#this is not vegetarian propaganda

[m7staruniverse]

It’s kinda fucked that a turkey gets pardoned by the President. Like what did that turkey do???? What are the crimes. And why just the one. Is it the most virtuous turkey??

[ficsempai]

Cucumbers are such a good vegetable, crunchy water, the epitomy of fresh crunchiness without being ice cubes. Absolutely epic in sandwich, or salad, or just as a snack by itself, long fresh snack.

Vegetables are just so underrated in recipes, everyone wants the cheese and the meat but WERE IS THE TEXTURE BRO! YOU’RE EATING MUSH ON MUSH???!! Where is the slight bitterness of the delicately charred Brussels sprouts. The eggplant melting on ur tongue.

YOU EAT BURGERS BECAUSE YOUR TEETH ARE TOO WEAK FOR SALADS!

Anyway, eat vegetables kids because if heart attacks won’t kill you, I will.

[feather--down]

Hmmm

[risingwinter]

Trying to wean off meat sucks. I've always loved meat so much, especially ham. But what hurts more is how much of an acceptable target vegans and vegetarians are. I had no idea how painful it gets :(

[historyhermann]

Steven Universe, vegetarianism, and media representation [Part 1]

My response to how some fans feel about Steven as a vegetarian. Cropped screencap from one of my favorite scenes from "Snow Day"

On December 23rd, "Snow Day," the 8th episode of Steven Universe Future (herein SUF), the mini-epilogue series to cap out the Steven Universe franchise, apart from possible games, aired on Cartoon Network. Among some fans there has been  anger and annoyance with the line by one of series protagonists, Steven Universe (voiced by Zach Callison), in declaring to his friends/guardians, Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst, that he has been a "vegetarian for, like, a month," saying it goes against his character and is "wrong." I'd like to defend this development, using existing canon, explain its importance in the show as a whole, and media representation of vegetarians. On this occasion, I have to laugh at that article in VegNews which claimed Pearl was a vegetarian because she is grossed out by eating and "...the only thing we see her consume is tea...[and] we're willing to bet she's not adding honey or milk, either." [1] Some of these sentiments are summarized from my Reddit comments.

Reprinted from my History Hermann WordPress blog and also on Wayback Machine. Originally published on Jan. 2. 2020.

Let's start with the episode itself. With that, warning of spoilers ahead for that episode if you have not seen this episode on Cartoon Network or any other platforms. As the episode begins, Steven is overworking himself, waking up early in the morning, preparing for a day full of activities to help those un-corrupted at the end of Season 5, helping them learn how to express themselves and enjoy themselves in a universe free of the repressive rule of dictators (as Steven called them in "Famiilar"), figureheads at this point. He leaves the house without breakfast, only taking a protein shake, decides to not take his novelty backpack, and drives to the school after Pearl bundles him up for the cold, saying he had "errands" to do. When he comes back that night, the Gems (Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst) greet him, trying to cheer him up, but he rejects their entreaties, rejecting activities and foods (like a pepperoni pizza) he enjoyed in the past. The next day, he wakes up at the same time, rejects his classic meal (a "together breakfast") as having "too much sugar," and tries to leave his house, but the snow stops him. As such, all the classes are cancelled and he gets out his notebook to work on changes to the third-quarter schedule. Amethyst sees he is too stressed out and begins a game of Steven Tag, last featured in "Keep Beach City Weird," a season 1 episode, when each Gem tagged becomes "classic Steven" (i.e. Steven from seasons 1-5), later joined in by all the Gems. The episode ends with Steven, after he is tagged and turns into "classic Steven" criticizing his fellow Gems not seeing him as grown up but rather a kid. They come around to this and rightly apologize to him. He wakes up the next day and travels with Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl, riding all in the car together, Amethyst with her own protein shake!

Perhaps that summary doesn't do the episode complete justice, but it sets the stage for the next part of my analysis: the importance of Steven becoming vegetarian (not a vegan). Steven is changing and maturing just as the world is changing, as he isn't the same person as the one who liked shows like Dogcopter (or "pupcopter" which is one for younger children), ate meat, and used a Cheeseburger backpack, like he did in the past. People like the cute, younger Steven but he is 17 years old now and fans should treat him that way. Without a doubt, he is putting a lot of emphasis on his responsibilities and it is stressing him out. You could even say that his rejection of a lot from the past is dangerous.

However, he is still making his own choices, just like every character, trying to cope with the stress, as he has "his own skin-care routine" noted by the fandom page for the episode. Steven's development reminded me of Connie in her debut in "Bubble Buddies," who talked about how her parents won't let her eat donuts because they have trans fats, although there is isn't an exact parallel of course. He seems to be cutting himself off from almost everyone, dedicating himself to his work, with Connie nor Lion making an appearance in the episode. I'll expand on that a bit later on.

Steven's choice goes beyond seeing the error of his past ways (being a meat-eater) or the possibility he is like "every teen" now (he isn't). He was acting within character, as some fans reminded us of how he acted during "Warp Tour" toward the Gems (the debut of Peridot, an autistic character like Entrapta):

In snow day he just gets kind of exasperated with the gems treating him like he's still 12, which is a totally normal way for him to feel. Part of growing up involves growing out of old interests. In the end he was happy to join them playing the new updated Steven tag and bring them with him to help do errands, and the next episode ["Why So Blue?"] had Steven being his usual happy self enjoying art and dancing and singing and stuff. So Snow Day honestly wasn't out of character for him imho.

This refutes the claim that he is "out of character" or the supposed "manipulating fan service" that some fans claimed. For those that say its a "betrayal" of his dad or of the saying "if every porkchop were perfect, we wouldn't have hot dogs," because that saying is supposed to be symbolic, and he is not the same as his dad, Greg, who can do what he wants. As one fellow user put it,

Steven has always been incredibly sensitive to the welfare of other living things, and that's only grown as he's gotten older. Honestly, for years now I've been predicting that he'd become a vegetarian eventually, although I wasn't sure if they would ever actually say so on the show.

To be fully fair, we should have seen it coming. As Leah said on Twitter, this should be a natural confusion based on all the hints in season 1 that "showed he was somewhat uncomfortable with meat." Certain users have cited the cookout at the end of Change Your Mind, that Steven seemed to eat pepperoni pizza in "Guidance," and other examples (like eating a hotdog in the openings to Season 1 episodes), we have to recognize that Steven has only been a vegetarian for ONE MONTH, so those examples are mute. Additionally, the time period between "Guidance" and "Snow Day" is not established, but is more than a month, as its assumed to be winter in "Snow Day" but perhaps summer or fall in "Guidance." Some have said that Sapphire may have made it snow, but I'm not sure she has that power, unless she worked with Lapis, of course, but Lapis didn't appear in the episode, so I don't know about that at all. He also had only potatoes and veggies during "Rose Buds" as one user pointed out, another detail worth noting.

Some can say that the episode was "depressing to watch" or grumble about Steven supposedly "starting to become unlikable and that's not good for your protagonist." The latter especially is absurd because people disliked him at the beginning (and the show in general) BECAUSE Steven was annoying. As I noted elsewhere, there is no doubt that SUF has a different tone, but Steven and the Gems are trying to deal with the aftermath of their victory in "Change Your Mind," and enforce the victory, dealing with the changes. Additionally, the Steven Universe franchise, itself, is about people changing. Not everyone stays the same and even though Steven is changing, the other Gems (Amethyst, Pearl, and Garnet) don't see it or fully recognize it, hence offending him with Steven tag, treating him like a kid. Steven has felt they don't completely understand him in the past, so this isn't a new sentiment. Those that say that Steven becoming vegetarian made them "legitimately nauseous" are about as bad as the person who argued with me on Twitter last week. I rather sympathize with a fan who said that the development is on-brand for Steven, adding that:

It shows growth and maturity; it shows that he finally understands the hypocrisy of "everyone is equal" but continues to contribute to animal agriculture. I know everyone won't agree with me, and that's okay.

Building upon this, I would say that his switch to vegetarianism, which is a recent development in the show, is an indication, among many others, that Steven is becoming more mature and modified, although not completely different from his youthful self. As one reviewer put it, "the world strikes on and Steven is shifting with it." Perhaps you could say he is doing a "speed run to adulthood," but he is growing and changing, with the show striking a much more mature tone. This is understandable because has a lot of work to do to maintain the "established peace across the stars," disbanding the "tyrannical and colonizing ways" of the Diamonds "to improve Gem life on the Gem Homeworld and Earth," as it is an ongoing struggle in an imperfect universe.

It's not flimsy that Steven is vegetarian, its awesome, showing a degree of maturity on his part and a representation of change in and of itself. I don't need funny memes to tell me that either. Sure, he needs therapy, without a doubt, which is a focus of later episodes. This brings me to the most important part of this post: representation. Before this episode, some of the best representation vegetarians had in animated shows was Lisa in “The Simpsons," still a canon vegetarian and Stan in “South Park” (not a canon vegetarian), so it should be praised that the Crewinverse and Rebecca Sugar allowed this representation in a show with great LBGTQ representation in the past, meaning that has done a good step forward. More than that, this shows "natural growth, hes becoming a teen and changing" as one user put it, and fits with his generally pacifist attitude and/or adopting the ideals of his mother who seemed to love all living things.

You could say that Steven's line about vegetarian is a throwaway line. It's not like Lisa Simpson who had a whole episode dedicated to her vegetarianism ("Lisa The Vegetarian") where Lisa reaches a compromise with her father, Homer, while spending the "majority of the show being ridiculed and ostracized by her family and friends." That leads to some songs like “you don’t win friends with salad!” chanted by Bart, Marge, and Homer. At the same time, Lisa disrupts a community event, is "saved" by vegetarians, with her belief tolerated but "for the price of no longer being a vegetarian outcast and being accommodated," in a show that has a strong tolerance for meat eaters. You could say that Lisa's moral outrage is muzzled. In fact, if we use Frinkiac as a measurement, the only other episodes that even mention the word "vegetarian" are in Homer's Phobia (in passing), Blame It On Lisa (Homer tries to convince Lisa to cheat on vegetarianism), Grade School Confidential (Bart threatens her with violating her values), Lisa's Wedding (a vision of the future), and jokingly elsewhere. This is still often cited as an example of representation in media of vegetarianism and veganism. [2] I think the one critic who noted that while it seems to be preachy, it is "overflowing with great individual scenes: the opening trip to Storytown Village; Lisa’s revelatory moment at the dinner table" with the Meat Council propaganda video as "the funniest isolated segment in the history of the show":

The fact that Steven is a vegetarian now is positive and fits with existing canon. Its really about damn time for this development, even if it is, ultimately, "pretty insignificant" in the show itself. Likely Steven will be like Mr. Peppy in Futurama: he'll be vegetarian but not "preachy about it." Nevertheless, it is worth highlighting, in part because it puts Steven among other noteworthy vegetarian cartoon characters like Tish Katsufrakis in The Weekenders��and Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender, the latter compared to Steven. [3] While it's hard to say that someone like Marceline the Vampire Queen in Adventure Time is vegetarian, we could easily assume that Perfuma, the hippy princess in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, is vegetarian, and maybe even Lapis and Peridot in Steven Universe, if they eat food at all, like in my fan fics, lol. Of course, that's just speculation. On an additional level, this is important due to the "pattern of vegetarians making people uncomfortable in the media" (indicated by annoyance from some parts of the SU fanbase in response in "Snow Day"), along with common "negative representation of vegetarians and vegans in the media." This episode counters that sentiment on its head. I am reminded of But I'm a Cheerleader, a great film if you haven't seen it already where the emissary of the conversion therapy camp, "True Directions," Mike, declares that vegetarianism is a "homosexual tendency." It's so absurd I have to laugh.

The fact Steven is a vegetarian is not only confirmed by further developments, like Steven eating a cheese pizza at the end of "Prickly Pair," but fits with two episodes which aired on December 28, the last two SUF episodes before the beginning of the hiatus, likely less than previous hiatuses in 2019, which was, by far, "CN’s most sparse release schedule for the show as they released the show in three chunks with massive hiatuses in between" as one fan noted in their statistical analysis of the show. We are all, clearly, being Spinel'd, but that's beside the point, lol. There has been a lot of chatter about these episodes. The first of these, "Little Graduation," begins with Steven looking happy and overjoyed, a good sign to see due to everything he is been through. But this doesn't last long: he is quickly depressed by the fact that his friends Sadie and Lars are not together as he had imagined in his mind (he was literally shipping them, like a sizable portion of the fanbase), with Sadie now dating a non-binary individual named Shep (which would may make Sadie pansexual or queer), voiced by Indya Moore, Lars & the Off Colors are going back to space, and sadly...Sadie Killer & the Suspects are breaking up! [4] The latter development is no surprise, however, as Buck Dewey predicted this in "The Big Show" where he said that their rise to stardom will be "followed by the inevitable infighting and creative disagreements that will tear us apart in a beautiful explosion of emotions," which Greg dismissed as hogwash. It didn't pan out exactly this way but, the band still broke apart nonetheless. Anyway, in "Little Graduation," Steven's emotions get the better of him and he almost kills everyone by suffocation, turning into Pink Steven, including the new graduates with a rose-colored dome, which is only stopped when Shep tells Steven that he needs to figure himself out and give his friends space to grow rather than suffocating them (literally). Symbolically the dome represents, as one fan put it, "Steven's inner perceptions of reality" since he has always worked hard for his friends, but now his friends are growing up without help from him (and moving on), as he feels neglected, combined with abrasive feelings he has toward his mom along with his own problems. And the toxicity bubbles up into a dome itself.

This episode was one of the best so far, as Steven realizes that not only does the world not revolve around him, but things happen when he isn't there. At one point, he asks when Lars and Sadie talked, declaring angrily, "but when did this happen? I didn't see any of this!" to which the response is that it was private, which makes sense. This also pokes at the fact that the show is, basically, all from Steven's perspective. I think the parallels between Lars leaving Steven and Pink leaving Spinel behind is a good one, which portends problems in the future without a doubt! Anyway, after freeing them and everyone departing, the episode ends as he contemplates by himself, in a scene reminiscent of the ending of "Mother Simpson" as AwestruckVox pointed out in his analysis on The Roundtable. In the latter, Homer sits and pensively stargazes, realizing that "Homer’s long-lost mother may disappear again, but he learns that she loves him, and that’s enough," with the ending serving as "a model of restraint and a signal to start crying...[and] a sobering reminder of how powerful silence can be."

© 2019-2023 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

[pedestrianversee]

i think vegans would find people would hate them less if 1. their movement wasn't overrun with ecofascists and 2. if they all didnt have such a cult like mentality.

[cypherdecypher]

Animal of the Day!

Dodo (Raphus cucullatus)

(Photo from Smithsonian Magazine)

Extinction Date- 1681

Habitat- Island of Mauritius

Size (Weight/Length)- 22 kg; 90 cm tall

Diet- Fruits; Nuts; Roots; Seeds

Cool Facts- As dodos went extinct in the 1600’s, we only know what they look like from incomplete skeletons and illustrations. These large birds were found only on the tiny Island of Mauritius off the coast of Madagascar. Little is known about their behavior but their skeletons imply they could run extremely fast despite being unable to fly. Their large beak may have been used in territorial displays due to the Island’s limited resources. They were primarily vegetarians but would occasionally eat a crab or shellfish. People first visited the Island of Mauritius in 1507 and the dodos were quickly hunted by people and invasive species alike due to their flightless and fearless behavior. Today, the near threatened Nicobar pigeon is their closest relative. Cracking down on the illegal pet trade and their illegal poaching has resulted in the Nicobar pigeon doing much better than their long since passed relative.

Rating- 13/10 (Dodos were originally thought to be a myth and extinction to be propaganda.)

[vintagetvstars]

Diahann Carroll Vs. Rue McClanahan

Propaganda

Diahann Carroll - (Dynasty, Julia) - God every clip of her on Dynasty is just so iconic, her entrance, the bit where she shades Joan Collins' Alexis for her taste in caviar... "I wanted to be the first black bitch on television" she said, and she did it beautifully!

Rue McClanahan - (Golden Girls, Maude, Mama's Family) - Listen to me. I have never understood celebrity crushes until I first witnessed Rue McClanahan. She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen - just look at her!! Gorgeous eyes, the cutest nose, a SPECTACULAR smile - she has this adorable, princess-like quality about her AND she's also a complete hottie AND she's aware of it: she HAS THE RANGE, people!! Her two most famous roles are polar opposites, in fact: she starred in the role of naive, gentle Vivian Cavender-Harmon in Maude (and I mean. Just look her up and tell me that's not an angel!), and then went on to gain even more well-deserved fame and success as the seductive, extroverted Blanche Devereaux in The Golden Girls (a role for which she won an Emmy in 1987 - her amazing, hilarious acceptance speech can be found here: . I should also point out that both of these are comedy characters and she is HILARIOUS as them both - the comedic timing, the delivery, the expressions, she was a comedy queen!!! As for her personal life, she was just a darling - and also very funny in person, not just in her acting roles! She was a staunch supporter of gay rights and a big advocate for same-sex marriage in the US, as well as a vegetarian and a big defender of animal rights. She suffered from illness in her later years which greatly impacted her health, but she was still very active up until her death in 2010, and she even released a wonderful autobiography in 2007 titled "My First Five Husbands... and the Ones Who Got Away". In her interviews she's always gentle, soft-spoken (her voice. dear god. sweet mother Aphrodite I cannot weave I am overcome with gay thoughts), and kind, but also sharp, witty, and just a delight to watch. I could go on forever talking about her honestly. I am actually in love with her and you should be too. She's just the best! Here, have some additional pics: (pics below the cut)

Master Poll List of the Hot Vintage TV Ladies Bracket

Additional propaganda below the cut

Diahann Carroll:

Diahann Carroll's First Scene on "Dynasty"

Rue McClanahan:

The Hottie™ of the Golden Girls, she was definitely a GILF. And her character's shenanigans were Emmy-winning but no less fun and her outfits were always on point and gorgeous, befitting her perfectly.

she!!!

as Vivian, with her fellow hottie Bea Arthur as Maude

as Blanche - look at those eyes!!!

come on, tell me you wouldn't do anything for that smile, I dare you

in her contract she specifically requested to be given all of Blanche's clothes and SHE WAS RIGHT

Okay so first of all. Rue has this way of moving around and looking at you that just-- I mean, I'm ace, but I *get* the allos. She's hot and she knows it (and she plays a character in The Golden Girls who's in her 50s, hot, and knows it as well. Which, talk about perfect casting??) But I'm mostly here to talk about the fact that she said this in her Emmy acceptance speech (paraphrased because I'm sharing the video with the right timestamp, and you should absolutely watch up until 3:40, because her delivery is UNMATCHED): "My mother said to me once [...] 'Oh, Eddi-Rue, for heaven's sake. Don't you know every kick's a boost?' There've been a lot of kicks, and there've been a lot of boosts. I'm not going to mention the people who gave me kicks... but you know who you are. And you'll be in the book." (Seriously though, do yourself a favour and watch that video. She's amazing!!) She said this, and proceeded to WRITE THE BOOK, titled "My first five husbands, and the ones who got away", which is *incredibly* funny, and such an earnest look into her life. She opens the acknowledgements with "This book is about my life and experiences as I lived them, and anyone who doesn't like it can jolly well lump it." And I mean... she's awesome. I could go on.

Rue McClanahan @ The Emmy Awards 1987

[audible-smiles]

So, I think I may have accidentally found the worst book ever written by a human being.

I don't know if you guys have ever heard of Savitri Devi; she was a Hitler stan who moved from Greece to India, got really excited about "Aryan" racial mythology, changed her name, and tried to fuse Nazism with Hinduism. A lot of her ideology is patently absurd (e.g. Hitler is an avatar of Vishnu), but none of it is funny because she spent her entire life actively trying to build a coalition of the most violently racist people you can imagine. Hindutva paramilitary groups, American neo-Nazis, early ecofascists; you name them, she probably went to their meetings and wrote propaganda for them.

So, knowing this, it makes one feel particularly deranged to learn that she also wrote fiction about- and from the POV of- her many cats.

The book in question is called Long-Whiskers and the Two-Legged Goddess, or The True Story of a "most objectionable Nazi" and half-a-dozen Cats.

Published in 1965, this text features a protagonist named "Heliodora", who Devi admits in the introduction is just her lightly fictionalized self-insert. In the beginning Heliodora heroically rescues a stray kitten and its mother, but then the narrative grinds to a halt to explain the weird racial theories that brought her to India, before it picks right back up with the cat fancying. Here is an excerpt that may convey a little of how jarring these transitions can be:

"An unexpected thought crossed Heliodora’s mind, like a flash of lightning: “Had I gone to Europe in 1939, or even in 1940, 1 should not have had this lovely creature, nor, in fact, any of these cats to which I have given a home. They probably all would have been dead, by now — would have died of misery, in some gutter, without love, poor beautiful felines!” And a strange question followed that thought: “Was it for them that I was fated to remain here?” She knew the thought was a nonsensical one and the question too. For of what account was the life and happiness of any creatures, nay, of any human beings, including her own, compared with the Service of the Aryan Reich and of the Cause of truth?

It is all. Fucking. Like This. There are grim descriptions of feline suffering contrasted with long, ecstatic descriptions of her cats learning to trust the only nice human in the world (her). There are passages on the virtue of vegetarianism and the evils of (especially Kosher) slaughterhouses. She thinks it's a great idea to do medical experiments on criminals rather than animals! She thinks kids who throw rocks at cats should have their hands cut off! She starts chapters with direct quotes from Mein Kampf! When her favorite cat runs away she writes the (fully imaginary) story of his adventures on the streets, including him having cat sex. Here is the cat sex:

"The coquettish she-cat jumped up and ran away, only to stop again some twenty yards further and again to roll in the grass, calling for love, — and again to ran away as soon as the lover was about to take her. At last, however, — after many an unsuccessful leap and further and further galloping in the moonshine, Long- whiskers overcame her faked resistance and possessed her. He forgot himself, and she — his black silky panther — forgot herself. Their individualities ceased for a while to exist, and in him, the eternal He-Cat, Creator and Lord of everything, and in her, the co-eternal, sphinx-like, dark Feline Mother, Lady of all Life, once more mingled their opposite polarities and took consciousness of their double Godhead, as they had been doing for millions and millions of years. And once more the divine spark — the Creative Lightning — flashed through their furry bodies, and the daily miracle took place: there was life in the female’s womb."

Sooooo......anyway...........the lost cat finds its way back to her, but has caught feline distemper and dies in her arms, but then he is REINCARNATED IN ENGLAND, as a kitten in a decent (white) home where his family loves him. Heliodora is coincidentally going back to Europe at this time (she lists her religion as "national socialist" on the travel paperwork), which means we get pages and pages of her obsessing over every 'misstep' in the war, and Germany's tragic loss, but more importantly, she meets a random cat and he is (unknown to her), the reincarnation of her beloved Long-whiskers, the Cat Who Fucked. She sees that he's well-fed and happy and is like "I finally understand why Hitler was so nice to the British; they treat cats well so I guess they're Aryan too". I am not making any of this up:

“They have poured streams of fire over Germany; betrayed their own race; identified themselves with its worst enemies ...”

“Prrr, prrr, prrr,” purred back the cat; “that is because they had been (as they are still being) misled, deceived. But one day they shall wake up from their delusion, tum against their bad shepherds, and help the people of their own blood to build up a new Europe — the very Europe of your dreams, in which we creatures will all be happy — for they are good people at heart; good people like Aryans generally are, taken as a whole. Prrr, prrr, prrr . . . The proof of it is that they have taken such good care of me! Prrrrrrrrr . . .”

This version of her cat grows old and dies. Meanwhile, Heliodora is arrested and imprisoned for distributing Nazi propaganda. When she gets out, she meets the reincarnation of a different cat she had left behind in India. (All of her cats want to find her again after death because they love her so very much.) In between her banal, mundane descriptions of caring for this new cat, she describes her various arrests, interrogations, and brief periods of imprisonment. And then she moves, gives that cat away and gets another fucking cat. It is at this point where I completely lose track of which cat is meant to be the reincarnation of which other cat; this woman goes through cats like potato chips. She says she doesn't even love them as individuals, but as one piece of "the intangible Essence of Catdom", so I guess it doesn't fucking matter whether I know their names or not.

This woman's primary thesis is "human suffering doesn't matter, only animal suffering matters" and she beats it into the ground. Her secondary thesis is that national socialism is the one true religion and will save the world. Not only is this a deeply self-obsessed, morally incoherent, grotesque piece of writing, it is also boring as hell. It's half stories about how people who are mean to animals all deserve to get murdered, and half a travelogue where the protagonist goes on screeds about race-mixing every time she visits a new city. While you're reading it you feel as if time has stopped, and you will be stuck reading this terrible book for the rest of your life. All she knows how to do is repeat her two ideas over and over again. Honestly, it reads like heavy-handed satire of a very specific type of white woman. Heliodora wears golden swastika earrings.

I'm exhausted. Never read this book.

[masayomi]

so funny to me that ppl on this website pretend to care about tswifts jet emissions. like yall dont actively spread misinformation and propaganda about the animal agriculture industry (which is responsible for like 15% of greenhouse gas emissions vs the entire aviation industrys 2%) to the point where yall genuinely come off as climate change denialists. especially when most of u live in western countries, like sure the main problem is ceos putting profit over the environment and lobbying politicians to keep them from stepping in, but YOUR lifestyle is still fundamentally unsustainable. like do yall genuinely believe that when the rapture Revolution™ comes and we all live in peace and harmony with nature overnight that not a single thing about ur lifestyle is gonna change? that ur still gonna be eating dead animals three times a day? and i know theres little most ppl can do about how sustainable their lifestyle is especially when so many are just doing there best to make ends meet, but lets not pretend like all this hemming and hawing about how eating beans and rice is classist actually (despite meat consumption being positively correlated with GDP per capita and lower income americans being more likely to be vegan and vegetarian) and tswift flying home to see her bf every weekend is single handedly drowning the philippines is anything other than yall trying to assuage your guilt and cognitive dissonance by deluding yourself into thinking u have nothing to do with climate change

[midmaximoo]

I'm currently in rendering hell right now as I'm finishing up some wttt Vermont doodles, and so in the mean time Ima take a break and share some of my head canons for Vermont - so here we gooo!

Vermont has a very obvious farmer's tan. No matter how much sunscreen he puts on, poor VT gets assaulted by the sun no matter what.

Vermont, Maine, Colorado, and Alaska go camping together every year. These states specifically bc of the average wilderness experience most people in said places end up having. Alaska tolerates these guys the most out of the lower 48, and VT is also sort of reclusive and quiet so Alaska and Vermont are buds.

VT skis and Colorado snowboards, they both like to hit the mountains & trails every year together

Vermont has tattoos! He's got maple leaves, a hermit thrush (VT's state bird), just a lot of nature related ink.

Vermont doesn't own a car, he has a motorcycle.

His aesthetic is along the lines of cryptidcore, goblincore, overall a very green sort of grunge.

He can speak French (due to him bordering Quebec, and VT was populated by a lot of French soldiers/immigrants during 1600-1900s.)

Louisiana and Vermont would probably be quite good friends. I can imagine Loui saying something in his lovely Louisiana French dialect, and Vermont being one of the few states that understands him and can respond in kind.

Honestly I feel like most Mideast/Southeast states would get along pretty well with VT even if he is pretty antisocial at times. He has a similar folksy vibe that fits well. (historically, VT was built by "lower class" immigrants working hard blue collar jobs. Lot's of the same Scottish and Irish influence as most Northeast states. Eventually, they trickled down south through places like Appalachia as time went on.)

Vermont is a townie at heart, not having very big cities and a smaller population, he definitely is a vocal workers rights activist and loudly opposes classism and loves himself a union strike if needed.

Vermont and New Hampshire may have started out hating each other, having a sort of rivalry. After time went on, and maybe due to living in the Statehouse right next door, or maybe even years prior, these two states really didn't have that much contempt for each other as one might seem. They mainly "hate" each other as a bit now, finding it funny. They are probably married for tax purposes (VT loves NH lack of sales tax lol).

Vermont is the Statehouse's resident veterinarian, being very good with pretty much any animal under the sun native to his state or not.

He also has a green thumb and loves gardening.

VT has a pet Raccoon named Champ (after the famous lake monster)

Vermont is a vegetarian, despite being a state with a lot of hunters. He'd do it for survival, but only as a last resort. To counter that, I'd say he is good with a bow and arrow (a reference to bow season).

This fella can play a lot of instruments. He especially likes the banjo bc why not?

Okay that's MORE than enough for now, and this was mainly for me to just yell into the void and keep for reference. I just want more wttt VT content bc he could be such a fun character! Sorry I tricked you into reading my Vermont propaganda

[oc-poll-tournament]

OC Poll Tournament Round 1 Poll 5

Propaganda below the cut:

Meparik (he/him) @gailynovelry: Meparik of the Frostbitten Court (he/him)

Meparik is many things! He is a feyrie, a pickpocket, a sign-language user, a voracious reader, and an accidental religious leader. He understands more of the political goings-on of his realm than most adults do, and profusely hates the gods for it. His bedraggledness is matched only by that of his best friend (unwilling messiah lesbian). Gaze upon the child, your honor. Do you feel it? The desire to feed him warm soups and wrap him up in a cozy blanket? I rest my case, your honor. I rest it well.

Nat Finch (he/him) @albatris: I'd like to submit Nat Finch! he/him, 25 years old, brand new baby vampire. he works the night shift at dodgy petrol and convenience store Stop 'N' Go, where he falls asleep on the clock and encourages shoplifting. he's schizotypal like me and he loves cats, cooking, and his friends! he's the protagonist of my campy gory horror trilogy, though he'd rather not be!

he's short and fat with red eyes and lots of freckles. his hair is long and black, often uneven and choppy in length, because he just cuts tangles out instead of untangling them ❤

he's a sweet boy, earnest boy, awkward boy; he doesn't have many friends at the start of the story due to his paranoia, psychosis, and social anxiety, but by the end of it has a whole bunch of good friends AND a kitty he adores named Grub who purrs like a faulty tractor

in this story vampirism is a sentient entity and all connected via a hivemind known as "the Garble".... it lives in the vampires' blood and can manipulate their thoughts as well as give them heightened strength and speed, claws and fangs, and night vision when they need it. it can be useful, but mostly it's a bully and an inconvenience

at the centre of the Garble hivemind lives the very first vampire, an undead rotting corpse and the god of vampires, and a few of their close friends and confidants. all life force collected by regular vampires flows to them at the centre and grants them immortality and power. it's a sweet deal for the folks at the centre, and a terrible deal for ordinary vampires like Nat who rarely reap any real benefits from their condition, but are threatened and manipulated into participating in this system regardless

Nat's story sees him struggling to solve the mystery of how and why he was turned and trying to balance his kind, caring nature with his new violent condition... and eventually leads him to, "hey, I think I'm going to hunt down and eat the rest of vampire god"

good for him!

some other Nat Facts:

huge drama queen (will play up being sad and pathetic to get what he wants)

vampires are hardwired to seek warmth and coziness so Nat is always down to snuggle 24/7

bouncy cheery overexcited lad who will grin for weeks if you say something nice to him

vegetarian, aside from eating people, which he insists does not count

speaking of eating people, primarily preys on rich pricks and abusive bosses

is too awkward to tell his neighbours he bought them a cute knitted blanket he thought they might like for their corgi because what if that's a weird thing to do. this has been going on for three weeks

is too awkward to tell his neighbours his name is Nat, not Matt. this has been going on for three years

has a giant scary monster mode full of eyes and teeth >:3

please consider voting for my boy!

[relatableblorbopoll]

Round 1 of preliminaries, group 7

The first two places get a place on the bracket

Little reminder: there will be 2 more rounds of preliminaries, the losing blorbos of this poll still have 2 chances of getting in the official bracket

Propaganda under the cut

Rigby (Regular Show)

"i relate to him a lot because he started the show as an insufferable piece of shit (i used to be insufferable too) and then he starts dating Eileen and becomes a better person (i became a better person after i started dating my girlfriend) and his friendship with Mordecai just reminds me a whole lot of my dynamics with my best friend. he really is just like me fr"

Angua von Überwald (Discworld)

"Okay SO she's a werewolf who ran away from home because her parents are awful and then changed her name. Her parents ignore her existence and when they're confronted by her they use her old name that she Discarded because they are the worst. She's a vegetarian by day and doesn't eat people at full moon (one drop is one too many) but she Pays for all chickens she kills because that's not what an animal does. She is So angry and So hateful and So wrong about So many things but she Learns and Grows through the books. When she falls in love she fully believes she will be chased out of the town when the clock strikes midnight because nobody can accept her for who she truly is but THEN her lover finds OUT and he is shocked and confused at first but he loves her and LEARNS about her and puts aside his prejudice and they both grow as people over the course of several books and I love her so much your honor she is just like me fr fr"

Cao Weining (Word of Honor)

"ready to risk it all for a pretty girl who can and will beat his ass. just wants to eat a bunch of good food with his girlfriend"

Aang (Avatar: The Last Air Bender)

"12 years old, told you’re going to be the most powerful and important person in the world—and that you need to start like tomorrow. I’d runaway too."

Okuyasu Nijimura (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure)

"YES, he says he isn’t too smart but he tries his best, he yells a lot when he isn’t supposed to, he puts things bluntly, he is menacing with a heart of gold, AND HE MAKE THE FUNNY FACE"

Shin Tsukimi (Your Turn to Die)

"-He is extremely weak. A literal twelve year old boy is stronger than him. He struggled to open a sliding door cabinet. -He's a liar, but like.. some of it is super funny. He lies about just the most random shit. He claimed that he simply 'didn't know how to do a push-up', and that's why he didn't want to do one. When in reality, he's actually just too physically weak to do one. -He has major beef with, (and is jealous of), a random seventeen year old girl. He is twenty something. His number one worst enemy is some random teenage girl.... same, honestly. -He uses really... strange.. wording. I mean this very affectionately. But it's hard to defend him when he says stuff like 'riffraff' and 'casting pearls before swine'. -Terrible fashion. I mean, just look at him. -Autism. -He enjoys cute cat plushies."

[bestfictionalplant]

Round 1, Group 6

Propaganda and spoilers under cut

Undergrowth: A gigantic plant monster ghost from the Ghost Zone, he wants to enslave humanity due to their destruction of nature and turn the Earth into a giant jungle paradise. He uses his mind controlling vines to enslave the citizens of Amity park. Her refers to the all the plants as his children and Danny's friend Sam, due to her being a vegetarian and environmental activist, gets special treatment among his mind controlled slaves as his "daughter", even dressing her up in a poison ivy-eque outfit and granting her similar powers to his own. Danny was only able to defeat Undergrowth after mastering his Ice Powers.  Despite hating humanity, he does not want Earth to be destroyed, and is therefore one of the many former villains that help Danny save the planet from the giant asteroid in the series finale. 

Karzahni: in the time before time, when the evil mayor impersonator makuta was planning his plan to get the little robot meat guys in their little memory-erasing containers and before he'd impersonated the mayor (i think; don't quote me; i am Not Good at the timeline) he was like "hey i should make a plant that will force these four-foot fuckers towards the big sports and politics stadium under threat of murder so i can easily get my bastard robot cops to force them into the amnesia balls" and then he made karzahni. who was too smart and cool and powerful. so he did not get deployed. he is named after the legendary Lego Hell and Lego Satan where Bad And Naughty Disabled Robots Go For "Repairs" And Never Return. it's expensive to copyright names. they had to double up on occasion. or triple up. or quadruple up. anyway so evil mayor impersonator who is also ANOTHER Lego Satan but that's besides the point, creates this plant. but the plant is too smart. so he puts it somewhere and forgets about it and makes the morbuzakh NEW PARAGRAPH anyway so basically most creatures in this universe are immortal bar murder and fucked-up circumstances. no old age, basically. but this plant has one, because Bionicle Satan (Not Karzahni) makes his shit with limited lifespans so they can't wait for ten thousand years gathering their power and then kill-murder him to death. six big robot meat superheroes fight a fucking big monster in a tunnel. the cool smart one who used to be a teacher gets poisoned. but because karzahni (plant) is so fucking cool it can make an antidote. and it holds the antidote hostage in exchange for Cool Oil, which is oil from the apocalypse planet where the robot meat guys' creators are from, but they fracked too hard and split the planet into three pieces so that's a bit fucked-up and yet besides the point. anyway they get the magic juice and give it to karzahni (plant). previously in the story (but later in the timeline; this is a TWO-YEAR FLASHBACK EPISODE BABY) some other robot meat superheroes took a dunk in this cool fucking water and got mega-boosted powers. super-superheroes. but that's because god exists and has predetermined what can happen in each individual's life. those guys got Good Results From Applied Goo. karzahni (plant) does not. it just fucking. dies. it is then chopped up to make some lorries float so they can take the amnesiac sphere guys up to a cool new island they found, because their old island got FUCKING WRECKED NEW PARAGRAPH anyway a cutting of karzahni survived (known as karzahni ii) with all the memories and shit of the real one and just sort of goes. FINE. i will join you, Lego Satan (not karzahni but the evil mayor impersonator) in gaslighting this mentally ill man into thinking he's short and his life is a lie in order to get the time travel device he made out of some magic fucking frisbees. karzahni took on the role of the morbuzakh. then the guy's like "this is bullshit" and gets thrown off a cliff but Karzahni II catches him and goes "hey. everything's alright. i tortured and killed a guy and he said you're doing good and everything is gonna be okay" and then the evil mayor impersonator (who by this point has not been impersonating the mayor for like. at least a week?) kills it. again. for real this time

[fictionalplushiestourney]

Second Round, Matchup 10

Propaganda under the cut~

Propaganda for Sakutaro: "Sakutaro is a superbly good boy! His human, a little girl named Maria, loved him so much that she brought him to life! Maria is Sakutaro's best friend of all, but he's very sweet and kind to everybody he meets and is even a "vegeta-lion" (vegetarian). He's also very fashionable in his cozy red scarf!"

Propaganda for Mr. Mew: None :c