times-like-these-deactivated202
A Semi-Comprehensive List of Muppet Specials Available to Watch on YouTube:
The world has been A Lot lately I am gonna cuddle up with my plushies and watch some Muppets tonight I think :D
oh to have a silly little house like this...
the inside has to look like this.
"The left needs a mass movement–" pal you don't even have a micro movement come back when you have a social group capable of hosting a regular five-a-side football game.
the concept of a freakshow never fully went away. nowadays people collect posts/screenshots of disabled/mentally ill people literally just Existing Online and put them on their accounts with the intention of displaying them for people to hurl abuse towards. And they think that this is a Normal and Moral way to behave and carry themselves.
Keep in mind as well that people were often the property of freak shows, human chattel.
idea that was prompted by the whump server: I’m a huge fan of the headcanon that Tim and Cass look very much alike despite not being related. while this makes for great fun in imagining them taking on similar superhero names and costuming, there’s another great avenue that lies overlooked.
Tim and Cass as Robin and Batgirl. simultaneously. interchangeably.
it starts as a prank on Bruce and Babs. their costumes are the same size and their coloring is similar enough to pass in the dark of Gotham. they go four hours undiscovered–it’s not Bruce or Babs that figures it out, it’s some random criminal, who in the middle of being beaten up by Robin, squints and goes, “are you a girl?”
needless to say, Bruce and Babs are Not Amused. Tim and Cass very much are. and their little gremlin minds start to think about how far they can take this.
they redesign the costumes–with Alfred’s help–to look more androgynous. Tim grows his hair out, Cass cuts it shorter. criminals lose their shit. they start dressing alike out of costume and Dick guesses wrong so many times, he gives up and just calls them both ‘duckling’.
Steph is the only one that can tell them apart with a single glance. no one knows how. she gives a different explanation every time someone asks.
the consequences balloon outwards. everyone is afraid of messing with Robin and Batgirl because sometimes they’ll get defeated so easily it’s humiliating and sometimes their entire life is unraveled before their eyes. Lady Shiva treats Tim like a surrogate son. Ra’s is delighted to have found a worthy opponent-slash-successor that’s solved the apparent limitations of the human body.
but the most hilarious consequence of all–
when Hood busts into Titans Tower, Robin listens patiently to his monologue about all the ways Batman failed Gotham. then takes Hood down the moment he makes that first punch. and hugs him when he’s lying on the floor groaning.
“wrong,” Robin says. “Bruce still loves you.”
(it takes Jason a week to realize that Tim and Cass are not the same person.)
(it takes Jason two weeks to realize that Tim and Cass are not identical twins.)
(it takes Jason several months to realize that Tim and Cass are not blood-related at all and even after he sees the results of the genetic tests, he still refuses to believe it.)
(Tim and Cass look at each other and shrug. in synchrony.)
Fandom: Phineas and Ferb
Sample Size: 3,208 stories
Source: AO3
I mean, it probably goes without saying, but the Found Family trope is so popular because so very many people are so terribly, terribly lonely
I adore the friends I do have immensely but god it would be nice to have like five people living nearby who I could call on for help or to hang out at any given moment
it’s also a very hopeful narrative. Found Family imparts this idea that you don’t have to start out life with a family, or with roots that go all the way down a family tree. That you’re not destined to be alone and without love simply because who you were born to didn’t make the cut. Found family resolutely insists that there is always a future, always a possibility for more, and that no matter how much time it takes to find them, they could always still be out there.
It’s about resolving loneliness, but it’s also about promising that you can find that relief later. It doesn’t have to be now, it doesn’t have to be when you’re little, it can be whenever it’s time.
For those of us without families in the traditional sense, or with families that had to be abandoned for any number of reasons, or even families that had to separate for long amounts of time, found family is proof that we didn’t miss out on love.
And I think when the world seems the darkest, it makes sense that a narrative about hope for the future and always having love on the horizon is popular. <3
Fanfolks today need to remember how important The Premise was.
Y'all have heard of The Premise, right?
See, historically there have always been people who saw an extra layer of gayness on certain pairs of fictional people (you just thought of several), and people Back Then even wrote their own fanfic (or as they were called at the time, "pastiches"), but the first widespread queer fanwork to really define the fanfiction genre was KIRK AND SPOCK. Kirk/Spock. K/S. The very first slashfics.
Why this work was vastly, overwhelmingly written by straight women is a discussion for another time, but it was, so that's the main perspective I'm gonna consider here.
How do you - a statistically middle-class, 30+, stay-at-home wife and mother - how do you write slashfic ao3-style in the 1960's before the internet?
Carefully.
Through letters with friends, phone calls, pen pals, and sometimes - sometimes - clandestine meetings of small groups. Whole novels were written communally, round-robin style, by sending typed or handwritten additions chapter by chapter to each other. These were all underground, some deep underground; even the early Trekkie fanzines of the time wouldn't touch them.
And keep in mind, few of these stories were explicitly even sexual! But they were all about a very, very close relationship between two men. In the 1960's.
Guess how cool everyone else was about this.
Actually, for their part, Gene Rodenberry and the other writers were fine with it, saying that they had deliberately written the characters to be two halves of a whole, and if you wanna read it that way, yeah sure, go right ahead. Shatner and Nimoy took it all in good humor, and seemingly still do, each guy basically gesturing to the other and chuckling "I mean, who wouldn't?"
But elsewhere there was vicious backlash against The Premise, and not just within the fandom. This was still at a time in the US and UK when various "sodomy" and "decency" laws made no distinction between homosexual sex acts and just, like, directly lighting another man's cigarette with your cigarette in public. (That, sadly, is not a fucking joke.)
It was probably the closest some suburban cishet women came to understanding the pain of being in the closet. They had to protect this secret from their friends and family at all cost. There were cases of divorces where women lost custody of their children because their writing had come to light.
Can you imagine having such a burning desire to write for your OTP that you were willing to lose everything over it? Even if you were never caught, you still had to be willing to wait weeks, months, to receive a letter in the mail that you had to carefully intercept, read in secret, and then add your own chapter t, also in secret, and then send off, perhaps never to be seen again.
These people were goddamn heroes, and they laid the foundation for the world we live in today. A world where we can read, write, comment on, or share - in a matter of seconds! - literature about two background characters from two different franchises enjoying a really specific kink involving vacuums or something. And that's objectively amazing.
Raise a toast to our fanfiction elders, who simped in the darkness so we could simp in the light of day.
This is important and should have more notes.
Read some actual comics, Kyle.
Superman is an incredibly kind and tender character. (If he’s not being written that way, then he’s not being written well.) He inspires hope not just through his heroics, but also through his kindness toward other people. That’s his thing. Don’t you DARE call tenderness a “weakness.” Get your toxic masculinity the hell away from me and go read a badly written Batman comic if you want a “tough” male character.
Why on EARTH would someone think Superman being tough and Superman being kind are contradictory?
Is that a Snyder fan telling someone that “you’re wrecking the character, create something new instead of making an interpretation that’s so off-base”?
Because Snyder is the guy who wanted the Greek Gods to all be Kryptonians and the Amazons to be descended from them.
Where's that comic where Superman comforts Billy?
I saw that tweet by Gunn and thought “So, like regular Superman?”
Kyle sounds like Lex Luthor who believed that Superman doesn’t have a Civilian identity because such a godlike being would see it as beneath him. Also here you go @simon-newman
These few pages legit make me cry
That's not just for acting, that's life advice. Seriously deep wisdom right there.
Only the strong can be gentle, because the weak don’t have the option of causing harm. Gentleness is the virtue that Superman can best exemplify, by being so strong that the only thing stopping him is himself.
I am so glad that someone who actually likes Superman is writing Superman now
Bilbo: Hello Thorin.
Thorin, drunk: You are so good looking.
Thorin, throwing his arm around Bilbo: I’m gonna make love to you right here right now.
Dwalin, sitting in a chair next to them: Really wish you wouldn’t.
So myself and two best friends got matching tattoos that say Κύριε ἐλέησον. It’s pronounced Kyrie Eleison and in ancient Greek means “Lord have mercy.” It’s one of the oldest Christian liturgical prayers and features in the Bible, and when Christianity became Latinised, it as one of the only surviving Greek prayers.
Just for fun I plugged it into Google Translate to see what modern Greek thinks of it and
10/10 A+ tat so glad its marked on my skin forever, would tattoo again
celticpyro
Thanks OP you ruined the liturgy for me.
never gonna hear The Hunchback of Notre Dame soundtrack the same way again
Frollo: Ima kill this baby
Choir in the background: Dude fuckin chill
Frollo: I’m gonna set her on fire
Choir: Dude… chill
My entire church singing in unison: ♫ Sir, please calm down! ♫ Calm down, sir! ♫ Sir, please calm down! ♫ Take it easy, sir! ♫
LORD, you’re making a scene
🎶 Sir, this is an Arby’s 🎶
right now it’s almost halfway through 2023, and 2024 is an election year in the US. I have started to see a growing proliferation of posts suggesting that there is no difference between the republican and democratic parties–the exact same kind of posts I saw an awful lot of before the last major election here. I am unfollowing folks who post or reblog these sort of posts, as I consider these posts to be fascist propaganda framed as leftist discourse, designed to suppress anti-fascist votes and voters.
Prepare yourself to vote for Biden now, because the only other option is someone who will make 2016-2020 look like a picnic.
You work with what you’ve got, not what you wish you had.
I detest Biden more with every passing day (and he was not in my top 10 candidates in 2020). 2024 will be an election between:
- Biden/The Former Guy
- Biden/DeSantis
- Biden/Republican Fascist to be Named Later
No Labels is an op. It’s being funded by unknown parties to defeat Biden and the Democrats. Their election scenarios are fantasy football for political junkies.
No Third Party has a road anywhere outside statewide offices (Bernie is the exception that proves the rule, and he’s a Democrat for all intents and purposes).
Arguably the rosiest scenario is that TFG breaks with the Republicans to form his own party and tanks any chance the Republicans have, but that’s not looking as likely as it did two years ago.
If you’re pissed, get involved in your local elections. Ensure that no position is running unopposed (and that includes if you’ve got a conserva-Dem somewhere now–primary them).
Get the House back in the Democratic hands (unless you’re up for two more years of this only with MTG as Speaker this time). Increase the margin in the Senate (and send Selema to her post-senate career). Make sure your school board isn’t full of flat-earthers. Wake sure your county counsel isn’t going to shut down your libraries if they have a book someone doesn’t like.
As Stonekettle says, if you want a better country, but a better citizen.
There’s a reason we call it a civic DUTY, not a civic privilege.
Starting mid-April I’ll be posting to-do lists and action items for people who’ve never gotten involved before. One party wants you dead. FIGHT.
Speaking as a Michigan resident: Look at the laws being passed in Michigan. Now look at the laws being passed in Florida. Spot the difference? That’s because Michigan is being governed by the Democratic Party, and Florida is being governed by the Republican Party. That’s the difference. They’re different parties. It is not the same.
You want what we’ve got? Vote for it.
(And you want Michigan to stay the way it is and not slide backwards into the shit we had to deal with with Rick Snyder, or even just the way it was when the House and Senate were Republican-controlled? Keep fucking voting.)
D are not our friends or even allies but R is a staunch enemy
look the main thing is that our first-past-the-poll voting style automatically and always devolves into a two party system where the majority of people dislike both parties. This is now a known phenomenon, a feature of our voting method as inevitable as water running downhill.
But that isn’t going to change until we get some sweeping voting reform that revises our voting system into some kind of ranked or run-off voting
Meanwhile one of our destined-to-be-disliked parties is actually trying to do things we want (health care, living wages, social services, public transportation, civil rights, education, support for gay and trans people, religious tolerance, etc) and one of our parties is banning books and undoing women’s rights and supporting corrupt racist police and endangering gay and trans lives while paying people to make posts about how both parties are equally bad so that people don’t vote democrat.
Like, we are going to not like a lot of how the Democrats operate, that is a feature of the current design, but they are trying to protect women’s rights, they are trying to help the homeless, they are trying to raise minimum wage they have agendas that include important things. And republicans? are at this point a literal cult that want to create a religious fascist state.
Even my father, now 80 years old, a man whose politics i have often despised, a man who voted for Reagan for fucks sake! even he (unhappily) votes Democrat now, because he’s not an insane person, and the republican party has become SO BLATANTLY EVIL AND STUPID that he can’t ignore it.
Democrats pass legislation we want that republicans then find ways to block. Democrats have passed bills that:
close gender pay gaps raise federal minimum wage make becoming a US citizen easier for immigrants protect civil/public water sources from pollution cut greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change increase gun regulation lower and control prescription drug prices improve healthcare access for those with pre-existing conditions protect net neutrality protect gay marriage rights
these are all the subjects of specific real bills that democrats have either passed into law or tried hard to pass in the last few years. Meanwhile republicans act to block these bills while championing book bans and attacking trans folk and giving more power to corporations to ruin our planet and taking away women’s rights.
when you see posts attacking Democrats from the left or whatever, the talking points and quotes can often be traced back to right wing sources
So all posts trying to keep non-republicans arguing amongst ourselves and calling for us to not vote democrat (or not vote at all) ? I will be assuming they are bad-faith posts and i won’t be spreading them or engaging with them or anything.
Honest critique of the party is necessary, but like it or not our system currently is a two party system, and i’ll be voting for the better of the two until we can change our voting style to make additional political parties viable.
I live in Pennsylvania.
Neither of my children is cisgender.
The last gubernatorial election was, literally, do we elect this guy who is overly fond of cops but is generally a normal human being, or do we elect this other guy who believes frightening conspiracy theories and wants my children removed from my care and forcibly detransitioned and honestly would prefer them to be dead?
That’s it. That’s the kind of choice we get in first-past-the-post voting. If that second guy won, we needed to move. There was no safe way to stay here. The votes of my fellow citizens were all that was standing between my kids and serious fucking danger.
And my fellow citizens DID turn out. Lots of them came out and voted to reject the scary death cultist. I am grateful to all those who went, ugh, I don’t really like this guy, but the other guy is worse, and hauled themselves down to the polling place to get it done.
You, too, can vote to reject scary death cultists, in your hometown and your home state and in the country as a whole.
Getting rid of the scary death cultists is a prequisite for getting political representation you actually want.
Like, imagine you're Batman. Youre just some guy that's really good at kung-fu with a lot of money that wanted to help people. You mostly just bust mentally ill people that get too out of hand and take them back to the hospital and find and deactivate whatever bombs they've planted in the city, (who the fuck even keeps selling these people C4? you would think the company that hands it over would get clued into the fact that the woman accompanied by pet hyenas isn't a construction site supervisor, and that there's always an urgent news alert about The Joker holding someone hostage a day later and that these events may be linked) but yeah that's mostly your job. Break a few would-be rapists’ ribs, keep mentally ill people from dipping civilians in acid, stop muggers, etc, and then one day you have to fucking stop an alien invasion? With an immortal, invulnerable, demigod and an alien refugee who's eyes shoot lasers? And youre just some guy? Throwing homemade bombs? And you can't NOT do it? It's your fucking planet, ofc you wanna save it, nobody else is gonna do it and you can't leave the demigods hanging, they are looking at you to help lead the fucking planning of all this wild-ass alien bullshit. And you can't even voice that fact that youre just some silver-spooned orphan from fantasy-chicago and out of your depth or its gonna demoralize the team, but holy FUCK are you out of your depth. And even if you survive and somehow achieve success, the demigods now look to you for help with their bs sci-fi problems and are convinced that you are the best party to aid them in their world-ending scale problems.
Green Lantern: "Okay, so what do we do about these guys?"
Batman, internally: Well i dont fucking know, Hal, YOURE the fucking SPACE COP
Batman, aloud: "I propose that we-"
The next version of the Justice League needs to be like The Office and anytime someone just casually talks about some Supernatural Alien Bullshit he looks at the camera with this WTF?! look before clearing his throat and Very Professionally asking Superman to clarify what the hell he’s talking about
is the atla fandom still around because i have more to contribute
Uvalde TX is a small town. Population 26k; 21 dead.
Newtown CT is a small town. Population 28k; 26 dead.
Parkland FL is a small town. Population 35k; 17 dead.
Red Lake MN is a small town. Population 1500; 8 dead.
Santa Fe TX is a small town. Population 13k; 10 dead.
Littleton CO is a small town. Population 45k; 13 dead.
Oxford MI is a small town. Population 23k; 4 dead.
Jason Aldean like to imagine that small American towns are safe spaces, where “good old boys raised up right” won’t tolerate any cussing of cops or flag stomping. Where there are no liberals talking about rounding up guns.
Mr. Aldean is dog-whistling past the graveyard. School shooting are done by local actors, not marauding bands of BLM protesters. And 2/3 of all fatal shooting are rural older white males who turn their guns on themselves.
It is a lot harder to write a hit song about the problems of poverty, lack of health care, lack of economic opportunities, drug abuse/addiction, domestic violence, and way too many guns that impact ALL our American communities than it is to demonize a scapegoat. But Mr. Aldean has Nashville hit-making machinery on his side, and I am sure he could do it if he cared about small towns as he claims.
Jason Aldean was born and raised in Macon, Georgia, which is NOT a small town. Doesn't he also currently choose to live in Nashville? He's rich as sin and his life has NOTHING to do with small towns. Otherwise, he would know about all the problems that plague many small rural towns and why adult children often move out of them if they can afford to do so.
yeah u freaks up north look and sound exactly like this when u pretend that us southern queers are perfectly complicit in our own eradication - for the heinous crime of not living in a liberal population center.
You’re an ancient Greek man coming home from 4 months of war to find your wife 3 months pregnant. Now you’ve embarked on a solemn quest: to punch Zeus in the face.
Soon after you begin your quest, you encounter another man in a similar situation. You decide to join forces, as two mortal men stand a better chance at punching Zeus than one. Two villages over, you encounter a woman who had relations with Zeus and was left with a highly aggressive half-boar half-man offspring. She too feels your anger and offers to join your quest. By the time you reach Mount Olympus, you’ve amassed a large and formidable army of cuckolded/ravished mortals, demigods with daddy issues, mythical creatures with scores to settle, and a seamstress who you’re pretty sure is Hera in disguise. Zeus never stood a chance.
What I find best about this scenario is that the original wife probably expected to be murdered for her infidelity at worst or have her relationship with her husband ruined as he grew to resent her baby, at best.
Instead this man looked at his beloved and said, “who did it?”
And she replied “Zeus,” accepting he probably wouldn’t believe her.
And then he sighed, strapped his sandals back on and said, “I’ll be back before the baby is born.”
“Where are you-?”
“The lord of the sky came into my house, molested my wife in my bed and ate my food. I am going to settle the score.”
“Darling, he’ll kill you.”
“He may try, if he would like.”
You’re so right, that IS the best part.
I’m personally caught up on the seamstress.
“The pathway up Olympus is guarded by dozens of traps and perils strong enough to thwart even the Titans. How are we going to get past all of…” the shepherd boy with golden eagle feathers gestured uselessly at the slopes above them, particularly the herd of eight-legged goats snorting fire.
“There’s a way around,” Yiorgos said, though he was not specifically asked. But he had been the first to begin the march on Olympus, and so felt obligated to take the lead whenever possible, “In the stories there’‘s always a way around whatever obstacles the Gods place in our way.”
He hadn’t meant the words to come out as a question, but they had that lilt to them none-the-less. And even though he hadn’t meant it to be a question, much less a question directed at anyone specific, it was directed at one all the same. Just as the eagle-feathered shepherd boy’s had.
“Way I heard it,” a woman’s voice said. Rough with the Mycenaean Greek equivalent of a backwoods accent, and with the depth of a farmer’s wife who straps cattle to her back to carry to market, “there’s a back path. Hidden behind an invisible door that only one key in the world can open.” Everyone’s eyes had turned to the broad older woman in heavy shawl sitting amidst supplies in the foremost cart. “Least, that’s what my grand-mammy always told me.” she added after a moment of dozens of eyes on her.
“Oh, we were so foolish!” That was Lydia, a lithe waif of a woman, many months pregnant, sitting opposite the seamstress in the wagon. “Of course there’d be a.. a quest. They’d keep such a key in the depths of Tartarus or in the golden chariot of Apollo, or, or-”
“Or”, the older woman cut her off in a voice both firm, but much gentler than she used on anyone else, “he’s like all husbands and has been promising to move the key someplace better for the past three thousand years but hasn’t gotten around to it.” She gestured vaguely to the hillside, “Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was under, say, that bush right over there.”
It was. Of course. And everyone in the caravan agreed that it had been a very lucky and wise guess from the nameless woman and for the upteenth time since she first sat herself down in the front wagon and announced she was coming along with no further explanation, each and every last member very purposefully gave no further thought to the matter.
- Have something you want to tell your Congress Critters? If you can't safely contact them in person, here are some other options:
Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.
Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resist.bot/