#entertainment value

[sevdidntdie]

tom cruise laughing hysterically

2:24 to 3:17

i have never seen tom cruise laugh hysterically

(keep in mind i am not a super tom cruise fan, just an ordinary fan)

but wow that was cute

@calkale @agentfaust @avianii @kazanskys-mitchell

tbh you've probably seen this already but still

[jamespoeartistry]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by dollars (@tril.liondollars)

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[magnusbae]

To illustrate this post by @mayahawkse I would like to visualize to you the difference:

A post in 2023:

A post in 2014:

A zoom out of the same post:

This is what a community looks like.

See how in 2023 almost all of the reblogs come from the OP, from their few hours/days in the tag search. Meanwhile in 2014 the % of reblogs from OP is insignificant, because most of the reblogs come from the reblogs within the fandom, within the micro-communities formed there. You didn't need to rely on tags, or search, or being featured. Because the community took care of you, made sure to pass the work between themselves and onto their blog and exposed their followers to it. It kept works alive for years.

It's not JUST the reblog/like ratio that causing this issue, it's the type of interaction people have. They're content with scrolling and liking the search engine, instead of actually having a reblogging relationship with other blogs in their community.

Anyways, if you want to see more content you like, the only true way to make it happen is to reblog it. Likes do not forward content in no way but making OP feel nice. Reblogs on the other hand make content eternal. They make it relevant, they make it exist outside of a fickle tumblr search that hardly works on the best of days.

If you want more of something, reblog it.

[iminaworldofpureimagination]

i wanted to just go to a spook house with bojack and we got a DEMON baby out of it

[unkstaarwysbr]

The Midseason Tournament: Balancing Entertainment and Logistical Challenges

In a captivating episode of The Straight Dope Show, El Uno and TraB delve into the introduction of a midseason tournament in the NBA, weighing its potential impact on the regular season. Engaging in a spirited exchange, they offer a diverse array of viewpoints, contemplating the tournament’s entertainment value and its potential implications for the teams involved. At the forefront of the…

[cahootings]

Did you have a goodSpotify Wrapped? I didn’t! during…. ahem…… private times 🫢 I would listen to a pathetic moaning anime boy audio that is disgusting but now it’s #3 in my yearly listens and I don’t know what to do! WhT would you do in my situation???? My friends are asking for my Wrapped 🙈

I think this is my favorite anon I've ever received, actually

[finelythreadedsky]

JSTOR Wrapped: top ten JSTOR articles of 2023

Coo, Lyndsay. “A Tale of Two Sisters: Studies in Sophocles’ Tereus.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 143, no. 2 (2013): 349–84.

Finglass, P. J. “A New Fragment of Sophocles’ ‘Tereus.’” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 200 (2016): 61–85.

Foxhall, Lin. “Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault’s History of Sexuality.” In Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, 167–82. Edinburgh University Press, 2003.

Garrison, Elise P. “Eurydice’s Final Exit to Suicide in the ‘Antigone.’” The Classical World 82, no. 6 (1989): 431–35.

Grethlein, Jonas. “Eine Anthropologie Des Essens: Der Essensstreit in Der ‘Ilias’ Und Die Erntemetapher in Il. 19, 221-224.” Hermes 133, no. 3 (2005): 257–79.

McClure, Laura. “Tokens of Identity: Gender and Recognition in Greek Tragedy.” Illinois Classical Studies 40, no. 2 (2015): 219–36.

Purves, Alex C.  “Wind and Time in Homeric Epic.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 140, no. 2 (2010): 323–50.

Richlin, Amy. “Gender and Rhetoric: Producing Manhood in the Schools.” In Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, 202–20. Edinburgh University Press, 2003.

Rood, Naomi. “Four Silences in Sophocles’ ‘Trachiniae.’” Arethusa 43, no. 3 (2010): 345–64.

Zeitlin, Froma I. “The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia.” Arethusa 11, no. 1/2 (1978): 149–84.

[serious-goose]

there's a subsection of the internet where upping the production value actually makes your content worse. like a lot of us are actually nostalgic for the simplicity of the early internet. trying to make content that's 'tv quality' doesn't make it better

[whetstonefires]

See I don't necessarily disagree with what seems to be the primary reading that Yue Qingyuan's shifu fucked him over, caring nothing for his needs or preferences and only for whether he was useful. That makes sense, it ties into plenty of the generational and societal themes of the story. It fits.

But iirc we don't actually get enough information to know that's what happened.

And the thing is it would be so in-character and also thematically appropriate if Yue Qingyuan absolutely did not explain his goals or why he was working so hard, because it was private and shameful and he didn't expect any sympathy, and there was a high risk of losing everything if he blabbed.

And also if he engaged with the existing ruleset with which he was presented, i.e. 'can't go off on your own on personal business until you've mastered your sword,' in the most negative and controlling manner possible, as absolute commandments.

He's a different kind of guy but he comes from the same background as Shen Jiu! It fucked him up also!

He is very very very not a guy who trusts the system to make allowances for him--even once he has all the power he 'does what he wants' and 'makes selfish choices' as a conscious transgression; not something he has a right to do, just something he can get away with so he's gonna. (And ofc he spends almost all the latitude he grants himself on sqq.)

And even less is he a guy who opens up easily.

He isn't too proud to ask for help or pity, so much as he just doesn't expect to get any.

So in this interpretation, he understood that rule as a non-negotiable barrier in his path, the target to overcome, and focused all his considerable will and talent on overcoming it through the sphere of action he felt he had control over.

And fucked himself up bad.

Whereupon his teacher, possessing absolutely no context for this dumb shit their star pupil pulled, did the only thing they thought might work to save his life, paying in the process no attention to the raving of someone deep in a psychotic break.

Like, I feel like there should have been a better, kinder medical option, but I don't know for sure that there was, so I can't say with certainty this was the kind of cruelty that derives from not caring enough.

And it really would be kind of elegant and so typical of Yue Qingyuan's fundamental tragedy if the real mistake was 'not confiding in anybody' the whole time.

And he was just so deeply sunk into the understanding that explaining and asking were useless that, even looking back, it never really occurred to him that maybe his mistake wasn't 'fucking it up when trying too hard to solve everything on his own' but 'assuming there was no help to be had, and that he had to do it all on his own.'

Like. What if this really could all have been avoided if he'd just trusted and communicated with the adult in charge of him? But of course, of course his history of trauma (neglect, child abuse, exploitation, being the One Responsible for the younger kids whom he could not keep safe) meant he was absolutely not going to do that.

It was basically impossible. For the person he was, the person the world had made of him. And that's always been the core tragedy the whole novel circles back upon.

People can only ever be themselves, and so very often the elements of self that let them survive until now are that which dooms them, that means they need someone else to intervene if they're ever going to be saved. Because your personal doom is always the thing from which you can't save yourself.

[lilapplesheadcannons]

Wei Wuxian: Hey, I know this sounds silly, but...

Jiang Cheng: Every sound that comes out of that mouth of yours is silly.

Wei Wuxian: Yeah, yeah... but do you think the Second Jade is a bit...odd?

Jiang Cheng: How do you mean?

Wei Wuxian: I can't explain it, but he's just a bit.... off. You know, the way he looks at me, the way he acts.

Jiang Cheng: Stop eating that much spice. It's cooking your brain!

Lan Wangji: Dear diary, Wei Ying rolled his sleeves up while doing sword forms. (BROTHER, STOP READING NOW!)

His forearms are so slender, so fair, like the palest jade glowing in the moonlight. So I threw my wooden sword at him and ran away!

[outer-space-face]

Too Many Spirits Out of Context Pt. 1

[jamespoeartistry]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by TRILLIONAIRE (@trillionaire3049)

[im-getting-help]

OMG Oliver, why did you lie? why did you tell me that your parents were addicts and dealers? that you didn't have siblings? why would you say that your father died? you came to my door crying and telling me a story about how your dad died in an awful way. Why?

Oliver, being completely honest:

[liesmyth]

Do you have any Coronabeth Worsetwin thoughts about Abigail's reaction to finding out Ianthe become a Lyctor in HtN ("Blast. It should have been Coronabeth. Ianthe never was quite the thing")? I love Abigail but ngl I am also a Corona Worsetwin truther in part because I would find it much more satisfying for one of the series' designated Rational Moral Adults to be categorically wrong about Corona.

OH I love this! I hadn't really thought out it until now, but my first reaction is that it might have been just the general "Ugh, yuck, Ianthe?" vibe that she seems to evoke, since she's very much unpleasant on main. But when thinking about it more in-depth, I think Abigail's perception of WHY Corona would be more suited to Lyctorhood depends on which qualities Abigail thinks a Lyctor should possess that Ianthe lacks.

One thing about Abigail in HtN is that she is as much of an atheist as you can get in TLT, but also she seems to have a sort of romanticised view of John (calling him "the Kindly Emperor", "I've longed my whole life to give him my findings") and I wonder if this extends to her conception of Lyctorhood as a sort of state of idyllic quest for knowledge — "the beauty of necromantic mysteries" as Harrow puts it. She's also the leader of a House known for its diplomacy, influence, and not-so-subtle expansionistic ambitions.

So, is she thinking about Corona's diplomatic skills? Her political knowledge? Or — because at this point she still believes Coronabeth is also a necromancer — is she thinking that Corona was the better necromancer than Ianthe, as it was widely speculated?

Going wildly off into headcanon land, we know Abigail has anti-Cohort sympathies (as per Judith's files) and I wonder if that plays a part. We know that Corona regards the Houses's expansionistic strategy as inefficient, but I don't think it's something Abigail would know. Maybe she just thinks Corona would be able to assert authority over the Cohort better? (One of my pet speculations is that there's some antagonism between the Cohort and the Lyctors, and if that's actually a thing Abigail could be aware of it.)

I think it's a combination of Corona's people skill, her personal experience with both twins, and the fact that Ianthe actively puts off everyone she meets.

(If anyone has any opinions about Abigail here PLS feel free to add, I too love her but she's one of the hardest characters to figure out for me)

Personally, a solid 40% of why I am a Corona Worsetwin truther is because I think it's hot. The rest is her everything in NtN / AYU from the threatening suicide to statecraft scheming, with a smattering of that one Taz interview <3 I'm excited to see her wreck havoc in AtN.

[simplydnp]

Sometimes I think Dan and Phil are totally platonic besties and then other times I’m convinced they fuck on the daily. I think they do it on purpose and it’s honestly iconic.

kind of the best thing is that they are that and everything in between. you can tell they just like being around each other. they've made content together for 15 years and the large majority of it was done in the strictly platonic sense for their audience. and they were still having so much fun with it. we're in the 'we know you know' era now so we get to see flashes of different dynamics they have, but they absolutely have more we Don't get to see bc they're not for us.

they like each other. stupidly fond of each other. spending time together doesn't feel exhausting. they're best friends and each others' harshest critics while being the biggest hypeman and also safe space.

dnp's relationship with us, their audience, always has been and always will be different than any other content creators. part of it is how they accumulated it, but another part is just the massive history we have with them. they Get us. they Know us. they're silly goofy sarcastic guys who love us and hate us sometimes. theyre grateful but careful too. they like to rile us up, just like they do each other. it's a love language, teasing, and we've shown positive responses to it over the years. i like to say that my relationship with dnp is antagonistic sometimes--cause i know they're pushing my buttons on purpose. and ykw? it's fun! it's fun for us and it's fun for them because they have the control. i know anything they let out is cause they chose to let it out because they Know how we are. so yes they absolutely adore messing with us. we're a funny bunch.