#simpsons studies

[broimgae]

I agree to manifest this post

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[cuubism]

some canon-verse trans Hob for the lovely @five-and-dimes who recently got top surgery! 🥳🥰 congratulations, I'm truly so happy for you, my friend. please accept this humble offering

--

“So, it actually started on a dare,” Hob says, on the day he tells Dream the story of him. Or of this part of him, anyway.

Normally, Hob gets a bit guarded the first time he tells someone he’s trans. It’s hard to predict with absolute certainty how people will react, especially ones he’s just become romantically involved with. He’s had it go poorly, to say the least, in the past.

He doesn’t feel that way with Dream. It’s not because there’s so much trust between them—they’re still new, after all. No, it’s something about Dream himself. For all his prickly and standoffish nature, being close to him feels like sinking into a warm lake, into a dark sleep where secrets and hidden wishes float up like glowing reeds to the surface. Deep, personal feelings feel safe with Dream; he cradles them in his hands and soothes them. Or that’s how it feels, when Hob is touching him.

Personification of dreams, indeed.

“A dare?” Dream echoes.

“Sort of," Hob says. "Got frustrated with people saying women should or shouldn’t do this or that or the other thing, so I decided if they felt so strongly about it I’d just be a man. Moved somewhere no one knew me, dressed differently, got stronger, practiced the sword—and that was that. No one seemed to care much, once you were at war. So long as you could swing a sword and not get yourself killed.”

“A choice, then,” Dream says. He’s listening very intently, hands folded on his knees, untouched tea on the coffee table before him.

“At first. Was only after I’d been living that way for a few decades—before and after we met—that I realized while there might be a handful of women out there living as men for the freedom of it, that they didn’t all like it. Given the choice they’d rather just be women in a more equal world. You know?”

Dream hums in understanding.

“But I didn’t want to go back,” Hob continues. “I felt like... who I'd become was the truth of me all along.”

“Identity, while not wholly immutable, is resilient against adversity and circumstance,” says Dream. “You found what your heart wanted you to be, if in a circuitous manner.”

“You seem very unbothered by it,” Hob observes, sipping his tea.

Dream frowns. “Why would I be bothered by it?”

“Dunno.” Apparently he can’t fully shake that this’ll put a wedge in us feeling. “People sometimes are. Feel deceived, or something like that. So they say.”

“If they are deceived, it is by their own assumptions,” Dream says, with disdain. “You should be as you dream yourself, Hob. No more nor less. Put aside these petty physical trappings.”

“I do actually have to live in these ‘physical trappings’ even if you don’t, you silly thing.” He can’t help laughing. “Besides, I rather like being some kind of living creature in the world, rather than what? A ghost? Best I can do is make this body as close to how it should be as possible.”

Hob’s come to like his body, for the most part, in the form that he’s made it. He didn’t always. But he needs a body of some kind to be alive, and he likes being alive. So what he couldn’t change, he made peace with.

Besides, they have hormone treatments nowadays. Brilliant stuff. Makes it so much better.

“Anyway, now you know. I wanted you to. Since we’re together.” It’s still a marvel. Together.

“Thank you,” says Dream, with evident sincerity. “It is a privilege to be gifted your secrets.”

“Not really a secret, but I get what you mean.” He takes Dream’s hand, just to touch him, and admits, “Telling it to you is like… I don’t know. Feels like when I was younger and first admitted out loud, ‘I’m a man. I want to stay like this.’”

It hasn’t been a proper secret in a very long time. But giving it to Dream is like the freedom of releasing a held breath, even so.

“I am the harbor and cradle of dreams,” Dream says in reply. He traces his fingers over Hob’s. Does Dream’s strange form just spring from the ether? Hob wonders. Or does he have to choose it? The way Hob chose his? “Dreams of being and becoming… these are most precious for they grow from tough soil. I can only protect them, I cannot create them. You must do that. And I expect that were I to find you in the Dreaming, there would be a fantastic garden there, indeed.”

Dream himself is the most fantastical thing. “Well, darling, just know your work is appreciated.”

Dream’s lips tip up in a tiny smile. When he meets Hob’s gaze again, his eyes have gone dark and starry. He folds Hob into a hug, and—

oh, it’s like being hugged by the universe itself.

Hob feels the light breeze of a warm dark night, when he’d lain by the dying fire in a war camp in the French countryside, and looked up at a million stars and first whispered to himself what if this is really who I am? Dream is that breeze and those stars. The dying embers that had lit him as he’d run his hands over his body and felt it differently than he ever had before, and been terrified because what would it mean?—but also thrilled and alive. Dream is the night wrapping around him in that moment, the night that was listening to his dreams no matter how quietly he admitted them, Dream is that and more and the voice in his heart telling him it would be okay.

A younger, more uncertain Hob would have needed this. Hob now is older, and he already knows who he is and what he wants, but he falls into Dream’s embrace all the same. A tear slips from his eye, and Dream kisses his cheek, wiping the tear away with his tongue before leaning their heads together.

“I could craft you any body you wanted in the Dreaming,” he says lowly. “However I think the one you have made with your own hands is more remarkable.”

Oh, God, he’s going to tear up again. “Dream, you are the most beautiful, wonderful thing.”

Dream hums in pleasure at the words, and lets Hob hold him close, lets him cradle his head to his chest, a dream kept close to his heart. One that he knew as soon as he saw it walk into the White Horse. Sooner even than he truly knew himself.

Then Dream looks up at him with a hopeful expression. “With these truths revealed, are we able to be intimate?”

Hob laughs so hard he has to tip his head back against the couch. “Wow. One track mind with you, isn’t it? I spill my heart and that’s what I get?”

Dream grumbles, tucking his face in against Hob’s neck to press his lips to Hob’s throat. “I find myself impatient of late.”

“Knew all along you were only with me for my body.” He’s grinning, though. Can’t stop.

“Well. Considering it is such a lovely one.” He plucks at Hob’s shirt buttons. Lecherous little nightmare.

It feels fucking good, though, to be desired.

“C’mere, then,” he says, and drags Dream into his lap.

Dream settles there with a purr, starts playing with Hob’s hair, but says, “I would not truly derail this moment, nor distract from your feelings if you do not wish it.”

“Oh, I wish it. You’ve no idea how much I want you right now. You’re like a prize.” He cradles Dream’s beloved face between his hands. “Stick around for long enough and you’ll get the most incredible Dream at the end of it.”

“Or at the beginning,” Dream says, and Hob’s heart swells so much to hear him voice that that he has to kiss him.

When he does, Dream makes a low, pleased sound, settling deeper in his lap. Yes, this moment, this life, is certainly the prize for all of those years hanging onto those dreams:

the dream of his lover

and the one of himself.

[racefortheironthrone]

There was a classic Simpsons episode where Springfield Elementary teachers went on strike, and the PTA responded by bringing in residents (including Marge Simpson) as replacement teachers. Would this count as union busting or crossing the picket line? If yes, I wonder why it was depicted as largely benevolent considering that Simpsons writers and plots tend to lean liberal.

Let's not mince words, it's 100% scabbing. It's not just crossing a picket line as a customer, it's crossing a picket line in order to work as non-union temporary labor, with the intent to crush the strike.

I don't agree that it's depicted as benevolent behavior - the whole gag of the middle portion of the episode is that the scabs are terrible fucking teachers. Frink is completely wasted in preschool and doesn't let the kids play with toys, Jasper is a physically abusive idiot who gets his beard stuck in a pencil sharpener, and Moe and the like are total pushovers when it comes to Bart's pranks. The only one who can manage a classroom at all is Marge, and even then she's incredibly embarrassing and unprofessional with Bart. (Notable difference compared to how she does in "Whacking Day.")

Also, it's not necessarily the case that Simpsons writers are always left-leaning. John Swartzwelder is notoriously incredibly conservative and his scripts tended to push his libertarian views pretty strongly.

[springfieldnerv]

Character study: nerds who love their bosses

[m00ngbin]

I'm doomed I keep forgetting the difference between the Simpson Index and the Lincoln Index. I am in so much distress right now it's not even funny

[lux--nova]

I encountered the funniest phrase I've ever read in a scholarly article yesterday and I had to share it with yall. I will now quote scholarly sources when assessing whether something is tiny, teeny, or teeny-weeny, thank you.

[hole34]

it will all be worth it once i can make funny lionel hutz references...

[lugiaabsol]

10 years old……

[phantom-of-the-memes]

Made my own personal version of this on the wall next to my desk.

To remind me who I’m working for!

[ericaportfolio]

So I've been silent for a while. That's because I'm working on a Redbubble Design that I plan to get out soon and this. This was a background study inspired by Steam Hams and Hello Puppets for a bigger side project. However, I still thought to release this because I was happy with how this background study turned out. Glad that I made this in color first. Have fun speculating what I'm doing currently.

[butchbarneygumble]

hey

[gamylost]

60/100 days of productivity •28/03/2024

I’m back !!! And feeling so much better !! I took time to recover and for myself too.

I have a few days off I’m gonna work only next Tuesday. I started studying yesterday I study all day for my epistemology dissertation.

So today I :

• Mails

• did my dissertation for epistemology and send it

• Had a 3hours phone call with the girl with whom I make the presentation on the simpson paradox (for an oral examination in epistemology on Saturday)

• read about art in education

• study Epistemology again but for the exam

• did some research for my geography in education assignment

• Duolingo : Portuguese

For a total of 10 hours 😅

[ronastudies]

Lots of thoughts on productivity recently, what it means to be productive, who determines and sets the bar, how productiviy differs in differents fields and professions and how one relates to the other. (Burn-out in the academic world and young academics working themselves into the ground vs. the image of laziness and uselessness in the eye of a big part of the public and especially those with a blue-collar background)

Source of picture: Simpson, David (1995): The Academic Postmodern and the Rule of Literature. A Report on Half-Knowledge. Chicago, London, p. 6.

[marciliedonato]

Anyway. Switzerland found dead in a ditch in Miami ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[seallbay]

Not my university textbook quoting Homer Simpson- help???

[angabby-zzz]

Allergic to not ending paragraphs with worst jokes / lines known to man

Edit idk how i forgot this one its like my favorite one