the blue poet

Vaccines (yay!)

Pasteurization

Implementing and enforcing food quality and sanitation standards. Did you know White Castle was called as such because their gimmic was that they continually cleaned and bleached their stores inside and out to prevent food poisoning.

The invention of antibiotics! The first sulfa drugs dropped in the 1930s-40s

Widespread access and distribution of enriched food products! Enriched flour did a lot to prevent malnutrition, and it’s how Wonderbread got its name!

We got a hell of a lot better with medical care for sick and premature infants. The first incubators for premature babies were actually used as something of a sideshow attraction at Coney Island! It was the only way the doctor who invented them could get funding to keep them running because no one thought it would work. It showed a lot of people that really premature babies could survive with the right treatment and eventually was adopted by hospitals.

The green revolution in agriculture that prevented around a billion people from starving to death

...so uh, that's not how that works. Will was never straight. You're not straight until all of a sudden you're gay. Will is not and has never been straight even though he may not have realized it until season 3 or 4. Just like how I am not and have never been straight even though I didn't realize it until I was 16.

bylerlumax picnic double date (summer of ‘94)

Truely missed oppurtunity, not having them kiss in these outfits. Would have saved the world without anyone ever having to enter the Upside Down... smh

i had started wondering, earlier, if i'm delusional because i can see so much love and beauty and profoundness and strength in this book where everyone else just sees 'trauma porn', so i appreciate you a lot. (plus, the thesis you wrote on it was incredible :))

also, slightly unrelated but WHY AREN'T THERE MORE PEOPLE WHO REALISE HOW FUNNY AND COMFORTING AND AMAZING JUDE IS??? (okay i'm gonna stop screaming in your inbox now)

don't know if it was kinda random to send you this, but. yeah. <3

this is so sweet what the helly!!

genuinely i started posting about a little life on here because i felt the same way like SOMEONE out there has got to feel the same way about this book and me and turns out now i get to be a part of a wonderful little community that really gets it which is such a gift

And yet I hated the ending because all of Jude’s trauma and his little moments of happiness amounted to nothing but despair for himself and others. I wanted to see him get better. Obviously people’s journeys are not linear and that’s one of the messages of the book, but I can’t believe that someone like Jude cannot be helped especially when he desires to get better so much.

Yanagihara wrote the story in a way so it was impossible for Jude to heal, beating him down at every opportunity, but that’s not real life. People do get better. People like Jude heal and grow from their trauma, even if it’s a struggle throughout their entire life. They have moments of happiness and those moments don’t mean nothing just because they’re unhappy later.

I also disagree with Hanya Yangihara's views on therapy and mental illness. Jude should've been able to talk about his buried trauma. Jude should have been able to work through *why* he cut himself, *why* he was so keen on self-harming.