quintessence of dust

hi, filipino here. just want to say that our independence day is june 12, not july 4. july 4 is when the united states government decided that they would recognize our freedom, specifically because it is your independence day and they wanted to cement their cultural hegemony over our country. and because of their influence on our country this was recognized for a time as our independence day. we still commemorate it, but i hope you can understand why we don’t want our independence day to be associated so closely with our former colonizer. it wasn’t even a work holiday for us.

“The LEGO Movie was my favorite movie of 2014, but it strikes me that the main character was male, because I feel like in our current culture, he HAD to be. The whole point of Emmett is that he’s the most boring average person in the world. It’s impossible to imagine a female character playing that role, because according to our pop culture, if she’s female she’s already SOMEthing, because she’s not male. The baseline is male. The average person is male. You can see this all over but it’s weirdly prevalent in children’s entertainment. Why are almost all of the muppets dudes, except for Miss Piggy, who’s a parody of femininity? Why do all of the Despicable Me minions, genderless blobs, have boy names? I love the story (which I read on Wikipedia) that when the director of The Brave Little Toaster cast a woman to play the toaster, one of the guys on the crew was so mad he stormed out of the room. Because he thought the toaster was a man. A TOASTER. The character is a toaster. I try to think about that when writing new characters— is there anything inherently gendered about what this character is doing? Or is it a toaster?”

Look I love unconditional devotion love stories as much as the next person, but there's really something so deliciously raw about conditional devotion.

me everytime one of my seemingly non-specific homoerotic text posts breaks containment

like ok allegedly the white people in Northern Ireland terrorizing mainly Black people and poc are British loyalists and not “real Irish” but that video stating that is showing more concern for the white Irish people currently hiding in their homes “in fear” of harm, while real life Black people are actively being harmed lmao like??? get up! if you say you’re not like these white supremacists than show up in defense for the Black people currently being mobbed by people who look like you!

imagine living through a war. a pretty long war, lets say one of the longest conventional wars of the 20th century. for 8 years. maybe the first 8 years of your life. maybe your early adolescence, or late teens or young adulthood. you get the picture. now imagine the war ends, ok great, cool, life goes on i guess? economy sucks, post-war reconstruction, etc. and hey remember that country that funded and armed your country’s adversary during the war? yeah, that one. they noticed how your economy isnt doing so hot and decided to help you out with some sanctions. pretty cool, right? i guess it beats bombs. nothing like good old long slow economic warfare. at least its not the bombs. maybe you go to university, get a job. depending on how wealthy you are maybe some people you know leave. depending on how wealthy (and lucky) they are maybe they go to germany or the UK or the US, more likely turkiye or the philippines, maybe a gulf country. probably at least one. more likely you and your friends and loved ones are too poor or cant get a visa or both. but hey at least that war stuff is- hm? oh, yeah that country from before, they just invaded your neighbor. maybe you meet someone, hit it off. hang on, sorry, they just invaded your other neighbor. yes the same one they funded and armed. and hey why is everyone leaving. maybe you get married to that person from earlier. and maybe israel just invaded lebanon again. what? oh yeah

Hey all,

Let’s get to 3K tonight