Where the Falling Angel Meets the Rising Ape

she’s so tired

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

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Zuko, freshly scarred: I had a dream that Uncle and I were clinging to a piece of driftwood for weeks before we ended up at a lovely spa and tended to and all my injuries were healed up

#I think there are explanations other than prophetic dreams but this is funnier#like for example him looking in the mirror and seeing air nomad tattoos is probably#just a manifestation of his anxiety around helping aang and what that means about him#but considering Zuko's grandfather is a former avatar and he later joins aang#that is a very funny dream for him to have#I vote Zuko has been having prophetic dreams this whole time but they involve a lot of symbolism#and he Does NOT do symbolism#so he's just like hm. yeah that was weird#and then when life poetically mirrors his prophetic dreams he doesn't even notice#This never comes up during his life time but some historian eventually uncovers his dream journal and finds it pretty blatantly#predicts every major event from his lifetime and beyond#and it ignites massive debate about how this foreknowledge was affecting his decisions as a head of state#hint: it wasn't (@an-android-in-a-tutu)

#listen not to read too much into the one line about love among the dragons#but zuko definitely knows about poetic symbolism but he doesn't believe in prophetic dreams due to thinking it's old man stuff for his uncle (@rogha)

#zuko thinks the curtains are blue and nothing else#prince ‘…which could mean nothing’ zuko (@averagemrfox)

#apollo throws the dodgeball and it just bounces off zuko @noccolibroccoli)

#Zuko being the spirit’s favored Normal Human (along w Sokka)#and him doing absolutely nothing with it#bc it never strikes him as relevant#(as opposed to Sokka who knows about the spirits but actively chooses to ignore them)#(out of spite and non-belief) (@seaglassdinosaur)

#sokka who had Multiple close encounters with spirits. still thinks they’re total bs#🫱🏽‍🫲🏼#zuko who has prophetic vision and thinks they’re total bs (@aneclecticmoonchild)

#zuko 🤝 sokka#yes I've had encounters with the supernatural no I don't believe in it (@emkini)

#he's that guy#the one who has prophetic visions but also impostor syndrome so he's like 'ugh it's just weird dreams'#'prince zuko have you considered maybe you have a gift--'#'there's only one gifted child in this family and she's a massive pain and also better than me at everything actually' (@aethersea)

People have been dangerously adulterating their products to make a bigger profit for THOUSANDS of YEARS. Rome famously had problems with people selling counterfeit bread and doctored wine.

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

i decided to try a romcom i somehow missed i the 2000s 'head over heels' and i got 3 and a half minutes in and we're introduced to the lonely MC with bad taste in men as evidenced by her extremely short list of ex boyfriends, including her first boyfriend when she was 11 or something because i guess that's still relevant in her adult life.

so she's resigned herself to never finding love and prefers to ignore men to focus all her energy into her career.

this job is immediately presented as though it's for spinsters with no hope of ever finding a man.

the mc's lesbian bestie (whose first line involves her being scolded for being too sexual in the workplace, but moving on) points out their colleagues as evidence that they're doomed to a romance-less, sexless life if they don't switch up their shared career path. the colleagues are three old women, so-dubbed "the menopause triplets":

these women are presented as if they have no idea what's going on at any given moment. this is 2001, and presumably this is an entry level job requiring low effort and no experience.

then their boss bursts into the room, unceremoniously bumping a large painting into the door jam and walls, announcing that it's a new project for our MC.

our MC is thrilled to see the painting. apparently it's a light in the daily slog at her dreary job for loser women with nothing going on in their lives.

And that job is? Conservator of paintings (specializing in Renaissance) at the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The painting being handled like an old couch on its way to the curb?

The Bacchanal of the Andrians by Titian.

Her lesbian colleague who is presumably also a a highly trained & skilled curator finds it depressing that the MC is so excited about the painting.