peace pigeon

[thenwearedecided]

fuckkkk my sacrificial lamb has started hanging out with the scapegoat

[mephistopheles]

midsummer: if the feudal strictness of your home kingdom can’t give you what you want, try going on an adventure guided by magical supernatural beings

macbeth: but not like that

hamlet: if you’re in a duplicitous violent world, your king and your peers and your girlfriend may lie to you, so only follow the advice of your steadfast best friend

othello: but not like that

as you like it: if you undergo a misfortune that causes you to hate your life in your city, give yourself a makeover and run away to the woods

timon of athens: but not like that

two gents: if you’re in love in italy, you can quickly and easily communicate important information via the verona postal service

romeo and juliet: but not like that

[folklorespring]

Amazing

[ryebreadgf]

yayyyy

[jomiddlemarch]

[lord-margolotta]

One of those how-many-life-experiences-have-you-had things, except all the points are ridiculously hyperspecific, pointlessly general, or just plain weird.

How many can you get?

Accidentally fallen in a natural body of water

Visited the second-largest city on your country

Taken ibuprofen on an empty stomach

Gotten a tattoo in only purple ink

Tried to dye your hair only to find the dye wouldn't take

Drank a spider

Broken your left femur in exactly two places simultaneously

Nearly ran out of petrol on the highway but not quite

Had an allergic reaction during an exam, because of the exam materials

Been prescribed antihistamines

Blocked someone on tumblr

Submitted a CV with a typo in the first line

Drank coffee without sugar

Been in an airplane only for the flight to be cancelled before takeoff

Abandoned a hobby exactly three days after you picked it up

Gotten the wrong prescription glasses because you were too shy to tell the student optometrist they were blocking your view of the eye chart so you just made up some answers at random

Been told "jokes about [trauma you had] are never funny" right after you made a joke about said trauma

Gotten lost at a new school

Been to a birthday party

Told someone you don't speak a certain language, in that language (give yourself a bonus point if you were lying to avoid a having a conversation (give yourself another bonus point if it was your native language (give yourself another bonus point if you clearly doing something - eg reading a book or watching a movie - that indicated that you did in fact speak said language)))

Left kudos on AO3

Read a book longer than 300 pages

Accidentally declined a call you wanted to take

Found a coin on the footpath that was the largest denomination minted in the country you were in at the time

Watched a TV series in an order determined by a random number generator

Gone out of your way to spit on someone's grave

Rolled a 12 on a pair of D6s

Received a scholarship that did not pay nearly enough to cover the course fees

Visited Geraldine, Aotearoa

Been mistaken for a sibling of a different gender

Accidentally shoplifted

Coloured your nails with a highlighter

Thanked your aunt for the lovely handkerchiefs

Been adopted by a calico cat with six toes on each paw

Looked someone up in an actual old-fashioned phonebook

Been given a nickname you initially hated but grew to like

Cut your own hair without looking in a mirror

Lived somewhere everyone says is haunted but you've never noticed anything abnormal

Driven a car older than yourself

Stowed away on a ship that turned out to be heading in completely the opposite direction from where you wanted to go

[comicgeekery]

Does anyone else remember this bullshit?

This official Good Omens tarot deck came out a few months after season two. Most of it was pretty cool, but someone made the bizarre choice to replace The Lovers with this. The Duo.

They could have just made Aziraphale and Crowley The Lovers. We would have been thrilled. They could have used one of the other couples of the show. We would have been disappointed but still enthusiastic.

But they didn't do either.

Instead we got this baffling situation where Crowley and Aziraphale are in the space of The Lovers, they functionally are The Lovers to anyone who knows anything about tarot, but they don't get to actually and properly be called The Lovers.

Just how long has Amazon (and maybe Gaiman and the BBC) been playing this game of almost giving us what we want and then ruining it? They must be so disgustingly pleased with themselves.

[politeanarchy]

Huh, wow, I actually made a series of tarot images after Season 1 came out, because there was such a lot of cool symbolic imagery in there. Here's what I used for The Lovers:

Adam & Eve, plus Crowley & Aziraphale. The Lovers is about relationships, yes, but it's also very much about choices. Both the things chosen, and the things excluded by choosing something else. This scene had all the right mythic resonance! How did they screw things up so badly?

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[rosecoloredtarot]

@friend-crow and @stagkingswife would absolutely both say this

[stagkingswife]

I think I have said this. Ghost = new friend! Weird house noise = expensive repairs.

[the-haiku-bot]

I think I have said

this. Ghost = new friend! Weird house noise

= expensive repairs.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[meg00se]

lets frolic as paleolithic horses together

[yesterdaysprint]

The Daily Times, New Philadelphia, Ohio, July 9, 1924

[thank-you-everyone-deactivated2]

whoever wrote this paper has the funniest phrasing possible

[the-wave-finally-broke]

happy turtle bit off a cop’s toe in the hudson river day for those who celebrate

[saessenach]

A CENTURY AGO

[apoemaday]

God

by Michael Bazzett

for Ada Limón

Look, it’s not that I believe in him. Nor he in me. We have moved beyond all that. I just like having someone there in the dark. Usually we sit in silence, waiting for passing headlights to glide across the ceiling and knock stray prayers loose from where they got stuck on their way out, so many years ago. It’s almost like finding old piñata candy, says God, picking one from the floorboards. He unwraps it, takes a quick taste. Winces. Nods like he’s just remembered something for the thousandth, thousandth time. What is it? I ask. It’s kind of like chewing tinfoil, he says. All that aching naked hope.

[bark-barkley]

I WANT TO LOOK AT THINGS MADE BY HUMAN BEINGS

[softwetmoss]

And also occasionally by pufferfish

[grootficguy]

it must feel good as hell when you’re a horse and you take a big bite out of an apple like ttshoke

[rubensmuse]

your command over onomatopoeia is unmatched bestie

[botanyshitposts]

love doing something I call ‘the big leaf test’ where I put my hand on a leaf and if the leaf is bigger than my hand I go damn that’s crazy

[popsunner]

Was just informed by my mom that I do in fact have ADHD and the reason I thought I didn’t was because ever since I was seven whenever I got super energetic my mom would have me go chop wood so now when I’m feeling The ADHD I go chop wood and I thought it was just some sort of routine I started when I was little and wanted to blow off steam

[popsunner]

I’d also like to point out that my sister has a really hard time staying present (I can’t remember the term because we’ve always called it Tethered at my house) and whenever she’s feeling Untethered my mom has her knead bread and make syrup because they’re repetitive and easy things to do that ground her

[popsunner]

Now that I’m thinking about it- my brother has days where he doesn’t talk and doesn’t eat unless he’s prompted, and on those days my mom sits him down in the fish pond in the backyard and plays Mozart and because he’s so used to that being his wake up he always comes back in after like an hour rambling about random things

[popsunner]

Oh yeah and when it rains my mom has a required hour where we all have to go outside and run around and whoever finds the most worms for the garden wins and then we go inside and my mom makes us tea and we watch Studio Ghibli movies

[popsunner]

Wait!!! When one of us has a bad day at school we make a fire in the backyard and roast homemade sausages and my mom tells us stories until we laugh and then she tucks is in bed like we’re five again and sings us songs

[popsunner]

Uh.... wait guys is my mom a witch raising a bunch of fae kids hold on-

[eldritch-eternity]

“I didn’t know I had adhd because my mom gave me such an effective coping mechanism” is such a high bar to clear and she soared over it like a space-plane.

[uno-gang]

Another great thing about Heated Rivalry on the meta-meta level is the fact that Connor Storrie has so many moles. Because in my native language the word for mole is literally mother's mark and we have this folk believe that they represent your mother's love for you. Because it "leaves marks on you".

That means that Ilya is covered head to toe in physical embodiments of his mother's love for him. He has so many moles, he is so loved.

And there is no way this could've been an active casting decision, because why would it be? It just shows that Connor Storrie was destined to play mama's boy Ilya Rozanov

(And don't even get me started on the big mole on his cheek, that is like prime cheek kissing location)

[letsfindouttomorrow]

As a white Slavic person myself who dated an Asian man for several years, I feel like I have some very specific Hollanov headcanons I would like to share

1. Jokes about being mistaken for relatives, anyone who has ever been in an interracial relationships knows what I’m talking about. Some white Centaurs player is complaining about his white girlfriend being mistaken for his sister, and Ilya’s annoying ass cuts in like “omg this happens to Shane and I alllll the time sooo annoying”, the sarcastic jokes that they get mistaken for siblings/twins/cousins never stop

2. Communism jokes whenever Ilya wants to share something that Shane has, “Shane it’s OUR personal space, this is how it is in Russia 🙄” then whenever Ilya complains about Shane’s boring car, Shane hits him with the “oh I thought it was OUR car huh🤨”

3. The STRONG mutual agreement that cold water is bad for indigestion and highly preferring room temp drinking water, and yes, this does get them some side eyes from teammates when they always refuse ice in their water. On the flip side, they both drink their tea scorching hot, and anything less than boiling is not hot enough.

4. They may avoid The Question since they’re both famous, but I feel like it’s likely that Ilya still sometimes gets the heavily disguised “oh and where is your husband from…no no I mean where is he ‘originally’ from” and every time he gives a straight faced “Ottawa😐”

5. I know in the show we see Shane and Ilya wearing shoes in the house a few times and I’m here to say this is FAKE NEWS. Both of our boys are strict no outdoor shoes in the house, and they only wear house slippers when at home.

6. Whenever they are drunk or just delirious with sleep in the late hours, one or both of them starts a sentence in a different language without even realizing. Just to clarify, multilingual people do not “forget to switch” but the wires can get crossed when the brain is impaired. Shane hears Ilya getting up at 3am for water and tries to ask where he’s going, but it comes out in French and Ilya’s standing there in the dark like “…I don’t know what that means Shane”

7. An unanticipated struggle of hiding their relationship in their early days was just their different hair types. Hayden is hanging out at Shane’s place and sees strands of blonde curly hair on the couch and spots curly hair products in the bathroom…suspicious. They’re constantly finding each other’s hair in their beds, their clothes, their OWN hair, Shane one time finds a strand of Ilya’s hair in his meal prep and gives him the cold shoulder for the rest of the day.

8. Obligatory jokes about throwing in a “oh what because I’m Asian?” in an arbitrary conversation. Ilya and Shane are obviously immune to these from each other over time but it never fails to turn their teammates into fumbling messes. A Boston teammate asks Ilya if he knows about a niche American political topic (he doesn’t) but Ilya just responds with “oh you assume I do not know bc I am immigrant, this is so xenophobic of you” and he watches with glee as this guy backpedals harder than ever before in his life

I kinda thought of these off the top of my head, I would love to hear other peoples thoughts about this 😋😋

[bighairedbitch]

One thing I’ve seen happens in this fandom- and honestly sometimes in real life discussions about Hudson too- is that people end up flattening all POC experiences into one universal experience.

Race absolutely matters. Racism absolutely exists. But different racial groups are stereotyped in different ways, and those stereotypes can produce completely different social expectations.

For example, I’ve seen people criticize Rachel and Jacob for joking about Hudson being unintelligent because he’s a person of color. If Hudson were Black, I would understand that criticism more, because there is a long history of anti-Black stereotypes portraying Black people as unintelligent. But Hudson is Asian. Asian men are stereotyped in almost the opposite way. They’re often assumed to be intelligent, studious, and academically successful. The stereotype is still racist, but it’s a different stereotype. It doesn’t suddenly become an anti-Asian stereotype just because we’ve replaced “Asian” with the broader category of “POC.”

The same thing happens constantly in fanfiction with Shane.

A lot of writers portray Shane as being afraid to fight because he knows he’ll be judged more harshly than white players. I understand where that idea is coming from, but as a black person I’ve never found it particularly convincing.

If Shane were black, that analysis would make more sense to me. Black men are often stereotyped as aggressive, which means behavior that is considered acceptable from white athletes is often interpreted differently when black ones do it.

But asian men occupy a very different place in the racial imagination. They’re frequently stereotyped as passive, non-threatening, weak, nerdy, emasculated, etc. If racial stereotypes were influencing Shane’s approach to hockey, I could just as easily imagine the opposite dynamic: feeling pressure to prove he’s aggressive enough to belong. Maybe he’s fighting TOO much.

But that doesn’t make sense for Shane. He’s the league’s golden boy. He’s polite, media-friendly, and heavily inspired by Sidney Crosby. He’s a superstar. Fighting is often delegated to players lower on the depth chart whose role is specifically to provide physicality. Star players generally aren’t expected to be enforcers. Teams usually want their elite talent scoring goals, not sitting in the penalty box after dropping the gloves.

So Shane not fighting much doesn’t strike me as evidence of racial pressure. It strikes me as evidence that he’s Shane Hollander.

Crosby is a useful comparison here. For years, people mocked him for not being physical enough (and for talking to the refs too much). They questioned his toughness and masculinity. They called him “Crybaby Crosby” or “Cindy Crosby.” Fans edited photos of him in dresses or makeup. The criticism wasn’t really about hockey. The joke was that he wasn’t a “real man.”

And that’s a white player.

Imagine how much worse those conversations could become if the player in question were Asian.

That’s the kind of racial dynamic I could actually see affecting Shane, not him worrying about people thinking he’s too aggressive, but people questioning whether he’s aggressive ENOUGH.

There’s a good chance that if Shane fought exactly like many white players, he probably still wouldn’t be viewed as tough enough. Meanwhile, if a Black player fought exactly like those same white players, he might be interpreted as more aggressive.

People often criticize Rachel for not doing much racial analysis in the books. But sometimes fandom fills that gap with racial analysis that feels disconnected from both hockey culture and the specific stereotypes that affect different racial groups.

Not every POC experience is interchangeable.

A stereotype that affects Black athletes is not automatically a stereotype that affects Asian athletes. A stereotype that affects Latino athletes is not automatically a stereotype that affects Indigenous athletes.

If we’re going to talk about race- and we should- we have to talk about the actual racial dynamics at play, not just substitute “person of color” for a more specific analysis.

Sometimes no racial analysis is better than bad racial analysis.