2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
will byers stan first human second
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
⁂
Product Placement
Andulka
Jules of Nature
Discoholic 🪩
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Cosmic Funnies
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
blake kathryn
🪼
@theartofmadeline
No title available
trying on a metaphor
Sade Olutola
cherry valley forever
hello vonnie
No title available
seen from Sweden
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from Philippines
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Singapore
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
@banananloop
Things Doctor Who should be
a showcase for young/early career British acting talent and tv production talent in the UK
fiercely moral and borderline communist Saturday night family telly that's engaging for all ages
slightly parochial
12-14 episodes per series
cheap
Things Doctor Who should not be
open to any kind of input from any kind of USamerican
oops all stuntcasting
expensive
it’s sooo funny when rude customers encounter employees who can deny them service for the first time.
i was working at a little cafe where I could deny service over bad behavior, harassment etc. & mask mandates had just ended a week before & already people were being weird about me still wearing mine—an N95, the kind shaped kinda like a duckbill.
so this man walked in, looked at me sooo scathingly, laughed at me, and said “damn. never known a woman to choose…practicality over looks.”
And I just said, “oh. you can go, you’re not getting a drink.” And he said, “what???”
I said, “sir, you just walked in at 6 am & called women impractical and me ugly in one sentence.”
And he was so astonished he didn’t even argue he just turned around and left 💀🙏🏻 it was like he suddenly became self aware
One summer I was running ferry rides across a lake so people could see the waterfalls without walking 6 miles when a guy snapped my bra strap as he was boarding the boat. So i immediately threw him off, he started yelling for my manager, my boss cheerfully informed him that, yeah, she’s the captain of the boat and she can kick off anyone she wants. He goes to storm off, looks expectantly at his girlfriend, and she just goes, “Well, I’M not walking six miles, Michael! I’ll meet you back at the car!” and sits right back down!!!!
The expression on his face when he was told that he couldn’t get on the boat, then immediately told that his girlfriend was ditching him? PRICELESS. he just blinked at her and then stormed off like a child. I gave her a free hat and was like maybe rethink this relationship…….
i once had this fucker come up to order a beer. while i pour it he shows me the wanky fucking chemical structure tattoo on his arm and he’s like “hey. you know what this is” i was like “nah sorry” (never cared abt chemistry in school, plus having to look at a some rando’s pretentious tattoo gives me the douche chills). he decides to respond with “heh. you must not read many books”
i immediately stop pouring his beer. i reply: “heh. you must not want this beer.” thirsty boy immediately starts groveling like a worm “please please no i do want the beer im sorry im sorry” believe me when i say it was one of the most pathetic things ive ever witnessed
gotta love people immediately backpedaling when they realise that there are Consequences To Being Mean
I genuinely believe that part of why it has become so normalized to be openly callous and evil in politics is that customer service culture has trained affluent people that they can treat everyone they consider beneath them however they want and still be treated kindly.
In light of recent events, I have begun submitting bug reports when I see mature content labels applied inappropriately to posts, especially if an appeal has been rejected.
Extremely good idea - how are you doing it? Through the contact us option?
Yeah it’s one of the options on the Contact Support form:
for what it's worth: after a few months of submitting help tickets as 'feedback' when i saw a post inappropriately flagged as mature, i tried following this suggestion instead. today i got my first-ever response from tumblr support on this issue, letting me know that a post i'd submitted a ticket before has had its mature content flag removed.
You've mentioned in a few recent asks how Julien, as a character and party member, has been working for you, and you enjoy his character.
Which, same! I enjoy him a lot, too!
Doylist-wise, what would you say are the most important aspects of what Matt's been doing with Julien (narratively, rp-wise, even mechanically) that allows for a character whose got a shit personality and who started the story as an antagonist to most of the main group and Thjazi to remain likeable to the audience as a whole and a good teammate in collaborative rp?
Good question! This is probably going to be a non-exhaustive list, but still, hopefully, pretty detailed. I'm going to split this up into sections.
Backstory: because Julien is an asshole at odds with people he needs to have a pretty involved backstory that causes him to have history with people so that he's not just "that asshole" (even if he is, on some level, that asshole). "Vassal knight to Thjazi's wife AND guy who caught him in the Falconer's Rebellion" is a hell of a backstory with tons to work with in terms of conflict that isn't just "oh he's a dick". He also has connections, however, to the Barrowguard, which means Thaisha and Hal have some shared interests, and in that Julien is someone with a professional relationship with their son Alogar. The fact that Julien is in the Sundered House societal echelon gives him reason to have crossed paths with Occtis and Wick (and, notably, both Occtis and Wick socially outrank him) as well as Bolaire and Tyranny. As someone affiliated with House Royce and fairies, he and Thimble have history; and as a veteran of the Falconer's Rebellion and again, guy who caught Thjazi, that ties him to the Torn Banner (minus possibly Kattigan, who left before the end of the war); we know that Teor and Azune and presumably Thimble were all present at Maharlian falls. Finally, Julien does in fact genuinely care about his family, particularly his sister Alba, and Lady Aranessa; the Barrowguard; honor/duty/etc; and he cares about his parents' approval deep down despite being in many ways extremely disappointing to them. In other words, there's a relationship already present with every character except Kattigan, Vaelus, and Murray. That is more pre-existing relationships than I think most of the cast has, and so it pretty firmly places him in this world and part of these people's lives even though a lot of them don't like him.
Personality pt 1: he is also kind of pathetic. His parents are mad at him all the time and as stated he really doesn't feel good about this; he pretty transparently hates himself, quite possibly for something having to do with his capture of Thjazi; he's canonically considered very attractive but he's mostly going to brothels and he doesn't really have friends outside the Barrowguard; he is hungover for most of the overture and cursed for even more of it because he spat on a dead man. He apparently is a crier when high. You can play a guy who sucks or you can play a guy who is cool but it's really, really hard to play a cool guy who sucks and not play an outright villain everyone genuinely hates, or like, mean girl Mary Sue (or another gendered equivalent).
Note: all of the above is pretty much established from the very start, before we get a subclass, or before the plot really kicks off.
Don't fight the plot: you can take an unexpected direction, to be clear. That's great. But Matt doesn't try to like, stop the giant fucking bomb that drops on Julien in particular (and unlike Alex he did not know something to this effect was coming). He very much reacts in the moment as Julien during the Palazzo Davinos massacre, which gives him a great deal to work with going forward. Obviously, Brennan does a huge amount of the work here by blowing up Julien's whole life (which, tbh, has to happen for all the Sundered House-connected folks for this campaign premise to work out, so props also to Alex, Sam, Whitney, and while we're at it Laura, for having characters who really got their shit rocked by that necessity and handling it beautifully) but Matt yes-ands it at every single turn. It's not the story he imagined - Matt said he'd very much thought the story might turn into reconciliation with Raimond, which clearly isn't really likely (though idk. we can talk to dead people in this campaign) - but he's doing a great deal with the story he does have. I know this is advice often given to DMs but it's true for players; if you want the story to go exactly as you envision it, write a book.
Share goals: If you are playing a guy whom a lot of people find really annoying, have shared goals and be extremely dedicated to them. I've mentioned this a few times but the Seekers level of conflict is like. if that's too hot for you enjoy your unseasoned chicken. It is remarkably tame and a big part of this is that Julien and Thaisha have pretty much the exact same goal re: Alogar/Barrowguard (further cemented once they stop at Castle Torch), and everyone hates House Tachonis. Julien is very confrontational, but he is also very interested in not getting his allies uselessly killed. Which brings me to...
Personality part 2: Julien is the least intelligent of the group but he's not stupid. He is, in fact, brutally pragmatic. This is a great trait to have if you are an asshole, because the thing is, you are also kind of right. Like yeah actually it is important that he and Thaisha know exactly what brings Occtis and Vaelus here outside the meta-level "we are the Seekers table". It's important he know that Dr. Talter can handle being threatened by a man with a sword because she's going to encounter undead. It's important he handle the Einfasens, both Otto initially, and Ingrid's flirtations later, with some degree of diplomacy regardless how he actually feels. I think he walks an excellent line of being mean, but not cruel nor spiteful. He is cold to his mother, but he also thinks he's in the right (and like, narratively, in a D&D game? He might die in a dark hole somewhere, but yeah, marrying Ingrid Einfasen won't save him. He's gotta get a gem from a Tachonis and kill the Tachonis to save Alba or die trying). Matt described Julien after the Seekers arc as realizing this is bigger than just him, and very much plays him that way. Convergence Julien is still a dick but he's not going to withhold information from Thimble, who is undergoing the same sort of grief he is, and instead recognizes her as another person who has lost their home and someone they love, despite their past animosity. He is not holding grudges against the Torn Banner, either, which means he's had excellent scenes with Thimble, Teor, and Azune. He's not going to full Leroy Jenkins with House Tachonis. He even tells Cyd that he is, at this point, effectively a commoner, which is remarkably low on ego.
The meta level of Convergence: some people in Convergence are much more central than others: Hal is very central. Wick and Tyranny are very central. Thimble and Thaisha are both quite important. Murray and Azune have a lot going on in the city. Julien is not one of these people. Matt is playing Julien as though he is not one of these people; like Teor, Kattigan, and Vaelus, he's often just going where they need a martial character as backup.
Finally, Mechanics: Fighter is always a useful class and Julien especially is built to take and deal a huge amount of damage. This means he is pretty much always useful in a fight, which gives people a reason to bring him around (see above). I happen to really like his build and I do think it underscores the fact that he really fucking hates himself, and the whole "booed and living man" vibe which is also a core part of his deal (and is really funny in that he is, simultaneously, built to survive at all costs and also built to uh. ride the edge of death all the time. But anyway point being I do think that if you are a fucking asshole character you better be support or a tank in combat and give back a little, and Julien is indeed a tank.
a couple of people in the tags of that post i made earlier are talking about masking and although obviously masking is a very real thing a lot of autistic people have to do to get through their day, i think framing any and all attempts to meet other people where they're at interpersonally as masking is pretty unhelpful and has some bad implications.
if we say that caring about other peoples preferences for how they want to be treated or spoken to or thinking of social interaction as more than just a potential opportunity to info dump count as "masking", then we're essentially presenting a version of reality where autistic people are innately self centered and any effort that is put in to not be that way is Hiding part of yourself or otherwise inauthentic. but i don't think that's true at all.
and importantly it's not like The Neurotypicals get to act exactly like they want with no consequences in social interactions either! everyone has to put the effort in to treat each other decently. there is no person on the planet who can just speak to everyone around them exactly as they're inclined to with no consideration or effort and end up with a bunch of healthy mutually fulfilling interpersonal relationships that way. everyone needs to put the work in. its just harder for some than others.
From the comments: “I don't think that we should categorically treat being interpersonally considerate as a form of masking.”
You’re right and you should say it louder.
Man who uses affability as armor.
Look at him, his good humoredness is load bearing.
enemies to lovers is cool but have you considered enemies to platonic bdsm partners
I just remembered one time in like sixth or seventh grade (we had the same teachers and class both years so hard to remember which) somehow we got into a debate of “who is better, boys or girls?” and instead of stepping in to stop it our teacher formalized it and egged us on by providing thoughtful prompts and counters to each side and by the end each group had built a barricade of desks on either side of the classroom and we were throwing balls of paper at each other and screaming about personal hygiene while our teacher just watched and enjoyed a Baby Ruth candy bar.
This was the same teacher that got the cops called on our school like three times and would reward us for being good by spraying our hands with rubbing alcohol and setting them on fire.
He was the best teacher I ever had.
STUFF MR ROBINSON DID THAT WAS VERY GOOD:
One time Mr. Robinson closed the door to the classroom furtively and asked a student near the door to keep an eye on the door’s window in case anyone from the administration was coming.
He explained the next curriculum was one he had been explicitly disallowed from, but he didn’t know how we were going to cover the next portion of our history work fairly without covering it first. He said if any of us were offended by it or felt it threatened our beliefs to be discussing it, please talk to him and he would gladly find alternative work for us to do instead. But he asked if we would be okay not broadcasting too loudly to the administration (our parents were fine) about it.
At this point we’re on the edge of our seat. Forbidden curriculum? YES PLEASE.
“All right, do I have a promise from you you won’t tell on me to the principal?”
We, of course, promised.
“Good. Then let’s talk about World Religions.”
-
(A side note here, if you ever have a not-forbidden courseload you want your students to really enthusiastically consume, I think pretending it’d forbidden will up interest levels immensely. The work was informative and we loved it, but the Secret Agent-ness of doing a SECRET ASSIGNMENTS and having SECRET PROJECTS and LOOKOUTS FOR THE FUZZ upped our investment in the material beyond description. Even if you DON’T have secret coursework, PLEASE DO THIS WITH YOUR CLASS SOMETIME. IT’S FUN.)
-
At the start of the Great Gender Debate when someone would try to say boys and girls aren’t different and they can do whatever the other does, he’d super respectively ask them if they really thought that, or if they were saying it because they thought that’s what they were supposed to say, and encouraged us being honest about how we actually felt about the difference between between boys and girls and who was better.
Then lots of super fun shouting and throwing paper at each other and making desk barricades and more yelling.
(Keep in mind, this was 1999/2000. A lot of people didn’t even have internet at home. This was a small conservative town. Being trans or nonbinary wouldn’t have even been an option we knew about.)
Then he eventually stepped back into the fray of the Great Gender Debate and made us break down our points, which he had been taking notes of, on the white board and then had us carefully and intentionally refute or discuss them one at a time. Until we had reached a real and honest consensus that actually we’d been tricked into thinking gender was anything at all. Now when we said we thought neither was better than the other and being a boy or girl didn’t mean anything about what you could or couldn’t do, we fucking meant it.
One of our male classmates started wearing nail polish the next week and we told him it looked rad.
-
One time it was a nice day out and even though we weren’t doing trig at that point he was like, “Wanna learn something cool? I’m gonna show you how to calculate how tall something is using shadows” and then we went outside and learned how to find out how tall things are by measuring their shadows and measuring the shadows of stuff we knew the length of, and then for fun we also independently worked out the world was round and how big it was.
-
One of the times the cops were called on us it was because we were having a Hot Air Balloon making contest and people thought there were UFOs or spy planes.
-
Another time we were just setting off dry ice bombs, lol.
-
They changed the milk at lunch and we hated it and Mr. Robinson may have given us ideas about civil disobedience and direct action that led to the lunch room sit-in the schoolchildren ended up staging until they would switch the milk back. At the time it felt like he was being really cool, and he was, but thinking on it he may have also been using us as props to prank the administration and also give himself an afternoon off while all the administration tried to get a hundred 11-12 year olds to leave the damn cafeteria while we chanted about milk.
-
We grew up in a town that was about 2% black. It was not uncommon for people living there to not know any black people at all.
One day Mr. Robinson told us we were going to be having a very important speaker come talk to us, and that he expected us to treat her with respect and deference. That she was one of the most important people we could be learning from, and we were honored to have her come to us. We all sat up, wondering who this important woman could be.
And he opened the door and it was one of the ladies who worked the front office, accepting our tardy slips and making us wait for the school nurse. A black woman, one of the only black people you’d find in the school.
She then sat down with us and talked to us about the racial history of our town. Explained to us what a Sundown Town was. Explained to us the racism she experienced growing up there. Explained the mistreatment of the police.
She wasn’t even that old. It struck us all. But you’re not even old. Is this still happening? Why didn’t you leave? Did anyone help you?
It was an incredibly powerful day.
When I went home to talk to my parents about it, they had no idea about any of it, even though this was the same town they had grown up in.
-
Mr. Robinson would occasionally repeat this habit of special guests were not academics, just people who had lived in our town for a while, bringing in a lunch lady or a janitor, making us talk to them, learn our town’s history, learn to respect their jobs, learn manners and deference for the working class.
-
One time he gave us bread, water, and ziploc bags and set us loose on the school to rub the bread on stuff, drip water on it, seal it, and watch what mold grew. The kid that got the grimiest piece of bread with the most enthusiastic mold would win.
We learned that many of the surfaces we consider the most dirty get the most regular cleaning, and so are in fact the least likely to produce mold. While many of the surfaces we eat off of and touch regularly are nasty as hell.
-
Similar to the Great Gender Debate, one time he let class go wildly off course while we debated hotly for over an hour about The Lion King. I do not, for the life of me, remember the substance of this debate. I think The Little Mermaid may also have been a point of conversation? I just remember it got HEATED, and Mr. Robinson always thought these heated debates were REALLY ENTERTAINING and would quietly sit back and egg them on.
-
One time he gave me detention and I cried through the whole thing thinking my parents were gonna kill me when I got home and instead when I got home my mom hugged me and told me how he’d called her and said I’d been really honest and showed moral fiber in standing up for a friend and taking the detention in the first place and she was really proud of me for being a good person or whatever and idk if he actually was impressed with my actions or if he saw that I was stressed about my parent’s reactions and wanted to mitigate that, but that was such a good move.
-
IDK. I just have a hard time thinking of any teacher I ever had both as capable of chaotic dry amusement and completely upright righteous anger. He modeled for us what it was like to evaluate things based on merit rather than based on rules and expectations, and you felt that energy constantly.
-
Plus like getting to set your hand on fire for good behavior is a way better reward than whatever dumb stickers or candies or whatever it is teachers usually use. “Behave and we will play with fire” is the BEST incentive.
Younger folk are getting really good at spotting AI slop, to the consternation of marketing execs.
Found on Mastodon.
Fanfiction is insane. You can write porn so good you make friends.
Can I be honest with yall I don't want to hear SHIT against cishets at pride this year
"But it's not FOR them!!!" The biggest military power in the world belongs to a christofascist nation overseen by a felon found guilty of 34 federal crimes and has greenlit a gestapo with more direct funding than the entire military of Canada for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. Let Hetero Jessica throw some biodegradable glitter at a municipal parade
At this point if anyone is trying to exclude anyone benignly pro-queer from a pro-queer space I'm just going to assume you're a fed or something idk like something something destabilize the movement from within or whatever
Hey can you guys reblog Cheeseburger so he can take a sunbeam nap on lots of blogs. No other reason I just want you guys to see him.
So, Cheeseburger died on November 21st after an unfairly short battle with an unfairly rare cancer that is rarely seen in cats. I only got to spend a month with him after his diagnosis, and losing him has been the greatest heartbreak of my entire life so far. He was my best friend and my soul cat, and he was there for me when I was completely alone, for twelve long years.
I made this transparent PNG the night he died in preparation for one of the many ways I was going to memorialize him--a surface rug in his likeness that I planned on laying directly in the line of his favourite sunbeam. And I uploaded that PNG here, because this is the website where people post their cats.
I was not expecting the reception I got. Many people have pointed out that this post has more reblogs than likes, and how insane that is in 2025 when reblog culture is at an all time low. I didn't even talk about the fact that Burger passed away in the original post, it wasn't a tearjerker reblog bait or anything like that. People just loved Burger that much, in the same way I fell in love with him at first sight. He was such an ugly kitten.
Anyways, it's really special to me that so many people have reblogged my best friend. I made this PNG to memorialize him in a completely different way, and you all wound up doing just that in ways I never even imagined.
Thank you. Wherever he is, I know the sun is shining.
we are broadly so fucking bad at being good friends to people who Cannot Leave
there are people who Cannot Leave. hopefully it's not the case for their whole lives but it is the case for them RIGHT NOW. and even trauma and abuse aware communities are shitassfuck bad at knowing how to be a supportive friend to these people and I find it soooo fucking frustrating. it's condescension and scolding and unrealistic standards and victim blaming and minimizing all the way fucking down .
It's so important to educate yourself about why people stay in bad situations and how to help someone who can't leave or goes back. Any sentence starting with "You should just" is bad, but "You should just leave" is one of the worst.
thank you for those links!
“If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it’s that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.”
― Marjane Satrapi, Iranian graphic novelist
alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
under 18, AI is a net positive
under 18, AI is a net negative
18-29, AI is a net positive
18-29, AI is a net negative
30-45, AI is a net positive
30-45, AI is a net negative
46-60, AI is a net positive
46-60, AI is a net negative
over 60, AI is a net postive
over 60, AI is a net negative
Question 2/3
How often do you visit or interact with museums/archives (whether in person or online)?
Frequently (multiple times per month)
Often (multiple times per year)
Occasionally (a couple times per year)
Rarely (once every couple of years)
Never :(
Question 3/3
If you saw a museum was using AI in exhibits, marketing, research, etc., would you be more or less inclined to visit that museum?
under 18, more inclined
under 18, less inclined
18-29, more inclined
18-29, less inclined
30-45, more inclined
30-45, less inclined
46-60, more inclined
46-60, less inclined
over 60, more inclined
over 60, less inclined
Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!
🫶
This much is clear. CBS is being “murdered,” as Scott Pelley calls what’s happening, not because of economics but because of politics. Economically, “60 Minutes” is a gold mine. Politically, Trump thinks it’s dangerous as hell because it tells the truth about him and his regime, and wants it killed. It’s important to see all this as a systematic effort by Trump to silence the truth about what he’s doing to America. Trump’s increasingly corruption — rife with crony capitalism, corporate welfare, and payoffs to the powerful — is producing an increasingly corrupt economy in which everything depends on bribes and personal deals made by the biggest Republican loyalists and grifters, oligarchs and plutocrats, billionaires and multibillionaires, and monopolists. When political and economic deal-making become personal transactions — when greed and payoffs replace trust — what happens? Authoritarianism replaces democracy. And an economy collapses, as it did at the end of America’s first Gilded Age, in the Great Crash of 1929, leading to the Great Depression. One day we will look back on the murder of “60 Minutes” as one of the travesties of Trump’s despicable reign. In the meantime, thank you Scott Pelley for telling the truth. Thank you, former “60 Minutes” producers, correspondents, and staff, for telling the truth. And now, what do we do in the interest of the truth? We boycott CBS.
