One thing I really appreciate about Into the Spider-Verse that I don’t see people talk about very often is how competent they portray Peter B as.
Like, in any other movie, you’d have a similar character whose live has become a mess, and they’re sad and kinda pathetic to look at, and when the time comes for them to step up, they just sorta…flop. They’re held back by everything, and they just become incompetent.
But Peter B is different. Yeah, he’s a sad, lonely, middle-aged man who cries in the shower while wearing a spandex suit…
And when you think about it, over the course of the movie, he kicks a LOT of ass. He’s a badass super hero, despite his flaws.
You ever notice how, when he puts on the mask, his gut sorta disappears? That’s too big of a detail to be an oversight. That’s intentional. I mean, in-universe, it doesn’t make too much sense, but to us, it’s meant to show that it’s not holding him back from being a hero.
He’s not held down by everything. Yeah, he’s a jaded, depressed, mid-life crisis Spider-Man. But he’s still Spider-Man.
They easily could’ve made Peter B sort of pathetic and had him be more of a hinderance than a help during battles. But they didn’t. And I feel like that was a really good way to pay respect to the character while still showing that he’s a heavily flawed individual.
As @lyricwritesprose has pointed out, Peter B. is really really good at being Spider-Man and really, really crap at being Peter B. Parker.
humans are an essential part of the ecosystem. nearly every ecosystem on earth had humans as an essential part of its function. the earth would be worse off than before if we were gone suddenly overnight. send tweet
I don’t remember dinosaurs drilling for oil and dumping trash everywhere…
very gently: yes. some humans have been doing destruction recently. yes, some humans are living in unsustainable ways. yes, the world is suffering for the actions of the humans who exploit the natural world.
however.
this has not been the case for the vast majority of time. this is not currently the case for many people on the earth right now. we evolved alongside earth’s ecosystems, as they evolved alongside us. we are part of it. we are embedded in the world. we have never been seperate from it, and the idea that we are – that our actions somehow could have no consequences for the world at large – is the mindset that allowed the current crisis to reach where it is.
it’s. hard to truly get a sense of the scale of humans’ existence on the planet– under the readmore i’ve drawn out a rough timeline for you. it is very long, so i’ll put it under the cut.
suffice it to say: humans, homo sapiens, have existed on the earth for 315,000 years. we did not invent agriculture until 11,500 years ago. the industrial revolution, the drilling for oil and dumping plastic? that has happened only in the last 250 years.
we are part of the world. we are in the world. some of us have very, very recently forgotten this fact. but we are remembering, and remembering quickly.
the earth needs us. it needs us to fix the things we’ve gotten wrong, yes. but it also needs us to be humans. to hunt, to burn, to care for the forests and the fields and the grasslands. it has always needed us. we are not interlopers here. we belong. we have simply forgotten our manners.
cannot stop thinking about the bizarre social world of monsters inc
like, first movie, they really have no actual understanding of humans as People, they’re considered like dangerous animals that emit such powerful screams they can be used as energy and will absolutely kill you if they even touch you
so scarers are incredibly brave and heroic for facing that threat to get the essential power their society needs
but now they’ve realized laugh power is even stronger and more ethical, and theres a big difference in how the monsters interact with children now. like imagine if skunk… pheromones? gas? whatever it is that skunks produce. imagine if that was an essential energy source. learning how to scare them to get them to produce it wouldn’t be that complicated. but what if they only did that when they’re amused. what is funny to a skunk? how do you tell a joke to a skunk and have it Understand the humor. especially if generations of skunks have learned to be afraid of you
so even if they never thought of humans as People before, they must be realizing it now, right? these are creatures with comprehension of language and humor. so wouldn’t all the former scarers now be coping with the realization that they are almost definitely the cause of deep childhood trauma for probably several generations of humans
not to mention the Monster In The Closet is a well known childhood fear, monster=scary is a basic fact of human culture, so now the incoming “jokesters” have the insurmountable task of “this being has lived its whole life learning that monsters are scary and bad and will hide in your closet and Get You. now i need to come through the closet and make them laugh somehow”
its not just “they gotta be real good at comedy” they have to somehow navigate a massive cultural shift in a species that has been writing stories about how scary they are since, like, humans began telling stories. and there can be no widescale communication because they still cant interact with adult humans for some reason. how are the adults going to respond to a sudden surge of children across the globe now saying “its okay, monsters are funny and nice actually” especially for the parents who have vague memory they’ve convinced themselves were nightmares of That Thing That Was In My Closet when they were children
someone’s gotta remember, right. especially since we know monsters often will have one child they scare repeatedly, randall was “boo’s monster” to the point she started drawing him. these are not exclusively babies, so someone has to remember their monster. there have to be monster conspiracy theorists out there intensely monitoring closets or like removing the doors from all the closets in their house. i know the monsters would just shred the door if a house proved unsafe for them or not a viable energy source anymore but still
fullmetal alchemist was nuts because “theres a crazy murderer who was executed for his crimes and then had his soul implanted in a suit of armor as part of a twisted government experiment” is a D-plot at best
So, this hasn’t crossed my dash yet. (Not blaming anyone, there is soooo much going on in the world and I’d also missed it in the noise).
There is currently a strike at Frito-Lay. in Topeka. These workers are striking because:
They were being forced to work 84 hour weeks. The company’s best offer so far is a 60 hour cap. This is shit we fought for a century ago, people.
Their generous offer also includes a whole 4 percent wage increase…over the next 2 years. I’m not sure what COL is in Topeka, but… Well, it’s better than the entire 77 cents they’ve apparently gotten in the last decade.
There’s also a report that a worker literally collapsed and dropped dead on the line and the foreman’s response was to make them move the body out of the way and put in a replacement. (However, this is unconfirmed and, of course, the company denies it).
There have been multiple OSHA violations at this plant over the last few years, including a forklift accident that’s under investigation.
They’ve now been striking since July 5 but, of course, it only hit the national media yesterday.
Because Frito-Lay is refusing to budge. They are attempting to make the excuse that union leadership agreed to the 60 hour work week and crappy pay cut…when union leadership only agreed to put it to a vote.
And this means that we need to put the thumbscrews on them. Remember, this is about 19th century style working conditions.
So, I’m calling on my followers to boycott Frito Lay’s until the strike is involved.
Frito-Lay owns:
Lay’s
Doritos (Sorry. I really am. I KNOW there’s no good alternative to Doritos, although Zapp’s are good if you can find them).
Fritos
Tostitos
Cheetos
Ruffles
Sun Chips
Baken-ets
Chester’s
Cracker Jack
Islen plantain chips
Funyuns
Grandma’s (the cookies)
Matador Meat Snacks
Maui style potato chips
Miss Vickie’s
Munchies
Munchos
Rolled Gold
Sabritones
Santitas
Simply
Smartfood
Stacys
The Walking Taco
NatuChips
PopCorners (this one wasn’t on their website, but was bought by Pepsi’s in 2019 with the intent of adding it. So best avoided just in case).
Yes, this really is more than half of the snack aisle. Suggested alternatives:
Kettle Brand Chips
Zapp’s (If you can find them. My supermarket had them once and not since, so I’m guessing the culinary cowards in this neighborhood were afraid of “Voodoo” flavored chips).
Pringles
On the Border for salsa.
Wise Cheez Doodles
Bugles
Utz
Store own brand alternatives, if your store has ones that are any good.
Cheez-its
Check before you buy and let’s tell these people they don’t get to treat workers like that.
This was posted on FB recently by someone supporting the strike!
you people are really out there putting skeletons in negligently small enclosures without any enrichment or socialization smh
You mean coffins? Those are just their beds, are people really believing that’s their whole enclosure??
actually coffins are primarily for TRANSPORT. some skeletons may enjoy using them as a resting area, but that is highly dependent on the individual and the breed (bog skeletons for instance prefer to sleep under the stars or in mud baths). But most people assume those tiny ass coffins work as a daily unliving space, bc that’s all the mortuary supply store sends them home with, when actually that’s as cruel as keeping a goldfish in the plastic bag it came with. Coffins have no room to roam around in! No room for toys or enrichment, hardly any light, and often a concerning lack of cobwebs (necessary fiber supplement!) and halloween decorations.
Oh and fyi keeping skeletons in closets is not any better! do your research before buying or adopting!!!!!
having a 3yo brother means i get exposed to kids’ shows way more often than i thought i would at this point in my life, but man, binge watching thomas the tank engine as an adult is a wild fucking experience
all these trains (and there’s like 20 counting locomotives alone, don’t even get me started on the anthropomorphic train cabins) are MAD competitive the whole time and will constantly fuck up their own whole day by tring to prove they’re the biggest baddest train. and like, i understand that you gotta get you plot from somewhere and i imagine plotlines like this happen in cars etc. as well, but the other day i was watching and i noticed that all these goddamn locomotives have DRIVERS in them. that apparently have no control over their train’s actions at all whatsoever. so these trains wake up, pick up their drivers, go to work, get taunted by another train who’s like “ha ha i see u there with your 4 cabins but did you know i can pull SIX cabins and still fucking book it at 80mph” and the 4 cabin train will be like “fuck it i gotta prove myself now, hook me up with 4 more cabins” and will inevitably derail themselves or some shit while the engine driver just shuts up and kicks back the whole time
i explained this to my brother and was like, is that fucked up or what, but he just pointed at the green train and went “that’s percy” so i guess that’s his take on the situation
OKAY I’M GETTING IN ON THIS BECAUSE I’M MAD AND FULL OF COLA
I worked on that show. For three hideous months of my life, I did this.
And there was this whole unwritten rule structure about the drivers and what they did and when they did it and how/when they needed to act
And there was this weird fucking balance between what the trains did and what the humans did - the drivers would only act when the train can’t do a thing by itself. Hooking up to another car? Driver does it. Need to shift from one track to another? Driver gets out and does it. Loading up one of the cars? Drivers.
See something funny here? BECAUSE I DID. What driver would hear their sentient train say “fuck it i gotta prove myself now, hook me up with 4 more cabins” and NOT respond with “Percy just shut up and drive we have people to transport or the Health and Safety committee is going to breathe fire up both our asses”???
Naw, they hear their giant fucking trains with giant fucking faces whining about how they are getting old and outdated and how they need to prove themselves by doubling their reasonable capacity and they go “welp, okay” and they get out and they hook up those cabins.
Otherwise, the trains had total autonomy to do whatever petty competitive shit the plot of the day demanded that they do. Go way too fast and end up breaking because they wanted to race a new and not outdated engine that’s actually built for speed? They do that. Go 100% the wrong direction because they wanted to show their friends a thing they got loaded up with and end up ruining it? No probbo, Bobbo. Disobey directions given by Sir Topham Hatt HIMSELF because they’re too proud? You do the thing buddy. Strain way too fucking hard to carry 8 fucking cabins when they were only built for 4? YOU GO FOR IT YOU MORON TRAIN.
SO WITH ALL THAT HERE’S MY THEORY that I had to develop because it was either that or never stop drinking ever again
Those drivers? They never speak to each other, never acknowledge the existence of any humans. They get in the train, go with the train, fix the train, load or unload the train. That is all they do.
They’re not human.
They are symbiotic extensions of the trains. They are a combination of the birds that eat parasites off hippos and fucking Boston Dynamics style robots where literally all they do is whatever shit their designated Train Of The Day deems worthy of their time.
With no task to fulfil, they are thoughtless beings. WATCH THEM. They look around at nothing. They blink. Sometimes they lean on the edge of the window. 99.5% of the time, they do nothing, they see nothing, they interact with nothing. They are shaped in such a way as to avoid unsettling the real humans of the world, but are below humans in almost every way - Sir Topham Hatt never speaks to them directly in the way he speaks to the engines.
If the train derails and it’s possible that a human driver would be severely injured? It’s fine, because they’re not actually human. They crumple into a heap of non-euclidian geometry and then rebuild themselves like an inflatable snowman. Their recovery is fuelled by the years of poor decisions they’ve helped enable - all this time they’ve been feeding off the intellect of these trains.
Why do the trains never learn from their mistakes? Why, after more than 30 years, are they still getting stuck, taking on more weight than they should know they can handle, still derailing themselves?
Because these symbiotic train extensions need their slice of the pie. They must feed. And what’s more cost effective than sandwiches? Thought. 30 years of quiet leeching, giving the trains enough processing power to do their jobs, but not so much that the trains don’t need them anymore.
The trains are in a constant state of developmental hiatus because of the drivers themselves.
NOW YOU MAY BE THINKING, this seems weird and unusual. Why would Sir Topham Hatt allow for this? Wouldn’t it be more cost effective for the trains to be able to learn from their mistakes and become better workers?
And to that I ask you… from this entire operation, hauling coal, hauling people, hauling animals, being “really useful”… what do the trains get out of this? They are kept alive and maintained, but neither are they allowed their own independent thought, or their own free time or interests. Everything they do is done under orders of Sir Topham Hatt.
And without the brainpower to devote to critical thought, they are unable to see how their petty struggles to be better than each other only reinforces the system where they are coerced into being “really useful”, above all else.
WAKE UP SHEEPLE
did not expect to wake up today to thomas the tank engine discourse and unsettlingly well-thought-out conspiracy theories..but at the same time, in this day and age, i really cant say im surprised
Many lgbt teenagers and young adults growing up on the internet today have socially conservative beliefs that they voice at all times that they got from their conservative parents which they’ve never challenged because they think the life experience of being gay or trans makes them politically progressive
This is why I hate it when people say something homophobic and then go “so you’re really accusing me, a whole ass lesbian, of being homophobic 🙄” like yeah
I think there’s also a thing where people will learn to use the proper words and phrases when discussing a specific topic without ever having engaged in any sort of critical thought about the topic itself. So you end up with people who will buy into any idea as long as it’s expressed with the right combination of buzzwords. That’s why you have a bunch of young, ostensibly progressive, mostly well-intentioned people just thoughtlessly reblogging terfs and weird religious hysterics all the time on here.
the only reason #cottagecore is considered a gen z thing is bc its a hashtag. it used to be called transcendentalism when offline men did it
Henry David Thoreau having all of his meals sent to him and laundry done while patting himself on the back for being such a back-to-the-land individualist: #simpleliving #aesthetic #waldenpond #cottagecore
trans guy 1: dude how did you grow an adam’s apple
trans guy 2: sheer force of will
this was from my freshman year of college, shortly after I came out, when someone sent me to hang out with these two (somehwat) older trans guys to show me that it was gonna be okay
one of them told me about how he got his gender marker changed before it was technically allowed. what he did was he waited until he grew a beard, and then he walked into the dmv and pointed at the f on his liscense and said “there’s been a mistake” and they were like “oh sorry about that sir”
honestly phrasing all that “change” stuff to companies and organizations as “correction” works WONDERS
just say “I need to correct the marker” or “I need to correct the information on file” instead of “change it” and it’s so much fucking smoother
Fuck the Olympics. Putting the nationalism of it aside for a second, the absolute nonsense happening this year with it is ridiculous. Disqualifying Sha’carri Richardson for smoking weed after she found out from a reporter that her mother died? Absolutely disgusting. Banning BLM apparel and afro swimming caps? Straight up racist. Deeming two cisgender Black women (Namibia’s Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi) ineligible for female classification because their natural testosterone levels were considered too high? A direct consequence of transphobia that the queer community has been saying would happen, an example of intersexism, and an example of misogynoir!
Used to be a fandom blog but after this past election I'd suggest blocking 'us politics' if you don't want that mess on your dash.
Still posting Megamind, Undertale, Steven Universe, Gravity falls and several others. Multishipper, everything should be tagged. "gnd" stands for "gloom and doom" and is what I tag stuff that's anxiety-inducing.
