Your Average Perfect Everything

I've got a lot of shit to say and to figure out.

[thememedaddy]

[thememedaddy]

[its-funnytwittertweets]

[dragonpyre]

[sevastiel]

[thememedaddy]

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

[cognitiveinequality]

[laurenshield]

There are a lot of people, right now, lamenting the despicable writing of HOTD's female character, particularly Alicent and Rhaenyra. There are good reason to: if HOTD writing team is committed to something, it's the refusal to engage with women beyond a neboulos notion of "women as peace seekers, women as victims of patriarchy", not to the mention the tiring and frankly insulting insistence on centering Rhaenicent as an emotional core for all the wrong reasons...

... But in my opinion, almost nothing is as grating as Helaena's characterization.

Rhaenyra and Alicent, for all their handling is abysmal, do have a sort of guideline, at least on paper. Rhaenyra wants the throne: crying every two minute, yes, acting as she's a Geneva convention expert in an ultra feudalistic world, all right, but at least she has a goal she's moving towards. Alicent is an idiot and an hypocrite on an almost pathological level, but she wants to "be at least myself (...) die free and unnoticed" (how she wants to do that in practice is a discussion for another day), which is... underwhelming, but still something.

What the fuck does Helaena want?

She's not a Cassandra figure; she never tries to act on her visions or even warn those around her. She's too little tormented for the reference to stick. She's not a grieving mother, because it's one thing to express grief in an unconventional way, it's another to shrug your child's brutal death because "children die". She doesn't want to burn innocents but doesn't ever advocate herself for peace. She's not a dragonrider despite having a dragon. Aemond is treated as a monster for the crime of asking her a perfectly reasonable thing - help him fight against the side responsible for her boy's murder. She wants to keep chicken, because apparently anything with more layers than that is too far beyond the scope of her Neuro divergent mind.

So, say what you want about Rhaenyra, Alicent, Baela, Rhaena, Rhaenys, Alys: you'd be right. But in some ways, Helaena got the shortest stick of the bunch.

[mlpoutofcontext]

[mlarayoukai-archive]

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

[secretchordstyx]

this trend of shitting on peer-reviewed academic studies in favor of tweeting “we already knew this was happening” is so soul-crushing. not to be an elitist cunt, but we have got to open the schools again. people genuinely seem to have forgotten that their personal lived experience isn’t indicative of the larger population, AND IF IT IS…… then you need researchers to support these assertions from a relevant data pool instead of a blog post from 2013 💀

[chaoticevilspacewitch]

"Believe women and the marginalized" does not replace the value of empirical data.

[power-handmaiden]

when I was in high school I had a literature teacher who had a policy of unlimited extra credit. All you had to do was read a book by a notable author (his discretion) and have a little chat with him after school to prove that you read it. No limits, no need for variety (one month I decided I really loved Kurt Vonnegut and just read everything of his I could get my hands on).

Yes, I was tearing through books constantly, and talking to this teacher at least weekly. Because even though I always loved reading as a kid, literature was always a very weak subject for me in terms of a teaching-to-standardized-test school setting (I just do awful on "what color were the curtains" type multiple choice questions. Those details don't stick in my memory THEY JUST DON'T). But that didn't matter for this class. I could just read my way out of any bad test score. I have always had fond memories of how I "fudged" my way through that class and "abused' the extra credit policy.

I was thinking about it again today, and only just now realized that he absolutely tricked me into being well-read, while my teenage self thought I was totally getting away with something. THAT MOTHERFUCKER. I hope he's doing well.

[madphantom]

You know, there's this cliché that teenage boys always eat massive amounts, but teenage girls really aren't that different if they're not suppressed by diet culture and body shaming. Like, I was a teenage girl who frankly just stopped bothering to fit into mainstream beauty ideals at some point, and I would regularly make myself just one big massive pot of pasta and devour it completely. This wasn't even stress eating or anything, I just genuinely needed the energy because you know, I was a teenager and my body was developing. I feel like so many teenage girls think they need to eat as little as possible to be petite and pretty, but the truth is that your body is developing just as intensely as teenage boys' bodies. Eat more, please, your body needs it.

[las-lus]

I know Brazilians are famous for being Into Football but the fact that the penalties of a game that 1. Doesn't include brazil and 2. Doesn't affect who brazil will face off anytime soon had so many watchers that when it was done the whole mall I work in screamed is wild. I love the world cup.

Anyways fuck Germany!!! Futebol é America Latina!!!

[bayernsnutella]

This looks like a sitcom

[girlbr0thers]

Faux leather was the worst thing ever created

[girlbr0thers]

Lets take a material that can last decades with the right treatment and care and fucking replicate it with the most dogshit ugly flimsiest animal extinction microplastics smells bad unsexual rips in four days garbage disgusting saran wrap we can think of. Ostensibly for vegans.

[thememedaddy]

[normal-with-adhd-is-a-joke]

Conservative beauty standards are back with a vengeance which means it's especially important to go out this summer with bellies out and bodies unshaved. Also be unapologetically disabled with mobility aids and wearable medical devices and stim toys and ear defenders and all that stuff. You need it. People need to see it. Everyone needs to be reminded that life is unquestioningly more enjoyable when you're not living inside an arbitrary set of rules created by people who are offended by all the wrong things.