#that show is imperialist as fuck and this is the hill i will die on

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Do you think that Animorphs could have been improved if morphing and demorphing didn't heal your original body? Firstly, it doesn't make a ton of sense, as your original form is kept in z-space, so demorphing should just return you that form without any alterations. Secondly, it would allow a couple plot points such as Tobias's wing in MM2 and Ax's sickness in #29 to be much more feasible. I'm not super well versed in the lore though, so I may be missing something.

I’m inclined to say it would not improve the series.  Because without a healing factor, Animorphs would lose a lot of its realism.

Hear me out.

If the Animorphs don’t heal between battles, but the series is still about superheroes fighting aliens, then there are only so many ways the series can treat violence.  And none of them are particularly realistic.

The Animorphs could face exactly as much horrific injury and very real threat of harm (amputation, disembowelment, and all) as they do in the series.  But if they can’t heal, then it’s gonna be a really damn short war.  Off the top of my head: Marco dies in #4 from shark bite, Jake and Cassie die in #6 from poisoning, Rachel and Ax bleed out in #7, and Tobias gets eaten by a raccoon in #13.

The Animorphs could have strictly “harmless” tactics against an enemy that uses “harmless” tactics against them.  Think Kim Possible, Transformers, or My Little Pony.  If it’s “laser beams set to stun” vs. “the predators that don’t do anything,” then there would be a dramatic shift in tone.  Kim Possible is a great series, but it would never be classified as horror, and it never contains any real threat of characters coming to permanent harm.  Animorphs would be different (more like AniTV, frankly) if the violence was never allowed to inflict damage, and it’d lose a lot of what makes it unique along the way.

The Animorphs could have the superhero Thing where they take huge amounts of damage and then just... get better.  Think like Firefly, where characters get shot and stabbed realistically but then are inexplicably running around a week later like nothing happened.  They get realistic short-term damage onscreen, but unrealistic insta-recovery between episodes.  I personally HATE this trope because it’s low-key eugenicist in its emphasis on Macho Men Who Feel No Pain.  But yes, Animorphs could do this, again at the expense of realistic depictions of bodily harm.

The Animorphs could be immune to harm sometimes and not others, depending on the tone of a scene.  Again, tons of superhero series do this, and again it’s a pet peeve.  In Umbrella Academy, bullets are harmless and fun when the Handler’s firing them at Lila in an upbeat training montage... and they’re horrible and deadly when they rip through the Hargreeveses two episodes later.  In Batman, Robin 4.0 can be shot in the torso three times and keep right on swinging, but Robin 2.0 takes one crowbar to the head and straight-up dies.  This treatment of injury drives me UP THE WALL because it a) makes light of gun violence and b) makes it impossible to know how seriously to take any given scene.  So Animorphs could do that, but personally I’d hate it.

The Animorphs could inflict lots of harm, but not have any done to them.  This is close to how the series does it, but without a healing factor there’d have to be practically no threat to the Animorphs themselves while they went around slaughtering controllers.  Think Doctor Who and the tendency for their annihilating entire alien species to be played for laughs, while the Doctor themself remains untouchable and rarely even rumples their suit.  Either the protagonists become Heroes in Name Only, or they become the villains.  If the yeerks can’t hurt the kids at all, but the kids still harm the yeerks as much as they do, then we’d go from morally-grey protagonists to irredeemable-asshole protagonists really fast.

So I think the healing factor serves a very specific purpose within a series that nailed the “superheroes, but realistic” trope decades before it became a trend.  The healing factor allows K.A. Applegate et al. to get way into the utter nastiness of violence and trauma.  It prevents glossing over the reality of what it means to kill someone (see options 2 & 4) or be seriously injured (see option 3), while also avoiding a fight that’s entirely one-sided (see options 5 & 1).  It draws attention to the mental toll of trauma through divorcing that from the physical toll.  It’s what makes Animorphs so profoundly, disturbingly anti-war.

Ergo: no.  I don’t think the series would improve if the healing factor was gone.

[prussiaposting]

for the meme thing: france?

how i feel about this character

I'VE LOVED HIM SINCE 2012! i enjoy most shades of his characterizations whether that's as the perverted comic relief, the over-the-top suave bisexual, the napoleonic era capital J Jerk™, and the modern day EU girlboss. he is just such an enjoyable character.

all the people i ship romantically with this character

oh my god there are a lot. arthur, of course. back in 2012 i didn't even care about gerita but i loved fruk with my whole heart lol. longtime rivals with benefits my beloved <3

i also love francis with ludwig. their dynamic as EU work husbands is... i don't wanna say underrated, but it definitely still has a lot of untapped potential. i mean, come on. f.rance tied their and g.ermany's economies together so intimately and with the rest of the EU + stubbornly volunteered and upheld itself as the primary military power of this alliance so that g.ermany could never surprise them again. darling, please focus on your cars and electronics and never pick up a gun again. i will protect myself from you by being the one to defend you from any threat. and ludwig with his luxury cars and electronics and having not stepped on a military base for years now is like thank you, this is nice actually :). francis domesticated him.

then there's prufra. they absolutely, 100%, had a fiery passionate fling throughout most of the 18th century that ultimately ended in one last emotional hate-fuck after the battle of jena-auerstedt I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL. one day i will fully write out that ridiculous fic i have in my drafts that parallels gilbert and francis with frederick the great and voltaire and then you'll all see.

and finally, where the fuck would i be in my life without frus. guns and roses. they are the ultimate romcom couple with endless culture clashes, disastrous dates, and earnest but horrible gifts given (mostly from alfred). with their personalities, a romance novel practically writes itself! francis, who has a wealth of relationship experience and is concerned with the romantic and the sensual and the delicacies of intimacy, falling for the macho, socially blunt and clumsy alfred who thinks relationships can be studied and optimized like ballistics.

i have more ships (like frain and franada) because francis is an endlessly shippable character, but those above are my main ones.

my non-romantic OTP for this character

kiku!!! love love love all those doujins and comics where francis is a big weeb and he and kiku bond over that. they have sleepovers where they watch hentai and critique it like high art. kiku shows him comics with shibari and tentacles and francis is like ah yes they were clearly influenced by marquis de sade. i also like francis, kiku, and alfred together as a platonic trio.

my unpopular opinion about this character

there is not enough portrayals of him as a serious colonizing and imperialist asshole. napoleonic era france especially in my opinion gets off way too easy in this fandom. give him the arthur and alfred treatment; he deserves it.

one thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

francis is actually one of the few characters in hetalia whose potential i think is explored with a breadth of complexity. i'm happy as long as hima keeps giving us francis as the asshole mother hen of the EU, tbh.

[manifestoonmoralmanlove]

Gormless Ch. 11 –  I’m Korma for you, imperialistic dogs

A well-meaning friend gave me a book series that is hilariously bad. The first book was Souless and my riffs were entitled brainless. This second book is entitled Changless and these riff are then gormless.

I mean to say I have entitled them gormless! Not that my riffs are dumb, and the effort I spend on them stupid since I’m the only one who enjoys them. HAHA!

The story is SUPPOSED TO be about how a badass lady wearing a rad-looking carriage dress hits baddies with her umbrella and bangs her hot werewolf husband.  In reality it’s mostly poor attempts at being witty, flirty, and superior.

For the last book check out the brainless tag.

If you want the TL;DR version but want to read these new riffs anyway?

This story is set in supernatural Victorian steampunk England.  Alexia is our NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS protag.  She is a soulless, which means she’s able to negate the abilities of vampires and werewolves by touching them. She’s recently married a big oaf, named Lord Connel Maccon.  He’s the manchild in charge of the supernatural police with a zillion dollars and he’s totes super hot too ok.  Their relationship is mostly arguments about how Maccon can’t tell her fucking anything.  Alexia has also recently become head of ~Soulless affairs~ in Queen Victoria’s government.  She has a dumb friend named Ivy, a gay vampire friend named Akeldama, a family who’s evil because they do the same shit as her but while being blonde, and most importantly Alexia is better than everyone cause…cause.

Last time on Gormless:

There’s some mysterious force that’s turning the Vampires and werewolves into humans. Alexia is in charge of figuring out that deal, and she is doing a bad job at it.  They are at her husband’s old pack castle about it.  Are they hiding something?????

Chapter 11 – I’m Korma for you, imperialistic dogs

Okay despite my grumblings on the lack of shit that happened last chapter.  This chapter comes in HOT!  And by HOT, I mean RACIST!

Basically everybody is taking a leisurely walk in the garden.  Ivy asks the military bros about, “how brave they are to fight the ~primitives~ in India.”

HAHA OKAY! LET’S JUST KEEP TRUCKING!

Maccon says it’s just minor pacification at this point, thus implying that he’s done the same sort of business which is super good and great.  

Oh but here’s a big old sticking point for me, one of the military bros says the food in India is terrible.  I will preface this by saying I have only probably had ~Americanized~ Indian food from restaurants or used generic recipe websites.  So we can have a discussion on whether I have had ~authentic~ Indian food and if ~authentic~ food is even a thing.

BUT INDIAN FOOD IS ONE OF THE MOST WELL-RESPECTED CUISINES IN THE WORLD, AND BRITISH PEOPLE, RIGHTLY LOVE IT!  WHAT I HAVE HAD HAS BEEN UTTERLY INCREDIBLE AND I WHAT LITTLE I KNOW ABOUT IT MAKES IT IMPRESSIVE AND WONDERFUL AND GO FUCK YOURSELF!

THIS IS A HILL I WILL DIE ON!  I don’t delete comments for much but if anybody comments on this chapter with even, “Indian food is just okay” COMMENT DELETED!

In this story’s defense, perhaps they think the food is bad because the Indian individuals preparing food for the exploitative brutes just took a dump on a plate and put a leaf on top.

Okay so while I fantasized about rubbing vindaloo directly into the eyes of these dipshit characters I continued…Alexia gets snippy with these military bros…but not over any of the racist horseshit, she tries to start shit over them describing Egyptian and Indian weather as hot. And maybe the author is trying to take pot-shots at these fuckers, but like why is she making snippy comments about how they describe the FUCKING weather instead of standing up for Indian people? Also Ivy was the one who started by calling them ~primitives~ but she’s not concerned with Ivy at all.  Also don’t @ me with whore shit like, “Well Ivy is supposed to be dumb” dumb people aren’t automatically racist fuck off.

We move on to find out that the Kingair pack STOLE ARTIFACTS including ACTUAL FUCKING MUMMIES from Egypt when they passed through.  THANKFULLY there is a blip of sanity when Maccon says that’s illegal.

Yet it gets SO MUCH WORSE when Alexia proposes a good old fashioned

MUMMY UNWRAPPING PARTY!

Which everybody gets super excited about.  Those by the way were REAL THINGS in Victorian England. JUST IN CASE YOU NEEDED TO KNOW!

Maccon and Alexia go aside a moment where Alexia says the humanization is obviously coming from the artifacts they brought back and that Maccon should have them confiscated since they are illegally gained.  They go back and forth about what to DO with them once they’re confiscated, and both agree that destroying them would be a bad idea…but they don’t bring up the fact you could I DON’T KNOW just return them to the country of origin? HAHA okay.

They head back to the castle and LeFoux, in proper dramatic fashion, is racing toward them saying some cliffhanger shit like, “10 dramatic turns this book could take but won’t! #7 will shock you!”  But before she’s able post some hilarious reaction memes she gets SHOT in the back! DUN DUN DUN!

Then they’re getting shot at and hiding behind the umbrella cause THAT’S FOOL-PROOF but eventually are able to get everybody inside the castle.

And here they just forget anything interesting was going to happen.

Nobody seems concerned with combing the castle to find the gunman in one of these towers.  I have done a few active shooter drills at my place of work, and you know what’s a big part of that?  If the shooter isn’t found just literally forget about them.  What could be the harm?  

Instead they fuss over LeFoux with Alexia wondering, “Was she really shot? Is she faking? Is she behind all of this?” And it’s like YOU LEGIT JUST WATCHED HER GET SHOT AND WHILE SHE WAS ON THE GROUND MORE BULLETS WERE WHIZZING BY YOU! EVEN IF SHE IS, IT SEEMS LIKELY THERE IS SOMEONE ELSE INVOLVED! By the way when I say fussed over there is no description of them bandaging any wounds or anything.  They don’t state outright here but in next chapter they talk about how it’s all tranquilizer bullets. It’d be nice if they mentioned it...you know this chapter.  It honestly felt like they had just propped a woman bleeding out in a chair and talked about how she’s probably behind her own impending death.

This would have been a great moment dramatic moment for them to expose LeFoux’s neck for Maccon to see the Hypocras tattoo. Imagine Maccon losing his shit that they let a Hypocras Crony in their mist, and when he finds out Alexia had seen the tattoo before, gets even loonier.  Alexia is ashamed that the intimacy she shared with LeFoux was perhaps cheating mixed with the shame of same-sex attraction, and kept her around in hopes that she could learn something more about her deceased father from her but instead just endangered everyone.

WASTED OPPORTUNITY!

Alexia then sneaks off to chat with Sidheag. When Alexia first met Sidheag she made a mental note of instantly liking her. This conversation starts with Alexia mentally stating that she’s ~decided to hate her.~ BITCH OVER WHAT? You’re being treated well in this castle, and she’s been polite despite you insulting her castle at every fucking turn.  Alexia just hasn’t been hitting that self-misogyny quota!

Let’s start with the good part of this conversation.  Alexia asks Sidheag about how she feels about what her great granddad did to the clan.  Sidheag says she was 16 and off at school when it happened. (Though at one point Alexia says that Sidheag is not holding a tea cup right and thus implies she never went to finishing school at all…and it’s like…are you trying to throw a seed of doubt that she’s lying about everything? I mean that’s cool but like I think it’s kinda a big jump from ~holds tea cup in different way.~)

Anyway while Sidheag agrees with his politics, she thinks he could have handled it better. She suggests he should have killed/kicked out more of the top members involved in the attempted murder instead of just skipping town entirely.  I was surprised to see the author give this situation more depth than just, “MACCON IS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING CAUSE HE IS BEST MAN!” So that’s the good part.

It seems odd that Maccon only punished 1 person despite it being a clan-wide problem. When Sidheag got back from school he put her and her boyfriend (whom was not part of the clan) in charge and everything just went peachy after that. REALLY? Seems to me the bitter leftovers from that dispute would really fucking resent a teenage human grandchild of the big bad ex-leader who hadn’t been spending much time there and her no-name boyfriend showing up to run things.  If they were going to kill a queen, it doesn’t seem below them to murder the two of them, especially with nobody there to protect them.

BUT THE FUCK DO I KNOW?

Most of the conversation is more of the “I WANT GRANDADDY TO TURN ME INTO A WEREWOLF!” Which…we had that conversation before, but at least Alexia decides she wants to support her in this.  Maccon is cranky when brought up but understands.  Their room is ransacked, but her bag is safe.  Alexia thinks that what LeFoux wanted to tell her probably involved the Aethongrapher, but she decides NOT to check it out cause ??????????? Maccon says that Tunstell brought him a special gun and they get ready for dinner.  The chapter ends with Alexia making the super clever deduction that Maccon has had the ulterior motive of trying to ~fix~ his old pack.  

And wow holy shit there Alexia

Sooooooo smart!  This is something that really needed to be pointed out too! Greaaaaaaaaaat.

This is especially infuriating due to how it’s written Full quote:

“…You must agree I have a point.”

He turned to frown up at her.  “I hate it when you come over all correct.”

Alexia trotted down the staircase until they were nose to nose. She had to stand one step up from him for it to be so. She kissed him softly. “I know.  But I am so very good at it.”

She’s praised for the deduction that didn’t even need to be stated, smugs up the place, and the fucking line, “Come over all correct.”  MAYBE IT’S JUST ME BUT THESE SAD ATTEMPTS OF TRYING TO SOUND PERIOD APPROPRIATE MAKE ME WANT TO YARF!

Also let me point out that Maccon has only started drama, gotten into a fist-fight, and try to or have sex with his wife the entire time he’s been there. Alexia has actually done more than he has for the clan and she hasn’t even been trying.

OH YEAH AND WE JUST GONNA FORGET SOMEONE GOT SHOT AND THE SHOOTER IS HANGING OUT IN THE CASTLE WITH YOU ALL RIGHT NOW? OKAY SURE?

Say something nice Faps:

At least something fucking happened this chapter.

I do genuinely like how Sidheag disagrees with how her great grandfather did things and she’s not demonized for it…at least not yet. I will dunk myself in boiling oil if it’s revealed that SIDHEAG IS BIG BAD CAUSE OF NOT HOLDING A TEA CUP RIGHT.

Sidheag is cool, can we not pick on her ever again?

Super looking forward to do aggressive racism of the mummy unwrapping party y’all!

[meet-me-under-the-corsican-stars]

Ok, but, seriously, what kind of take is this? Waititi ruined the Thor franchise?

What because Kenneth Brannagh with his mood whiplash and desynced narrative was better? Was Alan Taylor, who had most recently (to my knowledge) worked on GoT where the show runners thought themes were for middle school essays, invested in the source material? (Fun fact, Patty Jenkins was going to direct Thor 2, but left because Marvel Studios would not let her tell the story she wanted to.)

Taika Waititi injected a lot of humor and pagan deity duality of moral character into the film. He touched on the imperialist motifs (that were already present in the first two films) more thoroughly than either of the other directors. And Valkyrie was a nuanced and interesting character with severe PTSD and characteristics I have never seen portrayed positively on a character of color ever.

Does Loki take the brunt of some jokes? Yeah, he does. So does everyone else. So does Loki in the original myths. And the comics. Is Ragnarok a perfect movie? Fuck, no. None of the Thor films have been and none of them ever will be.

I don't give a shit what this person ships. Reducing Valkyrie to a drunk sexy lamp is willfully ignorant and low key racist. Acting like Taika Waititi, who was made to feel like he was a diversity hire to cover up racist casting and commentary within Marvel Studios at large, should have cared more about a movie he didn't even have very much creative input on in the first place is fucking hypocritical and a dickish hill to die on.

we do not deserve this man tbh

[susanthejournal]

GOOD MOVIES / Tyler Brewington

A movie about the evils of environmental degradation and ecological destruction, but it’s a making-of documentary about the original movie, which was abandoned by the filmmakers when they realized that the best way to honor nature might not be to make a movie about it, as moviemaking in general and film processing in particular involves the use of various harmful chemicals and staggering amounts of water.

A movie in which I do not have to watch a woman being brutalized in order to learn that the brutalization of women is bad.

Gender Essentialism, a movie about the confusion that results from the passage of a law which requires moviegoers to articulate exactly what they’re paying to watch. “I’d like to see A Profoundly Heterosexual Work of Art,” the characters keep saying. “One for A Profoundly Heterosexual Work of Art, please.”  

A movie that convincingly recasts the Bible as a disposable piece of direct mail marketing.

A sequel to that, called Public Instruction in Goodness, which is a sort of sermon on everything genuinely good and worthwhile about Christianity. The running time is a tight 35 minutes, but if you see it, you think about it for the rest of your life.

A movie unafraid to be subtle.

A bobcat and a rabbit, an eagle and a trout, a fox and a vole, wolves and a deer all dying in a documentary about Canada, produced by BYU––there is, apparently, an entire BYU channel––screening now above the emergency room bed where my dad was violent and now lies restrained. They want him to go ahead and barf but he keeps swallowing. They’re worried about his lungs. He’s writhed almost completely sideways and clawing at his neck brace. An owl’s tearing at something gray and the whole scene is oddly bloodless. What comes out of the moth when the bat bites into it?

A movie about everything Mormons are reluctant to show you.

Plot: the desire to watch movies is a survival mechanism generated by my body.

A movie called Freedom that follows people as they learn how to thank their bodies.

A movie called Dad about feeling indifferent to the eclipse, but moved when the lights come on and the birds go quiet.

Movie about how, after his first stroke, he spent a couple of days replacing his nouns with bird. “That fucking bird,” he would say, gesturing at the Jesus nailed to the cross nailed to the wall of his room. But Father Whoever insists on a visit. “I hear you didn’t go to church much but you liked to ski,” chuckles the chaplain. “Well, you know, there’s a God on the slopes, too.” “Bird,” Dad says.

My brother and I were recognized as my father’s children, so the men at the guard station at the entrance of this or that air base would salute us. A coming-of-age movie about me called Fat White Child of Unearned Salutes.  

A movie about watching a movie with someone you like who doesn’t like you back, but then you turn to whisper to each other at the same time, and your foreheads touch.

Imperialist Death Machine, a movie in which I explain to the tattoo artist that I’d like a tattoo of the kind of jet my dad flew, “but gay.”

A documentary about starfish, after which everyone experiences unobstructed joy and access to their life’s deepest calling.

A movie like a new nickname from a crisp, healthy voice you have no reason to mistrust. A voice like a carrot snap.

A movie about love in which a dentist replaces all of your teeth with stones and bits of antler. But the softest stones––polished agates, tumbles for centuries in the cleanest rivers, and antlers coated with the fuzz of rutting season.  

Much rewarded but little-seen but prestige drama in which no one is ever unfair to their mom. Near the end, I don’t lose my temper; I say, “Mom, I find it unhelpful when you talk about wanting him to find inner peace. There is nothing more peaceful than death, and nothing more interior than a brain. Parts of his brain have died, and are therefore at peace.”

Movie in which I know how to comfort anyone who needs comforting.

A movie in which dad recognizes mom when I take her to the hospital.

Movie in which mom watches me kneel in front of dad to trim his fingernails. “You’re so good with him,” she says. She isn’t crying because she sees my lifetime of learning to be intimate with men.

A movie in which I see how others see my body, but it’s not traumatic.

Nobody dies, but still, the movie doesn’t make you want to die.

Movie that shows you where to buy––or even better, how to make––100% ethical sweaters. You leave looking great.

A movie that mitigates the catastrophe of a compliment.

During the movie your brain relaxes and releases something quite obvious which had been unclear to you: One way to deal with surfaces is to go beneath them.

A movie you leave immune to the casual scorn of white ladies at the grocery store.

A naughty movie called Bats Alone, shot during a succession of spring twilights only during the minutes when bats wake up, that erases all of your self-limiting beliefs.

Just the one scene: I walk in and his face lights up because he remembers me.

A movie that convinces everyone that history didn’t start with their birth.

A movie that isn’t over until weeks later, when the ending comes to you in a dream. ⁂ Tyler Brewington is the author of the chapbook Dear Stray Volcano (alice blue, 2015) and, with Kelly Schirmann, the collection Boyfriend Mountain (Poor Claudia, 2015). His poems have appeared in PEN America’s PEN Poetry Series, Salt Hill, Powder Keg, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. He is a contributing editor at Seattle-based Gramma Press (gramma.press) and received an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He lives in Boise, Idaho, and is @bylertrewington in all of the places.