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obviously to be clear you should care about us imperial aggression because of its victims, the people of the global south who are immiserated and murdered by it. but also if you are at all a fan of living on a habitable planet you should be deeply concerned by what it means for nonproliferation. how could any state that fears the us as a strategic threat, seeing what is happening in iran right now, not conclude that obtaining nuclear weapons is in fact a necessary priority

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Video Game: Uh oh! You've encountered Fat Enemy! He will be a tough man to take down due to fatness armor and gross attacks like Belch and Fart.

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After noticing patterns over the years, I created this list with 13 points to score the level of stereotypes about sharks present in a work. I believe that most of these stereotypes have their main origin in the film Jaws (1975).

With the scarcity of works that explore other creative approaches to sharks, beyond the “man-eating ” narrative, Jaws ended up consolidating itself as the greatest source of inspiration and creative reference for many productions to this day. This was called “The Jaws Effect”. 🩸🦈

I've noticed that certain patterns in the creative world repeat themselves to the point of being tedious, which bothers me. Not because they're bad, but because in many cases they're harmful. With these points, I hope to show sharks in a new light.

🩸1 - Great White Shark Popularized by the Jaws movie, the Great white shark has become the dominant archetype in the representation of sharks in fiction. Often, works choose to use this shark or a generic gray version of imprecise anatomy, with no defined species. However, there are over 400 species of shark, and very few are explored creatively.

🩸2 - Man-eater The persistent idea that sharks have humans as a natural part of their diet is one of the most widespread stereotypes. Although there are reports of incidents, most attacks are isolated and often by mistake. Any animal, including humans, could turn to unexpected sources of food in a situation of desperation or starvation.

🩸3 - Forced Behavior It's common to see sharks portrayed with distorted or exaggerated behaviors that don't match their nature just to cause tension, such as:

Hunting small fish, ignoring the fact that sharks avoid expending energy on low-energy prey.

Abandoning easy prey just to arbitrarily chase the protagonist.

Going crazy at the smell of blood.

Showing a wild and constant hunger.

Obsessively pursuing a single prey.

Making aggressive shark species known for being peaceful or timid.

Attacking and destroying objects, structures or vessels with disproportionate fury just to reach someone.

🩸4 - Monstrous appearance It's common to see sharks' appearance exaggerated to intensify visual fear, making them look like monsters rather than real animals:

A gaping mouth, with huge, crooked teeth that are constantly stained with blood.

Menacing, demonic red, black empty and soulless eyes.

Body covered in grotesque scars, exposed wounds and even weapons embedded in the skin.

A disproportionate figure, with pointed shapes, a swollen or deformed body.

Bizarre mutations that completely alter their anatomy.

Technological modifications to make them more weapon-like, emphasizing the idea of the "Killing Machine".

🩸5 - Shark de-characterization Especially in children's works, in order to be accepted by the public or the other characters in the plot, the shark is often forced to change its identity. It is transformed into a “domesticated” version, such as:

Becoming a vegetarian or a toothless shark, losing its ecological role as a predator.

Taking on exaggeratedly “funny” behavior, becoming a caricature.

Having its behavior and appearance altered to look more like a dolphin or other friendly shape, excluding striking features such as prominent fins, visible gills or a fusiform snout.

Choose to portray a specific species of shark because it seems more “friendly” to the public, such as the whale shark.

🩸6 - Limited Nature The representation of sharks in fiction is usually limited to sensationalist aspects, such as the power of their bite, the old phrase that they "smell a drop of blood in 2 million liters of water", or things like "killers from the womb".

However, sharks have some very interesting characteristics that are little explored creatively:

Acute hearing, capable of picking up sounds more than a kilometer away in the ocean.

Their electroreception, which allows them to perceive tiny electrical impulses emitted by living prey and even sense the electromagnetic field around them.

Possible link between their migrations and the lunar phases.

Incredible healing capacity and immune resistance.

Skin made up of denticles made of the same material as our teeth.

They constantly change their teeth.

Longevity and they never stop growing.

Many fish such as rémoras and pilot fish depend on and live alongside sharks.

Sensitive to pressure changes and can even predict hurricanes and tropical storms.

🩸7 - Red Presence Striking presence of red, either with the presence of blood or the color present in the design. This emphasis on red reinforces the shark's direct association with violence, danger and death, contributing to the construction of the “bloodthirsty monster” stereotype.

🩸8 - Dark Music It is common for sharks to be associated with tense, dark and threatening soundtracks whenever they appear on the scene. More often than not, I notice that when sharks are mentioned in song lyrics, it is to express some sort of comparison to some negative stereotype.

🩸9 - Threatening setting Scenarios with sharks are almost always represented in a gloomy, dark, desaturated way, empty of marine life. The environment is treated as a dangerous place by nature, shipwrecks, dark caves, areas full of garbage, explosive mines or the inhospitable depths of the sea

🩸10 - Masculinization The theme involving sharks has always been very masculine. Shark characters are rarely female, while the human characters who interact with these animals, scientists, hunters, divers or specialists, are almost always white men. Women and minorities almost never occupy central or specialized roles in these narratives.

🩸11 - Villainization Sharks are often portrayed as villains by default, carrying negative and caricatured stereotypes, for example:

Gangster or mobster

Aggressor or school bully

Criminal or loan shark

Brutish idiot or dumb henchman

Corrupt politician or authoritarian fascist figure

Indomitable monster or irrational beast

Recurring enemy, obstacle or final boss in video games

🩸12 - Objectification Sharks are often treated as mere resources or utilitarian objects in fiction. They are represented as trophies, rewards, collectibles or consumables, as if they existed only to be hunted, exhibited or eaten.

This objectification also appears in the constant presence of jaws decorating environments, teeth used as accessories, fins amputated as an ingredient, and in the display of the animal's body in a morbid way: corpses exposed, dead body hung and displayed as a trophy in harbor, parts dissected or being devoured by other creatures.

🩸13 - Death As if it weren't enough to have become a symbol of death incarnate, even in animations aimed at children, sharks almost always have the same fate: death. What's worse, their death is usually celebrated as a relief or a victory.

Impaled, butchered, set on fire, crushed, blown up, fished out or killed by another "heroic" creature, tossed about by hurricanes… In many cases, these scenes are treated with humor or graphic exaggeration, turning the destruction of the shark into a spectacle.

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I was unsure about publishing this list as it is just personal observations from someone who loves sharks. A few people asked me for this list and said it would be worth posting, don't take it too seriously.

These stereotypes are not necessarily bad or invalid, after all, we are talking about works of fantasy and fiction. However, they could be resignified through new creative ideas that arouse feelings other than fear and terror.

Although many people's passion for sharks arose precisely from movies like Jaws and the stereotypes it popularized, it's important to remember that these same elements have been repeated almost unchanged for decades. This exhaustive repetition was largely because it was profitable, turning sharks into yet another victim of entertainment capitalism. Over time, this type of representation ended up distancing ordinary people from the reality of these animals, reinforcing fear rather than curiosity. Nowadays things are a little better, but not better enough.

The reality of sharks goes far beyond that. They are mysterious and fascinating animals, older than the first trees or dinosaurs. They have survived five mass extinctions, incredibly adapted from the abyssal depths to mangroves and freshwater rivers. They have unique senses and behaviors that are still shrouded in mystery, as well as a biology so singular that it inspires advances in science and technology. For many ancient cultures, sharks are revered as true gods of ocean balance.

I dare say that by looking after the health of the seas for millions of years, sharks made it possible for our own species to emerge from the depths of the primordial ocean. They are, in a way, guardians of our cradle of origin. And so we owe them a great deal of respect and preserve them at all costs.

To date, no creative work has managed to surpass “Jaws”. Who will be creative enough to create a new work and transform the collective imaginary of sharks from fear to fascination? 🦈✨

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What's your take on the "Superheroes are a bad metaphor for marginalized groups because real minorities don't actually pose a threat to people" argument?

Basically my stance on the matter, with very few caveats. Also my stance on most attempts at doing this with Vampires and similar obligate cannibals; morally speaking you're thoroughly into the territory where astronauts are on the moon killing each other with rocks, and would that be fucked up or what.

Admittedly valiant attempts at squaring these circles (such as the depiction of a significant population of mutants who are functionally just disabled people, etc) are such visible attempts at squaring the circle that it heightens the contradiction in works that don't pay the same amount of attention. Consequentially all my favorite capefic engages with the reality of these people existing as a social phenomenon unto themselves, intersecting with but distinct from anything else for which you might assume them to be a metaphor.

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Y’know, it’s kind of odd that Stark and Richards are the Marvel geniuses who the fans are always taking to task, given that Banner is right there. I mean maybe he’s just too obvious a target; but with all the discussions of “do we really want to raise up a tech billionaire as a hero?” it seems strange that there’s less discourse on how one of the foundational superheroes is an undisguised Robert Oppenheimer-alike.

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Nature is beautiful...

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✨🏳️‍⚧️ A short pride comic, hope you’re all well 🏳️‍⚧️✨

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No way

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TODAY

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Thoughts on the Street Fighter 6 DLC line up

As far as Monkey's Paw wishes of the week go, I'm afraid "sick new Marvel fighting game that's promising everything people wanted out of MvC4, but it's developed by ArcSys (they make great games! I just don't care for them much), so Marvel vs Capcom is almost definitely back in the grave for at least half a decade" is gonna be an impossible bar to beat, I'm afraid.

I guess my reaction is sorta the same as last time? They put one of my favorite characters in, they put in a character I like but whose inclusion amounts to not much more than a "neat!" from me, they put in a character I did not want to see come back but I don't truly dislike and can hear out a case for, and they put in a character I actually do dislike and did not want in the game, but whose inclusion was inevitable and I'm willing to be okay with because SF6 has rarely failed to redeem a previously mediocre/lousy character so, eh, whatever. Maybe it's just me being burned-out today but honestly, none of these people are eliciting that big of a response from me, but that'll probably change when we start seeing them in action.

To be clear, Sagat is my favorite Street Fighter character, but the main reason why I'm not popping for Sagat anywhere near as much as I popped for Elena is because Sagat was inevitable. I wasn't sure whether Elena would ever get to come back and then she did better than ever, but Sagat was practically a shoe-in the moment the DLC seasons began, so it was kind of just a matter of time. I am happy to have my main back, I am very curious as to where he's gonna be at lore-wise given where they left him off in SFV, but I don't think I'm gonna be feeling that buzz until I see him in action.

Not gonna lie, I knew it was a long shot, but I still wish they brought Adon back - I mean we'll definitely see a mention of him at least via World Tour, but I miss the fucker.

Viper's back and, yeah, that tracks, they were probably gonna do that soon enough. I wrote about her before and in the process talked myself into liking her a lot more than I did before, which is still not that much. Other than Poison (who doesn't really count as such) and maybe Seth, she's like the last SFIV character left with any kind of fan demand. To be blunt, I didn't care for her being playable again, but I wanted M.Bison back a lot less even though I like him a lot more, and I was happy with the way they brought back Bison. I really like the new outfit they're showing for her here, a lot more than I ever liked her past designs, and I think Viper's uniquely utilitarian niche is a good one to have if they're gonna start moving the stories along. At the very least I'll be glad to have confirmation that Juri's side-hustle with her was a real thing.

Well, egg on my face, I guess.

So full disclosure, Ingrid has always been one of the few SF characters I actually dislike - not one of the few ones I hate, but mostly because she never actually existed until now. She was a misplaced King of Fighters leftover that they kept around as a joke/easter egg, where the whole bit was referencing her misplaced non-canon status. The strongest character and the one to truly defeat M.Bison being a boring soulless anime girl who is the goddess of everything forever something something, the one time she showed up in an Alpha 3 release, her story was a joke where the whole bit is that it would be an anti-climax if she was real, and so even those Capcom character profiles that canonized everyone, even the ARIKA characters, went out of their way to emphasize her status.

So obviously she picked up a following - generic cute anime girl goddess who permanently settles powerscaling debates, that's catnip to a lot of people - and now that I'm laying it out like this, it feels silly to think this wasn't going to happen - obviously they were gonna have to make her real at some point past the joke running it's course. They released Capcom Fighting Collection 2 last month with this little shit on the cover, they were clearly gonna do it soon.

All that said, I like that design. I mean, I hated the old one, so anything would be an improvement, but this one has a neat religious wizard vibe that I think can match well with where Psycho Power is at in the storyline and play off JP's own vibe, and now that her old joke doesn't work anymore and she needs to have at least some character traits besides "cute and vaguely powerful", it seems like she's gonna be entering as kind of basically a new character? Maybe? Idk. If they pulled the trigger on Ingrid on any other game it would suck, but I'm willing to hear out how 6 justifies her.

Alex! Neat! Love Alex, Alex is cool. I'm glad people also seem to like Alex, that whole "new protagonist" idea just never worked out but I'm glad he stuck around as a reocurring cool guy, will love to play as him.

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Not happy with this at all but i had to draw my favest fella ever

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Happy 24-6-01!

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I think the funniest thing about the SF6 crossover in Wilds is the fact that nobody references the fact that it's a crossover.

In World atleast, similar crossovers make it EXTREMELY clear that the content they introduce is from "another world". Hell, Giralt of Rivia gets isekaid right in front of you.

But as far as I can tell, that just- doesn't happen with Akuma. I've not exactly gone through it with a fine-tooth comb, but nobody seems to suggest that Akuma came from another world or anything like that. He just showed uo and started beating the shit out of a bunch of monsters. So I can only assume that the implication here is that Akuma just kinda exists here. For some reason.

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i dont like how people can say that theyre in the united states military as a fun fact about themselves and youre not allowed to start going for the throat like a rabid dog

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it's amazing how if you just murder people on your own most people will agree that that's wrong but if you sign up to murder people overseas for the government you have like hundreds of people coming out of the woodwork like "pleeeease be nice to him 🥺 he was just a newborn baby who only enlisted to pay for college. pleeeease don't make fun of him, he is zero years old. he didn't know any better :( despite logging 10,437 hours in call of duty he was somehow completely unaware that the military kills people. he was poor also."