#say what you want but Conservatives are the LEAST funny people EVER

[papirouge]

What the fuck does Romanian police arresting a sex trafficker have anything to do with American bullshit? Why does the swedish teen climate change activist that laughed at him on twitter trigger them so much lmao

IKR? They are straight up asking for Biden to pardon him, like......THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS. AND YOU CAN'T PARDON SOMEONE WHO HAS YET TO GET A SENTENCE!!! If they had a brain, they'd rather talk about extradition, but these idiots think Romania is the 51st state of the USA somehow... Honestly USAmericans deserve their reputation of being absolute idiots.

And yes, Greta got them real shook. Watching them navigate through the 7 stages of grief to cope with that trainwreck was hilarious.

First they spread straight up misinformation saying Tate got released....by posting months old videos of him partying. Bold of them to pretend to escape from "the matrix" when they are so kin to drown themselves in their own delusion by crafting a whole another reality to fit their own bias....like b, shut up about the "eScApInG fRoM tHe mAtRiX" YOU ARE THE MATRIX!!

Then they said Greta should be ashamed of making fun of the size of his peepee (funny, bc this whole anti bodyshaming thing came from the "woke mob" that Conservatives usually looove clowning for resorting to emotionalism...🤔)

And now they're seething saying that the Greta joke wasn't funny and that the narrative of him being doxxed by his own pizza was fake.....when those are actually just details in this whole fiasco, and tbh people being nitpicky about this just proves even further how they are too embarrassed to handle the bigger picture so they try to deflect onto small details. Whether Tate doxxed himself or not doesn't retrieve anything to the pathetic irony of him being arrested moments after making a lame 2 minutes video comeback bc he got his fee fees hurt by a one liner comeback on Twitter. What truly made people lose their mind was 1)that (low blow) clapback was out of character for Greta. She usually barely engages with anyone on her twitter account, so the fact she chose violence like that is unprecedented 2)the timing of him getting in a stupid twitter beef flexing about his wealth & lifestyle just before getting arrested was just perfect 3)the irony of him being dragged by an autistic girl half his age when his whole brand his the strong unbothered Alpha male is peak poetic cinema. Only stupid moids think they are doing something being like "sO yOu Admit yOu Have a sMalL peNis GrEtA?? tHat'S yOur oWn AdDreSS aMiRitE???🤪" ....like, that's such a typical boomer-tier brand of 1st degree level reading comprehension..... By making a stupider comeback to an already stupid post Greta took the piss out of Tate and there are no configuration in which he could possibly make a compelling come back. Brillant. Sometimes, you have to lay as low as your enemy, and considering the unpredicted consequences of this stunt, that's what made her move retrospectively outstandingly funny. Moids, scrotes and Tate-sexuals can seethe, Greta won💚

[stealth-liberal]

Whew, I have a lot to say, and I know for a FACT that not a single non Jewish person on here will give a shit... but I have to vent.

Antisemitism in America is so bad that I honestly don't know if it's safe to send my daughter off to college in 2 years. She doesn't know either. Both of us have discussed her staying home and doing as much of her university education online, so as to keep her safe. She has sensory issues and an anxiety disorder... and already she has been rejected all over the place in her high school campus since 10/7.

The Women's Empowerment Club? The club leader has made it so that no female Jewish student feels safe there, and all of them quit. The little leftist neo nazi in charge of it probably cheered as they left and patted herself on the back for her "praxis". Maybe she can start goose stepping and yelling "Heil Hitler!" while she's at it. But she's not unique. Feminist organizations the world over deny mass rape of Jewish women. Why? Because it's Me Too Unless You're a Jew. They want us all raped and in the grave. Period.

The Pride Club? Forget it. All queer Jewish kids are persona non grata there. Apparently it's cool if Jewish queers are the subject of violence... and I can't say more or I'll start wanting to kill people. I am bisexual, my husband is bisexual, our daughter is lesbian. I have been part of this community since I was 12 as an ally and since I was 15 as a bisexual (took me some time to figure out what I was). My daughter came out in 4th grade for G-d's sake. We've been there, fighting the fight and now... queer organizations all over the world are abandoning us. They honestly hope we will all die, the more violently the better.

I was a proud intersectional feminist and a proud queer woman my whole life. Or at least ever since I could make decisions about that sort of stuff and what I believed. And I have been abandoned, my daughter has been abandoned, for blood sport. Her friends are pulling away from her and we all know why... because she committed the unpardonable sin of being Jewish.

Funny part? The Muslim Student Union has done nothing to her or the other Jewish kids on campus. Ponder that thought leftists if you will.

My son is in 8th grade and for the entirety of his 6th and 7th school years he was relentlessly bullied for being Jewish. We live in a red town and it was right wing antisemitism. It was so bad that I had to remove him for his safety from the school for a while. Now? It's left wing as well, he's catching it from both sides and I don't know how to protect him.

No one cares. Frankly, if my 13 year old son committed suicide to get away from it all... they would throw a party. Another dirty Jew/Zionist down... am I right? None of you give a fuck.

I marched, I protested, I voted, I phone banked. I lived my beliefs in action, and the left betrayed me. They fantasize about me and my children being raped and murdered. The more graphically it could happen, the better for them. Frankly, I think they get off to the videos Hamas released in the privacy of their rooms at night.

There's nowhere to run. Israel isn't an option. I know everyone thinks Jews are dripping in wealth... but I frankly do not have enough money to move my family to the other side of the planet. My husband is in IATSE, the stage hand local. There are no jobs waiting for him there. There are no jobs waiting for me there. I have no family there. Neither does he.

Actually, my husband isn't Jewish. I am, our children are, but he is not. He supports us in our Jewishness 100%, but he is not a Jew and he never wanted to convert. Which is fine with me... but how the hell does that work in a country where there is no civil marriage?

I'm not Orthodox, I don't want to be Orthodox. I want full egalitarianism, so I go to Reform, Renewal, or Conservative synagogues, depending on what is closer to wherever I live. Israel is a VERY Orthodox country, and the options are Orthodox or completely secular. This is a criticism I've been laying at Israel's feet for DECADES.

And Jew Haters better not use this as a way to say how awful Israel is. Not when the countries surrounding Israel are either dictatorships or absolute power, divine right monarchies who kill dissenters constantly.

So... there's really nowhere for my family to go. So I guess I'll stay where I am being a liberal Jew and waiting for the sick marriage of MAGA and Leftists to come to my door and kill me and my family.

None of you care. All of you would cheer. I'll never trust any of you again for the rest of my life. Till the day I die... I'll never trust any of you in any part of my life (online or offline) again.

1 in 5 members of Gen Z think the Holocaust didn't happen. 2/3rds of Gen Z think stories of the Holocaust are exaggerated and that Jews were somewhat complicit in what happened to us. Blame the victim...amirite? The rates amongst Millennials are not as horrific... but they're still bad. You all are going to commit a 2nd Holocaust and pat yourself on the backs. And when history remembers you all as the Nazis part 2... you will babble in your nursing homes that you were "Just trying to save the world from the Zionist/Jewish scourge."

When that happens, I hope you die in a puddle of your own shit.

[trainsinanime]

Is there a specific scientific term for what I'll call "harm construction", meaning "thinking of ways that something harms someone in order to condemn it"? There must be, right? I see it all the time and it's not new. Let me give some examples in random order.

One of the first cases where I really remember it was at least a decade ago, an online article by a British newspaper, about how an online store had put a pole dancing pole in their toys section. A bit of an embarrassing mistake but nothing more.

However, that article provided several quotes from a British couple who said they were very worried, because their kid could have seen that. It seems pretty clear that their kid did not, in fact, actually see it, but the newspaper treated their concern as if it was a genuine thing to worry about. It was utterly ridiculous.

A more recent example is a call-out ask I received a few months ago and, of course, immediately deleted, but it's still been living rent-free in my head since then, because it was so horribly bad. I'll not repeat the exact wording, but they were annoyed that their victim blog (which I don't follow and haven't for years, if ever, and they don't follow me) was annoying and sometimes said mean things. They very ineptly tried to explain that this might have been part of the reasons why someone else, completely unrelated, sent out hate messages to yet another person. That was the harm that was so big that it supposedly justified a targeted harassment campaign. (If you're the person who wrote that call-out ask, please rethink your life. You were only increasing the hate in the world, not making anything better. I suspect the sender wasn't anyone who actually follows me, but just in case).

The biggest and most prominent example of harm construction right now is of course all about trans people, bathrooms and school sports. Conservatives and TERFs alike need a reason to oppose the existence of trans people beyond "I personally find them weird", because saying that out loud gets them correctly branded as bigots. How do you turn "let's be really mean to a marginalised group" into a progressive cause? By saying that the existence of this group causes harm. The problem with that is that trans people existing does not actually cause any harm, it's literally fine.

So in an effort to construct harm after all, they have searched far and wide for something that trans people could even theoretically damage, and the only things they managed to come up with are "there might be someone with unexpected genitals behind that bathroom stall door" and "the sanctity of gender-segregated sports". If it weren't for their cultural and political power then it would almost be funny how little potential harm they managed to find and how much they have to amplify it. They're just another couple in the newspaper worried that their kid might potentially see a website.

If you look for it, harm construction is everywhere, because we all sort of agree on a surface level that dividing people into "normal, acceptable" and "weird, must be punished" isn't nice, but the instinct to punish people for being "weird" is still alive and well and many people refuse to question it.

At a completely different end, anytime someone uses the word "normalisation" about a fanfic on Ao3, that's another example. We all know making blorbos do weird things doesn't actually hurt anybody (assuming proper tagging and so on), but we still want to punish people who do it wrong. So we construct harm, by arguing that seeing something on Ao3 might "normalise" the thing and make it more likely that someone will do it in real life.

These examples are very different, at very different ends of almost all scales of power and cultural influence and meaning, but the core idea is always the same. So, yeah. There must be a better term for this.

[buttercreamdicks]

I guess if I am going to gather my thoughts about Link and the Eagle, I first have to gather my thoughts about Link and gender and expression. I have been through a lot of fandoms, I have been through a lot of ships, and I have always been against the oft-pervading logic that "This man is gay because [insert stereotypes of gay men performing femininized behaviors or underperforming masculinized behaviors]." One of the reasons I interpret my feelings on Link and gender as #my lesbian queen link neal is -- well, okay, because it's nonsensical and funny, but also because I specifically do not really want to fanon that he is gay because he wears a purse or whatever. One of the other reasons I interpret my feelings on Link and gender as a joke about being a queer female is because when Link says he is an unserious man I feel that unseriousness in manhood as hewing close to my own experience as a queer female; I recognize a lot of my own self or at least my own self's willingness to be "weird" (i.e., plainly honest) about gender and sexuality and affection in the idiosyncratic ways he expresses these things as well.

The main thing that hooked me into Rhett & Link was finding out that they grew up in the Southern conservative Evangelical culture in the '90s. Something that I think about a lot is how Rhett has talked about how Link was the weird kid, how people found him annoying, how he stayed at home and played with his wrestling dolls, how the moment they really became best friends was when Rhett punched that kid for making fun of Link. How in high school everyone thought they were gay. Rhett spent almost all his time with Link anyway. How even now Rhett talks about having to protect Link from himself, from embarrassing himself. And how Link talks about himself as someone who commits faux pas, and about liking that he has a safety net in Rhett, someone who will watch out for him.

Like the thing about Rhett is he performs the masculinity they grew up with well, and apparently always has: good grades, good athlete, just enough unexamined toxicity to his masculinity that he often doesn't pass my vibe check. I didn't grow up in the South or in Christianity but I grew up in the late '90s and I was steeped in enough of same culture of gender that I can recognize the mannerisms that Link has even today that would have been labeled as "weird," and the names he might have been called: sissy, mama's boy, fag. Rhett could have gone through life without ever encountering that, but he didn't. He chose to stick with Link, and he chose specifically to stick with a conception of himself as protecting Link.

And the thing with Link is he continued to be the way he was. He kept enough of those same mannerisms and ways of expressing himself that even now, as a grown man, he is the one a fandom will say is gay, is the twink, is the bottom. Whether he explicitly chose not to change, or is just one of those people who is incapable of not being exactly himself, I don't know. Probably both? Most of us who are queer (in the sense of sexuality or in the sense of being seen as strange) are both.

I also think sometimes of what Link's conception of himself would be if he weren't surrounded by people who have known him forever, or people who know someone who’s known him forever. If everybody's first impression of him wasn't mediated by a bunch of people who carry around his old teenage self crystallized in amber, who grew up in the same culture that thought he was weird, who still spend their time thinking they need to run interference for the way he talks and acts and feels. Because another thing that hooked me into Rhett & Link was how nearly every person in every piece of media they produce says "This guy is weird and awkward and makes people feel bad" when everything I took from watching him was This guy is honest and open and makes me feel good. Like if you just met him, on your own, would you even think anything was strange? If it was just him, without his past, would anybody think he wasn't enough?

[dwobbitfromtheshire]

Stuck Between a Jock and a Metalhead

Summary: Nancy, on a whim, decides to visit Steve at Scoops Ahoy, which leads to her overhearing confessions from Steve that leads her to think about the decisions she's made. A few days later, she decides to come back. She finds him being hit on by the town freak. What's a girl to do? Oh, get stuck in a freezer with the both of them.

A/N: Oops, I made this chapter a little angsty. I do love Nancy now, flaws and all. Oh, the title is a play on for stuck between a rock and a hard place. Thought it was funny.

Chapter One

Nancy Wheeler was confident in her decisions, to say the least. She never really doubted when she was in the right. It was a constant struggle, though, to look at someone's else's side of things. It was why she loved looking at the facts, put plain and simply before her. The facts are that she was interning at the local newspaper and that the news reporters seemed to hate women or look down on them at least. They surely didn't respect them.

"I mean, like what year are we in now? There are tons of female news reporters. Get ahead of the times!" Nancy complained.

"Well, there's a reason why people call this town so conservative. Will this town ever be willing to change?" Steve asked, shaking an invisible magic eight ball. "Sources say: unlikely. I mean, now, they really won't be subject to change with the way this mall moved in and took away their businesses."

"The same mall you work at?" Nancy asked in amusement. "By the way, what the hell are you wearing?"

"I can't believe you're just now noticing. This is my uniform," Steve said and flipped the hat back onto his head.

Nancy had stopped by Scoops Ahoy after coming into the mall to try to find Holly a birthday gift. She had spotted Steve behind the counter and had to stop in. Now, here they were, in the back room conversing like old friends. Steve stood up from the table and slowly twirled around before striking a pose. His back was to her, and he peered over his shoulder, his hand over his mouth as though he was shocked. His rear end was sticking out. He looked like he got caught doing something he shouldn't. Nancy burst into a fit of giggles.

"You're an idiot, Steve Harrington," Nancy said softly.

"And you're - uh - anyway, yes, this is my uniform. It's completely fucking embarrassing but not as embarrassing as being too stupid to get into anywhere," Steve said.

"Despite what I said before, you're not stupid. Although, you can be an idiot at times. It's not who you are, and if your dad ever makes you feel like that, then just send him my way. I'll kick his ass," Nancy said.

"You're the only person in the world I believe could actually take that asshole," Steve said.

"Thanks. I should probably go. I told mom I would be home soon," Nancy said, getting up.

"One thing first, and I'm not sure it was my place to say, but this job of yours. . .you're not getting paid, your skills aren't being put to good use, you have to ask what else am I getting out of this? What else am I learning?" Steve asked.

"Well, I'm learning what not to do," she said, and he laughed.

"You know, it's okay to give up something that's not working for you, and it's okay to fight for it. Whatever decision that works best for you, Nancy, it's okay," Steve said.

"Stop saying okay. I hate that word," Nancy said softly.

It made her stomach turn the way he said it softly, reminding her of the way he said it that night he told her to go with Jonathan. A small portion of guilt nestled in her stomach. She shook it away and smiled.

"It was good to see you again, Steve," Nancy said. "We should talk again soon."

"Definitely," Steve grinned. "Did I help at all?"

"Yeah, actually, you did," Nancy said.

As she walked out of the break room, she passed Steve’s co-worker Robin. She gave Nancy the stink eye. She wondered if it was because she thought there was something between her and Steve. Was Robin jealous of her? Did she want to date Steve? Or was she dating Steve? God, Nancy hoped not. She blushed, realizing that she had no right to be jealous of someone she didn't have any interest in anymore. . .or did she? Nancy walked briskly away, moving out of the parlor and towards the exit as quickly as possible. Halfway towards the exit, Nancy realized that she had left her purse. When she walked back in, there was a closed for lunch sign out front. She went in and headed towards the break room. She paused by the door when she heard her name.

"You're friends with your ex?" Robin asked. "That's a little. . . Unusual."

"I take what I can get," Steve said.

"What does that mean?" She asked and paused. "What? Are you still in love with her?"

Nancy sucked in a breath and waited hopefully for the right answer.

"I mean, I don't know. I guess so. How does one fully stop loving Nancy Wheeler?" Steve asked. "I just want her to be happy. If Jonathan makes her happy, then I'm happy, too."

"It doesn't kill you inside every time you hang out to see her with another guy?" Robin asked.

"Well, this is the first time we hung out in a while. After it all. . .ended, Nancy invited me to have lunch with her Jonathan, but I couldn't. . .it was too painful. I spent lunch in my car blasting Careless Whisper and crying. I got my heart broken, and I didn't have any friends. I mean, the friends I had I walked away from. They were assholes, yes, but I knew Tommy all of my life, and he wasn't always like that. My parents were never home, still aren't, and I just had no one. The kids I started to babysit helped a lot, but considering they were kids and one of them was Nancy's brother, I couldn't exactly talk to them about this," Steve said. "Before we broke up, I tried everything to befriend Jonathan because I knew how much he meant to Nancy. I guess I just didn't want to admit how much."

Nancy pressed her hand to her mouth, tears filling her eyes as she tried to muffle her sobs. She didn't know anything about all of that or the fact that Steve tried to make friends with Jonathan.

"You didn't want to lose her. The fact that you tried to befriend him says a lot about you," Robin said. "I wouldn't have been able to do that."

"I can't hate her for making the choice that she did. I was never enough to be it for her, but I respect her choice even if I don't like it. I can't force her - " Steve choked up. "I can't force her to love me."

"So pathetic," Robin said softly with a hint of affection and Steve laughed.

"Definitely pathetic," Steve said and paused. "I miss her so much that it's stupid. I just wish that I could move on. I think I'm trying too hard. I guess I can't force that either."

"I think I can help with that," Robin said in a mischievous voice. "It requires me taking over the whiteboard, though. What are your preferences?"

"Men, women," Steve said.

"I meant like how do you want me to tease you mercilessly while I do this, but that is. . . That is good to know," Robin said. "Um, right, thanks for telling me."

Crying softly, Nancy quietly and quickly walked away. She'd get her purse some other time. She ran all the way to the bathroom and locked herself in a stall. What he had said then was something she always suspected about Steve, but she never asked, never wanted to be pushy about that part of his life in case he wasn't aware, but turns out, he was. It was all the other stuff that was overwhelming her. She couldn't stop picturing Steve alone in his car, crying. She had so wanted to believe that he had been fine, that he wouldn't be affected by what happened. Or maybe she just hoped that he wouldn't care because it was easier to escape the fact that she fucked up. She didn't intend to hurt Steve, but she did it anyway, and maybe there was another reason why she didn't want to think about how he felt or that moment at the school. She didn't want to think about him walking away from her after begging her to tell him that she loved him. She didn't want to think about him telling her it was okay or hearing him call himself a shitty boyfriend. It was easier to ignore all of that than to admit that she didn't feel like she deserved him.

Jonathan doesn't deserve for her to think that way either because her relationship with him means something, doesn't it? Everything happened so quickly. Maybe that was why she wanted it to happen so fast. Why she had acted the way she did with her feelings for Jonathan? She wanted to destroy her relationship with Steve, to make him hate her the way she hated herself, and she wanted him to feel guilty the way that she did with Barb. She was so mad at her before she died. Why couldn't Barb have understood that it was her choice to have sex with Steve? That the moment he talked to her, it was decided, and the very moment his lips touched hers. She bought a new bra, bought a new sweater, and she even lied to her mom about why she needed birth control.

"This isn't you, Nance," Barb had said.

"Why couldn't you have just gone home?" Nancy whispered to the empty bathroom.

The real person she wanted to be angry with was Barb, and how grotesque was that? How could she be angry at Barb for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? No, because if Barb had gone home and just let her make her choice, then Barb would still be alive. Nancy's stomach rolled. That's what Steve represented, not his guilt because he did nothing, but her own for being so angry with Barb before she died and for being angry after. The real person to be angry with, she knew, was Dr. Brenner. He was the man who started all of this, who led Barbara to her death. If she could bring him back and kill him again, she'd kill him a thousand times. She couldn't go down that road again. She knew the risks she took when she sought justice for Barb. She risked the whole damn town to do it. She wasn't sure she could put something like on Steve again because she still loved him, and he deserved better than that. Nancy wiped her face and came out of the bathroom to find Robin leaning against the wall. She was holding her purse.

"You left this. I saw you run in here. Damn, you're fast," Robin said and handed her the purse.

"Thanks," Nancy said, taking the purse and Robin narrowed her eyes at her.

"You came back for the purse. You heard us," Robin said, and Nancy didn't say anything. "You still love him."

"He deserves better," Nancy said.

"Doesn't he also deserve to make that choice for himself?" Robin asked.

"I - why do you care so much?" Nancy asked.

"I'm a firm believer in second chances. Without them, I wouldn't be here. My mother thought she'd never see my father again or to tell how she felt, but the chance came around again, so . . . Here I am," Robin said, raising her hands up in a shrug. "Gotta believe that there's hope for everyone."

Nancy stared at her for a moment, trying to figure her out. She washed her hands and dried them off.

"Don't tell Steve about this," Nancy said softly.

"Tell him what?" Robin shrugged and left the bathroom.

When Nancy walked into the house, Holly was playing barber shop with Mike's hair while he screeched that she was pulling his hair on purpose. Judging by the mischievous look on Holly's face, she was. Nancy smiled and shook her head before walking into the kitchen where her mother was making lunch.

"Hey, Nance. Did you find what you were looking for at the mall?" Karen asked.

"I think so," Nancy said softly as she stared at her mother.

She realized then where the choice she made with Jonathan was leading her. It was the path that she thought Steve would lead her down to: an unhappy marriage. She still liked Jonathan right now, and she wanted to continue to like him. Not that her mom didn't love her dad. It's just that she didn't like him very much. She wanted a partner that she not only liked but loved as well.

"We like Steve, but we don't love Steve," Murrary had taunted.

Nancy blushed furiously. He had been wrong. She should have said something then, defended Steve then because it was true. She liked Steve, and she loved him too. As much as she cared for Jonathan, as much as she liked him, she didn't love him the way that she loved Steve. The more she thought about Steve, the more she started to remember everything that she loved about their relationship. She remembered nights when they would curl up and watch Tom Cruise movies. They would both gush and giggle over him. Thinking about it now, he definitely had a crush on him like she did. She remembered watching him bake, and when a Bob Seger song came on, he would pull her in his arms to dance. He wasn't afraid to let her lead either. It wasn't just Bob Seger. It was Queen, Bowie, and Madonna. Occasionally, it was stuff like Eddie Van Halen, too. She loved the fact that he didn't just have a particular genre that he loved. He appreciated all sorts. And when she had to babysit Holly, he would come over to help, and he was always so good with her. He was good with both Holly and Mike. She loved the way that he wasn't afraid to be an absolute dork. Her dad was a quiet man, but he always some managed to pull a conversation out of Ted, and he loved to help her mother in the kitchen. She remembered all if without the cloud of guilt weighing her down.

"Nancy, honey, are you okay?" Karen asked.

"I messed everything up," Nancy burst into tears.

Chapter Two

[kvtnisseverdeen]

This is my humble take…

Joe Alwyn was Taylor’s best boyfriend. She knows this and her fans know this. But he demands actual work and accountability. Taylor is a white rich conservative girl first and foremost. And she’s very narcissist. Joe is the first boyfriend of hers to put actually limits on how her public personal affects him and their relationship. And she liked dating him at first because he was private and reserved and she was desperately trying to scape the industry and she found the most non-industry British man ever. She liked that security and knowing he didn’t attract that much attention. Then, she slowly gained her reputation back on track and realized that she could finally go back to being the person that plays for the media again. And yes, maybe her relationship with Joe was slowly fading — it happens a lot. But she clearly says in her lyrics that wanting to be shown off in public is one of the reasons too. Because she likes that every relationship she’s in gets consumed by her fans and the media.

And Joe Alwyn required her to go and do some work on herself! He comes from a very activist family. He was the one that made her be more open about social activism. It was because of him that she tried to do the bare minimum like encouraging during elections, have more racially diverse people on her music videos and tours, and do a very cringey job at supporting lgbt rights. But it was at least something…

Isn’t funny that the moment they broke up she went back to being very problematic? The climate terrorist that she’s been for the pass year and then wanting to sue people for spreading her private flights information (knowing this is public information). Then dating that racist man that mocked woman of color and admitted to watch what he did, being quiet about the war that’s going on, and the lame and immature issue she created over some of Olivia Rodrigo’s songs (a literal new artist and teenager at the time) to the point she cut total ties with her and her next man being a very typical conservative macho man that seems to love the attention just like her. She’s back at being who she’s always been…

“Your integrity makes me feel small” Yes, Taylor, indeed. I am glad you know this too.

oh you absolutely have said it all. this is extremely well said and on point.

i find it so odd that most swifties can't pinpoint that the real issue between joe and taylor was taylor once again giving into the industry and being a rich white capitalist which is something joe is not and does not want to be, and most likely caused the demise of their relationship. taylor herself has said this in her songs (like the lyrics in peace, as you said). so yeah, maybe she wanted marriage but joe probably wasn't comfortable marrying someone who had completely different morals than him which is his right. let's be real here.

and oh the relationship between her and travis probably set her "redemption arc" far back than ever. she really was finally speaking up on so many matters and now she's dating a problematic trump supporter, giving into the media frenzy with the NFL, and has done no activism despite having the biggest platform. i think what sucked the most was her being times person of the year and using it to talk about travis and how she wasted 6 years of her life being private. so disappointing. and the cherry on top are some of the lyrics from ttpd (ex. 1830s racism lyric) like WHAT?

another thing swifties misinterpret is that no one would've known joe if it wasn't for taylor and that he's living off of his songwriting credits from folklore/evermore. joe who is notoriously low-key and has stated he just wants to be seen as human never used taylor for clout and has avoided saying her name in interviews, even after the break-up. not because he didn't love her, but because he did not want to feed into the media frenzy. and if all eyes are on him, he's using it to make a statement about palestine which is amazing. sure, you may not have known joe alwyn if it wasn't for taylor but he never used taylor's fame to make him more famous. and might i argue, it was taylor who despite releasing positive songs about him sometimes didn't defend him (like in the folklore sessions where jack antonoff was obviously being rude to him? or how she told her fans not to go after john mayor releasing speak now tv but didn't say anything for joe when her fans have been harassing him like crazy?)

on the other hand, we have travis kelce who has most definitely brought her up in every capacity like on his brothers podcast and let's be real, most of the swifties didn't know who travis was (i didn't!) unless they were football fans. we saw proof of that when NFL sales and viewership was significantly higher. so yes, travis is using her name for clout and feeding into the media frenzy. and then you have swifties saying he loves her and supports which yes, can be true, but you cannot deny that taylor and travis' relationship fed the media, fed the NFL, and diverted attention from more important issues like gaza. and while taylor and travis had their eyes on them, they didn't use it to do any good.

so yes, you are right. joe was taylor's best boyfriend.

[motsimages]

Info about European Parliament elections

Because the elections to the European Parliament are approaching (6-9 of June), I wanted to make some kind of master post about it to see if I understand it better and to give some tips. But I forgot we're talking about the fucking European Union and all its levels and sublevels and the respect to each country doing whatever the fuck they want. You may want to watch the series Parliament. It's funny and you will understand how the EU works better than I could ever explain it (I am not kidding).

THANKFULLY, the EU knows the mess it all is and they created a very clear and easy to use website just for this: https://elections.europa.eu.

It gives you general info and a guide for your country. I want to kiss in the mouth to whoever designed the website and wrote the text. Whatever it is they are paid, it's not enough.

IF READING THIS POST IN ENGLISH IS HARD FOR YOU, THAT WEBSITE, AS MOST EU WEBSITES/INFO, IS TRANSLATED INTO EVERY OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF THE EU.

The most important thing about these elections is that the European Parliament represents the interests of the European citizens. Copying from that website I gave: The European Commission is the EU’s executive branch, responsible for proposing and implementing EU law and the day-to-day running of the EU. The European Parliament, representing the interests of EU citizens, and the Council, representing the interests of the countries, shape Commission proposals and, if they agree on them, adopt them.

This is important to know because the Parliament will elect the new President of the European Commission who later will examine and approve the entire College of Commissioners. But this is another thing, so go check wikipedia about the President of the European Comission. In the last elections there was some mix-up between the candidate, the system and who ended up being president (current president is Ursula von der Leyen, chosen in 2019).

The European parliament is separated into 7 political groups. 23 members are necessary to create a group and each group must represent at least a quarter of the countries in the EU (again, watch Parliament, this is very well explained there in a fun way). Here you can find the list of the political groups (if you click each link, they send you to the website of the group and you can look for who/which party from your country is part of it). Some people do not belong to any political group.

From what I see, those 7 political groups include:

4 Right-wing groups (some say "center-right" but they may be right-right. 2 of them are clearly called something like "Christian democrats" or "Conservatives")

1 green party

1 left party

1 center-leftish party

Not all of the websites for these political groups are in several languages of the EU, but they are all in English. Here you can see how many members of the parliament belong to each group by country. In short, you can see where your country is leaning in the European parliament. For instance, Spain has 13 christian democrats, 9 "center-right" and 4 right vs 21 "center-left", 3 green and 6 left, plus 3 non registered in any group for a total of 59 members.

In reality, we do not vote for those political groups. We vote for politicians in our countries and then, they, if they want, they join one group or another. In short, if you vote a left-wing party from your country, it is likely that they will be part of The Left political group of the European parliament.

Historically, over 50% of the parliament is a group of right and another group of center-right. No sé qué de los nazis por Europa estos últimos años. This is how it looks like right now. The yellow party is right-wing adjacent too (Renew Europe), so you can see how it currently looks for the left (green and red colours, where the dark red colour is The Left and the bright red is center-left). The gray one do not belong to any political group.

In other elections, about 50% of the population did not vote (which may be why there are more right-wing parties than others, just saying).

So yeah, vote. This organ represents you and your interests directly. They are the ones who adopt laws that affect anyone and everyone.

Vote because the European Parliament is your voice in the EU.

[choppedcowboydinosaur]

A few weeks ago I delved into this rabbit hole of watching videos about the In Praise of Shadows hit piece on Wendigoon. Now mind you I don't watch either of these people's content but here's what I noticed during this whole drama.

For In Praise of Shadows I noticed the following (Note for the rest of this post I will refer to In praise of shadows as IPOS because it's easier for me to type.):

He wants ideological purity for horror movies. He doesn't think any conservatives should be allowed in horror. He thinks horror is inherently leftist. Which is odd since you could make the argument 80's slasher films have a conservative bent to them. Were all debauchery is punished by the slasher villain and only the final girl survives by being pure. Also, he accuses Late Night with the Devil of being a conservative movie because some of the transition cards use AI. That is odd to me since if you are going to call that movie conservative it should be by analyzing its themes rather than accusing it of AI. It just makes him seem like a very fragile person.

Most of his accusations are just guilt by association and lying about the youtubers he's complaining about. He accuses a bunch of people I've never heard of being gun crazed guntubers. None of these youtubers are guntubers. He also shits on Mutahara and Shoeonhead for no legitimate reason. I stopped watching Shoeonhead a while ago and distrust her somewhat but even I thought that accusation of her being conservative was completely disingenuous.

He accuses Internet Historian of being a neo-nazi because his birthday being 4/20 which is apparently Hitler's birthday. This stood out to me since you'd think for someone as terminally online as him, he would know what the 4/20 meme is.

He often associates guns with right wing despite there are leftists who use guns. Again, it's a very twitter mentality he has.

He bitches about Wendigoon being supposedly rich. I don't know how true this is, but I am starting to doubt IPOS claims of poverty given his pretentious manners. That and all he cares about is making video essays.

Also, he is whiny about not making enough youtube money and having to walk in a parking lot to a horror convention in North Carolina. To be fair he might have been saying this on behalf of handicap people, but they have handicap stalls for a reason. Also, if you aren't making enough youtube money there's this thing called getting a job. Especially, a part time one which allows for a more flexible schedule for him to make videos. Again, this man is very whiny.

He sounds like a pretentious version of Morakiu. He speaks in a monotone voice with no inflection in his voice. At least Morakiu was funny.

He has twitter brainrot. I say twitter brainrot because specifically he thinks all of Appalachia is white racists. Say what you will about this site many here would have called him out on that. For the record Appalachians are not inherently racist.

He associates aloha shirts with the boogalooo boys/alt-right. He said this while wearing an aloha shirt himself. Now that might be him being ironic but his stupidity cancels it out. Now while the boogaloo boys love their aloha shirts it is not explicitly a right-wing thing. I am a local from Hawaii and many of us here wear aloha shirts regularly so it's not some alt-right thing. I hate how people have now associated something innocent with that. Aloha shirts existed long before the alt-right ever came into existence.

He has this schizo moment where he thinks Wendigoon was trying to harass him by following him on twitter. When it turns out Wendigoon followed him because he liked his Slenderman video.

Pretty much the whole internet pushed his shit in after he spouted all that nonsense. He is a living case of a terminally online leftist with twitter brainrot. On one hand this man was clearly going through a mental breakdown, is delusional and should touch grass/seek therapy. On the other hand, he is a spiteful miscreant who likes to tarnish other people so my sympathy for him is very limited. It's good everyone rejected his ass because I feel like if he did this shit in 2017, he might have gotten away with it given how crazy everyone was driven with the TDS.

Now onto Wendigoon. Despite all this slander Wendigoon forgives IPOS. To me this shows he is legitimate in his kindness and beliefs. Since he was forgiving to someone who did not give him any courtesy at all. Which is doubly ironic since IPOS hates when people slander him, but he is fine with slandering other people. It's like I'm looking at two people diverging form a forked road. One chose the path to hurt people because he was hurt. The other chose the path to help people because he was hurt and doesn't want anyone to suffer. He's honestly far more merciful than I would have been in that situation. The thing was bizarre overall. Hopefully, after seeing IPOS madness people will calm down and not try to cancel each other. Unlikely but hopefully that reckoning will come and people go back to normal.

[sizzlingpatrolfox]

https://x.com/bangtinyboyys/status/1829062134036410612?s=46

when are people going to start realizing how disrespectful jungkook is to his hyungs? especially jimin? shippers love to say jungkook treats jimin differently than the other members "look he drops honorifics he teases him he pushes him away" when all it is is jungkook having no respect for jimin as his hyung 💀 been that way since before they even debuted funny to see he hasn't changed

- it's interesting in retrospect to see jikookers who used to say that jungkook would never roughhouse jimin or raise his hands at him have to change the narrative again and again to make excuses for jk's behavior and attitude and make it seem like everyone thinks jimin's a damsel in distress for finding jk's behavior kind of gross. oh how the tables turn.

---

I've had this in drafs for a couple of days, and now the tweet has been deleted. I was honestly enjoying the thousands of qrts calling them siblings.

First of all, I didn't have the same reaction to this as a lot of people. I can understand why people got upset about it, but it's not me.

I was never impressed or moved by the "hyung-dongsaeng" dynamic kinda of thing, I still don't get why people gag over it. I know culture this culture that, but in my culture some people call their mothers whores, and I don't. We're still part of the same culture. If you listened to the way my cousin talks to her mom, and the way I talk to mine, you wouldn't believe we're from the same family.

And I've always thought the same about BTS. Jimin has said that a lot of his friends are older than him. I doubt he's formal to them 24/7??? I assume they bicker and argue and they forget that they're of different ages. I assume Jimin's friends give him permission to be treat them as chingu after so many years.

Jungkook has even talked about his mom in a way that I wouldn't talk about mine, but anyways. I'm pretty sure he's also referred to Taehyung as chingu a couple of times between 2020 and now.

Jimin is respectful but he's not conservative by any means. I've always thought formalities matter only to some point to him. Especially with his loved ones.

As I was saying... I had a good laugh with the siblings comments knowing how much jikookers hate them because it really is siblings behavior. I don't ever call BTS brothers but I honest to god have no other words to describe Jungkook's attitude towards Jimin in that moment.

I've said before that I hate the "this is real because this happened to me". I don't want to know about how your very own personal life experiences tell you a ship is real. I've always rolled my eyes so hard when seeing people go "I've been married for 29048895 years and this is totally what me and my husband do!!" - Kristen, 57 years old, cis straight and married to Rob, 5 children, living somewherereallywhite talking about Jimin and Jungkook.

Well, Kristen. If you were having lunch with me and my family and Rob raised his hand like that to you - somebody's calling the police.

So I thought "maybe I'm thinking about it from a too heteronormative pov, thinking about my mom/dad and aunts/uncles but these guys are both men of the same age and social status." Because that wouldn't happen in my family. I'm not joking, it would be absolutely unnaceptable for a man to do that to his wife in my family, and at least half of the families in the country.

But then I realized none of the gay couples I know would act like that, either lol. I know straight couples and gay couples and none of them would ever do that to their partner, no matter how pissed they are. They might scream and curse at each other, I've seen lesbians do the nastiest scheming, manipulation, mindfucking tricks to get back at their girlfriends; but never something like "I'm going to punch you." And if it ever happened, I know the people who love them are not going to let it slip.

As siblings or friends, however... Especially men, what Jungkook did is completely normal. That's why I laughed about the siblings comments. Because they're right.

I don't do it because I'm not that type of person and I usually don't react strongly to many things, but my cousins do stuff like what Jungkook did all the time with each other and with me, too. And it's okay, it's funny.

I don't think Jungkook is violent because of this, but I'm completely in disagreement with these grown ass women on the internet telling everyone "couples fight like this". They DON'T. Or at least they shouldn't.

So, to sum it up. I don't think he had any real intention to hit or hurt Jimin. I don't believe Jungkook is a violent person, either (though he is impulsive). I don't think his behavior is "gross", as Jimin's friend. Jimin too just joked about it, but probably did think the reaction was uncalled for so he disguised it, and still asked Jungkook to give him an apology.

I'm just genuinely bothered by people saying it's "couple behavior". It's not. It shouldn't be. I think it's unacceptable between romantic partners no matter the gender, nationality, whatever of the people involved.

[quartings]

A little story about how I became me:

In the most supportive way I can say it, my thoughts on what people need to hear to become better, and why it's not always obvious.

Like pretty much everyone, I was a dumb teenager many years ago. I grew up in a very conservative environment, without many chances to really hang out with people who weren't also teenage guys either. I was surrounded by a lot of homophobia, sexism, and a lot of people telling jokes that weren't just horribly offensive, but even worse- they were honestly really generic and unfunny. And that's a small part of why I'm here to talk about.

For anyone who followed my blog in its earliest years, you might know I was a huge fan of the Yogscast YouTube group as a teenager. I loved Simon, and Lewis, and Duncan, and Kim, and so many of its members. But there was one member who was quite different from the others- a woman named Zoey.

Zoey Proasheck was one of the first big openly gay YouTubers I think ever. But what made me gravitate to her so much was that while she never downplayed that part of her identity, she promoted the positive stereotype-breaking parts of her personality even more. She's honestly not just one of the nicest content creators I've ever seen, but maybe even the nicest person I've ever seen. (And I know she doesn't like being put on a pedastal because celebrity worship is bad and all people have flaws, but I think her positive actions and impacts should at least speak for themselves) As a dumb teenage guy who at the time had never even met an LGBT person, it was eye-opening experience watching Zoey RP as characters who liked guys, and play kiddie games like Scribblenauts, Pokémon, and Puyo Puyo.

Dumb teenage me would have been under the impression that lesbian YouTubers would only promote queer content. Disclaimer that I'm not promoting the "model minority" argument, minorities are not obligated to act a certain way in order to earn respect or not be bullied. This is just a story about what it took to change me as an individual in a way that may not apply to everyone.

But yeah, just as her straight coworkers played games and expressed their interests that didn't telegraph their sexuality, most of Zoey's content wasn't either. It was nice seeing such an eternally kind, funny, and creative person just enjoy sharing her happiness and creativity with others, and her liking girls was just an added detail. Some highlights include her just joking about wanting to meet pretty girls in Scribblenauts, expressing her love of rainbows, and just saying 'boobs' because it's a funny-sounding word. And those bits while funny, were only a fraction of the overall funny and creative content she made that was for all audiences! Zoey was never a person who was there to lecture others on her identity, or to create content only for people like her. Just because she was queer, it didn't mean she marketed her content only or even mainly for queers- she made it for everyone- I'm happy so many LGBT youth found solace with her, too. But if she did try and make content solely or mainly for queer audiences, myself and others like me would probably have been dissuaded from watching her channel and having our worldview expanded.

But yeah, after watching Zoey for so long, slightly-jerky teenage me had a small space in his heart open up for accepting queer people. Because no matter what harmful stereotypes I saw on TV, no matter how many actual people fit those stereotypes in online spaces or irl, I would always know that if a real queer person as eternally kind and funny as Zoey could exist, being LGBT couldn't possibly be the factor that makes people "bad" as all the fearmongers say.

This next part will probably be tough to hear for a lot of people, but I don't think representation in media matters the way many people think it does- at least, not in the realm of animation and acting.

What I mean by that is, I was raised on well-written and amazing female protagonists as a kid- Kim Possible, Lilo and Stitch, My Life as a Teenage Robot, The Proud Family, Totally Spies, ATLA, and especially the girls of the Teen Titans. But because I was raised in an environment that was very oppressive towards girls and one that deliberately isolated guys from them, I had no good female presences in my day-to-day life. No amount of strong female characters in media could change the fact that my irl view of girls was shaped by the very conservative and honestly disappointing ideals of the girls around me. It took moving to a vastly different environment where I could interact with less conservative girls for me to start unlearning the misogyny instilled in me during my early teens.

And in the same vein, no amount of fictional LGBT characters would have undone any homophobic beliefs I used to have back then. Because I know such characters aren't real and don't reflect the values of real people around me. What actually contributed a lot to me becoming less homophobic was Neil Patrick Harris as Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother. If I only grew up on gay actors being allowed to play gay characters, my mind would never have been allowed to separate them from the shallow stereotypes I was taught as a teen. Neil Patrick doing such a great job of playing a caricature of a hilariously cartoonish straight guy allowed me to see that gay people aren't bound to always acting "gay". Their sexuality doesn't control their day-to-day behaviour. While such things are obviously clear to people who are also LGBT, I think we easily forget how straight people with literally zero experience talking to LGBT folks don't know these things by heart. Barney Stinson being straight was better LGBT representation to me than all other queer characters thanks to Neil Patrick Harris.

I think a lot of today's dumb teenagers are immediately put off listening to minority voices because they oftentimes come across as a "lecturer" or an "enemy". Someone who isn't necessarily evil, but still a person who views them as a "thing to change" or "person to yell at". And it's hard to give a mean person yelling at you the satisfaction of being right, even if they are right. If someone came up to teen me and started exasperatedly telling me how being homophobic made me a bad person (even though that's obviously true), not even yelling at me, teen me would have been off-put by being antagonised and would probably not listen to them. Heck, teen me may have even become more homophobic since this hypothetical irl LGBT supporter was so antagonistic to me, and the idea of being like them would seem off-putting.

EDIT: And I know certain celebrities have recently come under fire for not openly stating their political leanings. And sure, it's probably because they don't wanna get cancelled, or because they have the privilege to be impartial in situations that impact a lot of innocent people, but there's another detail I want to note. At this stage in the game, I wonder if a celebrity coming out as liberal would instantly turn their entire conservative fanbase against them before listening to what they had to say. Sure, it's probably just the celeb covering their ass, but I can't help but think about the silver lining of a conservative viewer hearing their favourite celebrity saying "hey, most people on the other side are chill to talk to, don't be mean to them even if you think they're really annoying" maybe being more impactful if the celeb claimed to be apolitical rather than openly liberal. You can absolutely chew me out for being wrong on this one if you think I am, I'm just speculating.

I don't at all mean to victim-blame anyone here for not being nice enough to bigoted people. Sometimes people are so hateful that no amount of kindness can change them, and you are well within your right to distance yourself from them or fact check them when they spread hate. What I am saying is that nobody likes being lectured. Not on big things like human rights, not on medium things like airplane safety instructions, not even on small things like promotional giveaways sometimes. I think a majority of people who don't support minorities aren't hateful bigots who constantly rant and rave about getting rid of other people. Maybe 10% of them are like that. But the rest of them are just poor isolated folks like teen me was, who just need that one cool person to show, not tell them that kinds of people they've never met can be cool too.

So what does that mean for me? Well, despite the massive amount of rambling I just went on here, I also don't want to be a "lecturer" in the content I make and how I conduct myself in daily life. I know it's difficult, and I've faltered before, and maybe will in the future. But if by some miracle you're a person who dislikes "wokeness" or "things being shoehorned into media" and you've read this far, thanks! I'm not here to tell you you're a bad person, I'm not here to tell you to change, and I'm not going to say any of my content is "not for you". I'm here to make art and comics and animation for everyone to enjoy. If you're feeling down or even just bored, I hope the things I make can make your day even a little better. I'm not a lecturer, and I hope I'm not an enemy - I'm just here to be a friend. I also have some of my biggest animation and comic projects EVER coming soon, and I really hope you like them!

And to people of all demographics, I want to add that if someone ever makes an offensive joke, there's no point yelling at them that it's "offensive" or "bigoted" or "whatever-ist". What's more important is letting that person know that, honestly? That joke ain't it, chief. It's worse than being offensive- it's honestly kind of boring and predictable, dude. Teenage me probably made that joke 10 times over a decade ago, and my classmates probably made that same joke 1000 times. Don't worry though - I've told lame jokes before too, but thankfully I took the L and my jokes now are honestly getting way better!

Stay safe out there, okay? I hope your tomorrow is happier than your today!

[kyouka-supremacy]

Hi!! Gin for the ask game?

Yay Gin!!!

Favorite thing about them: Oh man there's not much to talk about in canon outside of the oc I made from them. But I still think they're very cool!! I also find them felling affection for Ryuunosuke to be very sweet, they're the only character in the whole series together with Higuchi who's ever shown to genuinely care about him.

Least favorite thing about them: How they weren't given a personality outside of “Akutagawa's sister”. Like, I love Gin, but being honest, it's more of loving the character I built pretty much from scratch for them in my mind, because canon literally never gave them a personality. Also, I don't like the voice actor choice for them… I don't know if I'm being conservative with this, but I find that kind of hyperfemininity they're depicted having sometimes (their high-pitched voice, the onsen scene in Wan) pretty stereotypical, that taste of “all tough girls deep down actually want to be delicate and femminine” from old medias I don't really vibe with.

Favorite line:

This one, because it's funny, and specifically because it's a non-verbal line. I like the idea of Gin using their sword more than they use their mouth.

brOTP: Look, I'm weak for siblings dynamics. They're always my favourite thing. I don't remember ever having an hyperfixation that didn't include siblings dynamics. I love love love the Gin / Ryuunosuke relationship and could talk about them for days. ALSO the Black Lizard in general I've already talked about them here I care so much about them. I really like tachigin platonically too. And I like Gin's dynamics with Higuchi, I actually like them better platonically.

OTP: I dig everything tachigin, I really like them and the “I'm not who I say I am but you know me better than myself even though you don't know my true identity” deal they have going on. I also like the idea of Gin and Naomi 👀👀👀 talkative gf x gf who's never said a word their whole life. Also my personal crack ship Gin × Paula ThePromisedNeverland

nOTP: ... I don't really dig higu/gin. Higu/gin friends, please forgive me. I just think that starting dating the person your brother has repeatedly abused would be super awkward, and I don't think I really like the idea of Higuchi basically dating Ryuunosuke's sister as rebound guy. Also it's just a thing with me and not being a fan of vanilla / sugar spice and everything nice wlw ships. I do acknowledge they have their fair share of scenes together and that they're perfect to be interpreted romantically!! The latest volume 23 omake especially, it can perfectly be taken as romantic. It's just not something that does it for me, and tbh I like them better with having a kind of sisters dynamics, with Higuchi being this kind of very exuberant and silly self-assigned older sister and Gin who just likes her and enjoys hanging out with her.

Random headcanon: Oh boy, may I introduce you to my Gin brainrot. I really have so many ideas about them. Apart from what I've already mentioned, I really like the idea of them having selective mutism, especially as it's shown in Wan. I don't think they're someone to talk in general. The Akutagawas household must be death silent 24/7 lol.

Unpopular opinion: I just wish people would give them more flaws. I'ver read my fair share of Gin fics, and in all of them they're always this kind of sassy / funny / witty / pretty / confident / charismatic / overall perfect person. As result, I find them quite boring to read, and they particularly pale in comparison to Ryuunosuke; especially since at least for me it's his flaws that make him such a compelling character. I wish we'd extend some of his flaws to Gin too. They're bad at communication and expressing their feelings. They're aggressive and pessimistic. Idk, anything that makes them a little more human.

Song i associate with them: How To World Domination by Neru. Just the overall imaginary it evokes of two siblings close in age fighting together in a world that is both violent and war-ridden, and terribly domestic and mundane. The feeling of being lonely together. Them both fighting to become a better version of themselves, a kinder version of themselves, even, before my heart grows numb from the cold. This song really is one that always evokes the Akutagawa siblings in my mind whenever it comes on shuffle. Also, Re-education by Neru, for similar reasons.

Favorite picture of them:

Favourite panel from the manga:

Favourite illustration:

Favourite illustration in the anime art style:

Favourite Mayoi card: (Band Gin you will always be famous)

Send me a character?

[pingnova]

I want to know more about the Christian Bible but don't want all of the conservative riff-raff. What should I read?

A friend posed this question to me, so here are my suggestions.

Firstly, my biases: progressive politically, American, white, protestant/ELCA Lutheran, queer/gay/LGBTQ. The stuff I recommend is going to line up with these.

Quick aside on different ways Bibles are translated and interpreted

When translating an ancient language to modern English, there is no "literal" translation; that is, no translation that will be word-for-word the exact same meaning. If you have used Google Translate, you've probably noticed there are nuances that a "literal" word-swap machine translation misses. This is especially true with the Bible.

So be wary of any translation (or person or movement) that claims they follow the One True Literal Translation. That doesn't exist, and you'd be the chump in that situation. (Looking at you Evangelicals.) Conservatives and progressives are guilty of falling into that fallacy.

^ Above: A funny example of how a machine word-for-word translation misses a lot of meaning. "My dog has a hangover" machine translated to German and then back to English becomes "my dog has a cat." x

There are three main buckets of Bible translation. IMHO---and many scholars will agree---the best translation to read will actually be two or three translations. One for each method. The Bible is messages ("facts" meant to be passed down, history) and art (poetry, storytelling, song), which need their own special treatment to be understood in another language.

Some translations focus on the individual words (word-for-word/Formal Equivalence), some focus on the sentences or chunks of meaning (thought-for-thought/Dynamic Equivalence), and some try to balance the two with context a modern reader would understand (paraphrase). I won't detail it all here, but I highly recommend reading this Logos article which goes further in depth. I've included their helpful graphic below which breaks this down into four buckets, but you get what I mean.

Additionally, know which Christian tradition you want to approach this from because they include different books in their Bibles. Catholics also have a set of books called the Apocrypha, but most Protestants exclude those books. Bibles from other parts of the world have different books...

So look up the list of books you want to include too. I think it's great to read them all, but be aware that if you went to talk to someone about this they might not know what the hell you're talking about if you've read the Apocrypha and they haven't.

So tl;dr: No single Bible translation is ever going to give you the best understanding. The Bible is in an ancient language, so you need multiple perspectives to understand what it's saying as a modern reader. Modern translators and politics also influence which versions of the Bible people read, to the point of excluding whole groups of books. At least two different Bible translations that you can compare side by side is the best place to start.

A funny post by @enriquemolina that really cuts to the point.

On to the actual Bible recommendation.

Which Bibles to read

I personally use The Lutheran Study Bible by Fortress Press. It's NRSV, which is a moderate translation (mix of word-for-word translation and meaning-for-meaning) that includes supplementary materials for new learners. It's the official Bible of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (not actually evangelical but that's another long story), which I'm part of, so I'm biased. I felt like it was a solid translation to grow up reading with a focus on helping you understand what it's saying and to think about the meaning for yourself, vs dictating the meaning to you. It is not a poetic translation however, so it wasn't until I was an adult that I learned the bible was also full of songs and poetry, which today I think of as just as valuable.

I don't have a good rec for a more poetic version unfortunately, but many people still enjoy the King James Bible when they want something flowery. I too have taken verses from there for decorative purposes. BUT: it was commissioned to support the reign of King James VI and thus has decent bias written into it. It is conservative by modern terms as well.

@blessedarethebinarybreakers has a post of good recs as well. They explicitly recommend AGAINST the NIV, NIT, and ESV. Look up a conservative church near you and check which versions they recommend. Then don't read those.

Bible Gateway is a good place to read different versions side by side. Look up quotes you like or that bother you in multiple translations. It may help you decide which ones you want to ultimately buy.

I have not actually read these versions but I wanted to include them so you know your options. These were created with specific intent against bigotry, so they have a strong bias. Not that I find that problematic in this case - there's a crap ton of Bibles that were made intentionally to perpetuate bigotry. So I'm just choosing which bias I prefer.

First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament by Terry M Wildman <- Native perspective (paraphrase)

The Queen James Bible <- KJV edited to remove or explain core clobber passages, very popular with queer Catholics

The Inclusive Bible: The First Egalitarian Translation by Priests for Equality <- gendered language and other instances of bias edited out, tho I think it's still anti-gay?! (paraphrase)

Resources for inevitable encounters with bigotry

Many people avoid the Bible because the people and movements that claim it really lay the bigotry on thick and justify it with this dusty old book. If you have the interest to learn more about the Bible, very quickly you're going to encounter this bigotry in the translations and supplemental materials.

I'll tell you now on no uncertain terms: Your interpretation of the Bible does not HAVE to include bigotry, despite what many outside entities may try to tell you.

I always say, "The Bible is so big and so varied that you can 'make' it say anything. The true test is what you choose to make it say. Something hateful? Or something loving and affirming?"

It says a lot more about someone when you remove the excuse that the Bible fundamentally is full of bigoted beliefs. If you believe that racism and slavery are good and natural because it's in the Bible, as early American slavers claimed, then you're actually just human garbage. Any modern sane person knows its presence in an ancient text has no weight on today. It's the same for anything else on its pages.

Conservatives "cherry pick" meaning from the Bible that they prefer to believe, but it's just as true that so do progressives. The Bible is huge and contradictory because it's a bunch of very old texts written by a ton of different people playing a game Telephone over a few thousand years. It's full of stories, poetry, and history---with some bigotry baked in, and some applied in modern times. The stories are full of complex characters (heroes, villains, antiheroes) and history is not always pretty. The books of the Bible literally argue with each other.

^ Above: I've always enjoyed this graphic, which maps all of the times the Bible contradicts itself. That's a lot! Good thing the Bible isn't to be taken literally, that would be impossible. (Evangelicals: .....) x

Nobody is meant to replicate what's in the Bible or use it as a guidebook for how to live life to the letter. You're meant to read the arguments and come up with your own answer. (Personally I think the winning hint is how many times the protagonist talked about loving one another.)

tl;dr: If conservatives are cherry picking the Bible and progressives are cherry picking the Bible, who is flying the plane?! You are. So make the choice that doesn't hurt anybody.

Anti-Semitism and the Old Testament

I am an advocate for reading Old Testament translations (and interpretations) very critically. I'm sure all are aware of the anti-Semitism baked into Christianity. A lot of it stems from interpretation of the OT, which includes major portions of the Tanakh, the Jewish core religious text. The OT and the Tanakh are not one and the same, but they are entwined, and cause a lot of grief for everyone involved when not treated with the proper care.

Read the Old Testament separately from the rest of the Bible (the New Testament). I have really enjoyed using the free (!!) website Sefaria, an online library of Jewish texts. You can compare the Tanakh translations and commentary there to the same of the OT in your Bible of choice. (Also please throw them some money when you can, they're truly one of the great joys of the internet and operate as a nonprofit, keep them online forever.)

Beware any (Christian, New Testament) Bible translations that claim to be Jewish. There is a kind of Christian that calls themself a "Messianic Jew" that claims to recognize Jesus as the Jewish messiah. It's all very offensive, so please do not engage. Check the sources of websites and books to make sure you don't see the word Messianic. There are true academic texts by Jewish scholars that engage with Christian thought, but it will be very clear that they are not a Christian themself.

Speaking of... Another resource you must read is Better Parables. This is a website by a Jewish scholar who interprets the famous (and infamous) Christian parables of Jesus through the paradigm of Jewish academic dialogue. Many Christians have never heard non-anti-Semitic readings of a lot of New Testament content so this site offers refreshing perspective to get you out of that mindset. Particularly if you grew up with Christianity, I consider this mandatory reading.

Queer affirmation in the Bible

Personally I have moved beyond the fight against clobber passages (Bible verses interpreted to support homophobia) towards actively affirming readings of the Bible. I have tons of these resources, so I'm just gonna make a list.

Websites

Queer Theology - podcast, classes, and theological resources

Queer Grace Encyclopedia - succinct articles and links on common questions

Blessed Are the Binary Breakers - podcast and long running Tumblr blog @blessedarethebinarybreakers

Supplemental Bible interpretation

The Queer Bible Commentary by Deryn Guest, et. al. - if you can get it used for cheaper, this is a must have while reading the Bible

Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible by Robert E Goss, et. al. - if you can't afford the above commentary, this has only a few chapters from the larger book for a better price

For your inner child

What Is God Like? by Rachel Held Evans - I literally cried reading this children's book, I'm man enough to admit it. This is what we all should have been taught about the Christian god as kids.

[prophecydungeon]

:EYES: gimme 1, 3, 10, 12, 16, 18, 22, 23, 24. :3c

How old were you when you started writing fic?

oh man.... it was the summer before 9th grade, so i think i must have been 13 or 14? that's the first time i sat down expressly thinking "i want to write a story about naruto where there's a GIRL with COOL POWERS and-", but then when i think back, i'm sure i probably scribbled down other similar "stories" about [insert media]. fanart For Sure came before fanfic for me.

3. What was your first fandom?

for the purposes of this Q i'm going to define one's first fandom as something i felt, like, Identifiably Fandomy feelings and experiences about (not just "omgggg i love pokemon lugia is my fave"), and that was, unsurprisingly, naruto.

HOWEVER, nart came to me on the heels of FMA, which i also definitely had fandomy feelings and experiences about, but nart was when i really dove into the whole fucking nine yards of early-aughts Fandom: AMVs, googling "cute sasuke pictures", printing shit out to put in my binder, baby's first yaoi (legitimately got a Talking To from a conservative christian friend about this, it was so goddamn funny), those animatics that people posted on deviantart, drawing soooo much fanart, and reading and writing Fan Fiction™ while actually calling it that.

10. Do you read your own fics for fun?

ABSOLUTELY!!!!!!!!! dude i reread my stuff ALL the time. especially when i'm at the point where i can't find anything that scratches the itch. i wrote that shit for me, of course i'm gonna reread it a million times.

12. Post a sentence from your current WIP

ok i lied i guess since we talked about it yesterday i will try to make this an active WIP so:

“If you chop my hands off,” Sanji threatens in Zoro’s low voice, jabbing an accusatory finger towards his own body, “I won’t just kill you. I’ll make you wish you bled out on the Baratie’s deck.”

16. What are your favorite characters to write?

i'm gonna take this as asking for a type of character rather than a list of names, so: i looooove writing POV characters who have every reason to misinterpret/misread what's happening, which is to say, i love an Outside POV character who doesn't catch on because why the fuck would they catch on. i've loved writing every outside POV fic i've written because i get to find ways for the POV character to reasonably not catch onto whatever fuckoffery is actually going on, albeit in different ways: hiyori doesn't like sanji because she's got no reason to believe The Bit is just a bit (girl i get it); the POV chars in the last two ficlets in this bleach collection genuinely have no frame of reference for what the fuck kind of creatures ichigo or grimmjow could be; if someone had told aunor flat-out "yeah shin malphur is also zyre orsa who is also dredgen vale and he's in some kind of situationship with the drifter" she would have laughed and fried them to cinders.

i could do this shit all day! it's all about finding a logical path for the POV char to figure out what is actually going on, at least to some degree, and then letting them deal with the fallout. (sorry, aunor.)

18. Is there some headcanon you've included in more than one fic?

yes, totally! i think Reishi Theory and adjacent bits and bobs is the most salient example; i think everything i've written for bleach has included some facet of our headcanons regarding how it all works. in general, my headcanons and interpretations tend to be pretty stable across fics, so if i've written more than one work for a fandom, there's probably some connecting thread.

22. Pick out a random line from a fic you're really proud of

from the blood of the covenant:

Sanji thinks: this is a ritual like everything Zeff has ever taught me. The purpose is in its existence. There's nothing unpragmatic about that.

this whole bit might be my favorite part of the fic, but this line(...s) in particular i like a lot; there's a lot of things in a lot of different disciplines that boil down to just being ritual, and that's a purpose of its own.

23. What's the most personal fic you've ever written?

ah....... i think in a roundabout way that goes to steam, fill, shape, share in ways that are pretty clear from the first paragraph. i project plenty throughout fics - really, what else is writing for - but this one was definitely personal.

24. What's the cringiest (affectionate) fic you've ever written?

answered!

[wendytestabrat]

THOUGHTS ON THE NEW EPISODE:

•kyle is still a terrible friend to stan like honestly kyle seems like one of those fake friends that only hang out with u when they want shit from you LOL. like i was so pissed off when he went up to stan and asked to use his charger after he had been ignoring him for days on end

•this def was a kyman episode on cartman’s end and he was projecting by trying to get stan and kyle together bc he was rlly the one who missed being around kyle even more than stan. there’s a lot of moments in past episodes where cartman makes gay jokes about stan & kyle and acts like they’re a couple bc he gets sour and jealous of them LOL. the reason why we know this is because cartman will happily try to break up stan & kyle when it’s convenient for him and he knows he’ll get kyle all to himself so why would he give two shits about keeping stan & kyle together if there wasn’t something in it for him?

• i liked how this episode showed kyle finally avoiding cartman for once & minding his business and making friends with someone who’s not him which was nice to see even though kyle’s toxic side started coming out again midway through the episode when he couldn’t stop getting butthurt about cartman saying he runs hollywood and they pretty much revealed he only wanted to be friends with token (yes i’m saying token not tolkien SUCK IT THAT WAS HIS NAME FOR OVER 20 YEARS I DON’T GIVE A FUCK THAT THEY CHANGED IT CALL ME RACIST) bc he’s black and he thought token would be understanding over how victimized kyle feels for being jewish like bitch please lol. this was another example of kyle being ignorant and racist af yet he always jumps down cartman’s throat for being racist.

•cartman’s antisemitism has still toned down A LOT like i’ve mentioned before how he’s not as antisemitic as he used to be & so he showed more awareness of that and how antisemitism is wrong like when he got mad at cupid ye for praising hitler or whatever lol. when cartman was saying jews run hollywood i don’t rlly think he was being antisemitic that was just him obsessing over kyle and jewish culture like he always does bc he has a fascination for it lol. but they showed how cartman’s antisemitic behavior is basically a manifestation of his schizophrenia getting out of control, i mean that’s at least the way i interpreted the scene with him giving cupid ye his meds. it def does add more sympathy to cartman’s character bc he is trying to be better he’s just an extremely mentally ill and neglected kid lol.

•i don’t blame cartman & stan for getting annoyed by kyle and token’s tiktoks LOL i hate tik tok like nothing on there is funny or entertaining i don’t understand why people are so obsessed with watching strangers dance on the internet like tf. like srsly have ya’ll ever picked up a book before? it makes sense that kyle would be into something as dumb as that bc he sucks and he’s a follower and has 0 personality or originality and just does whatever will get him clout & money

• gotta love matt & trey for having common sense and calling kanye out on his shit unlike all the dumbass conservatives and shit who still keep defending kanye like the man is not well just bc he’s calling out a bunch of woke shit and the establishment that does NOT mean he should be an ally lol. but that’s just matt & trey’s libertarian views as usual they never swing too far left or right when critiquing anyone which is what i love about them. i love how they make a lot of conservative points but they also have the common sense to call out people like donald trump and kanye west on their shit when conservatives go too far. i swear like i loved candace owens until she started kissing kanye’s ass and defending everything he did and then when her fans wanted her to share her thoughts on the alex jones interview she was like “stop asking me to talk about kanye!1!1!!” 😩 like BITCH stfu lol.

[q-gorgeous]

Do Dying Stars Have Fever Dreams

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 763

Danny wants to blame this on his generally shitty luck. Maybe on his parents (for all they love him, but still manage to hurt him), on Vlad, on Skulker, on the GIW, or on Clockwork (because Danny knows he can see this and still won’t help). But really, he might be dying fully this time, and the only one he can really blame is himself. @thegayonthemoon 

this is so funny to me

Danny had many regrets in life. Stuff he wished he could’ve done better. Things he wished he got to say. But soon, he wouldn’t get a chance to do any of it. 

He didn’t get why he was always so unlucky. Maybe it had something to do with his parents. They’re the ones who created the ghost portal in the first place. It had created every problem in his life. 

Maybe if he had never died he wouldn’t be here right now. It was something that tainted every action he had done since then. Maybe the portal was leading to this right here. Maybe it just prolonged the inevitable. Extended his time. Because he thought he was dying fully this time and he could only blame himself. 

He wished he could pass the final level in Doomed. He had plans to do it with Tucker later this week. That wasn’t going to happen now. 

Or Sam. He was going to tell her he loved her soon. He’d been thinking about it for so long and he needed to say it. It was killing him every time he didn’t. But now he’d never get the chance. He didn’t know how people got the courage to say those kinds of things. But it was too late now. 

He laid on his back, his eyes closed. At least his final resting place was comfy. He was warm, toasty even. He couldn’t think of a better place to meet his end. 

Then he could see it. In front of him was a bright light. It looked ethereal and otherworldly. He could feel himself walking towards it, but it didn’t ever move. Was his ghost half separating from his human body? Where was he going? If he was heading towards the light he saw now, he definitely wasn’t going to the ghost zone. This one was too white. Is this what heaven was like? Bright and otherworldly? Comforting? He hoped so. 

The light grew brighter and brighter until it completely consumed him. He was finally free of responsibilities. Free of everything. 

“Stop being a baby, Danny.” Sam said when he opened his eyes. She placed a wet rag on his forehead. “Just because you’re sick with some ghost virus that Tucker somehow got doesn't mean you’re dying. You shouldn’t have been sharing the same cup if he was sick anyways.”

“No, I’m dying for real this time. I can feel it.” Danny held his arm up in front of him, staring at the lights on the ceiling. 

Sam rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay. I don’t know what kind of fever dream you’re having, but this isn’t the thing that’s going to kill you.” 

“You don’t know that.” Danny huffed. “I can see the light right there. That’s what heaven looks like.”

Sam stared down at him. “That’s the light attached to your ceiling fan. There’s nothing heavenly about that. It’s not even an energy conserving bulb.”

“That doesn’t matter in heaven.”

“It should. The planet is dying, Danny. People who contribute to the planet dying shouldn’t get to go to heaven.”

“The planet must also be going towards the light. I can see it getting brighter.”

“Yeah, okay. I think you just have light spots in your eyes.”

Danny kept mumbling about how the light was creeping closer, how he was this close to his end. Sam didn’t get it. She didn’t know what dying was like. This felt pretty close. 

“And Danny?”

He hummed at her as he closed his eyes.

“I love you too.”

His eyes shot back open and he stared up at her. “What? When did I-”

“You talk in your sleep. Did you know that?”

“I said it and I don’t even get to remember it?” Danny groaned. 

“I didn’t know you telling me you loved me was on the same level as finishing the last level of Doomed with Tucker, though. I think I need to feel jealous now.”

“Noooo, don’t be jealous.” Danny whined. 

“I’m teasing.” Sam smiled at him. “Now go back to sleep, you dork. The sooner you get better the sooner I can say I told you so that you’re not dying.”

Danny mumbled about how she didn’t get what dying felt like again but he curled back up into his blankets anyways. He could feel Sam shift on his bed beside him. This was probably his last chance to say it before this ghost virus ultimately killed him. He had to say it while he was awake this time.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Danny.”

[chaosnojutsu]

i am very proud of myself for how i handled a family matter and stood up for myself. tw for christianity and homophobia.

i’m literally shaking right now. i shared that post on facebook that’s like Jesus talking to a crowd of people and he says “love one another” and someone in the crowd says “what if they’re gay?” and Jesus answers “yes, even if they ask stupid questions.” and my violently homophobic uncle left a laugh react to it, as he tends to do when i post things of this nature. except, i don’t say a damn word when he posts his hateful conservative bullshit — i keep him as a “friend” to not make drama in the family and change my settings so i see as little of him as possible and go about my day. so i don’t see where he gets off acting like that toward me.

he doesn’t know i’m a dyke. and even if i weren’t, even if i were the cishet good christian girl he thinks i am (i’m a master of stealthing), i am floored by the way he constantly comes onto my posts just to leave ragebaity comments or laugh at my statements about human rights. that’s so disrespectful of him, and immature (this is a man in his forties), and if he wants to make an ass of himself publicly, i say let him.

so i texted my mom to warn her ahead of time, which is already a big deal, because if you’ve ever read my tags essays you know my mother and i do not have the peachiest relationship. i stood my ground against her and told her that i was going to point blank ask him why he laughed at my post in the comment section of that same post. and that if he tried to respond with scripture, i would respond in kind with verses about adultery and divorce, since this uncle has been married four times and had countless girlfriends just in my lifetime. i wasn’t trying to change his mind or “win” a political debate in the facebook comments — he’s a bigot, and a fight about Jesus and the gays was only gonna make him dig his heels in. but i figured maybe his least favorite oldest niece publicly getting to the root of the matter would strike a chord somewhere within him.

so i told him i didn’t understand what was so funny about Jesus — the guy said uncle claims to follow — commanding his followers to love one another. to which my uncle replied that i needed to look at the scriptures because they call homosexuality an abomination and that “those people” will never see the kingdom of heaven.

to which i replied with a bible verse about adultery and divorce and told him quite simply: You may not believe queer people will see the kingdom of heaven, but you don’t have to make life on Earth hell for them.

funnily enough, he didn’t have much to say after that. feel free to use that line on your relatives if you’d like :)