#the whole felony thing

[dumbfucksystem]

imagine if the shen family was actually a part of the mafia. and shen yuan just never knew.

like his Family is rich and they are all super close. he’s even in contact with some of his distant relatives pretty often, which is kinda cool for him, he’s sure that this isn’t the case for most families so he considers himself lucky to know the extent of his family tree. sure, some of them seem to have lost a marble or two but what family doesn’t have a couple oddballs in their midst, you know?

and its not just sy’s comical obliviousness that contributes to this. his family is well aware that sy is not suited for this life style- especially his siblings. they grew up watching him get himself into all sorts of weird situations and putting himself at a disadvantage simply because he’s too nice. he can try and deny it all he wants (just like how he denies he’s gay- c’mon sy everyone can tell you are not straight) but his sense of justice would only burden him if he were to work for the Family. not to mention his sense of self preservation is absolute shit and they don’t want to have to babysit him his whole life- and he probably doesn’t want that either!

so they send him off to college, help him find an apartment, and basically do everything they can to help him start off on his own, away from the Family. his siblings had to do a whole lot of convincing to let this happen btw- this kind of thing usually isn’t allowed, but sy doesn’t know anything that could be used against the Family, so they make an exception in his case. better for them to not have a deadweight sticking around either is what they say but they all dote on him anyways and refuse to admit they care about him. sy definitely picked up this line of reasoning from them btw.

shen yuan is a little upset and confused that his Family seems eager to send him off (it’s not like they can’t afford for him to live with them after all- both of his older brothers still live in the Family’s massive house and even his aunts and uncles are living there??). he manages to recover quickly though. at least now he can read his web novels in piece without prompting any dick jokes (his cousins had a field day when they found his account with all of his pidw comments…). now he just needs to figure out how to live by himself.

it’s not that sy is incapable of taking care of himself- it’s just that he’s so used to having other people with him that he never understood how much they were doing for him until they were no longer around. but that’s fine, living on your own is just another learning curve and sy is willing to rise up to the challenge. which he did, by the way! he found a job and pays his taxes and even though that isn’t much he still gives himself a mental pat on the back for it. he is still in contact with his siblings, he never misses an update for pidw which he totally doesn’t get excited for and his life is going great.

……until he accidentally eats some expired food and dies.

[motsimages]

As per Tumblr recommendation, I started Kevin can fuck himself yesterday. I see people comment on how the sitcom part makes it look the way people see an abuser and how the abuse can be disguised. People think he is just a funny guy and the abuse goes unnoticed. I personally see it otherwise, although it's similar.

People know he is an asshole. He spends a whole episode being mean to the new neighbours just because. He meets a dangerous guy at a bar, in public. He is an alcoholic who throws weird parties with lots of other people at home. Patty's boyfriend tells her twice in the 3 or 4 conversations we see that he is an idiot. People know, and people avoid him.

And his bubble know, but they justify it and excuse it. And that's the sitcom. The sitcom is the theater of excuses Allison has (and then other characters too) about his behaviour.

"Can you believe it? We were in our anniversary, such a fun party, we were both super drunk and I don't know how it ended, that I was face down on the floor and the table was broken! Anniversa-rager we call it lol"

"He is such a clumsy guy that just as I was leaving the house, you won't believe that I don't know how he managed to cover me in chilli sauce! What a silly goose!"

"He is so helpless without me, he couldn't find the printer and he called me all day because he needed me to explain to him how to work it. And he worries too! He called the cops because he didn't know where I was, maybe I forgot to tell him".

The conversations with her coworker about husbands help drive this point. That's what mariage is. You find ways to justify it and to avoid certain fights and that's it. We got lucky.

But he did all these things on purpose. And the unreliable narrator of the sitcom makes the joke of it and makes the audience consider that maybe it isn't *that bad*. Allison needs to believe that's what it is, so it is. It really isn't that bad, she thinks, he is just like that.

And we can actually see the worrying things and the threatening parts from minute one. It's only a joke because we have been trained to dismiss it. To justify it and to move on. He isn't doing any heavy lifting here.

In episode 1, just the fact that he ends up standing on the table (when she doesn't want him to even put glasses on without protection) says a lot. But then the table breaks and he fixes it poorly and visibly. It would be bad enough just like this, but I personally think there is more to it. It's just that Allison doesn't want to speak about it or look at it so it is just the table, but it's the switch that turns on for her, the last drop. But she did end face down on her living room, on top of the broken table. It's a very elegant narrative tool where we don't see, but if we wanted to see, it's there.

And the more she notices, the more off-putting the sitcom is. It's still played as a joke, with the laugh track, but she is more aware now, so we can notice too.

We start the series with her turning point, but if the series started a year before that, it would only be happening in her house, as it is her life, her only frame of reference, and it would only be a sitcom because isn't he such a clumsy but caring guy?

[mwolf0epsilon]

Not to start beef on main but what was the POINT of creating and then endearing us to Rex, of making him such an integral part of The Clone Wars and Rebels as a protagonist and supporting character, making him not just Anakin's and Ahsoka's captain but also their friend and most loyal ally, if you're gonna fucking snub him from the plot completely?

[cherry-bomb-ships]

HAD A RLY INSANE RLY FUN PPG DREAM WOOHOOOOOOO 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖 The best part was definitely a part where Mojo got embarrassed and he used his hands to push his bigass ears OVER his eyes, which looking at his movie design seems like something he'd be able to do hrnsjxhsbt 💖

[gelatinous-globster]

when i beat the executive dysfunction i gotta post about Felony Carl and Nega-Globby being in-laws who hate each other

[ginnyrules27]

I will just add this--if Trump gets elected again, according to the Constitution he can only serve one term (22nd amendment). However, does anyone think that is going to stop him?

this is the only text post im gonna make about voting for the US president:

under a 2nd biden term, cops will continue to shoot protestors in the head with rubber* bullets and suffer no consequences.

under a 2nd trump term, which may not end in 4-8 years, cops will go back to shooting protestors in the head with normal bullets like they used to, and suffer no consequences.

that’s where we’re at and that’s the choice you get. i am not willing to keep my own hands clean in exchange for a drastic and immediate increase in state violence, both direct and disguised as policies and regulations.

if you vote against trump, you might increase by a small amount the chance that you will live to see a presidential election where you get to make a good choice. if you don’t vote against trump, living to see that happen gets less likely.

voting is not even close to sufficient, but it is necessary, and it costs me little to nothing to do it.** to me that is the only possible ethical conclusion.

*rubber bullets are actually metal bullets with a rubber coating and they can and do kill people. nonetheless, they kill people significantly less often than regular bullets. also the bullet thing is a metaphor for all the varieties of state violence that will be committed by a trump administration. but also there absolutely will be an increase in the number of people murdered by cops if trump wins.

**there are a great many people in the US for whom voting does take considerable effort and sometimes sacrifice. if you are one of these people, you don’t owe anyone any loss of income or safety. but it may be even more strongly in your interests to vote against trump if you can.

[marithlizard]

(ETA: LINK) Reading rahaeli's bsky feed is an education in itself. I did not realize it was so common for undercover agents to join even harmless social activism groups and try to encourage people to do things they could be arrested for. The song has about a dozen verses, all of them based on incidents that resulted in felony charges o.O

The whole thread is very worth reading, especially since the incoming administration has been been very clear that they want to criminalize being trans or supporting trans rights. (Among other things.) ETA: Seems like a lot of folks have had trouble seeing the link to the full thread on bluesky, so I added it again above. This is a screenshot of where tumblr puts the link when you add an attribution URL to an image:

Maybe it doesn't show up properly on mobile? That sounds like a tumblr kind of bug.

[explode-this]

.

[starcurtain]

I think one of the funniest things about the Sabzeruz event is that the devs choose to go with Candace, Traveler, and Paimon having a whole "Ooh, two mysterious men are going into an alley to have a 'private' conversation; they must be bad guys!" only to then go "Oh just kidding, it was only Alhaitham and Kaveh doing typical Alhaitham and Kaveh things."

Except the "Alhaitham and Kaveh" thing in question this time was talking about Mehrak, a sentient robot that Kaveh built using absolutely forbidden technology, and which he then whole-heartedly willed would develop a consciousness of its own, violating one of the central taboos of his nation's governing agency, committing what amounts to an inherent and extreme felony punishable by law.

Alhaitham and Kaveh: Listen, we're not bad guys discussing illegal activity here. We're just two men having a private, personal conversation. Happens all the time.

Paimon, Candace, and Traveler: Oh cool, they're not doing a crime; they're just gay.

But they were, in fact, doing a crime.

[axolotlclown]

One of the biggest homeschooling programs in my state is facing charges of embezzlement, defrauding the state, and money laundering :)

Anyway enough lame gifted kid discourse we are in our 20s. Let's talk about how homeschooling in america should be fucking illegal it's insane lol

[prokopetz]

I totally agree that the ubiquity of centralised competitive matchmaking has done terrible things to online shooters as a culture of play, but I feel like in pushing back against it we're often falling prey to idealising a golden age of online play that never actually existed.

Like, I've been gaming long enough to have played Doom when it was new, and to the best of my recollection, the era when player-operated servers were king wasn't a good scene, either. The casual servers were overrun with griefers, the competitive servers were toxic as hell (and often full of Nazis to boot), the homophobia was regarded as extreme even by the standards of the time – and let me tell you, being so homophobic that early 2000s forum culture looks welcoming by comparison takes some doing! – and if you were unwise enough to let on that you were a girl, even the "good" players would say shit to you that would qualify as a felony if they'd said it to your face.

About the only reliable exceptions were if your server was a. private and invite-only, or b. sufficiently obscure as to pass beneath notice, and even that wasn't a guarantee.

I'll freely grant that player-operated servers are, on the whole, a lot better these days, but I have a strong suspicion that a big part of that is because the competitive matchmaking ecosystem is soaking up most of the toxicity. If you uncritically project that backwards in time you're going to end up with a very peculiar notion of what player-operated servers looked like when they were the only game in town.

[gffa]

What really kills me about Skeleton Crew being so good is that, at this point, I'm not sure it matters. The ratings have been terrible for the show, despite that I don't think I've ever really seen anyone say anything against it, which I think means that people are just absolutely burnt out on these live action shows and I can't really blame them. I've enjoyed things about all of them, I've enthusiastically loved several of them, but even I'm tired of stories that feel like they're half a story. To the point that, even when one of the shows defies that, it doesn't matter anymore. Skeleton Crew is the first show in a long time that feels like you can actually watch it without feeling like they're holding back something for another season or even another show all together. (Maybe Andor and Obi-Wan Kenobi escape this to some degree, but not as well as Skeleton Crew.) I think the idea is that they want that MCU kind of tie-in connectivity, they want a big shared universe that gets everyone hyped up to go watch everything--the problem is that D+ Star Wars just is not good enough or fun enough consistently to pull that off. So little of it is new, it's just filling in the gaps and telling half a story. Even The Mandalorian, which started out so much fun and a breath of fresh air, fell hard into this--it tells half of the story of the fall of Mandalore, it throws in characters that their primary story is in another series all together, it undercuts its own characters' arcs by having major moments take place in spin-off series. Very little feels whole anymore. And you can get away with that when you have a strong series of movies to build a foundation on, like with the originals and the prequels, but Disney has so thoroughly fucked up with the structure and direction of the sequels that what should be fertile ground for covering stories is leaning back harder on the originals and the prequels rather than the sequels. And then the shows themselves aren't building anything new and almost nothing ever finishes. Nothing is a satisfying arc or conclusion because The Story Can't Be Over Yet. (This is why I think OWK and Andor work best, they're leading up to an ending we already know. There is already a built-in end point. Rebels as well had an end point!) I think that's what Disney has really fucked up--almost nothing ever ends because they don't know what's going to be a hit, so they want the option to bring everything back and never let go of anything. They can't give The Mandalorian an actual story arc because they don't know where this story is going. They can't give Ahsoka a complete story because Felony can't let go of her. So even when Skeleton Crew comes along, tells a story that's satisfying in and of itself, has a satisfying conclusion and arc, it doesn't matter because so many people are exhausted and just don't care anymore. And I'm not sure Disney even realizes that's a major problem, because they're too focused on wanting to never let go of anything.

[morganbritton132]

I want a fic where Robin is adopted.

The only parents she has ever known are her own and the only time being adopted has ever bothered her was when Amanda St. James made fun of her for it in the third grade. But Robin told her that at least her parents wanted her and were not just stuck with her like Amanda’s parents, “And maybe that’s why your Mom and Dad are so unhappy all the time.”

She got in trouble for making Amanda cry and went back to never thinking about her birthparents. She had no interest in knowing anything about them and it stayed like that until she turned sixteen.

On her sixteenth birthday, her mom gave her a letter written to her by her birthmother. Robin doesn’t read it immediately, but eventually gives in to her own curiosity. She reads it over twice before her mind snags on a sentence, ‘I wanted to give you and your brother a better life…’ … you and your brother…. You and your brother…. You and-

“I have a brother.”

This eats at Robin, especially after her dad’s call to the adoption agency goes nowhere. It eats at her so much that she finally gives in – Fred Benson swears up and down that Nancy Wheeler is the best investigator on the school paper – and asks for help.

Nancy says yes and is maybe a little too invested in finding the truth, but honestly, Robin is having fun and she wants to find her apparent twin. She wants to know about his life. Settle the whole nurture over nature thing.

They hit a lot of walls, a lot of dead ends. They break a few rules and maybe commit a felony. They enlist Jonathan Byers to help and even Eddie Munson at one point because he knows how to pick locks, and it’s all for nothing.

One day when they have everything they’ve found spread out across the Wheeler’s dining room table, Steve comes over to pick up Dustin. He looks down at the whole mess and points at her birth certificate like, “Hey, we were born on the same day.” 

[destielmemenews]

After a rocky start, Biden tore into Trump about his recent felony convictions and legal battles;

"How many billions of dollars do you owe in civil penalties for molesting a woman in public for doing a whole range of things? For having sex with a porn star while your wife was pregnant? I mean, what are you talking about? You have the morals of an alley cat!"

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[angelstrawbabie420]

IVE BEEN DRAWING IT OUT IVE HAD TO SIT AND PROCESS IN BETWEEN BC THESE FIRST TWO EPISODES HAVE BEEN INSANE WHAT THE FUCK

happy monday i completed all my stupid chores and little tasks now im going to watch the last 5 episodes of house consecutively and then cry like a little fucking baby