bookpain cause I do be hurting from reading @bookpain - Tumblr Blog

i’ve been saying “do it scared” but now i gotta actually do it

Maybe this is the wrong platform to pose this question given the average tumblr user but

Is it just me or did our generation (those of is who are currently 20-30 ish) just not get the opportunity to be young in the 'standard' sense?

Like, everyone I talk to who's over 40 has all their wild stories about their teens and 20s, being young and dumb, and then I talk to my friends and coworkers and classmates, and we just... dont.

just-your-average-tangerine

My mom tells stories of skipping school to sneak across the border and spend the day at a bar in Mexico. I was threatened with not being allowed to graduate because of senior ditch day. One of my friends had to go to his first hour class on senior ditch day because the teacher, who almost exclusively taught seniors, arranged a huge exam that day with no available makeup days, specifically to punish kids who took part in ditch day. Our wild and crazy ditch day was playing mini golf and then stopping for ice cream on our way back to one of our friends' houses to play cards against humanity.

Don't get me wrong, we had fun. But all of that, threats of not graduating, threats of failing classes over a single test, over some mini golf and ice cream?

Throughout high school and early in college, my friend group got kicked out of malls, stores, and even a parking lot just for being there wrong. Not being loud of disruptive. Not causing problems. Just being there too long, or without buying anything.

My mom graduated high school, after repeating her senior year, without a single grade above a D, and was offered a full ride scholarship to a state university to play on their women's football team. I had a 3.8 GPA, multiple extracurriculars, a summer job, and over 100 hours of volunteer work, and barely got into that same university, and then couldn't afford to go there anyway.

We've made getting into college so important and yet so difficult that kids are sacrificing their childhoods for it.

Then they become adults and it doesn't go away. Your employer/ potential employers are searching your social media and internet presence so you'd better hope no one has ever posted a picture of you at a party, or with alcohol, or wearing revealing clothes, or whatever else they've deemed unprofessional. And if you want to go out it's a 10 dollar cover and drinks are at least 8 dollars, and you need to tip if there's any kind of live entertainment, who can afford to do all that regularly?

My physical therapist, when I was 18, told me about his 21st birthday, how the last thing he remembers is people taking body shots off him. I spent my 21st birthday alone, was in bed by 10pm because I had to be at work the next morning. My boss had already told me that they knew it was my 21st, and if I called out, she'd write me up for improper use of sick leave because you're not allowed to use sick leave for a hangover. I don't know anyone whose 21st birthday was a big deal. No one went out and partied for it.

I dont really know where I'm going with all of this. I guess I just don't understand the point of it all. We spend our youth working hard to provide a future that we still can't afford. We have to be responsible and professional as teenagers. And we get nothing out of it. We can't afford life or friends or fun. At least our parents got to have fun being young and dumb, we just got groomed on kik.

just-your-average-tangerine

So I'm not the only one noticing this. I wish I had an answer or at least something to say about it. But I dont. I'm just tired.

partialbirthabortion

This NPR interview with with Angela Saini about how race science never really left the global scientific consciousness is super interesting! I’m gonna read her book!

partialbirthabortion

my girlfriend has been talking about this since ancestry kits became A Thing

aoya

alverelover

gigi-drxws

I was tame, I was gentle 'til the circus life made me mean

"Don't you worry, folks, we took out all her teeth"

Who's afraid of little old me?

Well, you should be

( nothing special just somth i drew while thinking about TS new album …. It was suppose to have a second slide but i got tired so here it is 🫶🏻)

lizardsfromspace

Was there ever a news event in our lifetimes that the media fumbled more aggressively than Columbine. They genuinely got every single detail wrong

From reporting that they killed someone for saying she believed in God (they spared a different girl who said she did) to not reporting that they sought out students of color while yelling racial slurs - on Hitler's birthday & a day after the anniversary of OKC and Waco - while promoting the idea that you have to watch out for loner bullied nerds. Even though later research shows that the shooters were, in fact, bullies themselves, who had a wide social circle, and they were, you know, Nazis motivated by racism and not the video game Doom (1993).

It's a generational fuck-up, the GOAT of bad reporting bc it's still with us. The narrative of persecution after "she said yes" is a huge reason the evangelical right is like how it is today (they made a biopic that uncritically repeated it just a couple years ago!) & they still push the idea that it's primarily victims who do that sort of thing and not aggressors & people still shared that stupid video of Marilyn Manson saying he'd "listen" until a couple years ago (though the shooters being abusive Nazi creeps would uh, not diminish Marilyn Manson's desire to befriend them, I feel)

bumbleshark

kazsbrekker

thinking about how, as a child, kaz’s favorite trick seemed to be watching something disappear, and then he grew up and fell in love with a girl who could vanish into thin air, and how we’re told that when he looks at inej, he feels like a boy again and believes that there’s still magic in the world. imagine loving magic all your life, and then discovering that magic loved you too.

agirlwithachakram

Actually the portrait of Charles is red to represent enthusiasm, energy, determination, passion, strength, leadership, and love. It doesn't matter that it looks like he's walking through fountains of blood spilled by the British empire! Some of you people need to learn color theory

ilikeit-art

petermorwood

Snow leopards seem to treat gravity with a certain amount of disdain, but this is ridiculous.

"Their tops are made out of rubber, their bottoms are made out of springs."

Most of the rest has to be airbags, a high-tensile steel chassis and armour plate.

I will never again think that shopping for dinner is a chore.

novembermorgon

aemon

hedgehogoftime

Rereading the Lord of the Rings series recently, and it's so fascinating to me how much the series is a denial of the typical juvenile power-fantasy that is associated with the fantasy genre.

Like, the power-fantasy is the temptation the Ring uses against people It tempts Boromir with becoming the "one true king" that could save his people with fantastic power. It tempts Sam with being the savior of Middle Earth and turning the ruin that is Mordor into a great garden. It tempts Gandalf and Galadriel with being the messianic figure of legend who brings salvation to Middle Earth and great glory to herself.

The things the Ring tempts people with are becoming the typical protagonists of fantasy stories that we expect to see. and over and over we see that accepting that role, that fantasy of being the benevolent all-powerful hero, is a bad thing. LotR is about how power, even power wielded with benevolent intent, is corrupting.

And its so fascinating how so much of modern fantasy buys into the very fantasy LotR denies. Most modern fantasy is about being that Heroic power-fantasy. About good amassing power to rival evil. But LotR dares not to. It dares to be honest that there is no world where anyone amasses that power and remains good.

I guess that's one of the reasons its so compelling.

ach-sss-no

I think I've said this before, so, sorry about that. But I was taken aback when I read LOTR because I'd heard that it's a foundational work to the fantasy genre, and I was expecting it to be somewhat basic and cliché. I got the opposite experience. It read to me like a thoughtful and detailed deconstruction of the modern fantasy genre instead of the thing that spawned it. Mostly it's because Tolkien took things through to their logical conclusion where many of his imitators did not (the scouring of the shire, the lasting irreparable psychological damage to frodo, the fact that frodo actually can't bring himself to throw away the ring, etc)

kyraneko

The cycle of "great and foundational work handles some concept with nuance, thoughtfulness, and tact, then many imitators spawn and almost universally manage to mistake the wrappings and trim for the heart and soul, leading to an audience eventually thoroughly bored by an endless parade of love triangles, contrived tournaments, arbitrary social distinctions, chosen-one fantasies, and power-display fireworks" goes ever on and on.