The Following is a Random Blog

I'm Melissa. I write, I draw, I reblog what I want, when I want. Follow if you dare. inherently proshipping and anti genocide. censors can fuck off and build their own site. free Palestine free Ukraine.

[sophsun1]

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) dir. Peter Jackson

[aduckwithears]

"Well," said half the fandom, "that one went down like a lead balloon."

[ouroborosorder]

honestly I hate “can you pet the dog?!?” not for any of the common reasons but because it was initially interesting as a proposition of “can you interact with the world in a way that is not within the primary mechanical loop” and that very quickly fell away to being “well now any indie developer making a game has to have a pet the dog button or they’re going to get letters”

[ouroborosorder]

One of my dream projects has an NPC with a dog, and if you try to pet it, the owner tells you not to do that. If you try again, it bites you and you take damage. I want to do this entirely because I genuinely believe that this would make me feel way more grounded in the world than any “click button to see cute animation” would ever do, and also it would be really funny to have a game where people lose their runs because they tried to pet a dog they were told not to pet

[catgirldragon]

[sistertaxon]

[vamp-orwave]

Instagram article from Fifty Shades of Gay

[pjharvey]

we have to start running a massive PSA campaign to young gay people so everyone understands there is a difference between being a dom and being a top and between being a sub and being a bottom. and also that sometimes you are neither a sub nor a bottom and you're just like shy. we need to be handing out flyers we need ads at every train station spreading the word

[depsidase]

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

feels like a real step back that with all the sexual freedom available to us we moved to Hookup Culture instead of Having Sex With Friends Culture

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

I find it weird, actually, that today it's more common to have sex with casual acquaintances you meet on the Hookup App than to have sex with people you already know and like and have fun with. and how if two friends have sex, there's an assumption there must be underlying romantic feelings. because apparently casual non-romantic sex is fine, but only with people you don't already like and care about?

I feel like the hippies and people who lived through the Free Love movement would be rightfully disappointed at us for these made-up lines we're drawing between Sex/Romance and (gasp!) Friendship. shockingly, it's fine to have casual sex with people you enjoy hanging out with and do not want to date. fun and healthy even!

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Amazing that we call him the cookie clicker guy and not the "this website's hate mail game is insane" guy because one of those things had a much bigger impact on Tumblr culture than the other

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#I think it's nice that the thing he'a known for is something he's put a lot of work into and was passionate about#as opposed to some funny posts he made in a few minutes#would you rather be known as large for your funny posts or your books if given the choice?

I'm already known for my funny posts and not my books. People express surprise that I'm a writer constantly.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#wait what#Derin I didn't know you were funny

[deadelated]

we all have the homie that's a cautionary tale

[deadelated]

had

[anarchistmemedistro]

[elodieunderglass]

Fun fact: my sibling’s partner, while idly talking about sports, was like, “you know what’s a WEIRD athlete nobody ever talks about? JOCKEYS, they’re all four feet tall and jacked and psychotic and they fight people. And they’re all Irish for some reason? My dad used to go to a jockey bar in California”

And my sibling was like “oh hey; they’re writing a book about a jockey”

And their partner was like “and they’re all Irish or from the Dominican Republic????? Why??”

And I was like “oh yeah - the weight limit has to be half the weight of the average American male so by numbers Americans don’t really ride races any more, the top flat jockeys in the USA are from Latin America. In Ireland and the UK there’s a lot of Irish and the Irish go everywhere for economic reasons and get purposefully imported to Japan and-“

And the partner was like “and they’re all four feet tall and crazy!”

And I was like “and they’re all crazy! The most injured athletes!! The athletes with no off season! The most concussed athletes! And unlike football and hockey players, they don’t get brain damage from it.”

My sibling was like, “they don’t?”

And I was like, “well no!! They don’t!! The most resilient and fastest-healing athletes for some reason. Of course, two of them die on live TV every year —-“

“TWO OF THEM DIE EVERY YEAR?”

“Yeah well that’s just the ones that die IN RACES, more of them drop dead in exercise riding but dw about it…”

My sibling’s partner broke in, in a tone of revelation; “and nobody notices them! They only see the horse!!!”

Anyway that was weird and fun . There are audiences for my bullshit everywhere I guess

[dykepuffs]

AND TONNES OF THEM ARE MINCÉIRS!!!!! PRIDE FOR OUR SIBLINGS ON THE TOBER!!!!

[elodieunderglass]

AND TONNES OF THEM ARE (turns around and translates: Irish, an lucht siúil ("the walking people"), also known by outsiders, more frequently in the USA, as Irish Travellers; often written down in UK/IRE as the Pavee; indigenous travelling people of the British Isles, NOT ROMANI, part of the ethnic Travelling community - need not be actively travelling to identify) MINCÉIRS. WHO also form a huge number of the exercise riders and grooms of Ireland and the UK, operating under harsh and poorly paid working conditions. Remember that jockeys are athletes who are classified around the world as freelance agricultural workers, whose phenomenal horse skills and willingness to risk their lives do not negate a four-hundred-year-long history of invisibility; snatched up by rich owners for being small and horse-gifted; occasionally winning great glory. And remember the grooms and exercise riders and stable staff - referred to as Lads and sometimes as Lasses or perhaps Stable People - upon whose strength a multibillionpound Sport of Royalty and Billionaires is built. It is VERY common for them to be marginalised by ethnicity as well.

[slacktron23]

The Irish used to be short and now they are very average -- the average Irish man was 5'6" in 1914 and the average Irish man today is 5'10". So the Irish jockey thing may be a holdover from bygone days (most of the top jockeys these days are Latino). This is almost certainly down to improved nutrition/calorie density in foods over this time.

I think a lot of the 'size' discourse is out of date at this point -- we think of the Japanese as short; they aren't even in the top 25 shortest countries by average, which is dominated by South Asian, Latin American, Southeast Asian, and African countries.

[elodieunderglass]

Well, it’s closer to what I said: “the top flat jockeys in the USA are Latin American.” But the USA is dreary at horse racing, generally. Latin Americans aren’t the top/best in the world. They’re a healthy percentage of the best - 6 of the top 20 at the moment, working out to 30% - but the top five flat jockeys on the planet at this precise moment are one Australian, two Frenchmen and two Brits.

However, you did ask someone who knows about this. The Irish presence in flat and jump racing around the world is indeed less about Irish people being short as a nation, because they aren’t particularly. It’s much, much more about the national fondness for flat and jump racing - don’t forget about jump racing - the long history of breeding and training, and the resulting production of racing dynasties. Racing dynasties are strongly generational and influential, with families tending to produce clusters of people who are especially suitable for the sport.

Ireland and the United Kingdom, for four hundred years the breeding grounds of the Thoroughbred, tend to foster racing dynasties of people as well as horses. Prosperous and effective jockeys retire to other areas of the industry, marrying other horsepeople, producing crops of children, and creating familial networks radiating through the industry. And then the children do it too.

Some of the things passed down through these lineages are clear genetic tendencies to smaller frames, which is noticeable. (Oddly, a lot of generational jockeys seem to be born prematurely as well.) Much of it is familial temperament/obsession: people who cannot comprehend NOT riding horses. Quite a lot is the ability to comfortably normalise and tolerate the working conditions, because you were brought up within them. And a significant amount is that it’s much easier to be a fabulous rider if you have trained for it since infancy. If your grandfather put you up on his racehorses before you could walk, you and your siblings and cousins will have a decent advantage at riding horses professionally.

You are not looking for “the nation with the smallest people in the world,” you are looking for “people who want the job.” The Japanese jockey academy, the only pathway to being a race-rider in Japan, graduated no new jockeys in 2026. Some of that is lack of interest in the profession, some of it is lack of desire to live by the particularly punitive lifestyle standards imposed on jockeys in Japan, and probably a little bit is that naturally smaller people are fairly rare and not interested. The Irish racing academy at Kildare generates 30 jockeys a year, plus the dozens of training yard apprentices and pony-racing students being “home-trained” in the profession. You have to be willing and able. And desire and ability run in families.

Which is, in fact, what my book is about! It’s about a racing dynasty. My jockeyposting 🏇 and Killie tags have a lot of resources.

[greelin]

elijah wood as bacchus at 2004 mardi gras. if you care

[alexseanchai]

that's the context???

[the-goddamn-robot]

Damn, Rome really looks great in all four seasons

Winter

Spring

Summer

Fall

[ba7raltawil]

oh my GOD

[yomikoreadsbooks]

As long as I’ve been on this site, I honestly should have seen this coming a mile away and yet…

[jackkdaniels]

when i was a kid i decided that killing people was bad therefore war was bad therefore the military was evil. and adults would tell me it's more nuanced than that and i would understand when i grew up. well i'm a grown up now and idk i still think that killing people is bad and war is bad and the military is evil

[inkskinned]

y'okay can we stop pretending yet. like can we all acknowledge that eating disorders are chic again, and it's going to kill someone.

and like. do we have to keep gently phrasing things to protect naturally-thin people's feelings. in my life it has never been fashionable to be fat. "fat" is still a bad word. there has never been institutional power pushing people to gain weight; no trillion-dollar industry to "fix" skinny people. a larger body type has never been over-represented in models, influencers, celebrities. sure, people might say "i'm worried for your health," but they do it with respect and gentleness, like they're talking to a scared deer.

every single fucking time i talk about this, i have to be so careful with what i say, in case i offend even one skinny person. it is just true that skinny people have social capital across many cultures. there is a reason you almost never hear someone say "i wish i was fat," but you will constantly see people say "I wish i was thin." and yet inevitably some skinny person will tell me: i thought you wanted body positivity. it is the same fucking attitude as when a cis man says "when you say men have power, well, i've been bullied for being a man. i thought you believe in mental health awareness. don't you know men have a higher suicide rate?"

two things can be true at once: your experience being bullied for being thin was terrible. and people with larger bodies probably have it worse.

i have been big and small. i know many other people who have been big and small. trust what i'm about to tell you: being small is much easier. the world is kinder to you. people treat you better. honestly, this pattern occurs pretty much regardless of gender - my guy friends have confided that they'd rather be bullied for being thin than be bullied for being fat. if you're skinny, the pressure might be to gain weight, sure, but it's often to do so in a way that keeps you skinny - to gain muscle, specifically.

thinness is seen as innate and natural, genetic. whereas carrying any fat - that is a moral failing. it is assumed to be related to your character, your personality. i have seen people equate it to discipline, to hygiene. that bias is why we need to talk about this.

of course i want nobody to make a comment about anyone's bodies. and i think that hyper-thinness and an obsession with weight loss and a recession and a rise of conservative values... all of this is very fucking concerning. we are watching a return of "pro-ana" content, reframed as choice feminism, "health-conscious" behavior, "looksmaxxing". it's fucking terrifying.

[homunculus-argument]

You know the meme where you go "the name of [noun with a diminutive] implies the existence of [a hypothetical HUGE form of same thing, but without the diminutive]" like "existence of dorito implies the existence of THE DORO" and it's a huge-ass corn chip the size of a wheel of cheese?

Well, in finnish, the word for moth is "yökkönen", from "yö" (night), the suffix "-kko/kkö" which has many purposes but one of them is to change any word into "person involved with doing something with the root word", and the dininutive "-nen". So the name of moth is "little night creature".

But coming back to the diminutive meme, the existence of yökkönen would imply the existence of yökkö, the big (or at least medium-sized, or non-small) night creature. Through a happenstance completely unrelated to moths or other insects, "yökkö" is the finnish vernacular word for a night shift nurse.

[pisshandkerchief]

everyone's "well-adjusted" and "mentally healthy" until the "sometimes I wish I'd never been born at all" part of Bohemian Rhapsody comes on