I think it’s fascinating that the original horror of dracula is kinda lost on us because our cultural well has been poisoned. I don’t know any 6-year olds who can’t tell you vampires are EVIL or are unfamiliar with the name dracula.  Reading the first chapter and seeing Johnathan, our beloved, think about asking his new friend COUNT DRACULA for help is comedic! Of course he’s walking into danger. We’re genre aware. 

However, also while doing dracula daily, there’s a new kind of horror. Both the prolonged no knowing when the next entry will drop but the sadness and horror of having to sit with the characters and wanting so desperately to give our heroes a metaphorical rosaries to protect them. We know this is a sinking ship full of vampires, we know how dangerous the situation is, how woefully unprepared everyone else is.

Which brings me back to how the dynamic has shifted, and I think unexpectedly so. Originally, dracula’s horror comes from the audience being basically London. He is scary because it’s unnerving to discover what new and terrible calamity is coming. What new powers and murderous feeding will come next? Who exactly are we locked in this room with? Will we make it out alive? But now, the horror stems from the audience being the Transylvanians, desperately longing to catch Jonathan before he gets to the carriage, begging him to turn back now. We are condemned to watch the ship as everyone gets picked off one by one. It’s a different but equally visceral kind of horrorshow. 

thinking about how my old university's automatic email generation gave my friend Andy Ryan the email address ARYAN88

Way, way back in the day, because I am ancient, our university assigned us email addresses you couldn't have changed, which included your first initial, middle initial, part of your surname, and the last five digits of your social security number. They stopped doing that after people kicked up a huge fucking fuss, but...

... I think I'd still rather have that one than your friend's. Damn.

My old job assigned me "cajones" and I had to very, very gently tell them that I could not and would not send professional emails with it because my email would be balls@company.com

I just cackled so loud it scared the dogs.

I encountered one in the wild where poor Peter Enis has the first initial, last name company email default that meant he was P.Enis@email

answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:

tl;dr:

the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.

as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.

the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.

ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.

and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.

all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!

long answers under the cut!

plugging gaza soup kitchen for those with the means to donate! it's another gazan-led initiative currently providing food, water, classes for children, and medical care across the north and south. you can donate through their website or their gofundme, or follow them on instagram for news about their projects

Honest question: Why do pop culture references work and get a laugh in things like Shrek, but in others they just come across as just being lame and forced? What makes a pop culture reference work? 

I think the thing with references in general is that they need to either a) work on their own even if someone DOESN’T understand the source material and/or (preferably and) b) are brief enough that someone who doesn’t understand them most likely won’t notice them, instead of stopping the story shut in its tracks for a minute so you can wink at the viewer and say “geddit? eh? eh?”… metaporically speaking.

Example: in Shrek 2, Shrek sees an old poster in Fiona’s old room in the castle.

When I was a kid, I genuinely didn’t recognize that this was supposed to be Justin Timberlake, because I wasn’t that up on celebrity stuff (and he already wore a full beard at this point). But I still smiled, because even if you DON’T recognize the celeb it still is a solid joke even without that, narrative is still easy to recongize that Fiona as a tween had a crush on some male celebrity, and it ties into character development of Shrek feeling insecure because he’s not human - so it fullfills point a).

And in addition to that: that shot? It lasts for THREE SECONDS. It’s a quiet scene (except for music), noone makes any mention of that poster, there’s no dialog or callback or anything. If you don’t get it, you miss absolutely nothing. So it fulfills point b) at the same time.

True, and even the longer references (like the scene in Shrek 2 where Fairy Godmother sings “I need a hero” and you get that whole Godzilla Cookie bit) don’t actually impede the story, because there’s still stuff going on. Most of the time, when a reference falls flat, it’s because the movie stops in its tracks or doesn’t advance the plot, which tends to get on the nerves of viewers :P

another example: in Meet The Robinson’s, when Wilbur says his dad looks like Tom Selleck and we’re given this picture for a fraction of a second among a bunch of pictures of goofy cartoon characters:

now as a kid this was hilarious bc come on, thats not a cartoon character, thats just a man!!! and it’s absurd and only there for a second. and then i learned later that his dad is actually voiced by Tom Selleck and GOD THATS HILARIOUS

pop culture references usually just fall somewhere on a spectrum from “funny” to “obnoxious,” with “boring” smack dab in the middle

I’d say that’s also why the Genie worked so great in Aladdin. It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s that I understood most of his references and impressions. But they are all so rapid fire that even when I don’t understand in my mind he’s just a silly man doing silly voices.

cancel your plans we’re thinking about the pale blue dot voyager pic tonight

this image of earth from saturn rattles around in my skull at all hours of the day

So I am infamous now for the time I pointed out Op and Meg's eyes both are tears of sadness and of rage.

But @seraphim-seeker commented on my Megatron one with this in the tags

So yeah, what about Ratchet?

Ratchet has been described, in the Art of Prime to have soft eyes

Which, when looking at Ratchet, does in fact come across in his design but I wanna point out one very vital factor in his eyes.

These almost teardrop like additions to them.

And, knowing how rare to see them it is , believe me, I had to go through a lot of clips to find shots where it showed these tears I once again cannot help but be reminded of tears, of a medic in mourning.

Mourning what? The loss of his world, of his allies, his loved ones, his patients.

And it is so rare to see these tears, just as rare as it is to see Ratchet be vulnerable, because he puts on the armor and shields that hide his emotions from others.

With the kids for example, he immediately rejects the idea, but grows so close to Raf

one of my favorite gifs that shows how gentle and soft Ratchet once was is this

How he is quick to use both hands to catch Raf, and makes sure he has a hold of him with both, before making sure to shift to one carefully.

And keeping his eyes ON Raf, all times as he carries him.

And as always I mention RID15 for the rare good thing it did in design

It showed how tired he is. He was a war medic, making sure everyone made it back in one piece and made it out alive, and RID15 shows it in a way that makes it also feel so tragic

Ratchet bears the tears, ever eternal, of a doctor who couldn't save many, but saved those that mattered most.

Grumpy he may be, but there is a gentleness to him, no matter what he says to all.

i read the cutest reddit thread today where this 19 yo boy was “babysitting” his 15 yo little sister while his parents were away on vacation and she got this horrific period and needed to be taken to the ER.

and this sweet 19 yo boy was doing all he could to take care of her, giving her meds and water and then packing stuff up to go to the hospital once reddit was like “yeah if she’s soaking two tampons in an hour you should go” - but being only a little older than a child himself, he didn’t know what to pack, so he brought like three things, and one of them was SUNSCREEN.

lmao everyone on reddit was like “you’re a really good brother but sunscreen?? for the hospital??” lmao they are roasting him. also op’s sister changed his name in her phone to “spf” and their dad calls him “bananaboat” now. this guy is never living this down

(also his sister is ok and it turns out their family has some kind of genetic blood disorder)

link to the thread on r/BestofRedditorUpdates

the brother kind of reminds me of that post that’s been going around abt that abandoned five-week-old kitten that was taking care of a few two-week-old kittens that were somehow with him and he was just trying his best but he was so small

On Love and Community

2010. A Japanese woman sits down to take photos of her shiba inu dog for her blog. Suddenly, a man leaps out of a time portal. "Sorry, I can't let you do this. I cannot tell you why." She asks: "Is it forbidden knowledge from the future?" He sighs: "No, it's just too fucking stupid to explain."

character playlists aren’t for songs a character would listen to they are for songs that remind me of the character

“x wouldn’t listen to this” yeah no shit this is for when i want to listen to my shitty songs and think about my favorite little characters

Speak for yourself. I think Rouge the Bat would love my Rouge playlist. Every time I found a smooth jazz, acid jazz, nu jazz, or jazz house song that fit her style, I thought “damn Rouge would love this,” and added them to a playlist, specifically for her to listen to.

Okay. Well Rouge the Bat isn't real. So I don't think she's gonna listen to that.

In a monumental discovery for paleontology and the first of its kind "Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia"

Abstract The frozen mummy of the large felid cub was found in the Upper Pleistocene permafrost on the Badyarikha River (Indigirka River basin) in the northeast of Yakutia, Russia. The study of the specimen appearance showed its significant differences from a modern lion cub of similar age (three weeks) in the unusual shape of the muzzle with a large mouth opening and small ears, the very massive neck region, the elongated forelimbs, and the dark coat color. Tomographic analysis of the mummy skull revealed the features characteristic of Machairodontinae and of the genus Homotherium. For the first time in the history of paleontology, the appearance of an extinct mammal that has no analogues in the modern fauna has been studied. For more read here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-79546-1

I always knew it was possible, but I never dared to hope.

new variant on “your boos mean nothing; I’ve seen what makes you cheer”

Do you ever get reminded of that one really intense longfic that you had every intention of writing and had meticulous notes and complicated outlines for but then something happened and you aren't in the fandom anymore and you still have the desire to write the fic but it's slightly hollow now because it's a good idea and you think it would have been a great fic but you haven't been in the fandom for literally years and you don't have that bit of passion for it that you did when you were writing it and have just a weird moment of nostalgia where you want to reread it but it never existed

get out of my house

Rude

guy sitting in front of me in class was vandalizing wikipedia and i kept reverting his edits as soon as he made them and he couldn't figure out why it was happening

absolutely

There are a lot of video game fandoms that absolutely lose me at the very shallow end of the pool, but the Sims fandom always makes me feel like I'm absolutely drowning in an inch of water

It's because they let you in and then removed the ladder.