Cruisinforabruising101 - 0-o

oh my god two words in that just UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

also like, idk how to tell y'all this but…

dehumanizing *anyone* is bad. it doesn’t matter if they’re “the oppressor” or they have societal power over you. if you get to a point where you look at *anyone* and you don’t see a human being with thoughts and feelings and internal motivations, if you get to a point where you look at an individual person and see

“the oppressor” or someone that you feel 100% completely comfortable doing violence against without hesitation or consideration…

that’s actually bad. Social justice is not and should never be about trying to figure out who it’s okay to do violence against. Nor is it about “flipping the tables”.

For the Solstice: “Invictus”

In the dimness he woke and knew it was too late. Morning never came so late unless the world was ending.

Fortunately, he knew what to do about that.

Keep reading

Wildstar, Character Design, Female Objectification, Sexual Dimorphism and Biology in Video Games

We need to talk about the character designs in Wildstar.

We need to talk about the character designs in all science fiction and fantasy franchises that feature non-humans.

Wildstar is a science-fiction MMO currently in beta, developed by Carbine Studios. The general thrust of Wildstar is something along the lines of Firefly, Star Wars, and Ratchet & Clank; not exactly a grimdark sci-fi thriller. The mechanical features look interesting and the art style, in and of itself, is really vivid—but what they’re doing within the style?

Well.

The NDA dropped on a bunch of Wildstar content and character creation videos are up. You can watch them all, but here I’m just going to focus on the Granok, Draken, and Mechari.

Read More

@bananaruntz i think what sucks the most about it with xenofiction in particular is that when you have characters that are simultaneously nonhuman and anthropomorphic, it creates this issue where you're forced to accept any misogyny at face value and assume that it's just scientific accuracy, because nature CAN be notoriously unfair. it can't be denied that the females of many species get the shorter end of the stick, but way too many xenofiction authors seem to operate on the idea that this is innately true for the entire animal kingdom when it's just not. even if you are writing about a species where male animals generally dominate the hierarchy, that still shouldn't preclude you from being able to write well-rounded female characters, especially ones that aren't bound by suspiciously human misogynistic tropes.

xenofiction presents so so so many fascinating opportunities to really examine things like sexism and identity and biological determinism but it feels like no one has properly taken advantage of that yet. i am being so fucking serious when i say that xenofiction desperately needs a queer, trans, feminist upheaval.

What is Xenofiction?

love stories about monsters are THE BEST because the idea of conceptualizing love in a way that is not human and fundamentally cannot be human and is AN ENTIRELY SEPARATE LEVEL FROM THE HUMAN is so great. 

made better when one half of the relationship is human and suddenly we’re dealing with a) a human learning to love like a monster or b) a monster learning to translate their love into human terms and that’s

the best thing

to me.

which often goes hand in hand with MONSTER TRYING TO HUMANIZE THEMSELVES but that’s.. not necessary, don’t worry monster, you don’t need to do that. your capacity for love does not need to be whittled and softened into a human shape. it’s okay. your heart can be brutal and all consuming. you will learn to cope and you will learn to funnel it, pieces at a time, into something conceivable and measurable to the human mind. 

and i don’t strictly mean monster monsters because there’s room here for divinity (alpha and omega, first and last, holy terror OF THE HEART. apocalypses OF FEELING.) or ghosts, or non-human, non-monster outliers (superheroes, androids, idek), or even human beings who are self-made monsters and whose expression and understanding of love is two steps removed and two shades off. 

but, you know what i mean. 

love stories about monsters.

As someone who grew up with and loved and adored The Land Before Time (1988) and experienced quite a few of its sequels, too, it's amazing how similar the Ice Age series became to it as well - meaning sequels wise. Though in my opinion, Ice Age (2002) is leaps and bounds better than Land Before Time (1988) though I do deeply love BOTH of their original movies.

Both The Land Before Time and Ice Age (2002)'s original movies are gritty and dark, with a sense of "realism" grounding their events with migrations underpinning the journeys of the original narratives and with a greater xenofictional factor since in IA1, the Ice Age megafauna are treated like majestic creatures who growl and rumble (see Manny and Diego mostly) like they might've done so and with the threat of humans being a major conflict factor within IA1 itself with Manny's choice to return baby Roshan despite the knowledge that in doing so, the child has a chance to become a hunter one day.

However, just like its predecessor The Land Before Time, when it came for Ice Age to get continuations, the realistic underpinnings of IA1 were thrown out the window as its series went Lighter and Softer, just like Land Before Time before it.

And yes, in one of The Land Before Time's many direct-to-DVD/VHS sequels, aliens and an asteroid and end of the world themes (like Ice Age's much reviled IA5) become major plot points!

The Land Before Time sequel where Littlefoot reunites with his father involves Longnecks pushing back the sky to save everyone (because of a solar eclipse which was treated in-universe as an "end of the world" event) and the Stone of Cold Fire teased alien dinosaurs. .-. It was around those sequels that I put away keeping up with the TLBT sequels though when I was young I enjoyed them and it saddens me the Ice Age sequels followed the same route.

My hopes for the Ice Age sequels, even as a young (12/13 year old) child was that they'd buck the trend and remain dark and xenofictional and not devolve into silly Lighter and Softer-ness and Dense and Wackier plots like The Land Before Time did years before. In short, the Ice Age sequels deserved better - they deserved to not basically become a modern, theatrically-released "Land Before Time" sequels-redux!

@bananaruntz i think what sucks the most about it with xenofiction in particular is that when you have characters that are simultaneously nonhuman and anthropomorphic, it creates this issue where you're forced to accept any misogyny at face value and assume that it's just scientific accuracy, because nature CAN be notoriously unfair. it can't be denied that the females of many species get the shorter end of the stick, but way too many xenofiction authors seem to operate on the idea that this is innately true for the entire animal kingdom when it's just not. even if you are writing about a species where male animals generally dominate the hierarchy, that still shouldn't preclude you from being able to write well-rounded female characters, especially ones that aren't bound by suspiciously human misogynistic tropes.

xenofiction presents so so so many fascinating opportunities to really examine things like sexism and identity and biological determinism but it feels like no one has properly taken advantage of that yet. i am being so fucking serious when i say that xenofiction desperately needs a queer, trans, feminist upheaval.

no fucking way