At The End Of The Day Everything Glinda Does Is About Elphaba. From The Moment They Become Friends, Glinda

Imagine being a reverse Superman where you're really weak and struggle to keep up with your peers for your whole life until you learn that you're actually just from a race of aliens with comparatively shit body strength. This is the premise of Tarzan

We have to save them. We’ve got all the kids on board. No, Pete. The rest of them.

so as a third world transfem there's a bit of a parallel that ive noticed and it goes kinda like this:

if you live in the Imperial Core (or maybe even first world countries in general tbh), you never have to consider the third world in your worldview. what i mean is, you can be born, have a long, rich, fulfilling life and then die of old age, never having thought of any of us beyond the 5 minutes after you get shown some sort of news piece. there's vast, vast swathes of people that think of mexico, or nicaragua, or argentina, or or or or - as basically just names on a map, if that much. we're not people to them, not really. and when we stand up and say "no actually, we are human beings, people worth just as much as any citizen of the Imperial Core", they get upset! because we are shaking the fundamentals of their worldview.

and there's not necessarily any malice involved! like, obviously some people that feel like this are malicious, but their personal feelings are irrelevant. the point is that their position insulates them both from knowing us and from any consequences of not knowing us, while we most assuredly are not protected from either of those things in response.

if you are not transfem, even if you are also queer in some way, a similar concept applies. you can have a full, rich, fulfilling queer existence while never having to take us into account! you can go to queer and inclusive events, watch queer and inclusive creators and shows, read queer and inclusive books, and so on and so forth, where we don't feature at all, or if we do, we are a throwaway! and so, when we stand up and say "hey actually we deserve as much space and respect as anyone else", they get upset! because we are shaking the fundamentals of their worldview.

im not saying they're related but ultimately both of these worldviews stem from a position of privilege, and can only be eliminated by destroying that privilege. i dont really know how we do that but this is mostly meant as an observation rather than a solutions post.

Harrow and Gideon, stupid #1 and #2

MONKEY MAN 2024, dir. Dev Patel

You know, it was a very interesting perspective change to see Gideon from the outside. This was literally the first time we’ve ever had scenes with Gideon where we’re not hearing her internal thoughts, and it really changes her character.

Like, I know Muir consistently described Gideon as a “dirt bag” in tumblr posts and interviews when the first book came out.

And this is someone who kicked Harrow when she fainted rather than catching her; this is someone who, when carrying an unconscious Harrow intentionally bumped her into walls and doorways in the hopes that she’d wake up with mysterious bruises on her head or maybe even a concussion. But, you know, we heard her internal narrative at that time, we heard about how she was holding back from doing worse, but also about how she’d been so consistently abused that maybe this was all justice anyway.

But we saw her grow and change, we saw her be kind to Harrow at the end (…and then not), we saw her stop hating on the teens and actually care when they died. Corona liked her (Corona pretty much never heard her speak), Magnus liked her (Magnus literally never heard her speak), Jeannemary liked her (Jeannemary was a teen looking for a role model and would have latched on to her no matter what her personality). So when she came back and never had a good thing to say to anyone at the end of the second book, we were all rooting for her anyway–she was awesome and they all deserved her wrath and her snark, because we’d been in her head for two books.

And now we have… she’s rude to Nona, because Nona is possessing Harrow’s body, and because Nona kissed her based on her body-language reaction to thinking she was seeing Harrow. If it were Gideon’s narrative still, we’d be told how well and truly justified she is, how sketchy and even villainous Nona is; but it’s Nona’s narrative so instead we hear about how rude Gideon is in her body language, not even her conscious choice of words.

We have, she’s about to give Paul her jacket but gets awkward and doesn’t. Nona sees her fail to help; in Gideon’s narrative her instinct was to help but she just felt too awkward.

We have, she says the same rude jokes to everyone that she did in the first two books, but even though Pal and Cam are still putting up with that, even though Ianthe still thinks she’s funny, we’re getting it from Nona’s perspective and Nona doesn’t like her and so doesn’t like her rude jokes.

Ianthe actually does like her, and it’s not clear whether that’s a point in her favor or not.

It’s the same Gideon through and through, she even gets mad at Alecto usurping her place in service to Harrow. But what a difference an uncharitable reading makes.

Beatriz Machado at Edward Crutchley SS 20

sometimes I think too hard about like. how the ability to record audio fundamentally changed how humans interact with music. can you imagine if the only time you ever heard music in your whole life was when you or another human being in your actual physical presence decided to create it. and 99.99% of the time that person was not a professional but just like your wife or your dad or your co-worker or church choir singing or playing whatever they happened to know. i honestly don't think we can fathom it

How come pro-nuclear leftists never actually address the documented environmental damage and poisoning of indigenous communities of nuclear waste?