#independent researcher

[creativside]

It's called queer heterosexualities and it's a noted thing in media. Often containing themes of some sort of yearning, forbidden and/or unrequited love, romances that are for some reason taboo or looked down on in a culture. Also monsterfucker relationships where one or both characters are some kind of non/inhuman, yet one uses he/him and one she/her pronouns.

Romeo and Juliet from the Shakespeare play of the same name, Anakin and Padmé from Star Wars, and Jude and Cardan from The Folk of the Air are some of my favorite examples.

(Oh hey! Those themes crop up in Taylor Swift songs. Who literally wrote a Romeo and Juliet song.)

Now, we could dig into these three examples and casting choices, canon and fanon understandings of character's sexualities (Cardan is queer, Padmé is word of God EK Johnston demisexual with a queer platonic life partnership with a woman, and I follow the great fialleril's genderfluid reading of Anakin) and land on actually none of them are "straight." But I think that kind of proves the point.

sometimes m/f ships are gay. this is often the case actually

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Justin Horowitz at MMFA:

Project 2025 advisory board members have attacked or outright called for the end of no-fault divorce, the option to dissolve a marriage without having to prove wrongdoing by a partner. Research highlighted by CNN found “no-fault divorce correlates with a reduction in female suicides and a reduction in intimate partner violence,” including “an 8 to 16% decrease in female suicides after states enacted no-fault divorce laws.” Project 2025 is backed by a nearly-900 page policy book called Mandate for Leadership, which extensively outlines potential approaches to governance for the next Republican administration, including replacing federal employees with extremists and Trump loyalists and attacking LGBTQ rights, abortion, and contraception. The Heritage Foundation’s proposals have a track record of success — the first Trump administration implemented 64% of Mandate’s policy recommendations. Project 2025 is also supported by a coalition of over 100 conservative organizations, many of which have spent years promoting critiques of no-fault divorce as “destructive” for society — or even blaming it for enabling a “culture of death.” According to a Media Matters review, at least 22 Project 2025 advisory board members have made similar comments targeting, restricting, or eliminating no-fault divorce. Additionally, MAGA and far-right media figures have pushed for the removal of no-fault divorce laws across the country, and several local Republican parties in Texas, Nebraska, and Louisiana have called for the dissolution of no-fault divorce in some capacity.

Project 2025 partner organizations, including the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, and The Heritage Foundation, have called for significant restrictions or an outright ban on no-fault divorce.

[todays-xkcd]

Focus of your research: EXTREME PETTINESS AND UNWILLINGNESS TO LET ANYTHING GO

Research Account [Explained]

Transcript

[A shot of a webpage entitled "Application for Research Account". The page is cut off the end of a dropdown form asking for the institution, for which the response is "other/none".

Under it is the form "reason for requesting access to our datasets", under which is written "to win an argument with someone in a group chat".]

[The action "select all" is written, followed by the action "delete".]

[The same form, only now with the response "independent research".]

[Cueball sat at a desk, typing on a laptop.]

Caption: I never know how honest to be on these forms.

[thenxthird]

i started at my new job so that means they r also employed

full sketch page vvv

[vulcanautus]

"I have to carry on, and do everything he planned to do."

[reality-detective]

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness"

— Thomas Jefferson

God bless the Republic of These United States.

God bless the American Patriots who hold this Land so dear.

God bless All Patriots worldwide who stand with Us, and who are watching with breathless anticipation as Americans wage a Nonviolent and Digital Second War for Independence.

We will not bend.

We will not break.

We will never, ever back down.

We will stoke the fires of Liberty and burn them brightly for the world once again.

Ahead of Us lies true Freedom for all of Gods People, in all corners of this Earth.

Happy 4th of July 2024 to Patriots in ALL Nations, and to ALL Soldiers of Faith and Honor, without whom the World would have surely fallen. We shall never forget. ⚔️ 🇺🇲

[jstor]

Hey, so about those JSTOR hats...

For a VERY limited time, you can sign up for a one-year JSTOR Daily Patreon membership at the $15 level and get a JSTOR hat! 🧢

Remember, you must sign up for the ANNUAL membership to receive a hat. Members who pay for this tier monthly will not receive a hat.

There are only 50 available, so get them while you can 🫡

[necroticpixies]

[opens-up-4-nobody]

:-P

[millidew]

rip lucy and mina you would’ve loved farcille. rip marcille you would’ve loved westenray (falin lost interest and fell asleep before finishing the book)

[msfcatlover]

I just imagined what happens when my time traveling Robins realize they might all have been sent back, and are like, “OH SHIT, DAMIAN!”

(Cut to: The League of Assassins, actively on fire & at war with itself, less than one third of the forces it had remaining.)

Steph: *whistles*

Jason: “Damn. I’m impressed.”

Tim: “This saves me so much time & effort, honestly, you guys have no idea how stressed I was about having to take down two deeply ingrained, centuries old murder cults in a little over 10yrs.”

Dick: “DAMIAN!”

[orionscelt]

Older lads- Early 30s ish.

Version w/ only Seb and Ominis under the cut;

[oliviridian]

nonbinary in that I'm always a girlfriend except when I'm a wikipedia boyfriend

[bambiraptorx]

I know that logically Draxum probably got away with making the mutagen and oozequitos because he was very careful about hiding his research and whatnot, but the much funnier explanation is that he's already so weird that when he rolled up to an academic conference two months after his lab exploded the first time with his 200 page paper on how he's going to bioengineer mosquitos to be the size of his hand (without giving a single reason as to why he wants to do this), the most he was met with was maybe a few raised eyebrows and a couple people wondering how he still gets grant money

[lewiscarrolatemybrain]

One more time

A Positive Change Arc -- often called a Hero's Journey -- is one possible shape a story can take. It is not the only or the best character arc, it's just one option. In a Positive Change Arc, the protagonist begins the story believing the Thematic Lie, and must learn and embrace the Thematic Truth over the course of their journey.

TGCF and MDZS are not Positive-Change Arcs. They are Flat Arcs.

(I have not read SVSSS)

A Flat-Arc is a story where the protagonist begins already knowing the Thematic Truth, while the world around them believes the lie. In a Flat Arc, the protagonist will have their knowledge of the Truth challenged and tested, they will be tempted by the Lie, and they will ultimately use their conviction to inspire the world around them to also embrace the Truth.

Flat Arc characters do not need to learn the Thematic Truth. They already know it. They may be seduced by the lie, they may falter, but they will always rally back to the Truth in the end.

(If they ARE successfully converted to the lie, then that isn't a Flat Arc anymore, it's a Corruption Arc, and it's usually a tragedy.)

"But Xie Lian and Wei Wuxian learned--" Nothing they learned impacted the Thematic Truth. Did they learn things? Yes! That's how Being A Person works. Both of them DID change and grow as people from the start of the series to the end. But neither of them learned anything that impacted the Thematic Truth. Because they already knew it.

Xie Lian was already kind, he already wanted to help people, he already believed that common people should be protected and uplifted. His suffering at the hands of BWX did not teach him any deep or important lessons. He already knew the Truth. BWX tried to tempt him to embrace the lie -- that people are undeserving, that you should never do anything for anyone who won't grovel with gratitude, that caring for other people is a waste -- and failed, because Xie Lian knew the truth and even when he was at his lowest he was searching for confirmation that he was right. Xie Lian only needed one single act of kindness to reassure himself that he was right and BWX was wrong. He did not learn anything new, he reaffirmed what he already knew and understood.

Wei Wuxian is good, and righteous, and morally upright. He is a character who does the right thing regardless of the consequences he might face. The sects collectively wanted to destroy him because he refused to bow to them, not because he ever at any point actually did anything wrong. Even the vengefulness he showed while actively at war is narratively justified, and it's key that the sects did not care about the desecration of bodies while it served them. He did not learn any valuable or important lessons when the Sects raided the Burial Mounds. The fact that Lan Sizhui exists at all is proof for us as the audience that everything Wei Wuxian did was worth it. All of it mattered, and all of it was the right choice, because a-Yuan is alive. He doesn't come back to life having learned anything new, he already understood the Truth.

Obviously neither of them are Omnipotent. They learn that there's dudes in love with them, they solve the mysteries of their respective true Big Bads, they uncover some other stuff. But the Thematic Truth, the core theme of the story, is not a lesson either of them needs to learn. It is a lesson they teach others by refusing to bend to the Lie the rest of the world believes.

[reality-detective]

Happy Thursday! 🇺🇲

Hope you all get to spend time with other like minded Patriots to celebrate God, the Truth and some Fireworks! 🤔