#politics and zombies

[gorofeet]

What I WISH so badly people would understand about The Last of Us is that its not about zombies. Its about people. It has always been about people. When i see people being like “why are there ‘politics’ in my zombie show” I want to rip my fucking hair out. Neither the game nor the show are about the fucking zombies. Its about Joel and Ellie. Its about Sarah. Its about Bill and Frank. Its about Riley. Its about Tess. Its about Tommy. The zombies just happen to be there. Its about the human condition and its about how humans continue to love each other and fight for survival even after enormous tragedy. Its about learning to love and care again. Its about loving someone so much you would sacrifice the entire world for them. If you cannot grasp that concept then maybe consuming media isn’t for you.

#tlou #the last of us #the last of us hbo #tlou hbo #ellie williams #joel miller #lgbtq people are not ‘politics’ #but thats just what people tend to say #they actively give the zombies a lesser role in the show. #how is this not clicking for people #i love u tlou <3 im so sad its over

[mysharona1987]

Get ready for the zombie apocalypse, I guess.

#Qanon #zombies #horror #horror movies #the walking dead #democrats #republicans #politics

[tomorrowusa]

Don't think that patiently explaining the legalities and details of the Trump indictment will change the minds of the MAGA crowd about it. Those folks, like Trump, simply don't believe in the rule of law.

There may be some Republicans who secretly believe the charges have merit but are scared shitless of what may happen if they say so in public.

A reasonably healthy party might give its indicted leader some benefit of the doubt, while calling for judgment to be withheld before he has his day in court. But Republicans correctly understand that their party will consider Trump an innocent martyr regardless. The sickness of the Republican Party as it is presently constituted is that there is no conceivable set of facts that would permit it to acknowledge Trump’s guilt. What has brought the party to this point is the convergence of its decades-long descent into paranoia with its idiosyncratic embrace of a career criminal.

Yep, the GOP has been drifting in this direction for a long time. Trump's emergence finally nudged them into being a full-blown paranoid cult.

The Republican Party’s internal culture has been shaped by what Richard Hofstadter famously described as “the paranoid style” in American politics. Hofstadter specifically attributed this description to the conservative movement, which, at the time, was a marginalized faction on the far right but has since completely taken control of the party and imposed its warped mentality on half of America. To its adherents, every incremental expansion of the welfare state is incipient communism, each new expansion of social liberalism the final death blow to family and church. Lurking behind these endless defeats, they discern a vast plot by shadowy elites. In recent years, the Republican Party’s long rightward march on policy has ground to a halt, and it has instead radicalized on a different dimension: ruthlessness. Attributing their political travails to weakness, Republicans converged on the belief that their only chance to pull back from the precipice of final defeat is to discard their scruples. A willingness to do or say anything to win was the essence of Trump’s appeal, an amorality some Republicans embraced gleefully and others reluctantly. Trump, by dint of his obsessive consumption of right-wing media, grasped where the party was going more quickly than its leaders did. This aspect of Trump’s rise was historically necessary. All Trump did was to hasten it along.

This is Trump's legal philosophy (if you want to call it that) in a nutshell...

Trump was not raised in a traditional conservative milieu. He came into a seedy, corrupt world in which politicians could be bought off and laws were suggestions. He worked with mobsters and absorbed their view of law enforcement: People who follow the law are suckers, and the worst thing in the world is a rat.

Trump is basically a petty mobster. That explains why he hates the FBI.

It is the interplay of the two forces, the paranoia of the right and the seamy criminality of the right’s current champion, that has brought the party to this point. Trump’s endlessly repeated “witch hunt” meme blends together the mobster’s hatred of the FBI with the conservative’s fear of the bureaucrat. His loyalists have been trained to either deny any evidence of misconduct by their side or rationalize it as a necessary countermeasure against their enemies. The concept of “crime” has been redefined in the conservative mind to mean activities by Democrats. They insist upon Trump’s innocence because they believe a Republican, axiomatically, cannot be a criminal.

That Manichean view fits in well with the radical Christian fundamentalist tendency in the GOP. Though instead of Jesus Christ, the credo of Republicans is to accept Donald Trump as their personal Lord and Savior. By that reasoning, Donald Trump is incapable of wrongdoing.

#donald trump #trump's indictment #trump's guilt #republicans #the gop #maga zombies #the far right #the paranoid style in american politics #conservatives #election 2024 #jonathan chait

[coldgoldlazarus]

Seeing an ad for some zombie survival game made something click for me, about why the whole like, zombie apocalypse premise just doesn't click with me. (Aside from the gore and disturbing imagery I don't deal well with already.) Simply put, it feels like... dehumanization simulator, taken to a logical extreme. Those were people, but also not people, so there's no guilt in mowing them all down unflinchingly. It teaches paranoia, too, anyone around you could be hiding a bite and turn on you at any moment. The identity death is terrible to contemplate, but it's not contemplated, just used to make lethal force unquestionably justified, there's no point in trying to save them and the idea is almost never brought up to begin with. The world is out to get you, and other humans (they are people shaped, but not people) are the enemy.

#not a reblog #zombies #also IIRC it started as a metaphor for communism? #and was big in B-movies during the red scare #so there's a political aspect to it too #like that wasnt where they started I think? #but its where they got codified

[brother-emperors]

Out of Cassius, Trebonius, Mark Antony, and Brutus, do you think any of them are "genre-aware" of the type of story they re in, in the late Republic?

imo they’re all aware that they’re on the precipice of something (at a turning point, a fork in the road where the only option is forward/you cannot go back, etc) as people who live through these things often are, which makes them “genre aware” in a way that actually matters, but during his rivalry with Octavian post-Philippi, it would probably Antony after this specifically

But their competitive diversions gave Antony annoyance, because he always came off with less than Caesar. Now, there was with him a seer from Egypt, one of those who cast nativities. This man, either as a favour to Cleopatra, or dealing truly with Antony, used frank language with him, saying that his fortune, though most great and splendid, was obscured by that of Caesar; and he advised Antony to put as much distance as possible between himself and that young man. "For thy guardian genius," said he, "is afraid of his; and though it has a spirited and lofty mien when it is by itself, when his comes near, thine is cowed and humbled by it." And indeed events seemed to testify in favour of the Egyptian. For we are told that whenever, by way of diversion, lots were cast or dice thrown to decide matters in which they were engaged, Antony came off worsted. They would often match cocks, and often fighting quails, and Caesar's would always be victorious.​

Antony, Plutarch

#ngl I just spent several hours discussing gorillaz and genre/narrative awareness wrt to zombie genre/necromancy/resurrection etc #and looked at this line up of men and thought ‘well none of them are trapped in a torment nexus box of fame’ #before remembering how Roman politics (a torment nexus box) worked #anyway best start believing you’re the lead in a tragedy antony. You’ve already been cast in it. no longer a man but a character. etc #ask tag

[darkwood-sleddog]

He has zero regrets about kicking me in his sleep for two nights straight actually.

#dogblr #alaskan malamute #dog #canine #slash #dog photography #anybody else pups have really dramatic REM dreams? all mine do #usually he’s pretty polite in bed and often sleeps under it or on the rug but uh not lately #he’s also the only dog with bed privilege bc Sigurd is the size of a human man #and sleeps diagonal #and zombie thinks beds are WWE wrestling rings

[w1lmuttart]

Had a fun thought about immortality, now this exists

#my cryptid designing game is not much to talk about #but i do like em. they look polite :) #this feels like itd be a backstory for a comedy that regularly breaks the fourth wall and have characters fight w the narrator lmao #most normal idea ever #tw corpse #kinda? it's more zombie like cuz they ain't dead

[just-a-little-unionoid]

y'all gay people in my phone aren't obsessed enough with The Visitor From the Future and it displeases me :(

#okay look season 1 isn't *that* great #it was made in 2009 by cinema students and some parts uh... aged... not so well‚ politically .. #BUT #it's still a cool series and it got canon queer characters as soon as season 2 #(actually in season 1 too but it was as a joke so it doesn't count) #also the movie can be watched on its own (even if it lack queer content...) and is like... really good??? #like please yall it got time travel and drama and robots and zombies and cops and capitalism as the antagonists what's more to ask for? #vdf

[dichotomoustessellations]

zombie movies were always cultural reflections of how political power and radicalization is utilized through poisoning or diseasing the masses

#Political #culture #zombie movies

[astrowarr]

(slaps the roof of my roomies zombie apocalypse au) there are so many political nuances in this bad boy

#there's watcher lore. no one said i could help myself #also for the record all the politics come from pre-plot stuff #so the actual story takes place about a decade after the start of the apocalypse #by now the politics have simmered down and just the after effects can be seen on the story #but i basically have the entire pre-plot history stuff down which is so cool #rmzau #roomies zombie apocalypse au #secret life #trafficblr #grian #ethoslab #zombie cleo

[daz4i]

watching lots of videos abt horror in my free time and i noticed smth interesting. american horror very much follows the "if you do bad things/make irrational decisions, you will get hurt" rule, while japanese horror tends to not care about who the victim of the monster is - you can be a perfect person who's never done anything wrong, you can do everything in your power to avoid the monster, but you'll still get hurt

i think it's an interesting thing to study. I'd love to hear abt horror in other places around the world and what sort of rules they follow, and compare and try to figure out where they came from

i may be wrong, but it's easy to assume that the american rule of horror - do bad things and bad things will happen to you - is very christian. there's other things like leftovers from the hays code (like having sex means you'll die later, for example) but these are usually more abt specific actions, while i'm talking more generally now. i think it's affected by the whole fear of hell, obviously - if you do things right, you get to go to heaven, you get to escape the torment. and even non-christians are affected by these ideas bc this is just what american culture is like.

i can't speculate much abt the japanese rule (or rather, the lack of rules in that regard) bc i'm not as exposed to japanese culture and history as i am to american culture, but i will say, on a personal level, this is way more scary to me 😳 for obvious reasons.

also ngl it can get annoying to hear american youtubers try to analyze japanese horror and fight for their life to find Wrong things the protagonists do in order to justify their torment. i swear they end up demonizing the most mundane shit 😭

#i'm trying to think abt my country's type of horror and i think we're closer to the japanese type than the american one #our horror tends to be more general? like zombie apocalypse sort of thing. everyone's getting hurt #(which i can very easily explain actually but it will def get political unfortunately) #another more fun type is just like. stupid ppl doing stupid shit. and i don't mean it in a mean way #i mean it in a 'people are fucking around and finding out' way. a neutral type of stupidity. if that makes sense #like it's less abt making mistakes and more putting yourself in danger lowkey on purpose. to see what'll happen (death. usually) #but i also don't know a lot of local horror. there's not a lot of it. we're more comedy oriented here i think.

[wolves0nmars]

american healthcare by penelope scott but make it leon s. kennedy.

verse 1, "when i was seven years old i saw a dead man in the road..." could relate to the early loss of his parents and leon's first experience with a police officer. plenty of children are exposed to violence at an early age, and leon is no exception. this experience desensitized him to violence and to cope with it he focused on the positive experience he had with that cop, and decided he wanted to be an officer in order to help people.

he helped claire, sherry, ashley, etc. there's actually kind of a pattern of him "saving" female characters and kind of affirming his own masculinity by doing so. this makes his interactions with ada and luis very interesting, the former of course being a woman that doesnt need his saving and the latter being a man that desperately needs his saving. but thats a conversation for another time.

and in the chorus of the song, "you corporate fucking prick, i did not become a doctor just to suck the devil's dick" relates to him a lot. because leon s kennedy sucks a lot of d---he has a lot of experiences with "corporate overlords", like simmons. but also this doesn't just apply to specific individuals. leon is in law enforcement because he wants to protect people. he was a police officer because he wanted to protect people, he is an agent because he wants to protect as many people around the world in the long run optimally in the most efficient way. but he consistently runs into the problem that his job as a police officer is not to protect people. its to protect private property. his job as an agent is not to protect people. its to protect corporate interests. he's in the wrong job.

i really hope we see leon be a firefighter or an emt some day. like, obviously hes a little old and definitely traumatized enough, but those are occupations where your job literally is just to help people, not keep corporate interests in mind.

and in verse 2 "I asked the right questions, i never even really got bored" relates to him really well too. leon quite easily slipped into his role as "right hand man", never wondering or asking just what exactly left hand was up to. because truthfully, he didn't want to know. he preferred the comfort that came with not knowing.

or in verse 3, "it trickled into both my ears, it got louder over the years, until all that i could hear were fuckin' flies" probably relates to leon the most out of any line from this song. it perfectly represents how incredibly corrupted leon has become. it's also worth mentioning how resident evil viruses do sometimes take the form of insects. you could kind of look at it like a direct parallel between government corruption and the viruses he's fighting. they're both equally parasitic, infectious, and harmful. i imagine sometimes leon just wishes he'd be infected finally, because it's better than this torturous process of corruption. in the pre chorus, she says "sometimes it's like they'd rather die" and i think sometimes it's like he'd rather die.

it's such a great song about american capitalism and how easily it can corrupt people's naive hopes and dreams of helping people. because leon s kennedy... has been corrupted. time and time again throughout the RE franchise we see commanding officers from private corporations, governments, law enforcement, etcetera being revealed as evil and every time... the main characters just kill the guy and get back to work. they never stop and consider... maybe it's not about just one guy. maybe its not about just this one individual that happened to be evil. maybe something made him evil... maybe something allowed him to be evil... and maybe its the exact same thing that i work for... or something like that idk lolllllll.

i really hope we see leon kind of "break the cycle" and have the kinds of realizations that are in this song because like... BITCH... that stupid little boy is lucky hes so pretty!!!

also im really sorry for derailing a song about a womans experience in academia and social services under capitalism and stuff to be about this white boy in the CIA... i hope this little analysis doesnt detract from the actual song. cause like... its a great song and we dont need to make it about leon stupid little bitch kennedy for it to be good.

#leon kennedy #leon s kennedy #leon scott kennedy #re #resident evil #re2 #re2r #resident evil 2 #resident evil 2 remake #re4 #re4r #resident evil 4 #resident evil 4 remake #re4make #re4 remake #sorry for making the dumb little zombie game about POLITICS #in MY VBIDEO GAME? #its more likely than you think

[degenderates]

Actually after having binge watched 5 seasons of the walking dead in one week I can safely say that ideological wise, this show is pretty conservative. Not that it *literally* is conservative but it leans right in the way horror media leans right and especially monster stories lean right - zombies as an other, even other people as otherized, where the cop protagonist holds near-autocratic leadership and whenever not in control, seeks to regain it, and the story portrays this as right and good for him to do. Whenever people have alternative views about the zombies or other groups of people, they're always proven wrong. Holding fear is important. Keeping an us-vs-them mindset is essential. Obviously in-universe, all these things are needed for survival, but that's the point - and I do wonder if the show is self aware about it

#its also worth noting that zombie media has always been political with the black protag of night of the living dead #getting shot by the cops at the end bc they thought he was a zombie #etc #the walking dead #twd lb

[miguelinileugim]

Comedy movie where a bunch of southern racist white cops have to fight hordes of zombies all of which are black for some reason.

The joke is that they act exactly as they did before the apocalypse. Beating them after they're no longer a threat. Shooting them in the back while pretending they're afraid. Claiming "you can tell they're a zombie by the way they look!".

It's not even real and it's already banned in Florida.

#not a real movie #movie #comedy #acab #police #cops #antiracism #zombie #zombies #goncharov #politics #writing prompt

[thedreadvampy]

so me and Sam FINALLY watched the last season of Capaldi's Who

and tell me how, after literally over a decade and for perhaps the first time in his fucking career, Steven Moffat wrote a not just tolerable but really actually good two-parter and fully stuck the landing. like the editing and pacing were still a bit off but the storyline was original, fun, interesting and emotionally invested, and most importantly, rather than ending on a damp fart or the most furious autofellatio in history, the final part didn't fumble it and ended in a way that felt emotionally satisfying and like it made sense for the characters. like the last time he successfully wrapped up a multiparter in a way that didn't feel cheap and hollowly disappointing to me was literally The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, and a) that was in 2005 and b) tbh The Doctor Dances is about a tenth as compelling and memorable as The Empty Child.

so after 12 years of either hackery or great ideas that fall apart in the second act, Steven Moffat writes what I would genuinely consider to be a memorable Good Doctor Who serial. it ends with bittersweet pathos, a solid closer for all the main characters, and sends Moffat's showrunning career out on a genuine high despite failing ratings and budget cuts (and the fact Doctor Who hasn't been consistently good since about 2009). good job Steve. with grudging respect I admit you pulled it out of the bag on this one.

wait what's this there's one more episode left? and it stars Mark Gatiss? and you literally spend the whole episode inexplicably just shitting all over the legacy of Doctor Who by inventing a version of the First Doctor that bears literally no resemblance to the character that William Hartnell actually played, just so you can spend the whole episode saying misogynistic things to run yourself off to how much more Totally Feminist your version was than the version you made up in your head of what Doctor Who was like in the 60s? and it added literally nothing to the season except to take all the wind out of the sails of the actually good finale you already wrote?

even when he writes a good episode this fucker still finds ways to disappoint me.

#red said #as I remembered it is by a LONG shot the best that Doctor Who has been under Moffat and I do think giving Capaldi more creative control #helped a lot. cause he's a massive nerd and also he approximately knows how to construct a story. #bill is the first female companion Moffat has ever written with an actual fucking personality #(even if being mean that personality is maybe kind of just what you'd get if you put rose Martha and Donna in a blender) #(at least she's not a blank slate with the words SASSY. SEXY. written on it) #matt Lucas is genuinely surprising bc despite hating the man it's kind of impossible to not like Nardole by the end?? #michelle gomez finally gets some room to get her Anthony Ainley on and be the Master PROPERLY #i was hooting and clapping my hands at the John Sim Master's dumb disguise #like the cast is GREAT #(and while he still can't shut the fuck up about her at least Moffat isn't shoving River fucking Song down my throat 24/7) #buuuuuuuut uhhhh the politics are. incoherent and the vibes are rancid in a lot of the episode plots. #they clearly WANT to do Social Commentary but weirdly keep bringing up colonialism and capitalism and then taking the side of the baddies? #how are you doing to do a piece about the British Empire colonising Mars with a posh villain and a whole comparison to the British Raj #then come down on the side of the British state? same with the ninth legion piece? and the zombie spacesuit one is fun #but it wraps up with 'and then they complained to upper management and capitalism ended forever the end' #uhhhhh in the one with the microbot colony again we conclude the Morally Correct Answer is colonialism #don't get me started on the monks plot which is a) literally just ripping off the Year That Never Was but without the emotional impact #but also b) has some really weird and genuinely fucked up ideas about both geopolitics and uhhhh consent???? #so yeah the philosophical core is either incoherent or Fucking Horrendous in almost every episode #it's frequently derivative but tbh that's often to its benefit bc it vibes like trying to figure out what actually makes episodes memorable #and the budget is clearly cut to the bone bc the visual effects look worse than 2005 and the post edits are really weird and janky #like the pacing and ordering is weirdly off and a lot of the shot to shot transitions are awkward or confusing. #plus the sound design in the first few eps is. unhinged. it sounds like offbrand versions of standard stings it's all just Slightly Wrong #but for real i liked it more than I've liked any other season of Moffat Who. it's messy incoherent and often politically INFURIATING #but it has some actual heart and energy. and it feels like doctor who. and i would say moffat is spending like 10% as much time #wanking over his own past triumphs (and Alex Kingston) #and a lot more time like. trying to write something which works. he's not like successful 100% of the time. or even 50%. #but there's a lot more warmth and creativity. mackie capaldi and lucas have actual chemistry as a core cast #and i think it helps that everyone in the core cast is SO PSYCHED TO BE THERE. like it just wasn't a slog like all Moffat's other seasons.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Six Feet Under - Zombie Executioner

#Six Feet Under #Commandment #Zombie Executioner #Release date: #April 16th #2007 #Full-length #Genre: #Death/Groove Metal #Death 'n' Roll #Themes: #Gore #Death #Murder #Politics #Cannabis #USA