#Colon would have to say

[thedisdainfullysilentvisitor]

AU where when Kathony announces they're leaving again, Ben, Hyacinth and Gregory elect to go with them to India both to share in Kathony's experience and to get away from Lady Whistledown

[elvisqueso]

"...Will you go home?" — "Well, it's not like I have much of a home to go back to. I've never really...belonged anywhere."

Pocahontas (1995)

[themyscirah]

Complaining abt Suicide Squad yet again but the fact that they have Waller exposing the alien community to space racist attacks and talking abt how she got to her position through deceit and being a terrible person and stuff is just. Ahsfiwueh JUST SAY YOU DONT KNOW WALLER.

Anyways literally the 3rd mission of the Squad ever (and the first framed as smth Waller picked and not orders from above) was the Squad discrediting and stopping a rogue vigilante who was only arresting POC and funneling white people into white supremacy groups (of which he was the most prominent member) in SUICIDE SQUAD #4. and it's explicitly framed as this mission being personal for Waller that she's hiding from the government bc its illegal like. Guys. Please why are we having her incite (space bc comics) racist attacks now

Also the whole "Amanda got her position through deceit and being a terrible person" NO. she KEPT her position through being shitty and playing complicated political games!!! She wasn't always that way like there is a difference and it is IMPORTANT ppl PLEASEEEE. In Secret Origins #14 we learn Amanda's backstory and she used to be a normal, caring person! Like even after she entered into working in government and politics she wasn't automatically morally bankrupt like please people. She was originally given control of the Squad by Reagan (*sigh* 80s comics...) to distract and get rid of her because she was so successful at pushing progressive social policy in Congress. Acting like she's this static pillar of evil is such a waste of her character and so fucking uninteresting and disrespectful to her arc it drives me MAD.

Like I am NOT saying Waller is all sunshine and rainbows, she fucking SUCKS (said w love <3) but like there's a human being there. It's a progression, she has a character arc like please, DC, please!!! They've fucked up Waller so bad and made her so opaque and uninteresting she can't even be the protagonist of her own story for fucks sake!

Like I don't know how many times I have to scream it until DC hears me or remembers but WALLER IS THE MAIN CHARACTER OF SUICIDE SQUAD. ITS HER BOOK. yet right now she's a cutout to be used as the villain wherever the writers please. Even in her book we get none of her perspective really displayed, no exploration of her thoughts with any kind of understanding of the role she traditionally has played and was made to play in the story.

[yonemurishiroku]

In celebration of Nico di Angelo’s birthday and in the mourning of the 100th day of the genocide, please, for the sake of everything good left in this world, boycott McDonalds.

[hussyknee]

RIP to brown Swifties I'm sorry you had to find out she was a white woman this way

[lord-squiggletits]

Part of why I hate this fandom's take on Autobots vs Decepticons is ppl (mainly 'con fans honestly) who can't have any nuance of the situation whatsoever and love to write plots like "oh the humans are racist and abusive towards Cybertronians so this is how Megatron is right" no actually I don't think colonialism/imperialism and racism are justified so long as you can point the finger and say "they were the aggressors first" or "their hands are no cleaner than ours bc their society sucks too" sorry. Please come up with better sociopolitical narratives in your war story.

[suckerforfluff]

is it fucked up that as a filipino i dont know any filipino mc streamers or filipino streamers in general? like the ones who actually stream in tagalog/bisaya/ilocano/ilonggo/whatever dialect???

like im so envious of the ppl who are like "so and so was my childhood im excited to see them in qsmp" and here i am like "wow filipino streamers huh can't wait to meet them ^_^"

[pixiestein]

i’ve really been hoping that g3 Venus would be Indigenous bc venus flytraps the actual plant are exclusively indigenous to coastal areas in north & south carolina usa so it would make sense & be cool to see venus be part of an Indigenous nation in the same area. it’s looking like in this gen she’s going to be black/black coded but afroindigenous ppl exist so maybe i’m still holding out hope lmao

[thedevotionaltour]

alien romulus i wish it gave me more but i don't know what i want from it. it wants to be original alien but it isn't while also still wanting to be its own movie but it's also trying really hard to be alien. does that make sense.

[queers4years]

Indigenous Hawaiians really had a good system going: wake up reaaally early and do most of the days work while it's cool and by the time the sun was up and it got hot the work was done and you're free to surf and socialize. I wish the white people realized they themselves could work smarter and not harder and get time to relax. Instead of calling Hawaiians lazy (and being genocidal about it)

[sskk-manifesto]

Atsushi's back in the game!!! ۶( ˆ o ˆ )

[homonationalist]

Once the veneer of fantasy is stripped off, the setting terrestrialized, and the orcs recognized as human, then, all the classic themes of Western racist thought become immediately visible. Tolkien’s aesthetic judgment on Mongols and orcs simply repeats Meiners’ aesthetic classification of races, and the even earlier medieval hierarchy: “The figure prized in medieval romances corresponded to Greek statuary, physiognomy was important, and a ‘skin of dazzling whiteness’ exemplified true beauty. Such beauty symbolized goodness, while blackness, small stature, and an ill-proportioned body meant ugliness and evil.” Similarly, twentieth-century German racists would contrast Aryans and dark “ape-men.” Blacks themselves, of course, had traditionally been seen in racist thought as close to apes, and possibly even prone to couplings with orangutans. In keeping with the foregoing, Tolkien describes an orc as “a short crook-legged creature, very broad and with long arms that hung almost to the ground” (TT, 62), while at the siege of Helm’s Deep, we are told, the orcs “sprang up [the ladders] like apes in the dark forests of the South” (TT, 178). The pure-blooded orcs’ fear of the sun also has its precedent in one German anthropologist’s contrast of a diurnal Aryan and a nocturnal non-Aryan race.

Charles W. Mills from “The Wretched of Middle‐Earth: An Orkish Manifesto” (2022)

[fuckmeyer]

María is a bad bitch queen supreme with a simple dream of reclaiming her land Volturi-style after her human life was tragically cut short by a Texan who had invaded Mexico to create his own vampire Golden Corral. RESPECT HER OR PERISH

[bardinthezone]

Night Vale and the Power of Stories

So I’ve been losing my mind about this latest arc. Full hyperfixation. Studying for finals? Calling my parents? Enjoying other hobbies? Eating?? Who’s she, never heard of her. There is only the “#wtnv spoilers” tag.

Anyways, inspired primarily by this post, this post, and this post, I have been thinking about Night Vale as a place of stories.

Night Vale is a deeply weird place. It is a place where all the crazy conspiracies and contradictions and creepy crawlies can coexist (try saying that 5 times fast), and it is built on stories.

We know from “109: A Story About Huntokar” that Huntokar singlehandedly saved the town from nuclear destruction in 1983. This in and of itself is beautiful, tragic, terrifying and wonderful (I could write a whole essay on the lasting effects of the Cold War on the American psyche and how that’s impacted our media, but that’s not what this post is about). But what Huntokar says in describing this moment is fascinating: “ The people of Night Vale huddled, waiting for the end to their story.” The use of the word “story” here is so poignant and poetic. This was her town, a narrative she had lovingly followed since its inception, with an ever rotating cast of characters, finally seeming as though it would come to an end. And yet she managed to continue their story. The people of Night Vale, of every alternate universe Night Vale, are kept alive because Huntokar wanted to keep the narrative going. It is a town kept alive-- inverted and shattered and bizarre, but alive-- because someone saw the tale coming to an end and wasn’t satisfied with that. Night Vale is a place of stories.

And Cecil. Cecil Gershwin-Palmer is such a wonderful enigma. He’s a deeply troubled man, he’s the town’s beloved radio host, he is the voice of Night Vale. As the town’s only (?) regular source of news, he carries incredible weight in shaping the public’s perception of reality. It is his radio show that keeps the people informed through all of these earth-shattering events-- it is Cecil who, for as goofy and cringefail (thank you @bigcommunist for that phrase) as he can be, has been responsible for keeping his citizens safe. In “227: A Word With Dr. Jones,” Dr. Janet Lubelle notes that one of his traits is “town leadership.” When Cecil speaks, things happen. He rallies the people, against Strexcorp or the Beagle Puppy or Steve Carlsberg and his dry, dry scones. Hell, he says “weather” and everyone stops, or sometimes (Like in “204: Audition”) it literally saves his life. @lostboywriting raises a fascinating theory about Cecil having inadvertently brought the Faceless Old Woman into existence through his repression of his complicated relationship with his mother-- and while this contradicts with the backstory presented in "The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives Inside Your Home," who’s to say that both origins can’t be true, with how splintered and fractured Night Vale’s existence (and especially relation to time) is? Perhaps Cecil, as the Voice Of Night Vale, is capable of changing the world more than he knows.

Either way, this is why Dr. Lubelle’s Explaining of the town has so much of a tangible effect on it-- because she’s coming in and using something “empirical” to change the narrative. That is why she’s so threatening-- because how do you argue with the facts? How do you argue with science? She is using logic to insist that her reality is right, that these stories and poetics used to keep the town alive are meaningless. That it would be better for them to not exist than to exist outside her narrative. She said it herself-- she cannot imagine that anyone thinks differently to herself about anything, and she is all to happy to provide any who disagrees with an Explanation. No matter the cost.

In 227, Cecil remarks that “Science is not good or bad, as language is not good or bad, as religion is not good or bad, because humans are not inherently good or bad.” This sets up a fascinating play between science, language, and religion that I think is perfectly encapsulated by Dr. Lubelle, representing science, Cecil, representing language, and Huntokar, representing religion. Whether she knows it or not, Dr. Lubelle is directly undoing all of the hard work of Huntokar, and attempting to use Cecil as the most powerful tool at her disposal.

And this works in conjunction with my distinction of the What vs. the Why. We can take the incursion point of November 7th, 1983, and view it through both lenses. From Huntokar’s perspective, we get the Why: Night Vale was in danger, and it needed saving, so she saved it. But from Dr Lubelle’s perspective, we just get the What: Night Vale was the target of a nuclear missile. Nuclear missiles are unstoppable by any force known to science. This is a town that should have been empty for 40 years.

I posit a world in which Dr. Lubelle reduces Night Vale to what it “should be:” A town ruined by nuclear destruction. The empirical facts, the anchors that held Night Vale down to reality, the threads that Huntokar broke-- Dr. Lubelle is seeking to tie them back together. And with the Voice of Night Vale on her side, Explained and ready to share the Truth, of course she can make that happen. Perhaps Huntokar takes center stage again to show that science is not the end-all-be-all. Perhaps Carlos steps in to replace Dr. Lubelle as the Scientist in this equation, to provide a good alternative to her callous methods. 

Or I could be totally off-base with that prediction. I imagine the bodies being dug up in the sand wastes and the murals of flesh will play a major role in the finale. Maybe she’ll uncover the splintered realities of Night Vale and won’t know how to explain them away. Hell, people keep hyping up a Desert Bluffs return, what with the Sandstorm tapes and the talk of doubles-- Maybe Kevin and Lauren will be the “religion” in the triumvirate, and drive Dr. Lubelle mad with their unrelenting fervor. Who knows? I have my theories, but I’m just excited to see where this all goes.

.

Also from a meta perspective, this is 100% harkening back to all those early-days fan theories that “Night Vale is a normal town and Cecil is just off his rocker” (Thanks @maxgicalgirl for that one!). Welcome To Night Vale is a show that has never been about continuity and tight lore-- it’s about spinning a fun narrative, it’s about the poetry, the music, the aesthetics; it’s about everything that Dr. Lubelle HATES. From a meta perspective, Dr. Lubelle is every theorist who tries to ruin the magic of a story, who nitpicks it endlessly because it doesn’t adhere to how the “real world” functions. She doesn’t care about why story elements are included, she just needs what’s included to adhere to her worldview. And I can’t wait to see her get taken down, no matter how it happens.

Thanks again to @maxgicalgirl, @lostboywriting, @eclipse-song​, and everyone who’s been sharing their thoughts about the latest arc on tumblr. I would not be writing this without y’all!!

[the100isracist]

Idk if yall are still active but I just eagerly quit this show around early season two. I was kinda hate watching the whole way, but I started googling spoilers when I saw how fucked they were being to Lincoln and Raven (and more, but they’re my faves). Do you have any show recs that are similar with the shows “building a new civilization after tragedy” (minus the colonization and racism etc)

hey!

i actually binged the entire show recently and i can confidently say it was not as groundbreaking or cool as the showrunner believed. the first 2 seasons were incredible but it just devolved into a mess and the ending was so dark and horrifying. also the fandom was completely unhinged and did not need to act the way they did 😭

onto your question: yes!!!! battlestar galactica is what inspired me to watch the 100 in the first place. it very much shares the themes of mass tragedy, civilizational warfare, living in space, seeking a new home, and humanity fighting for survival without losing its soul. start with the 2003 miniseries (a three hour pilot) tho or it might be confusing. it also has diversity without the weird racist tones of the 100's diversity, although the cast is a lot whiter. the 100 has also obviously borrowed a lot of concepts and terms from it but i don't want to spoil you. all in all, it is one of the best shows i have ever watched and it delivers until its very last second.

lost in space is also quite cool. and i have heard good things about the expanse! another show that shares some themes (without the space element) is the society - very fascinating

[ohello0]

I myself have cheered on israelis protesting outside Netanyahu's residence but it has to be said that unless those settlers are willing to leave or live in fully actualized Palestine, their actions don't mean much in the long run.

It’s nice to know they draw the line at indiscriminately bombing hospitals and UN schools but they should’ve been against settler colonialism in the first place. It seems like there’s guilt at being constantly confronted with people dying in their name, which is good, but people living under an apartheid regime for your comfort prior to this is also inexcusable. ​

I want them to keep questioning and pushing back against their government, as it’s their silence that enables the violence of the occupation. Their complicity was the first push israel needed to be this unabashedly cruel. However, placing the blame solely on their government, specifically Netanyahu, and not taking accountability for their very existence being the occupation is frustrating to say the least. A military force like the IOF doesn’t appear out of thin air, a racist civilian population is creating the conditions necessary for the fascist ethnostate to survive this long.

Once the bombing stops will their protests stop as well? Like Americans will they pretend a change in leadership undoes everything and cleans the slate? I hope they continue to wake up and find ways to take accountability for their participation in an ongoing genocide.