it’s so insane how people act about high school steve bc like outside of the shit we see him do in s1 (breaking jonathan’s camera (tho tbh i’m on his side here) and the graffiti), all the things the characters mention when they’re talking about how he used to suck are so??? nothing???? like. he’s a douche because he didn’t remember someone a year younger than him from one (1) of his classes. I live in a small town and went to school with the same people from elementary through high school and there were Absolutely people in my own graduating class (of like ~140 people) whose names I didn’t know (while I was still in high school, let alone years later). and then the other things that get mentioned are like “he ate a bagel messily” or “he asked stupid questions” or “his parents are rich” which aren’t things he needs to apologize for?? everyone leave him alone!!!!

i know it’s actually like silly and goofy the things robin was mad at him for. one of my biggest pet peeves in fic is when people retroactively make up mean things steve did to robin in high school because like…..she would have said if he actively antagonized her. her literal only complaints were 1. he didn’t remember her from class 2. he got crumbs on the floor 3. he didn’t understand the material (😭?) 4. tammy liked him. like that’s all he did to her. and eddie can’t think of a single grievance he has against steve other than like “you play sports so i just kinda figured you’re evil” so all in all i think it’s kinda unfair and ooc when people write steve’s early high school days as if he was just constantly prowling the halls looking for people to harass.

and i’m not saying steve wasn’t a dick, because he was, but the way it’s presented in the show was much more interesting than the way fanon characterizes him. steve’s form of bullying was being nice to someone one second, then laughing along when his friends made a joke at their expense. it was taking the whole “dude stoppppp 🤣” approach when tommy went too far. it was saying the meanest thing he could possibly think of when he felt attacked. steve cared more about his social status and fitting in with his friend group than being kind, and he outright admits that in s3 when he says popularity was really important to him before he developed beyond that and realized it was all pointless. i feel like we all knew people like that in high school and it feels 1000x more real than the typical stephen king bully caricature who’s like so evil it doesn’t even make sense. and yet. everyone insists on making steve into that

Okay so it seems like Vander betrayed Silco a long time before the bridge massacre. They both look much younger during the betrayal scene and Silco says he was about Deckard’s age when it happened, so probably when they were in their early to mid twenties? Vander looks at least in his thirties during the bridge scene.

But I’m just confused as to why Vander tried to kill Silco. If it was because Silco had plans beyond the Lanes (which Vander brings up as a bad point against Silco during their conversation) but Vander was satisfied with them having control of just the Lanes, why did did he go on to lead the protest at the bridge??

It also sounds like he made Silco an outcast in the Lanes (based on what both Vander and Benzo say)?? But I don’t get what Silco supposedly did for people to believe that he’s some monster who deserves to be cast out. Especially if they saw his eye afterwards, it’s clear he was the victim. And I don’t believe he used the same extreme tactics when he was younger for people to shun him, as he attributes the betrayal with having taught him that lesson. So the only thing that makes sense is that Vander made up some lie about their falling out. I doubt he disclosed that he tried to murder Silco first…

getting fashion "advice" from my mom is kind of annoying because it's basically always "don't let other peoples' opinions bother you!! be yourself!! but also don't wear that jacket bc people will think it's too much!!"

You'd think being ignored by someone for what will be 7 months in a few days would idk lessen my complete obsession with them...

Knowledge Revenge.

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

spock’s room decor is actually fucking bonkers. The weapons??? the big red velvet curtain??? like ok phantom of the opera go crazy.

for reference jim’s room has some photos and a plant so we can surmise this is uniquely a spock being a dramatic weirdo thing

this manatee looks like it’s in a skyrim loading screen

it's so fucking frustrating to be in college and know everyone uses chatgpt and to be tempted by it constantly while also knowing intellectually that it doesn't work and it's a bad idea. like, i hang out in the library a lot, and i see people using chatgpt on assignments almost every day. and i know it isn't a good way to learn, because it's not really "artificial intelligence" so much as it is an auto text generator. and it gives you wrong information or badly worded sentences all the time. but every week i stare down assignments i don't want to do and i think man. if only i could type this prompt into a text generator and have it done in 10 minutes flat. and i know it wouldn't work. it wouldn't synthesize information from the text the way professors want, it wouldn't know how to answer questions, it just spits out vaguely related words for a couple paragraphs. but knowing my classmates get their work done in 10 minutes flat with it while i fight every ounce of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in my body is infuriating.

My sort of maybe embarrassing “late to the game” thing I’m learning now is how to tell if oil has gone bad.

I feel like most other foods have obvious visual tells like mold or they end up smelling foul and obviously bad. But I was googling about oil and the internet says “if it smells like crayons, it’s bad” which would not have been my first guess. And I tested it out on my somewhat old sesame oil and was like “by god, I would describe this as smelling like crayons”

Anyway protip if your old oil smells kinda like crayons it’s probably no good 🖍️

So usually when an imaginary friend is a real thing in a story, it’s either a demon or a ghost or some supernatural boogeyman that probably wants to eat the kid they’ve befriended (Mama, a couple of the Paranormal Activity movies), or “imaginary friends” are just treated as a real thing in the setting, and if a child just thinks hard enough they can manifest a friend into existence (Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Happy).

And somewhere in the middle is an area where the imaginary friend in question is real and they are supernatural, but they aren’t malevolent, and they aren’t entirely honest about what they are. Like maybe they’re a fairy or a god or some kind of boggle from mythology, but they just got caught by a six year old and they don’t have time to get into it, so they just go “…Yes. I’m your imaginary friend. We haven’t met. How do you do.” And then they stick around because they do love this kid, and if you’re a boggle from mythology in the modern day good food is really hard to come by.

And at some level. That’s what I think Hobbes is.

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

Because i feel like i might be overestimating what the average is, i shall Conduct Research

This isn't about how many languages you speak, but how many youre able to count up to at least 10 in, since basic numbers are some of the first words you learn in a foreign language and sometimes you catch them without having studied the language at all

yknow i dont go here but sometimes i gotta go: seriously respect clowns. they have the worst pop culture representation in the world and also the best most thorough honor code. they're just here to be silly little guys who bring joy and are very conscientious about doing so responsibly. let them to their merriment in peace you dont hafta take potshots. i dont go here but like maybe i should, you all seem super chill

A h-heartfelt reunion..?

Bonus

Things I've seen tumblr memeing about James Somerton doing à la "How did no one see how bigoted he was!" as if those things haven't been a significant part of tumblr culture for over a decade :

Presenting untrue and bordering on conspiratorial versions of (queer or otherwise marginalised) history without any sources

Completely disregarding and disrespecting any expertise on socio-cultural topics/humanities and distrusting academics and historians (incl. acting as if no academics or historians could be queer or marginalised)

Downplaying the role misogyny played in the historical oppression of queer women and concluding that queer men must have been more oppressed than queer women

Bi women are, at best, not as queer as "real" queer ppl, and at worst, simply equivalent to straight women

Despite nominal trans inclusivity, transmasculine ppl are functionally women when convenient (combined with the above, bi transmascs are functionally straight women)

Despite nominal trans inclusivity (bis), shamelessly attacking, threatening and actively endangering any trans woman who questions them or smth they find important (often by unfairly presenting her as violent or as a threat)

Having absolutely fucking wild and reductive takes about ace ppl, the oppression they face and their place in the queer community

Stating that marriage equality is an assimilationist fight while completely ignoring its direct roots in the horrifying consequences of the AIDS crisis for partners of ppl who died of AIDS

Praising western media creators from the past for queer coding even under censure and in the same breath condemning current non western media creators for being homophobic bc their representation isn't explicit enough

Blaming China for all existing homophobic censoring in western media

Assuming all queer media would be better told by western creators and by western standards

Only out queer ppl get to tell queer stories

Heavily criticising almost all queer media created by women or ppl they see as such (see above points about trans ppl) or involving/starring a significant amount of women for any perceived or real amount of "problematicness", but fawning over and praising and negating criticism of queer media created by and starring mostly or even functionally exclusively men (even when it could be argued that, you know, not involving/seriously sidelining women is a pretty clear example of misogyny which should probably be considered "problematic")

And I'm probably forgetting stuff or there's stuff I have internalised myself and don't recognise as an issue

Like idk but I feel like the takeaway from Hbomberguy and Toddintheshadow's videos should maybe be "be aware of such patterns in your communities bc they definitely exist" and not "this guy is uniquely awful" and I feel like a lot of the discussion I've seen surrounding this has been severely failing at that. Most ppl who've spent any significant amount of time on tumblr prob either have internalised at least one of those thought patterns, have had to de-internalise them, or have had to be extremely vigilant to not internalise them (which is done by, you know, seeking out other sources, which also seemed like an important takeaway from the videos)