tumblr users ranting about the death of media literacy and critical thinking vs an anti-vegan post with zero sources

That is all thank you

ANSWERED: Art credit for da first Ren meme goes to @meo-eiru!!

BUT HELPPPPP THESE ARE SO FUNNY JDSGJH T_T The Moth meme + Uno meme had me CACKLING lmaoooooooo

technically this one was finns idea

X

You had a post about Luci and Al and the eyes that i cant find but anyways.

What if more people start to notice that Alastor is constantly under watch, that the 'Excess evil' from dead sinners stare at the deer 24/7?

What if the eyes snap to whoever brings them up around Al, and slowly slide back to him, like their waiting to see how he responds.

What if they twist like they're smiling if Alastor panics?

👀

What yougotta understand is that when you're interacting with blogs from a fictional universe, such as the English Willy saga, ya DON'T GIVE THE GAME AWAY. Don't just TELL THEM all the plot. Don't tell them exactly what's happening!! Don't tell them the important names!! Send asks and such but actually think through, how would a normal person respond to all this? How would a normal Tumblrina respond? The answer is YOU PROBABLY WOULD NOT FIND FUCKING EVERYTHING OUT IMMEDIATELY. The answer would probably be memes and clowning on things! If you wanna allude to things that will happen in the plot, ALLUDE to them. If you know that someone's gonna burn to death, say you hope the stress doesn't cause them to burn out. Please, my Tumblrinas, learn the art of subtlety in writing. You are not the main character in fictional universe blogs. It's okay.

matthew knies, squinting at his phone: johnny, what does P-O-S mean?

john tavares: point of sale.

kniesy, face scrunched: mitchy says auston is such a point of sale…?

jt:

jt: piece of shit. it means piece of shit.

Ted: Okay. Explain quadratic equations to me like I'm 5. Pete: Alright, imagine you have a toy car, and you want to know how far it will go when you push it. A quadratic equation is like a special formula that helps you figure out how far the car will go based on how hard you push it. It's distance=a×(time)2+b×time+c, where a, b, and c are like secret numbers that help us calculate, and time is how long you push the car. Ted: Okay.... explain it like I'm 4. Pete: Okay, imagine you have a big slide, and you want to know how fast a ball will go down the slide. The quadratic equation is like a magical rule that helps us find out exactly how fast the ball will go. It's like having a superpower to know everything about the ball and the slide! So, with the quadratic equation, we can predict how speedy the ball will be when it goes down the slide. Ted: Like I'm 3. Pete: Imagine you have a bouncy ball. The quadratic equation is like a special way to know how high the ball will bounce when you throw it. It's like a bounce prediction formula. Yay for bouncing fun! Ted: Like I'm 2. Pete: Bouncy ball go up. We use special math to know how much up.

On the MegOP fandom trend of saying "Optimus should apologize to Megatron"

(Speaking specifically for IDW1, though it applies to a lot of MegOP especially ones that do continuity soup with heavy reference to IDW1)

I was talking to a friend in DMs and they mentioned a common headcanon/fanfic trope that I also concurred with, and both of us said it's something that bothers us: a common take in the MegOP fandom goes basically along the lines of "If Optimus had just apologized to Megatron, the war would've ended" (or other variants including "if he'd tried harder to understand Megatron/work in collaboration with him").

And firstly, this is incorrect for a number of reasons:

There were attempts at peace negotiations during the war, but they fell through. So Optimus WAS trying to work with Megatron to the point of participating in formal diplomatic meetings.

Optimus tried multiple times on page to convince Megatron to just stop fighting and work with him for peace (Autocracy, Chaos Theory) that Megatron rejected. Given that these on-page examples take place at the start of the war and at the end of the war respectively, it makes sense that Optimus asking Megatron for collaboration is something he was trying/willing to do the entire time. So again, Optimus was always willing AND ATTEMPTING to work with Megatron and find a joint solution

Even before the war when Optimus was still Orion, he was very explicitly inspired by Megatron's writing and names Megatron as one of the people who "opened his eyes" to the wrongs of Cybertronian society. So how is it that people claim "the war went on for too long because Optimus never tried to understand Megatron" when OP literally named Megatron as one of his biggest idols, thus implying that OP does understand Megatron's ideals

But the primary purpose of this post wasn't to defend Optimus, actually. Even though I personally think Optimus did plenty (dare I say, everything) to try to end the war, there are some who may still think otherwise, so instead of arguing about whether Optimus did "enough", or who should apologize to whom, or who "deserves the blame" for starting/continuing the war, I'd actually rather talk about this:

No matter who is most "to blame" for the war, it's my firm belief that neither Megatron nor Optimus would even expect/demand the other to apologize to them at all.

On Megatron's side, he would never seek to judge Optimus negatively for the decisions to the point of saying "you wronged me, apologize." Whether it's evil Megatron who doesn't care about atrocities and revels in an opportunity to expose Optimus as a hypocrite, or post-war/Autobot Megatron who knows that his own evil actions are irredeemable, the idea of Megatron judging Optimus and demanding an apology for the war specifically strikes me as out-of-character. Why would Megatron demand or even want an apology from Optimus when Megatron knows fully well that he has his own sins to bear, he prolonged the war for his own selfish/material gain, and that he is responsible for an untold amount of suffering? Demanding an apology would imply that Megatron sees himself as the wronged party and Optimus as the wrongdoer, but by the end of the war, Megatron is too aware of his own part in the war to ever demand such a thing of Optimus. Even if he DID think that Optimus was "equally to blame" for the war (which he doesn't/wouldn't, btw), Megatron's own feelings of guilt would prevent him from trying to seek the petty satisfaction of the moral high ground or making Optimus beg for his forgiveness.

Additionally, Megatron knows Optimus very well as a person: he knows that the position of leadership is full of "loneliness [and] agonizing self-doubt" for Optimus (Chaos Theory) and that "when Optimus hurts others, he hurts himself" (MTMTE). Another reason that Megatron wouldn't demand nor want an apology from Optimus is because Megatron knows Optimus so well that he already knows that being a war leader fills Optimus with immense guilt and suffering. Given that Megatron knows about Optimus' self-doubt and guilt, why would he even need an apology when he already knows how much Optimus regrets the war and desperately wishes/wished for it to end?

Then, as established in the previous paragraphs, Optimus is too full of guilt for his part in the war (both before it started and in being unable to stop it sooner) to demand an apology from Megatron. Again, demanding an apology would put Optimus in an implied position of moral superiority and/or victimhood, but Optimus doesn't see himself as morally superior or as a victim (or rather, he sees himself as being responsible for these bad things happening and internalizes this as a duty to do better/fix wrongdoings). In other words, Megatron and Optimus both share this view of themselves and each other: Their hands are so dirty, and they both feel such guilt over this, and they know each other well enough to know that the other feels this way as well. Because both of them feel blame for the war and are acutely aware of their own flaws/part in suffering, both of them feel far too responsible for the war happening for them to ever blame their archnemesis for "not trying harder" or "being responsible for the war."

Hell, if you even look at the socio-political climate of Cybertron before the war started, neither Megatron nor Optimus were the ones who put this conflict into motion. The corrupt legacy of the Primes, Functionism, class issues-- all of these things existed before Megatron and Optimus did. Even once they started doing things like writing about social issues (M) or fighting against the Senate (OP), both of them were "underlings" in sense that they weren't leaders:

Megatron's writings may have inspired the Decepticon movement, but that movement existed as an independent entity with its own leaders and speakers long before Megatron became the "official" ruler of the Decepticons. He wasn't even the leader of the 'Cons until he took control of the gladiator arena and the nonviolent sections of the Decepticons were (presumably) subsumed into the underground, exploitative battle culture that Megatron created.

Optimus-as-Orion was a police officer to start, but even once he started going against the Senate, he mainly worked in collaboration with others like Senator Shockwave and Zeta (later Zeta Prime), who he either saw as his idols or who were literally superior to him in rank due to government/military structures.

So with this in mind, even from a social level, while Megatron and Optimus may have been "catalysts" of a sort that caused the war to escalate to an outright planetary/galactic level, the scenario is too complex to solely lay the blame for the war at either of their feet. I'm not confident in saying that Megatron/Optimus would explicitly think of this when talking to each other, but what I'm trying to say is that M/OP were just catalysts in a long chain of brewing tension that exploded into a war. Even if one could claim that one of them "started" or "escalated" the war, the social issues that caused the war and the positions of power that allowed them to become leaders in the first place were falling into place before either of them actually BECAME leaders.

In other words, this shared fate of being the final reaction that exploded a societal conflict into outright war... Megatron and Optimus both have that in common. And because of this, I really don't think either of them would even think to ask the other to apologize because they're both in such similar positions, with such similar feelings of guilt and responsibility, that they understand each other's feelings without words. To demand an apology would be akin to taking that shared vulnerability/guilt and stepping on it, attempting to claim that one is right/superior and the other is wrong/inferior, and that the inferior one needs to grovel and take responsibility for the bad things that happened.

Hello fellow archen enjoyers nice to see u all here. be sure to vote for this Beast over on @bird-pokemon-showdown when they're in the running again

i refuse to interact with this post but if you uncritically put this shit on my dash without commentary i will unfollow you

using pj!aragorn and pj!boromir to argue that the films “respect the source material down to the details” (v rings of power, it’s always v rings of power) is objectively very funny, i have to admit

comment i got on my newt/teresa fic lmaoo

to those who don't get it why i find that amusing: while i appreciate fandom culture around headcanoning a certain sexuality for a character and deriving joy from it, it amuses me that

1) people seem to think a fictional character's sexuality needs to be policed in fanfiction, the medium where fans make up fictional content on fictional characters bc they derive joy from it 2) that people talk of newt being gay as though it was canon, when it in fact was one (1) tweet trashner made for clout, and the newtmas fanbase is the one he's continually trying to milk for money and attention bc that's the only thing he's got left to do for publicity since his publisher dropped him for sexual harassment allegations.

before i hit post, i want to highlight that luckily, this isn't a mentality i've seen around in the maze runner fandom for a long time, or that i feel is rampant. i just have Thoughts TM about this, and getting a comment like that prompted me to spell them out again.

loads of love to the tmr fandom for being one of the loveliest places on the internet. <3

there are days when i believe that i've come to a profound conclusion about the obey me narrative, old or new, and days where i sit myself down and accept that were it not for the piss poor writing then my profoundness would have no basis because everything in obey me can be delved into so deeply but is rarely handled properly.

at the very least, said piss poor writing is the best medicine for a lack of inspiration. i recreate works that rival that of homer and virgil and i witness the birth of other glorious creations that others offer upon the feasting table—and i thoroughly enjoy it (when i am hungry for it...)

matthew knies: wait, what do you mean i commit tax fraud?

john tavares: you were only gonna make like three dollars, it wasn’t worth the trouble!

kniesy: and that’s fraud???

jt, smiling calmly: no, evasion!

Saw a tweet online that was like "they've done good guy Megatron what if they tried writing bad guy Optimus (not SG)" and it made me think

My brother in christ IDW1 is the closest we got to bad guy Optimus (there's literally a chapter called "All Hail Optimus" for fuck's sake) and people lost their fucking minds over it and to this day the fandom barely acknowledges that IDW Optimus exists even though he was just morally gray and not even evil.

People SAY they want morally gray/evil Optimus but they actually don't and it's never going to happen lol. Not only is Hasbro never going to let their precious marketing icon turn evil but the fanbase would fucking hate an evil Optimus and call him OOC and not a real Optimus and replace him with some other version