#and rant

[rogue205]

Hunger Games rant

This is kind of surprising me because I used to ship Everlark when I read the books years ago but upon a re-read as an adult?

I’m just wandering through the Hunger Games fandom and seriously have to say… I very very much doubt that Katniss and Peeta “would’ve happened anyway” if they were not reaped nor if the Games never existed.

Sure, he had a crush on her which is likely why he gave her the burned bread that day(something that I’m pretty sure isn’t even covered in the movies) which people seem to think makes her required to like him back. Their relationship was also a forced play for the Capitol, she had no choice. If it was “gonna happen anyway”, she would’ve been dating him already by the first book. 

As an (now)Everthorne shipper, I am a little biased but she clearly has more in common with Gale, they had known each other for years, and she even bluntly states that “he is hers and she is his” at one point. Seems straight forward to me. Gale also deserved better than what SC did to him. Yes, he helped to design those bombs but I very much doubt he knew what Coin was going to use them for nor did he know that Prim was going to be there and put in the direct line of fire. Prove me wrong. I’m also slightly irritated that Katniss holds this over his head, and while I understand given that it’s Prim, she should know him better than that. Just seemed like an easy way for Collins to get rid of him so she could pander to fans by putting Katniss with Peeta. Yes, he lied by omission but he didn’t want to hurt her. And I find it odd that she just can’t seem to get over that, while she seems to just instantly forgive Peeta for every manipulation(unintended or not) that he puts her through. 

I do find it funny that some people seriously seem to think that Gale and Katniss actually are cousins. Take the Everlark blinders off, people. You really think that Collins would create a love triangle that involved incest?

She picked Peeta in the end because he could give her stability in a post war world when she had no one, not because she loved him like that. Matches up to “she’ll pick who she can’t survive without” to me. I know people immediately interpret that as “she’ll pick who she loves” but no. If Gale meant it that way, he would’ve said it that way but he also knows the only one Katniss would and could ever truly love is Prim. Peeta does not understand this about her.

The movies just showed a “happy-ever-after Everlark” ending while ignoring that fact that Peeta is still struggling with the hijack(and poses a continuing threat to Katniss because of it) and in the books, Katniss does wonder what kind of future she also could’ve had with Gale like they were talking about before the first reaping. But she dismisses it because she imagines that he’s moved on. Her ending with Peeta comes across to me as “obligation” still. Surprisingly, lots of people seem to get this too I’ve read but most are still “romantic Everlark” anyway. 🤷‍♀️

Katniss had gone through the books pretty adamant that she didn’t want to marry or have children and yes, that was largely because she didn’t want them to have to go through the Games but it’s also been said behind the scenes that she only did these exact things in the end because Peeta wanted it. Literally along the lines of “I didn’t want children but Peeta did and kept asking until I finally caved…” just rubs me the wrong way.

I think it would’ve been a refreshing change to have ended this series the way Katniss originally wanted. Where she didn’t end up with anyone. (@zalrb here on Tumblr says this all way better than I ever could. Go visit them.)

[draculasstrawhat]

Cos I reblogged the accent post, I sort of want to write a bit about British accents and class based on my (admittedly brief) study of linguistics, and a sort of lifelong interest in the matter, if anyone fancies it.

It goes in to a bit of a rant, but hopefully explains why we’re such pedants about why a “British” accent being considered stick-up-the-arse posh is a misunderstanding, and why we might be a bit touchy about the bo’ul of wor’uh thing.

So, first up: accents in the UK are very much a class marker. I know that’s true everywhere, but it is really pronounced here. Because of our linguistic history, we’ve historically had enormous regional variation in accents for such a small landmass, as well as a second accent spoken by landowners regardless of geographical location. Historically, therefore, your social class could be discerned by where you were on the scale of ‘regional accent’ to ‘posh person accent’.

To an extent, this applies/applied to Scottish and Welsh accents, too. Really posh Scottish people do not have, or have a very slight Scottish accent. This is not an accident, nor something people were unaware of - I was reading a book from the 1930s recently where someone was discussing her child’s education and bemoaning his accent, saying “a touch of Perthshire is charming,” but that he’d been spending too much time with shepherds and gamekeepers, and was being essentially ‘too Scottish’.

So, because the vast majority of the Very Posh and Very Wealthy were educated at about three schools, two universities, and inhabited once social sphere, they all spoke - and were taught to speak - in the same way. The name for this accent, as I’m sure a lot of you know, is “Received Pronunciation,” or RP, and we all know what it sounds like, right?

Or do we?

What Maggie Smith (and most of the other actors there) are speaking *is* RP, but it’s not a particularly thick RP accent. Smith - because she’s a great actor and knows what she’s about - is speaking thicker RP than the others, and that’s doing the work of letting you know she’s posher and more old fashioned than anyone else she’s talking to - but still, her vowels are mostly soft and broad, her consonants clearly articulated. It is stage RP, schoolroom RP - but not from an Eton/Harrow/Westminster schoolroom. It’s the sort of accent you were taught at grammar schools, or small private schools to rid you of your regional accent.

Now, of course, if you speak like that in any normal place in in the UK, people *are* going to assume you’re posh. But it is upper middle class posh, working in the Professions posh, rather than “owns half of Buckinghamshire” posh. It’s designed for clarity - which is what people think RP is all about. But it isn’t.

RP is a shibboleth. It’s actually not a particularly clear accent, and it is designed to mark the people who know it apart from those who do not.

Here is a much thicker RP accent: https://youtu.be/mBRP-o6Q85s

(apologies for the national anthem at the start)

If you see, the vowels are a lot higher and tighter, the consonants less clearly pronounced. But it’s still fairly intelligible - Liz is public speaking here and the majority of her audience will not be RP speakers, so she’s speaking slowly and clearly, and she still wishes to be accessible and comprehensible. If you want to hear a seriously thick RP accent, it’s worth looking up some early 20th century radio broadcasts.

The difference is in the emphasis given to vowels over consonants, as well as how much you move your lips. I’m not good at writing IPA as I’ve only done a bit of linguistics, but to give an example - if you wanted to say “I am speaking clearly,” stage RP might pronounce the word “clearly” as KLEER-lee, two distinct syllables, with a clear but simple vowel sound. A sort of mid level RP might say something more like KLE-ahr-lee, giving more vocalisation to the a and the r, making it almost three syllables, although one without emphasis. Really thick RP almost pronounces it as klAR-le, with almost even emphasis between the syllables, and the stress on the ar, rather than the kl.

But although plenty of people still use it, that very thick RP accent has become almost invisible over the course of the 20th century, as part of (if I put my paranoid socialist hat on) a campaign to render invisible the hereditary privilege and enormous wealth disparity which affects pretty much every aspect of British life. Which is to say, the very small number of people who can speak with and identify each other by a thick RP accent still literally own most of the country.

Even if I’m to be a little less red, the fact is during the 20th century, it became expedient for the accepted voice of radio and television to become less that of landowners and hereditary authority, and more like that of the middle classes. Even ‘The Queen’s English’ changed, as the Queen and several politicians took elocution lessons to sound “warmer and more approachable.” At the same time, Britain had a period of unprecedented social mobility in the post-War period and - much like the American conception of “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” - there gradually emerged this cultural idea that everyone was, or perhaps could be, “middle class.”

Even as this was starting to happen, and markers of “middle class respectability” spread (especially in the South East of England) the countercultural movements of the 60s and 70s rejected this very move and identified itself with everything their parents found ‘low’ or ‘shocking’. One of the markers of this was that middle class boys from the Home Counties adopted a kind of ‘mockney’ accent, which along with the success of a handful actually working class artists meant that having a vaguely working-class, vaguely South-Eastern accent became a sign of counter cultural validity and authenticity. (All of this is, ofc, a vast oversimplification - but it’s a general trend.)

From here we have the rise of the Estuary accent. Estuary English is a vague conglomeration of RP and the accents found around the Thames Estuary. It’s neither Essex, nor London, nor Kent, but a broad mingling of the three. It is easily learned and adopted, and - as a composite accent - has none of the shibboleths of real cockney, or Essex, or RP. To speak cynically, it is an accent uniquely suited to code switching. If you have access to RP, then estuary is an accent where you can ‘choose’ how thickly you speak it, or whether you intersperse it with another accent. (An example my mum always points out, although this is a bit pre-Estuary, is in Mother’s Little Helper, Mick Jagger pronounces all his “th” as “v” - but doesn’t use a single glottle stop.)

Beyond the “clear, warm, and authoritative” idea of a mild RP accent, estuary offered a “relatable” and, more importantly, “authentic” feel. Its use as a political tool further closed the gap between people’s perception of their class (and promoted the idea of the UK as a ‘classless society, which, lol) and their actual circumstances. The wildest example of this is perhaps Victoria Beckham describing being driven to school on a Rolls Royce while claiming her family was “very working class.”

Now, Estuary English has a really complicated place in the UK especially in the way it has homogenised regional accents, but one good thing about it is that it normalises and even valorises patterns of speech that have been historically mocked, excluded, and treated as markers of poverty, criminality, and stupidity. Double negatives, the glottal stop, using a hard “ff” for “v” sounds, and a “v” for “th”, and where someone the ‘drops’ and vocalises ‘h’. I said earlier that RP was a shibboleth, and these were some of the most commonly observed tells that someone didn’t belong. Given that the vast majority of social power in England rested in the same area that the estuary accent drew its sources from, it bears a lot of similarities to the accent of the working classes in those areas - the ones most often mocked, parodied, or disparaged by those in power.

And the thing is, people still have those accents - or they have adopted the similar estuary in place of those accents - but unlike BBC talk show hosts, or politicians trying to convince you they’re a “man of the people,” these people *cannot* code switch. They have no access to RP, and their accent - despite being mainstreamed and in some ways privileged - is still used a shorthand for vulgarity and stupidity. It remains a punchline, a joke. They are still constrained by it - they can’t put it aside or mitigate it in formal situations, they can’t leverage RP to their advantage when it suits, and thereby use their actual accent as proof of “authenticity”. For them, the shibboleths remain - just (like thick RP) hidden now.

I don’t want to call it cultural appropriation, because that’s not quite the right term, but there is something very cruel in that way that - in one of the most classist and economically unequal countries in Europe - an accent which apes several working class accents has become enormously culturally privileged, but only when it is NOT used by somebody working class. And although that isn’t apparent to the casual observer - not even the people being totally shafted here - there is, I think, this broad cultural sense that we’ve been had. That we’ve been played for fools on some level it’s really difficult to quantify.

We have been told that class and accent no longer matter - but every day in our lives, they transparently *do*. So anyone hearing my “middle class vowels” will assume I’m posh, and have endless contacts and support - despite the fact I lived a lot of my adult life below the poverty line - but in any situation where being perceived as posh would get me contacts and support, it’s immediately apparent I’m not part of the Old School Tie, because I don’t talk quite right.

Or how a poor kid with an Essex accent will be told they couldn’t *possibly* be discriminated against because of their class, because that’s how all the presenters on Radio 1 talk, meanwhile whole comedy sketches are still written about how ‘ugly’ and ‘stupid’ the Essex accent sounds.

Or how an accent that is somehow globally understood to be one of power and privilege (be it RP or estuary) and can therefore be ‘punched up’ against is - at home - only ever used to punch down on us. How people who want to ‘do well’ have had regional accents beaten out of them (in some cases literally) and were granted conditional acceptance for it, while the same people who’ve owned the country since the Middle Ages got to slum it down with us, without surrendering any of their money or privilege.

It’s… complicated, okay?

[edited for typos, for there were many.]

[ourbloodychocolate]

its 3 in the morning and I just finished watching Danny phantom and boy... When people said that phantom planet had its downs, they weren't kidding.

I still can't believe they ended the series with a comet trying to hit earth instead of something paranormal or expanding on an already developed plot.

And Sam.... Christ she was too much even for me and that's saying something. I still can't believe the series final line was her complaining about a statue dedicated to Danny... Like total bummer. Would it be mean of me to admit that when she started talking, I actually sped up the dvd so I wouldn't hear her?

It's still a good series. Love the characters to hell and back but idk the ending kind of just feels rushed. Especially the Sam and Danny plot. The only time I felt these two build some what of a romantic connection was season one. You know, the episode where Dora first appeared.

And Vlad... What a waste of a great villan. They could have done so much with him but they ended with him floating in space.

And Valerie! God I wish there was more done with her and Dani.

[fishtheflowerchomper]

i need some little guy who follows me everywhere that i can rant and ramble to them about whatever and they listen to everything and actually enjoys listening to me spew out random nonsense and just adore it.

IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?!

i feel like no one actually enjoys my rants and rambles bc they dont like/watch the same people/things that i do so we cant talk about that and im bored talking about the same thing every single day....

I JUST WANT TO TALK ABOUT MY FAV STREAMER/YOUTUBERS WITH MY FRIENDS BUT NONE OF THEM WATCH THEM AND THEY SOUND SO BORED WHEN I TALK ABOUT THEM AND I HAVENT BEEN ABLE TO TALK TO ANYONE ABOUT IN DEPTH AND NO ONE SEEMS INTERESTED IN HEARING ABOUT IT

do they not like me?

UGGHHHHHHHHHHH

[lovetommyactually]

I just had one of the worst shifts in my entire working days, first i lost someone from the very first hours, she was so young and the fact that we was working together for the last 3 months make it even harder (fuck cancer). Then the shift itself was filled with toxic coworkers (this the least thing that affected me, but well, it's there), and then at the end, we lost another patient who just came late we could've saved him if it wasn't for the stupid traffic.... it really never becomes easier... i didn't even notice that my 24 turned into 27 hours, but yeah thats an er shift for sure

And now I've been sitting in my car for the last 20 minutes or so, with a throbbing headache and i need my bed cuz i just want to cry to sleep, but guess what i dont have the energy to drive and i also have a bunch of chores waiting for me that i HAVE to do so i dont really want to go home but i know i have to drive before i get more tired or sleepy 🫠🫠🫠

[ann--f]

Girls be like : i don't want to get married and have a family. I'd rather study and be independant.

What they usually mean : while i really want to study and become independant, this is not why i'm refusing to marry . It's because society expects me to be everything all at once, a mother and a maid and a wife but never human. I'm afraid i'll become like my mother. I'm afraid i'll marry someone like my father. I'm afraid i'll end up bringing kids and raising them out of obligation not out of love.i'm afraid it's all a scam so i'll choose this safe way, but God why do i have to choose between being lonely on my own or loznly with a family?

[sniffanimal]

god I could be so wealthy if I had no ethics. that's so fucking frustrating. I'm living paycheck to paycheck because I'm not grifting vulnerable idiots on TikTok. I feel like I have the ability to very easily scam people. I could make a killing with AI. but god. I have morals and ethics and so I get to be poor as shit. I hate this fucking world

this post got too much attention so I sniffered it

[bonivers]

“why do you have a gap in your resume” idk why is there a gap in your staff. worry about that

[kleptomatic]

modern car design has honestly gone to shit

one reason is that it is now cheaper to put touchscreens, servos, and just screens in general than it is to actually engineer a properly working mechanical system, despite those being around for a literal century now

what's with the "one screen in the middle that controls everything" design philosophy anyways? "we want our drivers to look away from the road" is not. y'know. safe

the futuristic aspect also draws in buyers and (probably) investors, which makes it easier to fund projects. because futurism is better. these cars don't need to last!

and that's another problem: cars, ICE and EV, are not really built to last anymore. yes, all vehicles have a lifetime that they are rated for, but honestly it feels like it's getting shorter. or maybe consumerism has something to do with it: you always need to buy the newer and better car.

driving habits also do have something to do with it though, short commutes with lots of starting/stopping the engine do wear out parts faster. a lot of modern cars have the ability to turn off the engine while at a standstill, which does help increase fuel efficiency at the detriment of the engine

EVs do have drops in battery performance/capacity over time, which doesn't help

shifters are also changing. a lot. i mean, some are definitely cool, and I don't mind things like the BMW shifters that are just an automatic but fancy looking:

but then you have uh. well. tesla. with the touchscreen shifter. ok then

also they have the backup shift buttons. on the ceiling. yeah.

and their turn signals suck. that's enough dunking on tesla for this post. but do continue to dunk on tesla. especially the 6000+ lb. deathtrap called the cybertruck

which actually leads into the next point, big dumb trucks (and the general size increase of cars/the move towards SUVs and crossovers, but mainly the trucks). you know what they are. the giant trucks that have hoods taller than most sedans. that had that beautiful graphic of having worse sight lines than a main battle tank

safe for everyone, you see? they exist because of EPA regulations, after a certain size you're a work truck and less subject to regulations. and also the regulations on small vehicles are much higher than larger ones, in terms of like power to weight. so its a lot easier to make big than make small

most of them are pavement princesses anyways

repeal the chicken tax though, bring in light truck competition from overseas manufacturers. i want my kei trucks/cars (although that's the 25 year import law)

SUVs are painted as being safer, but actually have a higher center of gravity and are more prone to rolling over. they are safer though, cause they have more mass, which means what you hit gets damaged more and you get damaged less.

crossovers are weird cause they kind of can skirt regulations? not sure how they work

you can bypass some regulations with the "SUV overbite." give yourself a good approach angle, and now you're not a passenger vehicles and aren't subject to as many regulations. consequence is you look like this (sorry lexus)

electronic handbrakes. what. it makes sense, somewhat, but also manual handbrakes work perfectly well and are far less prone to failure (also drifting but)

push to start. i mean, it's not all bad, but keys are fun. give me keys. manual is better (although not necessarily for transmissions). don't be constantly emitting a signal that can be copied to steal a car. tesla i'm looking at you. a lot in this

i will say that not all digital displays are created equal. as far as i'm concerned, toyota/lexus have some very beautiful gauge clusters:

spicy, sleek, dare i say sexy, and they trickled down from the lexus LFA, which had a 9k rpm redline and got to that so fast they had to make a new digital cluster just to keep up. wild stuff. plus it's not too in your face and still has some mechanical components. nice

honestly no idea where i was going with this, but:

modern car design is getting worse because of futurism, trying to keep costs down, and poorly written/considered regulations

Touchscreens do not belong in cars

[brain-dead-bunny]

okay it’s come to my attention that absolutely NONE OF YOU know ANYTHING about how cutie marks work. let me say this simply. a cutie mark isn’t a job being assigned, it’s a special TALENT OR SKILL that the pony enjoys. Most of the time it has a directly transferable job for that skill, like if you enjoy baking and are super good at it WOW! baker. If you are really good at writing and telling stories, author. However, there are some cutie marks that could go multiple ways.

twilight sparkle has exceptional magic ability, so she became a scholar, but she could really do anything that required a good magic skill. same with rainbow dash, her weather controlling job isn’t directly linked to her cutie mark, but it does fit the bill for the job.

i was posed the question of what would a murderer pony’s cutie mark be and wouldn’t everyone know. NO. if somehow murder were to be a special skill, the cutie mark might be something like a knife or a shovel. other ponies might just assume you’re good at cooking or gardening. now with cutie marks like apple jacks, their family has a ‘green thumb’ kind of deal so obviously the cutie mark would be hereditary.

so, the reason i made this post. walter white pony’s cutie mark would NOT be blue crystals. it would be a CHEMISTRY FLASK.

[waywardsou2]

Some idiot: "Why are you reading your own fic, that's shallow and stupid"

All fanfic writers and writers everywhere: "Who the fuck do you think I wrote it for?!"

[chiisana-lion]

[bixels]

As gen-AI becomes more normalized (Chappell Roan encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use gen-AI because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by tech companies. I draw not because I want a drawing but because I love the process of drawing. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

[zeezeepearl]

ok im going to #seriouspost for a second here. I don't think Harry Potter is a manifesto. I think it was a flawed passion project that millennials latched onto because of the fantasy of sticking it to their mean teachers and arbitrarily categorizing themselves (hogwarts houses; it's the thinking millennial's astrology). I think the fact that the series got popular when and how it did was very much a product of its time.

I don't think Harry Potter is the biggest symbol of JKR's bigotry. I think the most flagrant sign of that was how she responded to critics. I watched her become radicalized in real time. I watched how she doubled down on her racism when she was called out for the ways she promoted her tragically mid fantastic beasts movies. I watched her chase marginalized teenagers with a double digit follower count off of twitter for daring to criticize her thought process, and no one with any kind of power standing against her because she was the one who was paying them. This isn't to say Harry Potter is without flaws. This is to say she really didn't give a shit about that. Getting rich and powerful is a hell of a drug, and she had enough sycophants that she had no reason to care about what her critics were saying.

She was convinced that she was a martyr; a voice for the unheard; a leader for the ages, so of course her detractors were the bad guys. And I think we should take this to heart. We should see this as an example of how easy it is to get radicalized; if you think of yourself as a paragon of virtue, you are going to think that whatever you see as good and right is an objective fact. Most people don't know this, but the majority of terfs start out as trans allies. You are not immune to propaganda! You are not immune to falling into dangerous ideologies!!!

This is why the most important thing you can do as an activist is to listen. Do NOT think you're above being wrong; do NOT develop a god complex; do NOT form an identity out of being right all the time. Involve yourselves in the groups you claim to speak for. Listen to trans women; share resources that help trans women; familiarize yourself with the diversity of experiences that trans people have and the struggles they face.

No, none of you are as bad as JKR because you don't have her money or her power. You will likely never have the capacity for harm she does. But check yourselves. Do not affirm yourselves into thinking you always have the moral high ground. Watch yourselves; humble yourselves; check yourselves for signs of cult behavior and internalized prejudice. You are always learning. You will always be learning. Do not allow yourselves to get a power trip from brushing off marginalized voices.

[hexjulia]

so hard not to become the most annoying person on earth if you're a little excitable and just learned a little about a topic literally no one around you has any interest in