Latest Posts by alcibiadesdildo - Page 5
😈 You are not bound by the Hays code.
😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who are not punished by the narrative by the end of the story.
😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who win.
😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who make evil look fun and cool.
😈 You are allowed to make your fun, cool evil character the protagonist.
😈 You are allowed to glorify, romanticize and eroticize evil characters and villainous acts.
😈 You are not obligated to teach your audience a moral lesson.
Hell actually exists but only for people who want to talk about philosophy while refusing to read any primary texts
what if instead of horses we domesticated porcines... i think that could be cool
i love the serpent snails so much theyre so cutes
After much introspection and soul searching I've turned over a new leaf and have decided to continue making poison swamps 😌
Just a few more hours
you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.
Our resident male Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) paused for a few seconds today in our backyard spruce tree.
vander fumbled hard like imagine having a gorgeous anarchist boyfriend with a straight up sculpted nose and a crazy haircut and then fumbling him so hard he gets a villain arc
he’s got rejection sensitivity
Every page of the legendarium is dripping with love. Love for Christopher love for storytelling love for history and language and nature and the world just a kind of slow reveling in the best parts of living that makes Tolkien’s work so antithetical to modernity and feel so timeless
nothing, just tolkien originally writing down the hobbit because his son christopher kept complaining that he'd change the details from night to night and then christopher later being so crucial in taking tolkien's notes and turning them into fully written novels of worldbuilding. loving someone to the point of creation and then having them help you finish the job.
nothing, just tolkien originally writing down the hobbit because his son christopher kept complaining that he'd change the details from night to night and then christopher later being so crucial in taking tolkien's notes and turning them into fully written novels of worldbuilding. loving someone to the point of creation and then having them help you finish the job.
The concept of general intelligence is such bullshit. Everyone has valuable perspectives education is just exposing yourself to some of the perspectives people have found most valuable throughout time and teaching you how to make have a more considered and contextually informed perspective
I really hate when people mystify intelligence as some innate or supernatural ability rather than the willingness to read books and consider different perspectives. Anyone with enough time, training, and preparation could become a professor. Stop seeing knowledge as arcane rather than as a skill anyone can develop.
For the love of god and your cat and birds and the environment keep your cat indoors
you really cannot be surprised or upset when your outdoor cat gets bird flu at this point. it is to be expected that your cat is put at risk of many diseases including bird flu. if you are letting your cat outside at this time, especially in a high risk area, you are actively gambling with their life
so strange to me that some people aren't bisexual
In the past fifty years, fantasy’s greatest sin might be its creation of a bland, invariant, faux-Medieval European backdrop. The problem isn’t that every fantasy novel is set in the same place: pick a given book, and it probably deviates somehow. The problem is that the texture of this place gets everywhere.
What’s texture, specifically? Exactly what Elliot says: material culture. Social space. The textiles people use, the jobs they perform, the crops they harvest, the seasons they expect, even the way they construct their names. Fantasy writing doesn’t usually care much about these details, because it doesn’t usually care much about the little people – laborers, full-time mothers, sharecroppers, so on. (The last two books of Earthsea represent LeGuin’s remarkable attack on this tendency in her own writing.) So the fantasy writer defaults – fills in the tough details with the easiest available solution, and moves back to the world-saving, vengeance-seeking, intrigue-knotting narrative. Availability heuristics kick in, and we get another world of feudal serfs hunting deer and eating grains, of Western name constructions and Western social assumptions. (Husband and wife is not the universal historical norm for family structure, for instance.)
Defaulting is the root of a great many evils. Defaulting happens when we don’t think too much about something we write – a character description, a gender dynamic, a textile on display, the weave of the rug. Absent much thought, automaticity, the brain’s subsconscious autopilot, invokes the easiest available prototype – in the case of a gender dynamic, dad will read the paper, and mom will cut the protagonist’s hair. Or, in the case of worldbuilding, we default to the bland fantasy backdrop we know, and thereby reinforce it. It’s not done out of malice, but it’s still done.
The only way to fight this is by thinking about the little stuff. So: I was quite wrong. You do need to worldbuild pretty hard. Worldbuild against the grain, and worldbuild to challenge. Think about the little stuff. You don’t need to position every rain shadow and align every tectonic plate before you start your short story. But you do need to build a base of historical information that disrupts and overturns your implicit assumptions about how societies ‘ordinarily’ work, what they ‘ordinarily’ eat, who they ‘ordinarily’ sleep with. Remember that your slice of life experience is deeply atypical and selective, filtered through a particular culture with particular norms. If you stick to your easy automatic tendencies, you’ll produce sexist, racist writing – because our culture still has sexist, racist tendencies, tendencies we internalize, tendencies we can now even measure and quantify in a laboratory. And you’ll produce narrow writing, writing that generalizes a particular historical moment, its flavors and tongues, to a fantasy world that should be much broader and more varied. Don’t assume that the world you see around you, its structures and systems, is inevitable.
We... need worldbuilding by Seth Dickinson
Alright, I was holding off for journalistic integrity but now that I've seen the WotR film I can make posts about it without restraint.
Jesus christ the racial politics of this film are atrocious. Some character might as well just tell Wulf 'not to play the race card'. Wulf is a liberal snowflake who blames racism for all his troubles and can't pull himself up by his bootstraps and he is also brown-skinned and obsessively pursues our PORCLAIN white dainty-drawn female protagonist with both romantic and murderous intent. Oppression of dunlendings by the Rohirrim exists only in Wulf's head apparently, though it can be tasted in every spat 'dunlending' perjorative that comes from Helm or Haleth's mouth. But Hera has absolutely no racism within her of course! She refuses Wulf because she doesnt want to marry anyone and Wulf just assumes it's because his dunlending blood disgusts her, so entitled of him!
But also maybe the racism is '''justified'''? If it exists? Which it doesn't! But IF it did, don't worry because ONCE AGAIN all the dunlendings are just greedy, clutching, unwashed, skull wearing, violent barbarians with no unique culture to speak of and no reasons to be making war on Rohan except to sieze what isn't theirs (ignoring the fact that it totally was theirs until Rohan seized it from them and OH BOY are we ignorin' that) And the only dunlending we see not frothing at the mouth for violence or showing any introspective depth at all is General Targg who is the mouthpiece with which we get to hear 'the girl (Hera) is right' whereupon he is promptly killed by Wulf.
Oh but of course, what else could Helm have done? Freca was some greedy FAT man (boy does everyone love calling him fat, happy to lean into THAT aspect of canon) whose lands were too prosperous for his own good (hang on isn't keeping your lands prosperous the platonic ideal of lordship?) And he called a 'Witan' (no he didn't, he came to one of the regular councils of lords that Helm called himself) just to make a scene about how Helm was going to marry Hera to a lord of gondor which is bad because Gondor has some nebulous hold over Rohan so Hera should marry Wulf instead (literally none of that, Freca simply asked Helm to wed his daughter to Wulf, his son, a completely normal and legitimate political strategy to secure a better relationship with the King's family since Helm already mistrusted him for having dunlending blood. Freca is a lord of Rohan, he is rich, he traces his ancestry back to King Freawine, this could not be a more reasonable suggestion in canon.)
SO OBVIOUSLY Helm had to get angry and call Freca fat again (true he did do that) and THEN claim that Freca only wanted his throne (there was never any suggestion of this in the books, it was just the offer of marriage which insulted Helm) to which Freca answered "Old kings that refuse a proffered staff may fall on their knees," and Helm is like okay lets take this outside.
And now THIS change is actually so important in understanding the extreme nature of the Rohir/Helm favouritism that is the main focus of this film. In the film Helm pretty much immediately takes Freca outside, he reassures Frealaf that Freca just needs to be shown his place, this is the only way to settle the matter, if he doesn't embarass him here then Freca will try to take his crown and slay his family apparently, his hunch ig etc etc. Freca punches Helm three times in full view of the whole of Edoras including Freca's two men who came with him, then Helm punches him back and he is knocked out cold and dead by the time he hits the ground. Film!Helm does not realise he has done this and tells Freca to get up, Wulf realises his father is dead and threatens Helm with revenge, swords are draw against him which he tries to calm before Wulf attacks him. Helm incapacitates Wulf, his sons draw THEIR swords and Helm exiles Wulf for drawing his sword on his king. Messy right? Like not a good thing to do, generally brawling with your lords is a bad idea full stop, but if you fear for the lives of your children then idk maybe it's excusable? And then it's just an unfortunate series of events right? And Freca was rude and insulting to a king in his own halls, heat of the moment etc etc
I feel so comfortable in telling you that Helm murders Freca in cold blood in the books, fully intending that to be the outcome.
He does not take him outside initially, Book!Helm tells Freca that this marriage dispute isn't important and they will deal with it later. And then;
When the council was over, Helm stood up and laid his great hand on Freca’s shoulder, saying: "The king does not permit brawls in his house, but men are freer outside"; and he forced Freca to walk before him out from Edoras into the field. To Freca’s men that came up he said: "Be off ! We need no hearers. We are going to speak of a private matter alone. Go and talk to my men!" And they looked and saw that the king’s men and his friends far outnumbered them, and they drew back. "Now, Dunlending," said the king, "you have only Helm to deal with, alone and unarmed. But you have said much already, and it is my turn to speak. Freca, your folly has grown with your belly. You talk of a staff! If Helm dislikes a crooked staff that is thrust on him, he breaks it. So!" With that he smote Freca such a blow with his fist that he fell back stunned, and died soon after. Helm then proclaimed Freca’s son and near kin the king’s enemies; and they fled, for at once Helm sent many men riding to the west marches.
(Appendices, 'The House of Eorl', emphasis mine)
I think we can all agree that forcing someone out of your city, isolating them away from their fellows with threats of violence, telling them you will break them, killing them in one blow and then proclaiming their kin your enemies and forcing them to flee to escape a murderous pursuit, is pretty clearly premeditated murder. There is not much nuance here, Freca tresspassed over a line with Helm that Dunlendings are not allowed to cross and Helm killed him for it.
And listen like, the description of this whole story within the appendices is barely more than three pages. This is not an obscure missable aspect of the tale, nor is it outside of what rights they had to adapt. The choice was made, actively, ONCE AGAIN by the Warner Bros cinematic universe makers, to drastically alter book events in order to sand down any immorality within Rohan's narrative, especially where the Dunlendings are concerned. And in the end the only 'mistake' Helm is allowed to learn and grow from is some nebulous and trite 'not believing enough in his daughter' schpiel, which needs to be the subject of a whole 'nother post actually.
And what's agonising is they COULD have done it like they were so close, there are multiple moments where me and my friend watching were like struck!! With grief! Over how impactful this moment could have been if only the racism actually existed as an acknowledged theme in the story. If only it was something Hera had to come to terms with, if only IT was the true driver of these horrors to the point where it's Avatar, Hera's father, a man who loves her and whom she has loved all her life, turns into a cold icey ghost of brutality, far more vicious and barbaric than the people he so reviles, and reveals to her the terrible truth of his actions and motivations. It's agony I tell you.
Anyway I did not like the film.
the pearly parakeet, also known in aviculture as the pearly conure, is a small parrot endemic to north-central brazil. they are a vocal and gregarious species, known for their loud screeches when in flight with their flock. they are highly social, and in captivity, tend to do well with a same-species companion. they primarily feed on fruits in the wild, although their dietary habits haven’t been heavily recorded. both sexes are equally colorful, with small variations in color & patterns across subspecies.
words just get better when you put boy in front of them. boykissing boycuddles boyfriend boylove.. many such cases
being nonchalant is overrated, spam me, send me all the videos that made you laugh, show me you care, send me your silly jokes and random thoughts, no need to hide your enthusiasm to come over as uninterested
Things to say during sex:
Meat’s back on the menu boys
Give it to us raw and wriggling
A new power is rising
This is a good sword
Something stirs in the East
Feast on his flesh
Andrei Tarkovsky
u ever just look at all the stuff u love and think wow i love this stuff
"oh, so you're just friends?" no we aren't 'just' friends. we are friends. we are everything that means, and it isn't any less than a romantic relationship.
we're parabatai, we're besties, we're siblings (unofficially but emotionally), we're attached. we have pinterest boards for each other, I give them presents for no reason other than i saw something I thought they'd like. They buy drinks and laugh as I chug a bottle at speed because im constantly thirsty. they say im the sun and they're the moon. my moon.
our messages consist of videos saying "I love you. You made my life better. You have impacted me as a person forever." and videos consisting of "lmao look at this dude" "cat cat cat cat" "this song made me think of you" "lmao look at this orchestra following a runner playing the mission impossible music while they run" "You're my favourite person" "this is an edit of your favourite show" "this is an edit of my favourite show".
we are not just friends. we are friends.
platonic relationships aren't worth less than romantic ones. don't diminish them with the word "just"
begging people to remember that queer-platonic relationships are not one specific type of relationship, it’s any relationship between people who choose to queer expectations around what platonic means. queer-platonic relationships don’t need long-term commitment, queer-platonic relationships don’t need to be prioritized over other types of relationships, queer-platonic relationships don’t need to be “pure” (aka sexless, we know what yall mean by that /neg), queer-platonic relationships don’t need to be anything in particular, that’s the fucking point.
that’s why, i’m gonna be honest with you, i’m very confused at what queer-platonic attraction as a concept could possibly be cuz every queer-platonic relationship is going to be different, including in types of attractions involved (or lack thereof). the only way i could make sense of it is like as a type of attraction that makes you want to diverge from social normal around platonic attraction, but that is just not the definition it has at the moment.
that’s also why i’m confused with any posts that talks about queer-platonic relationships as if they’re like.. one thing. one universal experience for anyone who has them. they are not.
i could fuck nasty with a friend for two weeks, never do it again and it’d be a queer-platonic relationship. i could (hypothetically, i actually could never) spend the rest of my life raising a child with a friend, completely sexlessly and romancelessly, and it’d also be a queer-platonic relationship. hell, i could choose to schedule completely silent cuddling sessions with people i barely know once a month like it’s a business meeting and it could still be a queer-platonic relationships.
anyways, please read up on relationship anarchy if you haven’t already 🙏
"You can't just pick and choose the parts of a romantic relationship that you want"
No, actually I can.
I can do exactly that. If I want to see them multiple times a week with no commitment and no exclusivity I can.
If I want to cuddle and kiss and not be any more intimate than that I can.
If I want to go on fun dates and spend time together and have little adventures but never call them my partner I can.
If I want to do these things with multiple people at the same time I can.
If I want to call it hanging out instead of dating I can.
If I want to keep things private but also post us being silly on my close firends stories I can.
I can do anything I want to as long as all the parties in the relationship are happy and it's not hurting anyone.
Other people cannot define my relationships for me.
I’ve always hated how especially in America we throw around the word friend like it’s kind of meaningless. I hate the idea that a friendship is less meaningful than a romantic relationship or that it has to be less passionate or dedicated. Whether we holds hands or kiss or fuck (all of which I believe can be platonic) or whether we just talk about the art we love and try to make each other laugh some part of myself is staked out for you forever, and I want you as a shared participant in my life. I don’t want to treat each other like distractions or interludes between the *real* relationships in our lives. I want friendships where we both know that even if we didn’t talk for a decade we’d always be welcome to show up at the others door, and I think even for allo nonaro people like me we’d be a lot happier and much more content in ourselves if we understood the real value of platonic relationships and didn’t rush to rank them against whatever other kinds of love we might have in our lives.
It is very important to criticize the “Why does everything have to by gay? Can’t they just be friends?” attitude that homophobes have towards gay characters, but it’s possible to do that without saying things like “This character literally did xyz for the other. Friends wouldn’t do that!” or “But character A says character B is the most important person in their life! There’s no way that’s platonic!” or even things like “Actually, they should have sex with each other instead of being ‘just friends.’” Whatever it is you think that friends can’t do, they can. Friends can think of each other as the most important person in their lives. Friends can go through pain for each other, risk their safety for each other, be physically affectionate, rely on each other, and die for each other. Friends can share beds, kiss, or have sex.
Friendship is not a tier below romance.