Leave the World Brighter

I apologize for calling Macklemore cringe

hey, if you've got spotify, just leave this on repeat whenever you can. all proceeds are going to UNRWA

something about the wave of Alfred Molina thirst makes me think of that "Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny" essay. shan't elaborate right now but give me a moment.

I'm sorry, the what essay?

so glad you asked

it was this article, "We All Simp for Alfred Molina" by Chingy Nea, that made me think of it, particularly this paragraph that one assumes the Nea must have composed whilst drooling like a cartoon wolf:

it's Nea's appreciation for Molina's physicality, specifically the fond attention drawn to his visible paunch, that made me think of R.S. Benedict's essay "Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny." it's a good read but also a long one, so I'll summarize: Benedict posits that current standards of American attractiveness stem from post-9/11 anxiety - "When a nation feels threatened, it gets swole," she writes - and has created a national mentality of bodies as commodities to be honed to perfection without indulging in any of the pleasure a body can bring, a vessel disjointed from any sense of self and meant only to be looked at with awe.

she opens particularly by noting the very particular brand of sexless-ness that pervades mainstream media, leading to action heroes whose beautiful faces and implausibly sculpted muscles are attractive in theory but also seem to exist in a world apart from anything like genuine sensuality. their bodies are inhuman in their perfection, and this comes at the cost of doing anything as human as fucking. to quote:

Benedict mostly speculates about the neutered nature of DC and Marvel's movie characters, but they're hardly the only blockbusters falling into this trend. Alison Wilmore's "Why Doesn't The Rock Get to Make Out More Onscreen?" calls attention to this with a particular focus on Disney's new Jungle Cruise movie, describing Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt's roles as "characters who are to Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen as Funko Pops are to people," with their inevitable kiss playing out "as though they’re dolls whose heads are being smashed together by a child enacting a rudimentary idea of passion."

similarly to Benedict's point, Wilmore notes that "There’s a striking divide between the body that Johnson is so famous for and the characters who are supposed to inhabit it... his characters rarely if ever seem to take pleasure in this physicality beyond its capacity to intimidate and serve as a spectacle."

and by now you're probably saying okay Makenzie that's swell, but what the fuck does this have to do with people thirsting over Alfred Molina? well, look at him.

take in the tits and paunch Nea loves so much, and compare Molina's body with the kind that have dominated the biggest movies of the last decade or so, since the MCU set the tone for the future of the superhero genre. Quoth Benedict again:

Molina's Doc Ock isn't bland; he has character in the form of features that are, increasingly, written off as too ugly or undesirable for film. I think the reason people may be reacting so strongly to him nearly two decades after the movie's release is that a pretty-normal looking body has now become a spectacle unto itself, by virtue of being so normal.

the current crop of superhero stars are exercised, waxed, dieted, dehydrated, and quite probably steroided into something the average person could never achieve on their own, a body that's fun to look at but is ultimately alien to anything most people will ever experience. whereas what we're looking at with Alfred Molina's Doc Ock is something like a body that many people actually have, a body that many people have known and loved, a body that, frankly, many people have had sex with - certainly more than have ever had sex with, say, Chris Evans' Steve Rogers all hairless and shiny fresh out of getting shot up with super soldier serum.

it's a sexy body because it's a palpably human body, in a genre that increasingly shuns exactly that.

plus, you know, those are just some nice tits.

dawning on me that it may not be appropriate to send the harrier du bois gun in mouth gif when mildly inconvenienced

there needs to be a way to use this gif without the threat of being institutionalized

finding blondes attractive at worst gets you called having bland taste but liking fat people on the average gets you called a fetishist who dehumanize people

just fyi this isnt calling blonds ugly, this is about how having preferences for some physical traits are considered so normal it's boring but for some reason people can't be normal about those who consider fat people attractive

SUDÄAN, The Nubian Empire

Visual Development for the comics

Creative & DIY

SO THAT’S HOW THEY FUCKING DO IT

Reblogging this because my entire life, all of my bows have looked like my shoelaces. Wrapping presents is going to be so much more aesthetically pleasing now

There is zero chance I will remember how to tie these, and even less chance that any of them would stay tied if attached to the vortex of entropy that is my person. But they’re so cool!

hey now...

Couldn't have nailed me any harder to the floor if you had a fucking hammer.

Hmmmmmmmmm...........

"now disappear!"

"over here!"

"get in gear!"

they all rhyme !!!

And putting it in a more tactical order works with their likely combat style, too!

Get in gear! - Freminet going in first

Now disappear! - Lyney distraction

Over here! - a Lynette surprise attack

I was suddenly caught in chilumi angsts😭

I rarely share requests for donations but this is a person I know and a dog I came to love through their stories, so...

If you like my posts please consider it a tip. ^^ Even a small sum will help a lot.

DON’T OPEN THE DOOR

the thing about Murderbot's """relationship""" with Gurathin is that the first time it vocally expressed its dislike for Gurathin was the very first time it was ever able to vocally express its dislike for anyone.

And it was not punished! Nothing bad happened to it because of this! The PreservationAux team was just like, fine, your opinion is noted and valid, we still all have to work together to not die though.

for someone who was never allowed to let anyone else know it even had opinions, this is a big fucking deal.

its actions toward Gurathin later on (especially obvious in Fugitive Telemetry) show that it considers Gurathin a trusted and valued teammate. And maybe it will never remove the "I don't like him" tag from Gurathin's internal profile but that is not a sign of their friendship needing repair, it is a sign that Murderbot feels safe and free enough to be a little bitchy hater. and i say, good for it!

thinking about whale falls

(inspired by the work of @catadromously )

I thought about this at work and had the hardest hit.

So like, I've been struggling with the fact that to live is to hurt people. There is no way to exist without inconveniencing or bothering or harming another. Eats me up inside.

I just got hit with the strongest revelation that one day, hopefully many years from now, I will die, and there will be worms and bacteria that never knew me, that were never harmed by me, and they will only know my corpse as a gift. I find that very comforting

Edit: I mean that like, to soothe a little bit of the guilt at existing and give permission to enjoy a long life. This is not a sign to hurry up and get to the worm part sooner dhdkd. The worms will be sad with a premature corpse