▲ I'm a Billiever ▲

Charles Van den Eycken - The feather (1910)

I like the W.A.S. scale for rating anime. It stands for Weeb Ass Shit, and you rate each of those things on a 10 point scale.

So like, a series that requires extensive knowledge of japanese culture, or one that relies on the audience already being very familiar with the media tropes that it’s parodying, would have a high Weeb score while one that any 10-year old american would totally understand would have a low Weeb score.

The Ass column is for how much gratuitous nudity or attempts at titilation there is, with pure and innocent things like most ghibli films getting really low numbers, things like Bakemonogatari or Kill la Kill ending up in the middle of the scale, and borderline hentai at the top.

And finally, the Shit column covers things that are just fucking stupid, or poorly implemented. Low numbers indicate a series that is extremely well written and has a lot of good ideas, higher values come from plot holes, idiot plots, authors shoehorning in some incredibly nonsensical philosophy, etc.

Some people don’t mind the weeb nonsense at all, so they only have to look at the other two categories. Some people have very little tolerance for ass, even in a series that is otherwise of high quality. Some people decide based on a combined score, like they can tolerate more ass if the shit level is really low or vice versa but refuse to deal with both at the same time.

I literally was looking for someone in the notes to mention the Weeb Ass Shit scale, bless you for explaining! Also I feel like even if the person you’re recommending things to is unfamiliar with this scale, it’s a helpful tool to help you break down and analyze different elements of the show.

it is crazy how “if this childrens show doesn’t kill their villain at the end it’s irredeemable media” became such a popular opinion here. like people were calling steven universe fascist apologia. and to be clear I don’t even think that would be the case for non childrens media, either. perhaps holding every single story up to the same standard of “does it follow the acceptable narrative path or is it evil propaganda” isn’t the most anti-fascist thing, either. maybe.

"you are morally obligated to murder your enemies" is also perhaps not the most anti-fascist thing

I did a research project on the ways popular children's animated films punish their villains and when you lay all the data out, the number of films that actually do kill their villains is terrifying. (It gets even more interesting when it's mapped out alongside the social characteristics of the villains, the the crimes they commit too)

Can you post the data? I'm curious ngl

Sure!

I did a study of around 100 top box office animated movies aimed at children from the last 30 ish years, finding 180 villains represented. This graph shows the ways they were punished within the film based on the crimes they committed:

As you can see, the punishment is generally harsher for "more serious" crimes, but drawing attention to the statistic for the villains who murder, they are killed more than 50% of the time. Which I guess can be seen as an eye for an eye type thing, but is that really what we want to be teaching our children? Notice how little legal action takes place as an act of justice too (you know, the system we rely on in society to take care of crime).

When taking gender into account, we also find that female villains are punished much more harshly that male villains, despite the fact there is not much difference in the ratio of crimes they commit.

Take a look at how they are punished when they don't conform to their gender expectations too:

When they are murdered in response to their crimes, it is much more likely to be active capital punishment than an accident, and the comparison of physical punishment (an action that would usually cause bodily harm) is staggering.

This data (and even the study) barely touches the surface of what could be uncovered here, and I definitely believe more research should be done into what we are teaching our children about criminal justice in the media they consume. Particularly as media becomes more accessible, and the overconsumption of media more normalised.

for the purposes of this poll, consider nonbinary under the trans umbrella

Hey, I made a silly quiz about the early-2000's internet if anyone wants to take it!

If you can, please donate to the Internet archive, links in the description. The loss of the archive would be devastating for dozens of reasons.

I know the Library of Alexandria comment sounds like an exaggeration. It absolutely is not. As of May 7, 2022, the Internet Archive holds over 35 million books and texts, 7.9 million movies, videos and TV shows, 842 thousand software programs, 14 million audio files, 4 million images, 2.4 million TV clips, 237 thousand concerts, and over 682 billion web pages in the Wayback Machine. It’s been operating since 1996, the loss of knowledge would be impossible to ever completely come back from.

The lawsuit from Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley Sons, and Penguin Random House alleges there have been significant revenue losses because of their controlled digital lending program. For context, most libraries in the US also use CDL to distribute books to their patrons wherever they are but those programs are run through for profit companies and the libraries are often paying a very high fee to so their patrons can have access to digital books. The Internet Archive’s program is completely free but they have a policy of not digitizing and lending anything less than 5 years old.

The lawsuit goes on to note that authors often own larger shares of their revenue of digital vs. print copies of their books. So the publishing companies, seeing that they’re underpaying their authors, are essentially blaming a library for being free instead of bumping up what authors earn on print copies. The Internet Archive’s 5 year policy is designed to protect authors anyway as that’s when books typically make the most money.

Hey by the way The Internet Archive is also one of the most cited places on Wikipedia. If it goes down a good chunk of Wikipedia will go back to “citation needed” or citations will lead to dead links.

Reblogging this again now because DON’T GODDAMN FORGET

My Human is Not

Written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly

Art by Sonny Liew

Star Trek: Waypoint Special #1

High Res Version

Combine your chinese zodiac and astrology sign to make your true fursona

i still hate this post so much. i’m an ox and a taurus. i’m a bull bull. i’m so fucking annoyed oh m y go d

SCORPION TIGER I WIN MUTHAFUCKAS PINCH PINCH STAB STAB

Hey, fellow space nerds, NASA just released its own free, zero-ad streaming service with all kinds of space-themed documentaries - and a few about Earth, too.

For @prisdreamsofsweetness​, who requested: Well, this isn’t detailed, because, reasons, but Garak and Bashir and Kukalaka because I am a total slut for cute things that involve that damn bear and Garashir. <3 

Also? Somehow, Cardassians are SO MUCH EASIER TO DRAW than Julian Bashir. I can see that this is the start of an ongoing struggle …

Today's bird is a Rook!

St. Thomas Aquinas spent many hours in deep Biblical study, tutored by Godzilla. These portraits commemorate this.