#not even an aspect its like. that implies its separate and its NOT its all integrated into who i am

[tapestryundone]

constantly thinking abt the long quiet and the shifting mound and their relationship w humanity. because the two are very much not mortal and even in the what happens next ending its very ambiguous if they ever WILL be or Can be. but even still they have both felt what its like to be mortal

i feel like its vague if the entity the two used to be even percieved its own existence. the way the narrator talks about it makes it seem like the two only existed conceptually and as a result lacked a complete sense of identity, and didnt need to, and wouldnt want to. but in the same way a thought cannot be unthought, the narrator gave them a glimpse into what it felt like to be mortal and the two can never un-know it, even if it wasnt exactly the same

the long quiet in particular seems especially tied to humanity and in some aspects seems to want to BE human (which feels so potent given how decidedly Not human he is). the game tends to imply that every option you get is a thought he DOES have, and in the spaces between, the choices dont seem as influenced by a given voice, which highlights even more how much he feels conflicted on his own nature that he gets Multiple options to express discomfort with himself being a god

it just gets to me how one of the options during the fight is literally "appeal to your shared humanity". because even if the two are gods, their separation and reshaping has given them humanity that they can never un-feel. for how much the shifting mound grieves what she once was, she cannot will her humanity away. shes mourning what the two of them once was and is desperate to have it back at any cost, even though they can never be together how they once were.

even if the long quiet goes with her, theyre still apart and lack balance, because the two once just Were and werent two parts. they werent both halves, they werent two concepts, they were just one concept that happened to, by human eyes, consist of two halves. and the narrators insertion of humanity into the mix in order to separate them, separating them into concepts that humans understood, manually put into existence a struggle for equilibrium where that balance had simply Existed

but theyve already perceived what felt like reality and can never un-see it. they were separated and Need the other to feel whole and for reality to BE whole but the moment that either of them realized their own free will, the moment the two fully came to feel like people, they could never be together the same way once again

im struggling to come up with a metaphor that isnt silly but its like if you took a piece of fabric and cut it in two and made them both into shirts. youve added a piece of humanity into them and doing so cost its original form. to take them apart and try to put them back together would never get you the original, whole piece of fabric back, because theyve been completely changed by their own unique destruction and reconstruction

they were separated in a way that gave them humanity that they have such conflicting feelings on. both seem to have a deep love of humanity but vastly different ideas on what humanity needs to thrive, because its in their natures

in order to get one to kill the other the narrator let the long quiet interpret the both of them as mortal. and for a being of perception and an god thats being lied to, this became part of their limited view of the world, on top of all the other reasons that the two gained humanity. the long quiet couldnt be told what to do if he didnt have the ability to potentially act on the narrators desires, and the shifting mound could never die if the long quiet didnt believe her to be capable of death

the narrator gave the two humanity and the shifting mound is very reasonably distressed by this. because the two of them never asked for this but they cant undo it. it is her OWN subtle desire for things to be the same as they used to be, her own piece of that stagnation that also led to her experiencing humanity, that makes her so adamant during the fight. she misses the long quiet and wants to undo a change that cannot be undone in search of a constant state of being that was taken from her

and the long quiet felt so closely tied to mortality, both its existence and absence, that no matter what, he wants to aid humanity. but hes been lied to and denied autonomy to the point where he doesnt know what that entails. but he wants to be a part of it. he was given fake mortality and cant seem to figure out how he feels

the shifting mound is set in how she feels it best to aid in the existence of life. she is stagnant in her feelings because its all that feels right to her. the long quiet is ever-shifting in how he feels it best to aid in the existence of life. he is changing in his feelings because its all that feels right to him

getting to the heart of the shifting mound allows them a moment to discuss it as the closest they can get to mortals. the two care about their impact on life and what it means to be alive and what better way for the two of them to truly decide what they want to do about it, outside of the conflict thats been forced between them, than as the mortals they never were?

[ohcorny]

i reread all of chobits recently as insp for my next TT book and every time i think about some aspect of it all i want to do is rip it open and tear it apart and go "why?". it brings up so many concepts and scenarios within the premise of "what if computers looked like pretty girls" but it doesn't want to commit to saying anything about it or take its own world seriously.

i have a lot to say about chobits. arguably i have more to say about chobits than even chobits wants to say about chobits.

chobits is about sex except it isn't about sex at all. chi's power switch is in her vagina. we're shown images of chi doing sexy things, she gets tricked into doing a strip tease, and two separate men try to finger her and she does her Do Not Touch Me There magic powers thing, and we eventually learn every time she resets from the power button, her memories are erased, so you can't have sex with her without deleting her.

but we never unpack why her reset button is in her vagina, or why it's so important that nobody can ever touch her, or why people's personal computers were built with vaginas in the first place (we never have it confirmed that all persocoms have them, but that two separate men try to touch her there imply it's expected). why do the personal computers shaped like women have vaginas if not to fuck them. as a product, it is expected that you will fuck them*.

*i assume, because the comic never says so!

the man who invented persocoms is the same person who built chi and her sister, and he built them to be daughters for his wife. he put the reset button in chi's vagina. we never find out why. we never get a HINT of why. he built the chobits so they could feel and fall in love, but also built them so they could never fuck. you can extrapolate a reason why a man might build his daughter-androids that way, but the series itself never touches it, and never makes any sort of point about it. it's just presented as an immutable fact that chi can't fuck without it deleting her, as if it was born of happenstance and not a person's choice.

what does that actually say about anything? what is it trying to say about sex? is it about the commodification of female bodies, how once they're used up sexually they're worthless? that if you can't love somebody without fucking them, what good is your love? that love without sex is okay (but also a huge burden and sacrifice a man must accept for the sake of someone else's happiness?)

what does it want to say! chobits is about sex, but it doesn't want to commit to any specific message about sex.

and that's just ONE issue i have with it. there are so many things chobits wants to be about but won't say anything about. it wants to be about the persocoms replacing human connections, we constantly get told 'gee people hang out with persocoms a lot', chitose publishes a whole inexplicable book series about people preferring persocomes to humans. it's to the degree that a prominent character's husband gets So wrapped up in (presumably) fucking his android that he locks his actual wife out of the house, having just straight up forgotten she exists. we don't have anything to say about it though. she falls in love with a new man. the people who hang out with their persocoms too much are all background characters in crowds. we never look at how the rise in persocoms has affected society as a whole.

it wants to be about grief, in the story about the man who marries a persocom and has to watch her slowly degrade until she can't remember him anymore, or the kid whose older sister died and he tried to replace her with a persocom who he dresses up/treats as a maid and lives alone with despite being omega orphaned and 11 years old. but then it's fine. the man who married a persocom gets in a relationship with a high school girl 20 years younger than him (CLAMP!). it's fine! the boy who tried to replace his older sister just accepts that the persocom replacement won't replace her. still treats/dresses her up like a maid and lives alone. is she his legal guardian. i don't know. don't worry about it.

and it wants to be about women, because everything about the story is about women, all the persocoms are women, all the tragedies are wrapped up in the death of a woman, or a woman's heartbreak, or a woman's feelings. but it has fucking nothing to say about women beside look how pretty they are. my boobs are E cup, sempai :) teehee

it makes me insane.

friend @amphiaria put it best as "Unfortunately the story is uninterested in itself" and i can never forgive it for being so aesthetically good, giving us the best design for an android (the ear things are Perfect) and then being So Fucking Bad.

in conclusion:

[neuvistar]

Ass, tits or thighs for loucha and welt

You can choose other hsr men

Fluff of nsfw you pick

ASS, TITS OR THIGHS?

— featuring ┊ luocha, welt, jing yuan, blade, gepard x fem!reader (all separate)

— warnings / content warnings ┊ a lil short i think?? uh not proofread, tiny bit of titplay, mentions of thigh fucking??, slight body worship me thinks, mentions of face sitting, use of nicknames, nothing extreme just suggestive of implied suggestive themes! || 18+ MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

— a/n ┊good question, let’s decide this once n for all ! hope u enjoyed this i had fun sm fun writing it tbh ++ i loved writing jing yuan’s part its so cute 2 me

LUOCHA lowkey seems like a thigh man, blud doesn’t care how big or how small he just wants you to crush him with your thighs. i mean come on i’m sure he probably likes the feeling of his hands trailing down your hips then to your thighs, giving them a nice squeeze while he’s at it. he seems like he’d enjoy times where you would thigh highs, thanking the aeons above for this lovely gift and beautiful sight. ++ when you do wear it jesus fuck his hands r always on your thighs, gently sliding two fingers in your black thigh highs you wore that day, pretty eyes gazing at yours to see your reaction.

maybe if he’s feeling a lil silly he’d slide his fingers inside you too, bonus points for that skull emoji idk man this goof just seems and LOOKS like a thigh man, i’m sure he’s a big fan of face sitting too since he’d love how your thighs cage around his head, holding them firmly as he eats you out like there’s no tomorrow. he just wants to get crushed by your thighs, i’m sure he’s someone that stays true to his word as well, “death by thighs is the way of a warrior” is what he believes. luocha just wants to savour the feeling of your thighs around his head, oh yeah his favourite place to kiss you is probably your thighs, surprise surprise!! that man has a huge thing for your thighs you don’t even know why, always complimenting you how beautiful they look too, you don’t mind though. but anyways, he loves kissing your thighs, such a sweetheart isn’t he?

WELT is expiring bruh one thrust n that fucker is already fading into thin air but itz ok cuz i like em expired (NAHH IM SO SORRY) but anyways he’s an ass man, i’m sure of it. that brunette loves ass more than you think, he’s a sucker for that fatty i know it, look me in the eyes n tell me he isn’t an ass man cuz he is n no one’s gonna convince me he’s not i don’t wanna hear it /j but back to business yeah he seems like an ass man, i think bro’s vv cool with it too like if you asked him “ass tits or thighs” he would give you a full description on why he prefers ass out of everyone of them, whenever you two make love i like to think that he prefers it if you take it from the back. why? well lemme tell you

he likes it whenever you take it from the back cuz he gets full view of your back and most importantly your ass, the way his hips snap against yours, hypnotized by the way your ass looks, giving it a lil squeeze too. oh yeah he’s probably the type to give ur ass little taps, like gentle ones but it isn’t perverted in anyway it’s just to get you moving, and maybe to also get a reaction out of you but yes no more explanation this manz is crazy for ass he would get hard at the sight of you in some tight clothing that makes your ass look nice wink wink. this goof probably snuck a lil glance at your ass when you were bending over one time, grabbing a pencil. let’s jus say, he got hard! cmon he just loves ass, he loves it sm bros probably fascinated over the jiggle physics of your ass or sumn cause gahhh dahum

JING YUAN i think he’d be vv sweet about these sort of things, he wouldn’t rlly separate things into things he liked or didn’t like, he loved everything about you. jing yuan would find you perfect in his eyes, he found you rather beautiful in every aspect, an alluring attraction he could not simply look away from, but he cared not for your body, for your beauty was the least of your features n it was everything else about you that he found the most attractive. beyond compare and without fault. but in all truthfulness, he loves titties stfu i’m not gonna argue with anyone else he’s a tit man and that’s final, it’s true it’s confirmed by me he’s apart of the tittie lover committee. but honestly, like i said he’d find every aspect of you beautiful (he’s a tit man trust he’s just in denial)

he would be so so sweet :( if u ever asked him what he liked abt u (ass tits n thighs yk) he would simply let out a deep sigh and kiss your forehead,

“why do you care so deeply about my opinion on your body?" jing yuan asked softly with a soft shake of his head. "does my opinion mean that much to you? i think you are a rather beautiful woman. that’s all, nothing more, nothing less. i do not look at you like a prize or a toy, my dove, for you mean more to me than your appearance. but since you are so concerned, i will say it. you are extremely beautiful in my eyes, i love everything about you. every part of your body, your facial features, your personality, everything. there’s nothing i can pin point, because i love everything about you, beautiful.” (he still loves ur tits though)

BLADE is indecisive with this sort of thing me thinks.. he’d choose all three but if you ask him why he did, honestly he’d pull up some shit like “because i desire them all and i get what i desire” or sum shit like that, he’s just a lil indecisive guys. but jokes aside, he would prefer your tits. he’s probably a tit man in my eyes! there’s just something about your titties that makes him stop and think about the decisions he made in life. the first time you guys got busy (if you know what i mean) blud would get all red for the first time asking if he could touch your breasts, and that special day.. he fell in love with the feeling of his hands engulfing your tits, the softness of your flesh was intoxicating to him almost.

he probably doesn’t care about size either, he just loves how his large hands engulf your tits as a whole, he loves the little whimpers you let out when he plays with your hardened nipples, twisting it gently as he feels your body jolt against his, pressing himself even closer against you. blade loves you and your body, he just can’t get enough of you because you’re so beautiful to him, he’s one lucky man to have someone like you. he’s probably into titfucking too, the thought of it makes me curl my toes tbh. he probably slides his dick in between the softness of your breasts, a moaning mess as he threw his head back, enjoying the feeling of your boobs around his cock. bonus points if he came on your tits afterwards, he fell more and more in love with you and your titties. he would probably cum on your tits like 99% of the time whenever you guys would have sex, you would scold him sometimes but cmon he can’t help it. he loves how pretty your tits look covered with his cum.

GEPARD last but not least the babygirl ever, most the babygirl of the babygirls, he would probably prefer ass ++ thighs over anything else. he tries to push these kind of thoughts away but he knows he can’t escape them when you’re right there all dolled up and pretty for him. gepard would blush seeing you in a short skirt, bonus points if you wore thigh highs or black tights along with it. i like to think tgat he would feel ashamed of himself for thinking such things about you, taking a quick glance of your thighs whenever you both use the stairs, seeing how your skirt would move a bit. jesus he didn’t even know you had allat back there, but you did. bless your parents. but honestly i don’t think he’d care about the size either, he just loves how soft they feel against his palm, huge fan of you taking it from the back too.

gepard is probably into thigh fucking too, grabbing your thighs and ripping your black tights, positioning himself in between them as he slides himself between the heat of your inner thighs, his dick also rubbing against your pussy too more bonus points for that. he would savour and take in the feeling of your thighs against his cock, loving how warm you felt around him. he’s such a huge sucker for that fattie n huge sucker for them neck crushers, if you sat on his face and broke his neck he would probably blame himself for being too weak to handle you like he should, speaking of that he loves it whenever you sat on his face, like i said no matter the side he’s diving into that pussy like it’s the pacific ocean, he doesn’t give two fucks if you’re too heavy your pussy is the ocean he’s gonna dive in 2nite (he’s practically asking u to break his neck atp skull emoji)

[mutfruit-salad]

read your criticism and have a genuine question about your thoughts on the branding scene. i completely understand how max's branding is inherently tied to a racist history, and it always will be, but i dont feel like the scene itself was written with that bias/intent. thaddeus also gets branded in later episodes and it's implied to happen to every aspirant upon their promotion. at what point in writing are black characters morally barred from specific story points because of their similarities to a history that's not directly related? sort of similar with barb, at what point can black characters not do bad things at all, especially in a story where there are near a dozen non-black characters who do worse things? also considering it's implied (at least, i understood it as) she's sticking to vault-tec to protect her family?

I am not in the best position to comment on this, because I am not black. I will do my best to add what I can, but this is a space for others to chime in.

Barb is interesting because she's essentially become the person who did the most heinous crime in the entire setting- by far and away worse than anything anyone has ever done. There really aren't white characters who did worse things- because all the crimes of Caesar or the Enclave or whoever else pale in comparison to being the one who literally set into motion the total annihilation of all nations on Earth. (This is setting aside her willing participation in the inception of the vault experiments- which is an entirely separate also horrific crime.)

The issue is they've created a setting that is, as presented, colorblind. Race is invisible to the writers, who did not consider it meaningfully while producing the show- as is often the case with white creatives putting characters of color into their stories. Colorblindness does not always produce entirely racist results- and when done with tact and intentionality it can even be revolutionary. Look at the relative inclusivity of star trek as an example, and the radical depiction of Uhura in the original series.

The thing that makes Fallout different from Star Trek however is that it is not depicting its colorblind future with tact and intentionality. This is a show that is intensely concerned with depicting the specific brand of nationalistic American politics of the 1950s and the Cold War- and they've reproduced that system for the show but with a black woman at the head. That's where the issue comes up.

This was a system that had racism baked into it by design. It still does. American Nationalism and corporate violence are built on racism against black people and other minorities. And this show desperately wants to depict these things, but they've decided to put a black woman at the head of them. They're depicting systems that are, by their nature, violently racist- but they've decided to portray them as being run by a black housewife.

Fallout 3 does a similar thing with how it depicts every major slaver as a black person. Eulogy Jones, the slave buyer at Paradise Falls, the head slaver in the Abe Lincoln memorial, Ashur in The Pitt. Hell Mothership Zeta adds in a black woman from the wasteland and even SHE'S revealed to have been a slaver. This is something Bethesda consistently does- depicting ideologies and practices with a deep history of racialized violence- and then showing black people at the head of them, seemingly to try to avoid actually addressing any aspect of racism in their stories outside of hamfisted metaphors like synths and ghouls. (I use Fallout 3 as an example but Fallout 4 does many of these same things.)

Thaddeus does also get branded, and he does also get treated to the same demeaning servanthood as Maximus. The difference, quite frankly, is that Thaddeus is white. There are just some things that are straight up inappropriate to depict happening to black characters without appropriate thoughtfulness and context. Never before this series has the Brotherhood ever done brandings- and yet this show opens with it in the first episode and introduces this brand new jarring concept with the visceral image of a black man being branded by faceless fascist cultists.

It's also important to note that even if they didn't intend the scene as racist, it still is. Like I don't think the scriptwriter sat down and said "oh I'm gonna do a racism" cuz intent just doesn't matter here. The scene was intended as a way of showing the severity of the brotherhood- but it also thoughtlessly reproduces images of historic black violence.

@orange-coloredsky I know you've been talking about this stuff all day, and your initial posts about the antiblack racism in the series were what prompted me to write my thoughts today- which is what this ask is in response to. I was curious if you have any other input with all this.

I'd also be more than happy to have any additional input from people better suited to answer these questions.

[victoriadallonfan]

Lets Talk: The Predator Franchise

About two months ago, I put my thoughts into my feelings on the Alien Franchise, and why I felt that they've been faltering so much.

It felt only fitting that I do the same for the Predator franchise, but I ran into a very curious thing... there's only one bad Predator movie.

A shocking statement, I know, but I'm not counting the AVP movie series (that's it's own separate thing). The Predator (film) is easily the only bad film in the entire series, but I'll get to that later.

First things first: lets talk about Predator (1987).

It's an all time classic, a great deconstruction of the 80's action film, with insanely quotable dialogue and memorable characters - not just the Predator itself, but all the human characters are easily recognizable.

Unlike the Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986), Predator is not predominantly a horror film, nor is it emphasizing a tough topic such as sexual assault. It does HAVE horror aspects (the first time they find the skinned corpses is intensely unnerving, especially when they realize that this group of marines apparently lost all self-control and fired in all directions), and it does touch a bit on how the US government is using its own soldiers as cannon fodder to destabilize third-world countries.

But it's not really built to scare the viewer so much as to present a simple idea: what if these action heroes met a bigger, stronger, more advanced version of themselves? And the result is a near total party wipe.

Watching the original film, you realize that the Predator is depicted as incredibly unfair. The majority of its kills are it sniping someone from afar, rushing them when they aren't even looking (while cloaked), and doing a combination of the above. It would have killed Arnold while his back was turned, if the net trap hadn't been set in place.

Hell, it even kills a wounded soldier that Arnold is carrying, after Billy's "last stand" (that lasted mere moments at best, implying the Predator didn't give him the time of day).

(Also, speaking of Billy... he's psychic? Apparently?)

But yeah, the Predator depicted is not the honor clad warrior that some fans may stan (and some writers believe) but more like the equivalent of Counter-Strike hacker. The fact that it takes Arnold untold amounts of traps, ingenuity, and willpower for the Predator to finally face him man to man, no tech, no weapons is meant to be a testament to how impressive Arnold is.

Likewise, the Predator decides to blow himself the fuck up while cackling manically like a supervillain as he tries to finally kill Dutch, also opens him to showing that as alien as it is, it's remarkably human. A spite filled asshole of a human, but humanish nonetheless (amplified by him copying human speech on prior occasions).

It's a really great film about how alien life, if more advanced than our own, might see us as lesser people or outright livestock to hunt (keep a pin in that).

Predator 2 (1990) is often divided amongst fans.

Some hate the fact that it takes place in the "modern day" LA, instead of sticking to the blazing heat of the jungle (as the lore of the first movie implies that the Predator or a Predator visits at the hottest time of the season to create the local bogeyman figure), but this film does a fine job justifying the LA heatwave and honestly... the idea of keeping the Predator to one type of biome is pretty limiting. So I don't mind that.

As one can tell already, I don't think this movie is bad. As good as the first? No, it rehashes a bit too much for that. But it's still a fun and good movie.

And, notably, scarier.

But for context, Predator 2 is set in the far future of... uh, 1997 LA, where there has been open warfare between the LAPD and the Jamaican and Colombian Cartels. Like, not drug busts or stings, but actual warfare with armies of gangs and shit.

The late 80's and early 90's loved to depict LA as a dystopian hellscape where "law and order" was the only defense from total anarchy (as anyone who has ever lived in LA can tell you, racial tensions, especially between the public and police have not been good to say the least).

This entire setup is like a D.A.R.E nightmare or wet dream depending on who's asking.

(Also the Jamaican drug leader, King Willy, might also be psychic? This is the last time it's brought up, but man, I sort of wish we could see future plot lines where people are randomly psychic in these films.)

Anyways, the situation is certainly perfect for this Predator (named City Hunter to differentiate between Jungle Hunter), who takes to the city with a gusto. The difference in how the Predator is portrayed is fascinating, because the bare bones remain the same: he hunts people who are deemed as sport with alien technology.

Fitting with the ultra-violent theme of this film however, this Predator feels like a legitimately horror movie monster. Unlike the Jungle Hunter, City Hunter doesn't prefer to attack from afar, but rather ripping and tearing in close quarters combat, and when he does use ranged weaponry, it's stuff like spears, bladed discs, and nets that shred people into bloody messes.

And he's 110% a bigger asshole that Jungle Hunter: when the City Hunter decides to focus on our lead man, Danny Glover, he doesn't just hunt the man but psychologically torture him. He murders his partner - who is probably the least threatening human in the entire series - just so he can taunt Glover with his necklace at his own grave. He then copies the innocent words of a child just so he can use it as a creepy catchphrase when he decides to hunt Glover's other partners.

The iconic subway massacre perfectly exemplifies both aspects of the City Hunter. He interrupts a massive stand-off between armed civilians, gang members, and the police, just wading in and killing everyone indiscriminately as people frantically scream and claw over each other trying to escape.

(Speaking of, this film does have a LOT of fun having the Predator on modern sets. The above subway scene, City Hunter investigating a meat locker, and him performing emergency surgery in an apartment bathroom are all really cool).

Also, for being so divisive, this film creates a lot of Predator lore: the Predator won't kill (unarmed) children, he won't kill pregnant women, and he WILL kill the elderly if they are packing heat.

And this includes the trophy wall (with xenomorph skull - actually funny because we never see a Predator collect a xenomorph skull in the AVP films) and that the Predator tribe will honor and respect those who defeat their kind with a reward.

It does include that the government is aware of the Predator existence and tries to capture them, but this won't be a major plot line again until The Predator (2018) though it gets some tongue in cheek reference in Predators (2010).

Anyways solid film, lots of cheesey scenes and very tropey stuff that hasn't aged well (or aged in a way that makes it amusing). It's also that last movie that actually tries to be true horror, in my opinion. The rest of the films stick to Action with Gore, but Predator 2 is truly the last film where you feel like this was written to be a horror film.

Also, this film will be the last to really play into the world as being an overly dramatic action movie earth. It's all realism from here.

And then the film franchise will go quiet until 2004 and 2008 for the AVP films (that I won't cover here).

Finally, we get to Predators (2010), and obvious title call back to Aliens (1986) and I have to say, a pretty good trio of ideas: The human targets are actually kidnapped and dropped on a safari planet, there are multiple Predators with their own unique designs and gimmicks, and there is a internal war between the Bad Bloods (aka the Predators who break the "honor code") and the 'normal' Predator clans.

(It should be noted that Bad Bloods have been a thing for years in comics and books, but not really in the mainstream until this film introduced it to movie audiences)

I have to say, despite having a fondness for the film and loving the new ideas, this film is not as enjoyable as Predator or Predator 2. It unfortunately suffers from what I call 2010ism, where there's a lot of CGI blood/gore, a lot of lighting/shadows aren't natural in a horror sense, and the dialogue isn't memorable because it wanted to ditch the action movie dialogue.

The last part isn't necessarily too bad, and it even works with how Adrian Brody is portrayed as a cynical asshole who is purposely meant to be the opposite of Arnold in every way. But the most memorable dialogue is definitely from Walter Goggins (including his highly disturbing "bitch raping time" speech).

Also, it really wastes Topher Grace, Laurence Fishbourne, and Danny Trejo, along with the whole idea of a gang of multinational killers/soldiers/enforcers forced to work together. Not nearly enough time is given to them to bond as a team and have a moment where they show off how cool they are like Predator and Predator 2 did.

Coupled with the safari world being just... a jungle, it feels like a lot of good ideas with "safe" execution.

I don't mean to rag on the film, it's still very fun, and a lot of that is due to the Bad Bloods.

The idea of a particular group of Predators being so evil that they are even warring with their (smaller) counterparts is a great idea, imo, and these Bad Bloods are memorable for their gimmicks.

You had one who used drones as "falcons" to scan and scout out large tracks of terrain, another who employed alien "hounds" to harass humans like a fox hunt, and the leader who had a rapid-fire plasma caster that was overpowered as hell. They also employed other tech like alien bear traps, net traps, and voice decoys.

This movie definitely had the most advanced Predator tech seen on film at the time, making the Jungle Hunter and City Hunter look low tech by comparison, and I think also served to try and force the idea of the Bad Bloods being really "unfair" compared to others.

And of course, we get our first Predator vs Predator fight, which was suitably graphic and badass. Also, I liked that one Predator died by a human pulling a suicide vest attack. Idk, I thought it was pretty ironic considering that's what predators do when they are about to lose, and thought it was neat.

Ultimately, there isn't much else to say about Predators (2010), even though the film ends on a cliffhanger with more people (and aliens) being dropped on the planet. I enjoyed it, it had a lot of cool ideas, cool tech, and cool lore... but if the prior films could be compared to novels, this one felt more like a guidebook.

And now... eight years pass and we get The Predator (2018)

Where do I begin with this movie.

I guess I start with the obvious: it's bad. It's a genuinely awful movie with few redeeming qualities. I'd say it's on the tier of Alien: Resurrection, except this movie is actually offensive because of autism ableism (turns out that autism is actually the next step of human evolution and makes you naturally predisposed to using Predator technology).

And don't get me started on the sex offender controversy.

Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. It's just that this movie... jesus christ, I rewatched it for this post, and it feels like a fever dream.

The Predator (2018) ultimately, is a film that looked at everything that came before it and said, "What if we did it all on a grander scale? And make it bad?" The plot is that a Predator is being hunted by an even larger, more powerful Predator, because it plans on harvesting humanity. You see, in this movie, some Predators use the genes of animals they hunt to improve themselves. The Super Predator as he is called, is a massive 10 foot tall monster that has turned his body into a super weapon, with technology built directly into his biology.

The Good Predator arrives on Earth to warn humanity and deliver a "Predator Killer" suit of Iron Man armor that will help humanity defend the Earth from the oncoming invasion force. The Super Predator wants humanity harvested because... autism makes them super geniuses.... and he declares that a 12 year old boy with autism to be the greatest Predator he's ever met... just because he has autism...

Look, I don't know how the fuck I'm supposed to describe the plot of this movie. It's just bad. It's stupid. At one point they turn a Predator hound good by giving it a bullet lobotomy.

It feels like this movie hates everyone. It hates the Predators, literally killing off the Good Predator not even halfway through the film. It hates the cast, because all of them are forgettable except for Olivia Munn and Super Predator, and it kills the mystique of the Predators because it has Super Predator monologue like an actual supervillain.

The dialogue is genuinely awful, the actors have no chemistry, and the comedy (oh yes, this film acts like a comedy on several occasions) is the definition of cringe. I would call it "ChatGPT writes Predator" but honestly, ChatGPT could do it better.

Let it be known that my words do not do how awful this movie is justice. You can only understand how bad it is by watching it, but it's absolutely NOT worth the time.

Is there anything good about this movie? Besides the Holiday Special on home release?

The effects are pretty good. We see a lot of high tech Predator stuff and that's always cool. I think this had the highest budget of any of the films and it shows.

There's an action set-piece where Good Predator escapes from a government facility and uses an M4-Assault Rifle which is badass. One of the best action scenes in the movie and a neat tie-back to the government investigating them.

The Super Predator is a cool concept and I actually enjoyed him for a large part of the film. I liked that he could just pick up a human like a toy and gut him like a fish before tossing him aside. I love the idea of a Predator that isn't a hunter, but rather a soldier sent in to fuck shit up, showing off the different tech. Really gives the impression that their society has different roles and tech for Predators beyond hunting.

I wish they gave him a helmet and didn't let him monologue like a supervillain.

And that's it. That's the good stuff. Nothing else matters. It says a lot that I don't think Super Predator or the autism plot has been accepted into lore in comics or books.

It's even been argued that this film was deemed non-canon because of how abysmal the reception was.

Suffice to say, after this awful film, fans were pretty low spirit. Which made it all the more surprising when Prey (2022) was released 4 years later.

There was a lot of drama about this film: the franchise is dead, why is the film so woke for including woman and minorities, how can any human expect to beat a Predator with a bow?

This drama is stupid and should rightfully be mocked.

Prey (2022) was a breath of fresh air for the franchise and I'd argue the best film in terms of quality.

It quite literally goes back to the roots of the series and does something that really elevated the film: it made the Predator symbolise something!

This film takes place in the 18th century on the Great Plains, following Naru the Commanche healer who dreams of being a hunter. Meanwhile, a young Predator - known as the Feral Predator for his aggression - is dropped on the planet for his first ever hunt.

Obviously, you can see the parallels between the two as Naru learns to use tricks and tools to handle her weaknesses, while Feral uses brute-force and high tech equipment to slaughter the animals and humans of the planet. The Bear hunt scene, where Naru is forced to flee from a bear and helplessly watch Feral kill the creature with it's bare hands (haha), thus condemning her in his eyes as not a threat is perfect character foil.

Also, he's such a piece of shit, cheating the moment he feels like his prey has the better of him. But in a good way that makes sense for his character.

But on the grander scale, the Predator represents colonialism. A secondary antagonist of the film are the French fur trappers, who have been skinning wild buffalo and depriving the commanche of their food source, openly compared to the Predator skinning animals/humans for trophies instead of resources.

It's actually a lesson Naru has to learn from her brother and mother, that to become a true hunter is about doing so to support a community, not just for ego and idolization.

Its no accident that the Fur Trapper leader dies when Naru sabotages his gun and Feral dies when Naru does the same to his gun as well, with both of them trapped and crippled without any means of escaping their demise.

This film finally moves to make the Predators feel like evil villains who are supremely selfish, much like the first 2 films emphasized (and the third film did to a lesser extent).

But talk of how amazing Naru is as a protagonist and how great the Feral predator is as an antagonist, the film is just good. The cinematography is gorgeous, the actors are great, the Predator effects and costume are terrifying, and lore wise, it does a lot to show that the Predator society is not stagnant.

They evolve over the years and it shows.

And my god are the action scenes incredible. The Predator vs Fur Trapper fight is probably one of the most iconic scenes in the entire franchise now, and for good reason.

Or Naru's knife fight massacre

All in all, this film really shows that the Predator films can be more that action films and... whatever the fuck The Predator (2018) was trying to be.

These films can be used to explore the history of humanity and symbolize concepts that deal with oppression, bigotry, and dehumanization.

The title of Prey - the focus on making the protagonists human - versus the Predator title is incredibly fitting.

While a sequel is left up in the air, we do have confirmation that a new standalone film - titled merely Badlands - is set to come out soon.

I can only hope they learned the right lessons from Prey and we can leave the horrid past of The Predator (2018) behind us for good.

[thewertsearch]

Ask Comp 07/09

Anonymous asked: also, thats pretty distinctly not vriskas handwriting (page 2196). the hell is terezi even talking about?

Terezi, for god's sake.

@manorinthewoods asked: I'd like to note that Pyralspite's eyes are either an eighth the brightness of Alternia's sun, or Pyralspite has the ability to psychically burn out people's eyes just by wanting to. Probably the former. ~LOSS (30/8/24)

I should have guessed that Vriska's cruel and unusual punishment for Terezi was yet another case of Mindfang Roleplay.

I think it's likely that Pyralspite does have some sort of ocular ability. After all, Terezi's lusus had a vision-based power, and she's probably Pyralspite's direct descendant.

@gogogoat495 asked: Say, what do you think of the reuse/mix of animation and music from Dave: Ascend to Seer: Ascend? Is it a simple callback or are there deeper parallels between the characters and story beats?

Well, they are both lead-ups to a climactic fight between 'siblings'. Other than that, though, I'm not really sure. Dave and Terezi have always got on very well, but I can't really see any direct parallels in their personal arcs.

@manorinthewoods asked: Mindfang's classism is ridiculous. This woman straight up said 'one of such middling 8lood' about someone literally one step below her on the ladder. If she were Tavros, she would be oppressing Aradia so hard. ~LOSS (29/8/24)

In Terezi's own words, she's 'a little too teal' to be considered a true highblood. I think there's a hard line of separation here, where anyone below Vriska's caste is considered a midblood at best.

In other words: to be a blueblood, you really need to be a blue-blood.

@manorinthewoods asked: Nepeta, whose handle is arsenicCatnip, uses arsenic's atomic number as a significant element of her quirk. This implies that arsenic has the same atomic number in Alternia as on Earth, which in turn means that, at the very least, the two universes likely share a periodic table. Odd, given how one has widespread psychic abilities and the other doesn't. ~LOSS (29/8/24)

I think it makes sense that Earth inherited some of its scientific concepts from Alternia. It wouldn't be the first thing we inherited!

@heliotropopause asked: TG: maybe if you kill her at least we can finally stop obsessing over her Hah! homestuck's been over for over for almost eight years now, and people are still doing vriscourse to this day. There is no escape, i'm afraid.

'Vriscourse' is kind of killing me. I'm kind of disappointed that this is my first time hearing the term, because I'd probably have been using it this whole time.

@probablyapineapple asked: im not completely caught up on reading this liveblog yet (currently up to s67) but i think youre on track to understanding these characters better than literally anyone

Well, thank you! I have, admittedly, posted some rather hot takes in the past, though. If I recall correctly, my Act 5 shipping chart was my most controversial post to date.

@bladekindeyewear asked: Back during these times in the comic, there were broad theoryposting camps advocating for both narrower and broader interpretations of Aspect domains/powers. I know you're avoiding as much outside influence as you can, but I'm wondering if maybe after the end of this Act, you could accept some community Theorydiving from around this time that could unlock more tools for you to understand hidden evidence for Aspect Stuff you might have missed? […]

I'm definitely considering something like that. Specifically, I'd love to take a look at some of the comic's early theories - ones that had already been disproven by this point in the comic. That'll allow me to get into the headspace of Homestuck's earliest theorists, without influencing my own as-yet-unproved theories.

@manorinthewoods asked: Perhaps an older Legislacerator's job is less actually trying to pursue justice, and more going through cargo cult-esque rhythms of justice, taking its trappings and trying to bring it about while having no understanding of what they're actually doing and what the meaning of their actions is. Maybe, like the Subjugglators, they're an entire social class/blood color based around a single cult? ~LOSS (28/8/24)

I think Dave was pretty on the mark when he described early legislacerators as bounty hunters. Maybe they assumed something marginally closer to an attorney's role in Alternia's modern age - but in Redglare's era, the ideal legislacerator was a violent thrill-seeker, more concerned with bloody combat than courtroom paperwork.

@violetsquare111 asked: I do wonder how big, exactly, is the multiverse in Homestuck. I guess that's a bit of a weird question if there are "infinite universes"… but infinite potential doesn't mean infinite already-existing universes, does it? For some reason I always thought of the amount of Sburb sessions/universes being fairly small, in the grand scheme of things. Less than a million, maybe. I really don't know where I got that from, and there's probably some throwaway line in the comic contradicting it, but if applicable then it's another possible explanation for how Perfect Jack would be one-of-a-kind.

It's not impossible. That would imply that the overwhelming majority of sessions are doomed to fail - but, honestly, they might be! After all, neither of the sessions we've seen so far have been unambiguously successful.

@iris-in-the-dark-world asked: i had a dream that you went from page 3703 to page 7053 in one day

You dreamt of Sally on Adderall.

@spiddermen asked: hihi i just caught up with your liveblog and im so happy to have a chance to reread hs along with you, the first time i read it was when i was like… twelve? so nine years ago? and pretty much all of it went over my head. but now im finally getting to appreciate this masterpiece and your observations are making a lot of stuff click for me as well. so its cool to finally get to understand how freaking good this story is and i cant wait to see you react to some of the crazy later stuff also i hope this doesnt trip the spoiler sensor but some of the answers to the questions you're asking are only answered in sequel material so i do really hope you'll read those, they're ignored by a lot of the fans but they're honestly really really good and i feel like you're the kind of person who would get the intended experience out of them. and psycholonials as well! everyone ignores it but it practically is homestuck (2) to me

Thank you! And yeah, we've talked a bit about this before. Cat and I had a discussion about the subject back in Act 3, and I'm well aware that this comic isn't going to answer all of my questions. Honestly, it would be pretty surprising if it did - I've been digging really deep into aspects of the comic that are clearly just meant to be background details.

As for whether I'll be dipping into Hussie's other projects, or Homestuck's non-canon material - I'm certainly going to check them out, but only time will tell whether they get the full liveblogging treatment. That said, if it addresses questions of mine that Homestuck itself doesn't elaborate on, consider my interests piqued.

@manorinthewoods submitted: I sorta skimmed Homestuck, and missed out on basically all of the Flashes going through, so I totally missed the fact that WQ wrote a romantic fanfic about herself, which is really funny. It does have a serious aspect, though - it implies something about her relationship with WK, no? I suspect they may be friendly with one another, but fate gives their relationship a bit of tragedy - as well as a bit of 'we are simultaneously both forced to be in a romantic relationship and also only being co-rulers'. Is WQ<3WK a thing? Doesn't have to be. I suspect it may be something like WQ<>WK […]

Plus, Carapacians are clones, so it's not like the Royals need to make any heirs. Really, they only need to be co-workers - but the idea that they might have a moirail-adjacent relationship is very cute.

Anonymous asked: Grimdark Rose: "Vengeance and rage are all I live for now, seeing my dead mother makes me feel nothing, I will-" John: Exists Rose: "OMG bestie hiiiiii" ~DJ

First Vriska, now Rose. It seems like John's the perfect calming influence for any out-of-control Light Player.

Anonymous asked: Not sure if you noticed, the tapestries about the kids' quests are all referencing the [S] pages with misattributed quotes associated with each kid (pages 82, 307, 444, and 2988). The quotes are, respectively, from Maxims by Francois de La Rochefoucauld, The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, Drop It Like It's Hot by Snoop Dogg, and possibly an original piece by Hussie ending with a line from Hamlet. I don't think any of them mean anything.

The quotes might not be Hussie originals, but they definitely seem to evoke the kids' respective Quests. Dave's quote is a bit of an exception, though...

Anonymous asked: "They wait for he who would drop it while it's hot whilst the pimp's in the crib." I mean, you laugh NOW, but knowing Andrew and this comic, can you honestly say this won't end up having an incredibly important and literal meaning? @walkerbehindyou asked: Is there a quest more suited for Dave than to show up at his denizen’s (certainly the pimp of LOHAC) palace in the past and drop straight fire?

...but perhaps that means it's foreshadowing something we haven't seen yet. If Dave ends up making a Choice, I wouldn't put it past him to rap an answer to his Denizen.

@iris-in-the-dark-world asked: the soundtrack of the grimdark rose segment really gets to me. i'd highly recommend the first few songs of that album

Black Rose/Green Sun was a great song. It evoked a very different feeling than anything we've heard before, and really highlighted how alien Rose has become, now that she's been fully submerged in darkness.

@manorinthewoods asked: Ooh, here's an idea - when you do the Sahlee-and-Sally Let's Play, set it in an alternate Sburb that's based on all of your incorrect theories. Every Land has a God Tier Moon orbiting it, for instance. Would be really cool - your theoretical Sburb has a lot of super fun stuff in it. ~LOSS (12/8/24)

Oh, I like that idea. It means I can finally bring back the anti-Skaia, which is probably my favourite since-disproven theory.

Anonymous asked: I never realised that the pillow that Rose uses then is the one from her mum - well spotted :,(

A mother will do whatever is best for her children.

And a daughter will remember what was best about her mother.

Anonymous asked: So. Do you think that a Horrorterror-Boosted Rose has any chance against a First Guardian Prototyped Jack Noir? We've seen that if left alone Jack can destroy Entire Worlds and his teleporting is Nigh Instant, plus who knows how far he can go in a single teleport! […]

Dark Rose is arguably a God-Tier level threat, but we've just seen Jack one-shot a God Tier. I don't think she has a hope - there's only so many bullet-time stabbings she can take!

Anonymous asked: its really interesting to see you say that rose saying she felt mom was a sister and a mother at once made u feel like there must have been camraderie. for me, it reinforced the idea that moms parenting forced rose to act like a peer to mom when it came to her alcoholism? in the sense that moms alcoholism took her out of commission, and made it so that rose had to take care of herself in a lot of ways that a parent would, putting them on similar levels. So its interesting to see a different interpretation!

It's not impossible. To me, Rose's monologue reads as if she's trying to express her admiration of her mother. This is the first time she's admitted to having positive feelings for her guardian, and I think she's regretting that she never voiced these feelings to the woman herself, before it was too late.

That's just one reading of her words, though. I think her monologue here is meant to be ambiguous, just like the Lalonde mother-daughter relationship always was.

@manorinthewoods asked: Ooh, you're thinking of a Carapacian player, huh? That would be interesting - imagine if they go in with, like, complete knowledge of how Sburb works, so they prototype something super strong in order to buff the Ring that they then steal and equip. ~LOSS (12/8/24)

That would be interesting. Carapacians are the only species where the game can't fully compensate for the power of your race by buffing Underlings, since buffing the Underlings would also buff the Ring I'm abusing!

@skelekingfeddy asked: re: troll romance: i generally lean towards xenopsychology, mixed in with a secret 4th thing (humans can also feel troll romance), with a little dose of propaganda, and also an undercurrent of parody (because Hussie. everything has an undercurrent of parody (e.g. pretty much all the trolls are based on internet stereotypes). i COMPLETELY disagree with the notion that the quadrants are made up unhealthy bullshit. i think theres a genuine evolutionary biological origin for the quadrants if matespritship is all about Companionship, then kismesissitude is all about Competition, Rivalry, a drive to push yourself and make yourself better. both are generally healthy and beneficial in their own ways. the evolutionary basis for moirallegiance and auspisticism is the need for pacification, a better half, to prop up matespritships and kismesissitudes and keep them from being interfered with (as described in-comic). each quadrant is the result of a genuine primal, biological urge

I don't necessarily think the quadrants are fabricated, but I do think that the version of them that exists on Alternia are unhealthy more often than not, particularly when it comes to black romance. Monogamous auspisticism requires an overwhelming amount of emotional labor, all the kismesissitudes we've seen have been toxic at best, and there has to be a better way to do this.

Anonymous asked: My brother's been going through your liveblog recently and it's been fun getting to re-experience it through him, especially being reminded of all the theories you have that are shockingly accurate in very inaccurate ways. The two that come to mind are your theory that Jade was engineered in a lab (which, she kinda was, but that's not unique to her) and that John's version of Sburb is bugged (the meteors, it turns out, were a part of the game as it's meant to be played, but this whole 'tumour' thing sure isn't). Also, while I'm here, going to recommend checking out Temporal Shenanigans by Rachel Rose Mitchell, which is a gorgeous fansong about Aradia that shouldn't have any spoilsies at this point. I would also rec PhemieC's music with the caveat that many of their songs are spoilery - while most of the troll-specific ones should be alright, I'd definitely say to get someone else to go through them first to be certain. Hope you're doing well!! And I look forward to seeing more of your liveblog if and when you return to it! -Megido

Oh yeah, I was talking about how Jade was made in a lab! I'd totally forgotten about that theory.

You know, her Dreambot is actually interesting in retrospect. The bed that controls it looks suspiciously like a Quest Bed, which makes me wonder just how much Grandpa knew about Sburb's lore, and what exactly he was trying to do here.

Anonymous asked: I find it a bit funny (in good way) how aspects of your troll and human sona are kinda opposites, like life and death type of thing, sweet

Really, it's mostly just me hedging on my own Aspect. Plus, having two 'sonas lets me explore twice as much Sburb lore, allowing me to come up with two weapons, Lands, Title powers, and the like.

Within the hypothetical context of the fic, I've been thinking a lot about why there'd be two Sallys. Like, was one 'sona partially cloned from the other? If so, who was the original? Technically, the Alternian version would have existed 'first', but the existence of time travel ensures that that doesn't mean much.

@manorinthewoods asked: Rather appropriate that Rose's weapon is her Thorns. ~LOSS (10/8/24)

Ayyy!

@ipunchvampires asked: "You should understand [Rose has] been corrupted by various entities with some rather questionable motives," says Entity with Rather Questionable Motives corrupting her. Kind of the perfect Doc Scratch line, honestly.

Doc Scratch is an awful person, but he's still a funny fuck.

@heliotropopause asked: wait. is that *Guybrush Threepwood* in the boat there??? @elkian asked: At the risk of being the 88th person to say something, the troll in the dinghy is a Guybrush Threepwood cameo (using the more cartoony style from Curse Of Monkey Island etc.). Man's truly unfortunate, or maybe he's lucky for not being a focal character? XD Anonymous asked: that 'one random motherfucker on a little dinghy' is in fact, guybrush threepwood from the monkey island series, thrown in as an easter egg by one of the artists who made assets for the flash @sanctferum asked: the troll on the dinghy is Troll Gybrush Threepwood. the guest artist for that scene confirmed this on the now-defunct MSPA forums IIRC

Ahahaha. Mystery solved, I guess!

I've been wanting to play Monkey Island for some time - and now I need to, so that I can understand the true backstory of of GY'BRSH TRPWUD.

Anonymous asked: I love this section, because I think it really shows something about Dave (and Rose). Because Dave just says whatever pops into his head, when he's getting command prompts, he just repeats them uncritically. (That also supports that when he said he didn't love his Bro, it was his honest reaction) @ben-guy asked: David "Zero Filter" Strider was absolutely not ready to have thoughts beamed directly into his head by an exile lmao @krixwell asked: It's so funny to me how when thoughts are incepted into Dave's subconscious mind, they just come falling right back out his mouth at the first opportunity. Filter, what filter? Those sunglasses don't hide shit.

Reminds me of his stress-rambles from early on in the comic. The reason he wears those shades is, I think, because he is a naturally expressive person - he just doesn't want to be.

[transraccoon]

On transandrophobia and the concept of co-substantiality

I refrained from talking on this topic as it's not a debate in my french leftist circles but seeing how it's prevalent here on tumblr, I think it's a good opportunity to talk about some concepts.

First of all, on a linguistic note, people people create words to suit their needs. The etymology doesn't matter : if transandrophobia is created to description "the specific oppression that trans men suffer", it does not imply that mysandry exists. It's an opression specific to an identity.

This bring me to a critique of some interpretation of intersectionalty. That it would only be intersection of oppressions. As you can't be oppress as a man, there is no intersection between being a man and being trans (so no need to use a different word than general transphobia).

This interpretation is honestly baffling. I'll take an example that I think everybody will agree on : Black men are more often arrested by police (or killed, or put in prison...) than white people because of the racial integral state. But also more than black women, why is that, how can we explain that this police brutality is more harsh on black men ? The same reason as the stereotypes saying that black men are more violent, criminal... This is a specific oppression for black men (who may choose to create a word to describe it).

This is not to say that black men are more opressed than black women. There are differences on the kind of racism that they suffer. Intersectionality is not the addition of oppression, it is used to describe specific interactions of class, race and gender and the social relations associated with them. (even if in general men oppress women, everything depend on the social relations)

(If you'd like to delve deeper into the subject, I suggest you read up theories on subaltern masculinities.)

There are still a lot of critics of intersectionality to do. As a materialist, I prefer the notion of co-substantiality of the social relations (CSSR) (coined by Danièle Kergoat, french sociologist).

A social relation is a antagonistic relation between two social groups around an issue. it's a relation of material and ideal production.

Social relations are co-substantial : they form a knot that cannot be cut at the level of social practices (except from an analytical sociology perspective) and they are co-extensif : when deployed, the social relations of class, gender and race reproduce and co-produce with each other.

CSSR doesn't naturalized the categories for example : "workers and woman" are part of gender and class relations. Sometimes in the struggle, they can form a collectif subject, original in its practices, but a subject always in process and not reductible to that category.

This is the main issue with intersectionality "mapping the margins" this means fixing the categories, naturalizing them. This concept struggles to reflect a shifting and historical relation of domination.

Multiplicity of categories hide the social relations. But we cannot separate social categories and social relations where they were made. Working with those categories is risking to leave blind spot. Spots that can be the strongest aspects of domination, just as they can be bearers of resistance.

Co-substantiality is the complex dynamic interweaving of all social relations; each leaving its mark on the others, modulating each other, building each other up in a reciprocal way; the fact that they form a system does not exclude contradictions between them.

Refusing to reason in terms of fixed entities allows us to put the political subject (and not just the victims of domination) back at the center of analysis, taking into account all its ambivalent and often ambiguous practices.

[speckled-jim]

Let’s talk about how Basquiat’s Slave Auction relates to the themes of remembrance & trauma in IWTV.

All the artwork we see displayed in Dubai is evocative of painful memories. It’s present in every single room we've seen, so much so that I'm surprised it took Louis this long to summon Daniel back for a redo of the ’73 interview.

The Basquiat piece is first seen in 1x3, an episode that starts with Louis telling Lestat about Jackson Square’s ugly history as the site of slave executions, and ends with a race riot caused by Louis’ actions. It also marks the beginning of Louis’ struggle with self-definition: he cannot divorce himself from humanity as easily as Lestat. He cannot divorce himself from the camaraderie, kinship, and mutual support/responsibility so integral to minority communities. Yet, as a vampire, he is now inherently separate from such aspects. By the time we meet Louis in Dubai, he lives in isolation, for all intents and purposes, his contact with humanity limited mainly to the penthouse staff. The art is evidence that he still craves a connection to his roots; however, it's no longer a positive connection centered on belonging, but a reminder that the gap has grown even wider.

Our next encounter with this piece is in 1x4, when Daniel finds "Rashid" praying in the same room.

The framing choice is quite interesting: the painting doesn’t dominate the shot, but its presence is still prominent. It’s physically behind Rashid/Armand, but more to the side of him than his back, and although there’s light streaming in through the windows, Armand’s just on the outskirts, sharing the shadows with the painting. It’s a rather startling image, considering how closely the piece depicts Armand’s past, not just in terms of the events he can remember but the jumbled manner in which they exist in his head: broken fragments, rather than coherent memories he can recount.

Thus, it connects to the previous episode’s introduction of the painting, which appears in the background just as Daniel casts doubt on the accuracy of Louis’ own memories.

On the surface, these appear to be lucid and orderly enough that Louis can form an unbroken narrative account of his life, but are they? When Daniel challenges Louis on the stark differences between the story he told in San Francisco and the story he is now telling in Dubai, Louis quotes Daniel’s own words at him, calling the second interview an “odyssey of recollection.” This implies some recognition on Louis’ part that his memory’s imperfect, even when it’s not “an admitted performance.”

Slave Auction likewise contains a chaotic profusion of themes: the lasting scars of slavery, racism, and failed assimilation, overlaid with images of black men as entertainers and athletes, a superficial success applied like a band-aid over a gaping wound. Is that not the very core of Louis de Pointe du Lac? Fathomless, unaddressed anguish buried under a placid façade of wealth? A lifelong attempt to gloss over his innate pain as a man grieving the loss of his family, his community, his connection to humanity?

Not for nothing the arc words of these two seasons have been “memory is a monster.” Many horror enthusiasts say that one of the scariest things you can do is never show the monster in full, instead letting the audience craft its image from their own fears. Louis has spent decades living with just such a monster always at his back, too terrified to turn around and face it for fear of what he’d see there.

And then, in the final scenes of s2, he finally finds that courage, only to realise that the monster, all along, was just love.

[sepublic]

I'm pretty disappointed that the other stages of the Metroid lifecycle aren't as well known and abundant as the larval form; Everybody thinks of that when they think of a Metroid, but most people don't even know about the Queen and all of the other stages leading up to that! And it's a shame because they're such cool designs and really sell the Metroid as an intergalactic threat to me.

And it's weird, because I'm not sure why they never caught on? We had the first Metroid game on the NES, which only had the larval stage. But then the second, Return of Samus, introduces the full lifecycle. But then in Super Metroid, there aren't the other Metroid stages, for some reason; It's like the developers just kinda ignored that?

I guess it's because with the Infant, they still wanted it to be recognizable when you reunite with it later in the game. But we see other Metroids cloned from it in that game, so why not have those evolve, and use them as a way to bring the Alpha-onwards stages (except the Queen) into the SNES' graphics?

Next we have Fusion, which actually does show the other Metroid stages... But most of them are just static and in the background, contained in vats. But we do get an Omega Metroid as the final boss, plus Adam mentioning the Federation's success in creating Metroids that can speedrun its lifecycle.

Conversely, we have Metroid Prime, which doesn't have any of the other Metroid stages, but does have Phazon mutations in the Hunter Metroid, and then of course the titular Metroid Prime. Next came Echoes, which only had regular Metroids, and then Ing-possessed Dark Metroids. Finally, we have Corruption, which leans into a Phazon lifecycle for the Metroids, but nothing of the natural one from SR388. This would not be brought back until, of all things, Other M giving us the Queen Metroid.

And from a Super Smash Bros. perspective, since that's where a lot of people are first exposed to Metroid (myself included), we only see the larvae represented... I think the other stages, as well as the Phazon mutations, are also represented in trophies, stickers, and spirits. But you can see how people gloss over that in favor of the more obvious assist trophies.

This could be its own separate question, why Sakurai doesn't give the other Metroid stages more of a role, but the man is so swamped with Smash in general that I won't blame him. From another standpoint, it seems the Metroid lifecycle is also so unheard of because for a long while, it was mainly shown off in Return of Samus, a black-and-white game with some clunky controls, which could've dissuaded more casual fans compared to the more iconic, colorful, NES Metroid and Super Metroid.

Recently, we have gotten Samus Returns, which did help to reintroduce the Metroid lifecycle back into the limelight. Dread didn't do much to help, but tbf no actual Metroids show up in the game, just in the intro; Where we do see the other stages! But otherwise the only Metroid is Samus herself.

What also intrigues me is that when drafting ideas for Prime's sequel, there WAS art for an Omega Metroid... But that never followed through into Echoes, obviously. But why not? Since the Prime series takes place before Metroid II, did Retro Studies not want to 'spoil the twist' from Samus' perspective of seeing the full lifecycle on SR388? In addition to wanting to show off their own Phazon mutations; Metroid Prime Essence feels as if some developer was disappointed the Metroid lifecycle didn't focus on the deep sea jellyfish aspect of the creature when it evolve, and so their 'alternate' lifecycle was a response to that.

Did Super's developers decide there wasn't enough room to fit in the other Metroid lifecycles? Fusion does imply a rule about Metroids needing SR388's environment to undergo metamorphosis, which does retroactively explain why the stages weren't present in the first game. But tbf, the NES manual seems to imply that the Space Pirates just started breeding Metroids by the time you arrive, so there wasn't enough time for them to grow.

I'm just wondering what happened; If it really is as simple as how Sakurai chose to represent the creatures in Smash, which may have been influenced by NES Metroid and Super being the more popular of the series, with Return of Samus feeling like a black sheep until we got Other M. It feels like the galaxy-ending threat of the Metroids would've been emphasized more if these rapidly-reproducing jellyfish could then each grow into a giant vampiric dinosaur.

[hoverboards-and-dragons]

In your verse, is Heaven aware that it is Lilith who is the main power in Hell, or do they just assume it is Lucifer? It seems from your fics that the Hellborn and Sins are aware that Lilith is the top of the hierarchy with Lucifer as second, but I assume the sinners in Pride aren’t due to the inherent sexism on Earth.

Also, are the exterminations a thing in your verse? If so, how did they come about?

Yes and No, most of hell actually overestimates how much control Lilith has due to deliberate image manipulation on the couple's part.

Sinners do have a sexism aspect to the way they view Lilith but it's more in the 'this man is subservient to a woman, he must whipped!' instead of her maybe actually being more capable at handling the situation, also he's the devil humans are just More Aware of him than Lilith it'd be weird to learn Lucifer's actually backseating hell

Heaven understands that Lilith is more motivated, confrontational and intoned with hell, they are almost completely unthreatened by her compared to Lucifer

Ideologically and physically, there is large difference between some human going rouge and a literal heir of God, they're really only worried about her ability to draw people in

From a power standpoint Lucifer still outranks Lilith, from a on paper professional standpoint they're equals

Lilith may be Hell's mind but Lucifer is its beating heart, (in kind of literal way spoilers-)

They are really a package and treated as such, do not separate them.

Yes exterminations will eventually begin(the first sinner haven't even landed in hell yet)

I'm not entirely sure on specifics, I'm a fan of heaven taken issue with hell lowkey becoming a pretty functional society through Lilith as implied by the intro and wanting to topple them back into chaos

because if hell started acting like a sovereign state they might do something unreasonable like start planning a coordinated attack on their neighbour who's hoarding 99% of the resources

I imagine its an issue the elders/archangels were discussing for a while with Sera eventually hitting her breaking point with all the red tape and bureaucracy while threat mounted and taking it on herself to 'solve' the issue by any means necessary

This is why Adam's in charge, because requesting a Power or any other higher ranked angel capable of leading from Micheal would have been sus as hell

This is where the divorce arc starts if I do end up doing one

[santoschristos]

The Flower of Life, Sacred Sex --Unknown artist

The flower of life appears as female energy, but it actually holds both male and female energy. The points are made up of male energy, while the curves are female energy.

Sacred Geometry: The Meaning Behind The Flower Of Life:

Throughout history, both in the ancient and modern world, certain repetitive geometrical patterns have been found in Nature.

Scientific studies done by research scholars have declared their frequent occurrences in the environment. Prodigious philosophers like Euclid, Pythagoras and Plato among many others have concluded that they form the basis of the reality of our existence; their patterns are inherent to the previous design of human life itself.

Fractals have forever held an important place in certain communities and places of worship and religion which has further sparked questions about the significance of their patterns.

Did the inhabitants of the ancient civilizations have any different knowledge about fractals and their omnipotence? Why the modern world lost its relevance?

Do these patterns have magnified symbolic significance other than simple artistic purposes? Do these fractals form the basis of all things accessible to their domains?

These fractals have a separate harmony of their own. They are ingrained into our consciousness or subconscious because they are a regular occurrence in the human design. They resonate congruously with our all-knowing awareness, because they speak the universal language of mathematics. They imply wholeness, equilibrium, equitable proportions.

Simply staring at these geometric patterns can alter our range, level or frequency of our potentials invoking healing, relaxation and colossal change within you. These fractal representations can calm our mind; transporting us to trance meditative state which lies beyond waking consciousness.

This flower of life is sacred, connected essentially to every aspect of our physicality. When a repetition of uniformly balanced overlapping fractals is placed within six fold symmetry, it creates consistency. It is found in ancient temples of worship and even in modern churches. The commonest version is the two dimensional print vision.

When overlapped with three dimensional Platonic solid figures, it creates a more varied representation of geometry. This topic is the most trending and famous area of discussion among today’s metaphysical and spiritual communities

By in Consciousness Spirit Science

[hareofhrair]

seeing your no dignity classpect system's made me interested in classpecting again. is there a limit to how many classes and aspects there are? aside from that, what do you think a "piece of cake" would be like?

Hey, that's awesome to hear!

Nah, a limit would go against the nature of the thing. It's all about subjective interpretation, and there's no limit to how language can be interpreted. It'd be amazing if one day I got to see some no dignity classpects based on non-english phrases. I think that's where shit would start to get truly wild.

A Piece of Cake is a great title to start with, can't believe I didn't think of that one. So, as a whole it implies ease, success, careless bravado. Separately, a piece is a part of a whole, but also a weapon or an accessory. Tends to imply either something non essential or something useless on its own. Cake has a host of associations in homestuck proper, but even putting those aside, it implies wealth, celebration, generosity. A non essential part of a wealthy celebration which inspires feelings of careless bravado...

Man can not live on bread alone, so let him eat cake. A Piece of Cake is the picture of ease and grace, great at parties, with a sharp wit and a knack for never letting anyone see them sweat. They learned early to never show weakness, at any cost. They're great at making the impossible look trivial, weaponizing confidence in every direction to gas up their allies and lure their enemies into stupid mistakes. The game they play requires a keen strategic mind, but their skill at subterfuge means they're often erroneously dismissed as frivolous, which is exactly how they want it. They prefer to be underestimated. Marie Antoinette meets James Bond.

[castlebyersafterdark]

Or waking him up with a hand already on his cock, or mouth around him.

Ok this is something ive vaguely wondered about for a long time and never known how to broach cos im sure most people will say it's Just Fantasy. i see this somno idea presented in extreme ways and more casual, like this one you mentioned. im curious about it because my initial reaction on seeing this hc was - is this based on people's real experiences, or fantasies alone, or just hcs for the boys/fictional characters? or all? because issues of consent become a bit grey here. maybe im just thinking of women's experiences and how women's discomfort can be minimized in pop culture. perhaps its different in your experience, as a gay man or in gay culture.

i kind of get icky when i see people throwing the need for constant blatant verbal consent around because post-weinstein we've lost a lot of the sexiness and complicity of non-verbal communication and consent in sex. but my brain always thinks of those cases where the guy doesnt think its even possible to rape a girl if theyre married or in a relationship. so anything goes, and yes and no blur. ofc mike and will are in a loving relationship, but what happens if one of them wakes up and feels a bit weird about it, totally not in the mood or just had a totally different sleep experience and is thrown for a loop because the other has a mouth around them? would they always be able to recover and just say no and separate (physically) and be fine? im not sure.

idk its such a tricky one. maybe with byler theyve had conversations before where they're like its always ok to wake me up with a bj lol

This is a good one and I wondered if the question would ever come up because I know it's a controversial sex act / kink! Definitely onto something with some of it being in the realm of fantasy - but it is realistic for a lot of people as well. I'll offer my own perspective under the cut at the end like I usually do when I get too embarrassingly tmi/personal haha. But it's hard to explain this particular one without a real life perspective.

The consent aspect is a big part and one that's incredibly important in real life - but I'll personally admit when it comes to fanfic or just a simple HC post, there are certain aspects of fictional sex lives I just choose to gloss over and/or leave out. Because it is a bit of a fantasy world and a lot of assumptions are made. (Do yall know how many asks I get requesting details and preferences on the intricacies of anal sex prep? Yall. Suspension of disbelief. There's so many advice and sexual health articles out there to read up on if you're so curious, it's... implied. No offense to the curious mind, I appreciate the genuine approach, but I ain't including all that in a fic hahaha. ANYWAY)

i kind of get icky when i see people throwing the need for constant blatant verbal consent around because post-weinstein we've lost a lot of the sexiness and complicity of non-verbal communication and consent in sex.

I know exactly what you mean. And I don't know what goes on in most people's real sex lives, but in fanfic world, there can sometimes be a sort of "over-correction" when it comes to the way dialogue and consent is written. You just... gotta make it sound natural. So much reads like a sex ed pamphlet. There's a way to add consent and communication into the flow rather than a pause to deliver a PSA. Easier said that done, I know. It's important, but we don't have to treat what is fantasy and playing around with creativity as a manual for education every time. Real life... isn't A,B,C dialogue choices. Hard to explain, you know??? This isn't covering all the extreme kink explorations and all - which I don't really write so I'm not diving into that. There's an entirely different world out there regarding bdsm but it's not my world so I have little to offer in terms of conversation. As well as the cnc kink which is a whole other ballpark. Valid, but not the topic I'm including with this. This is more of a "light" version.

Gosh. Ok. Here is personal insight which kind of informs how I approach the topic of something like consent and especially a somno style sex act in realistic practice:

It definitely is very personality based - communication, trust, sex drive, what both partners are into. Goes along with the idea of "natural flow of conversation and sex" and really knowing your partner. So. We both know we're very comfortable with each other's bodies and in a well established relationship - we know each other's moods. This isn't something that's happening every day! Or even every week! An occasional indulgence. It's intimate, sharing a bed with someone long term. If you or your partner goes to bed exhausted or a bit upset or off-kilter from the day, feeling sick or just in an odd mood - obviously life just goes about normally. There are times though, when let's say... the night ended after a lot of sex, just a really intimate time and drifting off to sleep from a really passionate session and you know. Continuing in the next morning isn't hmm. Out of the ordinary. The vibes linger from falling asleep into waking again. It's hard to describe - sometimes blatantly spoken in the heat of passion when it's so good and you're still feeling greedy even before it's over ("I'd love to wake up to you fucking me") or something crazy. Or, you just know you'd both go another round before bed if you weren't so tired, so you pass out but whoever wakes up first may just get a head start and continue.

It's... a lot of just knowing your partner. Feeling comfortable to know if you wake up and oh, that's happening and you're not into it? You can just say "babe, I kinda want to just go back to sleep" and you know they'll ease off and let you be. Or, you wake up to a nice surprise and it's a shock at first, but you then relax and let it happen, or vice versa doing something to them. More often it's one of those instances more where you both wake up, very in the stirring strings of half awake, half asleep, and one partner is a little more awake and has the idea. And the half asleep one is like, oh? Sure! I'm just gonna drift though, you have fun. Go to town. It can be like that, too. This all feels very normal and within the flow of an established couple with a pretty active sex life. Just in my opinion.

I've read a lot of sex forums and kink forums because I'm curious about a lot of things! And sex is interesting to me beyond just titillation (using that one for another anon who adores the word haha), sometimes it's just fascinating research. I've read a lot of instances specifically with women, some are actually really into the practice and find it really hot to wake up to their partner either going down on them or starting to fuck them, when they're still sleeping. After conversations about it - there's the consent talk. Now, proceed. They'll wear a specific hair tie or bracelet when they go to sleep, signalling that they're looking for this sex act to happen if so desired. That's the communication, that's the greenlight. No bracelet - no touchy. I don't really practice anything like that because it's not like this is something we do often. It's an offhand comment, it's reading the vibe, it's the half asleep fumblings on a morning lie-in when one partner wakes up with the urge. So, all in all - there are different forms of communications rather than just sitting down the edge of the bed and turning to each other and blatantly spelling out every detail and shaking hands at the end before engaging with the session.

I know there are relationships that are very how do I say it - lifestyle kinksters? Where the master/sub (I don't like the other S word to be honest) have an agreement for whatever period of time is decided upon - where there's a "free use" understanding. They've consented to the initiation of sex whenever. Often including while asleep or half-asleep. But that's also an agreed upon form of consent where it's not long form discussed previous to each encounter. That's lifestyle kink, though. Not most people. Realistically, it's more... trust and understanding of who you're sharing your bed with. Are they into it? Can you tell when they won't be? There's no real rule book.

So when it comes it fiction - I think the idea is kind of implied it's a bit like what I've personally described? Even if not really detailed in the written prose. Not that consent isn't interesting or important - but at least my writing and the writing I like to read - I'm not looking for hyper-realism or education. And there's also great worth in reading/writing some stuff that's more controversial or not perfected romance - I just don't really dive into that myself. I'm very sappy romance and idealistic, to be honest. Just what I'm good at and prefer. ☺️😘

[fourswords]

Just as the people had begun to lose hope, a lone young boy traveling with little but a sword at his side appeared. When this boy heard what was happening, he said only, "I will defeat this sorcerer." He boldly entered Vaati's palace, mystically trapped the evil sorcerer in the blade of his sword, and returned the young girls to their villages. The boy then went deep into the forest and disappeared. The villagers asked the girls how a boy so young could have saved them all and defeated the sorcerer when no one else could. The young girls told a story of how with just a wave of his sword, the boy's body shattered into four pieces, each of which then formed a complete copy of the boy. These four young boys then worked to defeat the sorcerer.

some thoughts about the hero of the four sword:

definitely has a lot of similarities with the link from the og legend of zelda. young boy appears, kills the bad guy, and instantly disappears afterwards (although og link did eventually return as shown by zelda 2: aol. this kid just completely vanished off the face of the earth).

the four sword was with him when he stumbled upon this scene. this tracks because the four sword was never actually placed in any sort of pedestal at the end of the minish cap—the hero of the minish still had it! which means that the sword had to have been passed down to the hero of the four sword, which would also explain his apparent mastery of it.

like, he was whole, and he just waved his sword and split into four, and then sealed vaati away and reformed himself before disappearing forever. he not only knew how to control every aspect of the transformation but he knew how the sealing capabilities worked as well!

(just to bring the fsa manga into this, i do think it's very funny how much this contrasts with the hero of light in terms of. um. Everything. red&blue&green&vio arguing for the millionth time in a week while the hero(es) of the four sword stormed vaati's palace and beat his ass in three hours. speedrunning king. really beginning to think that the hero of light is the cringe idiot of the four sword hero lineage or whatever you want to call it.)

off the top of my head, he joins the hero of men in being one of the only two links without zeldas (in the games. if you want to count the mangas i GUESS the first link could count but hylia was very much there. so. two and a half...?)

given that the four sword had to have been passed down to him, i do wonder if part of his motivation to defeat vaati was the fact that Vaati Was Supposed To Be Fucking Dead. the hero of the minish VERY much killed him. so either vaati reincarnated a) NOT of his own doing (gives some credence to the "vaati was actually the first incarnation of demise" theory) or b) of his own doing (his whole thing is being a mage so i could also see it). interesting nonetheless. ANYWAY.

given just how much his age is stressed to be Young As Hell I think he had to have been around the same age as the hero of the minish. so like. the 8-10 range. this only makes the idea that the hero of light sucks bad at being a competent wielder of the four sword even funnier to me

he was apparently just living in the forest before it was even cool. take THAT hero of time/hero of hyrule.

OH I ALMOST FORGOT TO WRITE. his mastery of the four sword's ability to split the wielder into four separate people directly implies that its ability to do so was NOT a result of any magical interference by vaati as lots of people in the fandom think. the reasoning for the difference how it splits the wielder between the minish cap & four swords/four swords adventures is seemingly just a natural progression of its power coupled with mastery of said power. when you think about it, in the minish cap, the hero of the minish really doesn't wield the four sword as we know it all that long because he was assembling it throughout the game. the hero of the four sword's story literally clears up that question. vaati had literally nothing to do with the four sword's power shift.

[transmutationisms]

this is so stupid but like so do u know about total institutions as defined in Erving Goffman's Asylums? uh if yes. do you think that reality tv shows that basically separate the contestants into a house where they are constantly on film, being prodded by producers, in some cases don't even have access to phones, etc. like is that a total institution? are reality shows inherently manipulative? do you think people dying by suicide after appearing on shows like Love Island are related to this? is there any scholarship on reality tv?

sorry if u know none of this I thought to ask u bc my initial thought was "the bachelor house is a bit like a psych ward." which is an insane thing to think. but truly I think shows like Jersey Shore, Rock of Love, Married at First Sight, Ultimatum, etc. that ply contestants with alcohol while controlling every aspect of contestants life for weeks are like. like thats bad. and then people harshly judge them for their behavior! like a psychiatrist saying a patient is very ill bc they do badly in a high level of care.

i don't think it's stupid. i don't really read much on this but yes there is definitely scholarship on reality tv---these shows are media objects and cultural productions as much as any 'prestige' drama.

obviously a tv shoot differs from an institution proper in that it's a temporary arrangement. however, the level of control and surveillance participants are subject to is something you would rarely see outside the conditions of an institution, and there is certainly something heterotopic about many of these sets as a kind of 'local institution'.

i think some of the most interesting shows have made this part of their conscious onscreen presentation. plenty of people have written about 'big brother' as a conscious gamification of the experience of being subjected to neoliberal workplace surveillance, for example. then there's something like 'secret eaters', which iirc literally had a little security camera icon on its title card even? that one didn't restrict people's movement, but if anything it did imply that doing so would have been in their best interests---because it was the unrestricted, unsurveilled eating behaviours that were configured as the result of laziness / lack of knowledge / lack of willpower, and the cause of weight gain.

so, if 'big brother' demanded the affective performance of enjoyment from those in an institution-like setting, 'secret eaters' presented the panoptic surveillance state as a benevolent kind of medical overlord, and the wayward citizen as someone insufficiently disciplined and too free for their own good. you can see variations on this latter argument in, eg, 'supersize vs superskinny', or any of the programs about weight-loss 'camps', or, on the meaner and more american end, 'the biggest loser' and even many episodes of 'my 600lb life'.

this is obviously a little different from the question of whether the shoot itself is institutional, which is essentially a question about working conditions. i watched a lot of 'america's next top model' as a teen and i remember even then thinking it was a leetle fucked up how much control the producers seemed to have over the contestants. so like, again i would say pretty much all of these shows that isolate participants in some closed house or whatever are patterned off institutional models of control, restriction, and surveillance, even though obviously they're not permanent commitments and they also usually allow some contact with the outside (grocery shopping or photoshoots or what have you).

i do also think there's something to be said about reality as a genre that often finds success by capitalising as cheaply as possible on some common social anxiety or malaise. so, the neoliberal workplace of 'big brother' and the success of weight loss shows following declarations of an 'obesity epidemic' in the us and uk. but then there's also, say, a franchise like 'survivor', which flourished in the post-9/11 years and often operated in a particular ecological niche that married body demands (strength, thinness) to the obvious survivalist fears. there was kind of a double reassurance being sold there: if civilisation collapses, you, too can learn to sustain yourself just like these starving people on a tv shoot; but also, look at how these bodies are becoming more disciplined, such that they can successfully perform physical challenges that we market as having some resemblance to military training exercises...! i remember even 'antm' dabbled in that a bit: the phrase "model boot camp" got thrown around more than once, and in the first couple of seasons there was more of an emphasis on 'fitness' and even a couple of challenges that were basically just "wear camo and pretend to do an obstacle course" lmao.

i guess to return to your initial question... there are ways in which a reality shoot often mimics, temporarily, characteristics of an institution; and then there are also ways in which it presents institutionalisation, or aspects of it, onscreen. so, without flattening the distinction between being on a reality show and being institutionalised, there's a lot to unpack here about reality as a genre that frequently constructs itself around the functions of, and justifications for, the institution.

to oversimplify (and certainly there are exceptions and edge cases) i think you could say that where scripted tv tends to rely on the closed family home or the workplace as its sphere of narrative construction, reality is more likely to construct a kind of temporary fantasy setting where contestants can be subjected to the kind of surveillance and restrictions typically associated with an institution or at least a high-control group. and this is both because of producers' need to generate 'drama', and because the shows are often successful precisely by replicating and intensifying those elements of control and surveillance that are (perceived to be) on the rise even outside of the total institution.

[cipheramnesia]

Silent Madness (1984) is a fascinating entry in the ignominious halls of "horror that portrays psychopaths as violent killers" slasher genre.

It's not exempted from all the deserving criticism of "psycho killer" movies, but I haven't seen one that portrays the institutions surrounding the killer as so uniformly reprehensible and even partially responsible.

On the protagonist end is the upright, responsible psychiatrist trying to manage patient care, partnered with a journalist investigating institutional mismanagement at the asylum holding the aforementioned killer. However, the director and general staff of the asylum equally murderous. There is no line that separates their behavior from the central antagonist. If anything, they feel like worse people in how openly malicious they behave, purposefully trying to cover their mistakes and perfectly happy to try to kill anyone that might reveal them.

Additionally, we have an incompetent law enforcement officer, whose sole objective is to preserve his own position, rather than anything like try to protect people. It's revealed at the end of the movie that the antagonist was wrongfully arrested by the very same sheriff - it doesn't undo the deeply incorrect stereotyping of "psychopathic killer" but between his false initial arrest and implied terrible childhood, the overall implications are that institutions are the ones responsible, not the individual.

This is far from a progressive movie, however the specific timing of it (1984) being so close to when Ronald Reagan de-institutionalized all mental hospitals - when both the terrible abuse in such hospitals and the even worse homelessness resulting in Reagan's decision would have potentially been at the forefront of news. There's mixed feelings on this website about psychiatrists, but from personal experience I can say quite a few are very displeased at the state of institutional mental health, and hold a grudge to this day over Reagan's policies. My point here being that I'm fascinated to see a movie which, in a very simplistic and crude way, has managed to encapsulate my experience with mental health workers.

It's not an especially good movie, but several scenes with the killer, the asylum director, and the psychiatrist protagonists all in a three way fight where each one is trying to fight both of the others makes for a striking metaphorical interpretation of how mental health is handled. If you were to remove the "psycho killer" aspect from the movie (which honestly could have been done without much difficulty), it's an even more effective statement.

Truly fascinating for this to have come out in the early 80s, fumbling its way around something profound, not quite getting it, but coming close enough to be intriguing.