#okay except like

[carefulfears]

i’m ready for the californication analysis like i’m ready for presents on christmas day

i actually cannot w y'all sdjkfsk

[trickstersaint]

i want to introduce you all to a project that is very close to my heart... or lack of one. anyway. for anyone who has ever wanted to play a poem. i'd like you to meet aromanticism

(link opens itch.io - she'll run on html in your browser! please be nice to her!)

[solroskajan]

:D

[rasairui]

"The bigots up top think we're ALL fucked up! They want us ALL dead!" Hey that's cool dude you're right! Now are you saying this as a genuine expression of solidarity and community, or do you only bring this point up when the acknowledgement of intersectionality makes you uncomfortable? Is it a rallying cry, or a way to shut down people affected by intercommunity bigotry?

[egophiliac]

*shaky thumbs up* I just finished ch5...... y-you were not kidding about it being a heavy one.....

:)

(how's that going so far, Mal)

[pinacoladamatata]

blink and you'll miss it moments around skyhold....

[iwoulddieforienzo]

Personally I think percabeth is at its best when Grover is in it. I don’t necessarily mean in a polycule way I just think it’s great when he’s around

[feniksido]

"We are brilliant." "..."

[sariphantom]

Rise April 2024 Days 1, 2, and 3: Trick, Fashion, and Crossover

Technically... Usagi counts as crossover, considering he's from a different show.

[inkskinned]

it is totally okay to be hurt and tired and fed up with the american schooling system but i need you to understand that we need to be better about loudly and routinely defending public education.

yes, many teachers suck, many schools utterly suck. i also got bullied and was absolutely not given the right support for my needs. i am not defending public education because it was kind to me. i am defending it because it needs to exist.

right-wing republicans do not want an educated population. they want kids to be homeschooled or in private school. there is a huge religious undertone to this.

the most common argument is that despite high costs, the "result" is not "good" enough. they point to failing schools as proof that public education is just never going to work out. there will be arguments made here that you actually agree with: that teachers can be bullies, that we taught online for 2 years and still charged the same amount of tuition, that we have no recourse for students to actually have agency or a voice, and that schools are now unsafe for kids due to risk of illness and gun violence.

these are all placing the blame in a fraudulent way, one intended to get your parents to homeschool you. the less kids in a school, the less federally-awarded funding for that school, the less any school succeeds. they will not mention the fact it is their legislation that takes away important funding opportunities, that teachers are living at or below the poverty line, that buildings are not kept up to code, that administration is overpaid and forces specific curriculums, that corporations like (my personal enemy) Pearson Education control certain classroom goals because teachers can't afford other options. they pretend to be ignorant of the gun violence and say "oh just get a gun" - but these are the same people who will be sending their child to a private school with a bulletproof backpack. they don't care if your kid dies, though. they "don't believe" in covid, but they did get their kid vaccinated, because of course they did.

it is a closed loop. conservative parents hear the fearmongering and remove children from the system. frequently these parents are also deeply religious. the kids are raised without access to other media & learn to parrot their parents. you have now created a new generation of conservatives. additionally, one of the parents/caregivers must stay home and homeschool the children, usually for free. i will give you 1 guess which parent tends to stay home to homeschool the children. these parents are encouraged to have many, many children. those children are most likely not getting access to safe sex ed.

we might laugh at fox news suggesting teachers are forcing children to use kitty litter but: first of all, there is kitty litter in the classroom. it's part of an emergency kit in case children are locked in due to a shooter. so that's fucking dystopian, and the fact they've completely reimagined the scenario to somehow make the teachers look bad when it's instead a fucking huge symbol of our failure as a country to protect our children.... it feels a little intentional.

secondly: don't just dismiss the situation. because, yeah, obviously, no teacher is encouraging kids to be a catboy. but the actual undertone that fox news is trying to sew is an outright distrust of teachers and of public education. they rely on the dehumanization of trans people as a common touchstone to hide the fact they're pushing two agendas at once. (which is ironic. because the thing they accuse teachers of. is pushing. an agenda.)

whenever someone tells you they want you to read less, you should be suspicious of that. when someone tries to separate you and your education, you should be suspicious of that. i don't even like incel rhetoric nor would i want my kids exposed to it - but i would not take away my child's (age-appropriate) access to the internet. i would just provide more educational materials, not less. the difference here is that i believe we can resolve ignorance with knowledge; whereas conservatives believe that ignorance is bliss.

they misappropriate funding and demonize teachers. they pull the same trick each time - the same thing we are seeing with anti-trans rhetoric. they do not want you to have access to safe sex ed, so they act horrified, claim sex ed teaches you how to thrust deep, claim that we have no idea what "age-appropriate" means. since the mid-nineties, the united states has spent at least 2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education, even though to quote the above link: "a preponderance of studies has found no effect of abstinence education at reducing adolescent pregnancy". conservatives want you to think less of any person struggling with addiction so they can continue their racist "war on drugs", so they spend up to $750 million dollars a year on the DARE program which has absolutely no effect. acting like teachers "must" be "grooming" children is just the same thing - so they can demand that funding either goes to their causes or the funding doesn't "exist" ("i'm not paying for our kids to learn that thing!")

and they want you to feel uncaring about this. they are aware that you will hate some parts of your school experience. pretty much everyone does. they want to lean into the parts that you hate so that you don't put up a fight about it when they take it away for not being "good enough."

i know i maybe sound like a conspiracy theorist. but truly. truly. it is beneficial for conservatives to reduce your faith in the american public schooling system.

one of the explicitly stated campaign promises of the conservative party: to axe the Department of Education in 2024.

i know we are all tired and burnt out and there is so much else wrong with their entire platform. but maybe just - pay attention to this one.

[notbecauseofvictories]

Watching this again, it becomes incredibly clear in s3 that Nate is teaching Parker how to run her own crew. He fully anticipates that she will be his legacy, and more than anyone else---more than Sophie or Hardison, more than Eliot (though I would argue that Eliot never even slightly wanted it)---he is teaching her how to take over, think like he thinks and plan like he plans. He fumbles some of the emotional stuff, never actually tells her explicitly...but by the time you reach s3 he's clearly all-in. He's decided. Parker is going to be Nate 2.0, with different more exciting bugs than the 1.0 version.

[hinamie]

binding vow

[mouseshift]

i had to redraw that one scene from saw. i didnt even like the movie that much but i still had to

[egophiliac]

Since book 7 part 5 (the part where we meet Meleanor/Maleanor 👀) is coming to EN this month, i would love to see your take on lilia’s proposal to meleanor! i mean they were like little kids right? it couldn’t have been that serious…i think the only reason she even brought it up again is because she could tell lilia still genuinely loved her…(even if he didn’t realize it himself?) but, oh well! Let’s think about silly childhood shenanigans to numb the pain! ^_^ (orz)

oh shit?! get ready for a doozy guys, it's comiiiiiing ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

I chickened out of posting the whole thing (look, I get VERY carried away when it comes to these wacky kids and their Tragedy), but I do believe that it probably ended with Lilia getting embarrassed and just shoving the first thing he sees into his mouth to try and cover for it.

(we're just lucky it wasn't a frog this time)

[pygmypouter]

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!

[snowyfrostshadows]

So.

We went from this for Starclan Cats:

To.

This:

Biggest downgrade of my life.