#culture thought and humanity

[jakubmajchrzak]

Thinking for a change. Make the world better (2024)

Camera, editing, post-production and music by Jakub Majchrzak. Questions by Dr Karol Morawski.

[bet-on-me-13]

Dark Secret

So! Danny was discovered pretty quickly after his first battle against the Lunch Lady. His hair turned white, and his body shape was a little different, but he largely looked very similar to his Human Form, so it was only a matter of time really.

Thankfully he was assumed to be a Metahuman.

He didn't look like any other Ghost, the closest resemblance was his hair and eye color, but even that could be explained away. Also his parents were adamant that he couldn't be a Ghost because he was still Sentient and not Evil, so he must just have powers that just looked similar to Ghost Powers esthetically. Probably as a result of the Portal Accident, which he used as an explanation for how his powers awakened.

Danny also avoided using the more obvious Ghost Powers like Intangiblity and Invisiblity, sticking mostly to the most basic Flight and Energy based Powers he got to be as generic as possible. If anybody saw otherwise, it was a trick of the light or a trick of the Ghosts.

Danny became the Hero of Amity Park, always pretending to be something else. It was his darkest secret.

Unfortunately because the public never saw a Ghost like Phantom on a positive light, their perception of Ghosts never changed. Nobody believed that Ghosts could be anything aside from Evil, and as the knowledge of Ghosts and the Ghost Zone began to spread around the world that perception became more and more commonplace.

If Danny had been revealed in the early days, it could have been salvageable, but nowadays if his secret was revealed he would have to convince the entire world that everything they knew about Ghosts was wrong. It would practically be impossible.

Even when he joined the Justice League when he became an Adult, he still had to hide his secret. Years of hiding made sure he could conceal his true Nature from the magic users on the team, but he still had to be distant from the team just to be sure.

While all this was going on in the Living Realm, his adventures in the Ghost Zone still happened as normal. He saved Pandora and the Acropolis, dethroned the Tyrant King Aragon, managed to defeat Pariah Dark in Single combat, and even became recognized as a Great Warrior by the Far Frozen.

After years of hiding, he actually felt more at home in the Ghost Zone than in the Human Realm. There he could be his true self without having to hide a huge part of his identity, and people accepted him for who he was. Sure he had enemies there, but he also had more real friends outside of Tucker and Sam.

He was content with his double life, acting as a Hero to the Public while hiding his true self, and secretly going to the Ghost Zone to be himself among his friends and even his enemies.

Of course it all came crashing down when he Anti Ecto Acts finally passed.

Now there was a Legal Path for Humans to enter and profit off of the Ghost Zone. Beyond just being able to legally kill and experiment on Ghosts, the Acts also allowed Humans to claim parts of the Ghost Zone as their own Property, enslaving the Ghosts residing there, and destroying the Ecosystem of the Zone because there were no laws preventing it.

And now Danny had a choice.

He could either side with the Humans to which he was a Hero, allowing them to destroy the Ghost Zone and Enslave the denizens living there with the full support of the Government, or he could side with the Ghost Zone, betraying Humanity and the people he had been protecting for years, but trying to save those who had accepted him for his true self years ago.

To him the answer was obvious.

[pawsthatcausechaos]

Being otherkin is going from ":3" to "I am not flesh, I am not bones, I am something beyond. these reflections, these shadows, they're nothing but lies. These eyes always deceive me, always trying to force me to believe that I'm something that I simply am not. I was given features only I can see, only I can feel. Why must I be trapped in this limiting body? Why must I pretend? Is this the universe's form of joke? Do my ancestors look down upon me and scowl? So many questions that are impossible to answer." To ":P" in the span of a few hours or maybe even minutes-

[witchofthesouls]

Hey, what if Quintessa had depictions of ancient human civilizations they had battled when Earth was young and magic was still active?

It's the horror combination between "humans are space fae/orcs." with "Earth is Space Australia."

Who else is better to battle Quintus "Life in all forms should be encouraged to thrive at all costs" Prime's creations than the planet that Unicron himself had spawned in a coma (aka Gaea)?

It's even funnier since Earth appears to be a paradise to Quintessons, but it's really a fucking nightmare with all the different kinds of predation and mutual relationships, like endurance hunting and man-dog relations. Plus, Gaea has a thing for crabs, and there are crab species that hunt squids.

[francesderwent]

thinking about snarky cultural/theological commentary and. the thing about snark is this: it’s easy, and it’s instant gratification. it’s easy because you’re playing to a likeminded audience. you get the way they think, you know the sort of things they find ridiculous, and so you know what’s going to play well with them. it’s not that hard to come up with a zinger that’s going to earn you applause from your own side. it’s also pretty easy to make another human being who’s not on your side look stupid, because we’re stupid creatures and we all have plenty of exploitable weak spots. it’s preaching to the choir, and it’s preaching meanly to the choir. and then, your snark bears all its fruit right away. you get the glowing feeling of having scored points against the enemy while being patted on the back by your friends for being so brave. if you succeeded in being snarky, you get the rewards of snark that very instant.

on the other hand, seeking to share the truth you possess in a mode in which it could actually be received—that is, says St Thomas, according to the mode of the recipient—that’s hard, and it’s so far from being instantly gratifying that you may never see the fruits of it in this life. not only are you not thinking about your likeminded audience, you’re not even going to trot out the truth simply in the way you understand it and call it your best effort. rather, you have to try to get inside your interlocutor’s frame of mind and understand how the truth you know is going to fulfill their own priorities and longings. you have to understand them so well that you see the truth of their position, even if that truth is buried very very deep, and then see how that truth connects them to the truth you see. you have to be insightful, and compassionate, and so, so patient. you don’t get to score any points, with anybody. your interlocutor might still get annoyed with you and turn around and make you look stupid. but you can’t just say “I’m going to speak the truth and I don’t care who hears and how they take it”—you have to care how they take it, because the truth is relational, it’s given and received, not just spouted into a void. and frankly you have to care how they take it because you have to care about their salvation.

don’t get me wrong, there are times in every person’s life when they will be called to stand up and be counted, to put fumbling words to what they hold most dear even if they can’t make everyone understand. but I don’t know that it’s a virtue to be always focused on being seen saying the truth, with no consideration given to who hears you and what they’ll hear in it—and it’s certainly not a virtue to be always focused on being seen saying the truth in a mean and funny way. “instruct the ignorant” is a spiritual work of mercy. but instruct the ignorant does not mean “instruct the ignorant while making the knowledgeable laugh and/or high five.”

[hypewinter]

Danny raises Superman au

So we all know that Superman touched down in Kansas and was adopted by the Kents and bla bla bla. But you know what state also has farms and is only like 600 miles away? Illinois.

So Danny is chilling in the countryside, enjoying his sweet, peaceful early retirement when an alien pod, that's a little a lot off course, suddenly crashes near his house. When he checks it out, there's a baby inside. Welp looks like he's a father now. No way is he risking the government getting their greedy little mits on this precious ray of sunshine.

Clark grows up with a father who teaches him early on how to control his powers and use them for good (They may or may not stop a robbery or two occasionally). He also gets two cool aunts. One is free spirited and always bringing him souvenirs from her travels. The other is very grounded and teaches him many techniques to deal with his conflicting emotions (his father is not happy when he uses said techniques on him).

Danny for his part is happy we his son develops a support system like he did. They can even actively help him beat up the villains! He's overjoyed at the man Clark becomes and even happier when he brings home an ace reporter who knows how shifty the government can be. He might be already saving up for their wedding but who can say?

[boarloved-art]

Who Me? Appearing in YOUR inbox again? Wh-What....haha.....what gives my beloved spouse that impression?.... So I've been working on a Fae AU and I just need you understand the brainworms I am DEALING WITH, my beloved spouse!!! Imagine for a moment: you've got wangxian morons both thinking that the other is a human. Wei Wuxian (the beloved Summer/Spring Court Fae), who has been stowed away in the Autumn Court all his life, has never met any Fae outside of the Autumn Court, and Lan Wangji (Winter Court Fae) has met all of the other Courts apart from the Summer Court (which is basically extinct apart from Wei Wuxian) and the Spring Court (because they have isolated themself from the rest of the world) so he's like "obviously this is just a human who is using charms to gain Fae features like the humans from the Winter Court". Cue wild shenanigans where they keep bumping each other and completely believing that the other is a human so being all like "this fucking human should NOT be here, also how is this human SO PRETTY?!?! HUMANS SHOULDN'T BE PRETTIER THAN FAE!!!" while the Jiang siblings completely believe that this 'Hanguang-Jun' Winter Court human pet is trying to seduce Wei Wuxian into joining the Winter Court despite not knowing what Court he's from, and Lan Xichen (and Nie Huaisang, a Night Court Fae) completely thinks that Lan Wangji is going insane whenever he talks about this 'Yiling Laozu' human. SORRY FOR RAMBLING BUT I NEEDED TO YAPPER TO SOMEONE WHO'S NOT HEARD OF IT BEFORE. I'M HEARTBROKEN AND ALONE (/silly/silly)

OUGH THIS IS DELIGHTFUL I LOVE IT!!! THEYRE SO SILLLYYY IM OBSESSED WITH THEM!!! WANGXIAN MISUNDERSTANDINGS YOULL ALWAYS BE FAMOUS TO MEEEEE

[porcelanitaa]

friendly reminder: Everyday is a good day to punch nazis <3

[crow-caller]

This 1970s short story is about a black shelled lonely crab alien contending with human romance. I'm sure my enjoyment of it has no other factors...

(The Reality Trip by Robert Silverberg— i love my pulp short story collections, overall collection is quite eh so far, this story was a lot of fun, and then whoops, there's a sudden very racist one! I read a collection by Theodore Sturgeon before this so I'm still haunted by how much better he is than Silverberg at every turn.)

[jakubmajchrzak]

Culture, Thought and Humanity – thinking for a change (2024)

Camera, editing, post-production by Jakub Majchrzak. Music by Jeremy Black "Electrician". Talking heads by Magdalena Hoły-Łuczaj and Paweł Korobczak.

[hanafubukki]

I’m surprised that malleus’ age is still debated/argued about?? 🤔

He’s a 178 years old fae 😂 and that’s that?? Why try to put him on a timescale of humans when…he’s not??

He’s a fae at the end of the day. Equating him to human ages/developments seems rather strange to me.

Especially when time moves different to a fae, everything related to faes/types of fae are not human in anyway so why equate it to humans??

I don’t know?? Is it just me?? Lol

Maybe I’m just too used to reading/watching/etc stuff about elves/faes/other long living creatures that it never made sense to do that to me.

Honestly I’ve only ever seen this “debate” in twst. 😆😂

[liesmyth]

would you be able to give examples/explain more about how race only impacts gideon in the tlt-universe? not being facetious or condescending, genuinely asking. thank you!

Hi anon! If you mean my tags to this post, I wrote

#earth conception of race doesn't impact any character in the series except the canonically brown main antagonist

By which I mean my Worstie and main antagonist of the series, John Gaius (PhD).

I don’t think TLT as a series engages with race in any especially meaningful ways. It’s set in a post-Earth society with entirely different social norms, and there’s no concept of race and ethnicity within the population of the Nine Houses. Physical descriptions of the characters are scarce to say the least, and they rarely spell out the kind of features that suggest specific racial connotations, because the POV characters don’t seem to think it’s something worth remarking upon. iirc, it takes until halfway through HtN for the narrative to confirm that Harrow has brown skin.

[See also Tamsyn’s GtN characters description post. It quotes passages from the book, and you can see how minimal the descriptions are, and she repeats several times that her characters’ appearances are up to the readers’ interpretations. It just doesn’t seem to be a big concern of hers]

Then there’s John, who grew up in twenty-first-century New Zealand and IS explicitly Māori in a way that absolutely impacted his character arc. It's not A major theme of his Nona chapters, but it’s there if you read between the lines. The boarding school he went to, which IRL had a high percentage of low-income Māori students on scholarship. The depth of his climate anxiety, his uncompromising “Nobody left behind” stance before the cryo project was halted, and his fervent hatred of ‘the trillionaires’ afterwards... these are all informed to some extent by his background as an indigenous man imo, and so was the global reaction to his developing powers. The “We were going to put you fellas in jail, weren’t we?” the way his initial attempts at publications are all flat-out ignored by the scientific community and dismissed as culty gimmicky faith healing until he leans into it.

John being Māori is just one of the many pieces of his backstory, and far from the most impactful to what eventually went down, but my point remains that he is the ONLY character in TLT whose racial background 1) affects his story arc and 2) is relatable to the audience. Everyone else is ten thousand years removed from Earth, and I’m just not very interested in using racial identifiers when exploring these characters and their dynamics, because the characters themselves don’t care and neither does the narrative.

[witchofthesouls]

Bots going throught strong food confusion probably hear the kids strong opinions daily considering three of them different countries and stuff

Jack: I mean we can eat anything but the big question is Should you thought?

Miko: Sounds like someone with food allergies would say

Jack: You maybe can eat raw fish without consequences but i rathet not risk salmonella or listeriosis

Raf: *probably has abuelita cooking lots of good food*Food is food

Funnily enough, Jack fusses over that because of fast-food experience and horror stories by restaurants and hospitals. Plus, he picked up on some of June's wellness habits, especially since Jack tended to get sick all the time as a young child. He warned Miko that botulism cases in the US usually come from improperly stored home canned food or the gas station nacho cheese sauce.

Miko came from Japan, so she had several culture shocks to jump, especially with food. American dining portions are huge since they're a very big (pun intended) on leftovers. Taking food home to eat later is deeply ingrained. It's common for Americans to eat out, but Japan is the opposite. Another thing that annoyed her was the advertising, but now she jokes that the pictures are tastier than the true product. And the amount of meat! It astounded her how much fucking red meat Americans like to eat. She deeply misses having a konbini because the American equivalent isn't the same, especially since the safety standards are different.

Raf can only be trusted with boiling water and ready meals since the girls and women in the Esquivel family shoo him out. He's familiar with ground pits since barbacoa is on the menu with family gatherings. Raf has excellent swiping skills as his siblings and cousins have the strength to shove him. He teams up with his sister as she does distractions, and he snatches away the good stuff.

So yeah, along with the 'Can you eat that?' game, the Autobots play '20 Questions' on preparation, ingredient acquisition, and cooking.

Supermarkets and farms are a Twilight Zone to them. There's food with different names to differentiate sizes, parts, and colors. (Arcee had thought the kids were messing her with broccoli and cauliflower.) Earth's varied languages add more to the confusion. Humans can eat rocks, poisons, and mold. There are perishable and non-perishable foods. Food that eats other food. Food that improves soil composition. Food that plays niche ecological roles. Food that's only about status. And choices, so many choices. A ridiculous number of choices in an American supermarket. Oh, and humans have a passionate love affair with cabbages and nightshade. Or with just plants in general.

Arcee started it as a joke, but now all the Autobots ask the resident humans if they did their "cabbage runs" and "picked up their posions" (aka grocery shopping with a play on the English idiom: "pick your poison." Yes, they have been told the meaning. No, they don't care because it makes so much more sense to them, especially with the nightshade and spices consumption).

[venti-death-watch]

with all his phds and all you can pretty much make dr ratio whatever you want and i know everyone does physics/math/medicine in some form and all, but that man is so fucking history humanities coded it’s like… embarrassing to see

[khattikeri]

maybe a controversial opinion but while i really love jiang cheng as a character he is deeply self-centered as a person. and seeing people fight tooth and nail claiming he isn't, or is just misunderstood, or that he has genuine valid reasons to be selfish when plenty of other characters make the difficult choice to forego status and opportunities for what they believe is genuinely right to do (read: wei wuxian, wen ning, wen qing, lan wangji, jiang yanli, mianmian, etc.)

it's just odd to me. especially if they're talking about the novels.

mxtx didn't give jiang cheng the name "sandu shengshou" as a quirky coincidence. there's a REASON she named him & his sword after the 3 poisons of Buddhism (specifically ignorance, greed, and hatred). it's crucial to the story that jiang cheng is NOT selfless and that wei wuxian IS.

it's important to accept that wei wuxian is, by their society's standards, not morally gray; he represents several Buddhist ideals in direct contrast of jiang cheng and multiple people attest to wei wuxian's strong moral character, which is a lot of why jiang cheng even feels bitter about him to begin with.

it's crucial, because by the end of the novel jiang cheng realizes the extent of this and begins to let go!

the twin prides thing wasn't jiang cheng wanting them to 100% mirror the twin jades. he does care about wei wuxian, but he wanted wei wuxian to stay his right hand man, in part the way wei changze was for jiang fengmian.

and if there's one thing you can notice about wei changze in the novels, it's that literally nobody talks about him. he is only ever mentioned when his cool mysterious mountain sect wife cangse-sanren is mentioned, or (even more rarely) when they discuss him as a servant to jiang fengmian. regardless of jiang fengmian's own feelings, wei changze was considered lesser to him and didn't seem to outdo him, since nobody's out there years later still waxing poetry about wei changze's skills.

it may not be the only thing jiang cheng wants out of a twin pride dynamic, but it is a big part of it. regardless of his parents' intentions in taking wei wuxian in and treating him certain ways, this twin pride right-hand man thing is what jiang cheng has felt owed since childhood. he gave up his dogs for wei wuxian, people gossip about his sect heir position with wei wuxian there... jiang cheng wants the reciprocation of what he views as personal sacrifices.

he is ignorant to the depth of what wei wuxian must've suffered for over 6 years as a malnourished orphan child on the streets. he hates how wei wuxian's intelligence, witty charm, and cultivation abilities are naturally stronger than his own. he does care about wei wuxian a lot and want them to be together as sort of-brothers, sort of-friends, sort of-young master and sect servant...

...but if it's between that unclear (yet still caring) relationship and being able to save himself just a little bit more, jiang cheng nearly always manages to clam up in the face of danger and choose the latter, which ultimately benefits himself most. maybe it's a stretch to call that sort of thing greed, but it certainly isn't selfless.

there are of course plenty of justifications for this. it's his duty as sect heir. his home and sect was severely damaged by the wen attack and subsequent war; he had to protect himself, etc.

but doesn't that prove the point?

wei wuxian may be charming, but in terms of pure social standing, he is lower and far more susceptible to being punished or placed in harm's way by people who have more power and money. to protect wei wuxian, yunmeng jiang's long-term head disciple and semi-family member, even in the face of backlash and public scrutiny would've been the selfless thing to do. this is what wei wuxian does for the wen remnants in the burial mounds.

jiang cheng does not choose this. it's not even an unreasonable choice for him to make! nobody else in the great clans is doing such a thing, stepping out of line to take on a burden that could weaken them in the long-run. wei wuxian himself doesn't hate jiang cheng for it; he lets go of these things and focuses on what good he can do in the present.

jiang cheng thinks further into the future - what would happen to him if he continued vouching for wei wuxian and taking his side? what about jiang cheng's face, his sect's face? would wei wuxian even care to reciprocate somehow? everyone expects him to cut off wei wuxian for being dangerous, for threatening his position, for...

do you see what i mean? to call jiang cheng selfless for falling in line with exactly what people expected him to do after the war is not only wrong, it's foolish.

"but they faked their falling-out!" okay. why fake it to begin with, except to protect jiang cheng and the jiang sect's own face? is that selfless? who does it ultimately serve to protect? wei wuxian canonically internalizes the idea that he stains all that he touches, including lan wangji, and agrees to the fake fight because he doesn't want to cause the jiang sect harm. regardless, it eventually slides into a true falling-out, and in the end jiang cheng is more or less unscathed reputation-wise while wei wuxian falls.

that isn't selfless. it's many things! it's respecting his clan and his ancestors, it's making a good plan for the future of his sect and cultivation... but it isn't a truly selfless in the interest of what's right rather than in the interest of duty and what's good for him and his family lineage.

that brings me to my next point: even though wei wuxian hid the truth of the golden core transfer, jiang cheng spent nearly 20 years believing that the golden core "renewal" he was given was a birthright gift of wei wuxian's from baoshan-sanren, an immortal sect teacher of wei wuxian's mother's and a martial elder to wei wuxian.

of course we all know that's a big fat lie, but jiang cheng believed that wei wuxian gave up a critical emergency use gift to him for decades! he was lied to, yes, but jiang cheng immediately agreed without even needing to be convinced. the light in his dead eyes came back with hope the moment wei wuxian even said baoshan-sanren's name. he accepted wei wuxian's offer to give that up to him and take it via identity theft without missing a beat.

with how mysterious and revered baoshan-sanren is, that's obviously not a light sacrifice to just give up to anyone, no matter how close they might be to you. pretending to be wei wuxian to take the gift could even be considered dangerous. what if she found out and got offended? could wei wuxian be hurt by that?

jiang cheng doesn't even hesitate. wei wuxian is the one who mentions that if jiang cheng doesn't pretend to be him, the immortal master could get angry and they'd both be goners. and funnily enough, the day they do go to "the mountain", jiang cheng is the one worried and suspiciously wondering if wei wuxian was lying to him or had misremembered.

of course they've both been traumatized like hell prior to this point. but still: it speaks to how broken he was at the moment as well as to his character overall.

i digress: jiang cheng "gets his golden core back" via what he believed was a gift that should've been wei wuxian's to use in serious emergencies. rather than use it for himself, wei wuxian risked his own safety and gave it to jiang cheng... and jiang cheng still ends up embittered and angry, believing that wei wuxian is arrogant and selfish.

if he truly views them as 100% brothers and equals with no caveats, why would he think that way? it's not like he needs to grovel before wei wuxian for doing that, or to reciprocate... but this is what i mean when i say jiang cheng feels he is owed things by wei wuxian. wei wuxian's actions hold a very different weight in jiang cheng's mind, and jiang cheng himself doesn't ever act the same way, except once.

is it wrong for him to feel like he is owed something? it depends. many asian cultures, including my own, feel that a person owes their family in ways that may not make sense to westerners. for example, it's considered normal for a child to owe their parents for giving birth to them, or to other caretakers for feeding, clothing, sheltering, educating them, etc.

however, something like verbally saying "thank you" or "i'm sorry" to family is considered crazy- why would you owe that? you're supposed to inconvenience your family; saying thank you or sorry is the sort of thing you say to a stranger or acquaintance. i get half-seriously lectured by my elders on this a lot even now, even though they know such phrases are just considered good manners in the US.

this muddies up the idea of wei wuxian being jiang cheng's family vs his family's charge or servant even more. jiang cheng wants wei wuxian to be close... but ultimately doesn't really choose to use what power he DOES have to protect wei wuxian. he considers himself still owed something that in his mind wei wuxian flagrantly never repays.

this isn't even getting into how despite spending a majority of his time with the yiling patriarch he never once noticed that wei wuxian stopped using any spiritual power-based cultivation. even lan wangji, who met them far more rarely, realized that something was wrong and that wei wuxian had taken some sort of spiritual damage, hence the "come with me to gusu".

of course manpain is fun and i'm not immune to the juicy idea of them reconciling and talking things out... but jiang cheng is deeply mired in his own desire to be "above" wei wuxian in multiple ways, and doesn't realize the extent of wei wuxian's actions, the intentions behind them, and the consequences wei wuxian knowingly faced for them.

to not recognize this about jiang cheng, especially in the novels, is really revisionist if you ask me. i reiterate that i really do like him a lot. he's flawed, angry, traumatized and has poor coping mechanisms, an overall fascinating character... but he is not selfless nor ideal, and i seriously draw the line at people saying he is.

wen ning shoves this all into his face at lotus pier to disastrous results. it is the reason why jiang cheng's a total mess at guanyin temple, and the reason jiang cheng ultimately doesn't tell wei wuxian about the fact that he ran towards the wens on purpose.

for that one last act of his to have really been selfless, he needs to not seek anything in return. he did it purely because it was right to do to protect someone else. if that means wei wuxian never finds out about it, so be it.

that moment that ended up causing jiang cheng irreversible harm is not a debt that wei wuxian owes him. it hurts, but no matter how bitter it is, that realization is so important to him changing in the future.

[eye-of-yelough]

hey GTA V fans, i heard some new trevor lines today.

except they’re not all new, if you’ve pressed ‘interact with citizens’ while looking at micheal at a specific point in their trailer trash era, some might sound familiar. “hello handsome/sugar/muscles/cupcake” definitely aren’t micheal specific. sorry lads

i think these were recorded before R* decided that trevor’s citizen interactions should be indiscriminate abuse. probably a bug that i’m even hearing them. but i am, when talking to michael’s house staff. there are lines specific to the maid as well, (or specific to women) but i couldn’t get a good recording of them. it’s just trevor typical catcalling anyway.

besides, this has something more interesting. slurs!

balding white man you can’t say that.