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disney concept art: the most beautiful dynamic original thing i have ever seen

disney finished project: rubber same face minimalism regurgitated plots 

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Happy Pride Month To Them

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this is by far my favorite safety/warning sign btw. they really went off with this one

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"In 1984, a few years before his death, James Baldwin explained to an interviewer from the Village Voice that queers could see the precarity of heterosexuality, even as straights kept it hidden from themselves. 'The so-called straight person is no safer than I am, really. The terrors that homosexuals go through in this society would not be so great if society itself did not go through so many terrors it doesn't want to admit.'

As Baldwin saw it, it is not simply that straight people are suffering and in denial about it, but that heterosexual misery expresses itself through the projection of terror onto the homosexual. One way to think about this is that homophobia is the outward expression of heterosexual misery; a kind of subconscious jealous rage against the gendered and sexual possibilities that lie beyond the violence and disappointments of straight culture."

-Jane Ward, The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

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I was today years old when I learned that when you type “otp: true” in AO3 search results it filters out fics with additional ships, leaving only the fics where your otp is the main ship

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Yeah, no that’s not an Ancient Greek Dionysus and here’s why

My absolute proudest moment as an ancient art history TA in college was as a student in a class on Gender in the Ancient World (a for-fun class I took when I’d basically wrapped up all my other degree requirements) and it involved me catching my Classics professor royally messing up in his own lecture.

So this Classics teacher (poor guy) was going on about Dionysus and what the Greek god of wine could teach us about the morals of the time, specifically about over indulgence being anathema to Greeks (“all things in moderation”) and to prove his point he shared this statue of Dionysus:

Which just happens to be the picture of Dionysus on Wikipedia, uh oh, first mistake! (Some of you nerds may already spot all of the other problems.)

So he starts rattling on about what this statue demonstrates to us how the Ancient Greeks viewed Dionysus and the sins of excess associated with wine drinking- his body is slightly puffy from over-indulgence, his muscles not carved like an Apollo. He’s off-balance, leaning on a faun for support. His eyes are glassy. He’s raising a huge, margarita-bowl of a cup. Basically, from this, we can see a clear visual of why Dionysus and his associated lifestyle and sacred objects were looked down upon in ancient Greece.

Meanwhile, I’m vibrating out of my chair like Hermione in the front row because oh my god how are you a professor this is all wrong oh my god…

Finally, the professor calls on my shaking raised hand, thankfully before I blasted off into the stratosphere with my sheer need to Be Right. 

And, with a voice only slightly shaking from high-octane adrenaline I say, “Except that statue is from the Renaissance. It’s by Michelangelo.”

The professor freezes like a deer in the headlights. I mean actually freezes, his eyes widen and he just stops. Dumbstruck. I wondered how many times he’s given this lecture and used this statue of Dionysus to make his point. I think the number of times he’d used this picture in a lecture was flashing before his eyes too.

Because if you go back to the ancient world there’s no effing way Dionysus would be portrayed so disrespectfully! Even if he’s the god of wine he’s not the one who overindulges, that’s his followers. He’s a god. Anyone who knows anything about Ancient Greece knows you don’t disrespect a god with a statue like that. Actually, Dionysus statues from Ancient Greece tend to look more like this in the Archaic period:

And in a late Roman example (Hi, Antinuous!) like this:

Yeah. There’s no “over indulgent” puffiness, no margarita glass, no glassy eyes or tottering form. Because Dionysus is a god. What Michelangelo’s statue of Bacchus reveals is what Renaissance people believed about Dionysus, not Ancient Greeks. 

But let’s briefly touch on all the other alarm bells about that statue. Because I didn’t know it was Michelangelo’s right away in that class, I was frantically looking that up even as my hand was raised, I just knew it was Renaissance and not Ancient Greek. Because sure, in Ancient Greece, this kind of sculpture denouncing excess existed, but we’d be looking at Silenus the Satyr, or just a Satyr in general to make this commentary, not ever with Dionysus who partakes in such festivities but is ultimately stands above them and definitely doesn’t fall prey to them (others fall prey to him). So basically, Michelangelo’s Bacchus has a lot more in common with an ancient sculpture of Silenus, not of Dionysus, reflecting on how Italians in the Renaissance viewed this ancient pagan god.

To tick off a couple other warning signs: the patina (that color stone and level of dirt, but without traces of cleaning or paint, was a give away because Renaissance people didn’t paint their statues the way ancient people did). The beautiful curly hair and laurels were impossible before about 200 CE because the drill tips needed to make fine curls hadn’t been invented yet, before that you tended to have carved masses of hair or lines of hair suggested on the scalp, nothing so elaborate. Also the features are much too fine, almost girlish, with a receding chin. Again, something you might see on a hyper realistic Roman portrait, but not something you’d ever see on a god. The child is out of place too, you do see children in ancient sculptures (like the statue of Hermes and Dionysus) but not really with such “childish” facial expressions, for the lack of a better word. 

So when I talk about how with material archaeology and art history it becomes impossible to mistake when a certain artifact comes from, this is what I mean. The ways of carving this weren’t available to the Ancient Greeks until way into the Imperial Roman era, at least. The stone is wrong. The morals visible in the carving are wrong. You’ll often too see Renaissance or 19th century statues being passed off as ancient here on Tumblr, but things like fine features are often dead give aways that something isn’t ancient. Stone work is a language of its own, and once you see enough to decode it, it’s as unmistakable to the eye as clothing from different 100 years ago looks out of date to even your average person today. 

(P.S. the professor made the point to thank me and said he would stop using this statue in future lectures. As you can see, I was proud of this shining moment of pedantry a totally normal about.) 

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When I was in ninth grade I wanted to challenge what I saw as a very stupid dress code policy (not being allowed to wear spikes regardless of the size or sharpness of the spikes). My dad said to me, “What is your objective?”

He said it over and over. I contemplated that. I wanted to change an unfair dress code. What did I stand to gain? What did I stand to lose? If what I really wanted was to change the dress code, what would be my most effective potential approach? (He also gave me Discourses on the Fall of Rome by Titus Livius, Machiavelli’s magnum opus. Of course he’d already given me The Prince, Five Rings, and The Art of War.)

I ultimately printed out that phrase, coated it in Mod Podge, and clipped it to my bathroom mirror so I would look at it and think about it every day.

What is your objective?

Forget about how you feel. Ask yourself, what do you want to see happen? And then ask, how can you make it happen? Who needs to agree with you? Who has the power to implement this change? What are the points where you have leverage over them? If you use that leverage now, will you impair your ability to use it in the future? Getting what you want is about effectiveness. It is not about being an alpha or a sigma or whatever other bullshit the men’s right whiners are on about now. You won’t find any MRA talking points in Musashi, because they are not relevant.

I had no clear leverage on the dress code issue. My parents were not on the PTA; neither were any of my friend’s parents who liked me. The teachers did not care about this. Ultimately I just wore what I wanted, my patent leather collar from Hot Topic with large but flattened spikes, and I had guessed correctly—the teachers also did not care enough to discipline me.

I often see people on tumblr, mostly the very young, flail around in discourse. They don’t have an objective. They don’t know what they want to achieve, and they have never thought about strategizing and interpersonal effectiveness. No one can get everything they want by being an asshole. You must be able to work with other people, and that includes smiling when you hate them.

Read Machiavelli. Start with The Prince, but then move on to Discourses. Read Musashi’s Five Rings. Read The Art of War. They’re classics for a reason. They can’t cover all situations, but they can do more for how you think about strategizing than anything you’re getting in middle school and high school curricula.

Don’t vote third party unless you can tell me not only what your objective is but also why this action stands a meaningful chance of accomplishing it. Otherwise, back up and approach your strategy from a new angle. I don’t care how angry you are with Biden right now. He knows about it, and he is both trying to do something and not doing enough. I care about what will happen to millions of people if we have another Trump presidency. Look up Ross Perot, and learn from our past. Find your objective. If it is to stop the genocide in Palestine now, call your elected representatives now. They don’t care about emails; they care about phone calls, because they live in the past. I know this because I shadowed a lobbyist, because knowing how power works is critical to using it.

How do you think I have gotten two clinics to start including gender care in their planning?

Start small. Chip away. Keep working. Find your leverage; figure out how and when to effectively use it. Choose your battles, so that you can concentrate on the battle at hand instead of wasting your resources in many directions. Learn from the accumulated wisdom of people who spent their lives learning by doing, by making mistakes, by watching the mistakes of their enemies.

Don’t be a dickhead. Be smarter than I was at 14. Ask yourself: what is your objective?

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just made the best non-looping gif i think

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you ever heard a lightning fucking scream?

youre about to

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Transphobes can die mad 🤷🏻

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Want to learn something new in 2022??

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)

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Atsushi Sakurai, 1990

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theres something abt those cunty 90s anime men thats so alluring i think it was all the estrogen they were putting in the water

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very serious. deeply serious

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games (mostly text-based) about houses and places-- exploring them, haunting them, feeding them:

childhood homes (and why we hate them) - after a decade, you return home.

return - a text-based horror game about coming home.

singing from the far side of the hill - about a trans woman, homeless after a bad breakup, who rents a stranger's spare room. it's a decision she comes to regret.

anatomy - Explore a suburban house, collect cassette tapes, study the physiology of domestic architecture.

leave house - leave house

the open house - We at Northtree Real Estate (in partnership with Optix Dynamix Labs) are proud to present our new, state-of-the-art, open house simulator!  Come and take a quick tour of 15615 Hollow Oak Lane, a familiar and comfortable showcase home in one of our premier developments!

what girls do in the dark - This little game is based off one of the greatest fears they had as a teenage girl: showing up late to a stranger's slumber party.

unbecoming - a sonically-textured interactive horror fiction exploring cycles of trauma and unspeakable forces of nature in a mythic rural American landscape.

13 laurel road - an interactive fiction game about the relationships we have with places and reconciling with trauma. You play as a young man named Noah who has been tasked with picking up some things from his cousin’s old house.

domvs - a gothic mystery game in which you rely on your environment to uncover the truth.

flesh, blood, & concrete - you find yourself in a vast, empty apartment complex.

i am still here - a short, unconventional ghost story and vignette reflecting on the end of a long lockdown.

vacant - Film a ghost-hunting show.

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Doppelgänger.