Time to scream into the void

It's about the horrors of colonialism and war and genocide. It's a high school drama. It's a sexy mecha show. there’s titties everywhere the 2006 fan service is absolutely tasteless and egregious. But don't get distracted, this is a show about rebels fighting to overthrow an evil genocidal empire except for when it's about the world’s largest pizza, yes, the world's largest pizza. Sponsored by Pizza Hut. This Show Is Sponsored By Pizza Hut. Major characters will die in devastating ways that you will remember forever. Buy Pizza Hut. The fandom is mostly yaoi of the two male leads but they’re not canonically queer. There are some canonically queer side characters! but watch out! you’ll wish there weren’t! It takes place in the futuristic year of 2017, which is actually in the 1960s if you convert the shows alternate universe calendar into our own.

There are levels of toxic yaoi and mecha design that mortals were not meant to experience on this side of eternity. Sometimes the cast has to wear Playboy Bunny outfits for incredibly important plot reasons. There is an extended meditation on whether the inherent corruption of wielding the systems built by your oppressors means the most moral choice for the successful revolutionary is suicide or if the curse to live with the sins of the past must be borne by someone to prevent their reoccurrence. It is a canon event that one of the experimental mecha is critical to creating the world's largest pizza.

anything for the anons in my inbox

It's about the horrors of colonialism and war and genocide. It's a high school drama. It's a sexy mecha show. there’s titties everywhere the 2006 fan service is absolutely tasteless and egregious. But don't get distracted, this is a show about rebels fighting to overthrow an evil genocidal empire except for when it's about the world’s largest pizza, yes, the world's largest pizza. Sponsored by Pizza Hut. This Show Is Sponsored By Pizza Hut. Major characters will die in devastating ways that you will remember forever. Buy Pizza Hut. The fandom is mostly yaoi of the two male leads but they’re not canonically queer. There are some canonically queer side characters! but watch out! you’ll wish there weren’t! It takes place in the futuristic year of 2017, which is actually in the 1960s if you convert the shows alternate universe calendar into our own.

There are levels of toxic yaoi and mecha design that mortals were not meant to experience on this side of eternity. Sometimes the cast has to wear Playboy Bunny outfits for incredibly important plot reasons. There is an extended meditation on whether the inherent corruption of wielding the systems built by your oppressors means the most moral choice for the successful revolutionary is suicide or if the curse to live with the sins of the past must be borne by someone to prevent their reoccurrence. It is a canon event that one of the experimental mecha is critical to creating the world's largest pizza.

anything for the anons in my inbox

It's probably THE anime memory for me, as a dork who's been watching them since I was a toddler. It'll send you completely insane, you'll be so sleep deprived. I recommend it to nobody. I recommend it to everyone. It was an incredibly entertaining and funny memory of a really sucky time of my life.

I don’t mean Australians are a “stick it to the man, fight back against those in power” kind of people – we’re generally not. And I don’t mean we have a “we’re going to do the status thing but pretend we don’t and pretend to all be equal in mixed company” thing that middle-class Americans do. I mean the status-respect system does not exist, and if you try to use it, it weirds people the fuck out at best, and insults them at worst. Treating someone most countries would say is ‘above’ you differently in Australia is basically telling that person that you hate them; it’s saying “I’m forced to interact with you due to our current circumstances but I don’t see you as a person and won’t grant you the basic respect of treating you like an equal”. (When I was in America, I was constantly suppressing the instinct that random service people were sassing me because they overuse honourifics and were so keen to help me.)

This makes interacting with foreigners really baffling in a lot of circumstances. In university, my international friends would often describe Australians as “friendly, but very rude”. They thought we were all arseholes because of the way we spoke to our PhD supervisors and soforth, and wouldn’t believe us when we explained that our behaviour was respectful and that being deferential would be weird and awkward and insulting to them. Learning Japanese had a similar problem; everyone in the class could get the concept of different levels of formality and deference in language, ans was happy to memorise the usage of various words for Japanese people, but using them on each other was super weird, and we’d only ever use the most casual form of anything unless specifically instructed otherwise by the teacher.

The reason I’ve been thinking of this lately is because I’ve recently become aware that a lot of countries have like… a special respect for their country’s leaders? I don’t just mean “yeah, that guy makes the rules”, but that having that office makes them better than everyone else, somehow. Which I expect from countries with royal families, because Tradition, but I’ve recently found that Americans feel this way about their President, too. (Except the current one, who seems to be enough of a dick to break the system.) Like, if six Americans were in an aeroplane that was going down and there was only one parachute and one of the Americans was A Generic Non-Trump President, it’s just assumed that that guy gets the parachute? Like he’s automatically the life worth saving over the others, and they’d just give up their chance in favour of him? And that’s so weird to me. An Australian prime minister would have a 1 in 6 chance at the parachute; however the people decided, “this guy happens to be the leader of the country” wouldn’t be a factor. 

When Americans don’t like a President, they usually feel the need to work in how he’s “not my president”, either through sheer denial, or by finding some way he’s theoretically illegitimate (different ways votes are counted, wild conspiracy theories about birth country, etc.), and while making sure those rules are obeyed IS extremely important, I’ve recently noticed that part of the motivation seems to be that they’re invested in whether he’s Really The President because being the President somehow makes someone Special rather than just a normal dick who’s been put in charge of the group project. (You see the same thing in “THIS IS TRUMP’S AMERICA!”, like him becoming President gives him superpowers or something).

I remember in school we were always taught to treat others how you wanted to be treated. You were no better or worse than anyone else. You want to be treated equal to everyone else and that meant being polite and showing decency and helping each other out. It’s true we only use titles for teachers or elders (indigenous Australians use “Aunty” and “Uncle” as a show of respect to their elders) but outside of that if someone calls you Miss y/n or sir or whatever it’s just uncomfortable. In hospitality and retail some of us will still use sir/ma'am mainly because we don’t know customers names but even then that’s rare and usually applied only to elderly. We personally don’t want to be addressed by titles or even surnames (unless it’s a nickname which I’ll get to) so we don’t use the titles or surnames for other people. With surnames often we use them as a nickname if we dont/can’t shorten their names. Getting a nickname (a good one, not one that is intentionally meant to bully you ofc. E.g. ScoMo is the nickname for our PM but he’s a piece of shit and ScoMo sounds a lot like Scum-mo) is the biggest show of respect in Australia. Usually it’s simply just adding a vowel or changing it up a little. I.e. John = johnno, Darren = Dazza, etc. If we can’t do it to your first name we do it to your last name. If we can’t do it to your last name it’s either a feature or behaviour and we put it in a good light. You ever notice that Australians like to make fun of each other and “insult” each other? There’s a very subtle difference when it’s truly meant to be insulting but that’s our way of being affectionate for each other. We will point out your flaws and make fun of you (and stop if you say no) and we will give you a nickname and it’s all in good humour. It’s one of the things I find foreigners get really upset about because they dont understand why we are so rude to each other. You build up a hard skin in this country and forget hat sometimes that stuff IS a bit insulting.

It’s worth pointing out that I’m speaking in generalisations here; Australia, like many modern colonialised nations, is an immigrant “melting pot” culture. Our indigenous population is not very large, partly because their population density wasn’t high (compared to the country’s current density) before England started dumping people here but much more because of, well, all of the genocide. There was quite a lot of genocide. There still is, to be honest. And while the first wave of colonial settlers were mostly English, that very very quickly stopped being the case due to multiple subsequent immigration rushes that I won’t go into here, and despite what the One Nation racists will tell you, constant immigration is still a cornerstone of our culture and our economy, as is foreign students coming here to go to our universities and go home when they have their degrees (which keeps our tertiary education system afloat).

As a US person, who is Latino… (yes, this involves race), US does work with a sense that there is a level of wealth/station/job that deserves to receive attention, words, attitude others shouldn’t. A level of reverence, and/or awe and/or chances, excuses, forgiveness that isn’t given to others who on some level micro and/or macro are seen as lesser.

It reminds me of my own culture shock with moving to more white areas in this country.

It’s like, oh, if people didn’t think other people deserved to be rich and others deserved to be poor, then we wouldn’t have a country of poor people.

It wouldn’t still be abnormal to be Latino and trying to go to college.

It’s remarkable still because people didn’t/don’t question why POC still struggle to leave the cycle of poverty.

They think, ofc these people are poor. They’re supposed to be.

If they didn’t/don’t think this way, why are people still poor? Why are people fine with this?

It’s normal to them even though the answer isn’t because we’re born to be poor.

Though saying all that, cuz respect is def more than words… curious about the definition there. Is your racism different? Is respect feeling equal? Treating others as equals?

Def curious what POC Australians think on this.

My experience as being a marginalized folk in the US did give me perspective on what people think they do vs what they actually do. Racism is this way. You have people who don’t care about being racist, and then you have racists who really don’t think they’re racist.

I believe your perspective, just want more view points to fully grasp how similar or how different.

In general, the thinking there are people who are lesser is def a problem in the US. It’s the classism, racism, and Christianity (as the father is the leader we serve, a lesson much pushed last century by the likes of Dobson, Heritage Foundation, all the typical assholes.)

This isn’t as dire as it sounds on the surface, because to be fair the main centre-left party has well over 50% of the vote on its own and we have a pretty good Independent showing in Australia so the actual proportion of support isn’t as high as “third biggest party” makes it sound, but still. It’s a very Racist Shithead Country kind of political landscape. And it’s absolutely not new; it isn’t like our major centre left party isn’t also racist, they’re just Normal Racist instead of Cartoon Racist.

My rapist was nonbinary and bi. My deeply Lutheran grandma was the first person to fully accept me as trans in my primarily liberal athiestic/agnostic family. Years ago my social life was ruined by another trans masculine person who intentionally destroyed all of my close friendships. One of my current closest friends is a cishet guy who has a friend group that is almost entirely populated of queer people because a bunch of his friends have come out around him since high school.

happy 20 year anniversary of Neil banging out the tunes!

though every rat is special, it's a wonderful and unusual thing for their accomplishments to be remembered and cherished by so many people so many years later. we're all so fortunate to know about the rat who banged out the tunes!

thank you to all the people who sent me reference photos of their beloved rats for this piece!!! credits under the cut!

AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They’ve warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic’s AI training now threatens to “financially ruin” the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.

Authors have until March 30th, 2026 (That is just 9 days as of this reblog, which I am posting on March 21st, 2026) to file their claim against Anthropic to be reimbursed up to $3,000 per work found in the list.