If you all will allow me a moment to analyze the competition as it exists, there's something interesting going on with the numbers.
As we all know, thanks to the support of the good people of Tumblr, Tylenol has experienced a meteoric rise to second place. Even though her competition is stiff, I believe in Tylenol's ability to go the distance.
But let's take a look at the competition:
Elmer seems to be a lovely boy. I have no qualms with Elmer, and think he would look fantastic on a beer can. But what about Elmer's campaigns? Who is the power behind the throne here, and how have they managed to find such breakout success on this competition?
A handful of wealthy donors are trying to buy this competition.
At the end of the day, all donations are good donations here. This is a charity event so every penny earned is going to help animals in need. But it's not lost on me that Elmer's current ranking is thanks entirely to a few individuals with the financial means to put their thumbs on the scale.
Tylenol's donors, comparatively, are small and numerous, mostly $1-10 donations from many passionate believers in what she stands for (autism and pain relief I think).
Overall, the donations tell a very different story than what the base ranking shows you. Elmer is held aloft by just 24 donors and bolstered by a few wealthy patrons, whereas Tylenol has won the hearts of literally hundreds of people. Even the current third place, Abby, owes her ranking to numerous small contributions rather than one or two large ones.
it's meee I'm your guardian angel hiiiiii 😇 okay🙏 so. in about six months, you're gonna die of starvation. 🥺 and if I don't protect you, I will get: #fired! 🫢 and that is No Good 🙅♀️ hahaaa So. 🙏 I looked into causes of starvation, and it turns out: Your death is totally preventable! 😯 Uh oh! 😆 There's more than enough food to sustain you without interfering with anyone else's survival, but you're not allowed to have it! 🤨 Whaaat? 🤷♀️ Apparently, your death is premeditated by thousands of things called "shareholders." So. 🙏 I've been killing people,
soy yooo tu ángel de la guarda holiiiiii 😇 okay🙏 bueno. en como seis meses, vas a morir de hambre. 🥺 y si no te protejo, me van a: #¡despedir! 🫢 y eso No esta Chido 🙅♀️jajaaa Entonces. 🙏investigue acerca del tema y resulta que: ¡puedo prevenir tu muerte al 100%! 😯 ¡Uh oh! 😆 Hay más que suficiente comida para que sobrevivas sin que interfieras con la supervivencia de los demás, ¡pero no puedes teneral! 🤨 ¿Queeeé? 🤷♀️ Al parecer, tu muerte fue premeditada por miles de cosas llamadas "accionistas." Y bueno. 🙏 empeze a matar personas,
c'est moooi ton ange gardien coucooou 😇 bon 🙏 alors. dans genre six mois, tu vas mourir de faim. 🥺 et si je te protège pas, je vais me faire: #virer ! 🫢 et ça c'est pas Pas Super 🙅♀️ hahaaa Donc. 🙏 j'ai fait mes recherches sur les causes de famine et devine quoi: Ta mort est 100% évitable ! 😯 Oh-oh ! 😆 Il y a largement assez de ressources pour te nourrir sans interférer avec la survie d'autrui, mais tu n'y as pas accès ! 🤨 Quoooi ? 🤷♀️ Apparemment ta mort a été préméditée par des milliers de trucs appelées des "actionnaires". Du coup.🙏 j'ai tué pas mal de monde,
The thing was a mound of flesh and mottled skin, as big as a barn and the shape of a pumpkin. Four tentacles as thick as trees hung limp at its sides; teeth ringed the gaping mouth at the top of its head like a crown.
A huge, sad whale eye the colour of wine stared at the knight. She could see her reflection in the jelly surface.
“We don’t know what it is,” she heard. “Some kind of monster that makes a perfect copy of whatever it eats. They think that was how the Dark Lord made his armies, feeding his minions to it so that it would make hundreds of copies of them. Do you recognize it?”
The knight opened her mouth. She hesitated. “Yeah,” she murmured, drawing out the word. “We found it in the Dark Lord’s tower, right?”
“That’s right. That’s where it ate you.”
The knight turned around and looked at her other reflection. This one appeared to be about ten years older, and had doffed her armor for a loose blue tunic and breeches.
She was holding a cup of tea. She had pressed another cup into the knight’s hand when she woke up here. It had been a shock finding herself suddenly out the obsidian dungeons of the Dark Lord’s tower and into this tall room of stone and straw. The warmth of it in her hands steadied her a bit.
“Everyone else in the party was worried, but then it started making copies of you,” the copy went on, staring up at the tentacled thing. “And all of the copies helped fight against the Dark Lord, and we won, and peace was restored across the land, but then nobody could figure out how to kill the damn thing or just to make it stop. Dozens of copies of us in a day, hundreds in a week, and then someone decided that the only thing we could do is just bring the thing here, seal it off and hope it starved to death.”
She sipped her tea. “Anyways, that was two-hundred years ago and it’s slowed down a bit. It can only make a new copy of us every few weeks now.”
The knight looked down into her tea. The copy had also draped a blanket over her shoulders.
“I have so many questions,” she said.
“I figured.”
“How can it be two-hundred years? I can still remember breaking into the tower. That feels like it was just minutes ago.”
“It was, basically. Your brain is a perfect copy of the original you’s brain at the exact moment she was eaten.”
“But the quest is just — done?”
“Yep. You missed some of the things that needed tying up afterward. There was a war, and a dragon, and some business about a ring.” She waved a hand. “It was before my time. Things are pretty settled now.”
“My parents?”
“Passed away about a hundred-and-fifty years ago. I’ve been told that they were very proud.”
The knight nodded. “Um. I don’t know if you know — we had an elf in our party—”
“I’m aware.”
“I — right. Obviously. Um. It’s just, after everything was done, I was going to ask her—”
“One of us did. She said yes. She outlived her. A couple of us have tried to reach out since then, but she wants to be left alone for a while.”
The knight considered this. “Uh — right,” she said eventually. Her fingers tightened around the tea cup. “Um. What do I do now?”
Her older copy shrugged. She had let her hair grow out again, the knight noticed. There were a few strands of grey against the black. “That’s up to you, I’m afraid,” she said. “A lot of us are finding work as soldiers and sellswords. We’ve done it for so long that most armies know we’re reliable and don’t tend to turn one of us away. Most of us are just sort of spreading out, wandering the world. Some of us keep in touch.”
The knight frowned. “What do you do?”
Her copy paused, tea cup half raised to her lips. “Sorry?”
“You said it only makes a new copy every few weeks now. So you just stay here and wait for a new one to show up?”
She lowered the cup. “Well,” she said. “I guess I just — I know what it can be like, waking up here in the dark, and it — it can be horrible trying to figure all of this out on your own.
“So I thought that what I’d do is just stay here with a pot of tea, and whenever I see myself again, I tell her that — that she’s not alone.”
“We aren’t?”
“Of course not. We’re all in this together, you know.”
#stories #:( does the flesh mound know that the dark lord is gone now #does it know that it’s safe #has it been in panic mode making clones for 200 years #just knowing that it’s running out of steam. it can’t keep this up #can the flesh mound get a cup of tea pretty please can someone give it a hug:(
“So do you live here alone?”
“Yeah, mostly. Just me and Moundy, basically.”
The knight stared. “Sorry — do you mean the flesh blob that ate me?”
“It ate me too, you know,” the copy said. She picked up a third teacup. After a moment the thing held out a tentacle, which the copy balanced the cup on. “Making a copy really stresses it out these days, so I try to calm it down when that happens.”
The teacup was raised to the huge wine-dark eye. It did… something to it, something like inhaling through its eye, gave a shuddering sigh and oozed in relaxation.
“It did eat you though,” the knight said.
“That was hundreds of years ago. I don’t hold it against it.”
Started using the phrase “that’s cilantro to me” to refer to the presence of a story element that completely ruins a piece of media for me, disproportionate to its actual badness.
for those unaware today india experienced one of its biggest protests in half a decade. there were protests all over the nation for various causes but the major one was in delhi. all we asked for was the resignation of the education minister because he's failed the students of this nation time & time again. but we were met with brutality, the police had barricaded the main site of protest (jantar mantar). metro stations were shutdown, the public was restrained from reaching the protest site and all the adjoining areas had signal jammers to make sure the crowd had no access to constant updates. they had us blocked from all the sides. they were lathi (baton) charging students from one side & releasing tear gas from the other. you couldn't walk 100 m on streets without having a tear gas shell thrown at you. there were many students, women & kids bleeding — some from their head. some couldn't walk anymore. the police had removed their nameplates & acted with full impunity to resort to unprecedented levels of violence. they were pelting stones at us, beating up people for no reason, forcefully detaining them and attacking us constantly with tear gas & rubber bullets. they wouldn't let you exit either. the crowd was peaceful & looking out for each other yet they were met with violence. i made a friend who was all alone & she asked to join me & my friend because a policeman wouldn't leave her alone. he constantly prodded her for personal info, invited her back to the jeep saying they have food there, wouldn't stop following her around. you couldn't call or ask anyone for help, we were left to fend for ourselves & be on a constant lookout if you did not want to be beaten up to death by police. all for what? asking a resignation? shame on this country.
I do think you lose your right to medical privacy when you decide to become a politician and it is mad fucked up that these people hold our lives in their hands and are allowed to disappear for months on end with no explanation. You need a doctor’s note to miss school for a cold but we have no clue if Mitch McConnell is dead or alive and Tom Kean was allowed to fuck off for 4 months without telling the public why. I don’t give a fuck about your privacy, you’re not protecting my privacy, if you’re leeching tax dollars and partying it up in a rich person rehab resort somewhere while your constituents vote against our access to healthcare, we should be allowed to know. Fuck you. I say this as a disabled person, I’m always having to explain the nature of my disability and the details of my health but we’re not allowed to know what the fuck is going on with these people.
I pull up my slide show. The first slide says “I do not want to financially support the Church of the Latter Day Saints in any way”. There are murmurs of agreement and approval from the room
Next slide. “Brandon Sanderson is a member of the LDS”. The muttering has changed tone
“It’s not a very big amount of money though.” Someone in the audience pipes up. “His cut is only a small fraction of the cost of the book, and then-“ my next slide shows an income breakdown, it is titled ‘a small fraction of $10,000,000 is still a big number’
I’m sweating. The following slides explain tithing rules. The vibe of the room has shifted. I start to doubt I’m getting out of here alive
There’s an emotion only unlocked when you live in a house with multiple stories. I call it “the stair emotion” and it’s when you realize the object you need is on the other side of yet another trip up and down those goddamn stairs. It’s the closest I get to transcending the desire for material goods. Maybe I don’t need that notebook. Maybe I don’t need anything.
whenever i see someone lambast a piece of media for portraying a character getting away with bad behavior instead of getting narratively punished, i have to laugh because that’s literally the hays code. it’s not hays-code-esque or hays-code-coded, it’s just straight up the hays code.
also are we sure that's a man. there could be estrogen in the chocolate (imagines willy wonka as a beautiful and frightening woman) you know I think I could forgive anyone for turning a child blue and spherical
