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also in my actual real elementary school experience I distinctly remember a particular friend of mine always wanted me to sit in his lap. I usually obliged, because he was warm. this may be an important inclusion in this story.

current thought:

elementary school friends who grow apart because of time and distance reunite in college; the dissonance between remembering who they were at age six versus who they've become at age twenty while you weren't looking; the fun of stumbling into an intimacy without being able to define what you have or communicate effectively about it for fear of breaking the fragile thing between you two

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current thought:

elementary school friends who grow apart because of time and distance reunite in college; the dissonance between remembering who they were at age six versus who they've become at age twenty while you weren't looking; the fun of stumbling into an intimacy without being able to define what you have or communicate effectively about it for fear of breaking the fragile thing between you two

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wearing my guy to class tomorrow

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from a while ago.

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meet the artist...sorta thing???

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my first attempt at sewing!

a shark(?)-shaped pincushion for my lace projects!

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please please please minecraft movie trailer colonialism breakdown ?? i want to hear your thoughts so bad

Hi! Sorry this took so long. The legitimate reason for this is because I literally got so mad at the trailer I needed to step away and relax, and that ended up taking two days. I’m still really mad btw.

But you asked, and I promised, so therefore I oblige. Here ya go

I want to start with a disclaimer before anyone decides to yell at me: yes, I am white and talking about colonialism, which is pretty damn weird. I didn’t want to do this because of that reason, but this fandom is majority white and I’ve spent nearly my entire college career studying and criticizing literature about colonialism + post-colonial narratives. I’m not the best person to talk about this, but I noticed it, I know how to discuss it, I’m loud, and I drew my sword. If anyone else who is more qualified than me (and they are out there) that wants to speak/add on to this, I highly encourage you to. Ok. Anyways.

So the Minecraft movie's going to be about these people getting isekai’d into Minecraft (which doesn’t look like Minecraft, but that’s besides the point), teaming up with Steve (who’s whitewashed, but that’s beside the point) and defeating the violent “uncreative” piglins so they don’t destroy the overworld and ban creativity, essentially. The way the piglins are introduced is by Steve saying this:

STEVE: Life here was perfect. Until one day... we came across the Nether. A place with no joy or creativity at all. [panning shot of a bastion full of piglins, milling around and working] (0:33-0:45)

This is, from every angle, weird. Players came across an already occupied nether (an active choice, considering Steve calls life "perfect" before the nether was discovered; they are quite literally doing an Age of Exploration because they got bored), deem it to have "no joy or creativity", and start antagonizing the piglins that live there. That's a very common narrative used in order to justify colonization- these guys are barbaric, they're uncultured, the colonizers are doing them a favor by "teaching" them + giving them "proper" culture. It's giving Columbus coming to America in 1492, calling the native peoples of the Carribean "barbaric" and then doing a whole lot of pillaging, rape and slaughter.

"Oh, but Woosh! Woosh!" you might be saying, "The piglin leader kills a baby for drawing a picture! That means they aren't creative and deserve this!" I cannot emphasize enough just how uncharacteristic this is for piglins. The devs of minecraft put very careful consideration into them and how they interact with players + each other, which has clearly been thrown away for this movie. Piglins dance when they idle! They sing and cheer! They’ve chiseled into blackstone and put it in tactful places in their architecture! Certain bastions have gold statues at the front gates! There are different types of bastions! If piglins were "uncultured" and hated creativity, they wouldn't live in bastions at all- a lack of creativity would deduce them to basic housing.

But no. Paramount decided to take the most visually different humanoid mob from a "newly discovered" land and force them into a villain archetype that they never inhabited in the first place. It puts forth a message of "colonization is okay if the people you're colonizing are EVIL" (as quoted by my friend goose when we were talking about it), which, once again, was a literal justification for the colonization of Africa + South Asia by Western Europe and the goddamn slave trade. Even if they were evil (which I refuse to believe they are), that does not barr them from being creative- even tyrannical civilizations had art, music, and culture.

And now you might be thinking "Woosh, this is just a kids movie about silly block game! Lighten up, it's not that serious!" to which I give you this post from @/txttletale:

Minecraft is a game made by a multi-billion dollar company that's been conglomerated into a multi-trillion dollar company. The Minecraft Movie is being created in collaboration with another multi-billion dollar company. If that much money is being thrown around to make a movie that okays colonization, you cannot call this "not that serious". They spent $150 MILLION DOLLARS on this movie, some of it being taxpayer money! This is your money being used to fund a movie with this narrative!

And the fact that this is a movie made for younger audiences who care very deeply for the media it is inspired by makes this so much worse. Kids are extremely impressionable and pick up on a lot of things, especially when it comes to how to view others. Take the babydoll experiment from the 1940s as an example- kids that were elementary age already had an idea of racial profiling and were practicing it. Yes, it's been nearly a century since those experiments, but we're entering a very scary and divided political climate that these kids are going to grow up in and be influenced by. This movie is going to be incredibly influential to these kids (because they love minecraft) in a cultural climate that is already hostile towards the "other", and it can lead them down a very very dangerous road.

So yeah. If you're a parent with a kid who loves minecraft, do not take them to see this movie. If you're an adult that likes minecraft, don't spend your money on this movie. Instead, if you really wanna see a narrative like this in Minecraft done right, play MCSM S1E5.

Ok I'm so fucking done with this I'm so tired goodbye

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A sockeye salmon 👀

Today, Jesus is holding:

A Sockeye Salmon

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someone on twitter is trying to claim that use of an em-dash is an indication of AI-generated writing because it’s “relatively rare” for actual humans to use it. skill issue

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my phone camera may be a little busted up

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a painting of the moon I saw once

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baby's first tumblr post