#please stop i'm so tired

[tesco-finest-aromantics]

please i'm begging you think about aplatonic people when you make a post about aro issues. not all of us care about friends. we can prioritise other relationships even if we've deconstructed amatonormativity because friendship is just not important to some people. being aro doesn't make me inherently care more about friendship

[shirozora-draws]

An "I want to scribble some kind of dinluke but every idea is trash" sketch to tidy this space over while I continue to fall behind on my plans to finish the illustrations and post the fic. I need to keep remembering that not everything requires my 101% and it's fine to play loose and fast with a blank canvas and pencil brushes.

Anyways, I'm off to see some goddamn whales.

[r0tting-rat]

"Ohh Eurylochus shouldn't have done that" "Odysseus should have known better" "It's [Character] fault if..." WRONG! WRONG WRONG AND WRONG!! If any of you had taken the time to read one (1) greek myth you would have known already that, if we really want to trace back the problem to the source, the only ones at fault would be the gods!

It's always the gods' fault—or Fate's—you can't argue with this. The whole point of greek tragedies is that you cannot escape what's already been chosen for you, so no matter how smart you are you will ALWAYS end up where you were meant to be.

[theminecraftbee]

alright, so, one more thing i've been thinking about during all of this, and apologies, because i normally try to keep my blog fairly discourse-free in the grand scheme of things. but.

there are hermitcraft fans who act irritatingly morally superior about this fandom. i think it's out of some impulse to try to distance yourselves from any other mcyt fandom. it needs to stop.

the worst behavior during the polls was from the hermitcraft fans.

period.

there were so many instances of hermitcraft fans accusing the other side of cheating, of hermitcraft fans making attacks on the character of their guy's opponents, i have heard what i HOPE are isolated reports of racism in the grian/quackity fight (it was genuinely impossible to keep up with the blog's notes that round without both going into a death spiral thanks to the horrible behavior of scar fans during techno/scar and also without losing track instantly of where we were due to the frankly insurmountable volume of notes, so i did not see it, but unfortunately i fully believe it). i have seen people receiving awful asks - saw people being accused of 'betraying' the hermitcraft side due to voting for quackity or techno, for example.

and for a fandom that likes to act like it's better than the other guys, well. the dsmp fans were generally very well behaved in comparison. (shoutout, for example, to quackblr - i saw maybe one or two possible instances of bad behavior, but for as intense as you all were, you all were normally mostly just retaliatory towards whatever energy was thrown at you.) it wasn't supposed "outsiders coming in" that was doing this bad behavior, either.

folks, you can't blame the dsmp when the problem is inside the house. you can't blame twitter users when you're doing it here. you can't blame the reddit when you're the ones throwing the first death threats.

get off your high horses. we're all mcyt fans. we're all having the same fun. get off your high horses. you can hardly claim we're entirely all "unproblematic" when keralis accepted a sponsorship from the wizard game and xisuma periodically gets another round of getting shouted down over something he said on xisumasays. get off your high horses. you can't claim we're the accepting, good behavior fandom, unlike those other guys, when you're the ones causing the problems.

now, as always, i'm sure this is a law of large numbers thing to some extent. as technoblade, wise as he is, said: sometimes when you get a large enough group, you're going to have a few serial killers. but for the amount that hermitblr likes to act better than Those Other Minecraft Fandoms, and those Other Fandom Websites, it wasn't those guys that made me cry.

to be clear, the majority of you have been well-behaved. but there's a persistent tendency in this fandom to act strangely morally superior to other fandoms. and, y'all? you aren't.

you just aren't.

and the sooner you acknowledge that, the less likely this is to happen again, because once you admit that yeah, we can be toxic too? that's when you can start actually looking at yourself and trying not to be.

anyway, sorry again to make this post. i don't want to be a downer, hence why, outside of the official mod statements of "chill the fuck out", i didn't make this until now. (it also helps that i wanted to wait until i was no longer furious, upset, and death spiraling.) i have seen a lot of the best of this fandom over the past two weeks! i've just also, unfortunately, seen some of the worst, and feel the need to make this statement because it's just... been eating at me.

i don't want this to continue to be a trend. i think we can do better. do so.

[sophus-wb]

If you're not jewish, I sincerely ask you to stop using the word "Zionist" or anything that has to do anything damn with it. You don't get to take our words, and twist them into things they don't mean.

If you're a "Zionist" or a "Anti-Zionist" and you aren't jewish? No you're not. I promise you, you don't understand shit.

[lost-in-fandoms]

This is me, trying to preemptively soothe myself for whatever will be said about Daniel in this incoming race week. This got longer than I was expecting, it's about 3.5k, so it's on ao3 too if you prefer to read it there.

Daniel wakes up to the feeling of Max sliding in bed behind him. He smells like Daniel's body wash and his skin is still warm and damp when he tucks himself close against Daniel's back, knees slotting in behind his.

Still too asleep to find a way to work his voice for a proper hello, all Daniel manages is a sleepy sigh, but Max doesn't seem to want to break the silence either, squeezing the arm he sneaked around Daniel's waist in his own quiet greeting, smushing his face against the sweaty back of Daniel's neck.

The room is still fully dark, a combination of the blackout curtains and the fact that it's still not even dawn, so Daniel is happy to let the sound of Max's breathing pull him back under, until he realises two things.

First, Max is still curled up close behind him, sweat already condensing between them, not rolling away like he usually does, complaining about Daniel's mound of blankets, which piles up especially high when Max isn't there.

And second, Max is supposed to be in England.

Suddenly much more awake, he opens his eyes again, trying to make his sluggish limbs coordinate to allow him to turn around, but Max squeezes him harder, keeping him in place, shaking his head slightly, nose dragging against Daniel's skin.

"Hey," Daniel mumbles, raspy and heavy with sleepy. Max doesn't answer.

"Max," he tries again, feeling more and more awake, as confusion and worry start to mix in his stomach.

Max, stubborn in this like in everything else, doesn't budge. His steady breath is damp on Daniel's nape.

For a moment, Daniel considers the pros and cons of trying to have this conversation now, trying to turn around and make Max answer his questions, but finally he decides this can probably wait for the morning. If this isn't a dream, Max will probably still be there, and it will be easier to figure out what happened between this morning, when Max had facetimed him on his way to the factory, and now, Max tense and too warm in his bed.

So he lets it go, intertwining his fingers with Max's and sighing again, feeling Max's acknowledgment of his momentary retreat in the way his muscles finally uncoil, relaxing against him.

Silence falls again in the room, only broken up by the whirring of Daniel's white noise machine and the buzzing of far away traffic, LA's neverending lullaby, but neither of them falls asleep for a long time.

The next time Daniel wakes up the room is still dark, in that unique way it gets when it's light outside and his blackout curtains are doing their job, and his bed is empty. For a second he wonders if it had just been a dream, a weirdly realistic fantasy conjured from the aching spot in his heart that is missing Max all the time. But he can smell Max's scent on his skin, even hidden underneath his own body wash, and the sheets beside him are still just barely warm.

And when he reaches the kitchen, still rubbing sleep from his eyes and tugging on a hoodie he had picked up from the floor, Max is sitting on a stool, very much not a dream.

"Morning," Daniel greets him, trying to figure out if asking what are you doing here right away is going to get him an answer or an annoyed Max.

He doesn't get the chance to try though, because Max only smiles at him, bright even if pinched at the corners, before pointing at his phone and at the earbuds in his ears.

Almost done he mouths. He pulls a face, exaggerated and ridiculous, but so paper thin Daniel can still perfectly see the annoyance behind it.

Daniel nods, joining him at the counter, sitting on the stool next to him and smiling as Max scoots closer, intertwining their ankles.

He wishes he had grabbed his own phone from the nightstand to keep himself busy, or maybe to order food, since he's not sure on what's in the fridge, but he's feeling too lazy to get back up, so he resorts to laying his head down on the countertop and look up at Max's face.

His mouth is in a hard line as he nods along to whatever they're telling him, distractedly running a hand along his unshaven jaw. He looks tired, and annoyed, and beautiful, and Daniel missed him so much it feels like even sitting like this, close and touching, is not enough to soothe the gnawing pit in his chest.

Max rolls his eyes, then looks down at Daniel and smiles again, reaching over to brush a hand through his hair, the motion smooth and practiced, the same he uses when petting his cats. Daniel fights hard to not close his eyes.

"Yes, change my schedule, email it to me, whatever. I have to go."

Daniel frowns at the snappiness of Max's tone, watches as his expression grows even stormier at whatever he's been told. Something tells him Max was not exactly free to come here.

"Yes, fine. Bye."

If Max had a flip phone, Daniel is pretty sure he would have just snapped it closed. As it is though, he just swipes his finger on the screen and drops his earbuds on the counter, pressing his hands against his eyes with a sigh.

"I'm going to throw out a wild guess, and say you're not a happy bunny this morning," Daniel says, hoping to ease some of the tension from Max's shoulders.

He partially succeeds, as Max does drop his hands, rolling his eyes at him, before laying his head down on the counter too, so that they're staring at each other from the same point of view.

"I am happy to be here," Max says, slow and precise, the way he gets when he's trying to correctly convey his feelings, "but the team is not."

Daniel hums, bumping their knees together. He doesn't really care if the team is happy or not, but he knows being at the receiving end of a scolding like the one Max must have just gotten is not fun.

"They're not very happy with me lately," Max adds a bit ruefully, closing his eyes. His cheek is smushed against the marble, making the bags under his eye disappear a little, the other one much darker in comparison.

"Flew away from many sponsor events then?" Daniel asks, again trying make Max smile. This time it works only halfway, a corner of Max's mouth ticking up, the other kept in place by his cheek and the counter.

"Just a couple. They..." Max stops, a hand coming up to tug at his ear, fiddle with his hair. Daniel wants to grab his fingers, press his mouth against Max's forehead and learn each one of his thoughts like that.

Instead, he has to speak. Boring.

"Why are you here, Maxy?" he asks, because he can't not. He wonders if he should add that he is happy that Max is there, hopes that he doesn't have to, that Max would know anyway.

"I missed you."

Simple, easy, deadly.

Daniel feels his heart do a weird stuttering skip, lungs squeezing, trying to accommodate the surge of love suddenly flooding his chest.

"I missed you too," he chokes out, giving up on resisting the urge and leaning forward, bumping his nose against Max's, their knees knocking together, looking for a kiss.

Max tastes like orange juice, Daniel probably tastes like sleep, and it's awkward because of the uncomfortable position. It's the best thing Daniel has done this whole week.

"They briefed me," Max murmurs, lips still brushing together, sounding like it pains him to speak. A part of Daniel wants to go back to kissing, but he can feel they are now getting to the real reason why Max is there, and doesn't want to stop it.

Not that he doesn't believe Max missed him, Max never lies, never says something sweet if he doesn't mean it, but he knows there must be another reason why he looks like this, instead of just happy to be with Daniel. And even if some part of him knows this will probably not be an easy conversation, he also suspects it's one they need to have.

"On what to say about you."

Daniel jerks back a little before he can really think about it, the words stinging sharply.

He knows it makes sense. He knows he now basically is an ongoing PR disaster for the team, and a part of him enjoys it, but the reminder of it still hurts. And it hurts to think about Max, sitting somewhere across the world, getting told what to say when asked about him.

Max's eyes are open again now, but his expression is carefully blank, just studying whatever Daniel's face is doing, and Daniel suddenly hates it all, pain and rage swelling once again inside him.

He's been doing well, trying his best not to think about it. He's been keeping himself busy, keeping himself with people, refusing to let the feelings dwell and drag him under, but it's unavoidable with Max right there, talking about it.

And something must show on his face, because he sees something flicker under Max's blank expression, and then he's moving back too, out of the space where they were still sharing air, taking his head off the counter with a wince.

For a second, Daniel thinks about staying where he is, neck starting to twinge painfully, and letting Max say whatever he's going to say, probably some kind of apology, then an excuse, and then letting him leave. He thinks about letting Max think that for Daniel it is worse to have him here, painful reminder of everything he's not going to get anymore, than have him gone, aching pit of absence in his stomach. Thinks about where all of that would lead.

He straightens too.

His wince is probably identical to Max's, his neck aching and sore from the awkward position, and he knows that normally it would make Max smile, it would make them both crack a joke about it. But now Max is too busy trying to hide what he's feeling, wanting to calibrate it on whatever Daniel is feeling, to joke about old age or something, and Daniel hates it.

He grabs Max's arm, pretending he doesn't see Max's barely there flinch, pretending it doesn't send a new wave of hurt through him, and leads him out of the kitchen, to the couch. Max follows him quietly, trustingly, not even asking where they're going, what is happening. Daniel hates it.

He lays down on the couch, tugging Max on top of him. A part of him wishes they had done this last night, when they were close and aided by the dark, but he knows that, as much as he doesn't like it, this is probably better. He doesn't want to have this conversation more than once if possible, so it's better this way, something they'll both remember clearly.

Max is still tense on top of him, careful, but he relaxes a little as Daniel winds his arms around his waist, tugging him closer, the familiar weight of him on top of him comforting.

It's only when they're properly settled that he lets out a breath, and he forces himself to face this head on.

"What did they tell you to say?"

He's proud of how steady and neutral his voice sounds, the swirling mess of emotions inside him nowhere to be found.

For a long moment, Max doesn't answer. His hair is barely brushing against Daniel's chin, and he can feel where Max's chest is expanding as he breathes, pressing against him.

"I am not going to do it," Max finally says, voice quiet but sure. "I told them, I am not."

Daniel hums, not even tempted to doubt him.

"What did they say?" he asks again, wanting to know, wanting Max to tell him.

"That you knew." Ouch. "That you were not performing." Ouch. "That this was the best choice for the team, and I am excited to see what Liam can do." Ouch.

He's not surprised Max wouldn't say any of this, he's more surprised the PR team would even try to make him say this, but it still hurts to know that this is how they are going to spin the story.

"Excited, uh?" is all he manages to say, slightly choked.

Max pushes himself up on one elbow, struggling against Daniel's hold on his waist, to glare up at him, eyes steely and fierce and red rimmed.

"I am not going to do it," he repeats, forceful and sincere. "They are wrong and they are stupid, and I am not going to sit and lie and..."

He breaks off, pursing his lips and pressing them firmly together, eyes shiny. Daniel loves him so much it hurts.

"I know I can't tell the truth," Max says slowly with a grimace, voice breaking under all the feelings he's trying to keep at bay, "but I am not going to lie."

Daniel wants to kiss him again. He wants to tug him close and kiss him and get lost in each other and in love until everything outside the door doesn't matter anymore. He wants to push all this away until it isn't hurting either of them.

Instead, he gently pushes Max down on his chest again, one hand on his neck and one on the small of his back, and breathes.

"You told them that?" he asks.

Max's nod drags the fabric of his hoodie against his skin, bunching it up.

"I said, I will be polite and I will say nice things about Liam, and about Yuki and Checo, but I will not say that shit about you. I am not fixing this for them."

Daniel wonders what the Daniel of 10 years ago would have said, if he got told that in 10 years time Max would still be by his side, fiercely on his side.

"Thank you, Maxy," is all he can say, his feelings to messy and big to try and put them into words without spilling them all over the room, making clean up a bitch he doesn't want to deal with today.

Max nods again once, rough and too quick, dislodging the hand Daniel still has on his neck.

"They were not happy," he says, squirming a little until Daniel puts his hand back. "They told me there will be consequences," he snaps, slightly derisive, "so I told them I can do consequences too, and left."

Well, that explains the scolding.

"You left?" Daniel asks, not disbelieving, but still incredulous somehow.

"I didn't want to be there anymore," Max says, as if that explains it all. It probably does, for him.

For Daniel, it's yet another confirmation of which side Max is on. Not that he needed one more, but it's still nice to have. Nice to know that even in something like this, something this big and catastrophic, Max will choose him, over and over. The flood of love is back, and this time Daniel has to tip his head back and breathe, trying not to let it out through his eyes.

"How angry are they?" he asks, when he feels like his voice isn't tangled up in a knot in his throat anymore.

Max shrugs awkwardly, trapped between Daniel's body and Daniel's hands.

"Angry."

It makes Daniel snort despite himself, the sound slightly wet.

"Can't have everything their way, I guess."

He can imagine it, Max storming out of a meeting room, leaving behind a mix of perplexed and angry people, knowing they can't really punish him in any meaningful way that isn't making him do more sponsor events. It's a very satisfying thought.

And then Max takes a breath, pushes himself up on an elbow again, and decides to shift Daniel's world once again.

"Do you want me to leave?" he asks. Then, probably because he sees Daniel starting to frown, he adds "not here. The team."

It knocks the breath straight out of Daniel's lungs.

He blinks, unable to process what Max has just said.

"You...what?" he stutters, shifting back a little, trying to look at Max's face better without straining his neck.

He's almost expecting Max to laugh, to take it back, to crack a joke. But Max is deadly serious, the same unshakeable firmness Daniel knows from years of debriefs and arguments on his face.

"I want to win," Max says, not taking his eyes away from Daniel's. "I want to race, and I want to win, for a little while longer. But I don't like what they have been doing, what they did to you. I don't like what the team has become. I don't like what the sport is becoming. So if you want me to leave, if it would help that I leave too, I will leave at the end of the year."

Daniel can't breathe. There's loyalty, and there's Max being loyal, and then there's this. He doesn't know what to do with any of this.

"You can't...I can't ask you to leave." His voice sounds distant to his own ears, so overwhelmed it doesn't even feel his.

"If you want me to, if it would make you hurt knowing I am still racing with them, if it would make you angry, or hate me..."

"I am not going to hate you," Daniel interrupts. He doesn't know many things right know, but he knows that. He's suddenly torn between wanting to tug Max close again and wanting to keep looking at him while they talk about this, and settles on bringing his hand up to Max's cheek, relishing in the way he immediately leans into it.

"I don't want you to stop racing because of me," he says, another thing he's sure of.

"I would, if you asked," Max tells him, easy and steady, as if it's not monumental. Max Verstappen, willing to stop racing, for him.

"I won't."

Max nods, then breaks eye contact, suddenly looking shakier, unsure.

"You can't..." he takes a breath, bottom lip jutting out. Daniel's heart is beating too fast in his chest. "You can't hate me for it. I asked, and you said no, you can't hate me for it, now."

Daniel gives in, pressing Max to his chest again, bending his head to press his lips against his hair.

"I won't," he promises, voice swollen and heavy. "I won't hate you, Max. I won't even be angry at you, not for this. It was never on you."

Something that Daniel hadn't even noticed seems to uncoil between Max's shoulders and he slumps against Daniel's chest with a shuddering sigh, arms coming around Daniel's waist to hold him tighter.

Daniel wonders for how long Max had been carrying the weight of this misplaced guilt, of this fear. Wonders how he hadn't seen it before.

"If you want to leave for you," he carefully says, giving himself time to properly word what he wants to say, thinking about retirement jokes, and about much more serious retirement conversations, "you are free to leave. I will not be angry about that either."

Max shivers as he nods.

"I don't know if I want to," he mumbles, half lost in Daniel's hoodie. His hair is soft against Daniel's lips.

"You don't have to decide right now," Daniel tells him, suddenly and strongly grateful they're having this conversation like this, and not through a phone. Or worse, not having it at all. "I am not going to be your WAG, but I am not going to be angry either."

There's many things Daniel has to work through, to figure out. The past few weeks have been hard, some days spent in bed, too sad and angry and betrayed to feel like getting up, others spent doing things, feeling like all of this is just the start o something better. He is still confused, and a bit lost, but this he knows. Max he knows.

"I love you," he says, because it's the easiest way he has to promise forever without saying it, the word too big for a moment like this.

"I love you too," Max says, easy and unwavering, as if he wasn't shaking in Daniel's arms a few moments ago, as if the words are a steady enough pillar to sustain the weight of the crumbling word around them.

And maybe they are. Maybe they are.

The conversation isn't over, he knows it. What Max has said is too big to just let it go like this, especially if he really is considering retirement. And he wants to know when Max has to go back, what the team has told him, what his punishment for leaving like this will be. But for now, Daniel presses his lips again Max's hair again and breathes out, feeling like they have pushed past something, undone a particularly nasty knot.

And for everything else they have time.

[lazylittledragon]

i guess my political opinions are quite extreme in that i don't believe there should ever be any sort of debate on whether or not a group of people deserve the right to exist

[mikakuna]

the way people care more about jason fighting tim than like any other rogue fighting tim during his robin run is...!

"they're brothers! jason is so horrible to attack his little brother."

aside from the obvious twinkification of tim, stop pushing the family narrative on two people who did not see each other as siblings at that moment.

[einaudis]

ALL OF US STRANGERS (2023) dir. ANDREW HAIGH

[infiniteglitterfall]

OMG, COULD EVERYONE PLEASE STOP IMMEDIATELY BELIEVING AND REPEATING DISINFORMATION?!

Sorry, I just. Was just on Twitter, and I snapped.

I literally haven't seen one true statement about Israel on social media in MONTHS.

It's gotten to the point that I'm seriously considering starting a sideblog fact-checking all of it.

PLEASE STOP BEING GARFIELD I AM BEGGING ALL OF YOU

BE NERMAL FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

I've written at least one really long post about fact-checking things before. I have another saved as a draft somewhere.

But all you really have to do at this point is GO LOOK AT AN ACTUAL NEWS SOURCE.

What do I mean by an Actual News Source?

An actual news source will tell you where it's getting its information.

Basically: Wikipedia rules apply at all times. Citation. Fucking. Needed.

Except with news articles, I don't mean a detailed footnote.

I mean, if they say, "Rosco Flubberish reported seeing a pig fly across Whatever Place. 'It was a flying pig,' he said," they're fine.

If they say, "Sources close to the President reported that the Department of Farmland Creatures launched a pig into the air this afternoon," they're fine.

If they say, "There have also been reports that pigs flew," they are purely making shit up.

Just check CNN or something. CNN checks their shit, and they're very quick on the draw.

NBC has been very reliable too, in my experience. So have ABC, Newsweek, the Jerusalem Post, the Guardian, the New York Times, the AP, PBS, the Washington Post, and Reuters.

You can break through most paywalls by putting archive.is or 12ft.io before the https:// of the URL. Or just go to either of those sites and paste the URL in the box.

Nobody is perfect. I've seen some articles from all of the above that were accurate, but left things out that I personally thought were important.

Journalists are humans, humans fuck up.

(Also, NONE OF THIS APPLIES TO OPINION PIECES ON ANY TOPIC. Opinion pieces are exactly that: opinions. They don't seem to be fact-checked anywhere, as far as I can tell. They range from super-accurate and informative to complete nonsense.)

(Surprisingly unreliable sources in my experience: Democracy Now, Jacobin, Workers World Party. The latter two act like news sites but are basically running nothing but opinion pieces; Democracy Now can do important deep dives, but I've also seen news coverage from it that was wildly misinformed in that same way.

On the flip side, Slate and the Atlantic are largely opinion -- the Atlantic more than Slate, maybe -- but they often have really well-researched analysis of political situations. Ditto Teen Vogue, and sometimes Vox.)

You don't have to read CNN or the NYT or whateverfor fun. You don't have to make it one of your news sources.

Just. Do a quick check on Google News before you assume anything is true, and then run it through a bullshit filter as described above.

You are being actively lied to, all the time. So am I. We all are.

And people will believe and repeat literally anything that sounds about right.

That's just human nature.

That is WHY none of us are immune to propaganda.

if you want my personal shortlist of Bad Sources, as in Sources That Consistently Publish Absolute Falsehoods:

Any and all state-owned or state-controlled media. For example:

Al Jazeera is owned by the Qatari government, and so are a bunch of other news sites.

Mehr News, the Tehran Times, Al-Quds TV, and Al-Alam are owned by the dictatorship of Iran.

Oops. Looks like every form of broadcast Iranian news media is owned by the dictatorship of Iran, which has a monopoly.

Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, Palestinian News and Info Agency, and Al-Hayat Al-Jadida are owned by the government of Palestine (the Palestinian Authority)

Al-Aqsa TV and Felesteen are owned by Hamas.

TASS / Russia News Agency, Russia Today, and a fuckton of others are owned by the Russian government.

State Media Monitor seems to do a pretty great job of tracking and listing these things. Check out your own country there!

I specifically listed those ones because some of them (especially Al Jazeera, Mehr News, and TASS) are sites I've seen come up frequently on Tumblr, or in my attempts to fact-check what people are saying here and on Twitter. The rest are just more examples from the same governments.

Al Jazeera deserves special notice because it's become a very popular leftist news source. Believe me, I used to read it all the time too.

It can be reliable and accurate sometimes. But:

It consistently tweets things that are unsourced, never appear anywhere else, and that would be big news you'd expect it to follow up on if they were true. It seems to be following a strategy of "tweet every rumor you hear in case it's true, so you can get the scoop."

It also does this with its liveblogs of the war. And ALL its coverage of the war at this point is liveblogs. So things that are verifiably true will run right next to things that are complete hearsay, but are too long to just tweet.

This is especially dangerous because as far as I can tell, Al Jazeera doesn't delete anything that turns out to be false.

I've also seen regular news articles in Al Jazeera, on multiple topics, that veer from Absolutely True Statements to Wildly Exaggerated Numbers and Speculation. Stuff you wouldn't expect a source on, like statistics or descriptions. And there's no way to tell the difference unless you already know a topic really well, or are fact-checking them while you read.

One especially terrible example, from Gazan activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib:

Al Jazeera has never posted or published a correction.

Alkhatib has also blamed it for destabilizing the region, although he's exaggerating about it being Hamas's official propaganda outlet:

TL;DR: If you see a Tumblr post making any kind of factual news statement without a link, at this point you need to assume it is absolutely not true. And either scroll on past, or go check Google News.

If there IS a link, you need to click through to see what it's from and what it actually says.

(Honestly, you need to do that with Wikipedia too. I've repeatedly clicked through on citations that absolutely did not say what the article implied they did.)

And pro tip: on mobile, you can just smack a button to sort Google's news results by most recent, and it helps A LOT. There's gotta be a way to do the same on desktop, but if there is, it's not immediately visible, which sucks.

[lej222]

Supernatural Involvement and Ominous Signs in ASLFUA

For a while, many readers have theorized that there is some kind of a higher power/higher being in ASLFUA, and looking at the latest episodes it seems to have been confirmed. With this post, I've tried to gather every instance of the higher power's implied presence and all the ominous scenes in the story. I also included foreshadowing scenes that could have made Miae aware of certain things if she had paid attention because coincidences are important in the story, and certain moments that were defining in the plot.

Episode 2 :

Miae is reading a book in the library about how the last day of 1999 will be the end of the world: "'1999, a terrifying overlord is coming...the end of the human race.." -> this might be a reference to the famous prophecy of Nostradamus in which in the 7th month of 1999 a great king of terror would descend from the skies (which makes me think...is it July in the story right now?)

The Hwang family's phone stops working

Miae's dresser breaks and therefore she has to take out the trash, where she sees Cheol crying

"This boy is about to be this girl's most special person, someone whom she will never be able to forget."

Episode 3

Miae and her mother visit the Buddha statue and Miae's wish is not to be in the same class with Cheol - it doesn't come true.

Miae, Cheol and Jisu all become classmates in their last year. Miae and Cheol become deskmates by coincidence.

Episode 4

Cheol's furniture becomes Miae's, along with the contents of his dresser, something only he knows about

Episode 5

Yunhui calls Miae on their new cordless phone, the line is interrupted by another conversation, "Did you get the present I sent you?" - it sounds like a message to Miae from the higher power about Cheol

Episode 8

Miae ruins her bangs, her mother says she should do something about her hair - the first time we are told Miae should go to a hairdresser to fix it

Hwanggeum Academy uses corporal punishment - might be relevant later on?

Miae has to go to karaoke so she gives up on going to the hair salon (this foreshadowing is super crazy btw)

Episode 9

Cheol is compared to the protagonist of the comic Miae reads, 'My First Love Next Door Is Number 1' - gets into trouble and transfers, fights the school bully and wins, nicknamed Lucifer, has a facial scar, lives next door

As Miae is thinking about Cheol, her thoughts are interrupted by a cockroach in the classroom

Episode 11

Miae notes how strange it is that she keeps seeing Cheol while they didn't bump into each other the previous year (just like how Jisu later keeps commenting how strange he keeps meeting Miae) - Miae acknowledges the higher power

Yunhui's pager says "between friends goodbye"

Episode 12

Miae has a weird feeling when she's talking to Cheol's shoe as if it understands what she's saying

Episode 15

In her dream, Miae remembers Cheol crying and her making a wish with a stone tower about how she wants to be his friend. The phone suddenly rings, the TV becomes static and there's a storm outside despite the weather forecast not saying anything about it. The other end of the phone is silent and the lights go out.

Episode 17

Cheol's shoe gets smudged with ink so Miae cannot give it back to him. She cannot concentrate on her practice test, foreshadowing her involvement with Cheol's academy.

Episode 21

Miae again remembers some memories about Cheol saying he doesn't want to be her friend while she's sleeping

Side note: while Soonkki is a great writer, there's some inconsistency about Jisu's seating arrangement. I think she always meant him to sit in Block 1, that's why we got limited panels of that area of the classroom, but his position kept changing until his official introduction. Here, he should have been sitting in front of Seonghan, but there's another boy in that seat. In episode 23, we get a panel of Block1 again, and there's a boy who looks like Jisu from behind in that.

She again remembers her time with Cheol while sleeping on the bus

Episode 24

Daebak Academy notebook says "The teacher is spoon-feeding you, so why can't you pass" -> the higher power is giving hints to Miae, why can't she understand them?

Episode 29

Miae thinks about how she doesn't bump into Cheol as much as before, we get a close-up of the shoe and the Daebak Academy notebook

Episode 37

Miae falls on Cheol while playing soccer

Episode 39

Miae and Cheol are arguing but still bump into each other because of their parents

While Miae thinks about how Cheol should smile at people, she almost gets hit by a ball but Cheol saves her.

Episode 40

Cheol goes to Miae's house to do their homework. Miae's mother says she wonders if it will rain before she leaves. Cheol tries to change the lightbulb in Miae's room, but the lights go out because of the storm. Miae thinks "again?" and they fall on each other. She tells Cheol they should be friends.

Episode 41

Cheol agrees to be Miae's friend and we see a flashback of young Miae wishing they would be friends. While they are doing their homework the rain stops. Miae says planes even fly in the rain and Cheol replies that airplanes fly above the clouds.

Episode 42

Miae answers their phone and the line is interrupted again. Someone thanks their boss for the present and says they will do well on their own from now. -> is it a sign Miae should do well on her own after the hints?

Interesting to note that every time Miae might be involved with the higher power, certain objects in her room are highlighted - Cheol's shoe, the lamp, the notebooks. They all give signs to Miae that she keeps ignoring.

Episode 43

Cheol and Yonghui point out that Miae should get a haircut. Miae ends up cutting it herself instead of going to a salon.

Episode 45

Miae wishes upon a star instead of a plane so that the presentation in class will go okay. This actually comes true, as also noted by the narrator in ep 46.

Episode 46

Daebak Academy booklet says "nothing comes easy"

Episode 47

Something I've noticed is that throughout the story Miae keeps thinking she forgot something, and there's usually a situation that seems like the answer to it. Here, it turns out she forgot about Jinseop's homework. And Taekwang's song is about how someone cannot do both things at the same time. It was the same when she forgot about her homework while playing soccer. Forgetting about things is a recurring plot point for Miae, which culminates in the Jisu subplot where we learn Miae completely forgot about his existence even though she didn't have many friends who were boys.

Episode 50

Cheol's father wants to take a picture of Cheol and Miae, but Cheol refuses

Episode 51

Miae again cuts her own hair and wonders if she cut it too straight

Episode 55

Cheol kicks Miae's pencil into Jisu's chair (side note: you can see here again how Jisu's seating arrangement was inconsistent, he should have been closer to the window)

Episode 56

Miae gets sent out to the corridor with Jisu

Miae's friends talk about handsome boys and someone mentions the number1 student (Jisu)

Episode 60

Jisu becomes Miae's folk dance partner - the first time Cheol and Miae are not doing something together

Episode 61

Hwanggeum Academy booklet says "there's nothing you can't do if you put the work in, do not expect a miracle" when Miae is struggling with the dance

Episode 65

Cheol's father takes a picture of Cheol and Miae after the sports festival

Episode 66

In Miae's dream, Cheol's sister says for a while means 5-6 yrs, Miae counts she will be in middle school by then. There's also a memory of Miae running after Cheol, saying "wait for me".

Miae's mother tells her to get a haircut but Miae replies she needs a bigger allowance for it.

The narrator says Miae should watch where she's walking after she bumps into Cheol.

Episode 67

Miae loses her name tag and Jisu finds it

Episode 70

Miae wonders how her wishes never come true, but remembers she also made one with the stone tower as a kid, but cannot recall what it was about.

Episode 71

Miae's mom notes their phone keeps ringing since yesterday. The day before Miae wanted to tease Cheol with how she heard him saying he "loved her" in the shop and she saw him shirtless the same night.

Miae doesn't realize it was Jisu who called her a pervert

Episode 72

Miae notices someone wearing her name tag (Jisu), but doesn't find the culprit

Episode 75

Cheol wants to ask Miae something, but the homeroom teacher interrupts. Miae and Jisu get called to the teachers' room and have to do cleaning duty together for a week.

Episode 76

We see Miae's mom at a hair salon - could the lady in orange be Jisu's mother? who knows

Episode 77

Cheol stands up for Miae, but when Honggyu asks if they are dating, they both vehemently deny it. It suddenly starts raining.

Episode 78

Miae and cheol promise to be friends for real, forever. The narration comments, "But will they end up regretting their promise?". The rain stops. "1999, the final year of the century is half over" -> Miae's story is half over at this point. I have pointed out this before, but the series seems to be about the transition period between childhood and young adulthood, symbolized by the last year before the new millennium. Hence the title, 'green apple academy'

In her dream, Miae remembers asking Cheol if they are friends. She is awoken by their phone. the Daebak Academy notebook says "you are in danger if you are relaxed" and we see a girl talking to Cheol.

Episode 81

Cheol and Miae fall on each other and almost kiss, but the phone rings. Later, they do end up in the same position with an accidental kiss.

Episode 82

Miae wants to confront Cheol about the kiss and gets embarrassed, but her actions are interrupted when the trash bag she gave Jisu splits open, spilling its contents. Miae runs to him to collect it.

Episode 83

While Miae talks to her friends, she thinks back on her memories with Cheol and the narration says "I always liked.." and Miae looks surprised by it.

Episode 86

Interesting detail that Cheol doesn't know why Miae keeps looking at airplanes. If we assume she has a reason for doing it from the past, it's likely not related to Cheol.

Episode 87

Miae uses the trashbag as an excuse to run away from Cheol, repeating how she has to throw it out. All of a sudden, Jisu appears and takes it out of her hand, giving her a chance to run. It's just my personal theory that the trashbag here symbolizes Miae's vulnerability and reluctance to face her feelings, and Jisu takes it from her hand. It makes sense when we remember how his words made her think about her actions when she wanted to interrupt the confession. It's a great early foreshadowing that Jisu might play an important role in Miae's growth story as her voice of reason.

Episode 89

Cheol and Miae take photos together in a photo booth, first with Jinseop and Song-I, then the two of them alone. We don't know if Miae still has her pictures, but we can assume she somehow lost them during running around from the bullies because we never see them again. Cheol gives her a new name tag in the next episode.

Episode 95

Cheol gifts Miae an airplane model for her birthday. I personally believe this episode marks the end of the first part of the story and it's a turning point, but more about this under ep96.

While Miae leaves for school, their phone suddenly rings and her mom answers it. Miae sees posters about love on her way to school. For the first time, Jisu arives early for cleaning duty.

Episode 96

The series has had 2 symbolic illustrations at the end of 2 episodes. The first one was at the end of ep2, when Cheol and Miae's story started in the present:

Miae is offering a green apple to Cheol - a biblical allusion, here, the green apple probably signifies how Miae helps Cheol in the first part of the story to mature and grow as a person with her own knowledge.

This illustration comes at the end of ep96. Like I mentioned, I believe this marks the start of the second half of the story which focuses on Miae's growth as a person. Space is an important concept in the series, Miae also has planet stickers on the wall of her room,has a charm on her bag, etc.

"16 years old. An age much like the universe." "16 years old. An age where it's like you're thrown into space." - highlights the narration.

But why is it compared to space? We have the illustration right after Jisu splashes water on Miae's face and Cheol wakes up from his dream. In my opinion, it's because this is where these kids' limited worlds start to expand. In part 1, Cheol and Miae were mainly together, but as you grow up you start to feel like you're just one insignificant part of a greater whole. You might feel like you're the center of the universe when you're a teenager, and that the world is ending when you experience negative emotions, but as the illustration shows us, it's not just Miae and Cheol standing alone in the universe. There are other people, facing different directions, but they are all interconnected by an invisible force. Miae is looking at Cheol, but Jisu is standing in her shadow- because even though she was not aware of him, Jisu had his own life happening parallel to what we saw in part1, and this is where he starts to have an intersection with Miae. If there is a higher power in the story, it is aware of all these connections and talks about youth in a nostalgic way. The sense that these moments are fleeting is always present in the story, however, connections formed between individuals will always have a lasting impact, just like how the universe will continue to exist. Being thrown into space might feel like losing your footing, but here it's the personal relationships that ground these teenagers and make them stay close to Earth.

Episode 98

The teacher tells Miae to cut her hair after Jisu takes the blame for ruining the plant.

Cheol is acting strange because of his dream, and while Jisu looks at Miae the narration box says: "16 years old. An age riddled with the unknown, just like the universe."

Episode 99

Miae's hair gets stuck in the zipper of Cheol's bag and he pulls it out, ruining her bangs in the process. They go to the infirmary after Miae gets scratched by the zipper.

Episode 100

At the countryside, while Miae picked a flower she thought how nice it would be if Cheol came to her school - and it became true. She thinks how it was so strange -> Miae again unknowingly acknowledges the higher power when it comes to Cheol

Episode 101

It's raining and the TV is not working in Cheol's home. He remembers taking a picture with Miae in the countryside. He asks his father about the picture on the sports day -> the data was lost. Miae gets grounded by her mother and she wants her to quit the academy.

Episode 102

I've mentioned symbolic objects in the story, but this one was noted by other readers as well: in ep 101, Miae accidentally drops the chalkboard eraser out of the window and Jisu fails to catch it - but Cheol does. However, in this episode Miae tosses it back to Jisu before saying she hopes they'll never see each other again (it's the first, but not the last time she declares it).

Cheol fails to convince Miae's mom about the academy -> Miae's mom points out Miae's grades have been dropping since last year. She makes her stance clear - she wants Miae to study.

Episode 103

It's raining and Miae cannot open Cheol's drawer in her room.

She tries to cut her hair, but the phone rings. On the other line, Miae hears someone saying "I only did what I did because you wanted it so bad, but you screwed up that chance! You don't deserve that project, I'm going to hand it to someone else." -> the first time the higher power tries to directly say Miae is late

Miae's mom cuts her hair instead of sending her to a salon...

Miae loses the name tag Cheol gave her

Episode 104

Jisu says "see you again" to Miae (and will keep saying for a while lol). Miae points out she never wanted to see him again.

Episode 106

After the teacher discovers their conversations in class, Miae and Cheol get separated and Miae becomes Jisu's deskmate. Miae and Cheol are not allowed to interact until the final exams are over.

Hwanggeum Academy's notebook remarks "Do you regret it now?"

Episode 107

Miae dreams about the flower from the countryside and a voice says she should hurry up and do what she wants about her wish if she remembers. She doesn't remember and the voice gets angry, Cheol appears and crushes the flower, telling her if she doesn't remember she should just forget it. The voice remarks Cheol is angry because Miae is late.

Episode 111

Jisu, who has also become aware of the coincidences, tells Cheol he's not the only one having something special with Miae.

When Miae calls Jisu her friend from the same class and tells him he should learn for himself, Jisu tries to say something, but he is interrupted by Cheol.

Episode 112

Miae thinks about their bet and how she should ask something serious, something more than friends do from Cheol, and we get a bunch of error messages. Cheol's dream is all fuzzy.

Jisu wins the bet, but we never get to know his wish because Miae gets angry at him.

Episode 115

The narration points out Cheol has changed and matured a lot, is it Miae's turn?

Episode 116

We see some posters about a summer festival, the forest in Midsummer Night's Dream and how everything is the product of coincidence.

The forest in Shakespeare's play is dominated by the supernatural - what we have in common with this story is the forest Miae and Cheol played together as kids, and obviously the involvement of a higher power. The coincidences poster is possibly a reference to Carl Jung's Synchronicity, a concept that states that seemingly meaningful coincidences have a deeper meaning, they don't have a rational explanation - almost like destiny, a deeper order in the universe. It's a connection between one's psyche and the material world (so you have to notice and acknowledge the deeper meaning of these coincidences in order to experience synchronicity). Jung used this to argue for the existence of the paranormal. For example, if you cannot decide something, you might come across a book on the topic. What a coincidence, right? In this interpretation, everything is interconnected in the universe, and we are a part of this web of connections. So those coincidences...were actually not coincidences. -> Hmmmmm.....I wonder.....meaningful coincidences, the universe, connections...why do they sound familiar??? BECAUSE OUR STORY IS EXACTLY ABOUT THIS NOTION! Who notices these coincidences? Miae about Cheol, Jisu about Miae....One has to be open to the possibility of the connection between our inner world and the outside world, only then they can start to notice the signs the universe is sending them. Soonkki, you deserve my applause! Because it was exactly what I said about the art at the end of ep 96 and the placement of the characters. Mind? Blown!

Miae thinks that she feels something is wrong

Yunhui's pager says friends goodbye

Jisu gets involved in the Yonghui-Yunhui storyline by coincidence

Episode 117

We see all the coincidences from Jisu's perspective and how he became aware of them. And what does he say about them? That they are fascinating and kind of funny! My boy Jisu got the synchronicity message.

This is the 3rd time Miae and Jisu didn't hold hands. The first time Miae pretended to help him up, only for him to fall back. Then Jisu held out his hand after the exam, but she didn't take it. Here, he again reaches out and Miae doesn't take his hand. Remember this later!

Episode 118

Someone steps on Cheol's bag, and he's worried it might be Taeuk

Jisu wants to join in another bet in exchange for his help

Episode 119

Jisu gets involved in the Shim storyline, and as we know from later he picks up the cigarettes to get revenge on him

Episode 122

Miae learns that Cheol rejected Seonyeong and the lights flicker in her room

She cannot remember her dream. The narration says that she should have realized that something changed.

Episode 123

Miae notes that she experienced the kiss in the comic book with Cheol

Jisu almost catches her, but Cheol pushes him away

Episode 126

The parents are having dinner together at a pig feet restaurant and toast for the future of their children. The TV is not working, and a boy who looks like Jisu tries to fix it.

Miae kisses Cheol

Episode 127

Miae has a dream again in the white dress. As she realizes she might like Cheol, the voice says she's too late and there's no use regretting it.

Episode 129

Miae remembers that they took a picture in the countryside together and wants to take one now. She makes a wish to an airplane about how she just wants one photo, and remarks that the planes never granted her wish before. Spoiler, they won't this time, either.

Miae chooses to take the picture with Cheol. The narration box says "she's always done whatever she sets her mind to. That has always been one of her better attributes. But Mi-ae, it seems as though you keep forgetting something. I told you, you're too late."

The pager's message means idiot, cancelled and it suddenly starts raining. Maie and Cheol cannot take their photo and Cheol cannot give her back the hairpin she dropped a few eps ago.

Episode 132

Graduation photos were postponed until the second semester

In Miae's dream, the voice says she's all over the place and cannot decide what she wants from Cheol. In her memory, Miae wishes at the stone tower that Cheol would like her back. The voice angrily remarks how it must not mean much to her.

Episode 133

While Cheol and Miae are looking at each other, Miae is smacked in the face by a flyer. Later while they are riding the bike, Cheol almost says she looks pretty but he is hit in the face with a flyer that belonged to Jisu.

Episode 134

Miae takes the cigarettes from Jisu and puts them in her backpack

While Jisu and Miae look at each other, the narration box says "Well. this is what we would call fate. What do you think?" Miae can sense the voice and dismisses it.

Jisu again says "see you later" and Miae answers let's not, but Jisu replies they never know and it would be fun.

On the radio in Miae's room there's a voice speaking, asking if it was a success and how there is something you can't stop thinking about. "A friend? The fact that you weren't wrong? Whatever it is, I don't think it's such a bad thing to obsess over it a little bit. I hope you have no regrets about it."

Episode 135

Miae's eyebrow and bangs are so ruined she has to finally go to a hair salon. Yunhui gives her money and says there's a cheap place where she can go. It turns out Jisu's mother is a hairdresser and after realizing she is Jisu's friend, she doesn't ask for money. So if anyone ever wondered why Miae kept ruining her hair in the story, here's the answer....

a little bit of strange wording here:

The narration says "Now that I think about it, this was about the time..wait,no, it was a little bit earlier that things started to go wrong, little by little. You two were completely oblivious, though. Just you two."

Miae's mother goes to the academy. One theory I can give on this is that Miae's family might be moving. She wished for it at the start of the story, mentions it in a later episode as well. Who knows ~

Episode 138

Miae doesn't tell Cheol her feelings because of her pride as she feels like she would lose first

Miae has a feeling as if something is trying to make her look bad in front of Cheol and her gun suddenly starts working

Everybody forgot to buy the picture they took together in ep 139

Episode 140

After conveying their feelings indirectly to each other, Miae tells Cheol they cannot date right now because her mom wouldn't allow it. She plans to go to the same high school, university, everything and thinks there's no one to stop them so nothing can go wrong.

Episode 141

Cheol imagines high school together with Miae and their friends

Every time Cheol is flustered, he accidentally drinks his sister's coffee and he cannot sleep at night..in a story where dreams are relevant I'm sure this is just a coincidence, right???🧐🙃😏

Miae says they should not be obvious before the entrance exam and they start to think of it as a competition

Someone watches them from the street

Episode 144-145

We get everything from Cheol's POV

Cheol got his scar because he wanted to give Miae the romance book she liked before they left and he fell on the stone tower

The picture his dad took of them is about a young Cheol accidentally kneeling with flowers in his hands, the same flowers from Miae's dream, in front of Miae. This picture was in the book Cheol and his family kept.

Cheol realized the book was in his dresser that is now in Miae's room, the one she couldn't open before

Episode 146

Miae sees two flyers in the newspaper, one is about how a student still didn't give it up, the other is about changing one's car

On the street, the same car ads keep flying after her in the wind

Miae goes with Yonghui to wait in a line and the same flyers are all over the place

Episode 147

Miae wants to call Cheol, but Jisu stops her. Miae notices how often they have met during vacation, and Jisu says these coincidences are fun. He remarks it's almost like as if some higher power is involved (!!). Miae is standing on the car ad, they look down on it with Jisu, then she kicks it away. Jisu tells her he has a feeling they will meet again, but Miae hopes they won't.

The academy is also full of the car ads and Miae falls on them

Miae thinks that for a while she's had a feeling as if something wants to get between her and Cheol, but brushes it off

Miae ends up with a bubble gum in her hair and goes to Jisu's house to fix it. Jisu tells her she should stay because he is bored, and there is a car ad on a stool.

Episode 148

We see some of Jisu's childhood memories and he was called a magpie by Miae which was a symbolic choice (I also made a post about it). Jisu in this story is the grateful magpie.

Miae and Jisu "touch hands" for the first time when they high-five (I wrote about how their hand hold never happened before)

After spotting some men smoking, Jisu tells Miae to go inside (one of them might be his father?)

Episode 149

Miae finally remembers Jisu

the narration boxs keeps saying how Jisu is cool and showing heart-thumping sounds and Miae is confused about these strange things

Miae not remembering Jisu was an important plot point considering she recalled everyone else from her past. As I theorized, memories and fate seem to be intertwined, the synchronicity theory also supports this. Synchronicity happens when seemingly unrelated events coincide and they become significant to you. It's easy to see why Jisu was aware of this notion, but Miae was not - because Miae had no idea about those coincidences other than meeting Jisu randomly. Him being her classmate, being the one who found her pencil, who helped her in the crowd, found her name tag, etc. - only Jisu knew about these. But right now, Miae was made aware that they knew each other in the past - a pretty big coincidence.

So now that Miae might have kickstarted her own fate, the question is whether she will be able to fight it or if there are certain things bound to happen no matter what. Is the narrator omnipotent and omniscient? So many questions that will hopefully get answered.

Episode 150

For the first time, Miae says she and Jisu will see each other again sometime. Before this, it was always Jisu who said it and Miae would reply that she didn't want to meet him again.

Miae remembers Jisu transferring, but doesn't know why he singled her out (so she will probably recall more memories later)

As Miae leaves Jisu's house, the car ads are flying in the air around her

Jisu enrolls at the academy and for the first time he says it's not a coincidence

Episode 155

Hwani tells her mother it would be great if they could keep being neighbours with Miae because she's fun. After a pause, Cheol's mother agrees.

Jisu keeps telling Miae she's a "traitor" or "bat" (depending on the translation, meaning she keeps secrets from others like the Yonghui Yunhui situation and the fact that she went to Jisu's house) and she might get into trouble because of that

[sysig]

Don’t be silly! Okay, be a little silly (Patreon)

[repurposedmeatlocker]

This has to be one of the funniest slapstick scenes put to animation.

[allgirlsareprincesses]

Stop calling My Lady Jane stupid! It's not stupid, it's actually a very deliberate and carefully crafted show FFS. They purposely made it anachronistic and whimsical and sexy AF! And it's good at being all those things!

Just like how Bridgerton isn't real history either and it's not trying to be, but it's very good at being a romantic fantasy!

Stop trying to prove you have refined taste and just enjoy things!

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

For $5 USD stop making everything about that goddamn show for five minutes.

[a-dragons-journal]

Forgive me for showing my fangs a little here instead of being as delicate in phrasing as I usually am, but. Periodic reminder:

sweeping "humans suck, humans are evil, the world would be better off if humans disappeared/had never evolved" statements may be cathartic but they're thoroughly inaccurate (ie, the vast majority of uniquely bad effects of humans on the planet are a) extremely recent, like within the last couple centuries, b) the fault of an extremely small minority not the entire fucking species, and c) fixable)

hating being human isn't the same as hating humans. I get species dysphoria is a thing. I get that it's often hard to fit in as a nonhuman in human social groups and that can make it easy to slip into hating everyone around you. Please fight that instinct

villainizing people for traits they didn't choose, such as the species they were born into, is neither cute nor fair. No species is inherently good or bad

misanthropy is cathartic in short term vents or whatever but genuinely embracing it wholesale as a philosophy is liable to lead to you hating humans, human society, and being in a human body more and more over time and thus make your life worse by constantly reinforcing a thought pattern that makes you angry and upset

you are not immune to being part of human society (translation: just because you're nonhuman doesn't mean you're not included in statements about the effects of the human population on the world, ie "humans are killing the planet")

related, you are not better than humans for being nonhuman. looking at my fellow dragons in particular on this one. I get it, draconic pride is a thing, dragon brain probably says you're the supreme being and all else is beneath you especially anyone who annoys you. Mine does too. Please recognize that is an instinct you are supposed to FIGHT, not something that's TRUE AND THAT YOU SHOULD EMBRACE. Good fucking gods.

some nonhumans are also human (it's me, I'm some nonhumans) and you are making sweeping "humans suck, why would I ever want to be human, all humans do is kill the planet" statements in the presence of people included in those statements, which is insanely rude (and no, you don't get to "but you're different because you're nonhuman" me! you do not get to decide to ignore half of who I am because you don't like it, you do not get to decide I'm not "really" human, and also see the previous bullet point). this goes doubly if you're in a space like a DIscord server where people have expressly stated they're not comfortable being tacitly included in statements like that

saying "but I don't REALLY mean all humans, I just mean the specific ones at fault!" after the fact does not actually change anything if every other thing you say is constantly "humans humans humans" and not the group you're actually referring to, or at the very least doesn't change how it reads to everyone around you