Happy Ides Of March’s Eve! Remember To Leave Outside Your Door A Knife And A Glass Of Wine Tonight

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a letter a day from “Letters to Milena” by Franz Kafka every single day starting from January 1. alongside the letter, i’ll also send a poem and an artwork recommendation inspired by the letter of that day.

weekly~ poetry and book recommendations

weekly~ art recommendations

thank youuu 🌼

That infamous prison escape.

I am consuming a media and you are going to hear about it

i literally can’t listen to tik tok by kesha without thinking about that goddamn star trek tos fanvid…you know the one

I don’t think anime vs western animation are as different as people claim due to the fact they have inspired and fed off each other for decades (they’re friends!!), however I do think our environmental messages to kids are… significantly and interestingly different

whereas, say Ghibli films express a deep Shinto-based respect and reverence for nature:

fighting for it as a means of both self-preservation and expression of heroism revolving around justice

and a matter of other groups of humans (the government often) going up against the stalwart youth

This is contrasted to western animation which tends to be like…. hey! look at this funny bat! And pollution is an evil spirit you can fight like physically 

that isn’t to say the west doesn’t depict environmentalism as heroic and even involving collective action, Captain Planet is a good example of this

but individualism is still very present, the struggle is stalwart youths versus an individual or individual corporation, hell, sometimes you even get a sympathetic backstory for the corporation and weirdly cool rock song

to be clear, antagonists like Lady Eboshi in Princess Mononoke are sympathetic too, but it is… different, Lady Eboshi is trying to survive due to circumstances but it is all of Irontown that represents a system of corruption

In comparison, there is this western idea of corruption coming from individuals rather than systems as well as the fact they aren’t trying to save nature because we are part of it, but because nature itself is a person and thus worthy of respect

In Fern Gully the fairy’s represent nature, the Lorax represents nature, Captain Planet is literally just nature, all things we can talk to and relate to, where in Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa the ultimate nature spirits are something you can’t talk to and are frankly terrifying, awe-inspiring, and mighty

Western epistemology is heavily rooted in Christianity which says that man has dominion over fish of the sea, fowl of the air, and creatures of the land, ect, which leads to a utilitarian and separate view of nature– what can it do for us as separate (higher) beings, and the only way to combat this view is to say “actually nature is a person and thus worthy of protection”

Whereas Japanese Shintoism has much more emphasis on the idea that we are all part of a whole with nature, nature is the ultimate divine with nothing more important than the other, and something worthy of protection not because we can understand it, but because we can’t

“It’s a mistake to think about nature from the idea of efficiency, that forests should be preserved because they are essential to human beings”– Hayao Miyazaki

this is not to completely bash western animation, it does have other strengths such as emphasizing children’s relationship to empathy, empathy toward others in “Toy Story” and empathy toward themselves in “Inside Out” 

However, our methods of conveying environmentalism could use some updating and steering away from “goofy” and “relatable” and maybe a little more terror and awe involved with fighting the good fight

imagine if the oceans were replaced by forests and if you went into the forest the trees would get taller the deeper you went and there’d be thousands of undiscovered species and you could effectively walk across the ocean but the deeper you went, the darker it would be and the animals would get progressively scarier and more dangerous and instead of whales there’d be giant deer and just wow

fuck him on the senate floor friday

Spock, writing in his journal: When I was a child, I thought it was mere coincidence that my forefather, Solkar, was... intimately friendly with humans, just like my own father

Spock: I have reason to be concerned there is more to it than that

Spock: Maybe some bizarre genetic sequencing?

Spock: The point is, if the Captain rips his shirt open one more time the control I have over my few human emotions may falter

Spock: At the very least, my body will assuredly betray me

Spock: I might even take his hand in mine, unprompted

Despite it all, Stray Souls slayed sometimes

Gender is confusing, but:

I am a mix between Harry and Rosie from mamma mia, and I think that says a lot