#or Heaven Forfend

[pilferingapples]

favorite thing about the Les Mis Letters server this year has been the growing certainty that the TRUE villain of Les Mis is Geometry

[seedsofmordor]

All hail, Lord Sauron! The new Dark Lord. All hail!

[hyperfocusthusly]

Not George Russell bitching about Lando straight lining the chicane and coming back out in front of him as if he didn’t nearly kill Max doing the exact same thing 10 laps ago

[edwardseymour]

there's something so refreshing about an academic outside of the british academic network who is completely removed from the pop history/for-profit circuit and therefore doesn’t feel the need to be gentle with alison weir

[stesichoreanpalinode]

Question: did Freddie and Brian share a pair of short shorts? Or both buy the same pair? Or were all four given the same pair but only two wore them in public?

South America, 1981 (I think)

[fiofo]

Having to scroll through my 430-strong queue to find the post I added with the tags misspelled

[lyeekha]

having to tag pairings is such a bummer because i love love lovvve doing surprise cold opens and i have to do it knowing it will never, ever be a real surprise to anyone

i mean theres no way round it i know that but. blaugh.

[wandringaesthetic]

I think the introversion/extroversion paradigm is probably wrong and the real question is not "would you prefer to be with other people more often or would you prefer to be alone more often?" But "how often is an interaction with the average person going to be positive, for you?"

[patchwork-crow-writes]

MMMM Imagine Tumblr having a proper search function!

MMMMMMM Imagine Tumblr having a post editor that didn't suck!!

MMMMMMMMMMMM Imagine a nice easy way to link posts in a series that didn't involve a ton of back-and-forth, opening multiple tabs and copy-pasting links!!!

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM YOU MAY SAY I'M A DREAMER BUT I'M NOT-- *gunshot*

[ajunicetryagain]

If you’re uninsured in the US, you should as well – Biden is set to end the emergency declaration for Covid and that means a LOT of things are about to change.

Free vaccines and boosters? Gone.

Free testing? Gone.

Depending on your coverage (or lack thereof), these things might be free or discounted or expensive or only with a doctor’s request. But millions of people are going to be suddenly without coverage too.

Medicaid will be dis-enrolling people who are no longer eligible. Everyone who went on Medicaid during the pandemic, stayed on during the pandemic – no reporting the first W-2 that put you over the monthly limit, no re-enrolling every single year.

Dis-enrollment will hit especially hard in states like mine where Republicans’ refusal to take the Medicaid expansion means there’s a sizeable gap between who qualifies for Medicaid (<$12k) and who qualifies for subsidies (>$21k).

Hospitals will also be losing a lot of additional funding so expect that to be real fun.

We have more time – not til May 11 – so prepare as much as you can. It’s gonna be a rough ride.

hey UK followers, go get your covid boosters ASAP before these bastards take away yet another covid protection. jfc

[typicalnoise]

good fucking fuck why is the job market so fucking abysmal right now.

[thatonerebelminiblind]

mornee, rune sorbees!

[willowfae82]

so hubby has covid. and he's been miserable and demanding for 2 days now. i mention that i'm starting to feel a cold coming on and it's all 'oh your symptoms are probably just psychosomatic.'

yeah. he literally said that to me... i can not with him some times.

[prokopetz]

this ask came to me in a dream and i must speak on its behalf: what do you think about homestuck beyond canon

I think it's too early for me to have a well-formed opinion at this point, for a very specific reason.

I basically agree with the majority opinion that the post-epilogue story which would eventually become Beyond Canon is characterised by a whole lot of spite toward its target audience. Where I differ is that I don't think this is anything new; a certain sneering contempt for their audience has always been a hallmark of Andrew Hussie's work, and it's present in Homestuck right from day one. At most, Hussie getting burnt out from the Hiveswap fiasco resulted in a text that's somewhat less willing to entertain the polite fiction that its readers are in on the joke, but that's not a change – it's just saying the quiet part out loud.

The interesting part is that this contempt isn't merely undirected bile: it's motivated by a particular stance regarding the purpose of fiction. Writing a story which invites emotional investment, then turning around and calling you a stupid baby for actually becoming invested in it is one of Hussie's favoured narrative sleights of hand, but it's not the Charlie Brown-esque football pull it appears to be – or, rather, it's not only that. Lurking under it is the insistence that fictional characters are, ultimately, objects: tools for exploring a narrative space. Ironic detachment is the only "correct" way to approach works of fiction, because when you emotionally relate to a fictional character (or, heaven forfend, actually identify with one), you are fundamentally committing a category error – like you've mistaken a hat for your wife.*

To what extent Hussie actually believes any of that, and to what extent it's just a very committed bit they're doing is a fair question, but that's not important here; sincere or not, the opening stages of (what was not yet) Beyond Canon are dyed in the cloth with it. Care of the comic has subsequently been handed off to a separate creative team who, to all textual evidence, don't buy into this notion of what-fiction-is-for at all, but they're building on a foundation that's steeped in it. What we're looking at now is a serialised narrative which disagrees with its own premise. I genuinely cannot imagine what sort of flower they're expecting to grow in the soil they've been given, and I don't think we're far enough in to draw any well-supported conclusions just yet.

All of which is a very complicated way of saying that I'm just here for the show!

* With apologies to Oliver Sacks.

[culturevulturette]

Heaven forfend!

[postcardsfromheapside]

I low-key hate adding to the Lucanis discourse at this point but like-

At some point in my insomniac scrolling last night or this morning I passed a post saying something like “I'm dissatisfied with Lucanis' romance and tired of pretending I'm not” and I really need y'all to consider that maybe you don't actually like him. You like an idea of him.

Way before the demi reveal, Mary was dropping lore hints of him being just a weird little guy.

I mean, there are other companions you could romance, heaven forfend you should consider Davrin maybe, but I just think it's not the romance that's bothering you, because it makes sense for who Lucanis is and what he's been through in his recent history.