#i hate intersections

[mangostar]

i’m going to kill these traffic lights

[ot3]

every new indie animation project that gets popular seems designed to test the strength of my convictions that indie animation is ultimately a good thing

[toastytrusty]

hickey is a really good example of a character who's internal conflict is represented externally by his relationships with other characters. his feelings towards the british empire/the bureaucratic command of the mission is split between his respect for crozier and his reverence tuunbaq. and it gets so religious and existential it's so good.

to hickey, crozier represents the british empire, and tuunbaq represents the new world. we learn throughout the show that he came from a lower class background, has a lot of resentment towards the upper class and government of britain, and feels they oppressed him. there's commentary there on how insecure/downtrodden people often become tools of imperialism in an attempt to find some small amount of power or respect, by positioning themselves above someone else. punching down and all that. his first lines in the show are about how command puts dogs above men, showing how belittled he feels by it all, and how much resentment he holds towards them for it. yet, the moment crozier shows him the slightest recognition, hickey begins attempting to appeal to him entirely, chasing the idea of social mobility through the system he has spent his life detesting, because now, it seems tangible to him. he goes out to kidnap lady silence, thinking crozier will appreciate him for it ("i just saved your life" line. laughs), abusing the people of the new world for his own potential personal gain. he gets whipped for it, and loses the reverence for crozier, and therefore the british empire at large. and while he continues to abuse the native people, it is now through the conduit of abusing his fellow englishmen. there's a Lot to the irving farr murder scene that both is and is not relevant to this specific conversation, but the way his violence is turned inward there i think is really important here; even though, and perhaps especially because, the result of native people dying is the same. at his hanging he properly denounces crozier, and calls him out for what hickey perceives as essentially abandoning his men. something something the british empire has abandoned its people; abandoned the lower class to a miserable fate as hickey feels has happened to him, and abandoned this mission of people to die in the arctic on a doomed expedition with no rescue until it's far too late.

now the tuunbaq representing the new world is not at all unique to hickey's character arc—it's something present and relevant within the core of the whole show—but the specific way he perceives tuunbaq as a direct foil to crozier is unique to him. when hickey toasted with crozier, he thought crozier Saw him, and understood him and his experiences in an empathetic way. he thought they had connected. he was, obviously, wrong, but that's not the only thing he was wrong about! when he kidnaps silna, he says that the tuunbaq Saw him, looked Him Specifically in the eye. he thought he had connected with it. obviously he did not. there is Something to the way the tuunbaq is always summoned by hickey's actions; it shows up to attack them whenever harm comes to the native people, and usually that is hickey's fault. however when it shows up at his execution, it saves his life, which is really interesting. honestly not entirely sure what the thematic significance of that is past furthering hickey's delusions that the tuunbaq is in his corner but i digress. by the time of his mutiny he has all but fully forsaken crozier and the british empire. yet the nagging desire to appeal to authority and get that recognition remains. he wants crozier to see that he alone is capable of saving these men, and brings up their toast to try and get crozier to understand. when crozier tells him the toast was a joke, and there was no connection whatsoever, he gives up on saving them entirely. he chains them to a boat and, again, summons the tuunbaq, but with dramatic british songs instead of preemptive violence. there is violence of a different kind, though, and now it is Only turned inwards. there are. a Lot. of ways to read the final stand off with tuunbaq, but i've always read it as a sacrifice. hickey did not want to kill the tuunbaq, obviously. he hardly wanted to leave the arctic at that point. he was turning over the remaining of their men, and crozier especially, this embodiment of the british empire, to the tuunbaq as a sacrifice. when he cut his tongue out, i didn't see that as an attempt at domination. i saw it as an attempt at supplication. the last thing he used his tongue for was denouncing britain; its monarchy and its church and its empire. instead, he names tuunbaq as the most holy thing he's ever seen. the god they've lived their lives believing in means nothing when faced with the raw dregs of godhood present before them in the tuunbaq; the empire they've lived their lives believing in means nothing when faced with this beautiful and merciless land they are now condemned to. he is renouncing his britishness. he gives the tuunbaq the human embodiment of the empire to kill and eat because he no longer wants anything to do with it. his reverence is for tuunbaq and tuunbaq alone. but tuunbaq does not accept his offer, and kills him anyway. because he Is british, he Is a tool of imperialism, he Has done so much harm to this land and it's people, and no end-of-life realization is going to change that. i find it especially fitting that it is hickey's body that kills it. everyone else's rotting british flesh had sickened it, but hickey killed it, because despite his best attempts to distance himself, he Is the rotting evil of the empire, and is just as much a poison to this land as the rest of them

[justidiothings]

When we think of equality in the mainstream sense, it often means giving women the same opportunities, rights, and privileges that men have. On the surface, that sounds fair. But what happens when those privileges were built on exploitation, domination, or violence?

I was scrolling through my phone, and I saw this great screenshot that really put this into perspective. It pointed out that if men’s power is rooted in systems of oppression, then feminism shouldn’t just be about giving women access to that same power—it should be about destroying those systems altogether.

when we talk about gender equality in the workplace, we often frame success as women climbing the corporate ladder, earning high salaries, and becoming CEOs. But if that system is inherently exploitative, thriving on overworked employees, wage gaps, and profit over people then is equality really just women getting a seat at the same oppressive table?

So much of what we call “equality” is actually just assimilation, letting women participate in the same flawed systems that have historically and continue to oppressed people.

When we talk about feminism today, so much of it revolves around letting women do what men do, without questioning whether what men do is even justifiable.

Look how capitalism markets feminism to us: Buy this “Empowered Woman” T-shirt (made in a sweatshop by underpaid women workers). Become the boss (but still pay your employees the same low wages men do). It’s all about fitting women into the system, rather than changing the system for women—and for everyone else.

Representation alone isn’t progress if the system itself remains oppressive..

[mallgothchloe97]

[leashybebes]

I need more from my fav ally Buck 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

"You know I wouldn't, like. I wouldn't out you or whatever, right?"

"I do know that. It's fine. Don't worry about it." Tommy tosses back the last of his beer and smiles. "What are you doing to celebrate?"

"Oh." Buck looks at their beers, at the plates with the remains of their burgers. "I mean, this?"

"Okay, but what else?"

Buck shrugs. "Graduating class are going out in a couple days. Might hit up a couple of clubs with my roommates at the weekend."

[mossterunderthebed]

[qilingxiong]

i understand that the site full of hyperfixating internet users who are exhausted grad students/doctorates by day is not the most effective audience to help me with this, but there is a horrible little devil on my shoulder who keeps whispering "psssst you could write an academic thesis on this" about my current interests and i need to kill it with fire

[eywaseclipse]

Fuck Emilia Perez and the entire cast. They are so undeserving of awards and recognition. Fuck Zoe’s response to a Mexican journalist telling her that it was harmful to project racist stereotypes. This is why we need more self awareness in ALL forms of media consumption. So avatar writers get your heads out of your asses and stop exploiting cultures that don’t belong to you because you’re thirsty for clout. Stereotypes harm people. It’s not just fiction. And until you’ve experienced this in all forms yourself, this isn’t the space in which you get to disagree with me.

I’m so sick of the apologists in this fandom. And honestly Zoe is one of worst I’ve seen recently. A sobering moment to realized these celebs are not our friends. They simply just play characters we like. That film was very hurtful.

[loonylodestone]

what was the first band shauna & melissa bonded over

and why is it weezer

[just-queue]

The best part to me as a very causal Taylor Swift fan is you KNOW she took those photos with all her albums on a white set for the explicit purpose of being memeable. Like she knows how the internet, her reactions have been made into dozens of memes, so she made it as easy as possible to meme that shit and honestly? Respect.

[thespiritualmeatgrinder]

if dance was a male-dominated sport, men would've considered it one

[maydayintheforest]

I don’t know about yall but my “political extremism” is gonna really shine through come Monday 😋

[sforzesco]

how do you feel about Savonarola ? given me checking out a book on him I was curious!

fascinating character in florence's history, I also want to throw hammers at him

[time-to-write-and-suffer]

Like honestly my main problemo with mainstream kink culture is that like. I'm sorry but you will never convince me skinnyhot cishet girlies being pounded into literal submission by a bigstrong cishet man in a "playful" recreation of extreme patriarchy is subversive. Straight women crying about being "shamed" for liking booktok alphas and reclaiming their sexuality just doesn't move me as an argument for feminism when the shit they write/read is just straight up hetero rapefic. Good for you for getting off but getting off isn't inherently radical or progressive.

Like I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry dude you need to at least fuck him in the ass on the reg for me to care. Like if you're just being a femsub girlbottom then I don't care how reclaimed and empowered you feel and I won't celebrate you for bragging about it.

I won't cheer for you if he spits on you or chokes you or whatever else you're into just because you personally get off to it. I don't care. It's not a power move. Come back when you idk. Put thang (man) on a leash. Release a song about breaking in a male dom like a horse. And then we'll talk subversive.

[chicago-geniza]

Surprise meeting this afternoon disrupted all my plans for the day and I got so upset I fainted