Why Is This Hannibal Coded

Actually I'll never forgive Punk Rave and Killstar and fast fashion brands for tricking people into thinking that being goth or punk or emo is expensive. Babygirl the only goth brand names you need to know are Rit, Good Will, Etsy, and Studs and Spikes, we used to shove safety pins through our ears and then they started selling earrings that look like safety pins for 15.99. We used to dye thrifted wedding dresses black and they started selling gothic gowns for 300 bucks. We used to put studs on boots we found in the back of the good will and they started making Demonias. DIY or die wasn't perfect it can be exclusionary to disabled people but whatever the fuck we've got going on right now is so much worse. It's not any more inclusive to the disabled and it is exclusionary to the people who made punk, to the people who made goth, to the people who made emo. If you've got the funds and you don't want to do diy pay someone else to do it for you but please let it be a small artist or a friend not some guy in a suit who's made it his business to gentrify punk. You can turn flats into platforms with flipflops, hotglue and gumption don't let anyone tell you different.

WOAW! two Salem...the boys

(HE/HIM FOR BOTH CHARACTERS) 🐇🎉🏳️‍⚧️

Chaos

so yes he has a six year long total nervous breakdown over a divorce which does seem kind of unwarranted on the surface but the thing is that his breakdown wasn't just because of his fiance leaving him, it's because he's lived for four decades in this absolutely untenable state of being on the coattails of the revolution. the fact that dora even has the choice to pack up and fly away and leave behind the poverty and disability and addiction and misery and, as he imagines her saying, "leave him alone in hell forever" while he has no hope of ever leaving revachol or becoming anything more than what he is is what causes the breakdown just as much as her making that choice. and so that's why he sees her as dolores dei right, like yes it's because he deifies her but it's not just that, because dolores dei isn't just some ambiguous religious figure, she's specifically the innocence of moralism and the welfare state and interisolary travel. it's not dora that failed harry, it's the world that failed harry, and because dora was able to escape and moralism and the welfare state and interisolary travel were able to save her in a way they never saved him, he projects all the ways the world has failed him onto her. like harry has this breakdown because the woman he loved (rightfully) left him yes but also harry has this breakdown because he was born into poverty in a military hospital and he got polio as a child and never quite got better and all his childhood friends are dead of car accidents and drug overdoses and he's lived his entire life under a form of capitalism that allows for no self-determination, no political representation, no upward mobility. so when she leaves him it's not just a broken heart that does him in, it's the culmination of a lifetime of misery that he falsely blames her for because she was able to escape. you feel me. and that's why his breakdown is so insane and massive and disproportionate and that's why he sees her as god you feel me. like love did him in but capitalism killed him. right

Hard to believe Nine Inch Nails' classic The Downward Spiral is 30 years old today! Here is some detail photography I took of the original album cover painting by Russell Mills for the 10th anniversary deluxe edition release, which I had the unique honor of designing, and somehow that is now 20 year old.

Everyone has that one album that hit at just the right moment of adolescence to change their perspective on music and get them through their teenage angst. The Downward Spiral was that album for me, released as it was in 1994, when I was a freshman in high school (and an absolute banner year for music/films/games all around). I must have stared at the artwork for hours over those years, without even much detail to draw from on its tiny 5” CD slip case. So five years later, when I found myself inexplicably working for Nine Inch Nails, it was surreal to see the actual original painting in the flesh, hanging as it was at the time in Trent Reznor’s office at Nothing Studios, New Orleans.

I was struck by how much dimension and texture there was in the artwork that never translated on that tiny slipcase printing, how much detail was happening in the physical materials of the art: Flies, moths, wires, blood… I had been staring at this “painting” for so long, yet suddenly it was like I had never seen it before. I also noticed that it had aged - the wires had wilted over the years, drooping down from their original position as captured in the original album cover (interestingly, judging by the photo posted today by NIN, the piece has since been restored); a tooth was missing from the other main piece.

That experience stuck with me and it was the first thing I thought about when the task of re-imagining the album package fell upon me in 2004. I wanted to re-photograph the artwork, subtly updating the cover to show that ten years had changed it physically, much like our perceptions of art and music and memories change over time with perspective. I also wanted to dig into the previously unseen details of the work and explore it with my macro lens, so that fans like me, old and new, could have new layers of texture to pore over for hours while listening to a legendary album.

Happy birthday, old friend.

something that i've always found really funny is catra's s5 plot armor, or rather, design armor i suppose.

to start with, adora (and bow and entrapta) had no idea catra was with glimmer on the velvet glove.

so they rescue her, and surely her chipped outfit, which she's wearing, is the only one she has after prime discarded her former horde uniform.

but then we see her in the same pajamas that she wore in the fright zone, just without the horde symbol, and remember that adora's looks different.

in the next episode, she's wearing an alternate version of her previous red & black uniform, which there's no way could been packed on the journey to save only glimmer, and they wouldn't have cared about leaving replaceable clothing behind on the ship.

also another thing i want to point out is that the back of the torso is mostly removed, likely by catra's claws due to the fact it had the horde symbol on it and she was now part of the rebellion. but i'm not counting this part since it makes sense.

anyway, she gets a whole space suit made for her by entrapta, who, again, wasn't aware catra wasn't on etheria anymore, let alone would want to leave prime.

and here's a bonus just because i can't tell: was this cloak made with a place for her cat ears to fit into, or is she just poking through the original fabric?

overall, this isn't a plot hole and i don't actually care about these inconsistencies since it's not a serious issue, if one at all. but this has always been something i wanted to share with the fandom since i love details!

queen

i want love

“face the truth as it is instead” disintegrated him

I think if folks want to form a new and healthier intellectualism as a tide against a lot of the culture industries worst sins, we also have to freely share information. If you have access to an ebook, share it, if your professors have class readings spread them around, put your notes up online. Be free and willing to talk to people about questions they have, point to your sources, leave no barrier against learning intact. If we actually want to get people to think and look and listen we cant just "advocate" for change; we have to make it, too.