#are the fucking best

[anxietyfrappuccino]

that last episode was wild, season 2 of school spirits when???

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[victusinveritas]

Reminder: you can always just stop hating and being an asshole. You'll probably even feel better about yourself.

[pers-books]

Nicola Coughlan Raised Over £70,000 for Trans Rights Following U.K. Court Ruling

The Bridgerton star called the ruling “stomach turning and disgusting.”

Allen J. Schaben/Getty Images

Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan has raised over £70,000 (roughly $96,000) for the trans charity Not A Phase following the U.K. Supreme Court’s Wednesday ruling that the legal definitions of “man” and “woman” are based on a person’s “biological sex.”.

The ruling’s long-ranging effects are still up in the air, but it is poised to have chilling, far-ranging effects on trans rights in the U.K. As legal researcher Jess O’Thompson explained on LGBTQ+ news site Queer AF, trans people in the U.K. can now be excluded from all “single-sex” spaces under any circumstances and cannot make equal pay claims.

British anti-trans advocates have been publicly celebrating the news, including Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, who posted a photo of herself enjoying a cigar and drink on X with the caption “I love it when a plan comes together” after reportedly donating over £70,000 to For Women Scotland, the anti-trans organization that had brought the Supreme Court case forward. Yet other U.K. celebrities, like Coughlan, have wasted no time publicly reaffirming their support for the trans community in the ruling’s aftermath.

On April 17, Coughlan took to Instagram to announce that she was launching a fundraiser for Not A Phase, a trans charity that aims to improve the lives of trans adults across the U.K. “through awareness campaigning, social projects, and funding trans+ lead initiatives,” per the organization’s official website. The actress originally set a fundraising goal of £10,000 and pledged to match donations up to that amount.

“To see an already-marginalized community… be further attacked in law is really stomach turning and disgusting, and these people celebrating it [are] more stomach turning and disgusting,” Coughlan said in a video. “If you are a cisgender person who is an ally of a trans person, I think now is the time to just… speak up and make your voice heard, and let your trans, nonbinary friends and just the community at large know that you’re there for them and will keep fighting for them.”

Just an hour after launching the fundraiser, Coughlan shared on her Instagram Story that fans had already met her £10,000 target. In just over 24 hours, the fundraiser has raised well over £70,000 at the time of writing. She has since set a new fundraising goal of £79,699.21 (roughly $105,725).

Coughlan isn’t the only cis U.K. celebrity who’s spoken out on behalf of trans rights following the Supreme Court’s ruling. On April 17, The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood re-shared a post from LGBTQ+ activist Ellen Jones to her Instagram Story denouncing the ruling.

“Pure rage,” Wood captioned her story. “This country is a hell hole.”

Coughlan’s Bridgerton co-star, Charitha Chandran, also called out the ruling in an April 17 TikTok that has received over 2.3 million likes.

“How pathetic to target one of the most oppressed groups in our society,” Chandran said. “Honestly? Loser behaviour… You don’t care about women. You just want to target those who are already oppressed.”

[arcanegifs]

ARCANE LEAGUE OF LEGENDS: SEASON 2 ACT 3 (2024)

[latehere]

they only thing my mind could conjure up after the episode

[vivitalks]

best types of brennan NPC

autism haver

stoner

frat bro who has unlearned hypermasculinity so hard that he's gone 100% the opposite direction about it

anticapitalist proletarian

the most insane person you've ever met

[shyflops]

[karynslee]

bc wtf do you mean i had to read the book to find out when benitez announces his papal name lomeli/lawrence sinks to his knees. HIS KNEES

[dykebeckett]

sometimes a video game with a bad story has a good secret story that you can unlock if you pretend the bad parts aren’t there and make up a bunch of stuff

[insomniphic]

Anya asked the crew to buy her some pads before they headed off for the trip :D

[inbabylontheywept]

i once accidentally dated someone for a few months. its very difficult to explain how this happened, but the gist is that i thought we were hanging out, and she thought we were on dates, and it was just a very painfully highschool thing.

she was a little bit confused that i hadnt tried to pull any moves, at all, even a little. like, didnt even try holding hands because, and i cannot emphasize this enough, i did not know we were dating.

so, halloween rolled around, and she thought, you know, why wait for destiny, when you can grab it? so she hit me with a clue by four.

babylon, she said. babylon. my mom's gonna be out of town on halloween, and im gonna have the house to myself, and it's going to be kind of lonely. would you like to come to my house and watch scary movies with me?

you know, kind of a netflix and chill thing. except, and i cannot emphasize this enough, i did not know we were dating. also autism. so i took it at face value and said: oh! yeah! thatd be fun! and she thought she got her point across, but she didnt and it was a mess.

skip forward to halloween: my family has a block party every year, right? and at that point i was too old to really trick or treat, but we still wore costumes for our role in the block party, which in my case, was handing out cotton candy. so i took the first shift, and my costume was this homemade abomination minion thing. i had full yellow body paint, and goggles, and a bald cap, and overalls. the kids who saw it were like, uh, hm. overly realistic minion. and adults were like, oh, some kind of hills have eyes hillbilly with jaundice. very scary.

(it was not my best costume.)

my little brother swapped me out for second shift, and i was getting ready to change out to head to her house when i was like: no, she'll get a real kick out of this. this is one of the worst things i have ever worn. so i kept it on and just brought a change of clothes thinking i could shower real quick and change at her place after she saw my nightmare getup.

so i left after that, got there, knocked on her door, and she said come on in. so i went in, and there was this very long hall with an abrupt right turn into her living room where the tv was, and i went down the hall, and i made the turn, and my field of view went from beige drywal to her, on the couch, naked. naked in the paint me like one of your french girls pose. super naked.

i panicked. this was my first time seeing a real person like, full on sex naked,which is a totally different beast from other kinds of naked. you see one kind of naked and you think yeah, im ready for all the kinds of naked, but you arent. i wasnt at least. i really wasn't.

so my brain crashed to BIOS. she also crashed to BIOS, but for different reasons. of all the ways this could have turned me, having me show up in yellow body paint and overalls was pretty pretty low down the list.

so we sat there a while, and you know, she wasn't getting any less naked, which really wasn't helping me get my brain sorted out. it really wasnt much of a surprise when she got her bearings first and started asking questions.

"babylon," she said. "babylon. what are you wearing?"

and i was like, kind of rebooted, but i was nowhere near full functionality, so symbolic language wasnt loaded in yet. i had nothing running but my trusty autism.exe, so i said

"overalls"

and she looked at me like i was the dumbest person in the entire world, and i looked at her like she was the first naked person i had seen in real life who got naked specifically for me, and my upper level cognitive process went: "listen man, we are not going to get our shit together as long as 80% of your brain power is devoted to not blinking. you gotta get out of here."

and if id communicated that, maybe things would have been less of a mess, but instead i just kind of turned around and walked back to my car. i figured i could drive a few loops around the block, get my brain in order, and figure out what the hell we were gonna do.

the only thing i had said to her since arriving was, again, overalls.

first loop around, i was like: oh god fucking damnit. oh shit. oh shit. shes gonna get like, an eating disorder from this. oh no.

second loop around i was like: oh NOOOOO oh WHAT THE FUCK oh SWEET JESUS PLEASE. i dont wanna go back man. i just wanna bury this and forget about it. please. please. let this bitter cup pass from my lips.

and after my third loop, i went and i knocked on her door again.

she answered it this time, and i counted my lucky stars that she'd changed into some pajamas. she was all teary eyed which was the saddest thing ever, and we sat down in her kitchen and talked. it was pretty bad - i figured out we'd been dating, and she figured out that trying to jump from home plate to 3rd base is considered ballsy in baseball, least of all dating. no real winners there. and i can remember after all that, we sat there a bit a bit longer, just steadying ourselves, and i was like "well, im actually really glad we figured that out. guess i'll see you at school tomorow' and she said "WAIT. wait."

"lets watch shrek 2."

so we did and it was horrible. we did not look at each other. we did not say a word. we just sat in stony silence, while shrek 2 played in the background, and when it was done we shook hands. i think we might have been able to salvage that as a friendship if it hadnt been for shrek. as it was she turned white as a sheet and ran away every time she even got a glimpse of me at school, and that summer she moved to a new state to live with her dad. all her friends said she moved just so she wouldn't have to go to school with me anymore, and i dont actually think they were lying.

every time i hear relationship counselors talk about how important communication is, and i'm tempted to roll my eyes, i look back and go, alright. alright. theres probably some poor bastard, somewhere in the world, who doesnt even know that hes married.

and god help him when he figures it out.

other bad dating story here.

[konakoro]

POV: your theater just saw a 10-year-old boy get squashed by a falling piano

[crumbpigeon]

flow away

[lotus-pear]

on everyone's SOUL she's the least benched character in the entire game ‼️‼️

[lazylittledragon]

they've been at it for 40 minutes