the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again
Something I find that people are missing when comparing Minecraft Story Mode to the Minecraft movie trailer is that, while MSM absolutely has its writing problems, compared to the Minecraft movie there's a level of sincerity that puts it well above. Where the Minecraft movie grimaces at itself and refuses to actually care about Minecraft as a game, MCSM treats the concept of "living in a Minecraft world" about as seriously as it can. Things like poofing into a pile of inventory when you die seems silly to us, as outsiders looking in, but to the characters who have been living under these rules their whole lives, they might as well be looking at a corpse. Meanwhile, it doesn't happen in the teaser trailer, but I'd bet anything that Minecraft death and item drops will be the subject of a quippy "well THAT just happened (⊙_⊙;)" joke and nothing more. If you can't at least take yourself seriously while exploring what life would be like under Minecraft rules, then you should not be making a movie about it.
probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.
Are you a student who is unable to donate to Palestine, but still want ways to show your support?
Me too! Unfortunately, searching up ways for students who can't drive, spend money, or drop school for a week to show solidarity for Palestine just comes up with "centrist" (if not blatantly pro-israel) articles for teachers telling them how to stay neutral during discussions with students. So! Here are some ways that I've thought of to bring pro palestine sentiment into your school and community! You are more than encouraged to add on any ideas of your own!
Wear shirts, pins, or anything outwardly pro palestine. If you can't find something, make it.
Email your representatives. Email Congress. Email the White House, or whatever your country's equivalent would be. Let the people in charge know you want a ceasefire
Talk to your local library about holding an educational night about the genocide, and/or about Palestinian culture.
Talk to your peers. Find people who share your views. Create a fuss together.
Talk to your teachers about it. Having an authority figure on your side could make things so much easier for you.
Make stickers, posters, pamphlets, etc to put up around your school, town/city, anywhere you can.
Educate yourself on anti-palestine talking points and how to refute them in a calm and logical manner. (Palestinian Toolkit is a great website for that)
Speak up! It's fucking scary, but if you can, don't let people's bigotry go unchecked. (You can use knowledge from the last point to make it easier to talk)
But also, know when to give up. It sucks, but not everyone is worth wasting your time debating. Some people won't change their mind no matter what.
Me: "hey game developers, especially AAA ones, are getting laid off en-mass and it's awful for our industry"
Gamer: "well I only play INDIE games and the problem with AAA games is they are creatively bankrupt"
Me, slamming my fists on the table like a baby: "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THIS IS ABOUT A BUSINESS PROBLEM PERPETUATED BY CAPITALISM NOT A STATEMENT ON CREATIVE DECISION MAKING"
So I saw Dune Part 2 yesterday and I was initially super crushed because of the deviation from book canon but the more I think about it the more I sorta like it…
So without further ado here’s a list of stuff I liked about Dune Part 2:
- all the scenes initially of Paul growing closer to the Fremen. You can clearly see that they become friends, accept him as a Feydakin, that they’re laughing, joking, hanging out. (And contrast that to the end of the movie, where Paul has no more Fremen friends, only followers. In the book, this is echoed, where Paul recognizes that he has lost his friends to the Muad’Dib religion. Take book Stilgar, who truly embodies this… by the end of the book, Paul says: “I have seen a friend [Stilgar] become a worshipper.”
- giving Chani explicit rejection of Paul’s messiah status was an interesting choice. Chani’s main thought over part 2 is that they don’t need religion to save them, that through Fremen power and desert power, the Fremen can save themselves. She recognizes that this fanatical worship can be a vehicle to control and enslave her people, and I sorta wish we saw Paul lean into that more… that they found a way to stay together and ‘fight’ the prophecy together based on Chani’s ideals…
- also, I love how engrained this rejection of religion and prophecy is in her character. Book Chani takes no issue with her Fremen name, Sihaya (desert spring), but movie Chani hates it “because it’s part of some prophecy.” Later, we see that despite her rejection of prophecy and religion, that the prophecy does indeed come to pass— the tears of desert spring save Him aka, Chani saving Paul after he drinks The Water of Life. (Interesting how Jessica has to force Chani to save Paul using the Voice… another example of Jessica explicitly forcing Paul to become the messiah).
- adding more depth to Fremen culture— the South being the more religious fundamentalist tribes vs the North being more secular. Early on, the movie paints this immediate divide between the tribes of Fremen who accept Paul and Jessica versus those who treat them as offworlders (who murdered Jamis). In the books everyone accepts Paul and Jessica after Paul bests Jamis and Jessica quotes some scripture, but I think it makes more logical sense that there’d be friction over these two random offworlders coming in
- I love love loved Paul speaking at the meeting of the Fremen tribe leaders in the South. He fully accepts his messiah status, exercises his power of the Voice + his prescience as a way to command all the Fremen under his name
- I’m a big fan of omitting the two-year time skip, so with that I’m glad Leto II was skipped over entirely. I always felt that Leto II was an unnecessary character addition to the book, especially when he just dies and everyone sort of goes “oh well” and moves on, so I’m glad it’s omitted.
- another interesting choice was to paint Jessica as a straight up villain in comparison to the way her book counterpart was not. The movie Jessica we see here is seemingly corrupted by the Water of Life: she walks around talking to herself (Alia) and scheming Paul’s ascent to Lisan-Al Gaib. She knows about the Holy War, which is the very thing Paul is trying to prevent, yet she expresses no concern about bringing it to fruition. (Probably because Jessica knows it’s impossible to prevent, but still.) The very last line of the movie, where Alia asks Jessica what’s going on and Jessica says “The Holy War has begun” is just total villain in my mind— explicit acceptance of the Holy War, like it’s just another stepping stone in her plan. Plus, the fact that Paul has visions of Jessica leading him into this period of great starvation totally cements her as a villian.
- going off of that, I like that we see Jessica undergoing actual agony when she takes The Water of Life. When book Jessica and Paul take The Water of Life they accept it calmly and without obvious pain (book Jessica was sitting with her eyes closed, as if sleeping), so this physical reaction that Jessica has to the poison adds to the idea that The Water of Life did change her in a negative way.
- I feel like so far we’ve been introduced to Alia as just a weird talking fetus who’s been consorting with Jessica, so Paul’s vision where Alia says “I love you” really strikes home, that she really does care for Paul which we might not have understood otherwise
the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.
sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.
you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.
it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.
but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.
they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.
they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.
barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.
and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.
but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.
they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!
this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.
[ID: the Supernatural "I love you" meme. The 2nd box reads: "Wayne Brady just came out as pan." End ID.]
Here's the video he posted on tiktok:
[ID: a 32-second tiktok of Wayne Brady, accompanied by 3 dancers, lipsyncing and dancing to "It's All Coming Back To Me Now." He starts the video in a pink bathrobe, then reappears in a pink suit and a long wig. The other dancers wave a rainbow flag. End ID.]
the video description (which doesn't appear with the video outside the tiktok app, annoyingly) says:
As someone who gets to bring joy to others daily on tv, it's been ironic that I don't experience it as much as I'd like. I advocate mental health for all and a part of that is self transparency. In doing my work, I've come to see a few truths, one of them being that I want to be free to l love whomever I want. This truth makes me pan and part of the lgbtq+ family. It's scary as hell to say it out loud but here it is. The people I admire most are the ones brave enough to be themselves unapologetically. This shouldn't shake anyone's world, but if it bothers you at all, that's your business:) I was so afraid of having my manhood questioned, but screw that. A "real man" in my eyes, isn't afraid to be honest and happy. From now on, I'll be over here living my best life. I love you @Mandietaketa @Maile Masako @Jason