#but otherwise this is so amazing <2< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[aro-absol]

[ID: A Queen of Diamonds card. Instead of the usual picture of a Queen, it shows a young woman with east Asian facial features and shoulder-length voluminous black hair. She is looking towards the viewer with a very determined facial expression. Her torso is covered with a gray metal armour. The armour has many big, dark green diamonds put on it. She also wears a black leather belt around her waist that has another big, green diamond on the buckle. Underneath the armour, she is wearing a light green dress or skirt with a white pattern on it. Around her shoulders, the woman is wearing a long cape that is light green on the top side and gray on the bottom side. On top of her shoulder that is closest to the viewer, she is wearing another piece of armour that has big, purple crystals on it. She has one arm stretched out towards the viewer. In her hand, she is holding a big bow that is entirely made of purple crystals. In her other hand, she is holding two arrows. Each arrow has an arrowhead made of a purple crystal. She is wearing armour around her arms and hands that has green crystals on her knuckles. The woman has shouldered a quiver with more arrows in it. / End ID]

Meet the Queen of Diamonds, the aromantic pride knight! ⚔️🌈

[gravitycavity]

Oh my FUCKING LORD THE NEW EPISODE

2:57 the way that Ragatha says “Ooh, what do you think, Pomni? ☺️” and fucking SWAYS her FUCKIKG HIPS and BATS her FUCKING EYES

LIKE OOOOOJJHJYUUHHHHH

SEND AN AMBULANCE I AM ACTUALLY FUCKING DYING

[armoireprincess]

I JUST WATCHED ARCANE SO SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2 IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN!!

---

JUST. The way Vi and Jinx cannot both be happy and alive together, because in both "good" universes one of them DIES??? IM SICK WHY CANT TBEY JUST BE SISTERS AND HUG IT OUT

[cellarspider]

2/30: Prometheus attempts to establish themes

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Several minutes into Prometheus, we have had no dialog, and we are going to wish that it stayed that way.

This is by little fault of the actors themselves. They all put in solid work. Many of the problems come from the writing, and others from the mismatch between their characterization what we’d call “informed traits”: What the movie tells us we should know about these characters. 

Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway are archaeologists. We see them with a dig team on the Isle of Skye, where they have just discovered their latest piece of evidence towards a radical theory. They have noticed something astounding that nobody else has dared to consider: evidence of alien contact with Earth, recorded in the art of disparate cultures from around the world. We, the audience, already know that they’re right. 

And we, the audience, know that the History Channel has had kooks on it for ages, ranting about Ancient Aliens. We’ve all seen the meme guy.

Okay. Let's try to meet this movie where it wants to be, thematically. These are its first two scenes, it's still establishing its direction, and nothing openly egregious has happened yet. We will ignore nitpicky stuff, like the fact that this previously undiscovered dig site is right next to a well-known tourist spot on Skye with 400 reviews on Google Maps.

This movie is establishing an existential premise for its themes. It implies aliens had some hand in shaping not just our culture, but our evolution. The questions it invites at this time are equally existential: why would they do that? What was their purpose here? What was their purpose for us? Why did they stop contacting Earth?

Whether life has a purpose is one of the core debates of philosophy and religion. This movie is beginning with the premise that terrestrial life does have a purpose, implied by the deliberate sacrifice of a thinking being to shape it. This supposition could create a more focused exploration of one possibility, within its narrative space.

I think it fails to deliver on this. The writing specifically fails to deliver on this, which will become apparent once we have more dialog. But there is also an issue with the framing of this premise, which the movie ultimately does not manage to avoid. An issue of cultural context.

Because this is where I, as somebody with a background in history, start to brace. The idea of extraterrestrials visiting ancient peoples is a discredited mid-20th century theory, which stems from ignorance of the historical record, and assumption of ignorance and incapability of ancient peoples to achieve great things, particularly outside of the cultures placed in the prized pedigree of European civilization. 

Such theorists look at the Great Pyramid of Giza and scoff at the idea that it could have been made without outside help, completely unaware of the century of more experimental pyramid-building that had preceded it, and the fact that we have written records that help us chart the progress of Egyptian mathematics for six hundred years prior to its construction.

They point to the Ramayana–likely written down around the same time that the Ancient Greeks were getting along just fine without aliens–and they say that the flying castles and chariots described in the text must’ve been aliens, who were mistaken for gods, and technological achievements such as rust-resistant iron must have been alien-made. Never mind that the period had a lively scholarly culture that was incorporating ideas from their Greek and Egyptian counterparts, and the people of the Indus Valley built well-planned metropolises with the world’s first known urban sanitation systems three thousand years before that.

They think the Moai of Rapanui, some of which were being erected while Shakespeare was writing his plays, were erected with the help of aliens. The actual answer, as usual, seems to be much more interesting: the Moai walked there:.

This is what ideas of ancient aliens are culturally tied to. You throw this into a movie, and even with the foreknowledge that they’re going to be proven right, I start out skeptical of these people from moment one. I was less likely to give them the benefit of the doubt, and less able to suspend my disbelief around them specifically. This will not get easier as we go.

Which is unfortunate, because most of the next scene is back to being phenomenal, and managed to bounce me back into going along with their premise.

...A side note as we close this out: Getting way too deep into the weeds here, but the art style of the cave paintings is worth mentioning. It appears to be a mashup of two famous cave’s painting styles: The animals are near-replicas of those famously seen in Chauvet (35,000 years old), and the humans and attendant dots are somewhat similar to Lascaux (17,000 years old), both caves in France. Here's an excellent little video from Tom Scott about the former, and the way that you can go see the cave paintings without endangering the site itself. There's a similar museum for Lascaux, shown below!

I say the human figures are somewhat similar to Lascaux, but I can’t find a match for the style anywhere. The closest I can find is from Tassili n’Ajjer in Algeria (6000 BC) or the Cave of Beasts in the Gilf Kebir mountains in Egypt (5000+ BC). This is because depictions of humanoid figures in european cave art are rare–ranging from a single bird-head figure in Lascaux, to the possible hoax at La Marche. 

This produces an interesting implication, if we take the movie’s premise at face value. If humanoid figures were avoided as subjects for cave art for thousands of years, their inclusion here is especially significant. Perhaps indicating that the alien visitors instructed that some visual representation of this scene to be made, or did so themselves. Thus, it is slotted in amongst the pre-existing animal art, creating a culture clash.

…However, cave lions never made it as far north as Skye. Their known northern range tapped out at about London. While it’s certainly possible that people could’ve traveled that far during this period, local animals tend to be the focus of cave paintings. So we’re getting the visual sense that a French stone age painter was doing a residency at Skye. Amusing, but odd.

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Citations for alt text ramblings:

1. https://www.isleofskye.com/skye-guide/top-ten-skye-walks/old-man-of-storr

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariots_of_the_Gods%3F

3. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

4. https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/royalty-calculator

5. https://search.worldcat.org/title/7625265

[justanintrovertedweirdo]

Spoilers for the new digital circus episode

THE NEW EPISODE WAS SO GOOD OH MY GOD AAAAAAAA!!!!!!! They totally teased us with that Jax angst, but it was still amazing! They better bring back Gumigoo in a future adventure. Man did not deserve what happened to him. He had his entire reality crushed and just when things were going well for him again, he got deleted. And of course it was Pomni who had to get close to him. My poor girl just can't catch a break. ALSO, THEY HAD A FUNERAL FOR KAUFO. THEY HAVE FUNERALS. I AM NOT OKAY. THE ENDING WAS SO FUCKING SWEET MY GOD!!!! POMNI HAS FRIENDS NOW AAUGDKDVAJSG!!! All it took was for her to get trapped in a digital hell hole. Good for her! Also there's a Kinger plush. I must have it. I need to cuddle him.

[qbedience]

little guy !

[locusfandomtime]

Since the ending of the season has been confirmed… and nobody new joined this season, it’s possible someone new is joining s10! So…

a serious alternative to the other poll. I think some of these have a pretty low chance of happening, but I chose options that are at least possible (i.e. the hermits know them). don’t take this too seriously, i’m just curious on what the fandom thinks is the most likely option

[rawliverandgoronspice]

realizing I'm very sensitive to pacing, actually

[comradecowplant]

my beef with Hughie being the most annoying part of The Boys ended, Kimiko & Frenchie reigniting their romance is my new The Boys best enemy 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

[flovverworks]

(wrong blog) i need gbfs 10th anni story to be a top2 anni story so bad

[causticsunshine]

.

[teamhawkeye]

replaying the OG RE4 (since I don’t have the console or PC to play the remake) and I still don’t understand all these years later how much hate original Ashley got

look at her - she’s adorable!

[space-ninja-fashion-show]

Very characteristic moment today for how i play this game:

I haven't gotten Transference Static in many moons at this point but i guess steel path ambulas decided to end that streak. Sorry North D: also sorry Higgins

Cue me hiding behind a crate bc Orbital Strikes, easily deleting enemies coming towards me bc nataruk, and claiming that I am Fearing For My Life bc instead of the usual 1.8k health i only had idk 1.3k or something. Y'know. To go with the 1.3k armour

It's always either this or me trying to bite an acolyte's face off and coming out of it full of ouch or just dead

[official-rolli-und-rita]

looking for new apartments out of spite bc my roommate is a control freak but it's only getting more depressing bc everything is disgustingly expensive and i may be stuck with her crazy ass for a while

[anyonghalimaw]

⬆️ atkinson hyperlegible and intel one mono

[sschmendrick]

Did I just make a little egg model in the egg picrew ? Maybe... Does it look like my pfp ?....Maybe