someone tell OP i did it, i spent about 3 hours on it
Was trying to make a joke about TV writing to my friend the other day and had to pause and go "...does the phrase 'surf dracula' mean anything to you?"
One of the most important critical texts of this century imo
Me trying to explain to my 5-year-old that I will still hear him and understand him even if he speaks at a volume less than the absolute loudest sound he can possibly make:
My 5-year-old, 5 inches from my face, about to ask me for some Cheetos:
(Minus the cigarette of course)
My ears
Unless they are trying to tell you something important, then it’s between 15 and 30 dB
WHY ARE THEY ALWAYS YELLING!?
I feel like people don’t give the Cornetto Trilogy enough credit for its female characters. They’re all very clearly written as women and even though, like the male characters, they’re written as certain stereotypes they still feel so real.
Even in Hot Fuzz when the majority of the cast is male you fucking remember realistically happily slutty Doris who has a harem of men at her beck and call. She could have been a male fantasy but she’s so aggressively in charge of her own sexuality you never hear male viewers sexualize her. It’s magical.
I didn’t even realize that Shaun of The Dead set the tone for me until I watched the movie again a few nights ago.
At 1:27 there’s a random scene where the only people helping Shaun are the female characters. They don’t make any real point of it but we get it. Liz and Dianne know Shaun is slightly stronger than them so they hand him the “spear” but they act as a team. Extra material on the DVD even revealed that Shaun, Liz and Dianne were the only characters who survived to the end (Dianne got away and hid in a tree apparently).
Women are in general far more capable and helpful in the movie and Shaun himself is the most “feminine coded” of the male characters. You’ll never see a male protagonist more honest about his emotions and more willing to be visibly vulnerable than Shaun I can tell you that much.
And in The World’s End we have Sam who has her own agency and doesn’t exist to be a price to be won by the main character Gary at the end of the movie, try as he might. She will help and save him and let him help and save her, yes, but the movie makes it very clear that doesn’t mean he has any right to her. She wants Steven and there’s nothing Gary can do about that.
The movies aren’t feminist masterpieces but together Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg writes some amazing female characters.
Side note; men also act a certain way around women in these movies that I can’t quite put my finger on. They don’t treat women as brilliant goddess or anything and can be downright inappropriate but there’s also a certain respect that feels unusual in movies? When Liz grabs Ed in Shaun of The Dead he doesn’t push her away or grab her back. He just sorta shakes her off without touching her in a “fuck off but I have zero interest in hurting you” way. I really don’t know how to explain it. There’s an understanding that “yes we are stronger than women so we can hurt them unintentionally but we know they’re our equals in both good and bad so there’s no reason to take advantage of that and women have had to learn to get the upper hand in other ways so strength doesn’t mean an automatic win anyway”. Just the way Shaun and Ed approach the girl in the garden before they know she’s a zombie. They’re afraid of her but not really and yet a little scared anyway. It’s…different.
"it's not that deep" START DIGGING!!
DIG
DIG
DIG
DIG
OOPS TOO DEEP
CLIMB
CLIMB
CLIMB
CLIMB
CLIMB
CLIMB
reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way
#okay but now what is the optimal way to be a good boss in this situation i genuinely wanna know#its easy to guess what makes a bad boss or a mid boss. but what is a good boss#specifically in such a highly structured hierarchal situation (via @rainbowroach)
HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")
In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.
A good boss (liege lord) is:
- Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.
- Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.
- Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.
- Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.
- Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).
- Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"
- Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.
- Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.
- Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.
- Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.
- Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.
Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.
The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.
TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"
(for more discussions of the ethics of fealty and what it means to be a good boss when you are an exquisitely beautiful twink of a prince with a hot beefy bodyguard.... [fingerguns] read A Taste of Gold and Iron)
The way all the 2020s have done so far have been making me categorically against every new generation of tech that comes out is insane. Like I'm from a technological boom generation, saw the first portable phones, nokias & blackberries & flipphones etc, and the first smartphones, and the first ipods & ipads & tablets in general while still having cassettes & DVD & MP3 players around so I know how all of it work, I had computer classes in high school, I did the transition between home desktop computers to laptops and back to gaming computers. But then they started to put internet in your printer & microwave, everything has ads & AI now and every update is worst than the last. I literally loved technology and they ruined it
i must say, i am a huge fan of when a book is in the middle of a very exciting plot containing many interesting problems when out of nowhere for a few pages it's like, "hey by the way, real quick, here's a detailed explanation of the city's water filtration system! i'm telling you this for a reason and you should worry about it. anyway! haha okay back to the plot" and you just get to be Scared for a while
i am kissing you on the mouth right now
you are the only person who understands me. you and the person who tagged a series of unfortunate events
🚨Safety Alert Australia
If you rely on a hidden phone for your safety, be aware that Australia’s new emergency warning system, AusAlert, can send alerts that override silent and “Do Not Disturb” settings.
If safe to do so, turn off any hidden device before the scheduled test and only switch it back on after the test period has ended.
A national test alert will be sent at 2pm (AEST) on 27 July 2026.
Coming into a fandom late
Coming into a fandom early and watching it become an angry clusterfuck
Being in a dormant fandom that suddenly comes alive again after a new book/movie
Don’t forget about those who come in the midst of a fandom war.
Accuracy at its best
Being in a fandom and not even knowing there’s a war going on…
all of this shit…lol
When You’re Not In The Fandom But You’re Nosy AF
When you get into a fandom only to discover it’s dead
This gets better every time I see it.
Being in a dead fandom…
Or being in such a tiny fandom that it feels like youre the only one
The accuracy hurts.
Being in a fandom that had a shit ending.
When you’ve been fangirling long enough, you’ve experienced all of the above.
Being in a fandom meant for kids.
This just gets better..
When you realize that joining the fandom has ruined you
Fandom hell in general
Yes.
This^^^ just… ALL OF THIS.
Being in so many fandoms that you don’t even know what’s going on
THIS IS THE SKULDUGGERY FUCKING PLEASANT FANDOM IN ONE POST!!
Trying to recruit people to your fandom
Annnnnnndddd it’s back
Being in a fandom which has so many antis
I’ve probably reblogged this before, but that was before these great additions.
Being in a fandom that actually works together
Why is this so true? All of it.
being in a fanbase but all your mutuals suddenly turn into Kpop blogs
I always enjoy it when a good post comes around again and has been improved by the reblogs like the years for a fine wine.
Being in a fandom when shit goes down and everyone has different opinions
When you are in a fandom and don’t care for others people opinion…..even if they are right…(believe me, I have met several of those)
Being in a fandom you never meant to join
I love this. and it’s gotten better
After abandoning a fandom you’re still a little bit emotionally invested in….
All of these are me. Lol
Being in a fandom on Tumblr
And it reached its epic conclusion
I CHOKED ON FUNDIP
HISTORY HAS BEEN ENGRAVED INTO THIS POST
I have a theory that people who say they're "afraid of clowns" largely are not, in the sense of actually having a phobia, and what they mean is "clowns creep me out," and what they mean by THAT is "clowns make me uncomfortable, because they dress and speak and move and act in ways that I do not necessarily expect or have a social script for so they make me feel wrong-footed and self conscious and confused because the interaction and behavior does not make sense to me,"
and honestly the way that I feel about THAT is, "ok, so now imagine that you live in clown world and everyone you encounter is clowns and all the institutions you are forced to navigate are clown institutions run by clowns. that is life as an autistic person"
anthropologist on Mpars/the only human in Clown World. pick your analogy
Why am I finding out just today that Salvador Dali designed the Chupa Chups logo
????
Hey. What
"relax. sucking does not kill" would make for a fun shirt
I am happy to inform you what chupa chups can translate to <3
my favourite lollipop: sucky sucks
I am happy to
inform you what chupa chups
can translate to <3
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.