not to be harry potter on main but i honestly think the fantastic beasts series would have been so much more interesting if it was just about the beasts. i don’t give a fuck about grindelwald, just give me a movie about an eccentric wizard travelling the world looking for magical animals and teaching us the power of friendship
newt’s character should have been like the crocodile hunter but in a wizard hat send tweet
There once was a singer of old, Who then broke away from the fold, He won’t give you up, He won’t let you down, In a word you have been limerick-rolled.
How dare you make me read this with my own two eyes…
2. you know, we have fun here, with the word “meme,” but according to meme theory, which is an actual thing pioneered by reptilian human impersonator Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, most of what we call memes are very unsuccessful memes. A meme, in the scientific sense – if one is generously disposed to consider memetics a science on any particular day – is an idea that acts like a gene. That is, it seeks to replicate itself, as many times as possible, and as faithfully as possible.
That second part is important. A gene which is not faithful in its replication mutates, sometimes rapidly, sometimes wildly. The result might be cancer or a virus or (very very very rarely) a viable evolutionary step forward, but whatever the case, it is no longer the original gene. That gene no longer exists. It could not successfully reproduce itself.
The memes we pass around on the internet are, in general, very short lived and rapidly mutating. It’s rare for any meme to survive for more than a year: in almost all cases, they appear, spread rapidly, spawn a thousand short-lived variations, and then are swiftly forgotten. They’re not funny anymore, or interesting anymore. They no longer serve any function, and so they’re left behind, a mental evolutionary dead end.
This rendition of Freddie Mercury’s immortal opera Bohemian Rhapsody is about the most goddamned amazing demonstration of a successful meme I’ve ever seen. This song is 42 years old, as of 2017. FORTY TWO YEARS OLD. And it has spread SO far, and replicated itself across the minds of millions of people SO faithfully, that a gathering of 65,000 more or less random people, with nothing in common except that they all really like it when Billie Joe Armstrong does the thing with the guitar, can reproduce it perfectly. IN PERFECT TIME. THEY KNOW THE EXACT LENGTH OF EVERY BRIDGE. THEY EVEN GET THE NONSENSE WORDS RIGHT. THEY DIVIDE THEMSELVES UP IN ORDER TO SING THE COUNTER-CHORUS.
“Yeah, Pyrrhic, lots of people know this song.”
Listen, you glassy-eyed ninny: our species’ ability to coherently pass along not just genetic information, but memetic information as well, is the reason we’re the dominant species on this planet. Language is a meme. Civilization is a collection of memes. Lots of animals can learn, but we may be the only animal that latches onto ephemera – information that doesn’t reflect any concrete reality, information with little to no immediate practical application – and then joyfully, willfully, unrelentingly repeats it and teaches it to others. Look at how wild this crowd is, because they’re singing the same song! It doesn’t DO anything. It’s not even why they showed up here today! If you sent out a letter to those same 65,000 people that said, “Please show up in this field on this day in order to sing Bohemian Rhapsody,” very few of them would have showed up. But I would be surprised to meet a single person in that crowd who joined in the singing who doesn’t remember this moment as the most amazing part of a concert they paid hundreds of dollars to see.
And they’re just sharing an idea. It’s stunning and ridiculous. Something about how our brains work make us go, “Hey!! Hey everybody!! I found this idea! It’s good! I like it! I’m going to repeat it! Do you know it too?? Repeat it with me! Let’s get EVERYBODY to know it and repeat it and then we can all have it together at the same time! It’s a good idea! I’m so excited to repeat it exactly the way I heard it, as loudly as I can, as often as possible!!”
This is how culture happens! This is how countries happen! Sometimes a persistent, infectious idea – a meme – can be dangerous or dark. But our human delight at clutching up good memes like magpies and flapping back to our flock to yell about them to everyone we know is why we as a species bothered to start doing things like “telling stories” and “writing stuff down.”
“That’s a lot of spilled ink for a Queen song, Pyrrhic.”
This high art is completely indistinguishable from a quality shitpost and I cannot quite describe the sheer existiential satisfaction and calm I am feeling right now
Netflix has announced that they’re moving forward on the limited series Maya and the Three, an animated project created by Book of Life director Jorge Gutierrez.
The Mexican animator, painter, and director has described Maya and the Three as a humorous “Mexican Lord of the Rings,” starring a female superhero who is half human and “half divine.” The director acknowledges that the fantasy genre is heavily male-driven and says, “this is my attempt to provide an awesome female hero.” Outside of that, the only facts known about it are that it will draw heavily from “Mesoamerican legends.” Gutierrez will direct four of the nine episodes in the series, as well as serve as screenwriter.
Just a year ago Gutierrez was discussing plans for a sequel to Book of Life, though there hasn’t been much public movement on that. Since the success of Coco which, like Book of Life, deals with Day of the Dead, it’s hoped that Book of Life’s sequel will be able to continue the trend of Latino-centric animated stories. As of right now, Maya and the Three sounds like a highly fascinating story that could take the epic in a new direction.
There’s no set release date for May and the Three.
missionlameturtle 