Doesn't look like anything to me

[Tweet from @/fozmeadows: “human gender and sexuality are very much like animal taxonomy, in that both look structured and simple on the surface, but once you start investigating, it turns out there’s actually no such thing as a fish despite the fact that we all know what a fish is, and that’s okay”]

As a biologist, that is a fantastic comparison.

We talk about “fish” (which, cladistically, do not exist, there is no monophyletic group of “fish” that simultaneously includes all organisms we understand to be “fish”-like while also excluding, say, humans) because, despite the utter fiction that is fish, it’s still a useful label when we talk about certain features that “fish” tend to have in common.

Gender is absolutely the same way.

Babe wake up new gender dropped, it’s got gills

"But where is she?"

one of the things that makes me throw up about westworld s2e5 akane no mai is the way that maeve is of course able to recognise akane as her parallel self in shogunworld but does not recognise that sakura is the equivalent of clementine. she instead views the adopted mother-daughter dynamic between akane and sakura to be that of maeve and Her Daughter, despite sakura's backstory, costuming (the turquoise!), and her general position in the narrative being SO clearly the same as clementine's. even in the ways they are victimised. akane even gives sakura the same familiar speech about that goddam voice but maeve doesn't see it despite completing the sentence for her. the real familial, retrievable love maeve felt for clementine is shoved to the side for her past self's narrative of a motherhood that wasn't realllll

have a repurposed meme from discord

At first, I didn't really like what they did with Dolores in Season 2. She seemed like more of a 2-dimensional villain now. But upon rewatch, the weren't trying to set her up as a villain. She's intimidating, sure, and ruthless. But at no point does she do anything that's actually malicious. She knows that no matter what she does, a lot of people are going to die, and she has a clear idea of what she needs to do next in spite of this fact. She definitely has an "the ends will justify the means" mentality, but Westworld is one of the few shows I've seen that has had the balls to say, "Hey if the ENDS are stopping slavery, and the MEANS are killing the masters in cold blood, maybe there's a little more to this MORALITY thing than how confidently a radical pursues her goal". She doesn't hurt anyone innocent, and when someone resists her will, she'll voice her concerns but ultimately she respects their choice. She still feels genuine remorse for her oversights/things beyond her control.

THIS is what an anti-hero is! Not just "A bad person who we have to like because they're the main character". Seasons 2 & 3 don't try to make revolution look pretty or one-sided. But it also doesn't pretend like the hero is an irredeemable monster the second that upsetting the status quo starts to result in bloodshed... namely because the status quo was in itself horrible and violent, so blaming the victim for going "too far" to demand equal rights would be a tad intellectually dishonest. (Not that being intellectually dishonest has stopped other shows from framing the debate this way HINT HINT!) But yeah. When given more time to mull it over, I have to say she looks pretty hot in that ammo belt.

Happy 20th of April

I feel like I want to explain to young tumblr users who weren't born yet that MulderxScully was a revolutionary ship. No, it was not queer but that is not the only way to be revolutionary.

In the 90s when The X Files was airing, media was like misogyny soup. Yes, there were exceptions. But casual sexism was so ubiquitous it was like we were all frogs simmering in it and if you dared to say, hey, uh, isn't this joke a little shitty to the wife? Or maybe this female character could do something other than pose and ask questions so the male lead can answer them? Then you were a hairy feminist outcast loser.

Scully was a lot of things but she was not that. All the "You're not going to believe this, Scully!" memes are based on the fact that Mulder, an attractive white dude, wanted nothing more in his entire life than to share his passions with this tiny redhead. Was he nuts? Yes. But on many other shows, he would have talked down to her, would've ignored her, would've mocked her. He didn't.

When you go back and watch The X Files, there's these moments where Mulder and Scully look at each other like, "wait did Jack Black really just say that" and the significance to fan history isn't just the sexual tension. It's that, yeah, and the origin of the word ship, and the 'will-they-won't-they'. But the most important thing about those looks is how they told the audience that Mulder was looking to Scully for something. A man was looking at a woman and asking with his eyes "what do you think about this?" Was he also saying "and do you want to bone about it?" Yeah, yeah he was. But the first thing was sexy as hell.

Respecting a woman's expertise and folding information she provided into his worldview was a revolutionary thing for a man to do on television at the time. Thank you for coming to my MSR ted talk.

I happened to be writing for a TV magazine back in the early 90s, and remember getting the very first tape (VHS! hah!) of The X-Files to review. I watched it about five times, and of all things that hit me and I couldn't stop squawking about in the article that resulted was the complete upending of the usual dynamic between male and female characters. It wasn't just the respect for Scully that Mulder displayed (even in that first episode where he was deeply suspicious and wary of a new partner being forced on him, and before he had the opportunity to fully appreciate her expertise) but it was the inversion of trope of the unreliable, flighty female and the rock solid, dependable man. A tv show that actually allowed the main lead to have EMOTIONS! That allowed the female lead to be analytical, and head-first, and possibly even smarter than him!

You are a very lucky person if you don't realise just how revolutionary this was.

(And I was a women's studies major at the time, so was pretty steeped in a wide range of media, and still I tell you - REVOLUTIONARY.)

(plus they were both so hot it was insane even before Scully was allowed to dress a little less dumpy scully)

I read somewhere that David Duchovny decided to play Mulder as though Scully’s opinion was the one that mattered most to him in the room. and i think that shows

So I just saw a post by a random personal blog that said “don’t follow me if we never even had a conversation before” and?????? Not to be rude but literally what the fuck??????????

I’ve had people (non-pornbots) try to strike conversation out of nowhere in my DMs recently, and now I’m wondering if they were doing that because they wanted to follow me and thought they needed to interact first. I feel compelled to say, just in case, that it’s totally okay to follow this blog (or my side blog, for that matter) even if we’ve never talked before.

Also, I’m legit confused. Is this how follow culture works right now? It was worded like it’s common sense but is that really a thing?

Saw a sharp increase in my follower count after posting this. The legitimacy of it is driving me nuts so I also feel the need to say that you can follow anyone on here regardless of whether you’ve interacted with them or not. People like the above mentioned blog are exceptions. Perhaps they themselves think they aren’t and therefore will act like they aren’t, but they are, trust me.

Just follow anyone you wanna follow. The worst thing that can happen is maybe getting soft-blocked by the other person, but if they do soft-block you, then they were never that worth following in the first place.

“I don’t care about dumb weed jokes,” I said naively, before I saw this

This 420 is a palindrome!!!! 4/20/2024

It is!

just curious as they're always things i've never questioned just doing but people in my life are often surprised that i don't mind doing them alone

🔁 pls reblog for sample size

“I don’t care about dumb weed jokes,” I said naively, before I saw this

i see a lot of people talk about edward being disabled in fma, but it's less often talked about how alphonse is also disabled. i think it's partially because alphonse doesn't experience physical pain like edward so for a majority of the series, he's not having any of those kind of symptoms, but he is still disabled. also because alphonse's experiences are unique. like you don't see ant walking, talking suits of armour in real life (unless they're piloted by a human being physically inside them) and in world, there are about 3 others like alphonse).

alphonse is dependent on edward's survival to function. after fighting scar for the first time, alphonse is literally in pieces. he can't walk or anything until edward is in a position to fix him. similarly his body is dependent on nutrients from edward's body. like there's the point towards the end where edward gets impaled and alphonse collapses. furthermore, these periods where alphonse collapses start to become debilitating towards the end of the series and massively alter his daily living.

also, alphonse constantly talks about how upsetting it is for him to not feel any physical sensations. yeah, he's not feeling physical pain, but he's also not feeling the warmth of a fire, the sun on his face, or the fluffiness of the cats he keeps petting. he talks a lot about not being able to eat or sleep, and how there's a lot of foods he wants to try.

there's another thing that highlighted by edward at one point. alphonse's body doesn't regenerate at all. the parts scar destroys are gone forever; edward stretches out the metal that alphonse has left to repair his body. and obviously human beings don't regrow limbs, but imagine if your skin didn't ever heal over a cut. how long would your body last?

also alphonse gets told several times that his body is great throughout the series, and he literally argues against it every time, because to him it is shit. like he is missing some of his senses just for some supposedly immortal body that isn't even immortal.

even once alphonse gets his own body back, the amount of physical therapy the boy has to go through. his body has essentially been doing nothing and only receiving what nutrients it can get from edward for years. by the end of the series, he's still using a cane as a walking aid. it's unknown whether he requires that cane for the years to come, but for at least a period of time he requires a mobility aid. I don't know enough to say what effect muscle decay from inactivity and severe malnourishment during a major portion of his teenage years would have long term.

Marisa coulter + ART 1. Jason and Medea - John William Waterhouse (1907) 2. Circe - E. Bertram Mackennal (1902) 3. La notte - Hendrik Christian Andersen 4. After the ball - Ramon Casas i Carbó  (1899) 5. The Fallen Angel - Alexandre Cabanel (1847)