#I Know I Am Imperfect

[bonnie-sheila-bennett]

[eldritchgray]

Happy World Turtle Day, have some catchphrases!

[lotus-pear]

whatever happens, please don’t break

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy Valentine's Day! (and this blog's first post anniversary!)

[cloysterbell]

Pete, I need you to stay here.

[doverstar]

to be clear, I think Rose Tyler being an often-selfish character is great. I think it's great because real women are selfish. Real women get petty. Real women hear their ex boyfriend say he's going out with a mutual acquaintance and get unfairly jealous and real women then say things like "she's a bit big" when they shouldn't and they have no right. Real women can be monsters, and Rose Tyler is relatable and I love how she is written and I love her, thanks for listening

[shitpostingfromthebarricade]

I was talking with a friend about the canon named women of Les Mis and decided to experiment to see who those are according to Les Mis fanworks.

Behold: your top ten women of Les Mis.

[d8tl55c]

me: waiting for shoe(s) to drop

Personified Alan Becker YouTube Icon: oh... buddy...

[ofmdee]

part 31 is edited and i am starting on the pics!!!!!!!

wanna catch up?

[lilaccatholic]

Boy who broke my heart, I hope life is kinder to your daughters than you were to me

[saphflare]

Personal take on "Chayanne as a Glass Child Interpretation" that no one asked for

===

Apparently people have been using the "Chayanne has glass child syndrome" thing to rag on q!Philza, which I haven't seen, at least not overtly. Or at least not with the purposeful intent of labelling q!Philza completely as a Bad Parent. But I can get why ppl would feel like that is an attack on his character (*stares at DSMP*)

But I also kinda wish some ppl understood that when we interpret the fact that Chayanne is a glass child, it isn't necessarily to blame q!Philza and his parenting.

please

Because anyone that has a singular critical thinking brain cell can see that the man is trying so fucking hard to raise his two children, and that he loves both of them so much. And that is the sad thing isn't it. Because the thing about glass children is that practically always it is not intentional, and the parents never mean to neglect or force their more capable/older children to become so. That it is often just a consequence of the circumstances of their lives together, and it is something that isn't obvious most of the time until it of course becomes an issue. That for all the efforts of the caretaker(s), they sometimes need to focus on one child more because of their needs and that is perfectly understandable, especially if it is health needs. But as a result, there are gaps in the support and needs of the family. And so, other children in the family that are capable of helping just end up doing so because additional aid and care is needed.

And if you especially look at the Death family's circumstances, we can see those circumstances in play. That the island is dangerous compared even to "normal" society, with the government system provides little to no additional care for its residents & their families. If not downright making it basically punishing them because they have children, due to needing to work for additional resources for their kids (cookies, tasks, etc.) And then there are the monsters and external forces trying to kill and torment all of them. Now that is already fucked, but then you consider the fact that Philza has two children, as he is their primary caretaker due to q!Missa's frequent absence. Which not blaming q!Missa, as the family still loves him and like probable lore reasons, but regardless that adds to the circumstances of the family. That q!Philza is the only one, for the majority of the time, responsible for two kids instead of just one for most of the other parents.

Which again, I will say that other residents also help out with taking care of other eggs of their own and all that, I won't deny that. But they can't always know or be able to pinpoint all things that the two children specifically need or be reliable as the island limits their ability to help.

That at the end of the day, Philza in specific is considered the official guardian for Chayanne and Tallulah, and the one that they spend most time with in their development on the island.

That with the constant danger and additional circumstances surrounding them, it is no wonder that Chayanne ended up taking more responsiblity, becoming more mature in the process. That like any other kid that could see their family struggling and also feel it, he wanted to help his dad. And especially at first, when they had Tallulah and it was evident she needed support due to her asthma and health issues (aka internet issues). She needed not just the support of Philza, who was already lacking consistent support of a partner, but also her brother to help out in case. That it might not have been the intention for Chayanne to take on these burdens or have to grow up so fast, but it happened out of necessity.

That it was as a result of everything they have faced on that island, both good and bad, for Chayanne to have turned out the way he has now and before.

And, I want to stress this so fucking much that neither Philza nor Tallulah are responsible for this. No one in this family is completely at fault because for fucks sakes it isn't exactly like they fucking meant for Chayanne to be a parentified child. That yes their circumstances contributed to to the situation, but that is the same as saying the island has given them lemons and they had to just do the best with it. And that in some ways, they are still growing out of their original dynamics, even months now that they have changed so much and literally have been displaced onto a new place. That in this manner specifically, Philza sometimes still falls into the same mentality in believing Tallulah is still the same little girl that he needs to constantly look out for, when she has become so much more and grown to be able to defend herself. Honestly almost, if not, just as well as Chayanne. But I also acknowledge that he has improved quite a bit, and given her much more freedom and autonomy, especially since they all reunited after Purgatory. But he is still getting used to it, and even in these few months, he has learned to give them room to grow a bit.

Also, I don't blame him for sometimes falling back on the old habits considering you know the dangers he is so guarded against are real and most definitely out to get him and his eggs.

The whole thing of people having flaws and making mistakes yada yada ya, they don't know everything they need to do all the time, especially with things changing constantly and all that shit.

And in some ways, I look at Chayanne right now and I see he is more of a glass child healing from their early circumstances. That his family has acknowledged in some way that he had to take on so much more than what a kid should have. And while I don't think they have unpackaged everything, and that it something that will take a lot more time. Not to mention all the new issues that pop up every other fucking day (for void sake, let this family have a goddamn break). But the thing is they are improving. That they are definitely moving towards that direction in which they are looking in retrospect of what they had to deal with and realizing things. And then, they are having conversations about it together.

And look, for all the things you can say about Death Family, they are all trying their best. That yes perhaps their family is dysfunctional due to fact that it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to cultivate a healthy stable and safe environment for them to grow up in. And yes, of course there are interpersonal issues and current trauma that they need to work through because of all the things they experienced on the island, there are issues in every family, small or big that needs to be worked through. But that doesn't negate the fact that they are trying so hard to the best of their abilities because of each other. That it is undeniable that they have sought to improve and grow and become who they are because they love their family, and hold each other closely in their hearts. That they are still people actively trying to discover things about themselves. And it will always be a struggle in their places as the family they are, but they do so out of love for each other.

But yes whole point is, "Chayanne has experiences that can be comparable to that of a glass child" and "q!Philza is a flawed person that is trying his best" and "Death Family is dysfunctional but also loving of each other" are all statements that can exist together.

Death Family isn't perfect and I love them for that <3

[lazyscience]

so there's something I feel like young leftists are not getting at all when they rail furiously about how "we keep voting for Democrats but they keep just pandering to the right, what are we supposed to DO to get them to change OTHER than not vote for them?"

It has to do with fundamental assumptions about what "governing" is supposed to mean in the modern era, and this is a conversation that has to happen culturally in and around what is happening at the ballot box in a lot larger sense than it is. putting in a readmore because this gonna get long and also ranty.

It also means I'm taking another Tumblr break because I can not, I CAN NOT with the current political discussion any more and even with terms blocked I'm seeing it, and I don't want to spend my evenings alternating between rage and depression, I get enough of that from the news.

This conversation was happening even earlier than this, but the timepoint at which it was first coming to a head and when I became familiar with it was 1994 and Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America". Prior to this point, the ethos on both sides of the aisle (in public) was that in general, a congressperson's job (especially in the House, a little less so in the Senate maybe) was while you were under the umbrella of one of the two parties, you were mostly looking out for the particular agenda of your state and only secondarily working towards a national agenda. And secondary to this idea, most of them agreed on basic principles that gridlock was bad (wouldn't produce anything useful/re-electable for your state), civil service employees and appointees weren't supposed to be blatant political operatives (there were, of course, but that was considered more sleazy and corrupt than "elections have consequences, hurr hurr") and that for the stability of the country, things like the debt ceiling were best mutually avoided.

So for the better part of the 20th century, the Democrats were more the party of regulation, the social safety net and the reality and use of powers on a federal level; the Republicans were the party of "leave these decisions to the individual states" (this is obviously a grotesque oversimplification, people have literally written dozens, probably hundreds, of scholarly books about this shit). And Newt Gingrich, ambitious little shit from an at the time deep red Republican state, said "you know what, we need to embrace a national party and federal control the way the Democrats have--because until then, WE can't control it." So the Contract With America was born - and the goal became instead of "well, whatever, as long as I can weasel out concessions for my state/special interests that hired me" the game ALSO became "demonstrate that federal government doesn't work by MAKING it not work." By using all the procedural stupid dirty tricks that a reactionary old bunch of white dudes that had just been through a war put into place to make any point of settled law that had happened basically as hard to change as fucking possible.

Now, the Democrats couldn't/didn't WANT to play by those rules, because their biggest and most popular successes (qualified, imperfect, but still) - Social Security, Medicaid, the civil rights movement, antitrust, worker protections, environmental protections - are all contingent on a federal government apparatus that actually fucking works. And now that the Republicans can win either by getting what they want OR by yelling "look, this process is clearly broken and doesn't work!", the only way Democrats can make sweeping changes without having to fight tooth and nail every step of the way is to have a majority in both houses of Congress, control the Presidency, and the Supreme Court.

Because again, the reactionary old white men who had just lived through a butt ton of social upheaval wanted to make it hard for one group of (rich white, male enfranchised) people to control another - and they literally at that time could not have envisioned the way the country would grow into both a far more unified AND polarized place that would take these safety rails and exploit them to block every achievement their opponent might make, whether or not it was actually in the best interests of the people they're representing.

(I mean, they should have, political parties and all that toxicity were not new to the British Empire before the colonies even existed, but well, I think we all know by now there's a lot of things they couldn't have imagined. See also: the second amendment)

So here's the deal - if you punish Joe Biden for being a confused corporate-friendly war-hawkish atrocity-enabling weenus - which he totally is sometimes! - you are kneecapping any actually progressive congressional candidates you elect unless you can also deliver 67+ solidly Democrat/Green/whatever the fuck Angus King is votes in the Senate, and 290+ equally staunch Democratic representatives. Because otherwise, that Republican President's just gonna veto everything they legislate that isn't what he wants. And yes, the Senate has to approve any federal judges or Supreme Court justices he wants to appoint - but again, the Republican party sees the federal court system being slow, backed up and impossible to use as a totally acceptable compromise in return for being able to block any significant Democratic legislation from going forward.

Since 1789, do you know how many vetoes have been overridden by supermajority? 109, out of 1,484.

Now, if you could GET that supermajority in the Senate and the House? You could amend the Constitution! You could make mail-in votes mandatory, and/or mandated paid time off for voting. You could mandate ranked-choice voting, so that leftists could vote for the candidate they actually want without splitting up the bloc to the advantage of the fash/fash-adjacent. You could do things like mandate that a Presidential election isn't valid until a minimum threshold number of votes has been achieved that's actual a majority of eligible voters, not just whatever fanatical minority shows up that day, so some asshole who won with 20 percent of eligible voters can't claim to have "a mandate from The People."

BUT WITHOUT THAT SUPERMAJORITY, VOTING TO PUNISH ELECTED OFFICIALS FOR NOT DOING THINGS THEY CANNOT FUCKING DOOOOOO MEANS NOTHING BUT LOSING FOR ALL OF US!

Especially when the other fucking asshole candidate wants to make it legal for the National Guard to LIVE FIRE WITH ACTUAL MILITARY BULLETS ON PROTESTORS, and the Supreme Court has just made it possible for him if elected to order that and have it not be illegal! If he wants to start deporting all Muslim immigrants like he was trying to push for last time he was elected, or round up LGBTQ people and put them in re-education camps, if he gets elected, he could do that now! Because crimes committed as "official acts" are no longer crimes!

So you want to not have to regularly make shitty compromises in the voting booth any more? Great, neither do I. Here are the only ways I see this going forward:

Get 2/3rd of the states of the union to call for an Article V constitutional convention - and be willing to have the process potentially hijacked by fash nutjobs at the state level if those 2/3rds aren't all Democratic-controlled. It's possible - I mean, the system was specifically designed to work that way - but the fact that a) an Article V convention has not successfully been called in the history of the US, and b) the only people advocating for that in the year 2024 are the actual fucking Heritage Foundation of the infamous Project 2025, Ben Shapiro of "but pussy doesn't get wet" fame, Greg "the solution to Uvalde is arming teachers" Abbott and similar nutjobs make me think that's not the safest way to get the outcome we want here.

Hold your noses and get 67 Senators and 290 Representatives elected that are either Democrats or who will reliably caucus with them like Socialists or Greens and have them pass a law to require ranked choice voting for the presidency - there's a chance it'll get a constitutional challenge from the Supreme Court, but there's not a solid precedent either forbidding or encouraging, and by the time it's an issue hopefully we're back in 5/4 liberal court territory if Alito and Thomas either retire or get canned. That will mean a lot of mid corporatist conservative Dems who will make decisions you don't like and don't want to support, but with an endgame of someday getting to stop doing that. This is honestly probably the most achievable, so it is also the one Republicans are fighting against hardest with gerrymandering and voter suppression, and they have banned it on the state level in Florida, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee and Idaho.

Let Republicans get elected to prove a point. This will result in an unknown but presumably acceptable to you number of deportations, convictions, legal abuse and deaths among people the Trump administration declares undesirable, including Muslims, Palestinians, trans people, anyone working in gender studies or race studies, the unhoused, potential child labor, and people of childbearing potential among others. This is not a threat to get you to fall in line. It is a prediction based on the previous behaviorand stated policy positions of Mr. Trump, the Republican National Convention, and the decision of the Supreme Court allowing his administration to carry out what would otherwise be crimes but for a president are "official actions" now apparently. It will also at the very least make easier the capture of the Supreme Court for another two or three decades during which no effective challenges can be brought for voter suppression, gerrymandering, and violent suppression of protest.

honest question: how, exactly, if it becomes an illegal act to talk about racism, queer liberation or police reform, are you proposing to get your better, more leftist candidates elected? I am so serious right now, why do you think after another four years of Trump provided he doesn't just immediately declare martial law like he already almost did once, do you think people would be willing to stick their necks out to identify themselves as enemies of the state? Think about the stranglehold Joseph McCarthy had on this country from 1947-1957.

[romantichore]

when I was in college, my Brazilian Literature professor told us this story about an author who wrote weekly adventures for some newspaper. as one would expect, the author was paid peanuts.

as the series grew in popularity, the author started pressing for a raise, and was always denied or told he'd get his raise after x or y issue. so he kept on writing, and funneled the story into a series of amazing plot points, only to reach a cliffhanger that had readers writing letters to rave about it.

he asked for a raise again, and got told no. so he quit, and no one thought much of it. only they couldn't find another writer to continue the original story. "too many loose ends", "no way to rescue the protagonist from this literal cliff", no one could do it. weeks went by and readers were getting impatient.

the newspaper reached out to the author and offered him more money. whatever would get him back, and the story out of the corner. naturally, the writer accepted it, but at this point everyone was curious to know how he'd keep the protagonist from meeting his grisly death. how could he possibly solve all those problems he had created in the narrative?

the following week, a new issue was published, and the story continued: "once all those problems were behind him..."

you see, this was just meant to be an entertaining story about how fiction was published in the olden days, told by a professor to future teachers. I like to think my professor was also trying to encourage us to try our hand at writing, seeing as he was a published poet himself and passionate about it.

it's been a decade since, and I think about his story often. in particular when I've been sitting in front of my computer for an hour and can't find the perfect way to end this chapter or introduce this new plot point. writing seems so complicated, and so many people have so much to say about it. what's right, what's wrong, what works, what doesn't.

but it's really simple, isn't it? start a new line, put all those problems behind you. if nothing goes right, go left. sometimes the simpler explanation is the best one. maybe there are better ways to go about it, but a patch is better than a hole.

go and open that wip, the one you gave up on writing because the plot seemed so convoluted or too difficult. press enter. put the problems behind you and keep going

[aerinfrankellove]

As a sports official from a long line of sports officials (not hockey but I have a point) refs and umps are rarely malicious in their calls and most discrepancy comes down to human error. Because refs are human and do the best with the information they are presented and sometimes it goes your way and sometimes it doesn’t. Even in games when I’ve been the team screwed over by a call it really irks me that people jump to the game being rigged when there is very little evidence to suggest otherwise other than a few calls going against a team

[jrueships]

I HATEEEEE DYSPEXIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bookwyrminspiration]

“why would Shannon put an e at the end if you weren’t meant to pronounce it!?” OKAY WELL first of all, Shannon didn’t make the name, she found it, and we also see similar names such as in artist Georgia O’Keeffe—which admittedly has a slightly different spelling, but not in a way that affects pronunciation. So there’s that. There’s ALSO how we use language and the matter that e’s at the ends of names aren’t pronounced like that on their own in English, to get Keef-ee it would need to be spelled Keefey, Keefie, or Keefee to indicate you need to pronounce the last part. Because names in English that pronounce the final e, such as Zoe, Kobe, or Penelope use different letters right before the end, affecting the final pronunciation and mouth shape. One that Keefe doesn’t naturally have. B and P are categorized together (bilabial plosives) in phonology, and o is a different situation because it’s a vowel. Does this mean you can’t pronounce it keef-ee? No, of course not, it’s a character’s name pronunciation. But it does generally defy typical functioning of English. Which makes KEEF a perfectly reasonable and logical pronunciation. Okay that is all

(disclaimer: this is not serious, there’s no actual venom, I’m simply going to die on this ant hill. and several people were asking how you’d get a KEEF pronunciation out of Keefe. this is how :) )