#inconvenient facts

[isawthismeme]

[why-is-it-always-autumn]

Love a self-inflicted time loop. The main character isn’t trapped.  They can stop whenever they want.  But how can they when things aren’t perfect yet?  They can do better than this.  They need to try again.  They can get it right this time.  They just need to try again.  They can stop anytime they want.  Just one more time.  They can fix this. They just need to try again.  There are still things to fix.  They just need to try again.

[dykealloy]

[tanadrin]

I think this is pretty spot on; whenever I see discussion of the economy and economic perceptions, there's always people in the replies going "yeah, but eggs are $8 a dozen" or "why is every middle class family I know foodbanking." And then OP, or someone else, will post data showing egg prices are stable, or that wages have actually been rising faster than inflation, and the person who posted that may even admit that, ok, things are fine for them personally, but not for other people.

And it's always been true that politics is more about attitudes and aesthetics than it is about policy or facts on the ground; but it's rare that attitudes are so divorced from people's actual material circumstances. And while I think there are lots of things contributing to this disconnect, as matter of campaigning, I don't really know how you overcome it.

[gojosbf]

megumi baby what the fuck

[zipmode]

stupid little comic based on that one comment Karlach makes <3

[gingermintpepper]

I saw it in your tag game post that you're also fond of the Apollo-Heracles conflict 👀 for a myth that appears in only a couple of sources, it sure has a lot of presence in the vase paintings (no seriously, everytime I think I've seen the last of it, I find ten more)

SO do you have any favorites among the paintings that represent this story??

OMG OMG THIS ASK IS A GIFT. IT IS A GIFT THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR LETTING ME TALK ABOUT THIS

I also think it's extremely interesting that it's a story so popularly portrayed by vase paintings and in such a variety of ways!! It's certainly one of the stories that gets left out of written compilation of Heracles' legend a bit (which is a shame, I think it's a fantastic story) but Apollo had a very peculiar relationship with Heracles in general that I just kind of find amazing (and very, very funny).

Apollo is not a god with any legitimate grudge against Heracles, but he does argue with the mortal a bit like he argues with his favourite brothers 😂Part of why I love the story of Apollo and Heracles fighting over the tripod so much is that it is such a little brother thing for Heracles to be upset with the proclamation his elder brother has given him and so, he throws a great fit, taking up the chair and declaring that he'll just give himself a better prophecy! And Apollo, instead of being a marginally professional big brother, decides to fight him for it until their father has to break up their cat-fight. Like was that not just the plot of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes? Is this not exactly how Apollo treated Hermes when he was a child and now those two are inseparable? 💀

Because of this, my favourite vase paintings tend to be the ones that highlight the personal squabbling between Apollo and Heracles the most. There are some very elaborate ones that have the full host of them - Athena, Heracles, Apollo, Artemis, usually a dog and a doe, I've even seen a couple that had birds and plants etched on them, but the simplest ones that show Heracles about to bonk Apollo with his club out of frustration or depict Heracles nyooming away from Apollo while Apollo (presumably) yells curses about how he's going to fling Heracles head first into Tartarus for daring to take his things? Yeah, those are the premium big brother/little brother things I'm looking for.

(Photo. Marie-Lan Ngyuen)

(Photo. Museo Claudio Faina)

Also the one in the Theoi.com archives is a real classic - perfect energy.

[roblogging]

the job search has begun (i already want to retire)

[strangersatellites]

dustin making the comment one day, eyebrows furrowed and voice suspicious, “i thought that scar on your neck healed up already?”

steve’s hand flying up to his neck because it did. it did.

he flinches at the tender feeling and briefly wishes that eddie would spill something on his last clean pair of jeans. maybe that he sleeps through an alarm.

quick on his feet he rattles off something about “new laundry detergent. gave me a rash i guess.”

thinks that sounds better than the truth.

better than “that’s where my boyfriend squeezes his hand around my throat when we have sex.”

dustin doesn’t need to know that.

[essektheylyss]

I was personally assaulted (honorific) by this essay on ambition. It's very good.

[silverskye13]

I get how Wels is really protective of the Hermits, but I think part of that has given Tango some prejudices about the Helsmets. I feel like he thinks of Tanguish as a defanged lion or something, like "oh Helsmets are dangerous, but mine's not so I can hang with him" and he's trying to convince his "parent" to let him keep the wild animal he's found. I feel like Tanguish trying to convince him the other Helsmets don't mean any harm is never going to work, but Tango is also not aware of some of the struggles the Helsmets can go through and doesn't realise they are capable of actually being nice to each other without tearing the other to shreds.

Tango has made one of my favorite blunders in media: he has mistaken no intent to harm with harmless. A harmless thing couldn't hurt you even if it wanted to. A thing with no harmful intent could do a great amount of harm, but does not wish to.

I think you're very right in saying he treats Tanguish like a tame lion. He isn't really a person. He's certainly more of a person to Tango than he is to Welsknight, but he's still a step down. Tanguish is his pet hype man, a rubber duck that happens to occasionally have opinions, a toothless predator.

Personally! I think this is less a flaw of Welsknight's influence, and more a flaw in Tango. Welsknight has done a lot to heck up the situation, don't get me wrong, but his has more to do with making Tango doubt his relationships. Tango didn't treat Tanguish like his own person before Wels found out about him.

[manmilkers]

We are supposed to believe, Armand, capable of controlling a theatre of +100 people without breaking a sweat or any visible strain, stopping time, mind wiping other vamps, able to withstand sunlight, wasn't capable of stopping Santiago, who is removing what Armand's perceives as his one obstacle to Louis, Claudia, and Madeline, a vampire Armand did not want made? But Lestat, who goes off script to align himself with the accused and speak in the defendants favor and who cannot control a dozen inebriated soldiers without bursting blood vessels and bleeding from the ears and not being able to stand upright after and is +2 centuries younger/less powerful than their leader had the more active role in the orchestrating/controlling the lynch mob- trial? There is an obvious difference in power here that belies the narrative being spun as well as onscreen actions being taken by each of them, that Lestat showed up for vengeance and Armand “could not prevent it” 🙄, as well as a disparity in what we know these characters motivations are. Both of these people have an obvious pattern of taking fairly extreme measures when they perceive Louis as spurning them for someone/thing else or being more taken with another. Only one of them has ever forcibly forbade Claudia from leaving Louis and the other had control of the coven that killed her.

[beaft]

i've been contemplating the cats' respective moralities and have come to the conclusion that kitten understands what crime is and will occasionally commit it, whereas pud has no concept of sin or indeed of anything beyond "want thing" and "want thing now"

[a-walking-fandom-reference]

the fact that it’s safer and more enjoyable to make content about aroace headcanons because it’s less of a threat to fandom because everyone knows it will never be canon than it is to make content about canon aroace characters because canon aroace characters are a threat to fandom because shipping is the most crucial part of fandom

[textfromthelookout]

Did you hear of the news?

I have. :(

Everyone else has their tributes so, here, a summary of my experience with Dragon Ball.

I was in fourth grade art class. A kid had the February 2005 issue of Shonen Jump, back when Shonen Jump was still physically printed here. I recognized Atem on the front cover because the Blockbuster around the corner from our house had DVDs (I think they were DVDs and not VHSs then since I distinctly remember it having a menu and special features) of some of the later episodes of Duelist Kingdom and my brother and I watched them on repeat. So I was like oh, hey, what's this? They make books of that stuff? I don't remember the conversation but the kid ended up giving me that issue, and I took it home with me.

There were a LOT of significant, groundwork things happening in that issue, now that I think about it. We were just beginning to see Sanji truly in action against Pearl. The Dark Tournament was in it's early stages still with Roto fucking around and finding out against Kurama. Sakura shears off her hair in a move that rearranged sexualities the world over. The reason Atem was on the cover was because Yu-Gi-Oh Millennium World was just debuting its first and second chapter. Bleach wasn't even serialized yet. And Dragon Ball, of course, was also there, about a hundred and fifty chapters ahead of everybody else.

Keep in mind that this was my first experience with manga, period. So my very first experience with Dragon Ball opened on this:

and ended on this:

Yeah. Truth be told, at the time Yu Yu Hakusho piqued my interest more than Dragon Ball (a guy fighting with plants? how creative!) but I never did forget these chapters. I thought the art style was so different from the others.

At some point after this, probably between several months and a year and a half, the TV happened to be on one evening when Toonami was airing Dragon Ball Z. Oh hey, I said, I recognize that art, I know those characters. So I hung around and watched some of episode 281. Two things about watching that episode stick with absolute crystal clarity in my mind to this day. Firstly: Buu choking Vegeta out with his arm freaked me the FUCK out as a child. I could not tell you why I had a fear reaction to it but hey, there you go. The second is this:

Specifically I remember 'You died once. If anything happens to you now, you won't exist anymore. There'll be nothing I can do to bring you back.' Not precisely word for word over the years, but Schemmel's tone of voice on this particular lineread. If I had to guess I'd say it was because at that point in my life, uh, death was kinda permanent? So wait, what do you mean died ONCE. Doesn't that apply to everyone?

This still wasn't enough to get me super invested in it though, it just didn't seem like something that would appeal to me that much. So a couple years go by, I don't think about it all that much, and then of course, TFS hits the scene and drops DBZ Abridged. So you know. As a shithead middle schooler with a shithead sense of humor I thought it was the best damn thing since sliced bread. (My biggest character flaw is that I still think a lot of Season 1 is genuinely funny)

And that was really the extent of my interaction with the franchise for the next several years. Say what you will about DBZA but they did manage to put it all together such that someone who had a nonexistent concept of what the original context was could grok it with not a lot of effort. Some time in high school, I think I was around 15, I decided to bite the bullet and read all the manga, as much to increase the funny factor of DBZA as sheerly for the sake of being able to say I had. Stick it to the other weebs, y'know. Now they can't say I didn't know anything about good anime. This was unfortunately at a time when all that was available online were dirty poor-quality scans and questionable translations, but read it I did. I went 'yep, that sure is about what I expected', and proceeded to get on with my life. GT came and went, I looked up and saw Battle of Gods coming out and went 'oh hey that's still a thing huh', kinda was peripherally aware of all the divisiveness of Super as it was happening, didn't really pay it much attention, just stuck to DBZA and quite a lot of wiki-ing.

And then, this time of year about three years ago now, in the middle of conversation with @prophecydungeon, Dragon Ball somehow came up. Something to do with 'Even though I'm not hugely into DBZ's story or whatever Toriyama does have some great character designs' (yes I was referring to Vegeta and Future Trunks at the time, no i will not stop being predictable, yes i am a parody of myself). They eventually brought up the DBS Broly movie and said, and i quote: 'that was a solid 1.5h of unbelievably fun and wacky animation'. Having seen the Gogeta vs Broly part of it on twitter and been like 'damn that animation's kinda off the hook actually, good for them good for them', my response was to be like. Oh word? I've got a spare hour and a half to kill, sure, fuck it, why not, time to watch DBS Broly.

I think that movie was precision crafted to hit me in the hyperfixation, if we're being honest. Opening on a solid 20 minutes of Lore and Worldbuilding and then having most of the rest of the runtime being mindless slobberknocker fun by way of some of the hardest animation flexes ever? I was done for.

In summation. I have been aware of Dragon Ball for a lot of my life, in that its presence was pervasive and enduring as I grew up. I may have been late to the game of actually wholeheartedly enjoying it, but enjoy it I do. Dragon Ball is the roots of a vast tree of anime, and in reading it I began to understand why that is. I respect it for that, and I love it for that. My current fixation may have shifted, but as far as time devoted to one individual thing goes... it took me a year and a half to watch my way through all of the anime and read all of the manga. ALL of it. So there's something good in there, I'd say.

[grumpyoldsnake]

One of these days. One of these days, I will figure out what the hell makes the tipping point beyond which either a) there’s socialization that I feel insulated from and kind of numb about and too tired to pursue, or b) socialization where the very notion of so much as expressing one (1) internal thought or emotion suffuses my whole body with adrenaline and blaring Nope instincts.