#in my framework of thinking

[straightlightyagami]

ngl cannot really understand why people would want to get pregnant. i mean like it destroys your body for what? so you can have a child to take care of that is genetically related to you?

[governmentcheeseboy]

True freedom will not be a possibility until everyone understands that all oppression is interconnected, and none of us can be free until we are all free.

[tiffanyachings]

Reaper Man / The Shepherd’s Crown / Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

[ursulaklegay]

what they don't tell you about unlearning the harmful, discriminatory, hierarchical systems of our society is that the hard thing is deconstructing all that shit, but the harder thing is dealing with the fact that most people around you still believe and act within these frameworks

[zukosdualdao]

i will never understand when people act like zutara shippers are reaching when we say the crystal catacombs scene is intensely romantically coded because like... ignoring literally all other context (which does have other hallmarks of romantic coding, but literally pretend you don't know anything about the show or scene for a second)... what would you think happened in this picture?

would it .... would it maybe be an interrupted almost-kiss

[cdroloisms]

Cdream be like: You can't put yourself in the Prison anymore bc of the woke >:(/lh

That man is a mess like it's facinating how messy his vision of reality is for others and himself

it is fascinating fr, and does remind me of how we'd talk a little bit about how his perspective may betray what kind of environment this guy might've been in pre-dsmp. the stick-up-his-ass about rules and rule-following, the neuroticism about conflict, and the ease with which he jumps to punishment as being the appropriate response to people who cause problems (a perspective that, quite evidently, to a certain extent, does apply to himself, doesn't it?) all seems quite indicative of someone who lived in an environment where punishment being the natural consequence of stepping outside the lines was generally something that went unquestioned. of course, this is speculative, and it's not that a #tragicbackstory is necessary to explain what the fuck is up with c!Dream, and it's hardly about justifying the choice to abuse a teenager into behaving, lmao. but while exile served his goals and exile was a lot of petty, spiteful cruelty for petty, spiteful reasons, i do think there's something to be said about how clearly c!Dream hadn't expected c!Tommy to respond quite so severely to exile and how he thought he would be "fine" with potatoes in the prison and the language he used both about exile and his own early prison stay about shit like "getting better" through punishment. of course, punitive justice as a norm is kind of ingrained in our own society (just look at the rhetoric around deserving in this fandom, lmao, which speaks more than well enough for itself) and of course that reflects onto the dream smp as well, considering how many of the characters talk quite freely about the idea of punishment/deserving/what have you, but few characters are quite as obviously a stickler for rule-following as c!dream and exile and then prison are uhhh definitely on the more extreme end of things. anyway. just some food for thought

[grayintogreen]

It is kinda crazy to me that EXU Calamity’s clear inspiration from disaster movies isn’t immediately recognized, but I do think that’s due to disaster movies not being the spectacle that they used to be, like when I was a kid the big budget summer blockbusters weren’t superhero movies, they were movies like Armageddon, Volcano, Dante’s Peak, etc., and like no these weren’t critically acclaimed and most of them didn’t leave an obvious footprint in culture, but the tropes and character archetypes and relationships were constantly recycled over and over because there was a formula to them that isn’t common anymore.

A strained relationship that comes together by the ending? I think the SECOND the reveal that one of the other PCs was Quay’s ex I was like oh okay we’re doing this.

The devoted Everyman father? Yeah, Cerrit has a lot of influence from old school detectives but he reminds me a lot of Harry from Armageddon.

The reporter? Not every disaster film has one, but it isn’t unusual for one viewpoint character to be someone determined to bring the truth to light when everyone else is shutting their eyes.

Laerryn even reminds me of a MUCH more sympathetically played (and less frustratingly stupid) version of the doctor in Deep Blue Sea- convinced that it has to be worth it, making mistakes based entirely on her emotions, but ultimately sacrificing herself to put an end to the damage done.

Obviously not everything is a 1:1, but I think if you go and watch a marathon of 90’s big budget disaster flicks, you’ll find similar beats and inspiration scattered throughout.

And disaster movies ARE horror. Most of them end happily and I think that’s what keeps them from being classified that way, but there’s always tragedy and the potential that it won’t end well. Armageddon ends happily but I can’t help but think of Harry’s last message when I hear Quay’s. The day WAS saved but a lot of people did die to achieve that victory.

[frogonamelon]

[seaweedstarshine]

Thinking about River affectionately calling the Doctor her “madman in a box” only after he's called her his “bespoke psychopath,” and vice versa. They each were called these words by the other before ever using them to describe the other.

Thinking about the way they defy reality for each other. How modern psychiatry elevates objective reality to gatekeep full participation in society, yet they shatter objective reality with love — “I can’t let you die without knowing that you are loved.” and “You are always here to me and I always listen and I can always see you.”

Thinking about “What's the mad fool talking about now?” and how Gallifrey ostracizes those labelled mad, going so far as to see it as failure in children. Thinking about “A child is not a weapon!” “Give us time.” and how Kovarian equates psychopath with weapon as a tool of dehumanization and control.

Thinking about the way the psychiatric-industrial complex inflicts violence upon those who deviate from psychosocial norms. How their relationship was born in violence, but of madness — not madness in a post-Enlightenment framework of opposition to Reason, but madness as radical compassion that doesn’t demand so-called rationality — “Every time you've asked, I have been there.”

Thinking about how neither of them chose “psychopath” or “madman,” but they both own those words as instruments in their own agency.

[monstermoviedean]

i was prepared to re-evaluate my love for dean and my confidence in understanding his character and his actions but the closer i get to the end the more i believe in him.

[grassbreads]

Also on the subject of Mochijun and master/servant relationships, I remember seeing MDZS takes a few times that draw on the idea that Jiang Cheng wanting Wei Wuxian to be his right hand man (and therefore arguably subservient) their whole lives means he looked down on him, and I just. I read Pandora Hearts at a formative age and fictional master/servant relationships have been irreparably romanticized in my brain forever now. Sorry if the same thing didn't happen to you.

Even if Wei Wuxian did end up as Jiang Cheng's right hand man and/or servant, I know it would've turned into a "you work for me, so that means it's my job to protect and be devoted to you" type deal. A mutual obsessive devotion in which the power dynamics have become a bizarre web. Or at least that's what JC dreamt of. You read enough Mochijun manga at age 14/15 and those dynamics just come naturally to you.

[pandelacreme]

at first glance i thought the fixation on till’s neck was a sly joke about a/b/o, a genre heavily based in bl works, in the same cheeky way ivan’s name is a play on korean lgbt slang.

but the recurring motif of strangulation, how till's relationships (excluding his infatuation with mizi) are largely characterized with him being the object while the other is the subject; how him being on a leash, not just a collar, is quite literally one of his defining visual traits...

it reminds me of shakespeare's othello, where the titular character strangles his wife to death in a fit of jealousy over her alleged infidelity... the results of round 6 almost feel like a subversion of that play, where the leading artwork, esp the red one, seemed to suggest that ivan would strangle till in an act of possession, but it ended up as just the opposite.

but i wonder if there's more symbolism we can extrapolate if we hypothesize that some of the imagery are allegories to othello...

[girlgerard]

mommm white people on tumblr are misconstruing my posts again despite the post being entirely about how important wording is + how i don’t feel comfortable posting large statements when i haven’t fully processed them yet.

[ot3]

imo if you're trying to discuss the concept of Sexual Orientations and you kind of need to come at it from the understanding that, at least in the Western World there isn't really a concept of sexual orientation or sexual deviance that isn't categorically reliant upon gender expectations to make sense of. concepts like sodomy, like homosexuality and bisexuality, are constructed entirely by the gender-based ways that people are expected to perform their sexuality. see: the way inversion theory was the prelude for a lot of academic understanding of sexual identity and how echoes of that continue into the modern day. this isn't really a hot take or anything i just feel like its a nuance a lot of discussions are missing.

[seonghwacore]

be real honest. which member of your favorite group whose personality is actually similar to you? are they your bias or not?

[blueper-saiyan]

I’m overanalyzing something that’s canonically not meant to be thought about, for fun, so here’s a speculative Saiyan biology question: how often do they actually need to eat? I’ve sort of joked about the possibility that it’s like large predators irl where they gorge themselves occasionally and then wait until the next big kill. This would balance out the amount they’re eating to closer to a normal human, just a surprising amount in one sitting, and dodge the thing I’m about to go off the deep end about. But I think they’re probably supposed to need that amount frequently? Which is like, rodent levels of frequency and portions, but unlike a small mammal, a huge amount of actual food consumed. It’s fine if there’s only a handful of Saiyans on a whole planet but how did that work when there was a lot of them? That’s a massive amount of food, where is it coming from? Are they mostly feeding their army by taking food from conquered planets? They’d still need to be producing enough for their homeworld. Is it being farmed automatically and that’s how they can have the majority of their whole species be soldiers? But like, Gine has a job processing meat, so it’s clearly not entirely automated. Stuck thinking about Saiyan agricultural production and supply logistics help.

Unfortunately, I can also say that almost immediately after finding out the amount that Saiyans eat, the back of my mind did jump to “how fast do they starve?” Like, is that a much bigger threat for them than a human or do they have about the same amount of reserves, even if they’re eating more? If it is way faster, how does that affect how they view food/hunger? As a fun irl example, hummingbirds have such an insane metabolism that they would potentially starve to death if they slept at night. So they don’t sleep like normal, they enter a state that’s more like hibernation to slow their metabolism down enough to survive. Many hummingbird species are fiercely territorial because they need access to their food source or they starve. I imagine a theoretical hummingbird society would be thinking about food differently. And because this is my indulgent post where I get to talk about animals, I’m also going to bring up vampire bats, which could also potentially starve if they can’t feed within two days or so (I did not go deep into scientific literature to find original numbers and sources for this estimate I’m sorry true bat fans. Actually same goes for the hummingbird estimate but I know more about birds.). Unlike the more territorial hummingbirds though, vampire bats roost together during the day in colonies, with the same other bats repeatedly. And their food source can’t be guarded like a flower patch can, so there’s less purpose to territoriality. So they can form long term friendships with each other by interacting in ways like grooming each other. Within these friendships, when one bat gets a meal during their few-hour-a-night feeding window, but the other one doesn’t, the one who got enough food will often share with their friend to keep them from going hungry. Then their friend returns the favor when their roles are reversed, keeping them both alive, along with the rest of their friend network.

So those are some very different responses to needing food nearly constantly. If I were deeper in ecology mode I could probably try and come up with explanations based on the types of food source and territory and other factors for why, but I’m here to apply this to Saiyans lol. Honestly, a cooperative strategy would make more sense given that they’re pretty human-like, but that’s certainly not the sense we get given of their society. Were they always super individualistic or is that a recent development? Are they even actually individualistic or is that fully a societal role thing (elites are different from lower class warriors)? Or is the idea that they don’t cooperate partly a lie made up after their deaths anyway? Speculative biology for intelligent species get the extra layer of culture just to make things more messy and fun. We also know pretty much nothing about their original home planet and the actual context that shaped them, so I don’t get to apply other factors, like how easy it is to defend food sources or how important it is to stick together. We probably won’t ever get to know anything more about their original homeworld/Sadala, which is disappointing given that we got hints about it, but it does leave more room for speculation.