pastryjay

[pastryjay]

thunderbolts fandom only existing for like... four days and already having so much absurd and annoying shipping discourse is just another side-effect of this enshittification of fandom that's been happening since *check notes* voltron and the pandemic imo.

but one of the most annoying recent fandom trends is forcing characters into this nuclear family dynamic and the way it's made shipping discourse unbearable. "alexei's the dad, bob yelena and ava are the big siblings and bob is the little brother," on paper, is a harmless headcanon. the problem is the weaponization of these family headcanons to fuel ship wars.

bob and yelena have a deep bond in thunderbolts. you can interpret it as a sibling dynamic. you can also interpret it as romantic or queerplatonic or literally whatever you want. the problem is the same people who call bob yelena's "little brother" are simultaneously saying that any romantic interpretation of their characters is "incestuous weirdo behavior."

like, can we not?

and while boblena is the ship that's taking the most heat right now, i've been seeing hostility towards any variation of any thunderbolts ships. john/ava, john/bob, bucky/alexei, bob/void (which, lmfao, is SUCH a typical ship to me that people getting up in arms about it just proves we've let too many normies into fandom spaces). even yelena/kate is catching strays right now. and it doesn't have to be this way.

again, can we not? just say you're not into any of the ships and move on with your life.

these are not siblings. these are grown adults who grew to care about each other after experiencing traumatic events. "found family" trope has gotten so out of control it genuinely makes fandom less fun.

[pastryjay]

nothing but respect for our troops (smut writers) but listen. i dont want to be the person to tell you this, but not every character is going to be a dom or a sub. some people. and i know this is hard to hear. but some people do have vanilla sex. and some of those people might even be The Character.

[pastryjay]

nothing but respect for our troops (smut writers) but listen. i dont want to be the person to tell you this, but not every character is going to be a dom or a sub. some people. and i know this is hard to hear. but some people do have vanilla sex. and some of those people might even be The Character.

[pastryjay]

I would dearly love for more people to be capable of differentiating between public risk and personal risk.

Examples: drinking is a personal risk. Drinking and driving is a public risk. Going scuba diving is a personal risk. Running a scuba shop with faulty equipment is a public risk. Riding a bicycle without a helmet is a personal risk. Not maintaining public transport safety standards is a public risk. Foraging for mushrooms is a personal risk. Advertising a mushroom identification app that uses shoddy AI is a public risk. Elective surgery is a personal risk. Not wearing a mask in a doctor's waiting room when you are sick with a contagious illness is a public risk.

I could go on just about forever here. But it's a really important distinction and it drives me nuts when they get conflated, and it's so common.

[pastryjay]

Wooper's Big Adventure in Milan

I visited Milan for Pokémon Go City Safari! There were thousands of players, lots of beautiful sights to explore, and perfect weather. My little friend and I had a great time.

[pastryjay]

got stuck on the toilet earlier and my inner monologue started coming in cookie monster's voice for some reason

[pastryjay]

John Turturro on working with Christopher Walken in Severance.

[pastryjay]

“apologist.” “critical.” y’all are doing too much. when my favorite characters do evil reprehensible shit I simply don’t fucking care cause it’s not real

[pastryjay]

[pastryjay]

JOHN TURTURRO as Pino Fragione Do the Right Thing 1989 | dir. Spike Lee

[pastryjay]

why does my mother suddenly fail kindergarten whenever she tries to do anything on the computer

[pastryjay]

I live near and often walk past an old graveyard with many headstones belonging to families from the 1800s. Most have at least one person who died as a child or young adult listed. Numerous stones have 2, 3, or 4 people in the same family with a tragically young age of death listed.

Most people alive today don't get how beneficial modern medicine is to us because we've never lived in a world without these things.

There was a TikTok post about an advertisement for “blood-making pills for weak women” someone found in a newspaper from the 1890s and everybody seemed to think it was just an example of the weird misogyny of the day and age but no. Anemia was a massive public health concern. It always has been through history but part of the reason we have this idea of old timey women thought history being physical weak, chronically cold and pale and fainting is because they often they were. Anemia was also a massive problem for men in that day but even now it disproportionally affects people who menstruate. So tonics full of stimulants and “healthful vitamins” were marketed at young women in pages upon pages of advertisements in every newspaper. People generally felt like shit all the time back then.

[pastryjay]

"Killing Izzy was a horrendous narrative mistake" and "S2 baited Stizzy and Steddyhands so hard to get people to watch because they knew it was shit" and "We weren't mad because Izzy died, we were mad because S2 was objectively shit (even though many of us were thrilled with it until the final episode aired)" and "David Jenkins' holiday special is horrifically ableist" are all things I have read in bsky's OFMD tab today. Is everyone quite well. Do you know you can just... let the show go.

Continuing to be mad about media you hate is just perplexing to me, but I think I'm just built different (worse). I give up on things so fast. I've quit more shows than I've finished. If media pisses me off, I drop it and run. There's so much stuff in the world to love; why would I stick around a fandom that I hate when I could enjoy things instead?

[pastryjay]

BRUCE CAMPBELL as Ashley Joanna “Ash” Williams in Army of Darkness (1992)

[pastryjay]

Evil Dead 2

[pastryjay]

Big year for snakes.