#but i'll get lower for him

[fearthhereaper]

okay, sure, aemond is a kinslayer two times over as well as an attempted kinslayer, but at least he's not and isn't going to be a PEDO

[covertblizzard]

jaykyle au where they're theatre kids in the same school but they're not the actors jason's the scriptwriter/director and kyle is the prop manager (i don't know the official terms sorry) and they'd probably do an amazing job on the backstage setting if they could stop arguing for 5 whole seconds about their artistic visions and ideas and how "this would obviously work better this way"

[lady-bizarre]

when does jason learn to drive?

cause according to a quick google search, you can't drive in new jersey until you're at least sixteen. and jason dies when he's fifteen.

he definitely didn't learn when he was comatose, and probably not with the league. did he have to teach himself? did bruce teach him before he died? did dick teach him to spite bruce? did he learn when he lived on the streets? does he somehow never learn and use it as an excuse to never drive any batkid around?

how many times did he crash before he finally figured it out? has officer grayson ever pulled him over for going 20 miles above the speed limit, asked for id, only for jason to just drive off? does he just drive like a maniac? do his siblings avoid driving with him at all costs to stay away? how many people has he tramuatized?

[ffcrazy15]

I need a whole fic where the Cerritos is mistaken for the Enterprise by some type of alien with very high intelligence but very poor visual recognition, for whatever reason.

And Freeman either can't or is too scared to convince them that they're not the Enterprise, so she starts desperately assigning everyone to various roles. Boimler gets assigned as Data, and since he and Mariner are the only people on the ship who play string instruments, the captain orders them to put together some sort of "symphony" because the aliens have heard that that's a thing on the Enterprise.

And it's just Mariner and Boimler frustratedly trying to figure out how to combine her electric guitar skills and his traditional violin skills into something suitably "symphonic" (i.e. thematically trying to combine her more lax/modern way of doing things with his more strict/traditional way).

[cerealbishh]

"We're in the exact same place we were before..."

"We are in such a different place. We're communicating, we're- we're listening to each other... We're gonna figure it out, together."

[fisheito]

yakuya in MY swamp? in MY ecosystem? no . i am still in disbelief. i hope you all know that my particles are bouncing off the everything. i am using periods as punctuation but the state of my mind is naught neareth final.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[swiftcast-selene]

been thinking about how hard MSQ must be on the body, especially for someone who isn't exactly in the best shape of their life. must be hard to keep up with the warrior of light! which ended up in a couple studies of how Negi's carried his weight through the whole adventure, with a couple extra mostly-non-spoilery notes on each expac~

[citrusinicake]

i wonder what their accents are meant to convey

[nexus-nebulae]

another childhood bucket list item obtained: i finally have a snuggie

[andthebubbles]

reading earlier chapters of my own fic like it's sustenance

[sysig]

I have to draw his tail as a heart, it’s the rules (Original)

[lilhawkeye3]

A Crash Course to Kendrick's Super Bowl Performance, from a Black Woman

Note: this does NOT go in depth into all of the song's lyrics. I don't have time to recount two decades of his discography. This is just a summary of the performance itself.

Let's start with the first visual we get:

UNCLE SAM - most notably recognized from WWII American wartime propaganda, Uncle Sam is the personification of American patriotism and freedom. The term "uncle" is also evocative of Uncle Tom from Uncle Tom's Cabin, an abolitionist book that aided in inciting the Civil War. Uncle is also a very common term (both endearment and derogatory) towards Black men (eg. "unc"). Samuel L Jackson was fantastic. (Edit: and please look up his history of civil rights activism, he was on the FBI watchlist and even a pallbearer at MLKJr’s funeral.)

Uncle Sam also resembles a circus ringleader, notable for my next point:

THE GREAT AMERICAN GAME - no, not Super Bowl. The GAG is us the people being pitted against each other: through late-stage capitalism, through the culture war, through class warfare, through being built of the backs of slaves. We are all players in the GAG because none of us on this site were the oligarchs seated at the inauguration.

This is also seen as Kendrick's stage was a Play Station controller. Not only did it remind of circus rings visually, but it was a game battle stage. The Great American Game is a battle royale of the commoners for the amusement of the rich whites.

Remember the foods / Them color was tin and brown / But now they 100 and blue - For this I'll just say, look what the last election said about lowering the price of eggs... and look at the prices now.

The revolution about to be televised / You picked the right time / But the wrong guy - Election 2024 once more. *Edit to add, the first part of this lyric is in reference to the Black Liberation Song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron. Thanks to everyone who mentioned that.

THE FLAG DANCERS - yes, the dancers formed the US flag... off of the backs of Black people. Not a single white person in sight, and that's true of the cotton pickers in the fields. Plantations are part of how the US came to economic prominence after being a "backwater" colony. Remember tobacco? Cotton? Our bloodlines do. *Edit to add: they also all piled out of a clown car. The US flag in a clown car? Brilliant.

The red and blue dancers are also notable for representing the Crips and Bloods, two infamous street gangs. The dance in Not Like Us is the Crip Walk. I recommend researching more on your own time about them, but just know they are a large part of the stereotype of Black people being "ghetto."

TOO LOUD, TOO RECKLESS, TOO GHETTO. Do you really know how to play the game? - This is exactly what Black people, especially Black men, get told all the time. It's why we change our names on resumes if they sound "too Black." It's why we codeswitch in non-Black company. This is especially rich considering how non-Black people love our culture and love to make money off of us, as the latter part of the quote points to. And it's even more profound during the Super Bowl-- the NFL is majority Black players.

STREET LIGHT A CAPELLA -- "thug" stereotype dancers to counteract the a capella connotations, with Uncle Sam then saying that Kendrick figured out "bringing other street guys around being a culture cheat code." Yes, this is a direct hit at Drake (listen to "Not Like Us") but also politically. Look up "model minority". Notably I would point to Candace Owens, or the Miami Venezuelan political group that's been in the news recently, especially as this directly led to Kendrick being surrounded by...

DANCERS IN WHITE -- it's white America. That's... that's the allegory.

NOT LIKE US TEASER -- Kendrick says "Not Like Us" is "their favorite song." -> he means white people specifically here. It comes after he's surrounded by all white dancers, the women around him who are his call and response are also in white (my opinion, they represent the industry). He's saying "Not Like Us" is the favorite of yts because it is about BLACK MEN FIGHTING. This again is reflected in the video game stage and ringleader Uncle Sam.

SZA -- instead of giving what they want, we see SZA. She's one of Drake's exes and Kendrick has always supported her.

ALL THE STARS -- This was in the first Black Panther movie, which I recommend you watch. Rest in Power Chadwick. Notably, this movie was incredibly mainstream as a major Marvel movie, and then we have Uncle Sam say...

"THAT'S WHAT AMERICA WANTS: NICE AND CALM. DON'T MESS THIS UP" -- translation: Marvel (the industry, America, etc.) wanted a safe, semi-pop song because white American likes safe pop songs, not Kendrick's usual heavy rap style about his life as a Black man! Don't mess up what you've got going mainstream for having this "Black rap feud" with Drake, who is an R&B model minority to white people because he's safe.

So what does Kendrick say?

IT'S A CULTURAL DIVIDE / IMMA GET IT ON THE FLOOR -- He was warned not to be political or apologetically Black for this Super Bowl performance, but he is using this big stage opportunity to speak out.

40 ACRES AND A MULE / THIS IS BIGGER THAN THE MUSIC -- 40 acres and a mule are what the freed slaves were promised. Instead, this land went to white sharecroppers. Research Jim Crow laws.

THEY TRIED TO RIG THE GAME / BUT YOU CAN'T FAKE INFLUENCE -- rig the election, rig the industry like with model minority Drake, rig the Great American Game with culture war to distract from active class warfare.

NOT LIKE US -- the only thing I'll mention because it made me holler is Serena Williams crip walking on Drake's metaphorical grave. She's another one of his exes (read: Drake harassed the hell out of her). *Edit: she was also fined at the 2012 Olympics for crip walking in celebration at Wimbledon.

TURN THE TV OFF -- exactly like he said! The TV is a distraction, the Super Bowl is a distraction, the mainstream news is often a distraction. Turn it off and get with your people!

GAME OVER — could not see this on my stream but at the end of the performance, the lights in the stadium spelled this out. The world is watching, America…

In conclusion, Kendrick Lamar is a visionary and thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[overexciteddragon]

This story brought me so much joy and reminded me of my literature teacher from my 1st year of high school. He was a shit stirrer and his classes were very much the kind of class that teaches you nothing in the moment but a decade later you realize it taught you everything.

Every day he'd waltz into class with a shit-eating grin on his face and some Brazilian or Portuguese classic in his hand, Dom Casmurro or Posthumous Memories of Brás Cubas or Captains of The Sands... he'd barely actually have us read anything, he wasn't interested in forcing us to read books, we were goddamn teenagers and he'd see our eyes rolling at the prospect.

No, he was a shit stirrer, and stir shit is what he was best at.

He'd talk about interpretation first and foremost, we'd read lots of poems and short stories, lots of short movies, things that were intrinsic to Brazilian history, and then we'd have Debates. We didn't get back then that there was no winner or loser, and that we weren't all objectively wrong or right. Did the author mean to represent some sort of abuse? Did the author allude to infatuation? Did the author have a bias that bled into this characterization? What's the morality of this story? Who knows! Who knows. I think it was the Sonnet of Fidelity from Vinicius de Moraes that had us shout arguing, one of my friends (literally the most demure straight-A student) straight up stood from the desk screaming at the teacher during a 50min long class debate about what love means, and he was grinning with so much joy because that is exactly the kind of passion he wanted to stir in us. I liked him a lot, he was foul in all the best ways, a huge fucking jerk that absolutely loved watching a room of 16yos devolving into arguments about the meaning of life, about intent, about allusions, about philosophy, about politics.

Growing up I realized why those classes were my favorite, and it was because rather than be interested in having us pass a test or learn about the birth year and marriage history of some old Portuguese writer, he wanted us to learn how to read, proper. He wanted to kindle in us a passion for literary interpretation that forcing us to read a "boring old book" would never really do. This man had teenagers who hated reading doing personal research into classical literature to prove him wrong the next class, people would read WHOLE BOOKS with very difficult ye old Portuguese to pull him aside in between classes and fight with him, and I don't think we truly understood back then how much power that fucking man had

So, okay, fun fact. When I was a freshman in high school… let me preface by saying my dad sent me to a private school and, like a bad organ transplant, it didn’t take. I was miserable, the student body hated me, I hated them, it was awful.

Okay, so, freshman year, I’m deep in my “everything sucks and I’m stuck with these assholes” mentality. My English teacher was a notorious hard-ass, let’s call him Mr. Hargrove. He was the guy every student prayed they didn’t get. And, on top of ALL OF THE SHIT I WAS ALREADY DEALING WITH, I had him for English.

One of the laborious assignments he gave us was to keep a daily journal. Daily! Not monthly or weekly. Fucking daily. Handwritten. And we had to turn it in every quarter and he fucking graded us. He graded us on a fucking journal.

All of my classmates wrote shit like what they did that day or whatever. But, I did not. No, sir. I decided to give the ol’ middle finger to the assignment and do my own shit.

So, for my daily journal entries, over the course of an entire year, I wrote a serialized story about a horde of man-eating slugs that invaded a small mining town. It was graphic, it was ridiculous, it was an epic feat of rebellion.

And Mr. Hargrove loved it.

It wasn’t just the journal. Every assignment he gave us, I tried to shit all over it. Every reading assignment, everyone gushed about how good it was, but I always had a negative take. Every writing assignment, people wrote boring prose, but I wrote cheesy limericks or pulp horror stories.

Then, one day, he read one of my essays to the class as an example of good writing. When a fellow student asked who wrote it, he said, “Some pipsqueak.”

And that’s when I had a revelation. He wanted to fight. And since all the other students were trying to kiss his ass, I was his only challenger.

Mr. Hargrove and I went head-to-head on every assignment, every conversation, every fucking thing. And he ate it up. And so did I.

One day, he read us a column from the Washington Post and asked the class what was wrong with it. Everyone chimed in with their dumbass takes, but I was the one who landed on Mr. Hargrove’s complaint: The reporter had BRAZENLY added the suffix “ize” to a verb.

That night I wrote a jokey letter to the reporter calling him out on the offense in which I added “ize” to every single verb. I gave it to Mr. Hargrove, who by then had become a friendly adversary, for a chuckle and he SENT IT TO THE REPORTER.

And, people… The reporter wrote back. And he said I was an exceptional student. Mr. Hargrove and I had a giggle about that because we both knew I was just being an asshole, but he and the reporter acknowledged I had a point.

And that was it. That was the moment. Not THAT EXACT moment, but that year with Mr. Hargrove taught me I had a knack for writing. And that knack was based in saying “fuck you” to authority. (The irony that someone in a position of authority helped me realize that is not lost on me.)

So, I can say without qualification that Mr. Hargrove is the reason I am now a professional writer. Yes, I do it for a living. And most of my stuff takes authorities of one kind or another to task.

Mr. Hargrove showed me my dissent was valid, my rebellion was righteous, and that killer slugs could bring a city to its knees. Someone just needs to write it.

[neverendingford]

.

[rapunzelsunshine]

people that bowl in leagues are just so arrogant