#important point

[nerdygaymormon]

[redstonedust]

i think its true that you can use dude, bro, queen, babe- literally any nickname in a gender neutral way, and its also true that if somebody tells you to cut that out because they dont like it then you stop. and i think if you go on to insist 'im not misgendering you i mean it in a gender neutral way' then you get the glock. simples!

[redisnotonfire]

shout out to suzanne collins for, in the middle of Everything Else she was doing in sotr, dropping a paragraph that’s just “btw fuck ai”

[floworence]

I need to get this off my chest before I go INSANE.

"You are not immune to propaganda"

This is the main thought I have when people are talking about Effie.

Effie is a clear example of that and people are kinda missing the point.

Suzanne take time to establish that not all Capitol citizens are pure evil, even if they're not rebels. We see it in Katniss' stylists, the girl in the lemon coat, countless kids that died in that bombing, people who died at the hands of both Peacekeepers and rebels alike.

We see it in Effie.

Over the course of the series, Katniss learns that capitol citizens are humans, ones that were put under years upon years of propaganda, with no knowledge on how to behave differently.

The whole message of the series is "remember who the real enemy is". It's the higher powers oppressing people, not common people living privileged life. That is why Katniss shoots Coin, that is why Games, of any kind, had to stop.

Some people focus too much on Effie being typical capitolite, and miss the crucial element of what she is representing. She is a picture of a person who lived their whole life under propaganda and could only break away from it when faced with real facts that contradicted it. Katniss and Peeta being reaped again, shattered Effie's view on Games, making her see through the propaganda.

It doesn't make Effie evil to change only after that.

Sotr also established that Trinkets are an ostracized family, one that is least likely to rebel since they'd be the first ones to go. They need to keep being in the system to survive, they need to comply or they die.

The difference between propaganda in Captiol and Districts is simple.

Districts are confronted with harsh reality daily, Capitol isn't.

That's why propaganda in the Capitol is more effective and why it's harder to break away from it. We cannot judge those characters as if they have access to all the information we have, since it's simply not true.

Effie is a woman in a situation where it's hard to break from the hold of Capitol, from the information that's being fed to her, you have to remember that.

[thestuffedalligator]

The thing was a mound of flesh and mottled skin, as big as a barn and the shape of a pumpkin. Four tentacles as thick as trees hung limp at its sides; teeth ringed the gaping mouth at the top of its head like a crown.

A huge, sad whale eye the colour of wine stared at the knight. She could see her reflection in the jelly surface.

“We don’t know what it is,” she heard. “Some kind of monster that makes a perfect copy of whatever it eats. They think that was how the Dark Lord made his armies, feeding his minions to it so that it would make hundreds of copies of them. Do you recognize it?”

The knight opened her mouth. She hesitated. “Yeah,” she murmured, drawing out the word. “We found it in the Dark Lord’s tower, right?”

“That’s right. That’s where it ate you.”

The knight turned around and looked at her other reflection. This one appeared to be about ten years older, and had doffed her armor for a loose blue tunic and breeches.

She was holding a cup of tea. She had pressed another cup into the knight’s hand when she woke up here. It had been a shock finding herself suddenly out the obsidian dungeons of the Dark Lord’s tower and into this tall room of stone and straw. The warmth of it in her hands steadied her a bit.

“Everyone else in the party was worried, but then it started making copies of you,” the copy went on, staring up at the tentacled thing. “And all of the copies helped fight against the Dark Lord, and we won, and peace was restored across the land, but then nobody could figure out how to kill the damn thing or just to make it stop. Dozens of copies of us in a day, hundreds in a week, and then someone decided that the only thing we could do is just bring the thing here, seal it off and hope it starved to death.”

She sipped her tea. “Anyways, that was two-hundred years ago and it’s slowed down a bit. It can only make a new copy of us every few weeks now.”

The knight looked down into her tea. The copy had also draped a blanket over her shoulders.

“I have so many questions,” she said.

“I figured.”

“How can it be two-hundred years? I can still remember breaking into the tower. That feels like it was just minutes ago.”

“It was, basically. Your brain is a perfect copy of the original you’s brain at the exact moment she was eaten.”

“But the quest is just — done?”

“Yep. You missed some of the things that needed tying up afterward. There was a war, and a dragon, and some business about a ring.” She waved a hand. “It was before my time. Things are pretty settled now.”

“My parents?”

“Passed away about a hundred-and-fifty years ago. I’ve been told that they were very proud.”

The knight nodded. “Um. I don’t know if you know — we had an elf in our party—”

“I’m aware.”

“I — right. Obviously. Um. It’s just, after everything was done, I was going to ask her—”

“One of us did. She said yes. She outlived her. A couple of us have tried to reach out since then, but she wants to be left alone for a while.”

The knight considered this. “Uh — right,” she said eventually. Her fingers tightened around the tea cup. “Um. What do I do now?”

Her older copy shrugged. She had let her hair grow out again, the knight noticed. There were a few strands of grey against the black. “That’s up to you, I’m afraid,” she said. “A lot of us are finding work as soldiers and sellswords. We’ve done it for so long that most armies know we’re reliable and don’t tend to turn one of us away. Most of us are just sort of spreading out, wandering the world. Some of us keep in touch.”

The knight frowned. “What do you do?”

Her copy paused, tea cup half raised to her lips. “Sorry?”

“You said it only makes a new copy every few weeks now. So you just stay here and wait for a new one to show up?”

She lowered the cup. “Well,” she said. “I guess I just — I know what it can be like, waking up here in the dark, and it — it can be horrible trying to figure all of this out on your own.

“So I thought that what I’d do is just stay here with a pot of tea, and whenever I see myself again, I tell her that — that she’s not alone.”

“We aren’t?”

“Of course not. We’re all in this together, you know.”

[technically-human]

First meeting

[adventures-in-poor-planning]

I rlly like the emphasis that live action one piece is putting on the fact that literally nobody else think about piracy the way luffy does. "Being a pirate is about being free and having friends :3" while every other pirate is doing legitimate career criminal shit around him.

[many-gay-magpies]

i think my favorite thing about the old guard was how much and how obviously they all LOVED each other. like. the baclava scene. those first hugs between andy, nick and joe. andy cradling booker's face while she begged him to wake up, and the tender forehead-touch when he did. how they all (barring andy, who i assume was taking a guard dog-like position) slept so closely together in the church. how quick they were to all surround andy when they found out about her mortality. how KIND andy was, even when coming out to tell booker what his punishment would be. how they waited and looked to each other in relief every time they died—and how the first thing they thought of when they felt nile's presence was that they had to help her, because they all knew how scared and alone she would be feeling right then. hell, even booker's motivation for his betrayal wasn't the typical scheming double-crosser's motivation; he just wanted to help, to try and give the rest of the guard (mainly he and andy) a means of control—a way to REST. to decide when to stop on their own terms. they weren't just a team of badass immortal soldiers dedicated to protecting the earth; they were friends, with relationships centuries in the making, and it showed. they were a family.

[asthedeathoflight]

Still thinking about none houses left grief, and while I understand where people are coming from, "it took me out of the world" is just... Really not a relevant criticism here. Like, that line is SUPPOSED to be jarring. It is supposed to be kind of darkly funny, but the point isnt for you to laugh. Its not trying to be a punchline. The point of that line IS to "take you out of the world" because the point is that *this world isn't what you thought it was.*

[secretmellowblog]

People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

[bennetsbonnet]

Two statements about characters can and should co-exist: Pride and Prejudice edition

Mr Bennet has a close relationship with Elizabeth and provides amusing observations on the folly of human nature BUT he is a terrible husband and father who consistently neglects the women who rely on him for absolutely everything; Elizabeth and Jane turned out so well in spite of him, not because of him.

Mrs Bennet's behaviour is understandable given the era in which she lived and the subsequent pressure she was under to get her daughters married well, which wasn't entirely for vanity reasons given that Longbourn was entailed BUT she was still fundamentally vain, ridiculous and rude; such pressure, even combined with an absent husband, still does not make her behaviour justifiable, nor her a sympathetic character, as she enabled Lydia (whose subsequent elopement with Wickham almost ruined the family) for far too long.

Mr Collins is unfairly portrayed as a middle-aged sycophant in most adaptations, rather than the young clergyman who sucks up to his patroness in pursuit of a more lucrative living that he was BUT he is still a ridiculous character who you are not meant to feel sympathy for when Elizabeth rejects him; he is rude, hypocritical and thinks of himself far too highly considering how vapid he actually is.

Caroline Bingley is often too harshly judged as a 'pick-me,' even though her relentless pursuit of Darcy is understandable given his wealth & status and how important it was for women to make a good marriage BUT she was still rude, vain and treated Jane terribly; plus she was a hypocritical snob, given the manner in which she looked down upon the Bennet family's relations despite the Bingleys' own background in trade.

Elizabeth is incredibly witty, courageous and endearing and instantly likeable which makes Darcy's slight of her at the Meryton assembly all the more of an affront to us as readers BUT, while it explains her dislike of him, she is no means perfect herself; she had far too much misplaced pride in her ability to successfully read others' characters and consequently ignored positive accounts of Darcy in favour of believing the deceitful Wickham, given her prejudice against the former.

Mr Darcy was harshly judged by Elizabeth, even though there are many more sympathetic elements to his character than immediately meet the eye BUT he was not shy or innocent; he was always a haughty rich man who had never been told no, thought far too highly of himself and, ultimately, thoroughly deserved to be rebuked and subsequently made to reform his character.

[arimabari]

-sees Miku trending on twitter- fuck it. Idaho Miku

[jojo-schmo]

How to turn off AI Training of your content on Web and Mobile:

On a Web Browser:

I had some trouble finding this option. My first instinct was to click the settings button on the left, but that's where it is!

First, you'll click the name of your blog on the left sidebar to bring it up on your browser.

Then click "Blog settings" on the right sidebar once your blog is brought up. That's where they're hiding it.

Click "Prevent Third-Party Sharing" under the Visibility section, and bam! You're done.

On Mobile:

Thankfully it's much easier on mobile. Just click the Gear icon on your blog's page, to go to settings.

Scroll all the way down until you see Visibility, then toggle the Prevent third-party sharing option for your blog!!

If you disable this setting on mobile, it automatically synced it to my web browser settings, too. ...But if you use both Web and Mobile, I would still highly recommend double checking that it actually turned off on both!!

Check that it's turned off on your side blogs too! And check your settings every now and then anyway to ensure that it's staying turned off, because if my memory serves right, some other websites will pull some shenanigans on things like this and opt you back in without telling you!

Leave Feedback on New Features at Tumblr Support Here!! Let Staff know however we can that having our content fed to AI at their whim is unacceptable.

And if you have the option to poison your art with Nightshade or Glaze, keep it up!!

[stupidlittlespirit]

This is so silly but I'm watching a short video essay on sincerity in cinema and the creator is talking about how he watched Lord of the Rings for the first time at 17. He explains that he'd grown so used to the 'ironic' meta style commentary in the movies of the 2010's that as he was watching the opening narration of LotR, he spent the entire time waiting for the joke to come. For someone to take it all back with a zinger line. He listened to Blanchett describe and explain the backstory, and he waited for the other comedic shoe to drop.

And he kept doing it. Scene after scene.

He spent the film expecting someone to make a joke about how unserious things were or to break the fourth wall or do some other self referential type thing.

Now, maybe I'm just at that point in my cycle or maybe I'm too delicate in general, but I literally teared up hearing that. Straight up cried a bit. It is so fucking sad that sincerity and genuineness is being bred out of people.

People say all the time 'this generation can't take anything seriously!' and really, is it any wonder? Younger people have been trained out of it. You are no longer encouraged to be genuine or show emotion or be honest. You are actively punished for it. In fact, you are almost guaranteed to suffer for it.

That is so fucked up. I'm sorry to go on a bit of a random ramble rant but it's so fucking gut wrenching to see younger people lose that element of themselves. You can't express your passion without being told you're 'crashing out' or 'cringe'. You have to live in this neutral state of fear of perception, and god forbid anybody step outside of it!

You're told you should only consume and succumb and be ironic and emotionless and cool.

Listen, if you're following me and you're like.... 25 or under, let's say. Please. I beg of you. Do not fall for this rhetoric. Please, for the love of all things, feel. Feel and create and be honest with yourself. Indulge in things that make you happy. Be sincere. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Do not let this hyper-capitalistic, hyper-consumerist, self-centred, individualist culture take that from you.

Bleed yourself into the work you create. Live. Don't fucking let anyone tell you different.

[bluegiragi]

classic.

full version on patreon on bluesky

[ambrosiagourmet]

I think one of the biggest tragedies of Laios & Falin and their relationship is how much his actions impact her life. But like. Specifically how much they WOULDN’T impact her life as much if they weren’t both stuck in such a shitty abusive situation.

This part of the Falin-tries-makeup daydream hour comic is what got me thinking about it again because truly it just... it seems like such a like an offhand comment that I'm sure Laios didn't mean to be cruel or anything. That's just like. A little kid not thinking about what they are saying. ESPECIALLY when the kid in question is Laios.

But man they depended on each other SO much as kids. Too much. It really feels like they didn't have any other source of positive reinforcement, or anyone else to share themselves with. So of course an offhand comment like that has a huge impact on Falin.

Or this little bit from one of the flashbacks:

This tears me apart. Do you think it tears him apart to think about? I think it does. I think Laios holds every small failure to care for Falin against himself.

And then there's the Bigger stuff. The way that him coping with his own trauma ended up impacting her.

Like his interest in monsters. Like him going to find a ghost, and accidentally revealing Falin's magic to the whole village in the process.

Like him needing to leave. And leaving her behind.

He shaped her life so much, and he carries so much guilt for it. And again, there should have been other people there to help. The same things that made Laios need to leave home are the things that made his leaving so hard on Falin. She ate alone after that. She shouldn't have had to eat alone just because Laios wasn't there.

She was 9 when he left for school, and he was 11.

Nine. And Laios feels like he failed her because he didn't stand by her through this better. As an eleven year old.

Both of these kids deserved so much better from the world.