Kiriona Gaia lives in my head rent free
-
from network effect. i imagine ART is like an eldritch horror but for bots
-
the avatar movies are crazy bc “what if colonizers literally inhabited and puppeteered the bodies of indigenous peoples in order to exploit their homeland” sounds like the premise of some sort of anticolonial horror film, like specifically the kind of thing that would be commenting on self-indigenization among white settlers, but because it’s James Cameron his whole takeaway from that premise is “it would be preddy cool”
actually sorry. the takeaway is also “the white settler possessing an indigenous body would actually be extremely good, perhaps even The Best, at being indigenous, and he would become their Leader”
The takeaway is that James Cameron hired a multi disciplinary team to create the most “alien” culture possible and after years of design what they ended up with just looked like the indigenous population that their Anglo American creators had waged a genocide against decades before. Something unpleasant in the Canadian mind stirred and twisted and managed to summon the ghosts of their own shadow haunted world.
The takeaway is that James Cameron leaned into it. The music they wrote was too foreign sounding, so they substituted “world music” for the Navi - a movie short hand for indigenous sounding. The alien bodies weren’t attractive enough to the western male gaze, so Cameron gave them mammalian breasts. This whole narrative about dozens of experts across dozens of fields building the culture of the Navi, while true, is just a distraction from the fact that Cameron designed Pandora and its cute cat eyed blue aliens already.
The takeaway is that dozens of ethnologists, musicologists, archeologists, historians and speculative fiction artists mostly just built baubles and artifacts to be displayed in supplementary materials. A well designed string instrument in the, “World of Pandora,” book. A materially sound weaving displayed at the “World of Pandora,” theme park. The same colonizer historian who reconstructs Hopi pottery for the Smithsonian, constructs Navi pottery for Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
Perhaps you’re old enough to remember when the world first met James Cameron’s Avatar and the globe was cleaved into two groups; one totally enchanted by this alien paradise, and one that went, “oh so it’s Dances With Wolves. Just beat for beat. No it’s not Pocahontas, it just looks like Pocahontas because Pocahontas was cribbing the same styles and materials from Dances With Wolves. Come on, Kevin Cosner won the Oscar for Best Picture for this movie it’s not an obscure film.”
The takeaway is that Avatar is also the dream of white maroonage. The history of colonization is also the history of defection. From James Cameron to Kevin Costner, from the Avatar Fans back to the first Europeans to walk the shores of Turtle Island; people have projected real and imagined freedoms and powers onto the members and first nations found there. That Pandora distills down the dream of a pre-contact, non agrarian and anti-industrial, spiritually rich but materially limited culture and that this distillation just looks like blue Powhatans, well that probably means something.
James Nicoll refers to this trope as “What These People Need is a Honky.” White guy encounters indigenous people, Learns Their Ways, and becomes the Bestest Of Them All at their Ways.
Dances With Wolves was the ur-example of this trope until Avatar came out. That one Tom Cruise samurai movie is also a contender.
It’s white liberal cocaine. “If I encountered a wise and noble indigenous people I would not oppress them; I would learn their culture and then defend them against other evil white people and then everyone would clap.”
Ignoring the fact that, if you’re a white person, there’s a pretty good chance that wherever you live you have routinely encountered indigenous people, and if you really want to be a good ally to them there are numerous opportunities. They just don’t involve riding magic telepathic
poniespterodactyls.And the thing is? The speculative biology cover story is objectively bullshit from the very beginning, even before you get to the white savior plotline. It’s so glaringly obvious it’s actually weird to me that I never see anyone talk about it, it was the very first thing I noticed way back when this movie came out, and it immediately undermined any respect I might’ve had for the supposed worldbuilding of the film:
Every single creature on Pandora has six limbs except the Na'vi. They aren’t even part of the planet’s biology! They are so explicitly a weirdly fetishized stand-in for Native humans that their baseline physiology diverges from the entire rest of the planet.
Actual James Cameron quote from 2010 by the way:
“I felt like I was 130 years back in time watching what the Lakota Sioux might have been saying at a point when they were being pushed and they were being killed and they were being asked to displace and they were being given some form of compensation,” he said. “This was a driving force for me in the writing of Avatar – I couldn’t help but think that if they [the Lakota Sioux] had had a time-window and they could see the future… and they could see their kids committing suicide at the highest suicide rates in the nation… because they were hopeless and they were a dead-end society – which is what is happening now – they would have fought a lot harder.”
(Source)
The Lakota are a “dead-end society” and should’ve just tried harder to not be colonized 🥰 I wish I could’ve made them as smart and knowledgeable as me 🥰
He’s supposedly improved since this quote but. Jfc.
(via elfhawk3)
-
thinking abt harrow making porridge for gideon. it’s like the only thing she knows how to make, as we find out in HtN. and it’s the only way she can think to apologize without Really apologizing. it’s a peace offering. and it’s hilariously tender as a gesture. “Oh, Gideon eats, uh… I can.. make her porridge, I guess?” and meanwhile gideon’s like “Is this real? The fuck? Is this poisoned?”
i adore them
(via lesbianpraetor)
-
Most use magic spells to tame monsters. But without access to magic, you had to tame, train, and bond with yours the old fashioned way. It has proven to be a lot more work, but the results were nothing short of spectacular.
Rival: *dispells the taming spell*
Monster: *still tame*
You: “Fluffy? Sic ‘im.”
Monster: “W̴̡̥͈̖̮̠̙̖͉̱̗̬͎͖̒̈́̄ͅƠ̶̛͕̩͖͙̇̀̂́̌̾͆̏̕̕͘͘͘ͅÒ̴̙̹͉̠F̸̎̆̓̑̽͛̕”
(via lineartimetravel)
-
Why don’t they make stained glass fish tanks? Give those fish Catholic guilt
fascinated by the implication that it’s the stained glass that gives catholics the guilt
I FOUND THE. FISH CAN’T SIN POST.
(via joghurtbrot)
-
Gideon the Ninth had consumed my every thought for the last few months
(via lesbianpraetor)
-
“Racialised” is much better than PoC but I’ve been leaning a lot on the concept of racial markedness. Because that allows us to make statements like “the name Jamal is racially marked in USA”. Rather than saying something like “Jamal is a PoC name”, a nonsense statement, saying it’s racially marked in USA allows us to contrast with societies like Albania or the Arab countries where the name Jamal is ordinary, thus unmarked.
It’s a concept I’ve kind of imported from linguistic analysis; saying a speech pattern is more or less marked does not really allow us to avoid the subject of who’s doing the marking. A statement like “womens’ speech is more marked in Lakota” necessitates that we understand that it’s the Lakota who are marking womens’ speech. A foreigner can’t tell the difference and probably doesn’t understand why it would thus be weird to see a man using speech patterns associated with women, in the same way an Albanian wouldn’t understand why USA people would think Jamal is a Black name.
You! You get it. In my view, if someone is saying “racialised” or “racially marked” without acknowledgement of context, they are doing it in a way that is gramatically incorrect.
(via piiwakawaka)
-
-
ALT
ALTALT
“Though my soul may set in darkness
it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.”
From the poem “The Old Astronomer” (1868) by Sarah Williams.
(via criminally-beautiful-art)
-
-
-
A naked eye 3D pterosaur installation at Shanghai Natural History Museum
(The guide is describing the exhibit and talking about the various “flying dinosaurs” and their appearance through history as they emerge from the fossil displays)
(via aniseandspearmint)
-
Pin-Lee & Iris, Gurathin, Bharadwaj.
-
silly goofy murderbot commission for @anna-neko!💥
Still love this.
-
I need a Preservation Station Security Officer Tifany appreciation post, so here it is.
“Farid had a hand on his interface, sending another urgent-assistance-needed code to the Station Security comm. Tifany was more direct. She drew her baton and said, “Balin, get us inside.””
Girl is ready for action.
“Target Two made a wild grab for her fallen projectile weapon. I kicked the weapon over to Tifany, who snatched it up and secured it. (Yes, it was unnecessary and showing off.)”
I like to envision the weapon flying through the air straight into Tifany’s hand without her even turning her head, rather than sliding across the floor. Because this pair is just that badass.
“ART watched the full video, running it back and forth. I had sent Thiago the part where I was on top of the council table trying to snap Hostile One’s neck while Hostile Two was on my back stabbing the absolute crap out of me. Six Station Security officers were draped around the room in various states of consciousness, with Officer Tifany, the only one still functional, hanging on to the stabbing arm of Hostile Two and punching him repeatedly in the head.”
“(It had looped through to the end of the clip where stupid Hostile One finally went inert and I rolled myself, Hostile Two, and Tifany off the table. Now Hostile Two was trying to strangle Tifany and I was prying him off her.)”
“I was sitting on top of Hostile Two to make sure he was dead. He had been apparently dead at least twice, so this wasn’t misplaced caution. Tifany was on her knees beside me, her weapon pointed at his head. “You’re too close,” I told her. She looked at me, the skin around her eyes so swollen and puffy I’m not sure how well she could see. Then she edged back out of potential arm’s reach.”
“Indah’s brow furrowed. “On the way.” She reached over to Tifany and carefully coaxed the weapon out of her hands. “You’re off duty now, officer.” Tifany said, “Yes, senior,” and folded over onto the floor. “She’s had a hard day,” I told Indah.”
This girl is nonstop.
(via rosewind2007)
