“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.”
— Plato
Definitely! As a sex worker I can relate to his relationship with his client Eddie. It is clear he does it for the money and is not into him, but he also has empathy for him and cares. I felt like that many times in my job. And indeed it is nice to see a show where a character being a sex worker is just one of the multiple sides of them, not their entire shown personality. I wish we would have more characters in shows who are casually doing sex work on the side:)
I think Lafayette in True Blood was the first unashamed sex worker character I ever saw on TV. He was a multi-faceted character, confident and unapologetic about his sexuality and his work, and I've never seen anything like it since.
He gets a lot of appreciation for being witty and beautiful and unapologetically gay and standing up for himself, and his character is wonderful for all of those things, but I also want to appreciate him for being a sex worker who wasn't 1-dimensional.
Stop everything. We literally have whale language. We just discovered definitive whale language. We can't translate it (yet) but we literally deciphered that whale calls are not random, and they're not simple. They follow linguistic patterns just like us. They have names for each other.
We're on the brink of ACTUALLY understanding what an animal is talking about, beyond basic warning cries. My childhood dream of being able to talk to animals is like, 1 step away from happening.
And omg if we ever do get to talk to whales, my adhd ass has a MILLION questions. Do they see/use the stars and moon to navigate? Do they have religion? Can they understand other whale species, or is it like trying to talk to a chimp? Do they like people-watching while we're on our boats whale-watching? Do they teach their offspring the way humans and apes do? What's the most annoying animal in the sea?
I want to tell them about us and our relationship to whales. How we have movies about them. We see their jaws in museums and marvel at how big they are. We try to save them when they wash up on the beach. How we made such a big push to outlaw whale hunting and bring back the whale population. How much I hated the novel Moby Dick.
I wonder if they would have questions for us? They can't really fathom the land the way we can understand the ocean. They might be able to see shorelines, maybe some islands. But think of how much land stuff a whale has never seen. They've never seen a cat, or a desert. I wonder if they would know that there must be more land, or assume that it's all just concentrated around the shore.
I imagine they would be curious about our boats, and why we can't swim very well. If they have culture, which I strongly believe they and most intelligent animals do, they might even remember stories passed down about whale hunting. They might ask why we suck at singing. Why do our fins look weird? How would we explain walking to a sea creature?
Of course, that is the one wrinkle - in all linguistic research and animal communication research, we haven't yet discovered a species that also asks questions the way we do. Apes don't seem to care about where or why things happen. They just make the tools and move on. At this point we have no reason to believe that a whale would need or want to ask questions. They have the ocean, they have their food, and they don't even make tools the way we do.
But still... can you imagine really having a conversation with a whale? How amazing and humbling it would be.
no fucking way
the aliens are going to have questions about our world that absolutely no one will ever be able to answer
"the world isn't kind" ok??? Much more importantly are you?????
I am appreciative that I’m learning to cry again. Over silly things or sad things. I’ve struggled for a long time to properly access, feel, and process my emotions. I do not get angry when I should, and it isn’t unusual for me to go months without crying, despite having valid reasons to do so. Without that internal monitor It makes caring for myself difficult sometimes. This may hurt, but it feels like progress.
Portal 2's Turret Opera still hits soooo hard as a closing point for Chell and GLaDOS' story dude. Right after a monologue about how after everything they've been through she realizes she's incapable of killing Chell, GLaDOS has actually.. set up a perfect, inescapable death trap. She could've easily had the turrets shoot through the glass, sent the elevator all the way back down to Old Aperture or simply gassed her without letting the elevator even leave her central chamber. She basically had her. She could've obliterated her while she was still out cold from fighting Wheatley, but she doesn't. Instead, she has them perform an opera about walking as far away from science as possible. An opera that's implied to have been rehearsed even before Chell broke out with Wheatley - was she considering doing this long before Chell went out to try and kill her again?? This is very blatantly me steering into headcanon territory, but I like to think this whole room was the "REAL surprise with tragic consequences" GLaDOS spoke of. I imagine this is exactly what she originally planned to do - give her false hope by having her ride an escape elevator only for it to stop right in the middle of a massive turret ambush. She would literally treat Chell like a fish in a barrel. Quick, easy and delightfully painful. Each instance where she escaped was either due to oversight or third party intervention - so she created a situation where none of that is possible. All that would arrive to the surface and see the sun is a bullet-riddled corpse. But that's not what the elevator brings to that dingy faux shed in the end. I wonder what she's done with this room after the elevator made its ascent. Do the turrets still stand there, waiting on the off-chance the elevator goes back down with a familiar face within? Do they still sing the same song, over and over, hoping she'll hear it up there? Do they think of her, does she think of them, does she think of her? If Chell were to step back in, would GLaDOS even have the heart to let that elevator go back down? Either way, they'd still be down there, gathered for someone that may never ever come back. They'll all be faithfully standing at their usual spots in the chambers, ready to lovingly shoot her again should she be back to test forever.
cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it
Sea animals, hopepunk, fantasy, queerness, and a bit of philosophy
175 posts