#swan princess 1981

[bryqe]

✧ swan lake, ¹⁹⁸¹

prod by toei company dir. kimio yabuki

ᵗʰⁱˢ ᵐᵒᵛⁱᵉ’ˢ ˢᵒ ˢᵖᵉᶜⁱᵃˡ ᵗᵒ ᵐᵉ

[residentialsinyomakai]

So

This guy from swan lake huh

[the-backwards-eel]

Odette and Odile from the 1981 Swan Lake!

[katlimeart]

Made in 2020 + 2022

If you’ve seen this anywhere else, I posted it back on my deviantArt when it was made.

Mario girls cosplaying as characters from fairy tale movies from Toei

1. Mermaid Princess

2 + 3. Princess Rosa (Puss in Boots 1969)

4 - 6. Thumbelina

7 + 8. Odette

9 + 10. Odile disguised as Odette

[thenamelessdoll]

Paused at the Right Moment, part 18

1. Thumbelina (1994) 2. The King And I (1999) 3. Cinderella III (2007) 4. The Fox and the Hound (1981) 5. Enchanted (2007) 6. Turning Red (2022) 7. Pocahontas II (1998) 8. Ferngully (1992) 9. The Swan Princess (1994) 10. Thumbelina (1994)

Part 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17

More Animaton Shitposts  +  Paused at the Right Moment Video

[quitealotofsodapop]

A neat idea for when Ganzhe and Spice decide to make their MK.

Their MK would be a female(bc there's one female version for half of the male characters). For name I was thinking of something like Xiao-Hong(little rainbow) or Cai Hong.

Add hilarity that when she meets Red Scamp when they're still both kids it's like Derek and Odette from Swan Princess(1981).

omg I love that

Ganzhe/Sugar and Spice come together and create a little rainbow. Likely a situation where they put some clay and pebbles together, or they literally wished upon a rainbow X3

I love the idea of her being a female MK since the different Red Sons have also been other genders before.

And ofc the Odette and Derek vibe Xiao/Cai Hong and Red Scamp would have is delightful to think about. Their parents just want them to get along, but both kids are so deep in their "Girl/Boys have cooties"-stage to even consider if they have a crush on the other.

[princesssarisa]

What are Odette and Odile like?

Well... I mean their hair (👩), their eyes (👀), their bodies (🚶‍♀️) and some colors of their skin

Since Swan Lake is a ballet, they're both very slim, with long, graceful legs and arms, like a typical ballerina. I also picture them with pale skin and either black eyes (like a swan's) or blue eyes.

As for their hair, I'm not quite sure. Every animated and illustrated version of the story that I've seen – the 1981 Swan Lake anime, The Swan Princess, Barbie of Swan Lake, and Trina Schart Hyman's illustrations for Margot Fonteyn's storybook adaptation – all depict Odette with long, flowing blonde hair. So a part of me does instinctively picture Odette as a blonde, because those adaptations introduced me to the story before I ever saw the ballet. But when I imagine a performance of the ballet itself, I find myself picturing her with black hair that contrasts strikingly with her white costume.

I think ballet productions do most often portray Odette (and by extension the disguised Odile) with dark hair, despite the tendency for non-ballet adaptations to make her blonde. This is probably because hair can't be long and flowing on the ballet stage, but has to be worn up, so blonde hair would be almost invisible under Odette's traditional white swan-feather hairpiece. Whereas dark hair stands out against it, even while up in a ballet bun.

I don't have any fixed image of Odile's true form when she's not disguised as Odette. In the ballet she traditionally just appears in her Odette-clone form, so every adaptation that does show her true form is different. Her design in Barbie of Swan Lake as just an ordinary black-haired, snide-looking human villainess is slightly boring to me. I prefer either the 1981 anime, where she's still eerily pretty but has pale gray skin, jaundiced eyes, pointy elven ears, and otherworldly blue hair, or Trina Schart Hyman's terrifying illustration, where she still has hair like Odette's, but a bony figure, vampire-like teeth, and big, monstrous red eyes.

[eemcintyre]

@eemcintyre's top 113 favorite movies in alphabetical order

An admittedly random number that includes objectively "well-made" films with artistic merit, objectively considered-to-be-entertaining movies, and possibly questionable ones that I'm sentimental for or just like for whatever mysterious reason (usually a hot guy but not always). This is just what I like and the premier way to get to know me.

(Updated 09/07/24)

A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), dir. Bill Melendez

A Few Good Men (1992), dir. Rob Reiner

A New Hope (1977), dir. George Lucas

Amelie (2001), dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet

American Made (2017), dir. Doug Liman

AMY (2015), dir. Asif Kapadia

Annie (1982), dir. John Huston

Argylle (2024), dir. Matthew Vaughn

Arthur Christmas (2011), dir. Sarah Smith

Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper (2004), dir. William Lau

Barbie of Swan Lake (2003), dir. Owen Hurley

Black Swan (2010), dir. Darren Aronofsky

The Blair Witch Project (1999), dir. Eduardo Sanchez & Daniel Myrick

The Bodyguard (1992), dir. Mick Jackson

Borat (2006), dir. Larry Charles

The Breakfast Club (1985), dir. John Hughes

Camille (1936), dir. George Cukor

Casablanca (1943), dir. Michael Curtiz

Chinatown (1974), dir. Roman Polanski

Cocktail (1988), dir. Roger Donaldson

The Conjuring (2013), dir. James Wan

The Conjuring 2 (2016), dir. James Wan

The Crow (1994), dir. Alex Proyas

Cruel Intentions (1999), dir. Roger Kumble

Die Hard (1988), dir. John McTiernan

Eddie and the Cruisers (1983), dir. Martin Davidson

Elf (2003), dir. Jon Favreau

Eloise at Christmastime (2003), dir. Kevin Lima

The Empire Strikes Back (1980), dir. Irvin Kershner

Enchanted (2007), dir. Kevin Lima

Face/Off (1997), dir. John Woo

Far and Away (1992), dir. Ron Howard

Footloose (1984), dir. Herbert Ross

Galaxy Quest (1999), dir. Dean Parisot

The Great Muppet Caper (1981), dir. Jim Henson

Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009), dir. Peter Chelsom

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), dir. Chris Columbus

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), dir. Mike Newell

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), dir. Alfonso Cuaron

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), dir. Chris Columbus

Heathers (1988), dir. Michael Lehmann

Hereditary (2018), dir. Ari Aster

High School Musical (2006), dir. Kenny Ortega

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), dir. Garth Jennings

Holes (2003), dir. Andrew Davis

The Holiday (2006), dir. Nancy Meyers

Hollow Point (1996), dir. Sidney J. Furie

Hotel Rwanda (2004), dir. Terry George

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), dir. Jim Gillespie

I, Tonya (2017), dir. Craig Gillespie

Ice Princess (2005), dir. Tim Fywell

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), dir. Steven Spielberg

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), dir. Steven Spielberg

In a Lonely Place (1950), dir. Nicholas Ray

Insidious (2010), dir. James Wan

Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013), dir. James Wan

Insidious: The Red Door (2023), dir. Patrick Wilson

Jackie (2016), dir. Pablo Larrain

Jerry Maguire (1996), dir. Cameron Crowe

JFK (1991), dir. Oliver Stone

The Karate Kid (1984), dir. John G. Avildsen

The Karate Kid Part II (1986), dir. John G. Avildsen

Knight and Day (2010), dir. James Mangold

Laggies (2014), dir. Lynn Shelton

The Last Samurai (2003), dir. Edward Zwick

Lawn Dogs (1997), dir. John Duigan

Lean on Me (1989), dir. John G. Avildsen

Leaving Las Vegas (1995), dir. Mike Figgis

Magnolia (1999), dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

Megamind (2010), dir. Tom McGrath

Minority Report (2002), dir. Steven Spielberg

Mission: Impossible (1996), dir. Brian De Palma

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), dir. Christopher McQuarrie

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015), dir. Christopher McQuarrie

Mission: Impossible III (2006), dir. J.J. Abrams

Mr. Right (2015), dir. Paco Cabezas

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), dir. Jeremiah S. Chechik

National Treasure (2004), dir. Jon Turteltaub

Natural Born Killers (1994), dir. Oliver Stone

Oklahoma! (1955), dir. Fred Zinnemann

The Outsiders (1983), dir. Francis Ford Coppola

The Pacifier (2005), dir. Adam Shankman

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), dir. John Hughes

The Preacher's Wife (1996), dir. Penny Marshall

Pretty in Pink (1986), dir. John Hughes

Pride and Prejudice (2005), dir. Joe Wright

The Princess Diaries (2001), dir. Garry Marshall

Raising Arizona (1987), dir. Joel & Ethan Coen

Return of the Jedi (1983), dir. Richard Marquand

Roman Holiday (1953), dir. William Wyler

Sabrina (1954), dir. Billy Wilder

Scream (1996), dir. Wes Craven

Se7en (1995), dir. David Fincher

Sense and Sensibility (1995), dir. Ang Lee

The Shining (1980), dir. Stanley Kubrick

The Silence of the Lambs (1991), dir. Jonathan Demme

The Sound of Music (1965), dir. Robert Wise

Stretch (2014), dir. Joe Carnahan

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), dir. Anthony Minghella

Titanic (1997), dir. James Cameron

Tropic Thunder (2008), dir. Ben Stiller

The Trouble with Angels (1966), dir. Ida Lupino

Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990), dir. Anthony Minghella

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), dir. David Lynch

Ulterior Motives (1992), dir. James Becket

Valkyrie (2008), dir. Bryan Singer

Vanilla Sky (2001), dir. Cameron Crowe

Vertigo (1958), dir. Alfred Hitchcock

The Way, Way Back (2013), dir. Jim Rash & Nat Faxon

West Side Story (1961), dir. Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins

White Christmas (1954), dir. Michael Curtiz

Zodiac (2007), dir. David Fincher

(500) Days of Summer (2009), dir. Marc Webb

[into-the-sky-under-the-sea]

𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘴 & 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘴

💠 𝑨𝒄𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒂-𝒊𝒔𝒉

-inspired by Saltburn (2023) and the art it references (or reminded me of) 🏰🍾 ▪ Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh [a fav book of mine] ▪ Brideshead Revisited (1981) miniseries ▪ The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith ▪ and I have to mention Purple Noon (1960), my favorite film, just because it is the first adaptation of the first Ripley book ▪ The Secret History by Donna Tartt [another fav book] -rolledover from autumnal mood -books on my tbr 📚 ▪ Ticky by Stella Gibbons ▪ Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey ▪ Possession by A.S. Byatt, which can also connect to The Romantics below

💠 ℂ𝕒𝕡𝕠𝕥𝕖'𝕤 𝕊𝕨𝕒𝕟𝕤 & 𝕞𝕚𝕕-𝕔𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕦𝕣𝕪 𝕘𝕝𝕒𝕞𝕠𝕦𝕣

-currently reading Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Laurence Leamer, which I've had for a while but am now reading because it is the basis for the new season of Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (series on FX) -Answered Prayers by Truman Capote is now one of the next books I want to buy -I read a couple articles pertaining to the book and surrounding figures, which then lead me to watching the documentary Always at the Carlyle (2018)

💠 ƑคเгץՇคɭєร

-I am in my fairytale era 🧚🏼‍♀️✨️🦢⛲️🪷❄️🏹🍎🪞🥀🫧🪺 -seedlings were planted back in December with reading E.T.A. Hoffmann's and Alexandre Dumas' Nutcracker stories, and watching Frozen for the first time and then reading "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Andersen -it was cemented with rewatching Donkey Skin (Peau d'ane) (1970) early in the month and then reading that fairytale 💍 -I've continued / am now I'm continuing to do that with other titles ▪ "The Red Shoes" 👠 ▪ "12 Dancing Princesses" 🩰 ▪ Up Next: "The Little Mermaid" 🧜🏼‍♀️ -specifically, watching (or rewatching) Czech and Soviet adaptations ▪ Снежная королева (The Snow Queen) (1957) ❄️ ▪ Three Wishes for Cinderella (1973) 🦉 ▪ Perinbaba (1985) 🌨 ▪ Up Next: Русалочка (1976) and Malá mořská víla (1976) (both are "The Little Mermaid") 🧜🏼‍♀️, and Двенадцать месяцев (The Twelve Months) (1973) -and on my immediate tbr is The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter 📕

💠 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔡𝔶 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔈𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔩 𝔉𝔢𝔪𝔪𝔢

-this is the only way I can think of describing this mood/interest and it's not even a complete phrase, just adjectives of the aesthetic -I'm just listing movies and books that illustrate this to me ▪ Currently Reading: Brutes by Dizz Tate ▪ Currently Watching: Jean Rollin's vampire films: The Shiver of the Vampires (1971), Fascination (1979), The Living Dead Girl (1982), Two Orphan Vampires (1997) ⚰ ▪ on my book wishlist is Mine-Haha: or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls by Frank Wedekind, which was adapted into the film Innocence (2004) 🌳 ▪ I swear I had other things to put here, but I can always do updates posts later -taken from one of my Letterboxd tags "ethereal femme horror" which I started/came up with when I first watched a couple Jean Rollin films late last summer

🏹 [Also, Fairytale + Moody and Ethereal Femme = my "growing up in a land far far away" list on LB]

💘 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚁𝚘𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚜

-in October I watched Haunted Summer (1988) and rewatched Gothic (1986) and in doing so I realized I haven't read much from Lord Byron. I then bought his Selected Poems and Don Juan 📜 -reading his work is also likely to lead to finding a biography about him, and works by and about the other Lake Geneva attendees: Mary Wollstonecraft (Shelley), Percy Bysshe Shelley, Claire Clairmont, John Polidori (I have previously read Frankenstein and The Vampyre)

💘 ᑘᘉᕼᓰᘉᘜᘿᕲ ᘺᓍᘻᘿᘉ / ᖴᘿᘻᗩᒪᘿ ᖇᗩᘜᘿ

-at the beginning of January I really wanted to start reading Boy Parts by Eliza Clark, but soon afterwards I found out an internet booktube friend died suddenly, so I was a little out of it last month. Boy Parts was actually on her 2024 tbr, so I definitely want to get to it soon when the spur strikes again. 📷 -honestly, since finding out about her death, though it has taken me some time, I'm even more determined to get to books and movies I've been wanting to read and to watch for years! things I've put off because of high expectations or whatever. things I think will be new all-time favs, 5/5 stars, etc. I'm going to read them! and one of those is A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers 🍖🍇 -I'm now realizing, when you think about it, certain Jean Rollin films could probably be categorized here 🧛🏼‍♀️

[jaspers47]

I watched 154 movies in 2022

Five Stars

Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood (2022) Bergman Island (2021) Blonde Crazy (1931) Blow-Up (1966) Cryptozoo (2021) Decision to Leave (2022) Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) Glass Onion (2022) The Hunger (1983) It Came from Hollywood (1982) Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2022) Minari (2020) Mona Lisa (1986) Never Let Me Go (2010) Night on Earth (1991) Nope (2022) Pearl (2022) Tár (2022) Turning Red (2022) Wolfwalkers (2020) The Worst Person in the World (2021)

Four Stars

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021) The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) Black Swan (2010) Blackmail (1929) Bullet Train (2022) Captain Blood (1935) Christmas in Connecticut (1945) CODA (2021) Confess, Fletch (2022) Doctor Sleep (2019) Dune (2021) Encanto (2021) The Fabelmans (2022) The Firemen's Ball (1967) First Blood (1982) Five Came Back (1939) Flee (2021) Gentleman's Agreement (1947) Gilda (1946) The Gospel of Eureka (2018) Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio (2022) Harvey (1950) House/Hausu (1977) The Hustler (1961) Hustlers (2019) Kajillionaire (2020) The Killing (1956) Kimi (2022) Kiss of Death (1947) The Menu (2022) Moonwalker (1988) The Mouse That Roared (1959) My Dinner with Andre (1981) The Northman (2022) Parallel Mothers (2021) The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) Predator (1987) Prey (2022) The Punk Singer (2013) Quatermass II/Enemy From Space (1957) Relaxer (2018) Saint Maud (2019) The Seven-Ups (1973) Thelma (2017) Watcher (2022) We're All Going to the World's Fair (2022) Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006) X (2022)

Three and a Half Stars

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) The Bob's Burgers Movie (2022) The Booksellers (2019) Blade II (2002) Gunpowder Milkshake (2021) Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul (2022) Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) My Name is Julia Ross (1945) Onibaba (1964) The Party (1968) Pygmalion (1938) The Quatermass Xperiment/The Creeping Unknown (1955) The Song Remains the Same (1976) Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) Wendell & Wild (2022) Yours, Mine and Ours (1968)

Three Stars

Amistad (1997) The Bank Dick (1940) The Batman (2022) Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022) Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) Cries and Whispers (1972) Crimes of the Future (2022) Drive My Car (2021) The Earrings of Madame de... (1953) Emily the Criminal (2022) The Funhouse (1981) Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) Inland Empire (2006) Jennifer's Body (2009) Jubilee (1978) Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982) Life of Pi (2012) Linda Linda Linda (2005) Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) Lucy and Desi (2022) Nobody (2021) Opening Night (1977) Pretending I'm a Superman: The Tony Hawk Video Game Story (2020) Repeat Performance (1947) See How They Run (2022) Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) Strawberry Mansion (2022) Tick, Tick... Boom! (2021) The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) A Woman is a Woman (1961) Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) White Zombie (1932) WNUF Halloween Special (2013)

Two and a Half Stars

Babylon (2022) Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan (2020) Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (2017) Thunderball (1965)

Two Stars

Doctor Mordrid (1992) Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) Enchanted (2007) Hardcore Henry (2015) The House (2022) My Fair Lady (1964) My Name is Emily (2015) The Princess (2022) Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) Rosaline (2022) Strange World (2022) Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) Treasure of the Amazon (1985) Werewolves Within (2021) Willy's Wonderland (2021) Winnie the Pooh (2011)

One Star

Beyond Atlantis (1973) Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) Chuck E. Cheese in the Galaxy 5000 (1999) The Crawling Hand (1963) Daddy-O (1958) Demon Squad (1999) Hello Again (1987) Indestructible Man (1956) Munchie (1992) Operation Kid Brother (1967) The Rebel Set (1959) Santo in the Treasure of Dracula (1969) Robot Jox 2: Robot Wars (1993) Shadow in the Cloud (2020) The She-Creature (1956)

[creativemidtermproject]

Day Two: Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Theater

Today I was extremely excited as I got to watch the ballet Swan Lake at its premier location, the Bolshoi Theater. Unbeknownst to those around me, the Bolshoi Ballet is among the oldest and most renowned ballet companies in my time, and to watch them perform one of Tchaikovsky’s most influential contributions to the music world in his home country was just the opportunity of a lifetime. I was surprised to see that, despite my understanding that the play received early criticism and was not popular upon its first reception, that the performance I attended was completely sold out and seemed to be enjoyed by those who attended. The ballet is based on the Russian folk tale of a swan princess named Odette and was choreographed by the original choreographer Julius Reisinger and was divided into two acts, rather than the four that it is typically presented in today. Regardless, it was a wonderful and magical experience. 

Swan Lake in my time is considered not just to be one of Tchaikovsky’s greatest musical achievements, but also one of particular importance to Russian identity and has been termed “the national ballet”. Critics in my time also think that the story of faithless love, symbolic use of swans, and Slavonic melodies inherently relates to Russian romanticism. Not to mention that Swan Lake has a globally pervasive popular culture influence that will probably extend into future generations.

Primary Source:  The Bolshoi Ballet, "Swan Lake," by Pyotyr Tchaikovsky, Moscow, 1981.

Secondary Source: Wunder, Rachel. “History of Swan Lake,” n.d. https://fisherballet.com/history-of-swan-lake/.

[princess-of-the-day]

Today’s Princess of the Day is: Odette, from World Masterpiece Fairy Tale: Swan Lake.

A shy and beautiful young princess, Odette is kidnapped by the evil sorcerer Rothbart, who desires her hand in marriage. She is cursed to turn into a swan during the day so that no other man will fall in love with her, as only true love can break the power of Rothbart’s magic.

[missmentelle]

Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things

If you’ve been paying attention for the last couple of years, you might have noticed that the world has a bit of a misinformation problem. 

The problem isn’t just with the recent election conspiracies, either. The last couple of years has brought us the rise (and occasionally fall) of misinformation-based movements like:

Sandy Hook conspiracies

Gamergate

Pizzagate

The MRA/incel/MGTOW movements

anti-vaxxers

flat-earthers

the birther movement

the Illuminati 

climate change denial

Spygate

Holocaust denial 

COVID-19 denial 

5G panic 

QAnon 

But why do people believe this stuff?

It would be easy - too easy - to say that people fall for this stuff because they’re stupid. We all want to believe that smart people like us are immune from being taken in by deranged conspiracies. But it’s just not that simple. People from all walks of life are going down these rabbit holes - people with degrees and professional careers and rich lives have fallen for these theories, leaving their loved ones baffled. Decades-long relationships have splintered this year, as the number of people flocking to these conspiracies out of nowhere reaches a fever pitch. 

So why do smart people start believing some incredibly stupid things? It’s because:

Our brains are built to identify patterns. 

Our brains fucking love puzzles and patterns. This is a well-known phenomenon called apophenia, and at one point, it was probably helpful for our survival - the prehistoric human who noticed patterns in things like animal migration, plant life cycles and the movement of the stars was probably a lot more likely to survive than the human who couldn’t figure out how to use natural clues to navigate or find food. 

The problem, though, is that we can’t really turn this off. Even when we’re presented with completely random data, we’ll see patterns. We see patterns in everything, even when there’s no pattern there. This is why people see Jesus in a burnt piece of toast or get superstitious about hockey playoffs or insist on always playing at a certain slot machine - our brains look for patterns in the constant barrage of random information in our daily lives, and insist that those patterns are really there, even when they’re completely imagined. 

A lot of conspiracy theories have their roots in people making connections between things that aren’t really connected. The belief that “vaccines cause autism” was bolstered by the fact that the first recognizable symptoms of autism happen to appear at roughly the same time that children receive one of their rounds of childhood immunizations - the two things are completely unconnected, but our brains have a hard time letting go of the pattern they see there. Likewise, many people were quick to latch on to the fact that early maps of COVID infections were extremely similar to maps of 5G coverage -  the fact that there’s a reasonable explanation for this (major cities are more likely to have both high COVID cases AND 5G networks) doesn’t change the fact that our brains just really, really want to see a connection there. 

Our brains love proportionality. 

Specifically, our brains like effects to be directly proportional to their causes - in other words, we like it when big events have big causes, and small causes only lead to small events. It’s uncomfortable for us when the reverse is true. And so anytime we feel like a “big” event (celebrity death, global pandemic, your precious child is diagnosed with autism) has a small or unsatisfying cause (car accident, pandemics just sort of happen every few decades, people just get autism sometimes), we sometimes feel the need to start looking around for the bigger, more sinister, “true” cause of that event. 

Consider, for instance, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot four times by a Turkish member of a known Italian paramilitary secret society who’d recently escaped from prison - on the surface, it seems like the sort of thing conspiracy theorists salivate over, seeing how it was an actual multinational conspiracy. But they never had much interest in the assassination attempt. Why? Because the Pope didn’t die. He recovered from his injuries and went right back to Pope-ing. The event didn’t have a serious outcome, and so people are content with the idea that one extremist carried it out. The death of Princess Diana, however, has been fertile ground for conspiracy theories; even though a woman dying in a car accident is less weird than a man being shot four times by a paid political assassin, her death has attracted more conspiracy theories because it had a bigger outcome. A princess dying in a car accident doesn’t feel big enough. It’s unsatisfying. We want such a monumentous moment in history to have a bigger, more interesting cause. 

These theories prey on pre-existing fear and anger. 

Are you a terrified new parent who wants the best for their child and feels anxious about having them injected with a substance you don’t totally understand? Congrats, you’re a prime target for the anti-vaccine movement. Are you a young white male who doesn’t like seeing more and more games aimed at women and minorities, and is worried that “your” gaming culture is being stolen from you? You might have been very interested in something called Gamergate. Are you a right-wing white person who worries that “your” country and way of life is being stolen by immigrants, non-Christians and coastal liberals? You’re going to love the “all left-wingers are Satantic pedo baby-eaters” messaging of QAnon. 

Misinformation and conspiracy theories are often aimed strategically at the anxieties and fears that people are already experiencing. No one likes being told that their fears are insane or irrational; it’s not hard to see why people gravitate towards communities that say “yes, you were right all along, and everyone who told you that you were nuts to be worried about this is just a dumb sheep. We believe you, and we have evidence that you were right along, right here.” Fear is a powerful motivator, and you can make people believe and do some pretty extreme things if you just keep telling them “yes, that thing you’re afraid of is true, but also it’s way worse than you could have ever imagined.”

Real information is often complicated, hard to understand, and inherently unsatisfying. 

The information that comes from the scientific community is often very frustrating for a layperson; we want science to have hard-and-fast answers, but it doesn’t. The closest you get to a straight answer is often “it depends” or “we don’t know, but we think X might be likely”. Understanding the results of a scientific study with any confidence requires knowing about sampling practices, error types, effect sizes, confidence intervals and publishing biases. Even asking a simple question like “is X bad for my child” will usually get you a complicated, uncertain answer - in most cases, it really just depends. Not understanding complex topics makes people afraid - it makes it hard to trust that they’re being given the right information, and that they’re making the right choices. 

Conspiracy theories and misinformation, on the other hand, are often simple, and they are certain. Vaccines bad. Natural things good. 5G bad. Organic food good. The reason girls won’t date you isn’t a complex combination of your social skills, hygiene, appearance, projected values, personal circumstances, degree of extroversion, luck and life phase - girls won’t date you because feminism is bad, and if we got rid of feminism you’d have a girlfriend. The reason Donald Trump was an unpopular president wasn’t a complex combination of his public bigotry, lack of decorum, lack of qualifications, open incompetence, nepotism, corruption, loss of soft power, refusal to uphold the basic responsibilities of his position or his constant lying - they hated him because he was fighting a secret sex cult and they’re all in it. 

Instead of making you feel stupid because you’re overwhelmed with complex information, expert opinions and uncertain advice, conspiracy theories make you feel smart - smarter, in fact, than everyone who doesn’t believe in them. And that’s a powerful thing for people living in a credential-heavy world. 

Many conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable. 

It is very difficult to prove a negative. If I tell you, for instance, that there’s no such thing as a purple swan, it would be very difficult for me to actually prove that to you - I could spend the rest of my life photographing swans and looking for swans and talking to people who know a lot about swans, and yet the slim possibility would still exist that there was a purple swan out there somewhere that I just hadn’t found yet. That’s why, in most circumstances, the burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim - if you tell me that purple swans exist, we should continue to assume that they don’t until you actually produce a purple swan. 

Conspiracy theories, however, are built so that it’s nearly impossible to “prove” them wrong. Is there any proof that the world’s top-ranking politicians and celebrities are all in a giant child sex trafficking cult? No. But can you prove that they aren’t in a child sex-trafficking cult? No, not really. Even if I, again, spent the rest of my life investigating celebrities and following celebrities and talking to people who know celebrities, I still couldn’t definitely prove that this cult doesn’t exist - there’s always a chance that the specific celebrities I’ve investigated just aren’t in the cult (but other ones are!) or that they’re hiding evidence of the cult even better than we think. Lack of evidence for a conspiracy theory is always treated as more evidence for the theory - we can’t find anything because this goes even higher up than we think! They’re even more sophisticated at hiding this than we thought! People deeply entrenched in these theories don’t even realize that they are stuck in a circular loop where everything seems to prove their theory right - they just see a mountain of “evidence” for their side. 

Our brains are very attached to information that we “learned” by ourselves.

Learning accurate information is not a particularly interactive or exciting experience. An expert or reliable source just presents the information to you in its entirety, you read or watch the information, and that’s the end of it. You can look for more information or look for clarification of something, but it’s a one-way street - the information is just laid out for you, you take what you need, end of story. 

Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, almost never show their hand all at once. They drop little breadcrumbs of information that slowly lead you where they want you to go. This is why conspiracy theorists are forever telling you to “do your research” - they know that if they tell you everything at once, you won’t believe them. Instead, they want you to indoctrinate yourself slowly over time, by taking the little hints they give you and running off to find or invent evidence that matches that clue. If I tell you that celebrities often wear symbols that identify them as part of a cult and that you should “do your research” about it, you can absolutely find evidence that substantiates my claim - there are literally millions of photos of celebrities out there, and anyone who looks hard enough is guaranteed to find common shapes, poses and themes that might just mean something (they don’t - eyes and triangles are incredibly common design elements, and if I took enough pictures of you, I could also “prove” that you also clearly display symbols that signal you’re in the cult). 

The fact that you “found” the evidence on your own, however, makes it more meaningful to you. We trust ourselves, and we trust that the patterns we uncover by ourselves are true. It doesn’t feel like you’re being fed misinformation - it feels like you’ve discovered an important truth that “they” didn’t want you to find, and you’ll hang onto that for dear life. 

Older people have not learned to be media-literate in a digital world. 

Fifty years ago, not just anyone could access popular media. All of this stuff had a huge barrier to entry - if you wanted to be on TV or be in the papers or have a radio show, you had to be a professional affiliated with a major media brand. Consumers didn’t have easy access to niche communities or alternative information - your sources of information were basically your local paper, the nightly news, and your morning radio show, and they all more or less agreed on the same set of facts. For decades, if it looked official and it appeared in print, you could probably trust that it was true. 

Of course, we live in a very different world today - today, any asshole can accumulate an audience of millions, even if they have no credentials and nothing they say is actually true (like “The Food Babe”, a blogger with no credentials in medicine, nutrition, health sciences, biology or chemistry who peddles health misinformation to the 3 million people who visit her blog every month). It’s very tough for older people (and some younger people) to get their heads around the fact that it’s very easy to create an “official-looking” news source, and that they can’t necessarily trust everything they find on the internet. When you combine that with a tendency toward “clickbait headlines” that often misrepresent the information in the article, you have a generation struggling to determine who they can trust in a media landscape that doesn’t at all resemble the media landscape they once knew. 

These beliefs become a part of someone’s identity. 

A person doesn’t tell you that they believe in anti-vaxx information - they tell you that they ARE an anti-vaxxer. Likewise, people will tell you that they ARE a flat-earther, a birther, or a Gamergater. By design, these beliefs are not meant to be something you have a casual relationship with, like your opinion of pizza toppings or how much you trust local weather forecasts - they are meant to form a core part of your identity. 

And once something becomes a core part of your identity, trying to make you stop believing it becomes almost impossible. Once we’ve formed an initial impression of something, facts just don’t change our minds. If you identify as an antivaxxer and I present evidence that disproves your beliefs, in your mind, I’m not correcting inaccurate information - I am launching a very personal attack against a core part of who you are. In fact, the more evidence I present, the more you will burrow down into your antivaxx beliefs, more confident than ever that you are right. Admitting that you are wrong about something that is important to you is painful, and your brain would prefer to simply deflect conflicting information rather than subject you to that pain.

We can see this at work with something called the confirmation bias. Simply put, once we believe something, our brains hold on to all evidence that that belief is true, and ignore evidence that it’s false. If I show you 100 articles that disprove your pet theory and 3 articles that confirm it, you’ll cling to those 3 articles and forget about the rest. Even if I show you nothing but articles that disprove your theory, you’ll likely go through them and pick out any ambiguous or conflicting information as evidence for “your side”, even if the conclusion of the article shows that you are wrong - our brains simply care about feeling right more than they care about what is actually true.  

There is a strong community aspect to these theories. 

There is no one quite as supportive or as understanding as a conspiracy theorist - provided, of course, that you believe in the same conspiracy theories that they do. People who start looking into these conspiracy theories are told that they aren’t crazy, and that their fears are totally valid. They’re told that the people in their lives who doubted them were just brainwashed sheep, but that they’ve finally found a community of people who get where they’re coming from. Whenever they report back to the group with the “evidence” they’ve found or the new elaborations on the conspiracy theory that they’ve been thinking of (“what if it’s even worse than we thought??”), they are given praise for their valuable contributions. These conspiracy groups often become important parts of people’s social networks - they can spend hours every day talking with like-minded people from these communities and sharing their ideas. 

Of course, the flipside of this is that anyone who starts to doubt or move away from the conspiracy immediately loses that community and social support. People who have broken away from antivaxx and QAnon often say that the hardest part of leaving was losing the community and friendships they’d built - not necessarily giving up on the theory itself. Many people are rejected by their real-life friends and family once they start to get entrenched in conspiracy theories; the friendships they build online in the course of researching these theories often become the only social supports they have left, and losing those supports means having no one to turn to at all. This is by design - the threat of losing your community has kept people trapped in abusive religious sects and cults for as long as those things have existed. 

[cm-top-10]

C.M. Top 10: Classic Cartoons

In these newer times most people & kids have never seen or learn about old time animation & cartoons from both the 80s, the 90s or eras possibility further than that.

So here's ten of my favorite classic cartoons that I would recommend watching.

What old animated series or movie do you know? You be the judge on that.

1. The Secret of NIMH (1982)

2. The Swan Princess (1994)

3. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)

4. The Flight of Dragons (1982)

5. Heavy Metal (1981)

6. Gargoyles (1994)

7. Kong the Animated Series (2001)

8. Pokemon the First Movie (1998)

(So there's no confusion I'm referring to the anime original.)

9. Betty Boop (1930)

10. Cool World (1992)

[rubykgrant]

I’m spinning this off of another post; here are the animated movies I was OBSESSED with when I was a kid, and I’m talking under the age of 15. These helped mold my entire imagination. If you want to know how my brain works, here ya go-

(in no particular order)

the Nightmare before Christmas (1993)

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1998)

The Prince of Egypt (1998)

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

the Swan Princess (1994)

Atlantis the lost empire (2001)

Hercules (1997)

the Little Mermaid (1989)

the Sea Prince and the Fire Child (1981)

Treasure Planet (2002)

We’re Back a dinosaur’s story (1993)

the Care Bears Movie (1985)

Little Nemo adventures in Slumberland (1989)

the Princess and the Goblin (1991)

the Secret of NIMH (1982)

Anastasia (1997)

the Humpbacked Horse/the Magic Pony (1947)

the Sword in the Stone (1963) 

the Fantastic Adventures of Unico (1981)

the Pagemaster (1994)

Mulan (1998)

the Flight of Dragons (1982)

Puff the Magic Dragon (1978)

Spirited Away (2001)

Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Space Jam (1996)

the Phantom Tollbooth (1970)

Cinderella (1950)

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

the Great Mouse Detective (1986) 

James and the Giant Peach (1996)

the Iron Giant (1999)

Jetsons the Movie (1990)

Ferngully the last rainforest (1992)

the Lion King (1994)

the Tigger Movie (2000)

Charlotte’s Web (1973)

Aladdin (1992)

Balto (1995)

Osmosis Jones (2001) 

Rock-a-Doodle (1991)

a Goofy Movie (1995)

Pokemon the Movies 2000 (1999)

Digimon the Movie (2000)

Sailor Moon R Promise of the Rose (1993)

the Incredibles (2004)

the Point (1971)

Dumbo (1941)

the Land Before Time (1988)

[the-radio-star]

movies i love

1917 (2019)

A Christmas Story (1983)

Airplane! (1980)

Alien (1979)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Argo (2012)

A Simple Favor (2018)

Baby Driver (2017)

Back to the Future (1985, 1989, 1990)

Beetlejuice (1988)

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

Birds of Prey / Harley Quinn (2020)

Black Swan (2010)

Booksmart (2019)

Carol (2015)

Cloverfield (2008)

Coco (2017)

Coraline (2009)

Crimson Peak (2015)

Don’t Look Up (2021)

Do the Right Thing (1989)

Eighth Grade (2018)

El Camino (2019)

Ella Enchanted (2004)

Fear Street (2021)

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) 

Frozen (2013, 2019)

Get Out (2017)

Ghostbusters (1984)

Gone Girl (2014)

Hackers (1995)

Halloween (1978)

Hercules (1997)

Holes (2003)

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)

How To Train Your Dragon (2010, 2014, 2019)

Hustlers (2019)

Indiana Jones (1981, 1984, 1989)

Interstellar (2014)

It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

Jojo Rabbit (2019)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

Kung Fu Panda (2008, 2011, 2016)

La Misma Luna (2007)

Life of Pi (2012)

Lion (2016)

Logan (2017)

Love, Simon (2018)

Luca (2021)

Malignant (2021)

Matilda (1996)

Miss Sloane (2016)

Moana (2016)

Monsters, Inc. (2001, 2013)

Muppets from Space (1999)

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

National Treasure (2004, 2007)

Oceans 8 (2018)

Office Space (1999)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) 

Planet of the Apes (1968-1973, 2011-2017)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)

See You Yesterday (2019)

Shrek (2001, 2004, 2007)

Six-String Samurai (1998)

Sorry To Bother You (2018)

Space Sweepers (2021)

Spirited Away (2001)

Step Brothers (2008)

Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

The Fallout (2021)

The Favourite (2018)

The Florida Project (2017)

The Great Gatsby (2013)

The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)

The Martian (2015)

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)

The Princess Bride (1987)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

The Shining (1980)

The Thief Lord (2005)

Twilight (2008–2012)

Us (2019)

What We Do In The Shadows (2014)

Whispers of the Heart (1995)

Wonder Woman (2017, 2020)

X-Men (2000-present)