The two most jobless, most friendless, most embarrassing fandom activities one can participate in are shipping discourse and top/bottom discourse.

Having a preference for a ship or a sexual dynamic within a ship is, on its own, perfectly innocuous and ppl need to stop pathologising or intellectualising the stuff they enjoy in fiction. "I like this bc it makes more sense narratively" uuuuuuh no, its actually bc you, personally, find it more interesting, engaging or even hot and you dont need to be ashamed of that.

However, actively engaging with content you do not enjoy bc you feel the need to convince someone the way you enjoy fiction is VASTLY superior is so immature. Literally thats 14 year old behaviour.

"Um, that ship isnt even canon, why do you ship that? *learn joy*" "Um actually both of these characters are canonically straight *cough heteronormativitycough*" "um literally why did you choose this fanon ship over the canon one?" "Um actually my ship is better bc uuhhhhh your ship is actually toxic and everyone who ships it is problematic"

How old are you. Ive seen a rise in ppl badmouthing non-canon ships, which is so odd, like what do you think shipping is??

Similarly, commenting under content that shows a ship is a specific top/bottom dynamic: "so weird how ppl think xy is the bottom, when actually xy canonically tops bc *wildly fanon interpretation of a canon scene*" "uhh actually xy cant top/bottom, xy literally has these physical limitations *names stuff that doesnt actually impact someones ability to do that*" "uhhh xy would never be a top/bottom bc they have this and that personality *literally acting like sexual dynamics are immutable personality traits*" "switches/verses? Never heard of that."

Like even as a joke, its aggravating. The amount of times ive seen ppl comment "um actually jayce would bottom bc viktors pelvis would literally snap" or "um viktor literally cant top bc of his disabilities???" Is mindboggling, like, girls!!!! Youre splitting hairs over fictional porn about fictional dudes! Pull yourselves together! You should not get that worked up over this!!

Yeah, there’s also nothing wrong with saying “this is my personal headcanon and the reasons I have it” but it’s when you’re insisting that your interpretation is right and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong/stupid/etc.

Especially when we’re talking about the theoretical sexual habits of characters who have never had sex onscreen. (Or never had sex with each other)

(And if you’re going to talk about how a character’s disability would affect their ability to perform certain sexual acts I’m going to need you to have done some research because that keeps coming up in ways that border on ableism. Disabled people are very capable of having sex if they want to have sex and there are lots of ways, a lot of them incredibly simple, to accommodate physical limitations in order to allow a disabled person to participate in whatever sex act they want to participate in.)

Every time I see this quote I realize how poor even very smart people are at looking at the long game and at assessing these things in context.

One of my favourite illustrations of this was in a First Aid class. The instructor was a working paramedic. He asked, “Who here knows the stats on CPR? What percentage of people are saved by CPR outside a hospital?”

I happen to know but I’m trying not to be a TOTAL know it all in this class so I wait. And people guess 50% and he says, “Lower,” and 20% and so forth and eventually I sort of half put up my hand and I guess I had The Face because he eventually looked at me and said, “You know, don’t you.”

“My mom’s a doc,” I said. He gave me a “so say it” gesture and I said, “Four to ten percent depending on your sources.”

Everyone else looked surprised and horrified.

And the paramedic said, “We’re gonna talk a bit about some details of those figures* but first I want to talk about just this: when do you do CPR?”

The class dutifully replies: when someone is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse.

“What do we call someone who is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse?”

The class tries to figure out what the trick question is so I jump over the long pause and say, “A corpse.”

“Right,” says the paramedic. “Someone who isn’t breathing and has no heartbeat is dead. So what I’m telling you is that with this technique you have a 4-10% chance of raising the dead.”

So no, artists did not stop the Vietnam War from happening with the sheer Power of Art. The forces driving that military intervention were huge, had generations of momentum and are actually pretty damn complicated.

But if you think the mass rejection of the war was as meaningless as a soufflé - well.

Try sitting here for ten seconds and imagining where we’d be if the entire intellectual and artistic drive of the culture had been FOR the war. If everyone thought it was a GREAT IDEA.

What the whole world would look like.

Four-to-ten percent means that ninety to ninety-six percent of the time - more than nine times out of ten - CPR will do nothing, but that one time you’ll be in the company of someone worshipped as an incarnate god.

If you think the artists and performers attacking and showing up people like Donald Trump is meaningless try imagining a version of the world wherein they weren’t there.

(*if you’re curious: those stats count EVERY reported case of CPR, while the effectiveness of it is extremely time-related. With those who have had continuous CPR from the SECOND they went down, the number is actually above 80%. It drops hugely every 30 seconds from then on. When you count ALL cases you count cases where the person has already been down several minutes but a bystander still starts CPR, which affects the stats)

That Vonnegut quote brings this particular moment to mind:

Yes, it’s just a pie. Yes, the pie itself doesn’t do much direct damage in the grand scheme of things. But the pie is resistance, and resistance inspires resistance. Resistance inspires survival. Throwing pies sometimes starts a movement. Throwing pies sometimes saves lives.

And of course, we haven’t spoken about the inherent morality of throwing pies at oppressors in a world where oppressors have outlawed pie throwing. At the very least, pie throwing is a reminder to the oppressors that no matter how much money they have, no matter how much power they have, there are still some people, some moments they can’t control.

I’d rather go out throwing pies than just rolling over and accepting that pie throwing isn’t going to solve anything. Yeah, the pie throwing doesn’t immediately solve the problem, but it doesn’t have to because it’s just a starting point. So throw the damn pie.

So throw the damn pie

The trend of drawing padawan!Obi-Wan with long hair is such a huge pet peeve of mine.

Embrace the real padawan hairstyle, cowards!

Yeah, it makes sense when people are doing specifically something like however many months into being on the run with Satine or something as people often do because it makes sense that he wouldn’t be maintaining the haircut for multiple reasons. (Although as someone who watched her younger brother grow his hair out from a similar length (minus the little ponytail and braid) I do wish people would commit to giving him awkward “growing out a buzz cut” hair more often.) Like, there are scenarios where he wouldn’t maintain the padawan cut but his hair wouldn’t just magically grow to chin length and have layers. Or to shoulder length.

like to think that after she becomes a princess, Cinderella keeps making little outfits for mice😀 🐀👕👖 

nice

also, agreed re @brain-deadx0’s tags:

What I am understanding is that the Prince’s look is “Why don’t I get a little outfit sewn by my wife🥺”

She’s working on his little outfit! People clothes just take longer! Especially if it’s a surprise and she’s only working on it when he’s not around. The mouse outfits are being made of remnant fabric from cutting the fabric she got for his little outfit. Mouse outfits can be made much faster and fit in her pockets.

My gif-making skills are rusty, but I MADE A THING 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Gotta say Yoda’s whole “the strength of the Jedi is the force” thing sounds a lot like “all things I do through Christ who strengthens me”

Just saying.

They literally say "all things are possible through the Force" at one point. Jedi teachings are just new age Christianity with an emphasis on meditation.

And a light veneer of Lucas’s understanding of Buddhist philosophy. Which is very new age of him, actually.

All in all, Jediism is not a bad religion. It avoids a lot of the traps that others do by following many of the teachings from Eastern countries where it picked up things from Buddhism (as you said) and also I feel Shinto was a big inspiration for understanding the Force. Shintoists believe (as all Animists) that the Earth and plants and animals, all life on Earth has a spirit and those should be treated with respect. When I look at Jediism through this lens I see them honoring the lives around them and even things that were born billions of years ago have that same spirit, that same Force, that binds us all together.

I just find it an interesting topic since many people do list Jediism as their religion and I (as someone interested in religion in general) am interested in how they observe their religion.

Agreed. I cannot help but remember the Christian book rack at my local grocery when I was a teen and Star Wars originally came out. Yep, I'm that old.

But back to the book rack... they had several books equating the Force with the love of God and Christ.

Personally, I agree that how it is shown in the movies is much closer to Shinto than Christianity in that the Force is every where and in every one. You don't pray for forgiveness from the Great Sky Father but instead are responsible for your own actions, good or bad. You live according to your moral code, not the one handed down from a pulpit.

Just my two cents.

I think there’s definitely a blend of concepts, I don’t think the Jedi necessarily map neatly to any one religion.

Hugely curious about the stats of this. I'm testing a theory. Elaborate in the tags if you please.

Please reblog!

So this original poll was posted almost two years ago. I'm interested to see how it changes.

It's been almost 5 years.

Please reblog!

seeing posts like “is anyone with high pattern recognition really anxious right now?”

girl idk how to break it to you but we are at “that’s right, it goes in the square hole” levels of pattern recognition rn

I think if you’re not really anxious right now you either don’t know what’s going on or you’ve achieved some sort of enlightenment that has eliminated all fear and anxiety and I’m not sure I trust that as a concept but also… share.

(Also doing a fake hick voice is gross.)

[In the interest of post length, I'm not including all of the subthreads - you can read this thread starting here if you have a BlueSky login:

]

[Spider's note: yes, she means the House version of the bill, HR 28.]

Usually I provide alternate means, but y'all, call at 2 am if you don't want to talk to a person, but this time, we need you to actually physically call. This one isn't email priority. It's please fucking call your Senators priority. I have been clear about not being alarmist, so let me say that this is one that we need to defeat. If your Senator is already firmly in the "no" camp, like mine, who introduced bills to make Bostock law, encourage them to be loud/louder about their no.

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

Surprise! Tumblr just got turned into an epic fantasy RPG, just like [your favorite appropriate media franchise]. And the Tumblr RPG's plot needs to have all of its characters covered, in roles both large and small.

That means that you are assigned to a stereotypical RPG role inside our new fantasy world. Spin this wheel to find out what you are now doing for a living.

what if the jedi had an actual child protection policy in place

a dream

in part because I grew up in a society with a strong child protection culture, I find the jedi's lacklustre protection of the children in their care - particularly anakin and the padawans during the clone wars - particularly egregious

anyway just imagine palpatine's evil sith plans defeated by bureaucracy

palpatine: I want to meet alone with that 12-year-old boy

mace *internally wtf man*: uh let me check with our liasion

bored jedi SR (sentient resources): do you have your up to date working with children's check?

palpatine: my what

SR: unfortunately you can't see an under-age jedi without a working with childrens' check and the explicit, uncoerced consent of their master.

palpatine: I did not know this existed :) how... sensible :)

[an incident happened 300 years ago]

palpatine completes the beraucracy

SR: alright so you must follow these protocols with anakin -

palpatine: ah forget it I'll corrupt him once he turns eighteen

Yes! Slightly different concept but growing up my church (as part of a denomination wide initiative) had a ton of rules that were part of providing a safe church. And one of them was that any room a child might be alone in with an adult had to have a window in the door and the window couldn’t be covered. So the crèche, the priests office, the choir room, the other office spaces, all had windows. Church employees were also not allowed to drive kids from the church anywhere. (And I might not be fully remembering conditions of any of these rules because I was a kid but this is what I remember)

So the idea of Palpatine, who isn’t even part of the Order and thus hasn’t met whatever standards are hypothetically applied to allowing supervision of children to members, being allowed not only to meet with Anakin as a child but to meet with him privately. To put him in a vehicle. To see him behind closed doors. Seemed wildly negligent.

The choir director of my tiny small town church was not allowed to drive me home from choir rehearsal when I was seventeen because he was a church employee and I was a minor and a member of the congregation but I was supposed to accept that the good guys aren’t wildly negligent for giving the Chancellor of the Republic unsupervised access to a child with enough regularity that by 19 that kid sees the Chancellor as a friend?

And I know that the prequels are roughly my age (Phantom Menace came out the year I was born) and the safe church practices were relatively new (I think they were a response to the major abuse scandal in the Catholic Church) so they’re probably not the kind of thing Lucas was caught up on. But I was very much raised in an environment where despite there being a great deal of safety and trust there were also measures being taken everywhere to ensure that we were as safe as possible.

So, yeah, I’d love to see what some robust child safety measures would have done to Palpatine’s apprentice recruitment scheme.

why do people go around acting like anakin was just an unrepentant asshole to everyone all day every day

like

goes through the script

it's simply not there!

Because people can’t cope with the idea that nice, kind, compassionate people can do evil things.