#we literally have nothing in common

[the-way-astray]

stria x keefe enemies to lovers when

i want to purge this sentence from my brain. this never existed. why are people shipping me with keefe. what is the reason

[ratmanwalking]

Being around the most normal ppl all day really starts to wither away your brain

[angryborzois]

how do people keep confusing me for this one person

[demaparbat-hp]

Oh, Lala...

[derrygirlstrash]

Not to start shit, if you know me you know I'm a "ship and let ship" kinda gal and saying this I truly have no problem with James/Orla as a ship it harms no one and plenty of people like it, I like people having fun... that said...

I have never understood the common argument that James/Erin as a ship makes no sense and James/Orla should have been the ship instead. Often one of the arguments is that James/Erin wasn't set up while James/Orla was and I'm sorry... what? James/Erin have at least one ship heavy episode each season as well as plenty of background moments and several significant moments in Erin's Diary.

Even if you ignore all the background moments of the two holding hands, being inside each others personal space, the times where they're clearly matching and whatnot. There is at LEAST the implication that Erin would ignore her supposed crush for James, that she cares what he thinks, that Erin is James's type, that they're aligned in creative values and match each others energies, that Erin thinks he's handsome, that James thinks she's beautiful, that she can't imagine her life without him, etc.

James/Orla have some touchy moments... that's kinda all they have as far as romantic coding and I don't see how those two hugging in the Season 2 finale is somehow more significant than what setup James/Erin have throughout all the seasons.

Honestly, while I can see Orla liking James - you could build a case for it and convince me even though I see Orla as ace/aro in my own personal headcanons... no one has ever been able to give me a convincing argument for James liking Orla back. It kinda feels like you have to ignore that he never has a reason to fancy Orla back and just project onto him that.

Which, again, go off if that's your bag I think their friendship is fun and I could see making a ship out of it, but the common argument is that the SHOW makes a better case for James/Orla and like, no? No it really doesn't? It's just not main girl/main boy and some people really don't like that trope or Erin as a main and I think that if you say the show didn't set up James/Erin well and you argue the show would have been better with James/Orla based on what's in the show, you just might not like Erin very much?

I've also never been able to make sense of the argument that James/Erin is somehow the trope that 'guys and girls can't just be friends' like, is that not also James/Orla? Y'know, besides that Orla isn't a girl. They do use she/her during the show time period though and some people who argue this think Orla is a girl, they just think they're not THE girl. So somehow it's better even though it's the same thing.

Basically what I'm saying is that shipping is fun and we all oughta do it. Every ship besides the obvious ones is potentially fun and I'm down for it, but there is one ship the show was setting up and we all know what that ship was and I think it would be better if we all were honest about it.

PS: "James was gay the whole time!" Truthers, if you made it through this post somehow I'd like to offer a compromise: James Maguire is the most bisexual coded male character in media history we can all win here.

[mantisgodsdomain]

You may say to yourself things such as "wow, mantis god, you seem really behind for bugtober this year", and you would be right, but what you can't see behind the scenes is that we are actually being surprisingly productive in the hours of the day that are not dedicated to school, it's just that some months ago we happen to have thought to ourself "well, we enjoy learning things, so maybe we should take a hack at school since the grant is decent, get some actual certification on our resume so we can get a real job" and then forgot that the reason we don't already have official certification is because formal schooling historically has had worse effects on our overall mental health than almost literally anything else in our life, and now that's eating 4-6 hours of our life per day with an extra few hours of recovery after which makes it unfortunately difficult to work on art.

[quietwingsinthesky]

the entire nes library is 287mb. think about that. that’s not even a single gigabyte. in a just world, you could have this on your phone for free, it would just be on there.

[hecatesbroom]

I fully did not expect to write a fic today (or this week, for that matter), let alone finish one. But I woke up with an idea this morning and here we are! A very short exploration of Phil and Dorothy's relationship, in the context of queerness (and boy, do I have more thoughts about them now!)

Summary

Phil looks for an ally in Dorothy, but these are the 1950s — and not everyone is brave enough to be themselves just yet.

[itspileofgoodthings]

Well, I actually have the most mundane of questions, but it’s been so long since I’ve been in an English class that I feel like I’ve completely forgotten (and I’m curious how you do it): how do you go about reading a book as a class? Do you assign them the chapters to read at home and most of them actually do it? Or do you give them class time to read? Do you have the kids who try to spoil the rest of the book for the class? Basically, how does one teach a book in the year 2024?  😀

And do you have your students annotate inside their books? (I know the English teachers in my school require the students to do that, and I get why, but I inwardly shudder every time I see a student marking up a page.) 

Haha I love this question because I too am always asking myself how DOES one each a book in 2024?

It’s sort of a combination. I absolutely assign reading every night (almost) unless it’s Shakespeare or any play in which case we read it all in class. But for a novel there’s a couple chapters a night. I read aloud to them a lot too. Sometjmes I make them read aloud to the whole class, rotating kids who read. Sometimes I assign a chapter to be read in class silently with questions or quotes due at the end of the reading. Sometimes I put them in groups and make them read aloud to each other. There’s no one way that works for sure and of course ultimately I have no control over how much they read and I’m not naive enough to think that most of the reading assigned for homework doesn’t get skipped most of the time buuuuuut.

My bottom line is that I believe it’s my job to get excited about the actual text itself (easier for me in some cases than others but overall pretty easy because it does fill me with excitement) and then commit to taking them on the journey of the story with me. And my goal—that I’m sure I often don’t reach—is to make that experience so much more fun if you have actually read. And the way that I teach is pretty text heavy which is why I always make sure I’ve read the chapters for the day and am not just relying on my memory because the way I do it is just sort of absorbing it all up like a vacuum-cleaner, schwooooop, and then either pulling stuff out of the reading to look at directly or directing them to do the same thing. So the big thing that I have going for me, if any, is buy-in. Is getting kids excited about actually reading the actual text. I also speak often and passionately about the evils of sparknotes etc. not because they help kids get better grades or whatever but because they present you with the husk and shell of a story, stripped of all that makes it interesting, and that by reading that alone they’re reading something so dry and dull and are not achieving what I always want them to achieve —which is, have an Experience with the Literature.

Again, it never works perfectly by any stretch and there are so many ways I want to explore in my quest to get better at it but overall I think, at my very best, I can create this wave of energy and excitement in the story itself which is the most organic and ultimately most helpful way to get them to want to read.

Also no haha. I don’t let them annotate! Though occasionally kids DO of course. But sometimes they bring in their own copies in order to do that. The spoilers absolutely happen and are annoying but I sort of get by it by moving on very quickly and/or talking about how it’s often not the ending but how you get there that makes it interesting. Because that’s just true!

[medicinemane]

I don't know... horrible things happen all around the world and it's not a competition

Atrocities are committed against multiple groups in multiple parts of the world at the exact same moment, and none of them erase each other. They all matter, all the people in this world who are being brutalized matter. There shouldn't be any line you draw where one group doesn't actually matter as much as another

You're welcome to prioritize your energy towards helping one group or another, but what's not ok is invalidating or dismissing people who are actively being harmed

Same goes for trying to figure out which social group has things worst (and lets be honest, always using a US lens)

Like... maybe the important thing is to prop each other up and help everyone get on their own feet rather than trying to... pick fights about if physical disabilities or mental illness are less respected (I'm trying to pick a more absurd example but sadly I've seen exactly that argument happen before). Maybe it doesn't really matter and what matters is helping who we can when we can

I'm tired of it, I'm just fucking tired of it. Support people, champion them when the world is just brutalizing them, but you don't need to throw a single other person under the bus to do that

Which seems to be an absolutely impossible lesson for people to learn

[spineless-lobster]

I miss creative writing in english class I don’t wanna write a fucking comparative paragraph about existentialism in two damn near unrelated pieces of media I want to write about silly little guys doing things

[nexus-nebulae]

got myself a little pocket radio bc you never know when severe weather might knock out the power or cell towers but apparently there aren't any weather radio stations i can pick up :/

[blitz0hno]

If we are counter protesting for Trans Rights in front of like a legislative building or something can we all chant "WE HAVE MORE IN COMMON WITH YOU THAN THE PEOPLE IN THAT BUILDING DO"??? I will be screaming it at the oppressors in my community only bcuz c'mon you can't tell me half the people consuming Fox News every night aren't crying because their food stamps are about to run out same as us

And even if they aren't when some idiot films the protest all the on the fence liberals might think a little bit at least

[wortsandall]

i should talk about billy more but i let other people's opinions affect me because i really dont want to hear or interact with people trying to tell me, a black person, whether i can or can't like a character that is implied to be racist. i dont have the time or energy to do that when it really boils down to-him not being real. and the one scene that implies it being a very blink and youll miss it. (i didnt notice it even the first couple of rewatches until my sister pointed it out to me)

regardless, i really don't care. billy isn't a real person who isn't out there harming real people of color. he barely even does that in canon besides a throw away line. what is real however, is the way people try to talk to me about him.

[shmowder]

just need to vent about the Olympics

[z-eusie]

I think there will always be a difference to me between the Gods (historical, religious) and the gods (narrative). on one hand I fully acknowledge that gods are a product of their time period, of the historical, cultural, and religious context of their era and that it can be irresponsible to assign morality or personality to them outside of that context. I acknowledge that the gods are powerful, significant deities upon whom my own 'silly headcanons' have no merit. the gods in their original context are beings I would never claim to understand or represent in any way resembling accuracy.

but I think the gods in a narrative context, as representations of concepts, as representations of important lessons and 'archetypes' (in a manner of speaking) are completely different. these are the versions I play around with, the ones I assign a level of humanity that might be unbecoming of their true selves. narratively, I'm going to write the gods in my own context, with human values and experiences. it's not meant to be a true representation of the gods in their original contexts.

I think it's important to acknowledge a) why these figures are significant and where that comes from, but also to b) find ways to connect to them on our own terms. and I do that by writing them in my little stories, portraying the humanity of them in every way I think they could be capable of.