizard / Whispering Obelisk 2024!
……….
I really appreciate that you decided to run with the Whispering Obelisk; I think that was a brilliant move to secure the youth and LGBTQ votes.
They whisper on my obelisk till I secure the LGBTQ votes.
what america needs right now is an even older candidate, and though i have forgotten my name and age i am excited to throw my twisted, spirally hat into the ring
vote Evil Wizard / Whispering Obelisk 2024!
……….
I really appreciate that you decided to run with the Whispering Obelisk; I think that was a brilliant move to secure the youth and LGBTQ votes.
They whisper on my obelisk till I secure the LGBTQ votes.
It is always to tempting to rhyme potion with commotion when putting together rhyming spells, but I don’t like to be stale. I’ve been workshopping some potions that work with other words like “locomotion”.
So far, I just made a potion that makes you do the locomotion, and there’s already a song that does that, so it’s slow progress so far.
Locomotion potion causes commotion, triggering in the user a great emotion,
maybe this is a swing at a hornets nest but watching people go down the pipeline of ‘reclaiming slurs’ to just calling people the r word as an insult again and bite at the bit for any extra slurpoints they can 'reclaim’ in this manner has been insane to watch as an autistic person i cant lie
you guys recognize the point of reclamation is to hand the power to those abused by the system to define this identity thrust upon them in a positive way or find comradere in it right. like you calling someone online the r-word is not reclamation you are just feeding into the very system a lot of us were harmed by and it feels like if you mention that u get called sensitive. like we have made a full loop of the ouraborus the snake is eating its tail as we speak
As a kid, I was really upset that Bill Watterson wouldn’t license Calvin & Hobbes so I could have plushies or so there would be a Saturday morning cartoon. Now, I realize his resistance is the reason we don’t have a Calvin & Hobbes DreamWorks movie starring Chris Pratt.
Our town (~9,000 people) has a couple garages, but there’s a big one on the main drag. My family has been going there for decades. I drive past it every day.
There used to be a huge pine tree on the corner of their lot, but last year it became a hazard and had to be taken down.
Shortly thereafter I drive by and see they’ve hired a guy to chainsaw sculpt the stump into a bald eagle.
ALT
Birds own my heart, but nationalism makes me twitchy. I withhold outright condemnation of the eagle, but I’m skeptical. (The original owner—an objectively Good Dude—sold the business to a younger couple a few years ago, and I don’t have any knowledge of their whole deal.)
Then it turns out someone on staff is really into making costumes for the eagle. Every holiday. Every month. Stuffed turkey, witch costume, menorah headpiece, bunny ears. These people love to dress their bird.
ALT
The changing of the eagle suit becomes a source of joy every time I drive through town.
Until June, when the eagle is bare.
Now look, maybe I’m expecting too much asking my garage to celebrate Pride. But this is a small town. Every time I drive by that stupid eagle—this thing that has previously brought me so much joy—I feel hurt. I feel reminded that there are plenty of people in my liberal bubble who don’t consider my community worthy of celebration. I drive to work, I feel bad. I drive home, I feel bad. The eagle is mocking me.
Then my A/C quits working.
So I book an appointent to bring my car in—and realize what I have to do.
ALT
I pick all this up at a thrift store for under ten bucks. I print the shirt with some weird heat-transfer fabric crayons I find in a cupboard. I loop gold elastic around the sunglasses and pray they’ll fit on the eagle’s head. (It is also important to draw your attention to the price of the feather boa.)
ALT
(Nice.)
My reasoning is thus: if I show up with a complete costume ready to go, someone will have to look me in the eye and say “We don’t believe in that,” at which point I’ll be finding a new garage. But if they let me dress the eagle, then people in town get to have the joy I’ve been missing since the start of the month.
I listen to a lot of hype-up jams on my way over. I hate confrontation. I also don’t wanna have to find another garage. I want to believe that this decision isn’t actively antagonistic, but I’m not particularly hopeful.
I talk through the A/C issue with the guy at the desk, hand over my keys, then take a deep breath.
“Who’s in charge of the eagle?”
“Oh, that’s all Dylan. Second bay from the end.”
I walk down the row of hydraulic lifts and find a disarmingly smiley middle-aged man pouring fluid through a funnel. I introduce myself and explain that, since the Pride parade is this Sunday and the eagle seems to be missing a costume, I have taken the liberty of making one myself, and can I get his blessing to go put it on?
Dylan grins this absolutely giant grin and goes
“Oh hell yeah.”
ALT
So that’s what’s up now.
Happy Pride.
UPDATE: I called this morning to figure out when the car was gonna be done and the desk guy talked me through it all and then said:
“Hey also: thanks for making that costume for the eagle. People can be touchy about it, but the guys love what you did. And it’s so smart to put "Love is love” on the shirt. Because we’re all for the LGBTQ community, but of course there’s people who come in here who aren’t. And what are they gonna do? Disagree with something like that?“
I admitted I’d been nervous to ask about it, and we had a laugh, and then he told me they actually have a monthly budget for the eagle now. There’s a spreadsheet full of holidays and everything.
Anyway, I’ve still gotta get my wheel bearings replaced.
I think dudes who say shit like “I couldn’t love a child that wasn’t mine” shouldn’t have kids
“I could never be a stepdad because I could never love another man’s child” another man’s child? not your hypothetical wife’s child? you look at a kid and see another man’s fuck trophy instead of seeing a human being? I’m not sure you could successfully be a parent to your own biological child
for my fellow psychotics who struggle with thinking someone is in their house, a method I’ve found that really works are these guys:
i put them on my front door and anytime it opens they ring. that way if i think someone has broken in or i see someone who isn’t there i can think back to if the bells have rung, and if they haven’t i can assure myself it’s not real. obviously it’s not fool proof, like if you are prone to auditory hallucinations, but it has really helped me calm down in time to avoid major psychotic breaks. it’s a real lifesaver
Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.
Might I add:
The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed
The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child
The human who died of radiation poisoning after repairing the spaceship
The adventures of a space roomba
Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)
I don’t know a snappy description but the my nemesis cynthia story certainly lives in my head
hilariously, these are almost all in my fic tag. so, a compiled list from the notes (and some extras):
What about the one with the princess locked in a tower learning to become a wizard? That’s lived in my mind for years and I haven’t seen it in a long time
I can hardly take any credit for these stories! But I love sharing them. Unfortunately I cannot read all the prompt responses so please tag me if you want me to reblog a story that resonated with you so I can give it a little boost :)
I don’t have time to draw it right now but while driving home from the winco I saw a happy mustached man pedaling a bike, towing a cart built to look like a chariot, inside of which stood what I can only imagine was his completely expressionless 13 year old in a makeshift corinthian helmet
like this
People drawing their encounters instead of filming strangers without their knowledge or consent: my beloved
Note to vacationing non-Americans: while it’s true that America doesn’t always have the best food culture, the food in our restaurants is really not representative of what most of us eat at home. The portions at Cheesecake Factory or IHOP are meant to be indulgent, not just “what Americans are used to.”
If you eat at a regular American household, during a regular meal where they’re not going out of their way to impress guests, you probably will not be served twelve pounds of chocolate-covered cream cheese. Please bear this in mind before writing yet another “omg I can’t believe American food” post.
Also, most American restaurant portions are 100% intended as two meals’ worth of food. Some of my older Irish relatives still struggle with the idea that it’s not just not rude to eat half your meal and take the rest home, it’s expected. (Apparently this is somewhat of an American custom.)
Until you’re hitting the “fancy restaurant” tier (the kind of place you go for a celebration or an anniversary date), a dinner out should generally also be lunch for the next day. Leftovers are very much the norm.
From the little time I’ve spent in Canada, this seems to be the case up there as well.
the portions in family restaurants (as opposed to haute cuisine types) are designed so that no one goes away hungry.
volume IS very much a part of the american hospitality tradition, and Nobody Leaves Hungry is important. but you have to recognize that it’s not how we cook for ourselves, it’s how we welcome guests and strengthen community ties.
so in order to give you a celebratory experience and make you feel welcomed, family restaurants make the portions big enough that even if you’re a teenage boy celebrating a hard win on the basketball court, you’re still going to be comfortably full when you leave.
of course, that means that for your average person with a sit-down job, who ate a decent lunch that day, it’s twice as much as they want or more. that’s ok. as mentioned above, taking home leftovers is absolutely encouraged. that, too, is part of american hospitality tradition; it’s meant to invoke fond memories of grandma loading you down with covered dishes so you can have hearty celebration food all week. pot luck church basement get-togethers where the whole town makes sure everybody has enough. that sort of thing. it’s about sharing. it’s about celebrating Plenty.
it’s not about pigging out until you get huge. treating it that way is pretty disrespectful of our culture. and you know, contrary to what the world thinks, we do have one.
ok, after actually looking up the term and doing some goddamn research (my goodness somebody on the internet actually decided to look something up before forming an opinion, dear god what a day), i can pretty safely say that everyone hitting this post with the “that’s just a friendship!” bit is wrong! and i can explain why! i myself didn’t get this initially! but after looking into it, i realized that it’s mainly due to the framework i was thinking in! Yeah, there’s actually merit to what these people are saying, this is stuff that’s been considered and these are indeed terms that exist! they were also coined by ace people specifically to describe their relationships!
So what gives? What does Queerplatonic Relationship mean? well i certainly fucking didnt get it at first, but it stems from attempting to define a kind of relationship that there arent really words for in the standard english lexicon! the poster above me is a TERF, and wherever i see myself agreeing with a terf i also see that there’s possibly some flaw in my logic or understanding of the thing. Basically (mind you this is only some very cursory and basic research, just type the term into google lol), QPR’s are a way of defining a relationship that has many of the same obligations and aspects of a traditional romantic relationship, without any of the explicitly romantic parts that come with having a spouse or romantic partner.
the idea of living in the same place, or jointly bringing up children, and performing many other tasks as a kind of unit that society would often mislabel as something done by two romantic partners in a union of some kind (i use that term to loosely define an exclusive relationship, not actual binding marriage, though this can include such). the idea of the QPR isn’t just “friends”, it’s very specifically “individuals in a platonic relationship that perform a number of the social aspects of a traditional romantic partnership”.
like, be real for a second. if someone described their relationship with someone to you and said “Yeah we own a house together, we have a kid that we adopted and take care of, we decided to get a dog last week and we file taxes as two members of the same household.”, you wouldn’t look at that person and assume that they arent romantic/sexual partners of some kind, because… well, traditionally, that’s shit that married people do. getting hit with the additional “Yup! And we’re not romantically or sexually involved at all! She has a boyfriend that she visits on the weekends and I’ve never had a romantic relationship in my life.” would throw you for a goddamn loop! What would you even call that relationship? and that’s where the term comes from: an attempt to define a very specific kind of relationship that certainly can and has existed, but isn’t commonly recognized or talked about!
so i think everyone shitting on these folks owes them an apology, i know i personally do for making assumptions that clearly weren’t true!
Actually QPR was coined by aromantic people but asexual people do also use it!
Finally I have a reason to reblog this after cringing every time it’s come across my dash.
Reblogging for the person who decided to (gasp!) actually research before having an opinion - everybody please do like this and we’ll all be ok maybe.
Agreeing that queerplatonic relationships are more of an aro thing than an ace thing. The categories can co-occur fairly often (aroaces seem pretty common) but there are also many aces who have or want romantic relationships (some of which have a sexual component and some of which do not) rather than QPR ones. Just wanted to say this since too often people hear “I’m ace” and assume that also means I am aro, but nope, very much not. But, still, there is nothing preventing non-aro aces, gays, or heteros from choosing to build a queerplatonic relationship - I’m sure it must happen sometimes, just less commonly. I’m not trying to police it.
Blocking the terfs/aphobes.
Honestly, I would prefer to be in a QPR than a romantic relationship.
In 97 I was the baby face in the Y2K Management Planning Team at the local authority where I worked. I was the pleb on the team who actually “did stuff” and could therefore give input about what required IT and what didn’t and what we could if it all fell over on midnight 31st, December, 1999.
In reality nothing happened because the worlds’ IT specialists en masse worked their arses off to protect us.
And it worked. They solved a problem that could even then have brought so much to a grinding halt.
And got zero fucking thanks for it really.
Accused of making a mountain of a molehill when in reality they moved the entire mountain, teaspoon by teaspoon.
I just hope yesterday reminds the fuckwits in charge to do as their predecessors did and put fail safes, mechanical overrides and contingency plans in place for the day the IT doesn’t fucking work so that next time they don’t get smacked in the dick because they are overly reliant on Microsoft systems for everything from opening their fridge to running hospitals.
The best part about being asexual is knowing that you will never be honeypotted. I often picture myself as a mark in a James Bond movie who has information or something and Daniel Craig saunters up in his sexiest tux to seduce me and I’m just like “No thank you” no matter what he does and then he has an existential crisis and walks away in a daze then sends in Moneypenny cause maybe I just like women and I’m like “hey girl, no thanks” and send her away as well and they just never get the information. I am an immovable plot piece without even knowing it. Sorry James but I defy the tropes of your genre.
learned a new word today, “honeypotting” (pink is my color for definitions). also here are the best replies:
^ true facts, relatable, 100%. i really thought everyone else was weak for falling for pretty marketing
AMAURY???? HELLO?????
relatable 100% again
they’d have to promise me a lifetime supply of ripe mangos for me to consider sharing the info.
hey as a local aroace, i want to specify something.
were no strangers to love. you know the rules and so do i (do i). a full commitments what im thinking of. you wouldnt get this from any other guy. i just wanna tell you how im feeling. gotta make you understand. never gonna give you up. never gonna let you down. never gonna run around and desert you. never gonna make you cry. never gonna say goodbye. never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
image embedded in tweet is a full bin labeled “Free Condoms, Be Safe Today!”, with the aro flag on both the label and each of the condom packets, next to a full bin labeled “Free Water Balloons, Have Fun Today!”, doing the same thing with the ace flag.
Regardless of whether you find ejoyment of sex, if you have sex it’s still important to stay healthy. Not every aro/ace is sex repulsed.
Saw this frame on a different reblog by @thatssroughbuddy but why does it look like Iroh is using his phone to take a photo of his nephew at a landmark
“Uncle, make sure you get that glowy light in the picture and send it to my dad to let him know I’m about to capture the Avatar!”
This was so cute I had to draw it
and of course Iroh is doing what-
!!!!!!
Iroh posts it on social media with some caption like “look at my beautiful nephew” and Zhao comments like “is that the Avatar in the background?”
And Iroh responds, “no, it’s the northern lights.”
the important thing is to make characters who are fucked up in similar ways to u and then to give them the strength to keep going. so that even by thinking of them u may be able to gift urself this strength too. the other important thing is to make hot women
ALT
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