#what do you Europeans think?

[mixmangosmangoverse]

So when a celebrity says something pro Palestine or even pro Hamas everyone goes "yeah woo celebrities should always use their platform to talk about issues"

But when a celebrity says "actually killing Israelis is bad" suddenly celebrities shouldn't get involved in conflicts and shouldn't use their platform to talk about issues

It's so blatant that people just mean "celebrities should only boost the opinions we deem correct and should never ever express sympathy for Jews, that's so lame"

I'm so done

[lotus-pear]

i'd like to think chuuya knows bits of french to some extent bc rimbaud would often randomly exclaim smth or mumble to himself in his native tongue and chuuya would overhear and pick up the little phrases and store it in the back of his mind unconsciously bc of his intrinsically observant nature, only for those phrases to resurface again when he's fighting verlaine and verlaine goes "sacre bleu!" or some shit and chuuya's like "Oh. OH. IVE HEARD THAT BEFORE...WASNT THAT WHAT SUB EXEC RANDOU ALWAYS USED TO SAY...." and verlaine completely halts with a nebulous expression on his face before going "who?????"

[mostlyvoid-partiallyflowers]

The most recent episode of Interview with a Vampire let's us see Lestat's side of the story and see how it compares to Louis' accounting of their relationship. As a result, it reaffirms just how unreliable of a narrator Louis is, but it also further illuminates elements of his character that the director and writers have been playing with since the beginning of the show.

There's this part in the episode where Lestat turns to Louis and apologizes and it's framed with Lestat turned to Louis on one side and Claudia on his other side. They're the angel and devil on Louis' shoulders, but who is the angel and who is the devil? And as my friend said, Armand and Daniel are placed into that same dynamic with Louis later on. We are being asked to decide who to trust, who's telling the truth, who's the good guy, but the fact of unreliability robs us of that decision.

This whole story is about Louis, he's the protagonist, though not the narrator, and he is constantly being pulled in two directions, no matter when or where he is in his story. He's a mind split in two, divided by nature and circumstance. He's vampire and human, owner and owned, father and child, angel and devil. He's both telling the story and being told the story. His history is a story he tells himself, and as we've seen, sometimes that story is not whole.

Louis is the angel who saved Claudia from the fire but he's also the devil who sentenced her to an life of endless torment, the adult trapped in the body of a child. He's the angel who rescued Lestat from his grief and also the devil who abandoned him, who couldn't love him, could only kill and leave him.

He's pulled in two directions, internally and externally at all times and so it's no wonder that he feels the need to confess, first to the priest, then Daniel, and then Daniel again.

He's desperate to be heard, a Black man with power in Jim Crow America who's controlled by his position as someone with a seat at the table but one who will never be considered equal. He doesn't belong to the Black community or the white community, he can't. He acts as a go-between, a bridge, one who is pushed and pulled until he can't take it anymore. He's a fledgling child to an undead father, he's a young queer man discovering his sexual identity with an infinitely experienced partner. He's confessing because he wants to be absolved, that human part of him that was raised Catholic, that child who believed, he wants to be saved. He wants to be seen.

Louis wants to attain a forever life that is morally pure, but he can't. He's been soiled by sin, by "the devil," as he calls Lestat, and he can never be clean again. Deep down, I think he knows this, but he can't stop trying to repent. He tries to self-flagellate by staying with Lestat and then tries to repent by killing him, but can't actually follow through. He follows Claudia to Europe to try and assuage his guilt. He sets himself on fire, attempts to burn himself at the stake, to purify his body, rid himself of the dark gift.

Louis is a man endlessly trying to account for the pain he has caused and he ultimately fails, over and over again, because he can't get rid of what he is. A monster. He's an endlessly hungry monster. He's hungry for love, for respect, for power, for forgiveness, for death. He's a hole that can never be filled. He can never truly acquire any of those things because he will always be punishing himself for wanting and needing them in the first place. He will never truly believe he deserves them and as a result, can't accept them if they are ever offered. He can never be absolved for he has damned himself by accepting the dark gift and thus has tainted himself past the point of saving.

[batsplat]

OT3: casey stoner/his neuroses/the concept of valentino rossi that mostly exists in casey’s head

y'know I have this casey stoner... idk what it is. thematic mind map (literal), let's say, that I like fiddling with and adding things to when the mood hits me. and it does always strike me just how many of his struggles during his careers and issues with the sport can in some way be linked back to the valentino rivalry

casey's sense of isolation? super valentino related. casey's feelings of cultural alienation in a paddock dominated by europeans? even when it's not really related to valentino, casey is the one linking those two things together. casey's issues with other riders not being respectful enough on track? very obviously repeatedly about valentino. casey's discomfort with the performance and entertainment-related aspects of the sport? more valentino. casey feeling treated unfairly by the manufacturers, the media, the marshals, the fans.... keeps coming back to valentino. casey's mystery illness really shouldn't be as relevant to the rivalry as it is, but somehow through this combination of public discourse and whatever comparisons casey's brain is cooking up at any moment in time... there valentino is again

one of the most charming things about valentino's feuds is that in each and every single one, both participants end up being deeply weird about each other? just keep knocking off these banger quotes about the other where you read them and go. hm. what's going on there then. I don't want to make it sound like I think casey is the worst offender with this (not when marc and valentino have their whole thing going on, bidirectionally)... but I do think he's the most susceptible to conflating his valentino issues with like... everything else that was going on in his career. to the extent where his alienation with the sport as a whole, his extreme disillusionment from everything related to motogp, really cannot be meaningfully disentangled from the valentino rivalry. at times it feels like, to casey, valentino literally is the sport. and that's the thing casey dedicated his whole life to!! which means you do inevitably end up regularly going 'wow there's a lot to unpack'. add in a dash of neuroticism...

and yeah you're so right anon!! the neuroses are what end up creating the version of valentino that mostly exists in casey's head, a version that casey is just a touch obsessed with. I always think it's interesting how aware casey is that he doesn't know valentino as a person - and to the extent casey does know him, he gets on pretty well with him... but valentino the person isn't all that relevant to him. it's valentino the character who matters - and can you even really know a character? in the end, all casey can do is rely on his own understanding of that character, as imperfect as it is. and, well, in a way casey is trapped with that character forevermore. if one man comes to embody a sport to such an extent and if that sport has been your life's work, how can you not be a little bit trapped? as he tries to make his peace with the sport and his experiences within it, so too has casey settled on a narrative of valentino that helps him make sense of it all... a very specific understanding of his rival that casey has shaped in his mind and still trots out now when he sells his own version of events to the media. casey learned from valentino, casey learned to be a little more like valentino, casey learned to fight valentino with his own tools, casey tells himself a story of that fight. he still continues to do so - and in the end he will never be entirely free of valentino

[menlove]

every single day I read posts on here that make it so obvious that some people here truly don't understand or comprehend that cultural norms different than their own exist

and this is not even remotely exclusive to usamericans btw so white europeans/australians/canadians do Not even start agreeing w me unless you know your people are being obnoxious too

[pineapplefulfillseveryneed]

The Wedding Of Jacqueline Kennedy To Russell Mael (THOM, april 10 2013)

[fallloverfic]

I've seen some very odd takes about certain language used in the scene where Mizrak rebukes Olrox at the end of Castlevania: Nocturne, which I think might be due to lack of knowledge about the historical context of certain things.

CW: historical racism against First Nation groups

I know reading academic articles isn't for everyone, but I have to wonder if a lot of people in the Castlevania: Nocturne fandom have not watched things like, say, Disney's 1995 animated Pocahontas, which, for all its many, many flaws, features the song, Savages. I'm not going to quote it in full here, you can find the song lyrics elsewhere (though the European colonizers do use the lines "vermin" and "barely even human", among other epithets). It's not a great song for a lot of reasons (among them being it tries to "both sides" things). But to look at the scene in CN where Mizrak, a Christian working in a European Christian church with at least some Europeans, calls Olrox, a First Nation man, an animal without the understanding of how Christian European colonizers (typically as part of or at least backed by some Christian churches) have viewed First Nation peoples and treated them, and certain epithets used for them, and how European Christian dehumanization of "new world" groups and non-Christians generally worked/works?

Well.

[gibbearish]

oh boy its my favorite day where nonusamericans condescendingly explain to me that the election effects other countries too and therefore i need to be even more terrified than however terrified i already am

[nova-rogue]

hey so they announced a movie coming out for The Odyssey and you guys will never guess the discourse on twitter about it

a bunch of (mostly british) europeans defending having never heard of The Odyssey before because how could they know american literature?????

and it's. oh god. it's something.

basically this

[voiceemporium]

Cassandra Pentaghast in Dragon Age Inquisition voiced by Miranda Raison

[somedaytakethetime]

hi 😁 do you watch Indycar?

Hi, anonie! 😊 I had to google that, love, so I think that answers the question HOWEVER I'm always open to being told about new sports! If you want to come over and explain a dumbass like me what's the breakdown? I'm all ears 😌

[quarks-pussy]

I am so utterly amused every time someone says they didn't know Picard was French. His name is Jean-Luc Picard what do you MEAN you didn't realise he was French???

[bumblingbriars]

While not a first generation immigrant child, I still appreciate Belushi: A Biography a lot because Belushi’s family life reminded me of my old home life before my mom and dad died. It also made me feel better about eating bigger portions too because like…. it isn’t just a me thing. It’s just how Mediterranean families eat KAKSJAKSJ

Not to mention Belushi himself reminds me so much of my dad I wouldn’t be surprised if his favorite actor was him. My dad was a big film nut and watched anything and everything that came out back then. Similar mannerisms, humor…

[bavarianmillionaire]

as a bayern and river fan i'm glad they're both on the same pot so at least i won't have to worry about a possible game between them so early but bayern could easily be in the same group as boca

[rustchild]

are gentiles aware that you can speak out against genocide without trying to legislate the complex nuances of jewish identity from a place of total ignorance. like

[knaveofmogadore]

So like, imagine this. It's the first big family reunion after COVID restrictions let up, your family took a few years to all get vaccinated, ect. Your kid is 6, so they weren't old enough to take to the last one, this is the first time they're meeting some of these more distant relatives. So you introduce them to Uncle Mike, and you say "This is Uncle Mike. He thinks you're so small and delicious, and that it'd be so easy to pick you up and throw you at the nearest wall and break all your bones." If that 6 year old then power kicks uncle Mike in the nuts and runs away screaming, whose fault is that?

So this post is about Doctor Who. The patron unknowable Eldritch entity of your country has just spent an entire afternoon telling you that the universe is full of things that are stronger and bigger than you, and a lot of them will happily blenderize your planet for a bit of rocket fuel, or eat all of you for a big Sunday brunch. And he's letting that ship full of slavers happily fly away to tell the entire galaxy about your tiny planet's existence. You are an animal, your empathy and reason only extends to the boundaries of what you can understand, and the Doctor has just told you that the vast majority of the galaxy sees you as prey. Me, personally? I'm with Harriet, I wouldn't stand a chance in that situation, I'd 100% take that shot.

All I'm saying is that if the Doctor wanted to foster empathy, they probably shouldn't have started with enthusiastically explaining how cleverly the aliens were going to coerce them into slavery, especially not to a woman who grew up in Britain as it rebuilt itself from the blitz in a post-nazi Europe