Disclaimer: not as cool as once thought.

“everything in australia is weird and dangerous” is not just some silly meme phrase, it is something that arcs back to the very beginning of white settlers laying claim to ‘australia’. and personally I am very sick of seeing it thrown around like it means nothing

Australia is not especially dangerous, or unfriendly, it's just 'different', but then the question is different to what. Why should deadly earthquakes and forests full of murderous bears be seen as more normal? Why is a desert any more weird or scary than a bog or tundra? Why are cold damp places seen as the only form of natural beauty, why do people see warm dry places as dead when they are full of life, and see warm damp places as full of TOO MUCH life somehow? Why, even in Australia, do we use the aesthetics of red October leaves and Christmas snow, and not celebrations of the beautiful seasonal changes we actually see all around us? Why are white Australians so actively hostile to engaging and connecting with the local cultures that have been celebrating and working with the place we live for thousands of years, and even after hundreds of years still see our home as Strange?

Yes, let's definitely have a conversation about why the European colonists were invested in the belief that the indigenous people didn't cultivate the land.

Also I read through the replies and people point out that exactly the same sort of exotification into a Dangerous Alien Landscape Which Must Be Tamed happens with Africa, Asia, The Middle East etc. Even like... Scotland and Italy, back in the day. And for similar reasons. And this kind of imagery is everywhere, like play any video game with multiple biomes or cultures etc (real or fictional) and see which ones are treated as Normal and which ones are Weird and Scary/Exotic.

Ingredients: butter, vegetable oil, sugar, vanilla extract, eggs, flour, milk, icing sugar, cocoa powder, water, optional additions include fruit jam and coconut shavings

chewed gum, but he’s my son

he likes to be in physical contact with me, which results in a piglet-sprawl across my foot when I’m reading

Neil!!!

me: ah, thanks for asking, but im neither christian nor 8 years old so the answer is absolutely nothing at all

A Blacksmith’s Dream

i like to imagine that my team would do exactly this every time my tinkaton would use gigaton hammer