New Pearl. No Plan.

30-year-old person working on actualizing her fantasies. Lots of thoughts about Judaism and Cartoons...and sometimes Judaism in cartoons. I'm thesometimeswarrior on AO3. Icon credit to nacrepearl!

[notaplaceofhonour]

I don’t want to live in NYC (too crowded/expensive) or Israel (too hot) but every time I hear about a cool kosher restaurant there you get me 🤏 this much closer to changing my mind

[notaplaceofhonour]

I would actually literally probably die if I had to live either place. I need to live somewhere polar. Just wish there was a bunch of Jewish food in the cold places.

[runrundoyourstuff]

Living in Monsey is def not for me, but when I saw the ad for the kosher Korean bbq place, I did have a moment when I reconsidered that position lol

[notaplaceofhonour]

I sometimes see people joke about how wild it is that the Raiders of the Lost Ark canonically “confirms the existence of G-d From The Bible” and, like, sure

but I feel like we’re glossing over a few very important details there

[notaplaceofhonour]

details like, what Covenant is being referred to in “the Ark of the Covenant”? who is that covenant with? the presence of whose G-d does it represent? why might that be relevant in a movie with the specific villains Raiders has?

what fantasy do we think George Lucas’s cowriter Philip Kaufman, screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, and director Steven Spielberg were trying to fulfill with this specific choice?

[unamccormack]

You know what, pals, and I think I’m among friends when I say this, I really really like DS9.

[clementine-kesh]

call me terminally academia-brained but i do think a lot of the fun of character analysis is figuring out how to build a compelling argument for a particular reading using lines of evidence from canon as well as meta/intertextual support

[clementine-kesh]

and you could say that what i’m saying here is basically “a lot of the fun of doing character analysis is doing character analysis” but let’s be real a lot of fandom character analysis is pretty heavily vibes-based. and i think that’s where i really chafe up against the traditional thought-terminating fandom attitude of like, everyone’s opinions hold equal weight and any interrogation of that is inherently hostile. because i think it’s fascinating to dig into where others are coming from in terms of their views on characters or dynamics or whatever, especially when they differ significantly from more commonly expressed views, and part of that digging is asking people okay what parts of canon are you drawing from to support your opinion? what parts of canon are you disregarding or downplaying? how does this argument hold up in the light of how race, gender, class, ability, etc. operate both in the piece’s in-fiction and real world contexts?

[animentality]

[runrundoyourstuff]

Sometimes fandom is fun

[spider-artdump]

[attenashe-deactivated20190606]

things that always make me happy: serial commenters. there are three types

1) reading a longfic chapter by chapter, leaving an increasingly emotional comment on every chapter, descends into keysmashes near the end: outstanding

2) read one fic by accident, clicked the author name, now working steadily through the backlog and commenting on everything, I wake up to an AO3 inbox full of enthusiasm: precious beyond words

3) the longterm serial commenter whose comment begins with I don’t even know this fandom but because they have followed me from somewhere else: stunning. humbling. magical.

[fineillsignup]

these are all *chef’s kiss* and I want to add one more: 4) left a comment a while ago, comes back and leaves another comment on the same fic, telling you that they’re coming back to reread the fic: angels. blessings. lifesavers.

[dancinbutterfly]

I owe all 4 my actual life

[teaboot]

Alright kids say it with me

My thoughts don’t make me a bad person

My feelings don’t make me a bad person

My thoughts, feelings, and impulses only exist inside my head, and none of it matters unless I act on it

Nobody can see my thoughts or emotions

The only things anyone can see and judge me on are my actions

There’s no such thing as a thought crime

thank u

[teaboot]

You can have harmful beliefs and harmful impulses and harmful urges and not be evil. You can make yourself aware that these things are harmful and take steps to correct yourself and not be evil. You can walk around with the urge to kick puppies all goddamn day and as long as you are capable of redirecting that impulse to something benign then it doesn’t matter. I don’t know how else to say this

[sillyness-incarnate]

Yes, but you are missing the part, where this is okay for everybody, except for me.

[teaboot]

As someone who has struggled with that exact thought, I personally try to kick it back with “if it’s weird to think I’m specially and uniquely better than everyone else, it’s equally weird to think I’m specially and uniquely worse”

[taolicious]

Hey, really quick, if your first instinct when a synagogue is threatened, torched, rammed with vehicles, bombed, or shot at, is to hurry and check if the victims are pro-Israel and stop caring about their suffering if they are, fuck you.

If your first instinct is to recoil at the fact that the synagogue's name contains the word "Israel", fuck you.

If your first instinct is to say "we should stop funding israel", fuck you.

If your first instinct is to say "but Gaza is worse", fuck you.

If your first instinct is to say "free palestine", fuck you.

[heebiegeebee]

If your first reaction is to make jokes about the amount of police cars called to a preschool and say it's because "rich jews", fuck you.

Highlights (for various reasons):

And yeah, while I agree with the ACAB mentality here, i can't help but take note that I don't typically see anything as flippant while the actual shooting is going on, (especially if minorities are involved) but that entire post is mostly commentary on the amount of police, outright unbridled antisemitism, and... not much care for the situation itself.

[heebiegeebee]

I just realized i forgot to include these gems

[puppydogwhitaker]

this was all about how necessary community is.

that elderly man going to the ER because samira is a friend to him. the obese man who lives alone tearing up at genuine human kindness and acceptance. digby being someone who can mourn louie when he seemed so alone. the hospice patient being able to relax once her parents show up. the college student’s parents being able to accept help from someone that looks like them who’s gone through the same thing.

they keep reiterating how you can’t get through things alone. the jewish community needs muslims, the doctors need pharmacists, dana needs robby. there’s all these macro and micro interactions that enforce this thesis. there are cultural, structural, professional, communal, and interpersonal vectors of support that are so necessary.

these doctors understand this truth deeply, they see the evidence of it daily. but every single one of these doctors is isolated. samira isn’t moving back to new jersey, robby is leaving for canada, dennis leaves for the farm, garcia denies trinity’s company. physician heal thyself, huh?

[puppydogwhitaker]

this was all about how necessary community is.

that elderly man going to the ER because samira is a friend to him. the obese man who lives alone tearing up at genuine human kindness and acceptance. digby being someone who can mourn louie when he seemed so alone. the hospice patient being able to relax once her parents show up. the college student’s parents being able to accept help from someone that looks like them who’s gone through the same thing.

they keep reiterating how you can’t get through things alone. the jewish community needs muslims, the doctors need pharmacists, dana needs robby. there’s all these macro and micro interactions that enforce this thesis. there are cultural, structural, professional, communal, and interpersonal vectors of support that are so necessary.

these doctors understand this truth deeply, they see the evidence of it daily. but every single one of these doctors is isolated. samira isn’t moving back to new jersey, robby is leaving for canada, dennis leaves for the farm, garcia denies trinity’s company. physician heal thyself, huh?

[aenslem]

The Life of the Stars 1.08 | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

[zeerenkelrec]

Funny that people are complaining about this new episode not being released last week, saying that a grief and trauma episode should've been directly after the episode that caused the grief and trauma... Hmm, guys do you know grief and trauma last like a really long time?

Consider that giving a gap episode helps ground the trauma and grief even more because it implies more time has passed and the kids are still not alright. Consider how it deepens the Sam storyline because it implies she's been suffering from the physical manifestations of her trauma for that long, and that's what makes it believable that she's in grave danger since they set up the hint that something was really wrong in the previous episode. Consider that the previous episode was necessary to set up the new Tarima storyline.

It's just funny to see people complain about a creative decision that's the result of objectively good storytelling. Yes, there was a gap episode. Yes, life goes on when you're grieving and traumatized. Yes, you eventually have to deal with it. That's how life works, so that's how it was written.

[jaydenskyle]

I do love this episode for saying “oh no the EMH isn’t here for nostalgia bait, he’s here because he has a story to be told and we are going to tell it because this man watched everything he ever knew die slowly including the Federation that built him and now that the Federation is recovering he’s going to have to reckon with his 900 year life span or risk imploding on himself emotionally.”

[homunculus-argument]

Imagine if you met someone who can't eat watermelon. Not that they're allergic or unable somehow, but they just haven't figured out how to do that. So you're like "what the hell do you mean? it works just like eating anything else, you open your mouth, sink your teeth in, take a bite and chew. If you can bite, chew and swallow, you should be able to eat a watermelon."

And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.

This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?

"It's red on the inside?"

Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.

"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."

And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.

If someone can't do something after being repeatedly told to "just do it", there might be some key component missing that one side has no idea about, and the other side assumed was so obvious it goes without mention.

[therainstheyaredropping]

Yep.

https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/how-to-do-everything had a nice list of additional examples like this, with (non-)obvious major insights with regard to opening stitched bags, cleaning your bathroom floor, using a search engine, catching a ball, pinging somebody, proving a theorem, playing sudoku, passing as “normal”, improving your writing, generating novel ideas, and solving your problem.

If you’d asked me six months ago how to get better at something, I’d probably have pointed you to how to do hard things. I still think this is a good approach and you should do it, but I now think it’s the wrong starting point and I’ve been undervaluing small insights. [...]

I think my revised belief is that if you are stuck at how to get better at something, spend a little while assuming there’s just some trick to it you’ve missed. You can try to generate the trick yourself, but it’s probably easier to learn it by observing someone else being good at the thing, asking them some questions, and seeing if you have any lightbulb moment.

[hergan416]

My fiance played the clarinet when he was in school. When he was first learning to play, he rented an instrument from the school to learn on. He was the last chair clarinet, had been for years, because he could not make notes that required the register key. For years, they kept making him do embrature exercises and he started to get a few notes, with lots of effort. Eventually he had to get private lessons to stay in band.

Every time he tells me this story, his frustration by this point in the story, years later, is evident. He still sounds frustrated by it, despite all the time that passed. Teachers had been giving him crap for years because he hadn't been making much progress with the instrument.

When he got to the private instructor, she acknowledged his frustration, and asked him to try to play for her. He did, and she saw all he was doing. She then did something no one else had done before. She asked him to put his mouthpiece on a different clarinet and try to play the same notes. Like magic, it worked. She looked at the clarinet he had been using and found that the school's clarinet needed it's pads replaced.

He went from last chair to first chair nearly overnight, having been taught far more techniques than typically taught at that age just to overcome the broken instrument preventing him from making noise.

Sometimes you don't need to brute force a problem. Sometimes your clarinet is just broken.

[nowordsandnotune]

Not quite sure why the clarinet addition got me crying, but here you go people: just in case, let's get you some new pads.

[orpheuslament]

yeah im still thinking about the minotaur sorry but just . imagine youre born wrong. imagine your entire existence is a punishment from the gods. for something you had no control over. imagine your mother holds nothing but contempt for you. she wont even look at you, not really, & she keeps crying & you keep crying & reaching towards her with your little arms & someone drags you away from her. & they keep you hidden & alone & a stranger comes & builds an impenetrable prison around you so youre doomed to forever haunt these endless corridors & youve never known kindness or companionship or love. & when they call you a monster. well. you believe them

[orpheuslament]

babe you reblogged orpheuslament minotaur post 23 times are you okay

[blackboard-monitor]

ask game for aging tumblr population

what's your favourite kitchen appliance?

do you have a collection of anything?

what's the best job you've ever had?

what's the worst job you've ever had?

what's your favourite piece of furniture and where did you get it?

what's your go-to recipe when you want to make something that requires minimal effort?

are you married or do you intend to get married?

do you have kids? do you want them?

are you on good terms with your parents?

do you have siblings? do you hang out with them?

do you vote?

what's the biggest purchase you've ever made?

what are your hobbies?

what's a hobby you'd like to get into?

do you collect anything?

how long have you known your oldest friend?

are you a member of any clubs or associations?

have you ever changed fields in your career or education?

how many wisdom teeth do you have and have you had any removed?

what's your favourite beverage?

do you have any living grandparents?

do you have nieces/nephews/godchildren/other kids in your life that aren't yours?

what's the coolest place you've visited?

what's your most recent degree and has it been useful to you?

would you rather own a dishwasher or a laundry machine if you could only have one or the other?

do you make a list before going to the grocery store or just wing it?

what's your favourite household chore?

what chore do you hate the most?

do you have houseplants and how are you at keeping them alive?

what's your living arrangement? (who do you live with, in what kind of building, do you own or rent or other?)