Latest Posts by mari-say - Page 4

If you see this on your dashboard, reblog this, NO MATTER WHAT and all your dreams and wishes will come true.

The Marx Understander: We should be voting blue harder

correct. sitting in your room jerking it to fantasies of a revolution that has no leaders, no organizational infrastructure, and no strategy is not more historically progressive than participating in electoral politics. revolutions don't spontaneously self-organize. the revolutionary left in the United States is fragmentary and riven with internecine feuds, and uses abstentionism as an excuse for its irrelevance. anytime somebody suggests that milieu might not be a tenable vehicle for large-scale political change, somebody leans back in their chair, sneers, and offers some cutting remark with zero substance that functions solely to indicate that cool kids don't vote, cool kids don't team up with liberals, cool kids don't care about large-scale effectiveness, they only care about the incestuous world of far-left politics.

they have no substantive defense of their behavior, of course. if they did, they would be able to offer a defense besides repeating Democratic campaign slogans in increasingly mocking tones to indicate their disapproval. the "far left" in american politics these days really is just an unpleasant, cliquish social club on the internet. and once you notice how their model for politics is Mean Girls, how they have no style of communication that isn't dripping with irony so they don't actually have to make a positive claim that they might have to defend, how they have zero ambitions beyond their extremely insular world, it becomes impossible to ignore.

This post just gets worse every year, like, dude, you couldn't be more wrong 😭

"Oh you had a plague? Come back to us when you had a World War, brand new unconventional weapons, and a new international order."

A character arc where the character who did terrible things and regrets them is forced to live, to put one foot in front of the other and find healing, who chooses to pour goodness into the world and make the world a better place

Is more satisfying to me than a character arc where the character who did terrible things and regrets them is redeemed through death

99.9% of the time.

Early Morning

DON'T GET DISTRACTED, PIERRE!

I love the very brief cut in the atla finale when Ozai, defeated, turns to look at Aang as he brings the water up to clear the fires around them

Ozai. An incredibly powerful fire bender. A man who was so arrogant and still managed to think that, moments prior, he could’ve caught the avatar off guard, even after being scared out of his mind as the kid chased him down with a solar system of elements around him

He fully got his ass handed to him. Not only was he beaten by the goodness in Aang’s heart and his decision to spare Ozai’s life, but his bending was taken away. In a world like that, it’s a fate worse than death. This little 12-year-old just touched his head and heart and fully evicted the one thing that made Ozai who he was.

You have the power to end it here and stop what you’re doing!

…I do have the power. I have all the power in the world!

I love that look that he gives Aang. He is exhausted. He just stared death in the face. His energy was bended. The strength and invincibility he felt when he was trying to break through the earth Aang hid himself in was replaced with an embarrassing shell of a man, and even more a leader

And to look at this child whom every avatar in existence, from Wan to Roku, spoke through and who chased him down and just selflessly saved the world. Who calmly breathes in, lights up, and slowly uses the first water bending move he was ever taught to cleanse the damage that Ozai caused

Forced to watch the goodness of this kid in full swing. This fully realized avatar, and a more powerful bender than Ozai could ever dream to be

Aw he’s shy

I've wanted to draw him for a long time ♡

Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them. 

Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.” 

“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”

“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”

It’s just. 

50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job. 

crystal beptism

my bf has many interesting stories and observations from his new job as a 911 operator

my favorite is how meandering people are, even in the midst of a terrible emergency

they respond to “what is the emergency” with “well, the thing is, four weeks ago–”

and then he’s like “WHAT IS THE EMERGENCY RIGHT NOW”

and they’re like “so what happened this morning was, i said to my wife, i said–”

“WHAT IS CURRENTLY HAPPENING AT THIS MOMENT”

“oh i’m having a heart attack”

my second favorite is how specific he has to get sometimes

like, “what is your emergency?”

“i’m sitting in a pool of blood.”

“… is it… your blood?”

“yes i think so”

“do you know where it’s coming from?”

“probably the stab wound”

“have you been stabbed?”

“oh yah definitely”

being a humanities major who’s friends with stem majors is so funny because you’ll ask your friends what they’re doing today and they’re like “UGH it’s so stressful i have to stabilize the reactor core for my nuclear power midterm and then i have to build the supercomputer from i have no mouth yet i must scream for my electrical engineering homework :/ what about you” and you’re like “oh well i have to read a fun little book and write an essay about gender.” and they still think you have it worse

It's interesting to me how Harley genuinely seems to believe that he's doing the right thing but not for the right reasons.

(This is more of a ramble than anything so please excuse any mistakes)

He mentions in chapter four that: "The ONLY difference is that what I fight for actually gains humanity something."

You could just attribute this to Harley trying to turn us against Poppy but I do think he actually meant what he was saying.

We know that Harley lacks humility, yet the actual reason he was kicked from the Young Geniuses Program was more because he was only interested in progress for progresses sake. He only cared about whether he could do something, not whether he should.

Elliot mentions himself in the letter removing Sawyer from the program that: "Scientific progress should ALWAYS be to the benefit of humanity," and I actually do think Harley took that part to heart. Only, he still didn't care about humanity in the slightest and probably didn't have a reason to. He just wanted Elliot's approval. Or perhaps he was trying to spite him.

In Harley's eyes the biggest flaw humanity has is mortality. He describes it canonically as an inferno. A flame to be escaped. That was one of the ulterior motives he had when he created the BBI - a way to turn humans into living beings that would never age or grow sick.

He even says himself before he dies in chapter four: "I was the one that paved the golden path," which I'm fairly certain is a reference to the "Golden Path" in Dune; something that also ties into ensuring humanity's survival.

In the Icepick Arg too you can find this message:

Here Harley describes himself as being merciful, sparing humans from their inevitable fates and the limitations of their own bodies. However he isn't doing any of it for humanity's sake, only for the recognition, approval, and attention. And because Elliot told him to.

He justifies himself here again, fully believing he is in the right and that others will understand in a thousand years, once humanity is "saved" because of an immortality he discovered.

Also consider how Harley's last words are: "You...saved...nobody..."

I think he's talking to us, but also to himself. He's acknowledging that despite his brilliance and achievements, he wasn't the savior he believed he was.

In the end, Harley is such a fascinating character to me because he does believe he's doing the right thing but because he doesn't understand why he needs to do the right thing, he actually ends up hurting people more than he does helping them. Ironically enough, it is exactly what Elliot was afraid of when he removed Harley from the YGP:

"Progress made simply for the sake of progress often winds up hurting us more than it helps."

It's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And despite the fact Harley is an irredeemable, narcissistic psychopath, I think it's tragic that he and so many other people suffered because he fought so hard for a cause he didn't believe in. Not truly.

I do actually care marginally about the guy in that reddit screenshot who voted for Trump and is now worried that he might lose his medicaid funding because I did not fucking stutter when I said healthcare is a human right but the people losing their internships and job offers to the hiring freeze are straight up hilarious.

In regards of the Trump government scraping all trans inclusion in its queer information portion of its websites I have made this thing. Spread the word. Don't let them pretend we never existed.

P.S: Don't like! Reblog! <3

whenever someone calls USAmerican English the 'movie accent' I remember how somewhere last year I was on a train when suddenly the silence was broken by an american voice behind me somewhere and I immediately thought "Oh no, someones playing their tiktoks out loud again" and automatically turned around to put a face to my annoyance like you do when someones driving bad, and turns out a few rows down were just some actual in the flesh USAmericans having a nice conversation amongst themselves. I am sorry Americans I'm glad they let you out of the phone

Young Geniuses Program

My awesome Dr.Sawyer design

Elliot.... Look, I'm sure the man had nothing but good intentions and truly cared about Harley but like others have pointed out, he really did not consider Harley's situation at all. He mentions in his observations about Harley that the boy probably has a bad home life:

"From here and there he talks about home, I get the sense that he doesn't miss it very much."

AND YET HE ENDS HIS LETTER TO HARLEY WITH:

"So I challenge you to head for home, Harley, and to look at the people around you."

LIKE SIR YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT THE PEOPLE AROUND HIM PROBABLY AREN'T GREAT WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT

Chances are that Harley did go home afterwards (he is a still child at this point after all, where else can he go?) looked at the people around him and fully threw away whatever humanity he had left after that - becoming the person we know today.

Not to justify Harley's actions at all, but I would feel betrayed too if I opened up to someone about a rough home life, and then when they kicked me out of the one safe place I had they sent me back home.

Like hello?

And again, I truly believe Elliot thought he was doing the right thing. But I don't think he should have made the fatal assumption that every child came from a good home - especially with all the hints already in place.

In the club

It's very sad to me that despite Harley Sawyer being a fan favorite he's so horribly misunderstood by the fandom. YES he is an evil scientist, but acting like he's generic or doesn't have a solid or interesting motivation is silly. We see in the ARG that he was practically "groomed"(for lack of a better word) into the role, Playtime Co saw the potential he had for their evil and they trained him to do so. And in the end, they punished him for becoming what they always wanted him to be.

Not to mention the implications that he comes from an abusive home, no wonder he turned out how he did. Obviously I'm not trying to excuse his actions(I LOVE EVIL MAD SCIENTISTS!!!), but there's so much more to him as a character than the fandom seems to care about. I think Poppy Playtime consistently has VERY fascinating characters that get boiled down to their most surface level traits - Harley, Doey, and Stella are all victims of this.

how my brain picks a new favorite character who sucks

Little silly scetches

Winter on the Seine, Lavacourt (1880) by Claude Monet

Y'all. Y'all. I have discovered possibly the greatest commercial establishment in the history of mankind. An indie bookstore-and-flower-shop in an old-town arts district, COVERED with trans/queer/Black Lives Matter books, flags, pride, etc. Filled with cute vintage furniture, a Writer's Corner, cool lamps, and an enormous and very friendly dog. Has a "Sappho Coffee" in-house bar about to open soon. Run by two lesbians. Horribly, I had to go elsewhere because I desperately needed coffee and theirs was, as noted, not up and running yet, but I will be back so hard. Possibly to shake these women's hands and take copious notes as to the secret of their success. They have done it. They are an example to us all. They are living the fanfiction dream.

god gives his coolest girlfriends to his most loser reddit bros

I don’t think any movie will make me feel the same ethereal sense of otherworldly sorrow and disembodied awe as that scene in Lord of the Rings where the loyal son is sent off into a doomed battle to please his vindictive father while Pippin sings a mourning song of his people

I was like 12 and high off this shit

fuck it, reblog to give the person you rb'ed this from a freshly baked buttery croissant.