they/them, 20s | locked tomb brainrot
230 posts
Latest Posts by affliction-of-beauty - Page 3
So I was going through an image gallery of these old Wizard of Oz promotional pictures and uh-
...🤐
the first law of tragedies: the end is already written and inevitable. the second law of tragedies: your actions are all your own and you can choose to get off this ride whenever you want. the third law of tragedies: we both know that you are never going to do that.
hunting down this post to find that OP turned of reblogs has me heartbroken.
it's time.
one thing about asoiaf is that it frequently invites you to have sympathy for characters who've carried out varying degrees of morally repulsive acts (most apparent with pov characters such as theon, cersei, tyrion, and jaime but also sandor, joffrey, and even viserys). and most of these characters have received some equivalent of, what may look like 'narrative comeuppance' : theon flayed by ramsay, cersei made to perform her walk of atonement, tyrion sold as a slave, jaime losing his hand, joffrey's painful, drawn out death etc. except the scenes really aren't framed like that since the series doesn't seem to buy into that idea. all these incidents are not just deserts but moments of horrible injustice against these characters. and that's a little series thesis statement in itself, no neat category of monsters whose misdeeds can be addressed by a single moment of karmic justice but people like you and me who hurt others and have been hurt and continue on living. it's saying, here's this person who is capable of great cruelty influenced and motivated by their experiences with the world, but will you also hold understanding and sympathy in your heart for when the world is cruel to them in return? given what most fandom discourse looks like... the answer to that question is unfortunately a resounding no for a lot of readers.
Not every story is about seeing yourself in it. Sometimes it’s about learning to see other people too.
i met one of my aunt's archaeologist friends/colleagues earlier today & he was telling me about legends that not too far from here there's the ghosts of a roman legion that people see walking up the cliff towards the edge of the sea and then off the edge of the cliff and onwards, because the coastline has receded so much since roman times that the 'land' they're used to walking on goes on far past the point it falls into the sea today. and like. OUGH. I don't even strictly believe in that type of ghost but I'm Obsessed with this image of them still interacting with landscape that has crumbled into the sea & completely disappeared over the thousands of years since they were alive. ghost landscapes Real
Honestly, one of my favorite things about GRRM's writing in asoiaf is how it turns the reader's bloodthirstiness against them.
Take Theon in ACOK, you are cheering in his final chapter because finally! Just desserts for that arrogant foolish bastard!
You read how the Bolton's have him captured in ASOS and say "Heh, good riddance".
And then... you read Reek chapters and with growing horror, you realize who is the person narrating. And suddenly, this need for payback, for him to face justice, doesn't feel that righteous anymore. No person should go through this.
The same goes for Cersei, her blaze of cruelty and scheming catches up to her when the sparrows imprison her. FINALLY, justice! and... you can only stare in horror and disgust at the walk of atonement scene. There is no vindication to be found here.
In the darkest chapter of German history, during a time when incited mobs threw stones into the windows of innocent shop owners and women and children were cruelly humiliated in the open; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young pastor, began to speak publicly against the atrocities.
After years of trying to change people’s minds, Bonhoeffer came home one evening and his own father had to tell him that two men were waiting in his room to take him away.
In prison, Bonhoeffer began to reflect on how his country of poets and thinkers had turned into a collective of cowards, crooks and criminals. Eventually he concluded that the root of the problem was not malice, but stupidity.
In his famous letters from prison, Bonhoeffer argued that stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice, because while “one may protest against evil; it can be exposed and prevented by the use of force, against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here. Reasons fall on deaf ears.”
Facts that contradict a stupid person’s prejudgment simply need not be believed and when they are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this, the stupid person is self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.
For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature.
This much is certain, stupidity is in essence not an intellectual defect but a moral one. There are human beings who are remarkably agile intellectually yet stupid, and others who are intellectually dull yet anything but stupid.
The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or rather, they allow this to happen to them.
People who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals in groups. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem.
It becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. Almost as if this is a sociological-psychological law where the power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.
The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, such as intellect, suddenly fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up an autonomous position.
The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us from the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him.
He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and is abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil – incapable of seeing that it is evil.
Only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then, we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person.
Bonhoeffer died due to his involvement in a plot against Adolf Hitler, at dawn on 9 April 1945 at Flossenbürg concentration camp - just two weeks before soldiers from the United States liberated the camp.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity
one thing about asoiaf is that it frequently invites you to have sympathy for characters who've carried out varying degrees of morally repulsive acts (most apparent with pov characters such as theon, cersei, tyrion, and jaime but also sandor, joffrey, and even viserys). and most of these characters have received some equivalent of, what may look like 'narrative comeuppance' : theon flayed by ramsay, cersei made to perform her walk of atonement, tyrion sold as a slave, jaime losing his hand, joffrey's painful, drawn out death etc. except the scenes really aren't framed like that since the series doesn't seem to buy into that idea. all these incidents are not just deserts but moments of horrible injustice against these characters. and that's a little series thesis statement in itself, no neat category of monsters whose misdeeds can be addressed by a single moment of karmic justice but people like you and me who hurt others and have been hurt and continue on living. it's saying, here's this person who is capable of great cruelty influenced and motivated by their experiences with the world, but will you also hold understanding and sympathy in your heart for when the world is cruel to them in return? given what most fandom discourse looks like... the answer to that question is unfortunately a resounding no for a lot of readers.
ive tried to verbalize this time and time again and i never rlly get there but as a femme lesbian i have a rlly hard time connecting with femenine straight women i dont know what the fuck they r talking about ever and they have always known (since i was a small child) that i was weird and other. INSTEAD i feel as if i can read the mind of fem gay men literally dyke2fag mental communication it is real and exist and im Tuned In i want to be an old queen when i grow up bc they r the only ones that get it
Something about Pratchett villains.
There's a lot of Pratchett villains who share one common thread: they're unromantic. They rip the charm and soul out of things.
Reach's service sends messages 'as warm and human as a thrown knife'. He himself 'kills people by numbers'.
Teatime is literally trying to kill Santa.
The Magpyrs turn the Gothic-vampire-novel style of the Old Count into industrial blood-harvesting.
Similarly, Wolfgang exchanges the traditional Game for just straight up killing people, and seeks to implement a werefascist regime to boot.
The Auditors are, by definition, made of unromantic. They are objectively unromantic.
And I think the idea of ripping apart the whimsy of things ties back to the idea of believing the little lies to believe the big ones. If you can't see charm and warmth, the dreams and imagination, you'll fall into what STP says is the biggest sin of all: treating people like objects.
MONKEY MAN 2024, dir. Dev Patel
you ever see a character and go "wow, this character is so nuanced and morally gray! their actions and morals don't always align! they're complicated and make bad decisions and behave painfully realistically! I hate them and love them at the same time and that's on purpose! they're so cool! .... fan content is going to misinterpret them completely, isn't it."
Watch Tracy Chapman Start a Quiet Revolution
You guys may be too young to remember, but I remember tuning in on TV with 600 million other viewers to watch Stevie Wonder live at Wembley Stadium for Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday celebration tribute in 1988. There were technical difficulties and Stevie Wonder couldn't go on yet. The crowd was antsy, milling around, singing their own songs. The TV cameras were rolling and the show had to go on, so TOTALLY UNKNOWN ARTIST TRACY CHAPMAN GOT UP ON STAGE AND PLAYED FAST CAR ARMED WITH ONLY HER GUITAR.
The crowd fell silent. Captivated by the absolute raw honesty and talent on display. Did we know we were witnessing history? A black queer artist who would rocket to fame and win a Grammy for this song the following year? I don't remember.
What I do remember is getting to the end of the song and not caring about Stevie Wonder any more. I wanted to know who this woman was!
Watch Tracy Chapman stun a rowdy crowd into silence:
When the days of the week on the calendar being "terrorist names" was going around I laughed because it was so, so ridiculously stupid. When a plate of dates was presented as "proof of terrorist activity" I looked at my own plate of dates and laughed. But the implications and the effect of those accusation, no matter how incredulously stupid they are, aren't funny in the slightest. I hate that our language is "proof" of terrorism. That a popular snack here is "proof". I hate that people believe anything tangentially related to being Arab is a sign of evil. I hate that whenever I see any recording containing Arabic in it, we scramble to translate it as quick as possible, not even to share information, but because we know if we're a second too late someone will put vile words in their mouths to dehumanize them and we need to beat them to the punch.
I love that we’re inventing historical guys now
"In one of Africa’s last great wildernesses, a remarkable thing has happened—the scimitar-horned oryx, once declared extinct in the wild, is now classified only as endangered.
It’s the first time the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s largest conservation organization, has ever moved a species on its Red List from ‘Extinct in the Wild’ to ‘Endangered.’
The recovery was down to the conservation work of zoos around the world, but also from game breeders in the Texas hill country, who kept the oryx alive while the governments of Abu Dhabi and Chad worked together on a reintroduction program.
Chad... ranks second-lowest on the UN Development Index. Nevertheless, it is within this North African country that can be found the Ouadi Rimé-Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve, a piece of protected desert and savannah the size of Scotland—around 30,000 square miles, or 10 times the size of Yellowstone.
At a workshop in Chad’s capital of N’Djamena, in 2012, Environment Abu Dhabi, the government of Chad, the Sahara Conservation Fund, and the Zoological Society of London, all secured the support of local landowners and nomadic herders for the reintroduction of the scimitar-horned oryx to the reserve.
Environment Abu Dhabi started the project, assembling captive animals from zoos and private collections the world over to ensure genetic diversity. In March 2016, the first 21 animals from this “world herd” were released over time into a fenced-off part of the reserve where they could acclimatize. Ranging over 30 miles, one female gave birth—the first oryx born into its once-native habitat in over three decades.
In late January 2017, 14 more animals were flown to the reserve in Chad from Abu Dhabi.
In 2022, the rewilded species was officially assessed by the IUCN’s Red List, and determined them to be just ‘Endangered,’ and not ‘Critically Endangered,’ with a population of between 140 and 160 individuals that was increasing, not decreasing.
It’s a tremendous achievement of international scientific and governmental collaboration and a sign that zoological efforts to breed endangered and even extinct animals in captivity can truly work if suitable habitat remains for them to return to."
-via Good News Network, December 13, 2023
I love "gender bending" characters but HATE HATE HATE designs where canon buff dudes are wispy little fairy ladies and canon tiny women are beefy ass male linebackers. If you're not in it for JACKED WOMEN and TWINKS then what's what's FUCKING point
People are walking biomes if u think about it
i think the thing about griddlehark is that i don't actually see a future for them where they're like. healthy. like independent partners in a sustainable symbiosis. i don't see that for them. they're always gonna be kinda codependent and weird about it but like. i do see a future where that's kinda ok for them? they walk around with gideon's carabiner clipped into one of harrow's belt loops. when they must be separated in public gideon wears like. a bracelet or a choker or something because harrow said "no" to dog collars in public. if harrow gets home and gideon isn't there then she gets separation anxiety that spoiled puppies can only dream of. she likes to do discrete checks to make sure gideon's heart is still there, her blood pressure is ok, her hormones levels indicate good sleep and relative calm. gideon pretends not to notice. and then one day when they're both very old and maybe one of them gets sick, they simply throw themselves into the sun together. and it's not healthy but, you know, it works for them.
in light of recent news about spotify trying to overshadow Pro-Palestinian posts on social media by releasing wrapped early and it's CEO being a zionist piece of filth, it's very very easy to crack premium for desktop
All you need to do is download and run the file off this GitHub
it's literally that easy
Enjoy your free spotify without ads
Prosecutor Karim Kahn said the referral had come from South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros and Djibouti. South Africa said the request was made "to ensure that the ICC pays urgent attention to the grave situation in Palestine."
17 Nov 23
I always wondered why the Western Zodiac and the Chinese Zodiac were both called zodiacs if one was associated w astronomy and the other w time in general. Like what defines a zodiac that the word is only used to describe these two things? Looking up the word “zodiac” in the dictionary didnt help bc it only talked about the western one.
Well, I decided to look up the etymology for zodiac and it turns out it comes from the Greek for “circle of little animals.” I love humans