The Final Frontier

User can be found in the wild at AO3 and livejournal.

[demilypyro]

I can fix me

[demilypyro]

Gotta do everything by my fucking self around here

[junglejim4322]

90% of age gaps don’t matter when you’re a grown adult as long as you don’t have a repeated pattern of dating people barely legal. I would date someone 30 years older than me if I liked them who gaf

[junglejim4322]

This entire conversation is somehow 90% people infantilizing themselves and 10% actually people talking about the issue of men who never grow out of dating 18/19 year olds. No it is not a big deal when a 25 year old dates a 35 year old please get a grip

[junglejim4322]

Honestly if you’re in your mid twenties infantilizing yourself on this level maybe you shouldn’t be dating anyone

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

so tired of people thinking taboo stuff in fiction equals taboo stuff in real life and “you’re a bad person if you write about it or enjoy it”. not to mention how harmful it is to reduce the severity of these things in real life by watering them down to dark fiction, my dude, humans have always enjoyed fiction that is taboo. otherwise there would be no horror movies or slasher movies or movies about wars and murders or any kind of media that wasn’t rainbow and sunshine.

just because you are personally uncomfortable with taboo stuff in fiction doesn’t mean your personal feelings are universal and it certainly doesn’t mean you get a free pass to harass others.

I’ve been into non-con fantasy ever since I was younger than 10 years old! I love reading and writing non-con fics, and I’ve been reading and writing them for almost a decade now. and guess what, I will never condone it in real life. nobody in real life is ever affected by the fictional things I enjoy, because it’s fiction and I am mature enough to separate it from reality. actually, even when I was younger than 10, I always knew that this thing I enjoyed was bad in real life. if a seven year old me could separate fiction from reality, you as an adult should be able to do it too — unless you’re deeply troubled, and in that case you need professional help.

no, you’re not morally better than anyone just because you don’t enjoy certain topics in fiction. you’re a bully if you think you can harass real people over fiction.

put your anger and energy on people who harm others in real life, instead of harassing innocent people for having thoughtcrimes.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[cowthropologist]

Do I actually want to write this fanfic or do I just want to wallow in the delicious daydream like a pig in the mud?

[thebitchywitchyone]

Unfortunately I wish for others to wallow in my magnificent mud pit

[yaketysmax]

thank you for the magnificent mud pits, fanfic writers

[userautumn]

i love fics that feel so... grown. fics about adults that were written by adults who have years of life experience under their belts who pour that into their writing. fics where you can tell this is a person who has lived through a marriage or a divorce or a child or children or parent death or any number of Huge Life Events because the way they write with an emphasis on the highs and lows of the human experience rather than an emphasis on tropes (not throwing shade) is just so. oh man, it's just so fucking good. if my blorbos are grown men, grown women, grown people, i love it when they feel like grown people, not just extensions of the (young) author's imagination. (still not throwing shade). you know?

[rob-pattinson]

THE GREEN KNIGHT 2021 | dir. David Lowery

[romanceyourdemons]

whenever i look into a historical monarch who doesn’t get talked about much and is just kind of a blank spot in my understanding of the historical narrative, 95% of the time what i find is pure white hot blistering capability. a pencil pusher for the ages. a 39 year reign with no more than three hours of sleep a night. there aren’t any good stories from his reign because he systematically caught and stopped all catastrophic good stories before they could start. you shrimply must respect it

[headspace-hotel]

idea: scene with two characters eagerly stripping each other clearly about to bone, but they keep getting interrupted by finding carefully concealed weapons in each other’s clothing, so they keep just unholstering, revealing and unstrapping increasingly ludicrous amounts of hidden guns and knives as the clothes come off, and it’s lowkey killing the mood a little

[findingfeather]

Alternatively: it's not killing the mood at all but it's totally making both of them giggle like they're twelve and possibly get lowkey competitive in a subconscious way about who has the most to drop.

[beyondthisdarkhouse]

The more that I think of it the more I'm seeing the incredible intimacy of letting someone know where you keep your backup knife.

Like my god, the trust involved in letting someone undress you and learn your secrets instead of popping into the bathroom to change where they can't see and hiding all your weapons under the sink

[headspace-hotel]

...Oh

[brainsforbabyjesus]

second alternative: you go to hide all your weapons under the sink but there’s already a bunch of weapons hidden underneath the sink.

awkward

[tyrannosaurus-trainwreck]

It’s not that there’s already a bunch of weapons hidden underneath the sink that makes it awkward so much as that there’s so many weapons hidden underneath the sink that they fall out of the cabinet with the unmistakable sound of a knife-alanche, and then the other person comes in like “I can explain!” and you’re just dead-ass standing there with your own armload of weapons like “I can also explain.”

[fenrislorsrai]

Married version is shoving your hand in your partner’s clothes when you’re out of weapons because you KNOW where their spare is.  Or wearing a weapon in a spot you can’t draw from yourself because its now spare storage for your spouse’s weapons.

[justlookatthosesausages]

Every single one of you is a genius

[doyoulovethewayzeylily]

if you're really chill about a lot of stuff, you will eventually become The Person Who Can Be Told Things and unlock a secret extra layer of knowledge about your friends

[copperbadge]

This also makes you a subconscious magnet for the one or two Really Kinky people at (non kink) parties. Whether this is a perk or a drawback is up to you.

[idlelizard]

twisting and bitturning

[dragon-in-a-fez]

personally I'm annoyed by the socioeconomic conditions that made words like "unalive" necessary but simultaneously impressed by the linguistic adaptations young people have made to continue talking about important things while subject to those conditions and I think if you can't hold both of those thoughts in your head you might just be old man yelling at cloud

[a-wild-embubble]

Two of my niblings (10 and 7) self-censor like this in real life during actual conversations. I tried briefly to explain to the 10-year-old that they didn't have to do that in real life after they said "unalive" out loud in casual conversation, and they just said they preferred to. On the one hand, I'm sad to see them unconsciously and fully without awareness succumbing to the panopticon. On the other... this post.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

it's not unprecedented in the evolution of languages to see euphemisms adopted as synonyms or even supplanting earlier terms. lots of people say "passed away" even in situations where there would be no particular social cost to saying "died".

for a particularly strong version of this kind of replacement: the word "bear" comes from a proto-Germanic word meaning "brown one" because there was a taboo against saying the animal's actual name. the taboo is gone but it was so strong in the past that we have no record of what the proto-Germanic word for "bear" even was.

maybe in 300 years the word "die" will be archaic and kids will dig it out of an etymology textbook and start using it because "unalive" is getting censored.

[luggifer4]

die has actually already undergone this process. die originally meant "flow" (i guess it's like you're flowing out of life or something? or maybe your life is flowing out of you idk). it was (probably) loaned from old norse to displace the now obsolete "swelt". and yes, that is the root word of "sweltering"

[dragon-in-a-fez]

[msilverstar]

That's the most hopeful spin on euphemisms like 'unalive' that I've ever read, makes them so much less annoying.

[starberry-cupcake]

after the current ep of snw, I've got to ask: which of these multi-series star trek teams would you like to see in survival mode on a dinosaur-filled planet?

b'elanna torres, kira nerys, deanna troi & una chin riley

spock, garak, neelix & q

the doctor, odo, data & erica ortegas

jett reno, leonard mccoy, seven of nine & quark

jim kirk, kathryn janeway, brad boimler & jadzia dax

t'pol, christine chapel, beckett mariner & julian bashir

hikaru sulu, benjamin sisko, la'an noonien singh & sylvia tilly

pavel chekov, nog, jean luc picard & michael burnham

miles o'brien, nyota uhura, beverly crusher & harry kim

worf, saru, tom paris & jay-den kraag

montgomery scott, william riker, chakotay & christopher pike

geordi la forge, rom, raffi musiker & philippa georgiou

Remaining time: 2 days 21 hours

[eleilinnrallin]

This is a reminder for those who handmake Christmas presents that now is not too early to start. It may in fact be a good time to start if you have a lot to make/your craft takes a long time. You should maybe start it now, whether that's brainstorming or actually doing the crafts!

[newtsoftheworldunite]

Translating this into tumblr's preferred public service announcement format for this kind of alert:

[kimberlychapman]

Or this preferred Tumblr announcement system:

[unforth]

It's 6 am and I'm having half-baked thoughts about Amazon and GenAI.

Cause like the things research is showing about how GenAI is that it makes people dumber. It causes people to rely on the LLM to do things they never had trouble doing themselves before, like making a shopping list or writing an email.

And I'm thinking about how, on a massive scale, using Amazon has done the same to people, and how the things people say when you suggest they use a different website are similar to the things people say once GenAI has infiltrated their brain.

"Where else will I buy [thing]?" Where did you buy it before Amazon? Have you tried doing a websearch for "place that sells [thing]" and checking out the results?

"What if those websearch places produce a scam?" What if Amazon produces a scam? How do you know that third-party seller isn't selling counterfeit or knock-off goods? There are review sites with lots of info on the new website you're considering! "Reviews of [website]" is the ticket. If you don't find many or any reviews, yeah, that's sketch, try another. Keep going til you get one that looks legit, and bam, new supplier. Or, you can ask your friends and internet circle! They may know a legit source for [thing]!

"It's just so easy to do on Amazon, everything is in one place." Yes, it's more annoying to have to shop other/multiple websites. Either accept that it'll be slightly more work or keep supporting the evil megalocorp I guess?

"It's cheaper on Amazon, and there's free shipping." It's cheaper on Amazon because they're paying less to the people who actually make things. Lots of places over free shipping. Lots of places don't deliberately undercut all the competitors to drive them out of business. I know for many people a couple dollars is a huge difference but I also know for many people it's not. If you really have no choice this post isn't about you anyway. Most people *do* have a choice, and a lot of excuses about why they don't bother exercising that choice.

I could keep going but meh. My point is, I feel like there are parallels of some kind here, or maybe that's just the "just woke up" brain misfiring about correlation (not causation). Just I feel like so many people are ceding their thinking to GenAi, and likewise so many people have ceded their choices to Amazon, and once they've opted into the "simplifying" system of GenAI and Amazon, it appears to feel nigh insurmountable for many folks to switch back to doing things the slightly more complicated way. It's this feeling of "I hate this but I'm helpless to change." And I get it! I used to rely on Amazon. When I'm in a hurry and need something weird or specific (my kid is into x random obscure thing and I need cake toppers for their birthday gets me every damn time, I can*not* figure out a source for custom printed fandom-specific decorations other than Amazon, and I've tried damn it) I also go to Amazon. I've failed to completely cut them out, but I've succeed at greatly reducing my use by just... oh, I need Avery labels? I can go straight to Avery. Oh, I need a specific envelope size? Wow, envelopes.com sure has a fuckton of envelopes. Oh, I need xyz? The company that makes x has their own website I can buy direct from, there's a clearing house for y type thing with a lot of good reviews, there's a local store with z or something similar enough I can just go there. It is a little more work for me! But Amazon is taking a bulldozer to entire industries and Jeff Bezos is a billionaire piece of shit and its worth a little more work to me to reduce my reliance on that.

Idk. Posts like this always draw out "I'm too poor to switch" or "I'm too disabled to go out and I need a place where I can buy everything" or "where I live is too isolated and has too little store diversity for me to find what I need anywhere else" or whatnot. I'm not trying to be classist or ableist or whatever. I know there are gonna be people - the money the save does matter materially for their lives, their illnesses mean even the little bit of extra work is more spoons than they can spare, etc. Fine, this post isn't about you.

Everyone else: Tumblr is the anti-Ai social media. You won't outsource your thinking to a chatbot. why are you outsourcing your thinking to fuckin Amazon?

[caffedorzo]

spin the wheel to be assigned a mysterious source of income - who will grant you 10k usd every month without fail!!

will you take the money?

yes

no

bald / nuance

Remaining time: 9 hours 38 minutes

[yesornopolls]

Allo-romantics, could you imagine living the rest of your life without a romantic partner or relationship happily/fully?

yes/no/see results

Allo-romantics, could you imagine living the rest of your life without a romantic partner or relationship happily/fully?

Yes

No

See results

Remaining time: 3 days 8 hours

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

Cnetizens: Why the thousand-year-old stone statues at the Northern Song Mausoleums aren’t covered with glass enclosures.

The director of the Cultural Relics Bureau replies: "They’ve stood here largely intact for over a millennium. Why add extra barriers?"

Visitors worry wind, rain and sunlight in the farmland will wear them down. The director explains:

Glass covers speed up decay—it’s like locking the statues in a sauna. Trapped heat and moisture create sharp temperature shifts. Salt crystals inside the stone expand and crack the carvings far faster than open-air exposure.

These statues blend naturally with the farmland landscape. Glass barriers would destroy the sense of scale and historical atmosphere.

When first built, the mausoleum complex was a restricted royal compound ringed by walls, palaces and pine trees—no farmland at all. After the Song fell, protection systems collapsed. Wars and weather destroyed buildings. Local residents gradually dismantled the abandoned structures, reusing timber and bricks in nearby villages.

By the Ming and Qing dynasties, villagers turned the empty grounds into farmland, leaving stone figures scattered amid crops.

Few people damaged the statues for three reasons: each weighs several tons and is impossible to move; folk belief held that anyone who damaged the guardian statues would be cursed with misfortune; every later dynasty passed laws punishing those who vandalized former imperial mausoleums.

Once an exclusive imperial burial ground, now ordinary farmland—this shift tells the story of history. Glass covers would only be unnecessary. As an old Chinese poem puts it: 旧时王谢堂前燕，飞入寻常百姓家

The swallows that were wont to grace the halls of Wang and Xie, Now seek the humble roofs of common men.

(cr 大鹅呀eyaeyaeya，陈帆fotochen，摄色📸，腾腾兔兔🐰)