i was laying in bed thinking about a classmates bumper sticker on his E-bike and i really think it goes hard but i needed it to be more clearly gay
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A graphic from Mad magazine #182 from April 1976. The larger piece this comes from is "A Mad Portfolio of Some Idealists' Dreams" by Arnoldo Franchioni.
I have been starting to visit and revisit Mad following the discovery of a huge box of old issues in the storage unit of my wife's late uncle. Some of this stuff has aged in rather interesting ways.
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A thing that bothers me about wizard schools in popular media – outside of the magic-grade-school stuff, anyway – is that they're typically depicted as being basically magic universities, but their actual curricula and pedagogical approaches look much more like those of a technical institution. Like, buddy, that's not a wizard university, that's a wizard trade school. You can't just slap university student culture on top of trade school pedagogy. It doesn't work like that – the one emerges from the other!
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While I do find it funny that henchmen in Gotham probably warn each other about the Red Hood because he's a bat who will actually kill you. I think it would be better if Jason was actually seen as some sort of savior or idol to like 90% of the goons scattered around Gotham. Doesn't matter who they work for, they all know Jason, former crime-lord that took over majority of Gotham's underground in one night.
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Jason, years after the events of UTRH, now fighting crime alongside the batfam, except every goon he runs into immediately recognizes him, stops fighting, and starts begging.
the first time it happens, Jason assumes they're begging for their lives only to hear them begging for him to return to the crime lord business so they can work for him and not Gotham's current money-stingy, abusive rogues (Black Mask lol)
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Jason showing up to patrol as backup for Dick in an overrun warehouse full of Two-Face's henchmen and as Jason's about to interfere, one of the men stops dead in their tracks and stares really hard at Jason until:
Goon: Oh my God, boss, is that you?
Jason, pulling out his guns, about to shoot:
Goon: Mr. Hood, sir???
Jason, halfway about to pull the trigger: Wait a min–Jeremy? Oh wow, it's been ages! How's the wife?
Goon (Jeremy): Oh my God it IS you, holy shit where have you BEEN? Me and the guys miss you, man!
Dick, with a knife at his throat: What is happening right now
Jason: Ahh, well, crime-lording just wasn't fitting in on the daily schedule. Tryna turn over a new leaf and all that
Goon (Jeremy): Aw, that's disappointing. We really liked working for you, right guys?
[Chorus of enthusiastic "YEAHS" from the rest of the henchmen (even the one holding Dick at knifepoint)]
Goon (Jeremy): Well, anyways, I can't beat you up knowing you're my old boss! You gave us the best health benefits! We'll just let you take the evidence and leave.
Jason: Aw, thanks guys :)
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And that's why 95% percent of Jason's missions in Gotham end in success. Not because he's willing to kill people or because rogues are terrified of him, but because 90% of the rogues' henchmen once worked for Jason and fuckin love him lol.
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Extremely nitpicky but I hate white wedding gowns in fantasy, especially when they make absolutely no sense in the setting. No, that culture in the far north that prioritizes function over form and mostly wears heavy furs would not have the means, ability, or desire to make a sleeveless ivory silk gown with a semi-sweetheart neckline. Please be sensible about this and use your creativity instead of just slapping a Kleinfeld wedding gown into a medieval fantasy setting.
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Post 9/11 Trivia
Most folks on this site were either children on September 11, 2001, or weren’t even born yet. But America went crazy for about a year afterwards. Here’s some highlights that I remember that might not be in your history books:
There was national discussion on whether or not Halloween should be canceled because…fuck if I know why. After planes crashed into buildings in NYC it follows that 6-year-olds in Iowa shouldn’t be allowed to dress up like Batman and ask their neighbors for candy, I guess. (Halloween wasn’t canceled, by the way.)
On a similar note, people asked if comedy - any sort of comedy - was appropriate anymore, ever.
People sold shitty parachutes to suckers “in case your building gets attacked and you have to jump out the window.” There were honest-to-God news reports warning people not to jump out of the window with shitty mail-order parachutes because they wouldn't work.
As a follow-up to the attacks, someone mailed anthrax to some prominent politicians and news anchors - you know, famous people - along with some badly-written notes about “you cannot stop us, death to America, Allah is good” and after that every time some random dumbass found a package in the mail they didn’t recognize they thought that the terrorists were targeting them, too.
Everyone was similarly convinced that their town was going to be the next target, even if they were a little town in the middle of nowhere. "Our town of Bumblefuck, South Dakota (population 690) has the largest styrofoam pig statue west of the Mississippi! Terrorists might fly planes into that too! It's a prime target!"
People started taping up their windows and trying to make their houses or apartments airtight out of fear of chemical and biological attacks. There were news reports warning people that turning your house into an airtight box was a bad idea because, y'know, you need air to breathe.
"[X] supports terrorism!" and “if we do [X], the terrorists win!” were used as arguments for everything. "Some rich Arab you never heard of donated to his organization that backs Hamas which backs al-Queda, and also owns stock in a holding company that has partial ownership of the Pringles company, so if you eat Pringles you're supporting terrorism!" "The terrorists want to tear down our freedoms and our way of life and rule us through fear! Eating what you want is one of our freedoms as Americans! If you're afraid to eat Pringles, the terrorists win!" (I promise you that this sort of argument is in no way hyperbole.)
(This argument is how Halloween was saved, by the way. “If we cancel Halloween, the terrorists win!”)
People worked 9/11 into everything, and I mean everything, whether it was appropriate or not. If you went to the grocery store the tortilla chips would remind you to support the troops on the packaging. Used car sales would be dedicated to our brave first responders. You couldn't wipe your ass without the toilet paper rolls reminding you to never forget the fallen of 9/11, and again, this is not hyperbole.
My uncle, who lived in Ohio and had never been to New York except to visit once in the 70′s, died of a stroke about 8 months after 9/11, and the priest brought up the attacks at the eulogy.
On a similar local note, on the day of 9/11, after the towers went down, gas stations in my home town immediately jacked up gas prices. The mayor had the cops go around and force them to take them back down. I doubt any of that was legal.
Before 9/11, Christianity in America - and religion in general - was on a downward swing, with reddit-tier atheism on the upswing. Religion was outdated superstition from a bygone age. The day after 9/11? Every single church was PACKED. (This wasn't a bad thing, but the power-hungry on the Evangelical Right saw this as a golden opportunity to grab power and influence.)
EDIT: By Popular Demand - Freedom Fries. I initially left these off because they came a couple years after the initial panic and most people thought they were kind of absurd (and I don't recall anyone really going along with it other than maybe some local diners here and there). France didn't want to get involved in our world policing so some folks were like "TRAITORS!" and wanted to call french fries "Freedom Fries" instead, so as to stick it to the French.
Besides dumb shit like that…it’s really hard to overstate how completely the national mood and character changed in the span of a day, or how much of the current culture war is a result of the aftermath. (9/11 was the impetus for the sharp rise in power of the Evangelical Right, who made themselves utterly odious and the following backlash helped the rise of the current Progressive Left, for instance.)
And if all of this seems batshit...well, it was. But I want you to think for a moment how people react today over even trivial shit. People send death threats over children's cartoons. They call for blood if the maker of a video game had an opinion they don't like. If someone made a racist joke a decade ago when they were a teenage edgelord, folks will go after people who even associate with them. "DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND ALL THE HARM THEY'RE DOING!?"
Now take that same level of over-the-top histrionics and apply it to the unprecedented event of passenger planes crashing into crowded buildings in America's most populous city and killing thousands of people all at once. "DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT WE WERE ATTACKED!?"
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