Let! That! Baby! Eat!!!!!!

Perfect tags

@catboybiologist

This is one of my favorite videos of all time and I will always reblog it when I see it

Death of the author: Treating the author’s stated interpretation of their own work as merely one opinion among many, rather than the authoritative Word of God.

Disappearance of the author: Treating the context and circumstances of the work’s authorship as entirely irrelevant with respect to its interpretation, as though the work had popped into existence fully formed just moments ago.

Taxidermy of the author: Working backwards from a particular interpretation of the work to draw conclusions about what the context and circumstances of its authorship must have been.

Undeath of the author: Holding the author personally responsible for every possible reading of their work, even ones they could not reasonably have anticipated at the time of its authorship.

Frankenstein’s Monster of the author: Drawing conclusions about authorial intent based on elements that are present only in subsequent adaptations by other authors.

Weekend at Bernie’s of the author: Insisting that the author would personally endorse your interpretation of the work if they happened to be present.

I thought this was going to be a joke, but these are all very real things you see people do.

I’m never more serious than when I’m joking.

guy sitting in front of me in class was vandalizing wikipedia and i kept reverting his edits as soon as he made them and he couldn't figure out why it was happening

Nidoking and his clutch of Nidorans in a poppy field. I drew this maybe 3 years ago for a zine that was never released and I think about it every spring since then. If you’d like a print, I’m taking currently taking preorders! Get it here: gumroad.com/l/nidok

No wait. Aziraphale is back. -

- I'm working on lil comics of personnal headcanons about what would happen after season 2!

New Character Unlocked!!!

Mooom, the chocolate alchemist has an accomplice now!

im not a genocide scholar but the emphasis on "intent" has always been a bit strange to me especially now that we're dealing with "modern" "liberal" nation states who will do backflips upon backflips to obfuscate or erase proof of their intentions to kill & dispossess millions of ppl. i understand the need to distinguish b/w "death as a standard part of war" and murder as a state organized targeted campaign (and imo its worth thinking abt why this distinction is needed in the first place & what it says about how we think abt war) but as far as i've seen it proving intent often muddies the waters and enables fascists to start quibbling over UN definitions to exonerate themselves on technicalities or "nuances" rather than taking the mass murder of a group of people homogenized as a particular racial ethnic national or religious group as (attempted) genocide

another related thing that confounds me is the emphasis on the "rules of war" - i get why they were established and i'm not saying we should do away with the geneva conventions (obviously) but how many wars actually stick to those "rules"? how many warmongerers are actually prosecuted meaningfully for "breaking the rules"? it sometimes feels like the product of a desire to make war more palatable and "humane" by legislating "good war" from "bad war", as if, e.g., widespread rape, famine, environmental destruction, infrastructure destruction, disease, civilian deaths, etc. isn't part and parcel of every war

I have to add a story though no one will see it. When I was studying bugs on a trip to Vietnam we would often do light traps. You get a big light, you point it from a mountain towards the rainforest, hang a sheet behind it, catch your bugs.

We would all get incredibly covered in moths and beetles and things. Like head to toe, moth went in multiple people's ears, cannot escape the hoard covered.

Our lovely van drivers who would kindly take us to places in the rain forest would keep their headlights off to not compete with our light, and then when we were done we would leave the trap light on as long as possible, walk away from it, get dusted by the drivers with massive feather dusters (this was a genius strategy from one who had hosted ridiculous entomologists before that spread to the others who were tired of their ceiling becoming moth central). The bugs would hopefully fly to the light. But then that had to be turned off and packed, in pitch darkness, because if you turned on your head lamp, you would get swarmed again and bring them with you into the van.

We never got it perfect, but man I enjoyed those moments of light rationing as we went from ATTRACT ALL BUGS to ESCAPE ALL BUGS in an instant

I cannot believe "only ghost gets to call me Johnny" is an actual line of the game and not from a fic.

This text is printed on a carrier bag. It is produced by Palestinian designers and says: 'This text has no purpose except to scare people who are afraid of the Arabic language.'

I know Dracula is the bad guy of Castlevania and all, but if some zealous Christians showed up at my home and horribly murdered my wife because she did medicine too good I too would probably have gone absolutely fucking feral

He gave them a year and fair warning

In love with this random guy who had a lock slapped on his storage unit for not paying its rental and not only did he ignore management and took his stuff out without paying, but also chose to steal the lock itself and send it to the LockPickingLawyer along with a confession letter

X

@theoutcastrogue

cant believe you didnt include the full sentence

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

I'm like one hour from going to bed so my take is not going to be extensive but my guess is that the social anxiety this is reflecting is the surveillance state. And the fact that private companies (i.e. not just the state) are also doing a ton of surveillance. And even the fact that the way we often use social media -- less so Tumblr, which has some anonymity still -- is basically internalising that surveillance and performing for it at all times.

It seems like there are two modes going on here: "avoid being perceived by the horror" (Bird Box, A Quiet Place etc) and "perform correctly so that the horror can't get you" (your trashy nun example). Both of them arise from surveillance logics; one is "avoid being surveilled or it will Get you", the other is "you are being surveilled, perform correctly or it will Get you".

And with regard to the social elements it's all reflecting, I mean -- have you seen the state of things? It's extremely difficult to avoid being surveilled! A monster where you have to not look at it is fucking easy mode by comparison!

(Pretend I cited Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman; they're relevant but also it's bedtime.)

Ooh yes, and breaking it down like this made me think:

- fear of observation (surveillance state)

- fear of not performing correctly (purity culture and evangelical backlashes)

- fear of confronting existential threat (climate change)

more on my Twitter

XD

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

― Edward Abbey

she tower on my babel till I ἐπιούσιον

#ἐπιούσιον is a word that’s only ever used in the Lord’s prayer#with extreme controversy surrounding its translation#i suspect the joke here is that this post forces the reader to do a bunch of linguistic research#only to not come up with a conclusive answer#mimicking the experiences of those who built the tower of babel#this has been another installment of overexplaining jokes until theyre not funny anymore with autistics via @exbeekeeper​

ok but you just saved my ass 30 minutes of research by explaining the joke and now i can laugh at it sooner you didn't make it not funny you made it funny faster