COMICS AND COMICS

Y’all, Brennan Mejia, age 27, from Power Rangers Dino Charge, is born to play Dick. He knows circus arts (including aerials) and martial arts, and is adorable af? And he does personal training. I can’t speak for his acting, but his twitter is a stream of sunshine and handstands:

Plus he liked the Justice League movie and is a Superman fan.  Not to mention being able to pull of that crazy costume that I just reblogged. I can’t find the original source but who else can pull off this Discowing look like:

Oh right, and he makes terrible jokes:

TRUTHY MCJUSTICE:

1. Cinnamon roll.

2. Is from Krypton(the planet not the periodic element) but it got blewed up.

3. Raised by some farm people who are also cinnamon rolls.

4. Arch-nemesis is Mister Clean.

5. Back in the old days he had a new power every other issue.

6. Dies and then un-dies a lot.

7. The original supaheroh.

8. BFFs with BatDad. They prolly lowkey gay for each other tho.

9. Rly hard 2 kill.

10. Gets his powers with photosynthesis.

WARRIOR PRINCESS:

1. Usually stuck as the only girl.

2. DOES NOT HATE MEN. THE WHOLE POINT OF HER CHARACTER IS EQUALITY. GET THAT THRU UR THICK SKULLS. LOOKIN AT U BRUCE TIMM.

3. Lowkey bi.

4. The den mother.

5. Biggest badass in the history of badasses.

6. Super catchy theme song.

7. Her lasso is basically a glorified lie detector that can also be used as a weapon.

8. Her villains need more love.

9. Prolly secretly ships SuperBat and HalBarry.

10. IS FINALLY STARRING IN A MOVIE NEXT YEAR HOLD ME.

BATDAD:

1. Is an orphan.

2. Can’t stop adopting other orphans.

3. Hates clowns.

4. Very dramatic.

5. Seems everyone he cares about has died at some point. :/

6. Kinda emo.

7. Jerk with a heart of gold.

8. Names everything after bats for some reason? Like the bat-toilet, is that rly necessary?

9. Has like 4 sons who all look the same.

10. Does not eat nachos. Except he does, cuz everyone luvs nachos.

SHARKNADO:

1. Sexiest superhero alive tbh.

2. Superfriends highkey ruined his reputation.

3. He’s gettin’ a lot more love now tho.

4. Rules 70% of the planet. Get on his level people.

5. Communicates with marine life(”talks to fish” was too obvious).

6. Somehow makes orange and green look good together.

7. V badass.

8. Eveyone loves his hook hand but I think they need to bring the magic water hand back.

9. Gives no fucks.

10. Can control the sharks, but not the tornado.

MOLDY GREEN BEAN.

1. I’m highkey gay for him.

2. Typical str8 white boi except he’s actually bi.

3. People hate him simply because he wasn’t in the JL cartoon, which is literally the worst reason to hate a character ever.

4. He and Speedy Gonzales are highkey gay 4 each other but won’t admit it.

5. Space cop.

6. He lik 2 fly.

7. Human disaster.

8. Fucks everything up.

9. Deserves better treatment from both the writers and the fans.

10. Apparently the executives at WB hate him simply because his first movie was bad. It wasn’t even THAT bad, it was just “eh.”

SPEEDY GONZALES:

1. Ur too slow! Cum on step it up!

2. Adorkable cinnamon roll.

3. Took me forever to find a pic for him cuz most of the pics of google images were the TV show version.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

4. Also gets flack for not being in the JL cartoon, tho not nearly as much as his boyfriend.

5. Okay, I’m gonna say it-his canon love interest is a poor man’s Lois Lane.

6. I’m gay for him too.

7. His evil twin used some slightly confusing time-travel crap to kill his mom.

8. Good at cooking.

9. Can travel thru time and thru alternate dimensions/universes/timelines/whatever term u wanna use it’s all the same thing.

10. If the Rebirth reboot gets rid of his blond hair simply because neither of his live-action actors are blond I will legit kill someone.

TIN MAN:

1. Half the man he used to be.

2. Some people r still kinda salty about him replacing Marvin on the JL, but I think he brings a lot more to the team than Marvin. Not that I don’t like Marvin, cuz I luv Marvin, but still.

3. He’s like Iron Man except he’s not a pompous ass.

4. My son. I will protect him.

5. Needs an arch-enemy rly badly.

6. In fact, needs more rogues period.

7. Likes football.

8. Known for shouting outdated slang terms like “Booyah!”

9. Usually stuck as the only black guy, no matter what team he’s on.

capitalism as a theory of wealth actually grew out of the enlightenment movement, which rejected the medieval stance that humans are inherently sinful.  also, medieval christians (like, the ones who started feudalism) were not as pessimistic as we tend to think, but i’m not a medievalist so i’m not gonna dig into that

except to note that feudalism, actually, is a system that very much admits that humans live in dynamic and overlapping webs of interdependency.  are feudalism’s dependency webs healthy and good? no. but you can’t lump feudalism and capitalism together like this

western individualism builds out of the OPPOSITE mindset as what this post suggests.  it is build from the mindset that says, “humans are inherently really nothing at all other than rational, and with the right education, they can use that rationality to reach true perfection”.  are there problems with this?  yes!  1. we now know that actually, humans aren’t really that rational, and 2. people who wanted to embrace enlightenment principles without accepting their ramifications (letting women vote, ending slavery, abolishing social castes) became very good at making excuses and dividing the world into rational people (educated white men) and irrational people (everyone else).

CAPITALISM is a theory of wealth that replaced MERCANTILISM. mercantilism says that we should only care about the wealth of a nation, and that said wealth is measured in gold, and that our chief concern should be maximizing said gold.  I know capitalism has many bad aspects but let’s have a reminder of what mercantilism led to:

a. the invasion of the Americas and enslavement of its people b. the Transatlantic Slave Trade c. a race to colonize and subjugate every part of the world that wasn’t Europe

okay so cool.  That’s mercantilism.  Capitalism actually was a big step up in saying, hey wait, maybe… gold… isn’t all that matters? Value matters?  And value kind of changes depending on supply and demand etc etc etc

We know its faults.  But it is an economic theory, not a political one. What it does say about human nature is that humans are ultimately rational and independent actors who can always make choices.  The flaw there is not a dim view of humanity.  It’s too OPTIMISTIC of a view of humanity.  We aren’t that rational and we aren’t that free, so capitalism’s best theories end up being like 90% bullshit when actually examined in practice

okay so, where does this idea that people are greedy fit in?  around the time that capitalism is being adopted people start saying, okay, we know that people CAN be educated to be virtuous, but honestly, they usually aren’t, so let’s make sure our systems leverage humanity’s nature to be somewhat self-serving. yeah, this gives us our shitty version of capitalism. it also gives us direct democracy and universal suffrage, though, because they decide that maybe people who aren’t perfectly educated “enlightened” rich dudes should still be able to vote.

marxism builds on enlightenment thinking. when marx blames religion for deluding the proletariat? that’s like some straight-up enlightenment crap. the idea that we’d all be nice to each other and govern ourselves without much government intervention if only we didn’t have an imbalanced approach to surplus? 100% state-of-nature, only like a hop-skip away from locke (honestly even to the point where both marx and locke say that labor adds value to a thing and creates a kind of ownership – locke uses this to justify private property, while marx uses this to set up a theory of wage theft). they disagree on lots of stuff but both marxism and liberalism have fairly optimistic views of human nature!

Darren Aronofsky’s 2014 Noah is a cinematic debate between anarcho-primitivism and class-stratified empire. Noah (the primmie) aids in the mass slaughter of thousands in order to revive an idyllic natural past “untainted” by “unnatural” humanity; Tubal-cain (the imperial) is a violent king who rules over an impoverished city, and he personifies the worst traits of classism, patriarchy, and war. Noah justifiably argues that no kings should exist, but he’s a blatant hypocrite who rules his family with a patriarchal fist; Tubal-cain justifiably champions the survival of humanity in the face of crisis, but he’s a Machiavellian chauvinist who still sees other people and animals as pawns for his own advancement.

The movie’s thematic conclusion is that you shouldn’t side with either one of these assholes. Noah’s family is reasonable and empathetic – they care deeply about preserving the natural world (as Noah taught them), but they aren’t okay with sacrificing all of humanity on the altar of nature. They want to bring others aboard the ark, both before and after the flood. Ham, the “covetous” sinful son according to Noah, stands up to Noah by telling him that a girl he tried to save was innocent and good, fully deserving of a place in the new world (with the broader implication being that many, many people Noah let drown were innocent and good). They are the reconciled “middle” in the cinematic debate.

In that sense, the movie at times feels like it was written by Murray Bookchin: capitalism is rightfully condemned for the conditions it subjects humanity to and the destruction it unleashes onto the environment, but the solution isn’t to retreat back into a prelapsarian “Garden of Eden” mythology that would in effect kill billions. If you’ll excuse my appeal to “centrism”, somewhere in the middle between naturalism and industrialism really is the answer, and Noah does a surprisingly good job at fleshing that dilemma out.

They Hide Their Green Faces Under A Hood

They Steal Lots Of Coins To Buy Food

They’ll Never Kidnap Me And Take Me To Their Brood

But Man,

favorite fancasts:: wheel of time edition

matrim cauthon

Summary: John and Mary Grayson die; Dick becomes Robin. This is everything that happens in between, a/k/a, how Gotham City ripped one family and identity from Dick and gave him another.

An origin story in the Rebirth spirit, weaving together threads from Tec #40, Dark Victory, Robin: Year One, New 52, and more.  

Dick just wanted to go back to the circus, to go back to his normal life, waving to crowds and flying through the air. But instead he was in a giant cave under a giant mansion in (outside of?) Gotham, swiftly becoming part of a billionaire’s cobbled-together family and trying to solve a murder. And the worst part? He sort of liked it.

The last of my Very Grayson Christmas (slash Valentine’s I guess) haul arrived! My collection is now a challenge to hold with one hand. And I wish I could’ve had the Grayson Omnibus on top because that cover is breathtakingly gorgeous, but uh, physics.

Discowing Funko Pop is the crowning glory.

Suddenly all those Hinterlands quests to go round up a random farmer’s druffalo don’t  seem so silly.

Dragon Age Inquisition - doing something right.

Like, some of my best and oldest friends I’ve never called anything but their surname. I can’t IMAGINE using their given name, it’s just too weird.

(a) Using surnames only in the US is a really weird thing to do outside of like, a certain kind of bro culture.  I’ve never heard actual mature adults do it outside of the military and a few specific people who just prefer to go by their surnames.  Even like, in my work, where all the students call us by surnames, people I never see are referred to by their first names when it’s just adults talking.  In DC Comics, you sometimes get Bruce or Damian referring to people by their surnames and it’s like, an intentionally jarring distancing thing.

(b) So yeah, it’s definitely a conscious thing.  The Avengers have a much less cozy relationship and one that’s more of a military feel TBQH as Shield brings them together.  It makes sense for Natasha and Clint and Nick Fury to refer to people by surname in the way that like.. Scully and Mulder are Scully and Mulder, not Dana and Fox, except for family.

But the League IS like a family.  Like, you may have personally clashes, but they all chose to come together to work with each other.  There’s no outside agency.  It’s just Bruce being like, hey, we could use you.  And Diana and Clark are both SO WARM and folksy that having a surname basis wouldn’t fit and the team is usually really warm to match it.

(Still better MOVIES than most superhero movies, I think, but not at all in-character. I wonder if Nolan just wanted to make movies about fear drugs, crazy clowns, and sympathetic fascism/law-and-order and figured Batman would work. Also I’m pretty sure his Gotham is just Chicago, which makes it immediately inferior.)

having best stuff first makes it so a lot of content creators’ edits and gifs get buried by other posts, so if you want to see your dashboard in… you know… chronological order (still don’t understand why social media keeps thinking we want anything but that) make sure you go: