acheronidae

[acheronidae]

they're saving my ass tho

[acheronidae]

when u click with someone and they have the audacity to live far away

[acheronidae]

girls r like "but he's my comfort character" and then it's literally the most emotionally traumatized man you have ever seen ever

[acheronidae]

please i love you i'm begging you bring back suspension of disbelief bring back trusting the audience like. i cannot handle any more dialogue that sounds like a legal document. "hello, i am here to talk to you about the incident from a few minutes ago, because i feel you might be unwell, and i am invested in your personal wellbeing." "thank you, i am unwell because the incident was hurtful to me due to my childhood, which was bad." I CANT!!!!

do you know how many people are mad that authors use "growled" as a word for "said"? it's just poetics! they do not literally mean "growled," it's just a common replacement for "said with force but in a low tone." it's normal! do you hear me!! help me i love you please let me out of here!!!

[acheronidae]

this may sound radical but "some addicts are violent and unlikeable" can coexist with such ideas as "it's bad to act like all addicts are violent and/or unlikeable" and "even the violent addicts deserve access to a full range of options for addiction management, including harm reduction"

[acheronidae]

truly

[acheronidae]

truly

[acheronidae]

truly

[acheronidae]

woke up today and realized that tumblr entirely killed fuck ya life bing bong so here ya go again

[acheronidae]

absolutely hilarious of Hollow Knight to answer the question "why are all the things I knock over back in perfect condition when I re-enter the room", a question that really doesn't need an answer because of how common it is in video games, with "there's a guild of bugs who are fixing things very very fast while you aren't looking"

#hollow knight

[acheronidae]

IM FUCKING SCREAMING

[acheronidae]

It frightens and discourages me how pervasive "tribal" stereotypes and imagery are in the fantasy and adventure genres.

It's all over the place in classic literature. Crack open a Jules Verne novel and you're likely to find caricatures of brown people and cultures, even when the characters are sympathetic to the plight of the colonized peoples - incidentally, this is the biggest reason I can't recommend 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to everyone, despite Captain Nemo being one of my favorite fictional characters of all time.

You can't escape it in modern cinema, either. You'll see white heroes venturing bravely into jungles and tombs to steal from natives who don't know how to use their resources "properly." You'll see them strung up in traps, riddled with sleeping darts, forced to flee and fight their way out. Hell, Pirates of the Caribbean, a remarkably inclusive franchise in many other ways, had an extended sequence of the white heroes escaping from a cannibal civilization in the second film.

And when fantasy RPGs want a humanoid enemy, the "bloodthirsty natives" are the first stock trope they jump to. World of Warcraft is one of the most egregious examples, with the trolls - blatant racist caricatures with faux-voodoo beliefs, cannibalistic diets, Jamaican accents, and a history of being killed in droves by (white) elves and humans - being raided and slaughtered in nearly every expansion.

It doesn't matter how vibrant and distinctive the real-world indigenous, Polynesian, Caribbean, and African cultures are. It doesn't matter how much potential these real civilizations offer for complex and sympathetic characterization. Anything that doesn't make sense to the white western mind is shoved under the same "savage" umbrella. They're different. They're strange. They're scary. They have to be escaped, subjugated, eliminated, ogled at from the safety of a museum.

Modern writers, directors, and developers don't even seem to realize how horrifying it is to present the indigenous inhabitants of a place as "obstacles" for non-native protagonists to overcome. "It's not racist," they say, "because these people aren't really people, you see." And if you dare to point out anything that hurts or offends you as a descendant of the bastardized culture, you're accused of being the real racist: "These aren't humans! They're monsters! Are you saying that these real societies are just like those disgusting monsters?"

No, they're not monsters. But you chose to design them as monsters, just as invaders have done for hundreds of years. Why would you do that? Why can you recognize any other caricature as evil and cruel, but not this?

This is how deep colonialism runs.

[acheronidae]

They De-Tumblrized Ms. Frizzle

[acheronidae]

this is so real

[acheronidae]

[guy who genuinely fucking loathes himself voice] well on account of my charming and endearing nature. Of course

#aventurine hsr

[acheronidae]

oopsie! You got a bit too manic about a creative project too close to bedtime and now your brain is too awake to sleep. One million dead 10 morbillion injured

[acheronidae]

#volume warning