Im enjoying the longevity of tumblrs recontextualization style of humor. a seemingly innocuous post followed by like "posts that a gnome would make" or like "are you a phone"

More from the notes:

I love this post

The horse thinks as it scratches an itch

apparently my bro thought they thought up Sasha the christmas tiger. but they were just talking about

“what if something other than santa came to give us presents because a man coming into my house isn’t cool with me, what if it was like a christmas demon or like a tiger”

“Sasha the christmas tiger?’

“yeah that would be cool’

See i just thought they were referencing Sasha the christmas tiger, but they thought we just made up right then and there. Its been 3 years and they just found out that Sasha the christmas tiger is like a thing that other people do too.

Their  Sasha is spelt Sascha and has an ribbons and ornaments floating around her like Okami

As Sasha’s OP I need someone to draw this, also I strongly approve of Sascha

reblog if you’re obsessed with imagery and symbolism and also are a homo

sometimes i feel like im climing up this incline again alone but thankully sisypus and the itsy bitsy spider and here with me

holy shit is that kate bush

hate how all these apocalyptic films show society breaking down the hot minute the grid goes down, with all the survivors banding off into tiny violent gangs that prey on each other.

bitch you are a member of one of the most social species in existence! it is actually insane the extent to which humans have evolved to use cooperation as our main survival tool. humans have been building and then rebuilding societies for as long as disasters have been bringing them down. an apocalypse would be fucking awful, but the survivors would end up building communities and networks and pooling resources and knowledge, because that’s what humans do. that’s what they DO!!!

#3 million years ago our ancestors put all of their skill points into charisma and tool use and we’ve been winging it ever since   tags via OP

This reminds me of a really great video by Sarah Zedig where the second half is her going off on apocalyptic, grimdark shows such as The Walking Dead as a ‘libertarian power fantasy where their dogshit ideology is never wrong’ and I’ve never forgotten it.

At its core, the edgelord trope that society would “break down” into violence the instant the cops stop answering the phones is a myth built on cynical belief that humans are - at their core - violent, selfish, cruel animals that are only kept in line with the violent enforcement of “law and order.”

Hell, it’s a myth built atop another myth that the police - the legitimate purveyors of state violence - are even competent at all!

Considering their abysmal track record for actually solving crimes and observed reluctance to put themselves in harm’s way, there’s hardly a case to be made that they are actively keeping society from descending into chaos. And if you think that’s woke anti-police nonsense, bear in mind that once, when the cops in New York did a work “slowdown”, crime went down.

Because see, there’s a second half to the apocalyptic “breakdown of society” myth, the one that appeals to a certain group of people. It’s the part where, now that society has become the State of Nature, the truly strong, independent, well-armed men of action have carte blanche to “restore order” with brutal, justified violence.

Apocalyptic movies are a popular genre because it takes the standard Hollywood power fantasy and gives it an adrenaline shot of compatible politics: libertarian, every man for himself, Übermensch crap. As it depicts the end of the world, with all the pornographic spectacle of chaos and human cruelty, it tells its audience that you won’t succumb when the rest those dumb, weak masses perish. Whether it’s zombies, plague, climate disaster, or solar flares making our cellphones stop working, you specifically (yes you, Kyle!) will rise above it.

And when it does, the strong and rugged will survive and start over. Make things how they “used to be.” Presumably a nice, pure, uncomplicated world suspiciously absent of all those “weak” folks that had been muddying the waters and getting in the way, before. The ones that had prevented the naturally strong men from reaching their true potential in the Old World.

To the people that truly buy into this garbage power fantasy, the inevitable apocalyptic collapse isn’t something to be feared, but prepared for.

They’re looking forward to it.

…that last line struck a nerve like an icepick to the skull

Obligatory link to ACOUP’s posts on “The Fremen Mirage”, which directly deals with this mindset about “strong men”.

He dissects this mindset in detail, along with its historical antecedents–this is not a new belief system at its core.

I keep thinking about that anthropologist who eviscerated A Song of Ice and Fire. In ASOIAF, the entire continent is subject to years long, sporadic winters that cannot be predicted. Historically, when humans face regions where food can suddenly disappear and the environment becomes hostile, they band together. Everyone pools their resources and keeps a stockpile for the inevitable lean days. We see this acted out in frozen tundras where the growing season is short and tropical regions where El Niño could destroy all the crops.

So having everyone in ASOIAF be at each other’s throats isn’t accurate. It’s just Martin’s weird Hobbesian fantasy of “every man for himself.”

Ok this is not to a) dispute the general points being made in this post (which I fundamentally agree with) OR b) directed specifically at the person I’m replying to, because this is a VERY popular perspective on A Song of Ice and Fire held by MANY people, but I think it is a fundamental misreading of the text, and one I find honestly hard to understand.

It seems pretty clear to me that ASOIAF is very much in line with the sentiments being expressed in this post, and full of blistering critiques of the idea of a Hobbesian “every man for himself” worldview and the people who hold such views. Such people are portrayed as villains and assholes who use their power to make the world worse for everyone around them, and are almost universally deeply troubled people full of unresolved psychological issues. Moreover, those who profess such views outwardly usually aren’t even being honest! Like Tyrion and Sandor for instance believe in an all-against-all world because of their personal issues, but most of the people who are responsible for the violence in Westeros actually believe in a world that revolves around them, that exists to serve their personal desires, and that anyone who doesn’t should be punished for daring to defy their delusional worldview (which as discussed above is much more common among professed pseudo-Hobbesians than genuine philosophical individualism, not “every man for himself” so much as “I alone am a PC among NPCs”).

The harsh winters are NOT depicted as the cause of rampant violence in Westeros on large or interpersonal scales. In fact, the harshness of winter has led to the North, where winters are harshest, becoming a relatively collective society, almost uniquely concerned with the welfare of common folk in winter when compared to the other six kingdoms, and where older men sacrificing themselves for the sake of their hungry families in the depths of winter is a cultural tradition stretching back thousands of years. It is from the leader of the North that we get one of the iconic lines of the story “when the cold winds rise, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.” The question of stockpiling food for the coming winter comes up frequently across the books, traditional and ancient practices that have been done for millennia, with those who are neglecting and sabotaging these efforts portrayed as selfish villains.

The level of violence we see in Westeros is not the result of environmental factors, but political ones. The war doesn’t happen because everyone is selfish and vicious, but because the *ruling class* of Westeros is selfish and vicious, with the specific members of said class with the most power at the time of the story being *spectacularly* selfish and vicious, starting one of the worst wars in Westerosi history on the cusp of winter for utterly selfish reasons.

And within that war is an unambiguous refutation of these assertions about the series. The Riverlands are by far the most ravaged of any of the kingdoms by the war, subjected to war crimes and mass destruction on a nearly unprecedented scale, and while there are certainly some Riverlanders who become selfish and suspicious as a result, it is within the Riverlands that the most radical political movement in Westeros emerges: the Brotherhood Without Banners, an egalitarian guerrilla resistance movement that crosses class barriers and opposes all who inflict war and death upon the common people while redistributing food and resources to said people.

I’m not familiar with the “anthropologist’s evisceration” of ASOIAF cited above, but I can’t imagine how said anthropologist could have reached the implied conclusions about the series. Pooling and stockpiling resources is absolutely present, people are only “at each other’s throats” because of politically powerful bad actors universally portrayed as messed up selfish assholes, and while heroic opposition to a world full of suffering is rarely rewarded and often outright punished (anyone tried opposing any atrocities in real life lately? Because I know a lot more people who got the shit kicked out of them for trying than I do who unambiguously succeeded and got lauded as heroes and lived happily ever after…), such efforts are clearly portrayed as necessary, admirable, rooted in human nature every bit as deeply as selfishness or cruelty, and even if they do not fundamentally save the world, they are glorious to behold.

“We are sworn to guard the realms of men. What are these Wildlings if not men?”

“What is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?” “Everything.”

“Strike the chains off every slave you see! Dracarys! Freedom! Dracarys!”

“‘If you want her, go and get her.’ So he did.”

“Seven…she had no chance against seven. No chance and no choice. She drew Oathkeeper and stepped out into the rain.”

Basic summary of the news about yesterday's far-right terrorist attack so people outside Brazil are properly informed of the situation.

The culprit, Francisco Wanderley Luiz, was 59-year-old keymaker. In the most recent elections, he ran for congressman by PL (same political party as former president Jair Bolsonaro) and lost the popular vote.

A few days before the attack, he posted veiled threats on Facebook, and one very explicit message namedropping 4 public figures around Joe Biden's level of leftism, which he refers to as "the shitty commies" and telling "you icky old men have 72 hours to disarm the bomb in your houses. The game begins on November 13 17:48 and ends at the 16th" accompanied by a comical amount of bomb emojis.

After the threatening messages, the terrorist wrote the phrase "for shit statues, you use dynamite" on his house's mirror, put on a suit themed after The Joker and drove his car on a 24h10min trip from Porto Alegre to Brasilia. He arrived at the Supreme Court, made a thumbs up sign to a group of confused witnesses in a nearby bus stop, and walked toward the Supreme Court's statue.

He threw a bomb at statue, which bounced off Looney Tunes style and hit the terrorist's head, killing him instantly. No one was harmed by the terrorist attack except for the culprit.

According to acquaintances, the incident happened because the culprit was emotionally disturbed by his divorce.

Linked below is an excerpt from the culprit's TikTok, in which he uses a prophetic amount of explosion effect on his own face.

["As a child or an adolescent, you may have made attempts to run away. If you were more passive, there was escape through sleep, books, and television. Many adult survivors still read obsessively. One woman said, "I'd buy a junk novel and read it till I fell asleep, usually for a good thirty six hours at a stretch." Others spend hours in front of the TV.

If you couldn't afford to believe the abuse was really happening, you could make believe something else was going on. Sometimes children create fantasies that explore their desire for power in a powerless situation. One woman dreamed of a little house she could live in all by herself, with locks on all the doors. Another spent her childhood dreaming of revenge:

Many survivors continue an intense fantasy life when they grow up:

Yet fantasies can be the source of a rich creative life. One teenager needed to escape so badly, she believed Star Trek was real. When the series was taken off the air, she began to hear the voices of the characters in her own head and started writing her own episodes. Today she is a successful science fiction writer."]

Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, The Courage to Heal, 1988

are you in a good headspace to receive my triple barrage hell nightmare skeleton attack right now.

its ok if nows not a good time

How about we just have like... hey trans people, post your pay links or wishlist or whatever you got. No limits, no trans excluded, intersex welcome, any and all genders off the social conventions included. I'll just reblog em a bunch.

I need a reblog to share your info, please use those, not comments or tags. I try to reblog immediately every instance I see between 10am and 10pm, everything else goes into the queue.

Additionally, Reddit is known to have further donation resources, some of which are outlined and linked in this post.

Okay i cant think of anything clever to say except that things are really Not Great right now and any help at all would be deeply appreciated.

My Paypal is paypal.me/fallcaesar

Please ignore the deadname, i cant change it without ID i don't have

its the last month of 2023 so i’m just gonna say it: what the absolute fuck was that

less than a month to go boys

[ID: drawing of an upset light blue dog on a black background with white text reading “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me” overlaid eleven times. End ID]