[dies a little inside]

1. will and elizabeth’s love story

2. elizabeth becoming pirate king

3. avoiding sexualizing elizabeth or the other female pirate characters in the first 3 films by allowing them to wear period-accurate pirate outfits that aren’t tailored to be revealing and impractical for ‘sex appeal’ just because they’re women

6. I run a corseting panel at cons and literally use Elizabeth’s lace-up scene as a video clip of what historical corseting was actually like, because the only thing they got wrong in this scene is that tightlacing wouldn’t be a thing for about another 200 years (and you couldn’t tightlace with the corset style Elizabeth is wearing anyway). It’s one of the most accurate corseting scenes I’ve ever seen.

7. Will’s hat.

8. That scene with all the pirates on the gallows where that little boy starts singing Hoist the Colours? Yeah, that’s fucking legendary. The rest of AWE was kind of a trash fire, but that scene gave me goosebumps.

9. There’s this great shot in the first one where they really drive home the class differences inherent in this time period by having the governor talking about progress and civilization to Elizabeth in their carriage, and then they cut to a shot outside the carriage where a beggar gets splashed by mud from the wheel. It’s a perfect way to underline that everything is not, in fact, a nice little upper-class fairytale, and to give some weight to Will’s storyline, because he has a lot more in common with that beggar than with the governor.

10. For its time, the CGI was fucking amazing.

11. And let’s not forget the work of the makeup department, which had to actually invent new ways of putting on makeup for this movie.

12. The governor’s death scene. Holy shit.

13. They could have gone with a Jack/Will/Elizabeth love triangle, but they didn’t. There are some hints Jack is in love (or at least in lust) with Elizabeth, but he recognizes that she loves Will, and that’s that.

2. They had a woman pirate right in the first film, when the tradition is to only show male ones (hell, the PotC ride at Disney had a wench auction scene until recently). And it was a female pirate of colour at that!

3. Elizabeth may not have known how to fight in the first film, but she wasn’t helpless either. Her first instinct was to fight, but she also had the brains to recognize when it was best to hide instead. Plus when given the chance she stabbed Barbosa that one time.

4. Elizabeth’s lack of fighting ability was not simply because she was a woman, it was clear it was due to her societal circumstances, since we saw other women of different socioeconomic backgrounds being able to fight (and when given the opportunity to learn Elizabeth took to fighting like a duck on water).

5. The Hoist the Colours scene where we see pirates of multiple ethnicities and their varying flags, reminding us that pirates came in all shapes and sizes and weren’t just white men.

6. One of the Pirate Lords being yet ANOTHER woman of colour. She may not have had much of a speaking role if memory serves, but even her presence is already a big deal.

Davy Jones CGI is legendary and a ton better than some of the stuff done today 😄

Here I can do it easily.

动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门 .

Right, now that we’ve gotten the Chinese banned, let’s continue.

The CCP is a horrifically corrupt force that needs to be destroyed more than anything else on this planet. You might think I sound like a harsh motherfucker in my burning hatred of the Chinese Communist Party, and that’s because I should be. We have watched every single person break down and let the CCP win with their projected shadow for too fucking long, and it’s time that we as a world reject this bullying from a country that wants nothing but to print money off of the backs of their people and pretend they’re in the right for doing so. 

Besides the fact they kill off any person of wrongthink and sell their organs for profit, they’re constantly tearing apart both their own environment and the environment of neighboring nations. Whether it be by overfishing, boremining, fracking on a level that pales in comparison to the states or by dumping metric tons of garbage in landfills both within China itself as well as onto other countries to make their numbers go down to balance their own. They’ve committed countless war crimes against Uyghurs and Mongolians, putting them in camps and forcing them to also work in the same sweat shops as other people. 

While Socialism with Chinese Characteristics was definitely an improvement over the mass murder and the dismantling of social institutions during the Cultural Revolution, it also brought with it more corruption and nepotism. All the old problems came back, and workers and students couldn’t help but notice that the West seemed to have fewer of these problems and also had this interesting social technology called democracy which was maybe related.

So started the 1989 Democracy Movement, a series of protests that sprang up across all of China, asking the government for democracy. The biggest and longest-lasting protest was in Tiananmen Square, which if you don’t know where that is, you can think of it like protesting in front of the White House.

And at Tiananmen, they built the Goddess of Democracy out of papier-mâché and a metal frame.

The students who created it said:

At this grim moment, what we need most is to remain calm and united in a single purpose. We need a powerful cementing force to strengthen our resolve: That is the Goddess of Democracy. Democracy…You are the symbol of every student in the Square, of the hearts of millions of people. …Today, here in the People’s Square, the people’s Goddess stands tall and announces to the whole world: A consciousness of democracy has awakened among the Chinese people! The new era has begun! …The statue of the Goddess of Democracy is made of plaster, and of course cannot stand here forever. But as the symbol of the people’s hearts, she is divine and inviolate. Let those who would sully her beware: the people will not permit this! …On the day when real democracy and freedom come to China, we must erect another Goddess of Democracy here in the Square, monumental, towering, and permanent. We have strong faith that that day will come at last. We have still another hope: Chinese people, arise! Erect the statue of the Goddess of Democracy in your millions of hearts! Long live the people! Long live freedom! Long live democracy!“

Less than a week later, the protests and the sculpture were destroyed by the People’s Liberation Army.

These words speak to me a lot, and I hope they are never forgotten. Especially this line:

On the day when real democracy and freedom come to China, we must erect another Goddess of Democracy here in the Square, monumental, towering, and permanent.

I have faith that one day, this really will happen. It’s such a powerful symbol. Until then, I think the best thing we can do is help keep this hope alive and known.

There’s a replica in San Francisco Chinatown:

And another in Washington, DC, twoish blocks north of the Capitol.

And a few others around the world.

[He removes a candle from a small cake and sets it down on the table before him, alongside eight other candles.]

“Now, take a look at this.”

[He orients the first eight candles to form a pair of W’s, spelling out “WWI” altogether.  The usual Vsauce music fades out, replaced with an unsettling low tone.]

“To celebrate the occasion we have temporarily recolored all Aperture Science appliances in these regions to your favorite flavor of gay.”

Real talk though: on the one hand, this is kids fucking around in the way that kids do. I made a little symbol that represented everything “important” about me when I was 13 and put it on everything. I have myself a nickname just by telling people my friends at my last school called me [name] (they did not, but who would argue?). I went by ze/hir pronouns because people kept telling me that singular “they” was confusing (can we please just enshrine a proper singular neutral pronoun already? Can we just all agree?? Please??).