If you want to boost your emotional health then build the following into your life:
1. Develop a good group of friends. If possible, try to have quite a wide group of friends. That then means if someone moves away, or you change your school, your hobbies and so on, you’ll still a healthy support system in place.
2. Learn to appreciate solitude. Isolation isn’t the same as solitude. Isolation is being cut off from others for negative reasons; solitude is enjoying space and time for yourself – so you can recharge your batteries, and enjoy just being “you”.
3. Invest time in getting fit. People who are fit and healthy generally feel better about themselves. Also, exercise releases feel good hormones so we feel happier, more optimistic and relaxed.
4. Allow yourself to goof off and have a laugh as too much work will drain your energy.
5. Discover your passion and invest time in that. We all have something that brings us alive, and seems to resonate with who we are inside. So investing in your passion is extremely satisfying.
6. Plan for difficulties and problems. We all encounter problems and hard times in this life. Expecting that to happen helps us feel more in control - as we understand it’s normal, and we don’t just fall apart.
7. Work on increasing your self-awareness. As above, we all have blind spots and idiosyncrasies. If we can learn about ourselves and our natural tendencies, we can learn to master weaknesses, and work to change and grow.
8. Be willing to take risks. Though it’s hard to step out into unknown territory, yo will find it’s more rewarding to stretch yourself and grow.
9. Watch out for energy vampires. There are plenty of people who will drain your energy so learn to say “no”, and to set some boundaries.
10. Ask for help when you need it. We all need support and encouragement at times … And offer help to others when things are tough for them.
Marvel League - Team Cap vs Team Iron Man - (2021)
Vintage baseball trading cards inspired by the legendary 2016 “Team Cap Vs Team Iron Man” fight (and also by the latest campaign of a famous US clothing brand ^^). Note: I chose the numbers on the shirts at random, except for some characters: it’s their birthday.
Marvel League - Team Cap vs Team Iron Man - (2021)
Vintage
baseball trading cards inspired by the legendary 2016 “Team Cap Vs Team
Iron Man” fight (and also by the latest campaign of a famous US
clothing brand ^^)
Note: I chose the numbers on the shirts at random, except for some characters: it’s their birthday.
First photo: Screenshot of text in an iOS Notes app that reads “i don’t know anymore, man. i genuinely do not know how to argue empathy at someone. i don’t want concertgoers and schoolchildren to be routinely slaughtered in hailstorms of bullets. you don’t care. i don’t want some kid’s first memory to be that of a jackbooted deportation force kicking down their door and ripping their father away from them. you don’t care. i don’t want a mother to bury her child solely because she couldn’t swing 600$ for a two-pack of epipens. you don’t care. every day you wake up and deflect, but-what-about, twist, bend, contort, and echo whatever vile, clubfooted rationalization keeps you from having to admit that you’re, not just complicit in, but in fact actively facilitating this nightmare of a reality so many people are experiencing. i care about other people. you do not. it’s as simple as that. take your thoughts and prayers and shove them up your ass.”
Second photo: Screenshot that reads “I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People”
just to be clear, the fact that music was nominated for a golden globe is absolutely disgusting. every single (adult) involved in that gross, ableist movie should be sickened by themselves.
for those of you who don’t know, music (2021) is a movie being directed by sia about a nonverable autistic girl. not only does it not include any actually autistic people in the movie itself but it also only took advice from autism speaks which is looked at as a hate group by the majority of the autistic community. leaked scenes have also shown the movie glorifying prone restraints which are incredibly dangerous and have resulted in major injuries and even death to disabled people as recently as last year.
autistic people just like me have been incredibly outspoken about how harmful this movie is but the allistic have been mostly silent. we are already seeing reviews calling this movie ‘inspiring’ and important’ and it’s absolutely horrific! we need your help calling this out. please stand with us and call out this disgusting display of disrespect to autistic folks.
💛 - your local actually autistic pal
p.s. please, please reblog if you aren’t autistic.
Y'all are fuckin idiots man. That shit is not normal. No other vaccine causes this bullshit.
i don’t think you’ve ever actually gotten a vaccine before if you think that
Hurt less than tetanus and way less than anthrax
Had covid in late December, got my first shot in mid March, my arm hurt like hell but way less than my last flu shot, It’s normal. I’m sure I’m gonna get sick when I get my second shot Sunday, which is also normal. Stop listening to fake shit on the internet and get your God damn vaccine you selfish idiots.
Yknow what while I’m here I know we as a website agreed to oppress the business majors but all the bullshit that comes around every April over ao3’s business practices makes me think we should’ve kept at least one to explain to people how nonprofits, despite their name, still need money to function and do not in fact run on rainbows and dreams alone
Woo! It’s a good thing y’all didnt oppress accounting majors because we understand this stuff better than business majors. (We were around before capitalism and we’re already set up for after capitalism.)
First things first - I dont regularly use or donate to AO3 but I have made an account to see what the fuss was about. Fanfiction just isnt my thing but I see why people like it.
That being said, AO3 has no employees. All work is volunteer based. ABSOLUTELY ZERO people are making money from this site. (Outside of contractors and professionals who are vendors and not affiliated with AO3.)
I’m going to break down the 2019 Audited Financials because that’s the most recent. And compare them to the budget and notes:
The auditor’s opinion is “unmodified.” That means these are as accurate as they get.
Their assets: $1.3M in cash. $197k in the value of the servers. (That’s the price they bought the servers minus depreciation. Depreciation is a tool we use to slowly devalue fixed assets over time. Without it, companies would recognize huge losses at year end when they sell old assets. That’s not reliable information when you’re trying to analyze the financials.) Why would a non-profit need a million dollars in cash? Partly to fund the next year’s work - it looks like they’re trying to bring on new servers which can cost upwards of $400k each time. They also have a history of protecting fans from people like Anne Rice who wants to sue them into debt and oblivion. We’ll talk about the legal stuff later. But in the case they would lose an expensive case, they need funds on hand to pay that out.
Revenues - this is the money in. They received $733k in donations and the like. Their expenses are about 37% of these. Which tells me, they are focused on managing their cash balance, and doing well. Again. No organization would survive if they had no cash at year end.
You might see the “In-Kind Revenue” and not know what that means. $190k is a big amount. But if you look at their expense statement on page (4) you’ll see “In-Kind Expenses” for the same $190k. In-kind means services in kind of cash. Or services instead of cash. So they had $190k of pro-bono (donated) legal work in 2019. They mention it in the budget and later in the audit footnotes. There are other “professional fees” for about $28k. That’s also legal/audit work but they had to pay cash for. It wasn’t donated.
Cash expenses:
Server fees = $79k (these are higher than 2018 because they installed a new server.)
Transaction fees = $27k (these are charges from your banks/credit cards/paypal to process donations. They are roughly 3% of donations which is about correct.)
Contractor fees = $15k (the budget noted they paid for a security test - this is actually a pretty low cost for something like this.)
Supplies = $14k (I couldn’t find notes on this but it’s similar to 2018, so it’s probably just normal business things.)
Postage = $12k (This is high compared to 2018, but I hazard a guess it’s related to sending out promotional items for donations.)
Advertising = $10k (looks like a new cost this year, but is related to fundraising efforts. And might be related to those promo items.)
Other non-cash expenses:
In-kind = $190k (those donated lawyer fees we talked about earlier.)
Depreciation = $74k (again this is an accounting process that every company with fixed assets does.)
The cash flows statement just confirms which expenses were and weren’t cash. And it shows us that they have $1.3M available for the next year. Glancing at the 2020 budget they planned on spending a third of that to upgrade servers. And they have another $400k budgeted for 2021. Honestly to me, the cash looks low considering some years (2018 in particular,) their legal work was valued at half a million. There is a risk that they would have to pay that amount out of pocket the same year they plan to bring on a new server upgrade.
So all in all, if you want to donate to AO3, this looks like a reliable organization to donate to. There is no evidence in the financials that they don’t deserve the donations. (And if you do donate, remember it is a tax credit!) I also don’t see any verifiable reasons not to donate. If you have other places you would rather place your donation, that’s fine! Do that! But there doesn’t seem to be a reason to campaign against their fundraising efforts.
This is a really neat breakdown! And it’s explained so that idiots like me who don’t know how stuff works can understand!
Fuck the ending, or how the writers betrayed their own story: an angry meta
I would like to preface that meta by saying that I haven’t been able to stop crying for hours. I’m grieving.
I discovered SPN when I was seventeen and I thought my life was destroyed. I had lost faith in myself and in the world. This show pulled me up. Seeing Sam, Dean, and Cas struggle with self-loathing, faith, bad decisions, sins, fatality, doubt, anger and trauma helped me with these very problems. This ending is a f*cking tragedy for me. Seeing these characters regress, and fall into even deeper misery than before… or being relegated as unimportant characters… is a personal insult to all of us who related to their problems.
I am not only talking about Destiel, I want you to know that. And even if you’re a Wincest or a bronly and you’re happy because you got what you desired (good for you, guys, at least some of us enjoy the ending!)… the writers betrayed you.
I am a literature student, and from a literature/story POV, this ending is BAD. This meta will tell you why.
If you don’t want to read it because you’re already depressed enough – it’s okay. I love you and I respect your grief. My point is that the writers (except for Bobo and, surprisingly enough, Bucklemming – 2020 truly is the Apocalypse world) destroyed the story they were trying to say.
——
The theme of the last season: Death of the Author.
The theme of this season was the Death of the Author. Here is what I wrote about ‘Inherit the Earth’ in a meta about 15x19:
This episode was absolutely Death of the Author. Now, contrary to what you may think, it never meant “the writer is dead/needs to be killed.” Chuck never needed to be killed, he needed to be rendered powerless and to be deprived of having any power over the story – his death is metaphorical. According to Roland Barthes, who coined the term and invented the concept, the writer and the story are unrelated. Looking in the writer’s life to understand the story is meaningless because the story exists outside of the writer’s control. A writer exercising authority on his work is bad (retconning is bad, for instance. Looking at you, JKR.) Authorship doesn’t mean authority. In other words, the story always escapes its writer to stand on its own: it escapes the writer’s tyranny, it’s the natural order of things. In fact, the story belongs to itself, but also to its readers: each reader will interpret it differently, meaning that a story never has one, definite single meaning.
And what did that mean for SPN as a story?
The story exists for itself, and this is what allows the series to end: in a very meta way, the writers relinquish any form of control they have over the story, and they let it live. It doesn’t just mean that they let the characters go and live their own lives, it also mean that they let us, the audience, choose the story’s legacy (see the title: “Inherit the Earth.” The characters inherit their own story, but we inherit it too.) It is a big acknowledgement that we made the story. We made it live. They joked about it, for example in the 200th episode, or “The French Mistake,” or all the references to the fandom and fanfiction etc. Whether they like what we do with the story or not, it is ours now. Soon, there’ll be no more writers toinflict pain on our favorite characters only for the sake of the story. In-story, the Author is dead (as in, he still exists, but he has no control) and the characters are free, Fate doesn’t exist anymore; out of story, the series ends, and we are free to interpret it, to play with it, to write about it, to look at it any way we want.
Basically, the story was supposed to do two things.
The first was releasing Dean, Sam and Cas (and all of Earth) from fate, by metaphorically letting them free and letting them decide. It was the climax of the Free Will arc that lasted the whole story. The boys have always fought against the roles that were assigned to them, be it being a hunter in the family business, or an angel serving God, or being the vessels to two Archangels, or even fighting against the pre-planned end of humanity. Story-wise, that meant killing God; and as God/Chuck is the avatar for the writers (cruel writers, who always inflict more pain and misery for shock’s sake), this means relinquishing authorial control over the story and letting it go. This is why God was supposed to be the Final Boss.
The second thing was giving the story to the fans. Becky was in this season for a reason: she was the one who denounced this kind of story and got what Sam, Dean and Cas really wanted and needed. This show was so meta, and its final message was that the story was ours in the end.
… they did everything but the two things their own story required of them.
Their final ending, as many people noticed, was Chuck’s ending: no one even mentions Cas… the climax is stale… and it ends with the two brothers’ grave, basically. This was the cover Chuck wanted for the book. In the end, then, the ending was still what Chuck, the villain, wanted. In other words, the villain won. Why killing him, then? It achieved no purpose whatsoever. They are free, but at what price?
In fact, it gets worse than that. Because chances are that Chuck’s ending was more satisfying. When Chuck was in power, we got better stories.
And what message is that, when the show and its final arc were all about Free Will? In the end, servitude made you happier than freedom.
I get that some people liked the ending because the two heroes were finally normal people, who could die on a hunt like normal people. No more plot armour. But this betrays the very story they were trying to tell: that Free Will was the way humanity could achieve happiness.
The second thing is that as I said this season was explicitly about giving the show and its legacy to the fans. This was supposed to mean an open ending. Maybe it will end in ragedy or maybe it will be a happily ever after, we don’t know, the story is over and it is the characters and the fans who will write it now. But now. They closed the story in the most definitive way: death. And after life. the canon is that the story ends in death. Whatever we will write now is fiction. The show TOLD US that our interpretation of the story was all that mattered and all that made the story true. That’s what Death of the Author is about. And in the last moment, they said ‘no! You have no power over the story. We have.’
This is the writers’s revenge. Seriously. I’m not kidding, pals. In the end of ends, when nothing can happen anymore, they wanted the last word. They really said, ‘you thought you could control the story? You thought you could tell us what to do? Well, no. We decide. You’re the ones who wanted Cas back? In the end, it will be as if he never existed. You, Misha and Destiel fans, you wanted canon Destiel? Well you’ll have it… on our terms. Becky, you said you wanted the boys to do normal things like laundry? You’ll have laundry and domesticity at the beginning of the episode and then fuck you. WE are in control, not you.’
I am getting very tired of writers trying to control their own story to the extent that they make it nonsensical, terrible, and insulting to the fans. (Looking at you once again, JKR.)
Character arcs????
WHERE ARE THEY?
What happened to character development? Apparently it died with Chuck. (Oh, no, wai, Chuck is still alive.)
(… WHAT THE FUCK. Chuck is still alive. Chuck gets to live but Dean dies and Sam is unhappy? WTF.)
What happened to Sam’s plot of leading hunters? It had been a prominent point throughout the past two or three seasons. But no. Sam leaves the Bunker, and… I don’t know. His getting a house, a wife and a son seems to suggest that he gave up hunting. Young Dean’s tattoo suggests that he taught his son how to hunt, thus doing what he swore never to become and exposing his kid to a life of trauma, depression, and potential death. This is not Sam. Or if this is Sam, this is a Sam who has regressed.
And Dean? What happened to Dean’s plots? All the emphasis put into opening his heart, using his words, being honest with himself, letting go of toxic masculinity, accepting what he wants (not speaking only about his bisexuality)? What happened to his needing to let go of his anger? What happened to his increasing want for domesticity and normal, with the dog and his nesting in the Bunker and his questions about settling down? (And I’m pretty sure the official-looking papers on his desk were for something like buying a house…) All that got thrown under the bus.
Dean died, and he never even get to explore his potential, to explore what he wanted to ‘experience differently.’ So what if the writers tell us that he is happy because he is in Heaven? There is no bigger tragedy than never getting to get a good life, never getting to explore yourself. There is a reason why young people’s deaths are so tragic.
And in spite of Jack’s ameliorations, Heaven is still stuck in an eternal moment. There is no place for growth or self-exploration or anything. This is a static ending.
And not only did they give us an ending that deprives the characters of any personal growth and development, they also cancelled all development of fifteen years.
The Sam and Dean of the end are the Sam and Dean from before the show even began. If Dean had died before season one? Same result. Dean goes to Heaven, finds ‘peace’ or whatever with Baby and Bobby. Sam is miserable, finds a wife (Jess or anoher, at this point it doesn’t even matter), has a son, dies and joins Dean in Heaven. The end. Call-backs to the origins are good. Here, the problem is that this isn’t a call-back, it’s a regression.
Dean dies on a hunt begun by their father. He’s still ‘Daddy’s Blunt Instrument.’
Sam finds a normal-enough looking life, but doesn’t get over his own trauma.
And Cas? Cas is back where he began too. He is in Heaven and he doesn’t’ leave it. He has no contact with humanity, notwithstanding the fact that his arc was entirely about getting close to and helping humanity. He still obeys God. Oh, granted, this is Jack, not Chuck. And he advises God, now. It is marginally better. But he is still a loyal servant of God who… doesn’t even bother checking on Sam and Dean even in Heaven.
What it comes down to is that the characters have fallen back into the cycle of abuse. 15x19 was heavy about that cycle: Michael and Lucifer come back and they are still prisoners of that cycle, they cannot break it, and it kills them. And in the end, Sam, Dean and Castiel fall back into it too.
Consistency and continuity, were art thou?
This ep makes no sense with what happened before.
In 15x19 Dean finally understood that he didnt want to be a killer. And neither did Sam. In the series finale… they go on a hunt???
I mean. I could understand it if they had difficulty getting out of the hunting life. But if this is the case it was never tackled in the episode.
Everything that happened with God goes unmentioned. You would believe they would address their newfound freedom. Their projects. Their doubts about having been manipulated. But no.
Their behaviour is completely OOC too. In 19 Dean is desperate to have Cas back. Now two weeks later he is chill with Cas being gone? Not even sad a little? Inconsistent.
What happened to their feeling of ‘Running on empty’ from the precious ep? Now they seem… okay.
Also the pie festival scene made no sense. Why is it here? What does it bring?
And what is the deal with Eileen? She lives in a limbo. Sam never mentions missing her, so she must be his wife. But his wife is unnamed. I can understand it if the crew couldnt have her on set because of Covid regulations, but they could have found a way to name her. Have Sam or even Dean mention a date with her. Show wedding invitations. Something. If this isnt her then how come Jack didnt bring her back?
Cas comes back but wont go and see the man he was in love with? Absurd. Cas saved his life but will accept his death two days later? Ridiculous.
And all those loose ends. The Empty is supposedly awakeand changed. What happens To it? If there is still a cosmic entity left it has to be bad for humanity! How come Jack brought Cas back? Did he bring anyone else back too? Is Heaven still dying? What happens with Hell?
I dont even understand. It makes no sense. This episode is jarring because it doesnt go with the rest of the series.
Castiel
What the hell did they do with Cas?
This is so fucked up. Cas died and his death was useless because yeah it saved Dean but Chuck wanted him alive for the big end anyway. It gave Dean motivation to live a good life but he never got to. Cas died for nothing and we couldnt even grieve him because they baited us into believing he would come back.
The last time we heard his voice was in a twisted parody designed to mock us.
He was not even in the finale. After all he brought to the story. The Themes of Free Will, faith, and humanity were only tackled with such beauty because of him. He was a unique character and they didnt even show him. Misha was not even in the goodbye scene. It is complete disrespect.
Like Eileen, he is in a limbo. We are told he is alive but he is not shown.
His name is on the fucking table ffs.
In the documentary they kept referring To him as the third brother. He is Family. He should have been there. Explicitly.
Depressingending
When I say Depressing I weigh my words.
Sam is clearly in depression for the rest of his life. He has a wife and a son but he is not happy. 'Always keep fighting,’ Dean said. The show didnt show him keeping up the fight. It shows a man who is so utterly broken that even a marriage and a child bring him no joy.
We dont see him happy once. Even with Covid regulations they could have done it. Show Sam gazing fondly at his wedding ring, or getting ready for his wedding, or buying baby shoes with a huge grin on his face. Nope. It didnt happen.
Listen, I get it. You never get over the loss of your family. It is normal. But it does not mean you cannot find happiness.
As it is, though, Sam’s happiness isnt his wife and kid but only Dean.
Basically the brothers never got rid of their toxic codependency. It is not a callback to the first season. No. This is complete lack of progress.
And the worst thing is that now, in the show, the two brothers canonically only find their happiness in death.
Dean does not find happiness or completion in life. He gets a dog, wants to apply for a job or a house, idk which. But the ep tells us that his happiness is in death. And Sam afterwards only waits for his own death and is happy only after he dies.
Honestly I thought Sam was originally going to kill himself.
I cannot help but think about Jared who fought against dépression. And this is how his character ends. Depressed his whole life and finding relief in death. They even used the title of the episode about his dépression, 'Always Keep Fighting’ against him. Disgusting.
More generally ending a show that deals with abuse, trauma, PTSD and depression with depression for life and happiness in death is super awful.
… also. Usually audiences who watch and thus relate to that are usually depressed people too. One hell of a final message. Death will bring you happiness… oh and servitude gives you happiness and freedom doesnt. This is a nice American narrative I guess.
Even the song of the show, 'Carry on Wayward Son’ was twisted To fit this narrative. 'There’ll be peace when you are done’ never meant 'you will only be happy when you die.’ The song does have a suicidary/depression vibe… but there is hope still.
In the finale, the title 'Carry On’ was not for Dean, since he died and thus did not carry on, but for Sam. Sam explicitly carries on… because he has too. Not because he wants to.
There is just no hope left. In a show that was about hope.
Also, even Heaven is depressing. Where are all the other people they loved? Bobby and Rufus and Mary and John… okay. But where are Charlie, Jo, Ellen, Ash, Adam, Kevin (Ok he is a ghost but still), and all the rest? They are not even mentioned.
Even on Earth no one but Donna is mentioned. Jody? Claire? Rowena? Garth? Nope. No one is mentioned. It is as if they never existed.
Hate crime
And the love declaration… man if they wanted to kill him and never show him again then they didnt have to feature it. NOT AT ALL. This is worse than usual queerbaiting. We are beyond UST and subtext. This is text now.
I was speaking of loose ends. This is such a huge loose end because this scene was never acknowledged at all and it was never answered. At this point even a “sorry but no” would have been better.
Rule number 1 of storytelling: when something huge like that happens in your story it needs to be acknowledged and answered!!!
Imagine in, say, Friends (taking a very known example) that Phoebe confesses her love to Rachel (taking a wild example). Or in Lord of the Rings if Sam confessed his love to Frodo. Or if in Harry Potter Ron confesses to Harry; if in Game of Thrones Jon proposes to Cersei (another wild example). And then it is never spoken about again. Rachel and Frodo and Harry and Cersei never answer, in one way or another. Never. This is just bad storytelling.
Chekov’s gun? Anything that is mentioned in the story must be important??
Some people who didnt even watch SPN called this scene homophobic. SPN proved them right.
Knowing that Jensen and Misha texted each other back and forth about fan reactions makes it even more painful. They knew and they had to watch that knowing that fans would be disappointed.
Or, if some fans are right and Misha filmed a scene in the finale… then they thought maybe destiel would go canon and they were sorry disappointed.
Dean was a victim of the bury your gays thing too. If he lived he had to confront his feelings at some point. So he died. If he met Cas in Heaven he would have to answer him. So they dont meet.
Bury your gays and your bis.
And even in Heaven the gay, the bi and the queer cannot be shown. A show that turned angels into assholes and God into à villain cannot even show LGBTQ+ people in Heaven. Hilarious.
Charlie died. Twice. And we are given no proof that she is alive. Kill the lesbian too!
All that remain is a straight marriage…
But wait…
We have no proof that the wife is Eileen.
Yep. Eileen might be dead. They killed the deaf woman. Twice. After bringing her back. They buried the gay and the disabled woman. Nice.
For a show that took a stand against tyranny and oppression this is… disappointing. They committed hate crime after hate crime.
Conclusion
The finale was not bad just because there was no Destiel. It was bad because the writers betrayed the story they had written. They insulted the fans. They provided no closure and cancelled character development. The story had no consistency. It insulted the characters and the actors. They showed death as the solution and as the way for happiness. They were hateful towards oppressed minorities that depended on them and identified with the show.
pro tip on how to explain the spn ending to your friends
Have them imagine an alternate ending for the Harry Potter saga: what if Ron died in book 6 and never got mentioned again? Imagine he had no funeral and he was never grieved by any of the characters.
After Harry kills Voldemort he starts planning to get a wizard career and finally rise to his full magic potential. First, he wants to visit the Dursleys and he falls off the stairs in their house. Hermione offers to heal him with magic but he says “he was always supposed to die in this staircase”. He promptly dies, right after a semi-romantic moment between him and his cousin. Nobody has time to attend his funreal because they’re busy with work (maybe?). Only Hermione and his owl show up.
Hermione moves on, gets a party wig and marries a man (but we never learn anything about him, his face is blurred). We do not know whether Hermione manages to follow her dreams and become the cleverest professor in all of Hogwarts, the details of her life are left out in favor of showing her son for some reason.
All of the other characters - the Weasleys, Luna, Neville, Draco, Snape and Dumbledore - are killed by Voldemort and then resurrected off screen, we never see them again.
Ginny’s arc is building up to have her be the love interest of one of the leads but then she’s just never mentioned again.
Harry reunites with his abusive adoptive family in heaven because he doesn’t want to meet his actual parents. He doesn’t want to see Ron either but he smiles when he hears that he’s here.
The last shot is just Daniel Radcliff waving at the drone camera, thanking everybody for coming to the movie theater, as a Katy Perry cover of the main theme plays in the background.
the amount of pure joy when i find a muslim clothing store (world wide delivery 😌😌😌 hehe) that has cute clothes AND niqabs… my mom is gonna have 2 stop me from buying an entire wardrobe of clothes i can’t afford LMAO
[ID: Two niqabis in matching pink and beige outfits. They’re wearing plaid shirts and solid colored skirts. The person in pink is sitting in a chair and has her eyes closed, hands around the arm of the person in beige and rests her head there. End ID.]
hey ao3 can you like give the extra $38k you made from this month’s funds drive to charity
You know it legally is a charity, right?
If x charity aims for £10, but gets £15, would you expect then to give back the extra five or give it then to another charity? No. Any extra costs go into the “rainy day” fund; sometimes servers crash or break, sometimes false reports are made that require the legal team, sometimes you need to hire coders or what not to implement new features or fix bugs or deal with broken code …
The money they aimed for is the bare minimum, which goes towards things like basic server costs and domain names and legal advice and so forth, but they don’t just “pocket” the rest (as people claim). It’s not a business. It has no advertisements. It needs some “rainy day” cash to function.
You can’t ask a charity to give money to another charity.
They don’t “pocket” excess money. They have a
publicly accessible budget - waaaay more info than most charities, in
fact. In it, you can clearly see where each dollar goes. (Also, you are
vastly underestimating either how much traffic AO3 gets or how much
servers/hosting costs.)
In my experience, people who don’t work in web design and hosting just have no concept of how heavy a load something like AO3 would have. Not only is the traffic absolutely buck wild, but the quantity of data that archive needs to store is fuckoff crazy.
I’m talking “more than the library of congress” crazy. The only reason
it doesn’t require Netflix levels of data serving is that it’s text
based rather than video.
AO3 is in the top 300 websites in the world, and the top 100 in the US. It is the number 2 literature website.
Number 2 in the entire world. JSTOR is 20.
It sees about 6 million people a day.
About 250k an hour. Each of those people is loading multiple pages, many are running
searches that execute on literally hundreds of potential variables per
search. The demands involved are astronomical.
JSTOR, btw, makes 85 million dollars a year.
It’s 18 ranks below AO3′s traffic, and takes in 650 times the amount of money.
But let’s say you think that’s an unfair comparison. Would you say that the Project Gutenberg Literature Archival Group- another text based archive that handles literature operating outside traditional copyright requirements- is more similar?
Because it sees all of 4% of the traffic that AO3 handles.
Care to guess its budget?
Double that of AO3.
AO3 is doing shit on the kind of shoestring budget that I fully, 100% cannot comprehend. And that’s just the archival service.
The 130k also pays for the OTW’s legal team, which they use to defend the right of fandom to fucking exist.
It’s
absolutely batshit fucked up that people are fighting to have the OTW
defunded and AO3 shut down. They are the only organized group that
actually stands directly between fandom- all the art and the fics and
the vids and the music and the chats and the memes and everything we
love about interactive, transformative work- and an incalculable amount of lawsuits.
I cannot believe the comments that I’m reading. From a logical standpoint, a trust broken after 2 years can still be fresh and it takes a great deal of courage to face it at desperate times and you really think it’s THAT easy to just make a call? I find it outstanding how a lot of you bitter kids can’t tell that Tony was hesitant BUT was about to call anyway until Thanos’ ship crashed in N.Y. which makes the safety of the civilians more important than a phone call at that moment.
Even if he did call, Steve and the rest are at the other side of the globe and Thanos is right where Tony is and such a threat demands immediate action. Having Dr. Strange open up a portal isn’t likely to happen if he himself can’t tell where they are located in a short time vs protecting the ones vulnerable next to him.
And, Tony did NOT just blast off to space. In case you guys completely forgot (or ignored to fuel your hate), Dr. Strange’s life was in danger and so was PETER’s who was holding onto the outside of the ship. Tony sent out the latest Spiderman suit to save him and if it can’t reach Peter on time, then fuck yeah he’s going to catch him himself.
This is getting really tiring. It doesn’t take much of your brain cells to actually SEE than watch. Your whinings about Tony about to murder Bucky is really OLD. You hear reasons how his actions are justified but I suppose you don’t care because it’s Tony Stark who’s hurting and acting on his pain and not Bucky or Steve? :P
Dear god, comments faulting Tony for ‘not reaching out to Steve’ raise livels of salt in my body to alarming degree.
Tony wasnt talking about Steve not being on Titan. Let me repeat: TONY WASNT TALKING ABOUT STEVE NOT BEING ON TITAN. Let’s remember the timeline of this whole mess, okay?
Age of Ultron: Tony, influenced by wormhole AND nightmare Wanda spooked him with, tries to create a way to protect Earth from invasion. It backfires and whole team turns on Tony, blaming him for acting prematurely and without telling others. It’s when Steve gives this speech, that there’s no need to overprepare, that they should be a team, and if invasion happens, then their weapon against it will be them fighting it off together.
Civil War: Avengers are given proposition with only two legal options: SIGHN or RETIRE. Vision, Rhodes, Natasha, and, yes, Tony, agree to sighn. Steve and Sam do not want to, Wanda makes no comment other than worrying that ‘they’ll come for me’. Bruce and Thor are not present. It’s 4 vs 2, or 4 vs 3 if you really want to count Wanda in. Please notice neither Steve nor Sam explain what EXACTLY is their plan for when they’ll get their resigment papers.
Steve then says that it’s Tony who broke Avengers apart, but Tony didnt make ANYONE sighn, nor did he influence them to. The only one Tony actually asks (begs) to sighn is Steve. Also, it’s not accords (or Tony’s) foult Steve and Sam were about to be prosecuted, it’s because they (OUT OF NOWHERE) helped out terrorist suspect to flee in foreign country, fighting operatives and crushing road tunnel with civilians in it! Right after! They were asked! To please consider!! The amount of casualities and damage they cause!
“Tony shouldnt have tried to catch them in airport!” you scream, but the fight at airport happened…… because Steve did not reach out to Natasha or Tony. He could have expalined them situation when there was still time, and you bet they would have come up with a plan. But Steve decided that turning more than half of Avengers into criminals was a better bet. Also him smugly going ‘i know what i’m doing, step aside’ in airport really doesnt count as ‘reaching out’, okay.
“Tony shouldnt have attacked Bucky!” ugh, shut up.
By the end of movie, because of Steve, 70% of the Avengers fucked off to Wakanda and then went underground. Vision slips away after Wanda. Avengers, that apparently ‘awlays were Tony’s’ are down to two memebers, which are: Tony and Rhodes.
Infinity War: The thing that Tony warned everyone about 2 ensemble movies ago is finally here, physically landing on Earth. And this is it.
THAT’S IT. This is the ‘you werent there’ Tony blames Steve for.
The moment they were supposed to fight invasion TOGETHER, Steve and the team were somewhere fighting arm dealers underground.
Dr Strange and Bruce came to Tony, when they could have went to the compground with whole team assembled. Vision could have been right there, surrounded by whole team. ‘It’s because Tony didnt reach out to Steve!!’ you scream, but Tony had that fucking phone on him while he was OUT FOR A JOG. He strugled with valid feelings, but he still opened that phone to make a call, and Bruce COULD make that call later EXACTLY because Tony had it on him any minute, exactly for this scenario.
Tony doesnt blame Steve for not being on Titan, he blames him for promising ‘together’ as weapon against Thanos and then just walking away. Do you realise that Tony couldnt contact Vision because Vision CUT HIM OFF to runaway with Wanda who was in hiding BECAUSE OF STEVE? Do you realise that Vision, Wanda, Steve, Natasha and Sam were only able to act AFTER DOUGHNUT SHIP ALREADY FUCKED OFF FROM EARTH exactly because they were in hiding?
Do you ALSO realise that Tony was on the scene and had power to evacuate people from area with single order to friday BECAUSE he was an official Avenger and not runaway rogue?
Under all of this let me just add that Tony would have never, EVER said any of this if he wasnt just wheeled in this room on wheelchair with a drip, after barely surviving a space trip with not enough water, food or oxygen, AFTER his kid fucking disintegrated in his arms? Instead of letting him rest they interrogate him for coordinates and clues and STEVE talks about NEEDING something from him? Steve. The one who condemned hiding things from the team and then lied to tony’s face, the one who preached to stick together and then walked away. Tony’s voice was trembling, on the verge of tears, grief and hurt and horror in his throat, yet people say he was an asshole?
I loved this scene, okay. I loved that Tony, who never protects himself this blatantly, who had to swallow unfair accusations in age of ultron, and then was conditioned into claiming that ultron was ‘his foult’, and then was blamed for civil war like he himself wrote the document and then made eveyone into criminals???
and THEN was shamed by Bruce for fighitng with Steve… finally Tony got to point out that he tried to give them ‘clues, coordinates, anything’ YEARS ago and they ignored him. Finally Tony got to tell Steve off for lying, for not listening to Tony’s concerns in the first place, for arrogantly believing only in ‘his own hands’. Somehow every damn movie Steve gets to walk out without any
consequences, squeaky clean from accusations, head held high, when somewhere in the world Tony get’s slapped with a picture of a dead child and ‘i blame YOU’ from a grieving mother. So if Steve had to endure few minutes of Tony finally telling him as it is… let him endure it, because it’s about fucking time. Because if in civil war Tony was a grieving orphan, in endgame he was a grieving father.
THANK YOU. ALL OF THIS ☝️☝️☝️
“because if in civil war tony was a grieving orphan, in endgame he was a grieving father” – not gonna lie, that sentence hit me in the face like a brick.
