“Leah Jeffries Is Annabeth Chase”

Today is the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Keep talking about it. Keep it on the front page. Do not let a genocide continue in silence.

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

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.

something about percy winning against ares by drawing first blood, not giving a fuck that it’s the god of war he is making an enemy out of vs him being caught totally unaware by luke and luke drawing first blood because percy hesitated, because this is his friend, because making an enemy out of a god is way more preferable over making an enemy out of a friend. percy winning against insurmountable odds vs him losing because his loyalty is truly and undoubtedly fatal.

i've had time to think about and process the 2521 ending and i'm finally ready to talk about it. first, i'd just like to say: WOW. i'm so happy i randomly decided to click "play" on episode 1 one day because watching this show was truly such a satisfying journey. the cast was phenomenal, seeing nam joo-hyuk and kim tae-ri together on screen was such a treat. the cinematography, the soundtrack, the writing, the feeling of nostalgia that this show provokes... 2521 is definitely one of my favorite kdramas of all time.

with that said, i don't claim the ending. a lot of people have said, "if you're not happy with the 2521 ending just because baekdo weren't endgame you clearly missed the whole point of the show," but i'd have to disagree. it's not just the lack of a baekdo endgame that didn't sit right with me, it's the ending that all of the characters got in their adulthood that turned me off.

seung-wan had stated in episode 10 that she found life to be boring, which is a sentiment that a lot of teenagers share. their lives are micromanaged by the schools they attend, the parents they live with, and all of their time is taken up by studying and trying to climb the step-ladder to adulthood. but even ten years later, seung-wan does not seem happy. she still finds life boring, she shows no satisfaction or attachment to the job she has chosen and she says herself that she is only able to see her friends during events like funerals. they may have hinted at a change in her love life with the return of yijin's brother, but considering how much emphasis was placed on having a "rEaLiStIc EnDiNg," his return just seemed very random and fanfiction-like.

yurim's ending also didn't satisfy me. don't get me wrong, i am so ridiculously happy that her relationship with jiwoong survived time and distance, and i'm also glad that she was finally able to gain the financial stability that she had always craved. but again, the emphasis was placed on what she chose as a profession following her retirement from fencing. we can't forget WHY yurim was so determined to make money, and the reason was her love for her family. she wanted to lessen their burden, pay off their debts, and provide them with a better life. i think seeing her with her parents in the present day would have been a lot more fulfilling in terms of a "happy ending."

and heedo... oh heedo. i can understand the baekdo breakup given the context of episodes 15 and 16, but i also think that a huge disservice was done to heedo's character in the name of being "realistic." because what were we shown? heedo lived her childhood alone until she was finally granted a short span of time to enjoy passionate love and friendship before it was ripped away from her. at the end of the day, heedo begins her journey alone and ends it alone. not only does she lose the friends that made her youth so memorable and the love of her life, but she also loses the sport that she lived and breathed for. in adulthood, she no longer finds fencing to be fun. she gets bored of winning. the girl who went through so much effort to transfer schools, worked so hard to join the national team, won three gold medals, and wanted nothing more to fence... quit. all athletes retire at some point but what she chose to do with her life afterwards had no relation to fencing whatsoever. i find that to be TRAGIC.

she shows no attachment to her husband in the present day, he's barely a part of her day-to-day life and she doesn't even mention him in passing. this nameless, faceless man that our best girl heedo spends her life with has no presence in her home, in her life, or even in her thoughts. she doesn't even have a ring on her finger. her reaction to yijin (his face during the 2009 interview, his words found in her diary in 2022) even years after their breakup is visceral, instinctual... and that's why she returns to the tunnel, erases the beach day from her mind, and just seems to have no trace of happiness in her. from where i'm sitting, her story seems like a tragedy full of regret, loneliness, and a bitterness for the direction her life took in the name of "growing up."

yijin also seems to be alone in the present day. it's a shame that he dedicated his life to a career that caused him to begin smoking, drinking, losing sleep, and sucked the hope out of his very being. it's also a shame that his "happy ending" consists of bringing the family together that provided him no form of support during the hardest time of his life. his parents may be his blood, but heedo was his family. and he lost her in a breakup that wasn't even reciprocal. they didn't part ways mutually, he was abandoned yet again during a time when he was struggling with issues completely out of his control. his ptsd and depression were never addressed and, just like heedo, he began and ended his journey completely alone.

why was a rookie reporter sent to the other side of the world indefinitely to cover a foreign story in the first place? why was jae-kyung only able to establish a close relationship with her daughter after ending her career? why did she have to choose? why did baekdo break up after their first and only fight? why did heedo say she would make sure her support always reached yijin when she made no effort in episodes 15 and 16 to help him in any way? were all of their words JUST WORDS? why were there so many remnants of yijin in heedo's present day home if they have no relationship at all? why did yijin and heedo have to lose their friendship, their love, their understanding, the very essence of their bond, just to become strangers with no tie to each other's lives after they broke up because "that's how real life is"? why did minchae even pick up that diary in the first place?

"I abhor you" from Nosferatu

You'll see this in a textbook one day.

(Source: AP Photo / Pamela Smith)