#There's genuinely no contest

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

God nerfed my misandry by making all the trauma in my life come from women

[itsgonnagetinspiringsoon]

Thank god

[amaranthdahlia]

farewell, one for all

[fluttershywheresheshouldntbe]

Beating Joey Chestnut

[itmethefalloutman]

Act 3 Blade be like

[silently-standingstill]

this is outrageous i cant stop drawing them

[heritageposts]

🍉 Bashar Murad - MASKHARA بشار مراد مسخرة

From a 2021 interview with Bashar, where he explains some of the choices behind his music video for Maskhara:

[...] Meanwhile, the coffee cup reading is a metaphor of family expectations, and the pink outfits, the pink lighting and filters, and pink roses stuffed into a military tank are a nod to pinkwashing – the promotion of the queer-friendliness of a political entity to distract from human rights abuses. As a gay Palestinian himself, the latter hits close to home. In 2019, Bashar attracted global headlines through his involvement in Globalvision, an alternative concert that was livestreamed simultaneously with Eurovision in Tel Aviv – which had been plagued with pinkwashing controversy. "We didn't get the same number of viewers as Eurovision, but it still felt like we were doing something important," Bashar recalls. "Eurovision is a very queer event. It's also a musical event, so it was not just pinkwashing, it was also artwashing. As a gay artist, it was so important for me to make a statement. "They were also emphasising the fact that Eurovision is not political when it's the epitome of politics. It's different countries voting for and against each other and flags being waved everywhere. "But when it comes to Palestine and our voices, we were shut down. We were told that no, this is not a political event, this is a party and this is a happy event."

. . . continues at The New Arab (5 Mar 2021)

[spitblaze]

I will say this once because I'm tired of seeing stupid discourse: anti-transmasculinity is not about being treated bad because we clock as men, it's about being treated as stupid little girls because transphobes think we've been tricked into this.

It's kind of the opposite of transmisogyny- instead of fear and revulsion, it's constant condescension, the implications that we've been whisked away from femininity by scary bad guys, that we're going to cause 'irreparable damage' because we don't know what's best for ourselves, somehow. People fearmonger a lot about the "ugliness" of transfem people, but for transmasc people that 'ugliness' is used as a warning- you'll look like THIS! You'll go BALD! Your top surgery scars will leave you MUTILATED! A lot of aesthetic concerns. Worry about our 'beauty'. Because it comes from that same stupid reactionary 'we gotta SAVE the WOMEN' shit, but this time they have to save them from getting 'stolen away', as if we're being seduced or pressured into this. As if we can't make our own decisions.

For TERFS specifically, they're losing one of their own. We're 'gender traitors', willingly aligning ourselves with the half of the population they consider unilaterally dangerous and evil.

We aren't REALLY trans, we just want the benefits that men get. You don't actually want to transition, you're just trying to avoid misogyny.

You aren't actually a man, you're just a self-loathing lesbian.

Why can't you just be a butch girl? Why can't you just be a tomboy?

Why can't you just be something that I don't think is icky?

Anyway. Like all things, it boils down to misogyny. Women stupid and gentle, dont know what best for them, evil men trick into taking man juice, must save because lady stupid and dont know what best for them (having babies and being Feminine).

Theres like. Obviously more to this but I'm just a Transmasc Rando explaining this from my perspective, and I'm not the best with words. Anyone is free to hop in and add on to this

[raisedbythetv89]

Never not thinking about how Buffy has to beg and plead for Angel to not let the sun kill him when the first was tormenting him with what he’s done and that fact that soul or no soul he still wants to hurt Buffy and he concludes the only way he won’t is to kill himself….. and the only reason he didn’t dust was the storm and he was fully gonna let her watch him die again because he couldn’t face what a worthless piece of shit and a monster even with the soul he really is (and then suddenly they’re back together even though Buffy said they couldn’t be together anymore like RIGHT before all this so essentially Angel threatens to kill himself and then suddenly he and Buffy are back together 🙃 i hate it here)

Riley was gonna let himself die rather than become even weaker than Buffy while she again begs for him to stop being a whiny attention seeking toddler and grow the fuck up and do what he needs to do so he won’t DIE (my words not hers obviously lol) and when that doesn’t work and she still doesn’t “pay enough attention to him or need him enough” in his eyes while she’s ya know being the slayer, raising her sister and taking care of her sick mother…. He cheats on her in a way that again threatens his own life and the lives of everyone he could easily kill in her life if he were to be turned and when THAT doesn’t work he threatens to leave forever unless she forgives him IMMEDIATELY

And Spike who is the only one to actually die after she again is pleading you don’t have to do this “no there’s still time you’ve done enough” because Spike knows Buffy doesn’t deserve “good enough” Buffy deserves everything, she deserves to be free of the hellmouth even though that means they can’t be together and he’ll die

Two man-children who threaten to kill themselves because they can’t handle what they’ve done or that they’re not as strong as they think they are and drag an overburdened and traumatized young woman they had no business even dating in the first place along for their self-destructive ride vs a man who literally already sacrificed everything he was to become someone she could love without guilt, sacrificing everything he fought to become, for her and her beloved world she loves so much and fights so hard to protect.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO MEN WHO THREATEN DEATH VS THE MAN WHO ACTUALLY DIED AND THE VASTLY DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING THESE THREE EVENTS 😭😭😭

Spike dying BECAUSE he was worthy of Buffy’s love rather than because he wasn’t like the two who came before him

[eurotowne]

to whoever is writing the copious amounts bojan x käärijä fanfiction on ao3 that are set in the most random historical moments (9/11, the bubonic plague, JESUS’ CRUCIFIXION) …..

are you ok?

[spaciebabie]

"but spacie, i have no followers why should i reblog things" let me answer this question using myself, a person who has been using tumblr for almost a decade now, as an example. pre 2022 the most followers i ever had was like 125. most of them were dead blogs. killed in the porn ban or just people who had left for whatever reason. out of the people left who were still active, i had like 3 people at the most interact with my blog on a monthly basis. for years b4 this, i had ZERO FOLLOWERS but upon making my blog i saw all the other ppl who had been using this website longer than me talking abt how important it was ta reblog shit, and throughout all these years on tumblr, even when i had no followers i reblogged things. b/c i understood that it was integral ta the way this site functions.

now mind you, just b/c i had no followers didn't mean ppl wouldn't stop by and reblog things from my blog. every couple months id have a new person find me and reblog something. maybe they'd reblog a lot of stuff! the point is that id go months without any interaction at times and i STILL reblogged things because i knew people could find me and see something they liked on here. eventually people who frequently checked my blog ta see what i would reblog followed me!! im sure there’s ppl who dont follow me that ta this day who still reblog the stuff on here!! the point is that it genuinely doesnt matter how many followers you have. sure, it certainly helps, but ppl can still find and interact with the things on your blog without you having thousands or even hundreds of followers. so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE reblog things.

[reineyday]

it sounds like hawks is probably going to keep the ranking system, and when he says he's keeping it bc the people who want to tear it down are "only seeing the cons of the system, and none of the pros," it shows keigo's childhood plushie of endeavor, and that's wild to me. "the popularity contest still has its pros," hawks says as he thinks of his idol endeavor, the man who abused and neglected his whole family because he wanted to win said popularity contest.

and it's specifically a panel of keigo's plushie, which reads to me that keigo's holding onto his childhood worship of the man so much, he's ironically only seeing the pros of the system (whatever those are), and none of the cons. it feels like hawks has blinders on when it comes to endeavor, and it's felt that way ever since he found out about endeavor's past and immediately, seemingly without any inner conflict, gave his stamp of approval anyways bc hey, at least endeavor's trying now! and i'm disappointed considering how complex a character he seemed when he was introduced. sigh.

[florshedworf]

dude i wanted to talk about this but when i wanted to the “mephone is a child” shit was still ongoing so before i start i wanna preface if i see any “he was just a child/baby:(“ i will kick every joint in your body halfway across the hemisphere

anyways. i did not get much insight into this beforehand because i joined quite literally a few days before ii16 dropped, but i realized that mephone before the Reveal was always seen as this mostly put together guy who has the whole gameshow thing figured out and just has some baggage on the way. not to say there were not hints to show he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing (gestures to season 3. “yeah! for photos and stuff.” “in my defense, i never thought they’d check.”) but other than his memories in episode 13 and glimpses and hints throughout the season it really seemed like he was the host to have it All Figured Out.

and OH WHAT A MASK THAT T’WAS!!!! perhaps this is my own dumbassery showing but any hint or glimpse of his naivety or dare i say childishness was smoothed over by that reality show host persona. i mean, in episode 15 that was shown in full force when he nearly went the whole episode Almost Successfully wearing the wacky host persona until cobs had to take that mask and shatter it.

and then shoot it 56 times and beat it with a baseball bat. like the fact that he didn’t realize that he created his own contestants until cobs told him himself really just tears down the whole act. like the whole interview with box just confirming yeah. this fucker tricked you all. bro had NO clue what he was doing.

anyways. this has been my essay

[adobe-outdesign]

shoutout to that one time when TNT released a BD item that could just straight-up delete your opponent's insanely valuable weapon and the backlash was so intense that they removed it the next day

[just-a-toast]

II 17 SPOILERS UNDER CUT

So I have a LOT of thoughts on this episode but there’s one that has been weighing on my soul since watching it.

Mephone is stuck with Cobs. For good.

After telling everyone the truth. They all hated him. Even MePad told everyone to get behind him because he thought mephone just wants to hurt the contestants for amusement.

While what mephone did to them was unfair, mephone admits to not seeing the problem because that’s how HE felt. He never knew how that would affect a person. He’s known NOTHING ELSE

He felt broken. And all of them were broken as a result. It’s like when I kid grows up in an abusive environment, they assume everyone has the same experience.

Kids make up silly gags with basic stereotypes because they don’t think how that could affect someone. Mephone was still mentally a child/had childlike innocence when he first thought of the contestants.

This could also be taken in a meta stand point with Adam, Justin, and Brian making the characters stereotypes for jokes and not seeing how that directly effects the character. They’re characters so why do the childish authors care?

Back to my point, now that everyone knows, why would they help him? They have been helping him every season! 1 4s sacrificed himself for him, marshmallow killed bow to help mephone! S3 balloon, cabby and silver campaigned for his life! And he had to be saved from being thrown into a volcano!

Now that they know their lives weren’t theirs in the beginning, why should they help the person they’ve been saving, but made them broken? (I’m not saying they never had their own lives it’s just they don’t feel like they had any control over their lives. This is a whole post in of its self)

So even if the contestants came back as ghosts, none of them would help him.

Neither would MePad.

After everything MePad has done for Mephone, MePad doesn’t have any good feelings towards him anymore. MePad borderline hates mephone.

So … mephone is.. completely alone. Not a single soul will help him.

The only people would would WILLINGLY help him is toilet or bot but either probably won’t work

We still don’t know if toilet is real or not. We didn’t see him at the end so we could assume he disappeared with everything else. And Bot is in S3. They could come back because everyone there might be disappearing too and needs help but once they find out mephone made the contestants and that test tube and fan died.. it’s really a 50/50. I don’t know they will be coming back to help him.

Another possibility is the shimmers but mephone is still a Meeple product so even if he knew he was a shimmer (which I don’t think mephone even knows he’s a dead shimmer) they wouldn’t trust him enough to help him.

So. Mephone has no choice but to take the one hand that is given to him. He has nothing else.

There’s no where to go, no one to call, nothing. Just him, his abuser, and the cycle of abuse.

Everyone might live, and get a semi happy ending with them being free in the afterlife but mephone.

There’s no happy endings without him, but none for him.

It’s time for him to go home. Start over from the beginning.

[maxphilippa]

i think that the major misinterpretation that people have with taco is that she didn't get attached to mic because of her sad face in the end wanted to show regret because "she hurted her friend". like. no, she wasn't sad because she regretted what she did. she was sad because she's alone again, but she knows very well at the end that she had it coming. the reason as to why taco was so desperate of wanting mic to tell her that she did gain something is because. she SAW pickle in mic, but of course their situation is very different. "Oh but Taco couldn't have done what she did to Mic to Pickle, Mic was fully aware" but she did do that. Mic herself says it. That is pretty much what II is telling you. Taco isn't a good friend, and is not exactly a good person either. Mic was aware that Taco was/is a bad person, but Mic's nature makes her believe in whoever acknowledges her. Taco made Mic feel like she needed her, just the way she made Pickle feel back in s1.

she didn't really change thanks to mic. her faces of "regret" aren't her actually lamenting all of the stuff she did to microphone, but rather just her realizing that she proved what everyone said about her as a result. i will give it to that she might've tried to change, but not because of mic. she wanted to win the prize so she could prove others wrong on her being a loser and a coward, by being a loser and a coward. if anything, mic made her realize that she hasn't changed. she pretty much just ruined everything for everyone who saw her as a friend, and for herself.

taco's whole arc is constantly just downgraded to questionable takes and listen. i do agree that she is heavily flawed as a character. she is morally gray, but ii doesn't portray her as a good person with good intentions, nor she should be really be treated as if she was. neither she had those good intentions with mic at all, i mean, their "friendship" pretty much started because of taco wanting the prize money, taking a part of microphone's prize if she made mic won, you know, an offer. she would get the prize and mic would get recognition. but everyone seems to forget that probably, the main reason as to why she's doing all of this, is because she does regret how she acted on s1. she doesn't exactly regret doing all of that to microphone, and even if she does, it's for the wrong reasons. (that's because she did the exact same thing to you know, pickle, her once best friend, the only person she truly ever cared about)

people do tend to forget that taco keeps sending letters to pickle, and that's often just used for pickle angst and making it his only character trait, but. it's not that. it's the fact that taco keeps on writing those letters, despite fully knowing that she did hurt pickle because of her actions. taco's biggest flaw is that she can't accept that she has ruined everything and wants so desperately to be back on pickle's life because she ended up caring about him deeply as a person. as a friend. but she was never there at all, either.

taco can't seem to understand that she has hurted people badly. sure, she seemed like a "friend" to microphone, and you can argue whatever you want but a fact is that taco IS smart, and she knew that the only way to possibly keep mic by her side is pretending to want to be better, you know, the same way she pretended to be just a odd fella so pickle and her could remain together and have an advance at the game. she played with both of them. because both pickle and mic believed in her but were just used by her for the game.

however, taco does seem to regret the way everything went during-post s1. you can see how she yearns for another chance and is saddened about not getting it, but that's not only for comedic purposes, but that's because the writing is telling you that she won't get a second chance. at least not here.

what i want people to understand is that, yes, taco is a complex character, however trying to sugarcoat what she did is pretty much missing the point of her writing as a whole. she isn't a good person neither was she a good friend. she hasn't grown because she was never able to let go of something that she thinks that she can fix with some words and a prize. she thinks that she can still fix her friendship with pickle, she thinks that she can clear her name (even if she was the one who tainted it), but she only ended up proving knife right. she proved everyone right. she hasn't changed. a morally gray character is that. they're not exactly fully bad or fully good, but it's taco's actions that speak a lot. words are cheap, and taco's title is "The Liar", and that says a lot, because she kept on lying to microphone and to pickle on both of their games. she won't heal unless she lets go.

and i want to be clear here: i do think that taco can go through redemption. i do think that taco can become a better person, but not in the way people portray her to do so. because it just pretty much goes against what her arc has settled in for us, and the other arcs that were involved in hers as well.

taco's arc is meant to be somewhat a parallel with nickel's in a way. hell, even with knife's arc if anything. she treats knife as a simple bully, but when she saw that he became smarter and way more emotionally aware than what she had expected, she felt attacked by that, because he was stable. he became a better person and he was rubbing that on her, and it made her feelings of anger way worse regarding him, but it is true. knife is pretty much everything that taco wants to be, but here's the thing that made them so different:

knife stayed. taco didn't stay.

knife is accepted by everyone in the hotel because meanwhile he hasn't explicitly said that he had a change of heart, he has shown it through actions and a big difference too is that he was there for pickle, even if they weren't close in s1, and taco is on the woods because deep down she is aware that she can't go back. not if she doesn't have something to offer as an direct apology, but here's the problem. whether or not she got the prize, she still wouldn't get forgiven by anyone due to what she said that day.

again. her problem is not being able to let go and to accept when she has messed up badly. she has been lying to everyone but she has also been lying to herself as a whole. she can't keep on doing this because it's just hurting everyone and herself. keeping grudges and holding onto past friendships that were doomed to fall is just hurting her. she is not on the state to keep on trying, she wasn't at all ever.

taco's arc most likely will have closure on a way that fits her character, and i feel like that would be with her letting go of inanimate insanity as a whole and of what she can't fix anymore. her trying to find herself after years of lying to everyone and to herself. she's not a good person. but she can become one. only if she knows what she did was wrong and that her second chance isn't there, and never will be, and if she recognizes that meanwhile she did that damage, she can still become a better person. just not there.

pickle and mic don't owe her anything, especially pickle. taco does owe them an apology, but they won't accept that. the least she could do is to accept their wishes, understand that she needs to leave them and grow to be a better person. maybe, if she does that, she would actually heal.

she doesn't need anyone to fix her. she needs to fix herself.