#but the fact she existed

[a-method-in-it]

So I reblogged this earlier, but multiple people have reblogged from me saying they don't know who Monica Lewinsky is, so here's the cliff notes because she is, uh, very relevant to the Clinton administration which is still surprisingly relevant to modern conspiracy discourse (Monica herself less so, but still):

Monica Lewinsky was a White House intern who, starting in late 1995 when she was twenty-two had what is usually described (more on that in a sec) as an affair with then-president Bill Clinton

This continued for over a year into early 1997, which is kind of wild given that Clinton was running for re-election in 1996 and you would think might want to not have extra-marital affairs of any sort right now

At some point in 1996, Monica's supervisors transferred her out of the White House because they were concerned about the amount of time she and Bill Clinton were spending together. At this new job, Monica told one of her co-workers, Linda Tripp that she'd been having sex with the leader of the free world.

Which like, girl I get it that is a ROUGH secret to keep to yourself but also

you should not have picked Linda Tripp

Tripp, who was in her 40s, decided what she really wanted to do, I guess, was be a political operative of some sort, so she starts illegally recording all of the phone calls between her and Monica

In the background of all this, there's an investigation going on having to do with some real estate thing in Arkansas the Clintons were allegedly mixed up in, which was kind of flimsy but it gave congressional Republicans something to try to make Clinton look shady

Except it wasn't going very well, because special investigator Kenneth Starr can't find anything that implicates the Clintons and it looks like everyone might have to be content with arresting some folks in Arkansas state government and a few random rich people the Clintons knew once.

Until

Linda Tripp

gives Kenneth Starr the tapes of her calls with Monica Lewinsky

I will spare you the detailed timeline of the fallout, because it is deeply frustrating, but the gist is that it gave Republicans a chance to scream about morals, caused some legal trouble for Clinton because he did lie under oath at one point about having the affair, but ultimately the country kind of shrugged and was like "politician cheats on wife with intern---juicy gossip but still gonna vote Democrat in the mid-terms"

And

No

One

Really

Paid

Attention

To

The

Most

Important

Part

Which was the fact that Monica Lewinsky, who was in her early-to-mid 20s when all of this was happening, had her whole life ripped completely apart by nefarious figures much more powerful and politically connected to her, who threw her to the fucking wolves of national media and that's before you even get into the question of is it really possible to call it a consensual relationship when he is kind of your boss's boss's boss and also commander in chief of the world's biggest military?

The man the CIA works for

The man the FBI works for

The man with the nuclear launch codes

Like actually the power dynamics are dizzying to contemplate

Anyway, the whole country was unspeakably awful to this woman, who need I remind you was a White House intern, which is kind of a prestigious job with lots of competition. But she was pretty much dismissed as a slut and a bimbo and a temptress, an easy lay out to seduce any married man with a navy who crossed her path. She was the butt of late-night jokes, torn apart on news shows, her private life was dissected in tabloids and she was just generally treated like shit

She tried to use the publicity for a while---she was a Jenny Craig spokesperson at one point, weirdly --- but within a few years got a masters degree and tried to stay out of the limelight.

In the mid-2010s, she re-emerged as an anti-bullying advocate and people kinda collectively went "....oh."

And she's mostly stayed there ever since. She's witty on social media, and she's done some interviews, but she's mostly just a woman in her late 40s who works on anti-online harassment stuff and honestly I love that for her

I genuinely hope she is happy

And truly, none of us would last an hour in the asylum where they raised her

i'm sorry but this is the only submission to this trend that i'll consider giving any thought to

[ronanlynchbf]

tshirt that says NO LIVE ORGANISM CAN CONTINUE FOR LONG TO EXIST SANELY UNDER CONDITIONS OF ABSOLUTE REALITY

[vagueconfusion]

Feeling real ridiculous for not having realized that Baron's "stark father" was the Nightmare King until now

[rottengurlz]

she’s like if the virgin mary smoked a pack of pall malls every day 🚬

[blorbologist]

syldor im coming for your fucking knees.

[bixels]

vague-posting about this here cuz i don't feel comfortable yapping about my su takes on twitter, but after everything that's happened the most interesting thing about the su fandom to me is that so many are 100% there for applying the "everyone can change and deserves a second chance" message to everyone, even the diamonds. except for one ☝️ she doesn't count. cuz she's dead.

[genderqueerpond]

We don't talk enough about the fact that Amelia Pond, s5 Amelia Pond, before the timeline is reset, isn't just a normal orphan. Her parents didn't die, didn't abandon her, and didn't send her away. They never existed in the first place.

And if her parents never existed, then Amelia cannot exist. She is a causal impossibility.

"People fall out of the world sometimes, but they always leave traces." A photograph. A face carved into an apple. Yes. Sure.

A child.

Now that's too big, surely.

But that's what she is. She is exactly the same as these things. A trace. An echo of something that could never be, never was, never could have been.

And the universe should never allow it. A whole person, that's just too much. She could not have continued to exist indefinitely, in normal circumstances, after her parents never existed.

In normal circumstances.

Because the Doctor didn't just save her from things coming out of the crack in her wall. He saved her from going into it. And he didn't just save her from the threat of going into it simply because of its vicinity.

No, by arriving when he did, he interrupted a process that was probably already in motion. And then by arriving again only moments later on a cosmic relative timestream (too quickly for the process to complete) and yet in the local relative timestream, years later --- years of a potential future caught midway through the process of rewriting -- he solidified that existence. Amy is a creature from another timeline, caught in amber. The Doctor prevented her from never existing, but only after she could already never exist.

And so, no one around Amelia thinks about it. Neither does she. There's some kind of consciousness block, because if you thought about it, really thought about it, for two seconds you'd realize she cannot exist. And the human mind can't deal with that. So, to protect itself, everyone's brain simply slides off it before ever noticing. They just assume that her existence makes sense, and don't question it, and don't notice what they don't question, that is staring them in the face.

But of course, to some extent they do notice. They can't think it, but they notice subconsciously that there's something they can't think. They notice there's something wrong with her, something uncanny. And they don't like it, and they alienate her even more because of it.

"Does it ever bother you Pond that your life existence doesn't make any sense?"

[yuriwarrior]

if miracles exist, then the girl you hate is right. if miracles exist, then that means it's your own fault she's with someone else. if miracles exist, then that means you weren't doomed from the start. if miracles exist, then utena didn't win by chance. if miracles exist, you doomed yourself. if miracles exist, then the girl you love is right

[xinyuehui]

It turns out to be a water demon. There are many kinds of water demons. Dragon, fish, black turtle, merfolk. Can you narrow it down a bit? It's ugly.

Ran Yi · Fangs of Fortune · 2024

[secondbeatsongs]

my boss is over here telling me she feels bad for illegal immigrants but she really thinks they should follow the law, because the law is important, and meanwhile I'm staring down a future where staying on hrt might mean committing a series of felonies, and I'm just. I'm too tired to handle this right now you guys

[lilianade-comics]

My brain gaslit me into believing that Valerie got her outfit upgrade in D-Stabilized because she was the only remotely acceptable thing about that episode, so imagine my surprise upon watching Flirting With Disaster again and Technus, Lord of Drip and Shipping Gray Ghost, shoots her with the drip-upgrade beam and she (and everyone else standing around her) doesn't even question it.

[hildegardladyofbones]

One of the best things about Disco Elysium by far is that it does not fear ugly women. The world is full of ugly men, but ugly women are so hard to come by.

[babycharmander]

Weird folks: Vent art of any form is good and all but it should ONLY be between you and your therapist. Don’t share that stuff online or publish it!!!

Me, an artist/writer: *goes to therapy, talks about my trauma and mental health and how sometimes it’s hard to talk about it with others*

Therapist: Have you thought about using your art and writing to help you work through these things and share them with others?

[okaydays]

It’s interesting that Colin’s kind of one of the more overlooked Bridgertons - Anthony, Daphne, Benedict and Eloise all attract attention without trying, whereas Colin does need to try - but he’s the one who has someone who’s so starry-eyed over him that she spends literal YEARS pining

Turns out you don’t need to be extraordinary to be loved. Turns out you can just be yourself

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Cultivator and Lawyer, Elle Woods (& Her spiritual dog Bruiser)!

Part 2 (soon)

[giddlygoat]

TRADITIONAL TOAD GARB PEACH LETS GOOOOOOOO