jumpingjacktrash:

ok a followup from my irony post: one of the things i love most about steve rogers as seen in the mcu is that he doesn’t do the thing that ‘feels right’ or looks most virtuous or american or whatever, he’s not sentimental, he knows what hell is like because he has been there and it’s called the western front. he grew up sick and poor and irish catholic when there was no kindness for those things in the american narrative, he is not the kind of guy who thinks everything will turn out okay if you just believe in yourself.

he doesn’t do what he feels is the right thing, he does what he decides is the right thing. and sometimes it feels terrible, and has terrible consequences. at no point in ‘civil war’, for instance, does he seem to think his decision is The Right Choice and tony’s is Wrong. he knows there was no right answer, only two wrong ones, and he picked the one he could live with. and people bled for it.

i wouldn’t say he’s a ‘logic’ character, he’s not that trope, but he is secretly, subtly, ruthlessly thoughtful.

so when he does something like, say, become a fugitive from the entire world within minutes of hearing there’s a shoot-first order out on bucky, it’s not that blind emotional panic that drives so many heroes. it’s as cold and unstoppable as a glacier.

an emotionally driven hero has, inherently, a sense of entitlement about the outcome of their choices. if you believe in your friends, if you tell the truth when you ought to lie, if you refuse to take the kill shot because heroes don’t kill, things will definitely turn out okay in the end somehow. and of course the narrative always supports this, because that’s the genre, that’s the trope set. there’s no room for a counterpoint in their universe.

and then there’s captain fucking america.

look, i’m sleep-deprived and haven’t planned this post out at all so it’s probably kind of a mess, but what i’m getting at here is that the ‘golden boy’ of superheroes, the star spangled man with a plan, this corny, schmaltzy, old-timey character, isn’t light because the darkness hasn’t touched him. he’s light because he set his jaw and marched into the darkness and he set it the fuck on fire.

tl;dr i love steve rogers a lot the end.

hedgiwithapen:

lesbianshepard:

lesbianshepard:

there’s an educational trivia game at the citadel on the exhibits on different planets called “Dog or Not?” that shows pictures of various four legged mammals and asks if they’re a breed of dog.

it was mainly for kids to learn about the diversity of earth’s flora and fauna but it became popular with adult aliens too and had to be shut down after almost causing no less than three diplomatic incidents.

they brought it to the nexus and it’s caused two more so far

“That’s definitely a dog.” “Incorrect. This is actually an animal called a ‘raccoon’” “What? No! It’s got the ears and the tail!”

“Okay, okay, I got this. That’s not a dog. It’s way too big it’s uhhh I think humans call them bears.” “Incorrect. This is a dog breed called a ‘newfoundland’” 

*indignant alien voice*: That’s not even an animal that is a cleaning implement, a…broom? no, a mop. that is a mop.

“We’re sorry, that is incorrect. The 

Komondor mimics the look of the ‘mop’, though it is unclear if the first mop were made from…”

Soon after A Wizard of Earthsea came out in England it received a review in a science-fiction periodical which took the book to task for being “consolatory” and “reassuring”. Well, fair enough, I thought, if the consolation is false, if the reassurance is unwarranted; but are consolation and reassurance inherently false, unwarranted — foolish, soft, silly, childish — sentimental? Are we writers only to threaten, terrify, and depress our readers with our ruthless honesty: have we not as good a right to offer them whatever comfort we’ve come by honestly?

ursula le guin

(via sixohsixoheightfourtwo)

Source: sixohsixoheightfourtwo

academicfeminist:

kiwianaroha:

eatprayvalkyrie:

kaijuvsgiantrobotsvsme:

ripplesfromawaterlily:

fuck-me-barnes:

tessalynn:

A snippet from an article on Huffington Post about what it means to be working poor.

Pretty spot on…

I got into an argument today with someone who is a landlord, and they were outraged, outraged, to find that their evicted tenants owned an Xbox 360. Never mind that the console was ten years old and worth perhaps $50 on Craigslist, they were outraged that their evicted tenants did not sell it, along with the very clothes on their back, to pay their back rent. I tried to explain to him that when you are $1800 in back rent, $50 isn’t even a dent in that debt. Why bother? Why bother selling that $50 item if it isn’t going to get you any less evicted? If it’s not going to save you, you’ll hold on to it. Money becomes meaningless when you’ll never have enough to hold onto. You just let it flow like water through your hands. It’s all gone anyways, no matter what you do. It was gone before it ever touched you.

The other day I got very mad at someone because their justification of why a family didn’t deserve their council house was because they had decorated the front of their house with xmas lights. DO YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE TO LIVE WITH NO SMALL PLEASURES AT ALL?!?!? DO YOU REALLY?!?!

This is one of the great end results of capitalism: we treat people as if the only thing they should care about are their mechanical needs but without things to nourish the soul or the capacity to talk about same, we fall apart.

We aren’t meant to be things which sit in blank boxes waiting to be used by our employers.  Nothing in nature acts that way.  Nothing’s meant to.

The source article:  ”This Is Why Poor People’s Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense”

#um this topic makes me fucking furious#i will do a murder immediately#don’t#not only are small pleasures necessary to keep from SPIRALING INTO DEPRESSION WHEN YOU ARE POOR but they are STATUS MARKERS#you NEED a fucking phone to get a job#you need a fucking SMARTPHONE to be accepted as a normal person#you need nice clothes to be treated like you’re worth something#especially if you’re a poor poc#everyone sit down#think about this if you haven’t before#smashes a vase#fuck capitalism

When I started playing the Sims, this aggressive need to micromanage the lives of poor people suddenly made sense; to them, poor people aren’t really human with human needs and frailty, they are just mindless avatars designed to follow orders. When you don’t think of poor people as having souls, suddenly it makes perfect sense to tell them to sell their few pleasures for the benefit of the wealthy landlords. 

^^^^^^^^^