The idea of “but everyone knows that” needs to stop.
I saw a post about someone chiding Millennials for not knowing about JKRowlings transphobia, and asking how it is at all possible that people can exist in the world and the internet and, you know, not know.
Which I mean, I get. It is so present in so many of my online spaces that it seems astounding that someone could simply be ignorant! It feels impossible!
But let me tell you a story:
I went on a girls trip with a bunch of friends. All of us are rather incredibly liberal and all of us are incredibly online.
One girl would not stop talking about Harry Potter.
At one point, another girl asked her why she was ok with supporting it, and she had no real clue that JK Rowling was at all transphobic. She had heard that she likes to support Lesbian causes and thought “oh ok cool!” And that was it. She was AGOG with the news and rather horrified.
I must once again emphasize that she was an incredibly online person. She’s a foodie and a restaurant blogger.
Later in the trip we were picking restaurants and I suggested one I found on Google, and she gasped at me. Actually gasped, asking how I could ever be okay picking that one.
The shock must’ve been on my face, because she then told me all of the shitty things that restaurateur does. He abuses staff. Underpays them. Fires them on a whim. Is known for being one of the worst people to his employees in the entire restaurant business on this coast.
And she was so shocked I had never heard of this. Because in her mind, I was just as online as her. And in her online world, EVERYONE knew about this guy.
So I think the moral of this story is: always approach the other person with some empathy. Even online people, even people you think MUST know about how bad people are, may not have heard. It may truly be just them being on a different sphere of the internet than you.
So be gentle, be kind when letting people know they might not have heard about the cancellation of XYZ person. Don’t assume that everyone knows all the same info as you.
By all means, let them know so they can make informed decisions, but being kind will go a lot further than attacking them for some info they might not know yet.
I know that here on tumblr we're all massive fans of the panel show with a straight white male gremlin-like host in a suit that forces comedians to perform deranged and semi-random tasks for little-to-no reward, more often than not geared at conning, tricking, or humiliating the contestants in the process in a way that can sometimes border on kink, torture, and the fully absurd.
Britain has its offering:
America has its offering:
And so today I'd like to put forward my 'for your consideration' campaign for Australia and New Zealand's contribution to this important genre - Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee:
Now Miriam, I hear you say, what's so unhinged about a Spelling Bee?
And to that, I say, much as Taskmaster has its envelopes, and Gamechanger its opening monologue (there's really no common factor on this one), spelling is merely the vessel through which hijinks and borderline torture are inflicted upon a group of unsuspecting comedians.
Whether it's the ghosts of their own mistakes:
Good ol' impish trickery:
The breakdown of genuine friendships:
Or straight up physical and psychological torture:
This show really has it all!
So please tumblr, the next time you're looking to get your kicks from one of our favourite gremlins in suits torturing comedians, consider Guy Montgomery and his spelling shenanigans.
I am a HUGE fan of Spelling Bee (and everything else in this post). I've watched the NZ & Aus versions, and I'm even going to see Spelling Bee LIVE in November - and the next night I'm off to see Greg Davies 😂😂😂
(also I feel like Cats Does Countdown should be included in this? perhaps?)
My favourite part of any Taskmaster is when Alex/Lesser Tom/Paul describes a task and you see the contestants fold in on themselves and cringe as they realise what’s about to be shown.
[ID: A series of six GIF panels shows Ncuti Gatwa standing on a stage lit in red and purple neon, wearing a sheer dark brown shirt patterned with sparkling silver web-like lines and high-waisted trousers. Vertical signs behind him read “LIVE” and “MUSIC.” White captions appear across each GIF as he speaks to the audience.
In the first GIF, he smiles with his hands clasped together as the caption reads, “Millions of you watched me as Eric in ‘Sex Education’...”
In the second GIF, he grins and clasped hands while the caption reads, “And maybe 12 of you watched me in ‘Doctor Who’...”
In the third GIF, he shrugs with both hands thrown outward as the caption reads, “Hey, maybe that’s why I kept crying.”
In the fourth GIF, the caption reads, “And even though I have since regenerated into Billie Piper...”
In the fifth GIF, the camera cuts closer to his face as he gives a baffled sideways look. The caption reads, “I don’t understand it either.”
In the final GIF, he leans forward intensely with his hands clasped again as the caption reads, “I still love ‘Doctor Who.’ And I got to meet so many crazy characters.” /End ID]
Amazing what happens to viewership numbers when you put a previously easily/freely accessible (for GENERATIONS) show behind a paywall that wasn’t affordable for many.
The Heartstopper webcomic’s first update dropped on September 1st 2016. Today, on April 11th 2026, the story has concluded.
I don’t quite know how to put all of my feelings into one letter. Heartstopper means more to me than words can express, but I’ll try my best.
Heartstopper has defined the past decade of my life. It started as a fun side project and quickly grew into something much bigger, eventually becoming my career. Despite that huge and unexpected change, making the Heartstopper comic feels the same to me as it did on day one. When I sit down to make Heartstopper, I feel at peace. When the world feels so scary and difficult, I have been able to return to Heartstopper, and everything feels okay again for a little while.
Nick and Charlie first appeared as supporting characters in my first novel, ‘Solitaire’. In Solitaire, Nick and Charlie represent the idea that hope, love, joy and connection can persist and thrive despite the trials and tribulations of being alive. So maybe it’s ironic that Nick and Charlie have come to represent this in my own life. They have brought me joy. They have given me purpose. They have given me everything, really. And I’m so grateful for every moment I have spent with them.
Heartstopper is profoundly special to me. Which makes it extremely hard to say goodbye.
But it is time. I always knew that Nick going to university would be the end point of the story. And despite how sad I am to be bidding farewell to these characters, I am so, so proud and excited to have made it to the end and concluded the story exactly the way I wanted to.
Any webcomic creator can tell you that making a webcomic requires a heavy amount of determination and endurance. To draw a page almost every day for the past ten years has required a lot of sacrifice and a lot of energy. But every moment was worth it. And now that it is complete, Nick and Charlie’s story can be experienced from beginning to end, for the rest of forever.
I wouldn’t have made it here alone. From the very start, Heartstopper’s readers have offered so much support, love, community, conversation, and enthusiasm. Knowing that there are people out there who love these characters just like I do has given me the strength to keep going. I’ve also had the support of many colleagues, friends, and family members, who’ve all helped in different ways at various points in the past decade. Thank you so, so much to everyone who has been here for the journey.
I have no idea what I’ll make next. For now, I’m taking a break. And I know that Nick and Charlie won’t simply vanish. I expect I will always return to drawing them and writing about them, probably in smaller ways, for the rest of my life, as long as my body allows.
Nick and Charlie will forever be in my heart, hand in hand on a beach somewhere.
Astronauts are so funny man. Here's just a couple of things I've found hilarious from this past week of space stuff:
It's probably already been spread around here enough already, but in case anyone's missed it; 7 hours after launch, commander Reid Wiseman, dealing with tech issues, uttered the generational quote "I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those are working."
After fixing the issues that were afflicting the onboard toilet, mission specialist Christina Koch (who has quickly become my favourite of the four) laughingly said “I’m the space plumber, I’m proud to call myself the space plumber.”
On Easter Sunday, the Artemis II crew hosted a makeshift egg hunt, by hiding packets of dehydrated scrambled eggs around their Orion capsule.
The way the crew always makes sure to make it very clear they're in space when doing interviews. From stuff like Wiseman just hanging out floating sideways on screen or Koch letting her hair loose so it can freely span out flowing around her.
While in transit, the crew decided to record a parody of those bad 80s sitcom intros where everyone turns and smiles at the camera.
When the crew reached the furthest point from Earth in the mission, they jokingly clambored over each other in an effort to get to the far side of the capsule, so that they could individually claim to be the furthest person from earth.
At the same time, on the ISS which was at the time on the other side of earth, the 7 astronauts onboard had a light-hearted race to the far side of the station, making jokes about being the furthest humans from Artemis.
On the way back to earth, NASA actually managed to establish an audio call between the crews of the ISS and Artemis II (where they shared the above info), and Koch called one member of the ISS crew, Jessica Meir, her "astro-sister" as the two of them previously spacewalker together in 2019. Meir then responded I'm so happy that we are back in space together, even if we are a few miles apart" (a few here being 230,000).
While Jeremy Hansen was doing an interview, Wiseman and Koch were just in the background swatting the mission mascot (a little moon plush toy named Rise) back and forth between each other.
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