gabbaghoulfromstloui

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

I just finished night of the living dead, Idk if it was the first zombie movie or not but the common tropes are def present here. Found out it’s the first horror movie with a black guy, also pretty cool.

Also I really liked Shaun if the dead, but I watched it at least a month ago.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) dir. George A. Romero Shaun of the Dead (2004) dir. Edgar Wright

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

Legion secretly good? (No.)

I was reading a Reddit discussion that asked who the successor of the legion would be. Now if you saw my last NV post you’ll see I have a bias. So it shouldn’t be a surprise I think Caesar is a fucking idiot.

However, one comment had my attention, they said the only reason to work with Caesar is to prevent the rebuilding of civilization. Saying that reconstruction of civilization will only lead to the downfall of mankind once more through nuclear war.

Now if you agree with this idea then sure it makes sense. It’s extremely nihilistic and rooted more in the idea that we’re inevitably going to kill ourselves. But as seen with tribes rising, towns building and republics forming. You can’t stop humanity from rebuilding.

If your goal is to simply stop the March of progress, you will fail. One can only march for so long before their legs give out. Unless they have artificial legs (which requires the March of progress) they will die.

Caesar’s legion is but a stone on a sidewalk. Sure if you’re not looking it could trip you, won’t stop you from walking down the side walk. Just as it won’t stop you, it won’t stop the inevitable March of progress.

Empires, nations, kingdoms and the like have both collapsed and risen from the ashes. Time and time again, it simply proves that Caesar’s goal won’t stop civilization, only hinder it for a time.

At best Caesar could moderate it, but it’s obvious by the legion’s destructive behavior that’s more akin to raiders than nation builders. That they don’t have the ability to actually build, only to expand, convert and destroy. If Caesar ever truly took continental America, it will collapse. It’s doomed to simply return to the same place it’s delusional creator is, 6 feet under the sands of the Mojave.

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

Disney, not spawn of Satan?

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

Almost like really bad people can get into power if they just hate the same people you hate

The nazis that you see in movies are as much a historical fantasy as vikings with horned helmets and samurai cutting people in half.

The nazis were not some vague evil that wanted to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. They had specific goals which furthered a far right agenda, and they wanted to do harm to very specific groups, (largely slavs, jews, Romani, queer people, communists/leftists, and disabled people.)

The nazis didn't use soldiers in creepy gas masks as their main imagery that they sold to the german people, they used blond haired blue eyed families. Nor did they stand up on podiums saying that would wage an endless and brutal war, they gave speeches about protecting white Christian society from degenerates just like how conservatives do today.

Nazis weren't atheists or pagans. They were deeply Christian and Christianity was part of their ideology just like it is for modern conservatives. They spoke at lengths about defending their Christian nation from godless leftism. The ones who hated the catholic church hated it for protestant reasons. Nazi occultism was fringe within the party and never expected to become mainstream, and those occultists were still Christian, none of them ever claimed to be Satanists or Asatru.

Nazis were also not queer or disabled. They killed those groups, before they had a chance to kill almost anyone else actually. Despite the amount of disabled nazis or queer/queer coded nazis you'll see in movies and on TV, in reality they were very cishet and very able bodied. There was one high ranking nazi early on who was gay and the other nazis killed him for that. Saying the nazis were gay or disabled makes about as much sense as saying they were Jewish.

The nazis weren't mentally ill. As previously mentioned they hated disabled people, and this unquestionably included anyone neurodivergent. When the surviving nazi war criminals were given psychological tests after the war, they were shown to be some of the most neurotypical people out there.

The nazis weren't socialists. Full stop. They hated socialists. They got elected on hating socialists. They killed socialists. Hating all forms of lefitsm was a big part of their ideology, and especially a big part of how they sold themselves.

The nazis were not the supervillians you see on screen, not because they didn't do horrible things in real life, they most certainly did, but because they weren't that vague apolitical evil that exists for white American action heros to fight. They did horrible things because they had a right wing authoritarian political ideology, an ideology that is fundamentally the same as what most of the modern right wing believes.

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

You can’t escape it

It's that time of year when Tumblr celebrates Easter by posting pictures of crucified anime characters, and inevitably somebody in the notes will pop up to helpfully explain that crucifixion imagery has no cultural significance in Japanese media because Japan is only about 1% Christian, which bugs me because it's completely wrong.

It's true that in the majority of cases, crucifixion in Japanese cartoons isn't meant to be conveying any specific theological message, but something Western audiences are likely to miss is that a large portion of those random crucifixion scenes are referencing Ultraman.

Ultraman's creator was a devout Roman Catholic who explicitly intended the titular hero to read as a Christ figure, and consequently, various Ultramen have been crucified on multiple unconnected occasions throughout the franchise's history. Crucifixion scenes in Japanese cartoons are often directly name-checking particular crucifixion incidents from Ultraman, right down to emulating the compositions and camera angles of specific shots. It's like an especially morbid version of the Akira slide.

The upshot is that, while it's true that the inclusion of gratuitous crucifixion scenes in Japanese cartoons typically has no (intentional) theological message, stating that they have no cultural significance is incorrect. A large chunk of the Japanese viewing audience are going to see them and immediately go "hey, that's an Ultraman reference".

Anyway, as an image tax, have a shot of four crucified Ultramen miraculously resurrecting a fifth Ultraman by shooting laser beams out of their hearts:

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

Well boo fucking hoo, cause we’re already married.

why are you so triangle

Because were married

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

why are you so triangle

Because were married

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

Wolfenstein is truly dystopian, yet beautiful.

I'll say beforehand, that I haven't gotten far in it. (I'm bad at most games) but the idea of a Jewish man who is the physical epitome of a "purebred Aryan" fighting against a Nazi regime that on every level despises his very existence. Is just beautiful, it shows the shallowness and baselessness in the Nazi ideology so perfectly.

On another note, it also portrays the depravity in such a world. I only finished the first three missions in "Wolfenstein The New Order" (2014). The way the weapons are made looks entirely industrial rather than something made by man. It's nothing but metal welded by other metal. No soul or anything in them. Hell, one could look at the armor the Nazis wear, and they're made to look robotic. unless it's a high-ranked officer they look and act as human as their dogs.

Just from that alone, it's easy to see Nazis not as this place of utopia but a dystopic regime that will cull the "other" until they must cull themselves. After all, in such a regime based on racial purity, they will have to exterminate first those who are visibly a different race. Once that's done, they will go after those who tested and found to not be "Aryan". But what will they do with no one left to oppress? well, it certainly won't be a utopia but auto cannibalism. Perhaps these "others" are hiding amongst the regime, and they must root them out.

Going back to the main character, I remember that he wakes up in a mental hospital. It doesn't take much to realize why the Nazis would want it to be shut down, after all, they're "Inferior". Yet the existence of a place filled with empathy towards fellow man still manages to persist. One could almost compare it to a flower sitting on the side of an erupting volcano.

This volcano of course is the Nazis, unlike actual volcanos they have the intention of destruction. They execute the mentally challenged and disabled like stomping on a newborn bird. except, of course, they find pleasure in destroying such a "plague". These little moments of humanity in such a cruel world in my eyes highlight hope, the fact that it exists in a dark cloud of fire is reason enough to have faith in humanity.

A lot can be said about Wolfenstein, but this is enough. After all, I can only write so much before it becomes mindless ramblings.

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

It won’t let me put a comment for some reason, (I have no idea how this app works)

The way presidential elections in the USA usually go is you vote for one of the big two candidates. In this case that’s Biden and trump, voting for another democrat or Republican is a option ofc. The chances of that vote doing anything except being seen as performative or protest based is low.

So sadly it still falls under the “choose Biden, or get trump”. Biden is the lesser evil in this scenario. It’s better to choose a decent candidate over a terrible candidate.

Robert Kennedy jr also is a choice but a independent has never won the popular vote or electoral vote. The closest I’m pretty sure was a former US president or a very vocal segregationist.

TLDR: Democrat primaries were dead in the water to begin with, it’s now Biden or trump since no one successfully won the nomination over Biden. (Last I checked Biden was leading by at min 40% in the primaries without participating.)

Finding out democratic senators are polling really well in the states Joe Biden is losing in polling is fucking insane. Every liberal somehow missing his genocide is costing him polling is the dumbest fucking person alive

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

RRRRAHHHHH PHYSICAL ART IN A GAME I ALREADY LOVE? Perfection.

I joked about this in the tags of another post, but I don't think it's mentioned enough that the first two Fallout titles deliberately used stylized stop motion puppets to depict their characters!!

You may think "Oh maybe that was just easier at the time than making them realistic" but NO!! Tons of games used real life FMV footage in the exact same way Fallout used its stylized puppets!

It's also part of why the OG fallout models still look way better than any of the modern ones!

The original Fallout creators deliberately wanted all their mutants and ghouls to look like fucked up claymation dudes and the more the series strays from that the worse off it will be!

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

Just chillin in the tub

Fallout 4

The Commonwealth

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

Ūropi (Europe)

Ūropi, also known by its indigenous name “Europe”, meaning “wide-gazing” or “broad of aspect”, is a small continent first discovered in 1806 by Moehanga of Ngāpuhi, although indigenous Europeans had been living there for many thousands of years. Modern researchers believe the indigenous Europeans originally migrated from the Middle East, and over time split into separate tribes or “kingdoms,” with many retaining their ancient rangatira (called “monarchs” or “nobility”) to this day.

While many see Ūropi as timeless and exotic, indigenous Europeans have actually adapted well to the modern economy, often exporting cultural products like baguettes and vodka, the former of which may be recognisable as the basis for bánh mì.

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

“European exceptionalism” my ass

"No climate justice on occupied land"

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

Concerning it skipped a generation, so much for “won’t let this happen again”

🎯 #Palestine

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

After playing fallout I have a newfound appreciation for American culture. Mainly the ncr, I mean the republic def isn’t going to last but the fact it exists is amazing on its own.

A new republic forming from the corpse of a country that by their standards is a empire. Managing to form a revitalized take on a state that was a powerhouse of its own. Despite the flaws in the democratic institutions the simple fact it managed to exist is amazing.

Further east there’s raiders and legion. Which share more similarities than they do differences. While the legion does have order of some kind it’s government is antiquated like the empire they try to emulate. Just like that empire it will collapse one day, albeit not from barbarians but within.

In my view the ncr due to its size will inevitably collapse. But it will collapse into separate independent states that work together. It could be reminiscent of America during the articles of confederation.

If the ncr does succeed in staying together and fully emulating the United States, they could show a reverse manifest destiny. Ofc this time it would be from California to the capitol wasteland.

It’s interesting to think about nonetheless.

[gabbaghoulfromstloui]

If one side of the political spectrum continues to move away from the center, how far can it go before the center shifts along with it?