A lot of the complaints about Kylo Ren as a villain is that he lacks Vader’s larger than life evil, he’s too common, too human to be evil. Traits that are used by his stans to argue why he will/must be redeemed.
I would like to point out that both camps, those who hate Kylo Ren for his humaness and those who use it for his defense, has missed the point JJ and Lawrence were trying to make.
When Christians think of Evil, not the smaller, everyday evil but the one that commits genocide and other atrocities they tend think of people like this:
Or if we stick to the Star Wars universe, this:
or this:
But from a Jewish standpoint neither Hitler, Vader or the Emperor is the true face of evil. Evil isn’t some epic, outside force, or some larger than life villain.
Complete ordinary looking people. People, men and women, born to good families and proper bloodlines (in the Aryan sense anyway), with good Christian raising, believing in good Christian values. Well mannered, well educated, usually erudite. And the direct committers of genocide.
To Jewish people there are no difference between Evil and evil, they are one and the same. A Jewish woman, Hannah Arendt, coined the phrase “the banality of evil” and I have yet to see a single goy use it properly, because this is what it means.
This is why JJ and Lawrence made the First Order an obvious, punch in the face parallel to the Nazis, in every single conceivable way that one can in a fantasy universe with no actual Germany. That is why they made Hux such on open and overt parallel to Hitler, and then went and made him a secondary, one note villain. Neither Hux nor Hitler symbolizes the true face of evil, or the banality of it.
Kylo Ren does.
Which is why Kylo looks like this:
He’s a young man, from a good family, with (from the First Order’s or at least Snoke’s pov) “proper” bloodline. And he’s evil. Not in the epic, over the top, Christian variety like Vader or the Emperor, but the kind of evil that oversaw Auschwitz and ordered and carried out the atrocities there.
No Kylo isn’t cool, or awesome, or epic in his evil, he’s human. But because people are either incapable or unwilling to follow the Jewish understanding of evil many take that humanity Kylo Ren as a sign of goodness and the guarantee of his redemption, instead of as the source of his evil.
So the people who say that Kylo Ren isn’t space Hitler as absolutely right, they just miss the point. He’s something much, much worse.
@captainamericagf Next time some fucker comes at you arguing that JJ writing Kylo as having good in him matters at all in how evil JJ views the character as, please feel free to throw this post at them. Hard.
Great-looking teeth come from two things: luck and money (which is also a function of luck).
Dental procedures tend to be very, very expensive, and are almost never covered by insurance.
Healthy teeth aren’t necessarily big, straight or bright white. Depending on what someone’s natural teeth are like, achieving that look may require a significant downgrade in their dental health; unnecessary crowns and veneers cause damage.
Do not underestimate genetics’ role in determining teeth’s appearance, or how prone teeth are to problems. Genes and early development, i.e. things people get zero control over, can outweigh all else.
A wide range of chronic conditions impact oral health and teeth’s appearance, too, and may contraindicate various types of work or raise procedures’ cost even more.
Finally, for many people and many reasons, celebrity-looking teeth just aren’t a priority (even when they’re attainable; some people might want, y’know, a new car instead).
Regardless, don’t be an asshole. Not even very attractive teeth look good on those.
I’ve NEVER seen a post like this and I’m thrilled TBH because I’m very insecure about my teeth and there is literally one reason they are not nice and that is money so I’m literally down for teeth positivity
turns people into cowboys or samurais depending on which place you’re in
That explains why cowboy movies and samurai movies are so similar.
Cowboys are Alolan form Samurai
So in Japan it’s called Kirinomitake while in Texas it’s called either Texas Star (because after releasing spores it’s unfolded into a star shape) or the Devil’s Cigar because it starts out as a long oblong mushroom but then it unfolds with an ominous hissing noise and releases a big smoky black cloud of spores.
It only grows in these two places, and people did genetic testing and a bunch of math to determine that the two populations started diverging from each other nineteen million goddamn years ago, so it’s not possible for humanity to have moved it from one place to the other. They’re at the same latitude, but 11,000 fucking kilometers apart not to mention the goddamn ocean in the way.
“this is only another illustration of the unusual and unpredictable distribution of many species of the fungi. It would be difficult indeed to account for it, and we merely accept the facts as they are.”
So apparently it’s pretty common in the mycological world to find some bullshit that can’t be explained and would probably drive men mad to look at too closely, and just sort of shrug and move on with your day.
The species is also the only example of its genus.
Your daily reminder that anyone who devotes their life to studying fungi is not to be trifled with because their brain is full of things humanity was never supposed to notice.
I do not doubt you, but my lips are as harsh and unforgiving as the bitter wind that blows through these streets… the rattling breath of a corrupted city.
Just mix sugar and coconut oil and stop being an edgy bitch.
The detective watched the thin ring of hot orange ash creep along the cigarette towards his fingers. If he did nothing, if he did not move, it might eventually reach his hand and burn the rough skin between his middle and index fingers. What did he care? It’d be just another scar from a world that handed out pain and suffering with the feverish enthusiasm of a sidewalk church pamphleteer.
Or perhaps it would give up and burn itself out before then.
A threat cleared on the other side of the desk, stirring him from his thoughts. “Aren’t you going to inhale that?” asked his new client. “You’re wasting a good smoke.”
The detective ground the cigarette into the ashtray, finally reuniting it with its fallen kin. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t smoke. Just like to watch ‘em burn.”
“Oh.” His client shifted his weight from one foot to the other and scratched the back of his neck. It was a nervous, artificial gesture, as fake the hair at the crown of his head. “I see.”
“That’s the history of humankind, isn’t it?” The last tendrils of smoke curled towards the ceiling. “Sitting by and watching the world burn, waiting to see if it’ll hurt you. Wouldn’t you agree, ah…?”
“Marshall. Stephan Marshall.” Marshall glanced at the sign on the detectives desk. “Is that… is that your real name…?”
“Damn shame, isn’t it?” The detective sighed. “Saved me from the prospect of marriage, though. There isn’t a girl in the world who’d want to be Mrs. Edgy Bitch.”
Marshall’s lips half-quirked into an uncertain smile. “Why don’t you change it? My offices deal with name-change requests all the time, it’s easy enough if you have the right form.”
Detective Edgy Bitch snorted at that and gestured at the door and the window behind him. “Bit late for that,” he said. “I already had all the frosted glass signage made up. Pain in the ass to have changed now.”
once in my sixth hour we were talking about 9/11 and i announced very loudly “more people died in hurricane maria than in 9/11 but nobody really cares because you can’t use hurricanes to justify imperialism” and then not even 5 seconds later i said “yeehaw my beets.”
What appears to be happening here is that kids are learning a different definition of being Adult than what we were taught.
When you grow up, you won’t like toys and having fun and defying authority, you’ll become a part of the system and you’ll realise that’s what maturity is. That’s what I was taught.
Instead, they’re understanding that you can be as silly and childlike as you want with the things that don’t matter, so long as you take seriously the moral issues and actual responsibilities you have, a way of understanding the world I usually sum up as “you can buy as much Lego as you want, so long as you pay your bills first”
A recent research team attached GPS trackers to a group of pet cats to track their whereabouts when their owners were not around or sleeping. The daily movements of the pet cats surprised many owners. Take a peek below.
We’ve spoken out of this blog multiple times about the dangers outdoor cats are exposed to when they roam. Here’s a gps tracking study that shows exactly how far from their ‘safe home base’ outdoor cats in Wales actually go in just one night.
“When you speak to a lot of cat owners they say: “Oh my cat just (…) doesn’t go anywhere.” (…) Some of the cats have “gone three kilometeres from home”.”
This cat went in such a straight line it can only have been following a major road for a long period.
This cat went more than a kilometer into the wilderness at night, potentially exposing itself to all sorts of urban and rural predators.
This cat traveled repeatedly through the yards of other houses as well as spending a good amount of time in the middle of the road.
Don’t think your cat travels? It does. Keep your cats indoors. Keep them safe.
The first gods were the earth itself, and they had no reason to whisper. They are the grass, the wind. They wave and laugh and feel and love. They were pure emotion, making every move based on their hearts. They did not understand the purpose of fighting. They sought peace and love. They wrote the songs of the earth in the first languages. They spoke light and wind, weaving the redwoods and the waves and the mountains. They birthed the moon and the stars from a million unborn dreams, a million untold stories. When they were finished, they laid down to rest, but the world kept growing around them. They faded to dust and crumbled. The first gods are dead.
The song of the old gods still resonates throughout the earth, though to some it is nothing more than a feeble whisper. They are still here. They have faded into the background. They live among the redwoods, no, they are the redwoods. They float with the waves of the world’s oceans, and dance in time with the erosion of the mountains. They mumble and whisper to the moon and the stars, singing nursery rhymes in a language so long forgotten that it was before the day of man at all. The old gods are dying.
The young gods don’t know how to whisper. They are loud, and bold. They are bright and bubbling and threatening to spill over. They laugh with the redwoods, cry with the ocean, yell with the mountains. They pray with the moon, and sing with the stars, and smile with the sun. They run with each other, living and laughing. They protect mankind, for they are not so different. After all, young gods are born from stardust and hope and perseverance, and so is man. They look lovingly upon the earth that their predecessors built. The young gods are growing.
The grown gods whisper when appropriate. They are controlled, and yet just as soft and childlike as the young gods. They are maternal, nursing the redwoods, singing the oceans to sleep. They hold the mountains together, and smile fondly when the moon shows its pale face. They care for man the same way a mother cares for a child. The grown gods give comfort in times of pain, and reassurance in times of doubt. They embrace the earth. The grown gods have a constant hollow feeling in their chest. If they don’t resist, the risk becoming as empty and apathetic as the new gods. The grown gods do their best. The grown gods are not yet dying.
The new gods do not whisper. They are born from grown gods who no longer care, who no longer feel. They lack the gentle warmth of the old ones, instead making every move with a calculated coldness. They do not fade, they do not float, they do not dance. They shun the moon and the stars, and point their dark, empty eyes towards a future that holds only power. They would laugh at the suffering of mankind, giggle at their infighting, if they could feel anything at all. They stand, cold and unfeeling, and gaze upon an earth that they plan to demolish. The new gods aren’t planning on dying any time soon.
In other words, so many people have come to the general consensus that Donald Trump is an idiot that it actively affects Google’s algorithm which takes into account trillions of websites and web searches to try to match keywords with relevant images. This is a real world example of “If you look up x in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of y” and the fact that the Republicans blame Google for “search results bias” instead of admitting that most people think that the current president is an idiot. That’s hilarious.
