#their story is a tragedy

[0ccams-chainsaw]

feeling very soft for them lately

[novelconcepts]

I Saw the TV Glow is such a uniquely, devastatingly queer story. Two queer kids trapped in suburbia. Both of them sensing something isn’t quite right with their lives. Both of them knowing that wrongness could kill them. One of them getting out, trying on new names, new places, new ways of being. Trying to claw her way to fully understanding herself, trying to grasp the true reality of her existence. Succeeding. Going back to help the other, to try so desperately to rescue an old friend, to show the path forward. Being called crazy. Because, to someone who hasn’t gotten out, even trying seems crazy. Feels crazy. Looks, on the surface, like dying.

And to have that other queer kid be so terrified of the internal revolution that is accepting himself that he inadvertently stays buried. Stays in a situation that will suffocate him. Choke the life out of him. Choke the joy out of him. Have him so terrified of possibly being crazy that he, instead, lives with a repression so extreme, it quite literally is killing him. And still, still, he apologizes for it. Apologizes over and over and over, to people who don’t see him. Who never have. Who never will. Because it’s better than being crazy. Because it’s safer than digging his way out. Killing the image everyone sees to rise again as something free and true and authentic. My god. My god, this movie. It shattered me.

[silentsockfeet]

the fact that the vi vs jinx fight was foretold from the beginning. the fact that the opening credits ends with their fight immortalized in stone, so that every episode you watch is a reminder of the immutable truth of it. the fact that every moment is building to this, that the show will culminate in this. this was always going to happen, they told us this from the beginning, and nothing anyone could do will ever change that.

[stil-lindigo]

HELP PALESTINIAN ARCHITECT EVACUATE HER FAMILY FROM GAZA

This is a verified fundraiser for a family of four to evacuate to Cairo. The fund's creator, Amal Abu Shammala, reached out to me personally to share this since she's failed to get her fund on Operation Olive Branch and Let's Talk Palestine's fundraising linktree.

As of right now, she has raised €2,397/ €42,000. You can see the breakdown of what the money will be used for in the fund description.

Please give generously!

[drulalovescas]

when you realize cas never got a chance to see dean mourn him. to see what his death did to dean. how it broke him completely. SHATTERED. he never saw dean's utter despair. anger. complete hopelessness. he only ever saw dean's joy when he came back. and so cas figured that his death simply didn't affect dean all that much. that dean could be happy with Cas gone. that Dean could go on. Move on. cas never understood that this joy, this hope, this smile on dean's face after he came back was ONLY BECAUSE HE CAME BACK. CAME BACK TO DEAN.

Cas was the REASON.

[infinite-love-42]

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been personally victimized by tumblr refreshing while you’re in the middle of reading a one shot causing you to lose it forever. So many incredible stories that I never got to finish 😭😭

[astromechs]

never forget that i am, first and foremost, a star wars prequels apologist

[roseworth]

comics are such a good storytelling medium i wish they were good

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Bonus 8: How met your mother (CSSR design by @qourmet!)

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[howlingtothevoid]

Begging God to fix you!

(And other tales about religious trauma)

[angelnumbers]

this was always going to happen.

matthew stover, david levithan, margarita karapanou, aeschylus, karese burrows, richard siken

[zombie-bait]

I can’t believe Gideon and Harrow had like 3 weeks of something approximating fun before experiencing 2 solid years of endless suffering 😭 lemme tell you, nothing could’ve prepared me for that or the realization that post book 1 these poor fuckers just never get to spend any time together, I miss the old days of One Flesh One End Bitch!!!!! We had it so good and we didn’t even know it

[magsneezo]

[farosdaughter]

If Coryo was solely looking out for himself throughout TBOSAS and never had genuine feelings for Lucy Gray, then explain this passage

He could’ve landed in one of the districts closer to the Capitol, but instead chose to exile himself to District 12 hoping to be reunited with Lucy Gray. The mere possibility of their reunion is the only thing that keeps him going. And that’s love.😌

[secretmellowblog]

The thing is, Jean Valjean’s “nineteen year prison sentence for stealing a loaf of bread” from Les Mis isn’t actually unusual….not even today! I see people talking about it as if it’s strange or unimaginable when it happens every day.

In modern America — often as a result of pointlessly cruel (and racist) habitual offender and mandatory minimum laws— people are routinely sentenced to life in prison for minor crimes like shoplifting or possession of drugs.

The ACLU did a report in 2013 detailing the lives of various people who were sentenced to life in prison without parole for nonviolent property crimes like:

•attempting to cash a stolen check

•a junk-dealer’s possession of stolen junk

metal (10 valves and one elbow pipe)

•possession of stolen wrenches

•siphoning gasoline from a truck

•stealing tools from a tool shed and a welding machine from a yard

•shoplifting three belts from a department store

•shoplifting several digital cameras

•shoplifting two jerseys from an athletic store

• taking a television, circular saw, and a power converter from a vacant house

• breaking into a closed liquor store in the middle of the night

And of course, so so so many people sentenced to life without parole for the possession of a few grams of drugs.

And we could go on and on!

Gregory Taylor was a homeless man in Los Angeles who, in 1997, was sentenced to “25 years to life” for attempting to steal food from a food kitchen. He was released after 13 years. The lawyers helping to release him even cited Les Miserables in their appeal, comparing Taylor’s sentence to Jean Valjean’s.

And there’s another specific bit of social commentary Hugo was making about Valjean’s trial that’s still depressingly relevant. He writes that Valjean was sentenced for the theft of loaf of bread, but also that the court managed to make that sentence stick by bringing up some of his past misdemeanors. For example, Valjean owned a gun and was known to occasionally poach wildlife (presumably for his starving family to eat.) . So the court exaggerates how harmful the bread theft was—he had to smash a windowpane to get the bread, which is basically Violence— then insist the fact that he owns a gun and occasionally poaches is proof that he is habitually and innately violent. Then when Valjean obviously becomes distressed traumatized and furious as a result of his nakedly unjust sentence and begins making desperate (and very unsuccessful/impulsive/ poorly thought through) attempts to escape…. the government indifferently tacks more years onto his sentence, labels him a “dangerous” felon, and insists that its initial read of him as an innately violent person was correct.

And it’s sad how a lot of the real life stories linked earlier are similar to the commentary Hugo wrote in 1863? Someone will commit a nonviolent property crime, and then the court insists that a bunch of other miscellaneous things they’ve done in the past (whether it’s other minor thefts or being addicted to drugs or w/e) are Proof they’re inherently violent and incapable of being around other people.

A small very petty fandom side note: This is also why I dislike all those common jokes you see everywhere along the lines of “lol it’s so unrealistic for the police to want to arrest Valjean over a loaf of bread, there must have been some other reason the police were pursuing him. Because the state would never punish someone that harshly and irrationally for no reason. so maybe javert was just gay haha”. (Ex: this tiktok— please don’t harass the creator or poster though, I don’t think they were intending to mean anything like that and its just a silly common type of joke you see made about Les mis all the time so it’s not unique in any way.) because like.

As much as I don’t think Les Mis is a flawless book or that its political messaging is perfect….the only way that insanely long unjust sentences for minor crimes is “unrealistic” is if you’re operating on the assumption that prisons are here to Keep You Safe by always only punishing bad criminals who do serious crimes. And that’s just, not true at all. Like I get that these are just goofy silly shallow jokes, and I’m not angry or going to harass anyone who makes them. but it feels like there’s an assumption underlying all those goofy jokes that “this is just not how prison works!” “Prisons don’t routinely sentence people to absurd laughably unjust pointless sentences!” “Prisons give people fair sentences for logical reasons!” When like…no

Valjean being relentlessly hounded and tortured for a minor crime in a way that is utterly ridiculous and arbitrary in its cruelty is not actually a plot hole in Les mis. It’s a plot hole in …..society ajsjkdkdkf. And the only way to fix that is to fight for prison abolition or at least reform, and (in America) stand up against the vicious naked cruelty of habitual offender and mandatory minimum laws.

But yeah :(. I hate how Les Mis opens with a prologue saying the novel will be obsolete the moment the social issues it describes have been resolved— but two hundred years later, the book is still more relevant than ever because we’re dealing with so many of the exact same injustices.

[awakeningnostalgia]

Peaky Blinders

THOMAS SHELBY