2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
pixel skylines
No title available
will byers stan first human second
No title available
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
Keni
art blog(derogatory)
Product Placement
KIROKAZE
DEAR READER
No title available
Discoholic 🪩
sheepfilms
todays bird
titsay
Xuebing Du
Stranger Things
Acquired Stardust
h
seen from France
seen from Romania
seen from Lithuania
seen from Australia
seen from Taiwan
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Sweden
seen from Romania
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from Hungary
seen from United States
@samcatthorneswalkingcorpse
Hey, hey, look me in the eyes when I tell you this okay? The whole "do trans women or trans men have it worse?" debate going on right now is the most obvious CIA bullshit on earth cause honestly we've both got it pretty shitty and fighting each other isn't helping anyone
a good thread
Yet another new study debunked the basis for the anti-trans sports bans. It was never about sports but for creating legal avenues for exclusion and abjection. This is one of the largest analyses ever conducted, involving 52 studies and 6,485 trans people. Read the study here.
post so nice had to reblog it twice and force it down everyone's throats
At minimum about 4.5 thousand people liked this without reblogging it.
We gotta fix that.
Progress.
Onwards!
I can't access the full paper, but their conclusion is right there in the abstract:
While transgender women exhibited higher lean mass than cisgender women, their physical fitness was comparable. Current evidence is mostly low certainty and has heterogenous quality but does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender.
ADHD affects how I experience time, not how I experience attachment. I love you. I miss you. I just don't realize how long it’s been since I last said that, let alone messaged.
I understand that most normal functioning brains need regular engagement to maintain a bond. Absence doesn’t diminish my affection. My silence isn’t neglect or disinterest. It’s time blindness and object impermanence. The contact gap is purely neurological, not emotional. Thank you for being patient with my inconsistency and holding a seat in your heart for me.
Oh come on lady, you can't deny a man his gaycation
You must surrender yourself mind, body and soul to the gaycation or be destroyed
Someone on reddit already suggested a sapphibbatical
Someone on reddit
already suggested a
sapphibbatical
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
how could you leave out the best part—the aquarium bit
"become a fish" (gay)
men will jump through an entire circus' worth of hoops rather than admitting they're bi
The level of mental hoops that guy had to jump through to say to his wife, "No, honey! Of course I wouldn't be cheating on you! Sex during gaycations doesn't count!"
Holy fucking shit! It gets trippier!
I mean, I feel horrible for the OP and her SIL...but "surrender to the gaycation" made me laugh way more than I should have.
this is an insane story
“Some men never return”
Helpppppp 😭
Um…here’s the reddit link? I’m speechless.
Don't worry honey, all the other men on gaycation aren't real people and they stop existing after. Hey, where's all the homophoboa coming from suddenly?
That's the beauty of the gaycation!
It get wilder. I only found out about this b/c of a youtube video reading the Gaycation post but, this isn't even the first one.
7 years ago someone posted this-
And 5 years a different user posted this-
What is happening with these people??? What weird ass cult did they find??
but i stay silly! *←said in the most world-weary voice you ever did hear*
“but I stay silly!”
Reblog you stay silly
on it boss
Joy and whimsy detected. This post is joyful and whimsical. I guess
can’t even joke about wishing my fics could write themselves without people mistaking it for ai usage anymore. what a lost whimsy
I don’t want AI to plagiarize-autocorrect its way to a fic I want little fic house elves to crawl out of the floorboards and finish my fic for me in exchange for a thimble of milk
the chill this sent down my spine. what do you mean tfs is still doing stuff. what do you mean theyre doing yu yu hakusho
not every mutual fits neatly into an archetypal medievalism but there are some mutuals that im like yeah addressing you as “my liege” would come strangely naturally
what mutual is prev
my liege lord
my loyal knight
my wise wizard
my evil advisor
my brother in arms
my lady muse
my wild mermaid friend
my fellow alchemist
my dashing rapscallion
my monstrous foe
On it, chief.
I love that Leverage really goes out of it’s way to show us that just because you break the ‘rules’, it doesn’t mean you’re breaking the rules. Rules and laws and society are all made up, at the end of the day, and all you really have is your own moral compass and sense of justice; is this just to you? Is it right? Should it be OK for companies to put people in insurmountable debt for the rest of their lives just because our medical care is so expensive in this modern day and age? No law or rule should change what you know in your heart is right and wrong, and I think that’s the key thing that makes someone a good person in my eyes.
#there was a time when parker wouldn’t have noticed, #not because she lacked the capacity to care, #but because she had narrowed herself, #to stay alive she cut off as many unnecessary things as possible, #watching her get them all back, #is one of the glories of this show (via @seananmcguire)
Leverage hands down has the best character development I’ve ever seen.
This scene hit me like a brick. My parents were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt when I was 16 bc I’d had cancer the year before (my treatment ended up being free but the initial ER bills and such were not).
But somewhere along the line they just… Disappeared. My mom says they’re not being paid and they’re not in collections. It’s almost as if someone out there did…exactly what Parker did.
Ever since I saw this the first time, I’ve imagined it was Parker doing it. That she and Hardison had a free weekend and decided to take it out on a collections agency. That I was one of the lucky ones who got a little Leverage.
Okay but like yeah, that is actually a thing that happens, albeit not exactly like this. I don’t remember the exact process but basically there’s a booming industry to sell peoples debt - the business you owe money to sells it to someone else for a fraction of the money owed, wipes their hands of the whole affair, and now whoever bought your debt is riding your ass to get you to give the money to the. But it’s also entirely possible for people to just… buy up massive amounts of debt for pennies on the dollar, and then just. Forgive it. Because capitalism is a living nightmare, but the system is broken enough that it’s possible to exploit it for good sometimes.
Like, the main reason I know about this is because John Oliver did a piece on debt buying a few years ago, and ended it by revealing that he’d bought 15 million dollars worth of medical debt just so he could forgive all of it. Both to expose how broken the system was because some random fucker like him could buy millions of dollars in peoples debt with zero regulations, and also just to take the record for biggest TV giveaway in history.
A charity where you can do this, right here.
Be Parker! Be somebody else’s Leverage!
Reblogging for the website.
yes! if you want to help with the medical debt crisis in the US and have some extra money please donate to RIP Medical Debt if you can. They’re completely legit and really do what they say - you really CAN relieve an incredible amount of debt for the needy with even a small donation. I’m a monthly donor and receive a quarterly report of the debt they’ve abolished, and it truly is amazing. Based on those reports the average amount of debt abolished per person is actually I would say about $600 - which means, if you’re doing the math, that with a $6 donation to RIP Medical Debt, you can potentially pull one person out of a poverty spiral - maybe even one family. For six dollars. that’s a pretty good deal, I think.
RIP Medical Debt is now called Undue Medical Debt!
Undue Medical Debt makes it easy for donors to make an impactful difference in the lives of those struggling with medical debt.
reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics
@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this
I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset
What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know
Mordor.
Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.
And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!
So what is a rain shadow?
Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.
this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.
my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.
so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.
the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.
also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:
it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.
#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass
On a Watsonian level, sure.
On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.
I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."
I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.
LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)
Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.
#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains
I wrote an entire paper in college analyzing the geology of the Misty Mountains and to a lesser extent the White Mountains (the Misty Mountains are easier because we get a cross-section via Moria). One thing I discovered that still knocks me for a loop when I think about it is:
Moria is the only place in Middle-Earth where mithril is found, right? That's kind of a big deal. So, why? What makes that location so special? Is it just random?
I found a paper that had just been published *that year*, 2011 or 2012 as I was writing it, that studied the locations of precious-metals mines in the Pyrenees, the similarly long skinny mountain chain that divides Spain and France. This paper discovered that where there was a bend in the mountain chain, from one of the continental plates having an awkward corner in it that got subducted under the other plate, that had dug deeper into the mantle and caused precious-metal-bearing ores to flow up to the surface in ways they didn't do anywhere else in the Pyrenees.
There's a conversation in The Fellowship of the Ring where one of the hobbits -- I don't have my copy handy or I'd get the direct quote -- asks why they can see the Misty Mountains ahead of them at one point if they're still heading south from Rivendell, and it's explained that south of Caradhras (which you may recall is the surface mountain under which Moria runs) the mountain chain bends and runs southwest instead of due south for a while.
Tolkien had absolutely no way to know *why* this particular feature of a mountain range was associated with intrusions of rare and unique metal ores, but he had gone backpacking in mountains enough to know How Things Should Look.
(And as prev excellently points out, when Jirt made screwed-up geology it was very much on purpose. Mordor shouldn't be square! Mount Doom shouldn't be doing any of the things it does! A composite volcano shouldn't even have especially hot lava! Even the Gulf of Udun, the circular feature at the upper left corner of the square, shouldn't be like that -- perfectly round features should be impact craters or calderas, not The Mountains Just Do This In A Suspiciously Convenient Way. These are all the way they are because Sauron forced them to be, in defiance of the laws of nature. Remember, he's akin to Balrogs and was a Maia of Aulë -- he's a volcano spirit in many ways.)
Amazing work by the LoTR fandom, as always.
This also serves as an excellent example of why worldbuilding needs - more than realism - to be cohesive and work with the themes of your story.
like the betrayal’s always going to be worse if they cared about you and it didn’t matter. someone discards you because they didn’t give a shit, then you can be angry about that, you can feel vindicated in that, you can get over it. but if they can look you in the eyes and say “I love you. I would make the same choice again.” You will never sleep peacefully again, is all.
“I thought they cared about me, but they were lying this whole time.” <- tired. boring. removes all the nuance of this relationship to make it easier to move on from.
“I thought they cared about me, and I was right, and every minute they were there for me, every time they said they were proud, every laugh we shared leaning against each other bruised and breathless, all of it was real. and they still left me behind. They could put their love aside. I couldn’t.” <- insane. will never leave you alone. reminds you that even the worst people are still people and can still care about even the ones they hurt the most and that undoes neither the harm nor the love.
This needs to be said. Underworld are good films.
Mind you, I'm only talking about the original trilogy. The other films don't exist for me.
I see a lot of people saying that these films have no story and no moral message, and that they're just an excuse for cool fights. But that's not true.
The films are literally about inequality. You have the wolves living underground, the vampires in their grand mansions. There's slavery with the situation of the Lycans, especially in the third film. There's also a form of this through Selene, molded to essentially be a killing machine by Victor. You can literally see it as a form of brainwashing. Something that lessens as Selene finds her independence. It's also about abuse (especially parental abuse with Victor's character through his relationships with Selene, Sonja, and Lucian). It's almost about eugenics with the whole hybrid aspect that the vampires see as an absolute abomination. Not to mention the revisionist aspect of history we see in the first film.
Underworld is actually about many things interesting when you stop focusing on its dark, action-packed form.
Also, most of the main characters are interesting. Selene, Lucian, and Victor completely carry the three films.
And even though I find Michael "boring," the fact that he's this completely normal, innocent, and kind guy fits perfectly with the story. He had to be like that to be with Selene. It's just a shame the actor really lacks charisma...
I also like how the story forms a perfect loop with the trilogy. It's clear there wasn't supposed to be a sequel.
The story has real narrative coherence.
Also, the fact that the heart of the story is literally the concept of Romeo & Juliet is very appealing. The romance between Lucian and Sonja in particular is quite iconic.
Also, the fact that Selene and Lucian have a lot of parallels. Selene is ultimately a female, vampire version of Lucian, beyond her resemblance to Sonja and her relationship with Victor. Selena is like the perfect mix of Lucian and Sonja, and she will finish and accomplish what they couldn't: kill Victor and go live with their love.
My only real criticisms of these films are (as I've already mentioned) the actor playing Michael. When a character is intentionally written in such a simple way, even if it fits the story, you need an actor who brings charisma to create a real connection with the viewer, and honestly, the actor playing Michael doesn't allow for that, in my opinion. And also the fact that the fight scenes in the first film are very (perhaps too) reminiscent of The Matrix.
Also, I've seen many people complain about how the vampires are portrayed in this film. But I loved seeing a version where the vampires were weaker.
@lizzie-queenofmeigas
No small part of why the story works as well as it does is because the actor who played Raze (Kevin Grevioux) also wrote Lucian's backstory, based off his own personal experiences with interracial relationships.
It is literally about racism.
Honestly, if you look closely at the fight scenes, the power difference between vampires and Lycans is slim to none. Because the power difference isn't the point. The vampires didn't subjugate the Lycans because they were stronger, but because they assumed they had the right. They just decided that the Lycans were beneath them, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Victor, in his bigotry, cared more about a hypothetical child than he did about his actual living daughter. He literally wiped her from history to avoid having to deal with the "shame" of her love for Lucian.
One of my favorite details about the first movie is that, when Lucian finally talks about Sonja, he only ever grieves her. He misses her, even centuries later. He never wanted anything but the woman he loved. It's Victor who brings up the pregnancy. He's the one obsessed with the child. Even all these years later, he carried more hate for a child that never existed than he did love for his daughter. He even used Selene as a "replacement," swapping Sonja out for a new model that he assumed he would have more control of.
Despite how much it dated itself by trying to be the "cool and edgy update" to classic movie monsters, Underworld's story did manage to age quite well. Specifically because the racism allegory was (at least partially) written through a Black lens.
Living in a conservative part of a blue state and watching tv during an election year is really trippy because nationally people are like oh you’re all liberals over there you don’t know what it’s like living in a conservative area but then the local attack ads are like my opponent wants to be NICE to ILLEGALS and the RADICAL TRANS AGENDA and BURN DOWN POLICE STATIONS. You should vote for ME. I will SHOOT immigrants PERSONALLY in THE STREET. I am a former NAVY SEAL. BARK BARK.
I wish all Black girls a clear shot at this world. I wish all Black girls a full belly. I wish all Black girls a respite from their many troubles. I wish all Black girls nothing but grace, prosperity, and ease. Black girls I am hoping for your continued safety and success every single day.
