All the doodles of the mutant mayhem turtles together! These were very fun to draw! Leo was my favorite in this version.
Raph looks like he walked out of 1999
Donnie looks like your adverage animation major
Mikey looks like he lives above a Vegas Casino
And Leo looks like he works at Best Buy
while everyone's rightfully talking about oppenheimer and its flaws regarding the erasure of japanese and native american voices regarding nuclear testing and detonations, i'd like to bring up the fact that pacific islanders have also been severely impacted by nuclear testing under the pacific proving grounds, a name given by the US to a number of sites in the pacific that were designated for testing nuclear weapons after the second world war, at least 318 of which were dropped on our ancestral homes and people. i would like if more people talked about this.
important sections are bolded for ease of reading. i would appreciate this being reblogged since it's a bit alarming how few people know about this.
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in 1946, the indigenous peoples of pikinni (the bikini atoll) were forcibly relocated off of their islands so that nuclear tests could be run on the atoll. at least 23 nuclear bombs were detonated on this inhabited island chain, including 20 hydrogen bombs. many pasifika were irreversibly irradiated, all of them were starved during multiple forced relocations, and the island chain is still unsafe to live on despite multiple cleanup attempts. there are several craters visible from space that were left on the atoll from nuclear testing.
the forced relocation was to several different small and previously uninhabited islands over several decades, none of which were able to sustain traditional lifestyles which directly lead to further starvation and loss of culture and identity. there is a reason that pacific islanders choose specific islands to inhabit including access to fresh water, food, shelter, cloth and fibre, climate, etc. and obviously none of these reasons were taken into account during the displacements.
200 pikinni were eventually moved back to the atoll in the 1970s but dangerous levels of strontium-90 were found in drinking water in 1978 and the inhabitants were found to have abnormally high levels of caesium-137 in their bodies.
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i'm going to put the rest of this post under a readmore to improve the chances of this being reblogged by the general public. i would recommend you read the entirety of the post since it really isn't long and goes into detail about, say, entire islands being fully, utterly destroyed. like, wiped off of the map. without exaggeration, entire islands were disintegrated.
From the article:
“Oh my god! This is like in the 1500s with the Indigenous people and smallpox,” she says. “They had no defences against it!”
Wait – what did she just say?
I pause and look to my friend. Did the Barbie film just compare women and patriarchy to Indigenous people and disease? Was that really necessary?
Other people obviously felt as taken off guard by the comment as I did, judging by the response on social media: “this line was unnecessary and not needed for the plot,” one person wrote. Another remarked that it “reeked of white feminism,” while another called it “a sloppy attempt at intersectionality.”
The thoughtless line about Indigenous people and smallpox ironically comes right before an insightful and impassioned monologue by Ferrera’s character on how complicated it is to be a modern-day woman.
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I would have loved to have grown up speaking nêhinawêwin (Swampy Cree). My father understands it, and my grandparents spoke it fluently. My grandfather even had a radio station in Manitoba where he exclusively spoke nêhinawêwin. This loss began with the same history that dates back to Pocahontas’s “story” — dispossession, expulsion from our lands, forced assimilation, and discriminatory laws that disbanded many from speaking it for a time. Because of this, I didn’t get that opportunity. In the same way so many others didn’t.
Speaking of my grandfather, Murray McKenzie, he was a photojournalist. He received his first camera while recovering from tuberculosis at the Clearwater Lake Sanatorium. We know now that my grandfather was given a blanket carrying the disease. Murray was one of the few little boys who survived his ward at the sanatorium.
So imagine my surprise when a movie about another fantasized character, Barbie, goes on to include a reference to a disease that wiped out so many Indigenous peoples on the continent. For example, my colleague recently wrote a piece on the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nation’s 100-year amalgamation anniversary, where it was shared that 100 years ago, the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (the Squamish people) at one point went from a population of 30,000 to 400 because of disease.
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I’ll end by saying this:
It is literally impossible to be an Indigenous woman.
We have to be beautiful but not too beautiful, or we might go missing.
We have to leave our homelands to become ‘educated,’ and to enter the ‘workforce.’
But we can’t forget who we are and where we come from.
We want to be good and loving mothers and protect our children,
But we can’t make a single mistake, or our children will be taken into the child welfare system.
We want to preserve the natural world for the next generation,
But colonial law will remove us with an injunction and put us in prison.
We want to honour our dead, but governments tell us that it “isn’t feasible.”
We want to speak our languages,
But so many of our language keepers have been lost to colonial violence.
Aren’t we tired of watching every single Indigenous woman kill herself to simply exist?
its so mortifying and frustrating that the crew of spiderverse were so overworked. by people who didnt understand the sheer work and effort that goes into all parts of the pipeline. but a new generation of artists are seeing the concept art, and going, “i want to do this too!” getting to see the release of so much behind the scenes work makes me want to do things like this. i aspire to this. but i dont want to have to deal with the death of creativity in the form of constant reworking. i couldn’t watch coworkers leave because of how stressful it becomes.
i hope the crew knows just how many artists walked into that theater, and then walked out going, “i want to make art as thoughtful as this. i want to make art as genuine as this. i want to make art with this much love in it. i want to do this too.”
adding:
if you’re interested in going into animation, you should be fighting for fairer work conditions. you should be invested in your health with your job. you should be fighting for better treatment of creatives across ALL parts of the pipeline! writers, concept artists, storyboarders, revisionists, animators, every single one. i want to go into animation one day but it’s unsustainable for so many and people get burnt out! i’m scared that i will never be able to make it. but i have to try.
also support the strikes i love art studios go to hell SUPPORT ARTISTS & REMEMBER WHO’S MAKING YOUR FAVORITE MOVIES
Tbh what if we just killed the next person to make a fictional story where the only black or only darkskinned character is a bully to everybody else for no reason. What if we just killed them with our bare hands
July 25, 2023 - Striking stuntman Mike Massa walks in the SAG-AFTRA picket line while on fire. [video]
The phenomenally talented Lola Falana performs the song I Am Love on her limited TV series Lola! in 1976. Known as “The Queen of Las Vegas” during the 1970s, Lola’s talents as a riveting singer and dancer definitely warranted the praise she received during the height of her fame. Following her success performing at The Sands, The Riviera, and the MGM Grand hotels, The Aladdin Hotel ultimately signed her for $100,000 per week, making her the highest paid female artist in Las Vegas during the era. Still around at the age of 80, Lola deserves to be re-discovered and appreciated by new audiences.
