#Give Karen more to do

[thoughtsandfiction]

So I started watching 911 because I was in the market for a new procedural, and Angela Bassett. After watching season 1, I looked it up online, see what people are saying, check out the fan community etc etc, and imagine my delight when I came across the #BUDDIE ship. Now I'm thinking "Oh wonderful this new guy's going to be gay and trigger a bisexual awakening in our sweet boy, followed by shenanigans and dramatic speeches about love and soulmates, and overcoming in the name of love and soulmates. Yay for me!" ...

Come to find it's not canon. Non-canonical! Non-canonical??! NON-CANONICAL??!! Why ,in the year of our Beyoncé 2023, would you put hot men with chemistry on my screen and not make them yearn for eachother?! I know we have our resident lesbian, and my fictional bestie, Hen holding it down for the alphabet mafia but her relationship stuff kinda gets put on the back burner cause this is a workplace drama. Our emotional investment is with the people who primarily exist in this space, so it's hard to care that much about an outsider. So new hot firefighter enters the scene, making Buckley feel threatened until they build a camaraderie--that everyone can see is more-- which simmers until someone makes an insane love confession after losing the victim in whatever thematically appropriate case they're handling. It just bring the drama. It's all right there!

Shout out to the fan edit community. You got me. I've been spoiled by IWTV and Our Flag Means Death and Killing Eve and Hannibal cause now my brain thinks "gay fancams set to Taylor Swift songs = canonical gay couple." Y'all really had me convinced that at some point I was going to watch Bobby give Buck a cheesy but quietly moving speech about allowing yourself to be who you are.....I thought that boy was gonna be a co-parent! Lol! Like, what are they doing?!

[chaos-lioness]

In general I have not been engaging with this show in a fandom way but I gotta say Molly Cobb is absolutely my blorbo. My skrunkly problematic fave. Rotating her in my mind etc. one of my favourite ‘asshole’ characters of all time. I’m so glad they didn’t have her die of space cancer or in a fiery test vehicle crash and instead she got to round out a good decade of flying very large vehicles very fast by stalking around NASA with her fuckin. Seeing eye wolfhound and spending time in her brass tub with her weird husband (who I also love.) good for her.

[shhh-secret-time]

No, see, because, like, you fucked up. Now you have to write that. I need that. I need the Star Park AU.

Below I will present my case:

1) That name is so freaking cute and I love it

2) Your tags made me fall in love with it

3) I know you have more ideas in that beautiful brain of yours

4) I really want it.

Please see points 1 - 4 if you have any questions.

Aafjdjakak Dude?! I'm cackling!

Fuck it we ball. Please look forward to it I guess.

I'll throw more in the tags!

[yesokayiknow]

cannot believe that in 2007 the eighth doctor adventures writers just decided to put toxic yuri in their show. they did that for me

[heloflor]

After seeing a playthrough of Bowser’s Inside Story, I gotta say I’m kind of mixed on Starlow, and no, it’s not just because of the Luigi bullying.

The thing with Starlow is that, on one hand, it’s great to see a female character who has no hesitation talking back and who can be a bit of an ass. But at the same time, the way they wrote her just…it really makes it hard to like her sometimes.

I think the main issue is that she’s written as someone who talks back but most of those interactions are with people doing their jobs and messing up. This leads to moments with Starlow criticizing someone for the things they’re doing, but then proceeding to do nothing whatsoever to help. On top of that, she’s kind of useless in the game, making her “I’m better than you” attitude really come off in a bad way.

(btw that moment with the doctor/fortune-teller calling her out on it is very satisfying)

The best way to describe the issue, and that’s when it gets interesting, is to compare her to how Bowser is written in this game. There are essentially two things that are similar yet different about those two.

1. Like I said, Starlow is often criticizing people for what they’re doing, which is something Bowser does as well. But where Starlow goes “Man you suck at your job. Do better !” Bowser goes “Man you suck at your job. Here, let me do it for you !” and that automatically makes Bowser more likeable. Because instead of just complaining, he actually does things (the section with the Monty Moles for example).

2. A bit longer to explain but the Tl;Dr is that Bowser actually learns from his mistakes and grows while Starlow doesn’t. To explain this, I want to describe two interactions between those two.

The first interaction is when Bowser forgets the code to his safe and orders Starlow to find it, to which Starlow gets angry with his tone and tells him to fuck off, only accepting to help once he politely asks her to search. That right here is really good, and is an example of a moment where I really like Starlow’s attitude.

But then you have their next interaction. Bowser just spent hours stuck in a safe (btw someone stuck in a liminal space like that is a form of torture), was thrown into the garbage so hard the safe broke, and understandably is in enormous pain. Because of that, Bowser asks Starlow to help with his back, and his dialogue here echoes the previous one in a good way.

He starts off his sentence as an order, only to catch himself halfway through and ask politely. Bowser just went through hell, is in a huge amount of pain, and yet still finds it within himself to be polite because he knows that’s how Starlow wants to be addressed. This also shows that he respects Starlow since he remembered that detail about her and is willing to avoid falling into his usual bossy attitude despite his terrible state.

And what does Starlow do in return ? She basically calls him a whiney bitch for complaining. Yeah….this is not a good look.

This actually reminds me of one of their first interactions, when Bowser can’t produce fire and panics about it, with Starlow telling him to just deal with it. The first time I saw this dialogue I was like “Hey Starlow, buddy, how would you feel if you suddenly lost your ability to fly, with no idea of why and the only one that might help is some random voice you don’t know anything about coming from your stomach ?” Although, I’d cut Starlow some slack for this one since this is very early on, so Starlow has every right to be mad at him.

And more on that topic, the thing with comparing Bowser and Starlow is that you quickly realize how much better Bowser is than her. I already mentioned Bowser doing things himself and showing respect to her, but then there’s also moments like him being humble enough to eat Wiggler’s carrot when being ordered to to “take responsibility”, or when he out loud says he will break the rocks in his path to free the Koopas, and decide to commit to it upon realizing the Koopas heard him. In that second case, he could’ve easily gone a different path and tell the Koopas to shut up if they were to say anything, but he didn’t. Instead, he said he will break that rock and that’s what he’s going to do ! Same for the Wiggler btw. He could’ve beaten them up instead of eating that carrot, which he does end up doing afterwards when Wiggler loses their shit.

So yeah, when you look at how not-very-useful Starlow is compared to Bowser, when you look at how they treat others, and when you look at their interactions with each other…it’s kinda hard to find Starlow likeable when a literal villain is a better person than she is (granted Bowser is more of an anti-hero in this game but the point still stands).

Funnily enough, some of those moments like the Wiggler, the Koopas and him saying please to Starlow while in pain actually show that yes, Bowser is a pretty decent king. At the very least, you can understand why his people respect him.

So all-in-all, yeah, I’m kind of 50/50 on Starlow. It’s great to have a female character on the hero team who has a lot of flaws for once, but it’s also hard to find her attitude likeable. Ultimately, I think the issue is how she’s acting the same with everyone. Like I said earlier, it is satisfying when Bowser is being a dick and she tells him off. But when Bowser is being nice, or when she’s interacting with someone who’s only trying to help, Starlow really comes off as an ass, which is not a good look.

And yes, while still a minor thing in BIS, her bullying Luigi doesn’t help either.

[xxlovelynovaxx]

Anti-recovery people: hey, it's okay to be unhealthy. That's not always something you can change and it's certainly not something you have to do. It's okay to exist as you are.

"Pro-recovery" people: OMG YOU'RE what's wrong with the mental health community, you BRAINWASHED me into thinking it wasn't okay for people to seek help if THEY wanted it, this is honestly TOXIC AF.

Anti-recovery people: but ... that's literally not what we said. Most people view recovery as this linear progression of milestones that often includes becoming more palatably neurotypical, which is ableist. What we're saying is that it's okay to recover if you want to, but that doesn't have to look like the mainstream abled version of recovery, and that it's okay to not do so at all. Some people also can't recover to those standards and we celebrate accepting your limitations.

"Pro-recovery" people: So it's OKAY to just harm your friends because of your mental illness? You support being a BAD person and not bothering to change? Also being unhealthy is bad and I'm going to assume because I recovered that everybody is capable of doing so, even if using different methods, and just choosing not to bother because of YOU people.

Anti-recovery people: What? No! Hurting other people is not okay! Do you actually think that these symptoms of a diagnosis are what causes someone to choose to harm other people? That's both super ableist and also a fundamental misunderstanding of what causes harmful, toxic, and abusive behaviors.

Anti-recovery people: In the few cases where someone is truly incapable of controlling a harmful behavior, where someone has extremely high support needs, we support them getting the adequate societal support to have someone help them through these behaviors without anyone getting hurt, but more importantly, without exacerbating their own distress that they are very clearly expressing.

Anti-recovery people: In most other cases, conflating the choices and actions of someone who is mentally ill with their diagnosis is super ableist, as is conflating "it's okay if you struggle to brush your teeth" with "it's okay to treat your friends and loved ones like shit with no consequences". I assume you're defining harm as "actively insulting, belitting, invalidating, physically or sexually assaulting you, though, and not just visibly having symptoms of a mental illness or talking about their struggles, right?*

"Pro-recovery"people: . . .

Anti-recovery people: We're saying that it's harmful to moralize health, for multiple reasons. There's that you are not capable of determining if a person is able to recover, for any given definition of recovery. There's that even if a person is able to, them being unhealthy is not actually harming you, and they have the right to make those choices even if you wouldn't make the same ones for yourself. There's the fact that recovery looks different for everybody, and for many, accepting that you can't "recover" to the expectations set by the mainstream IS recovery. ESPECIALLY given that many things that are called "unhealthy" are perfectly harmless and healthy aspects of neurodivergence that have been unnecessarily medicalized by our ableist society and psychiatric institutions.

"Pro-recovery" people: . . .

"Pro-recovery" people: YOU'RE the reason I wanted to kill myself for a decade and didn't bother to do anything about it! Personal responsibility, ever heard of it? Once I left your CULT I started doing yoga and now I'm BETTER and so everyone else can do that too!

Anti-recovery people: ... Do YOU know what personal responsibility is? All the "anti-recovery" in our names means is that we are against the idea that it's morally wrong to refuse to recover, whether that means refusing to conform to the mainstream ideal of recovery, a choice that you make to not pursue recovery, or an acceptance of your own inability to recover. We are not against choosing recovery as a personal decision if that's what you want - in fact, we support those people.

Anti-recovery people: Anyway, you don't know what led up to someone making this choice. Someone with long-term treatment-resistant suicidal depression is not wrong for not continuing to try meds that have not once worked, pursuing expensive TMS they may not be able to afford which is not covered by most insurance, continuing meds that have some effect but worse side effects than the depression itself, or psychotherapy that may have little to not effect, especially if they have at any point been subject to psychiatric neglect or abuse, which is more common than you're aware.

"Pro-recovery" people: See, I was toxic like you but unlearned all of that so now I'm no longer toxic. Btw I'm currently actively harassing disabled people because they're not 'working hard enough' or using 'better coping skills' and them being unhealthy is a personally harmful to me and everyone that ever interacts with them. What do you mean that's not okay just because the disability is a mental illness?? That's ableist!!1

Anti-recovery people: Okay, so, you haven't even bothered to deconstruct the moralization of healthiness and how that ties into ableism, I see. It's actively bigoted to expect someone to meet certain standards of health when they have a CHRONIC HEALTH ISSUE. This is no different than expecting someone with a chronic illness never to eat or drink anything unhealthy, to exercise regularly, have perfect sleep habits, and otherwise be a paragon of healthy choices or else it's "their fault" for just "not caring enough to put in the work to recover. Of course, you likely also do those things, in which case the comparison is lost on you, because ableists are so rarely ableist against only mentally or physically disabled people and not the other.**

Anti-recovery people: You also seem to believe that you're ontologically incapable of doing harm - you say that it's an "ongoing process" but then your actions show that you haven't bothered learning to listen when people say you're harming them and have just changed your targets to be people who have less societal power than you so they're less able to stand up for themselves and you're less obligated to listen to them. Are you just trying to find a justification for bullying people that others will accept?

"Pro-recovery" people: . . . STOP HARASSING ME!!1

Anti-recovery people: *Looks into camera like they're on the office*

*I have actually harmed others in the past in ways that were influenced by my mental illness. OCD, of all things, was the one that most directly impacted my actions, and I owned my mistakes. That being said, they were still my CHOICE. The mental illness played a role, but it didn't cause the harm I did. You know what wasn't my choice, though? My overreliance on my friends for essentially trauma-dumping and for getting my emotional needs met because I was actively being abused and the system was neither providing me ANY way out nor even adequate mental healthcare (as if that's possible when being ACTIVELY ABUSED WITH NOT EVEN A BROCHURE OFFERED ABOUT HOW TO ESCAPE ABUSE.) I was a drowning person clawing at them for survival, and it was neither of our faults that the system is primed to actively keep disabled people in abusive situations. So don't @ me.

**I would know, I am both multiple physically and multiply mentally disabled.

[limpdickharrington]

idk like ships are fun and all but when I talk bisexual Steve I am not talking about wanting Steve to date this guy or that guy I am talking about the fact that making Steve bisexual would have been the most incredible way to complete his character arc that's been building since season 1 and I've wanted it since the beginning, idgaf about Jonathan or Billy or Eddie, bisexual Steve should be canon even if he's single all the way through. It makes sense. It's stupid not to do it. He would be the best fucking character to bisexualise. The entirety of season 4 and his issues with dating felt like it was building up to it. I literally can't believe they're not doing it, my brain does not compute, I can't see any other way for his evolution as a character to not lead to a bisexual awakening.

[danothan]

sniffs. what changed 😢

[thedevotionaltour]

karen is MY special white woman. my problematic fave. because i understand why she sucks. i think in order to be allowed to be a karen fan you have to actually understand why she sucks. if you don't understand why she sucks then you're a bad karen fan i think.

[mariocki]

The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

"I thought you said if we destroyed the brain, it'd die?"

"It worked in the movie!"

"Well, it ain't working now, Frank."

"You mean the movie lied?"

[zevrans]

.

[adanseydivorce]

[ecoamerica]

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

[lighthouseas]

reminder that this fucking banger of a track exists and im So Normal about it 😁😁

[eskawrites]

ALSO speaking of AUs it’s halloween weekend so i’m contractually obligated to think about night in the woods idek how niche this is but i’m writing it out anyway bc i’m suddenly obsessed okay

NitW au where Nancy is Mae and Robin is Bea

Nancy finally gets out of Hawkins and goes to college, where she quickly finds out that she can’t for the life of her move on from her trauma

Nancy, who is haunted by what happened to Barb. everyone knows she was there the night Barb died. there are whispers that she did it. the only reason no one says anything is because her family is nice, and it’s a small town. people don’t say those kinds of things to your face

Nancy who is angry, and hurt, and lonely, and scared, and so, so, so lost. And she can’t keep it together anymore. She has a breakdown at school. She drops out and drives all the way back to Hawkins, alone

Meanwhile, Robin has always wanted to get the hell out of Hawkins. She did everything right: good grades, extracurriculars, worked as much as possible to save up money. But then her mom died, and her dad is no help at all, and she gets stuck working a dead end job in a dead end town for the rest of her dead end life

Robin who tries to be polite when she sees Nancy again, but mostly she’s just tired. She looks at Nancy and all she sees is the girl who had everything she ever dreamed of, then just threw it all away

Nancy trying to adjust to life back home. What has changed and what never will. the guy who owned the diner died. there’s a new grocery store out by the highway. a few people have moved. most of them have stayed.

She learns that Jonathan and his little brother disappeared one night, finally running away like they always said they would. Neither of them have been in contact with anyone since.

cue weird shit starting to happen in Hawkins. kids go missing. Nancy sees something she’s not supposed to on Halloween. 

she starts investigating, and she drags her friends into it, too--Steve volunteering, Eddie going where Steve goes, and Robin tagging along because she has nothing else to do in this shitty town

the kids are there too! Max as Lori, just a lost, lonely, vaguely angry teenager who clings to Nancy the instant Nancy turns out to be nice to her

Dustin as Germ, just a weird, lovable guy who’s been hanging out around Steve and Eddie lately. somehow the only vaguely well-adjusted person in town

something-something the Upside Down instead of a weird cult, and no one in town is listening to them as they keep investigating

Nancy having horrible nightmares and gradually deteriorating as she gets closer and closer to uncovering the truth

Reconnecting with Steve, the only one who seems genuinely excited to see her. Building a friendship with Eddie.

Slowly breaking through Robin’s walls after Robin seems to effortlessly knock down hers. Between getting trashed at a party in the woods and sitting quietly together in a graveyard, they’re reminded of all the reasons why they fell apart, and all the reasons why it’s so easy to come back together again

(idk man, the ‘is this just proximity?’ conversation lives rent free in my mind. and give me messed up Nancy, traumatized Nancy, sometimes completely unhinged Nancy next to a world-weary Robin who eventually learns to bask in all the love and care and passion--good and bad--that Nancy puts into the world)

Robin running away from a party in the city. Nancy sprinting through the rain, panicked, trying to find her again.

Robin losing her mind when Nancy gets hurt; Robin becoming clingy and tender and not letting Nancy out of her sight after that

i’m gonna go replay nitw and think about this now, byeee

[ofallthingsnasty]

I need to write more with reader getting drunk and then diddled. It’s one of my favorites... How heart-breaking. You just wanted to have a good time and now you’re someone’s basement wife 😞 The best part is really the moment when it catches up to you and you realize what’s happening - the regret, the fear. Oh, if only you hadn’t...

[homoquartz]

this post is not gonna be well put together but i am having feelings

mean girls is trending right now because the musical movie just came out and i feel insane. idk why i do, it was stupid of me to think that most people Got It, no one ever gets it, it was always about the memes and the aesthetic.

the first mean girls movie was based on a nonfiction book called queen bees and wannabes. it interviewed and discussed the social hierarchy system in teen girl friendships. how they hold each other to these insane standards of heternormative femininity out of sheer terror that they won't meet those standards themselves. the way they leverage their relationships for some small degree of power in a world designed to strip them of it, even if it drags other girls down.

the "you can only wear your hair in a ponytail once a week and on wednesdays we wear pink" speech was not an original creation for the script. it's a QUOTE from a real teenage girl. those were REAL RULES.

then the musical came, and it was one step removed from the intended messaging of the film. OG mean girls was not perfect (and was extremely racist), but it said what needed said. the musical leaned on the comedy more, but still left a heartfelt undertone, and still critiqued the systems in place. of course no piece of media is going to be perfect, but it was about the conversation.

then this new movie comes out and it is washed over in the veneer of white hollywood feminism so thick you can't see anymore. the problematic aspects of the original movie are taken out to avoid "offending" when the offense was the point. it becomes toothless, it becomes some other thing entirely. they changed karen's line "i expect to run the world in shoes i cannot walk in" to "watch me as i run the world in shoes i cannot walk in." because choice feminism is in vogue, suddenly this character whose entire point is that she doesn't think deeply about WHY she does anything is suddenly hip to the fact that the world is against her.

i think of sokka losing his misogyny arc in the new atla. i think of the Heathers remake casting the bitchy, identical heathers as queer and hollywood-fat outcasts. as if the story, the meaning, the allegory is hidden in the sets and the jokes and the music. it's a whole new thing now, and it's a thing that means nothing in particular.

the plastics should not wear jeans. they should not have curves. their queerness should be suppressed, painful. their sexuality is not a slay, it's the only thing they think they have of value. the santa dance isn't sexy, it's shocking, it's mortifying - they are children.

they're not mean because "we are all mean." they are mean because they are girls in a world that brutalizes them and crushes them into a standardized shape. they are mean because the world is mean to them. they are mean because it gives them some power back. they are mean because it's the only weapon they have.

the landscape of femininity today has shifted to camera-ready makeup at the age of 10, stringent performative hygiene standards, and avoiding being caught on film while having a genuine emotion. the consumerism, the fatphobia, the racism, the classism, the homophobia remain. We could have had a conversation about that.

[ecoamerica]

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!