monsterblogging

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#how much cheese is too much cheese

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I’m so emotional about dinosaur stuffed animals,,, there are these creatures, extinct long before any of us were alive, but we found their bones and their eggs and their footprints. And we made drawings and models of what they could’ve looked like. And we made them into stuffed animals so we could hold them. We made them soft so we could love them. I’m sobbing

#dinosaurs #toys #humanity

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First you procrastinate on the task because it is not a big enough deal to get done urgently. Then you procrastinate on the task because it has become such a big deal that doing it is overwhelming. You would think that this implies a middle point where it is just big enough of a deal to get done easily, however the inherent perversity of the universe's causal geometry prevents this

#executive dysfunction

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At some point in your life, you were taught that being slightly annoying is an unforgivable sin. Maybe it was by your parents or a teacher or a friend or a bully or an older sibling. But someone taught you that being slightly annoying is a crime punishable by death.

You must unlearn this.

You must accept that all people will be annoying at some point or another in their lives, maybe all of their lives, and that this is okay. It is okay for strangers on the bus, it is okay for children in the grocery store, it is okay for people on social media, and it is okay for you.

If you ever want to truly love your fellow humans, if you ever want to truly love yourself, you must have forgiveness for being annoying.

#skills #life skills

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#skills #life skills #the magic schoolbus

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#funny #video

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So this post I reblogged has got me thinking about humanity loss as a trope and the way it's treated. And just to clear things up for anyone who might be confused, I'm talking about stories that involve some amount of physical transformation (with possibly some amount of mental transformation), not just "losing your humanity" in the moral sense. (Though the idea that compassion = human is itself incredibly flawed, but we're not getting into that right now.)

So like, there is media where portraying loss of humanity as a bad thing actually makes sense - specifically, where it's a metaphor for something that's actually bad. The first example that comes to mind is where turning people into robots or cyborgs is used as a metaphor for the dehumanization of laborers. Rich fucks in real life want to treat workers like machines, so it's kind of a natural step to write fiction where it's presented a bit more literally. Or there's stories like Resident Evil 4, where transformation is an allegory for religious radicalization, because the bummer truth is that people who've been radicalized are more often than not impossible to reason with and either want to make you one of them or kill you. When the major bad guys turn into giant monsters, it's an allegory for wielding corrupt power.

(And for those of you out there going, "but people can be deradicalized???", I am with you! And this is why I think a lot of these narratives need to lighten up on the "oh no once you hit Certain Stage of Change there's no going back!!!" stuff.)

But then there's like... the people who miss the metaphor or have very chauvinist views, and oop - there is no allegory now (or at least, not much of one), and we get stories that effectively inform us that becoming too Other means we're no longer deserving of compassion, respect, autonomy, or even life. Like, you can tell that you're dealing with the kind of person who just doesn't really believe in universal human rights, or in people exercising too much autonomy. And I think it's very natural to have an "oh, fuck you" kind of response to this kind of thing.

And then sometimes there is an allegory, and the author is targeting queer people, communists, foreigners, or anybody the establishment isn't really a fan of. Once you realize that the author is just bullshitting, I think it's only natural to think that there could be another side to this story.

And I think it's also fair to ask ourselves if transformation into Something Else could be an allegory for something that isn't actually bad. Maybe getting in tune with some aspect of nature triggers changes; like you grow gills and fins after hanging out in the water for so long. Maybe this upsets the sensibilities of the people back home, but quite frankly it's none of their business where you choose to spend your time and what you allow to happen to your body. Or maybe the cult leader turned you into their perfect weapon, and maybe that process was traumatic, but what happens when you regain your autonomy? Are the abilities you gained inherently bad, or does it come down to what you choose to do with them? Do you really deserve to die just because your body has a different shape now and there's no way to undo it?

And sometimes transformations brings on various forms of disability, or the experiences the characters go through are very similar to the experience of being disabled in some way, which can make them very relatable to some people. When you see something about yourself in these characters, it's only natural to want them treated as a person who deserves compassion and accommodation, rather than nothing more than a dangerous monster.

Add into this that nonhuman characters in general are constantly given characteristics associated with autism, ADHD, and even trauma. Factor in that the temptation of turning into a creature who isn't expected to act "human" (read: neurotypical) so you can be released from burdening expectations. Factor in the desire to be free from anything considered "human," period. And don't forget the whole otherkin/alterhuman thing. Then of course there's the thrill of the idea of experiencing a novel form, of seeing how it feels to move in a differently-shaped body and exploring what you can do with it. And the temptation of stimming with a tail. And also the fact that people's bodies and minds will change throughout their lives and that's fine, actually. Nobody owes it to you or anyone to be the same forever.

So yeah, works of fiction that depict "losing your humanity," as in changing your physical body and rewiring your brain in a way that people find strange as inherently bad and morally wrong are crap. Change is nature, and if somebody wants try out life as a dragon that should be none of anybody else's fucking business.

#transformation #humanity #losing humanity #media #tropes #monsters #monster

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worried that thing you put in your art or writing or game or music is too self-indulgent, too self-referential, too niche for anyone but yourself? fear not! you can do whatever you want forever. and you should.

#art #writing

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Love how defensive the dimension20 crew are of their boundaries. Last week Siobhan made some error (I forget what it was) and she just told the camera that anyone who tries to give her shit about it will be blocked immediately on all social media. Murph says the Honor the Cock thing and the crew spends a good 5 minutes of Adventuring Party riffing about how random strangers shouldn't walk up and tease him about it. These people have experienced being a public figure having to weather through months or years of thousands of oh-so-hilarious people beating a stupid running joke into the ground and it shows. They know how to build the boundaries they need to fucking survive.

#honestly #boundaries

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Last night I dreamed I found Tendo Choi's original bio, and it said that when he was a baby, he couldn't resist chasing his parents' laser pointer around. (There was an implication that he'd still chase around a laser pointer as an adult.)

#pacific rim #pacific rim 2013 #tendo choi

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#hee hee #owen harper #torchwood #relatable #though also I have taught myself to do less complaining and more channeling my irritation into informative content and analysis and art #and watching those posts go viral is incredibly satisfying #but anyway

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Absolutely livid that every work of fiction under the sun depicts "losing your humanity" as something inherently bad and morally wrong.

"I'm not human anymore and that makes me automatically evil and bad in every way possible and now you have to kill me for the plot" Yeah sure thing buddy get bent.

"I'm not human anymore and it's okay because I don't need to be a human in order to be capable of giving and receiving love, and you know what? I think I'm better this way." Oh sweetheart I understand completely and I love you so much. Come here you kind beautiful inhuman little thing

#oh my god this #media #tropes #humanity

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Every* Type of Mecha

*Not Actually Every Type.

Something I spent WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much time on lol. This is entirely just riffing off of the many 'kinds' or 'tropes' in mecha design I found. Feel free to suggest more of them.

Might make a document providing examples for each one, but idk. I think most of these are pretty self-explanatory.

Tell me your favourites below

#oho #hee hoo #mechs #giant mechs

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Happy World Frog Day from all of the Totally Normal Frogs 🐸

#frogs #art

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Back when I used to walk around my college in a corduroy blazer and slacks I didn't call it "dark academia" I called it "professor drag" and the purpose was to smoothly walk into parts of campus I wasn't supposed to access

#hee

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I made a thing because I thought it might be useful.

#pacific rim #pacific rim 2013 #jaegers #jaeger #giant mecha

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Here's a li'l Pacific Rim canon 101 document I made to try and briefly sum up the essential elements of Pacific Rim's original worldbuilding. (It's way deeper than most people realize! What you see in the movie is just the tip of the iceberg.) Information is sourced from the film, del Toro, Beacham, Tales From Year Zero, the novelization, and the artbook. Errors from any given source are accounted for as much as possible.

#pacific rim #pacific rim 2013 #pacific rim lore #jaeger #jaegers #kaiju