Imagined Ambivalence

[depsidase]

[lilboreddev-blog]

reblog if your name isn't Amanda.

[thatblackwatchdouche-blog-blog]

2,121,566 people are not Amanda and counting!

We’ll find you Amanda.

[world-heritage-posts]

world heritage post

[doyoulovethewayzeylily]

imagine you had a friend who constantly made jokes at the expense of something you loved. they're never funny, but they seem to expect you to laugh even though the punchline is just, "this thing you love sucks ass". it's not even really a joke, there's nothing funny about it, you can tell that they genuinely actually believe it. but they insist it's just a joke!

no matter what the situation is, they're always bringing the social interaction to a screeching halt with these jokes. nobody ever wants to participate in this joke with them. nobody agrees with the premise. nobody ever knows what to say afterwards, it's just an awkward moment and a subject change. but they just keep doing it.

you have to stop with the self-deprecatory "humor", it's not fun for anyone including you.

[disney-universes]

From Vulture’s Oral History of Lilo and Stitch, here’s stories of what Michael Eisner was like in sweatbox screenings of 90s DIsney classics.

Completely fucking clueless. The incarnation of Defunctland’s jokes about him. Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois just hid Lilo and Stitch from him until it was done, absolute legends.

[soraka-in-warhammer40k]

It's one thing to say "you are part of the family" to the adopted kid and another to effectively state "the blood oath I have sworn to my honored liege lord to serve until my dying breath also includes you".

Opera's formal role is some mix between butler and bodyguard for Sullivan. Technically they have little connection to Iruma aside from him being the guest in the mansion. The oath they have sworn as a "security devil" is a really personal thing and links them first and foremost to their employer. Except Opera does not care about such details.

Sullivan adopted a random (actually not so random, there are theories) human kid and Opera was like "you mean OUR adopted kid?".

[mylordshesacactus]

For all that the 1800s etiquette guides are--obviously--derangedly sexist from a modern perspective? They're also mindblowing in how casually they will assert things that MODERN DAY CONSERVATIVES would scream and cry and shit their pants about.

"People back then always married young it's natural!!!" Every single 1800s guide I've ever met casually mentions that, of course, you really shouldn't get married before you're at least 20, and waiting until 25 is usually better.

Or, like. Okay here's a long segment:

Just firmly going "it is crazy sexist to blame The Wife for overspending when thirty seconds of asking questions will immediately establish that her husband was outright lying to her about how much money they had. Talk to your wife like a normal person."

Or--okay, here. A section on being honest and not writing love letters in secret, because that's usually a good sign that there's something untoward going on....

....except that he then immediately acknowledges that sometimes, the reason you're hiding this from your parents is that your parents suck. That there are parents who frankly have not earned the right to approve or disapprove of your partner.

(I realize the phrasing there sounds a lot less strong than my summary, but--trust me on this. When you're familiar with the narrative voice of these kinds of books, this passage is downright radical. The mere acknowledgement that if you treat your kids badly, it's your own damn fault when they don't talk to you? I've genuinely never seen that before in this genre. Don't freak out over "properly trained", either. It's just a linguistic shift--at the time, "training" was used the way we would say "raising" a child today. )

[thestuffedalligator]

It’s shit being a superhero when you know that the multiverse exists. You spend all day saving people, you’re tired, you want to go to bed, and right before you fall asleep someone says “The High Evolutionary is going to turn everyone on earth into a werewolf!” and every bone in your body says “Fucking. Maybe we can be the werewolf dimension. The Universe Where Everyone Is A Werewolf. There are infinite dimensions where everyone isn’t a werewolf. It could be fine. It could be good even.”

And you fight the High Evolutionary and you win and your world isn’t the Werewolf Dimension. But the thought was there. God the thought was there

[spookberry]

My personal headcanon for Ash Ketchum has always been that regardless of if his dream ever came true he'd never truly stop traveling and learning. Because despite "becoming a pokemon master" being his goal if you actually sit down and watch like Any episode of Pokemon the thing that always holds true is his curiosity and desire to learn everything he possibly can related to pokemon. And he'll try anything to! He did contests and the battle frontier. He'd do those silly little shows with Serena if they'd let him.

So I like to imagine him continuing on in life as this nomad who people don't automatically recognize as anyone important ya know? Just this goofy guy going from place to place always lending a helping hand and hes got a cute lil pikachu on him. And hes often lost somewhere with a friend just exploring the woods to see if he'll find anything cool. Ya know, as hes always been, but older now. And its only once hes drifted once more do you maybe stumble into an article on the pokeweb about him and are like... that guy??

[curvedroygbiv]

there’s a dedicated ashandpikachuspotter account somewhere on some social media. You tag a photo or search for a term and boom, there’s pics of this guy. this dude. this man. with his pikachu. and it’s thousands of strangers from across the globe coming on line to talk about some stranger that they met briefly and then never saw again. they’ve compiled their stories and their approximate locations and mapped his journey from continent to continent, a long snaking pathway that spans decades and thousands of miles. He’s apparently one of those Kanto kids that the government let just drop out of school. Its working out very well for him. 

[spookberry]

Thats so funny, to imagine him as a pokeweb criptid type character a la the florida man

[spookberry]

the one thing about him is he's also not gonna think he's famous or ever mention it himself

[pokemonheritageposts]

Pokemon Heritage Post

[partywithponies]

Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???

[urlocalpyshcopan]

as a black gay person real like where y'all be finding this stuff pass the name

[brainsforbabyjesus]

for real though, those DO NOT WATCH OR YOU'LL CORRUPT YOUR CHILDREN lists put out by conservative christian family groups is where I find all the stellar tv shows. Like, shit I didn't know half of those existed, thanks for finding them for me, gonna go watch 30 hours of gay tv now!

[infamousbrad]

I think I know how this works.

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

Same as the journalists describing Black Rock City as all naked. Same as the right-wing religious culture warriors describing television as entirely mixed-race and gender non-conforming. Not because it's even vaguely true, we know that, but because they haven't gotten over their discomfort over the last one by the time the next one comes along. The anger, not the stimulus, is the part that's continuous, so their mind lies to them that it's "all" the thing they can't get over.

[kagedtiger]

Similar effect for the presence/proportion of women in things, by the way: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm

[ifoundmybeatingheartagain]

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

this has rewired some neural pathways for me

[eccebitch]

[fabricandcircuits]

Peer reviewed tags wonderfully said

[shimamitsu-moved]

ppl are so mad in the replies to this tweet but op is literally right

[edgar-allan-possum]

[btc-official-deactivated2024071]

last week i woke up from one of the most fucked up nightmares ive ever had with that middle panel burned into my brain. like the exact wording and the exact apartment and the exact squidward. i feel like if i didnt make it real something bad wouldve happened. anyway todays upload is spunchbob comic oc

[dykepuffs]

There is a really frustrating thing where some kinds of speculative story are hard to write because they will be assumed to be bad (clumsy, harmful, regressive) metaphors for real-world events or people, rather than exploring completely speculative ideas. Like:

"What if a small group of religious extremists, persecuted in their own country, moved to an inhospitable uninhabited island and had to rebuild society there?" - But the Americas and Australia weren't inhospitable and were full of Native nations, why are you perpetuating the idea of Terra Nullius and manifest destiny? - Yes, that's because this isn't a metaphor for the British invading other countries, it's a metaphor for finding out how much of a person's religious practise is rooted in worldly concerns, vs how much they will really stymie themselves for the sake of God.

"What if 1/100 children born was a werewolf?" - But queer people are no danger to straight people, and disabled people don't have predictable patterns to their illnesses, and most people who have uncontrollable rages really CAN control them and are just lying, and no minority group has superpowers... - Yes, but that's all immaterial, because I wanted to talk about a load of other metaphors about the passage of time and responsibility and the relationship between humans and wildlife.

It almost feels like death of the author, like "Death of the most obvious metaphor" - If you couldn't reach for the (tormented) parallel between being an alien species and being stateless, what stories could someone tell? If your changeling-baby was neither disabled nor adopted, what would the story be about? Etc.

[miseria-fortes-viros]

[alphacrone]

i don't really want to weight in on the "using big words in your writing is ableist" discourse happening on tiktok because i'm like 90% certain it's an anti-intellectual psyop to stir up drama in online circles to promote the use of ai to summarize literally everything and thus feeding the LLMs and lowering the populace's mistrust of such tools but i also have to say: dictionaries and thesauruses are the most accessible they've ever been. if you use an e-reader of any kind you can look up a word without leaving the page. there's a plethora of online dictionaries and if you just type a word + "meaning" into google it'll usually give you a definition. we used to have pocket dictionaries we used when reading in class. i have two on my shelf right now that i used in high school. stop letting the fascists purposefully misuse anti-ableism rhetoric to trick you into never thinking again.

[janiedean]

&

chapter five of 1984 strikes again i see

[riseofthecommonwoodpile]

you make one fucking post where the point is “women are encouraged to develop disordered eating from a very young age and that impacts how we view the ‘natural’ size and shape of women” and too many reblogs later i am being accused of saying short people wouldn’t exist if they ate better growing up. i’m sorry but if you genuinely think i was saying that you are just a buffoon. i cannot and will not sanction your buffoonery.

[mylordshesacactus]

I read etiquette and homemaking guides from the 1800s mostly because they're a FASCINATING insight into cultural norms that we often don't think about. I honestly really recommend people crack one of these open at least once--it goes way beyond, like, "what to wear to a ball!!!"

The best ones have advice on decor, how to select high-quality furniture, childrearing, fashion, etc--from a contemporary perspective, and the things the authors feel the need to clarify vs the wild shit that will just casually mention like it's something everyone knows and agrees on is REALLY revealing of the culture and how it's shifted.

And while a lot of the advice is WILDLY bigoted or just outright funny, you'd be surprised how much of it is...just genuinely timeless, and shockingly compassionate.

They ALSO, as a writer, have INVALUABLE resources--because, again, they're talking about things that are so MUNDANE that a lot of the time nobody really sat down to formally document what normal, everyday people thought or cared about--because that's boring! But a book written to provide advice and information to, say, a young woman who's never run her own home before? You can fully expect an entire chapter dedicated to The Types Of Oven, and which features are useful and worth spending money on, and which features are a huge hassle to clean and a waste of space, and what to spend that money on instead.

And like. As a writer who frequently works in the 1800s? Fuck inflation calculators, this is the kind of thing I need. This is absolutely priceless.

Now that being said.

My current favorite 'etiquette guide' in the world is actually like....70% purely practical advice, written by a gentleman the groupchat has affectionately dubbed History's Most Autistic Man In The World, and thank god they didn't have Aderall back then

Because the AuDHD is strong in this one and as a result, in addition to the deeply practical and useful everyday reference points, we also have:

[mylordshesacactus]

[mylordshesacactus]

[stealthetrees]

I love seeing posts about MK being a secret shadowpeach kid cause in canon we do see exactly where he came from and his birth and also his dad, none of which involved the monkies. Go girl be delusional I’m so happy for you.