[theladsaregoingmental]

Hi

I’m Matt. This is my general things blog.

it contains whatever grabs me moment to moment with basically no curation of any kind.

I have a horror blog over @wrought-of-one-flesh and a sci-fi blog @he-cried-dying-on-mars which are better curated and tagged and everything but this is where I’m most active.

[halles-comet]

my favorite thing about louis is he's a business major in a world of theater kids. everyone's playing psychological games with each other through theater and rock music and the fractured art of storytelling and he's like "but what are the margins on my vampire hotel"

[vincentpriceofficial]

It absolutely kills me that Niall was just like going to a secondary location with Ruben and locking ourselves in? Okay yay ❤️ but also I do understand because I think he probably thought it would be something like the last time they had something really heavy and awful hanging between them and had to hash it out aka the hospital scene. Like yeah something violent and awful is probably going to happen to me but then it’ll be over. And he’s had this hanging over him for four years now I’m sure there was a part of him that was like, let’s just get this over with and then I can go back to my life

[vincentpriceofficial]

like at the beginning when he's like "do we really have to do this on my fucking wedding day" he's still like. pissed off his wedding is ruined more than he's thinking he's literally about to die

[fieryfoxboy]

It’s almost like… Lots of transmascs transition because we have dysphoria about our sex characteristics not aligning with our mental images of ourselves, and not because we have a desire to align with patriarchal ideals of what masculinity/manhood “should” be??? It’s almost like patriarchal expectations of masculinity are actively burdensome to transmascs, and frequently a deterrent from transitioning??? It’s almost like patriarchal gender roles are a prison for literally everybody?????

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[teathattast]

[jewish-sideblog]

Magen David Pride Flags except I fixed the sizes and the colors to better soothe my neurodivergent brain

Feel free to use them for whatever without credit. I wouldn't stop you even if I could, it's all in the public domain anyway

[jewish-sideblog]

Some free DLC for my lovely Queer Jews of Colour and wonderful Polyamorous Jews. I also tried my hand at the toothpaste gay flag, but the number and size of the lines made it impossible to actually soothe my neurodivergent brain...

[jewish-sideblog]

Genderqueer and gay added! Tried to tweak the blue on the Magen David to match the colors on the flags. Center white stripes are the bane of this project's existence

[darling-shrike]

You know what I still can't find it in myself to hate Niall sorry. I maintain the wave of people deciding he's somehow worse than Ruben have fallen for the "a loser/annoying person is always worse than a violent abuser" propaganda. Niall is responsible for many things having gone wrong in his life, he can be a vicious little shit, but you're not gonna look me in the eye and tell me he's *worse* than Ruben, esp when a lot of his actions are a direct result of his legitimate fear for his literal life.

[rainbow-femme]

My first reaction to the reason Ruben killed Niall was “huh, of all things, it’s not like that was even that bad given the things that have happened and what they’ve gone through” and I feel like that’s such a compliment to Richard Gadd’s writing

Because of course it’s not a good reason, it’s murder, there’s not good reasons for murder. But I got so sucked into the mindset and dynamic of the show I was willing to accept a scenario where Ruben’s violence would surely feel reasonable

But of course it’s not, it never was, and when Niall dies so does the narrative lens that loves and forgives Ruben for all he does

Ruben killing Niall is like all of his other violence; Senseless, immature, a self conscious attempt to prove something to himself. It was because of a pretty big betrayal, yes, but considering everything else that happens it doesn’t seem like it should be the one big horrible thing that is worse than everything else. But it’s not about escalating betrayal, it’s about Ruben’s escalating rationalization of his violent actions that lead him to decide killing Niall is ok

Ruben wanted to be the most Alpha Male he could be, and what is more pure animalistic Alpha Male than killing a rival male in competition for breeding territory? He did it, he achieved the peak of masculinity, and it was hollow, it meant nothing, he gained nothing, nothing about the situation changed for the better or was resolved. There would be no storming off and then talking things out later when they’d cooled down like all the other times, instead of closure it was a wound that would now never close because the violence was never what resolved anything between them. It was the talking, the hugging, the crying, the apologizing. But Ruben’s nature couldn’t accept that, it had to be the violence that did it

I do wonder at his mindset in that moment. If he’d known going into the killing that he would get no ultimate satisfaction but he felt his personal code demanded it. Or if part of him didn’t really understand the finality of what he was doing until it had happened and suddenly ‘Oh, oh it’s all done now, it’s over, it’s gone’

I know there are people who don’t like the ending but I loved it man, I love fucked up relationships that end in fucked up ways

[gabriel-stuns]

in any other show, the clear set up of the knife in niall’s sock would’ve been what saved him in the barn. chekov’s knife. at the pivotal moment he would’ve pulled it out and fought ruben off him. but he gets one stab in and dies anyway. it doesn’t matter at all. it doesn’t fucking matter. thank u richard gadd.

[vincentpriceofficial]

saying benji was his fault particularly gets under my skin considering ruben explicitly said he was going to beat the info out of him and the last time (we know of) that ruben said tell me or else he went on to violently rape him like five seconds later........... no jury on earth would convict!

[frogayyyy]

once again, reminding my british friends and followers to ask their MP to sign the motion to reject the transphobic changes to the EHRC.

there's a template email here you can use, it only takes a few minutes. sign the petition too.

EDM 240 / prayer motion is live. Your MP needs to sign it. Two taps via the coalition tool.

[walkingstackofbooks]

Non-Brits, PLEASE reblog this asap to signal boost! This is the first time I've heard of this specific thing, and we only have 27 days left to do it.

The government is currently trying to change British Law so that "biological sex" is the definition of legal sex WITHOUT DEBATE OR VOTING. Even if your MP is NOT an ally, there is a template here that talks to them from an "is this democratic?" point of view that could still be persuasive if enough emails get written. PLEASE TRY.

Also, do try to add something personal to your email - it doesn't have to be much, but try not to leave it as a complete copy-paste job.

[tragicwaif]

I think I’ve already said this but despite whatever genuine feelings they may have for each other I do kind of see their reuniting as a way for Niall to try and defuse the fear he feels for Ruben in Ruben’s absence like well if him not being there isn’t gonna make him less scared he might as well get in the cage with the tiger and get his eyes on it! But you see the problem is that this puts him in the cage with the tiger

[tragicwaif]

because if he’s there with Ruben he can monitor and placate him moment to moment even when he chooses not to placate him it’s like. the not knowing if there’s danger drives him wilder than the certainty of danger

[f-slur]

despite rgadd clearly not wanting half man to be a straightforward victim narrative thats kind of how the story ended up reading to me anyway. which is not a bad thing imo its just interesting. like throughout the show he clearly wanted to create this looming sense that niall mustve done something truly heinous to deserve ruben coming for him like revenge personified (the ominous "he knows what he wants and he takes it" before we find out what it is he took etc) but even with the full picture revealed i feel like nothing niall did ever came within light years of the kind of physical, verbal, and sexual violence ruben inflicted on the people around him, niall most of all. the fact that niall stole and lied and was addicted to drugs and sex and said yes to fatherhood for all the wrong reasons and acted like a selfish dick and kept returning to ruben despite everything and kept loving him and hating him and wanting to hurt him back – to me none of that really changed the fact that he was ultimately just a guy who fell in love with a controlling man when he was very young and was raped and murdered for it like so many women have before him. niall being a flawed person with the capacity to hurt people made him a more interesting protagonist but it did nothing to negate his status as ruben's victim in my mind

[lakeofsilverpike]

RE: Your Mohan Post, I saw someone's tags on a gifset and I was like wait wait, here's another thing:

Speed is incredibly important in an ED. We can talk about how doctors and nurses are forced to work more than able because of hiring practices and take on more-but I do think there is a point to be made by how Mohan's speed does affect others.

Like yeah, she takes her time and ultimately makes good connections with patients (which is why she has high satisfaction scores) but I wonder: if she was forced to move at the speed of her fellow residents, would her scores still be as good? I think the scripts and other characters reactions (such as Collins referring to her as slow-mo in the show, and Langdon doing so as well in a scene that was either filmed and deleted or simply just written) is that it also bothers them. Like we see Langdon, who is only a year ahead of her, treat a lot more patients in season 1. And I think (even though part of its due to being in triage) when he comes back to the main hub he still is able to treat more, see more patients and be involved in more cases, even just for a few minutes. I think even McKay saw just as much if not a few more cases, or was involved in more. To me I wonder: does she get too caught up in cases such as Orlando's often? I wish she was in season 3 to see more of this dynamic, but I also think her story ultimately ending with her not being a good fit for ED wouldn't have gone over well, despite the fact the show kinda says so.

Efficiency is really important. One of the most important skills in working in the US healthcare system at this moment is balancing the ability to connect with patients with the ability to see the number of patients needed.

I’ll just share what my experience is because I think it’s a good window into pace of practice that people not in healthcare might not know or understand. My training is in internal medicine and I work in primary care and urgent care at a community health center that takes care of mainly low income patients, the majority of whom are immigrants who do not speak English.

In primary care almost all my patients are elderly, extremely medically and socially complex and require an interpreter. Their visits are 15 minutes long. Think about that. 15 minutes for an 80 year old patient who has numerous health conditions, takes 20 medications, needs an interpreter for the visit, is marginally housed, and is afraid of being deported. That’s a typical visit for me. And I do that again and again, seeing 25 patients per day

I can’t run behind or my patients would wait hours and become angry and I would never go home. On top of that are administrative tasks for my panel of 1500 patients. You have to be efficient. You literally cannot do that job if you’re not committed to learning to be efficient. I have a wonderful friend who is so kind and thorough and she gets paid for 40 hours per week and literally works 80 hours because she spends time outside of work doing administrative tasks. This is unsustainable. This is why inefficiency contributes to burn out.

Now I don’t work in an ED but I do work in an urgent care. One shift I work with the kindest most empathetic doctor. She has Mohan energy with patients. They adore this doctor. And when we work together, in a four hour shift she might see ten patients while I see twenty. Now my coworker is kind and wonderful and doesn’t have Mohan’s attitude towards her colleagues so I don’t mind. But you can see how one doctor’s inefficiency makes a lot more work for the other doctor. It also means I just can’t take time with my patients. I have to have quick visits. I can’t take the extra few minutes to sit with a crying patient. Because in the waiting room people are cursing and threatening out front desk staff. And patients are coming out of their rooms and yelling at nurses about the wait time.

It would be wonderful if the system was built for doctors to spend hours with patients, but that’s not reality. Occasionally it has to happen with a special circumstance. But it can’t be the norm or the system falls apart and everyone suffers.

Geriatrics is a good speciality for slower doctors because you have longer visits and more support staff. But Samira would have to go into EM Geri which is different. She would still work in the ED. Otherwise she would need to redo her whole residency in IM or FM then do a geriatrics fellowship. And as someone who found residency to be some of the most challenging years of my life I cannot imagine choosing to do a second one.

Just figured I’d give some context since a lot of my thoughts on Mohan are shaped by having worked with very slow residents and interns both in the hospital when I was a resident and now when I supervise them. They cause real problems for teammates and patients. And residents are learning and so if they’re working on efficiency that’s great. But Mohan’s self-righteous attitude where she refuses to try to work on this is what gets me.

[otp-after-dark]

The Myth of “Fans Killing Shows”: Here’s the thing I fundamentally disagree with. It wasn’t the fans who “killed the shows.” It was the writers who killed it.

I came across this Tumblr post and here's why people blaming the fans for the writers fatal flaw is just wrong.

And now I'll get to the most unpopular opinion I've ever shared online - fully aware that what I've already said very few people on here would agree with: I don't think it's Rob Thomas who killed the show with his ill-adviced decision, it's the fans who did that. Not that they are not aware of it, but they still refuse to take the blame for it, as if there could not have been any other reaction. And clearly they don't regret it. After they paid to bring Veronica Mars back once before. They collectively decided that season 4 was a crime against the fandom and that it never happened. Therefore making it impossible for anyone who did not feel the same way to get more content and have some closure. I know I don't get to be mad about that, but it is sad. And I've been on the other side of this a few times and stopped watching a show after a certain point, but that never triggered a cancellation. I've seen favorite characters killed off many times without it ever leading to a fandom turning hostile like that, sometimes even ripping everything else apart about the show. And it's not even like Veronica Mars was a cosy show where people didn't die. It was neo noir. It started out with her solving the murder of her best friend ffs. So, how did this happen? How did one character's death kill the show? Was it because he was the main love interest over more than a decade? Why does it now feel like he was more important than the protagonist? Or was it maybe because the fans campaigned for it's return and even funded the movie? Was it because they felt more invested in a way and later betrayed although they did not pay for the last season to get made?

I know this take circulates a lot: “The fans killed Veronica Mars. If they hadn’t reacted so strongly to Season 4, we’d have gotten more.”

But after watching this happen over and over, across shows I love, shows that shaped me, shows that built entirely new corners of fandom culture. I just don’t buy it.

Fans aren’t killing shows. Writers are breaking the emotional contract, torching the narrative spine, and then blaming the audience for the smoke.

And if Veronica Mars were the only example, maybe we could write it off. But this specific heartbreak, this implosion of trust, has now happened on too many shows, in too many fandoms, with too similar a pattern to chalk up to “one overreacting audience.”

It didn’t start with Season 4. It didn’t start with Logan Echolls. And it didn’t end there.

It’s The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s Game of Thrones. It’s The 100. And on and on.

This is a cultural pattern. A breaking point between audiences and creators, and VM is just the case study where people still argue about who struck the match.

The pattern is the same every time: the writers kill the relationship they spent years telling us mattered most.

This is the part critics pretend not to understand.

Fandom doesn’t melt down because a character dies. Characters die constantly in television, and people grieve them, yell about them, move on. They melt down when a character dies in a way that breaks the story’s thesis. Let's take a deeper look:

Veronica Mars: Logan Echolls

Years of storytelling, marketing, PR, revival hype, and arc-building told us:

Logan is Veronica’s person. He’s the love story that grows with her. This relationship is the heart of the show.

Season 4 then kills him in the last 90 seconds as a plot device. Not a turning point, not a thematic evolution, just a twist that contradicts everything the show told us about her healing.

The Handmaid’s Tale: Nick Blaine

Four seasons of narrative work (and two books) told us:

Nick is June’s equal, mirror, moral counterweight, and match. Their love is radical, raw, complicated, feminist, and central.

Then Seasons 5 and 6 decide:

Actually, punish him. Actually, flatten him. Actually, the story is about motherhood, not womanhood or desire. Actually, June belongs with the safe man.

That isn’t a character arc. That’s an ideological pivot.

Game of Thrones: Daenerys Targaryen

Eight seasons told us:

Daenerys is the heart of the myth. She breaks chains. She frees people. She’s the emotional and moral center of the show’s grand design.

The final three episodes say:

Forget that. She snaps because… trauma? lineage? vibes? The woman who liberated millions is actually a tyrant.

A series that built itself on emotional logic ends on plot logic. The single most disorienting pivot a story can make.

When the ending contradicts what the story was, fans don’t feel shocked. They feel gaslit.

Killing the love interest isn’t the issue. Killing the thesis is.

This is the part nobody wants to talk about, because it forces a reckoning with the power and legitimacy of fandom interpretation.

Logan wasn’t just Veronica’s boyfriend. Nick wasn’t just June’s romantic partner. Daenerys wasn’t just another lead.

These characters were:

thematic mirrors

emotional anchors

narrative engines

symbolic structures

the emotional grammar of the show

and the embodiment of the protagonist’s arc

You don’t just rip those out. Not without re-breaking everything around them. It’s like pulling the keystone from a bridge and then blaming drivers for falling into the river.

Why does this keep happening? Because TV writers mistake cynicism for prestige.

This is the actual disease that keeps killing fan-beloved shows:

Prestige = tragedy

Prestige = subversion

Prestige = women alone

Prestige = punishing love

Prestige = nihilism masquerading as maturity

It’s a worldview that sees romance arcs, emotional continuity, loyal love interests, or morally gray partners as “cheap,” “fan service,” or “too soapy.” And because of that mindset, writers keep doing one of two things:

1. They kill the love interest to seem edgy or surprising.

2. They rewrite the protagonist or their partner beyond recognition.

And sometimes both. Either way, the show loses the very thing that made it groundbreaking. The fans didn’t kill Veronica Mars. They mourned what the creator killed first. If a fandom was powerful enough to:

campaign for a return

fund a movie

keep the discourse alive for a decade

pull the show into the 2010s streaming era

…then maybe, just maybe, they had a point about the story’s emotional core.

People didn’t walk away because Logan died. They walked away because his death dismantled the show’s moral vocabulary.

Just like:

People walked away from The Handmaid’s Tale, especially 6x10, because they dismantled the show’s feminist thesis and punished the very arc they built around love, agency, and liberation. (Ahem Hulu's TT because I will be shocked if it's not heading for a similar exit.)

People walked away from Game of Thrones because the finale dismantled eight years of character logic and replaced it with plot convenience.

This isn’t “toxicity.” This is narrative literacy.

Fans understood the assignment better than the people writing the final chapters. The truth is this: fans don’t kill shows. Shows kill themselves when they decide the audience was wrong about what mattered.

And here's the irony that never gets talked about: Writers taught us what mattered.

They built these love stories. They crafted these arcs. They centered these relationships. They marketed these dynamics. They put these characters in promos, posters, finales, interviews, season-long narratives. They told us these bonds mattered.

So when they then turn around and say:

Actually, wrong. Actually, silly of you to care. Actually, this was never the point.

Of course people walk.

It’s not immaturity. It’s not entitlement. It’s not “fandom killing the show.”

It’s the audience refusing to be told that the story they meaningfully engaged with for years was a mistake.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

^ If you cultivate a specific audience for multiple years and then they all abandon your work en masse because of a writing decision in the work then they didn't fuck up, you did. Skill issue. Gaining and losing some audience over time is normal but a mass exodus like this is the result of (borrowing some lingo from Brandon Sanderson) a creator failing to keep their promises.

[koreajew]

jewish + rromani lgbt solidarity!

ok to reblog and use!

[pnkrathian]

@aperturescience

[resplendent-ragamuffin]

@rrojasandribbons