You Cut Off Women From Dancing, Because Girls Of Good Characters Do Not Indulge In Such Lewd Activities.

Look, I’ll be real, a part me is really glad that this website is going to be somewhat revitalized by the inevitable migration of Twitter refugees post-Elon purchase. Staff has been doing great! Tumblr deserves an active userbase because this website fucks harder than any other social media bar none! It is unequivocally the best social experience online!

But oh my sweet Lord god in heaven help me the existential terror of having Twitter slither in here to promote its normalization of persistent social abuse, its puritanical means-testing of surface level ideological commitment, and its disgustingly narcissistic perpetuation of pervasive cultural pessimism is a genuine nightmare that I am not prepared to deal with.

Like, Tumblr has a such a unique and rare method of social interaction that disincentives the kind of low-effort, low-stakes (until it’s suddenly not) engagement that runs wild on Twitter. Beyond all odds, Tumblr’s culture of artful shitposting mixed with thoughtful consideration has SOMEHOW managed to survive the whitewashing of the internet. We’re a living fossil in a fragile ecosystem. Twitter is an obliterate of any positive subculture; it panders exclusively to the lowest common denominator of online engagement, and then further feeds that into a toxic mentality of enabling the weaponization of internet clout. It’s a race to the bottom where the loser wins. You can’t get clout on Tumblr because engagement has largely been anonymized, and the userbase in general has deliberately fostered a culture of not giving a shit about being popular. Follower counts here do not matter. And that is a good thing – that is something we should want to protect and encourage.

And don’t get me wrong, Tumblr is built on the fundamental lowbrow. We all appreciate being crass, being strange, being ‘unmarketable.’ But this is Shakespearean lowbrow at its core. It’s shitposting painted by Picasso way more often than it is shitposting sold as a fucking NFT. Our reverence for quality stupid actually contributes positively and uniquely to engagement (most of the time), and that feeds into even more positive and unique engagement as users reblog and add their own contributions to the post. Retweeting something will just never have that effect.

I cannot remember the number of dumb, one-off jokes I’ve seen reblogged into beautiful efforts of collective poetry. I’ve seen posts asking if Ezra Pound and T.S Elliot fucked like rabid animals turned into significant contributions of literary analysis for their respective works. I’ve seen the stupidest fucking takes morphed into powerful pieces of social commentary by people who cared enough to contribute their time, their effort to do so: to create something worthwhile. That one post about the value of gold and silver in the post-apocalypse comes to mind. Like, that’s the kind of thing that could never have survived, much less become prominent and valued, on Twitter. It would sink to the bottom there and never resurface: digital echoes that promise something special, something worthwhile, but are fundamentally wasted and buried in the chaotic din of scramblingly awful takes. 

I guess I’m just saying that I don’t want that to happen here. I like Tumblr, and I want Tumblr to prosper, but not at the expense of all the things that make it wonderful in the first place.

Whenever someone makes fun of his outfits, my heart sinks. Be nice to him. He's too sweet for this world. He looked sexy af and exuded joy like a radiant sunbeam of love.

my favorite kind of character is the kind who deep in their soul is constantly screaming LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME and outwardly expressing literally anything else

just the cutest little cutie patootie to ever cutie patootie

jeongin + maknae’s private life intros ✿

I think the most radical thing the hunger games does is tell young people that the most revolutionary thing you can do is have unconditional love for humanity. Katniss throughout the entire series is guided by a deep sense of compassion for the people around her. It is what causes her to volunteer, to bury rue, to mercy kill cato, its why she tries to save peeta, why finnick telling her to remember who the real enemy is works, and even though her compassion for the larger world falters when peeta is kidnapped, it comes back when she visits hospitals and asks for mercy for other victors and ultimately, it is love and belief in a better humanity that makes her kill coin. Through it all, she maintains an unfaltering belief in the fundemental goodness of humanity, which is diametrically opposed to dr gaul's and snow's worldview. Peeta is even more unwaveringly compassionate

So the series tells young people that the most revolutionary thing you can be is compassionate. Let compassion drive your politics. Let yourself believe in the fundemental goodness of people. And i think that's deeply important in a world that touts the superiority of pure reason or logic, to allow yourself to be guided by something as emotional as compassion. Katniss everdeen tells us that your politics should be rooted in compassion in a world that thinks detatchment or cynicism is intelligence and i think thats v cool

Theres something poetic about Kissinger biting the dust during the biggest public pushback against Israel in decades. If you’ve ever looked at the complete mayhem in Middle Eastern politics and wondered ‘hey what’s up with that how did we even get here’, you can probably thank Kissinger. Or the way some Arab countries tend towards either US proxy state or borderline feudalism. Henry Kissinger sabotaged diplomatic relationships in the Middle East for decades to better broker power for the US, by his own admission. He broke the legs of newborn countries for years to better harvest oil from their corpses, and we live in the shadow of his ghoulish foreign policy. Have fun in hell, you bastard.

Rick Riordan’s response to the racism and hatred directed at Leah after she was cast as Annabeth:

“Leah Jeffries is Annabeth Chase”

“This post is specifically for those who have a problem with the casting of Leah Jeffries as Annabeth Chase. It’s a shame such posts need to be written, but they do. First, let me be clear I am speaking here only for myself. These thoughts are mine alone. They do not necessarily reflect or represent the opinions of any part of Disney, the TV show, the production team, or the Jeffries family.

The response to the casting of Leah has been overwhelmingly positive and joyous, as it should be. Leah brings so much energy and enthusiasm to this role, so much of Annabeth’s strength. She will be a role model for new generations of girls who will see in her the kind hero they want to be.

If you have a problem with this casting, however, take it up with me. You have no one else to blame. Whatever else you take from this post, we should be able to agree that bullying and harassing a child online is inexcusably wrong. As strong as Leah is, as much as we have discussed the potential for this kind of reaction and the intense pressure this role will bring, the negative comments she has received online are out of line. They need to stop. Now.

I was quite clear a year ago, when we announced our first open casting, that we would be following Disney’s company policy on nondiscrimination: We are committed to diverse, inclusive casting. For every role, please submit qualified performers, without regard to disability, gender, race and ethnicity, age, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other basis prohibited by law. We did that. The casting process was long, intense, massive and exhaustive.

I have been clear, as the author, that I was looking for the best actors to inhabit and bring to life the personalities of these characters, and that physical appearance was secondary for me. We did that.  We took a year to do this process thoroughly and find the best of the best. This trio is the best. Leah Jeffries is Annabeth Chase.

Some of you have apparently felt offended or exasperated when your objections are called out online as racist. “But I am not racist,” you say. “It is not racist to want an actor who is accurate to the book’s description of the character!”

Let’s examine that statement.

You are upset/disappointed/frustrated/angry because a Black actor has been cast to play a character who was described as white in the books. “She doesn’t look the way I always imagined.”

You either are not aware, or have dismissed, Leah’s years of hard work honing her craft, her talent, her tenacity, her focus, her screen presence. You refuse to believe her selection could have been based on merit. Without having seen her play the part, you have pre-judged her (pre + judge = prejudice) and decided she must have been hired simply to fill a quota or tick a diversity box. And by the way, these criticisms have come from across the political spectrum, right and left.

You have decided that I couldn’t possibly mean what I have always said: That the true nature of the character lies in their personality. You feel I must have been coerced, brainwashed, bribed, threatened, whatever, or I as a white male author never would have chosen a Black actor for the part of this canonically white girl.

You refuse to believe me, the guy who wrote the books and created these characters, when I say that these actors are perfect for the roles because of the talent they bring and the way they used their auditions to expand, improve and electrify the lines they were given. Once you see Leah as Annabeth, she will become exactly the way you imagine Annabeth, assuming you give her that chance, but you refuse to credit that this may be true.

You are judging her appropriateness for this role solely and exclusively on how she looks. She is a Black girl playing someone who was described in the books as white.

Friends, that is racism.

And before you resort to the old kneejerk reaction — “I am not racist!” — let’s examine that statement too.

If I may quote from an excellent recent article in the Boston Globe about Dr. Khama Ennis, who created a program on implicit bias for the Massachusetts Board of Registration for Medicine in Boston: “To say a person doesn’t have bias is to say that person isn’t human. It’s how we navigate the world … based on what we’re taught and our own personal histories.”

Racism/colorism isn’t something we have or don’t have. I have it. You have it. We all do. And not just white people like me. All people. It’s either something we recognize and try to work on, or it’s something we deny. Saying “I am not racist!” is simply declaring that you deny your own biases and refuse to work on them.

The core message of Percy Jackson has always been that difference is strength. There is power in plurality. The things that distinguish us from one another are often our marks of individual greatness. You should never judge someone by how well they fit your preconceived notions. That neurodivergent kid who has failed out of six schools, for instance, may well be the son of Poseidon. Anyone can be a hero.

If you don’t get that, if you’re still upset about the casting of this marvelous trio, then it doesn’t matter how many times you have read the books. You didn’t learn anything from them.

Watch the show or don’t. That’s your call. But this will be an adaptation that I am proud of, and which fully honors the spirit of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, taking the bedtime story I told my son twenty years ago to make him feel better about being neurodivergent, and improving on it so that kids all over the world can continue to see themselves as heroes at Camp Half-Blood.”

(x)

yes babe you’re so bunny a certain hunger my year of rest and relaxation boy parts the pisces gone girl milk fed nightbitch the bell jar the virgin suicides earthlings pizza girl vladimir and ily for it