What are you doing here?

I will now impart all of my profit killing resources onto you, in case you don’t know them. I think most of you know them, now. But just in case you don’t.

THIS IS US-CENTRIC. I’M SORRY. 

1. GoodRx - this thing has an app now, so you can look up the best places to get your expensive medicines at the lowest possible prices without insurance on the go, and you no longer have to print coupons because you can just hand over your phone or tablet. Times have changed for the better with GoodRx. Definitely use it before trying to fill your scrip, because it will tell you the best place to go. (You can do that on the website, too.)

2. NeedyMeds - Needymeds is basically the clearinghouse of drug payment assistance. They have their own discount cards, but also connections to many patient assistance programs run by drug companies themselves. They are good assistance programs, too.

3. Ask your county - This is not a link. This is a pro tip. Most county social services will have pharmacy discount programs for people with no and/or shitty pharmaceutical coverage. You can often just find them hanging around at social services offices; you can just pick one up and walk off with it. 

4. Ordering online - There are a few safe online pharmacies. I keep a little database in a text file on my computer. Most of them are courtesy of CFS forums, my mother or voidbat, so a lot of that is a hat tip to other people, but if you’re in need of a place to get a drug without a prescription … first I’ll make sure you 100% know what you’re doing for safety reasons and then I’m happy to turn over a link. 

5. Healthfinder - A government resource that helps find patient assistance programs in your area. This might also point out the convenient county card thing. RxHope is something a lot of people get pointed to via Healthfinder that’s a good program.

Do a Google search for “patient assistant programs” + (your med), or search the manufacturers website. Sometimes the info is online; other times you have to call.

Even some of the big name pharma companies have this. It’s certainly not all companies, or all meds, but it is worth a shot.

Before Obamacare, I lost insurance and couldn’t pay for my mood stabilizers (kiiiiinda important to have those when you’re bipolar.) I was on generic Lamictal, but I went to the official Lamictal website, filled out a form with a valid prescription, and they mailed my meds to me every month for free.

You guys, you must stop doing this. You must. We cannot keep yelling at you about it because it makes us so angry, and we are already angry all the time, about real things, like how our lives are turning into a real world Handmaid’s Tale, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haha ha ha ha ha ha. We cannot keep spending our energy being mad at mediocre men for writing mediocre books that inexplicably win awards and that people tell us to read, for some fucking godawful who knows reason.

So men. My guys. My dudes. My bros. My writers. I am begging you to help me here. When you have this man in your workshop, you must turn to him. You must take his clammy hands in yours. You must look deep into his eyes, his man eyes, with your man eyes, and you must say to him, “Peter, I am a man, and you are a man, so let us talk to each other like men. Peter, look at the way you have written about the only four women in this book.” And Peter will say, trying to free his hands, “What? These are sexy, dynamic, interesting women.” And you must grip his hands even tighter and you must say to him, “ARE THEY, PETER? Why are they interesting? What are their hobbies? What are their private habits? What are their strange dreams? What choices are they making, Peter? They are not making choices. They are not interesting. What they are is sexy, and you have those things confused, and not in the good way where someone’s interestingness makes them become sexy, like Steve Buscemi or Pauline Viardot. Why must women be sexy to be interesting to you? The women you don’t find sexy are where, Peter? They are invisible? They are all dead?” He is trying to escape! Tighten your grasp. “Peter, look at this. I mean, where to begin. ‘She could have been any age between eighteen and thirty-five?’ There are no other ages, I guess? Do you know what eighteen-year-olds really look like, in life? Do you know what forty-year-olds look like? And not that this is even the point, but why are these sexy, dynamic, interesting women BOTHERING with your boring garbage ‘on the skinny side of average’ protagonist? Why did you write it like this, Peter?” 

And maybe Peter will say at last, “I don’t know.” Maybe he will be silent for a long long long time, and then maybe he will say, “I guess it’s scary and difficult for me to imagine the interiority of women because then i would have to know that my mother had an interiority of her own: private, petty, sexually unstimulating, strange: unrelated to me and undevoted to my needs. That sometimes I was nothing to my mother, just as sometimes she is nothing to me. That I was not at all times her immediate concern.”

“I know, Peter,” you can tell him gently.

And what many people don’t realize is that this subculture was born as a way for young girls to express themselves in their own way. And it was also used as something against the adult life and the traditional culture, often seen as dull and boring and oppressive. By embracing cuteness, these young girls (and adult women, after a while) were showing non-conformation with the current standards.

NO OK THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!

This is also how the kawaii fashions started! Girls began dressing in cute and off beat styles for themsleves, they were criticized by adult figures telling them “you’ll never find a husband if you dress that way!” to which they began to reply “Good!”

All the japanese subcultures and fashions that evolved out of this became a rebellion to tradition and the starch gender roles and expectations the adults were forcing on the younger generations. As early as the 70s and still to this day you’ll see an emphasis on child-like fashion and themes in more kawaii styles and the dismissal of the male gaze with styles like lolita (a lot of western people assume lolita is somehow sexual due to the name of the fashion, but ask any japanese lolita and they will tell you that men hate the style and find it unattractive which is sometimes a large reason they gravitate towards the style - they can express their femininity and individuality while remaining independent and without the pressure to appeal to men)

a lot of hatred of dresses, pink, stereotypically “feminine” stuff is based on internalized misogyny. and that’s definitely something we all need to look at within ourselves and address and work on.

but: a lot of hatred of dresses, pink, stereotypically “feminine” stuff is based on the fact that femininity is compulsory for people who are assigned female at birth.

like, this is a fact. this isn’t something i’m making up. femininity is compulsory. i have to wear dresses and makeup to be taken seriously when i go to job interviews, when i go to social occasions, when i present myself in any formal setting. when i don’t do that, people notice. they’re rude to me. 

when i shop in the men’s section, store employees and customers glare at me! my relatives press feminine clothes on me during the holiday season because they think i should dress in a more feminine way! when i go to get my hair cut and ask for it to be cut in a certain style, the woman cutting my hair literally ignores that explicit instruction because it’s “too butch”. femininity is compulsory! i am not allowed to present my gender the way i would like to present my gender!

it’s not the fault of femininity that it’s being forced on me. and the patriarchy does devalue femininity. and the current rhetoric of “you can wear pink and skirts and still be a feminist and still be queer and it’s other people’s fault for not taking you seriously, not yours for dressing that way” is great. 

but i’ve heard people say to me, “you can wear lipstick and dresses and still be a feminist” about a thousand times, and i have never, ever, ever heard someone say to me, “you can refuse to wear lipstick and dresses and you are no less of a woman than someone who does wear them.” i had to figure that out all on my own.

Oh, I’m sorry, I guess I must’ve hallucinated the part where he was LITERALLY RESURRECTED FROM THE DEAD.

Has no one on this website heard of the concept of coding???  Or more basically the fact that people in a religious group are not homogeneous and can have varying levels of practice???  No one is saying Spock is getting up here putting a kippah on and reading from a Torah but I swear people have to be willfully ignorant to ignore the parallels that SO MANY JEWS have pointed out between Vulcans’ HIGHLY MYSTICAL culture and Jewish mysticism.  These parallels are indicative of Jew coding, where the writer(s) don’t literally say “hey this character is Jewish” but they do about every other reference in the book besides explicitly saying it.  Vulcan Jewishness can’t even be classified as subtle but I swear unless Spock wore a T-shirt saying “I’m Jewish” people would be in (probably bluespock’s) inbox talking about how there’s not enough proof, as if everyone’s forgotten how to infer.  Did everyone need Gene Roddenberry and Leonard Nimoy to pull a Charles Dickens and refer to his only Jewish character as “the Jew” like a True Antisemite™ for this to sound believable?

Like Jew coding is a thing it’s a very real culture phenomenon, and it’s usually used negatively (just like queer coding) to give obviously evil/greedy/selfish characters Jewish characteristics.  Just like queer coded villains typically break gender/sexual binaries and hierarchies as part of their coding, Jew coded villains are money grubbing, large nosed, empathy-lacking outsiders who probably make children uncomfortable for good measure (because we can’t have the Jews corrupting our Good Christian Youth™).  And even if people don’t pick up on this explicitly they still start to subconsciously associate these characteristics, these JEWISH characteristics, with evil and sin.  Which is why it’s so important to have explicitly Jewish and Jew-coded HEROES in media, to combat this.  I honestly do not understand why people are so hell bent on taking that away.

Also if I hear one more person make the trite, tired argument that science and religion cannot coexist I’m going to hurl several history books at this website. That is a fabrication made up in the last century that has never before been the case and is still barely true.  Most scientists before 1850 were devout Christians (start with Issac Newton and just keep looking up his contemporaries and the scientists of the next half century; there are so many examples), and that’s not even getting into the amazing Muslim mathematicians that have existed over the past several centuries.  Albert Einstein was literally Jewish.  Like, literally left Nazi Germany for fear of being killed Jewish.  Like, people didn’t want to give his theories the time of day for YEARS because of antisemitism Jewish.

the episode where Kirk and Spock (played by the very Jewish William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy) beam down to an alien planet, Ekos, that has (because reasons) instituted a Nazi regime?

the episode where the Zeons (the aliens being persecuted by the Ekosians) are named things like Isak and Abrom?

the one where Kirk and Spock are arrested for being suspected Zeons? and then Spock, being “examined” by the Nazi scientists, is declared an obviously inferior and unintelligent subspecies because of the shape of his facial features, while we, the audience, know that he’s the goddamn science officer? THAT EPISODE?

At this point, I don’t even care if Spock is explicitly religious or not (despite the SIGNIFICANT evidence to display that he and most other Vulcans are at the very least spiritual)—the point is, the goyim who send these messages are displaying and exercising uninformed rhetoric rooted in a FUNDAMENTAL misunderstanding of how ethnoreligions work. 

           2/2 so I was wondering if large birds just hate human transportation or something haha. Thanks for your post, very interesting.            

(In reference to a comment I made about kayaks being incredibly rude in Swan Culture)

I’ve been looking at my inbox like “I am not some kind of ECCENTRIC BIRD WHISPERER,” but I actually know the answer to this one, and it’s hilarious.

Large birds don’t have a particular hateboner for human transportation, but wild turkeys have two unique properties that make them behave ridiculously when they collide with human populations. For those who aren’t familiar with them, wild turkeys are large, boisterous birds that tend to interact with humans most frequently around the autumn which is convenient for Thanksgiving and mating season in early spring. Most of the time, they live peaceable lives in the woods, but around November they run around in flocks bothering innocent citizens and picking fights with vending machines, and then they usually go away again.

The toms, or dominant males, can stand up to 4 feet tall and weigh up to 24 pounds. They’re the ones that do the fancy displays:

The First Unique Turkey Property: Now, wild turkeys are a little bit like betta fish, in that they perceive any shiny/reflective surface that shows them a reflection as actually containing Another Turkey, and they react accordingly. When they react to the Other Turkey - usually by posturing aggressively and flaring their fins feathers majestically - the Other Turkey ESCALATES THE SITUATION by posturing as well. At some point the real turkey loses its temper and attacks, pecking and scratching and trying to take the fucker apart, only to find that the Other Turkey has protected itself with some kind of force field.

So to a wild turkey that has encountered enough autumnal car-related psychic battles, the completely logical conclusion to take away from them is that cars contain demonic spirits that must be subdued. Other examples of things that wild turkeys are compelled to vanquish include… well, other reflective things.

To address this, cover reflective things (you can rub soap on your car to make it less reflective) and frighten off the turkey if it’s keeping you from leaving your car.

The Second Unique Turkey Property: This is a little bit embarrassing for all concerned, but you have to think about it like a turkey would. You see, humans are oddly compelling creatures to a hormonal turkey. We have bare faces with interestingly positioned lumps of flesh, we gobble our speech in a way that almost sounds like Turkey, we strut about on two feet showing off our long sexy legs, we strut about in family groups, we often have access to really good food, our clothing is big and bright and colorful. Turkey faces change color with their mood; human faces are all kinds of fascinating colors, plus additional fantastic decorations. To wild turkeys, humans are a type of turkey, and further: many humans are either Intimidating Sexual Threats, or Exciting Sexual Beings. 

Now, I am very sorry about this, but not only can wild turkeys be kind of reverse furries, they also have unexpected ideas about gender and sexuality. So to some female turkeys, “male” humans are excitingly sexy and they will follow one around for embarrassingly long periods of time, cooing attractively - meanwhile, the tom turkey and the subordinate males will be OUTRAGED by the COMPETITION presented by the interloper, and will attempt to subdue “him.” And “female” humans are likewise at risk of being passionately seduced by the dominant toms, or quietly propositioned by subordinate males - or the females may attempt to recruit you into their existing social system - as a junior member, of course. They have a strict pecking order.

Unfortunately for humans, your preferred gender may not necessarily actually translate to the gender that turkeys decide you are. And some turkeys may decide you’re “male” while others will decide that you’re “female,” so that will be confusing, and some dominant female turkeys have “male” sexual traits - like beards and tail fans - anyway. They recognize and remember humans, so if you had a particularly exciting encounter with a specific turkey, it will probably remember you.

Also unfortunately for humans, the fine distinctions between Turkey Seduction, Turkey Competition, and Turkey Networking are usually a little bit lost, and all of this behavior seems to be the same thing - it mostly consists of a large dinosaur-like bird trotting at you, possibly screaming and pecking and flapping, and can be worrying. If you are in the car and the turkey can see you, and it wishes to continue a previous encounter, it may well insist upon this in a frightening way.

Turkeys don’t give a shit about human “gender” and “authority,” as the many available videos on the internet of turkeys attacking police officers, reporters and mailmen will assure you. They just make logical decisions that are perfectly natural and reasonable to turkeys, and humans react by running away.

So what do you do about this? Well, DO NOT RUN AWAY, this means you that you are a Submissive Turkey and their behavior will escalate. Turkeys can learn the meaning of “no,” and you don’t have to be bullied by them.

The Humane Society has some tips to establish Dominance over wild turkeys, which will lead them to see you as a Strong Independent Turkey Who Don’t Need No Man. This will reduce their attacking and nuisance behaviors, but it may make you look like a fool.

And the Massachusetts Fish and Game website has a huge resource explaining all the subtleties of wild turkey behavior and how to combat the nuisances. Essentially, you must not attempt to make friends with them or attract them; once they arrive, you must “be bold” and establish Dominance, and encourage everyone to do the same.

If the turkeys are aggressive around children and the elderly, all sources agree that if they become a danger, you can contact the relevant authorities and have the turkeys removed or destroyed.

Anyway, that’s why turkeys attack cars. The take-home message is: the cars are too shiny and you are possibly a sexy turkey.

IT’S THE THRASHING/PADDLING MOSTLY

AND THE BODY LANGUAGE

you just look like you’re flapping towards the swan with Filthy Intent, going extremely fast, skimming over the water and flailing your wings around threateningly, which in Swan is shaped like the beginning of a territorial charge, so they go “TIME TO FIGHT BITCH”

How much do swans hate kayaks?

in 2012 in Chicago an imported mute swan straight-up killed a man in a kayak. Plot twist: the man was his own caretaker.

Asbo, a UK mute swan who actively attacked boaters in Cambridge until he threatened tourism, was eventually removed from the river… to be replaced by his son “Asboy”, First Of His Name, who continues his father’s legacy.

Tyson, a UK mute swan of the Grand Union Canal, also chases kayaks fiercely enough to warrant news coverage - although the “chase scenes” aren’t actually that scary. Here he is doing a territorial charge.

See when Tyson moves from busking (holding up his wings and padding menacingly) to a full on flying charge, with his wings pumping up and down? That’s what kayaks look like they’re doing when they paddle towards him. Swans are territorial (they firmly believe that they own property) and this charge would indicate that he is being directly challenged for possession of his property. Since some male swans are willing to defend their property to the point of death, this is Problematic during kayak season.

Also, swans just hate kayaks. Canoes are a little better and powered boats don’t bother them (many of them genuinely like powered boats and recognize friendly ones.)

This was related on boater social media: a well-known lady who has a garden that backs onto the canal made friends with a swan family. Sadly, the pen (female) died, leaving the cob (male) as a single parent. Now, that cob is renowned for disliking kayaks and canoes, and with several rambunctious youngsters to raise, he often forgot his parenting duties in the thrill of seeing them off - or he’d have to compromise his chasing to go back and protect his babies. Anyway, one day there was a kayak race and a constant stream of kayaks went shooting through his territory. Within a few hours of “seeing off” the flow of invaders while also protecting his babies from them, cob exhausted himself completely. He gathered up his babies and dragged them up the bank and into her garden, where he presented the brood to the lady, and then passed out on her patio. She entertained the babies - and apparently had a lapful of napping baby swans for a few hours - until the cob woke up and felt ready to cope. Thankfully the race was over.

That cob has a new mate now so hopefully she won’t be called upon to babysit again.

this is the masked bee! she has no friends and hates everyone. Sometimes when she has kids she raises them alone and doesn’t let the father come for day trips. she loves pollen but does not like waiting for it so she chews flowers open which is essentially stealing. we love her anyway.

these bees are homalictus bees! they are the rainbow gay bees. Females tend to live together in one nest and guard the entrance. one time we found 160 gay girls bunking together. They’re so irridescent and small that they might look like flies but they are really just tiny lesbians.

and this is the blue banded bee! she may look like she’s wacked out, but really she is pretty chill. she just wants to live independently (or with some friends) in a nest or burrow and look after tomatoes.

This is a tree bumblebee- they’re pretty similar to honeybees in that they have big nests with a polyandrous queen. However, these guys love to be around humans and in gardens, and are super resilient- there are now large populations in Iceland. They have a more complex social hierarchy than most bees, with multiple worker castes. If a worker gets close with the queen she can mate with a drone and lay her own eggs in with the big pile, but eat the eggs of any workers beneath her that try to do so.

This is a valley carpenter bee- the only bee that can thermoregulate and had a circulatory system complete with aortic arch. Carpenter bees are good because they are too big to get into many flowers and have to be extra hairy to get pollen. They live in raw wood in small family units of all females (mothers and daughters or sisters) and are excellent cooks and workers. Males cruise around mating with multiple females and then leave.

as Alice and Pam, OFFICE NEMESIS battling nonprofit burnout! and each other!

….UNTIL, in the first episode, they start having flashbacks and eventually realize: they are the reincarnations of, respectively, King Arthur and Lancelot, they are destined to fight evil while being devoted to each other in an epic and legendary way, and weekly budget meetings just got really weird!

Every episode alternates between flashbacks to Round Table efforts to fight evil, provide justice, build a better and more stable society, etc., and current-day office hijinks as the nonprofit attempts to do the same, but with much more paperwork.

As a sidenote, all the flashbacks initially have placeholder white guy actors doing ye olde British accents and speaking forsoothly, except for the person having the flashback, who plays themselves. Once Alice and Pam recognize each other at the end of the first episode, however, every flashback features Retta and Melissa Fumero talking exactly like they would in the office while wearing shining armor.

The rest of the placeholder actors gradually get replaced by actual cast members as further reincarnation reveals occur,

including:

- Donald Glover as the reincarnation of Sir Gawain, ladies’ man and too-cool-for-school tech bro, who’s the only person who knows how to keep the website running!

- Rahul Kohli as the noble reincarnation of King Pellinore, the development manager who is constantly questing after very worthy but COMPLETELY UNATTAINABLE grants!

- Yael Grobglas as the reincarnation of Sir Kay, the long-suffering and sarcastic office business manager who must always be the one to point out they don’t have enough money for their pet project!

- Sandra Oh as the director’s PA, the only person who knows where everything is and keeps the office running and everybody from murdering each other; she of course turns out to be Guinevere!

- and, of course, Jaime Camil as Merlin, the director of the nonprofit, who has been gathering all the Round Table reincarnations together for world-saving purposes all this while!

Merlin is not reincarnated, for the record. Merlin is just Merlin. This is why Merlin is very good at magic and WILDLY INCOMPETENT at being the director of a nonprofit organization.

Sample episodes include:

- the episode where everyone is rushing to meet a grant deadline, with flashbacks to PREPARING FOR BATTLE AGAINST THE ROMANS

- the team retreat episode in which Merlin insists everybody do trust falls; in flashbacks, Merlin also insists everybody do trust falls

- the episode in which Donald Glover has to go through ludicrous hoops to install a new open-source software, intercut with the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

- the mid-season love triangle episode, in which a.) the reveal of who is Guinevere, b.) the reveal that Lancelot and Arthur were way more than good buddies, and c.) THE MOST AWKWARD OFFICE MEETINGS YET, FOR EVERYONE

Pepe the Frog: To Sleep, Perchance to Meme.

It’s literally the only movie I can think of that is based completely around the unheard of “FEMALE gaze.” Granted, while I’m a huge movie buff I’ve not seen every movie ever made. But even so, even if there’s another example of the “female gaze” in cinema that has escaped me it’s still damn impressive that a kids movie from 1997 based on a Jay Ward cartoon from the 60’s managed to turn gender representation in media on it’s fucking ass!

First things first, let’s look at our leading lady and love interest - Ursula, played by Leslie Mann.

Let me just say that while Leslie Mann is adorable and a talented actress, she does look a little less conventional and a little more plain compared to the bombshells that Hollywood likes to churn out. Leslie, in comparison, looks much more like a real women you’d meet on the street. She dresses pretty conservatively and plain throughout the film ; Wearing outfits that are more functional than fashionable for trekking through the jungle, pulling her hair back and so forth. Not that if she was dolled up and more scantily clad it would give her character any less integrity, but can we appreciate how RARE that is in the male dominated industry of film? Just think about all the roads a film about a woman in the jungle COULD have taken but didn’t - no scenes with her clothes strategically ripped or anything! You can say this is a kids movie, intended for children and that’s why the sensuality of the female lead is so downplayed but there are PLENTY of kids movies that handle women in a very objectifying and sexualized manner despite the target audience is pre-pubescent. Like, a disgusting amount. So I don’t think “it’s a kids movie” is why the film doesn’t take ANY, let alone EVERY, opportunity to showcase the main female character’s sex appeal…

…especially considering the sex appeal of the film rests squarely on the well defined shoulders of our male lead, George of the Jungle played by Brendan Fraser in the best god damn shape of his life!

*Homer Simpson Drooling Noises*

Whenever members of the reddit community try to compare the sexualization of women in fiction to the design of characters such as Batman and Superman, I always want to just sit them down and show them this movie. Because THIS is what the female sexual fantasy looks like, and Batman and Superman are male power-fantasies. Look at him - his big blue eyes, his soft hair, his lean, chiseled physique built for dexterity rather than power. He’s wild and free, but gentle. It’s like he fell right out of that steamy romance novel your mom tried to hide from you growing up.

Hell, the whole plot seems to be designed around how damn hot he is! First, for the majority of the film, he wears only a small strip of cloth to cover the dick balls and ass. Everything else is FAIR GAME to drool over for 40 minutes. Then, after he meets Ursula she takes him with her to San Francisco just so we can enjoy him in a well-tailored suit (as seen in the gif set), running around in an open and billowy shirt along side horses while Ursula and all of her friends literally crowd around and make sexual comments about him, and my personal favorite, ditch the loincloth entirely and have him walk around naked while covering his man-bits with various objects while one of Ursula’s very lucky friends oogles him and makes a joke along the lines of “So THAT’S why they call him the ‘KING of the Jungle’…”

And yes, it’s also a very cute and funny little movie. Out of all the movies based on Jay Ward cartoons, it was the most faithful to the fast-paced humor and wit of the original source material (yes even the new Peabody and Sherman movie which honestly I thought was too cutesy-poo.) But that’s not why this movie is popular with the gay community or why we all became women in 1997. It’s just really cool that there’s a film out there where the sensuality of the female form takes a back seat for the oiled up, chiseled, physique of Brendan Fraser (in his prime that is)

he’s non threatening

let’s take a look at his rival - Lyle is a cravat-wearing trust-fund kid (who, interestingly, is into Ursula’s fortune more than her, which kind of makes this a gender-swapped gold-digger thing too). He’s blonde and Ursula’s mom LOVES him. He’s more uncomfortable and less prepared to cope with the jungle than Ursula is, in his pastels and shiny shoes.

But he talks over Ursula, insists he knows what’s best for her, ignores her autonomy. In spite of the fact that Lyle Van de Groot is a rich, educated, social climber who cares deeply about his clothing and appearances he is a point-by-point checklist of unhealthy masculinity in a way that beefy, inarticulate, uneducated George could never be. Ursula is off on her own doing her own thing and Lyle hires two FUCKING POACHERS to track her down in the middle of the jungle while she’s working (or on vacation? It’s never made clear because he interrupts her before she can explain why she went on the expedition). Lyle ignores the local guides, claiming his experience with a bridge in Maui means the bridge they’re on is safe - which leads to a significant injury for one of the guides. He then tells Ursula the guides are conspiring against him, trying to make himself and his poachers seem safe and the Africans who make up the rest of their party seem dangerous.

Check that body language! A post above points out that we’re never worried about Ursula when she’s around George. That’s because Lyle talks to her like this. Look at his aggressive lean! Look at him literally looking down at her! She’s tilted away from him in the least threatening position possible and he’s so aggressive about whatever point he’s making. When he finds her after he pushed her toward a damned lion he kisses her and she pushes him away. Want a textbook example of gaslighting? Here you go: she says “don’t get all smoochy with me! I remember what happened with that lion” and he responds “What are you talking about? I was fighting that lion the whole time - you were just so terrified you don’t remember.”  Then he shoots George! And then he kidnaps Ursula and attempts to force her into marriage!

Now look at how George and Ursula interact (slightly NSFW):

Even though he’s a big strong dude and he thinks he’s doing what’s okay he lets her set the tone for their interactions. He accepts that he’s out of his wheelhouse and even if he doesn’t understand it he does what she says is culturally appropriate. He learns from her! He listens to her! Compare Lyle leaning into Ursula above to this image of George and Ursula talking:

He’s listening to her, all of his attention is on on her, but he’s totally nonthreatening. His torso is turned toward her but he’s not invading her space, his hands are clasped, he’s smiling, and she’s the one leaning into him. Look at that smile she has, look how happy she is to be listened to. Her posture in both images is vulnerable but in this one with George she’s vulnerable because she has chosen to share with him instead of because she feels threatened.

When George rescues Ursula from Lyle at the end of the film it isn’t a typical damsel situation - George doesn’t have a knock-down-drag-out fight with Lyle, he swings into a tree and offers Ursula a hand so she can reach up and save herself (and before he does it he acknowledges how much it’s going to hurt and *whimpers* and looks human and scared). And you’ve gotta remember that George rescues everybody. It’s not just Ursula - he also rescues a parasailer and gets shot rescuing Shep and Ape. He just likes helping, dammit!

AND this movie offers a perfect counter to the “nice guy” thing - Ursula starts engaged to a jerk who her mom thinks is a “nice guy” the moves on to actual nice man George who isn’t *just* nice - he’s also patient, listens to her, has his own skills and talents, is okay with being goofy, has his own social circle and isn’t totally dependent on Ursula, and looks amazing. Ursula doesn’t go with George just because he’s a *nice* guy who rescued her from an asshole, Ursula goes with George because he’s an interesting, fun person who is supportive of her different way of being an interesting, fun person. AND he’s emotionally available. Google image search George of the jungle and see how many smiles you can find, see how many open looks of confusion there are, see how much sadness you can see in George’s face. Now look for images of Lyle. His two expressions are a smirk and cartoonish fear. I know this is a cartoonish kid’s movie, but it is SO powerful that the hero shares his emotions while the villain masks every emotion but fear. Lyle doesn’t want to open up, he doesn’t want to be vulnerable, he wants CONTROL. George wants to learn, to protect people he cares about, to explore new places, to laugh when he’s happy and to be sad when he’s sad, and that he does that while being a broad-shouldered, physically powerful dude who is NOT totally self-involved is just…

Like, look, I didn’t sign on to tumblr dot com for George of the Jungle discourse, but I’m just now realizing that this movie may have done the most for destroying my conception of stoic masculinity and gender roles as a child.

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