elexuscal - Tumblr blog

[elexuscal]

As leader she gets first dibs at scavenging the abandoned macy’s

[elexuscal]

if he was still alive I know in my heart that Terry Pratchett would have done a bit about Igors and Igorinas doing gender confirmation surgery by now. going into a lab full of bubbling vials and picking out a penis from a tank the way you pick a lobster. that one, please. you gotta be careful though because they'll really try to upsell you into getting two or three installed. people going to the clinic as pairs and just having parts swapped out for a discounted rate. maybe you actually just trade brains, that's even easier. Igorth have already been doing that thurgery for thenturieth.

[elexuscal]

TEMTEM HISTORY. VERY IMPORTANT!!!1!!

[elexuscal]

A year's worth of progress! Instead of doing a straightforward redraw I decided to improve upon the original concept by drawing sequences instead of singular poses. I don't enjoy redrawing old work beat for beat, so this reflects my current skills more effectively and also does the concept better justice than what I was capable of last year!

The 2023 art

[elexuscal]

Hey, would you be willing to elaborate on that "disappearance of the Anasazi is bs" thing? I've heard something like that before but don't know much about it and would be interested to learn more. Or just like point me to a paper or yt video or something if you don't want to explain right now? Thanks!

I’m traveling to an archaeology conference right now, so this sounds like a great way to spend my airport time! @aurpiment you were wondering too—

“Anasazi” is an archaeological name given to the ancestral Puebloan cultural group in the US Southwest. It’s a Diné (Navajo) term and Modern Pueblos don’t like it and find it othering, so current archaeological best practices is to call this cultural group Ancestral Puebloans. (This is politically complicated because the Diné and Apache nations and groups still prefer “Anasazi” because through cultural interaction, mixing, and migration they also have ancestry among those people and they object to their ancestry being linguistically excluded… demonyms! Politically fraught always!)

However. The difficulties of explaining how descendant communities want to call this group kind of immediately shows: there are descendant communities. The “Anasazi” are Ancestral Purbloans. They are the ancestors of the modern Pueblos.

The Ancestral Puebloans as a distinct cultural group defined by similar material culture aspects arose 1200-500 BCE, depending on what you consider core cultural traits, and we generally stop talking about “Ancestral Puebloan” around 1450 CE. These were a group of people who lived in northern Arizona and New Mexico, and southern Colorado and Utah—the “Four Corners” region. There were of course different Ancestral Pueblo groups, political organizations, and cultures over the centuries—Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, Kayenta, Tusayan, Ancestral Hopi—but they generally share some traits like religious sodality worship in subterranean circular kivas, residence in square adobe roomblocks around central plazas, maize farming practices, and styles of coil-and-scrape constructed black-on-white and black-on-red pottery.

The most famous Ancestral Pueblo/“Anasazi” sites are the Cliff Palace and associated cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado:

When Europeans/Euro-Americans first found these majestic places, people had not been living in them for centuries. It was a big mystery to them—where did the people who built these cliff cities go? SURELY they were too complex and dramatic to have been built by the Native people who currently lived along the Rio Grande and cited these places as the homes of their ancestors!

So. Like so much else in American history: this mystery is like, 75% racism.

But WHY did the people of Mesa Verde all suddenly leave en masse in the late 1200s, depopulating the whole Mesa Verde region and moving south? That was a mystery. But now—between tree-ring climatological studies, extensive archaeology in this region, and actually listening to Pueblo people’s historical narratives—a lot of it is pretty well-understood. Anything archaeological is inherently, somewhat mysterious, because we have to make our best interpretations of often-scant remaining data, but it’s not some Big Mystery. There was a drought, and people moved south to settle along rivers.

There’s more to it than that—the 21-year drought from 1275-1296 went on unusually long, but it also came at a time when the attempted re-establishment of Chaco cultural organization at the confusingly-and-also-racist-assuption-ly-named Aztec Ruin in northern New Mexico was on the decline anyway, and the political situation of Mesa Verde caused instability and conflict with the extra drought pressures, and archaeologists still strenuously debate whether Athabaskans (ancestors of the Navajo and Apache) moved into the Four Corners region in this time or later, and whether that caused any push-out pressures…

But when I tell people I study Southwest archaeology, I still often hear, “Oh, isn’t it still a big mystery, what happened to the Anasazi? Didn’t they disappear?”

And the answer is. They didn’t disappear. Their descendants simply now live at Hopi, Zuni, Taos, Picuris, Acoma, Cochiti, Isleta, Jemez, Laguna, Nambé, Ohkay Owingeh, Pojoaque, Sandia, San Felipe, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Tamaya/Santa Ana, Kewa/Santo Domingo, Tesuque, Zia, and Ysleta del Sur. And/or married into Navajo and Apache groups. The Anasazi/Ancestral Puebloans didn’t disappear any more than you can say the Ancient Romans disappeared because the Coliseum is a ruin that’s not used anymore. And honestly, for the majority of archaeological mysteries about “disappearance,” this is the answer—the socio-political organization changed to something less obvious in the archaeological record, but the people didn’t disappear, they’re still there.

[elexuscal]

obsessed with how in Danny Phantom

when the network (i presume) went to the show's writing staff and said, "love the show, but the kid's a superhero, give him a logo, we need a logo"

they clearly thought. but uhhh chief his super hero costume is the outfit he died in. we can't change it.

but they *had* to change it.

and instead of any half-dozen solutions i can think of off the top of my head (e.g. season 2 power up, take advantage of his already canonical light shapeshifting powers)

they went "okay so a ghost genie re-writes reality so he never met Sam and therefore neve rdied so Sam convinces him to die all over again but not before slapping her own home-made logo on his chest"

ridiculous. awful. love it.

[elexuscal]

dr maxwell

[elexuscal]

listening to wtnv in 2024 makes me understand immediately why tumblr over a decade ago thought this shit was the coolest thing ever. it casually but flawlessly parodies the us surveillance state, ultra-militarized police forces, inane human resource bureaucracies and the blasé of the suburban middle class all within the span of three episodes with a very tongue in cheek slice of life format that doesn’t sound possible on paper but is executed absolutely absurdly well

[elexuscal]

I'm going to start traumacore posting on linkedin

[elexuscal]

The Tower card represents danger, crisis, and unforeseen change. However, it can also symbolize liberation.

[elexuscal]

“I found you!”

[elexuscal]

My brain at all times:

[elexuscal]

Boy, I felt that one

[elexuscal]

Teen girls reading this, if you feel a calling to write fanfiction about a teen girl being transported to a fictional world, go for it. If you want to write about a teen girl being adopted by your favorite characters or joining the fellowship of the ring or becoming a knight, please do.

We should be encouraging kids to be creative and practice writing, an important life skill, not discouraging it because we find teens acting like teens to be cringe.

[elexuscal]

MURDERBOT

All Systems Red intro - comic adaptation

ENG/CZ (CZ under cut)

A comic adaptation I did for a school assignment.

Originally made for the Czech translation of the book, so I had to change the original English text a little to fit the finished comic.

Czech:

Original book All Systems Red by the author Martha Wells, I claim no right to the original work. This is only a fan adaptation.

[elexuscal]

fascinating to me how quickly we forget that the cycles repeat. people treating 5-15 year olds like this breed of superchild created to do evil and taint the world. that was all of us. "they're wrecking sephoras" you would not survive a 2015 hot topic with this mindset. "they're falling for the stanley cup thing" buying on trend overly robust camping gear for every day use is like. a middle class tradition in this country. our glorious kånken backpack vs their wicked stanley cup.

[elexuscal]

Laurence: I hate spies 😠 even if they weren't always lying to me they're dishonorable and willing to turn traitor for the base enticement of money. Also Laurence: