Toramiyo's Random Reblogs

[bogleech]

THAT'S what happened?! All those comedy websites years ago all shifted to doing videos and lost all their money at once because just Facebook tricked them with inflated video views?!

[guessed-starred-deactivated2025]

what????? what is this about

[ivie-online]

- so between 2014-2016 facebook launches a massive ‘pivot to video’ campaign to draw media orgs to their video-based features. zuckerberg’s doing rounds, saying that in the near future, newsfeeds will mostly be video, and that video is the future of media. to back this up, they release tons of wild viewership metrics for ads on facebook, enticing advertisers to prioritize video, and as a result, the media that relies upon advertisers for funding began to do the same.

- this had an industry-wide impact, and media orgs, from established news, to humor websites, to smaller creators, fire writers and those primarily focused on print, and direct resources to their video creation efforts.

- around 2016, it’s revealed that facebook completely fabricated their original numbers, likely inflating them between 150-900%. additionally, their viewership metric considered 3 seconds of a person watching to be a ‘view’ (whereas youtube had a 30 second requirement for the same metric).

-Having totally restructured in order to pivot to facebook video, many media orgs were unable to recapture hard won (and and sometimes decades old) audiences. College Humor, Funny or Die, MTV News, Vice, Mic, and Vox were among those that were seriously impacted.

- after a 2018 class action lawsuit, facebook (who maintain that the whole ordeal was caused by a simple error in calculation) was made to pay 40 million in damages, which 1, is a paltry sum when we consider the 22 billion they made in profit that same year, and 2, does nothing to bring back the jobs, audiences, and media orgs they destroyed. to make matters worse, many still posit that it was never the public, but rather advertisers that preferred video over text, meaning that facebook intentionally deceived everyone involved specifically to secure more advertising dollars. so yeah, fb is evil and… probably should be stopped

[injuries-in-dust]

So the AI art industry might be done before it had a chance to get started.

In other news, PETA might have accidentally done something good, for once.

[hopefulmillennial]

[called-kept]

#faith has just dragged her hands across her face and gotten up off the bathroom floor#charity has just taken deep breaths after sending something serious but necessary#hope has had her face on the steering wheel of her parked car for the past ten minutes#and finally stands up to go in even though it's hard

tags via @madamescarlette

[guerrillatech]

[whisperofthewaves]

this leaves out the most crucial tip you'll ever need:

-site:pinterest.*

excludes the entirety of pinterest's evil domainverse from image search

[soratayuya]

Reblogging for the Pinterest addition

[heroofthreefaces]

I think you mean “reblog for the pinterest subtraction”

[paulfrankjuliusthemonkey]

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: it’s more important to know and understand fully why something is harmful than it is to drop everything deemed problematic. It’s performative and does nothing. People wonder why nobody has critical thinking skills and this is part of it because no one knows how to simousltansly critique and consume media. You need to use discernment.

[paulfrankjuliusthemonkey]

This is ultimately why propaganda is going to work on you. Because you never learned how to think for yourself and the actual ideology behind things. You simply rely on group think and the bare minimum explanations to tell you what’s good and bad.

[ariaste]

Saw this article linked on twitter yesterday and…. yeah. YEAH. 

[niambi]

I’m????

[alarajrogers]

Oh my God this actually explains so much.

So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.

So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.

So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.

This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner. 

So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.

The only way to fix this is to teach boys it’s okay to love your friends. It’s okay to share your needs and your problems with your friends. It’s okay to lean on your friends, to hug your friends, to be weak with your friends. Only if this is okay for boys to do with their male friends can this problem be resolved… so men, this one’s on you. Women can’t fix this for you; you don’t listen to us about matters of what it means to be a man. Fix your own shit and teach your brothers and sons and friends that this is okay, or everyone suffers.

[dollbeshop]

The next time a guy says, “What? You don't want to be my friend?” I’ll text him this and then ask if he really wants to be friends or just have another potential girlfriend.

[sounddesignerjeans-deactivated2]

y’all I am living for these analyses where the new way to fight the patriarchy is to teach men to love each other and themselves

[astronomically-androngynous]

Im a communication student and can confirm the above is absolutely 100% accurate and it’s called agentic vs communal friendship theorized by Steven McCornack

[roxolotl-remaking-deactivated20]

Look i dont wanna sound like a Fandom Mom or whatever but what do you think women over 25 or so are supposed to do? Do u really think theyre supposed to drop all their interests and just talk about taxes and marriage or whatever? It seems like 25+ year old fanboys do not receive this kind of “ooh cringe” reaction either. There are guys in their 40s with comic book collections and shit and people might think theyre a nerd at worst, not a freak who shouldnt be trusted

[fangirlunderground-blog]

Thank you. Because, here’s the thing, I literally tried that. And this sounds really dramatic but it kind of ruined my life for a long time.

Once I got out of grad-school and started working, at exactly age 25, I figured it was time to get serious because I was “too old for this stuff” and frankly I was afraid of being judged. 

I sold all my comics, I stopped reading fanfiction, I stopped playing video games. All of it. It’s not that I never, ever watched anything “geeky” or spent a weekend binge-reading a kink-meme, but when I did, it was rare and I’d feel guilty about it like it was time wasted. I’d keep it all to myself, you know? And without any kind of inspiration, I eventually stopped drawing. After all, I didn’t need it for my “serious job,” so why bother? Unfortunately, my former skill is so atrophied now it’s nearly lost, but worse than that, it’s stressful now instead of the thing I loved to do for most of my life.

What was I doing instead? Well, I’d work my miserable, toxic job, come home and worry about how far behind everyone else I was, and how weird I was compared to all my colleagues. I’d go out with people and do the things they liked doing, but I only pretended to. But I’m not great at that and pretending to be someone else ate me alive. Unsurprisingly, by 31, my anxiety and depression was not in a great place, and I fuckin’ snapped. Not just because of this stuff, of course, but it honestly contributed. I quit my job and left town.

Suddenly I was completely alone, no job, no friends, and no reason to pretend to be someone else. So, I started doing all the things I’d given up. I read all the fanfiction I wanted, I bought a Playstation and an SNES and played them for hours. I bought back every comic book I loved, watched every Marvel movie I missed, and caught up on my favorite characters. I started traveling around just going to cons for the first time (NYCC, GeekGirlCon, DragonCon, etc). In fact, at @geekgirlcon and DragonCon especially, I saw groups of women who were 60+, just fucking enjoying things, and it made me feel so much better about my future. I’m not even joking, I literally cry every time I think about it, because I never realized how scared I was about aging in a world that thinks I’m already a decade too old for the things I love. Suddenly, that wasn’t so scary. 

And then I just stopped pretending that I wasn’t into this stuff. I mean all of it, even the stuff no one understand, even the stuff people openly make fun of, even smutty fanfiction. 

And look, I’m not saying this cured my depression, or that everything is perfect. For one, I picked a city that’s awful for geeks and I’m trying to figure out where to move and how. For another, I lost six years of making like-minded friends, and it’s hard to find them now because we’re all so worried about being judged and online – the space that was always a refuge for me as a loner weirdo growing up – is now apparently a Children of the Corn. But I’m happier here, actually fucking liking things, than being the unobjectionable robot woman I’m apparently supposed to be. 

I don’t expect anyone to actually be interested in this, or have gotten this far, but because I’m having feelings about turning 36 on Monday, I just want to tell anyone who is about to turn 25 that you should just tell people to go fuck themselves. It’s your life. You’re going to offend people no matter what you do, at least choose the direction that makes you happiest, because those people certainly aren’t going to pay for your fucking therapist bills, are they? 🦖

[taraljc]

This is gonna sound weird to you guys, but when I first started writing fanfic and sending stories to fanzines to be published back in 1991, in my first fandom all of the fans and writers and editors and readers I met were shocked that I was 17 because they were all in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. I was the outlier. I was an aberration.

Wanna know when young people started discovering fandom en masse? In the mid 1990s, when AOL got their internet gateway.

All the folks who ran fannish mailing lists and conventions and published ‘zines and posted fanfic online were over 18, because email and IRC and Usenet and FTP sites and listservs were primarily used by adults because they were almost exclusively college students, government employees, and academics. And the users of gated communities like BBS, GEnie, Compuserv, and AOL all skewed older. Only Prodigy was actually aimed at kids, because prior to the mid-to-late 1990s, children weren’t getting online until they went to university.

And what kids found was the fandom that adults had built online, after being a part of it offline for decades.

Even when FFN was launched, the people who initially posted there were the same people who had been posting fanfic to the internet for a decade: THE GROWN-UPS.

So the idea that we’re meant to put away childish things is hilarious, cos for most of our lives, fandom was not a part of our childhoods. It was a part of our everyday adult lives.

[megpie71]

Look, anyone who tells me I should drop fandom because I’m over 25 is going to get laughed out of the room, because you know what age I was when I first discovered organised fandom existed? 

I was 26.

I started writing fanfic (or at least, I started writing stories that I labelled as fanfic, rather than just “stories”) at about age 30.  I’m in my late forties now, and I have no interest in dropping fandom.  I especially have no interest in dropping fandom because some brat who wasn’t even born when I started putting my fanfic online wants to try and sell me their internalised misogyny.

[seperis]

I was twenty-three when I found fandom; in all the important ways, it decided the course of my life.  

I didn’t even know I liked tech; for my first fic, I needed a webpage, it was ugly, so I opened it to look at the code, saw my first html, and fell in love.  Now I’m an analyst who tests programs for statewide and even national use.

I didn’t know I liked people; I thought something was wrong with me, that I seemed to always say the wrong thing, that I seemed to think wrong.  Instead, it just turns out how I think is just fine; there are so many people like me and I still meet them to this day.  

I didn’t know I could make and maintain friendships, short or long term; as it turns out, not a huge problem.  I make and maintain friendships of almost two decades and still made new friends as of this year.

When my son came out to me as gay, I was ready for the question he wouldn’t ask that I had to answer right then; I love you.  Of course it’s okay. And why the fuck are you awake and messaging me at three in the goddamn morning?  YOU HAVE SCHOOL TOMORROW.  Without all the friends who told me what they needed that day for themselves, I’m not sure I would have known that was something he needed to hear.  Without my friends, I wouldn’t have known to even expect–much less how to answer–a thousand questions (at least) he had, and where to have him look for more.

(Also didn’t hurt fandom was the one place I could be sure was all the happy ending gay love stories any gay child would need to read and knew exactly where to send him.  Fuck knows the pro version still isn’t exactly thick on the ground though it’s getting better.)

When I first started, I was mentored by an older woman in her forties-fifties, and on her webpage she had a log of all this shit she’d done just in the last year; traveled to hang out with fan friends, all the fic she wrote that year, all these people she met, this wonderful life.  She posted to all these sites, and she posted to mailing lists her opinion and argued without fear or self-consciousness.

All I could think is I want to be her.

At twenty-three, I couldn’t imagine it would be possible for me. I’m forty three, and as it turns out, I underestimated myself; it’s even better.  

[harriet-spy]

Something you activist kiddies should keep in mind with all the “lol a thirty-year-old in fandom doesn’t she have dishes to do” nonsense is that it’s not only generally misogynist (not sure why you struggle with that one, it’s 101-level, but okay), but it is specifically designed to thwart women’s power by separating you from potential networks.

You think men just somehow magically get powerful as they pass into adulthood?  No.  They are mentored by, they get given chances to move up from, they learn from older men in their social networks, including in predominantly male “fannish” space.  Power, knowledge, opportunities move through those networks–and don’t kid yourself, they are primarily masculine networks.  By narrowing your networks to women within one or two years of your age, the “lol thirty-year-olds” rhetoric cuts you off from resources you might use to get stronger.  That’s a feature, not a bug.

Just the other day, I was in a room full of older fans that included a Nebula-winning author, an agent for a (different) Hugo-winning author, two tenured professors in radically different fields, and a member of the Foreign Service.  You’ll make your own friends in fandom (I did; one of my closest is 15 years older than me, and, my, did I learn from her), but these are the kind of resources available to you there.  Misogyny wants you to despise and avoid older women because it wants you weak.  Is this really something you want to play along with?

[silentwalrus1]

#reblogging for @harriet-spy’s excellent commentary#its NOT AN ACCIDENT#that we disown our mothers and foremothers#it’s how they keep us weak#its how they destroy our networks#fandom is the best old girls network in the world

[niniane17]

And, by the way, thinking that a woman over 30 is “too old” to have fun is a misogynistic notion in itself. Our culture already fetishizes female youth to the extreme and does a very good job to convince us that our life is basically over by the time we are 29, why would you want to contribuite to that? It isn’t just that you’re never too old for fandom, it’s that most of the time all these “old women” aren’t old at all.

[callmebliss]

I am here for the old girls’ network

[easchechter]

The old girls’ network saved Star Trek.

The old girls’ network started the first media conventions.

The old girls’ network redefined fanfiction to be stories about characters (as opposed to stories about fans themselves, which was what Fan Fiction was prior to Devra Langsam and Spockanalia.)

The old girls’ network was fandom before FANDOM was a word.

[systlin]

I’m 31, and I’m too powerful for any of these kids to stop.

[tyrograph]

I’m literally working on a comic [working title ‘AO3 Saved My Sex Life’] about how rediscovering fandom in my late 40s changed my relationship with my body image and my sexuality.

[musicalhell]

Two years ago I went to BroadwayCon. It was my first convention and my first attempt at cosplay for a convention (Mme. Giry–I did all right), and I was a little ambivalent. I mean, I was having a good time, and it wasn’t like there weren’t any people around my age, but there’s nothing like a bunch of college-age Evan Hansens and assorted Heathers to make me feel every one of my four decades on this earth.

Except. There was this one lady probably in her 60s and she was absolutely ROCKING a fabulous rendition of Glinda’s blue ballgown. And when she was picked as a finalist for the cosplay contest, she said she didn’t want to win–she just wanted to demonstrate cosplay wasn’t just for the young. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Here was this woman of my mother’s generation, dressed like the absolute princess I want to be from time to time and thought I couldn’t be because it was a little ridiculous for someone my age to run around a convention dressed like the ingenue I never was even at twenty.

Well fuck that! Why can’t I be ridiculous from time to time? Is what I’m doing any more weird than the people my age who obsess over pro sports, or Civil War reenactment, or whatever reality show drama is going on right now? Just because my fun is more niche doesn’t mean it’s any less valid.

So take it from this fandom mom. Enjoy the SHIT out of your fandom. Make art. Dress up. Read and write kinky-ass fanfic for that one ship that you know is kind of twisted but it still pushes all your buttons. Wear nerdy t-shirts. Play video games. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re too old for it, even yourself.

[thehobbem]

I had a 15 yo student once who, on seeing me take their corrected essays out of a Yuri on Ice folder, looked at me and went “Is that… anime?” Me, with a smile: “Yes!”. She chuckled: “Aren’t you embarrassed to be seen with that in public?!” Me, coolly: “Not at all.” She stared at me for a beat and didn’t pursue the subject.

As the year went by, I talked to that class about all possible topics under the sun: lgbtqia, politics, anime, body positivity, MCU movies, fanfiction, Harry Potter, feminism, veganism, drugs, music. I made them laugh and I made them think and I made them feel heard, because that was my job and because I loved them.

At the end of the year, the 15yo (now 16) came to me and thanked me. Said she’d always been terrified of growing up, because she thought she’d be forced to give up everything she liked and just focus on university and jobs, like all adults do, but that I’d shown her that was not the case. That if I could be a teacher, who worked from Monday to Saturday, paid “grown-up” bills, had a husband and a house, was well-informed about current world news, and STILL liked anime and Disney princess and superhero movies and silly pop music, then she could do that too. That I made being an adult look fun.

I know this sounds like I’m bragging, but I swear that’s not the point (though I won’t lie and say this is not one of the proudest moments of my life, because it IS). The point is that: women over 25, know that you should absolutely be enjoying the shit out of fandom and fiction, because you make being an adult look FUN. As it should be!

And girls under 25: I promise you, you don’t have to stop being yourself when you get out of college and get a job. You don’t have to stop being yourself to be just someone’s wife and someone’s mother whose only mission in life is to do the laundry and the dishes. In 15, 30 years, you can still be the person you are now, just with more bills to pay and a more developed sense of responsibility. And, I should hope, a more developed sense of empathy.

And trust me: the more responsibility and bills you have, the more you’ll need those movies and shows and fanfics and fanarts and cons and meta posts and fandom friendships.

[squeeful]

[disclaymore-deactivated20230920]

(x)

[problematicparrot]

Finally, a sane celebrity who doesn’t bend the knee to feminist bullshit.

Source

[ren-of-rationality]

My god I love her.

[mango-thot-deactivated20190520]

I know people are gonna get salty af about this but by God she’s RIGHT.

When Brad Pitt did Fight Club, he was cutting weight for every single scene to maintain his physique at 155. I’ve you’ve ever cut weight, you know how horrible that must have been. He did it because they needed a “look”.

Changing Tatum said his Magic Mike body doesn’t last for more than five days. He starved down and dehydrated his already fit physique for a “look”.

The male soldiers on Spartacus: Blood and Sand were eating pretty much chicken and veggies for every meal to maintain a “look”.

Why is this such a big deal? Because all these characters are considered physical goals for men. These are actual unobtainable physical standards for men. Male body image issues get swept under the rug so often that some people don’t even think they exist.

[da-boy-o-kultur]

You want proof? Just check out that scene in Captain America: First Avenger where Cap just transformed into that beautiful beefcake of a man. Agent Carter’s actress just HAD to touch them muscles, it was completely unscripted.

[eric-coldfire]

Chris Evans had to wear shirts so small they physically hurt, and he dislocated a shoulder during the helicopter scene in Civil War. But who cares, girls got to wet their panties watching Captain America flex.

[guyveranimefan87-blog]

If we are talking about unrealistic physical standards of male fitness given to us by movies, I would like to mention Hugh “Wolverine” Jackman here.

Yeah, he is ripped, isn’t he?

Well, it is true, but to get that kind of definition, he went through 36 hour period of dehydration, which caused him to temporarily lose 10 pounds of “water weight”. 

Thus during the fight scene he was filming, he was a hair breadth from blacking out whole time, just to look unrealistically muscular.

As he said during interview with Steven Colbert, “If You go three days without water, You will die. Then, when You are halfway there they shout ‘Roll it!”

It’s the same with professional bodybuilders who get into periods of extreme fasting and dehydration to lower their fat-to-muscle ratio to inhuman levels, all in hopes of making their muscle definition a bit better.

According to experts, healthy body fat percentage for a healthy male ranges from 8% to 20%, depending on height, lifestyle and numerous other variables. 

Fitness model and professional bodybuilder Helmut Strebl also known as “World’s Most Shredded Man” as he supposedly managed to get his body fat percentage below 5%…

… But only when he partakes in competitions, since it is not humanly possible to live with such low fat percentage of one’s body for longer periods of time.

I mean, yeah, he keeps a draconian training regime, as well as a very strict diet even off-season, but looks much more human then…

There are documented cases of incredibly fit and muscular bodybuilders fainting on the stage in the middle of their flexing routines, as well as several who outright died, because of cardiac arrest caused by their blood becoming too thick, due to long dehydration…

And let’s not forget about Muscle Dysmorphia, colloquially known as “Megarexia” or “Bigarexia”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_dysmorphia

Yeah, it’s a thing, but it’s barely talked about, since it’s apparently not manly to admit to having problems like that, which also creates problems with researching this particular disorder…

So… Thanks Hollywood?

[fierceawakening]

I had no idea that most people who looked like this are dehydrated until I read posts like this.

[brunhiddensmusings]

dehydrated to the point theyre about a day away from actual organ failure okay so chris hemsworth is a absolute god of a man, but hollywood says ‘thats not good enough’ and for the thor movie he has to spend several days having the juice squeezed from his body untill he looses about a gallon of whats supposed to be him so that he can do 2 days of shooting scenes without his shirt, after which he has to have recovery time before he is hospitalized because i am not joking about ‘one day away from organ failure’ thats the benchmark- look at chris hemsworth and process that he is told he isnt suitable for a shirtless scene without prepping for three days and nearly fainting

[shipperwolf1]

real feminism acknowledges the unhealthy standards that men are held to. radfems brush them off as non-existent

guys, feminism is for you, too. it’s for all of us.

[archivistofnerddom]

Unrealistic body images helps no one and actively hurts men too!!

[iamcon-fu-sion]

since the discussion of that they put henry cavill through for the witcher is floating around my blog, i want to add this too,.

one of the reasons producers get away with this in men and no one criticizes it is because we are fed the lie that this body type is 1) attainable and 2) healthy.

We know starving women down to skinniness is unhealthy, but you see an overmuscled man and you don’t immediately think dehydration. 

[pr1deandprejud1ce]

i love this whole thread but uh

this IS feminism. being able to speak out about that? that’s the most feminist thing she could have done. don’t call it bullshit, because this is IMPORTANT. these men are being starved and dehydrated and basically just hurt over and over again so that people can drool over their muscles and no one (by which i mean the audience) realizes something is wrong. so don’t say that this isn’t feminism, because it is. it really, really is.

[starkcontrasts]

^^^

[ghost-of-bambi]

Remember when Zac Efron ate pasta in his Netflix show and cried afterwards?

Also that Natalie Dormer headline is 100% feminist thank you @crying-at-ikea for your service.

[kuma-la-la]

this comparison of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in X-men (2000) vs. what I think is Days of Future Past (2014) always make me so sad, he looked like an actual human, and strong, in the first movie and then they turned him into…that.

[madlori]

All of this is good, but the most important thing to note is that THIS PRESSURE ON MEN ISN’T FUELED BY WOMEN’S DESIRES OR WHAT WE FIND ATTRACTIVE.

These super-shredded body images aren’t based on what women like. They’re based on what MEN like. They’re male power fantasies, not female sex fantasies. So this is just another hellish tab in the browser window of the patriarchy.

[0hcicero]

And YET, it is still incredibly important that women and people who aren’t men speak up and say that they don’t want to see men put in such terribly unhealthy states for aesthetics, that they find men who aren’t about to be hospitalized for dehydration MUCH more attractive to look at than someone close to death for a “lewk” because a lot of people think it’s a thing women are into. It’s important to feminism that we acknowledge it, that we don’t brush it off, and that we make it clear that it’s NOT OKAY that men are forced to do this for roles, that it’s wildly unrealistic and incredibly unhealthy and that should never be something expected of anyone, ever, at any point. It is the patriarchy, but it isn’t just the job of the patriarchy to deal with. The male gaze affects men, too. It’s just that women have more experience being able to identify it and to fight back against it. Men, in many cases, lack that sort of experience, and it’s hard to know what to do or to stand your ground if people won’t stand with you. So for me, as much as this is a product of the patriarchy and male power fantasies, when real people, men included, are getting hurt by those patriarchal fantasies, that’s where feminism needs to step in, needs to take a stand with them, and help give them the tools to critically understand what they’re experiencing and how to combat it.  It also means we need to stop this false dichotomy of slimness/body-builder muscle= healthy, and anyone who isn’t in that state isn’t healthy. That means promoting diverse body types, and being vocal about how much you like seeing diverse body types, even in superhero movies, even in action movies. Why isn’t Jack Black out here kicking ass and taking names? Why is Tyler Labine *NOT* starring in a million rom-coms? Greg Davies could be a sci-fi imperator and I would very much bend the knee. The point is, that insane body-builder muscle mass has been normalized and then pushed past it’s limits, and then normalized at that level and pushed back again, and if we can do that with one look, we can do it with other, healthier, more diverse appearances. 

[flower-and-thorn-deactivated202]

[lazysmirk]

Just in case you forget this exists.

It exists.

[dragonofdarknesschaos]

With those “when you want to design a character but you don’t know color theory” posts flying around I thought this would be relevant again.

[secretsivekept]

SLAMs THE REBLOG BUTTON

[niyarest]

there’s also Coolors website that gives you randomized palettes!

[tf2humbug]

Don’t forget ColourLovers, either! It’s a social media-esque site where you can browse tons of palettes and share your own.

You can browse the most popular ones or search for certain colors, themes, and even specific hex codes!

When you find one you like, you can download a wallpaper swatch of it and also select the specific colors it uses to look at more palettes that use those same ones.

ColourLovers is my go-to for when I’m having trouble coming up with a color scheme! It’s also been around for over a decade, so there’s plenty to browse through.

[ardate]

@birbwell

[maxkirin]

So, let me guess– you just started a new book, right? And you’re stumped. You have no idea how much an AK47 goes for nowadays. I get ya, cousin. Tough world we live in. A writer’s gotta know, but them NSA hounds are after ya 24/7. I know, cousin, I know. If there was only a way to find out all of this rather edgy information without getting yourself in trouble…

You’re in luck, cousin. I have just the thing for ya.

It’s called Havocscope. It’s got information and prices for all sorts of edgy information. Ever wondered how much cocaine costs by the gram, or how much a kidney sells for, or (worst of all) how much it costs to hire an assassin?

I got your back, cousin. Just head over to Havocscope.

((PS: In case you’re wondering, Havocscope is a database full of information regarding the criminal underworld. The information you will find there has been taken from newspapers and police reports. It’s perfectly legal, no need to worry about the NSA hounds, cousin ;p))

Want more writerly content? Follow maxkirin.tumblr.com!

[writing-prompt-s]

Assassins

“Below are selected prices that are paid to professional assassins by criminal organizations and drug cartels for a contract hit.

In Australia, the median price to hire a hit man is $13,610 (9,800 Euros), with the price going up to $83,000 (60,000 Euros) based on the task.

In Mexico, the cost for a low level assassin is $208 (150 Euros), and up to $20,832 (15,000 Euros) for a higher profile target like a police chief.

The prices paid in Argentina are between $3,749 (2,700 Euros) to $5,555 (4,000 Euros) per hit.

Government statistics in Spain state that 40 assassinations take place each year, with prices for the hit ranging between $27 (20 Euros) to $69,000 (50,000 Euros).”

So cheap! I always thought things like this would cost more than $1 million…

[writer-wannabe-needs-inspiration]

This is super useful to know!

[writing-prompt-s]

and not just for writing!!

[ladybugseatppl]

@katherine-rose

[katherine-rose]

HOLY FUCK

HOW MANY HOURS HAVE I WASTED TRYING TO FIND HEROIN PRICES ON THE INTERNET WHAT A GREAT DATABASE

[midnight-spectrum-again]

I needed this

[rheevalka]

Actually useful. Sometimes incognito isn’t enough.

[tommyparkerr]

and suddenly my life just became much easier

[galaxy-of-stories]

I’ve heard of this before but the GIFs made it better 

[witchygirl99]

FINALLY.

[oscarwildeboytoy-deactivated201]

Hey, unpopular opinion, apparently. But people don’t just “have pain for no reason” doctors say this all the time (especially to women and chronically ill people) and the truth is, Thats literally not possible. Even if your pains are psychosomatic (a word I hesitate to even use because of the way its used so often) there is a reason you are having those pains whether its mental illness, abuse, etc. If your doctor consistently tells you that “well some people just have pain for no reason” get a new doctor. That’s a doctor who is not going to give a shit what your actual symptoms or experiences are.

[kamorth]

I just wanna add to clarify the psychosomatic thing.

That word DOES NOT MEAN you’re making it up. It doesn’t mean you’re imagining the symptom. What it means is that the symptom ISN’T DIRECTLY CAUSED BY ANY OF THE THINGS THAT WOULD NORMALLY CAUSE IT.

I fought to get a PCOS diagnosis for 2 and a half years. For the ENTIRE time I was fighting, I was dealing with 3 cysts that were not going away by themselves and eventually required surgery to remove. At one point close to the end of the battle, I suddenly went blind. I was visiting my parents and was standing on the veranda looking out over the tree we had planted in memory of my dog and suddenly I got one of the shooting pains that I was quite frankly used to at that point and my vision started to go dark. It was like the sun was setting while being completely hidden behind storm clouds but it was 2pm in the middle of Summer on a clear day. Within about 30 seconds I couldn’t see ANYTHING. I was 27 years old and I was screaming for my mother.

My mum raced me to her doctor (he was a 15 minute drive away as opposed to 45 minutes to the nearest hospital) and he quickly worked out that there was nothing wrong with my eyes and what had happened was totally unrelated to them. Then he said it was psychosomatic and I freaked out, yelling that I was NOT making this up and I definitely wasn’t imagining it. Very quickly he calmed me down and said he believed me and I had misunderstood. He explained that whatever was going on with my abdominal pains (he suggested PCOS which I hadn’t even heard of at that point) had been ignored for so long that my body was starting to do things other than the normal pain response to try to draw my attention to the problem. My sight going was my body basically jumping around in front of me going “HEY ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME HELLLOOOOOOO??????”

He gave me some prescription strength painkillers and my sight started to come back as soon as they started to kick in. About 45 minutes after it started I could see well enough to walk around without help and within a day and a half I was back to normal. On top of that I finally had a scan booked to figure out what the hell was causing all the pain.

Psychosomatic symptoms are NOT imagined or fabricated or happening for “no reason”. Experiencing them DOES NOT make you a liar. It makes you someone who has been battling with something serious for so long that your own body has started to get impatient with you.

[oscarwildeboytoy-deactivated201]

I completely agree. Thank you for sharing this.

[antique-scarecrow]

Psychosomatic symptoms are literally your body flipping random alarm switches just to get any alarm blaring because you’ve been ignoring the regular ones

[seethestarsalittlecloser]

I don’t usually add to posts but I thought it was important to add that this 100% goes for mental health, too.

When I was 18, only a few months after graduating from high school, I started having seizures. Serious, triggered at the drop of a hat, knock me unconscious for an hour or more and leave me dazed for days kind of seizures.

I was rushed to hospital two or three times within the space of a week after passing out in the middle of cooking dinner or talking with my family, but the hospital could not find anything wrong with me. I spent a week in the hospital in a planned admission, connected to an EEG monitor for 23 hours a day with the doctors hoping to catch my seizures in action and finally figure out what they were. I don’t know how many seizures I had during that week, but at the end of it, they said that even after all that, there was nothing wrong with me. After that, they sent me to a psychologist.

I was diagnosed with PNES - Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Siezures. Essentially, it was explained to me, I had been ignoring my anxiety and PTSD for so long that my body was acting out just like @kamorth ’s had. When they started treating me for anxiety and PTSD, my siezures eventually turned into panic or anxiety attacks, and then stopped altogether.

The moral of the story is don’t ignore pain. Whether it be physical, mental, whatever. Pain is your body’s way of telling you something is wrong and it has ways of making you listen to it eventually. Some of those ways are seriously disabling and once you get to that stage, it can be a long road to recovery.

[lifewithchronicpain-original]

Just because therapy might be helpful for some psychosomatic symptoms doesn’t mean it was fake. It means your treatment worked.

[acesapphic]

Ready for a long ace-centric metaphor about sex? 

Alright, so. Coffee. I don’t drink coffee. I have no desire to drink coffee. I find people who enthusiastically go on about the flavor differences of lattes, espressos, and french press brews, both amusing and mildly baffling. All the coffee ads. Coffee jokes. Bustling coffee shops. To me, all coffee is similarly bitter and unpleasant. I have been through so many “Try this, it’s sweet! You can’t even taste the coffee!”  Alas, I always can. And I’m  sensitive to caffeine anyway. So, I don’t really think about drinking it when I wake up or am tired.

 Yet I love the smell of coffee. I love the idea of coffee. The feeling of a warm cup taking the chill from my fingers, the cozy ritual of having a drink and chat. I might try someone’s coffee. If they ask, if I want to please them and share in something they enjoy. I am also perfectly capable of learning the preferences of those I care about and creating a cup for their pleasure. 

But I don’t want coffee, generally speaking. I will probably make a face after trying their coffee and wash the taste out with something else. They may rush to reassure me that it is an acquired taste. And I’ll have to reply that it’s a taste I don’t particularly care about acquiring in the way they did. ‘Drink it till you like it’ will never work for me.

 But that doesn’t mean I am against coffee or think people shouldn’t drink it. Doesn’t mean I’ve taken a vow to never drink any. And sure, maybe if you get one of those sugar and whipped cream disasters, more of a warm milkshake than a cup of coffee, I’ll probably be happier sipping it with you. But honestly? I’d rather smell someone else’s coffee and not be expected to drink it. I’d really rather have the heat and sweetness of my hot cocoa. 

[onemillionspiders]

I love this

[daja-the-hypnokitten]

The best part is it works for ALLLL the ace spectrum! Maybe you like one specific type of coffee on rare occasions! Maybe you enjoy coffee when you’re sharing the drink with someone! Maybe you can’t even stand the smell of coffee!

This needs to be on my blog.

[teathattast]

[teathattast]

eXCUSE me who is this cat

[rannulfr]

This cat looks like it was drawn by Tracy J. Butler (@lackadaisycats )

[lackadaisycats]

this cat should offer acting lessons

[lesbianshepard]

stupid leftists and their belief in *checks notes* the intrinsic value of human life

[pastel-selkie]

Reblog if you would burn down the statue of liberty to save a life

[randomslasher]

Here’s the thing, though. If you asked a conservative “Would you let the statue of liberty burn to save one life?” they’d probably scoff and say no, it’s a national landmark, a treasure, a piece of too much historical importance to let it be destroyed for the sake of one measly life. 

But if you asked, “Would you let the statue of liberty burn in order to save your child? your spouse? someone you loved a great deal?” the tune abruptly changes. At the very least, there’s a hesitation. Even if they deny it, I’m willing to bet that gun to their head, the answer would be “yes.”  

The basic problem here is that people have a hard time seeing outside their own sphere of influence, and empathizing beyond the few people who are right in front of them. You’ve got your immediate family, whom you love; your friends, your acquaintances, maybe to a certain degree the people who share a status with you (your religion, your race, etc.)–but beyond that? People aren’t real. They’re theoretical. 

But a national monument? That’s real. It stands for something. The value of a non-realized anonymous life that exists completely outside your sphere of influence is clearly worth less than something that represents freedom and prosperity to a whole nation, right?

People who think like this lack the compassion to realize that everyone is in someone’s immediate sphere of influence–that everyone is someone’s lover, or brother, or parent. Everyone means the world to someone. And it’s the absolute height of selfishness to assume that their lives don’t have value just because they don’t mean the world to you. 

P.S. I would let the statue of liberty burn to save a pigeon. 

[boyist]

[robotmango]

also, there is an extreme difference between what things or principles *i* personally am willing to die for, and what i would hazard others to die for. and this is a distinction i don’t think the conservative hard-right likes to face.

an example: so, as the nazis began war against france, the staff of the louvre began crating up and shipping out the artworks. it was vital to them (for many reasons) that the nazis not get their hands on the collections, and hitler’s desire for them was known, so they dispersed the objects to the four winds; one of the curators personally traveled with la gioconda, mona lisa herself, in an unmarked crate, moving at least five times from location to location to avoid detection.

they even removed and hid the nike of samothrace, “winged victory,” which is both delicate, having been pieced back together from fragments, and incredibly heavy, weighing over three metric tons.

the curators who hid these artworks risked death to ensure that they wouldn’t fall into nazi hands. and yes, they are just paintings, just statues. but when i think about the idea of hitler capturing and standing smugly beside the nike of samothrace, a statue widely beloved as a symbol of liberty, i completely understand why someone would risk their life to prevent that. if my life was all that stood between a fascist dictator and a masterpiece that inspired millions, i would be willing to risk it. my belief in the power and necessity of art would demand i do so.

if, however, a nazi held a gun to some kid’s head (any kid!) and asked me which crate the mona lisa was in, they could have it in a heartbeat. no problem! i wouldn’t even have to think about it. being willing to risk my own life on principle doesn’t mean i’m willing to see others endangered for those same principles.

and that is exactly where the conservative hard-right falls right the fuck down. they are, typically, entirely willing to watch others suffer for their own principles. they are perfectly okay with seeing children in cages because of their supposed belief in law and order. they are perfectly willing to let women die from pregnancy complications because of their anti-abortion beliefs. they are alright with poverty and disease on general principle because they hold the free-market sacrosanct. and i guess from their own example they would save the statue of liberty and let human beings burn instead.

but speaking as a leftist (i’m more comfortable with socialist tbh), my principles are not abstract things that i hold aside from life, apart or above my place as a human being in a society. my beliefs arise from being a person amidst people. i don’t love art for art’s sake alone, actually! i don’t love objects because they are objects: i love them because they are artifacts of our humanity, because they communicate and connect us, because they embody love and curiosity and fear and feeling. i love art because i love people. i want universal health care because i want to see people universally cared for. i want universal basic income because people’s safety and dignity should not be determined by their economic productivity to an employer. i am anti-war and pro-choice for the same reason: i value people’s lives but also their autonomy and right to self-determination. my beliefs are not abstractions. i could never value a type of economic system that i saw hurting people, no matter how much “growth” it produced. i could never love “law and order” more than i love a child, any child, i saw trapped in a cage.

would i be willing to risk death, trying to save the statue of liberty? probably, yes. but there is no culture without people, and therefore i also believe there are no cultural treasures worth more than other people’s lives. and as far as i’m concerned the same goes for laws, or markets, or borders.

[aquatixwitch]

Well said!

[lauraantoniou]

This is an excellent ethical discussion.

[oganizediguana]

The first time I came across this post, randomslasher’s addition was life changing for me. I suddenly understood where the right was coming from, and I had never been angrier.

[hazeldomain]

This is also why so many people on the right fail to see the hypocrisy of trying to make abortion illegal when they themselves have had abortions. They can tally up their own life circumstances and conclude that it would be difficult or impossible to continue a pregnancy, but they’re completely mystified by the idea that women they don’t know are also human beings with complicated lives and limited spoon allocation.

This is also why they think “get a job” is useful advice. In their heads they honestly do not understand why the NPCs who make up the majority of the human race can’t just flip a switch from “no job” to “job.” When they say “get a job” they’re filing a glitch report with God and they honestly think that’s all it takes.

This is also why they tend to view demographics as individuals. They think that every single Muslim is just a different avatar for the same bit of programming.

[bemusedlybespectacled]

Borrowed observation from @innuendostudios​ here, but: there’s also a fundamental difference in how progressives view social problems versus how conservatives view them. That is, progressives view them as problems to be solved, whereas conservatives do not believe you can solve anything.

Conservatives view social issues as universal constants that fundamentally are unable to be changed, like the weather. You can try to alter your own behavior to protect yourself (you can carry an umbrella), and you can commiserate about how bad the weather is, but you can’t stop it from raining. This is why conservatives blame victims of rape for dressing immodestly or for drinking or for going out at night: to them, those things are like going out without an umbrella when you know it’s going to rain. 

“But then why do conservatives try to stop things they dislike by making them illegal, like drug use or immigration or abortion?” And the answer is: they’re not. They know perfectly well that those things will continue. No amount of studies showing that their methods are ineffective will matter to them because effectiveness is not the point. The point is to punish people for doing bad things, because punishing people is how you show your disapproval of their actions; if you don’t punish them, then you’re condoning their behavior. 

This is why they will never support rehabilitative prisons, even though they reduce crime. This is why they will never support free birth control for everyone, even though that would reduce abortions. This is why they will never support just giving homeless people houses, even though it’s proven to be cheaper and more effective at stopping homelessness than halfway houses and shelters. It’s not about stopping evil, because you can’t; it’s about saying definitively what is Bad and what is Good, and we as a society do that by punishing the people we’ve decided are bad. 

This is why the conservative response to “holy fuck, they’re putting children in cages!” is typically something along the lines of “it’s their parents’ fault for trying to come here illegally; if they didn’t want to have their kids taken away, they shouldn’t have committed a crime.” It doesn’t matter that entering the US unlawfully is a misdemeanor and child kidnapping isn’t typically a criminal sentence. It does not matter that this has absolutely zero effect on people unlawfully entering the US. The point is that conservatives have decided that entering unlawfully is Bad, anything that is not punishing undocumented immigrants – due process of asylum and removal defense claims, for example – is supporting Badness, and kidnapping children is an appropriate punishment for being Bad.

[dynamic-dynasty]