Perfectly Imperfect

JOYREN WEEK 2026 | July 4th - July 10th

Totally inspired by a post by the user JopperWeek (who are creating an awesome idea by dedicating a week to Jopper), I thought it would be really fun to celebrate Joyren for a week! Why July 4th? Because that’s the day that they had their cute interaction at the festival in season 3 (and it just so happens to be rounding the corner.)

To celebrate our favorite Hawkins moms, I created a week’s worth of ideas including ideas for fanfics, fan art and edits. And if there’s anything else you’d like to share about Joyren, share it! And you obviously do not have to follow the specific prompts and ideas I wrote. These were just the few that made the cut (I have so many more) that I figured I’d use as examples. Prompts and ideas at the bottom of post, NSFW Warning ‼️

This is my attempt to revive Joyren. Come on. They’re too special to let go just six months after the finale.

So share all of your wonderful Joyren creations and thoughts using the tag #JoyrenWeek ! 🍷

It's this guy. Who is still very much missing. I got the most recent update from Rachel Maddow, but you can see for yourself right here.

Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson): W.E.B DuBois' brief note on the life and moral cowardice of Robert E. Lee is one of the single most brutal pieces of writing I've ever read

Robert E. Lee March 1928

Each year on the 19th of January there is renewed effort to canonize Robert E. Lee, the great confederate general. His personal comeliness, his aristocratic birth and his military prowess all cal for the verdict of greatness and genius. But one thing - one terrible fact - militates against this and that is the inescapable truth that Robert E. Lee led a bloody war to perpetuate human slavery. Copperheads like the New York Times may magisterially declare: "of course, he never fought for slavery". Well, for what did he fight? State rights? Nonsense. The South cared only for State Rights as a weapon to defend slavery. If nationalism had been a stronger defense of the slave system than particularism, the South would have been as nationalist in 1861 as it had been in 1812.

No. People do not go to war for abstract theories of government. They fight for property and privilege and that was what Virginia fought for in the Civil War. And Lee followed Virginia. He followed Virginia not because he particularly loved slavery (although he certainly did not hate it), but because he did not have the moral courage to stand against his family and his clan. Lee hesitated and hung his head in shame because he was asked to lead armies against human progress and Christian decency and did not dare refuse. He surrendered not to Grant, but to Negro Emancipation.

Today we can best perpetuate his memory and his nobler traits, not by falsifying his moral debacle, but by explaining it to the young white South. What Lee did in 1861, other Lees are doing in 1928. They lack the moral courage to stand up for justice to the Negro because of the overwhelming public opinion of their social environment. Their fathers in the past have condoned lynching and mob violence, just as today they acquiesce in the disfranchisement of educated and worthy black citizens, provide wretchedly inadequate public schools for Negro children and endorse a public treatment of sickness, poverty and crime which disgraces civilization.

Listen, I have vented to Lizzen in DMs about this so many times. Mike! Is! Not! Dumb! My favorite Mike is the Mike who gets all caught up in a campaign or a plan and starts mapping out every detail. My favorite Mike is the Mike who is the president of the AV Club because he is a technology nerd. My favorite Mike is the Mike who makes us ask, "What on earth was Mr. Clarke teaching you, or what books were you reading on the side, that you could BUILD A BOMB?" My favorite Mike is the Mike who, despite being terrified himself, guides a group of kids through a literal battlefield by looking strategically at every point before he moves to the next safe spot. My favorite Mike is DM Mike, who writes whole campaigns for his friends for fun and tries to anticipate their every move so that he can surprise them and do something unexpected.

Mike can be emotionally obtuse at times, yes. Or maybe, slower to process his emotions than other kinds of information. Or maybe, he knows his own emotions but it takes him longer to articulate them out loud. Or maybe, he's aware enough of the consequences of his own emotions that he's afraid of what they mean. None of which are uncommon for intelligent people, by the way! Needing time to understand what your own emotions mean says that you are aware that you need the time. Understanding what you feel and being able to say it out loud are not the same things, because words have weight and meaning and accuracy matters. Understanding what you feel and knowing how others will react to it takes a lot of self- and social awareness. And all of that awareness can lead to a lot of fear. But fear does not equal stupidity!

In the video, the kid talks about “todas, todos y todes”. “Tod-o” is an adjective that means “everything/everyone”, but it is gendered. If you say “all the boys” it’s “todos los chicos” and “all the girls” is “todas las chicas”. But what about non binary people? Then it’s “todEs les chiquEs”

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.

Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.

:| :| :|

I grew up in the era where you still had to know how to proofread to pass fourth grade.

Write your book. Forget the grammar checker. I will proofread it. I will explain grammatical changes I make so you can improve your skills. Let me put my editing of your work on my resume so I can get the fuck out of warehouse work and into clerical. If you're a first time author I will not charge you. (If you've been published before, we can talk about it. I know most authors don't make a tin shit in a goldmine these days. I won't ask for much.)

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.

Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.

:| :| :|

I grew up in the era where you still had to know how to proofread to pass fourth grade.

Write your book. Forget the grammar checker. I will proofread it. I will explain grammatical changes I make so you can improve your skills. Let me put my editing of your work on my resume so I can get the fuck out of warehouse work and into clerical. If you're a first time author I will not charge you. (If you've been published before, we can talk about it. I know most authors don't make a tin shit in a goldmine these days. I won't ask for much.)

In the video, the kid talks about “todas, todos y todes”. “Tod-o” is an adjective that means “everything/everyone”, but it is gendered. If you say “all the boys” it’s “todos los chicos” and “all the girls” is “todas las chicas”. But what about non binary people? Then it’s “todEs les chiquEs”

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

Don't let fear or feeling doomed stop you. If you're overwhelmed that's okay, but take a break, take a breath, talk to someone about how you're feeling, and continue.

Listen, I have vented to Lizzen in DMs about this so many times. Mike! Is! Not! Dumb! My favorite Mike is the Mike who gets all caught up in a campaign or a plan and starts mapping out every detail. My favorite Mike is the Mike who is the president of the AV Club because he is a technology nerd. My favorite Mike is the Mike who makes us ask, "What on earth was Mr. Clarke teaching you, or what books were you reading on the side, that you could BUILD A BOMB?" My favorite Mike is the Mike who, despite being terrified himself, guides a group of kids through a literal battlefield by looking strategically at every point before he moves to the next safe spot. My favorite Mike is DM Mike, who writes whole campaigns for his friends for fun and tries to anticipate their every move so that he can surprise them and do something unexpected.

Mike can be emotionally obtuse at times, yes. Or maybe, slower to process his emotions than other kinds of information. Or maybe, he knows his own emotions but it takes him longer to articulate them out loud. Or maybe, he's aware enough of the consequences of his own emotions that he's afraid of what they mean. None of which are uncommon for intelligent people, by the way! Needing time to understand what your own emotions mean says that you are aware that you need the time. Understanding what you feel and being able to say it out loud are not the same things, because words have weight and meaning and accuracy matters. Understanding what you feel and knowing how others will react to it takes a lot of self- and social awareness. And all of that awareness can lead to a lot of fear. But fear does not equal stupidity!