#this was an essay

[gulpchulp]

my goodness some of y’all are exhausting when it comes to Gemma

People really wanting kids is very very common in a lot of circles. Probably less here on tumblr or reddit but amongst others just out in the world, stuff like fertility issues is a huge deal. A lot of people start to feel inadequate when they struggle with fertility although they really shouldn’t. But I think it makes people hurt because they feel like their body isn’t doing a thing that it should be able to do and feel like it is stopping them from reaching their goals.

Additionally, just because someone cares about their career (like Gemma) doesn’t automatically mean they don’t want kids. People can want both AND people can struggle with that. Especially women as they are often shoved into a box of ‘needing to choose one or the other’ (like i have seen some people on here say) when these two things can exist side by side. Wanting kids doesn’t ruin your career or mean that you have lost all ambition, it just means you want to be a parent.

And on top of that I really do not think at all that Gemma voluntarily left to do some random treatment retreat thing. I think that is a misinterpretation. Now maybe I am wrong and if I am sorry in advance but the way I see it is that Lumon took her. They faked her car accident the night she was going out, they had probably waited for a situation like that so they could take her (at night, alone). Yes her and Mark were having trouble but again this is very common amongst the general population. Relationships can have rough patches, you are just people and people are emotional and reactive (to different extents depending on the individual).

Honestly Mark and Gemma’s marriage stuff didn’t seem that unusual to me. I mean they weren’t in a great place but it was in a very normal way, a way that happens to a lot of people. That doesn’t mean that it is automatically great and that the way they were communicating with each other was amazing and is what should have to happen in a relationship but they were in a dark place. But I think that they were both stressed and tired of working towards a goal they presumably both wanted.

It was disappointing and stressful and when people are stressed they snap and they say or do things that they wouldn’t otherwise. Like Mark, who pulls away and gets snarky when confronted with pain or grief, he runs away not because he doesn’t care but because he does, too much. So I don’t think him and Gemma stopped loving each other and that she would run away to Lumon because they were having trouble. (I honestly don’t even think it would have ended in divorce or anything though that happens a lot too).

I get that pregnancy and birth plot lines are not for everyone, but I think it is narrow minded to write it off as a cop out or bad writing. Pregnancy plots and discussion of children and family’s have always been in the show, they just weren’t the main focus. And this was just one part of one episode. Gemma exists as a person outside of wanting a child, half the time we see her she is not worried about that at all, she is too busy being tortured. And yet many of you have latched on.

I think that sometimes in people’s discomfort with traditional societal norms (for a lack of a better term) they end up leaning into the toxic side of them. You allow Gemma’s desire to be a mother to overshadow all other things occurring and ridicule the show for including it. You blame her for her own torture and you think that if a couple ever struggles they do not love each other. You blame Gemma for everything happening in the marriage as if it wasn’t Mark buying the crib and later taking it apart.

Anyway yeah imma need people to start thinking critically in regard to Gemma cause these takes are some of the worst I have seen.

[maximura]

Kpop stan culture is just getting worse and worse. People just jumping on hate bandwagons without doing any research and trying to cancel people as if careers and lives are not at risk. They just have no concept of how the real world even works and it makes me so frustrated to follow kpop in the first place.

It's definitely frustrating. The thing that annoys me the most is how I cannot read korean very well/am not fluent so have to rely on translations (that may or may not be accurate). Misinformation is so frustrating.

In general, I understand people have a sense of justice. They want to see the full effects of Karma. They want to see "bad" people suffer the consequences and only "good" people win. We can all be susceptible to these kinds of thoughts but I feel like vengeance and hate are both just destructive and don't add anything to your life.

Finding something fictional "gross" is totally a spectrum. I don't dabble in dark Japanese media because I know how horrible it is for my mental health, but then you have other people who find it interesting in some way. Who the hell are we to ban and forbid others from consuming media that was officially and globally released. Like, if it was truly abhorrent (to the point of criminality), there were plenty of chances for networks to impose bans and remove the content.

I'm just so tired of this desire to "cancel" idols for some truly ridiculous shit. This is why new generation idols are so fucking muted and deliberately bland.

[addisonnie]

what's a frat party like irl

fucking absolute chaos. the floor is caving in. it smells like beer and asshole. random people making out. basement dwellers. the walls and ceiling are wet for some reason? it’s so FUCKING muggy. there is literally NO ROOM TO STAND. i mean that shit is SERIOUSLY packed like sardines. going up to the makeshift “bar” and they give you a cup of jungle juice.

the one i usually go to (phi sig) is in the frat BASEMENT. there are pipes on the ceiling and sometimes they drip and splash on you. the floor is slimy like the bottom of a lake. there’s graffiti everywhere. i slipped and fell down the basement stairs hashtag humiliating

the men to women ratio is INSANE because if you’re a man that isn’t a frat bro you’re not getting in, buddy. ladies get in free and they don’t gaf about you but the men…. you gotta know someone to get in so it’s like 90% women 10% men and most of the women are straight so where’s the fun in that

[koobiie]

i feel strongly about this

[soracities]

"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

[valeriehalla]

I am so utterly fascinated by “Saki”, the 18-year-running mahjong manga in which you, the reader, become gradually, frog-boilingly aware (over the course of nearly two decades’ worth of mahjong tournaments) that none of these girls are wearing underwear and most of their boobs are slowly expanding.

I need you to understand that I have, like, an anthropological level fascination with this comic. From the perspective of someone who is also a comic artist and writer, two things delight me about it:

the fact that I understand completely how an artist gets from “the fans can have a little hint of skirted asscheek” to “the pussy is completely out on center page” over the course of 18 years; and

the way in which the pussy being out is treated by the characters and diegesis as being utterly unremarkable.

Okay. Point 1. The frog-boiling.

Let me put this in perspective for you. There was already a meme about how the characters in “Saki” don’t wear underwear when I was in middle school. I am thirty now. Okay? And it’s still going.

In the time since, this has stopped being a joke. It is now indisputable canon. This is not because anyone outright says it at any point. It’s because the underwear ran out of places to hide. I’m obsessed with this thought: somewhere in the over 20 volumes of “Saki”, there is a panel in which underwear was objectively deconfirmed. And it would be so hard to figure out where that panel actually is. Maybe the artist didn’t even realize it when she drew it! The frog? Boiling!!

And of course there is also the breast expansion. I don’t know how to put a spin on this. They are just expanding. Like, this happens a lot with artists: you define a character as being, in your mind, “the one with the big boobs”, and over the years you emphasize that trait further and further so that the signal doesn’t get lost in the noise. It’s just that normally—in like a wildly popular manga series about mahjong published by literally Square Enix, for example—normally there would be a point at which the boobs stopped getting bigger. Like, an editor would step in or something. Or you would get to the point where you cannot draw the character in the same panel as her mahjong tiles without her breasts spilling over the tiles, and you’d go, “Well, this is now untenable.”

That did not happen. There is no ceiling. The frog is soup.

Point 2. The complete and utter mundanity of all of this.

It’s like this, okay: there’s no shortage of trashy ecchi manga out there. There’s a million other comics doing wildly bawdier things with wildly more improbable bishoujos.

The vibe with “Saki” is different.

It’s hard to explain this, but it feels like the world of the comic is fundamentally uninterested in the fanservice happening on the page. I cannot describe it as “leering”, because I cannot conceive of a person in the story from whose point of view one would leer. I think the artist is probably into it—I can’t imagine anyone is making her do this—but “Saki” the comic has no opinion on the matter.

There are essentially no male characters in “Saki”. Like, there was one guy? Kind of? At the very beginning? But he is gone now. They put him back in the toybox. He does not exist. It appears to be some level of canonical that in the world of “Saki”, almost all humans are women. Those women are sometimes romantically into each other. According to comments the artist has made on Twitter (which I cannot source), they have lesbian baby technology, so it’s no problem. It’s so much not a problem that the story is about mahjong, instead of any of that.

So, like, the fiction here appears to be this: this is the, like, meta-narrative of the fanservice of “Saki”, right: it’s just normal that they don’t wear underwear and their boobs are arbitrarily big. It’s been normal. It was normal before the story of the manga began. It’s just how things are. Nobody bats an eye about it, and if they do, it’s in sort of a lesbian kind of way so like what’s the problem, we love lesbians here. This is literally normal for girls.

The fanservice simply diffuses into this all-encompassing aura of disembodied, ambient sluttiness. The framing of the panels demands you acknowledge it, and the story demands you already be over it, because it’s mahjong time now, and we’re playing mahjong.

Do you get??? why I’m so fascinated??? Are you not a little enraptured???

Anyway, I have no idea how to end this weird post. I guess the conclusion is that women stay winning????

[francisforever2014]

how it feels knowing that loneliness is still time spent with the world

[ofswordsandpens]

idk why people get super pedantic about the movie logic in Home Alone and start and try to pick it apart, because like, its a Christmas movie about a child accidentally being left home alone, the premise isn't exactly asking us to suspend our disbelief that much, and yet nearly every single "gotcha" question I see people bring up about this film is literally answered within the first 15 minutes :/

[monsterfactoryfanfic]

if I've learned anything from grad school it's to check your sources, and this has proven invaluable in the dozens of instances when I've had an MBA-type try to tell me something about finances or leadership. Case in point:

Firefox serves me clickbaity articles through Pocket, which is fine because I like Firefox. But sometimes an article makes me curious. I'm pretty anal about my finances, and I wondered if this article was, as I suspected, total horseshit, or could potentially benefit me and help me get my spending under control. So let's check the article in question.

It mostly seems like common sense. "...track expenses and income for at least a month before setting a budget...How much money do I have or earn? How much do I want to save?" Basic shit like that. But then I get to this section:

This sounds fucking made up to me. And thankfully, they've provided a source to their claim that "research has repeatedly shown" that writing things down changes behavior. First mistake. What research is this?

Forbes, naturally, my #1 source for absolute dogshit fart-sniffing financial schlock. Forbes is the type of website that guy from high school who constantly posts on linkedin trawls daily for little articles like this that make him feel better about refusing to pay for a decent package for his employees' healthcare (I'm from the United States, a barbaric, conflict-ridden country in the throes of civil unrest, so obsessed with violence that its warlords prioritize weapons over universal medical coverage. I digress). Forbes constantly posts shit like this, and I constantly spend my time at leadership seminars debunking poor consultants who get paid to read these claims credulously. Look at this highlighted text. Does it make sense to you that simply writing your financial goals down would result in a 10x increase in your income? Because if it does, let me make you an offer on this sick ass bridge.

Thankfully, Forbes also makes the mistake of citing their sources. Let's check to see where this hyperlink goes:

SidSavara. I've never heard of this site, but the About section tells me that Sid is "a technology leader who empowers teams to grow into their best selves. He is a life-long learner enjoys developing software, leading teams in delivering mission critical projects, playing guitar and watching football and basketball."

That doesn't mean anything. What are his LinkedIn credentials? With the caveat that anyone can lie on Linkedin, Mr. Savara appears to be a Software Engineer. Which is fine! I'm glad software engineers exist! But Sid's got nothing in his professional history which suggests he knows shit about finance. So I'm already pretty skeptical of his website, which is increasingly looking like a personal fart-huffing blog.

The article itself repeats the credulous claim made in the Forbes story earlier, but this time, provides no link for the 3% story. Mr. Savara is smarter than his colleages at Forbes, it's much wiser to just make shit up.

HOWEVER. I am not the first person to have followed this rabbit hole. Because at the very top of this article, there is a disclaimer.

Uh oh!

Sid's been called out before, and in the follow up to this article, he reveals the truth.

You can guess where this is going.

So to go back to the VERY beginning of this post, both Pocket/Good Housekeeping and Forbes failed to do even the most basic of research, taking the wild claim that writing down your budget may increase your income by 10x on good faith and the word of a(n admittedly honest about his shortcomings) software engineer.

Why did I spend 30 minutes to make a tumblr post about this? Mostly to show off how smart I am, but also to remind folks of just how flimsy any claim on the internet can be. Click those links, follow those sources, and when the sources stop linking, ask why.

[simplyfroggy]

me when a movie is bad: 👎

me when a movie is good: 👍

me when a movie is mediocre:

[valeriapryanikova]

[mayonaisalspray]

HEY YOU!

Do you have an obsession with Ace Attorney? At least mild respect (or fear) for Miles Edgeworth? An inability to focus on your tasks? All of the above? Well I have just the thing for you!!

For the low price of opening it on your web browser of choice, you can use my handy dandy program I’m tentatively calling “Miles Edgeworth Glares At You For Being On Your Phone Instead Of Working”

Features include setting a timer(wow!), victory music, and an image of one very angry looking prosecutor! That’s more than one feature!

Try it out today!!

EDIT(final for real this time): I’ve made it so you can download and use it offline should you desire! Have fun

[catfindr]

[nyancrimew]

NEW ESSAY: anarchism starts in the now: hope for a better future

there is still time

cover art: @punkitt-is-here

[scrimmiestbingus]

I need someone to do a video essay-length deep dive into how 75% of the BG3 fandom fell so hard for Astarion's manipulative seductor act that they believe that's his actual personality. This man has to practice his lines and still fumbles them constantly. He flat-out says it's all a front because he believes his sex appeal is the only reason anyone would keep him around, which is tragic. When he drops the act, he becomes this kind of silly man rediscovering what it means to be himself, and what it means to both love and be loved. He says "I'm all pointy ears, love." while turning his head to show off those pointy ears. Let him be silly, let him be awkward! It's so much more authentic then him being a walking innuendo.

He has a mid charisma stat with a bonus for deception and rolled a nat 20 on all y'all.