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blackhakumen · 2 years

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Mini Fanfic #1023: Boney Jokes (Sonic X Crash X Undertales)

5:45 p.m. at the Smash Town's Halloween Store........

Coco: (Holds Up a Toy Skeleton and Uses it's Jaw to Speak in a Skeltor Like Voice) Miles Tails Prower! It is I, Sir Skullohein the III, would like to tell you a spooky joke!

Tails: (Chuckles Lightly) Okay, sure. Lay it on me, Mr......Skullohein.

Coco: The Third. You forgot the third- ANYWAYS! Tell me, my good man: What is a skeleton's favorite snack to eat?

Tails: I.....don't know honestly.

Coco: Go on. Guess. What is a skelton's favorite snack?

Tails: (Shrugs) Death?

Coco: Nooooo. Keep guessing!

Tails: (Starts Giggling Some More)

Coco: Why are you laughing? I haven't delivered the punchline yet!

Wave: (Walks Up to the Duo With her Arms Crossed Together) What are you two doing?

Tails: (Waves at the Older Sparrow While Trying to Contain his Giggles) Hehehe Hi Wave~

Coco: (Turns to Wave While Using the Toy Skelton to Bow it'sHead at Her) Good evening, my good madam. My name is Sir Skullohein the III! And I am here try to tell this giggling HOOLIGAN over here a proper joke! Has the nerve to be known as The smartest hero of all of Time Square....

Tails: (Continues Giggling) How do you even know that bit of information?~

Coco: Where else? THE INTERNET! Now keep guessing! (Use the Skelton's Arm to Point at Wave) That goes for you too, missy! What's a skeleton's favorite snack?

Wave: ('Scoffs') I dunno. Bones?

Coco: ......BONES!? That's your answer: BONES!? (Slams the Toy Skeleton's Head Onto a Nearby Box) Why would we have our arms and legs for snack!?

Tails' laugh starts getting louder the more Coco's skeletor's voice starta cracking him up even more.

Coco: Aren't you supposed to be the brains of the Babylon Rogues or whatever!? Why must you and your fox friend fail me so often!?

Wave: ('Sigh') Okay, so what's the real answer then?

Coco: Ribs.

Wave: Ribs?

Coco: RIBS!

Wave: Ribs.

Coco: SPARE RIBSSSS!~

Wave: Uh-huh. (Crosses her Arms Again) And how exactly do you eat ribs without a tongue? Or a digestive system in that boney body of yours?

Coco: .........Okay. That's it. I quhiiit!~(Finally Breaks Character and Giggles)

Wave: Finally done with the Skullohein bit?

Coco: (Points her Finger Up) You forgot the III~ And yeah.....(Sighs While Calming Herself Down) I'm done for now. (Looks Down at the Toy Skeleton WIth a Bright Smile) I think I might bring this little guy to trick-or-treating with us this year.

Tails: (Smiles Brightly) You should. You got the pompous, skeleton accent down perfectly!

Wave: (Rolls her Eyes)And obnoxiously so....

Coco: (Smirks Confidently While Pushing Up the Back of her Ponytail) Well, I do have a natural talent for voice overs from time to time~ (Comes Up With an Idea of Sime Kind) Ooh!~ That gives me an idea for a new Halloween costume. (Places her Hand Onto her Chest in a Dramatic Like Fashion) I'll play the role of Skullohein's faithful assistant: Mad'am Skulldenia~ Has a nice flare to it, don'tcha think?~

????: Eh. It needs more of a boney feel to it if ya know what I mean.

The trio gets startled and huddle up to one another before slowly looking back to see a familiar looking skeleton fellow wearing a blue hoodie, shorts, bedroom slippers, and a grin to boot, staring at them.

Coco: Oh hey it's Sans.

Sans: (Casually Salutes and Winks at the Trio) Yo.

Wave: (Eyes Widens a Bit in Genuine Surprise) Wait, he's real? (Turns Back to Tails and Coco) I always thought he was just some guy in a costume.

Sans: Nope. (Shrugs) I'm as real as I can get. They have opened up audition of me here and there. (Shrugs Again) It's a shame they couldn't find anyone who could match my charms. I would've more than glady gave them a hand.

'BADUM TSS'

Wave: (Sighs While Rolling her Eyes Again) There goes the unneeded puns.....

Tails: So what brings you here you today?

Sans: I'm just looking for some costumes that could suit my bro and Frisk's style for the Halloween occasion. Can't be here too long though. The Universe's Sexist Man's Co. wants me to come by their studios to get some pictures taken. (Smirks a Bit Smugly) Kinda of an offer i couldn't refuse, ya know?

Wave: You are...... (Examines the Blue Hooded Skeleton's Body From Top to Bottom)....Quite the looker alright....

Coco: (Smiles Brightly) Congrats on making it to the big leagues kind of!~ Excited to see your face printed on the magazine covers?

Sans: Yeah. Wouldn't say I'm ecstatic about it or anything like that, but it'll still be neat to see myself in the papers somewhere.

A yellow flower, sitting on Sans' hoodir sudden reveal his face from behind the skeleton's back with a smug look on his face.

?????: ('Scoffs') Please. Who would be stupid enough to pay money to see that ugly, horrid face of yo-

A blue aura suddenly surrounds the flower's body as he gets levitated mid-air for a brief second before violently getting slammed into a cardboard box woth a loud crash, leaving the tech trio's eyes to widen up in fear.

Wave: Wh.....W-Who was that just now?

Sans: No one important. (Blue Eyes Begins to Appear Inside his Skull) Not now and a million, agonizing years....

Wave: .............Ooookay. I think it's time for us to go now, so.....(Quickly Sprints Away)

Tails/Coco: (Follows Behind Wave While Waving Goodbye to Sans) Happy Halloween, Sans!

Sans: (Happily Waves Bacl to the Kids) Have a Happy Halloween to you too, kids. Don't be a boneified stranger now!

BADUM TSS'

Sans: (Chuckles Lightly Before Sighing) To be young. (Slowly and Menacingly Turns his Attention Towards the Injured Flower) Now then.....

??????: (Groans While Getting Himself Up From the Boxes He Crashed into) What in the.....blazes.....

Sans: You know, you really need to learn how to keep your mouth shut around here. (Turns to The Flower With Blue Eyes Appearing Back in his Skull) Flowey.

Flowey: (Glares Back at Sans While Growling) Really? So your method in doing so is to send me colliding into a bunch of boxes with little to no care in the world!? Your barbaric actions never fails to digust me, peasant! Imagine what poor Frisk would say if she finds out that you treated her poor flower companion in mistreatful manner. What will you say them, huh!?

Sans glares hard at Flowey for a few more seconds before calming himself down by taking a deep breath.

Sans: Whatever. There's no point wasting anymore time on something pointless. (Picks Flowey Up From the Boxes) Just know that you're five seconds away from being erased if you keep acting up. (Blue Eyes Reappears Again) Got that?

Flowey: ('Hmph') You would do the same to keep YOURSELF in check as well. (Grits his Teeth in a Menacing Manner) Sans......

@keyenuta

@cyber-wildcat

@26shann

@caleb13frede

@taiils2

@albion-93

#sonic series #crash bandicoot series #undertale #miles tails prower #coco bandicoot #wave the swallow #sans #flowey #frisk (mentioned)#papyrus (mentioned)#humor #inspired from skull boy's tells a joke video #tech trio #intensity in the end #halloween month

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najahmali · 2 years

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Enas Taleb: Iraqi actress to sue Economist over 'fat' picture An Iraqi actress says she is suing the Economist newspaper for using a picture of her to illustrate an article about Arab women being "fatter" than men. Enas Taleb said that the image was used out of context without her permission, and violated her privacy. She also claimed it had been photoshopped. The well-known actress and talk show host said in an interview that she has begun legal action in the UK. The Economist did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The article, entitled Why Women Are Fatter Than Men in the Arab World, was published in late July, using a picture of Ms Taleb taken nine months ago at the Babylon International Festival in Iraq. It argues that poverty and societal restrictions keeping women in the home are among the reasons why more Arab women than men are overweight. Another reason, the article states, may be that "curves" are viewed by some men as more attractive. "Iraqis often cite Enas Taleb, an actress with ample curves (pictured), as the ideal of beauty," it says. Ms Taleb labelled the article an "insult to the Arab woman in general and Iraqi women in particular", asking why the Economist "takes interest in fat women in the Arab world and not in Europe or the USA". Speaking to Saudi-funded al-Arabiya TV from Jordan, she said she had faced "bullying comments" on social media. She also told New Lines magazine she was healthy and happy with the way she looks. "To me that is all that matters," she said. Ms Taleb, 42, is among Iraq's best-known actresses, and has nine million followers on Instagram. In her interview with al-Arabiya TV she said the Economist was unlucky to have angered her. "They did not know that I'm a celebrity and a public figure," she said. "I can turn crises into gains." The Economist article also faced criticism on social media, accused it of being "racist", "sexist" and "shaming" Arab women. https://www.instagram.com/p/ChHtAVoDEeB/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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margridarnauds · 4 years

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I’m sleep deprived, so have my B5 Hot Take:

If the roles had been reversed, with Sheridan trying to get Delenn to have sex in front of a crowd because of his culture, with Delenn highly reluctant after having been led to believe she was JUST having sex with him, the fandom would not be NEARLY as keen to paint him in the right and her as disrespectful

#anti delenn #i GUESS?#like i love her but this is a precaution tag #babylon 5 #b5 #it’s rather sexist when you think about it #that we mitigate the things female characters do #because they’re Strong Female Characters #and therefore whenever a relationship has issues we IMMEDIATELY place them in the Victim Role or The Lady In The Tower #Because of COURSE that’s the inly dynamic right?#Now Sheridelenn doesn’t fall into that degree of toxicidity #but like...it is curious how something like that being done by a male character VS a female character would be received #both in the modern day and at the time B5 was aured

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gumx395 · 2 years

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Eternals Film Review: This is NOT your diversity darling

So I saw Marvel’s Eternals yesterday. It’s a week late, but I honestly didn’t think I would see it at all considering I just haven’t been as on top of Marvel products lately, nor have they impressed me much. But a friend wanted to see it for her birthday, and I figured that, worst case scenario, I’d at least get to enjoy some nachos in the movie theater’s comfy new recliners while a mediocre movie played in the background.

I was wrong, in the worst possible way.

I want to start this off by saying that I went in knowing that the Eternals, as a comic book group, has anti indigenous sentiment in it, and by this point I’ve seen all the “Marvel made a gay black man responsible for Hiroshima” memes. I went in thinking I knew the levels of racist it would be, and tried to brace myself accordingly. I grew up a half Mexican half Salvadoran mestiza, by this point I’m used to racism against my ancestors and my people getting swept under the rug. I figured I could sit through those scenes and make it to the end of the film still pretending I had a good time. I was not, in fact, prepared for what I ended up seeing.

Marvel’s Eternals is a racist, sexist, and ableist film hiding behind “diverse casting”. Let me count the ways.

the anti indigenous stuff is so much worse than I originally thought. Before watching the film, my friends and I discussed its origins in the comics, how it might be changed in the film, and whether or not it’s even possible to extract it from their story. Well, turns out we debated for nothing, because they didn’t even try. We see the ancient Aztecs being massacred while the Eternals stand by and debate the ethics of getting involved. The slaughter of my ancestors is used as background noise for the Eternals’ personal drama. Druig, the Eternal capable of mind control, argues to use his powers to make the Spaniards stop. I remember thinking “ok, a bit white savior-y, but I like him for that.” And then he proceeds to mind control the Spaniards AND the Aztecs to end the scene. It’s haunting, seeing him do that. But he’s not done there! When the others catch up to him in modern times, he’s in an indigenous village in the Amazon, essentially playing god, using his mind control to act through them and speak through them. It’s heavily implied he, a white man, is treated as a god. When the Deviants show up, he essentially uses them as red shirts to fight them. He has to be told by others not to risk these people’s lives without their consent.

As someone who briefly dabbled with the idea of becoming an anthropologist in college, I learned that the Middle East is THE place to go for archeology and anthropology. The real world reason for this is because this is where different ancient human groups met up, traded, and procreated with each other. It’s regarded as the place where human civilization was able to spread and grow. In the film, however, this is rewritten as the spot where the Eternals first landed on Earth. Not only do we SEE them create all human inventions, we see them DEBATE whether the people there, the ancient Arabic people, are ready for certain inventions (according to the Eternals, they weren’t ready for the steam engine, but they might be able to manage a gardening plow). We get a scene where one of the Eternals, Makkari, is trading with and stealing from these people, and the ancient Arabic men in particular are, in that scene, portrayed as violent and as swindlers specifically to push the romance between Makkari and Druig. This scene is part a few that imply that the empire of Babylon was successful specifically due to the Eternals’ involvement. When the Eternals return to Iraq in the modern day, we see that Makkari has been hoarding archeological findings in their spaceship.

In case you haven’t seen the Hiroshima memes (just typing that makes me sick), Phastos, the gay black Eternal primarily responsible for human technological advancement, feels personally responsible for Hiroshima. How it’s shown in the movie is Phastos and Ajak, sharply dressed, are walking among the ruins after the atomic bomb is dropped. Phastos cries and, while kneeling among the ashes of innocent Japanese civilians, says “humanity isn’t worth saving”. Maybe it wasn’t meant this way, but you can’t help but feel like the innocent people that were wiped out are being put in the same category as the white imperialists who just wiped them out.

Gemma Chan’s character, Sersi, is a tradfem fantasy. Now, before you assume I mean “all feminine characters exist for male consumption”, no, that’s not what I mean. I love when the female lead is allowed to be deep AND strong AND sensitive AND feminine. I have fought tooth and nail for feminine woman characters to be given the respect they deserve. But that’s not what Sersi is. While I’m not saying you can’t like, or love, or even feel represented by her character, you cannot deny she lacks serious depth. The entire establishment of her character is done through the eyes of the white men that are in love with her. They fall for her while watching her serve, and give, and do stereotypically feminine things, NOT through talking to her and getting to know her. We never see why SHE loves THEM, we just assume that, well, he’s an impressive masculine specimen, so why shouldn’t she fall in love with him, right? When Ajak dies, she chooses Sersi to succeed her as leader of the Eternals, but we never get a reason WHY. I don’t even think we see them have so much as a proper conversation, but we’re meant to assume Ajak just felt that Sersi was “good” and “kind” enough to be the leader, NOT that she felt Sersi would be a competent leader. Sersi’s entire motivations throughout the movie are “I love these two men” and “humanity dying is bad”. We don’t see her have any desires or needs outside of that.

All of the women of color are either fridged by an awful white man (Ajak) or in love with an awful white man (Sersi and Makkari). As a Mexican woman, seeing one Mexican woman get killed mercilessly and another Mexican woman fall in love with a man who treats the indigenous people of Latin America as little more than police dogs was disturbing on a whole other level.

Now to the ableism. I don’t want to speak too much on how they used the actress for Makkari, Lauren Ridloff’s, deafness in the movie, as I’m not deaf myself, but I’ll lay it out and let you come to your own conclusion: the character is also deaf, and sign language is used in the movie. It’s stated in the movie that she can sense all vibrations in the world, including people’s vocal cord movements, so she can “feel” what others are saying rather than hear. Sometimes the other Eternals use sign language with her, sometimes they don’t, either implying she reads their lips or can “feel” what they’re saying.

What I DO feel comfortable talking about, as someone with various mental illnesses and disorders, is how they handled Thena, Angelina Jolie’s character. Early on in the film (during the genocide scene, actually), she gets a psychological condition that only Celestials get that causes her to lose touch with reality. Despite the fact that the in-world explanation for it is simply that she’s remembering past lives, it causes her to be violent with her fellow Eternals, resulting in her being given the option to either be killed or have her memories wiped, thus erasing who she has come to be as a person. This reeks of real world eugenics as well as the stereotype that the mentally ill are inherently violent. Gilgamesh, the most physically strong of the Eternals, offers to be her caretaker, and they live in complete isolation for thousands of years. When the others meet up with them in modern day, we get a scene straight out of an ableist horror movie, with Thena sitting under a tree, surrounded by bones and scribbling creepy drawings. Once the existence of their past lives is revealed, her psychological disorder is used solely as a plot device and then just.....vanishes.

I honestly had to stop myself from leaving the the theater several times throughout the film. It was infuriating, it was disgusting, and it was PAINFUL. None of what I just wrote can be swept under the rug or circumvented by the color blind casting. Making Ajak a Mexican woman doesn’t make her advocating for letting my ancestors get slaughtered any less awful, it just makes Ikarus killing her that much more uncomfortable.

Usually when I leave a movie, even if I didn’t like it, I love to come onto Tumblr and Twitter to see what people think and what they took from it. But for the first time, I can’t bring myself to see people praise this film for false diversity, or stan a ship that makes my stomach turn, or make photosets of how beautiful a character that’s seeped in harmful tropes is.

The Eternals is not a good movie. Not only do I not recommend it, but I sincerely hope it flops so bad that Marvel gives up on a sequel. Another film with this group should not be made.

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drsilverfish · 3 years

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The Absence of the Feminine in 15x19 Inherit the Earth

I’ve been thinking about the fact that Amara’s absence from 15x19 Inherit the Earth felt... really disappointing. And how that deliberately parallels the disappointment the narrative itself creates at Cas’ absence in 15x19 too (Dean running to the door of the bunker, only to be faced with the huge let down that is Lucifer).

I’ve previously written about the ways in which Amara and Castiel have been paralleled in the SPN narrative here:

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/133295635934/amara-and-castiel

and here:

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/633588894701682688/amara-and-castiel-parallels-in-15x17

I was hoping Amara would, as an active power, evidently, transform Chuck from the inside in 15x19 Inherit the Earth; i.e. that feminine power in the narrative would come rushing back.

And in one sense, of course, that did play out. Amara did transform Chuck.

The ineffable power of the Divine, including Amara, moved on from its vessel Chuck (the Demiurge, or lesser God in Gnosticism) who had proved unworthy, and into its new vessel, Jack Kline Novak Winchester; part human and part divine.

And inside Jack, Amara’s Goddess-power is in harmony, and in balance, with the God-power of the universe; Creation and Destruction, Alpha and Omega, the End and the Beginning, united at last, in an alchemical Sacred Marriage.

Indeed, the first power Jack exhibited, after he exploded in The Empty and returned to earth, was a power more compatible with The Darkness and with endings (Amara’s traditional function). He kept sucking the life out of vegetation in 15x19:

Still, Amara’s voice and her form were absent in 15x19.

Just as Castiel was absent in 15x19.

The disappointment at their absence, which the narrative itself creates in relation to Cas, fits with the metanarrative feat S15 is attempting to pull off, in which the current SPN writers’ room drags elements of SPN’s own narrative - personified in Bad Writer Chuck (who is partly a writers’ room self-send-up, and, perhaps, partly, no doubt, a stand in for Exec Level at the CW Network).

God (Chuck), as Metatron said, in 8x23 Sacrifice, was always “a bit of sexist.”

And so has the show been, let’s acknowledge that; the writers’ room is :-).

So, of course, in the final chapter written by Chuck, 15x19, (although, notice, in that episode, that the Winchesters and Jack start to take over as narrators, as they begin to win) the feminine would be absent.

Chuck has always tried to write the feminine (which is symbolically equated with love in SPN) out of the narrative. He wanted a story about monsters, not love.

Chuck’s removal of the feminine from the SPN narrative on the earthly plane, mirrored his original sin, of locking away his sister, Amara, starting with the original fridgings of Mary Winchester and Jess. Followed by (remember Old Sexist SPN) the “ganking” of such Biblical anti-woman depictions as the Monstrous Eve, The Whore of Babylon and Lilith.

As a result, of course, of all the dead, or absent, or monstrous women, Chuck accidentally super-charged his story with homo-eroticism (lol) but that wasn’t his intention. Castiel was, in Chuck’s view “broken” because Cas rebelled and wrote his own (queer) love script.

So, Chuck tried to remove Cas from the story too; his ideal SPN ending being a Winchester Brothers Only Murder-Suicide, another revenge tragedy. We saw that played out on the angelic plane in the final fratricidal killing of Lucifer by Michael in 15x19.

But Chuck didn’t kill Amara, although his sibling rivalry with her was his driving creative force. He thought he’d won, when he absorbed her in 15x17 Unity. But, she simply moved on from him, to a higher plane, united with Jack.

Now that Chuck’s power over the story has ended, I am hoping the feminine will return to the narrative in 15x20, in the form of Mary Winchester, Donna and Jodie, Charlie, Eileen, and... Castiel. Castiel, who has been symbolically placed: 1) through his parallelling with Amara, and with Eileen; and 2) through Chuck’s repeated attempts to banish him, in the place of “the feminine”.

Let’s hope the narrative can now, fully, take Becky Rosen’s note (from 15x04 Atomic Monsters):

“It’s feeling a little… thin? Low stakes? It’s fun to hear the boys’ voices, but a story is only as good as its villain, and these villains are just not feeling very… dangerous? Not to mention, there’s no classic rock. No one even mentions Cas. The climax is a little stale.”

#Supernatural #15x19 #Inherit the Earth #SPN meta #Meta #The feminine God-principle #Alchemy in S15 #Jung in S15 #God is a bit of a sexist #I don't think the writers' room has been entirely successful #In its approach to re-writing the feminine #But under Dabb it's had a good go #With the introduction of Amara #And the return of Mary Winchester

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marys5thcigarette · 3 years

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Btw I’ve ended watching “Babylon Berlin” and I’m SO FUUUUUUUCKING IMPRESSED😱✨😩😩👾!

That’s totally a masterpiece!!!

Germany in 1929. Post war condition. Variety of parties and mentalities. Addiction. Development of forensics. Fashionable night clubs. Secret life. And of course, stupid sexist men, whose asses were beaten by Charlotte. Women’s stories and power. LGBTQ CHARACTERS😫🏳️‍🌈

WAAAAATCH IT IF YOU ADORED «SHERLOCK»

Btw it’s gonna be season 4 in a year✨✨✨✨✨

#babylon berlin #art #30s #20s style

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oldshowbiz · 11 months

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The No-Bra Generation

#commercial #sexist babylon

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themidnightcircusshow · 4 years

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Fully embracing a Modern Tokyo Babylon

Hokuto is an insta celebrity. The only thing more famous than her outfits are her legendary posts of tearing down sexists

Subaru doesn’t have social media. If he did, it would only be so he can follow twitter accounts about cute animals. He was however forced into getting a snapchat which is entirely Hokuto sending him clothes pictures and Seishirou snapping him pics of the animals at the clinic with cute captions. Subaru saves every single one.

Instead of handing off lewd phone calls to the birds and the monkeys, Seishirou replies to dick pics with photos of the animals looking horrified

Hokuto and Seishirou have definitely teamed up at some point to catfish people

Subaru has a youtube playlist of animal videos for when life gets too overwhelming. He also has animals for his phone cover. His lockscreen is a photo of the three of them Hokuto took

Hokuto’s lockscreen is a photo of Subaru asleep on Seishirou’s shoulder. She adamantly refuses to change it. She also has the most up to date phone and still is constantly running out of space because she has so many photos

Seishirou has a vet phone and a Sakurazukamori phone. His vet phone has a very bright and colourful case and has a lockscreen of one of the clinic animals doing something that will annoy a customer. His only contacts are Subaru and Hokuto. Subaru’s name has a whole bunch of love hearts and eggplant emojis around it. His Sakurazukamori phone is black leather with a troll face lockscreen

Seishirou does his Sakurazukamori zoom calls in his clinic. The most high ranking officials in government have seen the most feared assassin in Japan with a cat on his head and quite frankly that made him more frightening

#Tokyo Babylon #TB/X #Sakurazuka Seishirou #Sumeragi Subaru #Sumeragi Hokuto #Feel free to add on!#I might do a serious version of this post because I think TB in a modern setting has sooooooo much potential #But it's TB so memes first

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queerprayers · 3 years

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Got any information about the Whore of Babolyn?

Sure! Some of these are about Revelation in general, not specifically the character of the Whore of Babylon, but I think to investigate any character or symbolism in Revelation, we should be familiar with it as a whole.

This passage is Revelation 17:1-18, for those interested.

I think Revelation more than any book of the Bible is the most filled with metaphor and symbolism, and is the easiest to misinterpret and try to apply to current events.

Things to think about while reading this chapter: the symbolism, why John is writing it, the tradition of gendering themes/objects (like boats or cities), how modern standards would describe most of the men in the Bible as sexist, and what depicting this symbol as a woman means/how it would affect readers.

I think it's a very specific, interesting choice! Seduction is often associated with the feminine, and remembering that explains a lot! This powerful figure seducing men to fall? Of course that's a woman!

I'm just getting into The Bible Project, which everyone should check out! Here are some relevant videos:

Apocalypse Literature

Does the Bible Predict the End of the World (Podcast)

Revelation Overview Part 1 (Chap. 1-11)

Revelation Overview Part 2 (Chap. 12-22) - They address the Whore of Babylon at 6:26

Here's a video from Yale Bible Study about it, specifically about women in the Bible.

This is an article that I don't particularly love in terms of connotations, but is a good intro.

This article from a Baptist news site addresses current events. (I’m not a Baptist, and don’t know a lot about their theology, but this was a pretty good article.)

I'm not particularly knowledgeable about Revelation, but I hope this gives you something to start with!

- Johanna

#asks

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sadsadmag · 3 years

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Framing Britney Spears: An Underwhelming Portrait

Framing Britney Spears, the new documentary produced for Hulu by the New York times, attempts to revise the popular image of Britney Spears, painting the star as a sacrificial lamb in the face of patriarchal media, legal and family systems. But it wastes it’s broadsheet-paper pedigree by resigning itself to being a slickly-produced, but largely unilluminating celebrity biography of the usual stock.

The contributors who most steer the shape of the film’s story are largely the paper’s own senior editors and reporters. While the archive is clearly well researched and features some obscure picks, the result is a documentary that feels like not so much a piece of investigative reporting as an exercise in retelling while gently revising a well known narrative.

The big “get” for the filmmakers is the participation of Felicia Culotta, Britney’s long-time chaperone, who holds a special place in the heart of Britney fans as an unusually friendly public face for the layers of protection that surround their favourite star. But the documentary’s reliance on the insights she has on Britney the person renders the film closer to a standard hagiographic biography, and loses focus on the ostensible interest of both the title and the first half of the doc; how and why do star images become codified, commodified and abstracted? In this vein, the doc gestures at the now popular idea from star-studies pioneer Richard Dyer, that effective star images are those that manage to satisfy an inherent contradiction. The doc shows us how the young Britney came to represent the virgin and the whore, as a slew of international journalists and talk show hosts line up to ask cringe-inducing questions about her breasts and her virginity. But the film drops this illuminating analytical focus as Britney slides head first into her Hollywood Babylon years.

The film’s attempts to frame her in the first half end up at odds with themselves. The filmmakers frame the young Britney in two ways; as a capable young woman who made things happen, and as a victim of a media machine which could only conceive of her through sexist paradigms and which wanted to mistreat her accordingly. Despite arguing that Britney was never a puppet; that perhaps she used the cards she held to court this type of attention, both in her younger days and when she plunged head first into her time as a paparazzi magnet, the film doesn’t seem to want to touch the reciprocity of Brit ey and fame. The film’s first half is too informed by what the legal proceedings that come in the films second half; it is consistently most interested in young Britney as victim, as a lamb for the slaughter of a sexist media machine, while shying away from giving her credit for how she used that control; Britney courted the attention of the press as it got her where she wanted to be. It was only after a period of unimaginable success that the bargains she struck revealed themselves to be Faustian. Vanessa Grgoriadis’s 2008 Rolling Stone article, “The Tragedy of Britney Spears” offers an alternative vision of a Hollywood hillbilly engineering and thriving on the chaos around her, as much as being victim to it. This tension is only allowed play out in the New York Times’s doc through the interviews with paparazzi who hounded her. Here the film offers the films most heated line of questioning, which result in revealing and honest moments of tension.

“I wanted to be a filmmaker,” bemoans Daniel Ramos, the videographer who provides the film’s window into the world of paparazzi. There’s desperation and ambition on all sides of the lens. Watching back this footage - pulled from news services like Hollywood.tv - one is struck by how the celebrity journalism of the time acquired an aesthetic that perfectly captured the age-old anxieties about Hollywood as a cesspit of moral depravity, meaninglessness and nihilism. At the advent of online video streaming and camera phones, footage of Britney running out of gas station bathrooms is full of digital artefacts and strobing, blown-out for extended periods by machine gun like camera flashes whose creators haunt the edge of the frame. And there’s Britney at the centre acquiring a further unreachable quality; distorted beyond recognition by compression and aliasing; her presence apparent, but the actual details of her actions and movement lost to a 360p youtube streaming form 2008. One feels more intimate with the star than ever yet their humanity is more remote than ever. Chaos and confusion rains both in the content and the form of digital tabloid videos. But the endless procession of different instances of Britney Spears frightened and alone shielding herself from the ceaseless flashes of the Paparazzi’s cameras drives home the humanity of someone at the midst of a decades-long media storm.

The film tries to tell two stories in its scant 75 minute runtime; that of a woman imprisoned by the media, and that of a woman imprisoned by a labyrinthine legal framework by which her father has disposed her of her rights, and made her pay him for this services so that she now faces the unenviable position of endlessly funding opposing teams of lawyers to contest her freedom. These two strands never quite come together, other than in how this once omnipresent star now communicates only via the ouija board that is her Instagram, operated by her conservatorship team interceding the messages she passes from her stultified ivory tower to the land of the living.

It’s this latter thread, about a complex system of direct exploitation aided by the legal system, that one would expect the New York Times to use its investigative clout to explore. This is a celebrity story that exposes how a legal system offers the potential for exploitation as industry; indeed, Courtney Love has alleged one of the architects of Britney’s conservatorship tried to force her into one too. And the film certainly addresses some of the key aspects of the case, without doing any investigating. The film is an interesting product of legacy media unmooring itself from old-media celebrity journalism models of kowtowing to publicists for access. But beyond a few hypothetical comments from lawyers and some conjecture, there’s nothing new revealed or uncovered in this documentary. As with all of Britney’s commodified and reported-on life, it remains a piece of entertainment.

The doc offers plenty of implicit critiques of the media, and seems to have inspired a widespread feeling of shock amongst audiences about how mistreated Britney Spears was at their hands. One must assume those realising how cruelly she was treated were quite happy to unquestionably consume her downfall at the time.

For non-Britney fans, the film provides what I’m sure feels like a new and fresh reappraisal of the career fo a superstar that faded from infamy. But for anyone invested in the stars career or misfortunes, the story told in this film is the only story of Britney Spears for the last fifteen years; someone who has been victimised but refuses to be a victim.

#Britney Spears #Framing Britney Spears #New York Times #Documentary #Review #Film #Cinema #Film Review #90s #y2k #britney #00s #2000s #hollywood #celeb #celebs #celebrity #fame #movie #doc #doco

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crazytarawitch · 3 years

Text

20(ish) Things About Me

tagged by @al-the-grammar-geek (thanks Al! since being back on night shift, I am very in need of time wasting activities) name/nickname: Jas

gender: Nonbinary

star sign: Scorpio, though I don't put stock in it

height: 5′2" (on a good day)

birthday: Halloween

favorite bands: I don't listen to a lot of bands, but I like Florence+The Machine a lot. I also like Hozier, The Dixie Chicks (though I think they're just The Chicks now?), The Mountain Goats, Billy Bragg & Wilco, and The Lumineers, probably others I'm forgetting. Oh! And my dad's old band, The 103 (which my brother and oldest sister were also in and it was pretty cool)

favorite solo artists: Leonard Cohen, Adele, Guy Clark, Patty Griffin, Natalie Merchant, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Sara Bareilles, Meghan Tonjes, Jack Johnson, Ian Tyson, Lucinda Williams, Toni Price...

song stuck in my head: None at the moment, but only cause I'm watching TV; there's basically always something stuck in my head if I'm not watching or listening to something

last movie: I don't remember; we watched a holiday movie about a monster in a small town on Christmas, but I'm not sure if I've watched anything since. Though I guess Frozen was on at work last night and I caught moments of it...

last show: Currently have Critical Role on, though I'm paying very minimal attention. Last regular TV was The Magicians

when did i create this blog: Unsure, guessing maybe about 7 years ago? I remember it was right after I got into Babylon 5

what do i post: who even knows. not much fandom these days, so it's mostly random

last thing googled: an actress from The Magicians

other blogs: none that I use

do i get asks: Very rarely, since I don't really interact anymore. Back when I was more engaged here, occasionally.

why i chose my url: About 17 years ago I found the internet and became CrazyTaraWitch [because I loved Tara Maclay (from Buffy) and though myself to be both crazy and a witch]; I've seen no reason to assume a new identity

following: I don't really pay attention, but a few hundred?

followers: around 500 I think? also not a thing I look at

average hours of sleep: Around 7.5-8 when I work, more like 9 when I don't. And I'm still always tired.

lucky number: 13, 7, and 3

instruments: I mostly just sing, but I have been taking drum lessons for a little over a year - I'm still not very good, but I've made a lot of progress!

what am i wearing: A Steven Universe tshirt and boxers

dream job: Something similar to what I do now but way better! I used to work in infant/toddler child care and that was the best job in the world except the pay was crap, so I went to nursing school in the hopes of finding some sort of work that was roughly medical child care. I am now (finally!) doing the closest work I can find, working as a nurse at a residential facility for kids (or kids-ish - a lot of them are teens and our oldest is 27) with complex medical needs. But I don't actual get to interact with the kids very much and it's not as fun as I hoped, so I want a mish-mash of the best parts of new-job and all the things I miss from early education but with pay equal to or better than new-job. Like, a toddler classroom but all the kids have trachs or seizures or whatever, but it's still a classroom? And I'd be a teacher who happens to be a nurse and provides some nursing care, but I'd be paid like a nurse!

dream trip: I want months to explore Europe with my partner, backpacking at times [cause in dreams I don't have back pain!] and traveling by train and occasionally getting fancy hotel rooms, though in my dream version A) we'd know at least the basics of all the languages; B) it would be super easy to find vegetarian options everywhere we go; C) no one is transphobic to either of us; and D) I still have lots of Euroean internet-friends to meet and hang out with.

nationality: American

favorite song: I'm not sure if it's still my actual favourite, but for years I've said Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah and I'm too lazy to rethink it

last book read: Currently reading To Be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers and a Doctor Who book called The Dark Path. I think the last non-comic-book book I completed was Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchet

top three fictional universes i’d like to live in: Oh man, that's super difficult! I guess the Whoniverse has the possibility to travel with the Doctor, so that would be cool. And Tortall! I mean the universe is kinda shitty and very sexist, but maybe I'd have magic, and I could be a knight! I really can't come up with anything for the third - most fictional universes I interact with are terrible Not tagging anyone, but if you see this and want to do it pretend I tagged you!

#about me #Jas rambles

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