biromanticdanielsousa

[biromanticdanielsousa]

the ao3 lyric video strikes again

[biromanticdanielsousa]

Reading blog handles really enhances the tumblr experience because you’ll be thinking “that’s an excellent point on a very serious topic” and then you look up and the poster is yourlocalmilfhunter or some obscure fandom reference and it just feels like when you’re out in nature observing the flora and fauna.

[biromanticdanielsousa]

So Is china bad or good?

me asking a random tumblr idiot to summarise complex geopolitical situations in 4 letters or less

[biromanticdanielsousa]

#ok the small child took me way too long to figure out #but im screaming crying suffocating this is so good #these tags are perfect #also hellooooo tumblr #cacw #bucky barnes #mcu

[biromanticdanielsousa]

#oh no #stucky #til the end of the line #mcu #pretty

[biromanticdanielsousa]

— Meggie Royer, Psych Ward Lover | anon request

#this is so freaking good i stared at the first one for several loops my god #edits #bucky barnes #one armed sad trash hobo #mcu

[biromanticdanielsousa]

It’s finally happened.

After almost a decade on this site, I found another Tumblr user in the wild. I stopped to tie my shoe with rainbow laces this morning outside the silversmith at Colonial Williamsburg, and I heard it.

“I like your shoelaces.”

Oh. Oh no.

I responded the only way I could. “Thanks.” And then I reluctantly added, “I stole them from the president…and if that makes sense to you, I’m very sorry.”

The poor man, in full Colonial dress, stared at me for a long moment. And then burst into laughter. And said, “I haven’t thought about that in YEARS and this has never happened to me before.”

Yeah. Me neither. Not until today.

Tumblr rite of passage. Achievement unlocked.

#i like your shoelaces #shoelaces

[biromanticdanielsousa]

Kevin McCarthy losing four five six seven eight ten consecutive Speaker of the House votes (so far) is legitimately one of the funniest things to ever happen. This is 2023's boat stuck in the Suez Canal. Something important has ceased working for the most hilarious possible reason and we are all watching desperate attempts to get it working again while secretly hoping it does not, and I think that's beautiful

#politics #us politics

[biromanticdanielsousa]

Any chance we can stop with calling people cultural Christians? It is not possible to be a cultural Christian on the individual level. Societies can be, but not individuals. An individual either identifies as Christian and believes in at least some parts of the religion or they do not. Denominations of Christianity vary, but if someone is following the tenets of their chosen Christian church, they are Christian. If they identify as Christian but rarely go to church, or ignore the beliefs when it suits them, they are a Christian who is very bad at it. If they're not doing any of that, they just occasionally happen to celebrate societally important festivals because it's fun, everyone else is doing it and no one was using it to try and make them attend church, and Jesus was never mentioned once, they are not Christian. And they're guilty of nothing more than going along with important local traditions which last I checked was just polite.

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...

Uh... nonnie, doing the bare minimum of local traditions while not believing in the thing is what "culturally [religion]" means.

I was raised by a parent who found all organized religion stupid and backward and a parent who actively hates Christianity. I have zero interest in joining the religion. We nonetheless celebrated Christmas as a major holiday and I still do. My family was still all Christian a couple of generations ago.

Sure, I like to make my winter celebrations as un-Christian as possible, and I'm attracted to all the retconning-as-pagan stuff people like to graft onto Christmas now, but realistically, 1. the tree and all that comes out of a Christian context historically (no matter how much people try to make it something else) and 2. I'm contributing to the cultural hegemony of Christmas in the United States.

Am I annoyed to be forever associated with a religion I generally dislike? Sure. But I'm still shaped by the society I'm from.

This is different from using the term for my Jewish friends who helped me decorate the tree but who don't celebrate Christmas on their own or for Japanese people deciding to make Christmas a romance and shopping holiday. That's what joining in because something looks fun looks like.

Saying someone's "culturally Christian" or "culturally Buddhist" or whatever routinely means that they don't identify with that religion. That's kind of the point. If they believed, you'd just call them "Christian" or "Buddhist". No culturally about it.

#imagine telling someone from an oppressed religious minority that it's impolite to celebrate the dominant culture of their oppresors smdh

[biromanticdanielsousa]

In this house we only loosely acknowledge current MCU canon. In my mind it's still around 2014-15. Winter Soldier just came out. We have such high hopes for the in-depth character arcs of our main babes, not to be turned into cash cows milked dry of any soul. The Avengers still all have their own floors in the tower and Bucky is coming to live in as Steeb's emo plus-one.

#every time i see this kind of post I reblog it #this was truly the best year to be in the fandom #best year for fanfic #mcu

[biromanticdanielsousa]

“Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn’t all-encompassing, that wasn’t blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she’d had this kind, she didn’t want the other.”

#the raven cycle #graphics #Maggie Stiefvater #the thing i love about tumblr js coming back once every three months and seeing these gorgeous gorgeous edits

[biromanticdanielsousa]

reblog and put in the tags the first lgbt representation you ever saw on tv/in film

#will and grace #i vividly remember will kissing jack on the al roker show #it must have been a rerun because there's no way I'd remember that from the original airing in *checks notes* February 2000 #but i was definitely still a wee thing #tremendously formative

[biromanticdanielsousa]

[biromanticdanielsousa]

this might be a bold statement but I think one of the best character designs to exist in television is salem saberhagen, a warlock punished for trying to take over the world & forced to live as a cat for a 100 years, who spends his penance being a bitchy little drama queen who causes constant trouble and cries a lot 

#sabrina the teenage witch #i cant believe i forgot this fact #i think about salem a lot tbh #salem saberhagen

[biromanticdanielsousa]

Obsessed with the fact that Science said "we have to be cool, we can't just put our fandoms all over space. But!! If we de-planet Pluto everyone will forget it has a moon and we can just dump all our nerd references there.

#science #charon #pluto #funny things we find when we're procrastinating

[biromanticdanielsousa]

Hey, let's talk about anons like this, because I know some people haven't been in a position to see the patterns these play out in on broader scale and may indeed not spot the trap.

And it is a trap.

An ask like this has several purposes.

First, it uses social justice language in passive aggressive and manipulative ways to try to coerce a behavior. In this case, the desired behavior is usually for the recipent to participate in community shunning and/or harrassment. The language above is intended to put the recipient on the defensive where, in the haste to disassociate themself from the Bad Thing, they quickly disassociate themself from the bad person, often with no particular fact checking or evidence.

The message is also intended to create a sense of being surveilled and judged by an unknown amount of people with unknown amount of social power and an unknown amount of relevance to your life.

Notice that these asks are usually framed as if they are coming from a follower or potential follower, someone who is addressing you personally and who cares about your opinion and who your blog has an effect on. However this is usually.... very much not the case. If you've ever had the misfortune to watch a gossip campaign from like this from the outside, you will very quickly notice that messages like this get sent in mass batches to dozens and dozens of strangers. (You can often turn these up with a tumblr search, if you look.)

The sender does not know you and probably does not follow you. They have a person they don't like (possibly for their stated reason and possibly not), and they are going through the reblogs of a post from that blog and mass messaging *everyone* with a form letter. They will not see your response and they will probably never even see your blog again.

Which brings us to the second goal of whisper campaigns like this:

Notice that I blacked out the names above? That's because when the recipient answers anonymous asks like this, they provide a platform for the opinion on their blog. An anonymous message like this that gets posted doesn't just spread gossip and apply pressure to the recipient, it is spread to the recipient's entire community.

The *goal* is to get access to your community. The *goal* is to use you as a soapbox.

Is the information accurate? Did anyone check? Does the anon have an ulterior social motive? BIG SHRUG

If you go into the comments on one of these whisper campaigns you will see that *most people never bother to check.*

They assume good faith from a follower, they're off balance defending themselves, and they jump straight to conciliation.

It's a really, really effective form of social manipulation, and really really commonly misused.

[biromanticdanielsousa]

#stucky #yes perfect #Jewish bucky #gay jewish bucky