was reflecting on the fact that i seem to have naturally lost touch with a few people from one specific friend group since we finished uni and i realised that every single one of them went on to do a prestigious masters in humanities at a very expensive university and their lives are still entirely economically subsidised by their parents and therefore very student-like while i've had to throw myself into a career to support myself and work towards a move immediately after my studies and i don't resent them (i would have def done a postgraduate if my family could pay for it) but it's clear that we simply can't relate to each other's lives anymore and i can't believe i didn't realise this sooner

it is totally okay to be hurt and tired and fed up with the american schooling system but i need you to understand that we need to be better about loudly and routinely defending public education.

yes, many teachers suck, many schools utterly suck. i also got bullied and was absolutely not given the right support for my needs. i am not defending public education because it was kind to me. i am defending it because it needs to exist.

right-wing republicans do not want an educated population. they want kids to be homeschooled or in private school. there is a huge religious undertone to this.

the most common argument is that despite high costs, the "result" is not "good" enough. they point to failing schools as proof that public education is just never going to work out. there will be arguments made here that you actually agree with: that teachers can be bullies, that we taught online for 2 years and still charged the same amount of tuition, that we have no recourse for students to actually have agency or a voice, and that schools are now unsafe for kids due to risk of illness and gun violence.

these are all placing the blame in a fraudulent way, one intended to get your parents to homeschool you. the less kids in a school, the less federally-awarded funding for that school, the less any school succeeds. they will not mention the fact it is their legislation that takes away important funding opportunities, that teachers are living at or below the poverty line, that buildings are not kept up to code, that administration is overpaid and forces specific curriculums, that corporations like (my personal enemy) Pearson Education control certain classroom goals because teachers can't afford other options. they pretend to be ignorant of the gun violence and say "oh just get a gun" - but these are the same people who will be sending their child to a private school with a bulletproof backpack. they don't care if your kid dies, though. they "don't believe" in covid, but they did get their kid vaccinated, because of course they did.

it is a closed loop. conservative parents hear the fearmongering and remove children from the system. frequently these parents are also deeply religious. the kids are raised without access to other media & learn to parrot their parents. you have now created a new generation of conservatives. additionally, one of the parents/caregivers must stay home and homeschool the children, usually for free. i will give you 1 guess which parent tends to stay home to homeschool the children. these parents are encouraged to have many, many children. those children are most likely not getting access to safe sex ed.

we might laugh at fox news suggesting teachers are forcing children to use kitty litter but: first of all, there is kitty litter in the classroom. it's part of an emergency kit in case children are locked in due to a shooter. so that's fucking dystopian, and the fact they've completely reimagined the scenario to somehow make the teachers look bad when it's instead a fucking huge symbol of our failure as a country to protect our children.... it feels a little intentional.

secondly: don't just dismiss the situation. because, yeah, obviously, no teacher is encouraging kids to be a catboy. but the actual undertone that fox news is trying to sew is an outright distrust of teachers and of public education. they rely on the dehumanization of trans people as a common touchstone to hide the fact they're pushing two agendas at once. (which is ironic. because the thing they accuse teachers of. is pushing. an agenda.)

whenever someone tells you they want you to read less, you should be suspicious of that. when someone tries to separate you and your education, you should be suspicious of that. i don't even like incel rhetoric nor would i want my kids exposed to it - but i would not take away my child's (age-appropriate) access to the internet. i would just provide more educational materials, not less. the difference here is that i believe we can resolve ignorance with knowledge; whereas conservatives believe that ignorance is bliss.

they misappropriate funding and demonize teachers. they pull the same trick each time - the same thing we are seeing with anti-trans rhetoric. they do not want you to have access to safe sex ed, so they act horrified, claim sex ed teaches you how to thrust deep, claim that we have no idea what "age-appropriate" means. since the mid-nineties, the united states has spent at least 2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education, even though to quote the above link: "a preponderance of studies has found no effect of abstinence education at reducing adolescent pregnancy". conservatives want you to think less of any person struggling with addiction so they can continue their racist "war on drugs", so they spend up to $750 million dollars a year on the DARE program which has absolutely no effect. acting like teachers "must" be "grooming" children is just the same thing - so they can demand that funding either goes to their causes or the funding doesn't "exist" ("i'm not paying for our kids to learn that thing!")

and they want you to feel uncaring about this. they are aware that you will hate some parts of your school experience. pretty much everyone does. they want to lean into the parts that you hate so that you don't put up a fight about it when they take it away for not being "good enough."

i know i maybe sound like a conspiracy theorist. but truly. truly. it is beneficial for conservatives to reduce your faith in the american public schooling system.

one of the explicitly stated campaign promises of the conservative party: to axe the Department of Education in 2024.

i know we are all tired and burnt out and there is so much else wrong with their entire platform. but maybe just - pay attention to this one.

thinking about the... potential clawthorne woodcarving mentorship.

+ bonus cuz also thinking abt how if hunter ever met dell's palisman and got reminded of flapjack, he'd probably feel bad abt making that association cuz he knows what it's like to be seen only as someone's different version (even though the bird wouldn't mind much so lol)

I'm not the kind of person who thinks there is only one correct interpretation of a character or dynamics because seeing how much you can do within the established parameters of these things is one of the best parts of fandom. But some people don't actually have anything I could meaningfully call an interpretation of a character, they just pick one to three of the characters established traits and then puppet them around based on how they think that particular character archetype should behave. And it's infuriating to watch. It's not even "he would not say this" it's "nobody would ever say this, you have created something that is so derivative and generic that it fails to even crudely mimic human behavior." And yes believe me I understand that this literally doesn't matter at all but this is where my peak autism lies, and bitching on Tumblr is the most socially acceptable way to channel those feelings.

Eh, almost forgot ;~;; Commission for sweet @celestialrose3 ;;~;;; Thank you so much *bows*

screenshotting because this person is correct and having fun so I don't want to harsh their mellow, but to me it Does Not Count if it's new guys playing them. I'm so sorry. if you make a high budget star trek where kirk and spock are played by dudes who are 2020s handsome then they simply will not be in love the same way. I don't think jim can literally glow at spock if he's not played by a 60s pulp novel cover looking guy who is perpetually sweaty, on actual film and under soft yet dramatic lighting. doesn't matter if he's a good actor. bill shatner isn't a good actor. that's not the point because he can do one thing, and that thing is look twitterpated and say shit like "why, mr. Spock! 😍😳🥰" And Yes You Can Hear The Emojis even though they hadn't been invented yet. no one is ever going to get spock right other than leonard nimoy. no one has his weird little stance and precise combination of warmth and creaturely vibes. no one else is going to wear basic purple eyeshadow with the unaffected confidence of a no-nonsense 70 year old woman who's been wearing her red lipstick and tasteful dash of mascara since she was 16 and just considers it part of getting dressed. where am I going with this. Oh yeah basically I don't care what 21st century reboots do with them because I Do Not Know Those Men

So if you follow me (and aren't just stopping by because you saw one of my funney viralposts), you probably know that I've been writing a bunch of fanfiction for Stranger Things, which is set in rural Indiana in the early- to mid-eighties. I've been working on an AU where (among other things) Robin, a character confirmed queer in canon, gets integrated into a friend group made up of a number of main characters. And I got a comment that has been following me around in the back of my mind for a while. Amidst fairly usual talk about the show and the AU and what happens next, the commenter asked, apparently in genuine confusion, "why wouldn't Robin just come out to the rest of the group yet? They would be okay with it."

I did kind of assume, for a second or two, that this was a classic case of somebody confusing what the character knows with what the author/audience knows. But the more I think about it, the more I feel like it embodies a real generational shift in thinking that I hadn't even managed to fully comprehend until this comment threw it into sharp perspective.

Because, my knee-jerk reaction was to reply to the comment, "She hasn't come out to these people she's only sort-of known for less than a year because it's rural Indiana. In the nineteen-eighties." and let that speak for itself. Because for me and my peers, that would speak for itself. That would be an easy and obvious leap of logic. Because I grew up in a world where you assumed, until proven otherwise, that the general society and everyone around you was homophobic. That it was unsafe to be known to be queer, and to deliberately out yourself required intention and forethought and courage, because you would get negative reactions and you had to be prepared for the fallout. Not from everybody! There were always exceptions! But they were exceptions. And this wasn't something you consciously decided, it wasn't an individual choice, it wasn't an individual response to trauma, it wasn't individual. It was everybody. It was baked in, and you didn't question it because it was so inherently, demonstrably obvious. It was Just The Way The World Is. Everybody can safely be assumed to be homophobic until proven otherwise.

And what this comment really clarified for me, but I've seen in a million tiny clashing assumptions and disconnects and confusions I've run into with The Kids These Days, is that a lot of them have grown up into a world that is...the opposite. There are a lot of queer kids out there who are assuming, by default, that everybody is not homophobic, until proven otherwise. And by and large, the world is not punishing them harshly for making that assumption, the way it once would have.

The whole entire world I knew changed, somehow, very slowly and then all at once. And yes, it does make me feel like a complete space alien just arrived to Earth some days. But also, it makes me feel very hopeful. This is what we wanted for ourselves when we were young and raw and angrily shoving ourselves in everyone's faces to dare them to prove themselves the exception, and this is what I want for The Kids These Days.

(But also please, please, Kids These Days, do try to remember that it has only been this way since extremely recently, and no it is not crazy or pathetic or irrational or whatever to still want to protect yourself and be choosy about who you share important parts of yourself with.)

"Hannibal, stop stabbing ppl for buying me drinks."

Beacon 23 (2023) - Official Trailer

what i like especially about the pronouns in the goblin emperor is that this language doesn't just have the T-V distinction (aka informal vs. formal second-person pronouns, in this case 'thou' vs. 'you'), it also has informal and formal first-person pronouns. having BOTH of these distinctions in the same language lets you fine-tune your tone by mixing and matching. with only one axis of formality, when you use informal pronouns, are you being familiar in an intimate way, or in an insolent or dismissive way? when you use formal pronouns, are you being polite or standoffish? you can't tell just from the pronouns; there's ambiguity. but a language where you can use a formal first-person pronoun in the same sentence as an informal second-person pronoun allows you to distance yourself (via the formal first) while also being familiar (via the informal second), thereby achieving the conversational tenor known to linguists as Fuck Thee Specifically.

My head cannon is that Machete isn’t /bad/ with children he just doesn’t /get/ them. He doesn’t know what to talk about. Asking them their opinions on the Holy Roman Emperor’s endeavor to tax books published in various languages.

wheeze

I had to go and dig out this recent twitter exchange

I saw the saddest little meow meow yesterday!! All I could think about while watching that version of Bruce is a. GIVE HIM A ROBIN and b. LET HIM MEET SUPERMAN

dude you're going to drive?? the thing that killed eleanor vance??

Good morning~

People often bring up the omake No Respect Time to use as Crocodad Propaganda, and y'know, I think there might be just a smidge more the omake can provide to Crocodad than what people have already discussed in the past

Like everyone's seen the comparisons between Crocodile and the anime screencaps of Don Luffyone, we all know how the two look so similar etc etc. But honestly, the resemblance is even more obvious (and hilarious) when you look at the OG manga version (Sidenote but Don Luffyone is the only one who smokes cigars in the omake... Everyone else has plain ol' cigarettes... That sure was a decision there Oda)

And yeah, you might be thinking I picked this mangacap of Crocodile in particular because the resemblance is the most obvious here and I have My Crocodad Agenda to push etc etc. But I will have you know that the original omake was from Log Book 5, which was published February 28th 2006. Meanwhile that Crocodile is from the cover of chapter 398, published February 6th 2006. So these were drawn by Oda around the same time. I didn't just cherry pick this cover page because it's convenient for my evil agenda, if these were drawn around the same time then the likelihood the resemblance is intentional does legitimately go up a little. (Also since they're both drawn by Oda instead of random animators, again, it's a bit less coincidental and could be a bit more intentional)

But as I said, I think there might be more to the omake than that.

In the past people have also pointed out and joked how a mere few months before Oda revealed Dragon was Luffy's father to us in the story (post-Enies Lobby), in the Monster Time-omake Luffy was depicted as a dragon.

Needless to say, people believe this was intentional foreshadowing (/trolling) to the Dragon reveal by Oda-- if not it'd be one hell of a coincidence at the very least.

The reason I'm bringing that up is that if people think it's safe to assume Oda was hinting at Luffy's heritage in one omake by making him a dragon like his father, then why couldn't Oda do the same in another omake (by making Luffy a mafia boss who smokes cigars like his father)? Keep in mind that Monster Time was published in May 2006 (in Log Book 7), just three months after No Respect Time. So again, these are from the same era. To me, that just makes the resemblance between Don Luffyone and Crocodile seem even less coincidental

Oh, but there's one more omake I want to bring up.

So people do often bring up Nerd!Luffy's appearance in One Piece Gakuen spin-off manga, pointing out how much he looks quite a lot like the Theoretical Child Oda gave to Crocodile in that one SBS. Yeah. So. 'Bout that.

There was this one omake called Red Hair of Class 3-Sea Time, in which Luffy was a loser ass nerd. And man, that resemblance

Like it's one thing when a spin-off manga drawn by a different artist does A Thing. It's another when Oda himself does it

I’ll be honest i HATE the way the QSMP fanbase is treating Gegg and Tallulah. Like Gegg literally just appears, bro hasn’t done a single thing and people start talking about how they want him to die 😭 ?? And Tallulah starts feeling insecure trough no fault of Gegg and the Gegg tag just EXPLODES with hate. I’m a big petty baby and i don’t like seeing /neg in the tags bro. It just kinda feels like tallulahs the golden child who can do no wrong and Geggs the scapegoat who’s blamed for everything, and i feel like people are already taking it too far