#and everyone is like. GOLD STAR!!!!!

[petruchio]

harry potter is so funny honestly bc ultimately yes it’s just a fairly run of the mill middle grade mystery fantasy series but the thing that really sets it apart isn’t the magic, it’s that it’s a series starring only jocks.

like there was a whole house for the smart kids and not a single one of the main characters was in it. blows my mind that there’s a whole bit in one of the books where harry is gifted a mysterious potentially dangerous enchanted broom while there is a suspected murderer who is thought to be actively trying to assassinate him and when hermione is like idk maybe don’t just immediately use the potentially cursed mystery gift he low key goes ballistic on her bc he cares more about getting to play with cool sports gear more than he cares about, like, being alive. and the book fully supports him in that!! the narration is like, isn’t hermione so crazy for that. she should’ve just let him play with his new sports stuff. how dare she imply that this mysterious object that was given to him from an unknown sender might be tied to the larger plot against harry’s life despite the fact that that’s the main conflict we’re dealing with rn.

idk it’s just so funny to me that hp got such traction with nerds when the entire series is actually just about exploring the question “what if the meathead star athlete of your high school tried to solve mysteries. and also there was magic.”

[faaun]

what draws you back to your country what draws you back to your land when i was a kid i told myself if i ever left iran i'd never go back 2 years into living in the UK i started looking at news on iran again 10 years in and i visited it for the first time again and today i heard an iranian mother talk in farsi to her child on the train to london the way my mother used to and i wanted to cry i wanted to ask her whether they're still cutting the mountaintops whether the lakes are still drying today i showed the person i was with pictures of waterfalls and palaces and forests and snow-white north something odd pulls me back with increasing force i can't ignore it ever again

[anghraine]

jenndoesnotcare replied to this post:

Every time LDS kids come to my neighborhood I am so so nice to them. I hope they remember the blue haired lady who was kind, when people try to convince them the outside world is bad and scary. (Also they are always so young! I want to feed them cookies and give them Diana Wynne Jones books or something)

Thank you! Honestly, this sort of kindness can go a really long way, even if it doesn't seem like it at the time.

LDS children and missionaries (and the majority of the latter are barely of age) are often the people who interact the most with non-Mormons on a daily basis, and thus are kind of the "face" of the Church to non-Mormons a lot of the time. As a result, they're frequently the ones who actually experience the brunt of antagonism towards the Church, which only reinforces the distrust they've already been taught to feel towards the rest of the world.

It's not that the Church doesn't deserve this antagonism, but a lot of people seem to take this enormous pride in showing up Mormon teenagers who have spent most of their lives under intense social pressure, instruction, expectation, and close observation from both their peers and from older authorities in the Church (it largely operates on seniority, so young unmarried people in particular tend to have very little power within its hierarchies). Being "owned" for clout by non-Mormons doesn't prove anything to most of them except that their leaders and parents are right and they can't trust people outside the Church.

The fact that the Church usually does provide a tightly-knit community, a distinct and familiar culture, and a well-developed infrastructure for supporting its members' needs as long as they do [xyz] means that there can be very concrete benefits to staying in the Church, staying closeted, whatever. So if, additionally, a Mormon kid has every reason to think that nobody outside the Church is going to extend compassion or kindness towards them, that the rest of the world really is as hostile and dangerous as they've been told, the stakes for leaving are all the higher, despite the costs of staying.

So people from "outside" who disrupt this narrative of a hostile, threatening world that cannot conceivably understand their experiences or perspectives can be really important. It's important for them to know that there are communities and reliable support systems outside the Church, that leaving the Church does not have to mean being a pariah in every context, that there are concrete resources outside the Church, that compassion and decency in ordinary day-to-day life is not the province of any particular religion or sect and can be found anywhere. This kind of information can be really important evidence for people to have when they are deciding how much they're willing to risk losing.

So yeah, all of this is to say that you're doing a good thing that may well provide a lifeline for very vulnerable people, even if you don't personally see results at the time.

[usertoxicyaoi]

HIGUCHI KOUHEI x MASHIKO ATSUKI. Behind The Scenes.

[galaxywarp]

been seeing some good posts going around talking about alcohol addiction and it’s dangers and warning signs and societal norms and pressure etc which is all good!! But I always see a lot of people responding like “yeah that’s why I think alcohol is EVIL and it should be illegal!”

That’s. Not the solution at all. Making drugs illegal only serves to force addicts into even more dangerous and desperate situations. Alcohol shouldn’t be illegal. I don’t even think heroin and meth should be illegal. I firmly believe in harm reduction approaches and I know so many people who might still be alive if they didn’t have to resort to the things they did just to get relief from their withdrawal symptoms.

Also. You’re not morally superior for not drinking. And that’s a reallyyyyyyy annoying attitude to have and it undermines the whole spirit of wanting addiction to be taken seriously as a real health issue.

[thegreatyin]

i always knew buying all the ministers before estival would pay off

[mira-likes]

Start of s1: Everyone is super concerned that Fan Xian is drawing the negative attention of the Crown Prince, worried that he’s being dragged into the crosshairs of the dangerous fight between the powerful princes and that it won’t end well for him

Start of s2: Everyone knows that Fan Xian is fighting with the Second Prince, and assumes he’s capable of holding his own; the Crown Prince is his ally; nobody really wants to be within firing distance of any of their combined bullshit

[redbean-nom]

darth tiny

au where grogu becomes the first mandalorian sith - he sees what the empire has done to both his people and is determined to prevent that from ever happening again. he's naturally more immortal than the average sith and hes already got half an army's worth of morally-questionable and heavily-armed people willing to die for him because Cute Goblin Baby. his primary force talents are incredibly powerful force shield and incredibly powerful force choke.

(the red bit in the place of the beskarta is now named The Mythosaur Talisman, because he deserves to make his own brand new sith artifacts as a treat :)

[loverboybrightsideghost]

listening to rqg 159 and alex describes how zolf would recognize wilde’s “eeerrghhhhh it has to do with touchy-feely emotions” face. yeh

[cdr2002]

Deep Space Nine forced the mirror universe to evolve as a concept and explore the idea of inverting the characters on a more individualistic level and opening deeper questions of who each of us could have been if our lives turned out differently and I’m tired of that being abandoned and ignored to cling to the familiarity of the Terran Empire.

[frownyalfred]

I mean this in the best, most educational way:

You don’t get a gold star for not liking something.

If a tag, story or trope isn’t your thing, it doesn’t make you better — or more interesting, pure, appropriate, etc.

[articskele]

Thinking about....... Sun Onceler.........

[kingwaino]

i have done...an absolute deep dive into blues and folk music tonight. it was 100% one of those blink and three hours have passed type of deals. worth it though.

[dykecassidy]

its deeply funny to make a name and shame post for people who attach their name to the thing you're shaming for a grand total of one single solitary note.

[thecoppersoulbox]

Funniest way to fight SU Kafka is to use The Hunt path and get all your characters’ speeds so high that the psychological suggestion just. Never triggers. Bc your characters keep getting another turn before it can.

[saturnniidae]

Httyd fanart and fic thats somewhat and impressively historically accurate yet still delightfully anachronistic, I love you I love you I love you!!! artists and writers who do this giving you the BIGGEST hug and gold star of appreciation ever. you are awsome