apple turnover

red things, blue things, me things, you things

[greywatch]

currently reading:

labyrinth's heart . m.a. carrick

[consulships]

i do think theres something sad about how largely only the literature that's considered especially good or important is intentionally preserved. i want to read stuff that ancient people thought sucked enormous balls

[literaryreference]

Time to take this post entirely too seriously:

I often wonder if this is why you so commonly see the sentiment that we are in an era of uniquely bad literature, or at least that the fact that most books don't have artistic aspirations and are not aiming to be anything other than mindless entertainment is new. In fact what's new is the idea that everything is worth preserving (and also the internet making it easier to preserve it). The dumb artistically unambitious trash books of the past have survived only sporadically, because people thought of them as literally disposable.

When I was in college I had a professor who was an expert on detective fiction. He had a longstanding beef with the idea that "Murders in the Rue Morgue" was the first detective story. He thought that it seemed way too polished to be inventing a new genre, and also that the whole orangutan business had the vibe of someone subverting preexisting audience expectations and maybe engaging in a bit of stealth parody. With the help of some student volunteers, he went trawling through old magazines and newspapers and found hundreds of detective stories from the early 1800s that just hadn't garnered enough individual attention to be remembered. This was because most of them sucked balls. He created an online archive of them, so you too can read these mostly terrible stories.

[bogleech]

Oh my god murders in the rue morgue was dark parody that makes so much more fucking sense

[konetainkarr]

Old friend

[aromiekimart]

Digimon Tamers is my favorite Digimon anime series, bar none. Here's a drawing I did of the main protags

[thebaldursmouthgazette]

I need everyone who didn’t read the books to know that Felassan (who’s name means slow arrow in elven)

This guy

Who was in several of solas’ memories and has notes around the lighthouse and crossroads

Was in the masked empire. He was a friend and mentor of Brialas and helped her with her efforts to use her relationship with Celene to improve the lives of elves in Orlais (and tried to let her down gently when it became apparent that was not enough).

He refuses to let Briala tell him the code for the eluvian network so that he cannot give it on to Solas. Refusing to tell him would not be enough to keep it from him. When he meets with Solas he tries to convince him that modern elves should be given a chance. Solas murders him, his ally of thousands of years, for this.

In inquisition, Cole says this:

This is what the Betrayal of Felassan represents. Solas murdered his trusted friend and ally because he though modern elves were people whose lives had value.

[thebaldursmouthgazette]

I forgot to mention that Solas doesn’t speak in this exchange.

Felassan, knowing that he’s going to be killed for this (he KNOWS his “friend” is going to kill him for this) spends his dying words trying to convince Solas that modern elves deserve a chance

And not only does Solas not say a single thing in response, he kills Felassan mid sentence.

[hellothisisangle]

[fenja-illustrations]

(PRINT AVAILABLE)

BioWare when I get you for this

[dalishious]

Among these "cishet" Dragon Age women, who would you make queer?

Morrigan

Anora

Aveline

Meredith

Cassandra

Someone else (leave in tags)

Remaining time: 2 days 15 hours

[stuckinapril]

when James Baldwin said I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive

[stuckinapril]

when James Baldwin said to be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So I am forced to be an optimist. I am forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive.

[dimmadoome]

FROM LEGOS TO POLICE CORRUPTION: The Bricks and Minifigs, Reckless Ben and Stolen Lego situation in a nutshell.

Ok. So it all started when a guy named Bryan Mansell went to a lego reseller store called Bricks and Minifigs to sell his 80+ year old fathers lego collection so he can pay for his fathers medical bills. Mind you, this lego collection is all OG Star Wars legos all the way down and worth aprox. 200k.

Bricks and Minifigs, which I will call BAM for ease of time, is a franchise and the store he went to was located in Utah. The owners of said location, Benjamin and Chrys Gorman are not BAM at large, they are just people who signed a contract to go into buisness with BAM under their name as a franchisee.

The owners put those legos of Bryans up on consignment. Meaning Bryan still owns them, but the store gets a cut of that money for selling the legos themselves. It is explicitly stated in their contract with BAM that they can sell things on conisgnment.

Corporate BAM comes in once they learn of the lego collection and takes the store away from the owners. The owners previously had decided to move country for Benjamins job so they had contacted BAM about selling the store. BAM just fucking took it. They sent a guy named Brandon Best (more on him later) to get the keys and kick the owners out. They didnt let the owners take any of their personal property out of that store. Not even their fucking bird. But in the process of this, Brandon does say, on camera, that he is going to take on the liability of the consignment. BAM then puts new people in the management spots of that specific location. Josh Johnson and ...well lookie there....Brandon Best.

The store then starts selling those legos and not giving the money to the old man who owns the legos, saying that they dont DO consignment.

In comes Reckless Ben (Ben Schneider) who is an investigative youtuber. He goes all out to try to get these legos back to the family. Even suing the two new owners in small claims court to get that money back to the family. Which he won BTW. Meanwhile the CEO of BAM ,Ammon McNeff, threatened the old owners of the store, which they have recorded, saying that if they take BAM to court, BAM will drag out the court case out so they can drain money away from the old owners. Even ending the conversation with "if you think this is a threat...well...it is."

His words, not mine.

So Reckless Ben wins the court case. Josh and Brandon now have to pay that money back. They don't pay that money back and in fact, Josh threatens Ben on the phone (recorded) that if he persues this, he will claim Ben stole the legos and SWAT him.

Again, His words, not mine.

BAM, Josh and Brandon close that store so they can get out of paying for those legos.

Ben, not to be deterred, files a second lawsuit. He can't get it to go through until he can prove that he has spoken to both Josh and Brandon about getting the situation resolved. So he does.

He goes to Josh's house. The cops are already there. They pull him over for failing to stop correctly at a stop sign, despite having evidence on their own cop car dash cam that is available to the public saying otherwise. They ash for Ben by name. Ben is NOT driving.

They get off with a threat and a warning.

They then go to Brandon's house. Brandon comes out but says nothing. He looks like hes on fucking queludes or something this man is GONE. He sticks around for a few minutes and then fucks off back into his house.

That part of the court case is accepted. They tried to have a conversation, it failed. Got it in one.

Now they gotta go try to talk to Josh again to get everything sorted out.

This is where shit starts to really go down.

They get to his house. Cops are there again. They get pulled over on suspicion of HEROIN possession. Obviously the cops don't find anything but they break shit and threaten this kid anyway. Hours later, Ben gets home. His lawsuit is accepted. Now he has to serve them papers personally.

He goes to Josh's house again and tries to get the papers served. Four times the cops came by, three times they were like "Oh are these papers real? You arent doing anything illegal. Carry on". Until the fourth time where they, ON CAMERA, confirm with the court system that yes, the papers are real and yes they needed to be served.

So they arrest Ben for tresspassing.

Ben gets off on bail after a week.

He decides to do a go fund me for the family. He brings a huge banner for it and puts it up on the public sidewalk across from Josh's house.

The cops are called again. They know its not illegal to do what they are doing. The cops go back to their car, talk it over, admit its NOT illegal, poorly redact the body cam footage saying that and come up with a convoluted reason to arrest Ben again. So they do on suspicion of stalking.

They try to keep him in jail for a month, no bail. A judge went over the order and decided that it was crazy to do that and changed the order to let him go with bail again. Ben goes home.

THEN THEY SWAT THE PLACE HE IS STAYING ON SUSPICION OF HIM HAVING STOLEN THE LEGOS! Remember that threat that Josh gave Ben? Well, it came true. Ben was arrested again. This time they dislocated his shoulder and sent him on his way when they didnt find anything of note. Still, The kid gets harmed, threatened and bullied for the crime of...making an enemy of this company and those people.

And then the cops issue ANOTHER warant for Bens arrest. This time with no chance of bail at all.

So he flew to Mexico and is right now, currently in Mexico while he confers with lawyers over his situation.

The most fucked up part of the whole thing. Every cop and judge that harrassed him was Mormon. The CEO of BAM and Josh And Robert are all Mormons and every single one of em donate hella money to the Mormon church. Like, crazy amounts of money.

I am not making any of this up either. Like there is body cam footage, there are doccuments, emails, arrest records, court orders, dockets, contracts ETC that tell the story better than any words can.

I am not shocked at all by the corruption happening here, but I am hopefull that this is a thread that can be pulled to its source, that something good might come of how exposed these people and their crimes are by their own blatant assgrabbing tomfuckery.

But holy shit. What a development in the lego collection sphere. BAM seems to be going full force into destroying any credibility they have. Because if they can do this to anyone, they can do this to you too. How do you know if the legos you are buying arent stolen? How do you know theyre going to honor your consignment deal? How do you know theyre not gonna send the cops to break your fucking legs if you express any wish to get your rightfully owed money back from them?

This shit is heinous. Unspeakably heinous.

[gaybichon]

not even funny how true this is for me

[sreegs]

You should take some time to read @3liza's post documenting the Phantom Report Bug (which she deserves praise for doing, thank you eliza) and see how fucking broken Tumblr's report tool is. I also want to reiterate something she is once again correct about: no one files bug reports. I have first hand experience working at Tumblr and I remember having to tell web devs on Staff "i saw a post about someone talking about a bug" and they were unaware because no one followed through to file a bug. I have fixed bugs that I saw people posting about that were in my domain (I'm a mobile dev) but were not in the system. No this is not an endorsement of "complain about it enough and eventually someone will see it", this is an endorsement of "file a bug report directly to computer companies and people will most likely read it and probably fix it". I mean it this is not a Tumblr-only thing. I've seen this at every company I've worked for. Just fucking file a bug report please I beg you, software gets complicated and the devs are just unaware that there's a bug until you bring it to your attention. And they want to fix the bug! I promise!

[3liza]

WHAT AM I ALWAYS SAYING TO YOU PEOPLE. COMPLAINING GETS THE GOODS. YOURE NOT ALLOWED TO GET MAD UNTIL YOUVE COMPLAINED ABOUT THE PROBLEM TO SOMEONE WHOSE JOB IT IS TO FIX IT

[3liza]

POLITELY

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

Thinking about Romeo killing himself through poison (more passive, "woman's weapon) Vs Juliet having to kill herself with a knife (more active, images of falling on your sword, typically masculine concepts)

[inlovewelive-inlovewedie]

It does mean something! Shakespeare turns the “normal” gender roles on its head with the portrayal of Romeo and Juliet. For the most part, Juliet is level-headed and logical while Romeo is impulsive and driven by emotion. Juliet mostly monologues her thoughts whereas Romeo laments his feelings. Take the scene where Juliet is about to drink the Friar’s potion! She talks out her fears, mulling over possible outcomes. Now consider the scene where Romeo has killed Tybalt and is waiting to hear the Prince’s verdict. He’s hysterical and becomes even more inconsolable when he learns he’s been banished. He even takes out his dagger and threatens to take his life right then and there in front of Friar Lawrence. He’s crying so much that Friar Lawrence berates him and tells him to knock it off, be a man!

There’s even been a period of time where productions of Romeo and Juliet forced them into stereotypical gender roles, taking out how emotional Romeo was written to be. The podcast Shakespeare Unlimited by the Folger Shakespeare Library did a great episode on this topic!

“Romeo and Juliet Through the Ages”

Spotify

Apple Podcast

[essaytime]

YES! And the links between this and the idea of masculinity harboured by the people of Verona, which is defined by violence!

[lungthief]

there’s also a really great essay on this by Marlena Tronicke from her book Shakespeare’s Suicides: Dead Bodies That Matter—here’s the link to the R&J chapter

additional fun fact: romeo and horatio are the only male shakespeare characters to attempt suicide by poison, which has some Interesting Implications

[inquisitor-apologist]

Ok I’m being so brave about it but a couple of days ago I saw this post claiming that the Jedi saying ‘this weapon [your lightsaber] is your life’ is emblematic of ‘the Jedi’s failure as peacekeepers’ (not an exact quote but pretty close) because why would a weapon be the life of a peacekeeper?

And like. The Jedi are a culture. They’re a religion.

You know that, right? You know that many cultures, including generally peaceful ones, have sacred weapons, right? You know that the bond between a Jedi and their crystal(s) is an extremely sacred thing that requires the consent of both parties and is integral to their way of life, right?

You know that lightsabers are not intended to be only for killing, right? That the first thing Luke learns to do with his lightsaber is to shield and defend? You know that a culture having sacred weapons doesn’t mean that they view killing as sacred, right?

Not trying to start shit, I don’t even remember who said it, but ugh

[maulfucker]

lightsaber combat is literally a martial art. if you look at what wikipedia says martial arts are:

I put special emphasis on "practiced for a number of reasons such as physical, mental and spiritual development; and the preservation of a nation's intangible cultural heritage" because that's exactly why the jedi have lightsaber combat: it's part of their culture, as essential to it as the Force, and it's a way to train and connect with themselves, each other, and the Force. plenty of martial arts use weapons like swords and staffs, and it's most notable on asian martial arts like kendo, which is literally what lightsaber combat in the movies was inspired on. the weapons don't mean they're more violent than unarmed martial arts, or that they are meant to kill. they're just a different style of martial art, much like music has so many different genres.

plus, lightsabers are extremely limited in range, they are obviously meant for defense over offense. they can only cut down people who get close enough to be within range of the blade, and even though they can deflect blaster shots they still need to have been shot at first. using a lightsaber to kill is easy. anyone who gets their hands on a lightsaber can do that. using a lightsaber to defend, to save lives? now that requires plenty of training, discipline and understanding of oneself and one's weapon. that's what lightsaber combat is. that's why jedi carry lightsabers.

if the jedi were armed to kill, they'd be carrying blasters like the rest of the galaxy

[inquisitor-apologist]

Honestly, guys, reblog this version maulfucker said it WAY better

[supremely-unsupervised]

Got to see Hadestown for the first time ever today (and it was amazing oh my god I had no idea what I was missing) and I'd just like to give a shout out to the poor soul in the audience who had clearly never heard the myth of Orpheus before, because when Orpheus turned around at the end the audience was dead silent except for this one very audible gasp of "no!" from somewhere in the crowd. And after Euridyce was gone and Orpheus dropped to his knees in grief, all anybody --cast, audience, the uncaring gods, etc -- could hear was muffled weeping from the same person

[reasonsforhope]

By the way, when I say that I really do believe that we will make it, I am 100% saying that as someone who has been following good news extensively + basically daily for over two years now, and has come to that conclusion slowly and deliberately, based on extensive available evidence. It's not a platitude. I genuinely do mean it, and I could write you a whole dissertation on all the reasons why.

(you know. if I had the time and an in-progress doctorate. rip.)

[reasonsforhope]

Fyi for people asking me for sources, unfortunately I super don't have the time or spoons to make any kind of sufficiently thorough explanation.

In large part because my conclusion here is based on very literally thousands of articles and books and good news updates that I've read over the past couple years. That's a lot too sum up!

In the meantime, though, I'd suggest going through my "good news" tag - that's 500+ reasons/sources right there.

I'd also really recommend going through a ton of Future Crunch's good news archives - they really have such a breadth of info, especially internationally and from a big picture perspective. Unfortunately half of it's paywalled now!! But the sections you can see are still super powerful.

Finally, I'd recommend reading the deeply powerful (web content or) books Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming and Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation.

[byjove]

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m beginning to understand what certain Welsh words mean but I haven’t the faintest idea how to pronounce them without sounding like a fool, which is how I feel about many words in my native language of English because I’m from the American south.

[byjove]

It’s also quite difficult to do the whole ‘watch a show with subtitles to understand the cadence of the language’ thing that you could do with Spanish or French. Yet another reason we need a show about King Arthur entirely in Welsh. Until then, do any of you have any recommendations for Welsh language media or media where characters speak Welsh?

[riotwizard]

@becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Clic is S4C's equivalent of BBC iPlayer, so if you can get that to work where you are (might need a VPN), take a look at children's/learner programming. That's usually good because people will speak slower and use simpler language

Or, maybe try Hansh? A lot more Wenglish, but a super fun company that produces web content for young people; sometimes skits, sometimes mini documentaries, sometimes a round up of the Welsh language gigs across the country that week. They're on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, etc

Pob lwc!