#this is my soapbox and I can go on and on

[otp-after-dark]

Love is not dead. The THT show writing is.

I wasn't going to get back on my soapbox regarding the total fuck up of these THT writers but apparently I have to, because once again, anti-Nick people on Tumblr are still applauding Fred being right in 1x05. That all love is meaningless, that it’s all lust, that Nick is dead so June/Nick shippers are a joke, and that the only real love in The Handmaid’s Tale is between mothers, sisters, and friends.

First of all, LOL.

Second of all, this is exactly why people are pissed off. This isn’t just about shipping. It never was. It’s about fidelity to The Handmaid’s Tale as a feminist text, one with sharp teeth, clear themes, and a brutal thesis about control, power, and the radical danger of real, complex love.

If you’ve read the book — I mean actually read it, not skimmed it between seasons — you know that the “love is dead” conversation originates with Fred in the book. And it’s not just a one-off line, it’s the thesis. It’s exactly what Atwood is pushing against. Here’s the book scene:

“This way they’re protected, they can fulfill their biological destinies in peace. With full support and encouragement. Now, tell me. You’re an intelligent person, I like to hear what you think. What did we overlook?” “Love,” I said. “Love?” said the Commander. “What kind of love?” “Falling in love,” I said.” The Commander looked at me with his candid boy’s eyes. “Oh yes,” he said. “I’ve read the magazines, that’s what they were pushing, wasn’t it? But look at the stats, my dear. Was it really worth it, falling in love? Arranged marriages have always worked out just as well, if not better.”

This moment is not about Moira, or Janine, or Hannah. Or even Luke. It’s not about June’s maternal love or her friendships. It’s not about “sisterhood.” Atwood’s not making a case for motherhood-as-salvation. She’s not talking about love that is duty-bound or socially sanctioned. She’s talking about Nick. About falling. in. love. About something irrational, subversive, dangerous. About the one kind of love Gilead can’t co-opt or control.

That is the heart of the book. And that is why the emotional collapse of this story in Seasons 5 and 6 is so frustrating. It’s not just poor execution, it’s a betrayal of the core message.

Meanwhile, the women who don’t fit the box — who are childless, queer, flawed, angry, or not white — are erased, sidelined, or punished. The story uplifts a narrow vision of womanhood: white, heterosexual, soft-edged, and biologically maternal. And everyone outside that frame gets discarded.

And look, if the writers wanted to explore motherhood as one form of resistance, that's great. That could’ve been powerful. There’s room for that story, about how protecting children can be an act of defiance, about how love for a child can fuel rebellion, about the impossible burden mothers carry in a world built to break them.

But that’s not what they did. They didn’t show motherhood as resistance. They used it as a reset button.

They handed out babies and monologues and said, “Here. Feel bad now.” No real reckoning. No real consequences. Just dim lighting, slow camera pans, and the implication that suffering through childbirth and wearing neutral tones makes you sympathetic.

The nuance they denied to other characters was selectively reserved for characters the writers decided were worthy of emotional redemption. And in doing so, they equated motherhood with morality. As if birthing a child is a moral cleanse. As if crying over a baby undoes years of cruelty and evil.

This isn’t just some loosely inspired genre series. This is an adaptation of a book. A literary classic. A novel with a clear moral center. A devastating, sharp, intentional feminist message.

So tell me: why adapt a book if you don’t want to honor its core message? If you’re not going to stick with the text’s emotional truth — why do it at all? I genuinely struggle to find another adaptation that’s veered this far off course and still tried to claim it’s faithful.

And it didn’t have to be this way. The Hunger Games laid out a blueprint. That dystopia series understood the value of sticking to its themes. It gave us a traumatized female protagonist, a morally grounded partner, a better revolution, and a love story that mirrored survival, rebellion, and tenderness in the face of systemic violence. Katniss and Peeta are, in so many ways, a sibling narrative to June and Nick, and that story was allowed to end honestly. Messy. Earned. Human. Feminist.

The Handmaid’s Tale, on the other hand, decided somewhere around Season 5 that it was done honoring Atwood’s thesis. It wanted prestige television instead of storytelling with a spine.

And in that pursuit, it tried to reframe June’s arc, not as a story about surviving brutality and reclaiming her humanity through love, but as one of “sacrifice.” As if walking away from the man she loves, the only person who ever saw her fully, was the price she had to pay to be a revolutionary. As if that was the feminist ending. The empowering choice.

But here’s the problem: even if you’re going for that narrative, that love must be sacrificed for the cause, the writing was so muddled, so emotionally incoherent, that it didn’t land. It didn’t feel brave or tragic. It didn’t feel hard but necessary. It felt empty. Like a placeholder for meaning that never arrived.

And in the absence of that clarity, the message I’m left with, whether the writers intended it or not, is that June Osborne isn’t brave. She’s scared. She’s hypocritical. She’s judgmental and self-righteous, and ultimately too afraid to face herself in the mirror and say the truth out loud. She doesn't stand up to Luke, to Serena, to Tuello, to her Mom, or to the expectations that box her in. She lies to herself because it’s easier than confronting the cost of living honestly. She stays in the box.

That’s what the writing is really telling us, not that she made a hard but noble choice, but that she ran. That she retreated. And maybe the show runners don’t see that. Maybe they’re still spinning interviews trying to convince us otherwise. But that’s the message. Whether they meant it or not.

Because you cannot watch Seasons 1 through 4 and tell me she didn’t love Nick. You can’t erase that with a voiceover or a clunky metaphor or even his death. And in the end, if she couldn’t choose it, not because it was wrong, but because it was hard, then the final word this show leaves us with is this: love doesn’t survive, and the women who choose it are weak.

All you’re left with in the end is a puddle of ashes where a heart once beat. No catharsis. No clarity. Just the hollow echo of a story that forgot what it was trying to say.

And that, more than anything, is what I’ll never forgive. I'll never forgive these writers, EM, or Hulu.

[jazeswhbhaven]

I want to be excited, but I'm on the side wanting that Main story to finally come out. There's been way too many cards being released and it's impossible to save up between those times. Feels like PB is squeezing out as much fanservice as they can. I feel like we just came out with the Butler stuff, and then at least more than 4 L cards afterwards.

Yeah, it seems the wait gets a little longer each time. While I don't mind waiting for good content, the constant banners and events seems to be carrying this game and that's what I don't particularly like.

Also yeah it was literally a couple weeks ago that we just ended the Maid/Butler event, now Pirates, and I'm guessing the next theme is probably gonna be Cowboy or Idol /hj

Not everyone is a whale or even a dolphin so obtaining every card and at the same time tuning into each and every tiny event is just not ideal when everyone is simply waiting for the main story. Especially with the damn cliffhanger they left us on?

I hope a new chapter at least comes out in July or even August because that will set my expectations for the wait for the next chapter.

My initial theory is the following based on the wait: >this game isn't going to go past 12 chapters for the main story which will have an abrupt ending that the fandom is either gonna hate or we'll all just be confused (or both lol) >a lot of the 72 are not going to be introduced in the main story which means MC needing to break the seal for all of them isn't necessary >they will continue the events and banners and that's how we will get introduced to the remaining noble devils That's all for now as I step down from my soapbox lmaooo. I truly feel you on this, and everyone else who's waiting on the main story.

[nethhiri]

Ok uuum the tags in that one ask "don't get your loved ones autopsies, unless you really need to" like, what do you mean? I'm curious now

To preface this, I really wanted to be a forensic pathologist and thought autopsies were the coolest and most useful thing (and they are in forensics) and I was very pro-autopsy. I'm also not an expert and this is not medical advice by any means, just opinion.

Specifically hospital autopsy. Can autopsies help? Yes, absolutely. However, the majority of the time, there’s not really an answer OR the clinical team already knows what happened so there’s not a need to perform one. Medical testing is so advanced that there's really nothing left to be 'uncovered'. For some people, it's more of a closure thing and I can understand that.

Basically, no matter how gentle or respectful you are of a decedent, the bottom line is that you’re taking someone apart permanently. I feel like a lot of people aren’t properly consented and have no idea what actually happens. The idea of taking someone's mom/grandpa/daughter/etc apart unnecessarily or without them knowing the extent of what happens is the part that really bothers me.

I don’t want to go into crazy detail but I’ll put a summary under the cut anyways.

After we do the Y-incision to open, we use shears to cut the ribcage off. Take out all of the organs, in some places this includes all the way up to the tongue. When the autopsy is done, we don't put organs back unless it is specifically requested 'organs back'. Even then, they're put back in plastic biohazard bags inside the person. We don't put all the organs back where they're supposed to go. If it's not 'organs back', those plastic bags full of organs are essentially placed in big biohazard trash boxes and incinerated later. The ribcage is placed back in the body cavity and the skin is sewn over it, but it sags down bc there's nothing in there anymore (the funeral home fixes it up nicely so you can't tell). If the brain has to be examined, we also have to use a bone saw to open the head.

The worst part for me is that to tie off the carotids, we have to pull the neck skin over the person's face and I think it's just barbaric.

[heynhay]

let's drive out

[mamawasatesttube]

perry with some words of wisdom in superman: lex 2000 ("just because this country is about to go to hell in a handbasket doesn't mean this newspaper does, too!") (and we are all the newspaper, really.)

[ratislatis]

I'll find you. Wait for me.

hee hee hoo hoo AUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH PAIN PAIN SUFFERING PAIN IN ALL DIRECTIONS!!!! TO HELL WITH IT (LITERALLY)!!!!!!!!!

[jessaerys]

sun visits the moon at spk headquarters and gets so so so sleepy

[immobiliter]

people who refuse to entertain rarepairs are weak and won't survive the winter. people who refuse to entertain m/f and f/f dynamics with a basis in canon in favour of the popular fanon mlm ship are even weaker

[guildwuff2]

sorry it's late but i'm a night owl and i'm still thinkin' about the screenshots people have posted, like

...the fact that these people were wanting to use large language models to write their RP posts, or generate rps in general. it's genuinely kinda heartbreaking to think about, rp is a collaborative effort with multiple people to make really fun and personal stories in settings you enjoy with characters you relate to, or just a concept you want to explore. i've met so many amazing people that i talk to every day through rp, i've had friends i met through rp or rp platforms online that i've gone on to meet in person, multiple times in some cases.

what do you gain from rping with an LLM? all it's doing is predictive text. i want to connect with people, through characters connecting or characters in conflict, and grow as a creative! and, hell, grow as a person. the trajectories i've written characters in have gone in ways i've not expected before and it becomes an opportunity for introspection, and there's absolutely no way i'd ever get that from having a machine write the post for me.

writing is hard! art is hard! it takes years of practice, trial and error, mistakes, and taking inspiration from the media you love. the only answer is to connect with those artists and authors, connect with people in the same boat as you and want to improve as creators. using LLMs just takes the humanity out of the whole process.

[ladyoftheharbour]

prayer circle for me not to be scheduled to work on monday pls

[elllteo]

Creators I love you but it's time to wake up

Among rumors about our tumblr user data being sold off to Midjourney/Generative AI, recent Extremely transphobic events (that have been ongoing) coming to a head, another extremely concerning internet censorship bill being pushed in upper levels of government, and a general air of frustration over how the site belongs to and is operated by perhaps the second stupidest CEO (second only to twitters own) of our age, I'm very done with the last few vestiges of what the old internet held for artists.

And if you're reading this, you probably are too.

I know we're tired. We are all tired. It is not always viable to pack up shop and move, again and again and again.

From tumblr to twitter to anywhere else we've ever grown up posting, things no longer work. Our audiences are kneecapped by aggressive and hostile algorithms, our reach is abysmal - if we aren't shadow-banned or silenced for one (transphobic) reason or another, we're thrust into an ever growing pit of hostility where the only thing that drives clicks is fighting and contention.

We're tired. We're so fucking tired. We aren't businesses, we aren't content mills, we cannot keep this pace that modern social media has set for us, to wring every ounce of creativity out of us to profit from and leave us rotting.

The key to staying afloat here, and I cannot stress this enough, is to stay connected to your peers.

Pack up and move as units if you must. Exodus from the sites that are killing us. Push your entire friend group of artists to move from one site to the next that promises you a kinder experience.

Art drives movements, it drives change, it is all that encompasses being human. If you take that away from the shitty places, they will be left with nothing but a cesspit of inhumanity and the people who follow you will be more incentivized than ever to move with you.

Yes, this is terrifying. There are no guarantees. There never was, and never are, and never will be.

But stay connected. Stay human.

Support each other and be willing to hold hands and jump when we all - as a group - need to jump from the flames we're all trying to convince ourselves wont kill us before rescue comes.

Rescue isn't coming, rescue will be found hand in hand with each other. I'm offering you my hand, please take it. There's always a new start, there are always helping hands reaching for you. You have to look up from the doom-scroll long enough to see and take them.

[2016jeeprenegade]

um not really relevant to anything but fuck insurance companies. specifically medical ones

[dr-will-wood-confessions-is-dead]

I wish I was joking but my parents made me play the ukulele for my grandparents for their anniversary in a very public restaurant (we literally had to ask the music guy to stop and I wanted to cry) but because I’m wildly mentally I’ll I only knew Will Wood songs on it so I had to play the shittiest most awkward cover of The Song With Five Names for my poor, poor grandparents. I forgot the lyrics halfway through. It was horrendous.

[sappholovell]

Hot take: treating Riko like an intelligent person who suffered through his life doesn't automatically make you an apologist for the things he does.

Like, he grew up in the Nest. He had no autonomy. He hurt other people, but "Riko suffered under his uncle and the way that physical and emotional abuse is built into the Nest" and "Riko also caused a lot of that physical and emotional abuse, especially towards specific people" are two statements that can coexist. After he broke Kevin's hand he wasn't allowed on camera because of how badly Tetsuji beat him.

Do I think that any of that excuses what he did to Kevin, Jean, Neil, and literally everyone else? No, he still did that shit. But I don't think that shippers and artists are automatically bad people, and I'm sick and tired of everyone acting like they are. Someone drawing a fictional antagonist in a playboy bunny outfit isn't going to bring upon the end times.

[creating-by-starlight]

Love having to explain in detail to profs why they can't just trust everything Chat spits out. My favorite thing.

[kaurwreck]

you remind me of a time i wish i could go back to; a time in which i would obsessively read and keep reading about anything that interested me slightly. i would stumble into entirely new ways of thinking with all the delicacy of a bull in a china shop, and learn to engage with it on its own terms. the ability got lost somewhere in the haze that was school and uni and people and work and now i’ve… lost the ability to think on my own. it comes maybe twice a month, in random bursts, and i fucking hate that i don’t have access to it continuously anymore. i hate that now when i’m bored i can’t think up stories in my head and chew on ideas in my free time. i see you and i’m so happy and so envious; i wish for my thirst for life back. i’m so tired. i’m saying this to you because, of all people, might be able to see it clearly. i respect the fact that you managed to retain it to adulthood or beyond is so much. you don’t know how much that means to me, as a young adult.

If it helps, I don't read nearly as much as I did as a kiddo. Like, not even remotely close. Quite frankly, I've only recently gotten back into reading lit, after years of only reading comics and manga, and not nearly at the volume I did before.

But! There are all sorts of opportunities to engage with stories and ideas and reconnect the synapses that spit where they used to spark. Once, in the throes of a heavy and prolonged period of uncertainty, I was gripped by the color of spray paint on the sidewalk on the way to pick up an espresso while sleep deprived. I consciously chose to stop and appreciate it.

Which is to say, I also get exhausted and burnt out and go through periods where I wonder if I've lost some fundamental part of myself. But then I rest or I change my routine or I receive an affirmation I didn't realize I desperately needed, and my verve returns, as it does. I think having pediatric onset bipolar disorder has advantaged me in this regard because even when I feel like nothing, I know that the intensity will return, and that it will continue to ebb and flow like the tides. I used to dread the ebb, but the ebb has its own value, too; in the ebb is where I nurture roots.

But to my earlier point, there are lots of stories and ideas buried in all sorts of moments. We can imbue meaning in the things we do as an observed ritual until it becomes habit until it becomes sincere. And for the periods in which we can't, it's worth remembering that the winter solstice is the longest evening of the year, but the sun will come back because it always has. In the meantime, you can stoke a hearth and sip on coaxed together warmth while tucking into your memory this grief so that you will recognize what you've been missing when it returns, so that feeling excited is remarkable enough to cut the present ennui. In time, you'll start to feel substance in the contours of the grief, too, because to be exhausted and numb and tired means that you exist enough to be anything at all.

And, if you're too untethered from yourself for even that, find something mundane and look for a glimmer of anything worth observing. If you can't find anything, choose to give some facet of what you see meaning anyway.

(It's not that the sidewalk was purple. It's that I chose to see that it was that particular, beautiful shade of purple rather than remain adrift into my own ether and, in doing so, tethered my intangible enormity in something tangible enough for me to stoke while I weathered the season.)

If you practice enough, this becomes muscle memory. Same with thinking on your own. I don't think reading is ever enough on its own anyway; sometimes, we mirror ideas and mistake them for our own. Or we encounter ideas but don't allow ourselves to be changed by them.

It's why it's important to engage intentionally, and it doesn't have to be with text. It can be with movies, art, those around us, our environment, our own understanding of the world, the condensation on a window. Mindfulness helps, but so does adopting the mindset of a toddler and asking why? Constantly. Again, it may begin as a rote exercise, but the more you do it, the more it becomes muscle memory. If you think you know something, consciously stop and ask why? Where did you learn that? What assumptions does your conclusion rely on? Could there be another explanation? Pretend you're someone else for a moment, a favorite character or historical figure or loved one. What would they think given the same facts? Also important is saying, like a toddler, because I said so! as the only reason you need. Try things for the sake of having not tried them before. There's a reason why Lao Tzu advises being like a newborn baby, soft boned with a strong grip.

There's very little I do, read, watch, or consume that I don't think about applying elsewhere, too. This is sometimes exhausting. But it's also where I get my well of passion. Because there's always an opportunity for meaning, my life bursts with it.

This doesn't mean I don't still have rough weeks or months or years. I have bipolar, adhd, cptsd, and social phobia; I have frequent insomnia and sleep paralysis, etc. etc. But I look forward to what I might learn next, and there's purpose and intention to how I experience even my lows. The life I'm currently living is so unlike where I came from, in part because I decided I wanted meaning and purpose. Before I knew what that was supposed to look like, I picked a direction and strove for it, feeling out what I couldn't see. I still do, when necessary. It will always be necessary.

So, while I don't know if what works for me will work for you, I can promise that something will excite you again, eventually. Adulthood isn't a linear decline or a separation from yourself. It's variable and dynamic, and you have agency in what you do with that. There isn't any objective meaning or purpose to be assigned, so you get to choose it for yourself, and it can be as variable and dynamic as you need it to be. So, if you don't want to grow into someone who can't think on your own, you don't have to. If you don't like your current state of mind, you don't need to settle in it.

tl;dr: It's not what I've retained, it's that I've ebbed and flowed and changed, and given myself the space to clumsily stumble towards what I want and what I value, even if I'm not always sure what those are. I'm letting go of the construct that I have to be anything, and I emphatically choose not to be lots of things. It's a process, and it's nonlinear. But nothing is, and there's grace in the inevitably of ebb.