#because it wouldn't work that way

[nadiajustbe]

One of my favorite parts about the writing of Howl's Moving Castle is how easy it is to write off all the things from our world at first as him just being a weird wizard™ (also thanks to bestie @jutenium for spotting this I wouldn't put it like that without you!!/pos). Sure, Sophie uses weird descriptions, but readers have every reason to believe them because of the way Howl is presented as a character. When Sophie says he wrote with a quill that doesn't need an ink, you wouldn't think it was actually a ballpoint pen, you would think Howl had just enchanted his quill so that it wouldn't need ink! When she adds that she can't make out a single word, you think he has matchingly terrible handwriting, but in fact Sophie has simply never seen a pen writing. When she sees the mysterious labels on his books, you think he's keeping a lot of obscure magical literature, but it's really just an encyclopedia and a guide like "Top 10 Rugby Tips." When Sophie notices the bottles in Howl's bathtub, you think they're some kind of magical jars where he keeps girl's hearts, but I'm almost certain that they're just 'Dove' and 'Head and Shoulders' that he's enhanced with his spells and put silly labels on. When you read Calicifer singing a song in a language Sophie doesn't understand, you think it's some kind of ancient cipher or code, but it's actually just a rugby song in Welsh that Howl sings when he's drunk. And finally, when you see the terrifying black door, which is completely shrouded in darkness, you imagine a passage to an eerie, mythical place, similar to what Miyazaki showed us - but it's just fucking Wales.

[muffinlance]

From NPR this morning:

President Biden called for term limits and an enforceable ethics code for Supreme Court justices yesterday. The White House said that the proposal would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service to the Supreme Court. He also called on Congress to pass binding, enforceable conduct and ethics rules that require high court justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and remove themselves from cases if they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. The president also called for a constitutional amendment that would limit the broad immunity presidents now enjoy due to a recent Supreme Court decision.

...Yes please.

Le source: Up First briefing: Trump shooter update; Crypto and the 2024 election

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

christ sometimes I just wanna. steal a time machine & go back & sit down next to my 9-year-old self and just like. let them pull out their pokemon card binder & gush about their holographic gyarados or whatever. I'd just smile & ask questions about motherfukcing bulbasaur & tell my kid self that I thought they were a neat person, & someday they'd find other people who thought so too.

like i'm a grown adult who honestly finds most kids stuff boring, but. damn if i could go back & hang out with my baby self & listen to them ramble...just so they knew someone was listening. i would in a heartbeat. thinking about u kid

[spicyvampire]

Great and Tyme being worried about each other

4MINUTES (2024) EP. 5

[uncanny-tranny]

The interesting thing about medically transitioning is how you might just be treated with the wrong framework.

When I get my hormone levels checked, for instance, they check it against the wrong type of person, so everything is flagged. Did you know that testosterone encourages hemoglobin production? Well, my hemoglobin is perfectly in line with male levels, but my levels are checked for the wrong endocrine system. Before I realized this, I was really confused as to why my hemoglobin was two grams over the range given, and was confused as to why that happened, and worried about if I should be worried about that. But it was a normal consequence of my testosterone levels, which are also flagged though they are well-within the range that is typical for my age and health categories.

The way we treat and measure for trans people and trans patients will affect the treatment and education they receive. There are ways in which hormones especially can influence how one's body operates, and with that in mind, you also have to change the way you interact with a trans person. With my testosterone levels, if you were to measure them against the incorrect endocrine system, you would fail to treat me in reality - that being the way my body has changed and maintained homeostasis since being on T.

[naamahdarling]

You know what? You know what I think?

I think that if we lived as we were meant to, in larger intimate ("extended family") groups and with more shared labor and time to do it (UBI NOW) people like me would not feel so useless and burdensome because there would be people around to help and to do what neurodivergent people can't while making valuable space for the neurodivergent to do what they ARE good at.

The way we live right now, all right, the way we live right now forces units of two adults to be able to do EVERYTHING or PAY to have someone come do it for them. I have to do the housework. I have to do it! But I am having to do a million different things and most of them I am not good at. I suck at them.

I wouldn't feel like shit, okay, if I had more than one other person around who was not a child and who could do the things I can't, like do the yard and cook and do repairs and basic maintenance; and someone else to split everything else that I like but is too much for me. It would free me to do what I am good at and enjoy. Cleaning, as in the sink and toilet, the windows, the blinds. Taking out trash. Folding, hanging, and sorting laundry.

But because all the shit I can do often relies on other shit being done first, and I can't do or have trouble doing those things, the shit I can do often can't be done. And even the shit I can do, I can't do ALL of it. So I can't keep up, and things get very bad.

We aren't meant to live like this. We are not meant to live like this.

That thought hurts so much because being able to flee the birth family is integral to survival for so many people. I'm so afraid that living in larger family groups would create more opportunities for, say, queer kids to be isolated, rejected, bullied, and abused. But if we gave people enough money to survive, and stopped considering children the property of their parents with no system in place to help them escape bad situations except a system that is often just as bad, just different.

I'm aware that communes and collectives aren't all that successful and are kind of a joke. I don't mean that. I mean a fundamental shift to multigenerational families where taking in "strays" (which my family did) is also normalized so people escaping abuse into existing households was accepted, with these families centered in maybe a couple of different larger residences so not everyone has to buy and maintain their own fucking washing machine and vacuum cleaner, and so people can benefit from large group meals that yield leftovers, and so child and elder care can also be centralized.

Then disabled people and the neurodivergent and sick and injured people, and pregnant people, and grieving people, would not have to either labor through all those stressors or consign themselves to living off an unlivable pittance or being put under legal guardianship.

I'm not saying anything new. People live like this in other parts of the world and maybe it sucks and I am wrong. But I'm just really mad right now because I can either do laundry or clean the sink but not both, and I really think we could improve society somewhat by making it so I did not have to choose one without sacrificing the other.

[synchodai]

People who are criticizing GRRM for being unprofessional for not airing out his grievances privately should kill the Brand Management Team in their heads. His public criticism wasn't even that scathing. Some people are acting as if he scheduled a press conference so he can bash the show when all he did was have a mild take on what's basically the equivalent of his personal livejournal (his not-a-blog where he posts the most mundane of thoughts and the most miscellaneous goings-on of his septegenerian life). The way some people micromanage celebrities and artists and don't allow them to express even the most milquetoast of takes because they're more concerned how it'll reflect on the Brand™️ is wild. The way some people empathize more with a company's PR and legal team than the actual creator is wiiiiiild.

[makiswirl]

can i just say. and this is probably a niche hill to die on. that i am so gobsmacked every time someone vaguely hints at the idea that jotaro doesn't care meaningfully for the other crusaders, usually particularly kakyoin and joseph, when those two actually tend to be the ones he reacts to being hurt the hardest

like he cares for his loved ones!!!! that literally plays into his character motives in every single part he shows up in!!! stop lying to me!!!!!!!

[royalarchivist]

I say this in the kindest way possible, but I think this style of prose is more appropriate for a personal account rather than an update account. I have no idea who's being talked about half the time. 🥲

[ Tumblr meme via @mikaikaika ]

[lunarharp]

What led to this (orufrey comic, cw an uncomfortable/creepy scene)

[gideonisms]

it's easy to forget due to the amount of fluff produced as a result that the original tma was that good of a horror story you are like huh did we all have a collective hallucination in 2020. but no it was just genuinely good.

[ofswordsandpens]

I'm sincerely very happy for anyone who is enjoying the show but every time I see takes that the show has improved the book characterizations or that the book characters are underdeveloped in comparison to the show...

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

"Shangri-La is under attack."

The Librarians S03E09 And the Fatal Seperation.

Bonus wet splat:

[hamletshoeratio]

In season 4, I demand more Benedict and Hyacinth interactions. Gregory's off to school, Anthony and Kate are off to India, Eloise and Francesca are off to Scotland, the other two have married and moved out, so these two are the last ones under Violet's roof, I love what we've gotten of them but I need more bonding scenes. They're both hilarious and completely unhinged at times, I need more of this chaotic sibling duo.

[stardust-falling]

fandom psa; there is nothing whatsoever that is inherently "problematic" about shipping characters who are "found family."

Adoption is not found family. A blended family is not found family. A found family or chosen family is a group which, through circumstances or simply mutual affection, hold their relationship to one another with equal care and importance as family members ought to. It's not the same type of relationship.

It's not incest. It's not even pseudo-incest unless you want it to be. I personally don't care what people ship, but I'm absolutely tired of people misusing the term "found family" to just recreate the idea of a nuclear family and force those roles onto the entirety of a fandom. Sure, maybe characters who are found family may view themselves like siblings, or like a parent and child or aunt and niece, but they might also just see each other as friends-- and guess what? romantic partners too! That's technically the most widely-accepted form of found family/chosen family there is!

The whole point of found family/chosen family is to have the importance of "family" on relationships that lie outside the commonly-understood bounds of that relationship. Not to recreate the "mommy-daddy-daughter-son" dynamic with unrelated characters and use that headcanon or fanon dynamic to enforce your own morality or preferences on other fans.

[taravangians-storming-balls]

am I being too critical or does it really feel like nearly every kaladin chapter has kaladin looking into the camera and clunkily reciting a Fandom TakeTM that doesn't have the decency to even be thinly veiled