Hey guys!! So in honor of the upcoming holiday, Hannah (@harleeys) and I thought it’d be a really fun idea to do a “8 Days Of Simon” positivity week (and a day) for Hanukkah!
Here’s how it’ll work:
Each day of Hanukkah, starting from Saturday, the 24th of December, till Sunday, 1st of January, just post something about about Simon! It can be a short text-post, a headcanon, an edit/gif, even a full fic- just post anything about Simon that lights up your life. It doesn’t have to be holiday themed (though that would super great too!), just anything and everything you love about Simon. Then tag it with “simonhanukkah” that way everyone can see it. (you can tag us, as well.)
And that’s it! Nothing too serious but we hope it’ll spread some Simon-centered happiness around as we get closer to the end of the year and season 2!!! If you have any questions, feel free to ask us! we will highly appreciate it if you reblog this post and help us to spread the word. So have fun and חנוכה שמח (Happy Hanukkah)!
to the surprise of absolutely no one, i spent an entire morning of my winter break writing up a list of important figures to elizabethan england, complete with their titles/forms of address and their relationship to queen elizabeth 1
These days everyone’s all about sparkly vampires and tyrannical dictatorships trying to make you get with cute boys, and I’m just over here with my 90s YA heroine, who hangs out with marmosets and egg-laying mammals and rides dinosaur skeletons over tyrannical dictatorships before breakfast.
I really wanted to stick a tubby little duck-billed platypus into the final cover – and I still might. Don’t tempt me!
i cant Believe that doctor scraggydooper movie from marvel made a enough money to be considered a success & got ok reviews but i haven’t seen a single gifset about it since it came out. not a single character, ship, quip, costume, etc. gifset or even a picspam. And by “i cant believe” i also mean “i am grateful” thanks everyone
Me, on a date: so how do you feel about using old memes?
Them: I honestly hate people using memes that have expired. It’s not funny anymore
Me, shoving breadsticks into my purse: I came out to have a good time and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now
people villainize superman’s “perfection,” but when he fails to save someone, when he doesn’t stop every disaster, or win every battle, you say “he’s superman, he should have saved them.” you complain about him when he saves the day, you complain when he doesn’t. you call him “too perfect,” but fail to see that he isn’t, not even superman can be everywhere at once.
gee Clark Kent, you seem awfully defensive of Superman…
remember that time fucking dum dum dugan played damien dahrk
I’m watching zootopia for the second time and I’m seeing so much more social justice nuance. I’m gonna live blog it
First I know that TONS of people have already pointed this out, but I’m distinctly uncomfortable with the POC as predators narrative. I get how it works for this story and environment and how it’s a great metaphor for children beginning to learn about social inequality.
But in America tbh, a more accurate metaphor would be if the predators used the prey for stuff for ages, and then put restrictions on their freedom because there were way more prey than predators and they had the numbers to enact some sort of mass revolt but weren’t doing that for some reason. So the predators lived in fear of that one day happening. And then, ashamed for feeling fear towards a group that isn’t a direct threat to their survival, the predators lash out even harder towards the prey. On top of the structural disenfranchisement. Then it becomes the prey’s job to prove they’re not dangerous and just want to live in peace and create a society that one day becomes the city of Zootopia.
But that’s wAYYYYYYY too dark for a kids movie. So imo it’s good the way it is.
The bunny’s parents are so accurate from the whole “don’t be what you’re not supposed to be” and “yeah not all foxes are bad but SOMETIMES THEY ARE LOL” passive aggressive warped by worry and misappropriated kindness flavor of racism that so many of my white friends from conservative backgrounds have had to fight through. Like “I know you’re open minded but let us know when that door you opened hits you on the back now here’s a tazer!”
Salute a real one whoever put that scene in the movie. Someone is probably having bad thanksgivings with relatives irl.
I love the coded gay couple that Judy lives next to. I don’t think anyone mentioned them in any of the Discourse I’ve seen but I’m about it. They didn’t have to be in the movie at all, so shout out to the person who got that past the cuttingroom floor.
The whole “I’m going to give you an unreasonable standard to meet and if you fail it you’ll amount to nothing” (find otterton with no sources or leads or you gotta resign) is so real for so many marginalized people who are given opportunities to get ahead. That whole “you’ve gotta be twice as good to get half what they got” speech is so real.
The DMV scene is by far the most accurate thing about this whole movie. I’d rather be dead than spend a half hour in a DMV.
The whole police coercion angle (I’m going to hold a carrot over someone’shead while manipulating someone with disregard of their own risk or the complex matrix of oppression due to our difference of status) being met with the fox’s(nick???) complete dislike towards police and apathy about police success is an incredibly nuanced structure to place in a kids movie.
A jaguar running on all fours while wearing a tank top: unintentionally hilarious.
The parallels between this and the crack epidemic from the regan era are absolutely direct. When this film came out I read this incredibly high quality article about the parallels between the two. If I find it, I’ll link to it.
There is also a great discussion about microaggressions and how they compound over time to influence people’s self esteem, perception of themselves, and all too often–the trajectory they place their lives on due to these associations (Nick’s confession about why he became a criminal, next to Buffalo Idris Elba’s refusal to trust a fox, and also the bunny backstory)
There is also an interesting demi hierarchy within these animals. Larger prey (elephants, buffalo, giraffe) are placed in positions of power that smaller prey are ridiculed for attempting. They also tend to behave with authority like other large predators.
On the flip side, the general disregard towards smaller predators (mister otter, large rodents, shrew) is similar to the disregard towards smaller prey.
And it’s worth mentioning that while these inequalities are held up in the world of law abiding citizens, they are shown to be much looser in the criminal underbelly (i.e.: you can be whoever you wanna be when you do work in criminal enterprises!)
So in zootopia, it seems that systematic issues of oppression have just been replaced with a different but identical structure that exists with less obvious physical violence and more indirect social violence. Example: Jim Crow vs Now.
“Look at you junior detective, I think you’d make a good cop!” Judy to Nick
An interesting nod towards the fact that mostly everyone who spends enough time doing many different types of urbane crime would likely do really well as a cop.
Organizational skills, problem solving skills, resource and connections, business acumen and structure, etc.
The whole scene where Judy says a bunch of (read:unintentionally racist) stuff to the press and ruins her relationship with nick was heartbreaking.
It really brings back that part earlier in the movie with her parents. Regarding being raised with prejudices and about how even if you try to subvert them in your everyday life, when it comes to situations regarding fear, a lot of the time people tend to leap back towards old prejudices for defense or comfort.
So even though Judy can subvert these prejudices about bunnies in her everyday life, and connect emotionally with Nick, she often employs microagressions and prejudiced reactions towards him (fox repellant scene) in moments where she needs defense.
And while Judy is the best type of person in this movie to enact dynamic change towards the marginalized group, it was very important and kind of groundbreaking that they chose to showcase that disparity within many people (irl example:a lot of islamaphobia and xenophobia towards Mexican people)
The personal interactions between the parents and Gideon (the other fox) in which her parents are indirectly impacted by Judy’s open mindedness and decide to slowly become more open minded themselves and strike up a beneficial business relationship is such a powerful thing to show to children.
The final stand when they realize who is in charge of what’s happening is absolutely fascinating.
The whole film is all about racial tension we know that, etc.But when Judy and nick look up at the new mayor, it is clear to the both of them that they aren’t fighting race issues anymore, they are subverting what appears to be impending fascism.
As the mayor comes at Judy talking about how they have all this stuff in common and that they outnumber predators, it honestly reminds me a lot of Alt-Right/Neo-Nazi speeches.
And it’s very clear that regardless the giant case they just cracked, what they just subverted could have been a MUCH more terrifying future for everyone. Plus, considering what i said about the demi hierarchy within both predator and prey groups–just like real life fascism, it would have been bad for groups within the prey category as well.
I’m going to finish this off by commenting on the Shakira llama.
Earlier in the movie when stuff was getting really bad, she held some protest thing and made some speech. In the speech she said some weird stuff about how “my zootopia is not like this, make my zootopia the way it was before all this strife,etc.”
BUT, as the movie is more than half over at this point, we have been showcased how zootopia IS “like this.” We just sat through a fuckton of microaggressions, economic hardship within the Demi hierarchy (economic oppression, all smaller predators were involved in crime), employment inequality and popular sentiment that supports it, and social behavior and rampant hate speech and this random celebrity llama is going to come at us with “Zootopia isn’t ~like this~”
Idk it just reminded me of how many celebrities, who are far removed from so much everyday social strife due to economic reasons, decide to give half baked social statements calling for love and compassion instead of actual structural change and protection for marginalized groups. Who have good intentions but come off as kind of bland and unintentionally dense.
okay
so
this is a really solid set of analysis and discussion
but
did you just
did you just think that a gazelle called ‘gazelle’ was a llamma
I did
im so sorry
i saw that like twenty minutes after i posted it and was like “i have made my bed of failure and will now lie in it”
I don’t understand what’s Jewish about mother gothel… she has a typical Disney face doesn’t she? Is it the curly hair..? I mean her nose and everything else seem normal?
I’m sorry, I’m just trying to figure it out, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.
dark curly hair – long hooked nose – darker complexion than the blond blue eyed heroine 9and really the rest of the cast – portrayed as greedy and evil.
Lisa Edelstein is Jewish. As are Idina Menzel and Amy Winehouse, both of whom I have seen compared in looks to Gothel. Gothel’s design is a pretty clear caricature of ethnically Jewish women.
This is a pretty good contrast between Rapunzel and Gothel. Rapunzel has the “typical Disney face”:
Here’s a more close up look at her features.
The hooked nose becomes even more pronounced as she becomes “eviler.”
If you wanted to claim that there was noting out of the ordinary for Disney animation when it came to Gothel’s features, you would have to find at least one Disney princess or heroine with similar characteristics (long hooked nose and dark curly hair, etc).
But here is what we have is –
small noses that turn up at the end:
wide, flatter noses (though cheers to Disney for not putting button noses on their characters of color, although Esmerelda’s clothing design deserves another essay on Rromani stereotypes and there are some major issues with Pocahontas as well)
And then a few misc noses (again, props for Jasmine’s nose not being a button):
Apart from just the design of Gothel, there’s also the whole: “obviously ‘other’ (read Jewish) woman kidnaps the pretty blonde (read: gentile) kid to use her for ritualistic/magical purposes”
Like that right there on top ofthe aesthetic Jewish-coding is what pushed the antisemitic caricature over the top for me. It harkens back to antisemitic blood libel that claimed that Jews stole gentile children for all manner of nefarious reasons. Even when Gothel is in “mother” role to Rapunzel, she’s is shown as nagging and passive aggressive, both antisemitic stereotypes of Jewish women.
There is no one thing that makes her an antisemitic caricature, but the design, plus the storyline she plays out, plus her characterization cement the overall character as antisemitic.
Jew-coding a villain is not in itself always antisemitic when there are also Jewish coded heroes. Rapunzel does not have that.
Having a villain steal a baby for magical/ritualistic reasons is not always antisemitic as long as the villain is not Jew-coded. Rapunzel fails this as well.
Having a nagging and passive aggressive mother character is not antisemitic provided that she is not, again, coded as Jewish. Rapunzel fails once again.
Hope this helps.
EDIT: @ariminak pointed out that some of my wording made it sound like Gothel’s features only stereotypically caricatured Ashkenazi women when in fact that is not the case. I changed the language to remove that phrasing and make it clear that any ethnically Jewish women can be affected by this type of aesthetic trope. If you reblogged the old version, could you please delete it and reblog this one instead.
Spread this version so people recognize that this stuff harms all Jewish women.
I did not know this, thank you for writing this up.
