Wait New Tag Game. Tell Me If You’re Good Or Terrible At Cooking Then Tell Me Where U Fall Among Ur

+ bonus

I feel weird about Arcane S2 because ….. It'd be rad if Arcane was super leftist or w/e, but I never expected it to be. And I was happy with that! I always expected Arcane to continue having its “X-men level” of political takes— “both sides are at fault and we need to come together and have compassion." I don't need a leftist moral political justification to enjoy a fun fantasy story.

But season 2 really did surprise me? by swerving off and being like “actually the political oppression storyline Does Not Matter, never mattered, and won’t even get a resolution— not even a conservative or centrist resolution?” XD

They don't even resolve the political storyline with the classic X-men “both sides are suffering, why cant we get along" type of ending; instead they just abandon it completely. By the last four episodes the show is all about fighting random Evil Outsiders and Magic Robots from the League of Legends Cinematic Universe to advertise upcoming League skins and spin-offs, while the plot about the warring political factions gets completely dropped without any resolution beyond Vague Implications.

I guess my take is that, unlike a lot of people, I was never expecting Arcane to be any more politically radical than an x-men movie— and I still enjoyed it a lot!

But I was expecting it to care about the storyline it had set up? And I was genuinely surprised by how little it did.

In hindsight it now feels odd how much time they spent emphasizing the characters experiencing police brutality and political divides and riots and violence at border crossings and class disparity and being crippled by pollution, because now we know none of this was ever going anywhere? XD

My surprise was not that all that politically loaded imagery was building up to a centrist message about how there are good people on both sides and we need to reach across the aisle. Because that’s always how I thought it would end, and that’s Fine for a fun fantasy show? But I was surprised to realize that none of the imagery was ever intended to be building up to anything, not even a general centrist message about reaching across the aisle. It was using political imagery in a hollow way, without intent, for Shock Value, for the Aesthetic.

the actual story is just a generic comic book fight between humans who want people to live vs robots who want to kill everything; everything else is just there to dress that up.

The two best reasons to ship anything are:

1.Incredible deep and detailed narrative themes. The parallels that seem to hit just right, the narrative foils that they can be to each other, the intricate dynamic that's both extremely complex and easily understood. The juxtaposition between something that's harsh and undoubtedly toxic, with the softer undertones, the parts where you read in-between the lines and find a mutual feeling of loneliness from both parts, their intrinsic understanding of each other comes from the mere fact that they're each others mirrored reflections and shadows. In the end both sides will be together forever, and you as an audience can clearly see their tragedy laid out before in a path that blurs pure anguish and tender romance

2.It would be so fucking funny

The Lovers

Kaja Horvat, 2024

I’ve been thinking about the significance of names in GotG 3, and how it plays into the movie’s themes of intelligence and a being’s intrinsic worth.

Each of the test subjects’ names shows a different level of abstract thought:

Floor, seemingly capable of only very basic associations, named herself based on where she was while picking the name

Teefs named himself after a distinctive personal feature, and didn’t quite get the grammar right

Lylla picked a “real” name that she decided fit for her

And Rocket named himself aspirationally, using his name as a metaphor for the kind of person he wants to be

And the great thing is that all of these names were enthusiastically accepted by the group of friends, regardless of the complexity of thought that went into them. Because unlike the High Evolutionary, who places all living things on a spectrum from least to most evolved with only the most developed and “pure” being judged worthy of life, Rocket and his friends loved and valued each other for the beings they were.

This theme is then carried over to another naming scene at the movie’s climax: when Rocket declares himself to the High Evolutionary as “Rocket Raccoon”.

Throughout the series Rocket has taken offense to being referred to as a racoon, not wanting to be seen as “just an animal”. But in the climax he looks at a cage of baby raccoons and sees himself, not as the intelligent creation of the High Evolutionary but as the baby animal he once was, who never deserved what was done to him. And he looks at the other animals (the camera lingers in particular on a rabbit) and sees his friends, who were never as intelligent or “developed” as him but were no less valuable and important in his eyes.

And so he accepts the moniker of “Raccoon” alongside his personal name of “Rocket”, and insists that every creature on the ship be saved, not just the “higher lifeforms” as the other Guardians said. Because the truth he comes to realize is that there is no such thing as a “higher life form”: every living being has value, regardless of how intelligent, “developed”, or “evolved” they are.

While we don’t have sentient raccoons in our world, this is still a message that is so important, and so relevant to issues we face. It has takeaways for environmental stewardship and animal welfare (not as much separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom as we like to think, and it’s important to treat all living things with respect and care), as well as for issues of fascism, eugenics and disability rights (there are no types of people who are inherently superior to others; a person’s intelligence and/or level of functioning has no bearing on their status as a human being deserving of dignity, respect and self-determination).

It’s a lesson I hope we all can learn someday. Bless Guardians of the Galaxy 3 for portraying it in such a clear and meaningful way.

Nothing exposes the inability of people to navigate power imbalances quite like the relationship between drivers and pedestrians.

For example, I just had a driver get screaming-at-me mad because I stopped walking at a slip lane to make sure he was going to stop. And like, buddy, I know I have the right of way, but if I assume you are going to stop and I guess wrong, I will literally die. Whereas if I wait to see if you're actually going to slow down, I am just delaying both of us by a couple of seconds. And that might have more to do with why I made the choice that I did than my being a stupid bitch who needs to learn the rules. Like, if you can't understand why the fact that you could effortlessly accidentally kill me (and likely face no consequences) means I am reticent to assume the best from you, maybe you just shouldn't have any power over anyone ever.

i hate that every time i look for color studies and tips to improve my art and make it more dynamic and interesting all that comes up are rudimentary explanations of the color wheel that explain it to me like im in 1st grade and just now discovering my primary colors

One of my favorite things about Put Baby In Pelican Mouth is that not only does the pelican have the intelligence necessary to speak human language but also knows how to lie, suggesting it has a theory of mind, yet not enough to understand that no one is going to put baby in pelican mouth.