Prez-Koko

a) the mystery is half the fun

b) A movie is usually supposed to be at least somewhat self-contained. If you look at Pyramid of Light and dsod–while they make more sense within the context of the series, their conflicts (Kaiba wants to duel Atem and also Anubis is there, Kaiba wants to bring Atem back and also Diva is there) are introduced and resolved within the movie’s runtime. In theory, you could come into either of them blind and still feel like you heard a complete story, even if you didn’t totally understand who all these characters were or why that one guy’s height and voice kept changing.

But the plot of bbt as a self-contained movie is: some random guy shows up and goes “I have a tragic backstory, wanna hear it?” and the heroes are like “nah.” And then he’s like “if I don’t change the future, card games are going to destroy the world!” and the heroes are like “we don’t care.” And then he’s like “wait a sec, how did you even manage to time travel here?!?” and the heroes are like “we have no idea lol.” And then he’s defeated and the story just. Ends.

So the whole Kaiba-calling-Joey-a-dog thing is pretty infamous, to the point that it’s the source of their ship name. And the dub may have played it up a little, but it’s still definitely a thing in the original.

Which is why it’s notable that in the subs, there’s one other time that Kaiba brings up dogs:

When he’s talking about himself in relation to Gozaburo.

And we get the same connection in the manga, too, with this panel of Gozaburo (literally or metaphorically? it’s all in Mokuba’s head, so it’s a little hard to tell) forcing a young Seto to wear a dog collar.

There’s definitely some interesting stuff we could take from this. We could be dealing with an example of the classic “abused kid becomes a bully by turning their abuser’s tactics on other people” (and if we take some of the stuff Kaiba says to Joey as paraphrased versions of things Gozaburo said to mini!Seto…ouch). But it’s also interesting to look at in the context of Joey and Kaiba as foils.

He didn’t grab the throne laughing evilly. He rose to power because he was a terrific orator, captivating his audience, promising to bring their country back to greatness while blaming all their problems on scapegoats - Jews and homosexuals and everyone who was deemed “imperfect”. People didn’t look at him and say, “Wow, he’s a monster. That’s great, I’m gonna vote for him!”

Most people didn’t believe the worst stories about him. In fact, a lot of people never started believing them. They didn’t call them “fake news”, they called them “American propaganda”. Four weeks before her death, my great-grandmother got into her nth shouting match with my father because she didn’t believe the Holocaust ever happened. She just couldn’t believe it. After all, Hitler was supposed to save them all after World War I. He couldn’t have been a monster, right? She didn’t just sit at home and enable him to kill all those innocent people, right?

And that’s just it: Hitler was not a monster. He was just a man. An awful man, sure, rotten on the inside, but nonetheless just a man who convinced people that he was the right guy for the job.

For years and years we’ve been telling you to see Hitler as a man rather than the far-away historical figure, the dragon atop the castle. We’ve been telling you to stop painting Nazis as cartoonishly evil guys in your movies and you ignored us. Now you have the Alt-Right on the rise and the media refuses to call them Nazis because, woah, wouldn’t that be silly and kind of offensive to treat them like the villains in next week’s blockbuster?

On the 1st December 1941, the United States granted Otto Frank, Anne Frank’s father, asylum. They cancelled it ten days later and you all know how this story ends. On the 28th January 2017, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Donald Trump signed an executive order to ban citizens from various countries that have been bombed and torn apart by the United States themselves from entering the country. People who were already in an airplane, on their way to safety, while the order was signed, were detained upon arrival at the airport.

The night of 9th November 1938 is called Kristallnacht because broken glass from the smashed windows of burnt down synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses littered the streets of Germany. On the 28th January 2017, the Victoria Mosque in Texas was burnt down, mere hours after Donald Trump officially blamed all of America’s problems on an entire religion.

You think he’s not going to make those Muslim internment camps a reality? People didn’t think the concentration camps were real.

You want to give this man a chance? People gave Hitler a chance.

(Twitter)

President Velveeta plagiarized his inauguration cake.

A. Cake.

Koo Koo!

Rowlet fields forever!  I’m def Team Rowlet so I just wanted them in a giant, rolly polly pile!  This will be one of my new prints for Momocon 2017 in May!

More TMI - I passed a MASSIVE clot after my fourth birth. At this point I already knew this could happen - it’s normal. What I DIDN’T know, was that I had caused it.

My post birth contractions were so bad after the birth that it felt like full transition labor. And they don’t give you anything for the pain. So I used a hot water bottle, without the nurses knowing, and it caused me to bleed even more. I lost so much blood that by the first time they sat me up to go to the bathroom, I fainted. It took three more tries until I could sit up.

Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, the next morning I passed a clot the SIZE OF ANOTHER PLACENTA I KID YOU NOT, and I know what is and is not normal. So I called for the nurse and through the door told her I had passed a huge clot, and her response was - “It’s not big. I know what big is.” She hadn’t even looked. So I rolled my eyes and said, “Yeah, no. It’s big, I’m telling you.”

So, sounding extremely put upon, she asked me to open the door. I did, and after a long pause she goes, “Okay, yeah, that’s a little big.”

YOU DON’T SAY.

The point I’m trying to get across is that this shit is so common - women not knowing this stuff is so expected, and it keeps getting reinforced. People don’t expect you to know anything, don’t teach you anything, and then make you feel like you’re totally ignorant and a burden for your lack of knowledge when THEY WON’T SHARE.

Fucking learn EVERYTHING you can when it comes to childbirth, girls. It is the single most empowering thing you can do for yourself. And if you missed something, that’s okay. But the more knowledge you arm yourself with, the more in control of your situation you’ll be.

A few post partum tips:

DON’T use a hot water bottle - lol.

ONLY pads - NO tampons. Tampons can cause severe infection, not to mention, you probably don’t want to be shoving anything up there any time soon.

If you’ve had stitches, sitz baths DO help relieve the pain. Another great pain reliever? Dampen some pads and freeze them. Let one thaw slightly and use it on top of another pad. This will help with the pain as well as reduce swelling. Change the pad out as soon as it’s thawed completely. This REALLY helps on the first couple days after giving birth.

If you pass a clot, don’t sweat it. Even the one I passed, which was fucking massive, just required that we keep an eye out to make sure it didn’t happen again. If it does, talk to your doctor.

Take a pain killer half an hour before nursing. Because YES - your uterus is contracting after you give birth, to get back to its original size, and nursing causes much stronger contractions. Taking nursing-safe painkillers won’t prevent the pain, but it will reduce it. 

Buy disposable underwear for the first few days after birth. They will get VERY dirty. Or use your ratty old pairs that you’re ready to get rid of. Double up on pads - line them all the way up your ass-crack. I am so serious. And wear dark pants.

Pee in the shower. You do NOT want to wipe down there right after birth because ow. Peeing in the shower lets you just rinse afterwards. Especially if you’ve had stitches, peeing in the shower, with the shower-head rinsing AS you go, keeps stinging to a minimum. And fuck everyone else - keep on peeing in the shower until you feel ready to move back to toilet paper. Middle of the night and need to pee? Get your pants off - get in the shower and just go.

you gasp. “are you here to find our leader and kill him??”

the alien in front seems alarmed. “no, no, we all come in peace, why would you-”

“oh.” you sigh dejectedly. “i just- we have a really bad president. like really evil bad, i just thought-” you start to tear up.

It may just be me, I don’t know. But every single time I see this on my dash or on someone’s blog or anywhere else, I kind of just breathe a sigh of relief. That’s one more person who cares. That’s one more person who doesn’t hate me.

Because it means so much, especially when all the media is spewing out is that I’m a terrible person and no one wants people like me near them. It means so much because I’m tired of people who won’t sit next to me in class, or who choose to join the longer line at the grocery store because they don’t want to be beside me and my family. It means so much when I have to lift my head any time someone says the words Islam or Muslim because I’m scared that they’ll say something that’ll hurt, when I have to pay attention to the news because who knows what so and so is saying now, who knows which of my people are being attacked now, who knows what’s going to happen to me now.

It means so much because I’ve been given the idea that the world is against me. And a huge part of it may be, but at least I’ve been reminded that some of it, just a small group of people, acknowledges that I’m a person too. That people like me are just that, people.