so much of love was the peeling away of illusions

There were places, she now saw, that contained more happiness than ordinary places did. Unless you knew that such places existed, you might be content to stay where you were.

[stealingpotatoes]

i don't know what older adults were on about when they said being a teenager was good <3

[my-dailydreams]

[fellator]

this fetish stuff is getting out of hand what the fuck is word play

[notlayingroses]

in my opinion, the question isn't "Is RPF ethical?" but rather "Are you engaging with RPF ethically?" and even more importantly, "Are you being stupid about it?"

I personally hate any kind morality thought policing. I'm not Catholic or religious and I do not feel guilty over my thoughts. You are not an inherently evil person because you saw two athletes in an interview and went "Hmmm...... what if...." The Feds are not going to come banging down your door because you wrote about one band member dicking down the other and sent it to your friend.

Wondering about other people's lives is very human. Being nosy about their personal lives is very normal. People have been writing fiction about other people's lives since the dawn of time. Some people even manage to write New York Times Bestselling Books that are "historical fiction" or "alternate reality." It does not make you inherently bad to be curious about the details of someone's personal life. That's being human. Being nosy is kind of fun.

The problem, however, comes with the ways in which people engage with it, and involve the real people in this. Harassing an musician's real girlfriend because it doesn't fit into the RPF ship. Showing up at real sporting events holding signs about how certain teammates should kiss. Trying to get actors to sign art of them fucking their coworker. Flooding social media with comments using the celebrity's full name and speculation. There's a line, there's a fourth wall, and there's fandom etiquette.

I hate the question of "Is RPF ethical" because it feels like morality thought policing. Post your fics on locked accounts, censor someone's name when you tweet about it, blow up your groupchat with hundreds of "DID YOU SEE THE WAY THEY LOOKED AT EACH OTHER??" texts. It's not inherently evil to wonder what other people are doing when they're out of the spotlight. Kill the cop in your mind.

But just have some basic decency and do not involve the real people. Don't cross the line without caring how it affects them. This is basic fandom 101 and lately we have been flying too close to the damn sun! Everyone get more normal about RPF so major news outlets and magazines stop posting articles about "Is RPF ethical?" and blowing up our spot!

[catchymemes]

[awkward-bob-reynolds]

[apricops]

that post about “you get bandits when you cut soldiers loose without pay” reminds me of the Thirty Years War, because one could say that beneath all the religious schisms and diplomatic jockeying, the heart of the thirty years war was “what happens when you have a state with just enough capacity to raise massive armies but without enough financial capacity to actually pay those armies” and the answer is that the line between professional armies and roving gangs of bandits disappears and every time you try to raise an army it just becomes another independently acting wildfire devouring the countryside. No matter how bad things get, every day I wake up and thank my lucky stars that I do not live in 17th century Europe. Or 17th century China. Or the 17th century Americas. Or basically anywhere in the 17th century.

[probabilitydirigible]

One of my favorite little anecdotes about ancient mercenaries is that it was tradition for most of history to give your mercenaries two wages- "Bread" and "Gravy." Both were set at a daily value, but where "Bread" was intended to cover regular maintenance and life stuff and therefore paid out frequently (Here's your week's meal and gear repair budget!) the "Gravy" wage was paid out exclusively at the end of the contract as one lump sum. So like, your gravy wage and bread wage might be one silver coin per day each, so you're getting a handful of coins every week to cover food, and then at the end of an 800 day campaign, you get a wheelbarrow with 800 coins.

Employers liked offering this structure because then they didn't have to like, try to guess how long the invasion of spain will take and then carry 800 coins per soldier around the battlefield where it could be captured. It also gives them the chance to budget around the assumption that they take an enemy city and *find* vast sums of treasure even if they don't have the full value at the beginning of the war.

The main flaw of this system is that it's very easy to end up in a scenario where if you have, say, 50,000 guys that have been fighting for 800 days, you now owe 40 million silver to your army, and if the budget has not worked out to a 40 million surplus, you literally can't afford to end the war, but you can probably afford to pay them for a couple more weeks. So then you have to start thinking creatively.

Anyway across all time and history a lot of generals were ultimately beaten to death by men chanting gravy.

[mawofthemagnetar]

What do you mean “chat” is now referring to ChatGPT and not twitch chat? What? What? What the fuck? No?

When I address chat I am speaking to a presumed Greek chorus of real human people shitposting on their lunch break, not a machine that devours lakes to covert electricity into slop.

[anarchistmemedistro]

[isuggestrevolution]

i have a suggestion

[goopy-amethyst-deactivated20250]

Begging Staff to let me get a look at how the fuck does Tumblr's algorithm work

[hungwy]

Look at my post boy

[beau-rebloga-coisas]

Oh woah you made the gross misogynistic guy a fat bald sweaty man? Should we throw a party. Should we call everyone. Should we throw you into space with a cannon.

[beau-rebloga-coisas]

This is not staying in the tags because you're right and you should say it

[lycanthropicture]

tumblr is so good. whole website dedicated to BITCHING and MOANING. and television

[porcelain-rob0t]

the european mind cannot comprehend the 48 oz dunkin bucket

[derryderrydown]

Excuse me while I look something up...

1.4 litres????

[politenotice]

[interestingmistakes]

[justsomeguycore]

horror movie showing a child’s drawing of the monster or ghost or whatever but instead of a little kid and crayons they’re like a preteen and it’s manga style

[autistobrat]

this too shall pass but the fuck was that for

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

love when a charlie brown adult starts making an announcement over the MTA system and you just sort of have to hope it wasn't that important

[fairycosmos]

i often have every intention of doing something. which means nothing