@lightlunas / lightlunas.tumblr.com
I’m watching Splash (1984) which is a romcom about a guy who falls in love with a mermaid, and when she chooses a human name she chooses Madison and guy says “that’s not a real name, but alright” which seems to imply that Madison was not a name until at least the 80’s and all girls named Madison are actually named after the mermaid. thought you should know
I think...you might be right
what the fuck
Bilbo barely passed Old Took's record lifespan after having a supernaturally-life-extending ring for 60 years. which begs a question. what the hell did Old Took do
I have a theory that somewhere back up the line gandalf fucked a took. This sounds like complete crack but hear me out. The tooks are rumored to have “fairy blood” which in LOTR terms means either elves or maia. There is an ancestor who’s unusually tall and many of them are noted to live unusually long lives unless they meet with illness or injury, same as the numenorians did. They don’t hve extra pointy ears and elves don’t have a special interest in the line. But who DOES have a special interest in looking after tooks (and bilbo who is a took on his mother’s side/his adopted son frodo)? Gandalf. That dude is ALWAYS fussing over some silly little guy. He regularly brought the old took birthday presents.
Back in the day some bold hobbitess decided to climb that old man and ever since then gandalf has been looking after his line of tiny crazy bastards and no one will convince me otherwise.
Gandalf's attitude towards Pippin just took on a whole new layer.
not the person who sent the ask that received these tags but... i too am a lover of egotistical asshole self sabotaging suicidal codependent protags. tell more about bartimaeus?
THE BARTIMAEUS TRILOGY by jonathan stroud is the greatest fantasy series for children ever written. it takes place in an alternate history london where magicians make up the ruling class. as was once true in real life, england is a massive colonial power with a baseless aristocracy that brutally oppresses the working class. the "commoners" believe that magicians have inherent power, but secretly all magicians are just educated in the art of summoning and controlling spirits (hatefully referred to by humans as "demons"). all western magicians of this period punish and abuse spirits into doing what they want, no exception, as has been the case in many places and in many time periods over the years. the spirits are just invisible, giving the magicians the illusion of power.
the series is about 3 people: nathaniel, a traumatized adolescent boy who rapidly starts sacrificing his morals for power and prestige in the cutthroat world of the magic elite; bartimaeus, an ancient all-powerful djinni that nathaniel relies on to do his dirty work; and kitty jones, a commoner whose friend is brutalized by a magician who is never brought to justice. it's actually also about a fourth person who died thousands of years ago, but that's a surprise tool that will help us later.
the story is about how these 3 lives intersectin a decade of political turmoil, as the commoners' oppression becomes untenable and foreign governments sick of the british empire's power seek to exploit its growing weaknesses. it's about how the power-hungry oligarchy cannibalizes itself, and how external political, cultural, and social forces shape the characters and their relationships.
it's about trauma and power and justice. it's about oppression and freedom and classism and colonialism and the many purposeful lies inherent in the system you believe you can't change (*cough* capitalism *cough*). it's about how connection to another person can change you. it's about recognizing who the real enemy is.
it's also, if you would believe it, riotously, insanely funny, mostly because bartimaeus—who narrates about 50% of it—is a sarcastic, irreverent drama queen who can never shut the hell up. he's been alive for 5000 years and he's made it this far by being avoidant and self-serving and bitchy and lucky. he thinks he's hot shit and he kind of is, but he's mostly just driven by a need to survive. he and nathaniel are friends but also not really. nathaniel is both scared of him and scared to lose him, and the series ultimately centers on their relationship, the wariness and abuse and dependence, and the way it changes as nathaniel changes. nathaniel also does go through severe depression, for that anon who was asking about lockwood.
the bartimaeus trilogy is tightly, deftly written, and one of the only kids' series that i think 100% holds up without caveats. there's a great balance of action, emotion, humor, character development, and plot, and the worldbuilding is insane—it's very smart and never overexplains anything. i can't recommend it enough. every character is written with such care and realism by a writer who Knows How to Write. it's so, so good. every fantasy fan should read it imo.
The Queen of the Night sequence from Mozart’s “Magic Flute”
The first image by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1815 The second by Simon Quaglio in 1818
a tired mime on break leaning against nothing and smoking an invisible cigarette
After a few minutes, they look at their watch-less wrist, realize their "mime a break" time is over and their real break has begun, and takes three steps over to the wall to lean against it and pull out a real cigarette.
I'm sorry, but medieval settings are banned. Yes, it just came in. You're not allowed to do anything with an aesthetic inspired between the years 476-1453 until further notice. No, you can't do a deconstruction, it's a sweeping ban. Yes, I understand how well researched it is, but it's not allowed anymore. Sorry, may I interest you in submitting something on the bronze age or early modernity instead? No? Okay, listen, you can do a setting inspired by history from that time outside of Eurasia, but you have to go to elbiotipo.tumblr.gob.ar to get a permit though, and lately there haven't been many approvals,
HEARTBREAKING: band you just discovered doesn't have any other songs that sound like that
what are your thoughts on the idea that the trump administration is deliberately trying to cause a financial crash so that the wealthiest members of the bourgeoisie can buy up a bunch of assets during the dip and then become even more powerful afterwards? like what happened in 2008 but on purpose. one of my friends believes in this really strongly but i'm not convinced it's not just the ruling class buying into their own propaganda truss-style again
i think that this is yknow, kind of conspiratorial thinking that's not really corroborrated by any analysis of the actual facts -- there is not a master plan here, there is a very real and powerful element here of the superstructure outpacing the base. that said i do think that a generally useful lens through which to understand what is happening in the US right now is the decline of the bourgeois state to the point where it is no longer able to act effectively as a manager of capitalism on behalf of the entire bourgeoisie, and so has now become the staging ground for a vicious intrabourgeoisie power struggle which is deeply destructive to the empire as a whole
There is a Trump quote from 2014, that one political analyst I follow quotes very often:
Which is at least interesting in the current context.
my favorite genre of photo is cosplayer out in a random place in public. and i’m not talking abt malls or hot topic and shit where you’re already more likely to find cosplayers. i’m talking abt seeing like a junko enoshima cosplayer at a mcdonald’s
ok but i don’t think any of these can compete with this pic taken by a professional photographer of just the most dejected spamton i’ve ever seen. just alone. with three seperate drinks. also this was featured on an official bbc news report
people in the usa are so uninformed/misinformed/propagandized about socialist countries that even knowing like, basic facts about the electoral system of marxist leninist countries feels like being privy to some kind of forbidden knowledge.
most of my ride-or-die mutuals probably already know about al of this, but for any of the non-tankies who follow me who might not be aware:
in most marxist-leninist countries, the way the elections work is that the citizens elect representatives to the local council/assembly, who in turn elect from amongst themselves a delegate to go to the council/assembly at the next level up, all the way up to the national assembly, which in turn elects from itself a president/chairman. depending on the country and time period these selections by the assembly might also be put to a confirmation vote by the public, to either confirm or veto the assembly's selection, but this is largely a formality.
let's use cuba as an example, since it's a small country and consequently it's system of nested assemblies has a lot less layers and is much easier to keep track of. community meetings are held where between two and eight candidates are put forward for a single seat to the local municipal assembly. the municipal assemblies, in turn, elects from themselves a representative to go to the national assembly. prospective representatives to the national assembly are also put forward by various trade unions and other mass organizations which represent students, the elderly, non-working mothers, etc, these proposed candidates are also voted on by the municipal assembly. the national assembly then in turn elects from itself the 31 member council of state, which in turn elects the president. these representatives elected by the municipal and national council are then put to a confirmation vote by the whole citizenry, but again, this is largely a formality. there also used to be provincial assembly that was above the municipal assembly and below the national assembly, but this was removed in order to streamline the system and give a more direct path from the democratic input at the municipal election level to the national assembly.
now, i'm sure there are any number of critiques you could make, or ways this system might be improved- but anti-communists by and large aren't interested in critiquing the cuban electoral system (or any other marxist-leninist electoral system) as it actually exists. they completely ignore the multi-candidate municipal elections, ignore the electoral process by which the municipal assemblies select the delegates to the national assembly, and instead laser focus on the mere formality confirmation vote on the representatives the municipal assemblies elected, to paint a narrative that in communist countries you can only choose one candidate. you know the drill, "in communist countries, 'elections' have become a sham, a farce! you have no choice, but to vote 'YES' for your evil dictator overlord- under communism, so-called 'elections' are merely a method of control and humiliation, meant to enforce total submission to a system you have no say in!" here's just one example of that kind of rhetoric: [link]
the very existence of multi-candidate municipal elections utterly debunks this of course, people in communist countries choose between candidates in elections all the time. even if you completely reject the "bottom-up" method of leninist democracy, and you think that the elections by the municipal assembly of representative to the national assembly have no meaningful democratic content, (if this is you, just out of curiosity, what's your opinion on the electoral college? or the supreme court?) it's pretty hard to deny that the competitive races in the municipal/local level put at least some democratic input into the system.
now, i can already hear what some of the anti-communists who lurk my blog because they hate-follow me are thinking. "multi-candidate municipal elections? in cuba????? where the fuck are you getting this dogshit. let me guess, you read it on the website of some tankie political party, and like the gullible moron you are, you immediately believed it. pathetic. find any source, *any* source at all that isn't overtly communist that corroborates this claim."
this is a genuinely good point! i did originally learn about this from overtly communist sources, and if those were the only sources claiming this, it really would cast some pretty serious doubt on the veracity of these claims. so, can i find anti-communist sources that corroborate this?
yes.
from the congressional research service:
Although National Assembly members were directly elected for the first time in February 1993, only a single slate of candidates was offered. Direct elections for the National Assembly were again held in January 1998 and January 2003, but voters again were not offered a choice of candidates. In contrast, at the local level elections for municipal elections are competitive, with from two to eight candidates. To be elected, the candidate must receive more than half of the votes cast. As a result, runoff elections between the two top candidates are common. In 2007, the process of nominating candidates for the local municipal assemblies took place in September 2007. Municipal elections were held October 21, 2007 (with runoffs on October 28), and over 15,000 local officials were chosen. The new municipal assemblies then met on December 2, 2007 to nominate candidates for provincial assemblies and for the National Assembly of People’s Power.
[link]
given that this is an anti-communist source, they are of course playing up the confirmation vote in the usual ways (ouagh! aough! only one candidate! no choice!) but given that this document is intended to be viewed by congress, and isn't really intended for the general public, it has to at least passingly address actual reality at least a little and can't spend it's whole time rolling in propaganda slop.
or check this out, from fox fucking news:
Municipal assemblies also nominate candidates for half the representatives on provincial assemblies. The provincial assemblies then nominate candidates for half the representatives for the National Assembly, which elects Cuba's ruling Council of State, which in turn elects the president. The other half of the candidates for the municipal and provincial assemblies are selected by a government electoral commission, assuring continued Communist Party control. Once all of the candidates are nominated, voters choose among them in general elections. Every municipality is divided into block-level voting districts. The two-month process of electing municipal assembly representatives begins when residents gather in an empty lot or at a school to nominate neighbors as candidates. Each district picks at least two candidates — more populous ones have more. The top winners of show-of-hands votes at the meetings became the official candidates put before voters in Sunday's election. In all, there are 27,000 candidates to fill 12,589 seats on municipal assemblies for 2½-year terms.
and this is in an article about overt anti-communists successfully getting nominated as candidates for the municipal assembly! (they lost their election though lol bye bozos) [link]
they're trying to spin it, of course- the part about the "government electoral commission" is misleading and inaccurate (as previously stated, the other half of candidates are put forward by mass organizations such as trade unions, which are then voted on by the municipal assembly. the electoral commission simply approves the selections made by the municipal assembly.) fox news, engaging in anti-communist disinfo? unheard of!
but even here enough of the truth is shining through the lies to put to bed the idea that there's no element of choice in the cuban electoral system.
and what's crazy is that all of this info is just out there for anyone who cares to look. but a lot of people are simply too incurious to bother, they were told that the Enemy Country is a totalitarian regime without any democracy and it just never occurs to them to check into it. the US ruling class barely even needs to try to hide the truth, because most people in the US are too lazy and apathetic to look for it.
voice acting as a profession is so funny because you'll see someone being like "voice actors need to be paid better! like [obscure person you've never heard of]" and you're like "oh I wonder who that person is, maybe I've heard them voice a character" and you look it up and it turns out they voice 137 characters in Futurama and 94 characters in The Simpsons and 96 characters in Adventure Time and every one of the My Little Ponies and 27 characters in Arcane and 96 characters in Kim Possible and 4 characters in Phineas and Ferb and 296 characters in Dexter's Laboratory and all of the main cast of Fairly Odd Parents and at least 6 characters in every Pixar movie and almost every animated depiction of Superman and 473 SpongeBob characters and they've been in every installment of Mass Effect and Halo and The Elder Scrolls and Fallout and Call of Duty and they were in Star Trek and Law & Order and they were 12 characters in the MCU and they also invented t-shirts and the colour green and they got paid a sum total of $3.27 and a mothball for all of it combined. then you go burn down David Zaslav's house with him inside
Do you know how badly you have to fuck up for this to happen
