and your eyes seeing happiness;

Helloooo Sydney fives, it has been a long time. We have had the s2 release since we last had a meet up (entire civilisations probably rose and fell since we last had a meet up), and we should have plenty to talk about when we get together! Which implies we talk about ZR when we get together…which never ends up being that true.

The meetup:

Saturday 13th July, 12pm, meet at the Queen Victoria Building (QVB), near the statue. If it’s raining, we’ll meet under cover near the QVB entrance.

I will be wearing my panda hat and posting a picture of what I’ll be wearing closer to the date so you can find me easily. If you’ve never attended a meetup, don’t worry! We don’t bite! We’ve only ever had, like, two meetups anyway. And only thewondersmith and I were at both of them. New faces would be awesome! Traditionally, we meet at the QVB then walk down to Chinatown to eat absurdly cheap (and tasty!) dumplings, then have froyo afterwards. If you can’t/don’t want to walk that far, you can meet us at Paddy’s Markets, just tell me so I know. :D And if you have any better ideas, suggest them! We only do dumplings and froyo because it’s cheap and easy.

Please reply/reblog/shoot me an ask or email me at dropbear [dot] emma [at] gmail [dot] com if you plan on coming! That way we know to wait for you if you’re late.

obligatory question mark for replies?

pawlikethebear:

thischarmingand:

pawlikethebear:

A slightly more concrete analysis of S2M15.

PLEASE DON’T READ BEYOND THIS POINT, MOBILE USERS. 

SPOILERS.

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haha oh dear accidentally put this in the queue. I say exactly nothing of importance, carry on.

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November, Year 0: The Outbreak.

November, Year 0: The Major comes to Abel.

no but you know what this is 100000x better than term 2/3 holidays 2012 because not only is the time frame much, much shorter but there is a light at the end of the tunnel! like, a pretty big one! actually it’s not a giant light, it’s more like if you got seventeen strings of fairylights all together and then there are lots and lots of little lights.

not only does ~the entire future~ NOT depend on what happens in the next five days, but also I know what will happen afterwards! it’s not a big black gaping hole of nothing! i am going to the movies and I’m getting Journey for my birthday and Emk is teaching me how to knit things that aren’t scarves (we’ve gotta organise that, love) and I will sing a lot until I sing something I’m happy enough to record so people can listen to me butcher things (here’s a secret: I’m actually really happy with Heaven on Their Minds) and I’m going to read Discworld novels and go to Zoe’s house so we can do dramatic readings of homoerotic Bible fanfiction (my friends are better than your friends, lbr) and Kas is going to come home and we are going to marathon tv shows and eat chinese food and get a little bit smashed and in order to do that, all I have to do

is survive the next five days.

it’s only just over a hundred hours.

some of those I will be asleep! I won’t even need to worry!

it is doable. 

and now I am going to stop procrastinating because jfc spurr basically GAVE us the first essay question.

thewondersmith replied to your post: i have all these great plans for the evening after…

D: noo Emma <3 Feel free to hit me up via email if you need someone to talk to, okay? Also I will be home in a couple of weeks to see your lovely face and we can go out and get a bit smashed and eat lots of chinese food together. (also HERETIC PRIDE)

shall do, my love <3 it’s okay, because I have social things to do on tuesday AND wednesday and then thursday is my birthday (!!!!), so whatever happens over the next five days I will emerge from the ashes like a phoenix so I can go see a movie about Marie Antoinette having sex with ladies during the French Revolution (I have never been happier about the pretentious indie cinema near my house because wow yes queer ladies in period costumes being queer and speaking in French SIGN ME UP) and then also marathon broadway bootlegs on the wednesday.

I am very excited for your return! and we can watch teen wolf! while getting a bit smashed, perhaps! and eating chinese! ALL THOSE THINGS AT ONCE!

(heretic pride it is!)

OH OH ALSO. this zr q&a business. at first I was all ‘nooo 3am I cannot go’ but then I thought ‘but wait! what if I decided to be ten years old again and pulled an all-nighter?’ and I am still not sure which of those options I choose but if you feel like also pulling an all-nighter I vote we do it at the same house.

asbestosparty:

okay u guys yr self-destructive Jehan prouvaire is all well and good i love me some collision of the horrific and the sublime

but he ain’t crying in private man that shit’s all on display bc jehan prouvaire ain’t depressed he’s Romantic

which means he’s gonna feel all the feels and play the flute dramatically and think about death a lot and water his violets in PAROXYSMS OF BOTH ECSTACY AND WOE WHILE LES AMIS ARE JUST STANDING IN THE CORNER LIKE “but why tho”

u want angst bait and quietly self-destructive misery then u roll w/ grantaire

Jehan died shouting in praise of the future, man.

It is a bit strange to think that Sam’s “last Christmas before” was almost a year before the outbreak. Hopefully he got to spend some more time with his sister and parents after that ;_;

Yeah, that threw me off quite a bit. Poor Sam. D:

i have all these great plans for the evening after I finish exams (monday), but let’s be real, what will happen is I will sit alone in a dark room with half a block of dark chocolate and listen to a mountain goats album on repeat until I am sufficiently numb.

currently accepting suggestions for which album (though not sunset tree or tallahassee).

November, if Father Michael is to be believed.

WHAT REALLY? I just went to relisten to that section of radio abel and EUGENE WHAT A DOOOORK omg the clip where they introduce him is gold. also YOU ARE RIGHT. IT IS NOVEMBER. I can sleep easy now.

this is the last text post I will make tonight (mainly bc I’m going to bed in a sec)

but how the hell do people listen to the words of music

I find that impossible

(probably why I shouldn’t be making a fanmix, oh god)

the real question is can I include this for the new canton council

basically what i’m saying is that making this fanmix would be a lot easier if I listened to things other than movie soundtracks and the mountain goats.

I wish you could do a search for songs, by, idk, ‘male lead vocalist, minor key, bass guitar, lyrics about something being volatile’

this zombies run fanmix will never be finished.

galacticdrift:

All the world’s misfortune: disneyforprincesses: thelostsunprincess: delladilly: so here is the…

harukami:

disneyforprincesses:

thelostsunprincess:

delladilly:

so here is the thing about ariel, is that she always dreams of being on land with feet, is explicitly canonically unhappy with her body & choices way before meeting prince eric. ariel wants to read and learn and dance and stand for herself. she has this extensive meticulous collection of all the shit she wants to learn, and king triton destroys it. so she is essentially, i think, moving from a male-dominated space in which her safe personal spaces are negated and her opinions and desires are dismissed to one in which she shares power and is (LITERALLY!!!!) given free reign. like, prince eric is essentially a narrative device allowing ariel to choose her own future & self. if she can make him fall in love with her, she can stay NOT ONLY with him BUT ALSO on land, where she has always wanted to belong, notably away from her father— who ok, is frightened for her safety, but who also terrorizes and belittles her.

and yeah, she exchanges her voice to make that transition, but those are the choices marginalized people are forced to make. this is how identity works in structural oppression— ok, you can have the body you want and live with the lover you choose, but you give up some of your rights. you give up some of your social respect. you give up your voice. (whoops i queered it.)(and ariel still is never without personal expression; on her day out with eric, they do straight up everything she wants and eric is totally cool with her being in charge. JSYK.)

and ariel’s voice is meant to be not only her communication but also her beauty— how many times under the sea did we hear TRITON’S SILVER-VOICED DAUGHTER, like she was corralled and praised explicitly (solely!) because of her singing ability, to the point where her reaction to giving up her voice was not “how will i communicate” but “why would he love me.” wow!!! children’s texts about the social valuation and manipulation of women’s bodies!!!! and the little mermaid is explicitly about the bargains ruthless precious ariel chooses to make in order to get what she has always wanted— feet and freedom. she doesn’t change her body for a man; she changes it for herself. 

and while we should mention about how the structural progression of beauty & the beast is deeply fucked up, belle gets the fuck out of the castle until the beast changes his behavior to her and, like ariel, negotiates for authority in a space where her desire for knowledge is celebrated and supported. you’ll remember she was otherized & mocked in the village whereas the beast a) gave her a library and b) did everything she ever said ever. (i also think it’s relevant to talk about classism in beauty & the beast, like belle is all GUYS I READ THIS BOOK and they’re like GIRL WE HAVE SHIT TO DO.) in the village she was relegated to the women’s spaces which consisted of STOP READING, GET MARRIED, REPRODUCE, like you have to be practical and useful and obedient to be a Good Woman

and her choice still entails marriage, but marriage which is not a domestication but rather an avenue to social and personal power. people forget that belle is just as wild and selfish and opinionated as the beast is; she is also an outcast. and yes, the plotline can support a romanticizing of abusive relationships, a social narrative of good women making bad men better, i am not arguing that it’s not thematically fucked up. the story, following the fairytale, focuses on the beast’s ~transformation~, but belle also changes; this is also a story about two people society has deemed monsters recognizing each other’s worth and beauty and learning to be tender to each other and to accept affection themselves. i don’t think it’s very helpful, in analyzing this story, to reduce it to good-woman-makes-bad-man-better without examining the woman as a character herself and what she gets out of it. belle is not your plot device. all of belle’s decisions in this movie are based on what she wants and values. she’s not here to redeem anybody. 

jasmine is sort of an outlier in that her movie is not actually about her! this is disney’s first movie aBOUT a BOY?!?!? and so like yes, obviously, in the film ALADDIN, we focus on… aladdin… and the thematic and narrative climaxes are based on aladdin’s character and choices. but that does not inherently mean that jasmine is abused by the narrative. i also think it’s really relevant first to talk about the ways that she’s exotified— jasmine, disney’s first woc princess, has a gendered oppression more linked with her specific culture than any white princess’ gendered oppression of equal or greater value. that’s not okay. and jasmine’s personal sub-arc is primarily about the way that she is valued for her sexuality and the way that she argues for and regains control of herself as sexual being.

jasmine is one of the least passive princesses of the entire disney canon, y’all. the entire plot is set in motion when jasmine runs away because she doesn’t want to marry any of her current options, and she comes back when that goes to shit, but she’s still not willing to obey anyone. this super hotcake prince ali comes into town and she’s like you’ve got the moves, but have you got the touch???, and it turns out he does!, and she’s real into it so she’s like welp get ready to be the sultan and aladdin is like hey to the what, but jasmine’s made up her mind. jafar tries to hypnotize her into loving him and she uses his conception of her sexuality against him. she straight up femme fatales him. she is not some prize to be won.

it is jasmine alone who bestows political power: jasmine may not be able to inherit or rule alone, but she will rule, and she is determined to choose herself with whom. her personal sexual authority and political authority are inextricably linked, of which she and the movie are both cognizant. it’s fucked up, especially within the context of all the white princesses, that her body is so explicitly commodified. but that doesn’t negate her authority over her body and the way she weaponizes it. and there’s a lot of ~feminist criticism~ that’s like JASMINE TEACHES WOMEN THAT THEY’RE ONLY VALUABLE FOR THEIR SEXUALITY, but i think feminist criticism is also examining the ways women find power in their social spaces, the ways they express or attain their own desires by manipulating their contexts. jasmine also teaches women that they are in charge of their sexuality, that their bodies are theirs alone. 

which is all to say, there is a lot of feminist criticism to be made of the disney princesses, but that’s not where feminist analysis has to end. these are still children’s movies about women’s choices, y’all. there are not a lot of those these days.

This is a really interesting analysis of the princesses.

great read!

This is perfect to me.

I was just thinking the other day about how I wanted to talk about growing up queer, the impact Disney princesses had on my life. Because I always joked about wanting to be them or wanting to do them because that’s an easy joke to make. But at the same time Ariel was, for me, a queer figure. (It’s not enough — I want to say that right now — Disney needs to give us an explicitly gay character, and they need to do it soon, for the sake of the children growing up with gay right issues at the forefront of discussion on a daily basis) But lacking that thing which Disney needs to do, Ariel was the closest I had, because there was family and society telling her that what she wanted for her body and for her lover weren’t appropriate and deliberately smashing any hint they found of it (how many gay kids can attest to a parent searching their stuff for indications they might be gay, then destroying it? I didn’t, my mom was great about it, but friends, my high school girlfriend, many, many fellow young adults I knew dealt with that).  For me, Ariel was very much a queered figure despite being so overtly straight because she existed in a space where a young woman had to defy her yuppie-written dad to claim the body she’d always wanted and relate to a love she could only have under the new body/world that she wanted to claim.

bittermeggirl:

I want a movie where two manic pixie dream girls fall in love and do cute lesbian things like destroy the patriarchy.

This is EATING AWAY AT ME (again). Does anyone know if we have any evidence to go on? S1M9 seems to imply it was soonish after a Christmas, I think (or am I making that up?), but no one mentions the snow/frostbite/whatever and I assume that would definitely be a talking point. So I’m thinking the earliest would be Marchish? Also, Jack was able to just go to sleep in a forest and he woke up and didn’t die of hypothermia or whatever, so…yeah.

EDIT okay so I found a website about the average temperatures in Hampshire (what do you mean I have an exam on Friday?!), and…duuude. dude. Either Jack is some sort of cyborg impervious to temperature, orrr…well. So his disco nap was 13 hours long, so part of it was definitely after sundown. There’s no real reason why he couldn’t have had a sleeping bag, I suppose. However, in May the average nighttime temp in Hampshire is 6C, and it’s above 6C until September. On the other hand, I can’t find any info on google about how cold is too cold, and I’m very much biased by my “oh my god it’s below 15 degrees, quick put on seventeen layers of clothing” Australianness. (I am currently wearing uggs, a jumper, trackies and a scarf and it is 13C.)

one of these days I’m going to try to write a chronological timeline of ZR missions (though god knows when all the side missions are — the only ones that have something more specific than ‘after m23’ are S2S1-3).

edit: also anyone who knows anything about raves in the uk please tell me if there’s a ~season~ for it because google is telling me people hold raves in, like, Feb and stuff so I’m not sure how they don’t just all freeze to death. 

gardensoftherighteous:

I strongly dislike this idea that progression in countries is measured by their imitation of western society. 

zalia:

I saw these going around and couldn’t resist.

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awwwwww SIMON