#all that reading

[beaft]

my mum forbade me to say anything to my dad about the top surgery thing, and it's just hit me how funny it would be if i got it done and didn't tell him and just waited for him to notice. i mean, what's he gonna say? "didn't you used to have tits?"

[yeah-yeah-beebiss-1]

in case you were wondering how things went down at the pokemon world championships this weekend:

-during the top 8 of the TCG masters division, chilean player fernando cifuentes was running a gimmick deck that consisted exclusively of four iron thorns ex and a whole ton of control-focused trainer cards in a strategy that either completely shuts down opponents or shits the bed entirely

-through skillful play and some good luck, fernando made it through 2 days in a tournament with over 1100 players to get to the quarterfinals

-fernando lost 2-0 to ian robb, who was running regidrago vstar (widely considered one of the best decks in the current format)

-in an overexuberant victory celebration, ian did what can only be described as a jacking-off gesture, on a stream with tens of thousands of viewers run by a company with very firm player conduct expectations

-the judges determined that this warranted a penalty of game loss, but for some reason, rather than applying it to ian’s next game in the semifinals, they applied it to the one he had just won in the top 8

-(it should be noted that the prize money for making top 8 is $15k while top 4 is $20k, so this jerking gesture cost ian robb $5,000)

-nearly an hour after fernando came to terms with his loss and the end of an impressive run, he was told that he was to get back on stream because he’s now playing in the semifinals due to winning by default

-the player he was up against in the semifinals was playing a deck (miraidon) that happens to get shut down hard by iron thorns’s gimmick, so fernando wins the semifinals

-said player, jesse parker, had notably had an undefeated run throughout the whole tournament up to this point, and likely would have continued that streak had his intended semifinal opponent not gotten a game loss penalty for miming a lewd act on stream

-meanwhile, the other semifinal winner is japan’s seinosuke shiokawa, running a deck (roaring moon) that players had largely written off as underwhelming months ago

-the grand finals are on the following day, so saturday evening was abuzz with a lot of people baffled by the absurdity of the situation

-come sunday afternoon, the grand finals are set to begin, with fernando cifuentes running iron thorns and seinosuke shiokawa running roaring moon

-it should be noted here that the roaring moon deck doesn’t rely very much on abilities, so iron thorns’s gimmick has very little effect - this is basically an even matchup

-fernando wins the first game of the set, and seinosuke wins the second

-the third and final game of the set is a bonafide cheek-clencher, with both players reaching a state where a single KO will win the game, but fernando manages to clinch it at the last minute

-and that’s the story of how a guy pretending to jork it led to the first instance of a pokemon world champion who also lost the quarterfinals

[bookwyrminspiration]

I can behave normally around books

[yourfavecharacterisqueer]

hypothetical scenario for you all: the real king arthur returns. you meet him and you welcome him into your home. what is the first thing you do with him? keep in mind, this is a man from the 500s (he died in 542), and you are from the 21st century (2024).

[bamsara]

"youve already written that trope" yesss. i like it a lots. i will be writing it again. 1000 stories of the same trope over and over again for ten million years

[loveaankilaq]

People online (white) will create so many conspiracy theories that just boil down to "Asians aren't complete human beings with their own thoughts and autonomy" like maybe Chinese people are just going about their day to day life. Maybe a video of a North Korean person like chilling is just a person chilling, who isn't going to power down like a robot once the video is over. Stop being a fucking creep.

[junglejim4322]

Pdf of The Question of Palestine by Edward Said

[glitter-stained]

Random goon: Hey boss, were you the one to pick that name as an alias? And why this one?

Red Hood : I used to have another name, before... A long time ago. But that person is dead now. I get to choose for myself now, they can't take that from me. I won't let them.

Goon: Huh.

***

Random Goon: Say boss, why do you never take off your shirt in front of us?

Red Hood: Well uh, I actually have that really fucked scar on my chest and I'm not comfortable with...

Random Goon: Don't worry boss, we get it, you don't have to explain yourself to us.

***

Red Hood, high on some toxin: God, I wish my family...

Random Goon (on boss-sitting duty): why not try reaching out to them?

Red Hood: They would never accept me as I am now... They wouldn't agree with my so-called "life choices". Besides, they don't miss me, they miss the person they think I used to be... I wasn't even a man when I last saw them.

Random Goon: Damn boss, that sucks.

***

And then the goons throw the Red Hood a party on trans visibility day and Jason is so confused he straight up cries.

[dendrochronologies]

maya angelou saying the funniest thing anyone has ever said about editing, which i can never let myself forget EVER AGAIN [x]

[aesethewitch]

When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a huge lilac tree out front. It was mostly rotten, and it needed to be taken down before it fell. It took a while, but eventually, it was gone.

Mostly. A couple years later, little lilac babies popped out of the ground in its place. My mom was determined to get rid of them, because she'd planted a beautiful flower garden there, and the lilac trees would overshadow and kill the whole garden. I insisted on saving at least a few saplings. She said fine, but I had to dig them out and put them in pots myself.

So, I did. I spent days digging little lilac bushes out of the ground and putting them into pots. Some couldn't be saved, but some could. When all was said and done, I had five brand-new lilac saplings. Seven or eight years old, and it was my absolute pride and joy.

Three died due to sun scorching, severe drought that no amount of watering could save, and perhaps just being moved from their place in the ground. But two survived, and I was awfully proud of them! I'd go out and talk to them every single day. I watered them by hand and made sure they were fertilized properly. I learned all about their favored environments, and I was determined to make sure they lived.

One of my mom's friends saw what I was doing with the lilacs. She asked if she could have one to put in her backyard, and I agreed on the condition that she take very, very good care of it.

It's now fucking enormous. I'm talking ten feet tall and bursting with beautiful purple flowers every spring. My mom still gets updates each year as they start to bloom, which she forwards to me. And all I can think is, "That's my friend! Thriving some twenty years on, there it is."

The other tree nearly died, too. It lived in a pot for far, far too long. I wanted to plant it somewhere in my parents' yard, but my mom was reluctant. Eventually, we agreed to put it in the far back garden. It grew okay for many years, despite the shade, but in all these years, it's never bloomed.

Last year, the massive tree casting massive shadows over the lilac and the garden cracked in half and fell. It tumbled into the garden, crushing part of the nearby shed and destroying a few plants beneath it.

It missed my lilac by inches.

The clean-up is long done. The rest of the tree has been cut down, and my lilac has full sunlight for the first time in fifteen years. It won't bloom this year, I know. But it's got new shoots up. It's taller than ever. I spent half an hour a few weeks ago praising it for surviving all this time, dreaming about its future and telling it how I believe it'll become the tall beauty it's always been meant to be.

I think next year, I'll see flowers.

[stil-lindigo]

lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)

if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.

--

no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.

I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.

I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.

If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.

[bereft-of-frogs]

There’s that post that’s like ‘everyone should get into a tiny niche fandom at least once’ fully agree, that was really fun -- but I would like to add that everyone should get into a fandom where their opinions run counter to major fanon because it really teaches you about sticking to your guns and trusting your interpretation of the text without having to rely on peer validation

because WHAT are people talking about sometimes

[tanjir0se]

Disclaimer these are just a small sampling of some possible writer traits I’ve noticed either in myself or in fics I read. Also consider a rb for sample size !

[zkyeline]

a couple of eepies

[doyouknowthisdragartist]

"what's the appeal of drag kings" because women are my favorite guy next question

[sowlmates]

gotta give it to the percy jackson fans, you really do love your main character. for other franchises, fans usually place the #1 blorbo title on a specific side character. but in percy jackson you really love your percy jackson