“Country girl and sports lesbian are equally valid tomboy types” was such a specifically 2010 lesson from kids’ animation, perched between the NASCAR ‘00s and the woke ‘10s
I myself think that Batman is the flip side of Santa Claus, who - as I’ve said - in turn is the modern vision of the Christian God.
The lineage follows that in the age of desert nomadism, God was a force that created water and food in the desert and rearranged inconvenient geography - mountains, seas; that in the age of early settlement and tribal war he demanded ethnic solidarity, granting in return victory in war; that in the era where settled tribes were subsumed into Mediterranean empire, he was a fisherman/shepherd who unified mankind and ended war; that in the era of courtly feudalism he was at the head of heirarchies of angels, saints rewarded with face time to press their clients’ claims; and so obviously in the age of bourgeois democracy he’s an industrialist who rewards socially approved behavior with consumer goods and punishes its opposite with violence.
Is honestly hilarious that Gavin McInnes couldn’t recreate the vice aesthetic of original VICE with Street Carnage so instead he founded the Proud Boys to wreak street carnage
Precious dollhouse mansion, depressive daughter, exotic manservant of few words, Anjelica Huston as the mother. Who did it better, The Royal Tenenbaums (‘01) or The Addams Family (‘91)?
“The counterculture seemed to have it all: the unconnectedness which would allow consumers to indulge transitory whims; the irreverence that would allow them to defy moral puritanism; and the contempt for established social rules that would free them from the slow-moving, buttoned-down conformity of their abstemious ancestors. In the counterculture, admen believed they had found both a perfect model for consumer subjectivity, intelligent and at war with the conformist past, and a cultural machine for turning disgust with consumerism into the very fuel by which consumerism might be accelerated.”
I wonder exactly which day it was that the amount of time Comedy Central had spent broadcasting The Daily Show finally caught up to the amount of time they had spent broadcasting PCU
This was supposed to be a culture war joke, in fairness on further reflection I was like “yeah but maybe put all the hours of South Park, Tosh.0, and The Man Show on the PCU side too.” Maybe the Kilborn years, even.
Okay, for the benefit of all the followers I’m getting with absurd ages in their profiles, let me explain this one.
When Comedy Central started in the ‘90s, they didn’t have much original programming, and what they did was mostly one-off (but frequently rerun) specials - filmed standup sets, basically.
So what they ran was mostly secondhand content they’d picked up rights to, and what was most common were these two movies, I swear to god I’d seen them run back to back and then over again, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the same one run twice in a row. One was Throw Momma From The Train, a Danny DeVito comedic riff on Strangers On A Train.
The other was PCU, a campus comedy in the Animal House vein starring a visibly balding Jeremy Piven. It was a lovable frat fighting the dean and his Young Republican lackeys, but (because “boat shoe and dinner jacket-wearing WASPs” were overdone and increasingly anachronistic as villains by then) there was a third faction that took the brunt of the mockery: earnest, censorious social issue activists. Thus the title. The climax involved the activists protesting the big frat party (tagline: “Everyone Gets Laid”), but then realizing “holy shit, we’re against drinking, sex, parties, freedom, and fun, we’re the bad guys” and giving up and chilling out and hooking up with the frat members.
Because obviously you were supposed to see that as the only acceptable position for anyone with any pretensions to being cool and with it. Like I said, ‘60s-derived social liberalism used to offer something for everyone.
If you don’t know who Howard Stern is, he was the foremost crude “Morning Zoo” radio DJ in the country.
Like, in the '90s, white, blue collar (or “dudebro”) tits-n-beer vulgarity was plausibly coded left/liberal/Democratic. And that’s a little disorienting to remember.
I mean hell, Benny Hill was aired in part by an official arm of the most socialist Anglosphere government ever. Benny Hill.
If you’ve never seen Benny Hill, it’s from the British “light entertainment” tradition, a little variety but kind of sketch comedy, only a lot of the “comedy”
was basically dirty old man leering. Sketch leering. Episodes famously ended with sped up comedic chase scenes where Benny would try to catch and grope some pretty young girls, then turn and run away as they tried to catch and punish him.
Now by the '90s that was already a bit off, but still, it ran in reruns on Comedy Central. It ran on fucking PBS.
If you ever wonder why intelligent educated sensitive me is wary of if not actively hostile to so much of what passes for modern cultural liberalism, it’s because it pattern-matches so closely not only to the apocalypse visions conservatives were warning of when I was growing up, but to the liberals’ versions as well.
Mechanically, it hits the sweet spot between Dark Souls and Dragon Age.
Thematically, it is Polish as hell, holy shit. Most of our RPGs derive their worldbuilding from a British tradition, we actually get a bit of German by way of Japan (lancers, dragoons, 2h knights, one-city realms and threatening emperors and conniving chancellors), Dragon Age was bidding for novelty by doing French.
But this is definitely Eastern European. It’s not just the questlines and bestiary out of Grimm’s and Slavic legend. Part of it is the peasant’s-eye view. There may be great wars and cosmic forces at play but to a significant extent they just account for why a questgiver is in a particular location.
The more common viewpoint expressed is of a peasant - not even in a castle keep! in scattered villages and hamlets! varying from squalor to bucolic! according to their economic position! as you can tell from the actual productive activity the environment and animation design dramatizes! - who just desires that as few of his fellows suffer and die as possible.
Witcher got some knocks for having such a monoethnic world, especially by comparison to DA, because of course it did. But I think both routes *work*, creatively - DA only showed you a thimbleful of villages and two blocks of a capital city and called it a great civilization, venue for ageless deeds, and the range of accents and skin tones and styles helped sell that.
In contrast, just the *sameness* of Witcher, these dirty poor farmers and THESE dirty poor farmers, you can have a much bigger world but it still leaves the machinations of kings coming off as detached and pompous, and the dirt where you work as the *real* world.
And you want to talk races, human/nonhuman racism is the in thematic in “gritty” fantasy these days, but a lot of games play that as a supercharged version of the refugee/immigrant experience - you live in the REALLY bad quarter of town, and people stand around in public having conversations about how TERRIBLE you are, or walk through your streets for the SOLE purpose of calling you names.
Because I suppose even the most branched multi-release choice-consequence tree has a hard time making a dramatic antagonist out of a guy being polite and charming in working with you and then going home and spending three decades NOT spending energy on your behalf to upset a settled order that has already been mythologized as proper and on which he and worthy institutions he values materially depend.
But the Witcher, yeah, this clearly comes from a culture that KNOWS a thing or two about how ethnic conflict in a feudal society works. There’s a bit in the playroom zone with a dwarven blacksmith that does it great. People will know you’re different, but they’ll accept you as part of the community. But know you’re different.
And when things get stressful they might link you to the stresses. And want to take it out on you. And convince other people they gain from your loss.
But wait, there WILL be people that value you. Authorities that will protect you, put your contribution to the community above petty bigotry.
But authority - whether established or upstart-aspirant - has enemies, and if those enemies either win, or the authority ever needs to buy their favor cheap…
Other than that, I like the pulpiness of it all - it clearly comes from the kind of book that could be described as “rollicking”. A ridiculously OP protagonist - magical Han Solo Batman, basically - threading a plot advanced by femme fatale teases, with eventual consummation… James Bond was pulp.
Pulp - stories that just exist as off-the-shelf daydreams, no higher pretensions - I dig pulp.
So sometimes you see people talk about the number of shows about police on TV as sign of some particularly pro-cop identification, either in the audience, or the capitalist system that brings the shows to air, or something
I want to point out one thing from a structural screenwriting perspective though, cops just have good story engines, it’s very easy to explain how the cast becomes aware of the week’s plot and why they engage with it. Someone reports a crime, because that happens, the police follow up, because that happens. Because Cops.
Like, consider, really consider, that stereotypical opening scene of Law & Order where people doing some authentic New Yawker working class shit discover a body.
For one, finding the body establishes the plot on its own. The show just doesn’t have to mechanically show how the cast comes in, or work up a motivation *why* they’re now going to meet a lot of colorful characters on the way to gradually revealing a story
For two, this setup works for EVERY episode only for the cops. A show that followed the random yobs who found the bodies could maybe work up A reason in ONE story why some loading dock guys investigate a murder on their own, but for a whole series you’d have to work up a new reason for every episode (or lean into the absurdity a la Murder, She Wrote), with cops you never run dry for motivation
Official hierarchies work well for series where similarly structured stories are told each week, because “you were assigned a duty” is a reasonable cause for a plot. And that doesn’t have to mean routine or authoritarian shit - the X-Files was framed around cases assigned by The Man; the original Star Trek premise was “they ordered us to have adventures for five years”
Really a lot of dumb premises work really well as story engines. Buffy’s premise was “there is a Hellmouth, bad guys show up, she fights them”, which is dumb as hell but set up a lot of good stuff. Meanwhile Firefly’s beloved in part for its coherent world concept, but if you’ve ever tried to pick it apart or spec write it you realize how hard it is to set up a plot-of-the-week, the original writing staff had to really grind to line their ducks up and even they couldn’t work up a motivation for Inara to join in half the time
Listening again to Taylor Swift’s Red, picked up something I hadn’t - “memorize” used in two different songs
In Stay Stay Stay,
you took the time to memorize me
my fears my hopes and dreams
I just like hanging out with you
all the time
and then in Red,
memorizing him was as easy as knowing all the words to your old favorite song
and I thought on it and realize this downright sapiosexual knowledge-as-intimacy theme is pretty important in Tayswift, it’s the load-bearing element of YBWM
I’m the one who makes you laugh
when you know you’re ‘bout to cry
I know your favorite songs
and you tell me bout your dreams
think I know where you belong
think I know it’s with me
can’t you see I’m the one who understands you
been here all along so why can’t you see
you belong with me
it’s even important in negative (which is how interrogators tease personality from pretense) in Red,
forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you never met
thinking about that, and also remembering when her transparent brand strategy was accessibility and fans chosen to meet her would gush about her casually referencing something they mentioned on their tumblr long ago, and it’s like
AWW, she really IS just like us, in that her real output is multilayered invocations of accreted culture but she charms incidental humans by studying up on whatever incidental shit they happen to be and mirroring it back at them
I just want to know you better
know you better
know you better now
I just want to know you
know you
know you
At this distance all the street art I hear about in Shepard Fairey’s old Hollywood stomping grounds these days is right-wing, either The Faction or SABO.
(Hollywood the neighborhood hasn’t equaled “Hollywood” the industry since the 1940s)
There is a tradition of Gen X West Coast counter/subcultural right-cynicism though, expressed through humor and cartooning – Jim Goad and Nick “A. Wyatt Mann” Bougas at Answer Me!, Suck.com (large portions of which was absorbed by Reason magazine), Peter Bagge and Hate, John Swartzwelter writing for Army Man and The Simpsons
Really it was part of the same cultural ecosystem as Fairey and Adbusters, honestly as Spy and Vice and Bloom County and Life In Hell and Calvin & Hobbes tbh, even Beavis & Butthead/Daria, a Gen X disillusionment with/loathing of the normie world
But then that became the culture and got its edges softened and everyone forgot how to operate as a counterculture
(I was lately like “wow, Hard Times and Reductress AND Babylon Bee are all really good rn, why is all the good satire subculture-specific?” Then I realized The Onion’s “overeducated college town slacker with Thoughts about pop culture” was subculture at debut)
But now we’re cycling back out and it’s been rediscovered
oh hey reminder that AT (“Absolute Terror”) fields are themed from the same source as “terror management theory”
reminder that that concept is about the defenses we erect to protect us from awareness of our own inevitable mortality
so the Unit-02/Mass Production Unit fight in End of Evangelion where Asuka goes balls out and channels all her perfectionist neurosis into beating them all before her power supply ends, but then they just rise up again and break through her AT field and impale her mother/avatar/self through the face to be cannibalized
the very moment where their spears, forcing their way through the field, turn into a Lance of Longinus - the very tool by which his inferiors killed God - and she exclaims in astonishment, that second when she realizes that no matter how perfect she is she’ll die anyway
that’s also a metaphor for realizing that no matter how perfect you are you’ll die anyway
Arrakis is changing hands! It’s a desert planet, and House Harkonnen used to own it but just now the Emperor gave it to House Atreides! It’s a fucking terrible place to live but Spice comes from there and Spice is some hot shit!
Paul Atreides is a kid. He is the Brandon Stark of this series. He’s the heir of House Atreides and he is coming in on a starship. Starships work because Navigators, who are dudes who’ve done a ton of Spice, Spice here being LSD, can fold space with their minds. They turn in to giant octopuses in tanks though, supported by anti-gravity. Most things hover.
We’re down on the planet and things are cool. Paul is taught by a Space Nun, his mom used to be a Space Nun. He trains in knife-duelling with the head of the family guard, Duncan. There are shields and you’ve got to go real slow to get through them, so it’s all misdirection.
Baron Harkonnen really wants the planet back, also he’s a fat dude into little boys.
People have lasers but if you ever fire a laser at a shield they both blow up like a nuke. Paul and his dad go watch a mining expedition, flying in an ornithopter, which is a helicopter that flaps its wings like a bird. There’s a big sandcrawler that digs up the spice and the problems is that worms always attack. Worms are giant things that live under the sand and have gullets full of diamond teeth, and they will swallow harvesters right up.
There are scout ornithopters and they spot wormsign - a worm under the surface heading for the harvester. This is radioed in, Duke Atreides says ok let’s pull the harvester out, his foreman says no the worm’ll take a while let’s harvest as much and make as much money as we can, eventually the Duke insists and the rescue ornithopter pulls all the mining crew out just as the worm opens his giant mouth below them. Duke Atreides is A Good Leader.
The head Space Nun gives Paul a test, it’s like “stick your hand in this box and it’ll feel like the worst thing possible, if you take your hand out I’ll kill you with my poisoned ring.” Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total annihilation. Paul doesn’t pull his hand out and she’s like “well done, chosen one”.
The Atreides live on a rocky shield, one of the few parts of the world that isn’t sand to the bottom and the worms can’t get to. One of the Duke’s aides is a Mentat, who are the Maesters of this series, but also a bit psychic. Someone tried to hide an assassin robot in Paul’s bed, but he outsmarted it and his mother comforted him.
THE HARKONNEN ATTACK and Paul’s parents die, Duncan hauls him out through a secret passage, flee the castle and blow it up by time-delay aiming a laser cannon at its shield. They flee into the desert.
They meet the Fremen, the native tribe of the planet. The Fremen wear rubber stilsuits that recycle fluids and keep them hydrated. The Fremen take Paul in. The Fremen’s eyes are all blue pupils in blue irises, “blue within blue”, because they do so much Spice. The Fremen call worms Makers. Worms are attracted to sonic patterns and Fremen walk without rhythm so they won’t attract the worm, or they put down thumpers to draw worms away.
There’re some tribal things, Paul goes native and becomes Maud'Dib, The Mouse,Chosen One of the Fremen. He gets engaged to a tribal girl. Paul wins a deadly duel and wins a crysnife, a super-sharp knife made out of worm tooth. The Fremen ride worms by calling them with a thumper and then digging hooks into their segmented skin. You can pull back the segments and the worms will roll it away from the sand to protect the membranes, that’s how you steer them.
The Space Nun shows up and lets on that he’s part of a centuries-long breeding program to meld the masculine and the feminine, and there’s another deadly test for him. Worms turn into the Water of Life as part of their metamorphosis, then this blows up into a Spice geyser to spread the seed. The Fremen have a tiny Maker that they drown underwater to create the Water of Death. The Water of Death will make women trip out and command the universe, but kill men. Paul takes the Water of Death and survives by transmuting it to the Water of Life with his mind.
Space Nun says well done, but Paul wasn’t even supposed to be the Chosen One, rather the chosen one’s father. He has a kid with his girl, and then neglects them for years to go get high on Spice. Spice can show you multiple pathways to the future. Of the ones Paul can see, most of them have him leading a jihad on behalf of the Fremen and most of them he fails. Eventually he finds the right timeline.
Paul attacks the Harkonnen in their base, riding a fleet of worms up towards the stone shield wall and jumping them over. He kills some dudes and then threatens to drop the Water of Death into the Water of Life, which will kill all the worms in the world and destroy the Spice economy forever. Somehow, he wins.
THE END
And then there are sequels that are even more ‘70s. Which is a high standard!
The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous startups in Silicon Valley, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five startups?” // “If I find forty-five there,” God said, “I will not destroy it.”
… The two venture capitalists arrived at Palo Alto in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. … They did go with him and entered his $0.9m one-bedroom home. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without gluten, and they ate. Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of Silicon Valley—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can pitch our startups to them.”
Anonymous asked: Do you ever watch cable tv and see an old movie or show like “Lethal Weapon”, and realize with sad, wistful nostalgia that the next generation will not know such apolitical, feel-good interracial action-buddy entertainment or the strange truce between black and white masculinity that football was the foundation of? That that era where action and comedy cinema especially were defined by such simple masculine *fun* is gone forever?
Richard Linklater has literally made it his life’s purpose to make sure the memory of that early-80s interracial truce on the basis of earnest, earthy, fun-loving American clear-sky summer day masculinity is not forgotten
Please hit me up if you know where I can find more of these surreal ~2014 (?) 4chan memes of female NEETs that I find incredibly compelling
You fools. You can’t see the forest through the trees. This is literally revelations, complete with the mother harlot, the four horsemen, the behemoth with seven heads, and various other imagery.
In care you think I’m joking. Revelations 17:18 is when the whore of Babylon is mentioned.
this is a quote from Anne mccarfferey (wrote dragon riders of pern)
Revelations 7:13
A great multitude stand before the Throne of God, who come out of the Great Tribulation, clothed with robes made “white in the blood of the Lamb” and having palm branches in their hands. (7:9–17)
THE SEVENTH TRUMPET: (il) THE SIGN OF THE WOMAN .2 Then a huge sign became visible in the sky the figure of * a Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars upon her head
I dont feel like looking for more, but here you go.
this is thousands of times more terrifying and foreboding than anything else ive seen come out of 4chan
