Aremo Shitai Koremo Shitai Onna no Ko ni Mietatte

I think it's interesting how the two big holidays we celebrate today have completely exchanged places over their lifetimes.

When it started, Towel Day was very much a memorial. The date - May 25th - has no textual significance whatsoever. Rather, like the feast day of a Saint, it is the anniversary of Douglas Adams' death. The observance with the towels and all is/was a Fandom reference, but the purpose of the holiday was to honor the memory of a Great Man - and how more appropriately than with a bit of silliness? And in the, what is it, 20? more? years since his death, the memorial aspect has been eroded away, until it is now basically a celebration of the work more than the man, fun unalloyed by grief, a way to fly your geek colors. And perhaps that's what he would want in the end.

The Glorious 25th of May is exactly the opposite. It is - or was - purely a Fandom thing. It's a holiday in text, and we celebrate it alongside the characters because, well, Night Watch is a frickin amazing book and deserves to be celebrated. And there's admittedly always been a melancholic aspect, deriving from the text itself, but the date and the celebration were ultimately fictional. What I used to say is that I celebrated both, but I celebrated Towel Day harder because it commemorated something real.

And then Terry Pratchett died.

And this silly fandom thing we were already doing proved a ready made memorial to honor the memory of a Great Man. The fan art now us bursting with lilac covered fedoras. It now celebrates the man in addition to (perhaps even more than) the work.

I always wondered if Pratchett chose May 25th in honor of Adams. And I wonder what this day will look like in another 20 years, when the grief of this death has faded as well.

GNU Terry Pratchett. GNU Douglas Adams.

Happy Memorial Day.

also i think it's funny how tumblr was like "you can pay to see someone's posts" and we were all like FUCK you and they were like "... pay to... inflict your own posts... on others?" and we were like

yknow, people talk about the tumblr userbase being reclusive and stubborn (and we are), but its worth noting that we’re also aggressively social.

we dont NEED algorithms, because thats OUR job, and we take pride in it. we WANT to do the work ourselves! we WANT to tell people ourselves!

we dont NEED our blogs to look the same, because we wanna make our OWN themes, and share them with each other, and experiment!

our most successful april fools days are the ones that just gave us new avenues to SCREAM REALLY LOUDLY in (promoting candidates in the 2016 election, turning our dashboards into semi-randomized rube goldberg machines of text and emojis in 2022).

we’re always constantly ramping things up to eleven, so the best enrichment toy for us is just. see this ball? feel free to throw it as hard as you want.

> we're also aggressively social

oh. I just realised.

this is what actual social media is. instead of the other websites, which are advertising media that pretend they're social media.

D.N. Bryn

I’ve been trying to figure out what the Thing in YA is right now, since paranormal romance and dystopian rebellion have come and gone, and today in Target it finally clicked that ‘royal intrigue with some magic’ is definitely it

Poptarts

Poptarts will outlast the rise and fall of every genre

What she says: I’m fine.

What she means: I understand the Chronicles of Narnia was at its heart a fairytale with theological analogies for children. But why did Lewis never address how they had to adapted to life on Earth again. Why does no one talk about how the Pevensies had to grow up with a kingdom of responsibilities on their shoulders, only to return to Earth and be children. Take Lucy, she was youngest and perhaps she adapted more quickly-but she had the memories and mind of a grown woman in an adolescent body. Edmund literally found himself in Narnia, he went from a selfish boy to mature and experienced man. He found a purpose and identity through his experiences to come back as just Edmund, Peter’s younger brother. Did people wonder why the sullen, sour boy came back, carrying himself like a wisened king? Did his mother wonder why he and Peter suddenly got along so well, why they spent so much time together now? And Susan, the girl of logistics and reason came back with a difference in her. She learned how to be a diplomat and ambassador, Susan the Gentle had to live to endure not-so-gentle circumstances. She had the respect she wanted, only to be just another teen girl. And Peter, he entered the manhood and maturity he so wanted. He earned the responsibility and stripes he yearned for. He learned to command armies and conduct the menial tasks demanded of a king to rule a nation. But he came back, appearing to be just anther glory-hungry boy. Not to mention the PTSD they must have struggled with. Especially Edmund. How often did he wake up in a sweat, screaming a sibling or comrade’s name? His parents believe it’s the war, but it’s an entirely different one he has nightmares about. How often did he have trouble with flashbacks and mood swings? And how many times did he and Peter sit over a newspaper or near the radio listening to reports on the troops. How often did they pour over lost battles and debate better strategies. Did their parents ever wonder why they seemed to understand flight war so well? How long was it before they stopped discussing these things in front of people? Why does no one talk about this??? 

Why am i fucking crying

Why does no one talk about how the Pevensies had to grow up with a kingdom of responsibilities on their shoulders, only to return to Earth and be children

It’s not addressed because it’s understood. It was the shared experience of the generation. You are describing coming home from World War One, battle wearied and aged beyond belief, but walking around in the body of a youth. C S Lewis went to the front line of the Somme on his nineteenth birthday and went back to complete uni in 1918 after demob.

Not seen it with this very very pertinent addition before

Here’s to:

Cheating

Stealing

Fighting

and Drinking.

If you cheat, may you cheat death.

If you steal, may you steal the heart of another.

If you fight, may you fight for a brother.

And if you drink, may you drink with me.

To our fortunate proceedings and good success. May your New Year be as bright as the steel of my cutlass.

Skal, friend! May you have a fantastic new year, and know my doors are always open to share a drink with you!

Oh….. huge.. mood..

@emaziska au where franziska is exploring a spooky house for a murder trial and winds up leaving with a cute vampire girlfriend and witness

How do lighting

Connie and Peridot

lower-income people tend to be “hoarders” and richer people are able to do more “minimalist” living spaces. if u don’t have much, you will hold onto any little thing that comes across your way. you got a new tv, but you still keep the old tv because you know things can break. you keep extra boxes of macaroni and cheese lying around because there will be a week when you don’t have money for groceries. you hold onto your stacks of books and clothes for dear life. those are your assets. physical evidence of where your money’s gone. it’s hard to get rid of it. the bare wall is terrifying when you don’t have much.

Fuck. This makes so much sense and explains so much about me. I must have inherited this from my mum.

so I’d normally put this in the tags but it’s kind of a lot so just reblog this from OP to skip my commentary. But I dogsit for a family who is clearly LOADED. Their house is immaculate. High, vaulted ceilings, wood flooring, two chandeliers in one room. These things are fancy, right ?? I really don’t know, anything that isn’t tile or 30 year old carpet seems fancy to me. It also so… bare. Everything is organized perfectly, they have no excess. Their decor is extravagant and yet minimal - it is carefully and precisely executed. Nothing that doesn’t match the aesthetic sits in their living room. I tried to replicate some of it, but it’s just not possible. I have every book I’ve ever owned, my mom keeps papers upon papers, VHSs in a dresser, how do you just get rid of these things when you know you may not have the opportunity to buy them again? How must it feel to live in such orderly quarters where everything is replaceable?

This really locked into my brain when I was reading one of the declutter your space things and it suggested getting rid of duplicate highlighters and pens. /Pens/. It suggested that you needed one or two working pens, so if you had extra you should get rid of them. That was when I realized minimalist living was /innately/ tied to having spare money, because the idea was, of course you just went out and bought the single replacement thing whenever the first thing broke. You obv. Had the time and money to only ever hold what you needed that moment, because you could always buy more later.

there’s a nice article titled “minimalism is just another boring product wealthy people can buy” by Chelsea Fagan which i feel addressed lots of my problems with minimalism, you can read it [here]

I think my least favorite Hetero Trope is when the girl eats a burger or whatever and the dude is like “Wow, I like a girl who can eat” like what the fuck did your last girlfriend do, photosynthesis?

#also this isn’t news but what they mean is ‘I love a girl who can stay skinny but not annoy me with diet restrictions’  #men don’t actually love ‘girls who don’t go on diets’ or ‘girls who don’t wear makeup’ or ‘low-maintenance’ girls #what they DO love is women who can stay thin and flawless without ever having to reveal the effort behind it #it’s baffling to me! #like some Orwellian bullshit #you can’t knowingly demand women look a certain way and then complain when they go on diets lmao (via @halffizzbin)

I was just thinking the other day about how they do a very similar thing with men in the media as well. It may not be as prevalent as with the female characters, but you almost always see superheroic male characters with extremely toned physiques in bars, drinking beer and eating pub food, portrayed as “man’s man” types who let their scrappy lives give them saran wrapped eight packs, when in reality the actors playing those guys are on extremely specialized diets coupled with intense workout programs. At the same time, “gym rat” characters who are actually shown doing the work a person would actually need to to maintain bodies like that are almost unilaterally made out to be stupid, vain, often meanspirited meatheads.

I remember watching the behind the scenes footage of a Jason Statham movie where he’s complaining about only being allowed to eat a plate of steamed veggies while the entire rest of the crew was having a party with cake or something. In the same movie his character is pretending to eat and drink things that real dude Jason Statham was not allowed anywhere near to maintain the idea that regular blue collar working class movie character got sweet abs by drinking beer and driving fast cars.

Then there’s the issue of these actors being harassed in real life when they don’t upkeep their intensely high-maintinence bodies between movies. Like, The illusion has been created that the jacked up bodybuilder physique is their effortless natural state of being, so any deviation from that must be caused by flawed behaviour and you see constant articles about how “[Popular Action movie guy] Really Let Himself Go” or people bombarding the actors’ personal accounts with fat jokes and accusation about their lifestyles

I guess the overarching issue is, people seem to be fed this idea that attractive qualities people may posses are only valid if they came naturally and effortlessly. The person with beautiful hair is desirable, the person who spends an hour making their hair beautiful is “self obsessed”, the person with the athletic body is hot, the person who goes to the gym every day and works on being more athletic is “a dumb jock”. It’s all appreciating the results while devaluing the effort it took to achieve them.

do you ever think about how perfectly steve, bucky, and sam typify the 3 big wars america’s fought in over the past century?

steve is the soldier who fought in world war 2. he’s the tail end of the glory and honor of war. his reasons for fighting are clear cut, moral, as far as he can tell. but the weapons used are too deadly, too fatal for glory and honor, really. there’s the attempt to treat enemy combatants with respect, with honor, all while killing them quick than has ever been possible before. there’s the unease of the shift from the old style of fighting to the new. there’s the tiredness that only comes from a second global war in only two decades. there’s the closure that comes from unprecedented total destruction. the thought of “maybe now we can go home. maybe now we can build lives like our parents, those of us that are left.”

bucky is the soldier who fought in vietnam. he’s the one that couldn’t dodge the draft, that couldn’t evade the fight no matter how hard he tried. he’s the one who followed the orders he had to, and rebelled against all the others. his uniform was askew, more civvies than not. he didn’t look a soldier, and he didn’t fight like one either. he didn’t know why he was fighting, who he was fighting. he saw too many innocents die by the hands of his comrades, of himself. he felt agent orange burn his lungs, saw orphans crying in the streets. he came home, the rat-a-tat of machine guns echoing in his ears, always. he disembarked a plane, and was spat on by anti-war protesters. he couldn’t even be angry– he agreed with them. he participated in the winter soldier investigations, confessed what he’d been forced to do, and that almost abated the weight on his shoulders. almost.

sam is the soldier who fought in afghanistan. the modern soldier, with just as much shit as the rest of them. the difference is, where steve was greeted with celebrations and bucky was greeted with vitriol, sam is overlooked, forgotten. he suffers in silence, expected to endure without protest. sam copes, but not all vets are able to do the same. afghan war vets are the ones who take their own lives in droves, the unacknowledged, unknown aftershocks from an invasion founded on half-formed ambitions from men in suits who’d never have to bear the real burden. sam is the modern day vet, unknown, unseen, unthanked.

No wonder they’re all Captain America