I Know Everyone On This Website Means Well, But If You Ask Me “which Of These Characters Is Sadder/wetter/doing

the story of tlön —the fictional world created through a series of dictionary entries by a group of random specialists with too much time of their hands, written by Jorge Luis Borges— but make it unhinged, in real time and way sexier

its always these church people, am i right peeps

okay, i just caught up, and may i just say

i never thought i'd hear a more fucked up answer to a love declaration's than fleabag's 'it'll pass', but 'i forgive you' is up there alright

kissing you on the forehead

I don't think that Evangelion works as a series if you don't interpret Kaworu's feelings towards Shinji as love, and as the kind of love that humans share between each other, and Shinji not returning that love.

Kaworu teaches Shinji something very important: that being close to other people hurts you, but it's worth it. Kaworu showed Shinji unconditional love. He was interested in him, invested in him, liked him. Even though Shinji had killed so much of Angel kind. Kaworu loved him at the very end, even when he knew that Shinji had to kill him. Kaworu comforted Shinji even when he was at his mercy, moments from death. For some reason, Kaworu felt that showing Shinji love was important.

Shinji has been used, and hurt by the people around him. By his father, by Asuka, by Misato, even by Rei. But he learned, vitally, from Kaworu, that this doesn't make someone unworthy of love. That it doesn't mean he should give up on humanity, or on himself.

Today's aesthetic: people who are like "this anime could have been good if it weren't for one specific detail that totally ruins it", and then that one specific detail is, like, the thematic foundation of the show's core premise.

journal entry - 8.17.22 

“what is something that is always true?” 

Tumblr users like to build up a lot of myths about this site that still get thrown around like they're fact, but I think the biggest myth they've convinced themselves is true is that the site is unprofitable because of the users.

Tumblr's unprofitable because its model doesn't fly under the current state of internet advertising. It's also had a string of owners, leadership, and people in charge of coming up with ideas for Tumblr that don't know what they have and would be damned if they knew what to do with it. You can't make money on social media unless you collect worthwhile info from users to sell to advertisers. You also don't make money on social media by copying existing features.

Tumblr's core prop, which they has somehow survived Yahoo, Verizon, and now Automattic, is anonymity. You can't sell that information that you don't collect. Outside of that, Tumblr's a long-form blogging platform which flies in the face of short-form attention-grabbing content like Tiktok and Twitter.

The people who have been in charge of making decisions at Tumblr have never known what to do with it. A lot of them just copied other platforms' features. It got really frustrating working there, being forced to make something you knew would just languish for months before being left to rot or, hopefully, mercifully, be removed.

Meanwhile site improvements were neglected because they don't make a quick buck. This was the main reason I quit, because I just gave up on trying to make the place better only to be forced into adding a new feature that no one wants to use.

Case in point, Tumblr live. I can assure you that none of the engineers or the people who run the Staff blog, or anyone else who does actual work work at Tumblr, wanted to support it. It's not even the first time Tumblr had live video.

The thing is, though, I'm not sure that just improving the site without adding anything new would lead to long term success anyways. You need a steady stream of new users to replace the old. It's also incredibly expensive to run a social media site that hosts images and video. AND you have to moderate it, which is expensive and difficult. Even if Tumblr just made all these things better, I'm not convinced it would keep the site alive much longer. Tumblr's too expensive to maintain on this model that doesn't make enough money from advertising, and it's too expensive to be maintained on user donations.

Anyways, the point is, the Tumblr users that like to proudly declare they have the power to make this site lose money are actually helping the site make money by posting and using the site. Even if you have an ad-blocker never pay for merch or whatever, your presence and activity here adds to Tumblr's usership statistics, which they use to court more advertisers. The people who have actually been keeping this site unprofitable are the people who own it and the decision makers who dictate what the next feature will be.

“Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads in Mindhunter season 1 episode 2 (2017) dir. David Fincher

if at first you don't succeed…

Harry: *fishes a pair of pants out of the trash*

His internal monologue: oh you're putting on the Normal Pants? Huh? The pants that make you normal? You like the Normal Pants, normal boy? You bourgeoisie liberal? You Fucking Moralist in your Normal Pants you normal pants wearing pants wearer!

Kim: i trust this man to solve a murder so completely